#and how disappointed I was that they never once brought up mettle

[pinkrangersarah]

For all the reasons I've seen for people to either love or hate James's arc in V8, I've never once seen anyone bring up his semblance. Specifically, I've never seen anyone mention what a disservice it was to have it merely mentioned on Twitter and never once bring it up in any sort of way in the actual show.

I hate information being released on the side and never once being brought up in the canon in any sort of way. It's lazy. It is relying solely on the audience to have seen it and to take your word for it. It's like adapting a book into a show or film but leaving out important details about the world and/or characters, relying on the audience to have read the book first (which a vast majority of them will not have done).

James's semblance, to put it simply, is tunnel-vision. It "strengthens his resolve to carry through with tough decisions", basically cancelling out rational thought and ignoring consequences. This is a major piece of information about James's behavior that is never once brought up, and because of that I can understand why a lot of people didn't like his 180 heel turn into antagonist territory--I didn't either for the longest time, and because of this a part of me still doesn't. While parts of his downfall were done subtly and done well, this particular part of it was not.

"But why would his semblance ever be brought up in conversation?" Good question, one that could be easily answered by the three characters in the cast that definitely should know about James's semblance: Qrow, Ozpin, and Watts. Qrow and Ozpin had been working with James for years, and before that it is implied that Watts and James also worked together for a period of time, getting to know each other fairly well. It makes absolutely no sense for neither of these three to ever once bring up the fact that James's behavior is likely due to his semblance interfering with his ability to make decisions. Hell, I can even imagine Watts being delighted by this; Watts knowing how James's semblance works and how to take advantage of it would definitely benefit Salem.

James Ironwood was such a fascinating character, but the fact that his semblance felt like an afterthought is a major disservice to his arc, in my opinion.

[concussed-to-pieces]

The Mettle Of A Man; Part Fifteen

Fandom: Fallout (4)

Pairing: Eventual Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: Enjoy!

Part One: ArcJet

Part Two: The Prydwen

Part Three: Orders

Part Four: Finding Brandis

Part Five: Weston Water And Oberland

Part Six: Meeting Preston And Matthew

Part Seven: Radstag And Radstorm

Part Eight: The Return To Sanctuary Hills

Part Nine: Domestic Ruminations

Part Ten: Institutionalized

Part Eleven: Two Weeks, Three Days

Part Twelve: Haylen’s Warning And The Glowing Sea

Part Thirteen: Under Fire

Part Fourteen: Dichotomy

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains allusions to torture and prolonged, vivid depictions of assault. Stay safe!]

"Call tags?" The scribe droned, not even looking up from the terminal.

  Danse only hesitated for a second. "D, N, dash, four zero seven P." 

  The scribe punched in the letters and numbers, and Danse saw the young man visibly jerk in surprise. Rheumy brown eyes stared up at the towering suit of X-01 armor and the scribe's voice squeaked when he hissed, " Danse? "

  The armored man nodded.

  "Are you insane?! Danse--er, Paladin Danse, the elder has been on the warpath ever since you went...sir, he says you're a synth, a traitor to the Brotherhood. You're supposed to be dead! I knew there was something fishy about those reports!" The scribe whispered shakily. He looked incredibly nervous. "Most of us think he's off his rocker, but you try finding a soldier with the balls to tell him that point-blank!"

  "It's comforting that you all have such faith in me." Danse said, meaning every word. "I'm afraid the announcement of my death was a bit...premature."

  The scribe blinked. "Sir, after everything that...the amount of us that would stand by you through anything is the vast majority, I promise. Elder Maxson has locked up Paladin Brandis and-"

  "Tell me he hasn't harmed Brandis." Danse cut him off, relieved when the scribe shook his head hastily. 

  "I think even the elder knows better than to assault one of the most beloved officers in our chapter." The scribe exhaled a long breath, then looked back up at Danse. "Sir, you should know that...well, it may be a bit disappointing to hear, but even if you are a synth, we're still with you, sir." The scribe gave him a salute. 

  Danse's eyes pricked with tears. He couldn't believe that he had the power to inspire such unwavering loyalty. "At ease, soldier. With any luck, this will be a diplomatic engagement. I'll take Knight Vega and be on my way."

  "I...I am unsure if it will be so simple." The scribe admitted. "Ex-Knight Vega has also been confined to the brig since you went AWOL."

  " Ex -knight?"

  "Maxson stripped of her rank, sir. Accused her of conspiring against the Brotherhood. On her end, she maintains her innocence." The scribe shrugged. "I don't understand why he doesn't just exile her or have her stand trial, but he's been dragging his feet the whole-"

  " Bait ." Danse realized. "He's been waiting for me to come back for her, of course . She's our only way into the Institute. Either that or he just wants the satisfaction of killing me himself." He moved past the checkpoint without another word, leaving the scribe to sputter. Danse hoped he wasn't being too self-absorbed when he surmised that the report of his 'death' was no doubt being utilized as a thumbscrew on Elizabeth. Maxson obviously needed a confession; hell, he might even suspect Vega of being the one that tipped Danse off in the first place. 

  No one paid him much mind as he strode across the compound. Though he did intercept a few curious glances, Danse chalked them up to the distinctive armor he was wearing instead of outright suspicion. 

  "Where is the elder?" He gruffed at a crowd of aspirants, counting on the staticky speakers of his helmet to disguise his voice. One of them grimaced.

  "In a mood." She joked, the group of aspirants nodding and laughing amongst themselves. "But if you mean location, he's been hanging around the build site a lot. Watching the progress on Big Lib, you know."

  Danse inclined his head and turned on his heel, making a beeline for the previously-mentioned location while he guiltily recalled the time that he had threatened Vega with an upbraiding for her own quips about Maxson. As he thundered back across the courtyard, he could hear the muttering start up. People were beginning to notice him. His window of opportunity was shrinking; he needed to find Maxson fast . Danse picked up his pace, half-jogging.

  Catching sight of Maxson at the very top of Prime's gantry made Danse feel minute, an insignificant David at the feet of a giant. He swallowed hard, shaking off the unsettling sensation and cueing up his helmet's speakers.

  At the whine of feedback, Ingram glanced up from her console beneath the shelter across the dusty tarmac. "Hey!" She said sharply. "Whoever you are, you don't have clearance to-"

  " Elder Maxson! " Danse roared, ignoring the red-headed proctor in favor of tilting his whole body back to project his voice upwards. " You know why I'm here! "

  " Abomination! " Maxson shouted, sounding almost gleeful . He bolted for the lift, as if he expected Danse to flee. The paladin stood his ground though, patiently waiting for the elder to arrive at the lower level.

  "Danse? You…" Ingram trailed off, scrambling across the square. "Is it really you in there, Danse?"

  "Yes, Proctor." 

  There was so much more he wanted to say, so much more to explain , but Maxson's arrival on the ground effectively cut off Danse's conversation. "I knew you would return, you traitor ." He asserted smugly as he marched over to Danse. "How kind of you to give me the privilege of ending you myself ."

  Danse held up his hands peaceably. "I am unarmed, Maxson. I'm not here for a fight. I am simply here to request the amicable release of...of General Vega." He used the Minutemen title on a whim, watching Arthur's nostrils flare in irritation.

  "Oh General Vega , is it? The Minutemen send a machine to do their dirty work? Or have you already infiltrated their ranks with more of your kind?" Maxson spat. 

  Danse shook his head. "This may come as a shock to you, Elder Maxson, but I had no idea I was a synth." He heard Ingram gasp behind him. Even Maxson looked momentarily startled at his admission and Danse seized the opening to reason, "through the entirety of my career I've done nothing to betray your trust, Arthur. And I never will. Please," Danse implored, "we need General Vega if we hope to eradicate the Institute."

  "You expect me to believe that you wish to eradicate the Institute? You were born of it!" Arthur spat venomously. "You even standing here is an affront to nature, you scum . The Brotherhood does not negotiate with-"

  "Elder Maxson, wait!" Ingram interrupted him sharply. "He's telling the truth. Vega is instrumental to gaining entry to the Institute. Our whole reason for being in the Commonwealth is to destroy the Institute. If we lose this chance-"

  "I will not be spoken down to by my own troops, Proctor!" Maxson raged. 

  "Arthur, listen to me . You and Danse having a pissing match should be the least of our concerns." Ingram raised an eyebrow. "If he meant us harm, I feel like he would have come with a battalion or two. Danse might be a little dense , but he's never lacked battlefield intelligence."

  "This thing isn't Danse, so stop referring to it as such!" 

  "Until proven otherwise, yes, he is . His DNA matched that Institute crap. It's him, Maxson. It's always been him. Sure, you might find it easier to think that the Institute grabbed the real Danse while he was out and about, but I don't think he would be reported as a missing asset if he was supposed to be here." Proctor Ingram theorized as she crossed her arms, her armor frame creaking. 

  "Just give me Elizabeth, Maxson." Danse pleaded. "This isn't a fight you want."

  "Oh, on the contrary. This is the fight I want." Maxson seethed. "A chance to prove Brotherhood superiority once and for all! We will settle this as it is written in the Litany!"

  "You sincerely wish to have a live-fire trial?" Danse asked incredulously, "a Litany trial, Arthur? As I recall, you stated before that you were above such practices."

  "We live in unprecedented times, traitor." Maxson drew himself up to his full height. "My authority has been brought into question again and again. It seems only right that I battle my chief dissenter."

  Danse was at a loss for words. Maxson's behavior was so irrational, he was almost tempted to consider whether the elder himself had been replaced by a synth. But no, voicing that fear would no doubt send Maxson into an even worse froth.

  "When I defeat you, it will finally affirm the truth of the Brotherhood: that we were meant to stand tall atop the corpses of abominations, meant to triumph! " Maxson's eyes were wild as he turned to Ingram. "Proctor, you will bear witness to our Litany agreement. And now, abomination , issue your challenge." The elder demanded.

  "Arthur-"

  " Issue it or be slagged where you stand! " Maxson screamed, spittle flying from his mouth.

  Danse had never personally engaged in a Litany trial. His memory of the terminology was hazy at best, but he still made an attempt. "As a Brotherhood of Steel paladin," he began haltingly, saluting and then extending his hand to Maxson. "I am issuing a formal challenge against your authority as elder of this chapter. Through your actions and your deeds, you have proved yourself unfit to lead in my eyes. We will engage in combat under your terms, and should I emerge victorious, I ask that you relinquish General Vega to me."

  "And when I emerge victorious, I will kill you." Maxson stated confidently. 

  "So be it." Danse knew he had very little agency in this matter. Maxson wanted to fight him, and Maxson always got his way. "Your terms, Elder?"

  "No weapons or armor. We fight with nothing but the skills we possess. The first one pushed out of the circle loses." Maxson smirked. "You might be a synth, but a bullet in your head puts you down just as easily as any feral."

  "You give me your word as Elder that you will turn Vega over to the custody of the Minutemen if I win?" Danse insisted, his heart slamming in his chest. Oh God, he would have to fight Maxson. Worse still, he would have to beat him. Arthur's prowess in combat was almost fabled , that story about the deathclaw part of this chapter's mythos.

  "I will give you nothing, creature , and it will be far more than you deserve. But certainly, if you manage to beat me, I'll see to it that your co-conspirator is relinquished to your care." Maxson sneered. "Proctor, send out the announcement that we will have entertainment shortly."

  "Sure thing, Elder." Ingram muttered, sidestepping away as Danse removed his helmet. 

  "I want everyone down here and watching, Ingram!" Arthur called as she departed. "Make sure that traitor Vega is escorted to the combat area." He then chuckled in a self-satisfied manner, no doubt taking note of Danse's stern expression. "Oh don't worry, synth . We showed your precious general all the courtesies that the Brotherhood has to offer while we interrogated her."

  Danse knew that Arthur trying to rile him up was technically a good sign. It meant that the other man was attempting to disperse some of his own nerves. However, it was difficult for him to capitalize upon with the worry of Vega possibly being injured getting added onto the pile of Danse's concerns. The growl erupted from him unintentionally, burring in his chest like a hacksaw. "Maxson, if you-"

  "Do not speak to me, freak ." Arthur hissed.

  Danse stewed as a crowd began to form. At least now they would have an audience. Hundreds of eyes watching his every move, but also watching Maxson's. Danse hoped that the scribe at the gate hadn't just been spouting optimistic nonsense. 

  The paladin emerged from his armor, standing at attention beside the frame as a vertibird whirred by overhead, descending from the Prydwen. Upon their first sight of him, the troops began talking amongst themselves. Danse reasoned that it must be quite the shock for most of them, to see him alive and well. 

  Please be alright, Vega , the paladin begged mentally. Please , Elizabeth .

  He heard her coming long before he saw her, watching the crowd part for a lone knight in power armor. "You're a fuckin' piezashet , y'know that? Just a fuckin' asshole! " Backhand roared, struggling and straining against the iron grip of the knight that was dragging her along. "Let me go , y' fuckin' cockass'n sunuva' fuck! "

  Danse blinked, a bit impressed with the vitriol the general was spitting considering her appearance. She looked like a stretch of bad road, gaunt, both of her eyes ringed yellow-green from faded bruising and her glasses absent. The whole left side of her face bore the distinct grate marks of the Prydwen's catwalks, indicating that she had been slammed against the floor. Her Vault suit was in shambles, half-ribboned and hanging off of her shoulder at a rakish angle, and her hair was a tangled, greasy mess.

  Danse catalogued it all and swiftly tucked it away for later. Compartmentalize . She's alive and ambulatory. Priority is Maxson , he instructed himself sternly. Focus . You can't afford to be distracted right now. You face the elder of the Brotherhood of Steel .

  All of that flew out the window the moment he heard Elizabeth's voice crack. "D... Danse? " She asked tremulously, "Danse, you're alive? "

  Danse nodded, not looking at her. "For better or for worse, I am."

  "I…" Backhand paused. "What's going on, Danse? I-I thought that...I thought you were…"

  Her obvious distress gave Danse an odd rush of guilty comfort. She would have missed him. Had she mourned him when she thought he was dead?

  To hell with it . 

  Danse turned to Elizabeth, carefully tipped her chin up and pressed a corner of the bandanna around his neck to her lips. "For luck." He murmured with a thin smile, cupping the right side of her face so he didn't hurt her. She just stared up at him, those eyes bright with pent-up emotions. The knight securing her coughed awkwardly and Danse stepped back, feeling Vega's gaze on him even as he moved to face Maxson.

  Ingram cleared her throat and announced above the rising hubbub, "this is a Litany trial! The conditions are no weapons or armor, strictly empty-handed combat. If Paladin Danse manages to remove our elder from the circle, the Brotherhood has agreed to release the former Knight Vega into Minutemen custody. If our elder removes the paladin from the circle, Paladin Danse has agreed to allow the elder to pass swift judgement upon him."

  "Say it how he said it, Proctor!" Danse barked, his deep voice carrying well. "He plans to kill me if he wins, don't shy away from it!" He heard Vega swear before the crowd of knights, aspirants and squires around him voiced their mixture of dismay and apprehension. "Elder Maxson has deemed me a threat to the Brotherhood and has forced my hand. So now we engage in a combat trial as it is written in the Litany."

  "Trying to turn my troops against me, abomination?" Maxson huffed as he discarded his heavy battle coat and began rolling up his sleeves. "I can't say I'm surprised, but I am disappointed. I had hoped you would meet your end with some shred of dignity."

  Danse shrugged, Backhand's lucky bandanna brushing his chin when he raised his head. "You haven't won yet, Maxson." He reminded the younger man with a sad smile.

  Arthur lunged at him suddenly, dust flying with the speed of his approach. Danse barely managed to sidestep, latching on to Arthur's wrist and shoulder. The paladin used the other man's momentum against him, redirecting him around his body and kicking his legs out from beneath him.

  "Are we beginning now, Arthur?" He asked sharply, that tactical portion of his brain considering the merits of stomping down on Maxson's groin with all his might.

  But no, no, he couldn't--Maxson was the elder -

  Arthur flailed on the ground, his face red with fury as he clawed at Danse's hands on him. The paladin released him and stepped back, not overly eager to stay within striking distance of the formidable elder. Unfortunately, Maxson didn't leave him much of a choice in the matter. The younger man darted forward again, too low for Danse to redirect him. The paladin took the brunt of Arthur's shoulder to his midsection, gasping out a pained breath even as he tried to brace his footing. 

  Arthur's shoulder drove deeper into his stomach and the younger man grappled Danse's legs, heaving him backwards off the ground . Danse frantically grabbed at Maxson's back before the younger man pinned him bodily, the two of them hitting the gravel with a bone-jarring impact. 

  Danse still hadn't been able to catch his breath and he barely got his arms up in time as Arthur cocked back for his first punch.

  Maxson tended to machine-gun when it came to his blows, pummeling his target to a pulp within the first flurry. Danse had watched him fight enough to know that this was possibly the worst position for him to be in. Here, Maxson could just rain attacks down onto him until his damn arms broke, beat him into submission without even having to get him outside the boundaries. "You will die. In the dirt . Like the dog you are!" Maxson screamed as he struck Danse. 

  He's the elder. He's the elder. But...

  Danse gritted his teeth. No . If Maxson was doing to kill him, he was going to work for it. Danse wouldn't hand him his fragile existence on a silver platter. Not anymore. Never again . Every assault, every misguided order, every time his admiration or willingness to help had been taken advantage of…

  Danse sucked in a breath and shoved Maxson in the chest with all his might, knocking the other man off of him. " Fuck you Arthur! " He spat, suddenly red-hot angry . He got to his feet and loomed over the elder of the Brotherhood, smoldering with rage.

  Maxson seemed confused, like he couldn't believe Danse was actually fighting back . He scrambled back to an upright position, the two of them circling each other much more warily now. 

  "You should have just laid down and died like a good soldier!" Maxson taunted, feinting a few jabs on the left before he swung in from the right. His fist caught Danse in the jaw, snapping the older man's head to the side as he continued, "should have just let me break you, Danse!"

  Danse, reeling from the hit, staggered back a step and dropped to one knee. No, get up . Don't let him do this to you . He forced himself back up, glancing the next punishing blow off his shoulder and then landing a check of his own that sent Maxson sprawling on his back. 

  "Get up, Arthur!" Danse shouted, his fists clenched. " Get the fuck up and fight me! "

  So fast Danse almost missed it, Arthur whipped his combat knife out of his boot sheath and rushed him with it, holding the blade low in an effort to conceal the weapon.

  The blade that killed the deathclaw . 

  The point barely grazed Danse's arm as he flinched back, razor-sharp steel easily parting the flannel and skin beneath it. 

  He was in trouble now. Maxson unarmed was bad enough, but Maxson using a weapon he was intimately familiar with absolutely spelled certain death for Danse. Never mind that they had agreed on no weapons. Danse doubted anyone was exactly refereeing a Litany trial. As long as they stayed within the circle, he was under the impression that he was on his own.

  Arthur slashed wildly at him, no longer bothering for subtlety as he openly attacked Danse with the knife. Maxson had this hideous, leering smirk on his face the whole time; he was playing with his food. 

  Danse felt like an idiot for even thinking that he had a chance at winning when Maxson buried the blade in his shoulder.

  But what else could he do? Die in the dirt , like Arthur had screamed at him?

  " You're a cheating sunuvabitch, Arthur! " Vega's voice rang out loud and clear like the crack of a whip. Danse saw her out of the corner of his eye, the woman struggling vainly against the armored vambrace that encircled her waist. " Coward! " She yelled indignantly.

  Danse smiled thinly through the pain, gripping Maxson's wrist on the knife with enough force to make Arthur grunt. His free hand clamped down on the crook of Maxson's elbow, keeping the younger man locked in that position. Maxson headbutted him to try and make some space and Danse slammed their heads together harder, baring his teeth and snarling in Arthur's face. 

  Between the two of them, Arthur would always be smarter and quicker than Danse. 

  But Danse was stronger . Danse thrived in the trenches and on the front lines. Maxson may have called him a dog as an insult, yet there was truth in his words. Danse was a bulldog , boots on the ground, chewing for the jugular until the day he died. This wasn't his first time fighting for his life against insurmountable odds and he was finally refusing to roll over for Arthur.

  Something flashed in Maxson's eyes for a split-second and Danse latched onto it. "You're afraid of me, aren't you Maxson?" He panted, maintaining his death grip as Arthur began to struggle to free himself. "Of what I could do to your leadership, your elder status-"

  " Shut the fuck up!" Maxson seethed, the palm of his free hand crashing into Danse's throat. The paladin stumbled back and dropped to the ground, his lungs screaming for air as the blade tore loose. Maxson, instead of just finishing him off, began to pontificate, watching Danse writhe and hack for air in the dirt. "You know Danse, I saw what you had with Cutler and I envied it. I searched for years , trying to find something like it. I failed, naturally. So the only solution was to get Cutler out of the picture. But you were stubborn . You longed for a dead man, entirely ignoring the needs of your leader!" Maxson hissed, grinding the heel of his boot against the wound on Danse's shoulder. "And if I couldn't have you wholly, I would break you."

  Danse knew on a technical level that the wound should hurt. His face automatically winced. But all he could focus on was Arthur's words, his confession . The heel of the elder's boot, already sticky with blood, crushed down on the side of Danse's head next. 

  "Why so quiet now, Danse? Do I behave like a man who fears you, freak? " Maxson mocked him, delivering one last kick before backing away.

  Danse laid there in the gravel, bruised, bleeding; dazed not just by pain but by the knowledge that Maxson had sent Cutler away on purpose. Maxson had sent Cutler to his death. Sent Brandis to his death. Sent Danse to his death.

  " Well , synth? For being so confident, you are remarkably silent!" Arthur needled. "Where's all that righteous wrath you threatened me with? I wanted a fight! "

  Danse noticed dimly that the crowd was entirely still around them. It was eerie, like everyone else had vanished and it was just he and Arthur.

  Danse raised his left arm, the whole limb shaking violently, and he curled his fingers to flip Maxson off.

  The crowd's judgemental silence dissolved into laughter and rowdy shouts, both for and against the paladin. He vaguely picked up Vega yelling, " Attaboy! "

  Arthur sputtered with fury. He leaped at Danse, no doubt enraged enough to slit his throat. All Danse could think to do was hike his knees up, planting them firmly in Maxson's pelvis and then catapulting the smaller man up and over his body. Maxson landed several feet away on his back, giving a pained grunt as the wind was knocked out of him by the impact. 

  The knife clattered and skidded through the dirt and gravel, out of reach for the moment. Danse floundered to roll over, trying to keep the distance between himself and Arthur while the dust settled. When it did, though, he realized something. 

  Arthur's entire body was outside the circle. 

  Danse blinked, eyes wide as he realized that not only did that mean he had won, that meant Arthur had lost. In front of everyone .

  " Freak! " Maxson shrieked, staggering back to his feet and pointing an accusatory finger at the wounded paladin. "At least Cutler had the good sense to get himself killed , unlike you and fucking Brandis! " The elder screamed, blood and saliva flying from his mouth. "You two are like goddamn radroaches! "

  "Elder Maxson?" Rhys . He sounded so hesitant, so unlike himself. "Sir, did you...did you send our squad out here purposely? "

  "It is not your place to question me, Knight! And don't act like Danse didn't tell you as much, I'm certain he wasted no time vilifying me upon your arrival to the Commonwealth!" Maxson spat ruthlessly. "Traitorous liar! "

  "I'm afraid the paladin may have been too preoccupied with keeping his squadron alive to convey any personal irritation regarding you , sir." Haylen said dryly. "Perhaps you can fill us in on what we might have missed?"

  Maxson, instead of answering, threw himself back at Danse. 

  …

  Danse hit the ground with Maxson on top of him and Backhand screamed something abusive that was extremely unflattering to the elder's lineage.

  Arthur grabbed Danse by the collar of his worn shirt and slammed the back of his head against the ground, the elder appearing to snap as he howled with rage and punched Danse again and again and again -

  Vega's fists clenched in her binds and she struggled futilely against the knight holding her, willing Danse to fight back, to do something , don't die on me!

  Suddenly a huge gauntlet was seizing Maxson by the seat of his pants, tossing the young man off to the side. 

  "That is enough ." Brandis, Brandis , how had he even gotten there?! Backhand had last seen him in the bowels of the Prydwen as she was being led out from the cell! The elderly paladin stood tall over the two bedraggled men in the dirt, cracking his knuckles in his gauntlets. "What is the meaning of this, Maxson?" He asked furiously, tone sharp through the speakers of his helmet. "You would disgrace trial by combat in such a manner? How dare you! You bring shame upon the Litany!"

  "Stay out of my way, you meddling old fool!" Maxson ordered, getting shakily to his feet.

  "Or what, you'll beat me to a pulp as well?" Brandis retorted. "You've turned against your troops, Arthur, the men and women you swore to lead with integrity. You've freely admitted to sending soldiers to their deaths because it suited you , not the needs of the Brotherhood. You've brought nothing but disgrace to our chapter, Arthur! Look around you! " Brandis exclaimed, gesturing at the crowd. "You're a tyrant , Maxson! Not one amongst the ranks would stand up to you, not one would shake you back to reality, and those that tried are now lying in the damn dirt ."

  "Be quiet! "

  "You cannot silence me, Maxson." The old paladin said calmly. "You've tried and failed before."

  "What would you have me do, Brandis? He's a synth ." 

  "Perhaps." Brandis allowed. "But all I see is a man who obeyed your stipulations and threw you out of your circle, Maxson. According to our tenets and the Litany, his requests must be met. Release Vega to his custody."

  Maxson snarled futilely. "You will regret crossing me, Brandis!" He warned. "Stand down now! "

  "I have no squadron left for you to kill, Elder ." The older paladin scoffed a little. "What will you hold over my head? Retirement?" He tipped his helmet towards the knight who had Vega. "I said, release her ."

  The knight who had been holding Backhand let her go with a mumbled apology, and without any hesitation she took off at a dead run for Danse. Her whole body ached from the heavy-handed treatment Maxson had inflicted on her, but in the light of getting Danse back it was an easy burden to bear.

  She tumbled to her knees, her hands still bound in front of her as she called his name. He groaned in reply, grimacing when she touched his arm. "Danse, holy shit ." Backhand breathed. 

  The paladin exhaled a broken laugh, barely opening his eyes. "Did I win?" He asked blearily. "Everything is spinning."

  Backhand couldn't help the sob that escaped her as Danse pawed blindly at her bound hands, the young woman opening her mouth to say something. 

  There was a commotion behind her, Brandis shouting " no Maxson! " and then a gunshot. Backhand froze as a plume of dirt kicked up bare inches from Danse's head, the paladin jerking away from the impact. 

  She pitched herself forward, bridging Danse's form with her own by propping her weight up on her elbows. "Don't move, Danse." She whispered, "I've got you, okay? If he wants to shoot you he's gonna' have to get through me ."

  "Don't try to--Vega, I order you to get out of the way! How dare you defy me!" Maxson struggled against Brandis' attempts to take the service pistol from him, waving the gun wildly in the air. " Traitors! Let the synth meet its fate!"

  "Vega, you need to... Elizabeth , he'll shoot you, please -" Danse begged, weakly shoving at her side. "The Brotherhood needs-"

  " Fuck the Brotherhood, Danse!" Backhand yelled at him. "If this is how they treat you , someone who's spent his entire career fighting for their cause, then I don't want shit to do with them!"

  The report of the service pistol cut through the air once more, and Backhand's body collapsed on top of Danse.

Part Sixteen

[cynicalrainbows]

Fluff for @2nerd4this!

(In the interest of being honest, this is some modified fic that I already wrote for different characters. But i thought you might like it anyway, and I don’t think you’ll have read it bc the person i sent it to hasn’t published it. Anyhow, enjoy!)

Cathy groaned and rolled onto her side, trying to move away from the pain that was currently ripping through her.

Is this what childbirth felt like? Surely it can’t have been worse than this….

She knew she was perhaps exaggerating a little- she knew, she KNEW it was just a period….but it was hard to keep reminding herself of that when the pain was enough to almost bring tears to her eyes.

She wondered if periods were somehow worse in the 21st century- she could have sworn it never hurt this badly back at court.

Or maybe I just blocked it out.

Not that she would have received much sympathy from that quarter: her husband had had more than his fill of sick, ailing wives and ‘woman’s problems’. She was to be his final chance, his strong healthy wife who had lived long enough to prove her mettle, with none of the passions and fits and fancies of the women of his youth.

She was his easy wife, the one who brought him no problems but instead soothed his own.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

And now, hundreds of years later, here she was again: the easy one, the low maintenance one.

Easy-to-please Cathy, who needed only her laptop and a cup of coffee to be happy. Untroubled Cathy, without the trauma’s and nightmares that plagued the others.

The survivor.

And so, when the mild cramping in her uterus had turned into agonising spasms, she’d hidden herself away in her room, and assured the others that it was ‘nothing really.’

Oh how she was regretting that now. Not that she could do anything about it: Actually sorry everything I said about being self sufficient was a lie, I��m actually quite lonely and scared and in pain and so if you could all just drop everything….

A quiet knock broke through her thoughts.

‘Mmmm?’

‘It’s just me mija-’

Cathy felt her spirits lift but as she was opening her mouth to reply, another cramp ripped through her and she gasped instead, doubling up.

‘Cathy?’

 Catalina pushed into her room, looking worried and came straight to the bed, her hand cool against Cathy’s hot forehead.

‘Mija, are you alright?’

Cathy shook her head, screwing her eyes shut and biting her lip against the pain. She didn’t want to look pathetic in front of her friend godmother maternal figurehead…. She didn’t want to look pathetic in front of anyone but it hurt so badly, she couldn’t help her eyes tearing up.

‘J- just a period-’

‘It seems a bit more than that…’

Even as she shook her head, another cramp ripped through her and she winced. Catalina’s expression grew alarmed.

‘Querida, do you feel sick?’

Cathy nodded with the barest jerk of the head.

‘Is the pain on one side of your-’

‘Not appendicitis-’

‘Are you sure? Because-’

The worry in Catalina’s voice induced Cathy to crack open an eye. 

‘It’s-’ She winced; her voice was very quiet but her godmother leaned in to hear instantly. ‘It’s just period pain. Jane was right.’

‘Still-’ Catalina’s fingers threaded through her tousled hair gently. ‘It looks terribly painful mija.’

Cathy nodded. There was no point in denying it. Still, she had to keep up a front. She was the survivor after all.

‘I’m ok really- it….it hurts but I’m ok.’ She fought to keep her voice steady as she said it: even knowing that it’d be selfish to drag ANOTHER queen away from rehearsal on the same day that she was already out of action, the idea of being left all alone again to the pain and an empty house made her want to cry.

It reminded her too much of her first life- the long empty hours alone while her husband stewed and plotted and seethed and she waited on tenterhooks, and then the long painful hours after Mary was born, as she felt her strength sap slowly, her husband gone and no one left to care if she lived or died.

‘Ok.’

Catalina nodded and Cathy felt her heart sink. That was it? She was just going to take her word for it? She tried to keep the disappointment down as her godmother pressed a kiss to the top of her head and made for the door.

‘I’ll give the others a call-’

Before Catalina had left the room, Cathy could already imagine what the others would say- what the fans would say, to hear that she’d not only called in sich herself but dragged Catalina all the way back to the house for ‘just’ period pain.

What sort of survivor was she?

She managed to hold herself together until the footsteps down the hall died away before letting herself cry. This time, it wasn’t just from the pain. She buried her face into her pillow, feeling the bed shake with her silent sobs.

Always the same, no matter what life: she was destined to be alone. Alone and forgotten and abandoned and all because she was the strong one, she was the one who didn’t need care or love or support or anything at all, and that was good because she surely wasn’t going to get it, after all everyone knew she was the survivor, the one who didn’t need help because goodness knew nothing that bad had ever really happened to her….

‘Oh mija!’ A weight settled onto the edge of the bed next to her and the mattress dipped; a familiar hand smoothed stray strands of hair away from her face. ‘Is it very bad? Here, I’ve brought you some painkillers, let’s get you sitting up so you can take them-’

Cathy was too stunned to resist much as Kat gently eased her up to lean against her shoulder; automatically, she swallowed the pills and water handed to her and sniffled into the tissue that was pressed into her hand.

‘I- I thought-’

Her voice was husky with tears and Catalina frowned. ‘What is it mi vida? What did you think?’

Having to say it made her eyes sting all over again. 

‘I thought you LEFT-’

‘I did.’ Catalina looked puzzled ‘I had to get you the pills mija- why Jane insists we keep the medicine in the kitchen and not the bathroom I will NEVER know-’

‘No!’ It was hard to make herself understood as a fresh cramp made her writhe in Catalina’s arms but she made an effort. ‘I thought you LEFT.’

‘Oh!’ Catalina’s face cleared and then she looked horrified: the next thing she knew, Cathy was being swept up in her arms and bundled tightly against her chest. ‘Oh mija, no! Never! I just went to sort things out, to get the things you needed to feel better…. I never thought for a moment you’d think we were-’

‘We?’

‘Anna drove me back to check on you when we heard you weren’t coming in-’

‘Cathy?’ At that moment Anna appeared in the doorway, juggling a steaming mug and a hot water bottle. ‘Babes, what’s the matter, is the pain worse?’

‘She thought I’d just walked out on her!’ Catalina sounded anguished. ‘She thought I was just going to leave her alone-’

Oddly, it proved a curious sort of balm to Cathy’s wearied, lonely soul. To hear someone care that MUCH about hurting her….

Anna’s eyes went wide. ‘Oh Cath, really? Honestly, she just went to call us all in sick, to let the others know where we were, that you were sick and needed looking after, and to let me know what to fetch from downstairs…. We never for a second-’

‘’S ok-’ Still tucked into Catalina’s arms, Cathy felt her face heat up in humiliation and turned away, to hide it against her godmothers’s collar. ‘Not your fault. I was just being stupid, I’m sorry, I- I didn’t mean for you both to come, I didn’t want to cause any trouble, I-’

‘Hush.’ Catalina’s hand gently cupped the back of her head, smoothing down the flyaway hairs. ‘It’s all ok mija. Just a misunderstanding. Nothing to worry about. Ok?’

She nodded into Catalina’s chest.

‘And of course you’re not a bother-’ Anna joined in. ‘Honestly, the others wanted to come too except i think that would have pushed Joan over the edge. But it’s no trouble! We just wanted to check you were ok-’

Despite the reassurance, Cathy couldn’t quite raise her eyes. Surely they were both wearied of her overreactions by now. Shame bubbled in the pit of her stomach, a brief distraction from the pain.

Even so, she couldn’t help but feel a little comforted when another dip in the mattress told her that Anna had joined them on the bed too.

‘So I brought you a hot water bottle for your stomach and a cool flannel for your head- Catalina said you were a bit warm- and some hot chocolate, just because it probably won’t make you feel worse.’

‘Thank you, but you shouldn’t have-’

 ‘Well I did. Too late now.’ Blunt as Anna’s words were, Cathay  could hear the gentle smile behind them. Catalina shifted her slightly in her arms.

‘How about we get you settled again so you can make use of them? Hm? I promise they’ll make you feel better mija.’

Reluctantly Catalina peeled herself out of Catalina’s embrace and peeped up- her godmother's warm smile was reassuringly un-annoyed.

Maybe she really isn’t cross with me.

‘Now first things first- you can’t possibly be comfy with your duvet all tangled. Do you think you can stand if we help you?’

In less than five minutes, Cathy found herself being helped back into a freshly made bed. The hot water bottle helped soothe the sore muscles of her lower stomach, the flannel cooled her hot, tear-streaked face. Once she was safely in place, Anna and Catalina climbed up onto the bed either side of her; Catalina raised an arm and Cathy burrowed underneath, curling into her side and feeling rather like a baby chick being swept beneath a protective wing.

‘Better, mija?’

She nodded in Catalina’s cardigan and heard Anna’s soft chuckle.

‘Good. Now what can we do to take your mind off it all hm? Do you want to watch something on Netflix?’

Cathy shook her head, still burrowed; she didn’t really want to disturb the quiet peace that had settled over the room since the queens had entered.

‘I could read to you if you like.’

The suggestion seemed to take both Cathy AND Anna by surprise.

‘Really?’

‘Yes. If she- if YOU want.’

‘Do people even read aloud any more?’

‘Maybe you don’t.’ There was the hint of a teasing challenge in Catalina’s voice. ‘But I do.’

Cathy was about to tell Catalina not to worry, not to go to the trouble (because surely it WAS trouble)- but before she opened her mouth, she stopped herself. She couldn’t remember anyone- anyone EVER- offering to do something as tender as read aloud to her before. Not even as a child.

Catalina seemed to sense her hesitation. ‘Is that a yes mija?’

She nodded again, feeling her cheeks getting hot again as she did so. Even though Catalina had offered, taking her up on it still felt somehow presumptuous and demanding. Still….she also couldn’t quite bring herself to tell Catalina to stop.

‘Alright then. Anna, could you grab me something from the bookshelf?’ Cathy felt Catalina’s chuckle this time. ‘I seem to have a former monarch on me.’

(The arm holding Cathy to her tightened as she said it, even before Cathy could draw away in embarrassment and apologise.)

‘This do?’ Anna’s voice moved away and then came closer. ‘All she has are books about history and religion… Cath, when you’re better, we’re going to Waterstones, ok? Urgently. You need some light reading, I’m going to introduce you to the world of horror novels...’

‘That’s fine.’ 

Shifting slightly, Catalina drew Cathy infinitesimally closer and cleared her throat. Anna settled back onto the bed and Cathy felt a hand rubbing slow circles on her aching lower back. The relief was almost immediate- she had to fight the urge to purr.

‘Behold Lord how I come to you, a sinner sick and grievously wounded...’

Cathy peeped up- to catch Anna’s warm smile and Catalina’s absorbed expression- and then nestled back down. As her eyelids fluttered shut, she allowed the soft cadence of Catalina’s voice carry her away.

All was well.

[whitherliliesbloom]

mettle of metal

[ ffxivwrite2020 ] ★ [ my writings ]  ★ [ prompt #04 - clinch]

[ raubahn v.s wol ]  ★ [ 1,315 words ]  ★ [ post-heavensward spoilers ]

‘ to confirm the winning or achievement of ’

on the day the bull butt heads with the lamb, who was the true victor?

“I’ve always wanted to test my mettle against yours, Warrior of Light. I can’t say this situation displeases me at all.”

It does me. 

Illya has never been one to thrive off conflict or needless confrontations. Quite strange, most definitely, considering her fame as one who almost single handedly tore a hole right through the castrum’s stronghold. A test of strength against a friend, above all else, was something she absolutely abhorred. 

Not that she ever has a say in the matter.. she was, after all, always a slave to the whims and wants of others. 

The representative of Ishgard stood stock still in the midst of the freezing cold, with bed of hair tied into innocent little braids camouflaged into a sea of white around her. And yet in spite of the foreign colors she wore, Raubahn was all too familiar with her visage. 

A pair of violet jewels, spectacular in their luster, though holding just a tiny glint of danger within them. He’s seen that look in her eyes plenty, and yet it’s the first the threat of her soul piercing gaze has ever been directed at him. And in her hand, a rod made of metal and amethyst, name amply fitting for the diamond in the rough, the hero that held it - for the stardust that was their very own champion of Eorzea. 

Not now, however.. Raubahn had to remind himself, as he pushed the visor of his helmet down and raised his sword. In this very moment, on this very battlefield, she was his enemy, and the enemy of the alliance. And just as he’d sworn upon the sultana’s bedside, with tears that’d nearly spilled so uncharacteristic of his reputation, he would not fail to strike down any who would consider themselves enemies to her - friend or not. 

To his surprise, his foe had struck first, blasting the center of where he’d just been standing not less than a second ago with an unforgiving strike of lightning. The general of flames had dodged, just barely, and felt the full sting of electricity prick at his skin and cause his hair to stand.. and he hadn’t even been hit by her attack at all.

The mage waits not for him to recover, before she detonates a ball of fire upon his person that sends the bull flying across their arena.

He nearly rolls into the ring of flames he’d lit, and the man could do nothing but smile devilishly beneath his helm.

“You’re not the only one who can wield the power of flames. Behold!” 

The bull of Ala Mhigo was quick to pick himself up, and with a raise of his sword he conjured up his own raging flames, an inferno that burned hotter and brighter than the feeble little puff his foe had thrown at him. For his wrath and determination too towered over his foe - the girl he knew to be too softhearted for her own good. 

Illya was kind and gentle, almost too much so.. He’d once wondered of how a lamb could carry the flames of Eorzea as she does, rise to such fame and strength that not even the strongest of the imperials, the Legatus holding the title of the Black Wolf, could hope to match against her might. And though the general has long learned to not belittle the girl for her inconspicuousness, he has always wondered what the secret behind her strength was - what set Illya apart from himself?

She was the tender to his hardy, the white to his black, the gentle moonlight that would never meet his blazing sun. If he was a warrior, forged by the battles that has painted his entire body with enough scars to map the world, then she was a flower that had bloomed upon that very battlefield he fought on.

But flowers who could not accept its need for their own sustenance, a flower who refused to grow thorns.. will not survive for long in a war torn environment. If nothing else, he hopes her defeat will teach her that.

The flame general’s attack causes the girl to step back and stumble, the first Aymeric had seen her done in a while, and watches helplessly as Raubahn charges the girl with his sword swung to his side.

It was all she could do but to physically block his blade with her rod, grimacing as she barely avoids the sharp end of his sword from grazing her head before sprinting away from the man.

“Do you plan on running forever, warrior?! Your weapon is nothing more than a mere stick next to mine!”

Any distance she’d hoped to draw between them was always effortlessly closed, and any time she’d planned on buying to cast her spells to counter his attack was whittled away bit by bit, as was her strength. 

Raubahn was as observant of his enemies as he was strong, he surely must have noticed the lack of resistance as he struck the shaft of her rod. As was necessary for the conjuring of black magic, all of her magic was being imbued into her longstaff, but not herself. 

The wall of flames general Aldynn had summoned was not to damage her, great as her defense against magical damage as she was. It was to throw her off balance so that he might close the gap between them.

“I’ll finish this!”

The bull of Ala Mhigo charges, sword raised high above his head that he swings down towards the lamb, who helplessly raises up her rod. 

Foolish girl, doing that with her weakness will only cause her to crash down beneath his feet.

Metal against metal, steel against steel. The smell of ash fills his nostrils, and all he could hear was the deafening screech of his sword against...

her sword?

“What?”

Stardust has faded. The moon has sunk beneath the horizon, leaving naught but darkness. And from beyond the horizon, a shadow rose. 

How many summers has it last been since he’d had his sword pushed aside so effortlessly like this? He’d been reminded of his bouts with Ilberd, of his time as a calf who could barely even tell a swords’ hilt from its pommel. 

The feeling of fighting a foe he’d dreaded to clash blades with, a foe he knew to be stronger than himself in every way.

It would seem.. he’s underestimated the Warrior of Light again.

“I never knew.. you knew how to wield a great sword.” 

What a sight it was, to see the Lalafellin he’d always known for her dainty little staffs and canes to be carrying a jet black sword that was larger than herself, and to see the lavender glint in her eyes glow an almost ominous red. Illya’s stance was nothing like before, nothing like the stumbling, flustered lamb he’d thought her to be.

“If...If it’s a close fight you want..” Illya’s voice was the only reminder he had of who she was - of the delicate flower he’d watched bloom in his midst. He had just not taken notice of the thorns beneath her roots until it was too late. 

“Don’t blame me... You were the one who forced my hand.”

She didn’t want for it to come to this.. wished with all her might that she needn’t use him. But the unforgiving crystal in her breast pocket whispered to her, reminded her of the disappointment she’d cause her allies were she to fall without even giving it her all. 

And in that, the secret behind the Warrior of Light’s strength.. the crippling fear of failure, of the demon that laid dormant inside her. 

A victory clinched, a battle that was hardly even a contest. On that day, the bull had been brought down to his knees, and he stared up at the shadow with fear and pride in his eyes. 

[the-odd-job]

Up in Flames chapter 14 - Tear Into You (Ashes Part 2)

Warnings: Major Character Death, Chose Not to Use Category: Other Fandom: Transformers Relationships: Megatron/Sunstreaker, Megatron/Sideswipe, Sideswipe & Sunstreaker Characters: Sunstreaker, Megatron Additional Tags: Dubcon, Mechpreg, Sticky Words: 5342

Am I beautiful As I tear you to pieces? Am I beautiful? Even at my ugliest, you always say I'm beautiful As you tear me to pieces You are beautiful Even at your ugliest, I always say You're beautiful and sick like me

— In This Moment – Sick Like Me

( Previous )

It turned into a public event, as little of a surprise as that was. They were gladiators. Fighting for show was what they did, even if the glory days of the Pits were long gone, brought down by Megatron himself.

But gone or not, their world was still familiar to most of the Decepticon army. There were many among their ranks that could appreciate a good showdown between skilled fighters—and Sunstreaker quite enjoyed providing shows of that nature. Didn’t he deserve to be the center of attention, both for what he was and what he could do?

And Megatron as his opponent only did him justice. Could he win? Probably not. Megatron had beaten him every time they had ever fought, rightfully proving himself superior no matter the circumstances.

Would he still give it his best go? Pit yeah. Anything less would’ve been nothing but an embarrassment. As much as winning was the goal, so was entertaining, and testing yourself, pushing yourself to your limit in front of so many appreciative optics.

And this side of the war definitely could appreciate real fights like the Autobots never did. The Autobots were more concerned with not going overt with the damage inflicted during sparring, and real fights were supposed to be off the table entirely, as little as Sunstreaker had ever followed that rule. 

The Decepticons didn’t have such concerns. They were a violent bunch and seemed to only consider the injuries racked up as inevitable, without seeing any reason to change their actions because someone or other got hurt and required repairs. Part of life, no? Nothing more, nothing less. No reason to make a number out of it. With continued access to Cybertron, they didn't even need to worry about resources—aside from the ever elusive energon—as the Autobots did.

That suited Sunstreaker just fine, as did the fact no one thought twice about him suffering injuries the same as everyone else, despite the fact he was carrying. The only reason anyone spent time having second thoughts before fighting him was his sheer proven prowess. He could scrap most of the mecha on either side of the war. Did you really want to mess with him?

Megatron didn’t need to worry about things like that, though. Sunstreaker could provide him with a good fight, and he would do so, but Megatron’s strength and ability exceeded even his own. Everyone knew that.

Didn’t stop Sunstreaker from immediately agreeing to the suggestion of another no holds barred fight, and that saw them here, in the training room with the majority of the Decepticon army on Earth standing aside, optics sharp on them. Megatron’s sword was extended and Sunstreaker held his own thermal sword, ready to carve his fragging name in the warlord’s armor. As much as they were both weapons just by existing… Well, additional aids were damage multipliers, weren’t they? They evened the odds a little, allowed for greater damage on both sides. That came in quite handy. 

Especially now. Megatron was, in frame, more of a weapon than he was. Once upon a time Sunstreaker would have considered them equal as far as their armaments went, but since then, he’d lost his claws, his fangs, his edges—things Megatron still retained because who would dare try to take those from him.

Didn’t matter. Sunstreaker still knew how to hit and how to tear, blunt digits or not, and he damn well knew how to handle a sword. Maybe he was at a disadvantage, maybe he was the underdog—then let it be so. It wouldn’t stop him from giving as good as he got.

“Haven’t we done this enough times already?” Sunstreaker asked as Megatron nodded at him, inviting him to make the first move. He did, rushing the warlord, dodging the blade that moved to intercept him, although he couldn’t break through Megatron’s defense enough to actually land a hit. Neither did he receive a hit either, though, dancing out of the way of Megatron’s attack on light pedes.

“Do you complain?” Megatron asked in return, moving on him, but Sunstreaker moved with him, staying just half a step ahead. Enough to save him until he could try to take an opening.

It didn’t work. Megatron blocked him, and wasn’t it satisfying to feel like his skill was truly matched, like he’d be made to work for every attack he could possibly land.

Sunstreaker’s mouth tugged into a smirk. “No. Why would I ever say no to a chance of slagging you? Fragging well deserve it, at least.”

“Do I now?” the tyrant rumbled in amusement, sending Sunstreaker stumbling back with a strike of his sword, cutting too deep into his plating. Megatron moved to a follow up attack in one fluent motion, but Sunstreaker wasn’t there anymore when it was supposed to reach him, moving out of the way like quicksilver. 

“Damn well. Or did you forget everything you’ve done?” Sunstreaker’s sword connected with Megatron’s side, too shallow, a second before he had to dodge again. There was no way it would’ve been that easy, anyway. 

He’d be disappointed if it was. Megatron was supposed to be better than that, and he was. 

“How large of a scale are we talking about, here?” Megatron humored him. Sunstreaker could surmise what he meant. There was many a mech who would take an issue with the whole war Megatron had thrust Cybertron into—the atrocities he’d committed in the name of his cause. Genocide.  

Did Sunstreaker think he deserved an ass kicking for all that? He should have. He had been an Autobot, a faction whose entire purpose was to oppose Megatron and everything he did and wanted to do. It was that insignia that still painted his chest, scratched out now. Why was he ever one of the red faction if he didn’t think Megatron deserved to pay for his supposed crimes?

They knew already.

What, then? Did he think Megatron had been right all along, justified in what he did? All the death he’d caused, the innocent he’d killed? What did he think of that?

“Scale of my goddamn life,” Sunstreaker growled, jumping out of the way of Megatron’s slash that would have beyond hurt had it connected, and taking his chances with an attack of his own. It landed. Muted satisfaction burst in his spark. The sparklet in his chamber vibrated, its excitement joining his own.

This was right. Fighting, testing his mettle, against its sire too, proving to it and to himself once again that Megatron was powerful enough to be considered beyond desirable for the role. 

“Hm. And everything else I’ve done?” the tyrant asked from him. Why? Was he genuinely curious?

Or was he testing him? Megatron wanted him to fight. Not just like this—blades clashing against each other before one broke through, sharp cuts from Megatron’s, searing slashes from Sunstreaker's—but in the war. For him. Was this an attempt at gauging his current stance on the whole matter? 

“You didn’t do any of that to me,” came Sunstreaker’s answer. He dove past Megatron’s defense again, and this time his sword sank deep into Megatron’s side, as much as the warlord knew how to angle himself to reduce the severity of the damage. Getting out of the way of the retaliation was as important as delivering hurt, but he only managed that with a hair’s breadth away from the harm Megatron wanted to inflict on him.

Good enough, all the same. 

“Selfish,” Megatron commented, but it didn’t sound like an accusation as it would’ve been coming from any Autobot. More just an… Observation.

“You know it,” Sunstreaker grinned, unrepentant. As if it wasn’t common knowledge Sunstreaker didn’t really give a crap about anyone but himself. More reasons for the Autobots to dislike him. They put so much weight on altruism, Optimus in particular. Oh, all the talks he had gotten for putting himself first, at the cost of others. 

Hadn’t really worked, any of those chastisements. He was yet to see the error of his ways.

“And what of all the good I’ve brought upon your life?” Megatron went on to ask. Sunstreaker frowned a second before he was too slow and received a strike that sliced clean through his armor. He ignored the ache of the cut in favor of dodging to the side, away from Megatron’s follow up attack. But, if he’d hoped to take the chance to deliver an attack of his own, Megatron was quick to squash those dreams. 

“What fucking good?” Sunstreaker growled after he’d gathered his bearings and they were back to their scheduled dancing, injuries, wounds on both of them slowly piling up. “You destroyed it.”

“As was necessary. I freed you from the Autobots,” came Megatron’s argument, delivered in time with a feign Sunstreaker didn’t recognize as such, followed by a fast attack that landed and had him reeling and scrambling out of the way for a precious second that ended with a cut on Megatron when the tyrant was a little too slow to turn to face him. 

Sunstreaker couldn’t really disagree with Megatron on this one, though. He growled again instead, veering to the side quickly enough to deliver another attack that landed almost as it was intended to before Megatron could force him away.

“Ends justify the means, huh?” Sunstreaker asked after he’d dodged again, diving right back in the next moment to deliver a vicious strike upon the larger mech. “Waltz right in, announce my crimes to the whole damn world, but that’s fine because it would roast me out of the Autobots?” Fragger.

“Do you disagree it was for the best?” Megatron asked from him, then moved far faster than he had any right to. Sunstreaker couldn’t get out of the way quickly enough and Megatron’s blade sank into his armor, leaving yet another gaping tear behind.

But not deep enough to bleed. Yet.  

“What does it matter? A little too late to go back, now,” Sunstreaker hissed back. Whatever he thought of it wouldn’t change things anymore. There was no fixing what Megatron had done.

“But not too late to move forward,” the tyrant said—and why the slag did Sunstreaker feel like they were again circling back to the matter of would he or would he not fight? He couldn’t go back to being an Autobot, not after everything… Not that he really wanted to, either.

Did he want to be Neutral, then? Denounce his planet and his species for the sake of being outside the fight, picking no side?

Or would he rather continue fighting?  

“You’re not really winning me over,” he growled at Megatron all the same, performing one attack, another… But the third was blocked and countered. Sunstreaker was forced to backpedal fast as he could manage, his engine revving in aggravation.

“You’re as stubborn as they come,” Megatron snarled back at him. Sunstreaker chuckled, twice so when he managed to turn the tables for a moment and jam his sword into a gap in Megatron’s armor.

“You’re only now noticing that?” he purred at the warlord even as he was forced to take a step back again, then another, and another before he could slip to Megatron’s side. But no, even that didn’t work. This time there was blood when Megatron swept his sword into him, deep enough to nick fuel lines. Sunstreaker could feel the wetness running down his internals, but he made damn sure Megatron’s plating melted under his own sword before he dodged out of the way. Wouldn’t do to give Megatron a chance to do something even worse, but there was no fragging way Sunstreaker was going to get the bastard get away with slag, either.

Now all he needed to do was return to the favor for real and have Megatron’s blood drip along his frame as Sunstreaker’s was.

“Hardly. Headstrong—it’s one of your more attractive qualities.”

This time Sunstreaker laughed outright, although he didn’t let it distract him from the fight, weaving his frame out of the way of Megatron’s attacks. The sparkling was pulsing urgently, growing even more excited at the feeling of his amusement.

And it was amusement. Pleasure, too, though no surprise. Maybe there should’ve been some, with the trouble his stubbornness had caused Megatron. Lack of cooperation and whatnot.

But Sunstreaker was a creature of confidence that some said he took to a sick level. True to that form, “Do I even have any unattractive qualities?” Sunstreaker asked.

“I think you answered that question yourself,” Megatron responded, his field flaring with faint mirth of his own. Sunstreaker growled at the suggestion behind the words—that his self-regard went over the top and that wasn’t a positive quality. 

Well, frag that. The insecure wastes of space just couldn’t understand the comfort of loving yourself.

Sunstreaker dismissed Megatron’s opinion entirely with, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And nearly got his arm cut off for not reading Megatron’s movement fast enough. That, though, wasn’t enough to distract either of them from their conversation.  

“I won’t claim it’s not refreshing, as well,” Megatron conceded in time with Sunstreaker moving in, dodging past the tyrant’s attempted block and– Ah, now there was blood from Megatron too. His blade cut deep and true before Megatron could jerk out of the way. Sunstreaker didn’t let him go so easily, even if he paid for his second attack with a deep groove on his own armor.

But the pain was rewarding. He’d earned it.

And now that they were both bloodied, it felt like the fight was really starting. No Pit fight should be dry; it just wasn’t entertaining without spilled energon tainting the ground. Sunstreaker vowed that Megatron’s blood would pool on the floor before they were done—and acknowledged that his own would likely join it in no small amount. If it didn’t, what were they even doing this for?

So he pressed his attack, no matter how Megatron gave no quarter—no matter how he had to work to evade the injuries that would’ve otherwise piled on him in truly painful amounts. But frag, what else was he supposed to do? He didn’t want to do anything else. All he wanted was to dance on that blade’s edge, feel it every time he was too slow and it scraped along his body.

But also every time Megatron wasn’t fast enough and it was Sunstreaker’s sword that dug into him. Blood, they both wanted that—and they both got it.  

“So what you’re really saying–” Sunstreaker continued, bringing his sword to block Megatron’s when it came down at him, and taking just that moment to meet the warlord’s optics. Sunstreaker smirked. “–Is that I have no unattractive qualities.” Even the one Megatron named he only rescinded by calling it refreshing in the next moment. 

What surprise was it, though? He was beautiful, physically—but he also embodied so many of the things their city had admired, in his behavior and personality. The Autobots had never appreciated his spirit. He was unyielding, ruthless, comfortable with himself, oft violent, temperamental. He wasn’t a pushover. He knew his worth and demanded others acknowledge it too.

He wasn’t a meek little thing like the Autobots would’ve wanted him to be. He wasn’t humble, he wasn’t good.

He was everything an Autobot shouldn’t be, but everything a Kaonite should be—and could it be that he was what a Decepticon should be, too?

Maybe.

“You love to flatter yourself, don’t you?” Megatron rumbled. Slice, cut. Sunstreaker could feel the pain, relished in it.

Ignored it. Delivered it. Megatron ignored it too, showing no signs of feeling his injuries any more than Sunstreaker was. They both possessed well trained pain tolerances, and when nothing vital had been severed yet… Well, there was no reason to act on the pain they were both feeling, and that was multiplying with every moment, with every time one of them couldn’t block or dodge and paid for it.

Blood was beginning to flow faster, attacks on old wounds cutting deeper than the first pass had. Hurting more, too, as their frames informed them of the mounting damage.

Fragging right. Bring it on, give more, back down none.

Sunstreaker’s fans were running faster as the exertion began to build its effects, excitement and emotion only adding to the mess. He could hear the murmur of the Decepticons watching them, but ignored it with age old professionalism. Distractions weren’t acceptable.

Especially not now, with Megatron as intent on bringing him down as Sunstreaker was on not allowing that.

“Is it flattery if it’s just speaking the truth?” he asked, twisting his frame out of the way and into Megatron, bringing his sword to where it would fragging well hurt. And he was hurt in return, and so it went.

Had he still had his claws, he would’ve used those on the tyrant too. He could picture all the ways he could’ve employed them in tandem with his sword, dig them in preexisting wounds, tear every time he was within reach, accentuate the use of his blade and add to the damage he could deliver.

Because Megatron was definitely putting his claws to use, and every time they scratched into him, Sunstreaker envied him for still having them. They drew more blood from him, tore at his armor, bent it, built atop the wounds already littering him.

More and more blood, but it wasn’t just his. His sword damaged near as many lines on Megatron as what were being cut in his own frame. Pink was dribbling from the seams of their armors, all the way to the floor it began to slick.

Better not lose your footing.

“Do you truly think yourself flawless?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Megatron growled at him, and it was just insanity when the warlord stepped forward, right where Sunstreaker could drive his blade through his abdomen–

Only to misread Megatron’s intent and have the back of his helm grabbed. “You’re lucky you have your looks. Your attitude would be very tiresome otherwise,” Megatron growled lowly at him. Sunstreaker wasn’t sure if anyone else could even hear him—or if anyone else was meant to hear him.

But where Megatron could have caught him tight enough to crush… He didn’t. In fact, Sunstreaker was able to pull himself free and retreat a couple of steps away. “I don’t think you mind my attitude as much as you say you do,” he grinned before he dove right back in. Their swords clashed, then they didn’t, then they cut—more blood joined the mess on the floor, more armor was mutilated. Char from the heat of Sunstreaker’s sword tainted the edges of Megatron’s injuries; the edges of Sunstreaker’s wounds were ragged where Megatron’s had torn deeper into them.

Deep, shallow, it all hurt, all piled on top of each other and itself until important parts were reached after all this time, when even their thick plating wasn’t enough to protect them anymore. The engine in Sunstreaker’s left arm suffered under Megatron’s sword—Sunstreaker switched his sword to his right hand. Megatron’s engine was rattling where Sunstreaker had managed to sink his sword into it. Something in his leg was severed, giving the tyrant a limp.

Yet that wasn’t enough to noticeably slow either of them down—not enough to end their fight so soon.

But it was entering its twilight phase all the same. They could only carry on for so long at the pace they were building injuries on each other. Their ventilations turned more ragged, both from the heat that built in their systems, as well as the damage their vents suffered along with the rest of their frames. The floor was painted in pink; it was harder to not slip on the steps they took, back and forth. Harder yet for Sunstreaker as the one who had to move more, when he couldn’t possibly accept the same amount of damage Megatron could put up with if it meant hurting Sunstreaker worse. 

And oh, he was hurting. His injuries throbbed at him in time with the rapid pulse of his spark—his excitement, the sparkling’s excitement, his thrill, the sparkling’s thrill merging together until there was more emotion than Sunstreaker could have ever managed on his own. His frame was on the verge of lagging dangerously, too, as much as he could force it into full cooperation for now.  

Megatron was only doing better to an extent, but it was still becoming obvious he was gaining the upper hand, his size and durability simply surpassing Sunstreaker’s—and Sunstreaker couldn’t make up for it by causing more damage than what was being caused on him. Quite the opposite.

Didn’t matter. What mattered was that Megatron had a limp, there was terrible grinding coming from his right arm with every motion he forced it into, and he was bleeding more than just a little. Sunstreaker had done that to him. His armor was split in so many places. He could almost feel Megatron’s injuries as phantom sensations on top of his own.

Never let it be said he had gone down easily. Never let it be said he hadn’t hurt Megatron.

But go down he did. Megatron drove his sword through his abdomen first when Sunstreaker made just one mistake, too slow to get out of the way. Blood gushed forth when energon lines were cut well and proper, but that alone wouldn’t have been enough to down him. No, Sunstreaker merely backed away from his impalement, fast as he could, but before he was free… Megatron yanked his sword sideways.

Sunstreaker gasped when it tore through far too much machinery, his armor barely enough to stop Megatron’s strength before he would have halfway cut him in two.  

Even that wasn’t serious enough to bring him down on its own, but it forced him to reorient himself from the damage warnings that, along with the simple pain, clued him in on quite a few parts that stopped working entirely, and others yet that were verging on that point.

He took too long with that, was distracted for too many precious seconds. He jerked away when Megatron kicked at him, but that only put him in the path of the blunt impact of the hilt of Megatron’s sword to his face.  

Was he steady on his pedes, he may have been able to overcome even that much.

He wasn’t.

His footing didn’t keep on the blood slicked floor and Sunstreaker came crashing down, landing hard with a grunt as nearly every damn part of his frame complained about the impact. Still, he would have tried to get to his pedes if Megatron hadn’t knelt on his fragging abdomen. Sunstreaker’s vocalizer glitched to static at the agony, thoroughly distracting him from the sword that pressed to his throat.

Decapitation. Not deadly, but more than incapacitating. Sunstreaker’s vents heaved as he tried to push the pain aside enough to focus on his predicament.

His optics eventually found Megatron’s, finding the tyrant staring down at him, his expression unreadable.

Everyone knew he had won, though. Sunstreaker only confirmed that with, “I yield,” spoken loud enough for the observers.

At once the gathered Decepticons broke into cheers and jeers, whooping for the high of a good fight, laughing both for the victory of their leader and for Sunstreaker’s loss. The sparkling shook along with the thrum of the cacophony of noise, dancing to the rapid rotation of Sunstreaker’s spark, asking for more still.

Was nothing enough? 

Megatron’s sword disappeared back into his arm and his knee rose from Sunstreaker’s abdomen. Sunstreaker sucked in a sharp ventilation as the damaged parts were again realigned by the lack of pressure. Distracted by it, he jerked when Megatron’s servo came to his chin, taking a hold of it. Sunstreaker met his optics again as the tyrant traced his thumb along his lower lip. “Blood looks good on you,” Megatron commented.

Sunstreaker huffed a laugh. “Ditto.” It was what Megatron deserved, and no doubt the warlord thought the same of him. You know, for his attitude.  

But here he was, with Megatron above him, straddling his frame now. Sunstreaker’s optics brightened and Megatron’s optical ridges rose inquisitively in response, right before Sunstreaker forced his aching frame into motion and arched up against the larger frame. Megatron didn’t need any time to understand, his optics coming to glow a little brighter too. His engine rumbled even as Sunstreaker had to fight his ventilations that wanted to again come fast and hard and ragged. Something to do with the pain in his frame, that he dedicated himself to ignoring in favor of locking into a staring contest with the tyrant.

Whose servo slipped between their frames, brushing against his valve cover. “In front of everyone?” Megatron growled at him.

Sunstreaker growled back. “You object?”

“Hardly.” He wasn’t given a chance to retract a damn thing this time. Megatron claws hooked into the seams of his valve panel as they had who knew how many times already, and like who knew how many times before, the cover was torn clean off.

The sting of that was completely eclipsed by everything else his frame was going through. He didn’t give a frag about it, he only cared about the digits that pushed into his valve without the obstruction in the way. It was as slick as the floor, lubricant making the entrance of Megatron’s claws a smooth glide. The headiness of the preceding fight wasn’t lost to either of them, and Sunstreaker’s ventilations were quick to speed up for reasons that had nothing to do with the aches of his frame. 

The Decepticons had quickly caught on to the shift, and their cheers had rather changed in nature. Catcalls filled the air as well as dirty encouragements and lewd laughter. Clearly, they weren’t the prudish lot in the slightest. 

Sunstreaker didn’t mind being the center of attention in this, either. Fighting, fucking, was there so much difference? Both were raw sports that laid you bare for others to see. Blood, internals—lubricant and transfluid, retracted covers. They weren’t so far removed.

Megatron was all on board with this, by all appearances. His digits thrust in and out until Sunstreaker was well and truly ready—as if he hadn’t been so all the while—only for the tyrant to release his spike and replace his digits with it.

Sunstreaker hiked his hips up for better angle as Megatron pushed into him, despite the pain of his midsection. He wasn’t about to let that stop him, no matter how the way Megatron fetched his spike only to slam back in made his vents hitch and vocalizer produce some more static.

Primus, it hurt. His abdomen loudly told him all about how it hated him right then, even as his valve sang its praises as Megatron set up a pace that was no less punishing than usual, only this time made all the more so by the multitude of injuries they both sported.

Megatron had to feel it too. There was no way he was unaffected by forcing his frame into motion like this, this fast, this violent, right after the bloodshed they’d just inflicted on each other.

But he didn’t let that slow him, and pits, Sunstreaker fragging well didn’t ask him to slow down, to go easy on him just because he was hurting.

No, Sunstreaker arched into him. Sunstreaker wove his arms behind the warlord’s neck and pulled him down as his damage warnings piled in even greater numbers on his HUD. As his frame informed him of how much more it was breaking under Megatron’s administrations, Sunstreaker pressed their lips together, moaning—no fake—when Megatron overtook him, his glossa slipping into his mouth, lips pressing tighter, and his hips pistoning harder, if that was even possible. It was stretch and fullness like always, the abuse of what felt like every last sensor in his valve.

Sunstreaker shuddered from pleasure and agony both until he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. The sensations melded together until one only added to the other, and he fragging hurt, but he felt spectacular, his valve clenching as his frame was brutally driven towards completion. 

He could taste Megatron’s own pain in his field. It was gratification, proof that he had fought well and true, but also, even more proof that Megatron wasn’t weak in any sense of the word. It didn’t matter he was aching, he was still willing and able to take his prize.

Neither of them was weak. The sparkling wouldn’t be weak either, not with creators like them.

And if it was despite that… Well, would they have any need for it? This wasn’t a world for the feeble. He wouldn’t accept that.

But it was unlikely to come to pass. It wasn’t weak in spark, not now, not ever, pushing at him, riding every exhilarating emotion, demanding that he feed it more of it. It was lively, it was gaining more mass with every passing day—it was thriving, healthy. Why would it change that course all of a sudden?

It wouldn’t, he was certain of that as it spun faster in its own rotation in time with the pleasure growing in his frame. He rocked into Megatron’s thrusts no matter the pain, bit down on the tyrant’s lip to another growl from him. A sharp jab of Megatron’s hips had Sunstreaker’s vents seizing when it jarred his injuries.

He wouldn’t have it any other way. His servo grasped the back of Megatron’s helm, locking him in place as the pleasure crested and he groaned against the warlord’s lips. Charge released from his frame and he tensed, further hurting himself, more warnings popping up on his HUD.

Fucking worth it. This was the way to feel, this was the way to live, and he was fragging done having anyone tell him otherwise. 

By the continued racket around them, he was no further from his kin here than he had been in Kaon, in the Pits. The noise only increased when Megatron growled his own overload, jerking his hips into Sunstreaker to another pained hiss from him—whooping for their completion, for the sight of charge crackling across both their frames. It was a show from start to finish, all of it.

Never let them forget where Sunstreaker had come from—the very same place as so many of them.

He loosened his hold on Megatron and with another graze of sharp denta across his lips the tyrant pulled away from him until there was enough distance for their gazes to meet, amusement in Megatron’s optics… As well as something else. Sunstreaker couldn’t quite name it. Approval?

Ugh. Frag him and opinions. “Done already?” Sunstreaker growled at him, jabbing his digits into a deep gash on Megatron’s side and relishing in the jerk of the tyrant’s frame. Did that hurt?

Megatron responded by rather meaningfully tracing his damaged midsection, and just the threat of what he could do to injure him further had Sunstreaker snarling some more. “Mercy is so overrated, isn’t it?” the tyrant asked from him in return–

Before driving his claws into the gaping wound of his abdomen, in time with a harsh thrust into his valve. The dual pain on that one area of his frame had Sunstreaker’s helm snapping back against the floor, but he didn’t scream, only ground his denta together and groaned.

“Frag you,” he panted once he could will his optics open again, glaring at the tyrant now sporting an entirely benevolent smile. Megatron drew back… Thrust back in, and his claws remained in his abdomen. It was pain, plain and simple—but also satisfaction, the knowledge of what Megatron was ready and willing to do clouding Sunstreaker’s good sense. 

“Backing down already?” Megatron wondered with an innocent tilt of his helm, as if he wasn’t aggravating already severe injuries.

Sunstreaker yanked on Megatron’s wounds a little harder this time, bending his plating until the tyrant was growling a warning at him.

The twin grinned. “Keep fucking dreaming.”

( Next )

[psyga315]

Some Roses Will Never Bloom: A Rewrite Of Volume 8, Part 1

Never before have I felt so disappointed with the turnout of a RWBY Volume. It had the potential to be extremely good, but it chose mediocrity. Again. It felt like Volume 5 all over again.

I know I should probably wait for the final two episodes, but let’s be fucking honest here. Atlas is done. The plot is finished. These two episodes, if people are to be believed, are to hype for the next Volume and even then, given how RWBY did its “hype” and “payoff” in Volume 8… No, fuck that noise. Those last two episodes will get their own segment called the Volume 9 Character Short. If anything, only scenes with Emerald from those two episodes will be brought over to Volume 8 and if they’re big scenes, like her interacting with Cinder, I’ll make an addendum.

Before we begin, keep in mind that this is not a complete rewrite. If there’s a scene I haven’t mentioned, that’s because it’s good as is and can be left in. Length wise, I’ll try to aim for the same 14 episodes, but minutes wise… Who even counts these anymore?

So, let’s get into the meat and potatoes with a Meta-Rewrite. If this does not interest you, skip ahead to when I start talking about the episodes.

Grimm Expectations

Let’s rewind the clocks back to the hiatus of Volume 7-8. Rooster Teeth is proud to announce a new contest where Grimm entries are submitted and the winner would receive a prize. There was controversy the minute it began and it only got worse when the finalists were called.

So, let’s fix that. In this Meta-Rewrite, Rooster Teeth decide to instead broadens the prize pool to include five winners instead of the one, with no popularity contest to determine the winner. Of course, this doesn’t fix the contest results, which includes a controversial figure. However, because there is no voting involved, it instead becomes a flame war over the design that, let’s be honest, wouldn’t have mattered in the grand scheme of things.

So, yeah, RT uses all five Grimm winners, disregards any fucks that the fanbase has (again) and the only thing I could see happening is if the artist personally reached out to Rooster Teeth and requested it to be removed, to which RT will word it so that it doesn’t backfire in their face.

Alright, now let’s do it.

Divide

We’ll start right where the show left off, with Oscar witnessing the Whale arrive onto Atlas. However, curiously, it is stationary. Oscar asks what’s up with it before Ozpin cryptically tells him that’s what she wants it to do. We don’t need to see a huge montage of Oscar getting to the Crater, but just enough to know how he got there.

We cut to RWBY and co discussing what to do now, especially with Salem making good on her threat. Ruby tries to contact Qrow and Oscar, but she can’t reach them. Pietro and Maria pilot the aircraft down to the same discreet spot they parked in Volume 7. However, as they get off, they’re ambushed by soldiers. Just then, Johanna, May, and Fiona barge in and beat them with an ambush of their own.

“What the hell just happened!?” Johanna barked at Ruby. We’ll cut to fifteen minutes later where they all discuss what happened

“So, Ironwood’s finally lost it.” May mutters. They hear the news and see their wanted posters. Most notably, they see that Robyn and Penny are added to the list and that she and Qrow have a big “ARRESTED” sign over them. However, with Oscar, there’s a clear big red X over his face, causing Ruby to fret. Jaune gets upset and punches a wall, blaming himself for leaving Oscar behind on both occasions.

I don’t think Jaune would blame Ruby at this point, since 1) he, at this point, knows better than to point fingers and 2) it’s more his character to beat himself up rather than someone else.

It’d still be Yang, but she’d be joined by Ren. Yang brings up how Ruby’s leadership led them to this situation and Ren mentions how they destroyed Ironwood’s trust, not knowing what was really said up there back in “Gravity”. Ruby told Yang about how they not only went behind Ironwood’s back but also theirs by telling Robyn about the Amity Tower and thus burned their bridge with Ironwood, only for Blake to go on full blast and say what Critics have been saying for the entire hiatus:

“YOU GUYS ARE ACTING JUST LIKE THE WHITE FANG!”

She explains how they’ve done the exact same things that the White Fang had done, taking lives, stealing vehicles, but she adds the extra caveat of bringing up how they’ve also borrowed from Ozpin’s playbook. She confesses to being the one who planned on telling them about Amity.

However, Johanna breaks up the fight and tells them flat out: doesn’t matter what they did, they need to worry more about what to do. This is when they argue more about what’s important: Amity or Mantle. The team splits up the same way, since it is integral for their arcs to be like this and not go with the obvious “Ren cared about saving the world so he’s going for Amity and Nora cared about Mantle so she will help Mantle.”

Ruby frets more, since “this is what Salem wants”, only for Yang to retort: “well, she’s already getting that right now…”, which stings Ruby since she feels like it meant her splitting off with Ruby while she actually meant what happened with Ironwood. We’re not gonna do the “future” stuff. I feel like that should happen naturally instead of confusing people.

Just before they go, though, Ironwood calls Penny and tells her that Salem is here. Penny is about to answer when Ruby takes the phone away and tells him to fuck off, only for Ironwood to go “hey, people are going to die if you’re acting like a doofus about it!” Ironwood tries to talk more, but Ruby hangs up on him.

We smash cut to Ironwood growling in frustration, looking at the arm he lost in order to stop Watts. He gets a solemn look, pondering to himself about how far he must go in order to save the world. His arm trembles and thinks back to shooting Oscar. He begins to have second thoughts about what he had done, though they’re brief as the Councillors came in. During their rant, Ironwood grabs Sleet by the throat and drags his ass out to a window where they see the whale.

“YOU SEE THAT!? That is what we tried to protect the world from and now it’s at our front door. That’s why I’ve enacted Martial Law.” He then tosses Sleet to the guards and tell him to lock the Councilmen up. “You two have gotten in my way before. I won’t let it happen again.” As they get dragged away, he looks over to Winter and apologizes. Had he not arranged for her to be the Winter Maiden, she wouldn’t have been injured.

Winter reassures him and tells him that he was the only person who has given her purpose in life after her father ruined it. Ironwood is both touched and horrified with that comment, especially once the Ace Ops come, having done their grieving for Clover. Harriet also affirms her faith in Ironwood and tells him that Clover died for his Kingdom. Ironwood gives a moment to think… Closing his eyes.

“So… If I’ve led you all onto the path of hell…” He opens them as we see the light in his eyes disappear, followed by the sound of a loud, distinctive click. “Then there’s no other choice but to keep moving forward.”

And as we get our first official look at Mettle, the opening plays out.

Refuge

The villain scene from Episode 1 is moved over to here, but Cinder brings up why they haven’t made their move yet. Salem brings up that Tyrian’s report of the situation has confirmed that Ironwood has taken her bait and is now the greatest weapon they have. Let him destroy Atlas from the inside out and then clean up the mess. She then brings the relic to the Hound and has him sniff for Oscar’s scent.

The rest of the episode plays out like usual, with Ruby and Yang’s teams doing their thing, but with Oscar at the Crater, he’s not there for the scenes. He does still have his chat with Ozpin about how they’ll be one soon, however. He sees Yang, Ren, and Jaune arrive with people and he is elated to see them. He is elated to see them and asks what happened with the others. Yang sums up and then Oscar asks what happened to Qrow, Clover, and Robyn.

Cut to the jailbirds and Qrow saying how he wants to murder Ironwood. The Councilmen are tossed in while they extract Watts.

The Hound Scene gets changed somewhat, as we see it attacking Oscar in the middle of the Crater, bringing people to harm against the Hound. This furthers the reason why they couldn’t just shoot the Grimm, since the Hound threatens the lives of the refuges in the Crater. We end our episode there.

Strings

So, here’s where I think we’re going to make the big changes and axe a subplot. While the premise of Penny being hacked and her aura resisting it is good, I feel like, of the subplots that need to be cut, this would be the one. We can dedicate more of this time to her conflict with being the Protector of Mantle and now being the Winter Maiden, in other words being the Protector of Atlas.

Meanwhile, Nora, Ruby, and Blake all have their doubts. Ruby and Nora are obvious, but Blake has trouble deciding if she made the right call in returning to RWBY. Weiss, in a Tsundere way, brings up how she is a very integral part of the team. Blake then brings up how, if it weren’t for her, then they wouldn’t have had a hard time getting to Atlas, blaming herself for both their rejection at Argus and how Adam ruined their plans in the hijacking.

Weiss, however, wants none of that. While this was Ruby’s plan, Weiss takes charge of the operation due to Ruby being emotionally compromised. She gets a taste of being a leader in this episode, one she had wanted in Volume 1.

During this, Ironwood discusses matters with Watts, where they talk about the possibility of hacking Penny. For this rewrite, I think keeping the ‘Watts is working with Ironwood’ angle, complete with Ironwood having guns pointed to him, would benefit Ironwood’s arc and show how low he’s going. Not just working with one of Salem’s thugs, but also holding them at gun point. Ironwood justifies it by saying that this is Watts’s ‘punishment’ for the crimes he’s done. Watts, however, plays it by ear and waits for the opportune time for a backstab. That and he wants to stick it to Pietro.

The rest of the episode plays out like normal, but we get that ‘made a deal with the darkness’ scene as Watts is dragged back to his cell, Harriet has a hissy fit, and Robyn is like ‘you’re looking for someone to blame’. As the Ace Ops and Guards leave, Watts brings Qrow’s ‘we kill the man who put us here’ idea back to him and says he’s interested in his offer.

Fault

We open right where we leave off, as Watts reveals that he’s only getting close enough to Ironwood to acquire the right tools to escape. He then proceeds to dangle the carrot in front of Qrow.

“We’ve all been screwed over by Ironwood in one form or another. He disrupted your business, abandoned your town, betrayed your Headmaster.” The last part gets to Qrow and he lashes out. “We all want him dead, so… are you in or are you out?”

“Preposterous!” Jacques, to Robyn’s surprise, beat her to the punch. “Let’s not forget that you’ve done your fair share of screwing. Believe me, I had my experience. I know better than to trust you.”

“You’ve trusted Ironwood, right? And look where it got you. All of you.” That comment hangs in the air.

“We wanted Ironwood out for some time, but not like this! Are you mad?” Sleet asked. Robyn is visibly horrified at what Watts is suggesting and is the next to speak up.

“Jacques has a point for once in his life. Why should we trust you when you’re the reason Mantle is in this mess in the first place?” Then Qrow raises his hand.

“I want to hear him out.” Qrow said.

“What? What do you mean? You realize he works with-”

“I know! But remember who we’re dealing with. This prison… It’s not like the kind of prisons I’ve seen, especially in Atlas. No other people but us, only the top of Ironwood’s army are allowed to check in, and I’m pretty sure the guards aren’t allowed to give you that shiner. No… This isn’t our holding cell. It’s an execution cell, and we’re just waiting for Ironwood to drop the axe.”

We end on that implication as we see the episode play out like normal. While I like to have Ren bring up Pyrrha, I think the “cheated into Beacon” thing is big enough and we’ll need to unravel that bundle of worms. Instead of the “yeah, Ruby” scene, we could have Yang ask Jaune what he meant and Jaune reveals his fake transcripts. He also reveals that, for a time, he blamed Pyrrha’s death on his inexperience and that he knew about Pyrrha using her Semblance on his shield some time later. Yang, however, isn’t really in a position to pat Jaune’s back.

Meanwhile, the group crash at Whitley’s mansion, but Weiss doesn’t immediately point a sword at him. She’s tempted to as Whitley complains about having to harbour criminals without an explanation as to what’s going on, but then she notices that… he’s afraid. She then remembers Willow’s words to her and calmly goes “If you’re willing, I’ll explain everything. Please. Just help her.”

And we end on the Grimm River.

Amity

This episode is mostly the same, but with two exceptions. One, Ironwood does not, in any way, try to interfere with the broadcast. This had been the thing he was working on the whole time and, albeit without the Ironwood could no longer be trusted bit (which he looks solemnly away to), is pretty much what he wanted. And two, Watts ‘fakes’ hacking Penny.

He later reveals to his coup that there’s no way to hack Penny, bringing up how they had her schematics back in Volume 3 but were unable to activate the virus for her. What he really did was force a reboot and lied out of his ass about how it was a failed attempt. He then reveals the broken phone and offers the escape plan one last time.

Midnight

Here we are. One of the biggest episodes in Volume 8. The big backstory reveal for Cinder…

And we’re instead going to make it about Hazel, so instead, it’s going to be…

Gingerbread

We open with twins, lost in the woods. The elder reassures the younger that everything will be fine. They were abandoned by their parents to line their bellies and forced to fend for themselves. There, they come across a house that looked like it was made of gingerbread, with eagled eyed viewers being able to spot a young Cinder being carted off.

A blind woman greets the kids and brings them into the house. We know the schtick here, though instead of fattening the kids up to be eaten, she toughens them up to be sold to wealthy people who use them as child labourers. Gretchen finds out about this but she gets captured and is about to be killed to be silenced. Hazel, in a fury, ends up awakening his Semblance and, using a Dust Crystal, sets the house ablaze as they escape.

A montage plays out of them surviving however they can, even joining some bandits and raiding towns. However, during one such raid, they’re stopped by a young Qrow and have them be brought to Ozpin, which plays out similarly to how Ruby got inducted into Beacon.

We cut to Oscar chatting with Ozpin about Salem’s plan and how it seemed to be working before getting the idea to do the same to her. As Hazel walks in and gets upset that Ozpin casually says hello, Ozpin asks: “Why? Why do you follow Salem?”

“You know why. Did you tell him the full story?”

We cut back to another montage where we see that Hazel and Gretchen are part of the same team and they were the best years of their life. Unfortunately, they go on a mission to Mountain Glenn where it just so happens to be the time a mad scientist was fucking around there. They try to stop the Grimm from overrunning it, but it seems hopeless. Hazel, as the team leader, pulls the team back. However, Ozpin gives them the order to not run away and to hold the line. Gretchen follows this to a T and sacrifices herself in vain.

This devastates Hazel and causes him to drop out of Beacon, bearing a grudge against Ozpin. Not only that, but it paints some parallels between Hazel, Qrow, and Jaune, as all of them had friends they lost to the orders of a Headmaster who they despised. Qrow teeters in the middle (he talks big about killing Ironwood but hasn’t committed to it yet) between Jaune (who accepted Pyrrha’s choice and lets go of his hatred) and Hazel (“OZPIIIIIN!”). It also presents a dark parallel to the current story, since Atlas and Mantle are currently undergoing a similar siege, but it’s Ruby who insists on holding the line.

Ozpin admits that this was just one of his many mistakes, but asks again why he decided to work with Salem because of it, when she was the one behind the Grimm. Hazel then answers the obvious:

“I tried to kill her.”

We then get to see Hazel beat her senseless in a flashback, only to reform from dust and taunt him. Eventually, he gave up as Salem comforts him before revealing that Ozpin has sacrificed people like him for one huge lie (as she does this, Sacrifice plays). He then swears his allegiance to her if it means there’d be no more Gretchens.

Ozpin cuts the flashback by retorting that she’s planning to bring-

Salem comes in. The show’s about to start.

Cut to Weiss as she enters Whitley’s room. She notices that he just finished calling someone and suspects he’s ratting out on them. Whitely denies this and calls Weiss out for being overtly protective. Weiss counters by saying that she grew up in a hostile home and can’t really trust any Schnee but her sister, which she begins to doubt.

Whitley brings up that she barely had it as bad as he did and talks of his turmoil of living with the parents alone while Winter was at Atlas and Weiss was at Beacon. Between his mother’s drunken rambles and his father’s angry rants, he barely had time to live his own life. He just lets Weiss have it for ditching him before he breaks down and realizes that, no, he’s just jealous because she got to be free while he was still stuck in the cage. Weiss remembers when she was grounded and stripped of her title and realizes “oh… shit.”

Then the doorbell rings and, surprise, it’s Klein. Whitely explains that they need a doctor for Nora and without Jacques, he figured to invite the person he fired just to further spite his ass. He and Weiss begin to rekindle an old flame that they never ignited.

Back with Salem, the scene plays out like normal, but when we see Cinder get tortured, we see flashes of Cinder having a shock collar, hinting to her big backstory event. Then Salem has a small speech.

“It would appear that we have been brought forth into the light as monsters and villains. So, why not play that part and show them why dear old Ozma had to keep me a secret for so long… It’s time.”

Suddenly, Beringels fly out of Monstra and Zerg Rush the shields while the Grimm River activates and rushes forth, destroying the hut that RJY were at and almost killing them. Jaune sends out a distress call with his scroll as they try to avoid getting washed away in the water. They see that it’s heading to Mantle and that the plan by Salem is a two-prong attack to further force the division between Mantle and Atlas by putting them both in peril.

During this, Ren tries desperately to activate his Semblance, but just couldn’t. He panics, he worries, he sees Grimm emerge from the River to try and kill them and he just can’t make his Semblance work. He asks why now of all times must this happen. He closes his eyes and tries to think… Then sees petals on himself. Before he has any time to figure out what happened, they see a plane arrive and blast the River, stopping it in its tracks. Just before Jaune is about to thank their savior, they see that it’s Winter and the Ace-Ops…

War

The Beringels break through the shields and invade, destroying much of Atlas and overrunning the city, killing people on-screen. The rest of the scenes play out, however, when we cut to RWB, we see Weiss is trying to restrain Ruby from running out there, saying that she could be arrested or killed and Ruby responds with wanting to do the right thing. May interjects and asks why they bother saving Atlas when all they do is laugh at the misfortune of others. She’s basically the “Let Atlas Fall” part of the fanbase.

And this is where RWB give their counter arguments.

Weiss says how, even though the elite are snobby twits, Atlas is not exclusive to just them. May and her were just born with silver spoons in their mouths but that doesn’t excuse them from leaving everyone else on Atlas to die, bringing up how the Mantleans they saved were also on Atlas.

Blake brings up that, yes, Atlas has done bad things in the past, but so did every Kingdom at one point or another, bringing up Mantle’s role in the Great War, so to say that Atlas deserves to burn is to basically say Mantle deserves to burn.

Ruby then uses her “there are no sides” bit, but also blurts out that the whole situation was her fault and that she’s at the very least trying to fix it. And that starts by heading straight to the Whale and beating Salem herself.

The whale scene plays out the same, as does RJY’s scene right up until they plan to blow up the Whale. Yang and Jaune argue against it while Ren vouches for Atlas, saying how this may be the only chance they have at beating Salem, proposing to Winter to go ahead into the whale to scout it. This leads to the argument about replacing Oscar which pisses Ren something fierce as he finally drops the Pyrrha bomb on their ass.

“You say that like we haven’t lost a team mate before!” Boom. In a flash of light, Ren could see clearly. While muted colors were around him, he can see the petals around everyone. Jaune has blue petals, Yang has red petals, and Harriet has burning crimson petals. He could hear what each petal represents. He hears crying when he sees blue, he hears screaming when he sees red, when looking at Winter, he hears a bunch of different things as he sees multi-colored petals.

He sees that most of the Ace Ops don’t have a consistent feeling. Not even Vine and Elm, who he can’t help but see himself and Nora in their places. Then he looks to his own petals. Pure white as he hears exhaling: calmness. He’s reached a zen state, making peace with what he had felt in Volume 7: A desire to stop Salem and prevent what happened to him and Nora from happening to other people.

Hopefully that gives a slightly better explanation at what his Semblance does without directly telling the audience. However, he doesn’t use this to basically read the script and tell the audience what people feel because, reading the dialogue, it just feels forced. “You’re going to be a good guy because I have magic petal seeing powers!” Instead, he plays therapist.

“I understand why you think people are replaceable. I guess it comes with the territory of being in the army.” “If you can’t even gauge what your partner is feeling, you can’t work as a full team.” “What did you hope to accomplish when you joined the Ace Ops?” “Who are you trying to prove yourself to?”

I feel like that’s a lot more in character for Ren. As for Winter, she doesn’t go “I outrank you” but rather appeals to Harriet’s blood thirsty nature by saying that they’re basically sentencing them to a trial by Grimm, even tricking Harriet into agreeing that, should they survive and free Oscar, that they’d be let go, kinda playing into how she’s the Hare.

Back at the manor, Weiss gets ready to accompany Ruby. Willow approaches her and they have a small chat about what to do now that Jacques is arrested. Willow brings up that Jacques was promptly fired from the SDC due to his treason and, as a result, his previous rulings are called into question, including stripping Weiss of her title. She lowkey implies that Weiss should return and become the proper heiress to the SDC once more, even resisting the lure of the bottle to prove that they can make it right.

Weiss, however, looks to Ruby and Blake getting ready, then says to her “thanks, but… I think I’d rather be a team player than a team leader.” The two have a small, proper mother-daughter bond before BOOM!

It’s Penny, and she says that she’s sorry.

And that’ll wrap up this half of the rewrite. There are a lot of unaltered or even minor altered stuff, I know, but the front half of Volume 8 was alright to say the least. I think the back half of Volume 8 will be where major changes for this rewrite will happen. So, tune in for part 2.

[mobius-prime]

260. Sonic the Hedgehog #191

Metal and Mettle (Part 1)

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Josh Ray

A few days after Scourge and the Suppression Squad have taken control of Freedom HQ, Miles alerts Scourge to an interesting and unexpected visitor - namely, Metal Sonic, through whom Eggman is speaking and watching.

Yeah, don't underestimate a fellow evildoer, Scourge. Meanwhile in New Mobotropolis, Sonic and Knuckles stand before the Council of Acorn to try to get permission to take the base back. Unfortunately for them, the council votes four to two to leave it for the time being, as they don't see Scourge as that big of a threat, and want to focus on taking New Megaopolis from Eggman before going after smaller holdings. Sonic, of course, does not take this well, and tries to talk to Knuckles about it once they exit the building.

Oh, Knuckles. You have to stop angsting about this, my dude. Sonic leaves the city on his own, musing as he races back to Freedom HQ about how despite their recent successes in battle, and many gains against Eggman and his forces, he can't help a strange feeling that overall they're losing ground. He hopes that kicking Scourge out of the base will cheer him up, but is brought up short by the sight of Scourge and Metal Sonic battling it out on the grass outside. Miles stands nearby watching, and not-so-subtly tests Scourge's leadership by asking if he wants help against Metal, as surely the others helping him would only be an insult since he conquered his planet on his own. Sonic, uninterested in any of the politics, merely barrels in to help, offering Scourge a truce to take Metal out, but Scourge angrily refuses, and both he and Metal turn on Sonic to attack. Meanwhile, Julie-Su finds Knuckles brooding on a bench in the park, and when she presses to know what's bothering him he snaps, yelling that he can't trust himself or anyone else, as no matter what he does, someone always ends up hurt, and he can't bear to face the few remaining members of his family. Julie-Su reaches for him, looking at first like she's going to comfort him, but then…

I mean, all things considered, Julie-Su, you make a fantastic point. Your family's loss has been largely glossed over until now - I don't think she was even given a single panel before now to mourn the deaths of her foster parents, despite how delighted she was to rediscover them before - and as you point out, it's not like Knuckles is suffering alone. Back at Freedom HQ, the fight continues, with Eggman telling Metal to hang in there as he's putting the "finishing touches" on some backup. Sonic and Scourge briefly wind up fighting each other without Metal's interference, during which Sonic criticizes Scourge for taking his advice to better himself to a brutal, negative extreme. Scourge merely mocks Sonic's restraint, pointing out how much more powerful he is as a king than as a hero.

Ooh, dramatic parallels to their prior talk! I love it! Metal interrupts before Sonic can respond, and as the fight continues once more we move this time to Angel Island, where Knuckles is having a talk with Archimedes while Charmy sits nearby.

So something that needs to be pointed out is that inexplicably, this is Archimedes' last appearance in the comic, ever. Unlike all the other characters who have disappeared from the comic, there's no reason given - no genocide, no dimensional portal to swallow him up, no deaths or sudden decisions to leave and find himself on another continent, nothing. He just… never shows up again. It's disappointing, as y'all know how much I like Archimedes, but again I really do think this stems from Ian's weird, irritating habit of erasing a lot of Kenders' contributions to this world. I know that he's trying to make the comic's world more like the games, and that in the games, Knuckles is the last echidna and isn't embroiled in all these politics, but dammit, there's nothing wrong with comic Knuckles being so different from game Knuckles! Personality-wise, he's still similar, still recognizable, it's just his circumstances that are different. Then again, maybe I shouldn't be blaming Ian for all of this - for all I know, Sega themselves ordered him to get rid of all of this stuff. I dunno, man, I'm just some random fan with a blog. Speaking of controversial decisions by Ian, though, it's nice to see him doing his best to treat Charmy's brain damage with respect here. He certainly acts more childlike than he once did, but he's doing his best, and isn't a punchline, still actively participating in missions and helping Knuckles sort his own problems out.

Anyway, Knuckles, encouraged by his mentor's words, uses his warp ring to head back to the city, where he and Julie-Su give a curt apology to each other with an agreement to sort things out more fully later, when he's had more time to work through his emotional distress. They consider heading to Freedom HQ to help Sonic, but Knuckles believes that Sonic can most likely handle the situation on his own. Of course, we know better - Sonic might be able to take on Scourge or Metal individually, but both at once is a real challenge. He kicks Metal aside, only to be startled by the sight of another robot coming to join the fray - a robot that looks exactly like Scourge. Wow, Eggman, you really didn't waste any time on that one, huh? How many Metal Sonics do you think he has lying around in his base just ready for a paint job and a new assignment?

Though there's another story in this issue, we won't be covering it. Why? Well, it's the first real installment of "In Another Time, In Another Place"! I've mentioned it before, but it's basically what Ian decided to do when it was clear he couldn't keep putting in half-adaptions of random games anymore, but still needed to do tie-ins for newly-released games. With the pattern we've been taking with these tie-ins lately, you'd think this one would be for Sonic '06, but nope! For whatever reason, Sonic '06 goes completely unacknowledged within the comic verse (at least for now), with the sole exception of Shadow joining up with GUN. However, as I've mentioned before, Ian did state somewhere along the way that Sonic '06 did in fact happen somewhere during the course of the comic's plotline - it's just that due to the very nature of the game's story, the events of the plot are entirely reset and erased from the timeline at the end, meaning an adaption doesn't even have to take place, as technically, even though those events did happen, they also… didn't.

But all that aside, the tie-in in today's issue is actually for the little-remembered DS title, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, which was an RPG developed by Bioware of all companies (and yes, they did include one of their trademark Bioware romance sidequests, though it's probably of little interest to anyone who doesn't ship Sonamy). While again, we're not covering it due to it being non-canon, it's an important thing to note regardless. For one, these In Another Time, In Another Place installments became pretty commonplace throughout the comic as new games were released, but perhaps more importantly, this was the game that apparently really got under Kenders' skin. The problem is that after all he'd done to develop the world of the echidnas and all the political and military factions thereof, this game's plot ended up heavily centering around a band of echidnas in dark armor emerging from a parallel dimension where time moves more slowly, with an intent to take the Master Emerald and use it to cement their place of power in the real world once more, though one female echidna realizes the error of her people's ways and abandons her army to side with Knuckles against her megalomaniacal and powerful male leader. Gee, sound familiar? While I don't believe that Bioware or Sega actually copied Kenders' ideas outright - the way I've described it makes it sound similar, but there's a ton of differences in the plot and presentation that definitely indicate they're two different ideas by different people - Kenders certainly seems to think it's a rip-off, and this was from what I understand at the core of all his problems with Sega that led to his eventual lawsuit that forced the reboot of the comic. It sucks, too, because even aside from losing all the years of history in the preboot, the plot of Sonic Chronicles was actually quite fascinating and it ended on a cliffhanger, which will never, ever be resolved because Sega doesn't even want to touch that can of worms after everything that happened. I think the game has actually been quietly stricken from canon, too, because the cliffhanger literally involved Eggman having taken over the world while everyone was away, and there's just no way to solve something like that offscreen. Just a bad time all around, folks. As they say in the fandom - thanks, Ken Penders. Still, though, we have quite a ways to go before we hit the preboot's end, so let's forget about the negative stuff and keep trucking on.

[dzamie-oc]

Smaugust 02 - Ancient

Victor and Clara stood at the mouth of the huge cave. Above were the claw scratches of a young dragon, kept fresh over the centuries - nay, millenia - by careful, loyal kobolds. It displayed the name of the master of the cave in a script forgotten even by Time himself. Above it, in similar fashion, but with the deeper cuts started by the claws of a far older dragon, was the name "Gehrakt" carved out in an old, primitive form of Draconic writing. However, the two humans focused their attention on a metal sign, on which was carefully carved in several modern languages: Gehrakt's Cave Those who seek power, begone. Those who want riches, flee. Those who require knowledge... Enter, and prove your mettle.

Victor stared at the sign, then looked to his friend. "Well, that's us, then," he remarked, lighting his lantern before the dark, deep tunnel ahead. "We really can't afford to burn time now." Clara nodded as she did one last gear check before picking up her hiking staff, and together, they ventured inside. They walked in silence for a minute, following a simple tunnel around gentle curves until the entrance vanished from sight. Though they passed a few discarded, rusting swords and flails, and a number of snapped wands and bows, they pressed onwards; if their equipment was not enough for them, the legacies of failed conquerers would be of no aid. From time to time, Vincent thought he saw something scurry in the darkness, but there was nothing when he swung the light around, and he could hear nothing but his and Clara's footsteps. "Do you think it was a bluff? Assuming nobody would try to fight or steal from a dragon who'd lived so long?" Victor asked as they rounded another bend. Clara shook her head, her eyes glued to the walls of the cavern. Nothing more than some kobold-sized claw scratches and some paintings, presumably also by kobolds, so far. "I don't think so. Bluffs only work if your opponent doesn't call them. And while nobody in their right mind would try, he still has to contend with those out of their mind." "True. Oh, look ahead!" He held the lantern aloft, where, rather than a single tunnel, the path split off into two, separated by a thick wall. "Tisk, tisk, Clara," he joked with a grin, "this never would've happened if we'd just kept assuming there was nothing." His companion snrked and playfully pushed him. "Alright, wiseass, but I reckon that assumption would lead us down a random path, and I like having better than fifty-fifty odds on my life." They looked closer, careful not to step into either tunnel yet. Down one lay scattered weapons and armor, much like they'd passed already, but in good condition. Arranged rather than tossed aside, arrows bundled next to a bow gleaming with magic. In the other, a few silver coins from ages long, long ago were scattered near the entrance; they turned to gold a number of feet beyond, and from there, the wealth started piling up. Diamonds, rubies, golden statues, and more poked out of mounds of gold currency and bricks. Both humans felt the desire to step in, and take just one, so even if the dragon wasn't helpful, their visit would not be a total waste. And yet... "Okay, so they both scream 'trap,'" Victor remarked, "one for power and one for wealth. But there's not third option, barring tunneling, and we don't have the tools for that." "Could be the middle? It's wide enough for a person, and those parables often come from SOMEwhere," Clara reasoned, then tapped her walking staff against the wall by her feet. Solid as, well, rock. "Darn." "To be honest, I'm relieved. Can you imagine if all the dragon older than the ancestors of our ancestors had keeping people out was a trick wizards learn to hide contraband from their parents and siblings? Still, where does that leave us?" "Backwards? Maybe the cave changed after we passed, or there's an illusion that hides a passage from one direction." Victor shook his head. "Nah, then this would reward people for giving up on it. The sign didn't say 'prowess' or 'sense,' it said 'mettle.' I think it intends on people to push forward and find the solution." "Well, if back's not the answer, the walls are solid, and forward's trapped, what's left?" As she said it, they both looked at each other, and slowly drew their gaze upward. Hanging next to a stalactite, a coiled up rope ladder was visible amidst the shadows. "I got it," Clara said, and reached up with her staff to smack the ladder. It came tumbling down, the lowest rung hanging a foot over the ground. "Right, then, up I go," Victor said, and began his ascent. His friend, meanwhile, swiftly unscrewed her staff into several shorter pieces to stow away before she followed him up. "Short, hard to reach, hidden... this feels like a kobold maintenance tunnel," he grumbled. They soon found a ladder down, and Victor descended. Clara called after him, "maybe it is! Makes the test all the more fitting, if we turned out to have beaten not just the puzzle, but the system it's framed in, no?" "Eh, it's also a simple enough answer that it's probably the intended solu-" he cut himself off as he looked around and sighed. "Man, beating the system doesn't feel as good when the system is THIS." Clara stepped down the ladder. "Why, what is it- oh." A two-foot wall obstructed the entrance to the narrow tunnel they had climbed into, revealing that it was, in fact, the middle path, hidden by a rocky illusion. "Okay, I agree with you. That's a disappointing puzzle." She reached her hand out to pass through the fake barrier, but was stopped by something solid in mid-air. An actual illusion. "You know, if it didn't just happen to me, I bet I'd find this pretty funny," Victor quipped, "now let's keep going, if anyone's got that cure, it's Gehrakt the Eldest." And the two of them set down the tunnel. They passed several sets of significant-looking scratch marks, but from what they could tell, it was all code, or at least unknown abbreviations and slang by the dragon's kobolds. Eventually, they came upon another metal sign in several languages. Upon this one was written, simply: Stand on the X to meet Gehrakt The humans looked down at the floor. There was a large circle painted on the smooth, rock ground. They looked around, but all of note on the walls or ceiling were some claw scratches in what were decidedly not X-like shapes. "So... do we stand on the circle instead?" Clara asked. Victor shook his head. "I don't think so. It's not an easy shape to mix up. Unless this is some illusion of an O on top of an actual X, which would be kinda unfair." Clara nodded. "And, like the going-backwards option before, it would allow in people who didn't understand the trick, too. Here, let me try something." Having reassembled her staff, she used it to scrape an X inside the circle, then placed a foot carefully on the new symbol. Nothing happened. The two of them read and reread the sign a few times, wondering if there was an error in translation that had been missed when putting it into their first language. To no avail, however; everything but the single, translation-unneeded X was as good as they knew it could be. Clara narrowed her eyes. With careful balance, aided by her walking staff, she placed her foot on the sign, right over the X. Almost immediately, a small section of the wall above the sign slid away, revealing a small, scaly head. The kobold yapped and wiggled an arm through the hole to point at the circle. "Stand on the circle?" got another yap. So the two humans stood on it, and in a flash of light, they were suddenly in front of Gehrakt. To say that Gehrakt was big was an understatement. Dragons do not stop growing if they are not killed, and Gehrakt was the oldest dragon by a long shot. He bore an old scar, now the size of three men end-to-end, across his eye. Victor and Clara had seen dragons the size of horses. They had heard stories of dragons the size of a house. There were myths and legends of dragons big enough to stand over houses and barely scrape their belly-scales. But Gehrakt? His scales were visibly tougher than just about anything. With a wayward bite, he could devour entire trees and barely notice. The two of them looked at him, and were given the distinct, unsettling impression that to walk from the tip of his snout to the end of his tail would take hours upon hours, if not entire days. HELLO, HUMANS. WHAT DO YOU SEEK? The voice was loud, impossible to ignore, and was not spoken, but rather appeared in their heads. Clara was glad she had her walking staff to lean on, and Victor rather wished he had one as well. It took them a couple of seconds to recover, before Victor could respond. "We... our town is afflicted by an illness turning victims to stone. We have no books on it, and seek knowledge on its cure, and on its prevention." AND NOT ON HOW TO RECREATE OR HEIGHTEN IT? "Uh... no? Look, one of our town's teachers is made of marble now, and when we left, my best friend had lost a foot to it. Subjecting anyone else to this is beyond our furthest thoughts." "Plus, if anyone actually wanted to weaponize petrification, there's always chucking a basilisk over the wall," Clara muttered, and was quickly shushed by Victor. THAT IS SUFFICIENT. KREER VITGEHRAKT WILL GUIDE YOU. IF IT IS WRITTEN, YOU WILL FIND IT ON THAT SHELF. The rapid sound of scaly feet pitter-pattered up behind them. The humans turned to see the kobold from earlier before them. Kreer yapped, and began to walk off. The pair followed it, and only once they brought themselves to look away from Gehrakt did they see his hoard of knowledge. Hundreds of spiraling, conical pillars jutted out of the ground, each one lined with bookshelves filled with countless books. As Victor stared at them, he spotted a number of moving shapes browsing the shelves, each one presumably having gone through a similar trial to meet him. He squinted, making out not only humans, elves, and kobolds, but also gnolls, some sort of slime, and a couple of harpies browsing the stacks. Clara hung back a couple steps. "Uh... Mister Gehrakt? May I ask a couple questions?" A bemused glint appeared in the eye of the dragon. YOU HAVE ASKED ONE ALREADY; WHAT IS THE SECOND? The human smiled at having seen the joke coming, then asked, "just before we got here, there was a sign saying to stand on the X, but it was an O that we stood on to get teleported here. Was tapping my foot against the X on the sign really the solution?" Gehrakt drew his massive head back, and for a moment, Clara was terrified that she had offended him. Instead, however, he turned to face Greer, who chirped out a few short phrases in Draconic. IT WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE SO. ONE OF MINE HAS MISLABELED THE TELEPORT GLYPH. IT WILL BE FIXED. THOUGH... THAT SOLUTION IS NOT A BAD IDEA. Clara let out a breath, then sped up a bit to catch up to her companion and the kobold. "So," she said quietly to Victor, "Kreer gave us the answer to that last test, because it wasn't supposed to be one. We overthought a mistake." They walked towards one of the nearer spires of literary knowledge, and as they climbed its slope, they passed by a gnome, a politely coiled lamia, and a small, yellow pegasus before the kobold yapped once more and pointed at a bookshelf, then stepped past them and made his way back down. The books were all medical texts on uncommon and rare communicable diseases. Between the two of them, Victor and Clara quickly found the information they needed. On a sheet of paper they had brought, they copied down facts about the strange disease and made multiple copies of the instructions for creating and applying the cure. Once done, they carefully walked back down the spire. The lack of handrail was much more apparent as they descended, but they eventually managed to get back to Gehrakt and the teleportation ring. HOLD, HUMANS. MY KNOWLEDGE COMES AT NO GREAT EXPENSE, BUT NEITHER IS IT FREE. They froze at the dragon's booming, telepathic voice. "What- what would you ask of us? We do not bring much gold," Clara said. I VALUE LITTLE OF PRETTY METALS. YOU WILL TRADE KNOWLEDGE FOR KNOWLEDGE. A new kobold skittered up to them, carrying a roll of parchment and a quill. It scratched a few words to test, then looked up at them. A COPY OF THE STORY OF YOUR JOURNEY. THAT IS THE PRICE OF THE CURE YOU SOUGHT. WORRY NOT, YOUR TOWN NEEDS YOUR TIME MORE THAN I, SO YOU MAY ABRIDGE YOUR TELLING. Vincent and Clara shared a glance, nodded, and began their tale...                

[themusesofmars]

Fanfiction Posted - Final Fantasy XV

@ignoctweek Title: “A Final Fantasy Fairytale” Rating: Mature (but not explicit; I would say fairly safe for work) Warnings: attempted rape; slavery; strong language; violence; evil-Gladio Synopsis: In this fantasy-themed alternate universe, Noct is the leader of a group of bountyhunters. One of his guild members has been causing trouble, so Noct takes him on a private mission to set him straight. Along the way he and Gladio come upon an escaped elven slave called Ignis. Gladio has plans for their new bounty, but Noct’s secret lineage comes to light and the two clash yet again, with Ignis caught in the middle. Fanfiction.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12595469/1/A-Final-Fantasy-Fairytale Archive of Our Own: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11668863 Note: Can I just say, I really, really loved this prompt? My gratitude to whomever submitted it. <3 I feel as though this is the beginning of a series...

The two men on spiracornback were silent as they picked their way slowly through the forest overgrowth on their way back to the bounty hunters’ guild hall hidden deep in the woods. Noctis Lucis Caelum, the leader of the guild, never took the same path twice; he only associated with the most skilled of hunters, and he felt a well-traveled road leading to their home base would have been inviting mediocrity to the guild.

Noct’s companion today was Gladiolus Amicitia, a brawny degenerate still painted in the tattoos of the tribe that had exiled him. He drank too much and was prone to throwing punches first and asking questions later, which meant he was trouble. Noct had lured him from base for a one-on-one mission to test his mettle and to see if there was any truth to the complaints he’d heard of Gladio’s misconduct in the field. Sometimes people got hurt—even killed—in this business, so some aggression was understandable…even expected. But he had also been told Gladio was stealing more than his fair cut of each bounty he helped turn in. And there were rumors Gladio might be planning a coup to take over the guild.

All the warning signs were there, but Noct wanted to be sure to give his man the benefit of the doubt. Gladio had saved his life more than once. And even if he shot his mouth off and had made the occasional challenge to Noct’s authority as guildmaster, he was more reliable and dependable than members who had been with the guild for far longer than Gladio’s eight months of service.

So far things had gone well. They’d been away for three weeks. They’d taken on several jobs and completed them all successfully without a single casualty. And Gladio had been on his very best behavior. There had been minimal complaints, and no argument had been raised when Noct had said he would carry their earnings back to base in his own pack. It could be that Gladio knew he was being tested so he was playing the obedient servant, but Noct was impressed with his tracking skills, his strength and speed during the chase. They were still a day and a half’s ride from the guild hall, but Noct had all but made up his mind to keep Gladio on. He might even put him in charge of something, to see if the added responsibility curbed his drinking habits by giving him something else to do in his spare time.

One thing Noctis had noticed was Gladio wasn’t one to make small talk. He gave his opinion freely when he disagreed with his leader’s decisions, to be certain, but during downtime such as when they were making camp or traveling toward a destination, he remained silent. Even when Noct tried to initiate a conversation Gladio did little more than grunt in reply. So when the burly man held up a fist and brought his spiracorn to an unexpected halt with a growl of, “Stop,” Noctis didn’t hesitate to listen and obey.

Gladio’s fist remained in the air as he turned his head in a slow half-circle, scanning the tree line. The forest was thick, the canopy overhead all but obscuring the sun and casting them in a perpetual twilight. Noct neither saw nor heard anything, and felt a familiar annoyance with himself. Over the last few weeks this had happened more often than he would have liked to admit. As a half-elf, Noct felt he should have been the better tracker of the two of them. Every elf he’d ever met had had keen sight and sharp hearing, but Gladio bested him at both effortlessly. Of course, he never made mention of his lineage; elves were not treated kindly outside of their native Tenebrae, and it would have been just one more reason for others to question the young guild leader’s authority.

They remained motionless for so long mosquitoes were beginning to swarm. “What—?” Noct started impatiently, but Gladio cut him off with a hiss. Then the man pointed, and finally Noct saw—or at least, he thought he saw—a faint sway in the tall grasses about thirty yards to their left.

Silently, both men slipped from the backs of their steeds and crouched down on the ground. Gladio made a gesture, advising Noctis to circle around their unseen quarry to close in from behind. They had likely already been seen or heard, so Gladio smacked their spiracorns’ rumps to send them on through the woods alone to make it appear as if they were leaving. He would take a more direct path toward their target; since he was larger, he wouldn’t be nearly so silent and stealthy as Noctis, which was one area in which the half-elf had him beat.

Noct had to move twice as fast to cover twice as much ground as Gladio’s straight shot toward the faint movement they’d detected in the grass. The young guildmaster didn’t know if they were stalking man or beast, but he had become one with the forest the moment his black mohawk delved into the tall grass of the forest floor. His crawl was serpentine; he writhed smoothly through the brush like a lizard with a knife blade gripped between his teeth.

Once he was directly behind their prey, barely ten paces away, Noctis rose from the grass as dark and silent as a shadow. He waited for Gladio’s signal. Noct may be the bounty hunters’ guild leader, but his strengths were in making connections, gathering information, and negotiating contracts; Gladio excelled in tracking and brute force, which was what this situation apparently called for.

All at once Gladio leapt out of the grass with a roar. He was ferocious like a bear, fierce as a mountain lion. And the ax he wielded looked deadly even without the glint of sunlight on its sharp blade.

Whoever or whatever had been crouched down in the grass was spooked out of hiding and tried to make a dash for the rear. But Noct was waiting. He stood, taking the knife from his teeth and transferring the grip to his right hand, while his left loosed a second dagger from the sheath on his thigh.

And that easily it was over. Noct’s stormy gaze was still exploring the angles of an exquisitely-carved, frightened face when the startled figure gave up and collapsed in defeat. Gladio circled menacingly around the fallen form while Noctis relaxed his tense shoulders and sheathed his daggers.

“You can put that down,” Noct grumbled. “I don’t think he’s going to put up a fight.”

Gladio stared down at the body shivering in the grass, his eyes roaming over a pale length of leg revealed by tattered, dirty robes. He strapped the ax onto his back with a disappointed grunt. “That’s too bad.”

Noctis shot him a look, then stepped closer to the trembling body on the ground. “Hey—take it easy,” he said, kneeling as the man tried to crawl away from him. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He stretched out a hand and combed his fingers through disheveled ash blond hair that, if washed and combed, would probably hang past the man’s hips. Noct cocked his head to the side and tried to imagine it, hardly aware he was brushing the tangled silk of the man’s hair back over his ear until the side of his hand brushed against an unexpected point.

“Huh…” Gladio made a strange sound of interest. Then, shockingly, he commented, “Never done an elf before.”

Noct snapped his head toward the other man. “Nobody’s ‘doing’ anything to him,” he said sternly. He could feel the way the elf’s shaking had suddenly intensified. “Relax,” he soothed, brushing his matted hair away from his face. He noticed a rusty ring of black metal around the beauty’s throat and fingered it thoughtfully.

“What’s that,” Gladio asked, kneeling down next to them, “some kind of jewelry?”

“It’s a slave collar,” Noct murmured, a deep frown of concern forming on his face. “See that stone? It’s dwarven-craft. It prevents elves from using their magic…or from speaking,” he added, realizing why the elf hadn’t spoken or cried out even as frightened as he clearly was.

Gladio nodded, looking impressed. “That sounds handy.”

“It’s barbaric,” Noct spat defensively. He kept his own magical abilities a closely-guarded secret; since he was only a half-elf, his ears looked human and helped keep his lineage private. The only elves one could find in Lucis were slaves…or runaways, like this one apparently was.

The guildmaster reached for his dagger again, causing the elf in his grasp to flinch. “Hey, it’s okay,” Noct soothed, holding up his hands and showing his palms, the dagger held loosely by a thumb. “I’m just going to get that collar off you.”

“Wait a minute.” Gladio reached out and grabbed hold of Noct’s forearm. “It’d be more useful to leave it on for now.”

“What?” Noctis was stunned. “Why?”

Gladio shrugged sheepishly. “Come on… How often do you get the chance to take an elf? Don’t give me that look—I know you’ve had men in your room almost as often as I have.”

Noct felt his face flush. “N-not against their will!” he stammered. He was all too aware the elf’s wide green eyes were watching them.

Gladio’s brows furrowed in frustration. “But it’s just an elf—a slave, you said so yourself.”

Noct’s grip on the knife handle tightened. He found his pulse quickening along with his temper. “We’re bounty hunters, not thugs. We don’t rape the innocent.”

“It’s not like it’s going to tell,” Gladio rationalized, jerking his head toward the elf as if he were a thing to be used, and not a flesh and blood, intelligent creature. “Leave the collar on until we’ve had our fun and collected our bounty. We’ll be long gone before anyone realizes—”

“No!” Noctis growled, pushing Gladio. If the man had expected the shove, he would have undoubtedly stood steady as a rock. But caught off guard, Gladio fell backward onto his ass. His eyes lit up with rage. Noct was prepared this time and flashed his dagger. “You may not like it, but I’m the master of this guild,” the boy declared. “My word is law—unless you’d like to leave.” Gladio glowered, but said nothing. “We turn in criminals—thieves, murderers—but that’s all. We don’t take advantage of elves and we don’t chase slaves, do you understand?”

“Then what are you going to do with it?” Gladio snorted. “If you let it go, it’ll just get its fool self killed. Look at it; it doesn’t have any weapons, and the sight of you was enough to make it cower like a scared rabbit.”

“If I take off his collar, he’ll have his magic,” Noct countered.

“Yeah—to use against us.”

Well, Gladio had a point.

Noct looked down at the trembling elf, suddenly realizing that not all the stains on his presumably once-white robes were mud. “He’s been injured.”

“Probably not worth much, then.”

“We’re not turning him in!”

“Then let’s have our way with it and finish the job,” Gladio pressed. “It would be a mercy.”

“Not raping him would be a mercy,” Noctis retorted. “What is wrong with you?”

Gladio was as bewildered as Noct was astounded. “It’s just an elf.”

“He’s a man, the same as you or I! What difference does the shape of his ears matter? He bleeds the same red we do.” Noct was tired of trying to get through to Gladio. So close to home, so close to forgiving the man’s prior offenses, and now the guildmaster was seriously reconsidering his decision to let Gladio remain with his group.

Noct shrugged Gladio off one last time before the man’s open mouth spewed another word, leaving him to climb to his feet and sulk as the guildmaster raised his blade once more. He had no way of knowing whether or not the elf spoke the humans’ tongue or could understand him, so he kept his expression carefully reassuring as he slowly said, “I’m going to remove your collar. Hold very still; I don’t want to cut you by accident.”

The elf seemed to comprehend. He leaned his head back and turned his chin for safety as Noctis aimed the dagger at the keyhole of the collar. Noct wondered if he would speak the human language once his voice had been restored, if his words would carry the lilting accent of his people. He would find out soon, he thought, attempting to pick the lock on the cursed contraption.

As he worked, the young guild leader couldn’t help but wonder what the elf would have done if he hadn’t happened upon him. Anyone else—anyone with a shred of common sense, but lacking in decent morality—would have taken the elf into custody—perhaps not to do with him as Gladio would, but certainly to turn him in for the bounty his master must surely have on his fair head. It no doubt seemed suspicious that Noctis was taking such care not to harm the elf, risking his own neck by setting him free (a crime on par with thievery among humankind), but he didn’t concern himself about that right now. The elf was injured, though how severely he couldn’t tell, and he was scared out of his mind right now. Even though he had been raised among humans after his elvish mother’s death, Noct still felt sympathy for elves and their plight. If his father had been an elf, how very different his own life would have been.

The lock on the collar suddenly sprang open and the metal dropped to the ground behind the elf with the rustle of dried leaves. The blond’s hands raised immediately to his throat as he let out a surprised cry, his eyes wide.

Noct smiled with relief. He’d seen the slave collars, but never touched one. He hadn’t been sure how it would affect him—if it even could—let alone whether or not the lock could be forced open. “Better?” he asked, offering the elf his hand. The blond eyed him with suspicion. “What? Do you want me to leave you here? In your condition? Without any food or water?”

He could tell by the sudden shift in the elf’s expression he understood that much.

The guildmaster sheathed his blade and stood, waiting for the elf to join him of his own free will. Slowly, he did. “My name is Noctis,” the boy introduced himself.

The elf glanced about his surroundings warily, perhaps wondering where Gladio had gone. Noct wondered that, too. Finally, he said—in the accent Noct had been waiting to hear—“I am called Ignis. Ignis Scientia.”

Ignis walked side by side next to Noctis as they caught up with Gladio, who had wrangled their spiracorns and was waiting impatiently to continue their trek back to base.

He was noticeably agitated to see the two together. “Are you seriously bringing the elf along?” he demanded to know.

The tall, slender creature, hugging his waist to protect an unseen wound, cast a sharp glance at the dark-haired hunter who had rescued him. Noctis could feel his eyes on him, and wondered if somehow Ignis could sense their shared lineage.

“I told you he’s injured. What else can we do? He has no food, no water—”

“And we only have enough for the both of us.”

“We’re less than two days’ ride to the hall; none of us will die on half-rations till then.” Noct reached up to adjust the packs his steed carried to make room for another rider.

“Okay, so what if we run into bandits? Or lawmen? Or the bounty hunters out looking for his elven ass?” Gladio grew angrier with each word. “He’ll slow us down and cause us trouble. You should see the tracks he left through the forest—even an amateur could see where he’s been. Not to mention the wolves! He left a trail of blood that will have the packs sniffing us out by nightfall—which, thanks to him, is in about an hour now.”

Noct really couldn’t think of any way to defend the elf from the accusations, other than to point out, “He was obviously running for his life. I doubt he was thinking about wolves at the time.”

“I was not,” Ignis confessed, sounding guilty.

Gladio heard him speak for the first time and was startled. “It talks!”

“What did you expect?” Noct gave him a look.

“I didn’t realize you got the collar off.” Gladio stared at the elf for a long moment, then said, “I’ll see what I can do about covering its tracks. Wait for me here. And, Noct, don’t turn your back on it.”

As he watched Gladio retreated into the forest and disappear from sight, Noctis couldn’t help but feel he trusted the elf more than he trusted Gladio right now. The thought was irrational and he put it out of mind. What was he feeling? Was it kinship for the elf over their common ancestry? Or was he being bewitched by elven magic?

He decided to find out.

“So, what kind of magic do you have?” he asked with genuine curiosity.

The elf looked somehow paler than he had even when he’d been crumpled on the ground in fright. “None at the moment, I fear,” he confessed rather breathlessly. He stepped closer to a nearby tree and put out a hand to steady himself. “Normally…well, in Tenebrae…I was a healer.”

Healing magic. That was a surprise, but good news to Noct. At least, he thought so. It meant the elf would be less of a danger to them than if he had possessed, say, the guildmaster’s own fire magic. That should satisfy Gladio—if the elf was telling the truth. But then Noct decided not to tell Gladio anything; it might be safer for the elf if Gladio thought Ignis did wield some elemental horror.

“Sounds like you haven’t been in Lucis for long,” Noctis remarked. He had never been to the elven lands, but his mother had told him of Tenebrae’s lush forests, cascading waterfalls, and floating islands from whence his people hailed. But that was before the wars, before humans had kidnapped and enslaved the elves, to steal their magic and their free will…and worse.

The arm holding Ignis upright was beginning to tremble. “Three years,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I am beginning to forget the things I once cherished… The songs of birds, the scent of rain, the warmth of sunlight on my skin…” He touched his face. His hand was streaked with blood.

Noctis frowned. “Where have they been keeping you?” he asked. He was afraid of the answer.

He never heard it. Ignis groaned and clutched the dark stain around his waist. He must have reopened his wound while trying to evade them.

Disregarding Gladio’s warning, Noct offered the elf his assistance. He slipped an arm around him, holding him high on his side to avoid putting pressure on the obvious injury. “Let’s get you on the spiracorn,” he murmured, “before you faint on me.”

It was almost too late. Ignis draped his free arm around Noctis’s shoulders, leaning on him heavily as he let himself be half-dragged, half-carried to the tall mount.

Gladio was just in time to see the spectacle, and he climbed his own steed’s back without offering to help them.

As Gladio had warned, night was soon upon them. The forest was already dismal during the day, but soon it was growing so dark it was difficult to see. The chirps of sparrows gave way to the hoots of owls, and shortly the fireflies provided more light than the setting sun above the forest canopy.

“Shouldn’t we make camp?” Noct finally asked, speaking to Gladio’s back. Ignis had dozed on and off for the past hour, his head lulling even now against the guildmaster’s shoulder while he held the elf to his chest as they rode.

“Aren’t you the leader?” Gladio tersely replied over his shoulder.

Noct tried not to snap back at him. They were all tired and hungry. Arguing would be a waste of time.

There was a small clearing off to the right, Noctis noticed. It looked like a sparring zone for the local wildlife, judging by the scrapes in the bark of the trees, which indicated bucks had vied here for mates. “We’re breaking camp,” he declared like a proper guildmaster, giving the spiracorn’s reins a tug.

Ignis stirred and Noct gently pushed him into a sitting position. “We’re stopping for the night,” he said more kindly. He swung a leg over his steed’s thick body and dropped to the ground, then reached up to help Ignis down.

Gladio tied his spiracorn to a tree next to Noct’s and began unbundling a pack, grumbling all the while.

“Is it safe to stay here?” Ignis asked worriedly, looking around with eyes as wild and frightened as they’d been when the men had first spotted him.

“As safe as anywhere, I guess,” Noct shrugged. He was clearly not alleviating the elf’s nerves, so he reached out to touch his arm. Ignis started, his head turning quickly toward Noct. “Hey, what’s wrong?” the boy asked with concern. He lowered his voice. “I won’t let him touch you, if that’s what’s got you so jumpy. I’m his master; he answers to me.”

“As safe as anywhere, I guess,” Noct shrugged. He was clearly not alleviating the elf’s nerves, so he reached out to touch his arm. Ignis started, his head turning quickly toward Noct. “Hey, what’s wrong?” the boy asked with concern. He lowered his voice. “I won’t let him touch you, if that’s what’s got you so jumpy. I’m his master; he answers to me.”

“It isn’t just that…” Ignis said slowly. He seemed nervous to admit, “Noctis…I cannot see.”

Noct swallowed the flutter in his chest when the elf spoke his name, instead focusing on the rest of his words. “You mean other than because it’s nighttime now?”

The elf rubbed the bridge of his nose, though whether the gesture was out of embarrassment or due to habit, Noct couldn’t tell. “What I mean to say is, I’ve poor vision; I am unable to see clearly without my spectacles, which I have lived without for these past three years. Though, yes, the fact that the sun has set has certainly made my predicament all the worse… I had not considered it when I fled my captors; I was only relieved to have found a means of escape.”

Noct didn’t know what to say. “Well, I guess there’s not much we can do about that right now.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Look, I’m the master of a guild hall of some renown. Traders come through every couple of weeks to sell their wares to my men. Maybe they’ll have a pair of glasses you can buy.”

“Buy?” Ignis sounded dubious.

“I’ll buy them for you,” Noct corrected himself, feeling a blush creep from his cheeks to his ears.

“I’m to stay with you till then, I suppose?”

Noctis considered. “Well, I mean…you don’t have to.” He scratched the side of his head that wasn’t shaved, losing his fingers in the long, spikey strands of his black mohawk. “I’m really not sure what else you could do, though, considering—”

“Considering I’m a fugitive,” Ignis supplied. “Yes, I see your point. In that case, I accept.”

“You accept what?” Gladio wanted to know. “Never mind—I don’t give a shit.” He turned to Noct. “The tent ain’t gonna pitch itself. Tie him up and let’s make camp.”

“Tie him up?” Noct repeated, startled.

“You want to give him the chance to steal your horse while you’re fluffing his pillow?” Gladio shoved a bundle at Noctis, hitting him square in the chest with enough force to cause him to take a step back. “Or maybe you’d prefer he slit our throats in our sleep, while the three of us are nice and cozy inside the tent?”

Again, Noct realized he’d become too comfortable around the elf. He had once again abandoned common sense and instead followed his…heart?

Before Noctis could respond, Gladio had gone back to hammering stakes into the ground to hold the tent in place. So instead Noct set down the bedroll Gladio had thrust at him and unwound a cord of rope from the back of his spiracorn. He turned to the elf apologetically. “Sorry about this,” he offered, shamefaced.

Ignis’s gaze rested beyond Noct, warily following Gladio’s blurred movements.

“It’s just for tonight,” Noct vowed as he reached for one of the elf’s slender wrists. “We’ll be back at the guild by dusk tomorrow, and then—”

“Then what?” Ignis interrupted coldly. “Then you’ll give me my own room?”

Noct swallowed the lump in his throat and concentrated on tying Ignis’s hands together. “Maybe.”

The elf said nothing more. Noctis picked up his sleeping mat and led him toward the tent by the shoulder. “I’ll get you something to eat,” he promised him, tying the slack end of the rope around a slim but sturdy tree.

“Not until we build a fire, you won’t,” Gladio pointed out as they joined him. He sat down on his still-bundled sleeping bag and wiped his brow. “We need firewood, and it’s your turn to do some work.”

“Fine.” Noctis started to take off alone, but he heard Ignis draw a sharp breath and paused. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch the elf’s shoulder again and instead quietly told him, “I won’t go far. I’ll be back soon.” Then he left, wishing he’d called an end to their trek before it had gotten so dark.

Ignis did not like the larger man who accompanied Noctis, and regardless of what the boy had proclaimed, he did not trust him to keep his distance.

His instincts were right. Mere moments after the dark-haired half-elf had disappeared into the forest, the human suddenly jumped at Ignis. Before the elf could cry out, he was on his back and the man was straddling his waist and choking him. No, not choking: replacing the collar he’d only finally gotten rid of. And now he had no voice to use to scream for help.

As he picked his way cautiously through the thick brush in search of logs and kindling, Noct mulled over the brief conversation he’d had with Ignis back at camp. He hadn’t been thinking of the future when he decided to help the elf; he’d acted on instinct, aiding someone in need of his help. It usually took longer than this for someone to earn his trust, though. Did he just feel sorry for the elf, for having been enslaved and chained like an animal? Or was the sense of some connection only for the sake of their kindred heritage? It was hard to imagine he could feel this way about someone he’d just met only because he was so damn beautiful, but that was a third possibility.

Noct tripped on a stump and dropped the few sticks he’d collected, letting out a curse as he fell and struck his knee on a sharp rock. He hissed as he stood. That was definitely going to leave a bruise.

He was getting nowhere fast, and he wasn’t sure he trusted Gladio to be alone with Ignis for long. After all, the man had expressed a carnal interest in the elf already, and had shown no consideration for Ignis’s thoughts on the matter.

He was alone out here in the forest and could hardly see. There was only one thing left to do, if he was to gather proper wood for the fire and get back to camp before Gladio had a chance to try something underhanded. Noct looked around uselessly and then finally lifted a hand into the air. He wore gloves with the tips cut off for this purpose especially: with minimal concentration he brought fire to his fingers, and soon a flame was hovering like a torch over his hand.

Now that he had some light, Noct was able to retrieve some of the kindling he had dropped and then forage for some actual branches and logs. Gladio was the expert on determining which types of wood were best for burning, but Noct couldn’t argue that it was his turn to do some of the heavy lifting since all he’d managed to do so far tonight was attend to Ignis.

He started back toward the camp feeling self-conscious. He and Gladio were both terrible cooks, but he had promised to get Ignis something to eat. Now he was less than eager to put his cooking skills on display for the elf, but he wasn’t sure why.

Ignis’s throat ached with the strain of trying to cry out for help. The human was heavy on top of him and stank of sweat and earth. His hands were large and rough, his breath stale with the stench of alcohol. His kisses were sloppy and the hair on his face scraped against Ignis’s cheek and jaw almost as painfully as the pressure of his body atop his wounded side. Though it hurt, Ignis struggled to twist free. His hands were bound together and he could not scream, but he would not make this easy for the man.

But Noctis had mercifully reached camp before the worst of the damage could be done. The boy had doused the small magical flame he’d used as lamplight so his ancestry would not be found out, but when he returned to the tent to find Gladio assaulting Ignis, he dropped the bundle of firewood to the ground and conjured up a greater firestorm than he ever had before.

Without even thinking, Noctis tore the glove free from his right hand and stretched his arm out toward Gladio. His eyes became twin flames as white-hot heat shot out from his palm in a burst of fire.

Gladio probably never knew what hit him. Or maybe he thought the elf had freed himself from the collar once more. He screamed like a wounded beast, an inhuman wail of indescribable agony. He was engulfed before he even had a chance to try to beat out the flames that consumed his body.

The stink of burning flesh hung heavy in the air. Noct finally regained control of his senses and ended the fountain of fire he had wrought forth. When he saw the devastation that had once been their camp, he hurried to pull free the blanket from his spiracorn’s saddle and used it to stamp out the flickering flames until they were extinguished.

Then he knelt down next to Ignis’s limp body, cradling the elf in his arms as he whispered, with tears streaming down his soot-streaked face, “What have I done?”

EPILOGUE

Noctis stomped the toes of his boots on the wooden steps leading up to the lodge that served as his guild’s headquarters, kicking off the dirt he’d picked up in the forest this morning. In his hand was a large bouquet of sapphire wildflowers���sylleblossoms.

“You want a ribbon for those?” someone asked. If one didn’t know Aranea well, one might think she were being sarcastic.

“Why,” Noct asked, “you got one?”

Aranea dropped the sharpening stone she’d been using on her lance onto the workbench situated in the corner of the hall’s expansive covered porch. She reached up and untied a red strip of cloth on her formidable bicep and offered it to her guildmaster.

“Uh…no, thanks,” Noct declined, holding up his hand in refusal. “I’m actually going to put these in a vase.”

“They’re beautiful. It’s a shame—” Aranea broke off, reaching out to touch the silky petals of one of the flowers. “Well,” she said regretfully, “at least he can smell them.”

“…Yeah,” Noct agreed, then headed inside.

The main floor of the hall was tavern, meeting room, and lounge all in one. At this time of day—late morning—it was vacant save for a few men just now rousing themselves after a late night of drinking. The guild members made their homes in the many rooms surrounding the main hall, both upstairs and down. Ignis’s room was on the main floor. He didn’t get around much yet, so Noct had him placed as near the main hall as possible for his own comfort. The recovering elf still took most of his meals in bed and rarely accepted a seat at the long table with the men, but he never complained that the bar got too rowdy at night and kept him awake, though Noct worried that it did.

Noctis had made so many trips to the elf’s room in the past six weeks, he could have found it with his eyes closed. He made his way there now—second room on the left—knocking gently before pushing the partially-closed door fully open. Ignis had been making friends at the hall and didn’t like to keep the door completely shut. Now that Gladio was gone for good, Noct felt they had little reason to worry.

“Is that you, Noct?” Ignis asked.

At the sight of his radiant smile, Noctis felt his heart sing. “I brought you some flowers,” he said by way of greeting.

The elf laughed and reached out to touch the bouquet that still blossomed in the vase next to the bed where his long, ash blond hair spilled all over the mound of pillows propping him up. “You just brought some yesterday,” he protested mildly, “and the day before, and the day before that…”

Noct laughed sheepishly. “I think there’s room for a few more,” he argued gently, coming to stand beside Ignis as he pushed aside the other flowers for today’s offering.

“Thank you,” Ignis said, settling his hands to rest atop his stomach. “They smell lovely.”

“You’re welcome. Has the doctor been by this morning?” Noct asked.

“Yes—twice,” Ignis intoned. “Really, Noct, you worry too much. My recovery is coming along nicely.”

“Is that what she said?”

“She said there’s little she can do that I can’t do myself with my magic. The rest will just happen gradually over time.”

Noct fidgeted with the flowers far longer than was necessary. Finally he drew up a familiar chair and sat down next to the bed and took a long look at the elf. As Ignis’s pain eased, so did the guilt Noctis felt. But he still wished there were something more he could do.

As if sensing his stare, Ignis reached up and caressed a hand over the scars on his face. “I can feel your eyes on me,” he said softly.

“I can’t help it,” Noct murmured, catching hold of the elf’s hand, “you’re beautiful.”

“Even still?”

Noct responded by drawing Ignis’s hand to his mouth and kissing it tenderly.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore, you know. The bandages have been off for two weeks. I think I’m beginning to feel the sun on my face.”

“But you’re blind.” Noct cocked his head, his eyes drinking in the elf’s every feature. One eye was sealed permanently shut by scar tissue. The other was open but its former emerald green had paled to a milky white.

“Well,” Ignis shrugged with a smile, “at least I won’t need to purchase a new pair of spectacles.”

Noct didn’t laugh, but he did smile back at the elf. “Your magic… Do you think it will help you see again some day? Even a little?”

“All I can detect is a hazy light… Don’t feel bad.” Ignis squeezed Noct’s hand comfortingly. “I’ll always be grateful for what you did.”

Noct didn’t say he should never have left Gladio alone with the elf; it was an old argument, and one he always lost. “I’m grateful you came back to me,” he whispered instead. “And I know that you’re getting stronger every day, that soon you’ll be well enough to leave the guild and be free. But I wanted to ask you…” He climbed out of the chair and knelt instead next to Ignis’s bedside. “Ignis, will you stay with me?”

The elf may not have had his sight, but his expression wasn’t difficult to read as he opened his arms to Noctis. “My love, it is all I wish for in this world.”

[vitalmindandbody]

Criminal or scapegoat, Shakespeare’s Shylock is a reputation to celebrate

In his contemporary change of The Merchant of Venice, Howard Jacobson set out to explore Shylocks tolerating plead , not make amends for his Jewishness

If Shakespeare is the most revelatory of columnists, it is because he has infinite symbolizes at his disposal, and can find the poem of grief or disappointment where the circumstances are least poetical. Take that stage in The Merchant of Venice in which Shylock presses his co-religionist Tubal for information of his daughter Jessicas elopement, counting the cost of her “goin ” ducats. Tubal intersperses what he knows of Jessica with what he has is aware of Antonios adversities. Carefully, he divulges out presupposition and hearsay, quantifying their effects. But eventually he must let Shylock know the worst. Jessica has been heard of in Genoa, going through the money she embezzled from her father, and exchanging a reverberate, likewise stolen from him, for a monkey.

Thou torturest me, Tubal, Shylock reacts. And genuinely we dont know whether Tubal intends torture or not. Does Shylock have to be given this agonising info at all? Is Tubal well informed the rings provenance? Whether he is or he isnt, Shylock exposes it to him now, although it was tones as much as though its to himself hes talking. It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor. I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.

Whatever we have been thinking of Shylock so far, the field seems to open beneath him here , not to withdraw him but to award us rare access into his history, his antecedent affections, the man he was before he became and maybe why he became the man he is now. Just the word bachelor is a shock, because although we have experienced him with his daughter we have not in so far put our thoughts to his married, let alone his widowed state.

A Jewish patriarch, yes, who realizes his home a inferno, as patriarch are inclined to do, for his restless daughter. But a patriarch brought forward by small children without a bride to help him have we thought that one through? There is no word to say his wife is dead, but we hear it unmistakably in that deceptively plain convict, I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor-at-arms. A happening indivisible from Leah, that endowment voices, an expression of simple-minded closeness that sees Portias and Bassanios ring joke later in the romp look like shallow trumpery. We sense the loss to Shylock, anyway, without his scratching the ache of it. Detecting is not, to him, that thought of elegantly wearisome flaunt it is to Antonio and Portia.

Phoebe and Jonathan Pryce as Jessica and Shylock in a 2015 make at the Globe theatre, London. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

For Jessica to have embezzled the ring her baby demonstrated her papa and she would surely are all aware of its significance is a most terrible betrayal. For her to have parted with it a more terrible sellout still. But to have parted with it for a ape! There have been periods when it was fashionable for a magnificent maiden to dandle a domesticated monkey on her lap or parade with it on a studded rein. Whether that was the case in Genoa the play doesnt tell. Whatever her motivating, the grossness of the transaction is of a style Jessica, the Jewish daughter of Jewish father, should have been alive to. I would not have given it for a wilderness of apes, Shylock adds. What a fine Hebraism is showed in this formulation! William Hazlitt memorandum. No doubt he sounded the Old Testament in that parole wilderness for behind the Mosaic project to civilise and codify, the wilderness was always waiting to seduce and reclaim the natural being. To a people who thoughts God as a philosophical sentiment, never to be identified or encountered, least of all to be confused with the animal deities worshipped abroad , nothing utters the antithesis to civilisation more competently than the unbridled stomach of an ape. A wilderness is a desolate target. A wilderness of apes is a flesh for the despair of the human rights mettle when faithfulness and reward have absconded it.

It is not, nonetheless, the last string of the scene. Tubal bars Shylocks sorrow with better information. But Antonio is certainly undone. And it does the maneuver. Nay, thats true-life, thats very true, Shylock refutes. Go, Tubal, fee me an officer …

So its back to the viciou business of manufacturing Antonio pay. The gambling will have its act and Shylock will have his pound of flesh.

To someone determined to read The Merchant of Venice as a Jew-hating play, this scotches any debate that Shakespeare is of Shylocks party. Yes, Shylock is awarded an illuminating instant of humanity that, after all, is what Shakespeare does: every scoundrel has his enunciate but thereafter, and by his own choose, the Jew quickly returns to the engrossing Jewish occupancy of requital.

That, however, is to say no more than that The Merchant of Venice is a gambling not a exposition, and that we would not expect Shylock to be sentimentalised. He does not become, by virtue of what we have learned, a man forgiven and illustrated. But nor, in my view of the performance, is it possible to return unchanged to all we previously thought. Our feel of who he is should always have been evolving regardless, and we cannot escape our new knowledge of him as a husband who had and lost a wife, and can now be said to have had and lost a daughter. He has been cruelly burgled in a double sense, and the sneering offenders are all indulgent the group of friends of Antonio. This nothing extenuates, but once “weve heard” Shylock narrated his losings, ducats and all, we cannot forget them unless we have our own intellects to.

Two stages after the wilderness of apes, Shylock has animals on his head again. Thou calledst me bird-dog before thou had a crusade, he reminds Antonio, But since I am a pup, beware my fangs. So, yes, though all thats feral disheartens and demoralises him, he will put on a feral disposition in an act that is a sort of obstinacy against himself as well as Antonio. The wilful hardening of centres a reference establishing himself impervious to ground or affection, and so less human than he actually is interests Shakespeare. We see it in Coriolanus. We see it in Lady Macbeth. We even see it, although it was gloomed by clowning, in Hamlet. One human in his time gamblings numerous parts, and one of those components will be his own feeling of who he is or would like or has no choice but to be. The narration Shakespeare tells of Shylock is of a soul who diminishes into the extremely obduracy of irritation he is accused of by those who want him to be nothing else. It is a part that not every man could master, and Shylock notices the wherewithal within to participate it right enough, but being the Jew who must have his pound of flesh is still just as much a capitulation to an expected capacity as it is an expression of something invariable in his character.

I dont say this, as a fellow Jew, to save Shylock from his Jewishness. I simply recount the performance. When “its been” made publicly available by my publishers that I had hot-headedly taken up current challenges to write a contemporary romance in The Merchant of Venice, some cynics premised I would be embarking on a clean-up errand with the aim of reaching removing piquing fabric from Shakespeare, much as those who disapprove of Cecil Rhodes would eliminate his statue from wherever it stands. But I am not, as a Jew or as anything else, piqued by a word Shakespeare wrote.

Howard Jacobson at his home in Soho, London. Photograph: Richard Saker for the Observer

My Shylock, if I may employ it like that and he is the Shylock I see when I speak Shakespeares play is not intended as a post-Holocaust better on the original. Because I am deeply touched by his extending reference to his wife, I guess him in constant speech with her. The dead have much to say, just as the living have much they want to hear, and Shylock wont be the first person to have continued those discussions. Astonished by exhilaration impatient as the Wind/ I turned to share the transport Oh! with whom/ But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb. If this is a freedom and does the participate a progressive disservice I apologise for it.( Though Wordsworth did say it was Shakespeare who opened his nature .) What I surely dont apologise for, nonetheless, is following the write when it comes to Shylocks spiritedness and wit.

So much of which is something we become of Shylock is determined by the age of the actor who draws him, the clothes he wears, the accent he is given, the inhumanity of his stare and the curvature of his nose, most of government decisions as to these being unnecessary by anything in the textbook. Last-place summertime, while making a television programme about Shylock in the Venice ghetto, I saw a relatively young actor play him. The result, in particular in the opening exchanges with Antonio and Basanio, was electrifying.

The bristling invasion with which Shylock entertains the first mention from Basanio that Antonio is looking for a loan was not softened.

Three thousand ducats, Shylock muses in that half public, half private method of his. I make I may take his bail. To which Basanio, who is never other than literal, responds Be assured you are able. Shylock deters up the maying and puns on the notion of statement. I will be assured I may. And that I may be assured, I will bethink me … If he already searches more verbally quick for Basanio on the sheet, his gratification of an encounter in which he is the lord looked inhuman, actor to actor. Is the methodology used to his assurance the pound of Antonios flesh already forming in his psyche as he jests?

With Antonios arrival, which he memo with a satirists contempt How like a fawning publican he seems! Shylocks flavours rise so far. Now he can remind, reprimand, retard, offering and disclaim and render again, while a blustering Antonio, standing on basic principles he has forefeited, can do no better than threaten to spew on Shylock again. If it is war now, it is both their doing but, when playing with youth zest, Shylock was having the better of it. When he described the proposed draft bond as a merry play he seemed joyous surely. Tell the relinquish/ Be nominated for an equal pound/ Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken/ In what part of your figure it pleaseth me.

Angus Wright( Shylock ), crest, and James Garnon( Antonio) in the RSCs 2008 production of The Merchant of Venice at the Courtyard theatre, Stratford on Avon. Image: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

These wires should never be delivered anything but flirtatiously. Your fair flesh is an friendship that Antonio, had he been smarter, or less hopeless to self-assured the loan, or less egotistical about his ability to repay it, or little accustomed to flattery, might have recoiled from. Alone moments before, they had been to talk of spew. It takes person very quick on his hoofs to change the colour with such agility. Perhaps most performers, weighed down by their Jewish gabardine and the guessed peculiarity of a Jew manufactured age-old by the relic of his religion, is very hard to applied the requisite verve into this. But the young Venetian Shylock I attended didnt shy from it. For the duration of their deal Antonios flesh was exhibition as fair to Shylock, and whatever of that was derision it was up to the devil himself to find out. As for where Shylock, should Antonio are inadequate to redeem his alliance, merrily proposed to move his cut in what part of your form it pleaseth me why that selfsame devil might have blushed to hear it.

To my ear, the allusion is sex or its good-for-nothing. Interred deep in the antiJewish lores that contacted Shakespeare was a fear of Jews as castrators, and all that medieval Christianity never understood about circumcision. Did Jews eunuch themselves? Did Jewish gentlemen bleed like women? Was that why they needed the blood of Christian children, to oust the blood theyd lost? I dont remark Shakespeare was consciously mentioning all this at the moment that Shylock proposes the bond. But dark as well as comic powers are in play here, the darker, perhaps, for being comic, because what Shylock is building merry with is inchoate Christian terror. To play him as a consummate comedic provocateur, then, as I received him played by a young and juiced-up actor in Venice, is not at all to rescue him from obloquy. But it is to give him the vitality that I feel Shakespeare intended for him. And it is to suggest that the jaunt from Antonios privy parts, which might just ought to have the website please select Shylock for relinquish, to Antonios heart, is not of Shylocks picking only.

Before the idea of deliberate redoubling Shylock making a Jew of Antonio in advance of Antonios making a Christian of him I pull up short. I am not convinced that Shakespeare was ever interested in such abstract, academic mapping. But it is part of his greatness to grant unworked its importance and unsorted old material to have their road without him in a gambling. DH Lawrence wrote astutely about “whats happening in” a living production when the creator throws his finger in the wash, obliging the outcome document. It ceases to be a living design. And Shakespeare was a writer in Lawrences sense, dogma free, permitting characters to find their genuine souls in interaction with one another, and giving language do its own remembering.

It has always seemed incorrect to me to talk of The Merchant of Venice as an anti- or a pro-semitic gambling. Were it either it would be less the play it is. Those who are distressed by what the hell is see as the plays anti-Jewishness find themselves, ironically it seems to me, on the side of the individuals who glory in any anti-Jewishness they find. In both cases, Shylock scandalizes them. The former are scandalized into embarrassment Is that us? the latter into confirmation of what theyve always concluded – Yes, that is you. But for me Shylock lives, with all his human insufficiencies on evidence. We know him by his speech, his repetitions as though no thing said only once can possibly be trusted those strange stutterings in which he addresses himself in a kind of surprise, his sudden absences when he is with others that causes them to wonder whether he is taking note of them at all, his sudden revertings to lyricism, his enraged volleys of speculation , no matter that no one will accept a word of what he supposes, that draw him a kind of fucking cousin to Hamlet. No, there is never any thinking of him as other than a Jew: the Venetians playboys who spit on him one minute and ask for money from him the next will not earmark the Jew in him to be forgotten and, whether as a consequence or by preference, he will not countenance the Jew in him to be forgotten either.

Its hard work. Would he have become life easier for himself had he relented? Perhaps. Its said that finally, as he readies himself to take out Antonios heart, he is the Jew of pitiless legality, the moral antonym of passion as represented by Christians. Were Shakespeare interested in pressing this opposition to the detriment of the Jews he wouldnt have allowed the Christians to substantiate as quite so squalid. They speak of enjoy and think of money. They speak of kindness and evidence nothing. They are merely not more dangerous because they are indolent and forget to be.

In my tale I move Portias world from Belmont to Cheshires Golden Triangle, home to footballers, heiresses and Manchesters most wealthy. I planned no ailment to Cheshire by doing that. But I appear Portias moral universe of childish choices and pettish subterfuges, where protestations of fine experiencing cannot disguise materialism and malice, licenses me to satire. Shylock and Portia now Plurabelle meet again up there. Once more she isnt sure who the Jew is and who the shopkeeper. I never ensure it as my function to give Shylock a second chance. Where thoughts objective for him, they aim forever. But he does have one thing he would like to say to Portia/ Plurabelle. And I allow him to say it.

Shylock Is My Name is publicized next week by Hogarth.

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