#and hase is a piece of crap

[s30620]

Chapter 180: The Owner of the Kozuka Knives

The gang trying to act inconspicuous while Kouki goes undercover to find the culprit. Everybody looking away from her but Vamola just making persistent eye contact lol.

How many people is Count Saint-Germain recruiting?!?! Everybody is an enemy at this point. He gives powers to people with the white kozuka knife and has them steal powers using the black one. Plus, now we know the jiangshi and the iron ox are two separate people under Sanjome's control. So far we have: Kouki with the pygmies, the businessman as the ox, Miss Adachi with the jiangshi, and now Hase with, I'm assuming, the jumping crone.

He seems to be sending texts about targets to his "minions", we see Miss Adachi receives the same messages the businessman from last chapter got. Plus he can use telepathy now? He must be onto the kids since they're trying to find him now. He recruited Hase without even appearing in front of him.

I also think there was a translation error last chapter. On page 14, Murakami Sensei asks where Adachi Sensei is, the translation says Mr. Adachi, but I think it was supposed to be Miss Adachi. I don't believe the businessman is Mr. Adachi, since he's not a teacher, and Miss Adachi was gone to send her jiangshi after Seiko. The suspicious person walking away on page 4 is also wearing the same pants and shoes as Miss Adachi.

[leeuwchen]

Hi, würdest du bitte mit der Nr. 66 etwas für Ringsy schreiben. Gern auch in Englisch, wenn dir das lieber ist 😃❤️

Aber gerne doch ❤️ Einen Tag zu spät zwar, aber ich erweitere Nikolaus mal aufs Wochenende

How could I ever forget about you?

 “You don’t have to walk me to work, Honey, unless - - is there possibly a new street gang around that I’m not aware of?”

“Not yet”, Ringo replies smirking, “and since when do I need a reason to spend some extra-time with my husband?”

“No reason needed. I just thought - well, you’ve been up pretty late all week writing applications - - so maybe you could do with some rest now?”

“I can take a nap later if this would make you feel better”, Ringo offers sarcastically, still grinning broadly, “but how can one be expected to stay in bed alone all morning when one knows that someone has filled one’s shoes with chocolate and wine gum? I had to get up.” Easy looks at him suspiciously.

“I hope, you are not doing this here because you think I am mad at you for forgetting St.- Nicholas’ Day? That’s fine, Hase, really!”

“It is?”

“It sure is. To be honest, I didn’t expect it any differently. You are just not the type.”

“I ain’t?”

“And that’s okay. Surprising me with a picknick when I am sad? That’s you. Giving away chocolate on a day everyone is giving away chocolate? Not very Richard Beckmann.”

“Well, now I feel stupid.”

“Why-?”, Easy starts wondering but he doesn’t need to finish his question because as he is opening the kiosk’s door there is one of his almost unused sports shoes standing in the middle of the shop’s floor, filled with his favourite cookies.  “Aww”, he exclaims excitedly while picking up his gift, “So, you didn’t forget?” Ringo is leaning against the door frame as usual when seeing him off to work. “Of course, I didn’t”, he softly says, “how could I ever forget about you?”

“Maybe if the new street gang came along and hit you hard on the head?”

“Yeah, okay, I let you have this one. But other than that, I would never forget about you and your love for cheesy traditions.”

Easy is standing close to him now, eyeing him curiously.

“But why here? Why not at the flat share?”

Furrowing his eye brows, Ringo leans down a bit.

“I may have changed, Bärchen, but I am still not suicidal. Tobias would have never let me hear the end of it.”

“What makes you so sure your brother hasn’t filled up Vivien’s shoes this morning?”

“Because you don’t put salami canapés with horseradish into shoes.”

Laughing, Easy shakes his head, taking another step forward to be even closer to Ringo.

“Well, thank god, I just like these simple old cookies then or I would have missed you being all cute like that.”

He’s holding the shoe filled with chocolate up as a prove of his husband’s charm and Ringo is looking at his own present with a strange mixture of shame and pride when suddenly an enraged voice chimes up behind them.

“Did St.- Nick give something to YOU!?!”

Holding his father’s hand Noah is standing on the street, furiously staring at the shoe in the kiosk owner’s hand. Looking both tired and worn-out, Till is taking a deep breath and Easy understands at once that - contrary to Ringo - Till has indeed forgotten about today’s special occasion and who could blame him – having to organize his mother’s funeral and dealing with the aftermath of Conor’s rage. Smiling, Easy looks from the angry child in front of him to his present and then back again.

“Oh, you mean this shoe, here? That’s not for me. It’s for you.”

“Then why do YOU have it?”

“Because I am St.- Nick’s distributor in Cologne.”

“But Bambi said, St.- Nick told HIM to help him out with my shoes.”

Easy doesn’t know what to reply but Ringo steps in quickly even if the cheerfulness of his voice clearly sounds fake to anyone who isn’t an unsuspecting child.

“Well, Bambi is an idiot sometimes. Why would St.- Nick ask him to help out when there is someone around who works with sweets professionally. Doesn’t make sense now, does it?”

“It doesn’t”, Noah agrees and only Easy can hear the small dismissive huff his husband lets out because the boy fell for some stupid story that of course doesn’t make any sense. “So, can I have my shoe then?”, Noah asks greedily and Easy wants to hand it over promptly but Ringo grabs it from his hand, searches for something between the cookie boxes and finally takes out a small piece of paper. “Hey, that’s MINE!”, Noah pipes up. “No, it isn’t”, Ringo replies coldly and quickly gets a pen from the kiosk, “It’s a receipt. You have to sign here if you accept the delivery.” He looks at the child quizzical.

“That is… if you even can write your own name.”

“Of course, I can”, Noah yells, grabbing the pen and carefully puts down his name on the paper Ringo is handing him.

“Okay, fine. Then here’s your oversized shoe with Easy’s favourite cookies. Enjoy.”  

Excitedly, Noah grabs the sneaker and digs through the sweets that have been put inside while his father’s hand ruffles through his hair. “Thank you”, Till mouthes voicelessly and soon both Weigels turn around, walking away towards the agency on the other side of the street. Feeling kind of wistful, Easy is watching them go when suddenly the paper with Noah’s clumsy penmanship is pushed in front of his nose. “Here”, Ringo says rather harshly, “looks like Tobias’ handwriting, doesn’t it? And also - we’ve already had THAT conversation, remember?” A part of him hopes that Easy will focus his attention on the tasteless comment about Tobias’ stroke but of course Easy goes for the other one.

“I can still like children even if we are not ever having one, can’t I?”

“Of course, you can”, Ringo replies softly but with a pointed carelessness, “and I must admit, in comparison to Lotta, Noah is kind of cute.” Fortunately, Easy decides to go along with the distraction. “But she gave you such a nice wedding gift”, he says mockingly to which Ringo rolls his eyes dramatically.

“Doesn’t know when a gag has gone stale, does she? Well, what can you expect from someone who was raised by Britta Schönfeld. That girl is evil, I’m telling you.”

“And you still would have played along if it had been her standing there being all sad that St.- Nicholas forgot about her.”

“Lotta is too old to believe in that stuff.”

“That was not my point.”

“Well, I can’t see little girls cry even if they are evil… but I also think, children shouldn’t be lied to with all this Santa crap.”

Involuntarily, Easy chuckles. Ringo raises one of his eyebrows questioningly. “Sorry, but you being outraged about people telling some innocent little lies – you do see where that is funny, don’t you?”, Easy asks shily, dimples showing and eyes glistening. “I do”, Ringo nods earnestly, “but I really have my principles when it comes to that one - if only because I am still not over the fact that Kira found out before I did.” He frowns and Easy steps closer again, putting his arms around him.

“Poor Richard. Your secret is safe with me. I am a little surprised though that your parents did the Santa thing.”

Ringo smiles absently letting himself slump into Easy’s hug who tenderly caresses his back in return.

“They were really weird, weren’t they? Unconventional and conventional as they pleased. Always surprising.”

“Always surprising is such a Beckmann thing”, Easy says softly, letting go of Ringo, provokingly fumbling around with the paper his husband rescued from becoming Noah’s property. “You might wanna read that when I am gone”, Ringo teases and because he really wants to know what is written on it other than N O A H, Easy firmly puts a hand onto Ringo’s chest and pushes him out of the kiosk’s door, letting him walk backwards until his husband suddenly turns around and starts striding homewards on his own. Unfolding the piece of paper Easy reads Ringo’s message:

Dear Easy, I assume, somewhere down the line I am expected to write a reply to your Hase/Bärchen-letter, am I right? Well, not today because I got a LIFETIME left to do so and I am taking my time. Please don’t forget to pick up the suits from the dry cleaning. I love you. Ringo

[rokurawks]

let me actually ramble on for a while about my love hate relationship with f/inal f/antasy xv.

reason for this are the announcements they made during g/amescom and the overall state of the game. i looked forward to this game for such a goddamn long time -- ever since it was first announced and honestly the reason why most of my friends even bought the game was because of my passion for the title even during the atrocious development cycle of it.

i am not one of the people who tries to say t/abata is a terrible gaming director. everyone should know he got handed out an awfully unfair card with directing a game that was so desperately anticipated by fans and was actually a ride or die project for the entire f/inal f/antasy franchise. i loved both cr/isis c/ore and ty/pe-0 he directed a lot, but seeing how those two games ended already gave me personally a fair idea what to expect but i had high hopes he would surprise me with the game.

i do think what t/abata did was the only possible thing anyone could have done in his situation with a team that was so demotivated by years of pushing out some flimsy ( yet so amazing imo ) story trailer under n/omura. of course the game ended up just being mediocore, trying to appeal to so many audiences and trying so hard to please every single player.

that still didn't fully settle in until they released the g/ladiolus dlc, at least for me personally. honestly, i only started it and tried out the new story segment they added for a bit until i, later on, watched a nonspoilery review of it. a few people mentioned how in chapter 13 -- thanks to a very short dialogue between g/ladio and i/gnis -- things ended up being a lot more clear and the entirety of the chapter had more meaning. and from that moment on i actually hated what they made out of the game. i noticed more and more flaws ( not to mention that a few weeks before that i just finished the game with my best friend again and he experienced almost every glitch possibly starting from chapter 9 ) and it made me sick.

i love the cast -- at least the main dudes, because they really did experience a lot of polishing but all the other characters as well as the story are lacking. things don't make as much sense without watching everything else, which they first stated in the big reveal event that it would just flesh out the world more. that statement couldn't be more wrong. i had a friend who did not finish the game because he did not watch k/ingsglaive and had no idea what was going on with i/nsomnia. the little nudges they made partly to br/otherh/ood were sweet and even the pointers to old f/inal f/antasy's seemed cute at first but just made me more and more frustrated. if you even take them away, the game would feel lacking. it's nothing cute like "oh you played this game before look what we did." anymore because all those winks and nudges towards other f/inal f/antasy's seem to be in there because otherwise the game would feel incredibly lacking if not viewed through nostalgia glasses.

i don't even wanna get started on y/oko's music score. it was underwhelming, to a point where i can barely remember any of them even while i played the game; except for the pieces which were revealed before release to which i listened to before such as "s/omnus".

another thing i do not get is how we are supposed to care about l/una when she was that holy being doing everything right, while during the entirety of the game we saw her for almost half an hour. i don't even want to go into the length of the main quest of the game, but i do not understand how they could actually flesh out the main party so well but have every other character be actually a blank slate and it making just as much sense as before. don't get me wrong, i wish the game could have given me a reason to care about l/una and co. but it just doesn't. it's sad.

not to mention parts of the really reALLY interesting stuff like pr/ompto’s father the game doesn’t even mention once.

also quick reminder before i go on and stop rambling about all my problems with the main game itself, that this is in no way meant as a critical review with pointers in game but merely just my frustrations :')

anyway, the reason why i actually take my sweet time to type all this crap out and to get it off of my chest is because i am just incredibly disappointed about how much s/quare e/nix is milking this failed game so obviously. it's gotten to a point where i wish they would just announce fi/nal fa/ntasy xv-2 so they could stop making crappy mobile titles that they pay youtubers a ton for when it's so bad that a few actually feel so incredibly guilty for even considering taking that sponsorship that they have to make a heart to heart with their audience about it. i wish they wouldn't go back on their words that they announced so clearly just to get more attention on the project and ofc i know they are not doing this game for the fans but just for the cash -- i feel incredibly disappointed and let down.

f/inal fan/tasy xv p/ocket e/dition is an abomination that shouldn’t exist. so is the vr angel game. so is a ne/w em/pire. and all the content they have been adding since january should have been in the game from the start. this makes me so mad that i even refuse to play the game again until all the dlc’s are out to maybe, finally get the wholesome experience i deserved from the beginning. :’)

i also don’t even want to go into the potential story bits and pieces that got “leaked” during the time of release that tell the supposedly tale of how the story was going to be originally. if it’s fake, cool, if not; wow this would have been actually been a story that would have been more interesting than the typical fairytale they told.

another thing, i just want to get my two cents out on is the voice acting. while i love the english voices for the maincast -- the way they changed their dialogs from japanese to english and partly even their personally makes me, you probably guessed it, mad. n/omura wanted so desperately to not create an edgelord and overly cocky confident cunt with n/octis as again, I LOVE R/AY C/HASE AND HIS PERFORMANCE, but the shy and socially awkward n/oct will still be dearly missed from my side in the western versions.

despite all of this ( this sounds so cliche am i right ) i still like the game. i am incredily disappointed by the wasted potential that is just ending up in things like the p/ocket edi/tion and the like, but i really did enjoy the journey i could have with n/octis, p/rompto, g/ladio and i/gnis. i’m glad i got the game and though i spend way too much money on it, i am glad i at least got to play through it once.

that being said, sucks for sq/uare e/nix that n/ier a/utomata got released so soon after that :/ if it wasn’t for that i maybe wouldn’t have seen the game so quickly through non-nostalgia and hype lenses. love that game, despite the few bits and pieces that do not make sense, love the game that actually gives me a reason to care for the tiniest side character oh so quickly.