#and everyone telling him he is

[missmungoe]

I couldn't help myself, so here's my take on the Elbaf scenes in 1076, featuring pirate!Makino. Follows a pirate's idea of peace.

This is what the kids call couple goals

“Kyaa! He’s so cute!!!”

“And so charming!!”

“And those cheeks!”

From his seat beside her, Shanks pouted, his eyes trained on the spectacle happening across the tavern. “That used to be me. And my cheeks.”

On the other side of the bar, their son’s shrieking giggles lifted over the din, hoisted in the air as he was passed between the giants who’d flocked around him. For his part, Ace seemed as unperturbed by the attention as he was by the giants, but then as in so many things, he was his father’s son; Makino knew of no one else who could become an attraction simply by setting foot somewhere.

Patting his back, warm through the fabric of his cloak, “I'm sure they haven’t forgotten you,” Makino said. “But you can't blame them, he is ridiculously cute.”

“That’s not the point! I used to be ridiculously cute!”

As though on cue, Ace made an adorable little coo, which had the whole tavern of hardened warriors erupting into a frenzy.

“You’re still popular, my love,” Makino said, with a nod at the boy seated by the bar, wearing a similar pout, his petition to join their crew rejected. “See? There's someone who still looks up to you!”

His shoulders sagging, “It’s not the same,” Shanks sighed.

“Give it up,” Ben said. “You’ve been replaced.”

“But it's too soon! I'm still in the prime of my life!"

Grinning around his toothpick, Ben looked like he was having the time of his life. Makino almost asked him to go easy on him, but given what he’d put up with for so many years, a little schadenfreude was probably warranted.

"It was bound to happen sooner or later," their first mate said. "Aren't you the one always going on about the new era overtaking the old?"

"First of all, so not the same," Shanks said. "And secondly, these cheeks can't be out of date, they're still firm! You could bounce a coin off this ass!"

"Don't," Makino said, when he turned towards her, his mouth already open, and when he pouted, spluttered, "I'm not bouncing a coin off it!"

"I think the barmaid would if you asked her," Yasopp said, a grin flashed at Makino that had her averting her gaze demurely, but then those shrewd eyes missed nothing, least of all the fact that in spite of their captain's griping, their son wasn't the only one drawing longing looks from across the tavern.

Shanks didn't seem to have noticed, and with a wolfish grin, told her, "There's only one barmaid I'd want to bounce a coin off my ass."

Her laughing sigh didn't succeed in being as suffering as she'd hoped, but then it was hard when he was beaming at her like that. "You say the most romantic things," Makino sighed.

Shanks just grinned, his look adoring, and she held her tongue from saying that if he kept looking at her like that, she might actually take him up on the coin thing.

Her gaze swept the crowded tavern, the rough wooden floorboards and the burning braziers warming the room, the cheerful din like any other bar they'd visited, and it might have fooled her into thinking it really was just any other bar if it hadn't been for certain noticeable differences.

Observing the enormous tankards and ceramic cups on the tables, not to mention the giant-sized plates and cutlery, Makino tried her best to look like a fabled island of giants had been what she’d expected when she’d gotten out of bed that morning, to the sound of their ship’s bell announcing the first sight of land. Shanks had already been up, their son on his hip where she'd found him at the helm, observing their approach, and that alone should have told her it wasn't just a normal island, but his smile hadn't surrendered anything as he'd kissed her good morning and told her to get ready to disembark.

And from afar, it had looked like any other island, and only when she'd asked where they were and Shanks had told her, breezily, "War-Land", had she realised something was up, although hadn't been given the chance to ask what that name suggested when a tuna the size of their ship had breached the surface right next to the hull, and she'd screamed so loudly she'd nearly sent Fen tumbling out of the crow's nest.

So yeah, the giants had been a surprise.

She jumped when a massive ceramic cup was dropped on the table before her, the mead within sloshing against the sides like waves in a pool.

“For the little Empress!” the giant whose name she'd learned was Brogy announced.

“Drink up!” his companion laughed, lifting his own cup in encouragement; Makino had learned his name was Dorry. “Knowing how you drink, Red-Hair, your wife must have quite the stomach herself, ge gya gya gya!”

Makino stared into the vat of mead. It could have fit her. “Er―”

“I’ll take that,” Shanks said, lifting the giant cup with ease, a grin flashed as he told her, “Since I’m drinking for two.”

She was about to point out that it wasn’t how it worked, when the two giants blinked, exchanging a look, before their eyes shot back down to her, and it took everything she had not to flinch, but then either one of them could have easily plucked her from her seat with a single hand.

Then, in booming timbres that shook the table where they were sitting: “Apologies, lady!”

“We didn’t realise you were with bairn!”

Their bellows had drawn the attention of the rest of the tavern, and holding up her hands, her laugh was predictably flustered, but then even terrifyingly big, their blustering personalities were hard not to like. “That’s alright,” Makino said, smoothing her fingers over the bump glimpsed between the gap in her cloak, the fire in the copper braziers dancing over the silver and the velvet. "But I hope you don't mind that I don't partake. The mead looks very―", she glanced at the giant cup again, and the daunting amount of mead, and was suddenly thankful her pregnancy had saved her from attempting to take a sip, when she doubted she would have been able to lift it, "―refreshing."

Grinning down at her, “I’m sure you’d show us your drinking prowess if you could!” Dorry declared with a booming laugh.

She caught Shanks’ smile, which knew full well she got tipsy after a single human-sized cup of sake, but, “Oh, you know it,” Makino said, with a laugh that sounded unconvincing even to her own ears, but the giants only looked delighted.

“Barmaid!” Brogy bellowed, and so forcefully she jumped. “Some meat for Red-Hair’s wife! An expectant mother must be kept well-fed at all times!”

“Aye!" Brogy agreed. "She’ll need it to birth a strong warrior!”

"To the little warrior maiden!"

Rousing hollers sounded from around the tavern as they all thrust their tankards and cups into the air, their crew included, whose beaming delight at her predicament hadn't escaped her.

For her own part, Makino tried her best to gracefully endure the attention, while also politely declining the continued offers of food, their table already filling up, with cuts of meat as big as she was, and pickled herring, and a bowl of stew so big she would have needed to climb it to see the top.

“Are you pleased?” she murmured, catching Shanks’ grin as more giants appeared to offer their congratulations, and their wishes for the child in her belly to grow big and strong, to which she was tempted to say that after her last birth, a twenty-hour pelvic nightmare, "big" was the opposite of what she was hoping for.

“For the delight showered upon my tiny warrior wife?” Shanks asked, nodding his thanks to the barmaid who appeared with another plate of food, even as he hadn’t taken his eyes off her. “It’s what she deserves.”

Makino huffed, but lowering her voice, murmured, “I think they’d be disappointed to learn the truth.” That unlike her husband, she didn't have the constitution to hold her own in a drinking match against humans, let alone giants, or that while she carried a sword, she'd just started learning. She wasn't a warrior. Not like the ones on this island, anyway.

“What truth?” Shanks asked, his head tilted to look at her. “She’s one of the strongest people I know. And if anyone knows the value of strength, it’s these guys.” Lifting the ceramic vat like it weighed nothing, he raised his voice to call across the tavern, “To my wife!”

The toast was returned with cheers so deafening it shook the foundation of the whole building, the sound like a battle-drum where it reached up through the bench where she was sitting to fill her chest, and despite her immediate instinct to retreat from the centre of attention, her smile was helpless, subjected to their rousing approval now.

Shanks just grinned, although his look was gentler, holding her eyes as he tipped the cup back.

The din from his toast was still settling, and observing the tavern, she felt a moment of displacement, the kind that had become increasingly common in her new life, as Makino wondered how she’d ended up here, on an island of giants with one of the most feared crews in the world.

Her eyes drifted in the direction of the bar, and the boy who’d so proudly proclaimed his desire to join them, the image resurfacing memories of her own bar, and another little boy pouting into his glass. And for a brief moment the wooden walls and furs and braziers were replaced with summer green paint and soft curtains, and her neatly stacked shelves, the glasses polished to gleaming. Even the barmaid behind the counter had changed, smaller now, her fair hair darker and drawn back by a kerchief, a shanty hummed on her breath as she polished the glass in her hand, stealing a glance across the crowded bar to the handsome captain at the nearby table.

She blinked, and Party’s was gone, the noise of the Elbaf tavern rushing back around her, and the giant barmaid polishing a glass behind the counter was the same as she had been, although her gaze remained fixed on their table, Makino saw; one of the few whose attention hadn’t been stolen by their son.

But in spite of his earlier dramatics, Shanks didn’t appear to notice, his eyes on her, but then even if she'd grown accustomed to the attention her husband compelled whenever they were in port, he never indulged it. And she knew he hadn’t missed where her thoughts had gone when he asked her gently, “Thinking about Party’s?”

Her smile gave her away, she knew, but, “I’m just not used to being on this side of the bar,” Makino said. But then, her voice lowered between them, "But I miss it sometimes."

His smile understood, but then he always did. “I miss flirting with the barmaid there,” Shanks said, a finger hooked under her chin to lift it, and her eyes where they'd lowered. “But now I get to flirt with my wife, so I’m not complaining.”

Despite several years of marriage, her reaction wasn't any smoother than when she'd been nineteen, and she couldn't help her flustered grin, or the gratifying little flip her stomach did, hearing the envious sighs from the women around them, and saw Shanks had caught it when his grin widened.

“Oh?” he purred, and gripped her chin before she could turn her face away to hide the evidence. “Is someone preening over being the captain’s girl?”

She huffed, puffing up her cheeks, although it was hard to look serious when he looked so delighted. And so instead she asked, prim, “And what if I am?”

His grin had forgotten all about his earlier dramatics, but his chuckle was softer as Shanks told her, “You know, this might actually make up for our son stealing my spotlight.”

Makino shook her head, although his gratification made it hard to keep a straight face, or to look directly at his, handsome in a way that never failed to steal her breath, and most of her thoughts, observing the chiselled angles of his jaw and the clear grey eyes, hooded under his scars, and the dark stubble of his beard ruggedly sweeping his cheeks. The silver scar on his lip, tugged by the roguish smile that stretched along his mouth, wide and made for smiling. Well; that, and other things.

But it wasn't about his looks, even if it was hard to explain the feeling, one she’d been intimately acquainted with ever since their very first meeting but that had only grown stronger since coming out to sea with him, and witnessing the way he was greeted wherever they docked; the kindness and grace he showed that was returned in equal measure. To be chosen by someone like him...

The lump in her throat made it hard to speak, but they'd never needed an excess of words to understand each other, even if it felt important to say this, and so, “I’m proud to be yours,” Makino said simply.

She’d caught him by surprise, she saw, and for all his confidence and years of being accustomed to the fawning attention of strangers, it was an uniquely gratifying feeling to be able to catch him off guard with her honesty. But then even confident, he’d never taken her feelings for granted.

Taking his hand to kiss his fingers, Makino felt how they shook. And if it was a claim, let them see it.

His eyes hadn’t left her, gentle under his scars, but then for all the adoration he garnered, he made no secret of where his own affections lay.

Of course, it wasn’t just his fawning supporters competing for pieces of him.

There was a commotion happening outside. Makino had been trying to ignore it, already suspecting what it heralded, although wasn’t given the chance to ask Shanks what he planned to do about it when Rockstar appeared in the doorway.

“Boss! That bastard’s actually attacking us!" He sounded genuinely offended on his captain's behalf, but then Makino had always liked that about him.

"So far they’ve just been scraping with our youngsters, but what do you want to do about him?" Rockstar continued, with a glance over his shoulder. "At this rate it’ll turn into a full-on battle soon!”

Her heart stuttered, but then unlike her husband's fan-club, this was something she had not gotten used to, the months she’d been at sea with them.

Shanks sighed, although took the news of an impending battle in characteristic stride. “I don’t know whether to call this good or bad timing. We were just about to head out. Mah, guess I lost track of time catching up with everyone,” he said, his hand falling from hers as he rose from his seat. “But it can’t be helped when you suddenly come across old friends who you thought were dead.”

Holding out his hand to her, Makino smiled as she placed her own into it, allowing him to draw her to her feet. And she knew what he was doing, but indulged him, feeling how her stomach fluttered, and when he lifted her hand to kiss her knuckles, heard the dreamy sighs from the surrounding crowd. Their attention had shifted away from their son now, but even flustered by the attention, Makino could only laugh, seeing the rakish grin stretching over her knuckles.

“Catering to your adoring fans, Emperor Red-Hair?” she murmured.

“Our adoring fans,” Shanks corrected, with a pointed look. “Or have you failed to notice that it’s not just our son who’s been causing a spectacle ever since we came ashore?”

A glance around the tavern room proved him right, noting their starry-eyed onlookers, although they appeared enthralled rather than envious, she saw.

"She's so beautiful!" someone whispered, to vocal agreement from the room.

"They look so good together!"

"The cloaks!!"

Her heart skipped, and looking up at Shanks found him smiling. And even if she wasn’t used to this kind of attention, Makino found she didn’t mind being in the spotlight all that much, if she could share it with him.

Their eyes held, the din of the tavern fading like the watchful gazes of the crowd, but then for a man who drew people around him like a magnet, he’d always had a way of making her feel like the only person in the room, a peace under that hooded look that made the rest of the world disappear, leaving only the two of them.

Releasing her hand, his fingers brushed the high collar of her cloak where it enclosed her neck, tracing the silver embroideries, before his smile warmed, his eyes lifting as his hand did, to the red scarf holding back her hair. But then while she'd adopted a pirate's lifestyle, sword and cloak included, she was still a barmaid, even if they called her something else now.

A crooked knuckle tipped her chin, his eyes curving with a look she knew intimately, and her breath hitched when his hand reached to cradle the back of her head, a display that was a little more public than she was usually comfortable with, but she wasn't thinking about their audience now.

And maybe she wasn't the only one staking a claim, and she felt the flutter in her chest as Shanks bent his head, his beard scuffing her cheeks with his smile, but just before their lips touched, a throat was cleared loudly.

"Um, Bosses?”

The voice dragged their eyes from each other to their crew, on their feet now and watching them, their arms crossed and their expressions somewhere between patient and shamelessly delighted.

“If you’re done inventing romance over there, there’s a battle going on,” Yasopp said. "Remember? Angry guy, missing arm, vowed revenge?"

“Oh, right,” Shanks said, with a bashful grin. “Should probably deal with him first.”

The little giant who’d asked to join their crew jumped from his seat, his eyes round with an awe that made Makino think of Luffy, and felt a pang of affection as he exclaimed, all wonder and no fear, “You’re going out there to fight, Shanks?”

Smiling, Shanks nodded, and when he spoke, it was to the whole tavern, the warm timbre of his voice lifting with an authority that seemed to come as naturally as breathing, and that could compel even a room full of giants into silence. “I’d never let this island become a war-zone.”

The barmaid cupped her cheeks, sighing wistfully, “He’s so dreamy!”

Makino only smiled, although watching him, privately agreed, but then she was right: he was dreamy.

“They won’t be happy you’ve kept them waiting,” Ben said, as they prepared to leave. He looked like he needed a smoke, and Makino felt a pang of sympathy, knowing she was the reason he'd quit, but the smile he slipped her left no room for guilt as he moved to stand beside her; his usual place, if he wasn't guarding his captain.

“Do you think Kidd will appreciate hearing that it was because Boss was too busy making googly-eyes at his wife?” Yasopp mused.

“I say we send Makino to deal with him,” Lucky Roo said. “That’ll teach him some manners!”

“Honestly, if anyone could teach that guy some manners, it would be you,” Shanks agreed.

“From what you told me, he’s probably right to be angry,” Makino said. “He did lose his arm.”

“So did I, but unlike someone, I handled my amputation with grace,” Shanks said.

"The first thing you lamented when you were lucid enough to speak was that you now had to use your non-dominant hand to get yourself off," Ben said, as Makino's cheeks flushed. She had, regrettably, been in the room at the time.

Shanks ignored him, turning to ask Rockstar to deliver a message to Captain Kidd: to leave his poneglyph rubbings and scram, or to risk fighting him. It was a more generous offer than any of the other Emperors would have given, at least barring one other.

Their crew had gathered around them, although she felt how her breath shivered, but then she’d only witnessed him dealing with enemies from afar. This time, they’d be sailing right into the breach.

She touched a trembling hand to Siren’s pommel, the sword’s presence at her waist another thing she hadn't yet gotten used to, and even then she'd only ever sparred with Shanks. She'd never used it against a real enemy, even to protect herself.

Shanks had noticed, his scars furrowed above his eyes, and looking towards their son, in Bonk Punch’s arms now, “I don’t want to cause any major trouble here,” he said.

A bit too late for that, my love, Makino wanted to say, but before she could, “Dorry, Brogy,” Shanks said, with a smile at her. “Mind helping me make sure my wife stays out of harm's way?”

The grins from the two giants might have sent her bolting in the opposite direction if Makino didn't know them, as with bellowing laughs, they agreed,

“Aye, brother! We’ll keep the little Empress safe!"

“Ge gya gya gya, and the littleuns!”

Smiling, Shanks took the lead, his cloak flaring as he turned for the door. Makino fell into step beside him, the rest of their crew and the giants following behind them as they made their way towards Red Force where it waited.

Outside, a crowd had gathered to observe their departure, only this time their attentions weren’t on the baby in Bonk Punch’s arms.

“Look at them!!”

“Make way, the chief and his wife are coming through!”

"What a power couple!!"

"We love you!!"

Their eyes met, and when she ducked her gaze, he grinned and kissed the top of her head, to the shrieking delight of the crowd.

They’d reached the water, and she could see the ships covering the horizon now. And these were different crews than the one she knew and loved, although they’d pledged their allegiance to her all the same. And even if she knew now what it meant to be Emperor of this sea, like the attention he compelled, her Emperor, it stole her breath, seeing with her own eyes the forces he commanded.

And that was something else she'd had to come to terms with. That however highly regarded he was, her husband had as many enemies as he had supporters, and that being his wife meant they were hers, too.

“You can stay behind if you’d rather,” Shanks said, his eyes lowering to hers, and she knew from the serious look in them that for all his outward ease, he wasn't taking their opponent lightly. “It would be safer ashore.”

His knuckles brushed her belly through her cloak, before he splayed his fingers over the bump, his bigger frame shielding her from their audience now, but then unlike his display in the tavern, this wasn't for the benefit of the crowd.

The broad spread of his fingers was warm through her shirt, but the child beneath his hand was quiet. And there was no judgement in that look, his eyes anchored in hers, although beneath the seriousness, Makino saw what he hadn't shown the crowd in the tavern. Not fear, never that, but the feeling still threatened to sweep her feet out: a protectiveness that carried the same promise he'd made their adversary, of just what he risked, facing him.

She felt a moment of hesitation, but then he had a point. This was Elbaf, the fabled island of warriors. Even without Dorry and Brogy, there’d be more than enough warriors to protect her if she stayed, and out at sea, there were a lot of things that could go wrong even without factoring in an all-out naval battle.

The memory found her, recalling the Admiral they'd encountered outside of Wano Country. The way his haki had singled her out, like she'd been marked, and that had confirmed, and more than any wanted poster or bounty ever could, just what she was now.

And if it had been her bar behind them, she would have stayed, Makino thought. She would have gone back to polishing her glasses, waiting for news of the battle, her lonely court held from behind the safe enclosure of the sturdy wooden counter. Her bar, and her shield that had always protected her from the wider world.

But it wasn't her bar, or even her island, and she knew where her place was now.

And where she felt safest, above anywhere else.

“No,” Makino said, and moving to stand on his left, wrapped her fingers around Siren’s pommel. “I'm right where I want to be.”

Then with a glance at the crowd behind them, she lifted her eyes to his, hooded under his scars as she said, “Besides, if we’re catering to the crowd, we should probably give them what they want.”

Shanks grinned, his cheeks lifting with boyish delight. “Battle couple?”

Her smile was her answer, and drawing her sword from its sheath, the steel-song stirred the air, her grip around the hilt still a little clumsy, used to glasses and dishrags, but the way he was looking at her, Makino thought she might have been a master in that moment.

And while she'd once thought that behind the counter of the bar was where she'd felt the most like herself, there was something to be said for this feeling, standing beside him, nothing but danger ahead, and yet she didn't feel afraid.

"So then, Captain," she said, with a glance towards the sea, and the new ship she could glimpse through the mist.

"Should we teach him some manners?"

[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[some-kind-of-creature]

It wasn’t supposed to be a secret.

If you died while with the league, you will no longer be acknowledged to have existed, especially if you died during a mission. A disappointment will not be remembered.

The bats and birds don’t like speaking about the people they have lost, so they don’t. If someone ask about the dead, they will tell the person they don’t talk about that.

So how was Damian supposed to know that he should have told his father about his dead brother?

[lotus-pear]

he’s begging kuni to let them eat pancakes for dinner

[excali8ur]

When you meet your past lives but they're all ignoring you and freaking out over this one guy?

I've seen a few versions of this floating around with the different Leos and I wanted to have a go at doing one for Mikey. They're all collectively realising what a bus sized bullet they dodged by not ending up as messed up as Ronin

[lilislegacy]

random pre-school mom: you are such a good dad, picking your son up from school so often

percy: well, my wife and i switch off depending on our schedules. she’s here the other half of the time

random pre-school mom: that’s so generous of you!

percy, confused: uh, why? i’m his dad

random pre-school mom: it’s just so selfless! oh and your little boy is absolutely adorable. he’s the most precious thing i’ve ever seen!

percy: thanks, he looks a lot like his mom

random pre-school mom: but clearly those eyes come from you

percy: well, yeah. i mean, i am his dad

random pre-school mom, flustered: um, well, are you coming to parents night? i can show you around so you know where to go?

percy: my wife and i will be there, and we’ll figure it out. thanks though

random pre-school mom: *weird fake smiling*

[watchingwisteria]

listen there really was just something about how in the book, snow’s 3-page descent from hesitant lover boy to deluded mfer happens entirely in his mind. lucy gray gives him no indication whatsoever that she suspects him, that she’s going to leave or betray him. he’s just sitting quietly in the cabin waiting for her to return when that seed of calculated suspicion, which he has needed to survive the capitol, takes a hold of him and chokes the life out of any goodness left inside him. it really drives home your terror as a reader that “oh my god did he kill her? did she escape? what happened to her? why would he even think that?” in a way that when the movie had to adjust for visualization it lost some of that holy shit this guy has lost it emphasis.

[unicornpopcorn14]

So we all know by now that Dazai is comfortable enough around Chuuya to show nervousness/worry.

Enough times for Chuuya to pick up on that pattern. The pattern, may I remind you, that doesn't have evident correlation to either nervousness or worry to most people. One that can even be interpreted as misplaced given the situation.

Which means that Dazai has done this in front of Chuuya so often, that Chuuya at first was hella confused, before he finally made a connection between when and why it happens. And still remembered that connection after four years of separation. Which gets us to my point:

What if this isn't the only emotion Dazai displays weirdly?

What if he has multiple unconventional patterns he displays for sadness, frustration, content, or disgust? The times he really feels them, and they become too strong for him to just deal with normally? What if these are the only times he's actually being genuine with his emotions?

And Chuuya is the only one who is familiar with them all?

Dazai would be jumping rope and Chuuya would be like, "quit sulking, let's get icecream"

Dazai hanging upside down on the couch and Chuuya going, "It's okay, mackerel. You can cry."

Dazai actually crying, full on heart-wrenching sobs, and Chuuya unironically going, "What, good news?"

It's just... comforting, for one person in Dazai's life to read him like a book. Everyone else would look at him like he's crazy, displaying wrong emotions/behaviors at the wrong time, but Chuuya knows that it's just how he processes feeling properly, and thus he's the only one Dazai can count on to put things into context and understand, which makes him display them even more openly.

Because Chuuya never shamed him for his quirks, as much as Dazai never did his.

[akanemnon]

It could get worse and it DID get worse

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[starry-bi-sky]

don't you want to be a cult leader? - danyal al ghul au

this is mostly a joke post but i thought it was funny and had to share so--

his first mistake was, obviously, inheriting his father's inability to see an injustice and stand still. -- actually, danyal's first mistake was his lair being so big. a mountainous island with a large temple in the center resembling his old home in Nanda Parbat? With sprawling foliage and rivers and streams and waterfalls galore? What was he going to do with all that space? Let it go to waste? He had plants there! Native trees of the ghost zone growing from the soil! He couldn't let it all be left unchecked!

So naturally after helping a fellow teenage assassin ghost -- who he later learns is named Akihiko, -- from Walker of all people, he sent them over to hang low at his lair until it was safe enough for them to wander around the Zone. Walker couldn't get through Danyal's astrofield if his life depended on it, and trust him -- he's tried. Danny was clearing out debris from his stupid transport vans for weeks.

Honestly it wasn't so bad, he and Aki really quickly became fast friends and Danny loves having a sparring partner close to his level again -- he hasn't had this much fun fighting since he left the League. Aki was very dedicated and levelheaded, the both of them clicked really well because of it.

Nonono, the real trouble began after Danyal met some long-passed League members and allowed them to come join his island as well. Apparently they had made a few enemies of the zone, and maybe Danyal still felt some loyalty to the League. He couldn't just let them be left to rot. Their zealotry could be overlooked so long as they kept it contained and helped him take care of his island.

And it.. snowballs from there? He meets a teen squire aptly calling himself Ambroise -- whether that was his living name or not is yet to be seen -- who died during feudal france, who is just about as dramatic and passionate as every french stereotype makes them out to be. He calls Danyal "my moon and great muse" -- which is both flattering and little uncomfortable, but Danyal's grown up in the League as the Grandson of the Demon Head, he is used to mild worship. he passes it off as nothing more, nothing less. -- and while his energy is overwhelming on the worst of days, he helps Danny draw out of his shell more in ways that Sam and Tucker still struggle with.

Him and Aki butt heads a lot, but the two seem to hold the other in at least some positive regard, so Danny doesn't worry too much about them fighting while he's gone. It only becomes a mild issue when Aki also begins calling Danny "my moon". It's a little sweet, so Danyal brushes it off.

Then he takes in a troupe of ghosts some time after he defeats Pariah Dark and they begin calling him "great one" just as the yetis do in the far frozen. This is where he meets the twins -- a pair of sibling ghosts who call themselves Trixie and Missy (short for Trick and Mislead) -- who aren't quite as passionate as Ambroise but more energetic than Aki. Eventually they also start calling Danyal "my moon" and attach themselves to his hip, even within the living. They like to hide in his shadow and cause trouble for the rest of the students. He makes sure they don't hurt anyone.

He's pretty sure Aki is jealous, same with Ambroise, but he can't be too certain other than the fact that they become much more lingering (re: clingy) whenever he visits the island.. Something he's trying to do much more often these days due to the increasing amount of people living there now. Since when did he become so popular?

Then there's Pēnelópeia from the Greater Athens, who ran away from home and joined his Island after he ran into her while she was being chased by Skulker -- and he's pretty sure the reason was because of her chimeric appearance. Her strange eyes and mismatched wings and lion's tail and talons. She assimilates into his friend group very easily, she gets along well with Ambroise and Trixie and Danny usually finds the three of them climbing the trees to pluck the most fruit from the top. They can fly and he knows it, but they prefer to climb.

Then finally there's silent poet Akkara who comes from ancient mesopotamia, who gets along most with Aki -- which is no surprise there considering their similar personality dispositions. he watches Aki and Danyal fight each other and leaves comments on this or that that he notices. He writes Danyal poems on clay tablets and leaves them by his room.

They're one big mismatched group of outcasts, and Danny's got the other ghosts on his island to tend to, because they're living on his island and he wants to be hospitable even if he struggles with that. But he spends the most of his time with them.

Sam and Tucker are making fun of him. Tucker jokingly tells him 'careful Danny, at this rate you're gonna start a cult'. Danny really wishes he had taken that joke more seriously.

He just. keeps. collecting people. Wayward souls lost in the zone, looking for shelter or refuge from something or other -- whether that be another hostile ghost, or a past afterlife, or just a purpose. Danyal finds them, he takes them in, offers them a place on his island until they are ready to leave. Many seldom do. He's not complaining -- he has the space, and it feels like it's only ever growing.

His close friends, his "inner circle" as he's heard the others call them, keep insistently calling him "my moon". He starts calling them his stars, because then it only feels fair. They're his stars, this is his constellation. It becomes a thing; little star halos begin forming behind their heads, picking them out from the rest. He loves them so much, it's hard to place. Sam and Tucker are also his stars, but they reside in the living realm, they're his tie to Life. Meanwhile, his friends here know what it's like to be dead, and sometimes its nice to relate.

Those living on his island keep calling him "Great One" and he's beginning to notice zealotry in their care for his island. He really, deeply appreciates it. His close friends gain nicknames -- as his stars, it's only natural for him to pick them out from the cluster in the skies. Akihiko, his Sirius and bright star. Trix and Missy, Castor and Pollux, the twins and troublemakers. Ambroise, his zealous Antares and close friend. Penelopeia, chimeric and loyal Vega. And Akkara, his Arcturus and strength.

It's ridiculous how long it takes for him to notice; he is, of course, a deadly trained assassin. He is meant to be observant -- and normally he is! But somehow this becomes a blind spot. One that becomes too big to be dealt with by the time he realizes it.

He should've noticed when Aki, his Sirius, stood beside him one day while Danyal looked over his island and saw the sprawling spirits carrying on about their afterlife and bowing to him as they saw him, and said: "I looked down into the depths when I met you; I couldn't measure it." They aren't one for flowing prose, it took him so off guard he was silent for over a minute before he finally spoke.

Danyal should've recognized devotion for what it is, and yet he didn't. He should've recognized it when Antares began spouting praises about him, crowing about his radiance and resplendence to the heavens. He just brushed it off as Ambroise being Ambroise. He should've recognized it when Trix and Missy nearly broke Dash's leg after he knocked Danyal's books out of his hands, he excused it as them being protective. Of them coming from times where such violence may have been customary -- after all, that's what he used to be like. What he was still like, sometimes, when his emotions nearly got the better of him.

He should've noticed it when the people living on his island followed his word like gospel, looked at him like he hung the stars in the sky. When his friends gifted him a shawl with the moon phases delicately embroidered into it, with silver, shimmering thread and moving stars lovingly stitched into it. Their constellations seen clear as day in the dark fabric. When he found small shrines dedicated to him -- but they lacked any image of him beyond stones carved to look like moons, so he ignored it. When the religious imagery began popping up.

He really, really should've noticed it when a bunch of cultists accidentally summoned Antares, and Antares had turned to him when he arrived and called them heretics. But he was so centered on the fact that they had kidnapped one of his stars, that he hadn't paid much attention to what Ambroise had said.

Sages say that faith is blind, they should also say faith in you is even blinder.

It really only hits him one afternoon while he's sitting in Sam's room studying with Tucker, Missy and Trixie lounging at his feet, Aki sat on his right, Penelopeia braiding his hair, Ambroise draped against him, and Akkara lurking over him. Its one of the rare few times they're all in one room together.

It hits him like a bolt of lightning. He looks up from his textbook. "Oh Ancients," he says in no amounting shock. Everyone looks up to him.

"I've become my grandfather."

[ragsy]

big big big fan of found family relationships with shithead sibling dynamics

sure, yeah, they had no one in the world until they found each other, and they will fight tooth and nail for each other's safety, but they will also eat the last of the other's cereal and put the box back in the cabinet or tell the other's significant other every embarrassing story about them or greet each other by means of full body tackle and chokehold

[seefasterdraws]

i think its so funny that no one knows that fionna and cake are real except simon. imagine if he forgets to tell marcy and just gives her a heart attack one day

[bookalicent]

yeah so this was insane

[lotus-pear]

free will is drawing ur two favorite characters together and making them gay

[charlie-artlie]

I think the death weirdos should hang out

[magicpiano]

AU where the justice league finds out that Captain Marvel is homeless. Not Billy, they still have no idea about the captain's secret identity, but the Captain.

Maybe they were discussing a case or something, and he says something that is just a little too knowledgeable. Something only someone who has been there would know. He tries to backtrack when he realizes that he said too much, tries to explain that getting a job and an apartment is hard when you do hero work which doesn't pay (and hopes they don't find out the real reason he can't get a job is because no one will hire a kid).

The league comes to the conclusion the reason he is so secretive about his identity is because he is ashamed he is homeless. Naturally, everyone immediately feels super bad about this and tries to help him much to his dismay.

Identity shenanigans ensue.