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delaber · 4 years ago

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Can’t Have Your Cake and Another Cake Too

Rafael Casal x Reader

Note: Okay, I’ll stop breaking Rafa’s heart now... Last time, I swear! Thanks for the prompts to these lovely anons. Alhough this is not a prequel to Poetic Justice (Rafa x ER Nurse), poor Rafa’s facing some of the same issues. I very loosely based this story on J. Cole’s Kevin’s Heart (don’t know why I’m always incorporating J. Cole into my fics, but apparently he’s always lurking in the back of my mind) and Phlake’s So Faded. Let me know what you think!

Words: 4.7K

Warnings: Cocaine addiction! Does not have a happy ending (nobody ODs and nobody’s dying ...Only on the inside lol)

Tagging: No one! This might not be for everybody and I don’t want anybody to feel forced to read it 😌

It was supposed to be a great night out. The entire gang was there, and at the instigation of Diggs, Rafa was supposed to be on the prowl to get laid so he could take his mind off of his broken heart.

From his seat in the booth, Rafa had a fairly good view of the dance floor and he had already spotted a few honeys who likewise had acknowledged him by smiling and sending him a couple of long looks. One of them had even twirled her hair between her fingers while blowing him a kiss. He had the green light, all systems were go!

However, of all the things that could've thrown him off his game, Rafa would not have placed a single bet on a phone call. But the minute he pulled out his vibrating phone and checked the caller ID, both the group of honeys on the dance floor and his friends occupying the seats all around him were completely forgotten. Nothing else mattered anymore.

He stared at the screen for a while, reading the name over and over again. What the fuck was Morris calling him for? Rafa had told him to stop. Morris knew he was too weak to say no even though he had promised his girl that he'd stop for good.

...Or, you weren't his girl. Not anymore.

But Rafa was still determined to win you back no matter if you had stopped answering his phone calls or not, so he took a tough decision and pressed the decline button beneath Morris' name. He even contemplated putting his phone on flight-mode to remove all unwelcome temptations - he knew you'd never take him back if he fell back in - yet, for some reason taking himself off the grid was easier said than done, and before he had pulled himself together to actually press the little airplane button, a text from Morris had ticked in. It only consisted of two words but Rafa understood perfectly.

'New candy.'

Fuck... Rafa considered the pros and cons of accepting for a few milliseconds before he came to his senses. No, no, no. The only way he'd ever win you back would be by showing you that he could stay sober even after your break-up. Morris could fuck off! As if awaking from a trance, Rafa hurriedly put his phone back in his pocket and desperately tried to forget about Morris' enticing offer by telling himself that he was strong enough to shake it.

...although deep down, he was aware that it was already too late. That no matter what, he wouldn't be able to stop thinking about it now. And no matter how hard he tried to re-focus on the honeys on the dance floor and tell himself how stupid it was to hit Morris up, it was no use, the damage was done; he was desperate to get high!

Deeply, horribly ashamed of himself, Rafa texted Morris the address of the club and impatiently waited a couple of minutes before he walked outside with heavy footsteps. It felt as if he was walking to the gallows, the shame eating him up from the inside. You'd be so disappointed in him!

However, in order to make himself accept what he was about to do, he reminded himself that apparently, you didn't care if he was high or not. If you did, you would've returned his phone calls, and you would've reacted to the fact that he had been sober for three weeks now - but you hadn't. And with that in mind, Rafa managed to push away most of the shame as he laid eyes on Morris' sketchy Subaru parked by the curb on the other side of the road. He walked across the street with determined footsteps, carefully looking over his shoulder to check if anybody he knew were watching him approach what was clearly a dealer's car.

"What's up, bruh!" Morris called as he rolled down his window. He was wearing sunglasses, looking like an absolute turd in the dark night.

Rafa put his arms on the car's beltline and shot Morris a bro handshake through the open window, "what the fuck are you wearing sunglasses at night for? You look like a dick."

"Nah, man, it looks cool," Morris laughed, "do you like them? Hell, you should like them - you paid for them."

"What do you mean I paid for them?"

"With the amount of money you spend in my shop, I think it's safe to assume that you paid for these sunglasses and the rims on the ride too," Morris snorted.

"Yeah, about that," Rafa looked away, the embarrassment slowly creeping up his spine again, "you gotta stop calling me."

"You said that last time as well but look at you now," Morris laughed.

"Come on man, it's important that I stop."

"You don't wanna stop though."

Rafa let out a sigh, "look, I'm trying to prove something to my girlf- ...ex-girlfriend."

"A'ight, I respect that," Morris nodded slowly but then he quickly continued, "so did you just call me here to pin your lady troubles on me? Cause I have a customer waiting up on Seventh Ave."

Rafa blew out some air, embarrassed by the decision he was about to make.

"...Or do you wanna buy?" Morris continued as he read Rafa's body language.

"...you're not gonna tell Diggs are you?"

"Do I look like a fucking snitch?" Morris looked offended, "and you know me and Diggs don't talk no more."

"Yeah, alright. This stays between us, okay? If word gets out, I'm fucked."

"A'ight bruh," Morris laughed, "Now, how much do you need?"

"Just... just give me an eightball," Rafa mumbled.

Morris let out a small laugh, "an eightball? Man, you're not about to quit," he chuckled and handed Rafa a zip-lock bag with white powder in it.

"Shut up," Rafa mumbled and pocketed the baggie, "how much?"

"Rafa, you're my man, so I'mma give you a discount because I feel bad for you and your girl. Three hundo."

"Three hundred?! Last time it was two-eighty without the discount."

"Times are changing. I haven't seen you in three weeks, man. Plus, this is a good batch," Morris poked Rafa in the chest, "my contact got it shipped in directly from Medellín. Look, it got fish scale and everything!"

"You better not fuck me over," Rafa muttered and threw Morris three hundred-dollar bills before he turned away from him with an annoyed huff.

"Pleasure doing business as always, Casal! See you next weekend!" Morris yelled after Rafa with a small laugh, apparently not a care in the world for who knew about their illegal transaction.

"Fucking idiot," Rafa muttered to himself without turning around. He had more important things to do than to scold Morris about his indiscretion.

Rafa hurried to the restroom and carefully locked the door behind him before he frantically pulled out the zip-lock bag. He examined its contents and saw the pearl-like surface that Morris had talked about - Fuck it looked good! He opened the bag carefully but froze when he caught his own reflection in the bathroom mirror; the loving look he was sending the bag of coke was sickening. It made his stomach plummet. Had he really been reduced to snorting coke alone in a dirty bathroom of a sketchy club? He remembered when it had been a group activity. Before he couldn't control it.

Shake it off! He told himself. He had every intention of stopping after tonight. This would be the last time.

You said that last time as well, a small voice rang in the back of his head, but he ignored his guilty conscience and instead poured out a small pile of the pearl-like coke on top of the hand dryer. Quickly, he pulled out a random card from his wallet and used it to form two heavy lines. Before his guilty conscience could interfere again, he also grabbed a one-dollar bill that he neatly rolled into a small tube and put between his right nostril and one of the white lines, ready for the rush. His gaze, however, lingered on the random card he had used to break the coke into lines; it was his fucking rewards card for the small organic, artisan shit coffee house that you liked. What wouldn't you say if you knew what he was doing? In his mind's eye, he could see the disappointed look you always sent him whenever he'd come home all hyped up, rambling his mouth off. You never got angry with him and his love of coke, but somehow your disappointed demeanour was way worse. He would've taken screaming and yelling over the disappointed stare and the slow shake of your head any day.

Slowly, he removed the dollar-bill from his nostril, stood up straight and met his own eyes in the mirror again - and for a moment, he could truly see how pathetic he was. What the hell was he doing? He was throwing away his last shot at getting you back - and for what? A few hours of euphoria and confidence?

But she doesn't want you back, a small voice rang inside his head, you called, and you called, and you called. You declared yourself clean to her voicemail and she still didn't reach out. Fuck her!

"Yeah, fuck her," Rafa mumbled before he put the dollar-bill back to his nostril. Quickly, he snorted both lines of coke, shooting his head back afterwards, sniffling a bit as he cleaned his nose with the back of his hand. He knew he only had a couple of minutes before the euphoria kicked in, so he quickly brushed off the dollar-bill and the rewards card and tugged them both back in his wallet. The remainder of the coke was stowed away in his shirt's breast pocket for safe keeping.

Ready for the rush, Rafa was impatiently staring at himself in the mirror. He was thinking about how to avoid Diggs and his condescending looks for the duration of his high, when he was finally overwhelmed by the familiar fuzzy feeling. It came out of nowhere and started behind his eyeballs and continued all the way down to his toenails. It felt as if someone had pulled a large, fluffy blanket down over him, and it was slowly heating up his body, making him feel safe and secure. His pulse quickened in time with his breathing, and he had to close his eyes to get himself under control. He felt fucking powerful! Morris had not lied about this coming from a good batch. "Shit, Morris," he laughed.

There was a knock on the door, and Rafa remembered that he had occupied the men's room for a good five minutes now. He took a last look at his suddenly hazed eyes, aware that no matter how hard he tried to hide it, anyone could see that he was high as a kite. He contemplated riding out his high alone in the bathroom but also knew that with the amount of energy present in his body, he couldn't stay in the small restroom all night. He had to dance! To fuck! To fight!

With a suddenly confident bounce in his step, he opened the door, and sent the guy in line what he hoped was an apologetic nod before he confidently strode towards the honeys on the dance floor.

"Hey Rafa!" he heard someone yell behind him.

Hoping it was someone who wanted to fight, Rafa quickly turned around but was slightly disappointed to see Diggs coming towards him with a huge grin on his face. Shit! Rafa realised that he had to act nonchalant around his best friend. Diggs absolutely couldn't know about the coke in his breast pocket, or he'd be all up in Rafa's face about it.

"Diiiiiggs! My man!" Rafa yelled overly excited, clearly very, very high.

Diggs shot him a look at his weird behaviour before he continued, "where've you been, man? I've been looking for you everywhere."

"R-r-r-r-r-r-r-rrrrrrrestroom," Rafa laughed, he was too happy to pretend otherwise.

"Why are you saying it like th-" the huge grin was slowly slipping from Diggs' face, "...hey, Rafa - look at me," Diggs suddenly sounded all serious as he took Rafa's face in his hands, carefully examining his features, "Rafa, look at me."

Rafa let out a low chuckle, "Diggs, you know I think you're handsome and all that, but I don't like you that way," he joked.

"You're being weird," Diggs furrowed his eyebrows, "- and your pupils are huge. Have you been doing lines in the bathroom?"

"Maybe," Rafa laughed, unable to stop himself from revealing his dirty little secret, "why? You want some? I still have a few hits left," he padded his breast pocket.

"You know I don't do that shit anymore..." Diggs let go of Rafa with a sigh and looked away from him.

"Oh yeah, I forgot you're a fucking saint now," Rafa said a bit more harshly than he had intended to. Ever since Diggs had met Emmy, he had been boring as hell.

Diggs chose not to comment on Rafa's low blow, and managed to keep his calm, "I thought you'd stopped, bruh."

"Morris made me an offer I couldn't refuse," Rafa laughed in an accent halfway between Tony Montana and Vito Corleone.

"Yeah well, I'm not the only one who thought you were done fucking around," Diggs said seriously. He was having none of Rafa's jokes, "I just saw your girl downstairs. She wants to talk to you."

It took a few seconds before Rafa understood, but when he finally grasped Diggs' words, he felt the blood drain from his face and his mouth run dry, "what? No, you're kidding me..."

"Nope," Diggs sighed, "I've been running around trying to find you for fifteen minutes..."

"Shit! What the fuck do I do?" Rafa said in a panicked voice, licking his lips frantically, "I told her I was sober! If she sees me like this, she'll never take me back."

"Yeah, well you better pray that you don't run into her."

Rafa ran his hand through his hair, "fuck I'm screwed. She's downstairs?"

"Was fifteen minutes ago."

"Alright, I'm jumping out this window. You stall her, tell her that I got sick or something."

"You can't jump out this window?" Diggs said incredulously, "we're 50 feet up, if you do that, you die! Just walk out the doo- ...oh shit, dude, we're blown. She's here. She's coming over."

"Fuck! Can I still bolt?"

"Of course not!"

"Well how do I look? Alright?"

"You look-" Diggs cut himself off, "...maybe just try and avoid her looking into your eyes, okay?"

"How the fuck am I supposed to do that?"

"The light in here's paying you a favour but apart from that you're gonna have to pull yourself together. You brought this upon yourself," Diggs said harshly before his demeanour changed completely as his eyes interlocked with yours over Rafa's shoulder, "heeeeey," he smiled broadly, "look who I found."

Rafa slowly turned around and met you. Your stunning beauty - as always - immediately knocking him to the ground. He couldn't believe that it had been four weeks since the last time he'd seen you. He'd do anything to get you back!

"Rafa," you nodded formally with a stiff face. Rafa couldn't help but make a mental note on how weird it was to see you without a smile on your lips. You were normally always so happy. He had done this, he reminded himself.

"Hey baby," he whispered, the words weirdly familiar in his throat.

You briefly raised your eyebrows while looking away from him, clearly uncomfortable by the sound of your old pet name.

"Sorry," he continued, "force of habit. ...I'm just happy to see you."

Your gaze slowly found his face, and Rafa prayed that you couldn't see his coke-eyes from where you were standing.

"Well..." you said and clicked your tongue, "I'd like to talk to you."

"I'd like to talk to you too," Rafa said quietly.

"And you're sober? Like you said on my voicemail?"

"Yes," Rafa breathed, "completely sober," he lied thickly, hyper-aware of how awkward it was with Diggs shuffling nervously beside him. He was uncomfortably rolling back and forth on the balls of his feet.

"Good," you finally let out a small smile, "do you want to sit down?"

"Yeah," Rafa nodded.

"Yeah, I'll - uh - I'll leave you to it," Diggs cleared his throat and padded Rafa between the shoulder blades as a way of wishing him good luck.

"Thanks man," Rafa muttered before he followed you down to a vacant booth in the corner of the room. Instead of sitting down opposite you, he made sure to occupy the seat next to you, hoping that it would minimise the risk of you looking into his eyes. He just had to pretend that he was sober until the high quieted down. Fourty-five more minutes - Less if he was lucky.

"So, how've you been?" You said quietly as you were both overlooking the dance floor, avoiding looking directly at each other.

"Not good," Rafa said quietly, "like shit, actually... how about you?"

"Yeah, well I guess 'shit' sums it up neatly... How's sober life?"

"Oh, it's - yeah - it's - it's great!" He said, the lie thick in his throat, "I feel so much better now." He knew how much he had hurt you, and he knew how difficult it must be for you to face him after you'd said that you never wanted to see him again - which just really only made his lying so much worse. Fuck, how he hated himself for what he had done. What he was still doing.

Your eyes darted across his face before your gaze settled on a spot just below his chin. He was relieved that you weren't staring him square in the eyes. "I was so happy to hear your voicemail," you whispered, "you really flushed your stash?"

"Yes," he croaked.

"I'm glad that you're finally taking care of yourself," he couldn't make out your face in the dark but he could hear a hint of happiness to your voice that you were clearly trying to suppress. It made him feel horrible.

"Yeah, I want to stay sober for you," he said slowly. At least that wasn't a lie.

"You have no idea how happy that makes me," you said quietly, the happiness definitely shining through now.

Rafa's heart was fluttering in his chest, and he felt the coke-induced euphoria run amok in his brain, "...does that mean you'll forgive me?" All his senses were heightened.

"It's a step in the right direction" you said quietly, still not looking directly at him, "I've missed you."

"I've missed you too baby," Rafa said quietly and boldly took your hand in his.

Finally, you looked up at him, and to avoid you noticing his bloodshot eyes with the dilated pupils, he took a quick decision, leaned in and crashed his lips against yours.

Luckily, you mistook his desperation for passion and fiercely kissed him back, your hand releasing itself from his, and instead caressing his neck. In-between kisses you managed to mumble, "I'm still... mad... at you."

"I know," Rafa mumbled, enjoying the familiar feeling of your lips against his. Your hands switched to caressing his torso, and your small fingers travelled over his stomach and up his chest, coming to a halt over his heart. It was racing against his ribcage and he had no idea whether it was due to the coke or due to the heap of emotions he felt in his chest. He couldn't believe he was kissing you again. He had completely written it off no more than half an hour ago.

Your right hand moved away from his heart but came to a sudden halt when you felt a small bump in Rafa's breast pocket. Still kissing him, you ran your fingers over the bump a few times before you remembered that it was where he always kept his coke. Quickly, you pulled your lips away from his.

"Wait, no, don't take kissing away from me," he hummed, completely unaware of the discovery you'd just done.

You were looking at his euphoric face with the closed eyes and the swollen lips as you moved your hand over his breast pocket once more.

When Rafa realised what was going on his eyes flew open and he spluttered, "it isn't what you think!"

But he was too slow to react, and before he had had the chance to move away, your fingers went inside his breast pocket and grabbed the small bag from there. "You've got to be kidding me!" You said angrily as you held his coke between your fingertips.

"Baby, I can explain," Rafa said quickly while desperately grabbing your wrist.

"Rafa, you fucking idiot! Don't touch me!" You wrestled yourself out of his grip, got up from your seat, and fast-paced towards the door.

"Baby! Baby!" Rafa yelled out as he ran after you.

"Don't touch me!" You cried, attracting the attention of everyone in your path.

You stormed out the door, Rafa at your heel desperately clinging to every inch of you that he could reach. When you reached the curb outside, he finally managed to run up in front of you, stopping you in your tracks, "baby, I can explain!" He said desperately.

"You said you'd flushed it all!" You were screaming at him now, the tears running down your face.

"It was a mistake, baby, I swear I didn't mean to. I flushed it all, I promise. It's just a setback."

"When did you buy this, Rafa?" You said through gritted teeth, "how long did you manage to stay sober before you decided you wanted to throw it all away?"

Rafa looked away from you, he was so embarrassed by himself, "Morris called and I tried to say no, I really did! Baby, I tried so hard to resist it. But he was persistent."

"Well, did he force you to buy?" You hissed. You were having none of his excuses.

"...No." Rafa admitted.

"When did you buy it?" You emphasised every word, "before or after you called me last weekend?"

"After..."

"When? How long after? When did you have your setback?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes! I need to know if you did it because you were physically craving it, because you just felt like getting high, or if you did it because you’d thrown the thought of us away when I didn’t answer you.”

"I tried to fight it, I swear I tried to fight it," he was getting choked up.

"Rafa, tell me when you bought it."

He considered shooting you a lie but he didn't want to fuck up any more. "I bought it tonight..." he finally muttered under his breath, avoiding your gaze.

"You're not serious!! You bought it tonight?" You bellowed, "are you trying to tell me that you planned on throwing away your soberness tonight? That if I hadn't shown up, you'd be high as balls right now?"

Rafa didn't say anything, he just looked at you with huge eyes, the embarrassment evident on his face - and first then did you notice his blood-shot eyeballs with the abnormally large pupils that had taken over most of the green that was normally present.

"No..." you whispered when you realised, "no, no, no..." you groaned quietly, clutching your chest, "you're high right now?" The heartbreak was evident in your voice.

Rafa sent you a pained look. He fucking hated himself.

"You're high..." You stated in a whisper, the tears were streaming down your face, "you lied."

He had broken your heart. Again.

"I - I didn't mean to," he croaked, "I was just so happy to see you. I knew you wouldn't want to talk to me if I told you the truth."

"So you planned on telling me when?"

"I don't know," he croaked, "I didn't think it through. I've been sober for three weeks. Tonight's just a small setback. Baby, I swear, I'll block Morris and I'll flush this baggie right now if I can just get you back," Rafa was begging, “I’ll stop if you tell me to!”

"Rafa, how many times do I have to tell you," you cried, "You have to stop because you want to. Not because I tell you to stop! I don't care about the snorting! I don't care that you party and get high! You've done lines of my tits several times for God's sake! But I can't live with the constant lying that has become part of it!"

Fuck, Rafa knew what you were building to. His life's biggest mistake. He had it coming, he knew it. He deserved it. He was a fucking cheating coke-head and he hated it. "Please don't bring it up," he sobbed.

You didn't listen to him. You had to confront him with it because he clearly hadn't understood. "Rafa, you fucked another girl! And you were so high that you didn't even realise it! And when you woke up the next day and saw what you'd done, you lied about your whereabouts and the fact that you'd been high as fuck! I had to learn about it through her!" You were sobbing, "...and instead of staying home and comforting me, you lied about having to go to the studio, and you met up with Morris and you got high! Again! If knowing that you're breaking my heart with your constant lies doesn't make you want to quit, I'm not sure what will."

"I want to stop!" he sobbed. He had never felt so horrible before, "I love you, I want to be with you," he sniffled and took your hand, "please give me another chance! I'll stop snorting. I'll stop lying. I'll do anything for you."

It looked as if you were contemplating his words but the look in your eyes darkened suddenly and you let out a whisper, "no Rafa!" as you pulled your hand away from his.

"Baby, please!" He pleaded desperately, "I love you."

"You love coke more," you whispered.

"I have a problem," Rafa tried desperately, "I know. I can't stop. But I'll get help. I'll do whatever you want me to do!"

"Rafa, if you stop snorting because I tell you to stop, it will never last! You love getting high!"

"That's not true... it's pathetic," he cried.

"Rafa, honey,” you said quietly, “- ask yourself this; would you be throwing away this baggie and deleting Morris' number if I wasn't leaving you because of it?"

"Yes," he croaked immediately.

You took a deep breath of air, hurt written all over your face, "Love," you sighed desperately as a fresh wave of tears started streaming down your face, "you're lying again..." you sobbed, and put the baggie in the palm of his hand and folded his fingers around it.

"I'm flushing it," he croaked.

"Do whatever you want," you whispered and looked him in the eye, "We're not together anymore. I'm done - it's over,” you said as you slowly turned around and started walking away from him.

“No, no, no! Please come back!”

“No Rafa… This time I'm serious,” you said before you started walking again.

This time, Rafa didn't run after you. He just watched you walk further and further away from him as your hands dried the tears off of your face every two seconds. He imagined you stopping, imagined the hurt look you'd send him. How he'd run over to you and take you in his arms. Imagined how he'd apologise and you'd both hug and cry and kiss it out. But you didn't stop. You didn't send him any look at all. And he didn’t run to you, he was glued to the pavement.

He stood as if frozen in time and looked after you even long after you'd disappeared around the corner. Suddenly, however, he noticed that he was still clutching the baggie in his closed fist. Slowly, he opened the palm to reveal the beautiful mother-of-pearl-coloured powder. He contemplated dropping it down the gutter next to him. It would all be so easy.

But instead, he closed his fingers around it and pocketed it right above his broken heart. It would help relieve the terrible thunder that he felt rolling over him. It brought along a storm of emotions. A hurricane of regrets. And he was desperate to get high.

#rafael casal x reader #rafael casal #daveed diggs #blindspotting #rafael casal imagine #rafael casal fanfiction #bay boys #heartbreak #drug addiction #please don't hate me lol

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royallyprincesslilly · 4 years ago

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Title: Hibiscus Kisses {1}

Chris Evans x OFC Ajali Rambaue AU {Ah-Jah-Lee, Ram-Bow}

Warning: Plot Heavy, Cursing,

Words: 6.1k

Summary: Ajali decides on a rash decision to go on a Disney cruise, not for her love of Disney, but because she needs time to figure things out after things get even more complicated in her complicated life. She only expected peace, quiet, tropical drinks, and an overabundance of Disney songs. What she got was more than she bargained for when the cruise of a lifetime on the brand new ship Enchantment turned into a nightmare. The only saving grace is that she’s not the only one living through the nightmare. Can Ajali survive the test of a lifetime and the dangers ahead of her, and better yet, will she finally be able to live a little?

Note: Hey, hey, hey, guys! So here we are trying something different/new. I hope you enjoy this. 🤞🏽 Please feel free to tell me what you think. I’m super excited to explore this one with you all. 🤗 Also, what do you guys think of the title? What does it make you think of?

As always, thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this, please LIKE, COMMENT, REBLOG! ❤️❤️

I appreciate each and every one of your guys’ support and love!

***Loosely Edited/Proofread***

**Very Interactive**

***French Language Incorporated w/translations according to Google***

“Yes, mom, I packed my charger and my vitamins. Oh my god, of course, I have my scarf. Mom!”

Your mother continued to press you about things any woman would never forget packing. This was how she was normally. Almost morning, she would make her routine calls. First to your sister Atali, then to you. When she made it to you, she’d ask if you ate, and of course, by the time she called you, you were usually at work or on your way to it, and you wouldn’t have eaten. Then she’d ask you why you hadn’t eaten, to which she’d go back and forth with you about the importance of eating a well-balanced meal. Somehow that would lead to her asking how you expected to find the one when you didn’t eat enough. It was a never-ending thing with her. She was obsessed with you and your sister finding the one.

You understood. Your parents had been married for well over two decades, and they were still disgustingly in love. There was also no one like your dad, so you understood. They both saw what a catch they both were. After she told you the story of how she finessed your dad and got married in record time, it always turned into focus on you finding someone to marry. No matter how many times you told her that even though marriage was great and all, you weren’t in any hurry, it never registered.

“Mom, I have everything I need. It is just supposed to be a two-week cruise.”

“You’d be surprised the things you realize you left once you’re at sea. Then it will be too late,” Cynthia, your mother warned.

“Then I’ll just buy it. Mom, I’m not going to the middle of nowhere. I am going on a huge ship from one of the world’s most reputable companies. I am positive they have every possible thing I could want to buy onboard. Plus, when we dock at ports, I’ll be able to buy much more.”

“You’re always buying. Gah, I blame your father. He spoiled you and your sister rotten.”

“I am not spoiled. It’s not like I haven’t worked for my money. Yes, daddy helped me set up my company, but I got where I am today because of me,” you professed.

“I know, sweetheart, you don’t have to preach to the choir. All I’m saying is your daddy’s wealth only helped spoil you and Lali more. I saw it in you at the playground the most. You always wanted what the other kids were playing with. If it was a ball, you tried to take it. If it were the swings, you’d overtake it, toys in the sandbox my goodness those kids would end up with sand in their eyes and you alone with the toys.”

“Some would call that persistence, hardworking, and assertive.”

Your mother laughed then tsked.

“I’m surprised that when you were in high school, I never got a call about you getting into a fight because you stole some girl’s boyfriend.”

You pursed your lips, but as you were going to open your mouth to respond, your phone vibrated, signaling a notification.

“Hang on, mom.”

You thanked the Lyft driver for helping with your bags then checked your phone.

MSG Javii: I’ve been calling you all night. Come on, Chaton (kitten). You have to talk to me at some point. Tu me manques (I miss you).

You sighed and rolled your eyes. He had some nerve, you thought.

“Ajali, hello!”

“Yes, mom, I’m here. Sorry. I was getting my bags together.”

“So, you’re really doing this?”

“Yes, mom. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Who goes on a cruise alone? What about the man I heard in the background of our call a few weeks ago? Why not go with him?”

You rolled your eyes again, thinking about that man in the background a few weeks ago who was on your shit list.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was the tv,” you lied.

“Ajali--,” your mother began before you cut her off.

“—Plus, mom, it’s a Disney cruise,” you stressed.

“Exactly. The people who go on Disney cruises are families, wives, husbands, kids. You are neither of them and have nether of them.”

You balanced your phone on your shoulder and rolled your luggage toward the designated pier.

“I just need some time to myself to clear my head and destress. Two weeks.”

“Ignore your mother, my petal. You take the time you need. I’ve told you, and your sister working is important, but living is just as important. You don’t live to work; you work to live,” your father said.

“Thank you, daddy.”

“Plus, maybe you will find a worthy man on this cruise while you’re living,” your father slid in.

“Oh god, not you too, daddy.”

“We are unified in this, Lulu. He may wear the pants, but I control the buttons and the zipper if you know what I mean.”

You tasted vomit in your mouth.

“Eck! That is disgusting, mother. On that note, I gotta go.”

“Wait, wait, enjoy yourself, my petal. We love you.”

“Love you too, daddy, love you, mom.”

With that, you ended the call and continued to walk toward Pier eighty-one. You passed families with rowdy children who looked like they couldn’t wait to get ice cream wasted, couples who looked as if they couldn’t wait to get to their suites and even elderly couples who were dressed to the nines for vacation, including already applied sunscreen and sunhats. Despite what your mother thought, Disney cruises were for everyone.

You’d purposely chosen Disney because you didn’t want to be around other couples who were loved up and nauseatingly adorable, spewing love in the air. You wanted to be as far from that as possible. Love was the last thing on your mind. You were going on this cruise to get away from it. Your phone vibrated and went off twice.

MSG Atali: Have you made your getaway yet?

You stopped rolling and went to reply.

MSG: Almost. I’m walking to the boarding line now.

MSG Atali: I think you’re doing the right thing. Space and time. In two weeks you’ll know what you want to do. I hope it’s what we talked about.

MSG: I know, Lali, I know.

MSG Atali: Have some fun too. It’s Disney.

You could picture her face as you read it. She was probably cheesing at this very minute.

MSG: Thank you for looking after the company while I’m gone.

MSG Atali: Boo, you know it’s my company too, right. Don’t worry; our clients will be taken care of. I’ve got it covered.

You knew she did. Atali was the older one and had always acted like it, even though she was only nine months older. You knew she could take care of things on her own while you were away.

MSG: I know, still. Thank you.

MSG Atali: You’re welcome, Lulu. Call me later. Margaret Bailey’s appointment is next. Apparently, she’s throwing some party, and she wants to be the envy of everyone.

MSG: Eck, you have your work cut out for you. Bye.

As you were putting your phone away, another message came in.

MSG Javii: Chaton (kitten), call me, please. Don’t you think you’re dragging this out a little?

You almost said, “are you stupid” out loud. The man had some nerve. Dragging it out? You rolled your eyes as another message came in.

MSG Javii: Je t’aime (I love you).

Just like that, you melted. He was playing on the fact that your father was French, and the language itself was a favorite of yours. He was not a stupid man; he was a smart businessman.

MSG Javii: I’m sorry. I know we’ve talked about it, but you have to give me more time. Please.

Unbelievable, you thought as you exited your messages and stuck your phone into your back pocket. You turned and ran smack dab into someone’s hard body.

“Shit. I’m so sorry,” you rushed out even as you were falling back.

A pair of strong arms grabbed you and firmly held you, preventing your fall.

“It’s okay, you’re lucky I don’t mind beautiful women bumping into me,” a deep masculine voice said. You knew it was a man, but you couldn’t see his face even though he looked to be well over six feet. His head was dipped low, and the hat he wore over hair that fell to his neck was so low you couldn’t see anything but the full beard that showed off a chiseled jawline.

He set you right side up and slowly brought his hands from your arms back to his side. “Stay safe out there,” he said before he walked off.

You stood there for a few moments, then looked back to where he’d walked and watched him saunter away. He had a slight dip to the way he walked that could either be seen as a happy go lucky type of thing or something that said he had some sort of swagger. Before you stared any longer, you sprang into motion with wheeling your luggage to the growing line to board the ship. Thankfully the line went quickly thanks to the ten different lanes that had ship staffers ready and eager to help guests.

When it was your turn, a friendly-looking woman with a trendy bob cut explained what to do. While she talked, her smile never fell, but you didn’t really pay attention because her uniform was so distracting. She had on a purple and green hat that had mermaid scales and Ariel printed all over it. This hat matched the shirt and skirt combo she wore. Her shirt was two-toned, on one side was Ariel’s face, and on the other was mermaid scales while her skirt was plain white. It looked like The Little Mermaid threw up all over her. You didn’t expect anything else; it was a Disney cruise after all.

After doing all the check-in steps, such as handing off your rolling luggage to the ship porters and taking a photo for your provided identification wrist band that the crew will use to identify you and your indicated needs, you boarded the ship. All the friendly faces you passed all looked happy to welcome you to Disney Cruises and to direct you to where you wanted to go. The noise inside was much louder inside than it was out. The kids that looked excited outside looked downright jubilant inside as they posed for pictures with life-sized Disney characters and got welcome ice cream treats.

You were even tempted to take a picture or two, but you decided against it. What you did not decide against was ice cream. You took an offered vanilla cone and kept on your way, looking around the ship as the other guests did. From your research, this was the best-rated cruise this year. It was a newer Disney ship and one that cost over ten million dollars to design and build. Everyone said it was the Rolls Royce of Disney cruises.

From what you saw with the décor looked to have cost a fortune. There was glass, fancy lights, and marble everywhere. It was clear they didn’t skimp on funding and clear that they had the comfort and luxury in mind. There were plants around the central atrium that gave off that tropical vacation vibe and even paintings and pictures hanging on the walls that further pushed the agenda that this was supposed to be a fun time for all.

The more you walked around looking at different areas, the more you were impressed. If the gathering areas looked this upscale, you were even more excited to see your suite.

“Can I help you with anything, ma’am?”

You shook your head and smiled at the man wearing Hans all over him. “I’m all right, thank you.”

The next thirty minutes or so were spent walking around while following the map in your hand. You found and noted where the spa, library, on-ship garden, movie theater, bowling alley, tropical setting wave pool, and best restaurants and bars were. You had every intention of soaking up all the luxury that you’d paid top dollar for. When you saw a few amenities that you hadn’t expected, your jaw dropped. You had no idea why there was an ice skating rink or an indoor sky flying dome that had the tallest clear tube you’d ever seen. You didn’t know who’d designed this cruise, but you knew it must have cost millions. You were sure you wouldn’t be getting in that sky flying dome.

When you finally got the alert that your suite was ready, it was well after one in the afternoon. The walk among the crowds was noisy. Everyone was either talking about what they wanted to do first, how enormous and beautiful the ship was, or making a plan for the cruise duration. In between all the chatter, there of course, were the screams and cries of babies and toddlers who were already losing their shit.

This is what you’d expected when you decided on this Disney cruise over another like Carnival or Norwegian. You knew that the other passengers would be of a specific age range leaning on the younger and family-oriented side, which meant you wouldn’t have to fight off unwanted suitors who tried to shoot their shot. It also meant that you wouldn’t have to deal with any sort of drama that usually happened on a cruise with young adults all looking to hook up. That was not what you needed right now. You wanted to stay as far away from hooking up or eligible men that had blue eyes or a perfect head of hair, or abs that were chiseled by Michelangelo himself, or an ass that would make a mannequin jealous.

On the elevator ride to your floor, you caught the eye of an adorable little boy with a complete head of luscious dark locks and doe eyes with an unmeasurable depth. His smile was innocent. Every time your eyes met his, he hid behind his mother. When you looked away, he looked back at you. After two or three playful back and forth glances, which had him becoming more adorable, you surprised him by not looking away. When he realized it, his squeal was so childlike and filled with so much glee that everyone on the elevator had to giggle. Over the next several minutes, the passengers on the elevator got off group by group until it was just a few people remaining.

“Sixth floor,” the elevator attendant announced.

You made your way through the door but gave the adorable boy a look. “Have a fun cruise, cutie,” you said with a wink before the doors closed with the sound of his giggles. You looked at your phone to remind yourself which room was yours, then glanced at the numbers on the wall that directed you where to go. The dinging sound of an elevator brought your attention down the hall to your right to see one man walk off. His hat was dipped down low, but you noticed his face was buried in his phone before he turned and walked in the opposite direction of you.

Focusing on the signs on the door, you walked down the left side of the aisle. It didn’t take you long to realize your room was at the end of the hall. Once you reached it, you glanced back to see the same man with his tipped low hat. It looked like the same man from before outside the ship. It couldn’t be, you thought. The odds were not that small. As you opened your door, you saw him disappear into the room at the opposite end of the hall.

Once you walked inside, you immediately thought that this was what you got when you had Atali handle the arrangements. The theme of the room was clearly sky blue. The couch in the living area was a satin, silky sky blue that looked as if it was plush and comfortable. It matched the blue and grain colored carpet before it perfectly, and the abstract blown glass art on the wall. The colors all worked together to give you a sense of peace. It wouldn't have been something you’d chosen because, unlike Atali, you liked to keep things as low maintenance as possible. Just because your family had money doesn’t mean you had to look or behave as if you did.

When you walked into the bedroom portion of the stateroom, you saw your suitcases waiting for you in the far left corner of the room. The sunlight pouring in from the screened balcony bathed the room in a beautiful, cheerful yellow that was so inviting that once you kicked off your shoes, you had to step out into it. The temperature was not blazing hot because it was just the middle of April in New York, and that meant a mix of chilly and warm days with the occasional possible snow shower. The salty air of the sea was one of your favorite smells. You remembered when your father took your family to France on your yearly family vacation. As a child, you loved the beach and the salt of the sea. When you became an adult, nothing had changed.

Not realizing how long you remained on the balcony, an intercom announcement came on.

“Attention passengers, this is Lucas Albright, one of your captains. It is with great pleasure that I welcome you aboard this Disney Enchantment Cruise.”

He paused, and you could hear the uproar of cheers and claps from over the intercom as well as in the halls and neighboring staterooms.

“We are all excited to host you on this two and a half week christening journey from New York. I say christening because you lot are the first to travel on this brand new ship. This is her maiden voyage.”

More cheers and applause came for what felt like forever.

“We will be on this beautiful vessel for two days, at which time we dock in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic at approximately eleven o’clock in the morning, where you can enjoy plenty of the excursions and activities for the day.”

Again applause followed. Everyone was undoubtedly excited about this cruise. You tried to get out of your funk and onboard the excitement train.

“We will then set sail again, leaving port at ten o’clock that evening and moving on to two days at sea until we reach our second destination of Port of Grand Turk in beautiful Turks & Caicos. At that time, we dock at eleven 0’clock and lift anchors at ten o’clock. From the beautiful Turks & Caicos, we will be at sea for two days until we reach the tropical breezes of the British Virgin Islands!”

You were already making some mental plans for everything you wanted to do at each port.

“After spending out eleven o’clock to ten o’clock time there. We set sail to the glorious white sandy beaches of—Arrrruuuba!”

At that time, the classic Beach Boys song Kokomo came on at the Aruba part. It was so corny, but everyone seemed to love it. You shook your head as the short clip of the song played loudly until it was lowered to play in the background.

“Again, we’re docking at eleven o’clock to set sail again at ten o’clock. We are then at sea for three more days until we get to Ocho Rios, Jamaaaaica!”

As he spoke, you went around the room, placing things you’d need and freshening yourself up. When he finally finished giving the itinerary, you were situated and checking the schedule of events for the day. All in all, it was set to be an action packed seventeen days at sea. Atali must have chosen this length because she knew seven or ten days would not be enough time.

“All right, ladies, gentlemen, kids, and big kids, I hope to see you all at the welcome mingle we’ve scheduled to begin within the next twenty minutes or so, at which time we will lift anchors and say sayonara to New York and aloha to the seven seas.”

He had a voice for radio or a game show. It was velvety deep, just what many women seemed to like these days. You grabbed your phone and crossbody bag and walked out of your room. You had a mission before you lifted anchor. Everyone was still abuzz with talk of the itinerary as more of the beach boys played over the ship speaker system. Vacation vibes were in full effect. Once you got to the media area, you promptly purchased your airtime so your cell would be able to work while at sea. You knew your mother would have a heart attack if you went two days without checking in with her. You didn’t think it was because she was that attached to her children though, you knew it was her motherly duty to remain up in the tea, so she felt continuously connected. As she got older and older, you realized it more and more.

As soon as that mission was completed, you made your way to the top deck where the mingle was being held. As you stepped out into the sun, you marveled at just how extravagant Disney had chosen to go with this ship. Several feet before you stretching obscenely high into the air, you saw something that looked like a rollercoaster. There were plenty of other passengers pointing to it and excitedly chattering about it. You made a mental note to stay as far away from it as possible. Who would think to ride an insanely high rollercoaster on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean?

Slowly you walked around the deck, cordially smiling at those you passed. You passed a bar area and took one of the prepared cocktails, and proceeded to find a good spot at the side of the ship to watch them lift anchor. After several minutes of searching and bumping into all the excited kids and passengers who were posing for pictures with friends, family, and Disney staff, you found an excellent spot to press your back against.

Across the way, a familiar hat caught your eye. It was him, you thought. He always kept his head low and tried to steer away from big crowds. It was strange to you considering he’d chosen to get on a cruise ship filled with hundreds of people. He wouldn’t be able to escape the crowds. Your eyes followed him as he walked to another bar to grab one of the drinks there. As he did, he joked with the bartender, and it was then you saw a flash of his pearly smile. You couldn’t tell if he was attractive or not, mostly since all you’d gotten were glimpses of pieces of his face. Part of you wanted him to take off the stupid hat so you could be sure, but the other part—the sensible part that remembered why you’d chosen a Disney cruise slapped your ass back into focus.

“Welcome, Disney guests!”

In response, everyone around you screamed, clapped, cheered, and stomped so loudly the sound could have rivaled that of a rave.

“We are pleased to welcome you once again!”

As one of the staff members continued to speak about the ship procedures, expectations, highlights, amenities, and more, you continued to look around the deck, taking in all the grandeur before you. It didn’t take long to get lost in the directory you held. Again you took note of where everything was that you wanted to experience and even went as far as to make a plan of what you wanted to eat each night. Between you and Atali, you were the planner. You liked things to make sense and liked them to be stable and constantly reliable. You hated the erraticness of people and impulsivity. You always tried to steer as far from it as possible.

By the time the speeches were finished, you’d had three drinks and were working on your fourth. The vibration of your phone brought your attention to it.

MSG Javii: Chaton?

You rolled your eyes and sighed out a little louder than you intended. What attracted you to him in the first place was what was annoying you right now. His persistence. You sat in a nearby seat and stared at the text exchange and thought of what you wanted to reply. Five minutes passed with you not typing one word. The truth was you didn’t know what to say. You were that jumbled up. The stress of it all was making your head hurt. You rubbed your brow and began your message.

MSG: I need some time away.

Instantly a message came back.

MSG Javii: From me?

Bobbing your head from side to side, you tried to make a quick decision.

MSG: From this—us.

MSG Javii: Chaton, say what you mean. You know I prefer directness. Do you mean from me?

MSG: Yes.

A few minutes passed before he sent another message. You wondered if you’d hurt him. Part of you didn’t want to hurt him, but the other part wanted him to suffer and see what it was like to be without you. Maybe then he’d start appreciating what he had.

MSG: I just need to figure some things out.

MSG Javii: Are you breaking up with me, Chaton?

The name was killing you, and you were sure he knew it. Every time he called you “chaton,” it made your belly flutter.

MSG: I just need time and space, Javii.

MSG Javii: I love you. You know that, right? I love you more than anything.

MSG: If that were true, I’d be there right now instead of where I am. I have to go.

You closed your messages and sighed out again.

“Mm, I can easily read that expression, and if any man causes brow or forehead wrinkles, he isn’t the one.”

Your head snapped to your right to see an older woman sitting there. She wore a straw hat atop her long red hair that looked close to that of Lucille Ball’s. The hue of her hair complimented her bronze and gold complexion. Her makeup was expertly done, as was her purple painted nails that pinched the straw that was at the corner of her mouth, a mouth that was painted perfectly accentuating her cupid’s bow lips. She was gorgeous.

“Uh--,” you began as she continued.

“The only one who is worth it is the one who gives you cheek wrinkles and smile creases.”

You grinned to yourself and took a sip from your glass that was resting on the table between you.

“Trust me. I’ve dated plenty of men, ones who cause both, ones who cause one more than the other and ones who only cause one—the bad ones.” She motioned to the space between her eyebrows, symbolizing stress wrinkles from furrowing your brows.

“I have yet to meet one who only causes smile creases,” she finished.

You shrugged and looked glanced back to your phone before you put it on the table face down.

“Maybe that one doesn’t exist on this Earth,” you countered.

“A skeptic, I see. You’re one of those women who don’t believe in the one, right?”

After scoffing, you looked at her. “I don’t know what I believe. Once upon a time, I did then---things got complicated.”

The woman placed her drink down and nudged her fist underneath her chin, giving you her complete attention.

“Oh, complications are the joys of life, darling. Nothing is ever cut and dry or so simple and steady. I say go for the ride but make sure you hand on for the bumps.”

You contemplated her words. There was some logic there, but once she said nothing was simple or steady, you had to admit your heart skipped a beat. You hated when things weren’t simple. You took your glass again and finished its contents. At the same time, your eye found the man who’d caught you maybe an hour ago. You watched as he walked closer to where you were seated and caught another glimpse of his face before he passed you.

From beside you, you heard the woman whistle.

“I wouldn’t mind going for a ride with that one.”

Your laugh was loud and couldn’t be stopped. You shook your head at her, but she didn’t look one bit embarrassed or remorseful.

“It’s a cruse darling, a vacation. Now’s the time to live a little—or a lot,” she said, finishing with an exaggerated wink.

This woman was inadvertently suggesting you let your hoe flag fly for the duration of the cruise. She reminded you of your aunt Josephine from your father’s side. As a French woman, she definitely embodied the French lifestyle of only living once and to live life right the first time. You’d spent countless hours with her listening to her stories of her travels, boyfriends, escapades. You and Atali always loved to live vicariously through her. That was until Atali came of age and decided to live just like her.

You sat with this woman who introduced herself as Genevieve and listened to her stories of life and love. Usually, you hated speaking to strangers, but she didn’t feel like one. She felt like a kindred spirit, a much more carefree spirit but still kindred the same. You didn’t realize that two hours had almost passed with the two of you sipping cocktails and giggling. When you said your goodbyes, you wandered around the ship, taking in all it had to offer. You peeked in on activities that were already underway and scoped out other places you could disappear in.

You made it back to your room in time to shower, change, and put on a lite layer of makeup before you made it to dinner at one of the forty restaurants. Once you walked into the restaurant, the atmosphere screamed luxury though it was not opulently done. It still looked family-friendly, but it was done in a way that let you know that you were meant to feel important by the décor alone.

At the bottom of the long stairs, you quickly looked around, trying to find an empty table. When you’d zeroed in on one, you saw a hand waving you down—the hand of the same woman from before, Genevieve. Why not, you thought to yourself before you began to cross the dining area toward her. Within a few steps, you ran right into a body that felt like a brick wall. You could feel your body falling backward, but in the nick of time, a pair of strong, muscular arms wrapped around your back, holding you in place.

If his face had been eluding you all day, it was not anymore. The eyes you stared into were blue enough that the sea you sailed would be envious. His lips were so red that an apple would want a rematch for bragging rights and his face so symmetrical that even the perfect line of symmetry didn’t seem perfect enough when next to him. The man was gorgeous. You watched his eyes roam your face as if he was in no rush, wanting to take in every detail. What felt like minutes was probably only seconds before he set you upright. As you were prepared to speak, he smiled, and the action had you feeling like you’d been hit in the head at the same time as your gut.

“Twice in one day. What’re the odds? Are you okay?”

Rather than speaking, you nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, thank you. I’m—I’m sorry,” you stuttered.

“Nah, forget about it. No harm, no foul.”

From behind him, you could see Genevie giving you a look that said she wanted to know what was being said and who he was.

“I uh—I was going that way,” you said, nodding your head to behind him.

“And me that way.” He nodded behind you. “Stay safe out there,” he uttered before he walked off in the direction you’d just come from, giving you the opportunity to walk to Genevieve.

The look on her face needed no words to along with it, but she still spoke.

“Is that the same snack from before?”

You nodded and nearly snorted out, hearing her use the word.

“What’s his name?”

“No idea, but I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before. I just—can’t place it.”

“I don’t know how. I’d never forget a face like that.”

She had a point; he had an unforgettable face, one that stayed with you and possibly could haunt your nights. You bet he got whatever he wanted and whoever he wanted. As dinner progressed, you had your choice of different appetizers, entrees, drinks, and desserts. If one wanted Scandinavian food, they could get it, or southern food it was within reach. As you ate, you listened to more of Genevieve’s stories. She told you about the men she’d dated, the things she’d seen in her years, and lessons she’d learned from those men. The moral you learned from her stories was love often, love hard, and love entirely because while you’d remember the pain, you’d remember the love more.

As you ate and listened to her, you couldn’t help but think of the reason you were on this cruise in the first place. You were not running to love but from it. If you were to listen to Genevieve, you should have stayed your ass in New York and gone to Javii. If you listened to her, you’d probably spend another year living in sin. By the end of dinner, you’d met three other women all within the same age range as you, but they all were in different times of their lives. One was newlywed, and on her honeymoon, the second married a year and expecting her first child and the third long married with three children.

It was an interesting look at alternate timelines for you. Any of them could have ended up being you if you’d only made different choices. Part of you wondered which one you wanted to be more, your natural self, or one of the three possibilities.

After dinner, you made your way to one of the theaters to watch the planned show for the night. It was a re-enactment of The Little Mermaid, and the audience was filled with little ones who clapped and cheered throughout. You were surprised at how well the staff performed. They could have easily been true broadway stars. A little more than halfway through the show, you found the stranger with the deep eyes across the room. He was sitting alone, just watching the show with a relaxed look on his face. He looked as if he were genuinely enjoying it. Your curiosity was piqued as to why he was sitting alone watching The Little Mermaid on a ship full of people and why he didn’t seem to be bothered to make acquaintances. Who came on a cruise alone? Once you thought it, you wanted to laugh at yourself. You were the one to come on a cruise alone.

As you were about to look away, his eyes found yours. At first, they looked empty as if he were looking right through you. Then after a few moments, there was a spark in them. You watched him raise his glass to you with a soft smile teasing his lips. Realizing you’d been caught looking, you curtly nodded back then looked to the stage to focus on the show.

Two in the morning. That was the time when you finally made it back to your room. Festivities were going on all around the ship. No one seemed as if they wanted to go back to their rooms. There was something for everyone. The little ones had endless activities, including a sleepover with their favorite Disney characters, where they were set to have plenty of fun for the night. There was a mixer set up like a rave on the opposite side of the ship for the adults. From the things you saw when you scoped it out, you were sure a few siblings were going to be conceived tonight.

As you scanned your bracelet and opened your door, you looked back to see the stranger again. He was looking directly down at you. You gave him a head salute and disappeared inside your room. After a quick shower, you found your way to your balcony to watch the waves roll by with a glass of wine. It was the perfect end to the night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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#hibiscus kisses fic #Chris Evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans x reader #chris evans x you #chris evans x black reader #black fanfiction #chris evans x ofc #slow burn fanfic #angst fanfic

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thatdamnokie · 4 years ago

Text

so, as everybody knows, our man, the lovely mark strong, turned 57 this past august 5th

since the kingsman films have had a huge influence on several aspects of my day-to-day life (gee, wonder what group of people i could be referring to...), i decided to sit down and do something i’ve been thinking about since getting my medical card earlier this year: getting high as a kite and watching them back-to-back.

to celebrate mark’s birthday, i decided to do another running commentary post like the one i did for rocknrolla ages ago, under the cut. it’s a pretty similar style, which is to say not necessarily super coherent and might be hard to understand if you’ve never seen the movies. D:

there are some mentions of the roanoke society, but not many.

if even just one person finds this mildly entertaining for four seconds, then i’ll have done my job. there is a lot of cursing and this is NOT spoiler-free.

enjoy~

edited 9.1.20 to correct typos and such, please remember that i was Not Sober while i wrote this lmao

how many times have i watched these movies at this point? i don’t even know.

i always liked the nifty like—retro arcade marv opening animation

and the thing with the tapes! we love book-ending devices!

kingsman: badass motherfuckers worldwide incorporated

like why was merlin even with them? i understand why lee and james would be there, but merlin, was he not acting quartermaster then?

i have SO MANY FEELINGS about lee unwin

i think it haunts harry and merlin more than anyone thinks, but these are fun spy movies so we just don’t talk about trauma and shit, don’tcha know

don’t look at how merlin tears up and tell me he doesn’t drink about it *HEAVILY* later

it’s such a stark contrast to see the 1990s interior vs. what it’s like when eggsy’s grown :(

michelle baby i’m so sorry. you deserved better than this.

and BABY EGGSY

omg. like this scene is both heartbreaking but is also adorable.

colin firth has gd anime legs, that dude had to straight up unfold himself as he stood up lmao

aaannnnd swooping logo, whooooo, goin’ over some mountains~

and mark hamill, ladies and gentlemen!

this whole thing with james deciding to kinda go rogue makes me wish that we knew more about his backstory as well. like, is this james being james, or was this a weird one-off situation and he was just unlucky?

YES unlucky. nobody could plan for the hurricane of sleek destruction that is gazelle

who has one of my favorite aesthetic designs as a villain (although i guess i’d put her more on maybe henchman level? but idk, it seems like valentine looked at her more as a partner, less like an assistant? and they had a very interesting chemistry together too, like i would’ve added more valentine x gazelle scenes)

i would LOVE to be this chill about just—draping blankies over bodies

blankies over bodies sounds like a cool band name

DIBS you guys can’t have it

i am SO GLAD samuel l. jackson gave valentine a lisp!

valentine, to me, does fit a lot of the usual spy movie villain tropes

but since this movie doesn’t take itself super serious, it’s more fun than annoying

and we never hear about any of the other knights?? like

half of this is just gonna be me whining for additional footage that there just wouldn’t have been room for realistically lmao

michael caine, you are lovely

MARK STRONG, LADIES AND GENTLEMAN

WITH LEGS THAT DON’T QUIT AND AN ACCENT THAT I’D DIE FOR

i’m an embarrassment

like let’s all stop and thank god that mark didn’t have time to learn the welsh accent

not that i would’ve been disappointed, because all accents are good accents on this blog

but at this point i can’t imagine merlin as—not scottish

“try picking a more suitable candidate this time”

arthur you DICK

like were you this cold-blooded when lee died, you fuckin’ reptilian-ass son of a bitch

no wonder you were charlie’s pledge person thing

and enter the fabulous taron egerton, stage left!

DEAN you are DISGUSTING

god, michelle, you need better friends, if you were my bro this entire relationship would’ve never happened

;-; and eggsy’s so sweet with his sister! i know there probably wasn’t “room” for it but i AM glad that there are scenes showing that family is one of eggsy’s kinda “core values”or whatever you want to call it

dude is a hufflepuff through and through imo

can you imagine eggsy as a villain? we would be so fucked. he’s sly, he’s smart, he could’ve made life v e r y difficult for lots of people if he really wanted to

but look at him with the squad!

eggsy’s just like the british version of a good ol’ boy

this car scene is some dukes of hazzard bullshit (ramp-jumping and fun car horn aside)

if butterflies are harry’s main symbolic critter, would foxes be eggsy’s? or would it be a pug instead? i guess that’s like asking if harry would be either a butterfly or a cairn terrier, like mr. pickle. let’s say both.

this fandom is pretty on top of character associations like that

you get symbolic associations! YOU get symbolic associations! EVERYONE gets symbolic associations whether they’re actually in the canon or not! don’t have any? don’t worry, we’ll assign you at least one!

the guy playing the interviewing officer is ALSO the patriarch in the witch which i didn’t realize until—like, a while after

and it was while @circlesofbone was visiting, and we were just “oh, okay, guess we can’t escape this cast at all, this is fine”

“your father saved my life.”

harry you’re such a fucking peacock, waiting all posted up and posing so you’ll look cool

you big doofus

i’d kill to be inside his head during this first conversation with eggsy though

like is eggsy like lee? is harry seeing lee the entire time he’s talking to his son, in his mannerisms, how he carries himself, how he speaks?

or is eggsy the opposite? which—i don’t know if that would somehow be sadder?

there’s just a lot going on in the background of this bit that’s left up to interpretation

“although i’m sure it’s well-founded—“

harry’s just so casual about this entire thing, nobody’s that casual without practice

harry you rabble-rouser, what kind of life have you led

“manners. maketh. man.”

our timeless motto, my flowers

kingsman STILL to this DAY has some of the most well-choreographed fight scenes i’ve ever seen??

like yeah the church scene but even just this initial bar fight

harry could’ve been a dancer

in a way i guess he already is

like he moves so fluidly and gracefully, it is BONKERS

colin you did so good! i’m so proud!

the way eggsy’s just O.O

whether or not you ship hartwin, like, you gotta admit, that was hot

and his BODY LANGUAGE, he’s sitting like RAMROD straight, this poor dude lmao

nobody prepares you for a situation like that in public school is all i’m saying

harry, exiting stage left like a suave, smooth motherfucker

remember when iggy azalea was relevant

ugghhhh i hate this part

“I WASN’T WITH NO ONE”

can you imagine being harry hart listening to your dead friend’s son getting the shit beat out of him

like, surely he heard the cleaver, he knows dean was going to fucking gut eggsy right?

listen to how cold and icy his voice gets, oof

yeah, he’s pissed, and dean is lucky

PARKOUR

ugh, i want to go to london ;-; i want to walk in front of the shop and visit harry’s house and kiss cute english boys

i’d like to think harry’s super excited to show eggsy everything but he’s gotta keep it dialed back because “decorum”

the way eggsy pauses though

“come on.”

and he says it so softly.

if i was eggsy, i’d be nervous, too.

but i didn’t realize how quickly harry tries to give off signals like “hey there’s no reason to be scared.”

“like my fair lady?” “well, you’re full of surprises.” <3 one of my favorite sceneeesss.

harry’s voice is so soothing but eggsy is so freaked out by the elevator that he’s just—there’s no room for anything else beyond processing the elevator lmao

“how deep does this fucking thing go?” asking the real questions

aannnddd KINGSMAN BULLET TRAIN

i’d like to think they have like soft jazz or something playing in there

and then they get to the hangar and there are obviously a buuuuunch of people out on the tarmac that we just—never hear about? i just assume they’re all like technical officers or maybe other agents

“your father had the same look on his face. … as did i.”

harry is already rooting for him.

“late again, sir.”

that. brogue.

fuck, i could listen to him talk for hours, scottish accents are my favorite thing

#squadgoals

not a very diverse cast :/

the body bag speeeeech

and of course nobody was in any actual danger, but merlin doesn’t want them to know that so he becomes mr. hard as steel, i am emotionally stoic at all times, do not test me you bunch of rugrats

“classic army technique.”

ROXY

ROXY I WANT TO JUST HOLD YOU IN MY ARMS TT.TT

aannnnddd charlie, also

who we might’ve found sympathy for if we knew aaannyytthiinnggg else about his backstory

like, could he just be Like That, yeah

but most people i know who are assholes like that are that way because their parents were first /shrug/

can hardly fault the dude for turning out like that when poison was all he was given to drink

anyone else a hundred percent positive they would’ve drowned in the first trial

i would absolutely have panicked and bit it

but then again, i’m not kingsman material, i’m roanoke

and if this is the exact same test that merlin and harry went through, does that mean there might be some weird drowning trauma hidden back in there that’s just ANOTHER thing we’re not gonna talk about?

(yes the correct answer is yes)

god that’s such an american response to the problem though

glass can’t cause problems if it’s in a million pieces!

“yeah you can wipe those smirks off your faces…”

i wonder if there was ever a situation where a trainee actually drowned

and i don’t mean like amelia, i mean some poor kid who just failed the test

merlin knows how to put the fear of god in people though!

and mark strong, very handsome, yes, very scary, also yes

he and colin both look like they’re 80 percent leg in every single scene

harry literally had brain matter smatter ALL OVER HIS FACE and still somehow had the mental facilities to be aware of those dudes, leave a bomb and dive out of a window (and then escape said dudes)

billy badass, y’all

“just get it done.” okay, i took back what i said earlier, maybe he does see her as more of an assistant, less than a partner. their relationship is weird.

the puppy scene!

“it’s a bulldog innit?”

YASSSS the golden trio

because of what happened with our other canon charlie has become a weird character for me to watch, like, yeah, i “watch” charlie be himself in tss but the charlie i “see” is like—”our” charlie.

“bollocks!” and then he just runs with jb in his vest, makes me smile

aannddd we see valentine’s super cool factory

harry your hair gets so long <3

“water!” wow, who wants to bet that the fact he was instantly screaming means that maybe he’s gonna have some stuff to talk about in therapy later

roxy baby i’m sorry they made you hold the balloon and have to trust these dumbasses to not shoot you on accident

i would trust roxy to not shoot me

i love, love love valentine’s house

it’s gorgeous

set design is always such a cool way for filmmakers to include details about a character using pure aesthetics and i’m such a slut for it

tilde!

see also: one of the characters done the WORST by these movies imo!

the fact that she not only says no, she says no with enthusiasm and gets blatantly pissed, is one of the best insights we get into tilde’s character and then it just—gets wasted

like it takes three steps and then gets mowed down in the hallway like her guards

i would never be given the opportunity to be asked if i wanted an implant but i draw the line at having stuff put into my neck

awwww harry’s so proud!

that finger point “yeah, see, be more like your uncle”

merlin is SO TALL

“a bit much innit?”

he’s just—tapping a normal clipboard

… nobody wanna talk about how that’s a normal clipboard

anyway

i also love how they show him in professor sweaters for the beginning acts of the movie

definitely a softer aesthetic than one would guess for a dude who apparently did field missions sometime within the past decade or so, but i also have a theory that lee’s death directly contributed to merlin maybe being the man behind the screen as opposed to afield

because trauma is a thing but this is a FUN movie so we’re NOT gonna talk about it

“you’re gonna be all right. you’re top of the class!” this was the scene that made my mom a reggsy shipper

regardless of how you feel about them as a couple, their friendship is one of the best things about this movie, along with their dynamic with charlie, asjdnaskdjna WHY could we not have had a trio movie instead

eggsy you show-off “lemme just throw my arms up and dip outta this plane like it’s not a big deal”

roxy you can do it!

ugh, there goes my baby, off to have a near-death experience under merlin’s immediate supervision lmao

“good girl, rox, glad you made it!”

guys, they’re just kids.

i love this big group scene because it reminds us that these are just young folks, still

“my, my, you’re all very cheerful...”

“rufus, come on!” dude eggsy—and not even just eggsy, charlie and rox too--at least made an attempt at teamwork. you get points for that bro

but man, for all they know, they’re about to beef it in a very permanent way, i’d be freaking out too

merlin getting caught up in the drama

because again, he’s supposed to know that eggsy has a parachute

i think he wasn’t prepared for these two to get that close to not making it and that’s why we see him break face and drop his mug

*WHAM*

i HATE the sound of them landing

it’s not like you can hear bones breaking but it hurts me, guys

and then there were three

plus one daddy long legs quartermaster

“if you have a complaint you come here and you whisper it in my ear.”

yes SIR

“you need to take that chip off your shoulder.”

merlin coming’ in with the tough love portion of the kingsman core squad

there’s no reason for me to think harry’s persona was inspired by cruella de ville somehow but i do anyway

she reveals the mcdonald’s and valentine is just :D

idk if he was expecting a specific reaction or was just excited to see a reaction period

valentine is definitely a fun villain, which, given the tone of the movie, makes sense, it’s all supposed to be fun

one of the reasons i love kingsman is that it’s like, this golden ray of goofy cinematic fuckery in a world of grim!dark remakes and other superhero/spy films who are presented as more serious stories

“and thank you for such a—happy, meal.”

harry got a puppy smile

but see, then, here at his house he’s a lot more relaxed with gazelle! like, patting her butt, etc.

maybe what we see of their relationship is dependent on setting, because valentine himself has it compartmentalized?

perrrrrrhaps

“and i am never, EVER GOING TO AGREE!”

tilde, you deserved better, and i think all the weird hate you get from our ohana is unfair

you don’t twist a runner’s ankle before the race starts and then get mad when they don’t win

your story was mishandled from the beginning

asmr: hanging out with the golden trio watching worrying news in the kingsman trainee bunker room

the way he says “biblical sense” lmao

i have never been able to figure out if the way he says that line is supposed to infer spiritual respect, or lack of it, but i might be looking too into it

“it’s an acquired taste, mate.”

what—what would you even do if you were at a club and three people as hot as taron, ed and sophie all came up and start talking to you at the same time

like i know the target got up and left pretty quick because of the training exercise

but i’d be doing it because i’m ugly and if three hot people are all talking me up at a bar something is Bad and Wrong

which—the CAHONES on both eggsy and roxy

they both literally said “yeah i’m willing to die for this organization that hasn’t even given me a permanent place yet, what of it”

look at harry’s dimples in this scene, he is fighting a huge grin, he’s SO PROUD

i know that charlie’s response is supposed to be just more fodder into the “charlie hesketh is a tool” fire

but given that i’m not unconvinced that his home life wasn’t super shitty, like—

idk, this makes this scene a lot less fun to me. it makes it sad.

like, maybe charlie didn’t even want to be there deep down, maybe this was all for like, arthur, or his dad, or some other person he looked up to

and the way merlin looks when he tells charlie to go home, the way that he’s kinda grimacing? i’m wondering if he’s along the same kind of feeling. he’d know more about charlie’s history

have i also mentioned how much i love harry’s war room?

“YES harry!”

an evil plan is being born!

“true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

eggsy is still in his club clothes, so like—has he slept? y’all let those kids sleep after fucking drugging them, right? … guys?

“—when one is popping ones cherry.”

and eggsy is just CHEESING he is SO EXCITED

am i the only one who wants to learn more about the store clerk guy though?

he’s like the one person around who’s legit just there to run the shop

has no idea about any of the spy stuff happening

his name is donald, he’s married with three children and has two spaniels he loves

“THAT is sick.”

i would KILL for this room.

i don’t need anything in here for any reason but still

foreshadowing, foreshadowing, foreshadowing, more foreshadowing—

harry is such a NERD

“put it back, eggsy.”

the amount of self-control it would take to not have a sudden change in expression in that moment, omg

i wonder how THAT gets trained up in kingsman

“i guarantee it.” ha, get it, it’s a reference to that one commercial

“y’all—talk so funny.”

and this all means that they had a contact at that hat shop and got all that info to them before valentine got there, and somehow made sure he did end up buying a hat that they could also successfully put a bug on, how deep does this goooooo

“jack bauer?”

it says a lot about eggsy that out of all the jb’s it could’ve been, it was jack

uggghhhhhh of course they HAD to do this scene with eggsy with arthur

obviously harry couldn’t do it

i just think most of us would NOT be fans of arthur at this point in the movie, we’re all rooting for eggsy, like, he needs this moment with this other character because we gotta drive home that he’s an asshole

also—would have absolutely failed that test

and i’m not sorry at all

“welcome to kingsman--lancelot.”

i was really happy that it was a female agent who ended up getting the handle

aannddd more echoes of past scenes, man, nobody can say that this crew wasn’t intentional with their cinematography

when eggsy rolls the window down you can see his chest moving up and down, like, he is MAD

dean you asshole

so no wonder he gets so pissed that the car suddenly decides “nope, no, we’re not doing this, c’mon”

this entire conversation at harry’s house is—tense

and you don’t pick up on it the first time, i don’t think, but uh

i’m seeing it now

harry’s not just mad, he’s hurt, and eggsy’s furious but he’s also maybe regretting his actions.

it’s these two men who are rapidly trying to figure out their headspaces and trying to figure out how to navigate this situation with each other

and the way eggsy tries to apologize ;-;

kentucky is a beautiful state, actually

ohhhhhh y’alllll

we’re at the churrrccchhhh

we’re gettin’ closer to the coolest part of the movieeeee

it’s telling that gazelle was trying to make sure that they’d be safe

“… so hail satan, and have a lovely afternoon madame.”

the most metal lines colin firth has ever uttered on camera

the siren noise after it’s switched on bothers me in a way i can’t quite articulate

it might be because i have silent hill-colored trauma, who knows

FREEEEEE

BIIIRRRDDDDDDD

THE GREATEST ACTION TRACKING SHOT IN THE HISTORY OF CINEMA

but then eggsy and merlin are reacting aaaanndddd it’s—a lot less fun

because you realize that they’re watching their bro mercilessly slaughter innocent people and not stopping

and still not stopping

but plot twist, i’m really glad they kept the track going, because if they’d suddenly picked *this* part of the scene to get serious, that would’ve brought the mood down so low that i don’t think there would’ve been any bouncing back

i just

how do people exist who aren’t attracted to harry hart

that man is a machine

and colin worked so hard to be able to do the scene himself, and that work SHOWS, that man cuts a FIGURE

i don’t know how they managed to somber it up just the right amount, either? maybe because they waited for the “fun action sequence” to be over so there wouldn’t need to be noise that had to be masked by a fun rock track?

“… what did you do to me.”

i cannot imagine what harry was feeling in that moment.

the way he spoke it was like he didn’t even have time to be afraid to die

“that tends to happen when you shoot somebody in the head. feels good, right?”

“no, it does not feel good!”

i love that exchange because we normally hear the opposite.

also—whiplash.

mark has this way of expressing grief without showing any—blatant signs.

like merlin’s not especially tearful, or crying, but his eyes look MASSIVE. and SAD. and he has just the tiiiiiniest tremor in his voice.

and eggsy, dude, like, we’ve all had it come on us really quick and suddenly it’s like your chest is pumping like a piston and when did it get so hard to breathe?

ARTHUR you REPULSE me

like look at how egssy’s shoulders sag when he realizes that arthur isn’t on his team

and in a way, this is eggsy’s final test as a kingsman trainee, imo

do you realize how quickly he had to assess what was happening and figure out what to do, all without arthur noticing?

“you are all alone. it is all up to you. remember all you have learned. good luck.”

it’s a very—almost horror-esque situation from that pov

and he passed with flying colors to go on his first true mission, because after he puts on the suit, that’s his visual cue of graduating, if that makes sense

that’s the knight putting on his armor.

“i’d rather be with harry. thanks.”

“so be it.”

*click*

me: *laughing at arthur’s big dumb stupid head*

… man i’d love a replica of that decanter and glasses set though

not to mention that eggsy recognized the flaws in arthur’s character and weaponized them, which is a whole other level of shit that isn’t necessarily easy; he knew that arthur carried the kind of pride that would leave him open

god, he looks so exhausted though when rox has him at gunpoint.

i think he was being pretty serious, about harry

sick helipaaaaaaad

that thing looks vaguely like a rock-‘em sock-‘em robot but in pieces though

more grandpa sweaters <3

man. you can see roxy swallow, you know she’s scared, but then she just sets her jaw and—

roxy baby you are the best i love you

i like the vintage vibe of the mountain lair

i think that’s another visual poke at the aesthetic themes of some of the older, og spy flicks out there

merlin looks SO LANKY walking back to the plane for some reason??

he stays until the last second for roxy. that’s love right there.

“a bespoke suit always fits.”

which can be good spiritual life advice too but that’s a separate conversation

“what the fuck is WRONG with you people?”

and his fuckin’ disco ball

uuggggghhhhh his speech reminds me of so many… “public figures” that i dislike

even though it’s obviously a bad thing that the chips are everywhere, i appreciate that phones and such are being shown in a positive manner (like, michelle talking to someone in the park, people at a ball game taking selfies, people at the beach, etc.) because i get so sick of that anti-tech boomer humor tbh

and the big reveal of eggsy in his suitttt

A KNIGHT IS BORN

“how’s the view?”

“hideous.”

you’re allowed to be crabby baby, you just let it out.

“lookin’ good, eggsy.”

“feelin’ good, merlin.”

merlin is so calm heading into the fortress and i don’t know if it’s because he’s very, very good at compartmentalizing and that’s genuinely how he is at the moment or if he’s that way through extreme self-control and effort

he can rock a pilot’s uniform though

just like eggsy can rock a suit

they’re both so handsome, help

i also wonder how eggsy’s feeling right then

like, i’d imagine that the pressure of having to perform a role to literally save the world would be enough to distract him from the bite of grief

that’s—probably enough to distract everyone, tbh

i a hundred percent believe there are breakdowns we don’t see

i wonder if eggsy told tilde he’d spoken to lindstrum(sp?) after everything was said and done

like, that’d be some kind of weird foreshadowing in hindsight

this scene is anxiety-inducing in a big way so to distract myself i imagine roxy as a mech pilot

dude i’d totally watch sophie in a role like that, like, let her be in a movie like pacific rim, she’d kick ass

and now we have The Chaos

otherwise known as that point when Everything Is Happening All At Once All The Time

also a thing that doesn’t exist in spy movies: hearing damage

because like his voice is right in eggsy’s ear and without it he’d have a LOT harder time surviving

imagine being an agent, merlin trying to talk to you, but something either hits your ear or goes off right next to it and suddenly it’s just silent

SYSTEM FAILURE

YAAASSSSS

WE WIN

GGOOOAAAAALLLLLL

THE AUDIENCE IS DOING THE WAVE

except JUST KIDDING

The Chaos 2 Electric Boogaloo!

merlin with a huge gun: hot, also, very scary

eggsy is just 10000% done

“this is mine. i’ll show you yours.”

i wonder who e man was supposed to be that valentine called.

like is that a reference to a real person that i just did’t catch?

… elon musk? maybe? idk

eggsy slides like a gd anime character

when he uses the rainmaker, it’s just like harry’s protecting him from somewhere else

(oh—wait, technically kentucky, i guess)

“merlin, i’m fucked.” you can hear the anger there. not only did he fail, but he—and everyone else—is about to die

but this? this is the pinnacle of eggsy showing himself as a kingman agent

he was staring death straight in the mouth and STILL

SOMEHOW

REMEMBERED THE IMPLANTS

so i guess if i say that the moment when he puts on the suit is when he becomes a true agent, then maybe this is the moment when he becomes galahad.

*bobs head to pomp & circumstance*

i remember getting a huge kick out of how colorful they made this

because in real life you know a bunch of people literally blowing up would be like—DISGUSTING

viscera everywhere

no fun rainbow mushroom clouds

“i’ve always wanted to kiss a princess.”

ANOTHER knight reference, very clever matthew

mmmmm Do Not Like that noise

aaaannndddd *that* line

which—maybe that’s mr. vaughn’s sense of humor, or what he thinks the sense of humor his core demographic has, idk

but it always kinda rubbed me the wrong way

the mass brawl scenes are edited so like--jarringly compared to the other fight scenes in the movie

that’s probably for a reason

also, a showdown to the tune of something disco: kind of another trope homage

this shot of gazelle is so sick, i love everything about it, she is so cool

this entire fight with eggsy is awesome tbh

we got a little bit of what gazelle can look like in combat earlier with tilde’s guards, but now we get this epic showdown seeing her at her full potential against someone who’s actually a challenge

and the way valentine is shouting for her to kick his ass from upstairs and yelling encouragement lmao that’s how real friends act when there’s a fight

daisy ;-; ugh, that’s the visual gutpunch that makes it juuuuuust serious enough by reminding us of the stakes

which is why it’s fitting that then we see the Slo-Mo K.O.

and that smile with the fun little chimes in the back, lmao

and eggsy, quick on his feet again byyyy being quick on gazelle’s feet—foot—whatever

man, impalement deaths are always fun.

coulda done without the vomiting but that’s also one of valentine’s quirks that makes him different from a cookie cutter villain

aaannddd have a heavy sigh from merlin

that dude needs a full-body massage and a drink

“is this where you say some really bad pun?”

reminder: i love that this movie is self-aware! i could not picture a super serious kingsman movie! i just picture something depressing!

there had to have been a better option besides—this, for this eggsy/tilde ending scene

i’m not saying i’m mad it ended with them fucking, i’m mad that the extent of the joke was anal and that was it.

also the idea of my boss possibly seeing me having sex would have me a little more concerned about the hardware on my face, but okay??

aannddd the tapes.

gah, we love visual throwbacks!

we love being able to see that despite all this growth and change, family remains very important to eggsy—he hasn’t changed into a different person, he has grown more into himself than ever before! THIS! THIS is eggsy unwin!

… GET READY FOR IT

time for tgc! (and to get into my roanoke feels, maybe, this is the nexus where our canons connect)

the BAGPIPES

okay

i did not stop to consider how unpleasant this was going to be to watch stoned but we’re gonna power through it and get through it together

if i cry i cry

the way the music swells into the main theme <3

and the perfect reveal for our boy eggsy!

reflected in gold, looking sharper than broken glass

and SUDDENLY CHARLIE

the pacing in tgc leads me to believe that matthew had huge plans for this movie, and a lot of cool stuff probably ended up on the cutting room floor for time

i also love that they brought charlie back

i love his voice box and his cool robot arm

and i’m not just saying that because it made it super easy to blend him into our canon, either, this is like—charlie’s evil twin in terms of his new aesthetic, the contrast is really cool

YYAASSSS THIS SCENE

WITH PRINCE PLAYING??

*CHEF’S KISS*

like we are IMMEDIATELY thrown back into the gold parts of it all, like how physics is a little broken so we can do cool shit like have a knockdown drag-out fight all within the space of a small cab

i wonder what would’ve hurt charlie worse—being thrown onto his organic side, or having all his weight land on his metal arm if it hadn’t disattached

but then he’s up and standing so i guess we’re fine?

MERLIN! <3

otherwise known as the character entrance that literally changed my life

i try not to think about it too much or i get weirded out

ANYWAY

(and to think i almost never even saw the movie)

Sick Car Chase, Bro

and as an american, like, everything’s on the opposite side to me, it’s stressful to watch a little bit

“i seem to remember in your training you were rather good at holding your breath.”

man, that’s uh—kind of a macabre thing to say, merlin

just a little bit

i’m not even gonna attempt to hold my breath to see if i’d survive this scene just assume i’m dead in that universe

we all live in a kingsman subarmine, a kingsman submarine, a kingsman submarine~~

“not boasting, but i trained him well enough that even he wouldn't mess that up.”

merlin are you okay??

gah, i love that chest-deep laugh though.

is it real love if they won’t crawl through the sewer to get to your house in time

i love that harry’s house looks basically the same

i know they talk about eggsy not wanting to change anything in the novelization but i haven’t read it yet so I’m not a hundred percent sure what all is in there

and we still get to see him hanging with his friends, and his girlfriend, like, this dude is still all about the family

“wwwwOOOOO!”

i love this group so much omg

for as much as he’s galahad, he’s still eggsy

the transition in the weed bag looks super cool

… oh, i guess watching this while high makes the main storyline hit a bit different

welp

i love that poppy is an aesthetic slut and really doesn’t give a shit about anyone’s opinion about how she makes her space

like, “i want a big 50s-style diner with a gourmet kitchen that i can cook people in, soooooo i’m getting one”

it’s also refreshing to see julianne moore in a bad guy role!

not that i’m super familiar with her filmography but i feel like i’ve mostly seen her cast as like a good guy?

i could be wrong

awwwww jet and bennie!

there’s so much to love about this set

cannibalism and the fact that she bulldozed jungle to build all this aside (suspend that belief!)

the breakfast sceeeeeene

it’s so bittersweet, for obvious reasons

and it’s more evidence that he’s not super ready to move on into new territory yet, like making new memories with tilde that ring close to home

“i wish i could have met him.”

and the way he has to turn away, ugh.

eggsy. i’m sorry.

tilde, i’m sorry, too. you had good intentions, but they lost against his pain.

michael gambdon! the new arthur we didn’t know we wanted until we got him.

charlie had a moral glo-down, it’s fine, happens to everybody

FFFFFF his imitation of merlin lmfao

man, poor charlie, like

you wake up, you can’t make a sound, your arm has been blown off and your family’s dead

like his reaction to that entire scenario isn’t entirely unrealistic, i’m just saying

also LOOK AT ROX

omg everyone in this movie can wear the FUCK out of suit, y’all

man, i’ve gotten a few tattoos that were exquisitely painful—i can’t imagine how much it would suck to do it with literal molten metal

dude this means clara laid on her stomach and probably screamed at the floor as she got hers D:

this kinda—riffs off of hannibal, a teeny-tiny bit

like we’re so overloaded with the aesthetics and behavior of a certain character so it’s like, we forget about the much darker parts untillllll there’s a mood change and we’re looking at that dude’s legs, to the burger this other dude puts in his mouth, and thinking “oh, oh dear, ew”

i love eggsy in the orange jacket <3 snaps for the wardrobe crew across this series.

tilde’s face, omg, she was heart-eyeing so bad. and like, that little proud nod at her dad (who was of course being Like That on purpose)

and roxy, coming in in the clutch, you are tonight’s MVP

uggghhhhh i hate this part

because again, it’s just--a bunch of bad shit colliding outside of anyone’s control

(it was also really jarring seeing the war room with blank walls the first time i watched this)

like—granted, you should maybe not touch stuff that’s not yours, but…

like we *just* saw eggsy and brandon in a very casual, intimate scene with each other, how can anyone get angry with brandon?

this is all stress-inducing

i remember being in the theater watching this and feeling like i was watching some awful slow motion car wreck and i couldn’t look away

idk what other story i would’ve wanted to see but i was NOT a fan of Sudden Death For Christmas, especially concerning roxy!

and poppy is such a *bright* villain, not just because of taste but because of her personality, which is another weird thing to have next to the cannibalism

gaaahhhh charlieeee your arm is so cooooool

this shot is gorgeous and incredibly depressing.

what do you do?

gah, and the way merlin comes out of the dark, like

i probably would’ve drawn a gun on him too

“you think *i* would?”

this scene shows 1. how much he trusts eggsy to not shoot him, and/or 2. how good merlin is at compartmentalizing, because this is an even bigger blow than harry’s death, and he’s following the protocol like it’s an art form

i hope that we see some reference to this safe in the next movie, that’d be a cool way to tie the narratives all together

“i suppose that must be upper class humor. … i don’t get it.”

reminder, merlin is working class.

if you’re a ho for this fandom and went and bought this whiskey specifically because of this movie clap your hands *clap clap*

and they proceed to just get HAMMERED

“country rooaaddsss… take me hoooooome…”

another reminder: kentucky is a beautiful state!

i would love to tour a whiskey distillery, that’d be super cool

“shame it’s not scotch”

again, with his weird night vale clipboard.

who would win: two highly-trained kingsman agents vs. one (1) cowboy

channing tatum, ladies and gentlemen!

“y’all look damn sharp!”

i am forever gonna be mad we didn’t get more of tequila in this movie, and not just because of roanoke either, but like, “that dog don’t hunt,” whatever he has in his mouth sealed a leak in a barrel, and it took him all of two minutes to incapacitate both eggsy AND merlin? hello??

i’m glad we’ll get to see more of him in the another movie.

“you know why the measurement of alcohol is called proof?”

just dumping it on their laps, so disrespectful

“—and you can go fuck yourself.”

eggsy fucking just giggling.

these two doofuses

also it’s hot to see merlin be sassy ngl

“HARRY!”

these guys have been fast thinkers in stressful situations but as it turns out, people being unexpectedly not dead can kinda fuck with your day

aaannddd halle berry, everybody! i love ginger ale omg

(and so does merlin, he is instantly enchanted)

;-; this reunion scene

i don’t know how colin manages to be two completely different people at once

like there’s a huge difference between former agent galahad and harry hart the lepidopterist and i can’t explain it

i really, really hope we see at least one little hint at kinsman’s relationship with statesman in the new movie, i just think it’d be really cool

in roanoke canon, there’s an office rumor that the nanobot tech used by statesman was influenced directly by the same technology developed by dr. wernicke in the outlast games. i still think it’s one of my better crossover ideas.

also

god bless whoever decided to get elton john involved with all this?? because i was DELIGHTED

i love poppy’s wardrobe as much as i love her weird 50s-land in the jungle

i also really love the main statesman theme? it reminds me of all those fun epic westerns

jeff bridges! :D

champ vaguely reminds me of my dad

“can you imagine us in the tailor business?”

and he’s super quick with the questions. my headcanons for champ are all over the place but one that i really like is that he was maybe a sheriff or in law enforcement before being recruited by statesman.

aaanndddd pedro pascal, everybody!

otherwise known as *another* character that this movie did dirty, that’ll probably come up in this later

imagine being harry hart, not remember all of yourself, and suddenly your entire room just—fills with water

that had to have been so terrifying, and it was just as hard for merlin to watch (and possibly remember something unpleasant)

and like

that sounds like SUCH bullshit, too, like “yeah we thought if you came close to drowning it would help”

which, is that what merlin meant, no, but is that what harry heard, probably

enter jb the second ;-; <3 sweet baby

tilde’s trying so hard. i see you!

aha, penis jokes.

and all of the unnecessary weird festival stuff, uuggghh

there are so many different things they could have done, like, all of this is just weird from the get-go

first of all, whiskey striking out? hello?? saying no to a man like mr. pascal???

not realistic

the way whiskey takes a shot as he walks away lmao, relatable

and poor clara, like, it’s not like she was asking for any of this D:

hmmmmmmm don’t know how i feel being a stoner watching other stoners get this blue rash thing when i know it kills some of themmmmmmm

i love charlie in his newsboys cap!

poppy has a little bit of a point. like, booze is way more dangerous than pot, as is tobacco. like i would never advocate anyone try meth or heroin, but i think weed and some hallucinogenics get bad wraps.

seeing a dude get torn in half in the reflection of elton john’s sunglasses is the surprising bit of gore we need to remember that oh, yeah, the villain isn’t fun, she’s a murderer

uuggghhhh the TENT SCENE

and, look, i’ll defend tilde forever, but i did NOT like the weird marriage ultimatum. i still think it’s a dick move, like, in that situation either decide to trust your boyfriend or break up with him

the tent interior is super cool-looking

and like, man, he tried, he tried to bounce D:

/sigh/ work hazards, i guess

mmmmmm we don’t need any of what’s happening on screen right now so i’ll just sit patiently and wait for it to be over

and like, there’s nothing funny about merlin and ginger being able to hear everything that’s going on, it’s so grosssss, poor ginger has to have heard some shit before to be so nonchalant about it

everything about this sucks

and then he tries going to the one person who he needs the most and having to deal with him still existing in some state between alive and dead

his body is here

but harry is not

“maggots turn into flies, perhaps you mean larvae!” :D he is SO CUTE

but this entire conversation, with harry still not remembering and eggsy trying so hard to reach him through the fog, is so depressing

like, i’d need a drink too

*and* a joint

i’m seeing my coping mechanisms on screen here folks

the way he comes up with the idea is kinda ingenious though

like, he’s looking at stuff to make himself bummed on purpose, but therein he finds the thing he needs to fix the issue

harry’s smile when eggsy hands him the puppy TT.TT

and then eggsy just becomes a stone cold motherfucker with no emotions

“no one’s sick enough to shoot a puppy!”

hi, flashback!harry

and as SOON as he remembers himself, it’s like his eyes are different, something about him looks like it did before kentucky

“… eggsy.”

one of my favorite movie hugs

and eggsy has to stand on his tiptoes because harry’s so tall

like yeah merlin and harry’s reunion isn’t as overtly emotional, but there’s definitely a sense of joy and relief there.

harry my baby ;-; much better with the sunglasses (and merlin was so close to telling him he looked spectacular)

“now is that any way to welcome a visit from outta town, moonshine?”

he! tried! to! defend! harry!

i hate that jack got a villain story line!

we could’ve had something so much better and infinitely more compelling!

“hurrrr durrrr morgan you just like redemption arcs because you don’t want anybody being a villain permanently” i also like them because sometimes that’s better writing, y’all sit down

“that is NOT what i call a kentucky welcome.”

i love so many things happening in this scene, like

we get to see whiskey kick ass, like yassss gimme those sweet action sequences and give us some character development by showcasing his fighting style

and also NOBODY shits on harry for not being able to handle the situation. both eggsy and merlin were like “dude we’re still celebrating the fact that you’re alive tbh it’s fine if you’re not back up to speed right this second”

you can really tell that this was penned by british people writing american slang because having grown up in the southern half of the u.s. i have never ONCE heard ANYONE say shit like “i feel like a tornado in a trailer park” lmao

and poppy’s fun little death threat infomercial, so great

“what have you done to me you FUCKING BITCH” oof, that’s a mood

!!!!! gonna be honest i kinda forgot that bruce greenwood plays the president

okay but save lives, legalize isn’t an entirely bad idea tbh

hnnnnnnng the scenes about people not being able to get into the hospital hits different in the year of our lord 2020 huh

… y’all i’m being weirded out by all this hospital scenes, this is unpleasant

i, too, wish i could pull a tequila and just be slipped into a chilly coma until shit wasn’t so fucked up

“the fact is, this presidency has won the war on drugs!”

THIS SCENE!

look, y’all can come into my inbox and call me a pothead, or a lazy stoner, or some third insult, but this dude’s VP is bringing up some very, VERY important points when it comes to any kind of discussion about drug use in the u.s.

am i drug-friendly, sure, but i’m more friendly to the notion that we stop demonizing addicts/users

harry looks fucking SCANDALIZED when he sees champ spit into his spittoon thing

i don’t think whiskey even brought up harry not being ready to return to the field in an insulting manner, he literally just saw him get his ass beat in a bar, but eggsy’s faith and loyalty are up there in the category of unstoppable force/immovable object, so here we are

am i the only one curious about the whole charlie x clara thing? because he’s definitely grown up a bit by tgc, and i wanna know how much of that might be because of clara

and he MISSES, e for effort harry

“so sorry about this—“ WHAM

and now that guy can say colin firth busted his face with a fire extinguisher, which is very cool

“*you’re* wu ting feng?” “… yes?”

“you motherFUCKER” ohhhhhh charlie maaaaaad

ginger and merlin though, #couplegoals

the only person more pissed off about the hallucinations than everyone else is harry

imagine remembering that you’re one of the top people in your field and you just keep seeing imaginary butterflies everywhere

like, yeah, i’d be pissed at not being able to do what i knew i was capable of, too

if it wasn’t careening towards a random retirement center, getting stuck in a wildly rotating gondola thing could be fun

nice tuesday afternoon activity

i would loved to have seen more galahad/whiskey field stuff

“you’ve got to be fucking kidding me—“

meanwhile, in the continuing adventures of eggsy and jack: shit goes from bad to worse like a formal spiral only going downward

their expressions as their both just SCREAMING always make me laugh

”that’s the first decent shit i’ve had in three weeks.” <- as does that line, that old dude’s just telling it like it is

eggsy’s comment about the antidote just reminds me of when boromir looks a the ring and says something like “all this for such a tiny thing”

dun dun DUN what are THOSE? hints that whiskey may not be who we think he is??

great. so excited about that. i say, rolling my eyes into the sun

“i’ll fix their wagons.” no one says that matthew!

i. love. this. scene. because now we get cool gun tricks AND the second most metal thing that happens with a lasso in this movie (we’re coming up on the most metal thing)

like please please PLEASE show us more lasso tricks in the statesman movie

“well thank fuckin’ christ i didn’t need any backup.” i wonder if whiskey’s acting angrier than he actually is to throw off the fact that he might’ve caught harry’s glance at him betraying suspicion

RIP jack

imagine the timeline where whiskey was never a bad guy and harry hart just blew a dude away for NO REASON

now THAT would be an interesting movie

because harry and eggsy, for all they went through in the first film, never had a conflict where it was harry in the position of mangling the ropes up

but of course eggsy would never, never tell merlin what happened because he’s still ultimately on harry’s team

damn, charlie, literally blowing up your girlfriend seems kinda extreme

“THIS is vital!”

and here we get to see the biggest difference between merlin and ginger

now, i know there’s extra stuff in the novelization about their relationship and i can’t talk about it because i have no idea what’s in the book

but!

i DO still headcanon as merlin quitting fieldwork after lee’s death

his comment is either what he genuinely believes, or maybe what he fashioned his beliefs into after stepping down from his field role, and ginger is just as sincere in her desire to break into that aspect of working for statesman

it’s like seeing the same character but in two points in time, and it’s really cool

that balance would’ve also been a fun aspect of their romantic relationship to explore but alas! ’twas not to be

colin and mark could both play slenderman

look at those limbs.

gracious.

also this facetime scene with eggsy and tilde T.T

that has to be so terrifying to watch when you know the steps of death and what they look like as they get closer

but it also puts a fire under eggsy though

“i’m leaving with, or without you.”

and of course they’re both gonna go because that’s NOT characteristic eggsy behavior based off of how we know he views family/squad

that’s how they know he’s being for cereal

uugggggGGHHHH and THAT FORESHADOING

stacey pruitt, attorney at lawwwww

hmmmmmmmmm

what does this conversation between poppy and the president remind me of

gonna just sigh into the void

and now we have harry and eggsy on the jet along with the BIGGEST LIE harry hart has ever told in his LIFE

kingsman and statesman aesthetics at least tend to be the same color schemes. lotta golds, yellows. browns.

eggsy, yeah, it’s a bummer your gf dumped you, but this relationship wasn’t very well-developed or written so i’m not as bummed as i could be

“… and in that moment, all i felt was loneliness and regret.”

harry shut the FUCK UP

you felt NOTHING??

you weren’t thinking of, gee, i dunno, EGGSY? or MERLIN?? your MOM???

like these lines from him just seem to come out of left field and i can’t even halfway suspend my belief long enough to come close to believing him

like mr. hart you just gonna be like that in front of jesus and everybody????

so, yeah, of course he’s on board with saving tilde! because he recognizes (apparently just right that second) that “having something to lose is what makes life worth living”

and i don’t know if they felt like there need to be some weird, deeply contrasting reason for harry to swing around to being in support? or something?

i’m forever pissed about this characterization and i don’t even know if i’m expressing my anger in a way that makes it easy to understand lmao this is fine, i’m fine, literally not a single person in this fandom ever believed those lines anyway, it’s fine

moving on

... and even if they WERE true then honestly that just makes me more excited about butterfly knife, because that means that harry acknowledged both the bad side of the coin, and also the side with rae on it (which would mean seeing her for who she was and also recognizing his feelings for what THEY were) and drew the ultimately correct conclucision that love! is! always! worth! it! let that shit in like a welcome guest in the home of your heart, and they will stay as long as you let them!

as SOON as he wakes up ginger looks a thousand percent done lmao

and the “process” that they use to wake people up or whatever is—interesting

because all it is, is trauma turned into a tool which is kind of a weird concept to see in a “fun spy movie” imo

and this is one of what i feel were like only what, two? glimpses we get into whiskey’s Tragic Backstory

and the other scene isn’t a glimpse it’s just straight up exposition in his dialogue :/

jack, i’m sorry, you deserved better than this as a character

i’m sure the name “silver pony” is a reference to something but i don’t know what

“lookin’ GOOD merlin!” “feelin’ good, eggsy.”

ladies and gentlemen when i tell you that i lost my pool-noodle mind seeing him put on that suit watching this in a theater, i--

ANYWAY

because now that i have the horrible burden of having seen these movies a million times

i know it’s more symbolic

he stays in sweaters so long, as an agent of the background, because he walked a man to his death

so it figures when he puts the armor back on for the first time in ages

he walks to his own

uuuggghhhh the minesweeper

i hate this

i hate it

i hate everything about the feelings i’m having while this is happening

*beep-beep*

“you move, we die.”

i HATE IT

but like, i don’t know, how preferable is this to the end scene we almost got, which was merlin dragging his newly-legless corpse through a doggy door?

because it’s been literally multiple years and i still have no fucking idea

they��re both horrible in their own terrible, awful ways

damn, matthew, it’s not often someone manages to come up with multiple versions of a thing and have every version be so gut-wrenchingly horrific, i’m truly impressed and completely disgusted

“do as your told!”

god

everyone just going through twenty shades of Bad Feelings in the space of fifteen seconds here in the jungle

and colin and taron do this thing where it’s like—their eyes go dead? like, there was a light here, it’s gone now

it SUCKS

oh no

ALMOST HEAVEN

WEST VIRGINIA

… fuck

LIFE IS OLD THERE

OLDER THAN THE TREES

“… singing?”

this sucks.

this sucks this sucks this sucks

MOUNTAIN MAMAAAAA

TAKE ME HOOOOME

COUNTRY ROOOADDSSSSS

*THUNK*

and he even took off his glasses before he hit him, he had his end coming towards him and he was still a gentleman

TAKE ME HOOOME

COUNTRY RROOOOAAAADDDSSSSS

his EYES AT THE END

FUCK

… okay i had to get up and go for a lil’ walk

anyway

(and again, roanoke canon, fucking fixing’ shit left and right, because we’re the goat)

harry and eggsy look MURDEREROUS

MERLIN SAID KNOCK YOU OUT

it DID make the grand ending fun action scene a lot more satisfying

because like, without merlin there, that means harry and eggsy get to go full feral

poppy you big idiot you just robbed them of all their motivation to show any kind of restraint and now everybody’s gonna get blown up

except for those dudes who get kicked by elton john

which would be an HONOR first of all

(the part where eggsy’s using his gun and shield vaguely reminds me of the specialist, @bloodofthepen)

and harry and eggsy just—they’re drift compatible! that’s it! the teamwork! the grace! the flow! my god!

eggsy vs. charlie: round like 4 if you count the first movie

it was also satisfying to see charlie’s new arm in action

we love fun robotics and gadgetry in this house

colin firth is really just not afraid to throw himself full force down a bowling lane huh

ugh, seeing charlie slam eggsy over and over again makes my chest hurt

the sound mixing on all these films is top notch which isn’t always a good thing T.T

ROCKETMAN~~~

that shit will never NOT be funny

a wild elton john appeared!

eggsy is indestructible, he can walk off anything

but charlie, charlie i feel really sorry for, imagine being attacked by a superior version of your own limb, i.e. something that you can’t exactly quickly remove from yourself, that would be TERRIFYING

harry + elton = dream teaaaammmm

“darling if you save the world, you can have a backstage pass.”

i love you elton john :(

i would have been the most OBNOXIOUS hype man in the background of the entire kingsman vs. poppy land face-off

“let’s make this fair.” eggsy you’re fuckin’ cheeky

and poor harry, all that lank just getting tossed like noodles

i thought the robot puppers were very cool

“for the record charlie i’m more of a gentleman than you’ll ever be.”

mmmmmm do NOT like this death for charlie

SUPER glad we fixed it

and another scene where i can’t stand the sound mixing T.T it makes me cringe every time

“i don’t consider genocide especially lady-like.”

and are we gonna talk about how merlin knew how to make heroin?

… no?

nobody wanna talk about that?

ugh that houndstooth dress is so PRETTY though

high!poppy is weirdly comedic for all of two seconds and then it stops being funny real fast

whiskey D:<

this is so dumb

this is all so, so dumb

“our agencies were founded to uphold peace, to protect the innocent—“

there’s that nobility again

is what happened to whiskey fucked up, yes

i’m not saying we have to completely remove that from his story

i just

literally anything but this would have been preferable

and then HOT DOG it’s one of my favorite shots in the movie with the whip where harry’s just chucking it away from his face like a bamf, YES

how great is this cover, let’s be honest

like, i’d be lying if i said i didn’t enjoy this scene visually

plus

HARRY GETTING PEGGED RIGHT IN THE FACE WITH A FRYING PAN

gracious

it’s one fluid tracking shot, so kinda in alignmentment with what we’re used to

some people get annoyed with repeated junk but when you can do it THIS WELL you can get away with anything

but then jack

you did NOT desert that

yes, you were in dire need of an attitude adjustment but jesus

“this is for you, merlin.”

/ugly sobbing/

and tilde is all betterrrrrr ;-;

you guys did itttttt

COUNTRY ROOOAAADDSS

TAKE ME HOOOOOOMMEEEE

TO THE PLAAAAAACCCEEEEE

I BELOOOOONNGGGG

and the scene with jamal and liam T.T #wholesomecontent

poor tequila, after i knew that you would have a bigger role in another movie, i was less annoyed by the fact that they iced you so quick into the story

#FOX2020

“… now we’re brothers, working side by side.”

spoiler alert i actually love champ’s toast

“y’all shittin’ in high cotton now” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN???

and ginger becomes the new whiskey like she always wanted T.T

merlin is proud from heaven (or london, depending on which canon)

iiiiiii have mixed feelings about the whole wedding scene, which is probably because i take HUGE issue with the weird proposal ultimatum thing that happened earlier

but the way eggsy says “not a doubt in my mind,” he says it so seriously and i remember that tilde almost died

there was such good intention packed into this couple that was so badly written that i just

augh

“but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”

there’s ***merlin! lmao i see you dude, they did you dirty

look

i was pissed off about a lot of things that happened in this thing but i was honestly hype seeing tequila at the very end walking into the tailor shop

like, yeah, i’ll stick around to see what happens in this universe but i’m gonna complain the whole time

GO JACK RABBIT

RUNNING THROUGH THE WOODS

and again, i almost didn’t see this movie.

… i think about that morgan sometimes.

hope she’s doin’ okay.

…

she’s probably not. D:

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raffaellosanziodaurbino · 5 years ago

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Comfort Movies:

l got tagged by @lakemojave so here we go in no particular order:

1. Any Star Wars movie except RotS (stresses me out) and the sequels (i genuinely like them [for the most part] but i have too many opinions about them): These have been some of my favorite movies for as long as i can remember, what more can i say?

2. The first three Pirates of the Carribean movies: God these movies were big for me. I low key love the shit out of pirates, and those movies (and more specifically the MMO) were absolutely some of my favorites ever. also the soundtrack goes hard as shit.

3. The Lego Movie: is it childish, cheesy, and maybe a little simple? yes. is it something i can just watch and relax and enjoy myself? fuck yes. also it’s lego dude, what do you want from me? i grew up with that shit leave me alone

4. The Lego Batman Movie: see the above, but with some of the best depictions of batman and the joker i’ve ever seen. only thing about it that bugs me is they made barbara an adult and shipped her with bruce, which is an... interesting take, but not a bad one.

5. Thor Ragnarok: I have a love/hate relationship with the MCU but Ragnarok is just so well done. Taika Waititi is as much a mad lad as he is a genius. i weep, wondering what could have been if he had more influence over the other movies

6. Detective Pikachu: only seen this one once so far, but i loved it. it was honestly everything i had hoped it would. as a life long pokemon fan i can’t tell you how much i appreciate it. Somehow it managed to provide the same vibe the original seasons of the anime had, great for a nostalgia trip, while still incorporating elements of the newer generations and it’s own original ideas. also it’s darker and grittier than some other things, but without cutting itself on it’s edge. it just a lot of things right.

7. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: it’s the problematic fave, let’s be real. that said it’s such a fun movie to watch. the whole “incorporating video game elements into real life” thing is always pretty hit or miss, but they hit it real good. only issue is all the forced diversity, i mean come on, the main character is a bass player? really? get real, bass players aren’t relevant people.

honorable mentions:

-Captain America: Civil war, and both Guardians of the Galaxy movies: all very good movies, (k, maybe i just like civil war bc i liked watching all the hero’s fighting each other) but i don’t want to have a ton of MCU movies on the list, and if i was going to do anything it’s ragnarok.

-The Lord of the Rings: god i love these movies. however they are So Fucking Long and i have ADHD so it’s hard for me to consider them comfort movies.

okay so i’ve noticed a pattern: Action/adventure without too much graphic violence and gore, and lighthearted comedy that doesn’t rely on secondhand embarrassment, and more specifically: movies that do both really well.

anyways i gotta tag some people, so here we go: @officialmcnugget @accidentalbuttcheeks @the-ultimate-trashmouth @salutationsmydude that’s really all the people i talk to regularly enough to feel remotely comfortable tagging but if you wanna do this, especially if we’re mutuals, go ahead, follow your dreams.

#meh #idk if i've ever actually done one these things #but it was fun

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rainymeadows · 5 years ago

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I rewatched Eternal Diva and this time I took notes as I went through

Dive under the cut if you dare to experience my mad in-the-moment ramblings (warning for spoilers for pretty much the entire prequel trilogy)

- Don Paolo’s voice sounds like what Papyrus’s voice probably should

- Winter Layton is precious in that giant coat

- Janice is so pretty omg an angel

- Layton geeking out over the Detrogan is goddamn adorable

- I love how everything is greyed out in Janice’s flashback

- Suuuuuuuuper subtle indication that maybe “Janice” seeing how young this little girl was is what prompted her to find a way to put an end to this whole thing

- Whether it’s a moped or the Laytonmobile, Emmy drives like crazy XD

- Bitch you ain’t on Top Gear

- God her big sister relationship with Luke is adorable tho

- Aaaaaaaaaaaah Layton smiling at their banter dad’s so happy for his son

- They did such a good job reusing the game’s music for this movie

- The opera house looks so cool but so precarious – my first thought upon seeing it was “when is this thing going to sink”

- I MEAN IT’S ON A CLIFF

- Janice’s voice is so pretty TToTT

- I like that they kept the Japanese vocals for her singing

- SONG OF THE SEA-SHADOWING

- I hate that Layton and Luke were the ONLY people to honestly applaud the performance. Everyone else is a DICK

- First time I saw this dude, I thought “that’s a puppet, no ordinary person moves like that even in animation”

- Once again, Layton putting a polite and gentlemanly spin on “fucked if I know, my dude”

- Lol I love that even the people who didn’t applaud and thus apparently knew what they were in for weren’t down for dying

- Fuking cowards

- Layton is always DTF (down to fight)

- GROSKY OF THE YARD

- FUCK YES

- This dude’s manliness is infectious

- “Gee, I wonder who’s behind this-“ *Descole’s theme starts playing* “-oh well never mind”

- Honestly who else but Descole would be this fucking extra tho

- Gotta admit I love the twist of the opera house being a ship, I was totally expecting it to just go plunging into the ocean at a moment’s notice

- Aaaaah the CG in this movie is really well done

- Layton’s angry face is kinda ridiculous but I love it

- I love that it’s pointed out like “where tf did all these sharks come from”

- I prefer Cartoon Saloon’s Song of the Sea, but this one’s pretty too

- Lol as if a MAN-EATING SHARK could keep down GROSKY OF THE YARD

- I’m surprised he can see over the top of his chest hair

- God, the detrogan is such a cool instrument and I really wish something like it existed irl

- Ah, it’s only like fifteen sharks, Grosky will be fine

- I love the air of mystery surrounding Oswald Whistler

- Layton’s hat is made of 100% pure uncut husband material

- AAAAAAAAAAAAAH I LOVE HOW PUZZLES ARE USED IN THIS MOVIE IT’S SO GOOOOOOOD

- I’m so glad they didn’t scrap it entirely coz I mean they’re so integral not only to the Layton games, but Layton himself

- This music box tune kinda gives me Gravity Falls vibes tbh

- I think the backing melody sounds pretty identical to the tune’s intro

- I love that this movie actually lets us see inside Layton’s head and his thought process, it’s so much better than just having him put everything together seemingly offscreen

- Tbh any puzzle where “the night sky” is the solution is bound to be a good puzzle

- I just fucking love the implied MASSACRES in this movie

- God Luke is so goddamn precious

- Pffft pumpkin dude is so subtly duplicitous

- Okay I have ot pause for a bit to rant about layton’s design because it’s SO GOOD. Warm colours make him seem welcoming and kinda comfy and the simple facial features, while a bit Ditto-esque, do combine nicely with his overall shape to scream “friend”. Professor Layton is friend shaped. And of course there’s the popped collar to show that he’s cool, the high collared shirt gives a scholarly vibe, his shoes which I stg are plimsolls show a practical side and of course the quintessential top hat shows that he’s a Gentleman first and foremost. Add the amazing voice to that and BOI I DIE

- Although I can’t help imagining that gif with the teddy bear slapping eyebrows onto its face to look angry whenever he gets mad

- Luke is not friend shaped. Luke is son shaped.

- Precious bab shaped

- Wpw a sea captain I would never have guessed other than the “sailor” accent and the fact that you’re wearing a sailor’s uniform

- Ugh I love these quiet moments where things can sink in and characters can just talk to each other, I really wish more movieswould do this

- I love that even if you don’t have a literal look at his thought processes, you can still see Layton THINKINg

- Agh Amelia is SO CUTe this series is so good at designing beautiful women and cute girls while also making them look DISTINCT

- I like that they hinted at her intelligence by having her solve the puzzles by herself

- One advantage a film has over the games is that the visual novel format kinda limits the dialogue, coz it’s hard to convey one charafter talking over another

- I really like the side characters. They’re simple, yes, but they don’t really need to be complex

- I will admit that the limits of Layton’s simple facial features means it can be hard to tell who/what he’s looking at sometimes…

- “that man” asked me to write an opera, huh

- WHY DOES NOBODY ASK WHO

- Fuck descole’s theme is SO GOOD

- WHERE DOES HE GET THE FUNDING FOR ALL OF THIS THOUGH

- And Grosky boards the ship just in time for it to blow up XD I love this dude

- I can only imagine his gigantic pecs act as a flotation device

- Layton preventing Luke from looking at the exploding ship THIS MAN IS SUCH A DAD HE’S SO GOOD

- I love this scene with Emmy investigating because these parent’s appearances are just enough to make it ambiguous whether they’re Nina or Amelia’s parents

- Seeing them all wrapped up in blankets is kinda cute tbh

- LET. THEM. SLEEP.

- I wonder what Layton uses to keep his hat on?

- Lol Emmy pushing a fossil aside to look at the map

- I can only assume, given that they set off from the White Cliffs of Dover, that this island is SOMEWHERE off the coast of mainland Europe in about the same region as Spain

- Ugh I LOVE Emmy’s uppercrust accent, the fact that she sounds like such a refined lady is such a fun contrast to her literal arse-kicking

- Also this is totally BBC news lol

- I love the detail of the historian’s scrapbook being kinda hodgepodge with bits falling out

- And I love the Ambrosia Seal being super detailed but the subtle incorporation of a sheet music design

- Gotta admit I totally thought this little banquet was poisoned on my first watch

- Lol I love that pumpkin guy just KEEPS POURING THE WINE

- Ugh that beach looks SO PRETTY, I want to go there

- Janice is totally crushing on Layton, pass it on

- D’awwwwww luke trying to befriend ‘melina’ is SO CUTE this boy must be protected at all costs

- Layton how did you hear what she was humming from all the way over there

- Why do so many anime characters have inexplicable super senses

- Those wolves’ eyeliner is on point lol

- “I’m not built for running” lol mood

- FUCKING HELL DESCOLE WHO IS FUNDING ALL YOUR SHIT

- �� HOW MUCH DISPOSABLE INCOME DO YOU FUCKING HAVE

- Admittedly on my first watch I wasn’t as familiar with descole’s theme, but I saw that castle and I just thought “it’s descole, only he can be that extra”

- The twist of using the cages for personal protection rather than to trap the walls is simple, but so clever

- I love that Mr Whistler was one of those accidentally trapped outside. Keeps suspicion off

- And I love Layton saying “well that solved PART of our problem”

- YOU SHUT UP LADY THE PROFESSOR IS AMAZING

- And then he trips and falls lol that’s what you get for wearing old man shoes

- “Even a good gentleman needs to get some exercise!” pfft

- Oh hey, they found the starter house that Descole was using while he was building that castle. I wonder what texture pack he’s using?

- And here Layton puts MacGuyver to shame in the most Ghibli way possible

- I’d love to see someone try to build this thing XD someone call the Mythbusters

- Bjut I adore how even LAYTON isn’t sure how this fucking thing works

- Fucking NERD

- Yeah, these filmmakers were TOTALLY influenced by Ghibli

- This is so Castle In The Sky, it hurts

- “Hang on tight! NOT TO THE PILOT!” – best line in the movie

- You can’t escape it, Layton. You is a dad

- DID YOU GUYS NOT SEE LAYTON LAPUTA-ING HIS WAY IN

- It’s great how all those puzzles seem like they could be ripped straight out of the Layton games, complete with outside-the-box bizarre thinking required to solve em

- I’m so proud of Luke for solving it!!!!! Such a good boy

- RUDE

- Yeah, just stand in the middle of the suspiciously empty room, I’m sure nothing will go wrong

- That’s what you get for shoving Layton aside, bitches

- Lol I guess luke could just step through the bars if his head was a bit smaller

- DESCOLE HOLY FUCK YOU ARE THE KING OF EXTRA

- “humble scientist” GOOD GRIEF WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT YOU DRAMA QUEEN

- I love that Emmy can FLY A PLANE

- Holy shit grosky there are better ways to signal for help

- And LESS GROSS WAYS TO DRY YOURSELF OFF IN A PLANE

- Yeah, see, you lost your knickers

- Ugh, god. I adore this scene with Layton in Melina’s room. It’s so quiet, the soft evening lighting… aaaaaaaaaaah so peaceful, but you can still feel the tension in the air, especially after Melina comes in

- Oh my god, Layton plays like an angel *swoon*

- The lack of background music in this scene is what makes it so perfect, the tension is so REAL

- Lol I love the historian just standing there like ‘welp there they go’

- NOOOOOOOOO LUKE DON’T CRY

- BIG SIS IS HERE

- Oh fuck yes

- EMMY I LOVE YOU

- God she and grosky are so fantastic XD

- WHERE DID YOU LEARN TO FIGHT LIKE THAT EMMY

- Somehow emmy gives me Michelle of the Resistance vibes

- God, I kinda love it when you can tell Layton’s already put it all together and is just biding his time

- AAAAAAAAAAH I love the subtle resemblance between Layton and what you can see of Descole’s face

- In hindsight, that… stole? Is that what it is? The fur thing isprobably to hide his face shape because it most likely ups his resemblance to Layton

- But he’s totally wearing black converse like the extra hipster nerd he is

- God, I can’t even imagine the nightmare of having your memories overridden and personality suppressed

- Aaaaaaaaaaaand here’s the summation. I love this part in pretty much every Layton thing

- “Assisting you was the scientist, Jean Descole!” Descole: lol hi

- LAYTON YOU ARE SUCH A DAD I LOVE YOU

- Him being gentle with kids is so sweet

- Also damn this backstory is a lot. I can’t imagine the pain of losing a loved one, but I’m not surprised a father would do anything he could to keep his daughter alive

- “When did you realise I was involved” “ur an extra bitch who lives for drama, who else could it be”

- That brief bit of Luke without his hat just makes him look even more BABY BOI MUST PROTECC

- Okay real talk when did Janice get hold of the key

- I’m guessing it was in the commotion when Mr Whistler grabbed Luke

- SUCH A GOOD TWIST I LOVE IT

- My heeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaart goddammit

- In hindsight, the hint of Janice wearing Melina’s pendant was really subtle and clever

- GODDAMMIT DESCOLE CAN YOU STOP BEING EXTRA FOR LIKE TEN SECONDS

- It’s kinda cool that he’s an archaeologist too though. It really does run in the family.

- The way Descole and Whistler’s schemes intertwined was really cool

- Yeah, it just wouldn’t be Descole if there wasn’t some over-the-top machinery

- YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS MAGIC MUSIC THIS IS MY SHIT

- When escaping from a crumbling castle, do be sure to grab your boy.

- AAAAAAAAAGH THE SCENERY IN THIS MOVIE IS SO FUCKING GOOD

- Good lord, there it is. Descole just can’t function unless he has some ridiculous Humongous Mecha at his command

- This thing looks especially monstrous and I love it

- I don’t think I’ve seen ANY faults in this movie’s animation, jesus Christ

- Descole, did you learn nothing from the attempted excavation of Troy? It’s very possible that your efforts to unearth Ambrosia will be what destroys it!

- Aaaaaaaagh this flying scene is intense as FUCK

- Layton and Luke are SUCH A GOOD TEAM

- WHAT IS THIS MUSIC I LOVE IT

- Luke you are SUCH A GOOD BOY

- Sorry but you’ll never be mob tho

- Mob is perfection

- JESUS CHRIST DESCOLE ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL A CHILD

- I was about to ask where that explosion came from but then I realised it was probably a petrol-powered chainsaw

- Layton who told you that you could look this goddamn epic

- But I love that he’s taking on the sword-armed Descole with a PIPE

- That footwork tho

- Layton must be an amazing dancer

- So cool that he’s patiently explaining why Descole was wrong

- Sun, stars and sea. I feel like that’s a Dothraki term of endearment meant for oceanfairing

- MORE MAGIC MUSIC I AM BLESSED

- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH I LOVE THIS SO MUCH THIS IS THE FUCKING COOLEST

- I’M SUCH A SLUT FOR MAGIC MUSIC GODDAMMIT AND THIS IS DOUBLE TEAMING ME WITH SINGING AND PIANO

- I do enjoy that despite its emergence, Ambrosia is still partially submerged. Some movies would’ve had it rise from the sea completely

- Lol at Descole losing his shit because SOMEONE ELSE found the answer

- Yeah, bad idea attacking someone right on top of your humongous mecha’s control panel

- “DESCOLE!” dude he’s fine you really think he’d die

- I was going to ask why Emmy didn’t use her plane but she probably couldn’t get to it in time

- Yeah, this is SO Ghibli. The gigantic industrialised machine self-destructing on the ruins of an ancient civilisation lost to nature

- Noooooooooo don’t do this to me movie, nothing kills me like sad flashbacks

- Ow my heart

- This hurts

- “I’m sorry, Father. I’ve only ever brought you grief and sadness, haven’t I” as someone who’s struggled with depression this is a whole-ass mood

- NO THIS HURTS STOP IT

- Also the lil detail of Whistler’s waistcoat being the same shade of purple as Melina/Janice’s dress

- NOOO DON’T MAKE LUKE SAD

- “I’m so glad all of you were my very last memory.” Damn that line hits hard

- GIVE THE GIRL A HUG, LAYTON

- I said a hug, not a hand on the shoulder, she needs a HUG

- Seeing the destroyed detrogan really hammers it home, huh

- It’s very kind of Grosky to let Whistler play one last time in memory of his daughter

- When I got into the Layton series, I was no expecting to be hit so hard with the FEELS

- “Do you know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”

- GNU Ambrosia, I guess

- Ugh it’s so PRETTY tho

- Fucking sparkles and shit

- D’awwwww, I love the image of Luke patching up the wolves, he’s so sweet

- Knowing the truth about Emmy and seeing her being so happy with Layton and Luke makes it really painful :’(

- The world needs more of Layton with a big, happy smile

- Awww, Author Lady and Pumpkin Dude kept in touch

- GROSKY GOT HIS UNDIES BACK

- Ugh seeing Layton and Luke peacefully listening to that music is SO CUTE and SOFT

#professor layton and the eternal diva #professor layton #hershel layton #luke triton #pl #The Amazing Adventures of Rainy Meadows #this movie is so good holy shit #delicious finally some good fucking video game movie

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naruwitch · 5 years ago

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Code Geass: Paladins of Voltron Chapter 17: Crystal Venom

"I loved the smell of the mountain juniberries in the early morning breeze," Allura sighed as she looked up at her father's image. She was sitting in a field of juniberries from Altea. She still hadn't fully processed that her home was gone forever.

"As did I, Allura," Alfor answered with a smile. The Space Mice were sitting on a floating tray next to the Princess, stirring some tea to drink.

"Remember the summer berry festival?" Allura asked, "People would come from all over Altea for the harvest."

Alfor laughed a little at the memory, "I remember how the berry juice stained your favorite dress. You were so upset."

Allura laughed as well, "It took forever for Mother to calm me," the Princess then looked down, tears filling her eyes, "I miss Altea so much. I miss you, Father. I wish it didn't have to be this way."

"I know Allura," King Alfor sighed, "but, as leaders, we have to do what's right for our people, even if it means great sacrifice."

"I know, Father," Allura said, though the frown didn't leave her face, "that's what you always say."

The hologram door at the back of the room opened, and Coran walked in. "Princess, there you are, what are you doing up and about? You should be resting."

"Oh, Coran, can't I stay?" Allura begged.

"The Balmera Rejuvenation Ceremony took a lot out of you," the advisor argued as he knelt next to her to help her up, "Come along, to your room."

"Get your rest, darling. I will be here for you when you're well," Alfor assured her as the Princess reluctantly got up to leave.

"I love you, Father. I'll see you soon," Allura allowed Coran to lead her out of the room. However, her expression was downcast as Altea faded into a dark metal room once again.

o~o

Rai was down in Zerith's lair, typing away on his laptop. Rover was hovering over his shoulder. For the past several hours, Rai had been studying the Galra Crystal that they had not gotten rid of yet. It's structure, he observed, was very similar to a Balmera Crystal, except something about the energy in it seemed off.

He squinted at another algorithm as the speakers in the bay came on.

"Rai, please come down to the detainment room," Coran said over them.

With a slightly irritated sigh, Rai stood up and walked out, Rover obediently trailing behind him.

Neither of them noticed the Galra Crystal suddenly pulsing very brightly.

o~o

When Rai and Rover arrived, Coran was just finishing putting a device on top of Sendak's holding pod. There were two more across and below it as well. The other Paladins and C.C., who had now fully recovered from the Balmera incident, were there as well.

"Okay, guys, Sendak's almost all hooked up," Coran said as he pulled up a screen by a smaller container next to Sendak's. "But, look, I have to warn you, this technology was used to keep Altean memories alive, not to interrogate prisoners."

"Coran, we understand this isn't what the technology was meant for," Lelouch stated, looking confidently at their sleeping prisoner, "but if we can extract Sendak's memories, we may gain valuable intelligence on Zarkon's troop locations."

"Yeah, and then we can just be like, 'Knock-knock.' 'Who's there?' 'The avenging fury of Voltron, son!'" Rivalz laughed from behind him.

"Fascinating. So, how exactly does this work?" Rai couldn't help but ask as he hovered over Coran's shoulder, looking at the screen.

"As the memories are extracted, they're written bit by bit on individual molecules of the micro-storage strands," Coran explained.

"You know what? When I go, I want all the stuff in my brain stored in a giant ship, too," Milly declared with a smirk.

"You sure a ship this size would have enough storage space for what's in your head, Milly?" Kallen asked with curious sarcasm.

"...No, you're right," Milly paused before smirking, "I'll need at least five ships to store it!"

"Oh! Good one, Prez!" Shirley laughed.

Suzaku laughed a little too while Lelouch just sighed in exasperation.

"So, this is how you incorporated King Alfor's memories into the Castle of Lions?" C.C. asked.

"Precisely," Coran confirmed, before frowning, "but it's never been attempted before, on an unwilling participant."

He pressed a few more buttons on the control board, and the memory machine immediately activated, a port opening at the top. Nothing seemed to happen, though.

"Uh, is this what's supposed to be happening?" Shirley asked, a little confused, along with most of the others. Even Coran looked a little bemused.

"Let's just give it some time. As Coran said, he's an unwilling participant. He'll likely resist for a while before we get any significant results," Lelouch reasoned.

o~o

No one knew how much time passed as they waited for Sendak to give in. But it felt like hours. Shirley was having a hard time keeping her eyes open, Milly was tapping her foot, and Rivalz had resorted to just twiddling his thumbs. Rai, Suzaku, and Kallen looked like they were getting impatient too.

Finally, after several resorted to sitting on the floor and Coran checking the device for the thousandth time, Suzaku spoke up, "Well, I can't wait around any more. If you need me, I'll be at the training deck."

"Me too," Kallen sighed as she and Suzaku exited the room.

o~o

More time passed, Lelouch had not left his position in front of Sendak's holding pod. At the same time, Rivalz leaned forward, looking at Lelouch's face, trying to make sure that the Black Paladin hadn't turned to stone somehow with how intensely he was staring.

Rai finally sighed, "Okay, if anyone needs me, I'll be in the lab. Maybe I can pull some information from Sendak's Galra Crystal."

Rover followed after him as usual, and after looking back and forth between the exit and the others, Shirley followed him.

o~o

After another half hour, C.C. was leaning against the wall, while Rivalz was pedaling with his legs in the air.

Milly's stomach suddenly growled, "Well, guess that means its time to eat… come to think of it, we haven't even had breakfast yet..." She exited the room as well. At the mention of breakfast, though, C.C. followed after her as well. Even though she didn't necessarily need to, she still ate whenever she could.

"Well, I'm afraid I can't wait here any longer, either," Coran said as he stretched his arms, "I have a million duties to attend to. Between that Galra Crystal infecting our system, and then fighting off those ships and performing the Balmeran Rejuvenation Ceremony, the old Castle of Lions has taken quite a beating. Every system needs to be recharged and repaired."

"I'll stay," Lelouch said, "Somewhere in Sendak's mind is the information about Zarkon that we need."

"Okay, well, while you guys do that," Rivalz said, flipping to his feet, "I think I'm gonna get my chill on. Maybe kick back with a lemonade or space juice. Something."

As Rivalz tried to leave though, Coran stopped him, "Oh, hold on there, space juice. You're going to come and help me."

Rivalz stopped short and looked at Coran, shocked, "What? Why? Why me?"

"Because you're the last one here and because your activity isn't very essential," Coran reasoned as he left the room swiftly.

"Wait, did I say 'chill with a good lemonade'? I meant I gotta do homework," Rivalz tried desperately to correct himself.

"No, too late."

"Fine…" Rivalz groaned in defeat before looking back at Lelouch, "Let us know if anything happens… Lelouch?"

Lelouch blinked before finally acknowledging Rivalz just as he was leaving the room, "Y-You got it."

o~o

Milly punched the buttons on the food goo machine, a bowl already in her hand. "Maybe today, we try a little crème goo-lée."

The machine opened, and two hoses appeared in front of her. She grabbed the first one and pressed down on the handle to dispense the food goo. Strangely though, nothing came out. Milly blinked and scowled. She tapped the nozzle and shook it a few times, thinking something was stuck. When still nothing happened, she held the hose up to her face to see if she could see the blockage. She was so focused on the nozzle that she didn't notice the sudden static at the base of the machine.

After shaking it a few more times and holding up again, she shrieked as a blast of food fired right in her face, hitting her eye. She dropped her plate and held her face as she attempted to blink the goo out. She cried out again as another blast of goo hit her in the rear, forcing her to take cover behind the counter.

C.C. was just about to enter the kitchen herself when a glob of goo nearly missed hitting her. With a bewildered blink, she looked into the kitchen's entrance, only to see the goo machine going haywire, shooting globs of goo all over the place, much to her shock.

"What is going on here?" she asked, quite shocked.

Milly poked her head up from behind the counter, "The goo has me pinned down!" she exclaimed with a grunt as another glob hit her in the face.

C.C.'s eyes widened and rushed over to the counter as well, expertly maneuvering around the globs of goo flying through the air. She crouched down next to Milly and ripped open one of the drawers next to her. Inside was a row of neatly stacked plates. She snatched two of them and handed one to Milly.

"We're going to have to flank the goo to shut it down," C.C. said, holding the plate.

"Okay, got it!" Milly said, before bowing her head, "C.C., it's been an honor serving with you!"

C.C. playfully rolled her eyes before the two girls braced themselves to jump into action.

"And… GO!" C.C. shouted. The two women leaped out from behind the counter, plates acting as shields in front of them. Milly raised it in front of her face as two globs almost hit her face.

As Milly charged it head-on, C.C. swooped in on the side and leaped onto the berserk goo dispenser. She grit her teeth as she held the nozzle down with the plate, goo still flying out of it in the process. Milly then ran up to the machine itself, took hold of the nozzle's hose, and tied it tightly into a knot. This stopped any further goo from getting out of the nose, but Milly gasped in fright as the tube started to expand from the pressure of the food building up behind it. Both girls quickly scrambled away from it as more food goo began to drip from the inside of the machine. To their relief, though, it didn't explode outward and eventually slowed to a stop.

After they both sighed in relief, C.C. said, "Malfunction?"

"Yeah, yeah…" Milly laughed uneasily, "Guess the kitchen system needs to be rebooted, too."

The two made eye contact, both quite shocked about what just transpired.

"...I say we leave this Coran," Milly proclaimed.

Before C.C. could reply, the lights in the kitchen suddenly shut off, leaving complete darkness.

"...Yes, definitely leave for Coran," C.C. agreed.

o~o

Rivalz pouted as he scrubbed the inside of the pod that he had previously been inhabiting when he was recovering about a week ago.

"Ugh... Since when did 'you sleep in it, you clean it' become a Voltron rule? Also, how is it these pods have the ability to heal a human from near death, but don't have the ability to clean themselves?"

"Oh, self-cleaning pods," Coran laughed as he glanced back at Rivalz before moving onto the next pod, "Now, that's a good one! You know, this kind of reminds me of my time as a young cadet. I had just enlisted in the Altean space squad, aeronautics sub-tech nano-weaponry unit, and I was sent off to boot camp. Our sergeant had us cleaning cryo-pods day and night. I got so good at it, I earned my first set of stripes!"

As Rivalz only half-listened to Coran and moved on to the more inner part of the pod, he didn't notice that the pod had somehow closed behind him.

He turned around after hearing the hissing noise of a closing pod and yelled out in alarm before turning and banging on the front, trying to either break it down or alert Coran to what was happening.

"Oh—Coran! Hey! Hey! H-Hey!"

"—Oh, those were the days," Coran continued, utterly oblivious to Rivalz's plight as the pod flashed, freezing Rivalz inside and lowering back to the floor. "Anyway, you keep up the good work, and maybe someday you'll earn some cleaning stripes, too."

Coran turned around with a grin, only to blink in confusion and look around. "Rivalz? Rivalz! Ah, Paladins..." he sighed in defeat. The Blue Paladin must have slipped out while he was distracted. Oh well. He'd catch him and punish him for that later.

o~o

Suzaku grunted as he blocked the attack from the gladiator with perfect fluidity and ducked under another swing from above. Kallen stood off to the side, waiting for her turn. She and Suzaku had been switching out on who fought the gladiator. Suzaku was currently on his third round, and Kallen would begin hers once he ended.

Which it did moments after, as, with a sidespin, Suzaku's katana sank straight through the gladiator, which dissolved in blue light and pixels.

"You're up," Suzaku said to Kallen, swiping the sweat from his face.

Kallen grunted as she traded places with the Purple Paladin. Activating her cestus, she stood in the center of the room. "Restart training level three!"

At Kallen's command, a gladiator once again descended to the floor on the opposite end. With a blink of its blue eye, it charged the Red Paladin. With a shout of challenge, she met the gladiator's sword with her claw, and the two exchanged blows several times, the gladiator gradually pushing Kallen back.

It seemed like Kallen had it all under control until one of the strikes hit so hard, Kallen went flying to the other end. She landed hard on her shoulder and spun to a stop close to Suzaku's position.

"Kallen!" he exclaimed, running over. "End training sequence!" That gladiator fight had been far too hard to just be level three. Something must have glitched in the system. The Red Paladin grunted as she got back to her feet. Despite the sharp fall, she didn't appear hurt. Her eyes widened though as the gladiator didn't disappear, but started charging towards the two, its eye glowing red instead of blue now.

"End training sequence! End training sequence, now!" was her only warning to Suzaku as the gladiator continued to charge. The Purple Paladin managed to raise his katana in time to block the attack, but it resulted in his Bayard flying out of his hands and clambering to the other side of the room.

Too shocked to see what happened, the gladiator kicked Suzaku hard in the gut, falling into Kallen in the process, and the two rolled painfully across the floor. However, Kallen managed to keep hold of her Bayard.

Suzaku looked to where his Bayard had landed, not too far away. Making eye contact with Kallen, the Red Paladin leaped to her feet and charged the gladiator head-on. With a battle cry, she clashed her claw against the gladiator again as Suzaku slid past them to scoop up his own weapon.

Upon seeing that Suzaku was armed once more, Kallen sidestepped around the gladiator and managed to trip it before both she and Suzaku sprinted for the exit. Once they were out in the hallway, the training room door locked, the two panted profusely, hoping that that was the end of it.

They didn't have time to determine what had caused the robot to go crazy, as the sword of the very robot suddenly pierced straight through the door. With gasps of surprise and slight panic, the two Paladins backed away, horrified to see the gladiator breaking down the door to get to them.

o~o

"I know you're in there, Sendak," Lelouch growled at the pod, containing the Galra commander, "My Geass might not have an effect on you, but I know you have all the answers. Give them to me." Lelouch had been down in the holding area for the past hour, and he was starting to lose his patience. What exactly did Sendak have to gain from being silent now? He had nowhere to go.

Lelouch felt frustration build up in him more than ever before as he banged his fist against the glass, "You're a broken soldier! You can't hold out forever!"

A hiss to his right cut Lelouch off. Looking to the source, he grinned in triumph as a tiny tendril of purple energy dripped into the port next to them. The mind machine was finally working, they were collecting Sendak's memories.

"Well, well, so you can hear me," the prince could only smirk maliciously.

o~o

Back in the cryopod room, Coran had just finished scrubbing the last pod just as the final one rose up. This one, however, had a surprise inside.

Coran leaped back in alarm as a frozen, terrified looking Rivalz greeted him from inside. Coran immediately pressed a button to open the pod, and the nearly frozen Rivalz robotically walked out, his skin a light shade of blue.

"Ah, ah... This pod just shut on me and locked me in, while you were rambling on about boot camp!" Rivalz muttered as he held his arms close and rubbed them up and down, trying to reactivate body heat inside of himself. All the while, he was giving Coran a big stink eye of contempt.

"You sure you didn't just trip and fall in?" Coran asked. Upon seeing the offending look that Rivalz shot him, he held his hands up in a placated gesture, "No judgment. It happens. Besides, why would the pod automatically lock and start the cryogenic freezing process?"

"To kill me!" Rivalz exclaimed as he sat down on the steps leading to the pod and swiped his jacket from the floor that he had taken off beforehand. Rivalz shivered as he pulled it on over himself.

"Now, don't get your boots in a bunch," Coran still defended, folding his arms, but eyeing the pods suspiciously, "My guess is they're malfunctioning."

"...Okay, I'm gonna float this out there. I think this Castle is haunted," Rivalz said, with a suspicious, stubborn frown.

"The ship might seem like a fantastical, magical creature to you," Coran said, twiddling his mustache, "but it's really just a big embodiment of advanced, supernatural technology that cannot be explained by science alone." Throughout this entire explanation, one of Rivalz's eyebrows raised up slowly in skepticism.

Coran blinked as he went over the words again in his head and blinked, "...Well, that does make it seem a bit haunted, doesn't it?" Despite the conjecture, Coran quickly regained his composure. "Ah, but it's not. Trust me, nothing out of the ordinary is happening here."

As Coran left, Rivalz glanced distrustingly at the pod that trapped him. He then jumped slightly as he heard faint rumbling noises coming from outside the room. With a whimper, he hugged his legs close to his chest, "I'm okay. I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay..."

He leaped to his feet with a shriek of fear as the pod behind him hissed and began slowly descending back into the floor. Not wanting to be in the room a second longer, he turned and ran.

o~o

Allura was slumbering peacefully in her room. Despite her protests earlier, she really was tired and didn't realize how much until she had climbed back into bed. She had fallen asleep almost instantly. Her four mice friends were nestled in the pillow next to her bed as well.

"Allura… Allura?" a voice echoed in the room softly.

Platt awoke first, squeaking in fright and jumping behind his siblings as King Alfor's A.I. appeared in front of them. Allura awoke next, blinking in confusion before her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

"Allura, dear daughter..." the A.I. smiled down at her.

"Father, what are you doing here?"

o~o

Rivalz was walking cautiously down the hall, still hugging himself due to the mildly traumatizing incident with the pod. A flicker in the distance suddenly caught his eye. The hall lights were shutting off one by one. He whimpered as the ones by him shut off and then the ones behind him, shrouding him in complete darkness. Then, one light was still flickering near the end, the figure of a man stood at the end of the hall before vanishing.

"Coran, is that you?" he called out as the figure disappeared, "Okay, stop messing with me, guys. This isn't funny!" Rivalz was really starting to freak out now.

"Help! Help!" a voice that sounded a lot like Coran's echoed from the end of the hallway.

"Hello? Coran?" Rivalz called as he ran towards the voice. It led him down another hallway that led to a line of airlocks.

"Help! Somebody!" Rivalz noticed that one of the airlock buttons was flashing red, and that's where Coran's voice was coming from, "I'm trapped in the airlock."

Rivalz's eyes widened in fear and ran towards the airlock, "I'm coming!" He opened the outer airlock door and ran inside. He stopped dead in his tracks, though, when he saw that the airlock was empty. The door behind him then slammed closed.

Rivalz laughed nervously, "Okay, ha-ha. Good joke. You guys got me. Nice."

He abruptly stopped laughing when the alarm behind him started buzzing.

"Airlock opening in thirty ticks."

"Okay, joke's over! You got me!" Rivalz said desperately, looking around to see who could possibly be pulling his prank on him that was being taken way too far.

"...twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven..."

"Guys?" Rivalz asked nervously before it finally registered to him that this was not. A. Prank! He ran up to the outer doors and started banging hard on it, "Guys! Eugh! Help!"

o~o

"What was the first rank you held in Zarkon's army?" Lelouch questioned the purple memories as Sendak continued to sleep in the storage pod, "Where did you find the Red Lion? What is Zarkon's greatest weakness?"

"What makes you think you can possibly defeat him?"

The sound of Sendak's voice, echoing through the room startled Lelouch with a jump. He whipped his head back to Sendak but saw that the commander still continued to slumber.

Lelouch blinked. What was that? Was he going nuts?

He swallowed slightly before turning back to the memories, "If you were to attack Zarkon, where would you strike?"

There were a few more seconds of silence before Sendak's voice filled the hall once again, causing Lelouch to jump back again.

"Why strike at all when you can join him?"

Lelouch looked once more at the Galran, so still in his holding pod. No one else was in the room with him. It was just him and Sendak.

For a moment, Lelouch thought Sendak's eye opened. But once Lelouch blinked, it was closed again.

What was going on?

o~o

"I bet if we can modulate the dynamics of this crystal, we'll be able to reverse engineer a lot of Galra tech. Don't you think, Shirley?" Rai asked Shirley in Zerith's hanger. He was typing away on his laptop as Shirley stood off to the side. The Orange Paladin didn't seem to be paying much attention, though. She was facing the hanger entrance. "Shirley, are you paying attention?"

"Huh?" she jumped at Rai's voice, "Oh, sorry, Rai."

"Are you okay?" Rai asked her.

"Yeah, I-I just-I just have a weird feeling all of a sudden," Shirley admitted, rubbing her arm.

"Is this about the lights flickering earlier?" he asked kindly as he walked over to the Galra crystal. As the two made their way to Rai's lab, the Castle lights had flickered on and off several times. The first time it happened, the lights shut off so suddenly that Shirley had screamed and refused to let go of Rai's arm until they got to Zerith, shivering the entire way. Only then had she peeled her hands away from the Green Paladin.

"Yeah, a little," she admitted.

Rai laughed lightly but gave her a reassuring smile, adjusting some of the sensors on the crystal, "Relax. I'm sure the Castle's just glitchy. It's ten thousand years old. There's bound to be a few problems here and there."

"Yeah, it does seem like the ship is not currently trying to kill us," Shirley said with an uneasy smile.

Satisfied that Shirley was calm again and all the sensors were in place on the crystal, Rai called over his shoulder. "Okay, so, all the sensors are on the crystal. Hit the switch, will you?"

"O-Okay," Shirley said as she walked to Rai's computer. He had shown her earlier which button to press and was about to when the laptop and the rest of the equipment started floating in midair. Immediately after, Shirley's feet also left the ground. She was floating in midair!

"Shirley, did you accidentally hit the anti-gravity switch?" Rai asked in bewilderment as he was also floating in midair, along with Galra crystal.

"Um, no! I didn't hit anything! Is there an anti-gravity switch?" she exclaimed in alarm.

Rover started beeping hurriedly as if panicking himself. The bot tried flying towards the doors, but he went too fast and slammed into the wall instead, causing him to short out.

Rai gasped upon seeing his friend get knocked out. He'd fix him as soon as he got back on the ground. Rai then looked back at the Galra crystal. He spotted one of the sensors attached to it. If he could reach it, he may be able to guide himself back to the ground. He strained out to reach the tube but saw that he had floated too far away from it, much to his own frustration.

"No!" he shouted, "I'm too far away!"

"Okay!" Shirley shouted, "Hang on, Rai. I'm going to swim toward you!" Shirley started trying to perform the breaststroke in the air, but because there was no moving air around them, she barely moved and was simply stuck air-swimming in place. When she saw that the breaststroke wasn't working, she tried front crawl and even butterfly paddle. Finally, she went limp from exhaustion, "That's it. I'm all out of moves."

o~o

"Help! Help! Help!" Rivalz screamed as he continued to bang on the airlock door, his panic rising more and more with each strike.

"...twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven..."

While Rivalz continued to scream for help, Kallen and Suzaku came sprinting down the hall, the rogue gladiator still pursuing them relentlessly.

Suzaku grunted as the gladiator's sword clashed with his while Kallen stepped back and away. That's when she spotted Rivalz in the airlock.

"Kallen!" Rivalz shouted frantically.

"...six, five..."

"What are you doing in there?" Kallen asked, shocked.

"Kallen! Watch out!" the gladiator had kicked Suzaku away and had taken a swing at Kallen. She managed to dodge away in time, so she wasn't hurt.

"I need help!" Rivalz shouted, "Because if you don't get me out of here right now, I'm going to be sucked out into space!"

"Doors opening."

"I'm getting sucked out into space!" Rivalz screamed as the second and then third airlock doors opened. The wind rushed past Rivalz as the pressure from outside began to drag him backward. Fortunately, Rivalz was able to clutch the inside of a wall outcropping. He held on for dear life as Kallen and Suzaku continued to fend off the gladiator inside.

Finally, Suzaku was able to lock his and the gladiator's swords, neither of them could move. Kallen ran to the airlock door and made eye contact with Suzaku as her hand hovered over the button. With a nod, Suzake used what remained of his strength to shove the gladiator in the door's direction. Once the robot was pushed against the door wall, Kallen slammed her hand on the button, opening the outer airlock doors. The two immediately dove to the sides to avoid getting caught up in the vacuum as the gladiator spiraled out into the universe outside.

Suzaku then leaned over the side and extended his hand towards a still screaming Rivalz, "Suzaku! Come on!" he gasped as he latched onto his hand over the Purple Paladin's, who managed to pull him to safety. Once Rivalz was back inside, Kallen slammed her hand on the button once again, shutting the airlock doors behind them.

Only after the danger was passed did they all take a moment to catch their breaths, sliding down the wall of the hallway.

"Rivalz, what were you doing out there?" Kallen exclaimed.

"Who was that guy?" Rivalz asked almost at the same time.

"Oh, no one! He was just trying to kill us!" Suzaku answered, just as aggravated.

"Well, is he the Castle? Because that's who's trying to kill me!" Rivalz shot back.

The three blinked at one another before they realized how dangerous the situation indeed was, before the three of them bolted down the hall, yelling in fear.

o~o

Allura blew the petals off of the juniberry from the field she and her father were sitting in. The fragrance was still fresh, as if the simulation around them was real.

"Altean flowers are the most beautiful," Alfor sighed as the petals flew passed his face.

"It is sad that I will only see them in my dreams," Allura said sadly, "But when I wake, my memories are like these spores, scattered in the wind."

"Altea is not merely a dream, Allura. It still exists. The Altean flower, you can see it. You can touch it," Alfor said, picking up another flower and handing it to his daughter, "I can take you there. I can take you home."

"You can?" Allura asked, quite surprised. Was it really possible that Altea was still there? That her people weren't truly gone?

"Would you like to go home?" Alfor asked, kindly.

"Yes. I want to go back to Altea, Father," she answered immediately.

"Then come with me, and I will show you the way," Alfor stood up with his daughter, and the two of them left her room, which had been where the flower scene had taken place. The mice squeaked in alarm as they watched them both go. Something weird, and wrong was happening.

o~o

"Wait. Wait, wait. I have an idea. Grab on!" Rai shouted in the lab. He and Shirley were still floating in zero gravity and hadn't been able to do anything to remedy the situation. But Rai now had an idea as he extended his hand towards Shirley.

The two of them strained and groaned before they finally did make contact with each other, locking their hands together. This action caused them to twirl in the air, now Rai's back was facing the hanger door instead of Shirley.

"Yeah! We did it! Now, what?" Shirley asked, confused over what Rai was planning.

"Now, kick me as hard as you can!" Rai instructed.

"What? No! We're friends!" Shirley protested, looking at Rai like he was nuts.

"No, no. Kick me so I can fly across the room and get to the control panel," Rai explained, pointing to the door so Shirley could see.

Upon seeing it, Shirley nodded with a nervous smile. Rai spun around so that Shirley's foot was planted on his butt. Then, with as much force as she could muster, Shirley pushed off of Rai, sending him flying to the other end of the room just like he said he would.

Rai grinned as he approached the control panel. He was almost there. However, moments later, he realized he miscalculated the kick's trajectory. He wasn't flying low enough!

"Oh... oh, oh! No, no, no!" he exclaimed as he collided with the hanger door and then the floor. He was now floating away from the panel and back to where Shirley was.

Fortunately for both of them, the hanger doors opened anyway to reveal Suzaku, Kallen, Rivalz, Milly, C.C., and Coran on the other side. This allowed the gravity function to kick back in, and Rai, Shirley, and everything else in the room landed back on the ground with a thud.

"How can you guys be taking a nap while this castle is trying to kill us?" Rivalz exclaimed in disbelief as the group walked in behind them.

"Taking a nap? We've been floating around in Zero-G! You know how scary that is?" Shirley asked frantically as Rai ran over to Rover, scooping the bot into his arms.

"That's not scary! That's fun! I was almost ejected into space!" Rivalz ranted angrily.

"Yeah, well, C.C. and I got attacked by killer food!" Milly countered.

"Oh yeah?" Kallen exclaimed, "Well, Suzaku and I had a robot, trying to kill us!"

"I don't care what you say, Coran," Rivalz said, turning to the advisor with an angry glare, "this castle has gone apples and bananas!"

Coran groaned. He had an idea of what was happening now. He looked mournfully at the Galra crystal now lying haphazardly on the floor, "Perhaps the infection from Sendak's Galra crystal is worse than we thought."

"Then why don't we just get rid of it?" C.C. asked as if the answer should be obvious.

"I wish it were that simple," Coran said, "but it's too late. When Sendak plugged it into the ship, it corrupted the entire system."

"Sendak…" Suzaku muttered, before his eyes widened, "Wait! Where's Lelouch?!"

o~o

"We're connected, you and me. Both a part of the Galra Empire," Sendak's voice rang through the room.

Lelouch glared venomously at the commander, "No, I'm nothing like you!" he spat.

"You're a survivor. A leader. Just look at what's in your eye."

Lelouch's hand instinctively went up to his left eye, covering it. He grit his teeth, "That doesn't mean anything!"

"It's the strongest part of you. Embrace it," Sendak continued to taunt, "The others don't know what you know. They haven't seen what you've seen. You'll never beat Zarkon. He's already defeated you."

"That's not true!" Lelouch shouted back, viciously.

"It's just like with your father, a fellow emperor! One who sacrifices everything to obtain victory."

"What?" Lelouch gasped, stepping back, eyes widening.

"You're using everything now. Even your fellow Paladins. They're nothing but pawns to you. Face it. You claim you're nothing like him, but he's already broken and reformed you in his own image."

"...Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!" Lelouch screamed, covering his ears and bending down as if in agony.

"Do you really think a monster like you could be a Voltron Paladin?"

"I said, shut up!" Lelouch shrieked, his Geass instinctively activating, lightning crackling in his hands as he swung out and punched the pod door, causing it to crack significantly. Lelouch took several deep breaths before looking up at Sendak slowly, tears gathering in his eyes.

Lelouch suddenly yelled out as Sendak's face smiled maliciously at him. Without thinking, Lelouch slammed his hand on the ejection button, and the pod containing the Galran commander shot out into space.

Tears spilled over Lelouch's eyelids as he slid down the wall of the containment unit, still panting heavily, cold sweat dripping down his form.

o~o

"I remember how you used to dance around this very ballroom," Alfor reminisced as he led Allura into the hall, "I can still hear you giggling."

"Oh... Those were happy memories," Allura said sadly.

"We can create new memories, Allura," the King reassured her as he extended his hand to her.

The Princess smiled as she 'clutched' her father's hand. To everyone but her, though, the room shifted into the main bridge, her hands landing on the teludav controls. The crystal above illuminated with light. Allura smiled as her father appeared beside her.

They were going home to Altea, at long last.

o~o

"Lelouch?" Suzaku called as he and the others made their way back to the holding cells. The Purple Paladin's eyes widened as he spotted the Black Paladin, still curled on the floor, clutching his head and shaking.

"Lulu!" Milly exclaimed as they ran over, "Are you okay?"

"What happened?" C.C. asked urgently, kneeling next to him.

"Where's Sendak?" Kallen asked as C.C. helped him to his feet. He still continued to tremble, though. Kallen's eyes widened. She'd never seen Lelouch like this, so torn apart and scared. It was a whole new world for her.

"I... I had to get him out of here," Lelouch stuttered (He stuttered!), "I was hearing his voice. He... He can't be trusted on this ship."

"It is the ship!" Rivalz said quickly, "I got stuck in a cryopod, then, in an airlock. Kallen and Suzaku got attacked by a robot, C.C. and Milly got attacked by food, and Shirley and Rai were stuck in zero gravity for who knows how long! It's been a weird morning."

Any further discussion of this was interrupted by an alarm blaring through the room. Looking behind them, a red screen appeared on the upper wall, signaling a wormhole jump.

"What? How is that possible?" Coran exclaimed. Only Allura was capable of making wormhole jumps, and as far as he knew, she was still in bed resting.

Or… was.

"What is it?" Kallen demanded.

"The ship is starting a wormhole jump!" Coran exclaimed, quite frightened.

o~o

The group immediately ran towards the bridge. Upon entering, they were shocked to see Allura standing on the teludav, and the vacuum of space zooming past them from the jump.

"Allura, what's going on?" Lelouch exclaimed.

"We're going to Altea. We're going home," Allura said happily, looking back at them, "My father is taking us."

Seeing how dangerous the situation is, everyone ran forward, intending to stop her.

"Stay away from my daughter!" Alfor shouted angrily as his face appeared on the screen before them, and a barrier rose up around Allura.

"Uh…" Shirley gasped.

"Allura! Wake up!" Suzaku exclaimed, "None of this is real!"

"Why is she even doing this?" Milly asked Coran.

"The crystal must have corrupted King Alfor's artificial intelligence. It's taking over!" Coran deduced.

Utterly oblivious to their plight, Allura continued to pilot the ship forward, Alfor's A.I. appearing beside her.

Finally, the ship stopped, but it wasn't in front of Altea. In a flash of light, the Castle stopped in front of a massive darkened star.

"We're headed straight for a star, and it's about to explode!" Rai yelled.

"Father, I can see Altea," Allura exclaimed happily, bringing slowly closer.

"Allura! Allura, wake up! What you're seeing isn't real," Coran exclaimed as he ran up to the barrier wall. Allura remained oblivious and giggled at whatever invisible creature was in front of her.

"Hey, Lelouch," Rivalz said, turning to the Black Paladin, "use your Geass on her!"

"My Geass?" Lelouch asked, sounding shocked.

"Yeah! Just command her to stop! Or wake up! Or whatever! It should work, right?"

"...No, it won't," Lelouch shook his head, "I already used it on her once already."

"What? When was that?!" Kallen asked.

"It was back on Arus, during the party. She was talking to me and hinted that she and I had something in common. I got suspicious and used Geass on her to tell me what she meant. That's how I found out that she knew who I was, or who I used to be anyway. And besides, even if I could use Geass, I doubt the A.I. will give me a clear shot to do so!"

"The juniberries, the most exquisite flower of all," Allura murmured blissfully.

"This is bad! This is bad! This is really, really, really bad!" Shirley screamed on the verge of a panic attack. Rivalz looked like he was about to join her as well.

C.C. then walked calmly up to the barrier. "Coran, back away, now," she ordered.

"What? But-"

"Is this real?" Allura asked, looking around in wonder.

"Of course, it is real, Daughter. That flower you're touching is real," the A.I. said with a smile.

"Just trust me," she said, placing her palms face down on the wall, "dying here isn't an option. It won't be direct contact, but it's worth a try."

C.C.'s forehead started to glow bright red, her Geass symbol illuminating the area.

As Allura brought what she thought was a juniberry to her nose to smell it, she suddenly gasped. The world around her suddenly morphed into what looked like a wormhole, and she was the sole occupant of it. She was flung around violently before everything faded out into black and white. Her eyes widened as she saw two planets aligning, people that had similar markings to C.C. lined up in long rows. Finally, the wormhole seemed to end in a flash of light, and she saw...

"You!" she gasped as the hulking figure turned around to face her, it's glowing eyes narrowing. The corpse of her father slid off his sword with a sickening thud.

"No! Father! Altea! No!" she yelled, clutching her head.

"C.C., what are you doing?" Lelouch asked alarm but also curiosity swimming within him.

"I'm just feeding her some shock images," she explained, "I can't tell what she's seeing, but it should be enough to snap her out of whatever trance she's in."

"I think you did enough!" Suzaku exclaimed, running up and placing a hand on her shoulder to pull her away.

"Suzaku, wait!" Lelouch placed his hand over Suzaku's to stop him.

C.C. gasped, turning back in horror, "No! Not now!" she gasped again, her mark lighting up still.

Lelouch and Suzaku's eyes were wide as images flashed through their minds as well. It was a little more familiar to Lelouch as it was the same vortex that originally had granted him Geass. He wasn't sure if Suzaku saw the same thing, but he saw something.

Just like before, the vortex eventually ended, but this time, Lelouch saw a crowd of people, throwing stones at what looked like an old church, and on the side of the building… was the symbol of Geass!

"Wha-what is this?" Lelouch gasped, "It's different."

The scene shifted into a figure in a long cloak that was kneeling. The character turned, and Lelouch realized that it was a nun, a nun with the same symbol that C.C. had on her own forehead. The scene shifted again, they were back in Japan, an old shrine.

The Kururugi shrine!

"This-" Suzaku muttered.

The scene shifted again, it was C.C. in a pool, unclothed, holding her abdomen and sobbing.

"No… stay out of my mind!" she shouted just as more images flashed before them. The final image was of another figure. Neither Lelouch nor Suzaku could make out anything too distinct from him, but they could tell whoever it was was male, had long, flowing hair that nearly reached his lower back, pointed ears, and… purple skin? The figure turned their head towards them. They couldn't see his face, but Geass was also flashing in his eyes.

"Is that…" Suzaku started.

"...an Altean?" Lelouch whispered to finish.

"Stop it!" C.C. choked out, closing her eyes as tears trailed down them, "Why now? You're… unveiling me."

Alfor and Melenor's faces flashed before her eyes once more before Allura screamed, "No! That's enough!" She screamed one final time before stumbling out of the barrier and falling on her butt.

"Allura!" Coran exclaimed, racing over to her. The other Paladins had stood there in shock over the chain of events that happened. They didn't want to end up like Lelouch and Suzaku by touching C.C., but even if they didn't see what exactly that was, it was still scary to watch.

C.C. also stumbled back with a gasp, Suzaku and Lelouch catching her instinctively. The two boys blinked and shook their heads. Numerous more questions were cluttering their minds. Unfortunately, the time for interrogation was not now.

Allura had also come to her senses as Coran helped her up. She blinked in confusion before she turned around, and finally, she saw the dying star.

"That's not Altea!"

"When that star goes supernova, it will destroy the entire system," Rai cried out, "Allura, you must reset the course and get us out of here!"

Allura attempted to get through the barrier, but it wouldn't budge. Alfor's A.I. then appeared, hands over the teludav pillars.

"Father, please, I beg you to turn this ship around. If we don't do it soon, we will all perish!" Allura exclaimed desperately.

"I know. That is my intention," Alfor said calmly.

"What?!" Allura asked, shocked, "Why?!"

"Don't you see, dear daughter? Zarkon can never be defeated," the A.I. said, turning to face them, his image flickering in and out as if someone else was trying to patch through somehow. "He's been ruling for ten thousand years."

"But we must continue to fight!"

"Fight for what? It is all over for Altea. You don't have to live a lifetime of war. You can be with me and the rest of your people."

"Father, please!" Allura begged, "The Paladins and I can still stop Zarkon! Somewhere in there, you must want that to happen."

Alfor's image suddenly shifted. He looked grave, and they could see fear lingering in his eyes as he addressed his daughter, "Allura, my A.I. has been corrupted. You must disconnect my power source-" his image flickered again back to the aloof Alfor as he continued to tempt Allura again. "-We can stroll across the Blossom Canyon every morning, just like we used to. Remember how much you loved that?"

"I remember..." Allura said as tears flooded her eyes, knowing what her next course of action must be, "I'll see you soon, Father," she then turned to face Coran and the Paladins. "I've got to get into the A.I. chamber to disconnect my father's power source manually."

"But that means losing King Alfor forever!" Coran exclaimed. The other Paladins looked at Allura sadly. They knew how much Allura loved her father. He seemed like a good man. He didn't deserve this.

"Are you sure there's no other way?" Lelouch asked, despite the situation. Deep down, he didn't want Alfor to leave either. For some reason, the feeling he had in his gut reminded him of when it finally sank in for him, as a nine-year-old boy, that his mother was gone forever. Now it felt like he was losing her all over again in the form of the Altean sovereign.

"No, there is not!" Allura said, shaking her head, "Paladins, get to your Lions! I need you to slow the Castle's descent into the star."

As Allura ran for the door, Coran started running towards the main control panel, "I can try to override the system to open the hangars."

At that statement, the Paladins rushed to their elevators and raced to their Lions.

o~o

Outside, the Lions all exited their bays. They didn't engage an enemy outside, however, they turned toward the Castle and latched onto it with their front claws. With all the firepower they had, they attempted to push the Castle away from the star. It slowed down, but the Castle still fought to get closer and closer.

o~o

Allura rushed into the A.I. chamber, the small ball of light, morphing into her father before her.

"Don't do this!/You must!" Alfor said, glitching in and out of his pure form and the one the virus had overtaken. "All my memories, all my knowledge will be lost forever!/Do it, Allura. If you are to live, we must say goodbye."

Allura bowed her head, looking away from her father, "I'm sorry about this, Father." She pressed a button on the A.I.'s control board and a large red sign in Altean that asked if she really wanted to erase the A.I. before her. Upon pressing the 'yes' button, Alfor's form vanished, and the capsule containing his memories rose to the surface.

Allura stretched forth her hand to end it all, only to stop short with a gasp. The container emitted small balls of light from within it, and the room went dark around her.

When Allura opened her eyes again, the balls of light became images. No, not images. They were memories. King Alfor's memories. He was hugging a young Allura in the field of juniberries, her giggling in his arms. Another memory showed her a few years old, in a blue dress being twirled around by Alfor, both of them smiling and happy. Another, when she turned around, saw her another year older, placing a mauve flower behind Alfor's ear, her hair tied back in braids. Another had her on Alfor's shoulders, laughing gleefully. More memories continued to swirl around her, tempting her to stop.

"This is not real," Allura said with finality. "This is all in the past." As Allura ran back to the controls, more memories of her childhood flashed before her eyes, attempting to stop her. She stumbled but was not deterred from her course.

She stopped short with a gasp, though, as an image of her as an infant, being cradled in her father's arms appeared before her. She stepped backward, tears streaming down her face and clutching her chest, her heart throbbing with sorrow.

"You don't have to fight, Allura. You don't have to make this sacrifice," Alfor said as he appeared from one of the memories. He approached his daughter but stopped just within arm's length.

Upon hearing her father's words, though, Allura rushed forward and enveloped her father in a hug. The late king gasped at his daughter's action.

"Goodbye, Father," she whispered as the A.I. began to crack.

Alfor's face softened, before smiling sadly, "Goodbye, Allura."

In a flash of light, the capsule shattered, the room returning to what it once was memories and capsule pieces scattered everywhere. Allura watched sadly as the lights faded away like stars in the sky.

o~o

Back in the Castle's bridge, Coran and C.C. watched as Alfor's A.I. flickered and then vanished from existence along with the barrier to the teludav.

"She did it," Coran muttered sadly, before steeling himself and facing the star in front of them. Now that Alfor's A.I. wasn't corrupting the system, alarms began to blare all around them as the Castle sensed the impending danger as it still trickled at a snail's pace towards the star.

o~o

Outside, the Paladins and their Lions still continued to struggle to push the Castle back. They were all relieved when Allura's face finally appeared on the screen in front of them in their Lions.

"Paladins, get to your hangars. We're getting out of here." She ordered.

Nodding, everyone swiftly returned to the hangers just as Allura opened a wormhole to get as far from the star as they possibly could. At full power, the Castle charged away from the star and plunged into the wormhole just in time. Moments later, the star shrunk and then exploded outward, dust and fire raining everywhere, engulfing its surroundings.

o~o

After escaping the wormhole, the crew found themselves surrounding a distraught Allura on the bridge. They all felt so sorry that Allura lost her father once again. Most of them couldn't imagine what she was going through.

"I'm so sorry about your father, Princess," Shirley said sadly.

"...We all are," Lelouch murmured, glaring at the ground.

Allura looked up at Lelouch's face, another wave of sadness filling her. She remembered that Lelouch had sought counsel from her father when he was deciding whether to leave the team or not. He likely saw Alfor as another parent, one that he deserved. From what little she'd heard from the Brittanian Emperor, he wasn't fit to be anyone's father, especially Lelouch's.

Allura smiled kindly at Lelouch, putting a hand on his knee for comfort. She then stood up and faced the others, "Thank you. But that was not my father. The real King Alfor was a great man and a great father. He may not be here with us anymore, but his dream lives on through all of us, and his legacy is Voltron."

o~o

The door flew off its hinges as Britannian military men stormed through the clubhouse.

"Prince Lelouch! Princess Nunnally!" Jeremiah yelled as he entered through the door with Villetta Nu behind him, "Please, answer me if you are here!"

Doors were slammed open, and windows opened and closed relentlessly, as the soldiers attempted to find some clue of life in the house. Much to their shock, most of the house seemed deserted. The beds were bare, no food lay in the fridge or pantry. It looked like no one had lived here for years.

"No sign of them, sir," one of the privates reported back.

Jeremiah grimaced. The moment he and Villetta had seen the news report, they knew that if they could locate the Prince and the Princess, it could be their chance to reclaim their honor and positions that were lost to them by Zero.

Jeremiah turned to Villetta, "Are you absolutely sure this is the right place?"

"Positive! I checked the school records, their address was already included in it." She pulled out her phone to look up the student file she saw on a 'Lelouch Lamperouge' the boy that they were positive was the long lost prince.

Upon pulling up the student body roll, though, Villetta froze. She refreshed the screen. And did again. And again. And again.

"They're not there!"

"What?!" Jeremiah gasped, looking over her shoulder. She was right. On the roll where the name 'Lamperouge' should be, was vacant, it just went on to the next student on the list: 'Lewis.'

"How is this possible?" Jeremiah demanded.

"Perhaps I can answer that," another female voice said from behind. Turning, the two Purebloods were greeted by none other than the Knight of Nine herself, Nonette Enneagram. She had arrived in Area 11 just over a week ago without warning. Viceroy Cornelia didn't complain, though she was quite annoyed with the unannounced arrival, the more soldiers to deal with the Elevens, the better. The Knight, for the most part, only took part in battle when asked, and had spent a majority of time researching the same academy that Jeremiah and Villetta had been scooping out.

"Lady Enneagram!" Jeremiah gasped, and bowed respectively, "I-I apologize, I didn't realize you were coming."

"Well, I'm here now," the Knight waved away the apology before stepping into the center of the room. "And as for the answer, I wouldn't be surprised if our little Lulu had this planned from the beginning."

"Planned? What do you mean?" Villetta asked.

"Think about it. The Ashfords have backed his mother, Marianne vi Brittania, since she became a Knight of the Round, even long before that. I wouldn't be surprised if they assisted in contingency plans in case we came too close to finding him and Nunna," despite the explanation, a layer of sadness did paint her tone.

"W-Why on Earth would he want to hide from us?" Jeremiah asked, shocked, "We're loyal to the royal family! If he thinks we aren't competent enough to protect them-"

"On the contrary," Nonette interrupted, "I do believe that he knows that, which is why he is hiding from us. Need I remind you why he and his sister were sent to Area 11 in the first place?"

Villetta grimaced as Jeremiah outwardly gasped, before lowering his head in shame. It was a low blow, but still possibly a fact.

"...Prince Lelouch…" he could only mutter.

o~o

"How long are we staying here, Sayoko?" Nunnally asked.

"Just a little while," the ninja maid assured her charge, "once we find a more secure shelter, we'll head there."

"...Do you think my brother is okay?" Nunnally asked, trembling in her tone.

The maid's eyes widened before she slowly knelt by Nunnally's chair, "I'm sure he is. He loves you, milady. No matter where he is, I'm sure he's doing everything in his power to get back to you. I just know it."

"...Okay," Nunnally nodded, accepting the answer.

Sayoko nodded before standing back up and slipping outside the safe house. She looked out over the vast ocean that surrounded the island of Japan. She instinctively rubbed her apron pocket. She still wasn't sure why, but one of the specific instructions Lelouch had given her, should his identity or Nunnally's be discovered, was to bring this item. She wasn't sure why her master seemed so attached to it, but she didn't question the order.

But despite the heavy wrappings around it, she could tell it was a knife.

#Fanfiction #AU #Code Geass #Voltron #lelouch lamperouge #c.c.#kallen kozuki #suzaku kururugi #rai (lost colors)#shirley fenette #rivalz cardemonde #milly ashford #princess allura #coran #nunnally lamperouge #sayoko

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mr-deblob · 5 years ago

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Tagged by @elennare (thanks for the tag!)

Your name: Online, people just call me some variation of blob, which I am absolutely cool and fine with.

Fandoms you write for: Well, I’ve only really done High Rollers fics. I hope to write for more fandoms, and I’ve thought about writing a Kingdom Hearts fic at some point.

Where you post: Ao3 all the way baby! Hugo-award winning site where I put up my technically award-winning by association fics.

Most popular one-shot: If you follow my blog, you probably know it. My first fanfic and the first Aerois-specific fanfic that’s also a shipping one: Safe. The super fluffy Quillucius fic that spawned from about two lines worth of RP. I’m honestly surprised that people liked it so much and that people still go ahead and reread it every so often. Thanks to all of you folks, I got myself motivation to write a whole bunch more!

Most popular multi-chapter story: Heh heh heh, I haven’t done one of those yet. But I’ve got two multi-chapter fics that I’m working on... will work on once I finish one of my oneshots.

Favorite story I’ve written: I know that I’ve got small pickings here, but I honestly gotta go with Love Languages for this. Even though it’s a short collection of drabbles, the small nature of it had me really cram as much warmth and affection into the Quillucius interactions, and when I actually read it for the first time in a while, I made myself get overwhelmed with how sweet it was? The things you don’t realize while writing...

A story you were nervous to post: Gifts. This one, I made myself a deadline to get it out on Christmas Day since it was a Christmas-themed oneshot the crew did, and the day before, I somehow managed to write over a third of the fic in one sitting on the Notes app on my phone. I was really nervous that I rushed and could’ve possibly ruined the ending by doing so, but it received a lot of love from you peeps! Thanks for that!

How do you choose your titles? I generally have an idea in my head of what I want the fic to revolve around and put down the first title that comes to mind. This usually leads my fics to have one word or phrased titles that bear the main theme of my story.

Do you outline? Every time I’ve done an outline, it was never for my personal writing. I generally let myself make up the plot as I go, having certain scenes or points in my mind that I try to connect and incorporate into what I’m actually doing. Doesn’t always work out though...

How many of your stories are complete? Well, you can count them on one hand. Got three published fics, but I’m hoping to break the double digits this year!

How many of your stories are in progress? Four! Two of them are multi-chapter ones (which I have to finish writing the first chapter of) and the other two are spawned from a prompt from @dementorsatemysoup. It was originally one fic, but then I realized that I actually began writing something completely different from what she gave me to work with. Hopefully, I will finish one by the end of this month. So long as college does not kill me.

Coming soon: Hopefully it’s the prompt. That’s the one that I’ve been working on the most recently. Usually my latest WIP takes precedence over others, but I might need to work on a rotation schedule to make steady progress on all my fics.

Do you accept prompts? Abso-bloody-lutely I do. Generally I come up with ideas on my own based on how the campaign is going, but feel free to hit me up if you have something specific you want to see me write!

Upcoming story you are most excited to write: Well, I thought up of a possible Quillucius Coffee Shop AU. I’ve been working out certain things in my head for how it would go, and I’m excited to start writing and exploring that type of AU that seems to be in every fandom!

Tagging @nekosounds @neonbluetiefling @dungeonraided @maddy-mack-writes and anyone else willing to do this! I only really tagged people who I know have Ao3 accounts, but I’m totally willing to read up on any fics any of you have written!

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lucyferthecatx · 7 years ago

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hey, kid !! wanna see some dank plots ??

this is, quite frankly, the worst title but plots !! and i found kakaotalk gif icons !! i am ecstatic right now

- lorna facilier -

+ maybe more exes or something + let her fall in love!! and then fall out of it!!! i want that guilt!! + oR can she pls fall in love with someone and she thinks it’s gonna be okay cause neither of them are in it for the long haul but then suddenly she IS and they ARENT and she’s sad + eventually give her that fairytale romance she’s always wanted

- ursa pines -

+ oh my god i want someone to steal her journal + a hunter or something??? and they literally use her life’s work for the exact opposite of what she wanted it to be used

- nigahayami takako -

+ she needs friends cause i wanna make sure someone cares if she dies + someone gotta be there to stop me from killing her

- lulu butterfly -

+ all i want is to have someone bully him cause idek how he’d react at this point + it’s either full sass or straight up fist cuffing with someone + he might even be a sad boi about it who knows not me

- marcellus carabosse -

+ honestly idek what he’s doing anymore he’s just supportive big brother + only supportive in secret tho + he tends to look like he’s looming and glooming give him a smol to make him smile

- cassandra la bouff -

+ can she have a crush pls where she’s just??? i’ve never had this before let me just shower them in presents + Gay Panic maybe where she’s just like HI I LIKE YOU HERE IS EVERYTHING MONEY CAN BUY + actual panic when someone uses magic near her cause ya girl got PTSD

- reyna ego -

+ she killed someone can someone call her out on it + she didnt mean to do it??? there’s a para for it but it’s not done + ooh what if she went to court for it??? + isle kids are scury !! much danger !!

- wyatt o’neil -

+ collabs!!! with literally anyone!!! + someone point out that the main ship on the vlogs is her and rita

- gwendolyn bandersnatch -

+ nurse bandy!! + can someone have a crush on her??? and they keep finding excuses to go to the health room so she can patch them up??? + she doesn’t even notice she just gets progressively more worried about their well being and increasingly more protective + like !!! friend !! take better care of your health please !!! and the other person is like why when i have you to patch me up?? and bandy is just !!!! no !!! thats not healthy pls!!!

- nudge chulanont -

+ i have nothing for him he’s just not ice skating and being gay

- teuila kahiki -

+ idek what she’s doing okay just chilling with her flowers and being gay + oHH what if someone stole her heart as a prank??? + full lava monster oooooohhhhhh

- uma blackwell -

+ * cough cough kill her cough cough *

- kevin the third -

+ please someone fight him + i just want to see him get into a fistcuff with someone + also want him to have a radio show or something where he’s like not the most talkative person but he just has a nice indie alternative station that he plays his playlist on

- bash cipher -

+ somehow let them bodyjump ??? + they’re super op tbh so like i really don’t know what to do with them anymore + let them steal a bunch of bodies and go wild + oooh wait someone start a cult for them or something. maybe sacrifice something to them for a favor!! they’ll think it’s funny

- blanche grimhilde -

+ i lowkey want her to completely rob someone + get close to someone and then steals everything from their home + not get caught tho?? + she’s lowkey a baddie but i want a happy ending for her give the girl a crown

- nessa st. north -

+ someone take her near kids + help her find a girl scout’s troop or something + she just wants to spend time with babies and shower them with gifts

- mikhail romanov -

+ someone come by his cafe + idek he’s just a gentleman so maybe someone can fall for him and he’s just too polite to say no?? + i honestly have no idea i just like writing his accent

- phil coulson jr. -

+ i forgot to write anything for him + he’s just here being an older brother.....doing babyvengers damage control......just wants to keep track of all his enhanced children

- etta lahiffe -

+ she is lowkey party girl cause she djs and she sings + can she like??? sing at someone at a performance and lowkey gets super into it and now she’s just hoping they come to the next show + or give me fucked up party relationship pls i have a need

- tiramisu candlehead -

+ Gay Disaster idek what she’s doing + give me party relationships okay like hey we hooked up at this party and now we’re partners in this project ayyyy + or we hooked up at this party and turns out you’re my roommate + awkward one night stands pls

- alec levefre -

+ CURSES!!! + be a dick and then have alec have to curse you until you learn your lesson + or let him have a crush where he’s just a vague idiot and sits there and makes them little trinkets + sends little metal birds that sing cute songs + he’ll curse someone for them

- aristotle tesia -

+ please someone flirt with him and watch him just blink awkwardly + he is the literal embodiment of platonic love + wanna be friends with someone??? he’s your dude!! don’t ask him to set you up with anyone cause he literally only knows compatibility on the basis of great friendships

- rhiannon thropp -

+ ask her to show you some magic tricks + she will put on an entire production for you + can she have like a rival of sorts?? idek she’s just super competitive + she wants to be better than the wizard of oz and she uses magic to incorporate it

- bellamy doone -

+ THE RINGING OF THE BELLS COMPEL YOU + can he try to eat someone?? he’s literally possessed and he eats people

- anya dezerta -

+ she’s like the weird desert bird lady version of charon so she typically helps the dead passover but she also interacts with the living + she can sense when people are close to death + she also has a mailbox that she sets up outside her dorm!! if she’s able, she delivers letters to lost loved ones in the afterlife so like?? if any character needs closure?? she can help

- luca pantazis -

+ okay but i highkey want some student to have a crush on him + cause he’s an Adult and i really want someone to just come in and get something pierced or something just because they thought he was cute + i forget who else wanted to be flower shop babs but uhhh?? flower shop meet cute??? cause he’s always there looking for references for flower tattoos??? yes pLS

- sensuo nana -

+ literal embodiment of war + she loves to cause conflict around her?? just somehow knows the exact thing to do to start an full out battle + if you want to start shit, she’s your girl cause she thrives on that drama

- emil sama -

+ schools are for hooooomans!! + the prejudiced pureblood asshole we dont need but im giving to us anyway + pureblood as in he has a very special hatred for anyone he doesn’t consider supernatural of sorts. humans are the worst + he’s an asshole just hmu if you need a discriminatory fuckboi asshole in your life

#honestly i have no idea what i'm doing clearly #but ryan is here and he's getting me through it #( ;; plots )#( ;; too many characters to tag )

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cbspams · 4 years ago

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Kingdom: Legendary war - 100 second performances

TBH I dont wanna write full essays on these little intro performances even though I have a lot of thoughts, so they're all gonna be on this one post.

ATEEZ: I loved the introduction!! Dude the acting?? Seonghwa's full staggering?? Dope as fuck. The strings instrumental as well as the rough waves sound were a great introduction to the theme. A good performance overall, I think it genuinely highlighted and set up the kind of group ATEEZ is. I struggled a bit with the song choice because Wave (original) is so upbeat and free spirited while the kingdom version felt very aggressive. But I figured maybe they chose it because it's (1) their first music show win (important mentally and emotionally) and (2) it fits the pirate theme they're going to carry on in the show. Speaking of theme, I really liked that ATEEZ stuck to their guns and kept to the pirate theme. It's clearly a sort of icon for them, in Pirate King and Wave, and also in Wonderland (large pirate ship at the end) and THANXX (ships and sharks in the air, skull on the float). I do worry this will somehow limit their performances from now on but a continuous theme can be very powerful as well.

BTOB: Y'all I did not know anything about BTOB tbh. I've heard their songs here and there but I didn't know them at all and listening to this version of Beautiful Pain, I am stunned. Like I've always respected kpop idols as the ones who can do it all, especially in comparison to American celebrities who tend to be very one tracked in many ways, but BTOB really brings up a new level of skill in their singing. Eunkwang in particular really impressed me! He has really strong, stable vocals and is able to achieve those impactful long notes that I know for a fact is difficult to anyone who doesn't train with singing in mind in particular. He kind of reminds me of Hui from Pentagon and RTK? Technically it should be that Hui reminds me of him but like I got to know Hui first so yknow. I think the drawback for BTOB will be how they incorporate themes and action in their performances, as ballad songs tend to be very mellow in comparison to the kind of aggressive EDM/hip hop the other groups are known for.

SF9: I stan now. Just like, fact. I already really liked Summer Breeze and Good Guy from SF9 but I feel like their time on Kingdom has really suckered me into learning about them. But just from this introduction performance, I think it's really interesting what kind of strengths they were playing into. I know SF9 is pretty well known for their physique and appearances, as well as their individual acting ability. Like the mentioned during the episode, they do a lot of individual activities which I think would make a show like Kingdom really difficult for them because they don't have a lot of time to practice together as the other groups do. Still, I believe they can put on excellent performances if they play to their strengths and manage to show good team synergy. The intro performance is interesting because it was really intense, which was sort of off-set in some ways by their costuming and set design. I actually would have loved if they had taken more of a boss stance, like they're CEOs of the company or something with the matching lighting and LED screen displays. I feel like that would have really enhanced their suits and gelled hair. Still though!! Great job!! And please, huge shoutout to Taeyang who struggled with the body pack, I'm really impressed by his laser focus during the performance. I know it must be disappointing but he did well.

Stray Kids: My boys!! My babies!! I love how they carried the theme from the performance film that Minho stared in. Wolves is a wonderful concept for Kingdom for a variety of reasons. Wolves are a common standard in medieval representations (GOT as an example) so that's really symbolic of them participating in Kingdom. Additionally, I really like how it gives that kind of wild energy to SKZ, similar to how in Back Door they gave off really party-esque vibes. I also think of the aggression of wolves in defending their territory which is a cool intimidation tactic kinda? It's likely unintentional but it's still very cool. Choosing MIROH was kind of obvious, given it's importance as their very first win (like ATEEZ) and also the theme of the song being about freedom and being the king of the concrete jungle. The arrangement was so cool, seriously seriously Chan how do you do it?? Chan and Hui become friends please. I liked how they, like TBZ, used more of the stage than some of the other groups. Like Minho on the bleacher seats. Props wise, Changbin's firework was awesome although I don't necessarily know what kind of role it plays in the theme of the performance? But yeah, it was incredible and they totally deserved first place for that.

TBZ: Yooooo what was that start?? That posing?? Y'all please, my heart isn't strong enough for this. Eric's mf core strength to be able to sit up from that position-- hhhhh. I'm genuinely curious as to what theme they were thinking about when they made this because there's such a unique genre to the performance. It's daring, challenging, elegant and impactful. The whispering opening lines from Eric 100% made goosebumps creep up my arm. I also think it's interesting that they had a sort of rising from the ashes moment when all the members collapse and then come back up. This performance was an incredible showing of the full scope of TBZ's skills, as a group with incredible formations and dancing ability. I mean the hands in the camera? Really shows how their time on RTK has helped familiarize them to the stage available on Kingdom. That ballet bit with the classical piano?? (COOL LEDS AND TRANSITIONS TOO YO) Bro, how many other groups could do that so smoothly. It reminds me of the differences they had in RTK, like how Quasi una fantasia was a very modern dance-esque piece. I'm really hoping they continue to show their variety and creativity on Kingdom as they did in RTK and in this performance. Side note: GOT themed?? I'm gonna have to monitor that carefully because I'm not a GOT nut but my roommate is and I feel like if that's the theme then there should be some level of commitment to the concept, on a theatrical execution sense.

iKON: I've mentioned this before but this is possibly my favorite performance out of all of these for this intro round. I didn't really appreciate it at first but I keep going back to it because the arrangement is so interesting! The combination of their hip-hop original beat and the the aggression of the instrumentals (like the drumming beat and the flute) is so fun to listen to. I also like that they start off really strong and then really show off how fun they can be, like how Donghyuck (DK) and Jinhwan (Jay)'s duoing was really powerful and then post transition (which was also really clean!), Bobby had the time of his life just popping off the way he does. Bobby seems so carefree and that's amazing, I think that's so fun. I really like that iKON used their arms at the beginning too. Based on the other performance clips I've seen for rounds 1 and 2, that kind of movement seems to be their thing and that's awesome!! I gotta mention, Jinhwan is an incredible dancer. Even though iKON doesn't seem to have the same synchronization that TBZ, SKZ and ATEEZ have, it kind of really works in their favor because of the hip hop vibes they devote themselves too. Hip hop is all about individual expression so it's really fun to see their little quirks! That said, I do hope they're able to polish up a little bit so that it doesn't seem too out of sync, like when Donghyuck was a beat off in bit where they raise their arms together.

All in all, the intro performances really did stick to the charms each team has! That's really incredible and I really like that. Onto round 1!

lol i'm really out here always saying i dont wanna write full essays and then blowing up. anyways, if you haven't gotten the chance to check out the performances, I highly recommend watching them below!

ATEEZ - BTOB - SF9 - SKZ - TBZ - iKON

#admin talk #kingdom commentary #kingdom performance comments

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kari-izumi · 7 years ago

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Mokuba’s Reason Why Not: Chapter One

Or, “Hey, Kari is Finally Gonna Post That 5+1 Fic She’s Been Dropping Hints About Since Forever”

So, finally…finally, I have something I can live with for this prologue. This was originally 900 words, and now it’s over three times as long. And I don’t think I’ve ever edited a story this many times as I have this one chapter. I’m still not 100 percent, but I need to feel like I’ve made some progress in any part of my crumbling life, so here it is.

I haven’t posted on AO3 yet just in case anyone here has any suggestions to make it stronger before going live (it’s not beta'ed since I’ve been outta fandom for years and I’ve lost contact with most of the folks I used to talk with…but given the pairing, it may have been a hard sell anyway…or not, given the response that this postgot).

So, the premise began with me wanting to write a whole different idea entirely. Actually, two–I tried writing this scenario from several viewpoints but it was far too angsty for my liking. To get into the second idea would be to spoil future chapters. But doing a 5+1 story could incorporate a whole bunch of ideas and characters I wanted to write for as well as to subvert that teen playboy and the prudish nerd girl trope because seriously, did anyone watch seasons four and five and notice how forward Rebecca was towards Yuugi?

Okay, those seasons suck ass, but you know what I mean XD

On that tangent, fair warning: lots of making out in this chapter. I struggled a lot with how um…detailed to make this. Namely to keep as little as possible. And honestly, all the “writing about children having sex at any point in their lives, even years after canon as teens/adults makes you a pedo” bullshit on this site made me nervous about posting this at all. I don’t have a problem with blocking anyone who will ship bash. Don’t like; don’t read applies here. But there won’t be any sex depicted in future chapters.

Beyond that, any comments and critiques are more than welcomed in my inbox.

Title:Mokuba’s Reason Why Not Pairing:Kiddyshipping, with a couple surprise pairings on the side Chapters:1/7 Summary: “Losing his virginity isn’t something he’s planned on in this busy week, but when an intelligent, awesome girl like Rebecca admits to having the hots for him, Seto is out of town and no one else is going to stop them, the question isn’t why he should do it, but why not?

If any two fifteen years old have ability to tell if this is a good idea, it’s them.”

Or, the five times Mokuba thinks he's got this sex thing figured out and the one time he knows for sure what it is he wants.

—

Fifteen year olds doing homework with their friends happens every afternoon. Normally, it’s for a trig class or Japanese literature or focusing on the college entrance exam.

Fifteen year olds working after class to have a bit of spending money is also common. They have a delivery route or know a family friend in need of a help at the local restaurant.

A fifteen year old girl researching historic artifacts for her university master thesis, five thousand miles away from home is rare. A fifteen year old boy who holds the Vice Presidency of a major gaming corporation whose spending money is more than what most take home in their entire lives is even less seldomly seen.

“We really do have crazy busy lives,” Rebecca remarks on one such afternoon. She holds a textbook open with one hand while writing notes into a tablet with the other. “It’s almost like we’re not even kids anymore.”

From the other side of the desk in his corporate office, Mokuba glances through his own stack of papers; some are contracts to be reviewed, others mundane reports. He’s been at this all day, and if he’s honest, it’s all starting to run together.

It’s not like he has much time to think about stuff like that, least of all these past two weeks. There are times that he wants a bit more normalcy–being able to attend after school clubs or blow off work for a party. But for all that is unusual about his life, he’s content for what it is. He’s got an awesome brother, a set future, plenty of friends–and Rebecca, sitting across from his desk, who understands the pressure of high expectations better than anyone else his age.

Blinking his eyes as he looks over at her, Mokuba says with a wiry grin, “Yeah, but I’ve gotten used to it. I can’t imagine any other way of life. Could you?”

“Eh?” She looks up from her tablet, tapping the pen at her mouth the way she always does when she’s got something she’s contemplating. “I guess I can’t. Even if I wasn’t a prodigy, I think being in high school for four years and gossiping about clothes and boys would have gotten pretty boring anyway. I’m pretty glad for my life and I enjoy all the friends I’ve made in the pro dueling circuit. Like you.“

He sits up even straighter in his seat.

“Its nice having someone my age who isn’t intimidated by me being smart.”

Mokuba feels the room, which is already soundproofed to block outside noise, grow even more quiet as a certain warm, ecstatic feeling comes over him at her words. Intimidated? Her intelligence was his favorite thing about her! “You broke through Nii-sama’s security and helped us get the company back. I guess people might get freaked out, but I think that’s awesome.”

It’s not the first time they’ve discussed DOMA or her crazy hacking skills. But Rebecca usually brags that she could teach him a few new skills and not lower her eyes as her cheeks grow pink.

Letting out a cough, Rebecca asks hurriedly as she resumes scanning through her book, “Speaking of him, when does Kaiba come back from Hong Kong, anyway?”

“Monday afternoon,” he replies. He goes back to his own stack of papers, pretending as he always does that he doesn’t notice or care how much he truly likes having her around. And sure, she’s gotten hot over the past year, objectively speaking; but more than that, her boundless enthusiasm for gaming and school and everything is hard not to get suck into.

Rebecca speaks again. “You looked like you were spacing out for a moment.”

“It’s fine,” Mokuba says automatically as he picks up a new report to glance over.

“Bullshit! Have you even slept in the past few days?”

“Work’s gotta get done. Not like I’m going to school tomorrow.”

“That’s no answer!”

Rebecca reaches over for his free hand, and not even the clearly angry, frustrated scowl on her face negates the sudden jolt of electricity that shoots up through his arm.

“Look, I know a thing or two about all-nighters, and it doesn’t do you or your project any good to burn yourself out. If you work yourself to death like you tell me Kaiba does, how can you help him?”

Realizing that she still is holding his hand–and that somehow, their pinkies have become entwined–they both turn away from each other, but neither moves. Mokuba doesn’t blush that easily with his completion but he does feel his ears burn. “I mean…you’re right about that. I haven’t slept much, but…I’ll try.”

Sighing she says. “No, I shouldn’t bring it up. I know you’re working to keep up the company for your brother. But I can’t help it to bring up a better way of doing things a when I see it.” Rebecca laughs as she adds, quietly, “You probably think I’m too outspoken.”

“What? Not at all! There’s nothing wrong with passion and speaking up. And if other people have a problem with that, that’s their issue, not yours.” He believes this firmly, and looks her square in the eye as he says this. “And I like that you’re direct. You’re like the most honest person I know.”

Rebecca looks like she wants to say something, but closes her mouth. Her expression changes to one of resolve–Mokuba’s noticed the same look appear during her duels when she’s deciding on the best play against her opponent; beyond that he isn’t sure what else to read into it. Maybe he’s said too much, he wonders as she removes her hand from his to close her tablet and textbook, placing them into the bag on the floor. It’s only the training he’s gotten from Seto on how to school his face and emotions when he needs to that keeps him from showing any emotion of his own, as he realizes how nervous he is.

Mokuba watches her stand up out of her seat…

…and walks around the desk, stopping right at his chair, spinning it towards her. His heart nearly stops when Rebecca leans over and places a hand on either shoulder, rolling one thumb on the collar of the blue dress shirt he wore that day.

“How about I show you what I’m feeling?”

Her eyes really more like emeralds when her face is this close, brilliant and clear and reflecting the afternoon sun.

Mokuba has thought about this and thinks of his best line to respond:

“Um…wait, what?”

Rebecca doesn’t seem to mind or care that his brain has short circuited as she coos in a voice that’s far quieter than he thinks she is capable of. “Shut up, Mokuba.”

It happens so quickly that Mokuba doesn’t have time to close his eyes or to move his hands off the armrests. Her lips feel so soft along his and a current shoots through him from the sensation.

Rebecca jumps away suddenly, covering her mouth with her hands. Her eyes are wide in shock.

“Did you feel that…that spark?!” she squeaks.

“Wow…yeah.” He definitely felt that, placing two fingers on his own mouth, which is still a bit tingly. “But I liked it, though.”

He really did…and thinks it could be better. Mokuba stands up and pulls Rebecca close, his arms wrapping around her shoulders as her hands reach for his neck.

“You’re so tall,” she notes, looking up at him with a rapt expression, her voice so quiet.

With his own goofy grin Mokuba tilts her chin up to kiss her again, and hell yeah, this is a whole lot better indeed, being able to hold her close, catching the glimpse of a smile each time they break apart. The air grows still and the light gets slightly brighter through the window and he entirely forgets the rest of the world. So maybe he wouldn’t have picked his office for their first kiss; but then nothing in their lives follows the typical teenage script anyway.

As if by some primal urge that he doesn’t fully understand, Mokuba soon finds himself guiding Rebecca onto the top of the desk. She looks down, being careful not to knock over the forgotten stack of papers before leaning back, propping herself on her elbows.

Rebecca lets out an excited giggle. “You have a chair, you know!”

“Yeah,” he says, resting one hand along her hip and gripping her cheek with the other. “But it’s more fun like this.”

Mokuba becomes very aware of the way her thighs squeeze his hips, pulling them even closer. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

He hasn’t planned any of this, but being a Kaiba, he’s long since learned to roll with the unexpected and wield it to his advantage…and from the muffled sounds Rebecca makes as their mouths connect, she’s enjoying this a lot. And he enjoys that she’s enjoying this as the languid, chaste kisses soon give way to deeper, more intense ones each time they separate for air. Their tongues meet, tentatively at first, then more often; their hands begin roaming along backs and hips and twisting into one another’s hair as the silence in the room is filled with increasingly louder, heavier, more ragged breathing.

“…Mokuba?”

“Mmmm…?”

Rebecca pulls away, her cheeks a dark red, looking down briefly as she asks. “…that’s not your cell phone, is it?”

He freezes immediately, feeling his face growing heated and his mouth goes dry. “Umm…no,” he whispers.

It comes back to him right now–that conversation that he had with Seto a few months ago about biological urges taking over rational thought in the heat of a passionate moment and promise me you’ll take a minute to think it over, Mokuba–or rather, that Seto insisted on having with him over breakfast, the morning after the last tournament. Next the actual sex talk two years ago, it was easily the most awkward and out-of-the-blue conservations Mokuba could remember, and he still hasn’t figured out what exactly prompted him to bring it up when he did.

Maybe Seto realized somehow that this exact situation was going to happen, sooner rather than later.

Rebecca–rather than being bashful by…well, him–is grinning wickedly. “I’m glad.”

Mokuba can barely register her implication as she rolls her hips against his, hooks her legs even tighter and sucks down on a spot right behind his ear and that–that entirely throws his rational thought away so thoroughly that if he wasn’t so entirely turned on, it might have scared him to think he could lose control of himself this quickly–to grab a tight hold of her hair as he lays her back into the smooth wooden surface, being urged on by the noises as he kisses her neck, and desiring to grab her hips to test out how truly soundproof this office really is–

“Mokuba-sama,” he hears.

They both freeze, and the temperature in the room plummets instantly as everything comes crashing back into focus. Mokuba snaps up straight as his eyes instantly focus towards the door that he’s sure he didn’t lock to find it still firmly shut.

“It’s just the intercom,” he tells her, sighing in relief.

“I guess you have to get that soon…” says Rebecca. Her smile is unusually relaxed, even for her.

Mokuba gives her a slight grin in return.“If I don’t pick up, he’ll worry and call Nii-sama.”

“Hmmm.”

“Mokuba-sama, are you there? I have the tournament scheduling you asked for.”

Taking a moment to steady his breathing again, Mokuba reaches out for the intercom button, trying desperately to keep his voice flat and neutral. “Yeah, I’m here, just…can you leave it by the door?”

There’s a slight pause before Isono replies, “Yes, Mokuba-sama.”

Apart from the shock of nearly getting caught, a part of Mokuba is thankful for the interruption. What the hell was that?! He rubs at his face, feeling as though he’s coming back into his body as he remembers the other part of Seto’s talk: a list of all condom brands available in every country Kaiba Corporation did business in.

“Damn, that was too close,” he says, after a pause, low under his breath.

“I’ll say. I don’t what Isono would have done if he’d saw us like this,” Rebecca says with a sly smile and a wink.

Mokuba decides against any clarification on that as he pulls her up, helping her off the desk before pulling her into a chaste hug. His cheek rests against the top of Rebecca’s head, taking in the comforting scents of bright yuzu lemon and sweet jasmine in her hair.

“I’m sorry,“ he says.

“For what?”

“Because I didn’t even think about using…um…when we were about to…”

Rebecca catches his meaning and the smile is beaming as she kisses his cheek. “You silly. It’s sweet you were worried, but I’ve taken the pill for awhile anyway…just in case.”

“Oh.”

Oh.

The thought that Rebecca has been thinking about this…with him…for a while is a huge ego boost and flattered is too weak a word to describe the feeling that comes over him. But then, she’s one of the smartest people he knows.

She continues, not meeting his eyes as her face goes from a slight pink to deep red. “You’re the first guy that I’ve really felt like I wanted to…um, I mean…well, you know.”

“Me, too,” he replies. Maybe he hasn’t given nearly as much planning, but this afternoon…damn. Mokuba doesn’t remember a time when he’s smiled this much or felt so alive. “That was so crazy intense. I felt like…wow.”

“I know.”

There’s a look in her eyes, Mokuba notices–the one Rebecca gets when she’s got a plan or an idea that, he knows from experience, she won’t let go of. But there’s something else behind it this time, and realizes she had a similar look right before they were interrupted–

“I think we should do it.”

Her arms tighten around his back, clinging onto his shirt, her eyes oddly serious.

Mokuba isn’t sure how far his jaw has dropped. Rebecca has never exactly been shy about going for what she wants; she certainly wasn’t earlier. But stating it so plainly just makes it all so real.

“What’s with that look?” Rebecca’s smile doesn’t quite look as natural as usual. “Didn’t you want to do it earlier?”

“Well, yeah,” Mokuba says and squeezes her shoulders more tightly, and he’s never been so aware of his own heartbeat. “But this is moving a little fast, isn’t it?”

“Eh?” Rebecca snaps her head up, scanning the office with a look of disbelief. “Look at where we are! Our whole lives have been moving fast for as long as either of us can remember. At least this is our decision.”

“Shouldn’t we go on a date first?!”

“Well obviously, we’d go out to dinner first. I have standards.”

“That’s not what I mean!” he sighs, closing his eyes. “I mean, I really want to…you know…but we just figured out that we like each other like that. Why rush?”

“Is this any more crazy than you missing class to run a company or me having yet another degree before I can legally drive here or back home? Kids our age are doing it anyway–”

“Did you really just–?”

She places a finger to his lips. “–and we obviously click. Why would we wait?”

Mokuba opens his mouth to counter, but nothing comes out. Rebecca isn’t wrong; he knows all the reasons kids their age are told to wait, but the biggest one–ruining your future–would hardly apply to them. He’s already lived through things that would have entirely broken many others. In nearly every other way that matters, they might as well be adults already.

Even if Mokuba isn’t exactly sure he’s ready for that step right now, there isn’t anyone else he would even consider sharing this with…so does it really matter if they do this now or in a few months anyway? The newly awakened part of his mind reminds him of the excitement of wanting to melt into one another, hearing her cry out in pure bliss at his touch; the images quickly crush the nagging voice that says slow down because you want more than just sex.

“Not like anyone would stop us anyway,” Mokuba points out. Arthur Hawkins still resides in San Francisco in between his archeological digs, Isono he’s sure wouldn’t breathe a word of it to anyone as long as he comes home before Seto gets back–

Shit.

As far as he knows, Mokuba officially has more first hand knowledge of this subject than Seto does at twenty years old. How would he even begin to approach this subject with him? Would Seto even understand? Or try to stop him?

“You said Kaiba won’t be back till Monday?” Rebecca asks as though she could read his mind.

Mokuba blinks a few times as the realization kicks in. “Yeah…”

Maybe just this once, Seto doesn’t have to know anything about this at all.

Rebecca strokes behind his ear, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “So, Saturday works?”

Losing his virginity isn’t something he’s planned on in this busy week, but when an intelligent, awesome girl like Rebecca admits to having the hots for him, Seto is out of town and no one else is going to stop them, the question isn’t why he should do it, but why not?

If any two fifteen years old have ability to tell if this is a good idea, it’s them.

He reaches for her neck to bring her in for a quick kiss on the forehead as he says, “Let’s do it.”

I bet I can totally feel her up now.

He goes for it, slipping one hand into the opening of her shirt.

–and gets his hand slapped hard.

“Ow!”

Rebecca cheerfully waves a finger at his nose. “Nuh-uh!”

“But–!”

“Nope!”

“Weren’t we gonna do it earlier?!”

“Yeah, but it’ll be way more exciting to wait, won’t it?” She giggles as she pulls away and claims her backpack. “Besides, it’s only two days. I’m sure you can wait that long.”

Mokuba honestly doesn’t know how he’s managed to live this long without it!

“Can’t I feel over the shirt?”

“Hmmm…” Rebecca pretends to think on it, tapping a finger against her chin. “No, that’d be way too distracting when I get home. Sorry!”

“Distracting how?”

Rebecca doesn’t respond as she heads towards the door, only giggles. “You’re way more innocent than I thought…oh…”

The tournament schedule that Isono left, he remembers. He walks towards the door and reaches down for the folder.

“Oooh, I wanna see who I’m up against!”

“Sorry, Rebecca,” he says. “You know I can’t show anyone that.”

“Awww! Not even a hint?”

He pretends not to notice the hand that reaches his arm as he taps the folder lightly on the top of her head. He’s grinning as he replies, “Won’t it be more fun to wait?”

They lock eyes; a second later they’ve pulled each other into another searing kiss, but Mokuba breaks it off before either can get carried away again.

“Saturday,” he tells her.

Rebecca blinks, her hand lingering on his chest for a second before taking a step back and heads out the door. “Yeah…see ya.”

Mokuba takes his folder back to his desk, but sets down without opening its contents. There’s no way he can go back to his work now or even go to sleep with thoughts about Rebecca–

Distraction.

…oh.

He suddenly feels a bit distracted himself at the thought, regretting the decision to have this suit tailored so snug to his lithe frame. Mokuba growls, running both hands in his hair.

It’s going to be a long two days.

#mokuba kaiba #rebecca hawkins #kiddyshipping #yugioh #yu-gi-oh!#fanfiction #5+1 fic #finally fucking done #i have outlines of future chapters so no danger of this being abandoned #mokuba's reason why not #lots of making out #doesnt cross lines but it uses it as a jump rope #rated t/pg 13

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