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luminnara · 4 years ago

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Goddamn, Shit-Sucking Vampires | Lost Boys x OC CH 1

Summary: Vera is an unusually vicious bloodsucker who's never stuck in one place for very long...until a mysterious feeling pulls her right to the murder capital of the world: Santa Carla, California. Now, she needs to figure out why exactly she's there, where she fits in amongst the boardwalk's nighttime denizens, and how to cope with her own personal vampire-related problems. Poly Lost Boys/OC, starts just before the movie

Also posted on AO3

My requests are open!

Chapter one | Chapter two

Warnings: Blood, gore, smut, all that good stuff

Vera had been to a lot of cities, some of them twice, some of them three times, some even more, but none of them were quite as unique as Santa Carla. The boardwalk was crawling with lost souls, kids with nowhere else to go, and she was one of them; no family to call her own, no real friends, barely any possessions…Vera was a wanderer, a lone soul, a lost girl. She drifted from town to town, hanging around for a day or two if nothing interesting happened before moving on...and honestly, nothing very interesting ever happened.

Sometimes she took the bus, if she had the money from odd jobs or pick pocketing her meals, but for the most part, she was left to her own devices. She traveled on foot when she had to, avoiding major highways unless she was feeling up to a fight. During the day, she took refuge under bridges if she was broke, or motel rooms if she had a little cash. If she felt particularly frisky, sometimes she even managed to seduce locals into helping out, but for the most part, she only had herself as company, traveling by night for no reason other than an insatiable wanderlust and nobody else to spend her time with.

Nothing had ever held her in one place. She had started traveling a long time ago, when she realized she had no reason to stay in her hometown. Plus...people started to grow a little bit suspicious when they noticed too many bodies cropping up. The world was changing, and for someone like her, it was best to stay on the move.

After that, it became a habit, and she got used to wandering and never having a place to call home. Did it ever bother her? Sometimes, when she was resting, it did. She could stop and look at the stars, with some kind of foreign aching in her chest, but it was rare that she thought about it. It had started up years ago, and she had forced herself to get used to it. She had never found any cure, and while she lingered around the east coast, it had finally dulled to a strange, quiet pain. A constant throb in her chest, next to her heart, some kind of strange tightness that she was happy to forget whenever she could. It was becoming more frequent, though, as she neared California, and she chalked it up to the fact that she had been alone and hungry for far too long.

She would have to do something about that soon. She hated feeling hungry.

Vera hopped off the bus when it stopped in Santa Carla, a coastal town that boasted a crowded boardwalk and just the kind of nightlife she needed. From the road, she could see the bright lights of a Ferris wheel and even a roller coaster, and she couldn’t help but smile. She had always liked fairs and carnivals. They were fun and exciting, and good places to pickpocket. Plus, the chaos made it easier for her to go unnoticed.

At the bus stop, she was greeted with boards and telephone poles covered in missing persons ads, and it was an oddly comforting sight. She would fit right in.

“Murder capital of the world, huh?” she said to herself, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. She had seen the graffiti on the back of a big WELCOME TO SANTA CARLA sign on the way in, and the flyers only added to the town’s reputation.

Yeah, this place was worth checking out.

The pier was bright, neon signs and carnival rides lighting up the night. Kids and adults alike were enjoying their summer, stuffing themselves with treats or screaming their way around the roller coaster. It all looked fun, she had to admit, and maybe once she had a chance to grab some cash she could hang around and enjoy herself. She could use a break from running constantly, and she was finding that the boardwalk was already making her happy.

As she walked through the crowds, Vera spotted every kind of person, from middle aged parents toting along a family of four to dirty vagrant children to punks to a couple of weird kids lurking around the comic book store. There were pizza places, cotton candy carts, all sorts of dine in restaurants and bars...Santa Carla seemed like it had everything, but mostly, it was a good place for someone like her to spend some time.

She sat herself down on a railing, trying to ignore the hunger pains she was feeling as she people watched. Beyond the homeless kids and the weirdos, the boardwalk was full of partygoers, and it looked like summer vacation was in full swing. There were a million smells in the air—cigarettes, weed, funnel cakes—but none of them really caught her attention. She let out a sigh, leaning her chin on her hand. She hated being indecisive about dinner.

“Ugh, Surf Nazis,” a woman whispered to her friend as they ran by.

“Gross,” the other wrinkled her nose.

Vera looked past them to the men that were shouting about their asses as they left and she snorted.

“What’s wrong, girls?” One of them yelled.

“Come back, we’ll show you a good time!” Another cackled, tossing an empty beer can over his shoulder.

Vera rolled her eyes. Disgusting, pathetic creatures, all standing around a trash can as they smoked. They smelled awful, she realized with a wrinkle of her nose, and it wasn’t just from their smoke. They were nasty, leering at girls and laughing loudly with each other when the women they were bothering scampered away.

Well, they weren’t her first choice, but at least she had found a meal.

She hopped off the fence and sauntered in their direction for a moment before turning, giving them just enough time to notice her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw them perk up, and before long, all four of them were following her through the crowd, shouting profanities as she made her way down to the pier.

“Hey baby, where you goin’?” one yelled, jogging to keep up with her pace.

Vera looked over her shoulder. “Down under the boardwalk...unless you’re chicken.”

She heard a chorus of hoots and whistles and grinned to herself. Men were so easy.

“I call first dibs!”

“I wanna piece of that ass!” Another yelled.

They always did. Vera was a short girl, only around five feet tall, and stocky. She carried her weight in her legs, giving her thick thighs and a round butt that could never quite stay covered by the denim shorts she loved to wear so much.

Boys liked the way she looked. They liked how she seemed so easy to grab, so soft, so touchable. As the Surf Nazis followed her down the rickety stairs to a secluded spot under the boardwalk, their hands were already moving, unbuttoning pants and reaching for Vera as if they were entitled to her. She smiled sweetly as she backed into the shadows, cooing for them to follow, grinning sickly when they obeyed. They always did, like lambs to the slaughter, never clever enough to recognize her predatory gaze and dangerous movements until it was too late.

Sometimes, if they were lucky, they could catch a glimpse of her bra or panties before it was over, but tonight, Vera had little patience for the dirty fingers that tried to pull her shirt off and her shorts down. Their faces leered down at her, even in the darkness, grunting as they palmed themselves through their pants.

She gave them a second to enjoy it before her lips twisted into a sick grin and she reached for them, nails like claws and teeth like fangs. The air was suddenly filled with the sound of their screams, but the waves crashing against the sand drowned the grisly noises out. As she tore into them, she laughed, loving the way they were so terrified now that they had completely lost any sense of power over her.

Boys always liked the way she looked, until she was covered in their friends’ blood.

-o-

David was having a boring night.

His boys were under control for the time being, lounging on their bikes next to him. Paul and Marko were laughing loudly, occasionally punching each other just for the hell of it, and Laddie was reading a comic as he clung to Dwayne. Star had decided to stay home for the night, and nobody was complaining about that; at the thought of her, David growled to himself, grimacing at the reminder of the troublesome bitch. Max had wanted a daughter and a good mother for Laddie, and what had they ended up with? A mopey, whiny little cunt who refused to kill and feed like everyone else.

Feed...damn, he could go for a snack. He could practically taste blood in the air as he thought about grabbing a bite, fangs threatening to lengthen. He hadn’t even thought he was that hungry, but now that he was thinking about it, it was bugging him, and when David got the urge to feed, there were very few things that could stop him. The hunger would sometimes gnaw at him the way it did a newborn, and even Max was occasionally put off by it. It was something he expected from a younger vampire, like Marko, maybe, but David? His appetite could be insatiable, truly monstrous in a way that most others’ weren’t.

The boys picked up on his hunger and he heard a few growls of agreement before he nodded for Dwayne to take Laddie back to the cave. The kid was never allowed to go with them when they hunted, and Dwayne was capable enough to grab something for himself if he didn’t catch up with them. Ever since Laddie had gotten his pesky little hands on their bloody wine bottle, they had been stuck with him, and if Dwayne hadn’t turned out to be so good with the kid, David would’ve been irritated beyond belief.

It all worked out, though, and Laddie fit in well with the rest of the group. David just had to keep reminding himself to be patient.

“Anybody catch your eye?” Paul asked as his brother took off down the beach with their youngest member.

“Absolutely fucking no one.” David sneered.

The tall blonde straightened up to sniff the air. “Get a whiff of that, though…”

David paused, mimicking Paul. He was right. There was a metallic scent on the breeze, the sweet smell of fresh blood. It made him thirsty, and as he led Paul and Marko down the boardwalk, it only grew stronger.

“Shit,” Marko mumbled as they started down the stairs to the beach. Once they had broken free of the crowd, the scent had hit them like a train, and even David was having trouble controlling himself.

“Careful,” he warned, voice coming out with a ragged, heavy breath.

Murders happened in Santa Carla all the time, and not only because of the Lost Boys. It was a rough place, full of drugs and vagrants, and the violence only helped them blend in. Someone had probably gotten themselves in trouble under the boardwalk, and at this point David was just hoping that the killer was still around to sate his hunger. They never fed from corpses, so stumbling across them never yielded any good results unless they were in the mood to rip them apart for shits and giggles.

David was not in the mood.

He led Paul and Marko off the stairs and through the sand, hurrying now as the blood filled his senses. It was so fresh, and there was so much of it...this wasn’t normal, even for the murder capital of the world. What kind of sadistic human would cut someone up enough to spill so much blood? What the fuck was going on under his boardwalk? Sure, it was something he would do, but other than his boys, who could possibly be that brutal?

It was in the shadows of the pier that he finally got the answers to all of his questions.

Just like the blood had, her scent hit him like a freight train. He could tell Paul and Marko were just as confused by the way they stopped and hissed, fangs already out as they looked down at the bodies littering the sand. It was a gorey scene, throats and stomachs ripped open, Surf Nazis gutted with their pants down.

And in the middle of it all, she had the audacity to glance up at David, and then completely disregard him as she turned back to her final victim. She wasn’t worried in the slightest about the three males, and that pissed David off a little. When he would have snarled a warning at her insolence, he found himself distracted instead, head tilted and lips parted as he drank in her scent and checked her out.

She was wearing shorts that barely covered her bloody legs, ratty combat boots on her feet and an equally ratty denim vest over a ripped up black shirt. Her ebony hair was cut into some sort of shaggy mullet, falling around her shoulders. It was long and wavy and glossy, but tousled and messy, no doubt thanks to feeding.

He could only stare in shock at the black-haired girl that was feasting on a Surf Nazi. He couldn’t decide if he was angry at someone else hunting on his turf or happy to find a real female vampire, one that wasn’t stupid and whiny like Star, but the one thing he knew for sure as he took a step towards her was that he was just the tiniest bit turned on.

Paul and Marko could both smell the tiniest hint of their leader’s arousal, and it excited them. They weren’t used to supernatural girls, and the thought of getting a turn with her was enough to make the air heavy with the scent of lust as they followed David.

Paul let out a low whistle behind him. “Shit, first time I wouldn’t mind bein’ a Surfer. I’d take a little of that sugar right now, know what I’m sayin?”

The vampiress lifted her head from her victim and smiled, drunk on blood and high off the hunt. “I don’t usually share meals, but I’ll give you the rest of this one if it gives me a free pass back outta here.”

Paul tensed to take her up on the offer, but David stopped him. “Free pass?”

The girl sat back from the still-whimpering Surf Nazi, blood running down her chin. “Figure you wouldn’t want me in your territory. Sorry. Didn’t realize anybody else was here, else I’d have been moving on already.”

David smirked. “No need, sweetheart.”

She furrowed her brow.

“It’s feeding time, boys. Grab a snack.” David grinned, allowing Paul and Marko to surge forward and rip into the Surf Nazi. He watched with a twinge of annoyance as Paul turned from his meal and pressed his bloody lips to the girl’s, but that annoyance turned into surprise when she kissed back, albeit lazily.

She smiled as her lips moved against his, a hand moving to tangle in his wild hair. Fire tore through Paul and he growled, pushing her down until her back hit the sand and her chest touched his as her breaths turned into frenzied pants.

Hands ran down her sides, hard nails digging into her skin as Paul nipped at her lower lip. With a whine, she arched up against him, tugging at his hair until he snarled.

“Paul,” David growled a warning.

Paul sat back up with an irritated grumble, licking his lips before plunging his fangs into the Surf Nazi and leaving Vera alone.

David had to admit, he had never met a female vampire that wasn’t stuck in limbo like Star. They seemed rare, or at least they were around California, but Max had always told him that girls of their kind were a special breed. He was already feeling a tug toward her, some kind of something pulling at his chest whenever she moved, and before he knew what he was doing, he was crouching down to suck up the last few drops of blood while his boys turned their attention to the killer.

“What’s your name, beautiful?” Marko asked, playing with a strand of her hair.

“Vera,” she answered with the sweetest voice either of them had ever heard, practically a purr.

Paul sighed, leaning in again. He was head over heels already. “What brings you here to our little corner of the world, Miss Vera?”

She blinked, and they were fucking mesmerized by those lashes and those hazel eyes. “Just passing through, boys. Don’t wanna step on any toes.”

Paul groaned. He wanted her to stay. She smelled amazing, and when she had returned the kiss he hadn’t even realized he was giving her, he felt jolts of electricity shoot through every part of his body.

He wanted more.

“Damn, babe, you’re breakin’ my heart,” he said, holding her face so that he could lick blood off her chin.

“No fair,” Marko nudged his brother. “I want a taste…”

David looked up from the drained corpse, listening as his boys slurred with love drunk voices. Max had warned him about females, about those with foreign sires. They could trap you in a web of lust, keep you dumb and happy there for as long as they wanted, rob you blind and kill your entire family...but somehow, he got the feeling that Vera wasn’t even trying to fuck with them. There was no misty, foggy sensation that would signify magic, no eye contact, no focus. As he rose to his feet, he realized he was walking towards her of his own accord, the only spell being that strange, unspoken one that kept pulling him to her.

He had an inkling of what it could be, but he didn’t dare get his hopes up.

“Got a place to stay, darling?” He asked as he shoved his boys out of the way and knelt before Vera.

She leaned toward him, a sweet smile on those bloody lips that told him she was confident enough in her ability to handle them all. She was calm, completely in control of herself, even when faced with three healthy male vampires. Her eyes were half-lidded, long lashes fluttering whenever she blinked.

When her tongue slipped out to lick blood off her lips, David’s eyes widened at the sight of something he had never seen before. It was split in two, each side moving of its own accord easily. Paul let out an eager noise, Marko shoving him with his shoulder to try to get a better look. Vera just laughed at their fascination, pulling her tongue back into her mouth and smiling.

David could feel her breath on his cheek as she took in his scent and he couldn’t help the shiver that went up his spine. He wanted to touch her, to kiss her better than Paul had, to fuck her and hear his name on her lips. He wanted to show her how strong he was, to impress her, to prove himself for some reason. He would kill a hundred surfers if he had to, if it would grant him her favor. He would sit out in the sun and burn himself if it meant he could be hers.

He had never felt this way about anyone, and it was pissing him off.

Vera laughed to herself. She could smell his desire, and she knew that it was because of her. Just like those Surf Nazis, these vampires wanted her, but at least she liked this little pack. What’s more, that aching in her chest had stopped when they showed up, and she had a feeling she knew why.

It was a little bit terrifying, though, and she wasn’t about to stop and think about it.

“What are you suggesting?” She asked, brushing her fingers along his cheek, a smear of blood following.

“Stay with us,” he breathed, blue eyes locked with hers.

“Darling, I don’t even know your name,” she quipped, never shifting her gaze.

“David,” he said with a slight growl as he felt himself getting lost in her eyes.

“David,” she repeated, voice soft and breathy. Her hand moved to cup his cheek and he leaned into it, nose twitching as he smelled the fresh blood in her wrist. It was sweet, sweeter than any blood he had ever encountered before, and all he wanted to do was sink his fangs into her flesh and get a taste.

Vera heard a sigh and finally took her eyes off David. The other two were watching, just off to the side, staring hungrily at their leader and the new girl.

“And what about you two?” She asked, hand sliding down to the side of David’s neck to keep him in check. She was confident enough in herself to handle him, but at the same time, he put her on edge. There was no way she was going to let her guard down around him yet.

That was the thing about female vampires, though; they had the uncanny ability to always put on a facade, and Vera was no exception. David made her nervous—they all did, honestly—but she wasn’t about to let them know that.

“Paul,” the tall blonde said quickly, rushing forward as if he would die without her touch. He pressed his nose against her throat, breathing her scent as if he was starving.

“Marko,” the smaller one followed, desperately reaching out to touch her hair.

“Paul,” she purred, earning a growl. “...Marko…”

Another growl.

They acted like they needed her, all three of them, but they were behaving themselves. She had no doubt that if she gave them the go ahead, she would be naked within seconds, but for the moment, they were listening to her. She had never experienced something like this before; usually, other vampires ignored her, or threatened her until she left their territory. These boys seemed to adore her, and she had to admit, she liked it.

“Paul, Marko,” David said roughly. “Clean up so we can go home.”

With a groan, the younger two did as they were told, dragging Surf Nazi corpses into the ocean before wiping their hands and faces clean.

“You’re their leader,” Vera said, more as an observation than anything else. “Are you their sire?”

David smirked as he helped her to her feet. “Depends on how you look at it.”

She raised an eyebrow. “There’s only one way to look at that, David.”

He melted when she said his name, leaning in to catch another whiff of her scent. It was sweet, like honey, sticky and sick, and all he wanted was to drown in it. “What have you done to me, Vera?”

She smiled and took his hand, raising it to lick blood off of his fingers. “Nothing on purpose, I promise.”

“Whatever it is, I don’t mind,” Paul suddenly grabbed her from behind, arms snaking around her waist as he buried his nose in her black hair, inhaling deeply and letting out a happy sigh. The feeling of her there in his arms, pressed up against him, was enough to make his fangs slide out again, and he couldn’t help but swipe his tongue up the side of her neck.

David snarled, snapping only inches from his brother’s face. “Behave.”

“You say as if you are,” Vera snorted, giving David a gentle push and easing her way out of Paul’s grip. “But you boys are all very sweet. I don’t mind the attention.”

“Oh, you have our attention, sweets,” Paul whistled as she turned and bent over to wash her face and hands at the water’s edge, giving them all a good view of her ass. A low rumble rose in David’s throat as he appreciated the sight, and Marko echoed it.

“So greedy,” Vera mocked as she straightened up again. “Are you this nice to every bloodsucker that hangs out on your boardwalk, or is it just me?”

“Just you, that’s for sure,” Marko said, almost cackling.

“The others aren’t so delicious,” Paul cooed with that signature laugh.

“Oh, aren’t you a charmer?” Vera said, walking back to them. Now that her arms and legs were clean of blood, they could see that she was covered in tattoos, and David wondered if she had them as a human before she was turned, or if she had found some way to make the ink stay in her regenerative skin.

Paul gave her a cocky grin and David rolled his eyes. His brother was such a flirtatious bastard. He was a lady killer, literally, even more than David was, but Vera didn’t seem to mind his advances. She seemed comfortable with Paul, taking it all in stride.

It made David just the tiniest bit jealous.

“Come with us.” He said it more as an order than an offer, extending his hand out to her.

“Unless you got somewhere better to go,” Marko joked.

“And there ain’t nowhere better,” Paul snickered.

“There aren’t too many places to hide from the sun on a boardwalk,” Vera snorted. She was finally coming down from her high, the thrill of the hunt fading again and giving way to her less monstrous personality. “I was going to have to find a good spot anyways…”

Now that she wasn’t operating solely on instinct, she could take a moment and think about her situation. Three male vampires, none of whom had tried to kill her for stealing prey in their territory, seemed to be absolutely obsessed with everything about her and wanted her to go home with them. One had even kissed her and she had kissed him back, because it had felt so right. She allowed them to touch her, to taste her skin, to share her meal. They were stronger than her, and they outnumbered her, but she still felt like she was...in charge?

David, the definite leader of the little pack, was looking at her hopefully. His face was stony, but she could see excitement in his blue eyes, and when she smiled, there was a spark of something in those irises.

“Just don’t kill me in my sleep,” Vera joked as David took her hand and began leading her back up to the boardwalk.

“No promises,” Marko leered as they followed.

“You look good enough to eat, babe,” Paul growled playfully, lunging forward to cop a feel of her ass.

Vera only laughed, but David snarled dangerously at his brother, moving his arm to Vera’s shoulders and pulling her against his side.

“Relax, you big angry beast,” Vera said with a grin, raising her hand to his chin and giving a teasing scratch.

David huffed and Marko hooted with laughter. “Damn, she’s way more fun than you, David!”

“I dig this chick,” Paul snickered.

“You better share her,” Marko whined.

David smirked as they climbed the stairs back up to the boardwalk. Could he manage that? He only ever shared things with his brothers, but even then, he was terrible at it. Vera had some kind of magnetic pull on him, yeah, and his mouth watered at the thought of keeping her around, but Marko and Paul were both obviously into her...and she was into them.

She was into all of them.

He needed to talk to Max. He honestly hated having to ask his sire for help or advice, and he avoided it whenever he could. Max had never been very nurturing, despite wanting everyone to act like a big family. It worked out for the boys, sure, but Max was…not a great father. A patriarch, yes, always seated at the head of the metaphorical table, but he was cruel and cold towards David, and he had been from the very start. He thought they all needed a stern hand to keep them in check, and David didn’t like that.

Still, Max let them run free, and he knew more than David did about their own kind. He was helpful, sometimes, in his own way, and his son was going to have to defer to him. He had questions about Vera, about the pull he felt toward her, and Max was the only one with the answers.

As they returned to the boardwalk and joined the crowd of humans, Vera was pleased to see that the sea of people parted for the boys. They stepped aside, glancing with mixtures of emotions at the little pack. Girls looked dreamy, parents grabbed their children, Surf Nazis raised their lips in sneers. Was it because of their reputation, or did the humans somehow know that they should be afraid of the predators that stalked Santa Carla? She hoped it was both. She hoped that these boys were wild and rowdy enough to rule this boardwalk, and she hoped that they liked her enough to keep her around.

She glanced up at the sky, a few stars twinkling despite the light pollution from the city. For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t itching to hop on a bus or hitch hike to the next town. For once in her life, Something was occupying her mind, and the wanderlust was giving way to another, completely foreign feeling. The ache in her chest was gone, but it was replaced by a strange, burning, almost longing that she had never felt before. It was almost similar to the emotions she experienced during bloodlust, but she was in control of herself. Her fangs weren’t poking through, her eyes weren’t shining...she was happy and her hunger was sated, so where was this coming from?

She was still avoiding the one train of thought that would bring her to the right conclusion. It was just too much to consider, especially with everything happening so quickly all of the sudden.

They came to a halt when they reached their bikes, Dwayne already back from dropping Laddie off. From the looks of it, he had grabbed a bite on the way, jeans stained with fresh blood that the humans would just assume was from a fight.

Vera stopped. There was another male here? She was finding it hard to believe that she had stumbled across a pack of four males without any females, but she couldn’t smell much in the way of estrogen on them. It was just odd; vampires didn’t usually live in bachelor groups like these, but she supposed it wasn’t entirely unheard of. It was just strange that they hadn’t found any girls they wanted to keep around for all eternity.

Most people got lonely eventually. Maybe these four were all actually lovers...but she hadn’t seen any marks that would mean they were claimed, and she hadn’t smelled or sensed anything that would lead her to believe that they were serious.

Odd.

The one leaning against the bike was tall, long dark hair falling around his shoulders and a curious, but serious, expression on his handsome face. She felt frozen under his gaze, uncharacteristically nervous, like a deer in the headlights. It was like he could see right through her, and she didn’t know if she liked that or not.

“Dwayne, this is Vera,” David said as he tugged her along. She found a way to make her legs work again and followed, letting a smile curl its way onto her lips when Dwayne bowed his head to her.

“And she’s tough,” Marko said, bouncing over to his bike.

“And she’s gorgeous,” Paul took her hand and brought it to his lips for a kiss as he passed her.

“I can see that,” Dwayne said, his voice deep and smooth, a seductive smile on his lips.

David narrowed his eyes, but tried to hide the movement with a smirk. “Keep an eye on her. I’m going to visit Max.”

“Oh, I’ll keep both eyes on her,” Paul winked as he beckoned for her to sit behind him on his motorcycle.

David rolled his eyes, desperately trying to not make a scene. “Control yourself. I’ll be back.”

He pressed a kiss to Vera’s head, inhaling deeply before leaving her side and stalking off down the boardwalk. He could already feel his sire tugging questioningly at his consciousness, curious as to why David was so eager to speak to him. His son had always been good at blocking him out, keeping his mind locked down unless he needed something or there was trouble that called for Max’s attention. The others were more open, but Max didn’t have as strong a link with them, and while David was supposed to be his prodigal son, he was so...secretive. Private. Closed off. For him to be willingly heading to the VideoMax store for anything other than annoying him or hitting on Maria out of boredom, something very important had to be going on, and Max was beyond itching to know what it could be.

“Who’s Max?” Vera asked, joining Paul to perch on the back of his bike.

“David’s sire,” Marko answered.

“A grouchy old bloodsucker,” Paul grinned.

“He runs the video store. He hates it when we crash.” Marko laughed.

“But...that cashier is pretty cute,” Paul said, thinking of Maria. “I’d love for a bite of—”

He was cut off by the breath leaving his body when Vera wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head against his back.

Marko hooted with laughter at his brother’s reaction and Dwayne let out a chuckle. Paul was absolutely speechless, and Vera wasn’t even making skin on skin contact with him.

Until she felt him tense, smirked against his back, and slid her hands under his mesh shirt.

If Paul could blush, he would have. He would have been a shade past tomato red. The feeling of her fingers running over his abs was all he could focus on for a moment, and all he wanted was to kiss her again, feel her again, maybe get a little tongue action...

“You’re supposed to behave yourself, Paul,” Marko taunted as he caught a whiff of the lust in the air and felt his brother’s excited thoughts.

“Yeah, yeah,” Paul snarled. “I don’t need this shit from you.”

“I’m just repeating what David said,” Marko said defensively. “You’re the one who can’t keep it in his pants.”

“Well, aren’t you just the perfect little angel?” Paul shot back. “I’m the one with a goddess on his bike, might I remind you.”

Marko scoffed, lip raised in a nasty little snarl. “Not for long, Paul!”

Vera smiled as they bickered. Paul’s arousal hung in the air, but she didn’t mind; in fact, she liked it, and she hugged her arms around him tighter as he squabbled with Marko. She was eager to get back to wherever it was that they called home, and she was eager to sleep surrounded by them and feel truly safe for once. She was used to being alone, and she wasn’t scared of it, but she was always on edge, always ready to run or fight. It made her a light sleeper, and the concept of not having to worry was more tantalizing than any of these boys were on their own.

#goddamn shit sucking vampires #the lost boys #lost boys x reader #lost boys x oc #david lost boys #dwayne lost boys #paul lost boys #marko lost boys

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laceymorganwrites · 3 years ago

Text

One of us

Word count: 1,979

Pairing: none

Warnings: swearing, mentions of abuse

Summary: Illumi tries to rebel, leading right to you and the troupe. His shackles break, he tastes freedom for the first time.

It was the most dangerous point this time of the year, the time when the troupe had to change their hideout.

You didn´t really have to but there have been incidents in the past that made you extra careful now, incidents that started the whole Zoldyck hatred in your group.

Well hatred would mean fear as well which wasn´t the case, they were more of a nuisance, a wasp that always came back to eat the cake even though you flicked it away so many times already.

Though you had to give it to them, they tried, always came back even though they knew they´d lose. Just like all the other times.

It was like a game of cat and mouse, hide and seek.

It would´ve been fun if it wasn´t so annoying.

You had to admit that it was kind of funny to see those old guys chase after you, with such a laughable ambition in their eyes. What were they even trying to achieve? Honestly, you were just trying to live your life and have some fun. As far as you were concerned you never interfered with anyone of them or their acquaintances if they had any.

Well, maybe they were just trying to stay relevant in the underground and took every job they could get even though they could never even hope to finish it.

Quite a sad fate but that was what you got when you just wouldn´t learn your lesson.

Being stubborn wasn´t always the key to being successful.

“Where are we going this time, captain?” you asked, peaking out your head from behind the boxes you were carrying.

“Oh! How about somewhere near a beach? I haven´t been on vacation in so long” Machi chimed in, a dreamy expression in her eyes.

“Wait actually, how about a vacation? I mean we don´t really have any jobs right now, why not take a day or two off?” you supported her statement.

Everyone seemed to agree with the idea but Chrollo was reluctant. “We should move somewhere safe first and make sure the Zoldycks are busy with something else. I´ll think about it then” he let you know.

After they killed one of you he became paranoid, even more than he already was.

And you couldn´t blame him.

Chrollo didn´t have it easy in the first place managing the spider, being able to stay hidden and without anyone bothering you.

“Alright. I´ll check the route” you said, making yourself useful and making sure nobody would follow you.

As you stepped out of the hideout and looked around everything was in the clear, you nodded at Phinks and Uvogin who were responsible for driving the trucks with all your belongings.

The two men helped carry the last boxes inside the trunks and then you all joined them in the cars.

Chrollo was on edge, you could tell, the way he stared outside the window so paranoid as if you´d get attacked the next second.

“We´re almost there, captain. I can´t sense anyone but us, it´s gonna be over soon” you tried to calm him down, he appreciated it, just nodding.

His jaw was still clenched, but that was just how he was, always looking out for others and disregarding himself in the process.

When you arrived it was a bit too quiet for your liking, the others were careful too.

“I´m going to check it out, you guys can start unpacking already” you said and walked around the property. This time you chose an abandoned hotel, the furniture was still in tact and Shalnark could work very well in the security and control room.

You decided to work on the basement together, making a nice playroom for Feitan.

The building was big enough so that there was something for everyone, the location was very well hidden too, so maybe you could stay here longer this time. You´d like that.

Carefully and observant you looked around and walked everywhere around the property, nobody else was here besides you, but you could feel something. It made you uneasy. And yet it wasn´t a threatening aura.

That was it. An aura.

Anyone who´d come to attack you would conceal it, so why…. Why was this person here? And more importantly: where were they?

You frowned, being even more careful now and not making it as obvious that you were looking around. Hell, you even laid against a brick wall as to show how much you didn´t know what was going on. You let your guard down in hopes of them doing it too.

But Illumi was even more careful. This was the most important mission in his life, the mission to gain his parents´ approval and love, failure was not an option.

No matter what you do, don´t mess with the spiders. They´re not worth the effort and work. That´s what they always told him. And he had believed them his whole life, not even questioning it once.

But rather than doing exactly that and becoming aware of the fact that he was stronger than his parents thought he could ever be, in a way that wasn´t self destructive, in a way that wasn´t manipulative, he decided to make this rule something twisted.

Illumi knew what sort of punishment waited for him for breaking that rule, after all his family were the only ones who were still able to actually hurt him.

However he saw it as a chance, if he broke the rule and succeeded in killing them that would only show them what a great assassin they made of him, he wondered if his parents would finally be proud of him then.

“You don´t have any ill intent, how can I help you?” you faced him, still not seeing him but you could sense his nen well enough.

Illumi stayed hidden for a bit, how could you detect him? That messed up his plan quite the bit, but he didn´t have time to let it get to him.

He watched you from afar again, watching you just stand there unguarded. It was naive and stupid but so calculated, he rather felt like prey in a trap now, not the other way around. You made him uneasy and that excited him.

Maybe it wouldn´t hurt to play this game of catch with you, after all there was no hurt in having fun in his job, was there? Perhaps he was just playing with fire, you had challenged him for something he couldn´t calculate, for something he wasn´t ready for. It was exciting beyond belief.

“Ah, there you are~” you grinned when Illumi finally revealed himself.

“It´s not wise to be out here on your own, not calling anyone for help when you know someone´s here to harm you” he coldly stated, though it wasn´t really cold, it was just… distant, uncaring. There was no emotion behind it at all and yet all of them were. Maybe you were delusional but you could swear that you saw deep grief in his eyes, an even deeper hatred and regret.

Still, you didn´t know him, you doubted the others did as well.

“Yeah well it´s kind of obligatory to face danger in my work, so what brings you here? Something personal or just a job?” you couldn´t deny the fact that you were curious. After all it was pretty easy figuring out that he was an assassin as well. That only made things more interesting though.

“A bit of both” he answered truthfully. Again. No emotion in it at all. And somehow that just drew you in all the more.

“I see, well… hate to rain on your parade but we´re not really the types of people who get taken out easily. Or at all for that matter. But since you seem like a nice guy I´ll let you go before you make any stupid decisions” you offered him, Illumi was trained that nobody could ever trace his true intentions but all that training might as well be useless. Your intuition was better than that.

“I´m afraid I can´t do that. If I leave now everything will be over. I´ve come too far already to give up now” he let you know. Leaving for him would mean admitting to his parents that he broke their rule, he didn´t want to be punished like that ever again. He wanted to be free of them. Free for good this time.

But you were right, this was stupid to begin with. He knew how dangerous the spider was, he knew he wasn´t strong enough on his own. He sighed, the first sign of humanity he showed ever since he appeared. “I won´t kill you. But I can´t return either… this is inconvenient” he shook his head, thinking. Just what was he supposed to do now?

“Tell you what, why don´t you join us? You look like you have some tragic past, fits the job description” you grinned a bit.

Inviting him was a stupid idea, you knew that. But you felt sorry for him somehow. He clearly didn´t have a place where he belonged and to you that was just sad. Because you knew that everyone had a place to belong to, no matter how fucked up and broken they were.

“Pardon? I´m afraid that´s the worst idea I´ve ever heard” he said, appalled. Human emotion detected!

“Bad ideas make for good stories, what do you have to lose?” you grinned, curious about his answer.

Illumi had to chuckle at that. “Nothing anymore actually. I would´ve said my family but I never had one to begin with” his eyes were so empty when he said that, it made you sad.

Though they also held that sorrowful look in them, that realization that he could never have a normal family, that he could never be truly happy and he shouldn´t care, he knew he shouldn´t but … he couldn´t help it. It wasn´t his fault. It was engraved in him from childhood.

“Well now you do! Welcome to the spider” you smiled and practically dragged him along into the hideout with you.

To say the rest was shocked would be an understatement. Alarmed would be more fitting. After all you just brought their enemy into the hideout. However even they had to admit after a while that Illumi was anything but an enemy. Sure at first he was quite awkward and didn´t know how to act around everyone. But that was the thing, he didn´t have to act anymore.

For the first time in his life he could be himself, for the first time he had a chance to figure out who the hell that even was.

He fit right in into the troupe, they were all outcasts in their own way, each had their weird quirks about them and that was just what made them unique and special, that wasn´t a bad thing like he had been taught. After a while he even opened up enough to laugh and joke around with everyone. Though his way of laughing was just smiling ever so slightly that you wouldn´t even notice it if you didn´t look hard enough.

But you did. And the others did too. You cared about Illumi, he was one of you now, everyone would want to read him and they were patient enough to wait for him to open up, he was a great addition to your little makeshift family. And he was funny. Illumi had a dark humor but when you got it, it was the funniest thing you´ve ever heard. It even had Chrollo chuckling. And for him that was the highest of expressions and the biggest compliment.

And when Illumi´s former family attacked he fought on his real family´s side. He fought for himself, to keep this freedom, this inner peace, this adventure and excitement he´s never known before.

69 notes · View notes

mrkcore · 4 years ago

Text

𝐆𝐇𝐎𝐒𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔 - 𝐧.𝐣𝐦

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: na jaemin x f!reader

𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬: jaemin as DC’s nightwing/dick greyson, hero!jaemin

𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: you’re the one picking him up, piece by piece, even when you’re gone.

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: angst, fluff

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠(𝐬): profanity, character deaths, blood, gun use

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 5.3k (woopwoop!)

𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨: ghost of you - 5sos, lie to me - 5sos, woke up in japan - 5sos, want you back - 5sos, more - 5sos, better man - 5sos, moving along - 5sos, thin white lies - 5sos, red desert - 5sos, lonely heart - 5sos, high - 5sos (just me being 5 seconds of summer trash)

𝐚/𝐧: part of @nct-writers collab, the heartbreak hotel (this is probably the longest fic i’m ever going to write, so pls gimmie feedback i will love you forever)

“imagine you're watching a runaway trolley barreling down the tracks straight towards five workers who you do not know and can't escape. you happen to be standing next to a switch that will divert the trolley onto a second track. here's the problem. that track has a worker on it, too, just one, but they’re not a stranger. what do you do? do you sacrifice that one person to save five?”

jaemin regrets being the hero in the story.

jaemin regrets everything.

he constantly ponders the situation playing out where he wasn’t the protagonist. people have always said, “a hero would sacrifice you to save the planet, but a villain would sacrifice the planet to save you”. jaemin always thought that was bullshit, but now he knows the despairing truth.

he regrets, he regrets, he regrets. but regret won’t bring you back.

you seemed so sure when you told him to let you go and it’d be okay, it wasn’t his fault. how was it so easy for you to think and say that? not his fault? he was basically the reason you’re dead. he just found you after so many years, now you’re gone again; but this time, it’s for real, forever.

jaemin remembers the cold tiny room he was forced to sleep in with the other children in the circus.

it was a nightmare every single day. with kids screaming, singing, laughing, and running around the room, nobody could get any sleep. what made it worse was that jaemin had no one to talk to.

none of the other boys liked him, being handsome, dubbed the “face of haly’s circus”, always talking behind your back how the boss always favoured him because he was bringing so many more views in. girls swarming around jaemin ever since him and his parents ever joined, it was so obvious that he was the most popular. jaemin never liked the attention, he was only trying to survive after all.

then, you arrived.

y/n, the confounding witch, they called you.

conjuring up little tricks for audience members, brewing up drinks to transform participants into different species of animals, and controlling birds in cages were only a few acts you could do.

the first day boss introduced you to everyone, you seemed so bright and excited to be joining. your unique eye smile, bubbly personality, and caring nature drew jaemin to you. he’s seldomly trying to calm the younger kids down so everyone can rest, but your patience and compassion towards the kids were something they weren’t used to, and eventually caved in.

soon, it became quieter in that god awful room jaemin always dreaded. but jaemin's heart beat louder in his chest than ever.

jaemin was never one to show off. like we established before, the attention jaemin got was not appreciated by him. except, it became different when you arrived.

he was constantly trying to impress you, sway you, hoping the things he did for the crowds of girls that rushed to buy tickets to see him, would work for you too.

however, that was just his wishful thinking.

you were unlike any of the interactions jaemin had with the opposite gender. you were confident, yet humble, witty, intelligent, and easy-going. he is constantly flustered whenever he is engaging in a conversation with you, but tries to act nonchalant whenever he knows you’re nearby.

after shows, girls screamed and bolted towards the entrance where jaemin stood for exit duty, to say goodbye to patrons. he’d always try to be paired with you for it, trying to make you jealous.

but of course that never happened. jaemin would always be trampled by his enthusiastic female supporters, as surges of them stopped to interact with him. flirting with them all at the same time, they all swooned over your charms. he’d always see you giggle, laughing at his bursts of confidence he’d never have with you by yourselves.

this continued for a year, until one day, you let something slip.

“ladies, ladies, i’m so glad you could join us for today.” jaemin smiled at the groups in front of him, glancing at you walking an elderly couple out of the tent. “make sure to take good care of yourselves, wouldn’t want anything happening to any of you sweet gals.” and cue the squeals.

“hope you had fun pretty boy.” you directed to him calmly, as you walked back into the circus. jaemin’s head snapped to stare at your back. he’s stunned, did you just call him a “pretty boy��?

remembering that the crowd in front of him was still there, he reacted quickly.

“i guess it’s time for me to go, i’ll catch you lovely girls at my next show, i hope.” he leaves with a wink, following your path straight towards you.

finding you in your little assigned room, jaemin barged in, gaze fixated right on you, not even thinking what to say.

“oh, jaemin, hey.” you say, not even batting an eye, you’re focused on the book in your hands. “what’s up?”

“you called me pretty boy.” he breathed out.

“yeah i did,” you’re still not paying attention to him. “what about it?”

“you think i’m pretty?” jaemin is suddenly very close to you, his hand caressing your face, lifting your line of sight up to meet his gaze.

his eyes are sparkling, cheeks a slight tint of pink, with a look of determination. of course you thought he was pretty, anyone who said otherwise would either be lying, or have never seen his gorgeous face.

jaemin must’ve been acting impulsively, because when he realized how close he was to your face, he immediately pulled back.

“i am so sorry,” he says in disbelief. “i don’t know what came over me.”

“it’s okay,” you smile at him, grabbing his hand to where it was before. “i liked it.”

jaemin is flustered again, standing completely frozen as he admires your face up close.

you’re breathtakingly beautiful. he’s known that you were attractive, but this just created even more butterflies in his stomach.

“and yes, i do think you’re pretty.” you wink at him.

and that’s where it started.

you and jaemin started spending time together more.

jaemin was still a bit nervous and frenzied at the beginning, but that melted away, and his flirty, outgoing, and annoyingly confident side was revealed to you.

you were also quite popular amongst the other boys in the circus, so when you two were seen more frequently together, they started spreading rumours about jaemin to get you two away from each other.

“oh jaemin’s just trying to use them.”

“jaemin thinks after getting with them, he’s going to cross all of the names off his list.”

“he’s such a player, y’n’s too good for him.”

of course you’d hear them more often than him, the guys would always say these kinds of things around you.

but you know they’re just trying to stir up trouble. so you ignore them.

just like how jaemin ignores the talk about you amongst his female supporters.

“she’s trying to take him away from us.”

“he’s not as happy anymore.”

“she thinks she’s all that, he’s probably just a new notch in her belt.”

of course jaemin would never listen to them. they’d never know about the secrets you had together, sneaking out of your rooms and sitting on the roof at night stargazing, your note exchanging, late night talks; they knew none of that.

“i wish things weren’t like this,” you sighed, leaning on his shoulder as you two look at the early sunrise. “i wish we could be free and do whatever we want. this is so unfair.”

jaemin has never really thought about that. every day, his head was flooded with you. but now he thinks about it, it truly was unfair.

jaemin wishes he could take you on on real dates, take you on meaningful trips to explore the rest of the world. not hidden in this awful place where you could barely talk to each other in public. jaemin wishes he could give you more.

“it’s not your fault nana,” you look up at him like you’ve read his mind and know he’s overthinking. “there’s nothing you can do.”

“yeah,” jaemin exhales. “i know.” he tries to smile when you reach up to caress his face, you look at him with so much fondness, jaemin’s worries are almost all blown away. but you know he’s going to be pondering about this for the next week.

“maybe this just how it’s meant to be, our wicked fate.”

but all the gossip got to the point where the boss heard about it, and asked you guys to talk in his office.

“i think we should end it here.” you say one night on the roof, seemingly out of the blue.

“what?” jaemin is speechless, where did that come from? did he hear you wrong?

“he literally asked us to talk,” you’re facing the ground, not even daring to look at him. “it’s serious this time.”

“so you’re going to just throw all of this away?” jaemin asks, slightly furious. “just because of what a bunch of losers are saying?”

“it’s for the best,” you’re still not looking at him. “for the both of us.”

when you finally do look up to see jaemin’s reaction, you see tears in his eyes and you wish you hadn’t looked up.

“fine, if that’s what you want.” jaemin turns around and walks away, breaking that silence.

but what jaemin didn’t know was that it broke your heart to pieces. it took you so much courage to break it off with him, but in the end, you knew what boss haly was capable of. you needed to protect him, so if this is how it needed to go, it’s for the best.

the meeting the next day went smoothly, it was easy for both of you to deny everything since jaemin was giving you the cold shoulder. you didn’t need to pretend. it was for the sake of the both of you.

after the meeting, you didn’t get the chance to talk to jaemin as he rushed to get ready for his special act today. but it’s not like he would listen to you anyways, you couldn’t blame him.

you felt the aura of the circus today, it felt off. very off.

maybe it was because you were so shaken by you and jaemin's fight. maybe it was nothing, and you were just overreacting. everything was probably fine.

except it wasn’t.

as all of the spectators settled into their seats, when you tried to peak through the curtain to see the turnout, and as expected, it was packed.

but something catches your eye. a black raven flies in, the ambience in the tent suddenly changes so fast if gives you whiplash. this isn’t good. this isn’t good at all. something bad is going to happen, really bad.

you’ve never seen that bird in your entire life, and it suddenly hits you.

someone is going to die tonight.

you pray and pray it’s going to be fine, but the unsettling energy gets to you. you need to tell someone.

“jaemin, jaemin!” you call out to him. he turns around, but when he sees you, his face turns sour. your heart sinks, but what you’re about to tell him is more important, so you brush it away.

“what do you want.” he snarls, you gulp back a sob.

“something bad’s going to happen, i can feel it.” tears are threatening to spill out of you eyes. “someone’s going to die, and i don’t know what to do.”

“oh, so now you care?” jaemin rolls his eyes. “are you jealous that it’s my show tonight and all of those girls front row are here to see me and think they have a chance with me?” you’re shocked by his words, your eyes are wide. you never thought he was capable of saying something like that. “you’re just a little witch, and it’s all just an act. let it go.” tears stream down your face as jaemin huffs and walks away, strutting into the crowd as the ringmaster announces their act: “the flying greysons!”.

and jaemin was wrong. you were right. something awful happened that day.

jaemin watches helplessly as his parents’ high wires snaps and they pummel to their death.

you were right. and he couldn’t do anything about it.

jaemin runs away that night as he leaves you in that horrible place by yourself, and you never see him again.

and here jaemin is. 10 years after the incident, a college student by day, leader of a crime fighting superhero team by night.

after the incident of his parents’ death, mr. jung jaehyun finds him on his path. crying, sobbing, and vulnerable. jaehyun takes jaemin in under his wing. providing him shelter, food, and as much support as he could. jaemin slowly realized jaehyun’s second identity: batman.

jaemin has heard of jaehyun’s street name. but he’d never thought that he’d meet him in real life, and batman would be someone so similar to him. jaehyun saw a reflection of his younger self, the grief of losing your parents, the reality check of the world being a cruel place at a young age, he didn’t want jaemin to spiral in the same way he did.

so even though jaemin lived a life of normalcy, his past never stopped coming back to haunt him.

especially you.

jaehyun dug up some information about the circus, and piles and piles of their dark secrets were revealed. so did the truth of jaemin’s parents’ deaths too. how a well-known and feared crime-lord, threatened the circus unless the owner paid extortion money. boss haly refused, and that night someone messed with the equipment for the performance, resulting in the catastrophe.

you were right all along, and jaemin didn’t listen to you. it was his fault, everything was his fault.

he even left you there by yourself, all alone, and he never got to say goodbye. oh how wishes he could see you one last time, and say all those things he wanted to these years.

nightmares woke him throughout elementary school, middle school, high school, and even sometimes during his college time.

the same dream over and over, you reaching your hand out for jaemin to grab and save, but he’s too far away. and you fade away.

inspired by what jaehyun did to help him, jaemin started to do the same.

with a bunch of lost and uncared for young kids in new york, jaemin took them under his wing like jaehyun did with him.

with help from trusted individuals he met on the street, mark, renjun, jeno, and haechan, they started to take care of chenle and jisung full time. getting them off the street, given proper shelter, food, water, clean clothes, and access to education, this was the start of the dreamies.

today was the same as any other.

jaemin’s philosophy and law studies class has just finished up and he’s walking to his favourite cafe to finish up some work.

“jaemin?” he hears a familiar voice behind him.

he turns around and sees you. you haven’t changed a bit, still as homely and comforting as he can remember.

is he in a dream right now? how is this possible?

“oh gosh, it really is you.” you laughed, the same laugh you had. jaemin feels this unknown warmth and reassurance with you here, like a weight has just been lifted off his shoulders.

“y/n.” he finally speaks. your eyes glimmer, looking at him affectionately.

“yep, right here in the flesh.” jaemin starts tearing up. “oh you big baby, why are you crying?”

jaemin pulls you in as he hugs your waist.

surprised by his emotional state, you were going to speak up again. but you choose not to. standing there, a bit awkwardly, stroking his soft hair, embracing him.

and you’re back.

jaemin learns that you recently moved to new york city recently for your journalist job position, and you’re looking for a place to move in to.

he’s quick to offer his place, even though he’s still in college, his apartment is big enough for two people.

“are you sure?” you’re hesitant to accept his suggestion. “i don't want to be a big burden. you’re probably really busy as a student.”

“no, i’m fine.” he responds, enthusiastically. “my schedule is pretty much free since i’m third year now.”

and you accept. saying you’re only going to crash for a while until you found another place.

cherishing the time you had together, during the day, jaemin went to his lectures while you went to work, but when you got home, you did everything together. to the point where jaemin barely saw the dreamies, his crime-fighting crew.

staying up to watch the stars and sunrise, talking and laughing until your eyes were threatening to close. conversing about literally anything.

but as time went by, you noticed that jaemin didn’t really want to talk about what happened back at the circus. you understood since he lost his parents that night, but he never asked you about how you left and ended up in new york. but you don’t push it, you understand that it’s a rough patch in both of you guys’ lives.

“do you have anything that you regret?” you ask one night, you truly were just curious.

“not listening to you that night.” he says, monotone. “and leaving you by yourself at the circus when i ran away.”

“jaemin…” you start, but no words leave your mouth.

“fuck!” jaemin abruptly exclaims, mood crashing, turning furious. “it’s all that bastard haly’s fault.”

you shouldn’t have asked.

“if he didn’t make that fucking circus, everything would have been fine! it’s his fault, all his fault, i’m going to get revenge and kill that son-of-a-bitch one day!” he’s yelling now. “we could have met in normal circumstances, we could’ve gotten married, created a family, enjoyed life like all of these snarky city folk. why?”

you wipe the tears that are rolling down his face as he turns to cry in your chest.

“i’m sorry i brought this up.” you pat his head as his sobs turn into soft snores, head in your lap. “maybe this just how it’s meant to be, our cruel fate.”

it’s been a year now. it doesn’t seem like you’re moving out anytime soon, but jaemin’s not complaining. he loves having you here, you’ve become a standard part of his day.

with jaemin more adapted to your appearance, he has started to become more involved with the dreamies.

helping 10-15 kids each month, the squad has advanced to milestones jaemin never thought it’d be at. he is so thankful to have the group and you there supporting him.

you’ve even discussed marriage.

“y/n na has a nice ring to it, y’know.” jaemin beams.

“you’re such a softie.” you giggle out, but jaemin knows you like it.

jaemin knows you want to wait until you have a stable job and when he graduates, but the thought always makes him elated.

“what song would you play for our first dance at out wedding?” he asked one morning, waking up to the sun shining heavenly on you.

“hmm,” you grin. “best part, daniel caesar, h.e.r.”

“you’re perfect.” jaemin kisses your face as you cuddle into his warm chest.

imagining you in a white dress, walking up to the alter on your wedding day, saying your vows, slow dancing. you’re the only person jaemin has visioned a future with, and the only person jaemin wants a future with.

the next day, you agree to slow dance with him in the living room.

jaemin is on cloud nine.

but like the old saying, all good things must come to an end.

it’s been 5 years now.

jaemin comes home one night to the apartment door open, which is really unusual.

jaemin thinks it might be a robbery, but nothing is stolen, the apartment looked the same as it was when he left this morning.

but you’re nowhere to be found. jaemin isn’t panicked, maybe you went on a walk and forgot to close the door–

there’s a note on the dining room table.

“meet me on the top of the empire state building to see y/n, if you bring someone else, it’ll be for the last time.”

what is that supposed to mean?

was it one of the dreamies’ past enemies trying to get back at them?

nonetheless, jaemin is bolting out the door.

when he gets there, he sees the dreamies tied up, sitting and struggling at the feet of someone jaemin never thought he’d see ever again. c.c. haly, the owner of haly’s circus jaemin escaped a whole decade ago.

haly smirks as he sees jaemin approaching, but jaemin is scowling.

“what are you doing here?” jaemin snaps out, carefully advancing.

“i’m here to finish what you started.” haly says.

“how did you even find me?” jaemin snarls, stopping a fair distance between him and haly. “how did you find my friends?”

unexpectedly, haly starts to cackle loudly at his questions. turning around to reveal someone who has been absent, someone jaemin would never have thought of.

you.

jaemin’s mind is internally crashing. why are you with haly? what is going on?

“y/n, do you want to explain to our dear jaemin here what’s going on?” haly finds so much amusement playing with you both, watching this event unfold.

“jaemin, i’m so sorry.” your lips are trembling, tears are starting to flood your vision.

“so it was all a lie?” jaemin can’t believe it. “everything that happened this year, it was just you building up to just stab me in the back?”

“i did it to protect you.” you’re sobbing hard now.

“save it.” jaemin cuts you off, now focusing on haly. “what do you want.”

“i want you dead.” haly says, blankly.

“so what’s the deal.” the dreamies’ mouths were duct taped, but their muffled cries can still be heard.

haly is howling again.

“i get to kill you,” haly grins sinisterly. “and i let y/n and your little friends free.”

“if jaemin says yes, let me say one last thing to him.” your crying has stopped. “it’s the least you can do.”

jaemin is confused. are you just offering him up to haly with no fight? what are you thinking?

you look at him with pleading eyes, asking him to trust you.

the same eyes he saw that day his parents died, and he knows to trust you.

“okay,” jaemin states boldly. “i say yes. now let y/n talk to me.”

haly is stunned. how did you convince jaemin to agree so quick? maybe haly was right to use you this time. the least he could do is to let jaemin and you have time to still pretend to be in love. so haly allows you to walk up to jaemin to talk.

“y/n, what are you doing.” jaemin whispers frantically.

“trust me, trust me this time.” you glance at him with weary eyes. “when i’m walking back to haly, when i signal to you, i want you to grab your friends and run. can you do that for me?”

“what?” jaemin tries not to react to much that haly catches on, but do you hear what you’re suggesting? “you want me to just leave you here again?”

“jaemin listen to me, i’ll be fine. trust me.”

and you turn around, not letting jaemin respond.

there’s nothing he can do but go along with your plan.

and when you signal to him behind your back, jaemin grabs the dreamies and drags them away. everything is a whirlwind and happens in a flash. jaemin looks back and you’re struggling trying to get the gun out of haly’s hand.

you notice jaemin stopping.

“jaemin, fucking RUN.” you scream at him.

there’s nothing he can do. and he hates himself that he got himself in this situation again. so he runs again, like the coward he is.

jaemin runs, because literally the dreamies’ lives are depending on him. when he gets them to safety, when he unties jeno, jeno pushes him towards where they came from.

“go.” jeno is huffing trying to catch his breath after removing the duct tape off his mouth. “i’ll untie everyone else, go get her.”

jaemin looks at jeno, and turns back for you.

when jaemin arrives back at the scene, you’re on the ground. he runs panic-stricken to you, finding you bleeding out really hard.

“y/n? y/n, y/n please, are you okay?” he’s shaking you, distraught seeing you in this state.

“jaemin, i’m okay.” you say, barely any breath left in you. “i have the gun here, haly is behind the big box over there.”

“y/n, what are you talking about, we need to get you to the hospital.” jaemin tries to pick you up but you don’t allow him.

“use the gun and kill him.” you mutter out, quieter than before. “it’s what you wanted, jaemin. and he’ll be gone.” you’re smiling softly just thinking about it.

“y/n, are you insane? you’re going to die i could care less about haly, i’m taking you to the hospital–”

“jaemin let me go.” you mumble, stroking his cheek while you’re examining his pretty face for the last time. “it’ll be okay, it’s not your fault.”

“y/n…” jaemin’s tears are staining his shirt as he holds you tightly, trying to preserve your life.

“i love you, na jaemin.” a tear falls from your dazed gaze and trickles down your cold face. “i’m sorry that this is how it’s meant to be, our cruel fate.”

and you’re gone.

jaemin screams. tears dripping down his face, he picks up the gun beside you and storms towards haly.

he’s basically sitting in a pool of his own blood and has no strength to get up anymore.

“is little greyson here to get revenge for his parents and little witch y/n?” he cackles even in the last moments of his life.

“yeah i am, they didn’t die for you to see another day too.”

haly is laughing sadistically again as if jaemin just told a joke, but the laughter subsides after the bullets fire through haly’s limp body.

and he’s dead too. leaving jaemin alone, again.

it’s been 2 years since you’ve died.

here he is, waking up. still can’t sleep on your side.

he really can’t sleep on your side, because it reminds him of those times where he woke up to your warm embrace, and now it’s desolately cold.

there’s your coffee cup, the lipstick stain fades with time.

he’s saved everything you had, and hasn’t touched anything. he’s also saved everything you shared, your bed, your apartment, everything. he needs those to remind him of those bittersweet memories of you.

when jaemin was going through your stuff, he finds a piece of paper on your work desk.

my dear jaemin,

when you find this, i’m probably going to be gone. but that’s okay, and i’ll tell you why.

first of all, thank you so much for these past 5 years. thank you for showing me what living life is like, what being a part of a family is like, and what being in love is like. you told me you wished you could give me a normal life, and you really fulfilled your wish.

you must have so many questions right now, so i’m going to answer them.

i never left haly’s after you ran away. i couldn’t. because he was threatened by so many mobs and gangs everywhere, he had to kill off the other people that were a part of the circus. but he kept me. because i was the key to you. the government started an investigation into him, and he needed to keep a low-profile, but he still was angry that you didn’t die that night too. so he plotted this for years, and i just had to go along with it.

at first, i only agreed because i wanted to see you. i was young and still naive at the time, thinking that he wanted to see you too. but as i got older, i saw what he was planning. he would kill me in front of you and then take you out as well if i didn’t do as he said, so i kept quiet. i really did this to protect you.

i enjoyed every second being with you. you showed me the meaning of life i heard our patrons talk about. you showed me what true love was when i saw those elderly couples walking together as they look at each other adoringly while telling me they’ve been in love and married for decades. if i could choose to stay with you for a lifetime, i would, i would choose it a million times.

but i thought very long about this, and it truly is the only way.

remember when i asked you if you regretted anything that night? you mentioned how you regretted not listening to me, how you left me alone at the circus. and that’s when i realized, it was indeed our cruel fate.

you feel bad for me. you feel bad that you didn’t listen, you feel bad for leaving me at the circus, but it’s been over a decade. i know with me constantly here, you’re never going to stop feeling guilty, you’d never let the past go. we’re too young, too dumb, to know things like love. but i know better now.

so jaemin, i did what i had to do. the best for the both of us. you got your revenge for your parents, and you’ll stop feeling guilty because i don’t want to hold you back and keep you feeling like this forever.

i’m sorry jaemin i put you through all of this, and reminder that this is not your fault.

my love, nana, truly, truly, truly, thank you for everything. everything, everything, everything.

there wasn’t a single day where i stopped wanting you. i want you in the most innocent form, i want to say goodnight to you and give you forehead kisses and say i love you when you feel at your worst. i want you in ways where i just want to be next to you and nothing more or less. i wish i could explain your eyes, oh how i adore your angel eyes, and how the sound of your voice gives me butterflies. how your smile makes my heart skip a beat and how every time i’m with you, i feel so complete. i swear when our lips touched, i could taste the remaining years of my life. i want you to know that when i picture myself happy, it’s with you.

i’ve looked at you in millions of ways, and i have loved you in every way.

but this is how it’s meant to be, our cruel fate.

my pretty boy, i love you forever.

his tears are ruining the page, and jaemin tries to wipe his tears away to save the letter.

when he turns around, he swears he can see you. and he chases it down, with a shot of truth.

maybe if he dreams long enough, you’d tell him he’d be just fine.

walking into the living room, remembering how you guys would slow dance like it was your wedding. your wedding.

and he drowns it out, like he always does. dancing through your house, with a shot of truth, that his feet don’t dance, like the way they did with you.

jaemin knows your letter was right, he’s going to slowly get better, but he needs some time. meanwhile, he needs something help him cope, to get him by.

so he’s dancing through your house, with the ghost of you.

©mrkcore, 2021.

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hqbbg · 5 years ago

Text

butterflies.

pairing: bokuto x chubby fem!reader

summary: bokuto doesn’t understand why everyone’s giving you a hard time.

genre: fluff

word count: 1.6K

warnings: people are mean to reader >:(

You saw many flaws about yourself growing up, whether they were first pointed out to you by your parents, schoolmates, or even the cashier lady at the supermarket. The one particular flaw that seemed to follow you around throughout all the years seemed to revolve around one thing: your weight.

Looking in the mirror, you used to not see what was so wrong with how your body looked. You truly didn’t think you looked as overweight as those around you made it seem, but their words began to contaminate your thoughts and soon, you saw what they saw: someone who simply did not fit into a conventionally “beautiful” body, a standard set by models on magazine covers.

Some people had called you cute while growing up, but as you sat in your classroom during your second year of high school alone while others had gone to join their friends, you most definitely felt like all the kind words people had told you before held no meaning or sincerity to them.

“Hey, hey, hey!”

You’ve been hearing this every other day lately. It was always at the beginning of lunch time, give or take a few minutes depending on the day. The source of the brief disturbance to the white noise of the classroom was none other than Bokuto Koutarou, a third year. He always came to hang out with Akaashi, a classmate of yours that sat a few rows down from you.

You had seen Akaashi once or twice last year in the hallways, but never spoke to him, and even this year as his classmate, you barely exchanged any words. He seemed like a relatively quiet and observant person, so part of you wondered how he and Bokuto seemed so close yet were polar opposites.

You had been lost in your own thoughts, too busy staring off into space to notice a few classmates come up to sit at the desks around you.

“What, is our little piggy not hungry today?”

This was not unfamiliar territory for you. Once or twice throughout the week, a few students would get bored with themselves and decide to pick on you or taunt you. Usually, you would ignore them with your head hung low, and they would just get bored again, deciding to leave you alone until they saw another opportunity to mess with you.

Things like this used to bother you a lot more than they did now. Of course, their words would still keep you awake at night occasionally, but you’ve learned to move on.

It wasn’t like you hadn’t tried to lose weight before; nothing just seemed to work. It was as if your body had reached its current weight and stubbornly refused to change, no matter how much your heart and mind willed it. Your mother would toss in a few comments here and there about how boys wouldn’t want you because of this complex of yours and your father wouldn’t stand up for you. You supposed they were right, since the only time boys were interested in talking to you was to either make fun of you or compare notes after class.

“Did you not hear us, piggy?”

“You guys are talking in her face, so I’m sure she heard you loud and clear.”

You snap your head up towards the source of the voice and see Bokuto looking over in your direction. He has an unreadable expression on his face and your eyes flicker towards Akaashi as he also looks in your direction, his face blank with indifference to the situation.

“With all due respect, this doesn’t concern you,” replies one of the boys sitting in front of you.

“How rude,” says Bokuto. “Akaashi, you never told me how mean your classmates were!”

The third year turns to look at Akaashi, a pout on his face as he points to the group around you. Any thoughts you had of him being cool for butting in and momentarily diverting the attention away from you have all disappeared and it seems that everyone’s mental image of the suave and cool upperclassman have collectively shattered.

“Everyone is mean to Y/L/N-san,” Akaashi replies coolly.

You have to admit, as much as that statement should irk you, it doesn’t because you know it’s true.

“Why?” Bokuto turns his head back and looks directly at you. You feel yourself stiffen in your seat. He blinks his eyes a couple times, as if he can’t understand what anyone could possibly be giving you a hard time for. Part of you finds it refreshing, but another part of you is skeptical.

“This guy’s weird,” mutters one of the girls next to you. “Let’s just go.”

You feel a little dumbstruck as you watch the students around you stand and walk away before your eyes slowly return back to the pair of boys who are still staring at you. You can feel your face heat up at the realization that their eyes haven’t left you yet and you shift uncomfortably in your seat, clearing your throat.

“T-Thanks.”

Before anyone else can say anything, you quickly grab your lunch and head out of the room, muttering halfhearted apologies to the students you bump into as you walk down the hall. You make your way to the rooftop where a few other groups of students are enjoying their lunch and find yourself a decent and secluded spot. Maybe the fresh air would cool you down and prevent yourself from overthinking the situation that had just unraveled.

The next few days, you avoid eating lunch in the classroom and go back to the spot on the rooftop; you aren’t disturbed there and find it quite peaceful. You get used to not hearing Bokuto’s unique greeting and things seem to slowly go back to how they used to be.

“Hey, long time no see!”

You glance up as you walk down the hall, seeing Bokuto walking towards you, presumably heading back to his class as you head for yours. Although you’re sure he’s addressing you, you glance around to ensure that it really is you he’s talking to.

“Yeah, you! You’re in Akaashi’s class,” Bokuto laughs heartily as he walks up to you, stopping only a few paces away. “You know, no one really answered me when I asked why everyone is so mean to you.”

You can only look up at him, unsure what exactly his motives might be. There’s no way he’s this oblivious, right? You’ve heard stories about him, being a remarkable volleyball player and assumed that he would be intelligent. Was that limited to just volleyball?

“I should get back to my class,” you reply, bowing your head halfheartedly before rushing back to your classroom.

Needless to say, you’re socially awkward. No one has really given you this much attention without throwing a blatant insult at your face, so you’re unsure how to handle it. It isn’t until a week later when you miss the timing of heading to the rooftop for lunch and see Bokuto enter the classroom, making a straight beeline to sit in the empty desk in front of you, facing you. Akaashi has also moved closer, sitting in the desk to your right, looking at you with the same indifferent expression on his face.

“So, I’ve really been trying to figure it out for the past week and a half,” says Bokuto, propping his elbow on your desk as he leans his chin onto his palm, “and I still don’t get it.”

Your eyes flicker back towards Akaashi, but he doesn’t move a muscle that indicates that he’s helping you get out of this situation.

“W-Well, I…”

What’s he talking about? What are you supposed to say?

“Are you mean? Is that it? You seem like a normal girl, so I really don’t understand why everyone treats you so poorly,” says Bokuto, not letting you finish your half-developed thought. Is he teasing you? Is this some cruel way of indirectly making fun of you?

“Do you really not see it?” You ask, finding some rare confidence spurred by the thought of his antics being motivated to hurt you like everyone else.

You finally look into his eyes and see no malice in them, quickly casting your eyes back down when you can feel yourself blushing at the innocent intensity of his eyes staring back at you.

“Is there something I should be seeing?”

“I,” you pause. You’re suddenly afraid to say your next sentence because it’s a thought that was drilled into your brain since you were younger, but say it anyways. “I’m fat.”

Bokuto frowns.

“So?”

Well, that wasn’t an answer you were expecting.

“Huh?” You look at him again, brows furrowing slightly.

“What he means is, he doesn’t see why that’s a reason for you to be bullied,” Akaashi speaks up. Bokuto nods his head quickly, realizing the mistake in his word choice.

“Yeah, that’s what I meant!”

You narrow your eyes slightly in suspicion.

“No, really, Y/N! You look perfectly fine to me.”

You try not to show your surprise upon hearing Bokuto say your name, but you’re not sure how well you hide it. You want to question how he knows your first name, but something tells you that the boy sitting to your right has something to do with it.

“Thanks,” you say awkwardly, unsure of what else to say.

“If anyone gives you a hard time, let me know! I’ll take care of it for you,” Bokuto sits up, puffing his chest. You’re hesitant but feel your lips tug into the slightest smile.

“You don’t have to, Y/L/N-san. He’s all bark and no bite anyways,” says Akaashi. You feel your lips pull a little further into a smile. Bokuto looks like he’s about to complain or whine to Akaashi, but is stopped when he looks at your face.

“Wow, so you do know how to smile,” Bokuto grins at you. “You should do it more often. It suits you.”

That might’ve been the first time in your whole life to have ever felt butterflies in your stomach.

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu x reader #haikyu #haikyuu imagines #haikyū!!#haikyuu oneshot #bokuto x reader #bokuto koutarou #bokuto imagines #haikyuu x you #haikyuu fluff

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realisaonum · 3 years ago

Text

book meme

thank you, jen @det395 !! i feel like this meme got away from me a bit, but no shame! i love talking about books and writing so onward ~under the cut~

1- how many books are too many books in a series?

mhmmmmm i guess it depends on the objective of the series, right? is the plan to have x number of books in the series and if so, when we finally get to the end will it be satisfying considering all the books we’ve read leading up to it? OR is the objective of the premise / characters just to exist doing whatever? both can be done well. i would say a lot rides on how much i trust the author.

2- what do you think about cliffhangers?

so this is meant for cliffhangers in a series like between books? i don’t really care if there’s a cliffhanger as long as i have the next book sitting right next to me. otherwise uh, only if the wait between books is tolerable, because at that point you need to know that the author can clear this mess up, right? there’s this other thing, like you know how if the entire series was already written, then they might release the books a month apart or a quarter apart - that could be alright too. but years in between? not especially a fan. is anyone a fan?

3- hardback or paperback?

jen, you and me are complete opposites here. paperbacks stress me out. i will go out of my way to buy a used hardcover if given the choice. of course, there are some publications i don’t mind in paperback —thinking poetry and super indie books that don’t have a hardcover release OR books where the spines are thin enough they won’t break and i won’t be holding them long enough for them to wear. hardcovers are sturdy and i don’t have to worry i’ll accidentally bend the cover in some damaging way. I am invested in keeping my books nice to the point that i create covers for my books out of kraft paper or brown grocery bags while i am reading them. this is something i started when i was in college and didn’t want these books i was hoping to probably resell get thrashed coming in and out of my bag for all these classes. My home library is probs more half and half paperback/hardcover but if given a choice usually it’s hardcover.

4- least favourite book?

i think it’s good to at least attempt to meet a book on its level. there are lots of books i didn’t like, but i wasn’t meeting them on their level and i know that so we’re ignoring those. i do however have a shelf on my goodreads dedicated to books that i have beef with so i’ll just go off on two of them.....

tana french’s the likeness for being plagiaristic shit. it is essentially poorly concealed alternate universe OC insert fic of the secret history. you’ve got french’s dublin murder squad folks and then this group they are investigating who bear a STRIKING resemblance to the greek students in tsh 🤔. this would be one thing. it is pretty well acknowledged that nothing is original and there are enough changes to The Likeness that MAYBE i could let it slide if not for this other thing: french’s book, the likeness, has lines that are just basically reworded quotes from the secret history and french positions these lines so they are said by the counterpart (essentially same!) character that gave them original life in tsh. i cannot stress this enough: you can HEAR how similar the sentences are and their core intent is always the same. it’s thinly veiled theft! it astounds me that French hasn’t been sued frankly. it is one thing to want to capture some of the genius that tartt’s debut novel holds, but it is completely lazy and disgusting theft to go about it in the way French did with this book. and YES the secret history was published before french’s book. if i could stomach how fucking goddamn boring the likeness was to read it a second time and cite every one of these offenses i would, but that’s yet a third strike against it—it’s too boring to be worth it.

T. Kingfisher’s second book of the Clocktuar War duology : The Wonder Engine. this is a book that i feel violated the contract between writer and reader. the first book feels almost like a YA book. the stakes while described as very high are treated, as actions unfold, as very low. nothing truly irreparable happens until the climax of the second book and the fallout of that action is so off-tone of everything that came before i felt deeply betrayed. no, like, completely betrayed as in it ruined the rest of my afternoon, i am still viscerally angry eight months later, and i will never trust this author again. sure, maybe none of those actions that led to the climax were out-of-character, but there was nothing NOTHING in the proceeding action that even came close to that level of consequence. it’s a pity because right up till that point i was having a really good time. the entire vibe of the rising action to the climax of book one all the way through the rising action of book two was just a quippy fun version of roadtrip/quest - it felt like a comfort read. the abrupt tone shift had all the subtlety of dropping a graphically, brutal murder into Blue’s Clues. you don’t do that - this is a basic tenet of a writer / reader relationship. i’m not touching this bitch’s shit again.

5- Love Triangle, yes or no?

not so much. i like jen before me will scream ‘just be poly.’ love triangles that lead into poly relationships? yes, awesome will be glad i read. but i am at a stage in my life where your standard will-they-won’t-they-love-triangle is just fucking pointlessly frustrating to me. an example: i read a Nic Stone’s book Odd One Out a couple years ago and something about the synopsis or the hype made me think that it would resolve the love triangle that way, so when that did not happen i was incredibly frustrated and immediately wanted to resell the book. it’s the potential of the thing. stone’s book could have been the perfect vehicle for opening up the concept of polyamory to a ya audience but instead just really squandered that potential with weak floundering — in my opinion!

6- the most recent book you just couldn’t finish

uhhhhh i’ve got two and i’m not sure i’ve entirely given up quite yet buuuuuuuut

fucking dune. i got really pissed off with this book. So just…setting aside the whole vaguing at a pedophilically inclined queer coded villain - it’s done so poorly, that it's almost funny? like it doesn’t (as of half way through) actually have any consequence on…anything at all and is tacked on like an afterthought to the end of his scenes. honestly it all could just be cut out entirely with no recourse to the larger story. So my actual beef with this book is the pacing is ATROCIOUS. like yo, not only do you expect me to give a shit about these Atreides cunts, when we just met them and we spend the same amount of time with them IF NOT MORE with the antagonist? but you also expect me to believe Paul was able to just convince the leader of the Arrakis people —the leader of an entire planet!!— with a single fucking sentence??? yeah, not so much. it was not set up for me to believe that Paul could do that! maybe if Kynes hadn’t died immediately after—or at least not died at that moment? baring the fact I thought he was by far the most interesting character, IF he had been convinced by Paul in that scene, it would have been great to see some actual work done around that - with a transfer or a liaise of power between Kynes and Paul and the Fremen. By not having any substantive scene that does it - it begs the question of what the fuck was the point of the character in the first place? unplumbed potential!!! over all there seem to be some key scenes missing to get the reader to where the narrative expects us to be? but the choices made of the characters we spend time with and the moments we see with them, the benefit to the larger story…is not always there. hey herbert, these words you have written aren’t doing what you want them to?? i feel like i should finish it but i reaaaaallly don’t want to :) the only thing i can say is it looks like from the trailer, villeneueve is giving space to these moments so that the viewer can foster a genuine connection with the characters? radical concept.

our lady of perpetual hunger - i started this one optimistically bc i like chef memoirs, but i am at the point where she has just given birth to her son and honestly DON’T CARE. i still haven’t officially given up on it yet since i actually fucking bought it like a dope. i certainly would not have if i knew how much NOT about working the line this was gonna be

7- book you are currently reading

Aside from the failures mentioned above, I am working on the second book in B. Catling’s Vorrh trilogy, The Erstwhile. Also very close to finally finishing Iain Sinclair’s The Last London - there’s a review of his work from the LA Times that goes “One of Sinclair’s greatest skills has always been his ability to take diverse if not chaotic source material and refashion it in a way that sometimes seems downright alchemical” which captures some of the wonder I experience when reading his work. His style and how he creates atmosphere and setting is just unique and astounding.

8- last book you recommended to someone

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Before that I told my brother to read Eat a Peach, as we both love Anthony Bourdain and David Chang talks about him a bit here, plus it’s just a fucking great book. any book that gives insight into Chang’s methodology and paradigm is worth a shot.

9- oldest book you read

I think it might have to be Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (which apparently according to wiki premiered on the stage a whole four months before Hamlet so that’s what we’re going with) and if plays don’t count, I don’t care. I think they count and that’s what we’re going with.

10- the most recent book you read ?

Given the previous question, the most recently published book, right? It’s gotta be the one I just finished: The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic - Revised and Expanded edt., which like just came out this summer. I watched Jessica Hopper’s promo zoom, curtesy of my local indie bookstore, and went ahead and bought it. This was a great decision! It was just what I needed to read these last couple of weeks. i love there’s lots of short pieces that made the read quick and the fact that it’s non-fiction so there was no pressure of a plot or the emotional weight of character investment when I had a lot of big stressors dragging me down irl -it was such a relief. Hopper’s criticism is fun to read and there’s some real art in her appreciation of music here.

11- favourite author?

These are the top in a kind of order but not really: Donna Tartt, Jeff VanderMeer, Megan Whalen Turner, Flannery O’Conner, Chuck Palahniuk, Anthony Bourdain

Other faves very much worth mentioning: Emily O’Neill, Richard Siken, Brandon Sanderson, Warren Ellis, Nathan Englander, Stephen King, Eddie Huang, Carl Hiaassen, Anne Carson, and Iain Sinclair.

12- buying books or borrowing books?

Depends on if my library has it, of course! I nearly always see if my library has a copy first if i have never read it or the author before. If i’ve read the book before or trust the author, I’ll buy it. Like I’ll straight out buy new stuff from Jeff VanderMeer even though with him it’s either this-hits-exactly-and-is-my-new-fave or i-really-disliked-this-but-admire-the-boundaries-you’re-pushing-my-dude - so it’s always a gamble but a worthy one.

12- a book you dislike that everyone else seems to love

a little life (just bc it's torture porn elevated to art doesn’t negate the fact that it’s torture porn. Yanagihara’s project here is repugnant and the fact that this book is lauded as moving lgbt fiction makes my skin crawl)

sharp objects (good writing, compelling story, BUT typographical scarification doesn't work like that - i am not going to get into it but i know from first hand experience how Flynn described it is not accurate)

nesbø’s the snowman (what kinda dumbass detective would think THAT when a woman finds her missing father’s corpse? absolute idiocy - so obviously reverse engineered with that end in mind)

the raven cycle (fuck ronan lynch to start and then fuck him to end as well - there’s some other stuff but mostly he’s a total CUNT and if i don’t say that once a day i have probably died)

14 - bookmarks or dogears?

Bookmarks and sticky notes. Then I can place it pointing directly to the paragraph I last stopped on.

15- The book you can always reread?

This is my question because I reread all the time. ALL THE TIME. Books I reread often: The Secret History, Medium Raw (especially chapter 17 The Fury), Crooked Kingdom, The Violent Bear It Away, and The Goldfinch. Every year like clockwork (since it came out apparently) I will reread Stephen King’s The Outsider.

Other books I feel the urge to reread: VanderMeer’s Acceptance, Englander’s Dinner at the Center of the Earth, Frazier’s Nightwoods, Fresh Off the Boat, the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, the Peter Grant Series (which is queued up for another go here soon I think), any of the stories from A Good Man is Hard to Find, Sanderson’s Wax and Wayne Mistborn books, simon vs the homosapiens’ agenda, and there are two of Alan Morinis’ books on Mussar that I am technically always revisiting—when i need a reminder, i’ll jump around and read specific sections to get centered again.

16- can you read while listening to music?

Yes, but only ambient or near ambient (only usually one track on repeat) or a soundtrack I am extremely familiar with. No new music. I do usually need some audio stimulation or my mind will wander terribly.

17- one POV or multi POV?

Multi pov can certainly be done well (looking at the soc duaology and VanderMeer’s Acceptance) but working a multi-pov means there are more plates spinning, it’s more of a challenge, and some authors pull it off better than others.

18- do you read book in one sitting or in multiple days?

I don’t really do this anymore. that might have something to do with me picking up thicker books? but also i have a full time job now and let’s be real the book has to be hella good if i don’t want to put it down. the last book i attempted to shotgun was the final installment of my favorite series and it still took me two days so....i can get through a lot of books but none of them are ever in one sitting anymore.

19- who to tag:

@sybilius @mouth-rainboy @iwonderifthatisart @phereinnike @magnificentmoose @wambsgangs @moriarteaparty and anyone else if you feel so inclined!

Bonus Question: What’s on your to-read shelf?

As for me, I am excited about one i just picked up, Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines, which i might start tomorrow and I will be taking Paul Madonna’s Come to Light on my trip to see my brother this coming weekend.

#this took a while but was fun #thanks again jen #very excited to read other folks responses #also like a general content warning? i mention/refer to things in the books but nothing's unpacked here #still to be cautious reference to mature themes #the narrator feeling posthumous

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itsclydebitches · 5 years ago

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So I'm curious what are some character designs you love? Not from RWBY, but just i general. I'm the same anon who got you to check out Berserk and I'd say essentially all of the designs are done damn well. Fit the character. Changes that makes sense for growth. Also make sense given the setting. Even women in armor that doesn't have those massive boob plates. Good designs impact so much subconsciously to have much we enjoy other aspects of a story.

Congratulations! You’ve unlocked my never-ending need to praise Yu Yu Hakusho! :D

This long, picture-laden post needs two disclaimers going forward:

I’m not an artist. In the sense that I’m not a visual artist who knows anything about what makes character design good from a technical/community approved standpoint. This is purely based on my own, personal reaction to a beloved series.

Connected to that, I’m going into this under the assumption that people might really disagree with me (?). Based on the cartoons and anime that I see praised for character design, I don’t think YYH fits whatever list more knowledgeable viewers are pulling from. But I’m gonna lay out my thinking anyway!

Major spoilers for Yu Yu Hakusho below.

Alright let’s do this.

First off, when people start talking character design they often reference how cool a character is. Which makes sense. You want a character to be visually engaging and distinct. Something that makes you go “Wow!” whenever you look at them. However, one of the things I love about the YYH cast is how normal they are. Because they’re supposed to be normal. The trope of the main character having a crazy hair color has become so prominent that we’ve got memes about it now and that works for a lot of stories. You know who is important because, despite the assumption that they’re average people not dying their hair, they stick out like a sore thumb among the rest of the cast.

However, normalcy is a really important part of YYH. The entire point at the start is that Yusuke is not special. He’s not unique. He’s a delinquent kid who most assume isn’t going anywhere in life. When he dies this doesn’t unlock some Super Special Backstory - you were innately amazing all along! - he just gets caught up in the plot because of a paperwork issue. The afterlife doesn’t know what to do with an asshole kid who unexpectedly saved another kid’s life so they just kind of... shuffle him around until he’s given another chance to live. Then he gets to pay back that second chance by becoming a Spirit Detective. Yeah, Yusuke is talented when it comes to fighting and spirit energy, but at the start that’s rarely emphasized outside of “He’s the best street fighter among no-name street fighters so really, it’s not impressive once you take Yusuke out of his tiny world of school parking lots and the occasional alleyway.” The takeaway is that he’s a dime-a-dozen troubled teen who got involved in the spirit world due to an impulsive act and a bunch of bureaucracy. Indeed, it’s a HUGE moment of emotional growth for Yusuke to realize that people do love him despite his supposedly average, unremarkable, and otherwise negative personality. His normal-ness - and others’ expectation that he could someday make himself great if he learns to work at it - is crucial to where Yusuke starts out. Making him visually distinct in terms of Anime Protagonist Looks would undermine a lot of that. This isn’t supposed to be a Super Special Kid Destined For Greatness. He’s just... a kid. A normal kid. A kid who has to work and learn and grow if he wants to make something of himself. So he gets black hair, brown yes, and a green school uniform. He’s pretty damn average looking.

Same with Kuwabara. Same with Keiko. Same with Atsuko. They’re just normal people going about their lives and I always appreciated that they looked the part. You can still easily tell them apart thanks to different hair colors, texture, jaw lines, and outfits, but none of them seem out of place in the average world they start out in. Which, as said, is crucial to a lot of YYH’s themes. The ones who look more visually distinct - Hiei and Botan - aren’t human. It makes sense that they wouldn’t obey these same average laws of the rest of the cast and they are our first taste of a world that, in terms of character design, will eventually get pretty wonderfully weird. They function as stepping stones.

This eventually becomes a story about the demon world and those demons wouldn’t come across as particularly scary/other if you begin the story with equally strange looking humans. Or even just “I don’t see people who look like that walking down the street” humans. Alongside many themes, there’s a contrast at work here. Yusuke stepping out into a stadium full of demons who despise him because of his species hits home when he is so clearly distinct from them. Suddenly, his normal is abnormal.

Once the ball gets rolling, Yusuke’s looks are constantly in contrast with both his environment and his inner self. He looks like a scary thug but then unexpectedly saves a life. He looks like an average human but is actually the strongest among a group of scary-looking demons. He looks like this badass spirit detective who everyone assumes with have an equally badass spirit beast but, uh...

Oh my god that’s a precious baby. By the time our cast is family and everyone accepts that Yusuke looks scarier than he actually is or ever was - once the core group is made up of not just humans but demon loving humans who are equally soft - we turn it all on its head again and reveal that Yusuke has demon blood. For the first time he looks as strange and powerful as he is. Yusuke’s normality is done away with the second he’s fully accepted his place in these worlds, throwing everything back into chaos.

Yusuke’s demon form becomes even more foreign looking when he’s being controlled by his ancestral father. The above is a Yusuke who is still Yusuke and in many respects the design reflects that: natural hair color, human body, tattoos easily covered up with a shirt. When he’s gone full Mazoku though, something dangerous, the white, wilder hair and change to his expressions ensure we read him as something feral. For the first time in the series Yusuke is truly the dangerous creature he’s pretended to be since his principal was running after him at school.

As a side-note about character costumes, we see this emphasis on normality in their outfits as well. Obviously a story like RWBY is limited by how much time/money they have for animation, but it nevertheless has an impact to see the group almost constantly in their battle gear. They’re never not the main characters of an action-fantasy show, not even while just out around town with no expectation of entering a fight.

In contrast, Yusuke and Kuwabara are often animated in everyday clothing that remind us that they’re really just teens trying to live their lives outside of this crazy nonsense. Kuwabara wasn’t even formally hired for all this! The cast wears sweaters and jackets while out and about. More formal clothes for special occasions. Jeans and t-shirts when they’re unexpectedly caught up in a fight because, you know, they’re not ready for battle every second of every day. They’re drawn like normal folks because, outside of the ring, they are.

(We’ve also got a lot of parallels between Yusuke and Kuwabara’s civilian clothing, visually reminding us that they’re far more alike than they might be willing to admit.)

Despite often changing outfits, the group maintains a basic color pallet that makes them recognizable, yet it’s also not so limited that they appear strange for sticking to one (1) color for the entire time we know them. Yusuke, like most people, is drawn to particular colors, mostly greens, yellows, and blues, so each time we see him he’s familiar while also being distinct from the last time he changed.

Hiei, as someone who initially wants nothing to do with anyone else and relies on assassin-like speed to take out his enemies, is dressed almost entirely in black. Without that bit of white in his scarf/hair you’d lose him in the shadows... which is the point.

When he opens up and actually becomes friends with the team, his color pallet starts opening up a great deal too.

And we’re shown all the little changes he starts incorporating that speak to his growth: his Jagan eye, a bandaged arm hiding his Dragon of the Darkness Flame, the necklace connecting him to Yukina.

I’ve blathered on about the outfits enough but as a quick final note: EVERYONE WEARS APPROPRIATE FIGHTING CLOTHES.

No one (even the women to my recollection) wear heels. Everything is loose-fitted and looks easy to move in. They’ve got sensible belts, bandages if they need them, and... that’s it. No unnecessary bells and whistles that distract from what’s supposed to be the story’s real draw: good fights and good characterization. Even the more elaborately styled characters (usually) look like they chose their outfits practically first and for the aesthetic after. At no point do I recall watching this show and going, “WHY would you wear that to a fight??”

Anyway, back to the designs.

The exceptions to either side of these extremes - from human normal to demon monstrous - are Genkai and Kurama, both of whom straddle the line. Genkai is someone who has pushed her spirit and body far past the norm. She’s the first human we meet who truly goes beyond that normality, even if you don’t immediately realize it. Her pink hair (such a soft color in her old age it’s not at all distracting) is a slight hint that something isn’t quite right with her. She’s obviously human... but not a normal human. Not anymore.

Those unnatural looks are emphasized in her youth when she was at the height of her power.

Genkai as a young woman has vibrantly pink hair (a bright pastel like Botan’s), a softer face, and far more emotive eyes. She looks ethereal, which fits not just her own journey to power but Togoru’s as well. Her story is intimately tied up in what that power does to the human body/soul. So Toguro starts out like this

a pretty normal looking guy who is on the far end of what the human body is naturally capable of. He’s buff as hell, but not so much that it looks unreasonable. I’ve seen body builders bigger than him. He’s the average (dehydrated...) MCU superhero. However, he ends up like this

In Togoru’s case his abnormality is explicitly presented as grotesque. Rather than giving him a cool looking characteristic that’s clearly supernatural (blue hair, an extra eye, curly horns, etc.), we’ve taken a human characteristic (muscles) and expanded them to an unnatural degree. He’s got some uncanny valley shit going on.

Paralleling Genkai, we likewise see Kurama subtly standing out among his human allies.

He’s a demon in a human’s body. By in-world logic his appearance should be just as normal as anyone else’s, but a bit of his true nature shines through. His hair is long in a style not popular in YYH’s Japan. His red is far less of a natural shade than Kuwabara’s. He carries himself with the air of someone who is ancient, because he is. His human design deliberately reflects his true demon form so when that’s finally revealed we still recognize him as Kurama.

(Same sort of work with Hiei’s demon form.)

When we look at the cast together we have an immediate, visual impression as to who is normal and who is not - and those assumptions are embedded into the story. Yusuke is someone you’d overlook in the crowd, but he’s the most powerful. Kurama is clearly other in some way, but he’s desperate to live an average, human life. Kuwabara is designed to look and move like the fool and a lot of his development (his and others’ in relation to him, really. Like Hiei) is built around respecting him despite those looks. Hiei is tiny but will kick your ass. Genkai is tinier and will kick your ass worse.

Her size combined with her age - combined with her status as Yusuke’s teacher - is a continuous reminder not to judge power by looks alone. Don’t underestimate your opponent and get overconfident (a major flaw of Yusuke’s). Know that you still have a LOT to learn about the world. That woman you assume is just a rude grandma? She’s going to break your expectations over and over and over again.

Speaking of size, that’s a major aspect of Koenma’s design as well. When Yusuke learns he’s meeting the head of the underworld he starts picturing a massive, demonic beast who (sensing a theme here) looks the part of a supernatural ruler. Seeing Koenma for the first time - an adorable toddler-like being - is an absolute shock.

It’s a gag for the audience, but it’s not just a gag. Due to his looks Yusuke is unable to take Koenma seriously, despite knowing the power he holds.

Which, even more-so than arrogance, is Yusuke’s greatest flaw throughout the series. He doesn’t take school seriously. His death seriously. Ruler of the underworld seriously. His teacher seriously, etc. Yusuke constantly acts like he doesn’t care, throwing basic respect and effort in the face of whatever authority figure is desperately trying to keep him from self-destructing. He’s on the receiving end of multiple speeches throughout the series (mostly from Genkai) that boil down to, “Care about something, dammit. Take this seriously!” and when he does it’s GREAT. It’s a moment of growth we’ve really built to in a hundred different ways, including how he reacts to others’ looks. Koenma’s design feeds directly into the primary flaw Yusuke is working to overcome. How will he go from a delinquent laughing in the face of the most powerful being to someone multiple worlds can put their trust in? Design assists with that.

When Yusuke does respect Koenma (even if he still insults/teases him because that’s just an ingrained part of Yusuke’s personality) Koenma’s appearance can change. It’s no longer serving its original function, so he evolves into a very good looking young man (with references to Tuxedo Mask to emphasize those good looks) that just... happens to still carry a pacifier.

A pacifier that is revealed as an incredibly powerful weapon that will help save the world. Again: don’t judge anyone or anything solely on their looks. They’re never precisely what you’d assume they are based on your first glance - with the exception of minor villains whose looks serve only to convey their villainy:

For everyone else, looks are complex. Two of the most different looking characters (color-wise anyway) are actually siblings, their contrasts reflecting both differing cultures and the emotional distance between them.

The scariest looking monsters are just paper-pushers. It’s the handsome humans you should watch out for.

And this is our hero, a man charged with protecting three worlds.

I could say SO MUCH MORE but this is already disgustingly long so basically YYH (I think) does a great job of:

Crafting characters that are distinct but not different for the sake of different. They always feel like they belong to their individual worlds and adhere to whatever “normal” is by those standards.

Tying character looks really closely to the show’s themes and individual growth. Which, frankly, is something I think all good character design should do.

It’s not nearly as flashy as other anime... but YYH knows what it wants to accomplish and went about it beautifully. Catch me still weeping over this show fifty years from now.

Peace ✌️

#Anonymous #YYH #Yu Yu Hakusho #mymetas #for the record #I'm not trying to hide my response or anything #(lol)#tumblr would just NOT let me put the read more anywhere else #why are you like this tumblr

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reminiscingdreamer · 4 years ago

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Criticism on the end of Case 4

I love Great Pretender. The art is spectacular, beautiful, and unique; the characters are interesting with well-defined personalities and pasts; it’s funny; it has a lot of heart while not shying away from the darker stuff; and seeing the villains get their just desserts in the end satisfies that timeless desire to see rich assholes eat dirt for the sins they always get away with.

Then Case 4 waltzes along and… there are a lot of mixed feelings in me for this one.

On one hand, it has many of the attributes of the previous arcs but on the other, there’s a sense of non-satisfaction at the end for several reasons.

The first one is that every character an arc focuses on finds peace with themselves at the end, but the emotional payoff for Edamura simply isn’t there.

Edamura’s hang-up is twofold: one is his relationship with Laurent and the other, bigger one (and the main focus for Edamura) is his relationship with his father.

In the relationship between Laurent and Edamura, no matter how Edamura expresses his desire to live an honest life, Laurent keeps ignoring his wishes. No matter what Edamura decides to do or where he goes, Laurent will set up a scheme to rope him back in. He can never know if Laurent has really let him go and the life he leads is truly peaceful or if it’s another one of Laurent’s plans to loop him back. I’m personally surprised Edamura didn’t develop paranoia from this kind of behavior.

In the relationship between Ozaki and Edamura, we have this charged atmosphere between them that the show does beautifully to illustrate. It shows Ozaki’s side and what really happened, and then we see Edamura’s anger, his reluctance to forgive, and his attempts to do so.

Case 4 is supposed to be a culmination of all the frustration Edamura feels towards Laurent and his hatred towards his father. And it does culminate towards the end when he pours his heart out about how he feels being constantly left in the dark and jerked around by Laurent for his selfish grudge con and Ozaki for fucking up and leaving behind his family without thought to the emotional toll it took on them or how it could ruin them. For fuck’s sake, his reputation followed Edamura and prevented him from getting a job. That moment Edamura held that blade to his father with all that emotion on his face, I truly felt that.

And then Laurent goes, “glad you aired that out!” and that was the end of that. No proper conversation or scenes between father and son afterwards showing how they may have begun to patch their relationship, neither Ozaki or Laurent acknowledges how their actions hurt Edamura, and Edamura just lets everything go. I think the show was trying to depict how Edamura took Abby’s reminder to heart and just forgave but… for all the show does a good job illustrating the tension, it doesn’t do a good job illustrating the forgiveness part. Nothing is addressed.

Even as I write this, there’s a very uncomfortable knot in my heart. It doesn’t feel like there’s a resolution. Edamura sets off to try coffee from around the country seemingly in preparation for a coffee shop and Ozaki is there doing whatever and their relationship is just left up in the air. Did they patch up? How? What did they do together since? Did they do anything at all? The thread dangles. But maybe it’s just that I hold grudges. I don’t know.

I feel like Edamura’s resolution got a bit tangled up in the threads the show began to weave about his relationship with Suzaku.

The show keeps hinting that Edamura will betray the group to help her instead and despite being an unforgivably despicable person for running a human trafficking ring, the moments of humanity she shows towards him really sells that they’ve gotten close. Edamura even gives her a little cat figurine which is monumental considering what it represents to him. But the show never delivers on anything at all with their relationship in emotional terms. We know Edamura got close to her for the con but I keep expecting the show to connect that relationship with Miki and reveal another aspect of Edamura’s feelings about her or the circumstances surrounding her which would then somehow connect to Edamura’s present relationship with Ozaki.

Instead, none of it connects with Edamura coming to terms with his feelings about Ozaki, and I think that’s why it feels so messy towards the end. Edamura releases everything in one burst towards the end, leaving almost no room for the show to do anything about it.

What would’ve sold Edamura being at least okay with his dad are little snippets of them working towards an emotional compromise throughout the episodes but since they can’t do that or else it’d ruin the “clever reveal”, they simply set it aside and said, “well, everything is forgiven somehow” and move on.

Edamura’s resentment towards his father is so baked into the scheme of the plan that the show is forced to forego the emotional character arc in favor of their reveal. That... isn’t too good. It isn’t bad writing, necessarily. Maybe bad outlining.

Compounding the ending’s messiness is the second issue I have with the arc’s ending: the reveal that Cassano, Sam, and Coleman aren’t in fact rotting in jail like they deserve but are just… chilling together???

When I first saw this scene, I thought “oh, some character must be hallucinating or it’s a dream!” but no. The show was entirely serious about having them suddenly be buddy-buddy with the main cast who ruined their lives and tricked them out of all their money.

Team Confidence and Dorothy’s team before them is all about bringing down rich, influential scum but now we have these three assholes who has undoubtedly hurt many people with their bullshit just hanging out together. It takes away their entire shtick of being something like modern day Robin Hoods who serve a kind of justice to people who are normally untouchable.

You can’t tell me that those three were part of Laurent’s ridiculous fucking network all along either because Coleman had history with Cynthia so unless you’re suggesting Coleman was under Laurent’s thumb aaaaall the way back then, as far as I’m concerned, everybody is suddenly somehow okay with each other.

Snow of London is undoubtedly my favorite arc, so seeing Coleman casually there on the same boat as Cynthia set me off. I felt betrayed. That emotional moment at the auction when Cynthia remembered Thomas and how Coleman took that away from her… was all some kind of what? Hoax? Lie? It didn’t matter after all? What the fuck is this supposed to mean? Did any of their cons mean anything? What the fuck was the point then?

Finally, we have the pièce de résistance, the dreaded snippet at the end everyone despaired over, the one… the only… dead character was alive all along! And with amnesia! Everyone’s favorite twist!

When I read how people hated the post-credit scene, I grew extremely nervous. With great anxiety, I watched it and just went, “oh. This old hat.” Honestly, with all the other unbelievable bullshit that the previous episodes pulled (really? Building an entire skyscraper and replicating the rooms? That’s really going off the deep end of suspension of disbelief even for this show), the only thing I felt was exhaustion and the thought, “yeah, this might as well happen too.”

I’m not as upset about it as other people seem to be although yes, it’s cheap and always will be, and yes, it’s unnecessary. But hell, the way the whole show was going and resolved was also cheap so it’s just another thing to add to the pile to the point it’s almost unmemorable to me. I can even pretend it didn’t happen.

#great pretender #edamura makoto #laurent thierry #ozaki seiji

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mtvswatches · 5 years ago

Text

10 Things I Hate About You

Obligatory soundtrack

1) The late 90s/early 00s were filled with contemporary adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays - Julia Stiles starred in three of those, coincidentally - but, in my opinion, none has been more iconic than 10 Things I Hate About You. It’s been over 20 years since the movie was released, and it’s certainly become a teen/rom-com classic. It’s definitely a feel-good movie, and even though it obviously had great source material to work with, it did so in such a unique and fun way. And it was kind of woke for its time, too.

Disclaimer: I am a bit afraid this whole review will turn into me taking screenshots of the movie and just writing “iconic.” You’ve been fairly warned.

Anyway, let’s get into it!

3) I really love how they managed the “show, don’t tell” technique with Kat’s introduction. Her first scene really shows who she is – a jaded, kind of rebellious teenager, who marches to the beat of her own drum. Or to the beat of Joan Jett’s drum…

She’s shown as the opposite of the other girls, but it doesn’t feel like a criticism of the other girls' more cheerful, sunny disposition. We very quickly learn what she is like, but we have yet to find out why.

4) The next characters we meet are Cameron and the school’s guidance counselor. Cameron is the new student and the guidance counselor is just…

I love her. And Allison Janney proves how talented an actress she is by making the token counselor character both memorable and unique.

5) We also meet Patrick Verona, the resident Bad Boy who had “exposed himself” in the cafeteria. Oh, Heath Ledger, you are truly missed!

6) Michael Eckman shows Cameron around and he basically delivers the token “school cliques scene”, and since I’m not American, I’ve always wondered if this is a real thing in schools? Like, are there really so many cliques that are so visually different from one another? Each group dressing in a particular style and hanging out at a specific spot? Anyhow, the cliques here are the beautiful people (or rather, the assholes), the coffee kids (?), the white Rastas (or white stoners), the cowboys (?), and the yuppies.

7) Michael’s tour gets cut short when Cameron spots Bianca, and he’s instantly infatuated with her. I’ve always found it hard to root for Cameron at first because I’m not really a fan of insta-love, and he ends up doing A LOT of shady things for a girl who he doesn’t know AT ALL. But more on that later. In fact, the movie kind of makes a point of how ridiculous it is for Cameron to be in instant-love with Bianca by having her deliver this little lecture on love:

BIANCA: Yeah, but see, there's a difference between like and love. Because I like my Skechers, but I love my Prada backpack.

CHASTITY: But I love my Skechers.

BIANCA: That's because you don't have a Prada backpack.

Bianca clearly grows a lot over the course of the movie, but it’s clear that Cameron was in love with her appearance and not her brains or personality, which makes his quest to sweep her off her feet misguided at best.

8) And then Michael presents the main plot point…

The question then is, how is Cameron going to get the girl? It’s his quest to get a date with Bianca that creates a domino effect that brings all the characters together.

9) See what I mean? ICONIC!

And can I say that I just love Kat? Not only is she smart, but also, she didn’t take any bullshit from anyone, especially not males. She was a feminist before being a feminist was cool. And she does grow a lot.

10) Okay, two things, A) I love Mr. Morgan, and B) foreshadowing? Sort of?

11) Iconic.

12) Michael seems to have a lot of preconceptions about Bianca – and most of them were kind of accurate, at least at the start of the film. She was kind of vapid and shallow and self-absorbed. For someone who believes that Bianca is not only completely out of Cameron’s league but also not worthy, he does get very involved in trying to get Bianca to date Cameron.

13) This is one of my favorite lines in the movie, probably because it sounds a lot like Buffyspeak…

14) This is so random…

And the movie does have a lot of these little moments of slapstick comedy that almost seem to belong to a different type of movie, but for some reason, they work?

15) And this reminds me of the Veronica Mars of yore, the one I used to love…

16) We meet Cat and Bianca’s dad, and he is very overbearing at first, but he truly grows on you once you understand where all his rules are coming from. And of course, he establishes The Rule, which sets off the movie’s shenanigans – Bianca cannot date unless Kate does.

17) Bianca does prove a lot of Michael’s preconceptions right during her interaction with Cameron, who asks her out on a date, and even though he has been tutoring her she can’t remember his name and after he reminds her of it, she calls him “Curtis.” Bianca very clearly sees in Cameron the solution to her dating problem, and she very obviously manipulates him when it’s clear she’s not interested in dating him. She’ll get him to do the dirty work, and then let Joey rip the rewards. On the one hand, this is wrong. On the other hand, Cameron sort of had it coming? He was only interested in Bianca because of her looks, and he was about to manipulate Kat with total disregard for her feelings, so...

18) So Michael and Cameron set out to find a match for scary Kat. And what do you know…?

They figure the only way to convince Patrick to date Kat is by paying him, except they don’t have any money. So they turn to Joey, who gladly agrees to invest if it means this will get her Bianca.

19) Patrick and Joey strike a deal, and let me tell you, this deal never made any sense to me? Like, after some bargaining Joey agrees to pay Patrick 50 dollars? And I might be daft but how would Patrick be making a profit here? If he took her out, he’d be spending most of that on the date, making the whole thing pointless if he’s not making a profit? And Joey was supposed to be loaded, so why not offer more than that, to begin with?

20) I really love how Patrick assumed all he’d need to do was say hello and Kat would be at his feet, and she gloriously turned him down and put him in his place. He tries again the next day and he gets turns down, again. And I can’t blame her, he was acting like an entitled douchebag and assuming she’d want to jump his bones only because he was hot and asking her to go out, like that’s all it’d take.

21) And Joey gets a little bit of what’s coming to him…

22) This leads to Kat getting into an argument with her dad, making a lot of valid points…

WALTER: Is this about Sarah Lawrence? Are you punishing me because I want you to stay close to home? KAT: Aren't you punishing me because Mom left? WALTER: You think you could leave her out of this? KAT: Fine. Then stop making my decisions for me. WALTER: I'm your father. That's my right. KAT: So what I want doesn't matter. WALTER: You're 18. You don't know what you want. And you won't know what you want till you're 45, and even if you get it, you'll be too old to use it. KAT: I want to go to an east coast school! I want you to trust me to make my own choices... and I want you to stop trying to control my life just because you can't control yours!

I can see both sides of this argument, though. He wasn’t punishing her because her mom left, I think he was just afraid they’ll get hurt again and that’s why he was so overprotective. And Kat had just crashed her car on purpose, so I really don’t understand how she managed to turn the whole thing against her father?

23) Patrick renegotiates the terms of his agreement with Joey, demanding a 100 bucks per date. He can’t have had getting something for Kat as his goal at this point, but I think he was just trying to screw Joey over as much as possible, which kudos to him.

24) Michael and Cameron approach Patrick and inform him that they’re actually the masterminds behind this date-Kat plan, and they agree to help him woo her. And I get that Kat was not the most agreeable person to begin with, but it’s still very disheartening to see that literally no one considered her feelings in this whole thing? Like, all of them were so proud they were playing Joey, but she was the one getting played the worst? And Bianca even allows Cameron to go inside Kat’s room and go through all her private things? Everyone was an asshole in this movie, is all I’m saying.

25)

26) And then…

Probably in spite of herself, he managed to get through her shell a little bit.

27) Bianca finally begs her sister to go to the party so that she can go, and what do you know? Kat does have a heart after all, and she agrees to show.

28) Which leads to…

29) Kat seems very happy to see Patrick at her door, although she quickly puts the bitch rest-face back on and pretends his keeping his word and coming to get her did not affect her at all…

30) So, now that she got to the party and gets to hang out with Joey, Bianca demands her sister do not address her in public, and I’m like, wtf?! Kat then begs her to listen, and again, Bianca shrugs her off and tells her to go off and “enjoy her adolescence”, which pisses Kat off and probably hurts her, too. So she decides to enjoy her adolescence the way everyone seems to do, getting trashed and embarrassing themselves.

31) Further evidence that Bianca was, indeed, an asshole… Cameron is the reason she got to go out at all – after he pulled off this elaborate plan to get her sister a date – and she manipulated him by feigning to be interested in him, and now…

But karma is a bitch because Joey might be the most popular boy in school – god knows why! – but he’s as dull as dishwater, and she quickly finds herself regretting her decision to brush Cameron off in favor of Joey.

32) Meanwhile, Kat is truly enjoying her adolescence…

And thank god Patrick was there to catch her because if he hadn’t, I don’t think anyone would’ve helped her.

33) I really love Patrick’s pep talk to Cameron…

CAMERON: It's off, okay? The whole thing's off. PATRICK: What are you talking about? CAMERON: She never wanted me. She wanted Joey the whole time. PATRICK: Cameron, do you like the girl? CAMERON: Yeah. PATRICK: And is she worth all this trouble? CAMERON: I thought she was, but, you know, l... PATRICK: Well, she is or she isn't. See, first of all, Joey is not half the man you are. Secondly, don't let anyone ever make you feel like you don't deserve what you want.

34) And Patrick taking care of drunk Kat is the sweetest thing ever…

35) Of course, now that Bianca no longer wants to hang out with Joey and her friend leaves her high and dry, she asks Cameron for a ride home.

36) On the way home, Kat actually opens up to Patrick, a lot. She admits she’d love to play in a band, and that her father wants her to be someone she’s not – her sister. Patrick admits that he doesn’t really get what everyone sees in Bianca, and Kat delivers what’s probably the greatest compliment you could get from her…

She puts herself out there… and gets shut down. Of course, Patrick was probably feeling remorse about the way he’d gotten to know this girl and the way he’d been playing her because now that he’d gotten to know her a little bit better, he could see that behind that badass façade she was extremely vulnerable and sensitive. Kat feels rejected and humiliated, and who can blame her? He’d been relentlessly pursuing her, and now that she’d opened up to him and offered to kiss him, he’d turned her down…

Anyway, Patrick’s behavior, later on, makes no sense after the way he acted here, but more on that further below.

37) Cameron finally confronts Bianca about her manipulative behavior, and to her credit, she is honest and owns up to being selfish when he calls her on it. And I guess she finally sees he’s worth it…

38)

39) This exchange is so silly and hilarious?

Like, Cameron’s answer seems silly, but what type of answer was Patrick expecting? Where could she have possibly kissed him? On the knees?

40) Kat is clearly not yet over the rejection…

41) See what I mean about the jokes in this movie?

And they just look over and go on talking, as if she hadn’t just nailed her teacher on the ass with an arrow...

42) Joey goes to Patrick yet again and offers 200 dollars to get him to take Kat to the prom. Patrick tells him he’s sick of this game, and Joey ups the ante and offers him 300 dollars, which Patrick somewhat begrudgingly takes. I just would really like to know if it was at this point that he thought he’d used this dirty money to buy something for Kate. Otherwise, he was still being a jerk...

43) This scene just gives me butterflies, okay?

And as charming as he is, Kat is still not over the humiliation of putting herself out there and being rejected.

44) Cameron returns the favor and gives Patrick some very good advice, the reason for that glorious scene later on…

CAMERON: Look, you embarrassed the girl. Sacrifice yourself on the altar of dignity and even the score.

This gets Patrick thinking…

45) And I’m just going to add the video here because this whole scene is just rom-com perfection and bless Heath Ledger again, okay? And why didn’t we get more of him singing in everything he did? His voice just makes me feel things, okay?

youtube

Seriously, how do you say no to that boy asking you to let him love you? You don’t say no, that’s how.

Same, Kat. Hard same.

46) Kat goes into detention and distracts the coach while Patrick attempts to escape out the window, and then…

And the teacher is looking directly at her tits? And while the distraction tactic worked, how was she not sent to the principal’s office? Patrick was sent to the principal’s office for “exposing himself” with a bratwurst while joking with the cafeteria lady, and Kat is literally exposing herself and she walks scot-free? Hmm.

47) Patrick and Kat have another heart to heart, and to be honest, it always melts this cold heart of mine…

PATRICK: So, what's your excuse? KAT: For? PATRICK: For acting the way we do? KAT: I don't like to do what people expect. Why should I live up to other people's expectations instead of my own? PATRICK: So, you disappoint 'em from the start and then you're covered, right? KAT: Something like that. PATRICK: Then you screwed up. KAT: How? PATRICK: You never disappointed me.

Same, Kat. SAME.

48) #SWOON

49) And this is the part that doesn’t make sense to me. They’ve just had this perfect date, and they’re growing closer, and they’ve kissed, and he clearly likes her. And the reason he didn’t kiss her after the party was that he was feeling guilty about the way he’d gotten her to go out with him and fall for him – through deception and manipulation. And now that they’re much closer and into each other, he tries very hard to get her to go to prom with him, pushing her in a way that makes her feel uncomfortable, and like, why? They’re clearly not the type of people who go to proms, so why not take Joey’s money and screw the deal? Why did he have to keep his promise? Why not be honest with Kat? Why not tell her, I like you a lot and this idiot is paying me to date you even though I’m honored to do that for free so why don’t we team up and scam him? I know the answer is “conflict”, but it’s always pissed me off.

50) Seriously, though, Cameron. Why?

51) In true teen-rom fashion, everyone needs to be paired up, right?

52) See what I mean about the jokes?

53) Loved the Dawson’s Creek reference…

Believe it or not, a lot of people thought DC was scandalous at the time. And DC was so naïve compared to its predecessors The OC or Gossip Girl…

54) Kat finally opens up to Bianca and explains why she has so many issues and why she doesn’t want to conform to high school’s social rules and expectations and stereotypical idea of “normalcy.” She’d had a less than stellar dating experience back when she was way too young and far too vulnerable with none other than Joey, who had slept with her and dumped her right after. Oh yeah, and it all happened right after her mom had left them. In an attempt to prevent the same thing from happening to her little sister, she had agreed to their dad’s rules, effectively preventing Bianca from experiencing anything on her own. It’s kind of a case of the pot calling the kettle black, considering she’d complained about the very same thing to her father.

55) Kat finally realizes she’s been unfair to her sister and decides to go to prom, to their father’s dismay. Kat even swallows her pride and actually apologizes to Patrick for questioning his motives to ask her to the prom, and he has the nerve to forgive her. Dude, you do have ulterior motives, and the girl you like is actually apologizing even though she’s done nothing wrong and you’re blatantly lying, and he doesn’t even bat an eyelash when he tells her “You’re forgiven.” I mean, I love Patrick, but still… not cool.

56) Bless Walter.

57) I guess they’re a thing, because why not?

58) And this is, among many other reasons, why I can’t hold anything against Patrick Veronica…

He got her favorite band to play in the prom.

59) Chastity is such a bitch for no reason? Like, she and Bianca were close friends, and then, all of a sudden, they aren’t? And she’s so mean to Bianca!

60) And leave it to Joey to ruin everything…

61) And I truly love that Bianca is the one to put him in his place…

62) See? He’s a good guy, he was just trying to protect his daughters the only way he knew how…

WALTER: Bianca did what? KAT: What's the matter, upset that I rubbed off on her? WALTER: No, impressed. Fathers don't like to admit it when their daughters are capable of running their own lives. It means we've become spectators. Bianca still lets me play a few innings. You've had me on the bench for years. And when you go to Sarah Lawrence I won't even be able to watch the game. KAT: When I go? WALTER: Oh, boy. Don't tell me you changed your mind. I already sent 'em a cheque

63) And I also have to include the video for this scene because it’s just… *chef’s kiss*… Julia Stiles absolutely nails this one, and it never fails to bring me to tears…

youtube

Same, Patrick. Same.

64) And while the fact that he doesn’t immediately run after her always has me screaming, he does make up for all of it…

KAT: A Fender Strat? Is it for me? PATRICK: Yeah, I thought you could use it, you know, when you start your band. Besides, I had some extra cash, you know. Some asshole paid me to take out this really great girl. KAT: Is that right? PATRICK: Yeah, but I screwed up. I, um... I fell for her. KAT: Really? PATRICK: It's not every day you find a girl who'll flash someone to get you out of detention. KAT: Oh, God. You can't just buy me a guitar every time you screw up, you know. PATRICK: Yeah, I know. But there's always drums and bass and maybe even one day a tambourine. KAT: And don't just think you can...

65) This movie is hardly a masterpiece, but it doesn’t intend to be either, and not every movie needs to be. It’s a feel-good movie, and it delivers on so many levels. It’s funny, it’s tropey, it’s cute, it’s romantic, it has a great soundtrack, and you just feel a whole lot better after watching it. It’s the 90s at its best, and that’s why it became a classic.

What I love the most, though, is Kat’s character development. We see this girl who is a badass and super smart, takes no bullshit, holds everyone accountable for their shitty behavior, and has a great wit. But she is not without flaws. She’s closed off because she has been hurt before, both by her mother and her first love. She holds everyone at bay because it’s easier that way. Throughout the movie, however, she shows empathy and a lot of vulnerability. And she soon finds out that she had been missing out on a lot of things by shielding her emotions. She’d missed out on having a good relationship with her sister and on finding love again. What is truly admiring about Kat, though, is that when she’s hurt the most and she has every reason to close herself off again, she does the exact opposite. She opens herself up not only in front of the guy she’s in love with but everyone. The shrew cries and bares her soul for the world to see. Regardless of the happy ending, I think that in itself s truly inspiring, don’t you?

66) Bonus: bloopers!

youtube

67) Hope you enjoyed my recap, and, as usual, if you’ve got this far, thank you for reading! If you enjoy my recaps and my blog, please consider supporting it on ko-fi. Thanks!

#10 Things I Hate About You #Heath Ledger #Julia Stiles #Joseph Gordon Levitt #William Shakespeare #The Taming of the Shrew #mine #movie recap

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cheriesjubiles · 4 years ago

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please don’t look under the read more i’m just testing

Can you imagine a world where we're all represented by a font? Huh, I wonder which one I would be? sees Arial Too straight. No! Not in that way! Just, straight, as in unexciting. sees Badaboom Too.. uh... Deadpool.... BROADWAY! Now that's the one! Now THAT'S the one! Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a question. If your personality were represented by a font, what font would you be? Take a moment and put your font in the comments. I'm really curious to see what everyone has to say. Maybe find a couple new cool fonts to use. I'm getting bored with ol' Calibri 11. And with that out of the way, it's time to talk UNDERTALE. Now I don't think I've ever gotten this many requests to cover a game. Well, except for FNAF. And I suppose FNAF 2. OH and there was FNAF 3. Wait a minute, should I be worried about something here? Anyway, across the board on YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, you all have wanted Undertale. And honestly, I'm glad you brought it to my attention. True loyal theorists will know that Earthbound is my favorite game of all time. So a self aware RPG in a similar style, WHOA MAN, it's like a gift from the indie gaming heavens. Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you're saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, Comic Sans, hence all the font references at the beginning of the episode. If you haven't played Undertale I'm sure that was a really weird opening. ANYWAYS, Sans is, well, there's a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven't played it, pause the video and come back after you've finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won't regret it. Alright, so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I'm feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of Sans' mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven't played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, Sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is Papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of Undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what's given to us by a shopkeeper in Snowdin, who explains that Sans and Papyrus, quote, “just showed up one day and asserted themselves.” Weird, right? What's more is that, well, Papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. Sans is much more complex. He likes fart jokes, but he's also incredibly powerful and deadly serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he's one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts around the world through ridiculous routes. Even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he's only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines that you've played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he's killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements on the player's actions in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE, just to clarify. In short, he just doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, the idea that he doesn't belong in underworld seems to be correct. The evidence seems to point the fact that he WAS, in fact, formerly a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, Papyrus asks Sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, “we call that the sun.”

This is important because A, the usage of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun shows that Sans has a kinship or knowledge with other humans, and B, that despite he and Papyrus both being skeletons, or, supposedly, brothers, and apparently appeared in underworld at the same time, they clearly-- uuuGGHH take two CLEARLY have two very different histories. Why would Papyrus not know the name of the sun but Sans would? We get further clues to Sans' origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to "go home" or "go back." He says as much during his dinner date scene at the Mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, "i know the feeling." He then continues, "maybe sometimes it's better to take what's given to you." As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, "look, i gave up trying to go back a long time ago." End quote. And before you say he means going back to the surface world, that's clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is, "and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either." Key word here, is EITHER. Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on his dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It's as though the surface world he once knew is gone, as though he's from a different time. It's pretty intriguing. So we're left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface, but from a different time period, who seemingly has the power to teleport. That's a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But here's where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg Sans gives you a key to his room and says "it's time you learn the truth." After some searching you find the workshop which contains items that leave even more questions. A photo album featuring Sans and a bunch of smiling people you don't recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A handdrawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don't forget.” so what does it all mean? Well a lot of Undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named W.D Gaster. A ghostly character who never truly appears in the game. Honestly, covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably one best saved for another day. Even still, none of the Gaster theories I've seen have been able to explain all the details. In particular, the photo album, and the badge. And that's what kept nagging me as I researched Undertale. A badge? That one in particular really stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of a room? Something that supposedly reveals the truth about Sans? Badges just aren't important in Undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn't from Undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different game? And was, in fact, the most important badge in the history of gaming? The Franklin badge. Now, for those of you wondering what I'm talking about, the Franklin badge is a pivotal item from the Mother series. You know, the one with Earthbound. Or, maybe you don't know that one either. Uh, you know, the one with Ness from Super Smash Bros? Yeah well, Ness is from Earthbound, and Earthbound is the second part in this larger Mother trilogy. Alright? Good. Anyway, the Franklin badge is a really important part of that series. It gets its start in the very first game and carries through the whole trilogy, saving your life multiple times in the process. It's SO important that nintendo has made it a staple item in the Smash Brothers series. So I asked myself; what if the badge in Sans' drawer was THAT EXACT badge?

Well first off, it made Undertale connected to my favorite game, thereby making it even COOLER, but that's still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as I started looking, more and more pieces started to fit into place. At the end of Earthbound you're given a photo album, covering your adventures throughout the game. To me it's one of the best, most satisfying endings in gaming to look back on your journey in picture form. And what does Sans happen to have in his other drawer? A photo album with pictures of Sans with people you don't recognize. Of course you don't know them, they're not characters present in Undertale. And note the word that's used here, PEOPLE you don't recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that's 2 items oddly linked to the Mother series. But then, how do the blueprints and broken machine fit in? Well, in the final stretch of Earthbound, Ness and his 3 friends must travel to the past in order to have their final battle against the evil alien Giygas. To do that, Dr. Andonuts (remember him, by the way, he's going to be important later) with the help of the science geniuses Apple Kid and Mr. Saturn, create what's known as the Phase Distorter, a machine that allows people to travel through time and space. Except, it comes with a cost. It can't transport organic material. As a result, the young heroes must put their souls into robotic bodies to use the machine, and thus, save the world. I played this game back in 1997 and I'm not ashamed to admit that when I first saw this scene, I cried. It's DEVASTATING. Doctor Andonuts says goodbye to his son, these characters you've grown to love and care about are suddenly promising to sacrifice their lives. For all they know, there is no possibility of them being able to come back home. It's this incredibly dark departure in the final moments of what was otherwise a fun, quirky, and colorful RPG. So what does all of this have to do with Undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that Mr. Saturns are known for their, let's say, unique linguistic style. That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken Phase Distorter is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch, but it actually explains a lot. If Sans wound up in Undertale via Phase Distorter, it could provide a reason for why he's a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences. Not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why Sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the Phase Distorter is a time machine. By being in underworld, he's not only in a different place, but based on how he talks, he's also in a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. But the crossovers between Earthbound and Undertale continue. When you speak to Apple Kid at the end of Earthbound, he's blown away by the astronomical odds of Ness overcoming Giygas, saying that he's going to continue studying the trait called courage, in order to harness its power. Seems awfully similar to the same experiments happening in Undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that Sans was a key player in those experiments. But I'm sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don't worry, because I have plenty. During one of the endings of Undertale, we see Undyne and Alphys hanging out on the beach on the surface world. A beach that bears a lot of similarities to the tropical resort location named Summers that you play through in Earthbound. In fact, the geographic layout of the surface bears some striking similarities to the world of Mother. When Undertale's crew of monsters are finally able to reach the surface and look out over the earth, they're met with a beautiful sunset falling across the landscape of a tall mountain, a large city, and a sandy area adjacent to water. Notice the sun's reflection to indicate water, and a lack of trees in this middle section here, hence the sand.

Well, in Earthbound you have the big city of Fourside, complete with skyscrapers, which you reach via a desert that just so happens to be adjacent to some water, and to the east, the mountain in Onett where a meteorite lands on Earth. I always called it Aw-nett. But if that's not clear enough for you, Mother 1, Earthbound Zero, Earthbound Beginnings, whatever you want to call it, it's had a lot of names, had a map laying out the same geographic landscape. A tall mountain to the east of a large city, separated by a desert, with all of it up against a coast. I don't know about you, but to me it seems like there's a definite connection between the world of Eagleland (Eagleland? Again, unclear how its pronounced.) between the world of Eagleland and the surface world of Undertale. But the strongest physical connection, one that definitely unites these two franchises, comes from none other than Papyrus himself. He wears a custom-made costume known as his “battle body”. But if you look really closely at the design on the armor, you'll notice some markings on the chest. Is it just a throwaway detail? Ohoh NO, that right there is an exact match to the ones that appear on the chests of Starmen, the most iconic enemy of Earthbound. And look at the way he stands! I always thought it was awkward until i saw the two characters side by side. Papyrus’ curved arm and hand is a DIRECT match to the curved arms of the Starmen in the Mother series! In short, we have some incredibly strong proof that the Earthbound universe is somehow connected to the Undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS? Well, what if we took it one final step and said that Sans happened to be Ness from Earthbound? Sent through the Phase Distorter during a test of courage, carrying the Franklin badge and his photo album and his trusty backpack. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does Sans’ behavior. Remember, Sans can seemingly teleport. And Ness just happens to have the PSI ability to teleport. Now look the way Sans always stands, hands in his pockets, directly facing the camera. It's a very similar stance to how Ness is depicted standing in most marketing for the game. It even explains why Sans bleeds when you finally hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human. Oh and finally, Sans is only one letter removed from being an anagram of Ness. That's just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning. But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creator's previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind Undertale, had previously worked on a Halloween hack for Earthbound. But this just wasn't a simple reskin. The Halloween hack tells the tale of Dr. Andonuts after the events of Earthbound. Remember, I pointed him out? He's the one who made the Phase Distorter. In Toby Fox’s version of the story, we see that after Giygas' defeat, the souls of the kids never return home. Instead, by going to the past to defeat Giygas, they create a new timeline that they're stuck in. As a result, Jeff never reunites with his father Dr. Andonuts. And Dr. Andonuts goes crazy with guilt, because HE’S the one responsible for creating the time machine, and extracting the souls of his son and his son's friends to send them back to what he assumes was their death. In his mind, he's killed 4 kids. And in Toby Fox's game, he's lost his mind trying to deal with that guilt. I'm telling you, this hack is DARK. that said, you see a lot of Undertale in this game. The appearance of Amalgamates, the first use of the awesome song Megalovania, the prototypes for Flowey? And the theme of having the choice to be nonviolent in an RPG, SPARING your enemies. But then why's all this matter to the theory? Well, remember, in Toby Fox's version of the story, the kids don't come back. They're stuck in the past, with no hopes of getting home. Just like Sans. And, in the hack, one character is oddly missing, with no explanation as to why. NESS. Presumably in this timeline his soul is in a different place than his 3 friends.

In short, Undertale is a continuation of Toby’s version of Earthbound, with Ness never being able to get home, adopting the name Sans, and accompanied by Papyrus, a former Starman, an alien force able to speak English and still equipped with his armor, and signature posture, but without any knowledge of earthly things... like the Sun. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Pokey/Porky and we’ve got ourselves a true sequel. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING!

#it’s the sans is ness game theory video copypasta

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daybreak-academy-fanfic · 4 years ago

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Daybreak Academy: Chapter 22

A Special Announcement

Summary: In which many important decisions are made for the next two months. Word Count: 1,737 First | Previous | Next ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆

Daybreak Academy's auditorium could hold well over 2,500 people. But on days when the whole school needed to be in attendance, it seemed as if there were not enough seats to go around. Ephemer and Skuld were running a bit late, mostly due to the clipboard the boy was holding in his hands.

“Let's see,” Ephemer mused as he went over a checklist he was making, “I'll need a music player, a CD with that song on it, balloons, you're making the cake, do you think we'll need party poppers too?”

“What are you talking about?” Skuld demanded. “We're late enough as it is.”

“Ava's birthday party, of course!” the boy smiled. “Which reminds me; if you see Anora and her friends, flag her down for me, would ya? I want her to get in on this.”

Skuld let out an annoyed scoff, paired with an equally unimpressed eye roll, and the two entered the auditorium. Immediately, Ephemer tried to scan the crowd for Anora, but he didn't have much luck so he followed Skuld up to the higher seats where no one was sitting.

Anora was in attendance, of course, sitting with Pyra, Nin, Mog, and Affie as she didn't truly know anyone else.

“What do you think the assembly's about?” Mog happily questioned, almost bouncing up and down in his seat.

“Probably the school play.” Nin said to him. “It's that time of year.”

“I thought the dance came first, then the play?” Affie questioned.

It was Pyra, the oldest of the group, who shook her head. “It switches. They usually announce both at the same time, but which one comes first is literally a toss up.”

“Hope it's the play.” Nin grumbled under her breath. “Don't wanna buy stupid expensive dresses to wear for a single day...”

“Shush!” Mog then told them. “I think it's starting!”

The five of them looked at the main stage and saw that the five headmasters had taken the stage. Ira was in the middle, standing a little in front of the others.

“Greetings students!” Ira's voice commanded, causing an instant hush over the auditorium. “As you all know, we are now a week into April. With it comes many very interesting events that require all of your unique talents!”

The students gave a modest applause at the news. Ira waited for them to settle down a bit before going on.

“As it stands, we will have the Spring Formal on May third. Our annual school-wide play will take place June sixth! Now, what this means is that throughout the month of April, we will prepare for the Spring Formal. Immediately following, we will begin to organize the school play- this includes everything from the play itself, to crew hands, and actors. We would like to see you all participate and show the world how you can shine!”

Another round of applause was given. Nin audibly groaned.

“I hate formals...” she bitterly murmured to her friends.

Ira raised his hands out to the crowd, signaling that he needed their attention once more.

“Sign ups to help prepare for both the Spring Formal and the school play will be available through the drama club, and in every headmaster's office. You may also contact our musical director, Ms. Tremaine or our gym instructor, Mr. Snoops directly if you so choose. If you have any further questions about either event, feel free to contact them as well.”

“However,” Ira went on, “As it was mentioned that preparations for the play will take place in close junction with the Spring Formal, auditions will not take place until after. Again, further details can be given by we headmasters, Ms. Tremaine, or Mr. Snoops. Every student should have their name listed for an activity in these next three months- you do not have to help for both events, but your enthusiasm is what keeps Daybreak Academy's spirit moving!”

Sensing Ira's bravado, the students gave another round of applause- this one slightly more enthused than the previous ones. Anora joined along with them but something in her felt hesitant, like a sense of foreboding that she couldn't shake off.

The feeling persisted, if not worsened, when she and the others were going over the help lists. There seemed to be a job for everything: the prom required at least one DJ and several people to help decorate the gym, and the play needed everything from directors to sound technicians.

Nin was the first to put her name down on one of the lists. “I'll help with the play, but you won't catch me working on the formal with a ten foot pole!” she told them in disgust. With a furious scribble, Nin put her name down for a set designer and returned to her friends.

“I'm going to class.” she then told them. “Expect my mood to be this perky when lunch comes around.”

Her friends gave a small nod of acknowledgment as Nin made her leave.

“I'm helping with the dance.” Affie decided as he stepped up to the sign up sheet. “Get it done and over with.”

“Yeah,” Mog agreed. “I think it'll be easier too.”

Both boys put their name down for decorations.

“See you guys at lunch!” Mog told Anora and Pyra with a happy wave.

“See ya!” Pyra smiled as she waved back. With the boys gone, it was now Pyra's turn to look over the sign up sheets.

“Hmm...” she hummed to herself. “I think I'm going to help with both this year. I've gotta pretty nice theme in mind, and I like helping behind the scenes.”

Anora watched as Pyra signed on the 'theme coordinator' and 'assistant to actor' columns for the formal and play's respective sheets. She turned back to Anora with a gentle smile.

“Let me know what you sign up for at lunch, okay?” Pyra gently said to Anora. “Have a nice morning until then.”

Anora gave her friend a grin in response. Happy with the simple gesture, Pyra then left. As Anora turned her attention back to the sign up sheets, her grin easily faded into a frown. There were so many options, and she didn't know if she'd be good at any of them. Should she just go with what one of her friends did?

“Hey Anora!” the happy voice of Ephemer called out, snapping Anora out of her thoughts. She turned to see him coming up to her, Skuld trailing behind as if she didn't have much of a choice. The first thing Anora noticed was that the boy was holding a clipboard, and for a frightful moment, she wondered if he was purposely trying to recruit her into something.

It was a shame that she wasn't too far from the truth. When Ephemer was close enough, and gave time to catch his breath, he casually asked her, “Say, do you know how to play the tuba?”

The look Anora gave him changed from three different expressions in only a few moments.

“Nah, you're right,” he then said, looking back at his clipboard. “I can see you as more of a clarinet player.”

But Anora shook her head. Of all the things she knew how to do, reading music just didn't click with her. It was like learning another language -which, in some respects, it was- and her patience quickly wore thin on the matter. Still confused on Ephemer's request, Anora turned to Skuld for some sort of explanation.

“Headmaster Ava's birthday is coming up,” Skuld offered. “Ephemer is planning a surprise for her, but he needs suckers like us to help him.”

“Well, I wouldn't put it that way.” the boy smirked. He looked up at Anora before realizing that the sign up sheets were behind her. “So,” he then asked the girl, “Are you going to sign up for something?”

Confused on what he was talking about for a moment, Anora looked behind her at the sign up sheets then back to Ephemer. Her indecision came back and she showed it with a shrug.

“It's kinda overwhelming, isn't it?” Ephemer mused. He then moved closer to the sign up sheets to see what was on offer. Giving a small click of his tongue, he turned back to Anora and suggested, “How about this; whatever you sign up to, I'll sign up with you- even if it's to help with both the formal and the play. Two heads are better than one, right?”

Admittedly, knowing that he would be there did made the idea of helping out better. Smiling, Anora gave a nod to show she agreed. Ephemer smiled back at her.

“While you two are deciding that...” Skuld cut in as she moved over to the sign ups. She didn't reveal what she was signing up for until she moved away from the sheets. Ephemer looked at her choices before cautiously looking back to Skuld.

“Are you sure you're going to do both? It's a lot of planning and time for someone who claims to have none.”

“It'll look good on a resume.” came the short answer.

Anora blinked for a moment, peeking around to see what Skuld had chose. For the prom Skuld had put herself down for activity coordinator, and for the play she chose directing/producing. It did sound like a lot of work.

“I've got to go to class now.” Skuld told them, ignoring their worried expressions. “See you guys later.”

“Bye.” Ephemer warily agreed. Now with only each other, Ephemer gestured to the sign up sheet. “Well, whatever you want to do Anora. We can do both. To be honest, I was kinda hoping to be in the play this year, instead of setting it up. But I'd also rather have Ms. Tremaine breathing down our necks than Mr. Snoops.”

Anora could feel her face pale as she looked from Ephemer to the sign up sheets. With a slightly shaking hand, she wrote her name under the gym decoration column. Ephemer, who was casually peeking over her shoulder, gave a small nod at her decision.

“Just one?” he asked, just to be sure. Anora carefully nodded her head. She could set up decorations around the gym. Who couldn't?

“Well, then I guess it's decided.” Ephemer approved as he wrote his name under Anora's. Satisfied, he turned to her and grinned. “So,” he all but teased, “I'd really like it if you'd help me with Ava's birthday too…”

#daybreak academy #chapter 22 #kingdom hearts fanfiction #Ephemer #Skuld #Anora #Sewer Squad #Pyra #Nin #Affie #Mog #Season 1

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metalchick19-blog · 5 years ago

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The Bowers Gang: How the Guys Would Behave Towards a Girl From a Foreign Country (Anonymous Request)

Warning: Offensive/Explicit Language, Instances of Discrimination

* In a scenario where the girl is new at school, and the gang develops an interest in her.

* Any and all credit for this idea goes to the requestor.

Belch

Absolutely loves the girl’s foreign accent, regardless of where she’s from

Isn’t familiar with other cultures at all though (and believes every stereotype he’s ever heard), so makes a lot of innocent, but extremely ignorant comments at first

Example: Assuming a girl from India is forced to wear a sari, and telling her he “thinks it’s rough” that she has to put it on even when it’s super hot outside

Truly doesn’t come from a bad place though - just genuinely uninformed about other countries and their lifestyles

So interested in trying some food from the girl’s home country

Seriously. Please invite him to dinner, or there will be emotional turmoil

Has many deep conversations with the girl about her culture (spurred by his aforementioned cluelessness about other cultures)

Really has his eyes opened by their relationship - helps him ditch a lot of the assumptions/misconceptions he had about different nationalities, and become more well-rounded

Ends up becoming extremely appreciative/fiercely protective of his new friend, and will set people straight if they judge her unfairly/say something disparaging about where she comes from

Also known as, the cutest friendship you ever did see

Henry

Basically rejects the girl right away

Isn’t willing to get to know her himself, and expects the rest of the guys to follow suit (though none of them will)

Not for any personal reasons - just because he was raised by Butch Bowers (the original old, racist, white dude)

Operates from a position of complete rage-filled ignorance (i.e. afraid of what he doesn’t know), and taunts the girl mercilessly from day one

Lots of racist comments hurled from across the hall (mostly variations of “go back to where you came from” or “we don’t need your kind here”)

Constantly knocks the girl’s books out of her hands, takes things from her lunch tray, and slams her locker shut on her

Does extremely loud, obnoxious impressions of the girl’s accent/first language when he sees her passing by

Basically makes it as hard for the girl to assimilate as humanly possible - general assholery all around

Again, though - not for any personal reasons (Henry himself wouldn’t even get why he was so angered by her), just because he’s been raised in a household of hate

... but, yeah, still a major dick

Thankfully, forgets about the girl after the first few weeks of school, and moves on to another target

Patrick

Sees this girl as the freshest meat he’s ever seen

She’s literally kind of from another world, and he’s so ready for it (although anywhere outside of Derry is another world to the people in Derry)

Wants to be the first one to experience the girl’s uniqueness, and would insert himself in her life right away (heaven help her)

Would absolutely approach her on the first day of school to “call dibs” in front of everyone else

Not so much interested in learning about the girl’s culture as he is in learning about her individual personality - so psyched to see the differences between her, and the people he usually messes with

In other words, national psychology is his shit

High-intensity flirting/stalking 24/7 (and yet, when is it not?)

Will make fun of the girl’s accent forever though, regardless of how close they become

Will also make every offensive joke about the girl’s nationality that exists - no fucks to be given

Will also confirm that stereotypes about the girl’s home country are true, even if she told him firsthand that they weren’t (“Swear, guy, she told me herself - all of ‘em just chow down on fresh dog like it’s fuckin’ taco Tuesday! Batshit, I know.”)

Victor

Has such a crush from the get-go and wants to know everrryyything about this girl, oh my gosh

Has the biggest intellectual hard-on in the world, and thinks of a thousand questions to ask the girl about her culture from day one

Truly just so happy to have access to someone that isn’t from the hellhole known as Derry, Maine

Interest level (both intellectual and romantic) = 1,000,000

Genuinely embarrassed by Henry’s racist remarks, and tends to walk off somewhere when he feels Henry’s about to start up

Always tries to tone Henry down during the instances when he is there for the racism

Cultivates a relationship with the girl outside of the group, so he can be himself

Really connects with her on a cognitive level, and slowly becomes one of her best friends

Seriously; the relationship is so refreshing to him - appreciates the girl’s original perspectives, and learns to value their bond just as much as his bond with the guys (if not more)

Lots of deep talks, study sessions, partnering together for assignments

Wants to see all the foreign movies, read all the foreign books, and listen to all the foreign music

Please share your culture with him - he’s desperate

#henry bowers #patrick hockstetter #belch huggins #victor criss #The Bowers Gang #the bowers gang headcanons #it

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yellowcanna · 5 years ago

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Two Sides, Same Coin

Summary: Since the beginning of Quirks, Yokohama has announced independence from Japan and closed itself from the rest of the world.

To this day and age, no one knows what lies within the city of Yokohama—or that was what the public was made to believe. In reality, Yokohama has long fallen into the control of the world’s largest criminal organization known as the Port Mafia.

Follow Class 1-A as their principal organized a field trip to Yokohama! In their short trip there, they must change their perspectives and learn exactly what it means to be justice and what it means to be villains.

Rating: T

Genre: Crossover, hint of shounen-ai (boy love)

Pairing: Contains mild Soukoku (Dazai x Chuuya) and Shin Soukoku (Akutagawa x Atsushi) if you squint

Author: Canna / Yellow Canna

Status: Ongoing

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◅ PREV MAIN NEXT ▻

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CHAPTER 6

LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY (DAY 1: SUNDAY)

None of the U.A students knew exactly how it had happened.

After the teachers left, they all went back into their rooms to get ready.

Midoriya, Uraraka, Todoroki, Bakugou, Kirishima, Kaminari, Yaoyorozu, Asui, Sato, and Aoyama were the fastest ones to finish, as their appearances fit the normal criteria. As for Shouji, all he needed to do was to retract his extra limbs. Iida, Mineta, and Jirou took a bit more time, but their unique characteristics were simple enough to cover.

The rest had to look through the boxes of clothes Kunikida left them, seeing what they could use to mask themselves. The ones who had it worst were undoubtedly Ashido and Hagakure, for the two girls needed to smear foundations on their faces. They didn't know what to feel when they found that the blond-haired man had even prepared make-up in the box of clothes…

After they finished dressing up, the group headed off to begin their first exploration of Yokohama.

However, the moment they stepped out into the busy street, all of them froze. The first thing their eyes laid on wasn’t the people or the shops around them. It was five, sleek buildings dyed in black towering over the city.

“Woah! What’s that?” Kirishima said in awe as he stared at the building that looked completely out of place in contrast to the retro feel this city was giving off.

“Where did those popped out from?!” Sero gapped.

“We must have been driving away from those buildings, that’s why we didn't see it," Yaoyorozu explained, remembering back to the path they were talking. They had been going straight after all, so those buildings had been behind them the entire time?

“Ah!” Uraraka clapped her hands as a thought came to her. “Could those be the government buildings?”

“Gero, it’s possible!” Asui nodded, agreeing with her friend.

“Truly magnificent, they are overseeing the city itself! Look at how each of those buildings faced each part of the city!” Iida praised with stars in his eyes.

“Government buildings?” Midoriya looked over those towers. There was an odd feeling in his heart as he looked at those dark silhouettes. A call of his name snapped him out of thought as he looked down to see his classmates walking off.

Being surrounded by Old Humans was another very interesting experience. It was completely different from just observing from the bus. Just standing there within a crowd of people all having the same characteristic was very…strange.

It was a weird feeling none of them could describe, and it would be a lie to say that they felt comfortable.

When the girls saw some beautiful kimonos being put on the display window, they wanted to go in and check it out, only to remember how none of them had Yokohama currency. So they continued on their journey, deciding to leave shopping for another day after they got the money.

That was when they came across a library.

The library wouldn't require any money and there won't be any clerks trying to introduce their products to them. Thinking that perhaps they could find more information on Yokohama—especially Ability—everyone agreed to go in there.

And then it happened…

“…Mineta-kun?”

None of them could react in time. They didn’t know how it even happened.

“Hey, bitch! What did you do?!” Bakugou was the first to jump out as he screamed at the girl.

“Wait, Kacchan!” Midoriya quickly stopped his childhood friend by jumping between him and the girl. That girl…she definitely did something, but what?

What exactly happened that could make a person disappear within a blink of an eye without alarming any of them? Midoriya could only think of one—no, there was only this one possibility, but to think they’ll meet one so soon?

“Ah?! That disgusting pervert was looking up my dress and you got the nerve to question me?!” The girl said through gritted teeth.

“You’re an Ability user.” Todoroki calmly spoke out the thought that was going through everyone’s head.

“So what if I am?” The girl’s eyes narrowed as she slowly looked through each of them.

“We’re very sorry!” Midoriya hurriedly apologized with a bow. After all, they can’t make a scene, especially after Kunikida specifically told them not to use their Quirks. Without Quirks, how could they stand up to the girl whose power was still unknown to them? And for all they know, she could be an ordinary civilian!

“Hey, Deku! What are you doing apologizing to that bitch?!” Bakugou roared behind him.

Iida also thought of the same thing as Midoriya and stepped up as well. “Mineta-kun didn’t mean it! He was just—”

“Didn’t mean it?!” That was apparently the wrong thing to say.

The girl whipped around and pointed at the old ladder leaning against the bookshelf. “I was standing on that ladder trying to reach that book and he was standing right under me looking up and drooling!”

“Stupid Mineta!” Hagakure crushed her scream into a hush whine like many others. Though as much as they all wanted to shout at Mineta right now, they have to get him back first.

“Uh…I could get that book for you?” Sero tried helpfully.

“Who asked you?!” The girl exploded as Sero instantly raised his hands and backed away. Jesus, this girl’s temper was as bad as Bakugou!

“Then what can we do to have you give him back to us?” Jirou hastily cut in before the situation could worsen.

“You want him back so much?” The girl smirked as the air around her suddenly changed. The anger she was displaying on her face was gone in a blink of an eye, replaced by abnormal calmness. The sudden change in her was unnerving and had all the students unconsciously raised their guards against this one girl who couldn’t be that much older than them.

“How about you tell me who the hell are you and what do you want from me?” The girl spoke in an icy tone.

“W-what do you mean?” Yaoyorozu swallowed as her heart pounded. It can’t be that they’ve been found out already?

“Do you think I’m stupid? You’ve been following me for the past half an hour and into this book shop.”

“Hah?!” Ashido exclaimed, nearly exposing her face as she clumsily grabbed her scarf and pulled it up. Unfortunately, her gesture only made the girl’s eyes narrow.

“Why would we follow you?!” Kaminari shouted. “We don’t even know you!”

“Hold up! This is all a misunderstanding!” Kirishima tried to convince her.

“We just came in here because we wanted to look at some books!” Uraraka added. “We weren’t following you! Really!”

“Yeah, we’re not anyone suspicious!” Hagakure frantically said.

“No matter how I look at it you’re the most suspicious one.” The girl deadpanned as she glared at Hagakure who was currently the very definition of suspicious. “You’re Ability users, aren’t you?”

“Huh?!”

Of all things the girl might accuse them of, they were not expecting this.

“Why would you think we’re Ability users?” Yaoyorozu carefully questioned. She needed to approach this carefully. The girl's temper was short and currently, none of them has any idea what happened to Mineta. Without knowing anything, they can’t protect themselves if the girl suddenly uses her power on them.

“Don’t try to avoid my question. I’m going to ask you one last time.” The girl’s face twisted into the perfect balance of annoyance and anger. “Who. Are. You?”

It was at this moment that the gravity of the situation finally hit them.

This girl was an Ability user—an Old Human with powers that they know nothing about. What’s more, the murder bleeding from her eyes was real. Having all experienced Villains first hand, all of them could tell that this girl wasn’t just a normal civilian. She was someone who could kill them without blinking an eye.

It was at this moment that they truly began fearing for Mineta’s safety.

“Yeah, we’re Ability users, what’s it to you?” Bakugou’s sudden declaration made his classmates looked to him in surprise.

Midoriya almost stumbled when Bakugou shoved him to the side. With his hands tucked in his pocket, his childhood friend began walking up to the girl.

“Bakugou-kun?!” Iida looked at the explosive boy as if he had lost it.

“Wait, Iida-kun!” Midoriya gasped, carefully standing behind Iida’s larger frame and gave a small tug on his shirt to stop him.

Iida paused in his step, but sensing that Midoriya didn’t want to draw the girl’s attention, he didn’t look back.

At the same time, Todoroki also discreetly positioned himself before his other classmates, using his body as a barrier to stop them from doing anything. The entire time, his eyes were on Bakugou who was getting closer and closer to the girl.

“You look so weak I wouldn’t even peg you for an Ability user!” Bakugou taunted as a vein on the girl’s head throbbed. “I don’t see why those bastards wanted us to bring you in!”

All of the students stared at Bakugou with a mixture of confusion and disbelieve. But even so, none of them stepped up to do anything, because they knew Bakugou must have something in mind—especially when he began talking nonsense.

“That’s right!” Kirishima joined in. Although he has no idea what’s going on, he was going to support Bakugou. “Let’s just hurry and just bring her in!”

“What did you say?” The girl glowered at Bakugou who now stopped right in front of her.

Midoriya swallowed. That’s right, this was the best chance they got right now.

From what he had analyzed, to be able to make Mineta disappear without even so much as moving could only mean that this girl’s power was something similar to teleportation. The girl must have moved Mineta to somewhere and confined him.

In other words, if they could also get the girl to use her Ability on them, then they will find Mineta.

“What a moron.” The girl snorted, the anger on her face lessened as she gave Bakugou a condescending look. This sudden change took them all off by surprise. "Whichever organization you're from, they must be desperate. I didn’t think armatures like you would exist in Yokohama.”

“What did you say?” Bagkuou gritted his teeth as he glared down the girl who didn’t even flinch.

“You want to taunt me into using my Ability and let you reunite with your friend, right?”

“Eh?! Was that right?!” Hagakure gasped as she looked at Bakugou. If they were capable of seeing her face, it must be one of pure shock right now.

…And then, their surroundings suddenly changed.

There was no warning at all. To Midoriya, it only felt like he had blinked and all of the sudden, the scene before him became foreign. He blinked a couple of times, staring at the magenta sky over his head before to the checkered floor he stood upon. It took a full five seconds before his brain reacted as chill crawled down his spine.

“…Eh?” Sero blinked as he did a double-take at the sudden change in their environment.

“What the heck?!” Kirishima frantically looked around.

“What is this?” Uraraka whispered as she stared at the gigantic blocks, presents, ribbons, and balloons decorating the place. There was even a table and tea set. It was as if they arrived in a gigantic dollhouse or something.

“Hey bitch, where did you bring us?!” Bakugou snapped at the girl who was sitting on top of a stack of blocks, looking down upon them like tiny ants.

“This is my Kingdom.” The girl replied as she stood up with her hands laced behind her back. “Welcome to Anne’s chamber.”

“Could this be…Ability?!” Midoriya’s eyes dilated as he took in this space. Was this is an Ability? If so, then does that mean this girl’s power was to manifest an entire dimension and pull people in? Can something like that even exist?

“An Ability? But that’s…!” Yaoyorozu looked around in disbelieve.

“Impossible! There’s no way—” Iida couldn’t believe it as well.

"No, it's possible," Todoroki said as he carefully observed his surroundings, refusing to let go even the smallest bit of details. After all, Abilities aren’t Quirks. These are powers they’ve never heard of, it was only natural the effect would be something out of their knowledge as well.

Bakugou was putting on a confident smirk, but the droplet of sweat rolling down the side of his face betrayed what he was actually feeling.

How could one person have the power to tear apart space and create a new one? Just who in the world was this girl?

“G-guys! Look at this!” Hearing Ashido’s shout, everyone turned to see Ashido standing by a white door. The door was designed elegantly, like those ancient western doors the kids remembered seeing in oversea movies. Despite its beauty, it was an odd place for a door to be, considering how there was nothing but the sky behind it.

“Come over here! Quick!”

“What is it?” Hagakure ran over, looking out the window on the door only to yelp in surprise.

One after another the students gathered by the doorway. When they peered out the window, they saw the library they were in just seconds ago. But that wasn’t what shocked them. The library has huge window panels, and through the glass, they were able to see the street and people beyond.

Everything—the car, the people, the birds in the sky—they were all frozen.

“Time…stopped?” Midoriya whispered in disbelieve.

“What is going on?! First, we're in a weird place that’s not even real and now the time stopped?!” Kaminari furiously scratched his head, unable to wrap his head around any of this nonsense.

“Hey! I thought this was the sky but it’s just a wall!” Sero’s scream had everyone looking over to see that their classmate got a hand against the eerie sky. To them, it looked like the boy was just hovering his palm in midair, but when they stretched out their hands, they were soon met with an obstacle. It was as if there was an invisible wall there, preventing them from going further.

Midoriya gasped as he looked around the rails surrounding this place, noticing how it was forming a square. This wasn’t a floating platform like he had originally thought.

This was a room, with the sky being the wallpaper!

They were trapped in a room.

Uraraka reached out, about to grab the door handle when the Ability user’s voice came from behind them.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

They all turned to see the girl standing up from on top of those blocks.

“That door will take you back to the real world.”

Real-world—Midoriya committed those keywords into memory. He needed to hurry and figure out just what this girl’s power was.

“But once you go through that door, you will lose all memories of what happened in this space, including your little friend there.” She smirked, left hand resting on her hip while the other jabbing a thumb over her shoulder to another door on the other side of the room.

That door was like the polar opposite of the white door. It was the same western-themed door, except it was black. Also, the wall around the door looked like normal walls made out of ordinary bricks instead of the reddish-pink sky.

“Mineta-kun?!”

They all rushed for the other door. When nearing the girl, they were all wary, but the redhead just watched them as they passed by. Once they arrived safely without meeting any obstacles, they peered through the window and saw their lost classmate Mineta.

“Gero! Mineta-chan!”

“It is Mineta!”

“Mineta-kun!”

“What’s up with that creepy room?!”

Shouts resonated through the space as everyone called out to Mineta who was separated from them by a metallic door. The room behind the door got no walls, no ceiling, it didn’t even have floors! It was just pitched darkness with wooden hands stretching out of the abyss, gripping onto Mineta and suspending him in midair.

The boy’s eyes were wide with his eyeballs completely rolled to the back of his head. White foams were slowly flowing down from his open mouth, disappearing into the shadows beneath. Mineta was out cold, and by the looks, he had fainted from some sort of shock.

“I can’t open! It’s locked!” Iida gritted as he pulled the door’s handle with all his might.

“Move!” Bagkuou snapped impatiently. Tiny sparks dancing on his palm were the only warning before a strong, but carefully controlled explosion blasted against the door.

“Hey, Bakugou!” Kirishima gasped.

“Bakugou-kun!” Iida shouted. “Have you forgotten—”

“Shut up and use your brains, moron! Right now we’re trapped in that woman’s fucking power, you know what it means, don’t you?” Bakugou smirked widely despite his fingers twitching at the irritation of how the girl had insulted him before doing exactly what they wanted.

The woman had brought them in here to taunt them, but she just dug her own grave.

This space isolated from the rest of the world meant no one else but them are in this space and knows what happened here.

In other words, they can activate their Quirks without the fear of being found out!

Fortunately, the smarter students caught on fairly fast, though the dumber ones still looked rather clueless.

“Try as much as you like, but it won’t work!” A snide remark reminded them that the girl was still there, enjoying their futile attempt to save their friend. “The only way to open that door is with the key.”

The students looked down and indeed saw a keyhole on the door.

"Give us the key," Bakugou demanded, his tone leaving no room for argument.

The girl didn’t look pleased by Bakugou’s attitude, but she snapped her finger as a golden key appeared, hovering in front of her.

“Here you go.” The girl waved her hand at the key. She smirked when no one made a move to take it. “What’s wrong? You wanted the key, didn’t you?”

Something was up. They all knew the girl wouldn’t give them the key so easily. Why would she pull them into this place otherwise?

“I’ll do it.” Iida stepped forward.

“Dude, this is obviously a trap!” Kirishima warned.

"Don't worry, if anything happens I can run," Iida muttered just low enough so the girl wouldn’t overhear as he began to approach her.

One step….two steps…three steps…

Twenty-seventh step.

Iida stood in front of the key and the girl. He watched the redhead carefully as he slowly reached out his hand before he felt Goosebumps crawling over his skin.

What was this feeling?

It was as if he was being watched, but it wasn’t the girl. He had kept his eyes on her the entire time! He didn’t see her do anything, so what—

“IIDA-KUN!”

Urgent cries of his name snapped him out as the engine in his legs roared. With breakneck speed, he darted to the right, aiming to get away from the girl.

However…

“Too slow.”

Iida only saw shadow covering his eyes before what felt like walls slammed into him from both sides, completely immobilizing him.

“IIDA-KUN!” Midoriya, as well as many others, rushed forward towards Iida the instant they saw that…that thing materialized out of nowhere.

BAM

The black door that wouldn’t open no matter how hard they tried now slammed open on its own.

“KYAAAA!” Koda’s high pitched scream was what made them risk glancing away from Iida, looking behind just in time to see Koda—engulfed by wooden hands—got dragged back into the darkness.

“Koda-kun!”

“Gero!” Asui croaked as she—who was second last in the group and closest to the doorway—got caught by those hands as well.

“Tsuyu-chan!” Uraraka shouted as she jumped back and grabbed her friend’s ankle just as Asui was being pulled back. Like snakes swarming into prey, wooden hands snaked around her boy, gripping onto her limbs to immobilize her with another hand grabbing her by the throat, causing her to choke.

“Uraraka-chan! Tsuyu-chan!” Midoriya shouted, digging his heel into the floor as he sharply changed direction—only to be met face to face with Iida.

The green-haired boy's face twisted between horror and shock as he stared at the class president who was being tightly squeezed between a pair of giant wooden hands. And right there, hovering in front of him was an ugly doll with hair similar to the Ability user girl.

“Midoriya!” Seeing how their target had disappeared, Todoroki spun around to find Midoriya coming face to face with that weird floating doll. However, his attention was soon grabbed by the screams coming from the far back.

Stomping his left foot down, a pillar of ice shot across the room and towards the endless hands coming out from behind the door. To his shock, his ice barely held those hands stilled for three seconds before it shattered, leaving behind no damages to those wooden hands as they reeled in Asui and Uraraka.

At the same time, Midoriya had leaped up, first thrusting towards the doll’s face as he screamed, “Let him go!”

The loud sound of impact practically shook the room.

But…that was all. Just the sound that indicated the amount of strength he had used.

Midoriya stared in horror at that doll whose face didn’t even have the slightest bit of scratch.

How?

Even if he held back in fear of Iida getting caught up, he still used quite a bit of his strength. So how?

“Get away! Don’t worry about me, Midoriya!" Iida managed to choke out before smaller wooden hands grabbed onto him. The doll let go and instantly Iida was pulled towards the door. Being pulled along were Ashido, who was screaming as she kept releasing acid over the hands, but her acid only rolled off them like harmless water.

“I got you!” Sero shot out his tape, wrapping it around Iida’s ankle as Sato grabbed Sero’s tape and pulled with everything he got.

From another, Kirishima and Kaminari were grabbing onto Ashido’s hands as they tried to pull her free.

Tokoyami was using his dark shadow, desperately fending off the hands while protecting Hagakure who was hastily peeling off the layers of clothing on her body.

Shouji had grabbed onto Jirou, running from the hands with Jirou constantly trying to counter the hands with high-frequency sound, but that too was useless.

Forgetting that he had a trench coat on, Ojiro tried to flick out his tail only to be restricted by the large coat. This moment of delay led to his swift capture along with Aoyama who was screaming at the creepy hands grabbing him.

“Think, there must be some way!” Yaoyorozu told herself repeatedly.

With her Quirk, she could easily conjure a metal cuff over where the area where the hand grabbed her. By enlarging the cuff, she could easily slip out of those hands’ grasps, but if this continues she will reach her limitation very soon. She has to think of something before that happens. There must be a way for them to escape this place!

“Everyone!” Midoriya gasped, deciding to ignore the doll for now as he ran to save them. That was the biggest mistake. Midoriya had been way too confident with his speed. With Full Cowl enhancing all of his body’s physic, he hadn’t considered the fact that the doll would still be faster than him, given how when the doll went after Iida it was still at a speed he could follow with his bare eyes.

Midoriya was halfway across the room when the doll just appeared in front of him as if it had teleported. The green-haired youth tried to dodge, but he was too slow. He could only manage to free his right arms just before the doll’s hand came down on him, holding him within its iron grip.

“SMASH!” He roared, this time putting his all as his fist slam down into the hand gripping onto him. The sound of impact was deafening as the force of his punch created a blast of wind throughout the room.

The result was the same as before. Midoriya couldn’t believe his eyes as he looked down at the perfectly undamaged wooden hand. How was this possible?!

“BASTARD!” Bakugou roared, evading the hands trying to snatch him from midair and with a blast of explosions, he shot down like a rocket. He was aware of Midoriya’s predicament. Pretty much everyone was after the boy made a ruckus like that. But Bakugou’s priority at the moment was the save the others first, as they were the ones in danger of being locked away.

It was fortunate that whatever that disgusting doll was, it was preoccupied with Midoriya. He held out his hands, about to blast those wooden creeps into charcoals when a strong force slammed into him from behind.

“Kacchan!”

“Bakugou!”

Midoriya’s and Todoroki’s shout sounded distant as Bakugou’s eyes spun from the impact. His head felt faint, there was even a weird ringing in his ears as the air was forcefully knocked out of his lungs. When Bakugou looked up, he came face to face with that disturbing doll. Its large hands were holding him so tightly that he couldn’t even budge an inch.

“The fuck?!” Bakugou painfully twisted his neck, managing to get a glimpse behind him to see that Midoriya was still being held by the same doll.

“Two dolls?!” Midoriya was equally as shocked as he stared at an identical doll gripping onto Bakugou.

“Damn it!” Bakugou growled as explosions began to go off from beneath the doll’s hands. At first, Bakugou had assumed with these explosions, even if the doll refused to let go he would still be able to blast its fingers off. It was wood, after all, and wood’s weak against fire. However, as time passed and explosions were repeatedly fired, the doll’s hand was perfectly fine without any hint of damages.

That was when realization dawned on Bakugou.

That this monster was immune to his attacks! No, no just his…perhaps this thing is immune to all of their attacks. But how the fuck was that possible? It didn’t make any sense!

On the ground, Todoroki was captured as well. He had been skidding across the rooms, sending blasts after blasts of ice at the hands coming at him to stop them momentarily. He had already found out how fire does nothing to these wooden hands. As he ran, he also used his ice in an attempt to slow down all the other hands, to buy his classmates some time.

In the end, he too was captured. He froze his left his foot firmly against the floor, stopping the pull of his hands as he let his continuously flow at the hands, doing whatever he could to stop them.

On the sideline watching the ruthless battle, the red-haired girl who was seemingly forgotten by the entire class watched the battle unfold. Instead of looking pleased or happy that she was winning, the girl had a really deep frown on her face. Her brows were furrowed as green eyes scanned over these kids.

A boy had…tapes for arms…

Fire and ice…

Explosions…

Sound…

Enhanced physic…

Aside from the elemental and explosion that are somewhat mediocre, what kind of useless Abilities were the rest of those?! Actually, were those even Abilities? She has never seen anything so pathetic in all of her life, and that was a lot considering how useless her own Ability was.

“…!”

Sensing something approaching her, the red-haired girl speedily jumped to the side, just as she felt something flew right past her, creating light wind brushing against her cheeks. And then…that invisible attack came with a weird sound effect…

“Hiyaaa!”

The girl took half a second to get over her surprise before instantly reacting. With a spin, she thrust her leg out and felt her foot sinking into something that weirdly felt like the flesh of a human.

“Geeeh!” The thing was only able to grunt out this much before wooden hands wrapped around it and immobilized it.

The red-haired girl stared at the wooden hands gripping onto her invisible attacker. The wheels were slowly turning in her head as she noticed a pile of clothes discarded in the corner of the room.

The girl’s turquoise eyes widened as something she neglected to consider hit her.

“Quirk?!”

◤◢◣◥◤◢◣◥◤◢◣◥◤◢◣◥

“Seriously,” The red-haired girl—whose names was Lucy—slammed down a mug of matcha latte in front of Midoriya. “If you just told me right off the beginning I wouldn’t have to go through all that trouble!”

“S-sorry…” Midoriya muttered meekly. He wrapped his hands around the warm mug and took a shy sip.

Lucy crossed her arm, letting out a huff as she looked over the quiet group of kids filling the small pastry shop. All the tables in the shop had to be pushed together just to fit all of them in. There was a dejected atmosphere around them—so much that Lucy didn’t feel like lecturing them anymore.

“Well…I suppose I’m at fault as well, so let’s just called it even.” She sighed before her eyes sharpened and glared daggers towards a particular boy with balls as head huddled in the corner. “Be grateful I didn’t lock that thing with Anne for the rest of the week!”

Ever since getting out, Mineta hadn’t spoken at all. He just curled up in the corner, hugging his knees close to his chest with his eyes practically budging out as he mumbled a string of incoherent words. No one dared to ask the boy just what in the world happened during their short time of separation, so they all just let him be.

"We're very sorry about his behaviour!” Iida—the ever so responsible class president—immediately shot out of the chair and bowed a perfect ninety-degree to the girl. "We’ll be sure to give him a stern talking after!”

“We’re sorry!” Yaoyorozu—the vice-president, followed as well.

With the two representatives setting an example, the rest of the students hurriedly followed—all but Bakugou who was fuming as he stabbed at his pancakes.

“L-Lucy-san!” Midoriya spoke up hesitantly. “About what happened back there…about our Quirks…”

“Ah?” Lucy looked over to the timid boy—who hadn’t looked so timid before when facing Anne. It wasn’t hard for her to understand what he’s asking.

“Don’t worry,” She said flatly. “I don’t make it a habit to blabber. What goes on here isn’t any of my business.”

“Thank you so much!” Uraraka let out a breath of relieve.

“Thank you, gero!”

“Yes! Thank you!”

“Thank you, Lucy-san!”

“Enough with the thanks.” Lucy snapped impatiently. The girl didn’t seem like she was used to having so many people thanking her. She walked behind the counter and began piling different kinds of cookies onto a plate.

“So uh…Lucy-san, is this café yours?” Uraraka asked as she looked around the cute décor of the store.

"No, I just work part-time here," Lucy stated flatly.

"Then is it okay for us to be here?" Hagakure wondered worriedly. After all, the moment Lucy brought them in, she had locked the door and closed all the blinds, making it impossible for anyone to see what’s going on inside the shop.

“The shop was closed for the day anyways.” Lucy set the plate in the middle of the table, earning a round of thanks. “And you’re all paying, so why would I have a problem with it?”

The redhead then went back to the counter, returning with a cup of steaming tea and a large Daifuku, cleanly cut in half to reveal the red bean and the deliciously ripe strawberry inside. She set it in front of Todoroki, taking the boy by surprise.

“I didn’t order this.” He told her.

“It’s on the house.” Lucy gave Todoroki a look before she grabbed a rag and began wiping the counter.

“What?!” Kaminari’s jaw dropped at the unfair treatment. “Is it the face?! Is that it?!”

“Yo! The pretty boy got charms!" Sero teased, though the person being teased had no idea what that meant.

To the corner of the room, Mineta’s mumbling got a tad louder, though no one but Jirou notice as she gave him a weird look.

Bakugou grumbled from the end of the table as he shoved another piece of pancake into his mouth.

The other students may not have seen it, but Todoroki did.

Although the girl’s eyes were seemingly meeting his, the half-fire half-ice Quirk holder felt her gaze lingering on his burnt scar. He almost touched his scar out of reflex but caught himself in time as his hand paused halfway. Changing the direction of his hand, he reached out, gently picking up the wooden fork and stabbing it into the soft Daifuku.

“Thank you.” Although he wasn’t sure what the girl's action meant, she gave him free food, so he must thank her. Lucy just kept on cleaning, showing no acknowledgment that she had heard him.

"Lucy-san," Yaoyorozu called. When Lucy just continued with her work without even lifting her head, the raven-haired girl realized that she was listening and waiting for her to continue. “Your Ability is really amazing. I’m wondering if all Ability users are as strong as yourself?”

“My Ability’s amazing?” That made Lucy paused. With her back turned to them, none of them could see what expression she was making.

“Yeah, it was super awesome!” Kirishima shouted in excitement. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“To make a whole new dimension like that is unreal!” Kirishima added.

“And you can even stop time!” Hagakure added.

“Your dolls were really strong as well! None of us could even damage it and there were two of them! Does that mean you got more of them?!" Midoriya greedily asked, wanting as much information as he could get with stars in his eyes.

The redhead straightened, dropping the rag before she turned around to face them. All of their praises died on their tongue when they saw the deathly stoic look on the girl’s face.

"There's nothing amazing about my Ability." She finally said, turquoise eyes tainted by a mixture of anger, sadness, and jealousy. “I envy you kids. I bet your Quirks are considered top-notched in your world.”

“How can that be?!” Iida looked offended that Lucy was selling herself out so short. "I've never even imagined a power like yours could exist in this world! With a power like that amazing, you could—!”

“Abilities aren’t the same as Quirks!” Lucy cut him off angrily.

Silence filled the room as everyone stared, shocked by her outburst.

“For you to be able to say something like that must mean I’m the first Ability user you’ve come across, huh?”

The students nodded mutely, not daring to speak, fearing it might anger the girl even more. Lucy almost wanted to laugh at how carefully they were behaving. She stared at those naïve and clean gazes—something that doesn’t exist in her world.

This was why she hated those outsiders.

“How did you guys even get to Yokohama?” She finally asked the question that’s been bothering her the entire time. At first, she thought these kids might have secretly snuck into Yokohama, but now that she thought about it, with their weak powers and low brain cells, they wouldn’t even be able to get in let alone survive a second within Yokohama.

"We're here on a field trip," Jirou answered.

“Field trip?” Lucy blinked. That was not what she had expected.

“We’re from U.A High School. Er…it’s a school for Heroes.” Ojiro explained.

“I know what U.A High School is.” Lucy retorted. She looked around the kids before her eyes landed on a certain explosive boy. “…I thought you looked familiar! Weren’t you that brat that got kidnapped by those Villains?”

“AH?!” Bakugou hollered, the fork in his hand bending from the force he was applying.

The rest of the class tensed up, ready to jump on Bakugou the moment the boy loses control and jumps out to scream in the girl's face. After all, this topic was a sore spot for Bakugou, and for people to constantly bring it up to his face like this…they wouldn't be surprised if Bakugou literally explodes in rage.

To their surprise and relief, Bakugou just gritted his teeth and kept his bottom glued to the chair. His body was body shaking in rage but he just continued to stab his pancakes with his mutilated fork.

“W-we’ll pay for that!” Midoriya hurriedly said to Lucy whose brow had twitched when the boy had ruined the fork.

“Wait, how did you know about that?” Iida gasped once he reacted to what the girl had said. “With Bakugou and…”

“TV of course.” Lucy arched a brow as she pointed to the flat-screen television hung on the wall.

“TV?!” The group shouted.

“So? You’re telling me the Port Mafia let you in because of a field trip?” Lucy asked, having no interest in explaining to these kids how television works.

“Uh…yes.” Uraraka nodded, still trying to get over the fact that there are televisions in Yokohama possibly broadcasting news from the outside world.

Lucy almost wanted to retort and tell them how it’s impossible, but when she saw those honest gazes staring at her, she felt every single hair in her body standing up unpleasantly.

“You’re kidding me.” She muttered.

These kids were serious.

These Quirk holders—Heroes-in-training—came to the city of Ability users—a city filled with criminals—with zero knowledge of what they’re in for?! Are they stupid?!

“Is something wrong?” Midoriya looked at the girl in concern, feeling that something wasn’t right.

“Is something wrong? Are you idiots?!” Lucy looked at them in disbelief. “You should consider yourselves lucky you’re still alive!”

“W-what do you mean?” Hagakure asked.

“Since you outsiders just arrived, you wouldn’t know, but the underground is a mess right now!”

“By underground do you mean the Port Mafia?” Tokoyami asked.

“Did you really think the only criminal organization in this place is Port Mafia?” Lucy huffed. “Seriously, you guys don’t’ know anything and you still dared to come in here?”

The students couldn’t say anything back to that. They knew coming in here was dangerous, but after everything they saw, they sort of just brushed the danger aside despite knowing that this place was controlled by the Port Mafia.

“There are two worlds in Yokohama.” She stretched out a hand, gesturing to the blinds protecting them from the views of the outside.

“Ordinary people,” She then brought her outstretched hand and gestured to herself. “And Ability users. Ordinary people know the existence of Ability users, but that's it. Unless it’s those who have ties with the underworld, Ability users never interfere with them.”

"What do you mean they don't interfere?" Iida frowned, not understanding what she meant. After all, they lived in the same city, how could they not interact with one another? “Wouldn’t there be Ability users using their powers for evil?”

“There’s no good or evil in battles with Ability users.” Lucy scoffed. “Don’t put us on the same level as those Villains of yours.”

“But evil is evil and good is good.” Asui pointed out. “There’s always a difference, gero.”

“Oh?” Lucy looked down on them like looking at some five years old. “Then what’s evil?”

“Like robbing a bank!” Ashido shouted, eager to bring up the first example. After all, bank robberies were extremely common in their world. It was one of the most frequent crimes. "If you have so many Quirkless—I mean, ordinary people, wouldn’t it be easy to rob a bank?”

“And?” Lucy didn’t look impressed as she put her hands on her hips. “Why would anyone rob a bank?”

"Uh…because they want money," Kirishima replied as if it’s the most obvious thing.

“Why?”

“Get rich of course.” The lightning boy gave the girl a weird look. Why she was asking such obvious things?

“Ability users have no interest in such materialistic things as only getting rich," Lucy replied. “If they do want money, they get it through their own powers, not something as petty as robbing a bank. Do you really think robbing a bank would give you that much money? There’s no Ability user anywhere in the world that would do something so stupid. You brats live in an easy world. You’re all pampered the moment you’re born, that’s why you have Villains going after something so pointless.”

Midoriya’s eyes widened at Lucy’s use of words.

Ability user anywhere in the world—he was certain that was what she had said.

“Lucy-san.” Midoriya didn’t know why it never occurred to him before. Her name and looks were obviously not Japanese. Yokohama has been sealed for centuries—even if there were foreigners at that time, it was unthinkable that there would still be any left after so many years. “Where did you come from?”

That grabbed the rest of the class's attention as they looked at Lucy with a mixture of confusion and shock.

"America," Lucy replied easily, not even going to hide the fact that she was not from Yokohama.

“Wait, you’re American?!” Kirishima gasped.

“There are Old Humans and Ability users in America?!” Uraraka shouted in surprise.

“…Who knows?” Lucy wondered as well. “As far as I know, we’re the last ones in America.”

“Did something happen?” Yaoyorozu was hesitant to ask, fearing she might have asked something improper.

“No, our populations declined, that’s all.” Lucy sighed. “There are still some organizations surviving in other countries with strong Ability users holding the organizations together, but sooner or later they’ll be wiped out through time. Not all of us were able to preserve an entire city like Yokohama, it’s only natural we’ll slowly die out.”

“If population is a problem…why not just live in the open?” Yaoyorozu asked. “I’m sure the governments of any country will be glad to have you!”

"…Are you serious?" Lucy's eyes were dilated as she stared intensely at the ponytailed girl. "Do you even know what you people will do to us when we reveal ourselves in the outside world?!”

Lucy didn’t give Yaoyorozu the chance to respond. She just continued on.

“I’ll tell you what! We’ll be captured, experimented on and those with Ability will be used by your governments as tools!”

“We wouldn’t do that!” Iida immediately argued.

Lucy laughed. “Are you stupid or are you just ignorant of how the world works? You’re all what, sixteen? Are you seriously telling me that you don’t think your government will try to capture an alien species if they suddenly appeared within their arm’s reach?

“Alien?” Ashido looked at Lucy weirdly. “What alien?”

“It’s a metaphor.” Lucy deadpanned. “I’m saying that to your people, we might as well be aliens—although it’s you people who are the aliens.”

“What are you talking about?” Kirishima asked, unable to follow her words at all.

“You kids kept calling us Old Humans. Did you seriously think after so many years, we're still the same species?"

"Lucy-san…could it be that you know how Quirk came to be?" At Uraraka’s question, everyone looked at Lucy with surprise in their eyes. After all, this was humanity's biggest mystery of all time. Through years, there were only speculations, but no scientists have ever confirmed the truth behind the appearance of Quirks.

"It's not some secret," Lucy replied.

“Then can you tell us?!” Uraraka pleaded.

“Yes, we want to know too!” Yaoyorzu nodded frantically.

It was a virus brought into earth by a meteor," Lucy explained. “A meteor entered the earth’s atmosphere, but it dissolved into pieces from the force so the people at the times didn’t think much about it. In truth, that meteor was carrying a weird type of virus from outer space. When the meteor dissolved, the virus quickly spread throughout the earth’s atmosphere and became the air people breathed. I’m sure you can imagine what happened after breathing in these viruses for five continuous years. In those five years’ time, the virus spread through the body and that was what sparked the first change in humans and caused them to develop mutations.”

The students listened with their jaws hitting the floor. Outer world virus?! That was where Quirk came from?

"Wait, so we've been breathing in these viruses our entire life?!" Kaminari shouted in horror.

"They don't exist anymore," Lucy told him. "The viruses disappeared eighty-six after its appearance—presumably absorbed by your ancestors. The outside air right now isn't much different than in here...save for some pollution issues.”

“So…what happened?” Uraraka couldn’t help but wanted to know. What exactly had happened in the past that separated people like Lucy from the rest of the world?

“You can’t count on the governments to do much," Lucy said mockingly. It was clear she harboured no love for the governments. “The only ones that acted were different Organizations scattered around the world in the underground. Whatever those viruses were, they got no effect on Ability users. Being the only ones still able to maintain order and with Ability users that have immunity, each organization separated themselves from the rest of the world. Some created a literal underground world while others sealed themselves within a barrier like Yokohama.”

“But wouldn’t you still breathe in the air, gero? You said it took five years before the mutation fully started, correct?” Asui asked.

“They developed a vaccine," Lucy replied. "I don't know which country's organization developed it first, but one of them created a vaccine to counter the virus within a year after Quirk began to appear. In early stages, while the virus still hasn't taken root, it was still possible to kill it and revert humans back to normal. For a price, that organization sold the formula to other organizations. That’s why we’re still able to keep our genes clean from the invasion of viruses.”

“Wait, but if those people had the cure, why didn’t they give it to the government?” Iida furrowed his brows in disapproval. “Wouldn’t that save the world from falling apart?”

“Hah?” Lucy looked at the glassed boy as if he was stupid. “Why would they do that?”

“What do you mean why?” Iida whispered. “For the sake of the world, of course!”

Lucy almost laughed at that dumb remark. No, actually, she did laugh. It was a sarcastic laugh as she looked at Iida as if looking at a moron.

“For the sake of the world.” She parroted. “Here’s something to keep in mind while you’re here. Whether it is Ability users of the past or now, we don’t care about the world.”

She leaned close to Iida, towering over him and making him shrink back as maniac rolled off her body.

“Before the appearance of Quirks, Ability users were dangerous and deemed by the public as threats. I just said the underground. Do you think organizations with Ability users were lawful ones? If I was in your world I’d be branded as criminal as well.”

“Did you do something bad, Lucy-san?” Hagakure swallowed hard as she looked at Lucy.

“When we came to Yokohama, we also tried to burn this entire city to the ground," Lucy said so casually that no one would think there was anything wrong with her sentences until the words registered into their brains.

“WHAT?!”

“To be precise, the one who wanted to burn down Yokohama was my old boss.” Lucy clarified. “Well, lots of things happened. Right now I’m just another resident in Yokohama.”

“Y-you tried to murder an entire city?!” Aoyama was hysterical. No one could blame him though, as they were all reeling from shock.

“W-wait! If you’re some sort of terrorist…shouldn’t you be arrested?” Kaminari gapped.

Lucy arched a brow at how the boy called her a terrorist. That was a new one. “I got their citizenship.”

“That’s not what I meant—they gave you citizenship after you tried to burn their city?!”

“That was in the past. Besides, it wasn’t like the plan succeeded. The Port Mafia shut us down before we can get there. So anyways, do you understand now?” Lucy dismissed the panicking kids, not interested in talking about the past.

“After so many years, the virus has merged with your DNA, creating completely new ones different from real humans. It’s only our appearance that looked similar, but we’re already two separate species. We had been since hundreds of years ago after the virus took root. Do you ever wonder why Abilities doesn’t exist in the outside world? Like Quirk that never manifest on Ability users, Ability will never manifest on Quirk holder. It doesn’t matter if they are Quirkless, because Ability only occurs in humans."

The kids fell silent after hearing the end of the story.

Sure, they were shocked at the origin of Quirks, but they were listening with the mindset of hearing just an old story—a truth that no one in the outside world has discovered yet. The thought of being aliens never occurred to any of them or affected them in any way.

Perhaps it just hadn't fully sunk in yet, as the story sounded too surreal and distant for them to link it to themselves.

“Can we ask…uh…how did the Port Mafia…?” Yaoyorozu began hesitantly. The moment the girl mentioned the Port Mafia, that had become the center of their attention. After all, this was a valuable chance for them to know the enemy.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Lucy picked up her rag and began cleaning again. “We were completely crushed, that’s all. As far as I know, only me and three other people survived—the rest were all killed. Though the other girl that was close to my old boss believed he was still alive and went off looking for him.”

To say the kids were more shocked by how she so casually talked about her comrades’ deaths than knowing the origin of Quirk was an understatement. How could she act as if she was just talking about the weather? She didn’t even show the slightest bit of remorse, anger or sadness over their deaths.

“Do you hate the Port Mafia?” Uraraka whispered softly.

“No.” Lucy still had that not-my-problem tone. “It was our loss. That’s how things work in the world. There’s no point in resenting over anything. The loser dies and the winner lives.”

Her attitude and tone sent a chill down all the kids’ backs. How could she say this? What exactly did she go through to make her say something like that as if it was completely natural?

“Besides,” Lucy continued, “it wasn’t like we ever had a chance of winning. From the beginning to end, everything was in the palm of that person’s hand.”

“That person?” Tokoyami spoke for the first in a long time.

"The boss of Port Mafia," Lucy replied.

“Did you meet them? The boss of Port Mafia?” Midoriya wore a serious expression as he stared at Lucy. The shyness he had when he first sat down in the shop was all gone by now.

“Never mind the boss, we never even saw any of his executives.” Lucy snorted as if mocking herself from that time. “Not a single one of them appeared when we invaded Yokohama. He only sent out his successors and their underlings to deal with us. From the very beginning, we were used by the Port Mafia boss to train his successors.”

“Successors?”

The kids looked around one another.

“That’s why I said you guys got here at a bad time.” Lucy turned to them with a solemn look in those turquoise eyes. “The Port Mafia boss announced that he will choose the next boss of Port Mafia by the end of this week. There are two successors. The last to stand will become the next to lead Port Mafia. After that announcement, everyone in Port Mafia started choosing sides. The underground is also a mess right now with various organizations plotting to use this chance to overthrow the Port Mafia. A war is coming.”

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02/28/2020 DAB Transcript

Leviticus 22:17-23:44, Mark 9:30-10:12, Psalms 44:1-8, Proverbs 10:19

Today is the 28th day of February, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it's great to be here with you today coming to you from the holy city of Jerusalem where we…well…we spent the entire day kind of in and around the old city and…and all of the different things to see here in Jerusalem. Today will be escaping and going down to the shephelah, which is the lowlands for the day. So, that's exciting. It's…it's…it's beautiful to see the green lush open land again after being more in a metropolitan, kind of large congested area. So, that will give us a breather and get us ready for our final day of this pilgrimage tomorrow. So, let's…let's get into the Scriptures. Let's see what the Bible has to say to us today. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week. Today Leviticus chapter 22 verse 17 through 23 verse 44

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the gospel of Mark today Jesus is moving around the countryside teaching, doing ministry, doing what he does, and John comes to Him with this really, really interesting situation. He’s like, “we saw somebody trying to cast out demons in your name and we tried to put a stop to it because he wasn't…he wasn't one of us.” That is sort of the first rumblings of an issue that was…that was certainly going on among the Hebrew people but then bled its way into the early church and still continues until this very day. Even though Jesus spoke very very clearly from His own lips about how He saw it. So, like as believers, we usually kind of…we usually find a group, we might call it our church community, but we sort of find a group of friends, other believers and we…we stick together. And that's community. And there's nothing wrong with that. If we’re defining ourselves as believers in Jesus, we’re following the way, we are practicing our faith, knowing that we have not mastered anything, that…that we’re in process and that we’re walking with God and we’re walking together then we’re the body of Christ. It just gets weird once we decide we have to define precisely what that means. And then we get our theology books and start with our dogmas because invariably at some point we will think we have it right and someone else, some other group, some other people who don't see things the way we see them, they have it wrong. So, the ultimate question then becomes “who gets to be in the kingdom? Who gets in? And is that something that a human being, no matter how judgmental, and no matter how much authority they seem to hole, do they have any say in it at all?” After all it is God's kingdom. But we can get ourselves so segregated into our group that we then can't even fathom the concept that God could use anyone to do anything that thinks differently than we do because they’re not really in. So, John was seeing somebody that they didn't know that was not part of their group casting out demons in the name of Jesus and he tried to shut it down because he wasn't part of the group. Same thing was going on with the Pharisees toward Jesus and now it's in Jesus’ inner circle. And unfortunately, it's always been with us and is still with us today. But Jesus said “don't stop him. Anyone who is not against us is for us.” And then He went on and He had a little child and He uses the example. What He was saying was, “like anything that's done for anyone who belongs to Christ, even something as little as like a glass of water isn't gonna go unrecognized.” So, in our own lives may we understand that if and when we encounter God on the move, whether through a group of people or a person or something that we don't understand, let's quit with the labels, let's understand that we are at a crossroads. And as we've been talking about in all kinds of situations, let's understand that wisdom will be there and just the humility of knowing none of us have this all sorted out. That's why we’re practicing our faith. That's why we’re all undergoing the process of sanctification, the process that sets us apart and makes us holy to God. We’re all at different points in our journey. Criticizing everybody else's journey does not further ours. It actually walls us off and it doesn't take long before we look like the Pharisees. May we offer grace, the same kind of grace we would like to see as we love our neighbor as ourselves.

Prayer:

Holy Spirit we invite You into that because what freedom it would bring, what freedom it would bring. And we confess, the reason these kinds of things usually happen is truly based in fear. We do not want to get it wrong, not with You, not with You. The implications are far, far, far too dire. And, so, we live in fear that we might get it wrong when we will get it wrong. But You have offered us an open door. We can always return. We can always repent. And that is for everyone, not just for our group. So, come Holy Spirit and give us grace. May we see the kingdom at work in our world today and may we understand that we are a part of it. In Jesus’ name we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

Okay. So, we’re like down to our last couple of days in the land of the Bible for this pilgrimage and that's always kind of…of a mixed…mixed feeling. We’ve been in motion for so long now and it’s just our heart…heads, hearts, just bodies, everything. We’re full, empty and tired and elated. And, so, it's just all of that. And, so, yeah, longing to be home but hating to leave all of that just kinda comes. Yesterday, ooo, it was a long day around Jerusalem. Beautiful day, thank God. It was a beautiful, beautiful day but we…we were…we were working and we saw a lot, covered a lot of ground. I'm trying to think if I can even remember it all.

We got up early, like 1/2 an hour early to get in the line, queue to…to be able to go on to the Temple Mount. And that's pretty extraordinary on a clear blue-sky day. The dome just kind of stands out. It…it's just a really…it’s a remarkable place with definitely conflicted history all over the place over all kinds of time. But that's kind of the nature of Jerusalem. That's been the story pretty much all along. So, yeah, you can feel the tension, you can sense…you can sense that because it's ancient, it's always been. And, so, there’s just a lot of jostling around. But a beautiful morning up on the Temple Mount.

And then we came down and went to the pools of Bethesda. And this is where Jesus healed a man that had been…had been suffering there by the pools on a…basically on a daily basis for 38 years. And Jesus came along and said, “do you want to be made whole?” And that's a challenging thing. That's a challenging thing to consider, especially here on the pilgrimage. It’s like…it's like so much comes down to that. “Do you want to be made whole?” Not “can you” or “should you”. Like, “do you want to this and the collaboration that happens with God when we say yes to that?” And, so, yeah, spent a little bit of time, kind of pondering that and putting it in our hearts. It’s a beautiful church from the Crusader era right there with the acoustics that are really breathtaking as well. And often it's really full, really hard to get in there but we managed to get group in there, and Jill lead us in…in a song and just could hear the echo of our voices just bouncing all around. It's really majestic. It’s a lot of fun to do. It's just a really, really unique experience. It’s like you’re in a huge cathedral and you are, but just being in Israel in this ancient church and singing to the Lord and just hearing the echo of it is…is wonderful.

So, we did that and then many…many of us walked on the old walls. You can kind of walk a portion of the old walls, beautiful views and you gotta climb some stairs, but beautiful views. And then coming down and also just little small sections of the city that from the Roman era as well as like the wall, a portion of the wall of Jerusalem from the time of King Hezekiah. And that is also pretty remarkable, see how wide the wall is. Even though it’s like all buried, you know, you can’t see how high. And it's a small section but just kind of see like, “this is…the this is what a wall at this time, a fortified city at this time would’ve look like.” And their thick. I'm thinking, I don’t know, we’re like above it, I'm thinking 30 feet maybe 35. Maybe…I don't know. I’m not so good with that and I didn’t have a tape measure, but really really thick. So, you know, it's…it's easy enough to imagine the kind of battle the…like the kind of ongoing onslaught that it would take to breach a wall like that. And we read of those kinds of stories in the Scriptures, especially the tactic of surrounding…like starving the city basically and weakening everyone's morale. And there’s plenty of stories that we will encounter in the Bible about that including Hezekiah's story when we get to it.

Then there was some lunch in the Jewish quarter and then to the Jerusalem archaeological Park, which is again, it’s…I mean there's a lot to see but it is really spectacular. Your down below the walls of the old city. So, like the southern temple steps are there. Part of the steps that what would've continued up to the temple when it was there. And some of them have been re-created but some of the original steps are there. And, so, that's one of the places that you can be where…where you’re…you have just a pretty near certainty that Jesus would’ve walked there, that Jesus would’ve taught things on those steps and would've been there. And, so, for us to be there and not only have that touch point with Jesus, but also to open up the book of Acts and read the story of the Holy Spirit's coming and Peter's first message, and 3000 people following the way of Jesus after that and being baptized and considering where…where that might've taken place and understanding that the temple complex is really the only place that would have that kind of resource to do that many baptisms. So, that's a likely scenario. And just having that touch point is great. Like all these things are great by themselves and you start stacking them up and it's really great and then just kind of following all of the archaeology around the old walls and then making our way over to the Western wall and being able to go to the wall and join with brothers and sisters all over the world and…and pray, touch the wall.

I took Ezekiel to the wall this time. I mean, we prayed and that was…that was really sweet to watch his little hand reach out and touch the wall. Probably should've took pictures of that, probably would've wanted to remember that, but it just seemed like a moment that needed to live in memory. I don’t know. Sometimes you have these moments where you’re like, “I really really should video this or I really should take a picture of this”. But maybe that, you know, maybe that ruins the whole thing. Maybe this is just a moment that we have. So, that…that…that happened and was beautiful.

Then we went into the, what's called the rabbinical tunnels. So, a lot of archaeology has been done under the ground along the walls of the old city because the temple mount itself, the second Temple era, this is during Herod's development phase. And he was crazy. I mean you read about it. He was crazy. But he was a fantastic developer and so much of his fingerprint on this land still stands today, including…including the, you know, the Temple Mount, the whole support system to hold up the Temple Mount, like all these massive retaining walls. But they sort of disappear. You have this like one little section of that with, you know, with the western wall or the Wailing Wall as it has been known. But it continues. It's just, you know, the cities built up. But archaeologist have for years been working beneath the ground. And, so, you can kind of go down there and see all of that, basically walk the whole length of the Temple Mount under…under the ground and see that, “yeah, these are the same. This is the same Herodian era all the way down.” Ssee some of the Roman era. There’s opportunities where they had like glass, you could look down all the way to the second Temple period, the time of Jesus, see the street down below. So, that's pretty…pretty fantastic as well.

And then we finally…finally got back to our hotel pretty exhausted. We did a lot of walking. But it was a beautiful day and we made it…we made it and we saw a lot in Jerusalem today and we got sort of the…the full force of the city…like the change of complexion that Jerusalem brings. So, the wilderness, very different. The Galilee, very different than the wilderness. The Mediterranean coast, very different than the Galilee. Jerusalem, very different than the cost. So, we’ve kind of experienced all of that and it's been wonderful and today we’ll be heading into the low lands and I’ll be telling you about that tomorrow.

Thank you for your continued prayers and…over all of this…and as we prepare…even though we have a couple days left…as we prepare to reenter our world as we go home and prepare for that. Thank you for your prayers over all of that.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage, and I thank you profoundly for your partnership. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement you can hit the Hotline button in the app, the little red button at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi this is Laura from Castle Rock and I just joined with the DAB this January. I just happened to find it. And, so, I’ve been listening every day and enjoying the Word and the prayers and today I just heard Harold call in and I just burst into tears because he prayed the prayer of salvation and I’m so happy for him. And I just have been following his story and ever since I heard about him, you know, praying for him and just thinking about all the other people that maybe don’t feel like they have a place. And I’m just so grateful I found this community and I, because of my own life circumstances, have been kind of isolated from the church and just been through a lot of hurt and trying to work through that but this format just is so nice and feels safe. And I just…I’m praying today to for Diana’s boys and just joining in with the prayers of the people that…that they would feel comforted and they would feel surrounded by love as they walk through the grief of losing their mom. So, I just wanted to say hi, introduce myself, and…and join in with the prayers of the community. Thanks. Bye.

So, this is my first time calling in my name is Emari Davis. You all can call me SOG1031. I’m from Houston Texas. This is this is my first time calling in because I was using the wrong app. I was using the old app and I was always wondering like, “I don’t see no red button up at the top. I’m not understanding how I’m supposed to call in and pray.” But finally updated to the new app, praise God and…and I’m loving it. I really am loving it. I’ve been plugged into the Daily Audio Bible this…for this year like every day. But I started a couple years ago. My mom actually showed me the app and I listen to it every once in a while, you know, but it’s just…just this year alone of me listening to it every day has really impacted my life and everything. And today I was listening and I just…I just want to pray…I just…I just I want to ask for prayer. Can you guys pray that…that…that the heart…that my heart is a good heart, you know, that it receives the Word like it should and just that God makes my heart a clean heart and…and that the that the word just takes deep ,deep root, deep root, deep, deep root. And that’s all…that’s all I ask of you guys. I also want to send prayers out to Diana Davis’s sons. You all will be in my prayers and…and everything. So, God bless you.

Hey this is Cindy the Silver Lining Miner from Seattle. I really have it on my heart to call and chat with you Daniel Johnson Junior. I think probably two years ago, maybe three, you sent or you sang a little doughnut song and I don’t remember what it was but I remember it was so adorable and it really lifted my spirits and I just…I wanted to take this opportunity to lift your spirits. And I know you’ve got issues with congestive heart failure and you’ve been laid off, but I just want you to rest and I don’t know how old you are, but rest assured gray capital is a thing. People will value your wisdom and your experience. And please don’t let your age deter you. Anybody who’s older and looking for work, man I work with some people who are older than me, which is surprising but it’s also encouraging because everybody’s got something to offer. And please don’t let those lies deter you from finding a job. I’ll be praying for you. Also wanted to pray for trusting father in South Carolina. I’m just praying for your daughters and your son. I’m happy that you have spiritual replenishment and I’m praying that you can be a beacon of light for your family. Kimberly who was abused by churchmen, I’m so glad you’re feeling a part of this community and enjoying this fellowship and I’m praying for you as well. There was a woman who called in tonight who…well…I listened tonight to the episode. and she just joined the church and she gave her life to Christ. Hang in there and listen to God, listen for God in the quiet times. His love is all around you and we will be praying for you and we welcome you to this community and we support and love you and God loves you a hundred times more. So, rest in that. Thank you.

Hi this is Norma from the Bronx. I just needed to call and thank Brian for today’s…February 19th…today’s devotional. Something really penetrated me, my spirit so much. Brian said something. He said that we try so hard to get out of the wilderness instead of trying to see what it is that God is…is trying to teach us or trying to show us. And it totally made me refocus the pain that I have been enduring to be lessons that God is trying to teach me. And I just want to be…hope that I’m thankful so much for Brian. It has given me a new sense of hope to focus on the lesson. And he also said something, that it shapes you. And that is so true. The wilderness, it shapes you and prepares you for what God has called you to do. That is so powerful. God bless you.

Hey DAB family this Kingdom Seeker Daniel from Chicago and I am…I am overwhelmed right now with tears of joy. I…I just left a facility that I service for the mentally disabled and there’s a young lady in there that I…I had a chance to connect with just in passing. She’s one of the residents and it’s been several months since we’ve connected, but as I just left the facility, she called my name out, she called my name out, she remembered my name from of very, very brief exchange that we had. And it just blessed by soul. And, so, I just wanted to encourage someone with…with the reality that God knows your name. God knows your name, Beloved, whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you’re dealing with, He knows your name. Michael, Elijah, Charisse, He knows your name. Don’t ever think that God doesn’t love you. God bless you guys.

Hey DAB family it is Shanda the sister from South Dakota. I am calling today because I…well my son is in need of prayer. He is 18 and we’ve had to kick him out of the house because after he got off probation we found…I found marijuana in the house and an apparatus to smoke it with and we have young children and we had an expectation any he broke that expectation. Now he’s living with one of my family members that is most likely a practicing meth addict. And I know how much my son longs for acceptance and confidence and all the things that drugs…drugs falsely present themselves as - confidence and beautiful and wonderful. I’m just…I’m praying against the enemy making advances on my family anymore through drugs. I’m praying for the cycle of addiction to be broken. I started by getting clean and I am almost 2 years clean. And I just am praying for this generational curse to stop and…and for my family members to see the light of God. And God has told me to trust and not to worry and it’s been kind of hard lately but I’m gonna try and I’m just asking for you guys to rally behind me with your powerful prayers and I will keep praying for all of you guys. I love you guys. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.

Good morning this is Laura from Georgia I’m new to DAB. I’ve been here officially January 5th and it’s been a blessing to me. And I haven’t really called in for prayer for myself. I’ve called and prayed for other people and have given praise reports, but I need prayer. I am…I feel like I’m in the wilderness here. I am from Oklahoma but moved here two years ago two and a half years ago because of marriage. And the gentleman, after four months of marriage, emailed me and told me he wanted a divorce. So, I felt lost and alone, but God had me here for a reason because the only person that I could draw my strength on…strength from was Him. And I saw him do so much wonderful things for me. But the bottom line is is that I haven’t established any true friends because I am a member of the church, a beautiful church, but I only get to go on Sunday’s. Because of my work schedule I can’t go to Bible Study, I can’t get in connect groups or whatever. And my prayer is that God would bless me with female companion that loves the Lord and that we can experience Georgia together. I am dating but I miss that friendship, that female companionship and I need that. And there are days when I feel really, really low and, in fact, when I joined or came across DAB I was at a very low point, very depressed and feeling very, very alone. So, I thank you for mt DAB family. Keep me in prayer please and reach out to...

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