#and it's so obvious that the selling point for each of the trio was what if XYZ had a dundundun...BIOLOGICAL child together

[wellzofyouth]

Here's how we can still save DC (reboot via another crisis)

[thebrawlerina]

I need chester, Mandy, and berry headcanons because I’m too lazy to see if you have already posted them

I actually HAVEN'T made a post about these three, even on my previous account! So lets do this!

I'll go over each of them individually since their dynamic is pretty obvious in their animations.

Candyland Trio HC's

Chester HCs

Chester joined the park by signing up to work at the soon to be established Candyland Area. His antics and pranks ended up winning the hearts of both the customers and management, so he got a brawler position, to Mandy's chagrin.

Chester ran a youtube channel before he joined the park. It has all kinds of stuff in there, from food reviews, pranks, and vlogs. Even after he accepted the job at the park and became a brawler, he still keeps up with his videos. It focuses more on the park life and battles now, but hes got a bigger fanbase since.

He has an iron stomach. If theres anyone whos willing to try the most off the wall and disgusting dishes and also someone who wont keel over from bad cooking, its Chester.

Chester has a hunch that hes related to some of the other redheads in the park. Right now he thinks hes either Max's or Draco's cousin. The less said about Colt the better.

Chester is among the taller teens in the park, something he likes to lord over by keeping things out of others reach.

If Chester isnt wearing his bells, he can actually be quite sneaky.

Even though hes a prankster, he *usually* doesnt aim to cause bodily harm. If something crazy is going on when a prank spirals out of control, he'd at least try to fix it instead of booking it for the exit.

Chester is Bi with a big preference for guys.

Chester may have had tiny crushes on his coworkers at some point. But he isn't dating either of them and has since gotten over them.

Chester is exactly one month older than Mandy and often tries to pull the 'Im older' card on her. This has a 50% chance of working at any time.

Even outside of battle, Chester likes to wear a hat. He claims he feels naked without one.

Mandy HCs

Mandy was always a pretty entrepreneurial person. Even from a young age, she knew she wanted to set up her own business and get rich (and maybe famous) from it.

Mandy's Candy was actually a home business in its conception. Mandy was passionate about making sweets and sold her homemade treats online and in a few select stands.

One day, she got the chance to actually sell stuff inside Starr Park (some outside food concessionaires do exist in Park Premises) and it was a big hit! Almost sold out immediately. After a few more days of successful sales, she was approached by the management on sponsoring her candy making business and making her a brawler in the park. She couldn't refuse.

The whole candy kingdom design was her idea. Though she was honestly just expecting a storefont designed like a castle, not a full area of the park. But she will admit, it makes her feel very special.

Even though most of what Mandy sells are the typical sweet treats, shes actually a fan of all kinds of candies. Even ones with bizzare flavor profiles. Shes also a fan of sour candies.

Mandy is questioning. Shs not exactly sure or what she likes, but shes willing to experiment some to figure things out.

There are actual defensive turrets in the candy land castle. Some kids are vicious and she needs to protect her stock!

She thinks Chester is like the brother she never had, since she herself is an only child.

She kind of relates and sympathizes with Berry so shes not too hard on the guy. Besides hes the best worker shes got!

Mandy admires and is a bit jealous of Piper. Her elegance and poise is something she could only dream of being. Also Piper knows how to make and all of her attempts were total flops.

Berry HCs

I'm still debating if Berry is a human or a horse-headed minotaur in my HCs. If hes a horse-headed minotaur, he just wears the suit cause he refuses to get his actual skin and mane dyed.

The original suit was meant to look a bit baggy and dumpy, but Berry's build filled it up very well. Almost too well. His arms couldn't fit in the original suits arms. Management didnt want to make a new suit for him so they just cut off the original arms. Chester jokes that he 'flexed the sleeves off' which Berry doesnt mind.

Berry was in rock bottom when he took the job at Starr Park. He was willing to do and accept anything to keep himself afloat. Hes still not sure how he got promoted to the rank of Brawler, but at least he doesnt have to worry about his past situation. His present situation on the other hand...

He likes his job and his co-workers, but he also feels like he ages 20 years when he remembers that both Chester and Mandy are in their late-teens/early twenties. Partially cause hes reminded of how old he is compared to them, but also cause their antics are really giving him grey hairs under his suit.

His name is Barry dammnit! Some people start using his name correctly, but no matter what he tries he cant get the management to change his name in all the official releases. At least hes not the only one!

Berry knows how to breakdance, and he did it a lot as a kid. Even now that hes older, hes still got the moves to wow everyone.

Berry is fond of both Doug and Lou. The three of them work in the Velosorapids pools in summer. He finds them much more calming to deal with than his trio mates.

Berry likes ice cream but tends to get brain freeze too quickly. Hes honestly happy with any flavor you throw at him.

Berry is pretty sure he knows Bull from somewhere, but the man's attitude throws him off. Hes just extra cautious not to show his face around him, just in case that odd familiarity was because of something bad.

[wolven91]

Medical Monkey

Henry's boots squeaked on the smooth floors as he ran through the corridors towards what he hoped were the remaining lifeboats. 

He had stayed in the locked down medical bay as long as possible. It wasn't until it was evident that nobody was coming for him and even then it wasn’t until one of the locked medical bay doors started to get cut through that he had chosen to flee by way of a vent.

The intention was to follow the vast majority of the ship’s occupants and get off the vessel. It was already falling to pieces when the foreign vessel appeared and stalked them with obvious intentions of boarding them.

Pirates were always a danger, but most would leave crew relatively unharmed to encourage future crews to just give up rather than fight.

Not for Henry. A human. The invisible price tag attached to the back of his neck meant that the pirates wouldn't leave without him. Even law abiding citizens could be tempted with the sheer life changing money that could be made off selling one human to someone that wanted to get claws on one.

The pirates would be a new level of incompetent if they ignored him.

Skidding around the corner however, revealed the pirates to be fiks. Henry ducked back around the corner and held a hand over his mouth. They had been poking their heads through one of the lifepod doors. Henry needed them away from there.

"Hai! Hear that?!" Shouted one.

"Saaaaaaah!..." a hissing reply from another. Henry tried to run as quietly as he could away from where he was standing.

Fiks weren't part of The Galactic Community so had no ready access to the common things enjoyed by member species. Anything from weapons and armour to food or water, if fiks didn't produce it themselves, they took it from the crafts as they traversed the void.

They were new, nobody really knew how to handle them or what they 'wanted'. Henry didn't want to think what their opinion on humans were. There were no species that didn't have a horror story or two about humans being found in the 'possession' of someone. Just because he hadn't heard the fik's story, didn't mean it didn't exist.

What he was aware of, was that whilst the fiks had taken to the stars with incredible ease, there were huge chunks of their skills that weren't just subpar, but absent. Their attack records showed them capturing skilled members of crews and taking them away for periods of time before the kidnapped would reappear a few systems over.

The human's boots barely made a whisper as he sped back the way he came. As he took the corner however, he glanced back the way he came to see a fik pointing and shouting to the others, only for the human to slam into the broad muscled chest of a previously unseen Fik that had approached from behind, hidden behind the blind corner.

“Ah.. human yesss?” A female voice had questioned him from above as Henry gathered himself, still prone on the floor.

From his position on the ground, she was a slab of bulging muscles and grinning sharp teeth. The large round ears did nothing to detract from her imposing nature of giant rat-like pirate. She crouched down, resting her arms over her knees and was suddenly very close to Henry’s face causing him to flinch. 

“Ah.. no fear human; no… We friend; yes?” She stated simply, seemingly not having a complete grasp of the syntax used by the majorityof races. She seemed to have enough knowledge to get her intentions across however. She reached out to grab one of his hands and grasped it between two large, leather padded fingers. The blunt claws that tipped each of her fingers did nothing to reduce Henry's anxiety.

As the hulking fik studied his hands, a trio of other fiks appeared. The one that had spotted the human amongst them.

"Sah! We saw him first!"

The colossal fik didn't seem to care, or even seem to notice the trio of smaller fiks.

"Hai! Saaaaah! Our prize!"

Now the colossal fik acknowledged them. She make a series of sharp clicks with her long whiskered snout.

"But you not capture him? Yes? Then not yours. Sah, be better next time." She spoke without looking at them, seemingly fascinated by Henry's hands. She used both hands to test the joints, knuckles and even to run her soft pads over the calluses that the human had gained over the years.

The trio huffed and hissed, but with a flick of a tail, sagged and went quiet. The ship rumbled and creaked around them, reminding Henry that this ship was not going to last much longer.

Based on the melee weapons attached to her hips and the thick armour plates that protected her chest and thighs, Henry hesitantly flagged her as a 'warrior', despite the fact they were in space.

Said warrior glanced at the trio of subordinate fiks and nodded before speaking again.

“Good… Sah, You? You are skilled; yes?” 

“I’m a doctor.”

An intake of breath through her teeth, yet her expression was flat, like a perfect poker face.

“Med-I-Cal…?” She enunciated carefully. 

“...yes?” Henry confirmed, it was pointless lying, he was terrible at it. 

Her sudden grin became rapturous and concerned the man as the warrior fell forwards until Henry was laying flat against the floor whilst she held herself up up by her hands and feet, looming over the human.

“You are very… very.. Precioussss..” She hissed leaning forwards until she was mere millimeters from his face.

"This ship abandoned. Crew fled, yes yes. Abandoned you?"

"I feel you had something to do with that."

"Saaaah... ship already bleeding out... better to use carcass then waste. We not tell them to flee. To abandon precious one." One of her hands reached out for Henry’s face, but stopped short, not quite touching him before retreating.

She stood suddenly and turned away, her tail slapping Henry in the side of the leg absently. “Take him.” She ordered without looking back. 

This snapped Henry out of his reverie, but before he could get to his feet, several heavy hands fell onto his shoulders, arms and legs. His wrists and ankles were tied in rapid order while a cloth gag was put through his teeth with little effort. The warrior turned back at his muffled protests and barked at the other fiks.

“Sah! Be careful with him… He is our guest now…. Yes yes…” She instructed as he was thrown over the broad shoulders of one of the pirates as if he were naught more than a shoulder of mutton. He was marched with little agency towards an airlock.

As he passed the leader, she reached out a hand to gently brush his hair from his eyes with a careful hand. 

“Very precioussss….”

[pigeonpalacade]

PLEASE SAY MORE ON THE SAW FIGHT CLUB AU

Your wish is my command!!

So, in terms of character placements I believe narrator is Amanda, Tyler is John and Marla is Lynn. John and Amanda's father-daughter dynamic would be thoroughly disregarded in this au and replaced with Jack and Tyler's original tension from fight club, with the only remnants of the parental angle being the "our fathers were models for god" and "a generation of men raised by women" kind of stuff Tyler harps on about. This version of Tyler is as if project mayhem is the jigsaw murders, I'm honestly not sure what would kick-start it, but when he meets Jack he has got a few kills under his belt, but it would be him solo rather than in an organised group. Speaking of, the space monkeys would be jigsaw apprentices, I doubt there would be as many of them as there were in fight club, but instead of their signifier being bald heads it would probably be grevious injuries/scars from their own saw traps, as well as the more obvious stuff like the coats and the pig heads. Paper Street serves as Kramers strange little warehouse, he would have the space monkeys working on making traps like we see Amanda do in saw 3, but I don't think they would sell anything in this au given the nature of what they're making, so the plane meeting would probably centre around another topic like machinery, Tyler being more familiar with how to make a machine would give him a common ground with Jack's car recall knowledge.

Marla gets changed around quite a bit here, I think her being in the place of Lynn fits in the way that Tyler is trying to convince Jack that she's important to him, but the way Tyler would get her involved is a bit up in the air. If I had to come up with something on the spot I'd say that she could be an trap survivor and meets Jack through a jigsaw survivors support group that he would most definitely attend to see who hadn't learnt their lesson [Tyler doesnt send him to do this, its his own side thing but it does help choose who should be double trapped], then he complains about her to a point that Tyler brings her in to convince him she's made her choice about life or something like that. Her philosophy of life is probably why she got tangled up with jigsaw in the first place. Also she wouldn't have a husband or any children, so the events of saw 3 would be purely focused on our main trio. The saw 3 ending would have Tyler dead, Jack with the neck bullet hole and marla alive, probably having Jack remove the shotgun collar at Tyler's request before they would murder-suicide each other with Tyler missing the shot and hitting Jack's throat, the end to some grand test Tyler was putting Jack through to see if he could survive without him. After this Marla might end up an apprentice herself, or more likely she would keep in contact with Jack and desperately try to get him to turn himself in.

Tyler's whole "the ability to let that which does not matter truly slide" would be cranked up to 11, in the way that someone kramer sees someone squandering their opportunities gets trapped, Tyler would much the same way find people who aren't living their lives to the fullest and trap them in order to 'save them', much in the way he blew up Jack's condo or gave him the lye kiss, it's all in order to get them to reach rock bottom. As previously mentioned, I think support groups would be a big part of it, maybe the reason Jack gets beartrapped is a combination of hating his perfectly good condo life and hanging around jigsaw support groups despite never being trapped, perking Tyler's ears and putting him in the beartrap, just to end up keeping him around as the first apprentice, which would lead perfectly into Jack's jealousy as the saw monkeys increase, he would argue that he was the first apprentice, he should know everything that goes on, which would probably land him in the saw 2 trap for being a bit of a whiny bitch [in Tyler's eyes]. A reason I put Jack in Amanda's place is the obsessive devotion to the mentor figure, but also because I think their scars weirdly match. Book Jack ends up with scars on either side of his mouth, which in this au would be caused by the beartrap, and Amanda has the bullet wound for saw 3, which coincides with the placement of movie Jack's bullet wound.

I haven't thought about who I would put in the other major character's shoes, such as Adam, Lawrence, Hoffman and Strahm, but I like the placements I've got now which puts a strangely heavy emphasis on saw 3 despite how much more I like saw 1. If you have any thing to add do not hesitate to do so!!! I'd love to discuss how this could go further :3

[gregorygerwitz]

I’m a useless lesbian so tell me about Erin, Hailey, and/or Kim in the hockey au!!! 🏒

oh god that's multiple people I have to figure out, huh? uh... I honestly hadn't thought about Erin and Hailey yet. in theory, they have a place in this universe, but it's hard?

Erin

I don't want to keep using the "Jay's girlfriend who left him" thing for Erin because, as much I use it as a plot point, she deserves better than that. I think she'd still have grown up around the Voight family, still had her teenage rebellion, still wanted to do something to pointedly distance herself from her mother and keep something solid under her, if that makes sense? I don't know if I'd make her do the whole Follow In Hank's Footsteps And Be A Cop thing tho.

It would be neat to see her interact with the law in other ways, though? Maybe she went to school, got a degree, isn't exactly a lawyer - because woah that's a lot of school and not quite what I envision for her - but like... I don't know where I was going with this. Maybe some kind of social service job? Maybe doing a community outreach thing? Helping teens who are in a rough spot like she was, running a substance abuse help center? Something like that. Still helping people, just without the badge, if that makes sense.

It's a rich boy Mouse AU, maybe she's loosely friends with Greg because one of her programs benefited from a charity gala one year and they're the same age (canonically!!!) so they ended up talking at the event and now they're Facebook friends and wish each other happy birthday every year and meet up for drinks every few months to catch up.

Hailey

Another difficult one. Because this is very much so a Moustead AU, not Cozy Trio (as much as I love them, I took on too much with YOTP this year and I feel burnt out, so I'm taking a break).

As much as I don't want to do it (because I'm already basically doing it with Chefs AU eventually), it would make a lot of sense, in this universe, for her to be a part of her parents' restaurant, in some way. Not in any meaningful way, at first, but maybe she's the one who suggests expanding? Buying a space in the little arena that the Mice play in and selling food there during games to make a little extra money for the business. And, because it was her idea, it's hers to run with over summer breaks and when she finishes high school - whether it succeeds or she crashes and burns with it.

So she knows Jay, very loosely? Because he was at practice for a few of her location scouting trips, and she was just a kid, and there's no games during the summer so he only saw her on scattered afternoons when he went to skate. She doesn't actually run the little outlet of the restaurant, so to speak, full time until the summer before Jay and Greg meet and start to get together. But like... they know each other's names? And he'll get a late dinner from her if the game goes into OT? They've talked and they're friendly but they're not friends.

Kim

I'm still figuring out the exact details of Kim. Because @fighterkimburgess mentioned that this could easily be an actual siblings AU (Greg and Kim as half siblings because Gregory's a whore), and they're right. And if that's the case for this AU, I want it to be closer to the Gerwitz Siblings AU instead of something where they meet later in life? Where they were kinda-sorta raised together near the end of their teens but aren't as close as they are in that one?

Because it's kind of obvious that Kim is only included in the family for the sake of appearances, and Greg is very clearly being groomed to take over the family business and, presumably, he's the one who will actually pass on the family name to kids (he won't, he's very gay, but it's cute that everyone thinks that), and she definitely falls off the public radar a bit more when she starts dating Adam Ruzek, a player on her father's minor league hockey team. Her decisions don't matter in the grand scheme because the entire family legacy isn't on her shoulders, so she's kind of lucky, in that respect.

She gets to date Adam, and cheer him on openly at games, and be happy. Unlike her half brother, who is closeted, and when he does start dating someone, he can't be open about it, and he can't just start suddenly showing up at games and cheering on the Mice louder than everyone else when he's openly frowned upon the fact that his father bought the team at all. Kim gets it easier, and she knows that, and she's thankful for it. (yes, Burzek is here, because it's me, but also because canon gave us them literally playing hockey with Mack and I was supposed to let the opportunity pass me by???)

[ ask me about the hockey au ]

[daemonhxckergrrl]

re: your ask from greyr4t about win10: as you said in your answer its free, just needs a key for 'activation.' ime activating win10 has been worth it. like you mentioned, it isnt strictly necessary, one can make do fine in a somewhat limited capacity with the watermark in the corner forever (unless your monitor is an OLED then have fun with 100% guaranteed screen burn in lmao. or unless always seeing it enrages you disproportionately. as in my case). but having windows activated is honestly just nice, it makes many things easier and is more sustainable in the long run... worth the extremely minor hassle as like a QoL thing imo. you also brought up that its possible to circumvent microsoft (and its brazenly insane asking prices 🤬) & buy cheap keys online from third parties. i wanted to talk about how i did shit, hopefully it helps the original asker directly or at least comes in handy to know

so i bought my (shady bootleg, yes, but perfectly functional for years now) win10 activation key for even cheaper than what Synthia listed as a price point- iirc, under 5 bucks USD. (might be higher now w inflation, but id be surprised if its much more than around 10.) if things still work how they used to, you can do this on ebay. technically ebays policies dont allow it, so the accounts selling these keys come and go frequently due to getting shut down by ebay after popping up. thus, dont necessarily be put off if the seller hasnt existed for long, as often thats just how it goes (or it did. hopefully this sort of thing is still going strong🤞); do trust happy reviews. now, there are a few TYPES of activation keys– priced slightly different, nothing big– that correspond to different editions of windows 10. so basically its home edition, pro edition, and "pro for workstations". might be worth finding a brief summary of each to determine which edition best meets your needs. (there are more editions beyond the main trio, look into those too if you want, but the tldr on em is theyre for like niche markets w/ highly specific use cases.) fwiw, i got pro & am happy with it. another thing, from personal experience: may or may not be obvious but you're gonna wanna save a screenshot of your key somewhere safe and accessible. additionally though, label the screenshot somehow so you know what it is later, and if youre a disorganized scatterbrain like i am then put that in multiple places you can reliably access so if/when youre having trouble tracking it down you know where else to look; it came in handy for me to have access to it in places both online (cloud storage like google drive or dropbox for example, or even just saving the email copy of the ebay mssg in the designated folder in your email for the ones containing info you wanna save) & off (physical note on paper, stored in the files on one or more personal devices, etc). theres a huge chance youll need it again in the future– like say if you want to upgrade certain hardware– and likely more than once. final advice: highly recommend looking into comprehensive ways of "defanging" and/or "lobotomizing" windows, as they say. i.e., a tip that gets circulated is doing the initial setup for windows w your pc in airplane mode / ethernet unplugged so you dont have to make a microsoft account so they cant create a profile on you to collect your data to sell off & target ads at you (which is obvi totally reversible later if you decide the benefits of having an account outweigh the drawbacks). shit like that, plus the loads of guides out there– many here on tumblr itself– on extensive fucking around in various settings to disable bloatware / preserve privacy / other useful stuff, that can get pretty granular. i think ive even seen Synthia herself reblog posts like that here a couple times, maybe? perhaps try checking relevant-seeming tags from the tagging system in her pinned, or do a blog search for the term 'windows' and see what all there is to find

phew, anyway, jesus christ! sorry this got to be such a long writeup!!! some of this blog's aggregate of resources have been a big help to me, so i wanted to try to pay it forward a little <3 and, Synthia, if you wouldnt mind, tagging the original asker in your response to this anon so that greyr4t is more likely to see all this would be very much appreciated by me!! ty in advance!! thanks also for your careful curation of useful info on this blog, plus the helpful posts and guides youve written here for us yourself 👍🌈

hi anon ! thanks for writing all this up !! lots of great points here - hopefully they help you out @greyr4t ! the airplane mode one is real important too if you care about privacy (and the fact you can't choose to make a local account during installation unless you are disconnected from the internet is awful and yet another dark pattern-type tactic.

i'm glad my blog's been good for you <3 (though i do need to go through and make all the important stuff a bit easier to access at some point)

iirc there's some reblogs on general privacy stuff (probably under one of the REPO tags and like "net privacy" or similar) as well as my own firefox post, and maybe more will happen in the future when i get to them

[peterlorres21stcentury]

some "old" writing

I woke up this morning with old Genesis prog rock in my head (specifically "Selling England by the Pound") and I'm just impressed that my brain remembered so many of the lyrics after not listening to these really rather complex songs in such a long time. It was just what I needed to blast through some boring work this morning, but it also made me think fondly of my last huge writing project before I devoted myself to Peter Lorre fic more or less full-time.

Back when I was going through a serious prog rock phase, I wrote an entire book that was one huge, half-silly half-serious riff on all my favorite 1970s-1980s musicians, written as fictitious ancient people of the Stone Age. I had a lot of fun with it, and I think it was also very necessary for me at the time to write something long and get all the writing cobwebs out before I found what I really wished to do. My favorite thing was writing thinly-veiled caricatures of actual rock personalities in the hopes that people would recognize them. Sometimes I was a little too on-the-nose with names... or was I? See if you can guess.

(well, since you can't tell from this particular excerpt, I'll say that two of the main characters Oak and Rowan are young Mike and Tony of Genesis fame, but who's the new trio of performers?) ;)

_______________

At length, a new trio of young Coastal men appeared. The audience stirred and the whole cavern shook with deafening cheers. Oak sat up with fresh interest and nudged Rowan's shoulder.

“I know them! That one there, see him?” He pointed to the middle one, a slightly chubby youth with a perfectly circular face. He carried an elegant sifigaan that stood about half his own height and bore a graceful curve like a swan's neck, carved from a single branch of ash wood.

“What about him?” asked Rowan, struggling to raise his voice. He could barely hear himself think.

“He's Lake. Moon-on-the-Lake. He used to sing at other meetings but I never had much to do with him. And the others... oh, I've already forgotten their names.”

Rowan watched the trio take their places in the chamber. The drummer sat behind two low skin drums and raised his arms to encourage the crowd, showing off glorious muscles as taut as new bowstrings. He was a joyful, innocent sort with a bright honest face and a jubilant grin. As he cheered, the enormous leaf crown atop his head slipped down over one eye and fell apart under its own weight. He tried to fix it, still smiling as his two bandmates teased him. Rowan couldn't help laughing too; it was possibly the most impractical headdress he had ever seen. It was fashioned from row upon row of the green fan-palm leaves that grew in low shrubs along the dry mountain coast, and radiated out from his head like streaks of sunlight through the clouds. Rowan considered that it might be a namesake, and knew he was correct when he heard Lake playfully admonish: “Leave it, Palmetto!”

The third member of the trio was something of a puzzle. He was small and thin-legged, and his eyes were hidden behind a long mop of fluffy brown hair. He did not volunteer a name to the crowd, nor wear any kind of obvious namesake, but simply grinned and took his place behind a curious instrument. It had large flat stones like Rowan's elanngyo, only they were tied down to an upright wooden frame rather than allowed to swing freely. A number of hollow gourds of varying sizes were lashed to the sides, and a few shell strings dangled off the front. With the practiced air of someone who had done this many times before, the little musician strapped two round pebbles in the palms of his hands and slapped a quick double rhythm into the instrument, each hand playing different notes. The stones rang and clattered under his strikes, and drew cheering whistles from the audience even before the song began. The little player waved to them and lowered his head, allowing his hair to cover most of his shyly grinning face.

The group did not bother to introduce themselves. They started up immediately once the crowd had quieted, opening with humming strikes on the very lowest strings of Lake's sifigaan, and stealthy words of warning:

There's a sharp edge in the girl's hand

Waiting for the strike at her man

Don't expect they will have many

Days until the stars take pity

Never knowing

Take the women from the clearing

As the sparrows watch in silence

How the warlord prays for violence!

The verse repeated in other languages, building slowly before Lake gave a long wail and stood aside, disappearing into the flickering shadows. For a long time there were no words, only the pounding of drums and the exclamations of the elanngyo. The song grew faster and the drummer tossed his head to the sky. His eyes rolled and he clenched his teeth, straining as he drove the tempo to an impossible limit. Droplets of sweat flung away from his brow and the ends of his feathery hair with every beat. He did not let up his pace for an instant. The remnants of his broken palmetto crown had long since fallen to the ground in the whirlwind of his energy.

The tiny elanngyo player was a whole performance unto himself. His eyes were closed as he struck blindly from note to note in a chaotic madness, and he wore a grimace of such intense concentration that he looked to be in pain. He leaped and twirled about, at times thrusting himself bodily into his instrument. He ground his hips against it in a passion, he mounted it like a lover in the throes of bliss. Something flashed in his hand as he brought it down violently upon the stones again and again, and a tortured scream went up like murder.

Rowan was mystified. His eyes widened when he saw the smears of blood. A glassy black flint was driven between two of the singing stones, and there was a fresh bleeding wound on the player's fingers. The little madman scarcely noticed. He grunted as he drove a second, then a third flint into the vitals of the instrument, still coaxing noises from it, and with a final heave he tipped it over with a great clattering of stones into the sand. He raised his bloodied hands into the air and the song ended with Lake's final cry and the clamor of the frenzied audience cheering them on.

Breathing hard and shining with sweat, they bowed and swiftly cleared away for the next group. Rowan overheard Lake and Palmetto fussing over their companion’s injured hand, but the little elanngyo player just smiled.

“It looks good, don't you think?” he said, pointing to the bright red smears of his own blood across the overturned instrument. He happened to catch Rowan's eye and winked from under his locks.

[lxvislxdy]

Imagine Bakugou x stoner!reader

So... maybe I got carried away, and maybe this turned into more of just you and the bakusquad being besties, but I literally love this concept and will 100% be writing more.

Warning(s): obvious mentions of drug use, and some language. All characters are 18+.

So, let’s say, just for the hell of it, that this is a quirkless!college!au 

just imagine...

- you befriend Sero and Denki first, meeting them in a class, and they love you right off the bat

- you’re personality just meshes so well with theirs, you become bffs almost instantly

- the three of you raise hell in that class, I’m convinced, like RIP to whoever sits near you goofs

- you slowly start to hang out outside of class. maybe it starts as a study sesh, but let’s be honest here. the three of you can’t focus to save your life, and eventually Sero asks if you guys wanna smoke

- and, to their complete surprise, you outsmoke them (Denki later bows down to you, literally, and proposes to you with a ring pop. he’s such a dork I love him)

- this becomes a weekly thing, as it should, and the three of you are practically attached at the hip

- your favorite part of hanging with them is, of course, all their crazy stories about their friends

- so of course they want to introduce you to the bakusquad, and you are just as eager to meet the rest of the group, if not a little nervous

- Denki and Sero assure you they’ll love you (”c’mon, you’re just like us, they’ll adore you!!!”) and they take you out to lunch with Mina and Kirishima

- now, if you thought you, Denki, and Sero was a chaotic trio, just wait until you add Mina to the equation

- Kirishima lives for the chaos and thinks you’re adorable, but the guy has his hands full keeping the four of you out of trouble, that’s for sure

- (when Bakugou’s not around, Kirishima is in charge of the braincell, I don’t make the rules)

- Mina immediately kidnaps you for a girls night, and is ecstatic about having a girl to hang out with her and the boys 

- (SIDE NOTE, Mina introduces you to Jirou, and the three of you are THE baddest bitches around, thank you. the three of you definitely have girl nights and either kick the boys out, or force them to join, face masks and all)

- anyway, you finally get the opportunity to meet Bakugou

- and, as always, he’s in a sour mood. but! you don’t let his grumpiness upset you, in fact, you take it in stride and throw his attitude right back at him

- you aren’t mean, and you certainly aren’t going out of your way to bug him, but if Bakugou makes a snide comment? you better believe you’re throwing one right back at him

- and at first, Bakugou is annoyed, and thinks you’re mocking him. like, who do you think you are? 

- but the more he gets to know you, he realizes that you’re way too sweet to be that mean. you fit right in with the idiots he’s friends with.

- and, to be honest, it drives him nuts. because he likes you. he likes you, and he likes when you snap back at him, and he likes watching you goof off and laugh with his friends

- in true Bakugou fashion, though, you’re convinced he hates you. it’s just the icing on top of the cake when one night you notice that every time you’re there, and Sero lights up, Bakugou disappears 

- when you finally tell Mina this, she laughs. actually laughs! and you’re just like ....what?

- turns out, Bakugou hardly ever smokes with them, and he’s just like that. 

“Trust me, babe,” Mina tells you, “It’s not you. Bakugou just doesn’t know how to relax, he’s got a terrible case of trust issues and a bad attitude to top it off. But he likes you, trust me! He’ll come around.”

- you weren’t so sure about that, but you take her word for it. 

- and then, one night it’s just you, Denki, Mina, and Bakugou, and he stays!

“Someone with a brain has to make sure you idiots don’t do something stupid.” He says, when you ask.

- that night ends up being one of the funniest nights of your life. the three of you are high as a kite, and everything is funny. seriously, you can’t stop laughing!

- then, you find out Bakugou’s birthday is on 4/20, and you have never been so excited in your life (so you say). it’s the funniest, most ironic thing to you

- you go up to Bakugou, grabbing both his arms by the biceps, and are going on and on about it, bouncing on the balls of your feet and giggling, and Bakugou just listens to you talk and he blushes 

- you’re adorable, and he can’t lie to himself anymore, he likes you. he really likes you. and this realization really freaks him out (he calls Kirishima later that night absolutely freaking out, and he has to totally calm him down. Kiri ships it)

- over the next month or two, he tries his best to not give himself away, but it’s so hard. 

- he starts sticking around when everyone smokes together, and sitting next to you during movie nights (because you always fall asleep, and theres a good 80% chance you end up leaning on his shoulder), and he offers to help when you complain about a class you’re struggling with

- and it all comes to a head one night when he gets jealous. 

- he was definitely reading too much into things, but he swears you’re acting clingy with Sero, leaning on his shoulder, and grabbing his arm when you laugh, and playing with his hair. he definitely has himself convinced Sero is making a move on you, and he’s pissed.

- at some point during the hangout, he gets up and storms out of the room, and no one really notices but you and Kiri. after a minute or two you’re curiosity gets the best of you, so you go after him

- he’s in the kitchen, glaring at this plant Denki and Sero have (that is totally, 100% dying, and probably can’t be saved) and he’s pouting

“I don’t think staring at it is gonna bring it back to life.” You say, and he just looks at you weird and asks what you want

- you say you’re just checking on him, and he asks why you care. and you’re just like dude ??? i care about you? hello? we’re friends ??

- and Bakugou, being himself, snaps at you and makes some kind of rude comment

- so you snap back, offended because you’d just wanted to check on him

- and halfway through you telling him what a jerk he is, he kisses you

- he kisses you like his life depends on it, because he’s still pissed off about Sero and, come on, Bakugou Katsuki doesn’t do anything halfway

- and maybe the two of you make out in the kitchen for way longer than you want to admit

- and maybe you laugh and call him an idiot when he tells you he was jealous of Sero

- and maybe Denki catches the two of you, and screams like a little girl on christmas morning

- cue protective Denki and Sero telling Bakugou he better not EVER hurt you... and then crying happy tears a minute later because you’re so cute together

- after that, Bakugou is literally never seen without you by his side. he walks you to class, cooks you dinner at least once a week, helps you study and takes you out every time you ace a test. this man knows your coffee order, and has your schedule memorized, it’s impressive 

- god forbid he see’s you eating junk food

- listen, he knows how Denki and Sero eat when they get the munchies, okay, and that is absolutely not allowed. this man is such a simp behind closed doors, he will literally make you homemade snacks for when you go smoke with the guys. 

- he’s not the greatest with words, okay, but he loves you and he shows it through small things like that. he’s always pushing you to do your best, and bragging about you, and doing little things to remind you how much he cares

- he’s also a little over protective, but he means well, and cmon it’s kinda cute when he get’s jealous, sometimes

- but overall you guys are just the cutest couple. like the bakusquad is absolutely obsessed. (you make Bakugou soft, but don’t tell him they said that)

- and sure you fight over little things every once in a while, but you learn how to handle Bakugou’s attitude quick, and it never lasts too long. 

- if you do have a big fight, you take a step back and let each other cool down, and then you make Bakugou talk it out. he hates it at first, because sharing his feelings is so not something he wants to do, but it does help and he knows it.

- if, on the rare occasion, the two of you have a bad fight you can’t resolve on your own, therapist Kiri is there to save the day

Bonus:

- now, let’s get down to the whole reason i made this au in the first place

- the first time the two of you celebrate his birthday after getting together, he makes it clear that the day of he just wants to spend it with you

- so the weekend closest to his bday, the whole squad goes out and celebrates, but when it comes to his actual bday? Bakugou has a surprise for YOU

- you show up to his apartment, not really knowing what to expect, and this man pulls out a pan of brownies

- yeah, those brownies

- turns out, he and Sero used to sell them in high school

“What? Sero already sold, and I can cook, so we just... did it. It was good money.”

“How could you keep this from me?! Have I told you recently that I adore you?”

He just laughs, “You’re such a dork.”

- so you have the PLEASURE of getting high with Bakugou for the first time

- and let me just tell you, you’re in for a treat

- Bakugou. is. so. clingy. as soon as it hits, you know, because he’s wrapping his arms around you and pulling you into his lap

- he’s speaking so softly?? and he’s just relaxed, and content with holding you and talking about anything and everything, just cuddling with music in the background

- high! makeout sessions! with Bakugou! that’s it, that’s literally it. he is INSATIABLE 

- the man just wants to kiss you, for hours, okay? give him what he wants!!

- he used to get super paranoid, that’s why he doesn’t smoke much, but with you he’s calm and comfortable, and not anxious

- it becomes tradition to make brownies on both of your birthdays, and you look forward to it all year

- and every once in a while, Bakugou will smoke with the squad, and they quickly learn that he can’t keep his hands off of you when he’s high. they tease him relentlessly, and Sero and Denki definitely have asked him (aka whined to him) to stop hogging all your attention

- also, he definitely lights the bowl for you, because he is a gentlemen

- shotgun kisses. yup. that’s all I have to say.

before I get carried away again, this is the end. Thank you for reading! I literally can’t get enough of this au I’m in love with it!! I’ll be writing more of this au soon, hopefully, and my requests are open!! 

[prof-peach]

If you could cross over two of your favorite games, which would you choose? Please explain, why that crossover would be a good match.

Oh you’re going to regret asking this one, I’m bout to GET SERIOUS.

So Pokemon, obvs, I love the whole world it’s built in, but the games imo are REALLY boring, I haven’t enjoyed one a lot since gale of darkness, the main ones just are a little too linear obvious plots, pretty standard setups for story and style. Speaking of style, the games lack personality, the models aren’t animated well, moves have no dynamic energy or visual difference at times, and the turn based battle style just feels kind of, I don’t know, old? Slow? Just doesn’t suit what I enjoy personally, gives me a FInal Fantasy vibe and I just cannot stand the speed at which things happen in those games, plus not into 3rd person ‘let’s build a team of people’ much, but that’s a problem for another time. With this all in mind, the game I wish would happen is like gen20 Pokemon, far future sadly, I doubt I’d see it in my lifetime but god I’d be happy if I did!

Ok so take the newest Zelda graphics, the visual treat that was BOTW, open world, puzzles, not JUST combat, you got side missions, hunt the chickens, find missing pets, parcels, items, whatever. Love it! The horse taming?! Amazing you funky little game. Now take the bad guys and beasts from that. And put Pokemon in instead. Give them the diversity, the life and believable natures that BOTW gave the animals, I followed a frog in BOTW for 15 minutes, and it was a great experience, it felt like it was believable. Above world spawning, ACTUAL difficult gameplay, rare spawn rates, make dragons hard to get again, cmon, it’s too easy now, make it so we need a certain set of Pokemon for certain tasks. Water types big enough to carry you will be able to get you to new areas, rock types that can help you climb mountains faster, or break through blocking boulders. Actual towns with more than 4 houses in them, shops, barns, farms, homes. Like little link with the heat, maybe ice types would struggle in volcano areas, or bug Pokemon not be so comfortable in gale force winds. Give the weather more of an effect on your partners. Mounts, don’t even get me started that Pokemon Let’s go had you able to ride any of the larger species, but swsh did not???? Bitch please, give me my rideable Pokemon. The wild area too was far too closed, limited, online was laggy and a mess, camping is limited, let me do more with my team. Pokemon for me is all about the actual creatures, how they live with humans, and the many wonderful things they’re capable of. Yes of course it’s cool they can fight, but like what else you know?

I’d love a game that lets me buy a plot of land, maybe plant things, custom build things. I’m a sucker for the fallout4 settlement builds when they’re modded to hell and back, they’re fun! It can be a really calm and creative process. If I could do that and skip the main campaign and all the battles for a bit? Amazing, it sound perfect for me. I am that distracted hoe collecting flowers while the kingdom burns in the background. Side quests are everything to me. Let me give homeless people enough money to get them in a home? Let me adopt Pokemon that are stray around the town? Plz oh plz bring me a Pokemon game that allows me to work WITH my team to do more than KO other species. I want to save and buy a plow for my buddy gogoat, and grow amazing foods to sell to get currency to spend in decorations, to spoil my team. Give me actual game consequence, if I ignore that sick and injured Pokemon I find in the wild, later maybe it’s family don’t want to help me out with a different problem, too stricken from grief. I am all about the average bits, the old women who need help, the lost pets board in town, the general day to day stuff. Let me get cosmetic items for the Pokemon I keep, cute outfits, special gemstone items, let me actually live with them, or even feel remotely like they’re realistic.

Ok so in game, if it’s looking like BOTW it’s pretty beautiful but also stylised, I’d have it so you can send out a maximum of 3 Pokemon from your 6, using bumpers and such to throw them out. If you hit the trigger you switch from controlling the human trainer, to the Pokemon you’ve targeted with a standard lock on targeting system. You then can be the leader, but be the Pokemon. You could technically defeat the game without a human if you wanted, which incorporates the mystery dungeon games I think, and caters to that crowd. I’d love to see the use of attacks out of battle, things like using water gun to grow plants, using ember to start a campfire faster and stave off the cold. There’s no consequence to Pokemon anymore, and I think that’s where it’s lost me. I have to admit I miss the days of a poisoned pokemon fainting if you don’t heal them soon enough, I miss gym battles that were actually tough, damn, try picking charmander in red and beating brock without grinding in viridian forest first, it’s not easy. And I loved that. Yes it’s a child’s game, it will never be difficult again, but god it’d be nice to have a bit of a challenge, or maybe a difficulty setting, so some could play it with hostility turned off, great for kids, or you can be n adult like I know so many Pokemon fans are, and play it on expert mode and ACTUALLY have to work hard to beat the game. Alternate skill trees anyone? Train gun a fire type to ACUTALLy combat water moves?? Please! Cmon! It frustrated me that every challenger has pretty much a systematic set of moves to use to win. Grass opponent? Fire attack spam until you win. It’s dull, so at least with very difficult tricks to either find or learn in game would make it more achievable if you can send that fire type in and I don’t know, train them so much the heat evaporates the water mid-battle and you suddenly have a shot at winning. Pokemon has taught me that if you work hard enough you can achieve something, but the games just have such strict ways to win. Feels wrong.

In terms of battling, let us BE the Pokemon, let us learn to dodge, train our speed, train our defence, make a team of truly tough Pokemon instead of just, average? Some species have a cap on their skills, a squirtle has lower stat points than a Charizard, but you can’t ever change that? Let me choose the Pokemon I believe in, and let me work with them until they’re just as good, if not better than the game tanks. This would also make online battles more interesting. Everyone picks the top trio. Fairy, dragon, legendaries. And yknow what? It’s boring. That one IRL fight with the monster Pacharisu that won in the world tournament with follow me and the situs Berry? Unbelievable, I love that little rat so much because of this, so let us all have a chance to build a team that’s strategically viable, strong, and potentially a winner formula, even if they aren’t fully evolved, or the biggest Pokemon in the world. Yeah maybe you have to grind way harder with your unevolved Pokemon, but you get to the end game and win, because you put love and time into species that you enjoy, not just good fighters.

Unfortunately I am beholdent to Todd-idiot-Howard, and I love the Eldrescrolls and fallout games (before they got dumb, not that I don’t play the new ones. 76 I’m looking at you, you big asshole game.) honestly I hate online games, so none of that junk, just a good old fashioned open world sandbox game is plenty. Games for me are an escape from others, not an invitation to socialise. To each their own of course, and I do play online games sometimes, just pretty short lived ones, over watch and rdr2 for example. Would they be sometimes better on private servers? Yes of course, fallout76? Want to play with others? No. I do not. Please leave me alone. And if you buy a private server you’re feeding the monster that is Todd Howard, the man the myth the asshole, then we’ll get more bad games like 76. I just so desperately want the Pokemon company to see what a beautiful potential game they’ve got on their hands, that could be suitable for far greater audiences, but instead they’ve focused on the kids. It’s fine, it’s functional, but it’s lost to the fans from day 1, that are all 20+ years old now and want something meatier to play, something far more broad and inclusive. I also hate that there’s no wheelchair option in any Pokemon game. Like cmon, it’s not hard to include that.

In short, BOTW + Pokemon, with a sprinkle of open world sandbox to it, less fighting, more fun. Or, at least both options. Sure, go fight everything, great, but I want to farm carrots over here with 6sunflora, plz let me have some peace.

Edit: I forgot about harvest moon, chuck some of that in there too.

SECOND EDIT: someone in the comments mentioned to put this in Unova? Plz love yourselves, this game would be ALL MAPS. Stuff one singular location, this is the ideal game, put every map in it, join them, put islands in, make them more explorable, more detailed!

[kittyprincessofcats]

She-Ra S5 E09 - An Ill Wind

In which the Best Friend Squad’s back on Etheria and I’m back to writing up my thoughts about it. (The real question is whether I’ll manage to finish these posts before season 5’s one-year-anniversary.) I probably really don’t need to say this anymore, but there might be spoilers for the rest of the season in this post.

- I think it’s funny how Catra can’t stand teleporting, but what’s even more important is how visibly concerned for her Adora is each time. Have you seen how she touches Catra’s shoulders and looks at her with such a worried expression? D’awww.

- “Wow, you don’t trust the princesses? I am shocked.” No Glimmer, Catra’s 100% right. This has nothing to do with trusting the princesses; you really don’t know who’s chipped and which places are occupied by clones. Perfuma literally told you the rebellion was compromised.

- “Catra’s right.” THANK YOU, ADORA! (Also, I love Catra’s satisfied little smirk in the background when Adora says this.)

- I just paused the episode when they arrive in Erelandia and counted the Horde flags you can see hanging all over the town: 14, plus one giant Horde sign in the sky and a spire not too far away. Prime, are you compensating for something? (Also, Adora has an arm on Catra’s back again. Cute.)

- Is it a little disappointing that all the rebellions against Horde Prime on other planets got reduced to one brief exposition scene where a clone mentions they’re happening and a few quick images? Yeah. But I also get why the show just didn’t have the time for more and wanted to focus on Etheria.

- Speaking of, are those the magicats we see in the second image? Interesting… I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of Catra potentially being an alien as well. But then again, the show never clearly answers it one way or another, and there’s no reason magicats couldn’t have existed on multiple planets.

- Also, am I understanding this right: The Star Siblings started the intergalactic rebellion after meeting the Best Friend Squad? And now there are already rebels on several planets? Nice job, Star Siblings!

- “My heart aches for these misguided children.” I’m not sure if I’ve ever properly addressed the heavily religious symbolism around Horde Prime and his cult, but… that right there is *such* a Christian-extremist-coded line, holy hell…

- So Prime says he wants to use the Heart of Etheria “to bring peace to all the universe” and at this point I’m not entirely sure what his exact goal is. Does he just want to destroy all the planets with the Heart? Because I’ll be honest, I tend to find “I just want to destroy everything” a bit boring as a motivation in villains. What’s the point of him ruling the universe if there’s no one left to rule over? I mean, I know Prime had his whole “If there’s no one left, there are no wars, etc.” speech in an earlier episode, but that’s also just so dumb.

- Where did the Best Friend Squad even get those cloaks? Either way, Catra looks adorable with the outline of her ears showing under the hood. 🥺

- “I hope you, too, are full only of love for Horde Prime… and have no crippling doubt eating at your soul.” / “Brothers, there is nothing to see here!” Like I said in an earlier post, all of Wrong Hordak’s lines are absolute winners. Also, I love how the other clones just keep falling for his very obvious bluffs.

- Wrong Hordak learning to wink so quickly makes me jealous because I can’t wink. (No, I really can’t; I’ve tried. Whenever I try to only close one eye, I always end up closing both. If anyone has good advice on learning to wink, let me know.)

- I love the character designs of the mushroom people.

- Catra wasn’t wrong about the locals selling them out and not telling them anything useful. The others should listen to her more.

- Bow posing as the “average traveler passing though” is especially funny because I’m pretty sure there are no “travelers passing through” in times of Horde Prime.

Catra: “A town that hates princesses? Should I buy property here?”

Everyone else: *glares*

Catra: “Is what I would have said before I joined you. Go, team.”

😂😂😂 Catra’s quiet little “Go, team” in the end is what gets me most about this moment 😂. She’s adorable and trying her best, okay?

- I love how Wrong Hordak just calls everyone “brother” regardless of gender. Also, Adora’s little “Did you just wink at me?” / “That’s not how winking works!” moments are hilarious and adorable.

- “You’re wearing hooded cloaks, it’s highly suspicious.” Okay, mushroom lady’s not wrong, though. And I love how someone finally points this out, since hooded cloaks are so often used as “undercover” disguises in shows like this.

- That said, both she and mushroom guy earlier did try to sell the Best Friend Squad out super quickly. Like, I get that the locals are scared, but still… They could have tried to stay safe without running towards the clones to tell them everything right away.

- I’m just noticing that Erelandia has mushrooms everywhere. Obviously the people are mushrooms, but there are also mushrooms growing outside in the streets everywhere, and the shop they’re in is selling mushrooms and clothes with mushrooms on them as well.

- Both Bow and Glimmer blowing their covers almost immediately and Adora just quietly shaking her head at both of them in the background is amazing.

- Love Catra (and Melog) just casually stealing a mushroom from a mushroom lady.

- So Catra’s just chilling in a tree and eating stolen mushrooms and Entrapta wants to analyze samples that’ll be ready in 4-6 weeks – neither of them’s really helping right now. But then again, Catra wanted to leave in the first place because she thought the locals would sell them out (and she was right about that), so she probably thinks it’s not worth the effort.

- Also, you know who this scene with Entrapta and Catra is missing? Scorpia. If there is one problem I have with season 5, it’s that we didn’t get any Super Pal Trio reunion / moments with all of them on the same side now. (Or just in general, that we didn’t get to see Scorpia and Catra properly talking things out.)

- “That’s the windy one, right?” Okay, am I the only one who finds this line weird? Spinnerella literally has Adora, Bow and Glimmer trapped in a tornado as Entrapta says this. Obviously she’s “the windy one”? Entrapta can literally see that??

- “Lord Prime has given me peace.” Oh, I’m just realizing that’s just what Catra said when she was chipped. That’s got to be awful for Adora to hear again.

- Glimmer grabbing Bow and Adora’s hands and teleporting them out of the tornado was badass.

Adora: “How are we supposed to fight our own friends?”

Catra: “It never stopped you before.”

OMG. I love that Catra still considers their time as enemies as “being friends”.

- I really love Netossa’s entrance. What makes it really cool to me is that at that point the Best Friend Squad didn’t even know if there were any unchipped princesses left, so Netossa jumping in there with a casual “Welcome back, guys” was just an amazing moment.

- Also, I don’t know if I’ve said this before, but I really like that this season finally made Spinnerella and Netossa more important characters. (And I wonder how much network censorship of LGBT+ storylines had to do with them not being that important earlier on.)

- Hordak getting flashbacks of Entrapta again (while Prime looks at his older body’s memories) is just 🥺. I like how Prime talks about Etheria while Hordak slowly remembers more and more about his own life on Etheria.

- “So, the only person I’m fighting here is… my own wife.” I love the on-screen confirmation that they’re married! But also, Netossa wanting to attack Catra and Wrong Hordak at first was pretty funny.

- Catra and Glimmer’s respective expressions when they hear about Scorpia and Micah being chipped are a gut punch. Also, Netossa talking about how she has to get Spinnerella back is making me tear up.

- “Where are the rebels?” “Right beside you!” 😂😂😂 Amazing, just amazing.

- Love to see Catra taking out those bots. She’s so badass ❤️.

- “Be careful.” “Always am.” I wonder at what point Netossa started to realize what’s going on between Catra and Adora.

- Love Netossa whistling at She-Ra’s new look. Your wife’s right there, darling. But then again, who wouldn’t whistle at She-Ra’s new look?

- Honestly, why did anyone ever say Spinnerella and/or Netossa were weak? Their fight here really shows how powerful both of them are when they don’t hold back.

- “Stop holding back. She won’t.” Looking past how hard this must be for Netossa, this line really sums up why so many characters in shows like this seemingly become more powerful when they turn evil (or less powerful when they turn good): Because the bad guys have no reason to hold back.

- Adora firing a rainbow beam from her sword was amazing. I wish we’d gotten to see a bit more of She-Ra’s new powers this season.

- “Please. I love you. Come back to me.” I’m crying 😢. That’s a nice first taste of all the “I love you”s to come in the finale. And I love that it works (even if just for a bit). The whole “power of love helps you break free from mind control” thing might be a cliché, but it’s a cliché I love, so…yay, awesome!

- But also, and I’ll probably talk about this more when I get to the next episode (that I had a few problems with), I like how Netossa doesn’t only rely on the power of love, but still realizes she has to first fight Spinnerella without holding back to get her into a position where they can even have this talk.

- Yay, mushroom town is saved!

- Catra reassuring Netossa that Spinnerella will be okay was so sweet. She’s really trying to be nice and I think she’s doing great 🥺. (Also, Adora looks at her so proudly.)

- I just noticed that when She-Ra replaces the Horde symbol in the sky with her sword symbol, all the Horde flags around town are already gone, too. Did Catra, Glimmer and the others just like… take all of those flags down in between fighting the bots? Or did Wrong Hordak maybe walk around taking off the flags while the others were fighting?

- That said, the rainbow sword in the sky looks amazing.

- “I think Horde Prime is going to know She-Ra’s back.” “Good.” Love Adora’s determined expression here.

- Geez Horde Prime, no need to punch the screen. The screen didn’t do anything to you.

- Okay, so Horde Prime finally decides to go to Etheria himself, and when he announces that, Hordak looks at the crystal in his hand – it’s all coming together.

- “This is where the rebellion is hiding out?” “Yup. Why, have you been here?” The looks on Glimmer and Catra’s faces here are amazing. People have of course already written all kinds of amazing metas analyzing their expressions, but the short version is that Glimmer seems to remember their fight fondly, while Catra seems embarrassed.

- Perfuma trapping them all in vines and demanding to see their necks is not only hilarious, but also shows that the rebellion has learned from their past mistakes. 👍

- All of their reunions (Bow and Perfuma, Glimmer and Frosta, Adora and Swift Wind, Entrapta and Emily) were super sweet – I like big reunion scenes 🥺. Wrong Hordak meeting Emily was adorable. Perfuma clinging to Bow and crying about how she doesn’t want to be in charge anymore had me laughing so hard 😂.

- Okay so, I know Frosta’s punch breaks the mood a moment later, but I really think Adora wanting to officially introduce Catra to everyone after seeing her standing there alone while everyone else was having big reunions was super sweet. The way her face falls when she sees Catra standing there sadly, the way she asks her to come here so gently… it’s just so sweet. 🥺

- Also, unpopular opinion, but am I the only one who didn’t really find Frosta punching Catra funny? (And the same goes for Scorpia electrocuting her in the next episode, by the way.) I know these moments are meant to be cathartic “drag the former villain because some people are still mad at them” moments, but Catra’s whole story is largely about being a victim of physical abuse. Wasn’t there some way for the story to make fun of her without having other characters physically assault her? I like how Catra’s redemption was handled overall, but moments like those kind of rub me the wrong way. (Netossa trapping her in a net was fine though, because that didn’t actually harm her.)

- That said, Adora’s “Catra’s with us now. Okay? Hmm.” was hilarious. I love how she just gives the briefest explanation and then turns away from Frosta with a smile and little “hmm”, just completely expecting Frosta to be fine with this now.

- That ending shot of all of them together is epic.

So, what changed this episode is that Erelandia was freed, the space group has reunited with the remaining princesses, and Horde Prime is heading for Etheria. Good episode!

[Previous episode]   [Next episode]

[loverboyromanroy]

More cathartic dread: I have been quite sure Logan dies (almost) at the end of this season for weeks now but I am dreading how they are going to make it be the fault of all of Caroline's children at the same time, especially as it would be tragic af for any of them to carry that for the rest of their lives(one is a killer already, one genuinely loves him, one is genuinely loved by him). I don't think they really kill him but somehow metaphorically they do. (1/2)

More cathartic dread part 2: Roman becoming a fascist Macchiavelli makes sense to me if he feels like his Dad approves and the rest of the world fears him. Choosing Logan over Gerri is just the last nail in his moral coffin, he will sell his soul and the best thing he (n)ever had. And you know what... She will actually cave before that and show vulnerability, she will show she wants him too. Just so we!!! know he could have had it and he CHOSE to give it away. I am going to be a mess. (2/2) Ok, I thought I gave you all of my fears but there's another one: at this point most people know they are a team professionally in some capacity, her being his mentor, even if they think it's against her will. It's obvious. But the bond, the nonverbal communication, hell, the loyalty, someone will see that too and use it against them. It's going to be brutal. Poor Gerri. (3/2)

i'm guessing the third was also from the same anon so i'm putting them all together :) thank you for sharing your dread!! it is also all of my worst fears and i feel like...extremely likely!! getting into it under the cut

i think you hit an interesting point about one of the golden trio feeling like they caused it – i kind of defaulted to kendall because this season has been so expressly kendall versus logan, but it could just as easily be one of the other two. in recently rewatching 1x02, it's so interesting that we've already seen their responses to his possible death and how they turn on and blame each other immediately (the iconic roman/shiv slap fight literally happens because roman blames shiv for making their dad's brain explode). in that sense, maybe as a parallel to the beginning of the show, it's something that happens once again in front of shiv and roman with kendall absent...

and on gerri – i'm so curious where they're going with their alliance as far as other people perceiving it. to me, it seems like they've been flying under the radar in the sense that no one quite has a name for what they've been doing. surface level, it just looks like they've been working closely together, MAYBE a mentor/mentee thing, which he already expressed to logan he would pursue, so isn't really a gotcha thing. it seems like shiv is starting to pick up on it as something else, but even still i don't know how she turns that against them. she can't tattle to logan, because logan already knows and is tired of her coming to him with every little thing, so then my thought becomes she starts to needle at roman and/or gerri specifically? it seemed like going into the season the big scare was whether or not the sex stuff comes out, but i don't think that's even a factor. there's no proof and even if one of them came out and said anything about it (and they wouldn't), it would be a he said/she said that nobody believed in either direction

i also thought, going into the season, roman would be the one to broach the feelings thing first, but last episode kind of changed my mind. to me, it's like you said, i think there may be a moment (like at argestes when she volunteers him for pursuing the private equity/banking the tattoo photos/in the shareholder meeting where she appeases him after hurting his feelings) that she tries to reel him back in with a gesture or favor and ends up getting played...generally she's SO smart about what she needs to do but i think she's softening in a way that's gonna hurt her in the end :/

[flameo-firelord-hotman]

Idiot — Sokka x Fem!Reader

Genre: not sure...crack/fluff?

Warnings: none

Words: 2.1k

Summary: after spotting you in the marketplace, Sokka is head-over-heals for you and makes several foolish attempts to woo you.

A/N: I had to do it. This is yet another contribution to @fromthewatertribe’s 1k event! But this time I decided to write something a little silly with my boy Sokka. I used prompt #16: “you are like sunlight.” Enjoy :)

Masterlist

“Wow this marketplace is huge despite being such a small town,” Katara commented.

“Yeah, and it has so many cool things. Look at those pink lemons!” Aang exclaimed, pointing to one of the fruit stalls.

“And these Earth Kingdom hairpieces!” Katara added.

“And that bag over there!” Sokka said. Then, he saw you. “And her...” he said dreamily. Quickly, he approached your stall. Okay, be cool, Sokka. Be cool! he chanted in his mind.

You were organizing your products and making sure everything looked neat, when you heard someone cough to get your attention.

“Helloooo there!” Sokka greeted you in a lower sounding voice. He gave you a smug look and leaned his elbow on the countertop.

Ugh, not one of these guys again, you thought. It didn’t happen often, but it was still annoying when some customers would try to hit on you. Still, you had a job to do, so you put on your customer service smile and played nice. “Hi! How can I help you?”

“Well, I was just…inquiring what wares you were selling in this boutique here,” Sokka replied, still faking his voice.

Seriously?

Katara overheard her brother and stepped in to save you—and him—from an awkward conversation. “Pardon my idiot brother. He’s just interested in that bag over there,” she said, pointing to one of the bags on display. Sokka glared at her.

“Oh! Ahaha, sure thing. That bag is 10 silver pieces.”

“I’ll take it!” Sokka said enthusiastically. As he handed you the money, he tried to think of something clever to say to you. Come on, Sokka, think! Say something that’ll make her fall for you! When you handed him the bag, he got an idea.

With the bag in his hands, he admired it saying “this bag sure is fine, don’t you think?”

“It’s nice, yes,” you simply replied.

“So fine…just like yo—"

“Ugh, for crying out loud!” Katara suddenly groaned. She grabbed Sokka’s arm and dragged him away. “Quit hitting on her and let’s get going, will ya?” You chuckled as the siblings mocked and grumbled at each other while walking away.

“Why did you do that?” Sokka cried.

“Do what? Save you from embarrassing yourself?”

He scoffed, “if anything you embarrassed me!”

Katara groaned and pinched the bridge of her noise. She couldn’t believe how utterly stupid her brother was.

“She was totally into me!” Sokka continued, “didn’t you see the way she looked at me? We were connecting...and then you ruined it!”

“Or maybe she was looking at you, because you were being a complete weirdo.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Idiot,” Katara muttered.

“I know you are, but what am I?” Sokka jeered.

“Spirits, Sokka!” Katara cried, throwing her hands in the air.

The next day, the trio returned to the marketplace to do some more window shopping. Sokka snuck away from the group to talk to you again. He was determined to impress you and win his heart. As he approached your stall again, he devised a plan. Alright, here’s what you’re going to do, Sokka. You’re going to go up to her, introduce yourself, get her name, and then ask her out. Easy peasy!

Whistling as he walked, Sokka went up to your stall. “Oh heyyyy,” he said with a grin on his face.

“Hey,” you greeted. He leaned on the countertop just like he did yesterday. You noticed he was sporting the bag he had bought from you.

“I don’t know if you remember me, but—”

You giggled. “I do actually. You’re the silly guy who bought that bag from me yesterday,” you remarked, pointing to the bag.

“Yeah! Yeah...uh, the name’s Sokka. I’m from the Southern Water Tribe,” he said, extending his hand. You reluctantly shook it.

“I’m [y/n]. I live here.”

“That makes sense! Uh, you work here; therefore, you live here!” he commented awkwardly. He was trying to make conversation, but was clearly failing at it. You actually found it funny, not his comment, but the fact that he was making such a fool of himself again. None of the guys who hit on you were like this. You decided to play along purely for entertainment.

“Yes, that’s right. I’ve lived here all my life,” you said.

“Wow, that’s amazing!”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah! You know what else is amazing?”

“What?”

“You,” he said with a wink.

Okay, that was kind of smooth…but I’m not giving in just yet, you thought. “Why? Because I sell bags every day?” you playfully asked.

“Yeah!” Sokka immediately responded without thinking. Then, he dreadfully realized what you said. “Well, I mean, um…that is interesting, yes. But uh…” Sokka stuttered, trailing off. His plan wasn’t working out so well. You didn’t respond the way he expected you too. By now he should’ve asked you out, but now he was off track, and didn’t know how to recover.

“So, uh, are you here to buy something? Or…” you asked, interrupting his thoughts.

Shoot! I’m losing her. I need to think of something quick! He racked his brain, trying to come up with something witty or funny to say. “No, no...I’m, uh...um...” he scratched his head. Nothing came to mind. It was time to abort mission. “You know what? I forget. Bye!”

And he bolted. You kind of felt bad for him. That Water Tribe boy was trying his best to flirt with you. It was too bad he sucked at it. But at the same time, it was funny.

Sokka ran through the streets of Shí Zhèn. He needed a new plan, but he couldn’t think of anything. He needed help, but he couldn’t ask his sister for advice, because he knew Katara would tell him to leave you alone. That left only one other person: the 12-year-old, very inexperienced Avatar. I’m so screwed! he groaned. But he had no choice; he needed to find Aang.

At last, he spotted him at one of the marketplace stalls.

“Hey, Aang!” he shouted.

“Hi, Sokka! Check out this tiny sweater I found. I think it’s supposed to be for babies, but it fits Momo perfectly!” Aang smiled. He held up Momo to show off the little green sweater wrapped around Momo’s small body. Momo chirped happily.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s fantastic,” Sokka quickly said, unimpressed. “Listen, you have no game, but you’re also a wise guy. I need your help.”

“Um, thanks, I guess? What’s up?” asked Aang.

Sokka sighed, lovestruck. “This girl at the marketplace...her name’s [y/n]. Everything about her is stunning: her face, her hair, her voice…so stunning that I keep making a fool of myself in front of her.”

“Aw, that’s so cute Sokka! Isn’t love a wonderful thing?”

“Uh-huh, yeah, so how do I impress her without being an idiot?” Sokka wanted to get straight to the point.

Aang thought for a moment. He had virtually no experience in the dating world. In fact, he was struggling with his own crush on Katara. “Well, the advice you once gave me was to not be too nice and act aloof, but—”

“That’s it! Thanks, Aang!” shouted Sokka as he ran off.

Sokka rushed back to your stall. When he got within sight of it, he slowed to a stroll. Then, he proceeded to walk past your stall multiple times while acting aloof. Every time he did, he would look at you from a safe distance to see if he caught your attention.

To him, it seemed you hadn’t noticed him. The truth was that his new tactic was so painfully obvious and cringey that you pretended not to see him.

Still determined, Sokka approached your stall and pretended to look at the bags on display. Well, if he’s going to play pretend, then I will too, you decided. And so, you put on that customer service smile again and acted oblivious to him.

“Welcome back,” you greeted him.

“Hi,” Sokka said curtly. He didn’t even look up at you.

This’ll be good, you thought. “What brings you here again?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Just looking, I guess,” he stated in a bored tone.

“Okay. Well, I see you’re looking at the wicker bag. That one’s pretty popular.” He merely grunted as a reply. You continued. “It’s made of rattan. Very durable, water resistant, easy to clean, and holds a lot. What do you think?”

“Meh, it seems alright.”

“Just alright? Is there anything specific you’re looking for?”

“Eh, nothing really.”

At this point, you were entertained enough. You were done playing around. “You’re funny, you know.”

“Huh?” Sokka was completely caught off guard.

“Yeah! Flirting with me, and then suddenly acting like you don’t have a care in the world. I think it’s funny.”

“Oh...” was all Sokka could say. I’ve screwed myself again, haven’t I? he worried.

You leaned on the countertop, getting closer to Sokka. “Want to know what else I think?”

“Uh...”

“I think you’re trying too hard. I don’t normally let guys hit on me, because they’re usually creepy about it, but you’re actually nice and funny. Instead of pretending to be someone you’re not, I think you should just be yourself when you ask me out.”

“Wow,” Sokka muttered in astonishment, “even when you call me idiot, it’s amazing.”

You burst out laughing. “See? You’re funny! And, yeah, I didn’t want to say that out loud, but...you read my mind.”

“Alright, I’m going to start over!” Sokka decided. Dramatically, he did a jump and spin, then threw his hands in the air and beamed as if he transformed into his true self.

“Hi there! My name’s Sokka,” he said with newfound confidence. “Has anyone ever told you that you are like sunlight?”

You threw your head back and laughed again. He gave you look of confusion.

“You’re so goofy!” you laughed, wiping tears from your eyes. “That’s really sweet though, keep going!” you begged him.

“Okay,” he chuckled, “well, I think you and me should hang out tonight. What do you think? We could walk through the streets, eat dinner, stargaze,” he said, hands waving in the air as he spoke.

You put your finger to your chin, pretending to deeply consider his offer. “Hmm, I don’t know, goofball,” you mumbled sarcastically, while dramatically rolling your eyes.

Sokka smirked knowingly. “Oh, come on, sunshine. You know you can’t resist silly Sokka!” he said playfully. To top it off, he scrunched up his sleeves and flex his arms. When he gave you a cheeky grin and bounced his eyebrows up and down, you cracked up once more.

“Pft, okay, goofball. You’ve won my heart. Meet me here at sunset!” you cheered.

“YES!” Sokka shouted before jumping in the air and clicking his heals victoriously. If he could do a backflip, he probably would’ve done one right then and there. “Uh, I mean...great! I’ll see you then,” he said, pointing finger guns at you as he backed away into the crowds.

Tired from wandering and shopping, Katara and Aang relaxed in their room at the local inn. Suddenly, the door was forcefully kicked opened.

“Guys, I did it!” Sokka announced as he leaped into the room. Katara and Aang stared at him wide-eyed like a startled deer-dog. Then, they glanced at each other, unsure of what he was talking about.

“Did what?” they both asked.

“I have a date with [y/n],” he sighed dreamily. If heart eyes were real, they would be popping up on his face.

“That’s great, Sokka! I’m so glad everything worked out for you,” Aang smiled.

At first, Katara felt out of the loop, then she realized who he must’ve been talking about. “Oh, don’t tell me you harassed and that poor girl again!” she facepalmed.

“Oh, no, no, we chatted for a bit. She thinks I’m hilarious!” Sokka exclaimed.

“She must’ve lied,” Katara concluded.

“Nuh-uh, she was cracking up at my jokes,” Sokka assured. “By the way, Aang, your advice sucked.”

“Actually, it was your own advice...which you gave to me,” Aang carefully explained.

“Well...ugh, whatever! It doesn’t matter anymore. I have a date tonight that I need to get ready for. Later, losers!”

After the door closed, Katara shook her head and sighed, “why is my brother like this?”

[iliveiloveiwrite]

Together

Request: Okay, so the reader is Bellatrix's daughter. And she's from Slytherin. And Neville has always hated for obvious reasons, but over the years she eventually fell for him. And this can be set in like the last film. So right before the trio comes to Hogwarts, Bellatrix could have tortured Hermione plus the reader because the reader chose to help the trio and they take her with her to Hogwarts for the battle. And she's injured and stuff, and Neville sees her, and Harry tells them what happened, how her own mother tortured her and Neville takes her to the hospital wing with him to look after her and then they eventually fight the battle together, and end up kissing in the end. -  @obsessedwithrandomthings

A/N: My first Neville request - I loved writing this, I truly did. I really hope you enjoy it and I hope I’ve done it justice. You’re an absolute star for all of the support you have given in the last two weeks. Requests are still open and here's a shameless plug for my writing challenge :) 

Pairing: Neville Longbottom x Reader

Warnings: Please do not read if any of the following are a trigger: angst, descriptions of violence/torture, shitty families, descriptions of depression, swearing, mentions of blood. 

Word count: 2.7k

“Neville, is everything okay?” You ask, watching him read and reread the instructions for making the potion. You knew it was his weakest subject – something the head of your house never failed to remind him of.

He grits his teeth, “Everything is fine. Leave me alone.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind helping.”

“I’m sure. Leave me alone, Lestrange.” He spits.

You back off with a sigh, leaving him to it. The lesson swiftly finishes after that. Grabbing your books, you cast a long look at the boy who had unexpectedly captured your heart. He packs up his equipment slowly, disheartened after his potion failed. You resist the urge to go over to him; to attempt any form of comfort knowing that it would be rebuffed the point of humiliation on your end. Luckily, he’s soon surrounded by Harry, Ron and Hermione – all offering words of support.

You couldn’t help but feel jealous. Jealous of having such a tightknit friend group, jealous of them having his attention in a positive light.

You grip your textbooks that little bit tighter as you leave the classroom, cursing your house and your family.

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The feelings you had for Neville were far from platonic; falling for him hard in Fourth Year when you saw how dedicated he was to Herbology. It was a sick twist of fate that you had fallen in love with the very boy who had more than enough reason to despise your very being, but nevertheless, you remained pining after the one thing that would always be out of reach.

It hurt to admit yourself that it would always remain one sided; always unrequited. He wouldn’t love you back; he couldn’t. You were a Slytherin and Bellatrix Lestrange’s daughter – a name and curse that you would carry around until death was ready to greet you.

There was no relationship between you and your mother; she had dropped you off on the Malfoy’s doorstep before you had turned one, leaving you to be raised by your aunt and uncle. Bellatrix had never been maternal; you were simply the side effect to her marriage to your father who had also never cared for you. It was rough, it was damaging but you knew that if left in the care of your biological parents, your situation would be much more dire.

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There was no other way to put it: shit had hit the fan. Draco had joined the Death Eaters; against his will or not, you couldn’t tell yet.

Dumbledore died; Hogwarts descended into mourning.

Your mother broke out of Azkaban.

How you were still standing was a miracle.

After the death of the beloved Headmaster of Hogwarts; your family closed ranks. Pulling you from your education, bringing you to Malfoy Manor where you are the unfortunate witness to the extremism preached by the Dark Lord and followed blindly by your fanatic of a mother. The more you saw, the further you pulled away.

You spend your days at the manor avoiding the crowds of Death Eaters. Thinking and worrying over Neville – was he okay? What was he dealing with at Hogwarts?. Dread spreads slowly through your veins as you think of him; worry settles deep in your gut. You never even got to say goodbye to him. Your breath hitches and a lump forms in your throat when you realise your last conversation with the boy you had so recklessly fallen in love with was a distant memory of a cauldron and cross words.

You would always be thankful to Narcissa and Lucius for opening their arms and their home to you; for raising you and loving you when your own mother was incapable of the act. But as you watched them meet with his followers; continue to believe his philosophy, you knew that there was nothing left for you here.

You needed the perfect opportunity to leave; you needed to find the right timing. Luckily, snatchers had found Harry, Ron and Hermione in a forest and had apparated them to the Manor you once held so close to your heart.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bellatrix pulls on your hair; dragging you to the figure kneeling in the centre of the room, forcing you to your knees. You yelp in pain but that only makes her pull harder. “Draco couldn’t identify who this is. Can you?”

You stare at Harry; heavily disfigured from the charm no doubt cast by Hermione. It’s still so clearly him; you could recognise him anywhere, but you would not identify him, you would not sell him out.

“No,” You whimper, “I don’t know who this is, but it isn’t Harry Potter.”

“LIAR!” Your mother shouts, shoving you to the floor. You can hear the distant shouts from Harry as he’s taken to where Ron and Luna are.

You bite your lip to try and stall the tears that will surely fall as a result of your mother’s punishment. You wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of her seeing the extent of your pain just yet.

Dread pools in your stomach as Bellatrix flips you onto your pack; pinning your left arm to the floor by a knee into your elbow.

“She’s your daughter! What do you think you’re doing, Bellatrix?” Narcissa asks, tears welling at the sight before her.

Her niece laid on the floor with Bellatrix straddling you, wand ready to permanently mark your skin.

“She’s no daughter of mine,” Bellatrix declares, “She is not worthy of the name Lestrange. She’s a traitor and will be marked as such.”

Narcissa forces herself to watch Bellatrix burn the word into your skin. She forces herself to commit your screams to memory, so she never forgets the exact moment where she failed you.

You lie there, convulsing from the pain. Through the blur of your tears, you make out the word ‘traitor’ scrawled messily into your arm, blood trickling from each letter. You see your mother stalking towards Hermione, cackling.

“No!” The word leaves your lips as you realise that your mother is going to subject Hermione to the same torture you had just received.

Your mother turns at the sound of your voice, hissing, “Who do you think you are? Talking to me like that? You’re nothing but a traitor – betraying your family. You would rather hinder the Dark Lord’s cause than help.”

Pain overwhelms your body, and some small voice in the back of your mind registers that your mother has used the Cruciatus Curse on you. Your vision becomes blotchy and you’re indistinctly aware of Hermione’s scream before you fall into the welcoming darkness.

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You’re vaguely aware of the funeral for Dobby; you’re vaguely aware of the refuge at the safe house by the beach.

The duvet cover is scratchy as you wrap it around your body; staring at the wall, gazing into nothing. You’re distantly aware of Harry and Ron checking on you every hour or so but there’s nothing for you to say. There are no tears left to cry at this time; everything you had known had been left on the cold stone floor of Malfoy Manor.

Time becomes irrelevant as you continue to stare at the wall. You don’t know how long you lay there, but Hermione joins you. She lays in front of you, blocking your view of the wall. Your eyes focus in on her face; her eyes swollen and red from crying, flecks of dried blood dot her cheeks from the scratches littering her face after running through a forest.

Nothing is said; no words of comfort are offered but there is now silent understanding between the two of you. She simply puts a hand on the stretch of duvet separating you both; knowing that the last thing you need is to be touched, but that you do need somebody.

You make your first movement in days; placing your hand above Hermione’s.

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Neville’s heart stops the minute he sees you on the other end of the portrait at The Hog’s Head Inn. He never got to say goodbye to you; he never got to apologise for every cross word he had ever thrown at you. He feels the fool for realising his feelings for you too late; he believed that if he accepted his feelings for a Slytherin, he would be betraying his family, but he soon came to know that his family would be proud of him no matter who stood at his side. And all he wanted by his side, was you.

Neville’s eyes run over you from head to toe. You’re a shell of your former self; your right hand permanently resides on your left forearm, keeping it close and safe – protecting something or hiding something. He can’t decipher which one yet.

He can practically feel the wall you’re building around yourself; hiding yourself from questions, looks. Trying to get through this war without any more damage to yourself.

He wants to say something to you, but doesn’t know what to say, what to do. He screws his hands into fists, desperately resisting the urge to pull you into his arms, to whisper promises of a happier future, to try to bring a smile to your face. Instead, he greets you all before leading you back to Hogwarts; back to home.

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“Harry, what the hell happened?” Neville demands the minute they arrive at Hogwarts, pulling The Chosen One to one side, keeping his voice low should you hear anything.

“It was bad,” Harry starts, “Bellatrix tortured both (Y/N) and Hermione – marking their arms, using the Cruciatus Curse. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget their screams.”

The colour drains from Neville’s face, “ (Y/N)’s own mother?”

Harry nods, “She disowned (Y/N) as well. It was brutal.”

Neville nods, turning away from Harry to walk to you. He kneels in front of you, placing his hands on your knees, his thumb rubbing comforting circles, not missing the slight cringe at the touch, “Come on. We’re going to the hospital wing.”

You nod, silently getting your feet, following him from the room.

The hospital wing is empty when you arrive; completely silent with no sign of Madam Pomfrey. Neville walks you towards a vacant bed, helps you sit down before gathering a first aid kit from the cupboard at the end of the row.

“Harry told me what happened at Malfoy Manor. I can’t believe your own mother would do this.”

“I can.” You whisper, voice hoarse from disuse.

The silence that falls between the two of you isn’t awkward, isn’t painful. It’s comfortable, it’s natural. There is so much Neville wants to say; wants to confess, but as he looks at you, he simply whispers: “I need to look at your arm.”

You shake your head, your right hand clamping down on the long sleeve of your shirt, making it clear that he will not be seeing the word scrawled into your flesh. There was a lot you could cope with; these last few weeks have proved that, but you knew deep down, that you could not cope with Neville’s reaction to seeing the hateful word now permanently marring your skin.

“I need to make sure there’s no infection.” Neville continues, making his case.

“We put a dittany on it before we apparated to Hogsmeade, I’ll be fine.”

“Let me make sure that you’ve put enough on then. You have nothing to fear from me.” Neville murmurs, looking you in the eyes, keeping eye contact so you can see the concern swirling there. He’s worried about me, you think, he wants to know if I’m okay.

It’s this thought that has you pulling the sleeve of your shirt to your elbow. You watch Neville closely, gaging his reaction to mess on your arm. He stills at the sight of it; his hand wraps around your wrist, pulling your arm closer to get a better view.

“Oh god, (Y/N).”

You yank your arm back, cradling it to your chest, “I don’t need your pity, Neville.”

“It’s not pity. I’m feeling many things, but pity is not one of them. I’m angry, so angry at your family for allowing this to happen to you, that I wasn’t there to help. But you survived this; you survived torture by your own mother. You’re the strongest person I know, I am in awe of you.”

Tears fall freely down your cheeks; Neville raises a hand to wipe them away. You stare at each other, both coming to the realisation at the same time. There was something unspoken between the two of you that needed to be addressed.

Neville opens his mouth, ready to tell you what he has felt the very day you left to join your family.

He doesn’t get a chance.

Voldemort begins his sack of Hogwarts.

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The battle is endless; it’s brutal, it’s bloody and it’s ceaseless. Bodies litter the school, and you barely hold back a sob as you recognise the bodies of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks – your heart breaks as you think of their baby, now an orphan.

Walking through the Great Hall, you take note of the other bodies, making sure that you never see his. Double and triple checking that Neville was not among the dead. Something lifts in your chest when you realise he is not. The last time you had seen the proud Gryffindor was when he ran from the hospital wing to the wooden walkway; your heart had been in your throat through the entire battle. You find him in the entryway to the castle.

The sword of Godric Gryffindor glimmers like starlight as Neville wields the weapon; using it to cut off the head of Voldemort’s beloved snake Nagini. The snake’s head spins into the air before falling with a thud onto the stairs of the entrance hall of the school the sword’s owner founded. The Dark Lord’s mouth open in a silent scream of fury as Frank and Alice Longbottom’s son finally gained the retribution he had so desperately desired for as long as he could remember.

The once proud castle stands in ruins as you face the Dark Lord and his followers. Some sick part of you seeks out your mother, hoping to lock eyes with her before you remember that she was killed by Molly Weasley. Molly would be added to your Christmas Card list the moment the battle was over. Cries and sobs break out across students and teachers alike as they see the body of The Boy Who Lived being so lovingly carried by the very man who had collected him from the ruins of his childhood home.

Neville breaks from the crowd, fearlessly facing the remainders of the Death Eater and their hateful leader, and right there you are reminded for why you fell in love with Neville Longbottom.

“I’d like to say something. Doesn’t matter that Harry’s gone. People die every day… Yeah, we lost Harry tonight, but he is still with us where it matters. So are Fred, Remus and Tonks – they did not die in vain. But you will!...”

Gasps break out across both parties as Harry reveals himself to be alive, and all hell breaks loose as Voldemort and Harry begin their final duel.

You run towards Neville. Gripping his hand you implore him to look at you. He does so, taking it upon yourself to pull him from any more immediate danger.

“What are you doing!?” Neville shouts, wondering why he’s being pulled into the entryway to the school.

“I won’t lose anyone else, Longbottom, do you understand that? I cannot lose you too.” You shout, your voice breaking from the emotion falling from your mouth.

Neville doesn’t reply; he doesn’t need to. He grabs your face in his hands, bringing your lips to his in a kiss. It’s messy, it’s a clash of teeth and tongues. For a first kiss, it isn’t romantic, it isn’t sweet, and in the middle of a battle isn’t where you imagined it happening. It’s pure need and emotion falling from the both of you, but it’s enough. You paw at each other; the need to feel the other almost overwhelms you both.

“Don’t leave me, whatever happens we do it together.” You plead, pulling away for breath.

“I won’t. Not now, not ever. We do it all together.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10 Years Later:

The scar remains, marring your arm.

But on the days you can feel the heavy press of memories long wished to be forgotten; your husband draws you in wrapping his arms around you, pressing kiss after kiss to your face, to your neck, to the mark on your arm.

He reminds you every time the wave of memories threaten to overwhelm: you survived, you overcame and you would only get stronger.

*****

Harry Potter (general) taglist: @the-hufflefluffwriter

[darkarfs]

my favorite WWE matches of 1997

Though I officially started watching wrestling in 1995 (my family famously first bought SummerSlam that year, which would be my first wrestling show ever, because it was $25.00. 1995 was a bad year for wrestling), I became a regular watcher of both WWE and WCW Raw and Nitro, and was able to buy my own PPVs, around summer of 1996, when Hogan turned. The first show I bought with my own money was In Your House: Buried Alive, though I kept up with weekly TV. And, for better or worse, I've been a fan ever since.

1997 was a REAL rollercoaster year for wrestling. The NWO was becoming a bloated mess in no time at all, Bret Hart was riding high, while he and Shawn Michaels publicly hated one another, a young Rocky Maivia was slowly transforming into the most charismatic wrestler of maybe all time, a young Steve Austin has broken his neck and can only work 5 minute matches but is somehow the most OVER wrestler in the company, and by the end of the year, the Screwjob happens, Bret's in WCW, Shawn's on handfuls of SOMAs (yet main-eventing). In a lot of ways, I'm grateful, because I side-stepped all of Hogan's WWF and WCW run. But it was a tornado of a year for a business always on precarious footing, as it ever has been.

And it gave us some CRACKING matches! - The 1997 Royal Rumble I love me a Rumble, and it's REALLY hard (but not impossible) to find a bad one (1993, 1995, 1999). And I personally love one with a storyline that runs throughout, and in this case, it's the ultimate heeling of Stone Cold Steve Austin. He visibly dominates the match until he hears Bret Hart's music, and then goes into panic mode. And it furthers the characterization of Bret's hand-spun narrative as being rightfully pissed that he's being taken advantage of by the roster, screwed by the company, and booed by the fans. Fun bonus: this is also the only Rumble appearance of lucha legend Mil Mascaras, who was so full of old-school carny spirit he famously refused to let anyone else eliminate him, so he eliminated himself, pissed Vince off, and was not spoken of again on WWE TV until the 2012 Hall of Fame ceremony, where he was inducted by his huge prick nephew, Alberto del Rio. - Bret Hart vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin, WrestleMania 13 This match is considered legendary, and for good reason. The greatest technical wrestler in the company vs. the best brawler, months of build, the world's most iconic (and off-the-cuff) blade-job (so much so that the visual of Austin bleeding in the Sharpshooter going "DAAAHHHH!" became the cover for his first VHS) and the wrestling world's most exquisite double-turn. It's fun, it's thrilling, it feels at once timeless and modern. Fun fact: there's a fun version of this match you can watch with just Austin doing commentary over it, and it's entertaining as hell. A true classic, and one of the greatest 'Mania matches of all time. - Ken Shamrock vs. Vader, No Holds Barred match, In Your House: a Cold Day In Hell Vader, famously, while a big teddy bear and a for-all-accounts lovely guy outside of the ring, had a reputation of being a bit "snug" with other wrestlers. Meaning he hit a little too hard, had little self-control, and took liberties with people, especially rookies and younger guys. It's supposedly why Shawn Michaels didn't want to work a world title program with him from summer to fall of 1996, because he was "too rough." But what never occurred to Vader is that trying that with a guy who's had 2 matches but has almost 5 years of MMA experience might not be the smartest or most prudent idea. Shamrock gives Vader as much as Vader gives him in this match, and there are moments where you can tell the guys are going into business for themselves. There's a moment where Shamrock is clubbing Vader with punches, and you can hear Vader, as he's turtling up and putting his arms up to block, yell "SLOW DOWN!" and then he rolls out of the ring to catch a breather. Vader, by the end of this match, is bleeding through his mask, a product of a broken nose, which is why I assume he gives Shamrock the stiffest short-arm clothesline I've ever seen. It's brutal, it's stupid, it weaves in and out of the script SO many times like a drunk man trying to stand up straight on a canoe, and I'm fascinated by each and every instance. - Owen Hart vs. the British Bulldog, European Championship Tournament Finals, Monday Night Raw, March 3rd Somehow, a workrate classic is stuck on a rinky-dink episode of Raw from Berlin, Germany. Smith and Hart blended some of their acquired WWE-style of work with classic junior heavyweight wrestling, complete with intricate reversals and fast-paced offense that was unlike either man's designed ethos of the time. Hart's shift toward his underhanded instincts as the match wore on provided enough story to balance the beautiful grappling from two men with impressive resumes. You can feel that these two knew one another, grew up together, and most importantly, wrestled together. An honest-to-God sleeper hit, but everyone who knows this match calls it a classic. - Shawn Michaels vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin, King of the Ring It's a concept that would be beaten into the ground in short order: Tag Team Champions that hate each other's guts. John Cena, seriously, has only been tag champions with people he's feuding with. That's

not even a joke. Austin and Michaels won the belts out of mutual dislike for the Hart Foundation, and then were programmed together for a wild match at the King of the Ring, one without a winner. Early on, the two actually pieced together a tremendous wrestling match full of nifty counters (prior to Austin changing his style after August for obvious reasons), before it degenerated into chaos after both men assaulted referees in the heat of the moment. Granted, neither man could really lose this one, so the screwy finish did serve its purpose. Until that point, it's a different type of incredible Austin match. You're never so happy to see a double-DQ finish. - Owen Hart & the British Bulldog vs. Shawn Michaels & Stone Cold Steve Austin, Monday Night Raw, May 26th And now we have a match set! The previous 4 participants in a brilliant and brutal tag team match. The Tag Team championship switch marked Austin's first piece of recognized gold in WWE, in a match on free television no less. That's not to insult the match any, as it was a pay-per-view quality fracas that barely slowed down. It is a mere 14 minutes long WITH entrances, but it moves at a clip, and everyone has their working boots on. It was a harbinger of days to come for this new period in WWE's history, and the crowd ate it up.

- Taka Michinoku vs. the Great Sasuke, In Your House: Canadian Stampede What happened here? Just when you think WCW had the cruiserweights cornered, WWE pulls this shit...and then kind of ignores it for a few months. But not before importing two of Michinoku Pro's finest to have a TakeOver-length exhibition. At first, the crowd in Calgary wasn't sure what to make of the undersized performers, but it wouldn't take long to win them over. From Michinoku's hands-free springboard dive to Sasuke's beautiful Thunder Fire Powerbomb, the expansive crowd was positively hooked on the daredevils with each passing minute. Although Sasuke wouldn't be long for the company, and Michinoku's run as Light Heavyweight Champion faded as 1998 wore on, the display at Canadian Stampede was a wondrous experience. This wouldn't have looked out of place in a Chikara King of Trios tournament. - The Hart Foundation (Bret Hart, Owen Hart, Jim Neidhart, Brian Pillman, the British Bulldog) vs. Team Austin (Stone Cold Steve Austin, the Legion of Doom, Ken Shamrock and Goldust), In Your House: Canadian Stampede I would have put this match on the list for the entrances and the finish alone. The crowd is at fever static for the entire match, seriously at the level of Punk/Cena at MITB 2011. And even though the Harts are the heels, they're in Calgary, and they get rock-star level ovations for merely existing. Everyone plays it mad and delighted, and you can tell they're all having a ball. Especially Pillman, who is just magically unhinged, a template for a young Dean Ambrose during their feud with the Wyatt Family. It is a magical, unreal main event, one of the best B-ppv main events maybe of all time. Well...other than MAYBE... - Shawn Michaels vs. the Undertaker, Hell in a Cell, In Your House: Badd Blood The very first Hell in a Cell match may very well double as the greatest of its kind. What stands out to me (other than how the match ends) is just how GREAT Michaels' selling is. When he's running away, he's constantly looking around for an exit, like a scared rat. When he finally gets caught and struck, he sells almost to the level he did for Hogan at SummerSlam 2005. But while he was doing that to make Hogan's offense look stupid, he's doing it here to make Taker's offense and anger look legit, and it somehow WORKS. But as fabulous as the match and the psychology is, it somehow takes a backseat to the debut of the Undertaker's monstrous little brother Kane, finally confronting his older brother in perhaps the greatest character debut in WWE history. - Mankind vs. Kane, Survivor Series I dunno what it is about this match that does it for me. Mankind's emotional lead-up to the match, where he's sad that Uncle Paul (Bearer) left him. Maybe the fact that Kane sells like Michael Myers, not so much that he's in pain, but as if he's never been hit in the face with a steel chair, a DDT or a piledriver. Maybe it's because Mick takes more horrific bumps than he needs to to make sure Kane looks like a legit monster. Maybe it's the broken Virtua Boy lighting. But it's genuinely unlike any other Mankind, Kane or ANY match I've seen before or since. It's a perfect somehow sympathetic serial killer vs. bigger, scarier serial killer that feels nothing story in a wrestling match. I didn't even know you could DO that.

[writernomore]

There’s ink on my parchment..

So Basically I have finally got the inspiration to do a part 2.

 Haven’t seen the first part? Here! Part 1 

Summary: After the Incident with ink and parchment you grow closer to The ‘Golden trio’ and you slowly fall for a certain Weasley, Will you tell him how you feel or remain silent to keep your friendship?

After the incident with ink and parchment.

You were intrigued and wanted to be closer with Harry, Ron and Hermione.

Clearly it was obvious on what you were signing up yourself with, it would be difficult to be a close friend of theirs when they would be in danger every year during the first time they went to study in Hogwarts.

But did that stop you? No. Where you gonna really endanger yourself? Maybe. Were you always this hard headed? Probably.

Gryffindor were going to practice Quidditch.

You and Hermione were sitting together in the Quidditch stands.

“Hey Hermione?”

“Yes Y/n?” Hermione said looking up from her book.

“What do you think Ron is into?” You said.

Hermione looked at a little wide eyed but then picked up the pieces and understood what you meaned by that.

You fancied Ron.

“I personally think you should stick to being friends with him..”

“Is it cause I’m not his type?”

“No, I love you Y/n but..some friendships could be awkward when you confess to your friend that you like them and that’s just..You get my idea right?”

I nodded and sighed I just leaned my head against Hermione’s shoulder, she sighed as well and rubbed my shoulder.

We were down on the ground to be with Harry and Ron when Quidditch practice ended.

“You guys did great!” I said Hugging them both.

“Thanks” Harry said.

I nodded.

Then it hit me I just realised I was supposed to meet up with some classmates for a group project.

“ Oops, I have to go to Hogsmeade, I forgot I was supposed to meet up with groupmates for the group project”

“See you later Y/n” Harry said while he was taking off his Quidditch head gear.

Ron watched your running figure fade away  as you got farther and father from the three of them.

Ron sighed and decided to walk to the boys locker room.

*-*

you had class with the trio which was Defense against the dark arts or we call it DADA class.

You and Hermione were talking together to class while the both of you just talk not much of usual girl talk but you get my point.

Ron and Harry just listened to the both of you talk and laugh at each other like you guys were some long lost sisters.

“Hey, I finally was able to go to Hogsmeade wanna go all together?” Harry said.

“Yeah sure, I was into buying some candy there anyways” You said already drooling over the candy you should buy in Hogsmeade.

Ron just laughed.

“I guess I could buy some with you, I also heard their selling new candies there”

You hummed and nodded.

The four of you arrived in class and went to your perspective seats.

*-* Timeskip to where you guys have gone to Hogsmeade

You and Ron were where they sold candy while Harry and Hermione were somewhere in Hogsmeade looking for new and other shops.

You and Ron were standing there looking at different candies.

You looked to Ron and saw he looked focus in looking at the candy, but it was no foreign that you felt different from Ron.

He was cute and nice, but you just didn’t know if he sees you any different than just as his friend.

You sighed.

Ron looked to you and asked if you were okay and you just told him that everything was fine, you were just thinking about something.

He asked you what it was.

You said your were contemplating whether to tell this guy that you liked him but you were too afraid he would decline you and it would’ve ruined your friendship with him.

Ron was silent but then quickly replied that you should just give it a try, you may not get the answer you hoped for but atleast the pain and agony of not knowing if he likes your or not won’t be there once you confessed your feelings to whoever this guy was.

You sighed “I like you”

“Yah, just like that” Ron smiled.

It was silent between the two of you before you went to leave the shop saying you were just going to head back.

He was oblivious to what you just said!

When Ron, Hermione and Harry were in the Gryffindor common room, Ron told them about what happened at the candy shop.

Hermione scolded Ron for not getting what you said to him at the shop just a while ago.

He was dumbfounded and abruptly stood up to leave the Gryffindor common room and find you.

It didn’t take long for him to find you, you were going to head to the Hufflepuff dormitory when Ron placed a hand on your shoulder to stop you.

He apologized on how he was stupid enough that he didn’t know that you were confessing to Him in the shops.

You told him if he remembered on how you guys had officially met and he said yes, it was a weird way to meet and become friends not long after.

You asked him if he felt the same way.

He said yes, you just hummed and nodded.

It was awkward between the two of you, despite being in the hallways and risk in getting caught.

You just turned around to go back but Ron stopped you again and pulled you against him in for a hug which you returned you broke and just laughed.

You told him the both of you can take things slow before taking things further just incase not to rush the both of you.

Before you left you kissed him on the cheek and left to go to the Hufflepuff dormitory.

You didn’t see it but Ron fist bumped the air.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I did it!

I managed to finish this short series which basically only had 2 parts.

Anyway, I’m going to go and start writing another fic.

Probably will let it stay in my drafts for a while.

and I have some in my drafts so I will probably finish those.

But we will see.

[edenfalling]

[Fic] “Between the Saltwater and the Sea-Strand” - Naruto

Summary: Yukiko and Kakashi run an undercover mission in the coastal port of Asase during monsoon season. Rain can make anyone philosophical. Part of the Apartment Manager AU, set after The Guardian in Spite of Herself and before An Unorthodox Pedagogical Approach. (3,515 words) Note: Written for warriordrgnmage, in response to the prompt: Naruto: Hatake Kakashi/Ayakawa Yukiko set in the Way of the Apartment Manager Series Timeline. For the Bingo card: Monsoon. It is also a fill for the genprompt_bingo square monsoon. For obvious reasons, Yukiko and Kakashi are using fake names while undercover. Yukiko is Aoi, and Kakashi is Hyoujin. Also, you may notice that this is gen! See, while I am perfectly cool with people shipping Yukiko with Kakashi, that is 100% never going to become Apartment Manager canon, for many, many reasons. If anyone wants a shippy AU, you are welcome to write it yourself, because I flat-out CANNOT. Seriously, even if I tried, you wouldn't want the results. They would be awful. Trust me on that. --------------------------------------------- Between the Saltwater and the Sea-Strand --------------------------------------------- Kuwa Natsume looked up as Yukiko slung herself in through the office window in a spray of rain, raised one eyebrow, and then looked back down to her account books. "Misplaced your shadow?" "Does anyone have a shadow in this weather?" Yukiko said wryly as she shut the window, reducing the sound of rain from deafening to merely incessant and inescapable. "I thought I was used to rain, but coastal monsoons are something new, yeah?" "We get that a lot from inlanders," Kuwa-san said as she drew a sharp line under a column of numbers and wrote a sum. "You get used to it, and it's easier for shinobi -- you have all that fancy ninpou and whatnot. But in all honesty, Aoi-san, where is your partner? I can't finalize your supply contract without both of your signatures." Yukiko made a face as she combed water out of her black-dyed hair. "Is it that important to be fussy when this is all ninety percent illegal anyway?"

"The more illegal, the more important to nail down all the details," Kuwa-san said. "What court would adjudicate the case if you sign alone and Hyoujin-san decides next week that he won't pay for his share?" Yukiko personally agreed with Kuwa-san's caution, but her cover persona would probably make one further push. So, "Oh, don't worry about him. Hyoujin trusts me completely--" Kuwa-san raised her eyebrow again. "--nearly completely when it comes to contracts. What's the point of having a partner if you can't split your responsibilities?" "I would say partners split focus, not responsibility. If you don't maintain some degree of joint liability, what's to stop one of you from turning on the other?" "Ethics?" Yukiko said with a winning smile, and allowed herself to laugh at Kuwa-san's carefully calculated answering smirk. "Fair enough. Let me look over the terms and I'll drag him over here to pretend he knows how to use a brush sometime before-- when do you close today?" "Six." "Before six. Actually, let's say before five, yeah? He's not that hard to track or sweet-talk if you know what you're doing." Yukiko held out her now-dry hand for the supply contract and wiggled her fingers until Kuwa-san passed it across her desk. She retreated to the broad windowsill and began flicking through the pages. It wasn't complicated, just a dead drop of miscellaneous dry goods in neutral territory that would hopefully establish her and Kakashi as reliable clients and Kuwa-san as a reliable supplier -- a standard way for missing-nin and gray market merchants to feel each other out. If the goods wound up as a cache for a long-term Leaf-nin mission, well, nothing in the contract specified that Yukiko and Kakashi had to be the ones to make the pickup. And their cash was perfectly legitimate Fire Country tender, so as far as Kuwa-san was concerned, there was nothing to worry about. (Yukiko was fairly certain there was nothing to worry about on Konoha's end of the bargain either. Kuwa-san had a rock-solid reputation for following through on her contracts. Nobody survived twenty years in the gray market without either keeping their word almost religiously or spending a fortune on bodyguards, and Kuwa-san barely bothered to pay for warehouse security.) "Where do you source kunai?" she asked as the rain's intensity kicked up a notch, beating against the windowpane in a nearly solid sheet of water. "Wind Country," Kuwa-san said without looking up from her accounts. "Earth Country's metallurgy is better, but the border tariffs aren't usually worth the slight increase in quality. I could change that if you're willing to pay the difference." Yukiko feigned consideration. "I don't care, but Hyoujin can get picky about steel composition. What would the increase be for this number of kunai and senbon?" Kuwa-san named a figure. Yukiko made an exaggerated expression of disgust. "No thanks! He can whine and make do. I'm not paying that much more for what, a half percent less chance of flaws? It's not like anyone expects kunai to last anyway. Use 'em and lose 'em and buy some more, that's what I say. Or steal whatever's left from your targets! That's economy, yeah?" "Officially, I can't encourage any behavior that would reduce my chance to sell you more equipment, Aoi-san. Unofficially? Yes, that's very economical. If only all my clients were equally practical." "Eh, there's all kinds of ways to be practical. What we're good at is mostly spying and killing -- it's more efficient to hire a ninja than do that stuff in-house, yeah? Just like you're good at moving stuff around to where we need it, so it's more efficient to hire you instead of us trying to figure all that stuff out from scratch. It's win-win, is how I see it." Yukiko tapped the papers to shuffle them into a neat pile, then handed them back to Kuwa-san. "That looks fine on my ends. Me and Hyoujin will be back sometime this afternoon to sign and pay the next installment." "It's a pleasure doing business with you, Aoi-san," Kuwa-san said. Yukiko grinned and dove backward out the window, into the pounding rain. --------------- Kakashi was lurking in one of Asase's numerous quayside bars, most of which were run out of the back doors of warehouses and also did a brisk side business in assorted seafood dishes. Rain pelted down on the roof tiles in a clattering racket that Yukiko found personally soothing but professionally irritating -- it was a lot harder to eavesdrop through the constant noise, not to mention the complications it added to genjutsu. She and Kakashi had spent their first night in Asase mutually grousing about the unpredictability of electric ninjutsu in waterlogged conditions and the difficulty of filtering ambient sounds out of illusions. Today Kakashi was sipping a bowl of lobster broth through a long, curved straw that vanished into the deep blue folds of the scarf he'd used to shroud his face. To the casual eye he was staring out an open window toward the rainswept harbor, his oversized gray hood restricting his range of sight and hearing, but Yukiko followed the combined angle of his feet and chopsticks to their targets: a trio of young missing-nin drinking in the far corner, defaced forehead protectors proclaiming their renunciation of Kiri. They were small-time, only a few months out on their own each with barely a name and one line of description in the latest bingo book editions, but anyone willing to go against the Bloody Mist was worth a second look. Whether this particular investigation would conclude in a job offer or an assassination was still up in the air. "Heya, Hyoujin. Thinking of roping in some new blood for larger contracts?" Yukiko asked as she dropped into a seat across from him (back to their targets) and set her ramen down on the unsanded wood of the table. Kakashi shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Three's better than two for flexibility, but more than four on a mission gets awkward without ranks and a chain of command. Nobody who leaves a village wants to go back to those kind of restrictions." Yukiko tilted her hand. "Eh, there's assholes on power trips and there's division of labor -- not necessarily the same thing. I let you take the lead in a fight and you let me take the lead on retrievals. That's just practical, yeah? But we wouldn't throw each other away. Shinobi are tools, sure, but if you don't look out for your teammates, how can you trust they'll look out for you?" Kakashi shrugged again and continued sipping his broth. Targets hear? Yukiko signed under the guise of snapping apart her chopsticks. Yes, Kakashi signed back as he lifted his bowl and drank the last of his broth under the shadow of his hood and scarf. No bite. Yukiko slurped a mouthful of noodles and nicely salted broth. "Grouch. Well, whatever we do for future contracts, today we have to sign off on the supply contract with Kuwa-san. We'll need the goods for that thing in Tea Country and she wants both of our names in writing." "Sign for me," Kakashi said "Tried that. She won't bite." "So fake it. Illusions are your thing, Aoi; pretend I'm there and forge my seal." Yukiko slurped another mouthful of noodles in her best imitation of Naruto's sloppy manners. "Oh, sure. Lying is the best way to establish trust for future contracts, yeah?" "She's a civilian, how would she know?" "Not the point. C'mon, Hyoujin. You won't melt in the rain. Let's go make nice with Kuwa-san and I'll make it real worth your while." She ran the edge of her sandal up the side of Kakashi's shin and gave him her best imitation of her cousin Yura's flirtatious smile. Kakashi twitched. Yukiko slapped the table and let her smile shade into a more genuine grin. "Ha, I win." "Fine. Finish your soup and let's go drown ourselves. Again." "Eh, getting soaked's not that bad. Especially when you've got a partner around to help you peel out of all your soggy clothes and warm up when you get home, yeah?" Kakashi twitched again, then rallied and let a tiny arc of electricity jump between two raised fingers. "And then get wet again?" Yukiko held onto her cover persona by the skin of her teeth. "Now you're talking my language. All right, I'm done. Let's go give a little now so we get more back later." --------------- Signing the contract with Kuwa-san took all of twenty minutes -- half of which was entirely for show, as Kakashi lived up to his cover persona and whined about the kunai quality until Yukiko overruled him -- after which they had the afternoon and evening entirely to themselves and a conveniently established reason to retreat to their rented room and lock themselves inside Yukiko's best privacy genjutsu. "We can't stay longer than another day now that the contract's signed," Kakashi said as he flashed his hands through the seals for a quick and subtle bit of ninjutsu that left their clothes and skin completely dry without spilling any excess heat. "Do you think the targets will be receptive if we approach them openly?" Yukiko shook her head, grimaced at the awkward motion of her still-tangled hair, and began working the tie out of her ponytail. "No chance. I don't know if they'd even be open to a joint mission with Aoi and Hyoujin at this point. Sumire wants security and Kenichi likes profit, but they're still raw enough to see tigers in every other shadow, and Eriko's almost too paranoid to make deals with someone as solid and non-threatening as Kuwa-san. On the bright side, they're wildly unlikely to join up with anyone else." Kakashi slumped back onto the futon with an annoyed set to his eyebrow. "And since they haven't moved against Fire Country assets, there's nothing to justify an assassination without a contract. I hate leaving loose ends." Yukiko dropped down to sit cross-legged beside him, fingers slowly working through her tangles. "Think of it as a guaranteed vacation in a few months. Our agents will send word the next time our trio pass through Asase, Aoi and Hyoujin turn up to sign a new contract with Kuwa-san, and we sound them out for a joint mission. They ought to be the right balance of calmer and hungrier by then, and we'll get a better reading after a week or so of close contact." "Ugh." "Yeah, yeah, talking to people is terrible and scary." Kakashi rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face in his arms, the soft, voluminous fabric of his hood blocking all apparent lines of sight. "Only the living." Yukiko froze, then sighed and flopped onto her back with her arms above her head. "Yeah. The dead talk back just as much, but it's still so much easier." "Sometimes I wonder how many people in Konoha would qualify for a 'Lone Survivor of My Genin Team, Including My Teacher' club," Kakashi said into the futon. "Then I stop wondering because the math is too depressing. But we could start a private chapter just for us." "Sometimes I hate that you trust me enough to say things like that," Yukiko said to the ceiling. "Then I tell myself not to be an idiot, because it means I get to say equally horrible things to you. Like that I'm pretty sure if we recruit our targets, at least one of them will be dead within two years, and I'm not sure that balances the odds that all three of them will die within one year if they keep working as missing-nin. After all, there's always a chance they might retire and start a farm." "Says the woman who got so bored with civilian life she jumped into a chuunin exam the minute Sandaime offered her a chance." "Says the Anbu assassin." Kakashi snorted. "We're all so fucked up." "Yeah." "Might as well be fucked up with other people who understand." "Yeah." They lay in silence for some time, listening to the steady thrum of rain on the roof tiles above. The air was warm and sticky, and the breeze eeling through the open window smelled faintly green beneath the ever-present fish-salt-rot odor of the sea. "Let's accidentally-on-purpose bump into the targets tomorrow morning, buy them breakfast, and float the idea of a joint mission later in the year," Yukiko said eventually. "Might as well plant seeds when the ground is soft." "You pay." "It's all mission funds in the end." "To clarify: you handle all the human interactions. I'll stand behind you and look vaguely menacing so they'll think at least one of us is competent." "To clarify: you'll look vaguely constipated, while I impress them with my social competency. Networking is an important skill for missing-nin." "I object to that assessment." "Which one of us has experience making business deals directly with civilians instead of through the mission office?" Kakashi flicked a gust of wind at her, re-tangling her hair. Yukiko pulled out Aoi's grin as she kicked Kakashi gently in the ankle. "Ninjutsu isn't a valid argument, which means I win. Your forfeit is fixing my hair." "Having teammates and friends is a terrible choice and I should never have made it a second time," Kakashi grumbled, but he sat up and tapped Yukiko's shoulder. "Turn around and hand me your comb." --------------- They hadn't been able to slap any chakra tags on the targets -- Eriko's paranoia was too thorough for even the subtlest of genjutsu threads to make it past her guard longer than a couple hours -- but Yukiko had gotten a decent sense of their chakra signatures over a series of not-quite-encounters during the past week. It helped to have rooms in the same lodging house, of course. Kakashi took first watch, leaving Yukiko to spend the back half of the night with a manual on steam heating systems and the interminable patter of rain. Eventually the sky began to lighten from matte black to flat gray and her spider-light sweep across the building and surrounding streets caught movement from their targets. "Time to go," she said as she stood. Kakashi remained unmoving until she nudged him with her foot, secure that he was actually awake and wouldn't strike her in reflexive defense. "I remember pretending to be a morning person when I was too young to know better," Kakashi grumbled into the futon. "It was a terrible idea then and it's a terrible idea now. Nobody should be awake before the sun is halfway up the sky." "Unfortunately the targets set the schedule," Yukiko said as she tucked her book away into a holding scroll. "Come on, put on your face and let's get to work." Kakashi flicked a minor wind jutsu in her direction as he rolled to his feet, but Yukiko had braided her hair so this time it stayed secure and untangled. "I wonder if I should switch to bulky scarves as an off-duty option. It's easier to eat and drink through the gaps between layers than to yank a mask up and down very fast or while people are looking away, and people have been much less interested in Hyoujin's face than they tend to be in mine." "That's because Hyoujin doesn't have a reputation. There's no glory in pulling down some random missing-nin's scarf." Yukiko grinned at Kakashi's affronted eyebrow and slipped out the window ahead of another wind jutsu. It wasn't hard to find their targets today: apparently Sumire's morning grumpiness had won over Eriko's paranoia and the trio of former Mist-nin were huddled near a breakfast yatai, half-sheltered from the incessant rain, and haggling over prices with the male half of the married couple behind the counter. Yukiko couldn't have asked for a better opening if she'd tried. She eeled her way up to the counter and grinned at the woman scraping down the stove from whatever she'd last been grilling. "Two miso and two fish on rice -- salmon for me, mackerel for my partner," she said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at Kakashi, who was standing, smugly dry, under a wind jutsu shaped into an invisible umbrella. "Oh, and how much extra for nori with the salmon?" The woman named a price. Yukiko rolled her eyes. "I hate bargaining on an empty stomach, so I'll just pay nine tenths of that and we'll all pretend you're not robbing me blind, yeah?" She glanced sideways to where the three young missing-nin were still arguing with the other cook. "I hate listening to arguments on an empty stomach, too, so how about I cover these loudmouths, too? Or at least the difference between what they're willing to pay and what you're asking." "Deal," the man said, interrupting the mockery of persuasion Kenichi was currently attempting. "Pay up and thank the nice lady for making sure I don't turn you away unfed." Eriko slapped her hand over Sumire's wallet. "No. It's poisoned." Yukiko rolled her eyes again. "There's a difference between reasonable caution and paranoia, yeah? I want a peaceful breakfast and our last mission went well, so I'm willing to pay a little extra to smooth things over. It's not like it's that much money. And hey, if it'll make you feel better, consider it a-- a-- Hyoujin, what's the word I want?" "Why would I know? You handle contracts," Kakashi said as he slipped a bite of mackerel through the folds of his scarf. "Ugh, why are we still partners?" "Because I'm very good with knives." "Point!" Yukiko slapped the yatai counter and turned back to the trio of missing-nin. "Anyway, breakfast. You're right that nothing comes free, so let's say that I'm paying for you to consider a joint mission sometime in the future, if me and Hyoujin have a line on a job that needs more than three people and we're kicking around the same market, yeah?" Sumire blinked. Kenichi looked like she'd slapped his face with a whole salmon. Eriko scowled and said, "That's not how contracts work." "Yes it is. It's called a-- a-- it's an option, that's the word! You can ask any of the suppliers in town, they'll tell you. I'm paying for the chance to run a job past you, because anyone who makes it out of Hidden Mist is worth a trial run, yeah? You don't have to accept. You just have to listen. And now I'm done with this conversation because I don't like having arguments on an empty stomach any more than I like listening to them. Don't die, and me and Hyoujin will see you around." She grabbed her rice bowl, her cup of miso, and her disposable bamboo chopsticks and kicked Kakashi's ankle to make him turn around and stop staring creepily at the trio of missing-nin through the folds of his scarf. Bite? she asked in handsign masked by a low-level illusion -- the chakra for which ought to be covered by Kakashi's own completely explicable umbrella jutsu. Maybe, Kakashi signed back, then added aloud, "What do you want to do for our next vacation, if this job goes as well as the last one?" Yukiko shrugged elaborately as she swallowed a mouthful of fish and rice. "Eh, there's worse places than the ocean. And by then, the rain should be over for the year. I like water a lot better when it stays flat on the ground than when it's trying to crawl up my nose and into my ears, yeah?" "That's because you have no imagination," Kakashi drawled. Yukiko considered countering with her own innuendo, but no; they were leaving Asase. They could leave Aoi and Hyoujin behind with the rain and introspection and return to more familiar ground. So she poked Kakashi with her chopsticks instead, and laughed when he neatly dodged the strike. As they walked past Kuwa-san's warehouse, bickering companionably, a watery ray of sun pierced briefly through the clouds over the storm-wracked sea and laid a path west to the green reaches of home. --------------------------------------------- End of Story --------------------------------------------- Well, that took significantly longer than it needed to, but I won in the end. \o/ Also, Kuwa Natsume (from Whose Allegiance Is Ruled by Expedience) is now officially part of Apartment Manager continuity. You're welcome. :D