#and like even the junkyard won’t take it

[loveinhawkins]

“What happened to Steve?” Dustin asks.

He’s already shut the door so no-one can overhear, has left everyone else—almost everyone—in the living room. He can make out some sounds in the background: Robin, who’s still talking overly loud, valiantly trying to drown out the noise coming from the bathroom; from Nancy who’s locked herself in there, and the sound of running water only half covers up stifled, sobbing gasps—each one makes Dustin’s stomach drop.

And if he really concentrates, he can hear the quiet creak of Steve pacing in concern, and there, every other step or so, the movement stops abruptly. It’s barely a second before it starts up again, but Dustin knows when Steve’s bracing himself, knows when he’s in pain.

And there are way too many things he can’t solve—Nancy’s hidden, gut-wrenching cries are another unwelcome reminder of that fact.

So he asks again, “What happened to Steve?” because he knows, if nothing else, he can solve this.

Eddie jumps, confirming Dustin’s suspicions that he didn’t hear the question the first time. He’s sat hunched over on his bed, surrounded by scattered piles of tapes from their panicked search earlier. He looks up, blinks a couple times like his mind’s been somewhere else for a long while.

“What happened to—? Uh, why don’t you just ask Steve?”

Because, Dustin thinks, you can’t lie for shit.

He doesn’t say it, but maybe Eddie suspects something, because he mutters, “Sure, sure, okay,” under his breath and clears a spot for Dustin on the bed. He keeps dropping tapes, like his hands are too unsteady to keep a hold of them; there’s a crack in one of the plastic cases already.

Dustin sits, and then Eddie tells him. It’s not like he hadn’t guessed something kinda close to it, but the confirmation is good to have.

“So. Demobats,” Dustin says in summary, because Eddie had trailed off near the end, as if he was reliving the dive into The Upside Down all over again. He cracks a smile at the name, though.

“Cute.”

“And Steve… like, he a rode a bike and everything so he’s…?”

Dustin tries to make his thumbs up look as confident as possible. Eddie nods a little too slowly for his liking, but he’ll take it.

“Yeah, um. Hey, Dustin, does, uh, all of that…” Eddie waves a hand vaguely. “Does that, like, happen a lot? Historically?”

Dustin doesn’t need to ask what he means.

Several memories battle to reach the forefront, but what wins is Steve in the junkyard before anything had even happened, how he whistled, bat in his hands. And Dustin had firmly filed the whole thing under awesome which yeah, it was, and maybe if he keeps thinking about how awesome it was, he won’t have to think about—

“He just—he just needs someone to watch his back.”

It’s almost a non-answer because it’s true of everyone, a Party rule so obvious it goes without saying. Still, Eddie nods again, and when he rearranges the last of the tapes his hands don’t shake.

“That I can do,” Eddie says.

There’s a edge of self-deprecation to the words, like he’s saying it’s one of the few things he’s capable of, and Dustin wants to push back against it because it’s not fair. Eddie’s only at a disadvantage in that it’s like he’s joined a long-running D&D campaign mid-way through, missing pages and pages of notes, and all he’s got time to get is hastily thrown together bullet points.

The creak of Steve’s footsteps suddenly gets louder before there’s a soft knock on the door.

“Everything okay in there?”

“Come on in, Harrington,” Eddie says.

Steve opens the door. “What’re you doing?” he says casually, but Dustin can tell he’d been worried; his eyes flicker around the room as if he’s checking it’s still safe.

“Oh, just getting Henderson to work on his tone.”

A millisecond ago, Dustin had been all for whatever excuse Eddie could come up with. But now…

“My what?”

Steve laughs like this is all very funny. Dustin keeps his eyes sharp even in his indignation, takes note of how Steve holds himself as he leans against the doorway: not relaxed by any stretch, but there’s no longer the awful sense that he’s holding his breath in pain. And the bandages wrapped around him are dry, Dustin double-checks to be sure. It’s not ideal—none of this is—but he can work with it.

Meanwhile, one thing he can’t work with is baseless slander.

“I don’t have a tone, what the hell.”

Eddie heaves a sigh. “That’s exactly what someone with a tone would say.”

Dustin kicks him.

And in the middle of Eddie pretending to be mortally wounded, he sobers abruptly—must notice the same thing just ahead of Dustin, that the water in the bathroom’s stopped running.

Eddie catches Steve’s eye. “Wheeler?” he mouths.

Steve pauses. “She’s okay,” he mouths back, and then mimes with his hand, five minutes, which is absolutely not the whole story, but it’s the one they’re getting for now.

And if she needs some more time, Dustin can find plenty more sources of distraction. What he settles on is a double take that would put Drama Club to shame.

“Wow, Steve, that’s a cool vest, where’d you get it?”

He dodges Eddie’s kick.

“Tone, dickhead,” Steve returns easily, and he grins, glances over to Eddie with a wry shake of the head.

The bathroom door clicks open, and Dustin hears Robin warmly greet Nancy in the living room. Steve looks relieved, pats the doorframe a couple times before he beckons for him to be followed out.

Dustin hesitates the tiniest bit so he can keep an eye on how Steve walks. He turns back to Eddie with one last questioning thumbs up; Eddie, still a little pink in the face, smiles back and gives a reassuring wink.

[shanastoryteller]

Sam seems convinced this is going to work, but Dean’s pretty sure it’s just a load of crap. Bobby’s even more convinced that it’s a whole lot of nothing, although he had admitted that he couldn’t read every symbol that Sam had added to this mess up devil’s trap. That didn’t mean it would work. It just meant that Sam had thrown everything he could think into it.

The real reason that Dean is going along with this, and probably Bobby is too, is because it means that Sam wouldn’t be alone after Dean is dragged to hell. Although standing in the middle of Bobby’s junkyard in a mess of spray paint isn’t exactly how he’d wanted to spend the last hour of his life.

“You really think Lilith is going to show?” he asks. He doesn’t know why she would. She just has to send the hellhounds, who’s howls and yips Dean has been hearing for days. And those things have never been stopped by any sort of devil’s trap.

“Yes,” Sam says, tense, not looking at him.

That’s another thing. For weeks Sam has barely looked at him, barely talked to him. Which sucks, because he’d really wanted to spend the last weeks of his life just looking and talking to and spending time with his brother, but Sam hadn’t been interested in that. At all.

He shares a look with Bobby, who just shrugs, hands tight on his shotgun.

Then the hellhounds come, just like he knew they would, no Lilith in sight. “Sammy,” he says, reaching out for his brother. Not because he thinks he can do anything, but because he wants to touch Sam one last time, one last memory to sustain him through hell.

Sam snaps out his hand and the hellhounds go skittering back, letting out pained yowls.

Dean stares, not understanding. “What did you – wait. You can see them?”

Only he should be able to see them. He’s the one that made the deal.

Sam still won’t look at him, damnit, even as Dean fists his hand in the back of his shirt. Sam's voice is low and pained when he says, “I’m sorry.”

Fear clenches in his gut. But before he do anything, there are demons surrounding the devil’s trap, appearing one by one in Bobby’s junkyard. They’d needed to take down his protections so Lilith could get in, but they hadn’t expected this. Of course she brought a freaking audience.

“Which one of you is Lilith?” he barks out, dragging Sam behind him. He refuses to let the last thing he sees be his brother hurt, or worse.

Dozens of demons stand there, human vessels with pitch black eyes. The hellhounds whimper and slink around them, but don’t seem interested in getting any closer. Dean can’t blame them.

Sam pries his hand off of him, stepping away before Dean can grab onto him again. He leaves the safety of the devil’s trap, which is fucking stupid. Dean’s lunging forward to stop him, but then there’s Bobby’s arm holding him back, face pale with a horror Dean doesn’t understand. He hadn’t looked like that even at Cold Oak, when they’d seen the gates open to hell.

The demons bow.

He blinks, not understanding what he’s seeing.

Sam is standing there in front of them, no protections, and they’re all bowing to him.

Except one.

Ruby is there, stupid red leather jacket and blonde hair and the smirk he hates so much. She walks around the demons up to Sam, who’s face is cold and expressionless. “She’s coming.”

“I know,” he says. “If this doesn’t work, I’m going to kill you.”

“Promise?” she returns. “If this doesn’t work, death will be a mercy.”

Dean tries to push Bobby off of him, to get in between Sam and this bitch, but he doesn’t let go.

Then there’s a little girl in a white dress, head tilted to the side. “Something here belongs to me.”

Ruby flinches, stepping just slightly behind Sam.

“Not you,” she sneers. “You haven’t belonged to me in a long time, I fear. You really think that this boy can save you?”

“Sam,” Ruby says.

He sighs, like this is a trial, and raises his hand.

Lilith’s sneer drops from her face. Her upper body yanks forward, but her legs won't move. “You bastard,” she snarls, raising her hand in return, but nothing happens.

For the first time, fear flickers across her face.

Ruby steps forward, her own terror swallowed up by arrogance, by delight.

Dean tries to move, but finds he’s just as frozen as Lilith, even more so. He can’t twitch a single muscle. Going by Bobby’s unnatural stillness next to him, he assumes he’s in the same boat.

“Samuel is the heir of the light bringer,” Ruby says. “He has taken his birthright. You can’t touch him.”

What’s she talking about? What birthright?

What has Sam done?

“No,” Lilith snarls. “He’s nothing more than one of Azazel’s experiments.”

“A night, a full day, and then morning,” Ruby says. “That’s what he was. Then he rose on the third day.” She shoots a mocking look his way. “If it weren’t for his brother, he would have died nothing more than a failed experiment. But he has risen.”

No. What does that mean? What’s she saying? He had just wanted Sammy back.

Did he do this? Is this his fault?

“Ruby,” Sam says, a note of warning in his voice.

“Right, right,” she sighs. Then, back to gleeful, “Her eyes.”

Sam’s finger twitches and Lilith’s eyes bleed black tears.

She screams, the sound even worse because her vessel is a child.

Ruby lists thing after thing, pulling out her fingernails, peeling her skin. Her blood is black, none of it red, and the injuries shouldn’t really be hurting her but they clearly are. Dean watches helplessly as Sam tortures Lilith at Ruby’s command, enacting one terrible thing against her after another.

Lilith lies there, moaning, limbs broken, body in pieces.

“That’s enough,” Sam says.

“Enough?” Ruby hisses, turning to face him. “You know what she did to me! She – she–”

Sam’s stoic mask breaks, creasing in sympathy. Dean would prefer it wasn’t for a demon, for Ruby, but at least he now recognizes his brother. He raises his free hand to her head, his touch an oddly gentle counterpoint to everything he’s done to Lilith. “I know. But it’s enough.”

Tears glint in her eyes, just for a second, then she swallows and nods, stepping away from Sam’s hand.

He steps forward, crouching in front of Lilith. “You shouldn’t have come after my brother. Now we both have to live with the consequences.” His mouth twists. "So to speak."

Whatever she would have said in response is lost in her screams. Black smoke pours from her, then lights up, like a spark in steel wool, the fire moving through her reminding him almost of the Colt.

Lilith dies. Sam kills her, no Colt, no devil’s trap. Nothing but his own terrifying powers.

“Will you bow to me now?” he asks.

Ruby tears her eyes from Lilith’s corpse and her irritating fucking smirk slides back into place. “Now?” She steps closer, tilting her head back almost like she’s about to kiss him, then falls gracefully to her knees in front of him. It looks more like she’s about to give him a blowjob than a form of subservience, but he thinks that for a moment Sam almost seems amused. “I bowed to you first.”

“So you did,” he says softly. He raises his voice. “Move out. Casey. You know your job.”

“Yes, sire,” says one of the demons, voice almost familiar.

Then Sam’s walking away, Ruby just a step behind him. The other demons follow suit, the hellhounds not even glancing at Dean as they get caught up in the procession.

Sam still won’t look at him. He only sees the back of his brother’s head as he leaves him behind

The only demon left is Casey. He knows her, he recognizes her, the demon he’d been trapped with in that city full of sin, the one that Sam had shot and killed. He’d seen him kill her.

She gets to her feet, offering him a smile as she draws closer. “Hello, Dean. I bet you never thought you’d see me again.”

She steps right into the devil’s trap and presses a hand to him and Bobby each. As soon as she touches them, they’re able to move, darting away from her and leaving her stuck in the devil’s trap.

“What the hell was that?” he asks, wishing his voice wasn’t shaking, but he has more important things to worry about.

She turns to face them. “Samuel does not want you to die. He did what he had to do to ensure you wouldn’t.”

“The fuck you talking about?” Bobby asks gruffly.

“I told you back then I was ready to follow Sam,” she says, stepping out of the devil’s trap like it’s nothing, which she definitely shouldn’t be able to do. Bobby hadn't thought that this thing would be able to contain Lilith, but Casey’s nowhere near Lilith’s level. It should work on her just fine.

Bobby’s hand darts out, throwing holy water over her, but it doesn’t so much as steam.

She just looks amused. “That won’t work on me now. Neither will an exorcism, or any of the usual tricks. I have been purified.” She holds out her hand to Dean and it’s the Colt, the one that they’d lost when Bela sold it. “This is the only thing that will kill me now.”

“And you’re just handing it over?” Dean asks.

“I have my orders,” she says steadily. “Samuel wants you to have it.”

His entire body goes gold.

“What do you mean purified?” Bobby asks, shooting Dean a concerned look. “You’re a demon. Purifying you should kill you.”

“And was Lucifer a demon?” she asks. “I have taken the sacrament.”

Dean doesn’t know what that means, but Bobby’s expression shifts from disgust to shock to a horror filled curiosity. “You drank Sam’s blood?”

She did what?

“I have taken the sacrament,” she repeats, lifting her chin. “Samuel purified me.”

How the hell would Sam’s blood do that? Why had she drank it in the first place? She’s a demon, not a damn vampire. Dean pushes those questions aside and instead asks, “How are you even alive?”

“Samuel resurrected me,” she says. First he can kill demons, and now he can bring them back? “He knows we had a rapport and he thought it would be easier if it was me.”

“What would be easier?” he asks. His head is spinning and his heart hurts and he doesn’t understand anything that just happened. At least being dragged to hell would have been simpler.

She presses the Colt into his hands. “Samuel doesn’t want you to die. He knows this will be difficult for you, that you’ll make poor choices. I have my orders. I am to stay with you and keep you alive. We’re going to get to know each other very well, Dean.”

“Like hell,” he says gruffly, hand tightening as he takes the Colt and raises it to her head. “What’s to stop me from killing you?”

“The same thing that will stop you from killing Samuel,” she says and he flinches. “Nothing.”

He stares at her. He can’t bring himself to speak.

“You’ll have to hunt him down the old fashioned way,” she says casually. “But if you can find him, you can kill him. We’re all under orders not to touch you. Samuel won’t stop you if you want kill him. The same way I won’t stop you if you want to kill me.”

“Why?” he asks.

She shrugs. “It’s always been up to you, Dean. He trusts you. If you decide that he must die, then he’s willing to die.”

Dean sold his soul for him. He’s not going to fucking kill him.

But the Sam he sold his soul for wasn’t capable of doing that to Lilith. He wouldn’t have even wanted to be.

“What about your demon lover?” Dean asks, thinking of the priest that Casey had embraced and kissed, the demon she’d begged to spare Dean’s life before Sam had killed them both. “Sam bring him back too?”

Grief chases across her face before she smooths it away. “He will. If I am good, and obedient, and loyal, then Samuel will bring him back for me.”

Dean’s stomach rolls to hear Sam described like that, like some sort of tyrant or king. Like Dad. “You really believe that?”

Casey meets his gaze steadily as she echoes the words she’d said to him in that basement as she spoke of Lucifer, except now she’s talking about his brother. “I have faith.”

[jellicle-junkyard]

Silly idea I had

Macavity abducts Tugger but he takes him back to the junkyard like 45 minutes later cause Tugger won’t shut tf up about Mr. Mistoffelees being a much more impressive magician. It’s maybe even funnier if you imagine them being brothers.

[celestiamour]

ft. cassandra nova x f! reader — marvel

╰₊✧ surviving in the void isn’t the same as living┊0.6k words

contains: established relationship, angsty, before dp&w, probably ooc & lore inaccurate in so many ways but uhhhhh

➤ author's note: we need more cassandra x reader, she’s the prettiest bald woman

you stare out into the void, a vast desert that’s a mere skeleton of other worlds you used to explore freely, sitting on the ground and enjoying the fleeting breeze. there’s no point in it really, it’s already been burned into your mind long ago. there’s never anything different about the view, just sand and machinery with the occasional variant minion wandering around. despite being at the top of the food chain with cassandra, you feel like you’re only surviving instead of living, scraping by in a dimension that’s essentially a junkyard for discarded souls.  

the faint sound of whistling reached your ears, but you didn’t bother to turn your head and see who was approaching. you don’t need to when this spot was only known by one other person whom you would always sneak off with for moments alone.

“what are you thinking about, love?” she asked, sitting down next to you.

“nothing important,” you sigh. 

she gently nudged you. “come on, don’t make me use my telepathy on you.” it’s a joke, of course. she loves you enough not to do so, a display of trust to show that she won’t violate those boundaries like the first time you met. “tell me what’s going on.”

“it’s just that… don’t you ever want to leave the void and go back to earth?’

she hummed in response, “i guess i never thought about it, but i don’t think so. i can freely be myself and use my powers here while basically being the empress of this realm. i don’t think i want to leave for a place that would only hunt me down when they find that i escaped and banish me again after a few days. and besides,” she affectionately laid her head on your shoulder, “i have you here with me.”

“right, i know that, but… i can’t help but wish that we could be a normal couple, doing normal couple things… like i want to take you on dates at the beach, go to fancy restaurants, introduce you to my remaining family, travel the world to see all its wonders… i treasure what we have right now, but i want to do so much more with you, even if it’s just stereotypical lovey-dovey stuff…” your smile is pained and you worry if you’re being stupid right now. cass seemed perfectly content with how everything was right now, you had no idea if she felt the same way you did. it was a topic that seemed too sensitive to bring up before, but it’s one that was weighing on you constantly these past few days. 

you did have a point though. there isn’t anything really romantic that could be done in the void, nothing aside from physical touch, long talks and walks to nowhere, watching decades-old films on a beat-up television found a while back that barely worked— it was no place where love could flourish when merely existing was difficult enough.

cass looks deeply into your eyes, the bright eyes of her beautiful girlfriend. not even her girlfriend, she thinks of you more like her wife, a soulmate who was gifted to her after years of suffering hidden under layers of her sadistic and mischievous personality. if she was allowed to go back to the world she was ripped away from with you, she would like to marry you properly and put a ring around your finger as a testament to all you both have gone through.

escape was something she barely considered since it was something that seemed so out of reach and impossible, yet seeing the hope in your eyes sparked a light of optimism she hasn’t felt in years. “maybe one day, and we’ll do everything you mentioned and more… even if we are hunted down by the tva the entire time…”

[chebyshevptera]

ideas as in analysis and any resulting 'headcanons' or further extrapolations of his character that you get out of the analysis? please share what you saw in skybound. typically you only hear about hunted/crystallised when it comes to this topic (and only ever on a surface level) so I am interested in your impression of it

yeah ok !

so in hunted and crystallized we see his psychosis delve into more severity considering the fact that he’s hallucinating (visually and audibly), his personality has changed, etcetera . i wouldn’t say that these seasons are great psychotic rep but that doesn’t change the fact that jay is still canonically psychotic and denying that part of his character because you dislike the way ninjago deals with characterization in the later seasons is silly to me

now this is just my own interpretation of the situation in skybound as someone with a psychotic disorder myself lol . TO CLARIFY!!! I AM NOT SAYING THIS IS LIKE. THE CANON THING THAT HAPPENS OR THE CANON REASON OR WHAAAATEVER . THIS IS JUST HOW I INTERPRETED IT BASED ON MY OWN EXPERIENCES . (clears throat)

aside from the scenes in hunted and crystallized i think skybound is a pretty good representation of jay’s mental state specifically with less bizarre delusions . i personally recognize the severe succumbing into a particular belief that jay bases his behavior around lol . his emotions become really unstable (“it’s because im from a junkyard, isn’t it?!”) and he starts bargaining and changing his behavior excessively in order to confide to this belief he has (where the only evidence is the fact that nya was standing next to him in his vision, which he sort of states?? “besides, even if it WERE true…”) . even when he gets the absolute fuck beat out of him and has to have an eyepatch to cover the wound, all he can think about is the fact that it’s justifying his beliefs (“just like the one in my future!”) . these are all things i myself have experienced while being delusional over a similar situation (platonic, not romantic, but still lol).

jay is also arguably pretty depressed at the start of the season so the sudden change in demeanor from sad and mopey and whiny to loud and frantic and snappy and paranoid was notable to me . just like how despite the fact that nya has frequently dismissed his affections, which he even KNOWS of and ADMITS to in the first episode with zane, jay quickly seems to “forget” this and just kind of . does whatever it takes to get with her . (not to claim his mental state makes his behavior okay . to me it seems like a delusional episode) . i know it’s a cartoon or whateva and jay obviously has a point to believe that he and nya are ending up together but like , from any character’s perspective and from jay’s own, i can understand why it seems so wonky

even before skybound jay just overall is incredibly impulsive , emotionally unstable , seemingly experiences racing thoughts and speech , and him having poor hygiene is (unfortunately) a running joke in the series . he lies for the sake of feeling secure and does incredibly dangerous things to himself (??throwing himself off of a building with a makeshift glider despite the fact that he failed 5 times previously) and is easily distracted , etcetera etcetera

of course ninjago won’t outright try to admit that a character is psychotic because of stigmatization and it’s not like jay’s experiences in skybound are CANONICALLY the result of an episode , and therefore, if you don’t agree with this interpretation then that is a-okay . it’s just me recognizing something in him that I experience and then trying to understand jay’s brain . my experience as a psychotic individual also won’t be the same as other people’s so there’s that too

headcanonsssss ? personally i hc jay is schizoaffective . i think that jay has more prolonged recovery periods / better prognosis than he would if he had schizophrenia . but i also know a really common one is borderline jay, which i also totally understand and agree with (especially because people with bpd also experience psychosis! fun) . there’s also the other bpd aka brief psychotic disorder which also could easily apply to him

sorry that this is super choppy haha . I hope it makes sense . thank you for taking an interest !

[pinkieclown]

Cats The Musical Autism Headcanons

because these kitties are autistic okay!! honestly i think all the characters can be autistic these are just the ones i have specific ideaz for :3

mungojerrie & rumpleteazer (cause the twins definitely share some traits lol)

- the talking talkers… they’re both hyper-verbal :) while their chattiness can sometimes help with their schemes (they like to engage a friendly policeman in conversation!) but usually they just talk cat’s ears off cause they like talking

- always up in each other’s space, these two have very little sense of personal space and are always grabbing each other’s shoulders/arms or leaning on each other, snuggling, or generally being close to each other

- both love jumping up and down or running around to stim! sometimes they link arms and run in a circle for minutes at a time just to get their energy out

- they’re pretty spontaneous when it comes to their heists, usually jumping into it before fully working out a plan, but both can get very upset when something goes wrong/doesn’t go their way

mungojerrie

- TERRIBLE with eye contact, he’s always looking at everything except the person he’s talking to. definitely adds to his kinda ‘shifty’ reputation

- loves oral stimming, usually chewelry or something of the sort, but will absentmindedly chew on p much anything in his reach (pens, plastic, teazer’s arm, etc)

- has poor volume control, tends to talk just a bit too loud or too quiet depending on the situation

- tends to accidentally interrupt/talk over others cause he doesn’t really understand their cues

rumpleteazer

- very touchy-feely… but only on her terms! she loves initiating snuggles hugs or play-fights, but if someone touches her when she’s not expecting/in the mood, she won’t hesitate to take a swipe at em (jerrie is usually the only exception)

- tippy-toe walks alllll the time. helpful for moving quietly when she needs to but will do it for no reason at all

- loves to give cats nicknames, but doesn’t understand how they work so just decides on random nouns to call her friends

- has a hard time understanding metaphors and sarcasm

etcetera

- THE STIMMER!! she loves to stim! usually flapping her paws, tapping her toes, or bouncing in place, but pretty much any repetitive movement is a stim for her <3

- related to her stimming, she cannot sit still! she’s always moving around, playing with toys, or shifting from side to side even when she’s supposed to stay still

- loves to knit or crochet with jenny, since its repetitive and keeps her hands busy, plus she gets a cute scarf at the end!

- has echolalia, she often repeats words/sounds other cats say, usually just to feel it in her mouth

mistoffelees

- non/semi-verbal, only speaks when he’s very comfortable or around certain cats (like victoria or tugger)

- loves to perform but is naturally quite shy and quiet, so tends to lean on his ‘stage persona’ to express his more dramatic and expressive side! when he isn’t in that mindset though he’s very aloof

- very diligent about keeping himself clean and tidy. he can feel when even one tuft of fur is out of place and it BOTHERS him

- has hypersomnia, he’s always sleepy and gets worn out pretty quick (especially after his bigger magical feats)

- has very specific day to day routines (wakes up at a specific time, visits the junkyard on specific days of the week, etc) gets really frustrated and stressed if they’re interrupted or changed

- he’s a house-cat, but refuses to wear a collar (he hates how it feels)

sillabub

- didn’t speak for a long time growing up, but at like age 4 (in cat years) suddenly started speaking in full sentences. demeter was very surprised

- has a (terrifying) habit of slipping into this wide-eyed hundred yard stare when she zones out. it took a while for everyone to get used to that

- very sensitive to lights and colors, she’s the first to notice when the light shifts ever so slightly, and too-bright lights or colors are very overstimulating for her

- doesn’t like being touched except by her moms and sister (demeter & bomba and electra, respectively) and even then only in certain moments

- special interest is the night sky, she knows all the names of the constellations and can tell you the phase of the moon on any given night

- makes A LOT of eye contact

[sabaldax]

outtakes from a fic i'm working on

so i had a revelation abt my fic and these bits no longer fit - instead of deleting them or putting them into a junkyard doc, i figured i'd just post them lol. so a couple are "canon divergence" where olrox responds differently to mizrak's canon lines:

MIZRAK: Is that what you have planned for me?

[Olrox huffs, just barely too bitter to be amused.]

OLROX: You can barely stand my company long enough to bed me, Mizrak. I wouldn’t condemn you to an eternity by my side.

[desc]

OLROX: Ask me again when you learn to like me a little, and we’ll see.

& again, when olrox saves mizrak from running out of the forest when drolta’s killing the French army:

[Instead of crying, mizrak’s furious with him. lashes out and wrenches down a branch from a tree. He snaps it in half, fashioning a stake. Fully expecting olrox to have disappeared by the time he turns back around. Instead, olrox is on his knees, holding his overcoat and shirt open for ease of access.]

OLROX: Go on. Put a stake through it. It’s yours already, so you might as well.

& then the last one is basically what if mizrak finally pushes Olrox Too Far:

[segue out of those memories to the present, they’ve just slept together]

MIZRAK: … until I have to die to get away from you, like your last lover.

[olrox’s reaction]

OLROX: It seems I’ve found the limit of how much of your loathing I can withstand.

[quiet fury]

OLROX: I’m going to go somewhere the light won’t reach me. I’ll stay there for the next two weeks. I’ll seal myself in so that I can’t leave, even if I change my mind.

MIZRAK: Why?

OLROX: Mizrak … If you truly hate living as I do this badly … then wait for the dawn, and walk into the sun. I won’t be able to stop you.

MIZRAK: Heaven would deny me [Mizrak argues] I’m without a soul.

OLROX: And exempt from Hell, also. There’s no Devil waiting for you in the next life, not with nothing for Him to take. What bliss. No Heaven. No Hell, either. And best of all?

[desc]

OLROX: No more me.

so consider these up for grabs as prompts if any of them catch ur interest!!! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ they r #abandoned otherwise

[ameagrice]

Capsize

chapter twenty-seven | the dam thing

percy jackson x fem reader

Sadness was very, very tiring.

Your skin burned with the heat of the sun beating through the truck window, sitting with your knees to your chest. Percy and Grover had chosen to sit in the tow wench part of the stolen truck Thalia drove, while you sat up front with Zoe and Thalia.

You couldn’t take your eyes off the junkyard as Thalia drove, watching it get further and further away. She didn’t seem as bothered as you or Percy, or even Grover, like the death of Bianca hadn’t affected her even a little bit.

The boys’ voices flowed through the back and into the front, mumbling that you were unable to understand. You looked down at your hands; the tiny figurine that cost Bianca her life lay in your palms. Ironically, the one Nico didn’t have was Hades, the god of death. The dark hair, and the stony face he wore gave away which god he was.

Something settled on your chest. What were you supposed to say to Nico? What were you going to tell Chiron when you went back to camp? You’d made a plan—an awful one—that sent Bianca straight to her death. They’d hate you. Everyone would hate you.

In the back of your mind, you thought maybe it wasn’t your fault. Yes, you had the idea, but it was an idea you’d been intending to put to use yourself. You hadn’t forced Bianca to carry it out. You hadn’t even told her to go ahead with it. In retrospect, it hadn’t been your fault.

But you carried the guilt anyway.

Annabeth was right, Maybe you were claimed by the wrong goddess. You certainly weren’t smart by any means if you’d gotten a friend killed. And it wasn’t the first time you’d put Bianca in danger—your stunt at Westover had nearly sent you all plummeting to your deaths off the edge of a cliff.

“You think too hard,” said Zoe beside you.

You looked up. She was pale in the face, and looking out at the road ahead. “What?”

“It was not your fault. Do not think it was.”

Thalia glanced over. You swallowed hard, throat closing up.

“But it was,” you objected. “I had the plan. I was going to do what Bianca did. If anyone should be dead, it should be me.”

Zoe looked completely outraged. “Don’t say that. What happened to Bianca is terrible, but that does not mean you should have taken her place. It is as the prophecy decided. We could not control her actions or her decisions.”

That doesn’t make it any better, you thought.

The truck ran out of gas just as you approached a dead-end street, much to Thalia’s irritation. You all jumped out, Thalia slamming the door shut. One of the tyres burst immediately and began letting air out.

“Great,” she said. “What now?”

There wasn’t much to see or say about the area. Desert in every direction, barren mountains everywhere. The canyon in the distance was the only interesting thing, and a small river flowing down the middle.

“There’s a path,” Grover said. “We could get to the river.”

You squinted in the light. Very faintly you made out the outline of a small path winding down the cliff side.

“That’s a goat path,” said Percy.

Grover turned to him. “So?”

“So the rest of aren’t goats.”

“We can make it,” goat-boy assured. “I’m sure of it.”

A beat of silence caused you to look at Percy. He looked worn out, and a little tired, but determined. “No,” he said. “We’ll go farther upstream.”

“But—” Grover frowned.

“Come on, a walk won’t hurt us.” He looked at Thalia, and she held his stare for a second. You looked between them both; what was that about?

You shook it off, and let the others go up ahead. The quiet might do you some good, you felt—it gave you time to think things through.

Percy didn’t feel the same, clearly.

He looked back at you, slowing until he was at the back with you. You spared him a glance, focusing on the hills ahead of you. Not too far now.

“You okay?” He asked quietly.

You hummed. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Percy shrugged his shoulders briefly. “I don’t know. You’re just quiet.”

“I’m tired, Percy,” you sighed. “I want to go home, now.”

You turned your head, to find him already looking at you. The blood rushed to your face, and you looked away. But…you couldn’t not look at Percy for too long. So you glanced back. Those bright green eyes flickered across your face and eyes, and you paid attention to the way his hair was a little sweaty and more tamed than it usually would be.

“I was thinking,” he said. “Did you want to stay over this summer? At my place? My mom wants to meet you. And it would be fun. We could get, like, takeout and stuff.”

You blinked. A little bit of sunshine made a hole in the dark, and your mouth quirked. “Sure, it’d be fun.” Was all you could think to say.

Percy’s expression faltered an inch, barely noticeable if you hadn’t grown used to the emotions he wore on his sleeve. He nodded once, and his smile was tight.

You wanted to invite Percy over to your place in return. You imagined running down the beaches with him, entirely in his element, and showing him a cove you had discovered one day, the path memorised. But you had left things unsettled at home, and the very thought of going back was too much at the moment, anxiousness spiking your veins.

The rest of the walk, you trained your eyes on the ground, following the river’s dips and splashes. It made the walk go by faster, and when you looked up, almost walking into Thalia. You were about to voice your question, when you sets your sights on the locked-up cabin with a canoe sale sign up outside the front shutters. The ground gently sloped, and the water ran more fiercely along.

Percy turned to you. In the middle of the desert, his eyes shone like stars. “You got a pen and paper?”

Of course you did.

Percy left a stack of drachmas on the countertop outside, and a ragged note beneath them: I O U 3 canoes.

“We need to go upstream,” Zoe said. She sounded like she was suffering from a terrible cold. “The rapids are too swift.”

“Leave that to me,” Percy decided. Nobody questioned him.

You quickly discussed who had which canoe—Percy and Zoe (you’d nearly argued over that one), Thalia and yourself, and Grover in his own.

Once, you never would have had a clue about canoes or rapids or how to get into one without tipping over. But camp had prepared you well, and there wasn’t much fuss getting in them. You held the canoe to the shore with the ore and…was something moving under it?

“Hey, Percy,” you turned your head, looking to him. But he spoke quietly with Zoe, so you left it.

You all got ready (and by ready, you meant, you argued with Thalia for the front seat, and won).

You found you weren’t actually going stir-crazy.

The canoes were pushed forward so forcefully you almost fell out of it, actually laughing when all you could see of Grover were his hooves in the air. When you recovered, you took a peek over the edge and into the water, looking past your reflection: naiads.

You knew what it was before you even saw it fully. After a while, the large monument before you came into view.

“Hoover Dam,” you voiced. “Built in the 1930’s.”

“It’s huge,” Thalia awed.

The naiads stopped pushing, and everyone climbed out onto the river’s edge. When the naiads swam away, the canoes gently floated back downstream, pushed by the current.

You stood together, looking up.

“Seven hundred feet tall,” Percy commented.

“Five million cubic acres of water,” Thalia hummed.

“Largest construction project in the United States,” Grover sighed.

Zoe looked at you all like you were crazy. “How do you know all that?”

“Annabeth,” Grover tilted his head.

“She was crazy over architecture. Gods, try getting some sleep in the same cabin as her.”

“Spouted facts all the time,” Thalia said. “Annoying as hell.”

“I wish she were here,” Percy said.

You didn’t have it in you to be annoyed. Because you felt the same way. In a sense, it felt like a mean joke from the world—you’d stopped in one of Annabeth’s dream locations, and she wasn’t able to see it.

“We should go up there.” Percy said. “For her sake. Just to say we’ve been.”

“We don’t have a great track record with heights.”

Percy just grinned.

“You are mad,” said Zoe. “But that is where the road is. And so, sightseeing it is.”

—

“It’s cold,” you sang. “It’s cold and windy and why are we just standing here?” You pivoted to Zoe, flaying your hands. You side-eyed Grover; he sniffed the air, shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, clearly monsters are coming.”

“How close are they?” Percy asked.

Grover shook his curly head. “Maybe not close…the wind from the dam, and the desert all around…scent could probably travel for miles. But it’s coming from almost everywhere. I don’t like it.”

“There’s a snack bar in the visitor centre,” said Thalia.

Percy’s eyebrows knit together. “You’ve come here before?”

“Once, to see the guardians,” she pointed across the dam, where carved into the cliff were two big statues. In the back of your mind, something felt familiar, maybe something you’d learned in school. “They were dedicated to Zeus when the dam was built; a gift from Athena.”

Tourists were clustered around the statues, seemingly looking at…their feet?

“What are they doing?” You asked.

“Rubbing the toes.”

You gagged.

“They think it brings good luck,” Thalia said.

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Mortals get crazy ideas. They don’t know the statues are sacred to Zeus, but they know there’s something special about them.”

Percy hummed. “When you were here last, did they talk to you or anything?”

Thalia’s expression darkened. “No. They don’t do anything. They’re just statues.”

Just statues brought a hot flame to your heart. Once again, you were reminded of Bianca. How you wished that one had been just a statue.

“Let us find the dam snack bar,” Zoe interrupted your saddening thoughts. You raised your head, blinking away the cloud cover.

Grover cracked a smile. “The dam snack bar?”

Zoe blinked innocently. “Yes. What is so funny?”

“Nothing,” he tried to keep a straight face. “I could use some dam French fries.”

Even Thalia smiled. “I could use the dam restroom.”

Percy snickered. And you broke, showing a smile. Eye contact with Grover proved to be a bad idea—you both broke out laughing.

Zoe just looked between everyone. “I do not understand.”

“I want to use the dam water fountain,” you wiped your eyes, still laughing.

“And,” Thalia tried catching her breath. “I want to…buy a dam t-shirt.”

Percy burst out laughing, setting you off. Zoe was not amused; her face was stoic, if not a little annoyed. You opened your mouth to make a joke, and then—

“Did anyone else just hear a cow?” Percy had stopped laughing.

You snickered, finding humour in the weird situation.

“A dam cow?” Thalia laughed.

“No,” said Grover, seriously. “I heard it too.”

Zoe listened. “I hear nothing.”

“Percy, are you okay?” You asked. Was it heat stroke? Or maybe he was overtired? “There’s definitely no cows about, man.”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just…you guys go ahead,” he said.

“What’s wrong?” Grover prodded.

“Nothing,” he shook his head. “I just need a minute. I need a minute to think.”

Zoe, Thalia and Grover headed off towards the visitor centre, and you were about to follow after them. But Percy looked…a little too confused for you to be happy leaving him on his own, especially hearing cows that weren’t there.

You trailed after him. Percy leaned on the rail that overlooked the water.

You came up beside him. “Do you want some water?”

Looking down at the water, Percy’s hand reached out and snaked around your arm, pulling you closer. Your eyes widened, but you didn’t resist.

“What—”

You followed his gaze downward, and couldn’t believe what you were seeing.

“Is that—”

Percy nodded. “Bessie.”

“Bessie?”

“Bessie the cow serpent.”

You looked at your friend. Your slightly stir-crazy friend. “That explains it all.”

Percy’s bring eyes practically shone looking at the sea creature. “What are you doing here? How did you get up here?”

A quick glance around showed nobody else could see this Bessie. Either that or they were all hoping it would go away if they avoided eye contact.

Bessie swam in a circle, long tail swishing, before bashing its head on the wall of the dam. “Mooooo!”

It was as if you were in a weird dream, quite frankly. A cow-sea-creature nobody but yourselves could see. But in this whole strange world of demigods and gods and monsters, was anything a real shock anymore?

But after the day you’d had so far, and Bianca’s passing, everyone felt like a big, fat joke on you.

“I can’t!” Percy exclaimed. “I’m with my friends!”

Bessie have an urgent moo, and dove underwater, swimming away.

Percy raised his head, green eyes meeting yours, and you hesitated on saying something. A weird chill settled on your spine, as if to say watch your back. You looked behind Percy, and froze. Two tall men in grey camouflage covered flickering skeletal bodies. And they were heading right for you.

“Gotta go,” you snatched up Percy’s hand. “Let’s go!”

You ran as fast as your legs would take you, lungs burning, toward the visitor’s centre. Percy skidded to a stop beside you as you slowed to fit through the entryway, and you didn’t have the time to pay attention to what it was he was looking at behind you. You bolted down the stairs, security yelling for you to slow down, but you paid them no heed. Your friends had no idea what was going on, and like hell would you let a repeat of what happened to Bianca happen.

Percy called your name behind you. “Wait up!” He yelled. “Slow down!”

“Like we have the time!” You called back, not caring if he heard. The ding of an elevator caught your attention. To your left, a group of tourists waited with a guide, and you took your chance, running across to it.

Just as you slid inside, Percy slid in behind you, and the doors closed with a ding. A few people looked your way, as you heaved for breath.

“We’ll be going down seven hundred feet!” The tour guide said cheerfully. Her dark hair was tied up in a long ponytail, and dark shades covered her eyes. “Don’t worry, ladies and gentlemen! The elevator hardly ever breaks!”

You could have rolled your eyes. Hardly ever—chances were, with your luck, the hardly ever part would happen to you.

“Does this go to the snack bar?” Percy asked behind you. A couple of people laughed. The tour guide looked your way, and shivers ran down your spine; you wished Percy had just kept his mouth shut. Your gut twisted.

“To the turbines, young man. Weren’t you listening to my interesting presentation upstairs?”

“Oh, uh, sure. Is there another way out of the dam?”

“It’s a dead end,” said an irritated-sounding tourist behind. You had half a mind to look them up and down for good measure, but refrained. “The only way out is the other elevator.”

With a ding, the elevator doors opened.

“Go right ahead,” the tour guide said. “Another ranger is waiting for you at the end of the corridor.”

You moved quickly, trying to get out of the small space.

“Young man!” The tour guide called. Percy gripped your arm. You turned back.

She’d taken off her sunglasses, twirling them in her hand, and you blanched. Her eyes were a startling grey. Just like yours. Just like Annabeth’s.

Something tugged in your stomach.

And something felt oddly familiar about this guide.

“There is always a way out for those clever enough to find it.”

She looked at you. She winked, the corner of her mouth curved in a sly smile just the way yours did.

Just the way yours did.

You blinked. Before you could give any thought to what just happened, the elevator doors closed, and the only sound you could focus on was the sound of skeleton chattering.

With Percy still attached to your arm, you ran after the tour group, through a weird-looking tunnel made of jagged stone that seemed to go on forever. The air was humid and hot, and when you came out the other end, fifty-feet below you were enormous wind turbines. It was almost enough to send you dizzy.

By this point, you slowed, and allowed yourself to think. You’d gotten here on spontaneous thoughts, but where did you go from here? Considering your line of bad experiences with your own ideas, maybe it was best to sit this part out, the part full of action, and let Percy take the lead. Playing hero wasn’t going so well, for you.

You looked around in a circle, almost feeling desperately lost, as if your body told you let someone else take over. Preferably, an adult. Someone to take this burden from you all. Because, at last, this quest was wearing you thin, and the lingering question and unease surrounding what happened to Bianca would simply not let up on you.

All you wanted now, was to go back to camp.

Percy, at your side, shoulders slumped, sighed. He span his sword, disguised as a pen, between his fingers. You turned to him.

“Look,” you breathed. “I think—”

Percy’s eyes shifted to behind you, and widened. You barely saw the quick sweep of his arm pushing you out of the way before you felt it, staggering aside.

“H-hey—!”

The gleam of his sword caught your eye, as he swiped it straight down. Almost falling back, you turned to the victim of his harsh death.

Except the girl wasn’t dead.

Just horrified.

And very human.

“What the hell?!” She screeched. “Do you always kill people when they open a packet of Kleenex?”

Both yourself and Percy could only blink at the girl, whose wild red hair danced in her eyes. She blew it away, huffing when it fell back.

“You’re human?” Percy frowned.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The girl pulled a face. “Of course I’m human. How did you get that sword through security?”

Your jaw almost dropped. “Ohhhh boy.”

“You can see this?”

The girl rolled her eyes. Her nose was red as if she’d been aggressively wiping it like she had a cold, and jeans with holes all over, like she’d gotten bored in class. The inner stylist in you cringed.

“Well, it’s either a sword or the biggest toothpick in the world,” she scoffed. “And why didn’t it hurt me. Not that I’m complaining. And woah, are you wearing lion fur?” She reached her hand out to Percy’s coat.

At Percy’s lack of words, you looked to him, going to prompt him to explain. But he stood like a fish, mouth agape, staring at this girl. Jealousy ran through your body, and your jaw clenched.

“It’s none of your business, really,” you huffed. The girl’s eyes rolled over to you like she was bored. “I mean, we gotta go anyway, so…”

Percy raised his hand suddenly and snapped his fingers in the girl’s face. She went cross-eyed looking at them. “You don’t see a sword,” he said. “It’s a ballpoint pen.”

She scrunched her nose. “Uh, no. I’m pretty sure it’s a sword.”

You almost wanted to sock Percy in the arm. “Bro, what are you doing? We need to go.”

“Who are you?” Percy ignored you.

“Rachel Elizabeth Dare. Now are you going to answer my questions or am I going to call for security?”

“Uh, miss Rachel Elizabeth Dare,” you imitated poorly. Her face was a picture at your words. “We really have places to be. Percy, we need to go.”

“You in a hurry or trouble?” Rachel asked.

“Hurry.”

“None of your business.”

Percy blinked at you, talking over one another. He sighed.

Rachel coughed a little too loudly for your nerves. You slowly turned to her, ready to give this random girl a piece of your mind. She grabbed your arm and pushed you along.

“Bathroom, now!”

You tripped on a wet floor sign, knocking it down on your way in. You landed on the slimy floor, complaining under your breath. Your own voice was too loud at this point, but something else caught your attention in the background.

The chattering of skeletons.

“Oh my god! Did you see those kids! They just ran at me with swords! I think they went that way towards the wind turbines! You better hurry!”

The chattering grew quieter, and then a knock on the door. “You’re good!”

You emerged back into the public. Rachel Elizabeth Dare looked shaken and slightly pale.

“All clear, but you better go.”

Down the way, skeletons were running in the direction Rachel sent them.

“We owe you, Rachel,” Percy breathed.

“What are those things?”

“The skeletons?”

Rachel nodded uneasily.

“Do yourself a favor,” Percy replied grimly. “Forget it all. Forget you ever met us.”

“Forget you tried to kill me?”

“That too,” you quipped. Rachel side-eyed you. You looked her up and down.

“But who are you?” The question was, very obviously pointed at Percy.

“Percy—gotta go.”

Warmth wrapped your wrist, and pulled you along. Behind you both, Rachel Elizabeth Dare was whining. “What sort of name is Percy Gotta-Go?”

The cafe was packed with kids shouting and crying, and your heart felt about to burst from the run down here. You scanned the room. In the middle, at a round table, Thalia, Grover and Zoe sat with their food.

You ran over, a gross and sweaty mess, panting. You slammed your hands on the table so hard their trays shook. “We—gotta—go,” you heaved.

“But we just got our burritos!” Thalia said.

Zoe looked around. “No. She’s right. Let’s go.”

The cafe wrapped around the dam, giving your friends a good view of the skeletons that had come to kill you. And all of them were armed with batons and pistons. The more urgent problem now, though—the skeletons Rachel had spotted were making their way over. They began to advance.

“Elevator!” Grover gasped.

You all ran for your lives, and skidded to a stop as the elevator arrived on your level with a ding! You scrambled back, almost tripping on someone’s toes as more skeletons came out. You were completely surrounded.

And then…Grover’s brilliant mind surfaced a brilliant plan.

“Good fight!” He screamed.

And launched his burrito right at a skeleton’s face. His skull fell off his shoulders with a clatter, like he’d been taken out by a grenade and not a burrito.

It didn’t take very long for Grover’s plan to take off. Kids began throwing their food this way and that, and you couldn’t even be mad at the soda and chips in your hair because the skeletons couldn’t aim their guns, and you were soon just blurry faces in a raging crowd.

“Four against eleven. What now?”

“It’s been nice going with you guys,” Grover trembled.

“Woah, their toes are really bright?”

“Percy, that’s really weird.”

“Thalia, pray to your dad.”

Said girl glared at your best friend. “He never answers.”

“Just this once. Please just try!”

“No! He won’t answer me!”

“This time is different!”

“Says who?!”

Percy hesitated. “Athena—” your head snapped to him. “I think.”

Thalia scowled.

“Try it!” Grover begged.

Thalia closed her eyes, sighing visibly. Her mouth moved in silent prayer, and you gave thought to what Percy said.

The grey eyes. That weird feeling in your stomach. And the same smile…

Things like that couldn’t be just a coincidence, could they? And after how you had felt all day…was it weird to hope your mom might be giving you guidance?

You tried it too.

Mom. Please, if you can hear me, give us some guidance. Show us what to do. I can’t anymore.

The skeletons closed in, and so did your chest. It pulled tight in a way you had never felt before…was this impending doom?

You dug for your dagger and held it tight in your fist. Percy clutched his sword closer.

Just as you thought your heart was giving out, a shadow fell over you. In slight fear, you tilted back your head, mouth agape. Above you, stood the very statues you set your sights on earlier. The bronze angels. Bullets pinged off their wings like rain on a metal roof. Both angels swept their giant arms like bats, and the skeletons went flying.

“Man, it feels good to stand up!” One said. His voice sounded tinny.

“Will ya look at my toes?” The other said. “What we’re those tourists thinkin’?”

“Get us out of here!” Thalia yelled.

Both angels looked down at her. “Zeus’s kid?”

“Yes!”

“Could I get a please, Miss Zeus’s Kid?”

“Please get us out of here!”

The angels shrugged to one another. “Could give my wings a stretch?”

Next thing you knew, one swept up Percy and Thalia, the other Grover and Zoe, and before you could get left behind, you leapt for one’s wing, shoes scuffling as you pulled your way up to its shoulder.

And then you flew straight up, over the dam, away from the river and the trouble.

—

“Tell me when it’s over!” Thalia said from your left. A timid peak behind the angel’s head showed you Thalia with her eyes squeezed shut, holding on for dear life.

Not that you could blame her. This high up, with nothing to properly hold on to, you were feeling a little worried, too. You’d situated yourself just in the crook of the angel’s neck, on his shoulder, holding on to his ear of all things. Your arms were starting to go a little dead, but you weren’t taking any chances.

“Are we…high?” She asked.

Percy kicked his foot off the edge of the mountain below and shook his head. “Nah, not really.”

It depends who you asked. Even this high was enough for you.

“We are in the Sierras!” Zoe yelled from the other angel. “I have hunted here before. At this speed, we should be in San Francisco in a few hours!”

News which both delighted you and twisted your guts. You would either find your sister alive and well in a state you’d never forget.

“Hey, hey, Frisco!” The other angel yelled. “Yo, chuck, we should visit those other guys at the Mechanics Monument again! They know how to party!”

“Oh, man, I am so there!”

“You’ve visited San Francisco?” You raised a brow.

“We automatons gotta have some fun once in a while, right?” Yours said. “Those Mechanics took us over to the de Young Museum and introduced us to these marble ladies, and see—”

“Alright!” You exclaimed. “Feel free to stop there.”

“Hank!” The other angel, Chuck, laughed. “They’re kids, man.”

“Oh, right. Back to flying.”

They sped up. The snowy mountains fell away soon enough and transformed into farmland and roads, and then the city.

It turned quiet after a while. Thalia muttered to herself. Grover played his pipes quietly, and Zoe pegged a bullseye on ever my Target you passed.

“Hey.”

You looked down, with hesitancy. Percy was looking up.

“Sup?”

You pressed your lips together, thinking. “You think that was really my mom back there?”

He didn’t talk for a few seconds. “Maybe. I mean, I just…I had a feeling. But…”

Percy’s unsureness didn’t put yours off. Because the more you thought about it, the more you had a feeling you were right.

The angels landed on a ferry dock, once in San Francisco. You scared a homeless man, who ran off yelling about metal angels from mars.

Only when it was quiet and still, did you wonder what next?

You looked between your friends, all appearing as stuck as you.

What Percy said next struck you.

“Look, guys,” he said almost hesitantly. “I haven’t mentioned this before, but, uh, halfway down here, I had a dream. I talked to Apollo in it, and he said something about finding this monster.”

“What kind of monster?” Thalia eyeballed him.

“I’m not sure.” Percy shrugged. “He just said it would help us find our way. Nereus, I think he was called.”

“Nereus, eh?” Zoe pulled a disgusted face.

“The old man of the sea,” said Percy.

“You know him?” Asked Thalia.

“My mother was a sea goddess. Yes, I know him. Unfortunately he is very hard to find. Just follow the smell.”

You all strolled across the pier to a charity shop hosting cardboard boxes of free clothes for the homeless outside. You were confused as Zoe stopped outside of it and turned to face you all.

“Trust me,” she said, talking to Percy, who instantly pulled a mistrusting face, mouth curved unhappily. “Put these on.”

She dressed him in too-big pants, a ragged flannel shirt and shoes that made him look like an improvising clown, lost from the circus.

You couldn’t help the laugh that fell from your mouth at the sight of him. Even Grover was holding back a smile. Percy was not by any means impressed.

Zoe stepped back and looked him over, and then nodded, impressed. “A typical male vagrant.”

“Thanks a lot,” he grumbled. “Why am I doing this?”

“I told thee; to blend in.”

Zoe led the way down to the water-front. After a long time of her searching for something, she finally stopped, and turned to Percy. She pointed to a group of homeless guys huddled together with blankets.

“He will be down there somewhere,” she said. “He never veers far from the water. He likes to sun himself during the day.”

“How do I know which one is him?” Asked Percy. You nodded, looking at Zoe.

“Sneak up. Act homeless. You will know who he is. He…he smells different.”

“Great. And once I find him?”

“Grab him. And hold on. He will try anything to be rid of thee. Whatever he does, do not let go. Force him to tell thee about the monster.”

Ah. The monster, which nobody had mentioned to you. Just another punch to the chest.

“We’ve got your back,” said Thalia, reaching out and picking something off of Percy’s new—well, reused—shirt. She gagged. “On second thought, I don’t want your back. But we’ll be rooting for you.”

Percy huffed, looking the least happy you’d ever seen him. He turned to you, and offered a tight-mouthed smile. More of a grimace.

“Any advice?”

“I’ve stopped all that. It doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere good. Just do you.”

The rest of you observed your friend as he wandered down the dock, looking lost and confused. Eventually, Percy left your line of sight, and you found a nice spot on the floor to rest a while.

A ruckus a few yards away caught your attention. You looked at Thalia, who hummed. Then her eyes went wide, and the shouts of anger turned into awe.

“Whoa!”

You turned, mouth agape, as a giant killer whale came burst out of the water and feet into the air. Percy gave you all a little wave, before plunging into the sea.

“Well. At least we know he’s fine.”

It wasn’t long before Percy wrestled the old man to the surface. Thalia tapped your arm. “Let’s go!”

“You got him!” Zoe yelled. The four of you sprinted down to Percy.

“You don’t have to sound so amazed,” he said.

Even from a foot away, the smell of gross seaweed and dried up something filled your nose. You wanted to gag. Nereus groaned. “Oh wonderful, an audience for my humiliation. The normal deal, I suppose? You’ll let me go if I answer your questions.”

“Sure,” you shrugged.

“Only one question per capture!”

Percy’s silence followed with his sigh. “Alright, Nereus. Tell me where to find this terrible monster that could bring an end to the gods. The one Artemis was hunting.”

“Oh, that’s too easy,” Nereus grinned evilly. “He’s right there!” Nereus pointed at the water by Percy’s feet.

“Where?”

“The deal is complete!”

With a plop, he turned into a goldfish and summersaulted into the sea.

“Wait!”

“Stop!” Thalia shoved forward. “What is that?”

“Mooooooo!”

You blinked. Maybe you weren’t insane at all. The serpent-cow swam around in the water, giving Percy the puppy dog eyes.

“Ah,” he grimaced. “Bessie, not now.”

“Moooo!”

“He says his name isn’t Bessie,” Grover said.

“You can understand her…I mean, him?”

Grover nodded. “It’s a very old form of animal language, but he says his name is Ophiotaurus.”

“The what?”

“It means serpent-bull in Greek.” Thalia said. “But what’s it doing here?”

“Moooo!”

“It says Percy is it’s protector.”

You scoffed, playfully. “Percy couldn’t protect a teddy bear.”

“Hey!”

“He’s running from bad people. He says they’re close.”

Thalia’s eyes practically bugged out of her head. “And you somehow forgot to mention this before?”

“Well, yeah.”

“I know this story!” Zoe said suddenly. She snapped her fingers. “From the War of the Titans. My father told me this tale thousands of years ago. This is the beast we are looking for.”

Your gaze dropped to the doe-eyed creature swimming in urgent circles. It mooed sadly. You eyed it sceptically.

“Bessie?” Percy’s tone of voice told you he had the same thought. “But…he’s too cute. He couldn’t destroy the world…”

“This is how we were wrong,” Zoe persuaded. “We had been expecting a great monster of terrible power. But the ophiotaurus can not harm the very way that other creatures do. He must be sacrificed.”

“I don’t think he likes the S-word,” Grover muttered.

Percy knelt, the damp ground around him soaking into his jeans and drying instantly. He reached out a hand, and scratched the creature’s head. “How could anyone hurt him? He’s harmless.”

Zoe nodded. “But there is power in killing innocence. Terrible power. The Fates ordained a prophecy eons ago, when this creature was born. They said that whoever killed the Ophiotaurus and sacrificed its entrails to fire would have the power to destroy the gods.”

“MMMMMM!”

“Um,” Grover said. “Maybe we could avoid talking about entrails, too.”

Thalia stared at the cow serpent with wonder. “The power to destroy the gods . . . how? I mean, what would happen?”

“No one knows,” Zoe said. “The first time, during the Titan war, the Ophiotaurus was in fact slain by a giant ally of the Titans, but thy father, Zeus, sent an eagle to snatch the entrails away before they could be tossed into the fire. It was a close call. Now, after three thousand years, the Ophiotaurus is reborn.”

Thalia sat down on the dock. She stretched out her hand. Bessie went right to her. Thalia placed her hand on his head. Bessie shivered.

“We have to protect him. If Luke gets hold of him…”

“Luke wouldn’t hesitate,” you said. You didn’t know him well, not the way Percy or Thalia did, but you knew that much. And, even if you didn’t, you could sense it. “The power to overthrow Olympus? That’s…that’s huge.”

“Yes.”

A hand clapped down on your shoulder. You pulled away, walking backward into Grover. Your heart thudded painfully.

There, before you, stood Dr. Thorn, eyes glinting menacingly.

“And it is a power you shall unleash.”

oh. my. gods. it’s quite literally been months. and I didn’t even finish this chapter. I just needed to get something out.

I’m so sorry for the absence.

taglist: @bl6o6dy @lilyevanswhore @embersparklz @rottenstyx @rory-cakes @i-am-scared-and-useless-bisexual @marshmallow12435 @lantsovheiress @distinguishedmakerpandapatrol @twsssmlmaa @gayandfairycore @padsfirewhisky @emu281 @charlesswife @jessiegerl @crackerphobic20 @mata0-0mata @jccc1000 @xx-all-purpose-nerd-xx @nothankyou138

[pixeldistractions]

This was Gabby’s first time as the responsible one in a babysitting arrangement, but she was hopeful. She had very fond memories of spending time under her brother’s watch. In the years since her brother moved away, she hadn’t gotten any better at video games, as the boys proved. Felix won every round, and Milo came in second most of the time. But that was fine. Kids liked it when you let them win—or she would let them believe that, anyway.

So they played some games together for an hour, then Gabby ordered the pizza. The boys were fed, entertained, and alive. A job well done, she’d say. 

And these kids were pretty cool. They didn’t have an older sibling like she did, and she felt bad for them. She had sixteen years of vital life wisdom to impart. She’d been through things. Like bullying in seventh grade. Maybe it turned her into a little bit of a brawler, but a girl has to stand up for herself in this cruel world. She won’t stand for petty bitches telling everyone she smells like frogs. She might not always smell like a rose, but she does not smell like frogs. 

These days, Gabby had many passionate interests. Only half of them included boys. Or men, even, lately. Vale Akiyama. Yes, she is his number one fan, even if her parents’ generation has no idea who he is. So call her boy crazy if you will—some would call her just plain crazy, because she’s been especially interested in cryptozoology lately. 

“Crypto-what? Our mom talks about crypto all the time. Isn’t it money?” 

“Not that kind of crypto,” Gabby said. “I said zoology. They’re creatures. The kind you don’t read about in your biology books. Doesn’t mean they’re not real. There’s werewolves in the forests of Cascades State Park.”

“It’s not true, dummy,” Felix teased his brother. “Ha ha, look at your face.”

“What if you should be afraid?” Gabby said. “What if it is true? My brother’s been there. He said he saw things.”

“Like what things?” 

“Growls in the forest, red glowing eyes. Sometimes you turn your head and almost see a flash of movement, fast and furry.”

“Our dad’s been there,” Felix said. “He didn’t see anything like that. He said it was peaceful. He said he was gonna take us.”

(To be fair, Jordan did pick up his fear of death during his solo week in those woods…)

“Maybe it was a close call. Maybe he didn’t know how close he was to becoming werewolf dinner!”

“It’s kind of boring here,” Felix said. “Nothing like that ever happens here.” 

“It wouldn’t. There’s too many people around,” Gabby said, crowing with wisdom. “Cryptids like to stay scarce, make you question your own eyes.” 

Felix smirked at her. “Well, did you ever see one?”

“No. Not yet,” Gabby said. “But I will. And I’ll tell you all about it when I do.”

“I don’t know,” Felix said. “Maybe you’re not so cool. You basically just daydream about unicorns all day and stuff, and you never even saw one. But what did you ever really do?”

“Child,” Gabby scoffed. “When I was your age, my big brother used to take me to the junkyard and show me how to blow shit up. You should have seen what we could do back home in Lakeside Heights. The scrap yards here are kind of lame. Just a ton of broken furniture. But even he’s boring now. He got a job. Now he’s always working and paying stupid bills and taxes and stuff. It’s pretty lame.”

“But you have a car. You could take us?”  

“Felix, Mom said we’re not allowed to go in her car. She might be a bad driver.”

“I’m actually an excellent driver.” 

“What if we walk?” Felix suggested.

“Nah, you might need a quick getaway. But there aren’t any junkyards here anyway. I checked. And I can’t drive you to Washington this weekend. I have school on Monday.”

“Maybe on winter break?”

“It’s closed to traffic for the winter. It’s too cold, too harsh. I’m hardcore, but I’m not stupid.”

“Okay, so spring break then?”

“Mom will never let us,” Milo said. 

“That’s why you ask your dad,” Gabby said.

“But, anyway, I only just met you boys. You might be trouble. How do I know what you’re made of? If you got a scrape or a cut, would you wash it off and patch it up, or go crying to your mommy? Do you have the balls to jump a fence? Could you run if there was a junkyard dog?”

“Duh!” Felix boasted. 

“I think maybe no,” Milo said.

“I have an idea,” Gabby wondered out loud. “There’s this movie... It’ll scare the piss out of you, or it won’t. If you boys can hack it, then we can talk about werewolves on spring break. But only after my brother’s wedding. My mom said if I ruin myself for portraits, she’s gonna murder me.”

Milo’s eyes went wide. “How are you gonna ruin yourself???”

She shrugged. “You know, sometimes things explode. Sometimes there’s fire and you lose all your hair.”

So they put the movie on. The boys ate popcorn and handled the jump scares pretty well, all things considered. Nobody peed their pants.

Or, well, Gabby had to admit she almost did when their mom texted.

Coming home now.

“Oh shit, your mom’s coming home. Oh. double shit. By that, she means she’s here.”

Colette opened the door. 

It was well past ten. After the night Colette had, she hoped the boys would be fast asleep in their beds. She hoped the end to this terrible evening could have been as easy as throwing some money at this girl and taking her own sorry ass to bed. But no. The boys were wide awake and riled up, watching a slasher that must have been at least PG-13, if not worse. They weren’t even ten years old yet. Useless babysitter.

“Go. To. Bed.” 

The boys didn’t need telling twice. 

It took everything in her not to erupt with rage at the child of her only friend standing in front of her. “Ugh, if I didn’t want to make a stink with your mother.”

“But you’re gonna pay me still, right?” Gabby shrugged. “I think you still need to pay me.”

— boxes and squares #5.3: hindsight is a bitch, part 5/10

next -> // 5.3 start // index

Gabby was all about telling urban legends all night, lol!

So, I know the movie I put on for them is zombies and I should have chosen the werewolf movie since it exists, but I took the pictures before the conversation fully materialized, so, please imagine, lol! 

Is this the last we’ll see of Gabby, or are we going werewolf stalking on spring break? 😈

Gabby's stats, because I don't have a bio page for her yet: chief of mischief // erratic, daredevil, goofball, lovebug

I’ve never played a sim I felt would be really into the mischief skill (it’s a base game skill and I’ve been playing this game for ten years!), but it seems fun to try and I think Gabby might be the one to do it. Among other things. I could see Gabby stumbling upon some interesting tangents in her life, or maybe even some of the occult aspects of the game I generally ignore. Are werewolves real? Maybe Gabby will find them some day. 🐺

[seat-safety-switch]

Motorhomes are basically a home with a motor in it. Although this definition also covers my home (which has several motors inside it,) we’ll elide that particular information and move on to the thrust of my story. A heavily-used motorhome, especially one that’s been sitting out in a farmer’s field for years, is cheap.

There’s a lot of reasons for this, the primary one being that they quickly become the primary residence of field mice. Although the Disney corporation will tell you that mice are cheerful and fun friends, this is at best a lie of omission. What mice actually do is pee and poop all over everything, chew the insulation off of wires, and occasionally crawl inside part of the climate control system and die. Like my uncle used to say at his used car dealership, if you find a dead critter in this one, we’ll take ten percent off.

I know what you’re saying: even with a discount, how can it be worthwhile if you have to tear out all the “home” part and replace it with new upholstery, new carpet, and new walls? The answer is the “motor” part. Motorhomes are often equipped with enormous, lazy engines, designed to rack up the miles with little or no maintenance. Those engines will outlive the owners’ disinterest in ever going anywhere. As long as you’re willing to dispose of the wrapper it came in, you can have a pretty beefy V8 for surprisingly few pennies (before your trip to the local speed shop to pick up several hundred dollars of Chinese camshafts and nitrous oxide kits.)

Of course, I did mention the big problem there: disposing of it. Just how do you get rid of a motorhome? Towing them is expensive, so you should make your best effort at getting it running and drive it to its final destination. Wherever you take it needs to be cool with you sawzalling the engine out of the chassis and taking off with it in the back of a pickup truck. Most junkyards are wise to your bullshit, and won’t accept a vehicle that’s ninety percent wood and mouse piss by volume.

The answer, naturally, is just to drive it right back to a farmer’s field. Maybe find one with a bunch of other RVs already there, and tuck it into the pack. It might be years until they find out about it, and today’s battery-powered sawzalls are both extremely quiet and very easy to return to Home Depot for a refund when you’re done. It’s called “recycling,” and it’s very good for the planet.

[zmediaoutlet]

Straight shot down I-29, Sioux Falls to Carthage. Should be about seven hours unless the girls have to stop and pee every fifty miles. “That means you, too,” Dean says. Sam shoves his shoulder but just enough so Dean sways, grinning, and Sam rolls his eyes and settles back against the cab, stretching his legs out long on the truck bed. He hands the bottle back over to Dean, too, so he’s not that annoyed. Bodes well for Dean’s chances, later.

Freezing out. Dean’s wishing they’d brought out a blanket for more than one reason. One of those nights where there are about a billion stars overhead, the moon just a tiny sickle-slice low in the sky, and Bobby’s place out far enough from town that there’s nothing to get in the way of the view. He tips his head back against the truck’s window, blows out so it purls foggy over their heads. A shooting star, streaking fast across the east. They both snort.

Dean takes a drink off the bottle and hands it back to Sam, and Sam takes it but doesn’t drink, only sets it on top of his thigh. Dean lets his knees spread, knocks one into Sam’s. Wants to pull Sam down to the cold metal and crawl over him and actually get to some good ol’ defiance of looming death, but on the other hand if he does that then he doesn’t get to look forward to it, anymore. He licks the inside of his cheek, thinking it through. Thinking also that he’s kinda tipsy. Won’t be the first time he’s driven hungover to almost certain tragedy. Maybe it’ll be the last but he’s feeling optimistic, kind of. Sort of. Against the cripplingly awful odds.

“You know,” Sam says, “Carthage is where Hannibal was from.”

Dean squints at the stars. “The f-f-f-fava beans and chianti?”

Sam huffs, lets his shoulder sink down against Dean’s. Warm all the way along his side. “The general. Led that doomed march on Rome. Drove his elephants over the Alps. Half the army died.”

Elephants in the snow. Dean pictures it. Soldiers cutting out pieces of flesh to try to keep going. Stumbling, freezing. Leaving their friends behind. He turns his head and finds Sam looking not at the stars but at his hands. Only one of the junkyard lights on, back by the house, so Dean’s really only got the rime of gold on his dumb swoopy nose and his crumpled forehead to go on. “Messed up,” he says, light. “Should’ve used snowmobiles. Better turning radius than elephants, for one thing.”

Sam doesn’t laugh. “How are we gonna win,” he says, finally.

Like Dean hasn’t been thinking the same thing, on a terrified constant loop screaming from his cramped guts to his hindbrain. He’d thought Hell was bad. Even the word crawls in this frozen awful way up his throat and makes him want to just lay down, give up. Apocalypse. And worse, though the idea of worse than that should be impossible, that the hands meant to wreak it, that are allegedly destined to force their way into cracks in the earth and just tear the whole thing to jagged bleeding pieces, are right here beside him, holding that shitty plastic bottle of drugstore hooch.

Dean reaches over, takes it. Sam lets him. Dean takes a big gulp that burns going down, and then sets the bottle tucked into the back corner of the truck bed where hopefully they won’t knock it over, and then takes Sam by one wrist and pulls and Sam—resists, for a second that makes all the horror in Dean leap up straight to the surface in his skin—before he lets Dean bring him in, sliding down together on the slick cold metal, Sam’s hand sliding up his side under his jacket and shirt and shirt and landing freezing somewhere around his ribs, this light hold that makes Dean shiver all over. Dean nudges his nose under Sam’s jaw, breathes there in that way he’s known for too long makes Sam shiver, too. Sam does, and presses his closed mouth to Dean’s temple. They’re going to fuck, one way or another, because this is a last night on earth unlike any other they’ve had—and Dean can feel it already, getting a wet hand around Sam’s cock and maybe sucking it, getting Sam to grab his head in those huge hands and getting that taste heavy under his tongue and that ache in his jaw that he’s always not-so-secretly liked, from how he’ll stretch after and Sam will smile at him, and he’ll say shut up and Sam won’t say anything, and how that’s just—maybe never going to happen again, if they screw this up. If tomorrow goes how it could so, so easily go. If Lucifer—

Sam’s hand slides over his stomach, down. “I want,” he says, and doesn’t specify. Dean gets it. Wants a honeymoon suite and a case of bourbon and a week to sink into every single inch of his brother. Sam’s hand cups his whole crotch, squeezes, and Dean pushes into it, balls dumbly waking and his dick swelling, stupid and ignorant of the circumstances. “I—”

“Yeah,” Dean says, to everything. He pushes Sam down to his back and rises over him, Sam’s hands sliding urgent to his hips, his body blocking Sam from the cold stars.

[naturepointstheway]

Flufftober2024, Day 5, Alt Prompt 4: "I hate it." - "No you don't." (Mungojerrie and Misto friendship, based on 1998!Misto)

Mistoffelees will never, ever admit that he would ever go along with Mungojerrie, not even to himself.

Based on Jacob Brent's 1998 Mistoffelees, inspired heavily by how he had described Misto as a "little rascal". Because he's 1000% correct on that front.

@flufftober

---

Mistoffelees would absolutely deny it, to the highest of heavens, and the lowest of damned hells, that he’d ever hid half of the cutlery in his humans’ household in the strangest places he could think of, from the toolbox in the garage, to the sewing kit in one of the bedrooms, and even in one of the fine statues standing guard over one of the flowerbeds (why they had a statue of a pollicle, he’d never understand). 

No, no, as a matter of fact, Magical Mister Mistoffelees himself?

On the contrary, he was one of the most well-behaved magical cats you could ever find, with no intent on causing mischief. He would deny to the highest of heavens and back and then some that he would ever close, then open, his eyes in the dark to jumpscare his humans or an unsuspecting Tugger, using his magic to make his eyes glow so bright as to cut through the night. 

And consent to ever partaking in Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer’s antics? Certainly not!

He absolutely never showed Mungojerrie how to pry open a purse’s zipper with a claw, making sure not to catch it (he had done that once and it hurt for days), and then poke his head inside just so, pulling whiskers into the dark space of the bag, and feel around for loose coins. 

“There, you feel that?” Mistoffelees whispered to Mungojerrie as he stepped aside to let the other cat have a go. 

Mungojerrie grinned and immediately stuffed his whole head ungainly into the purse, Mistoffelees rolling his eyes at how unsubtle the ginger cat was about this whole thing. 

“It’s a cool, coppery kind of feel,” Mistoffelees explained. “They have a round shape with the taste of old monarchies.” 

Mungojerrie pulled his head out of the bag, casting a confused gaze over the Tuxedo. 

“What do old monarchies taste like?” 

“Old monarchies,” Mistoffelees said, explaining nothing. 

“Ah, I see!” Mungojerrie hummed a loud note, nodding with great exaggeration, before stuffing his head again in the bag, ears pulled back flat against his skull. “Ooh, my whiskers feel something cold and round!” 

“That’ll be a loose coin. Just grab it with your mouth.” 

A distinct little clink of teeth on metal met Mistoffelees’ ears, and Mungojerrie’s head popped back out, a large fifty cent coin clamped in his teeth. He spat it out near Mistoffelees’ front paws. 

“There’ll be more in there, right?” Mungojerrie asked, eyes gleaming with delight. 

“Take a look back inside.” 

“Ooh!” 

Mungojerrie again stuffed his head inside the purse, moving his head around with far more force and dramatics than Mistoffelees thought the whole thing ought to have needed. When the orange tomcat extracted his head out again, his mouth was full with at least three coins all held in there, before being spat out unceremoniously at Mistoffelees’ paws. 

“I reckon that’s all of them! What now?” 

“Hide them.” 

“Where?” Mungojerrie spun around on the spot, like he was looking for the best hiding places. 

“Not in here.” 

“Why not?” 

“You need to be mysterious.” 

Mungojerrie shoved him with a shit-eating grin. “Said the most mysterious cat in the junkyard.” 

“Shut up, Mungo,” Mistoffelees said with an exaggerated eyeroll. “Now grab some, and follow me.” 

“Grab some what?” Munojerrie asked, before it clicked a second later, glancing down at the coins. “Oh, yeah! The coins!” 

Both cats grabbed their share of coins, holding them in their mouths, Mistoffelees leading the way to the humans’ bathroom, where he immediately jumped up onto the railing of the shower, perching a coin with expert precision so that it would not fall at all. 

“Now, so long as I don’t touch it, it won’t fall on its side.” 

“Why up there though?” Mungojerrie asked, watching the cat jump back down on the floor, quickly licking a paw. 

“It baffles the humans, that’s why.” 

“Ooh! It’s a game, isn’t it?” 

Mistoffelees nodded. “Just like a game. Now tell me where we should leave another coin.” 

Mungojerrie made a dash straight for the toilet seat, plopping a coin right into the bowl before jumping back down. 

“I’ve drank from toilets before, it’s not that bad.” 

Dear Everlasting Cat, please rid my brain of this knowledge. 

The Everlasting Cat, alas, did not, and Mistoffelees found himself still saddled with this undesired confession from Mungojerrie. 

“Okay, anywhere else?” 

Mistoffelees waved a dismissive paw at the bathroom and sauntered out, tail high and whiskers spread wide. He didn’t have to turn either ears back to hear Mungojerrie trotting after him, appearing a second later right at his side, bumping into him again in that way he did when especially excited to be sharing mischief with someone. 

“Can you not?” Mistoffelees asked, pointedly shifting to the side so that Mungojerrie couldn’t touch him. 

“Sorry!” 

“Thanks.” Mistoffelees stopped before the partially open doors of the wardrobe in the hallway, where the humans liked to keep their many shoes and best outfits for special occasions. “Right, see this here?” 

“Mm-hm!” 

“Deposit a coin in their shoes. They like that for some reason. Think it’s lucky.” 

“I’d think I was lucky too if I found a coin in my shoe.” Mungojerrie made a face. “Not that I’d ever wear shoes. I don’t get humans sometimes.” 

“They have frail feet,” Mistoffelees explained before depositing a coin in a black shoe with a high heel that smelled of freshly lathered leather. “No paw pads, unlike us.” 

“How do they live?” 

“Very differently to us.” 

“No, I know, I mean…” Mungojerrie’s voice trailed off and he shrugged. “Okay, which shoe?” 

“Any you so desire.” 

Mungojerrie contorted his face into an expression of what he apparently assumed to be one of great concentration, but it just looked more comical than anything to Mistoffelees (who did not giggle a little to himself at the sight, absolutely not.) He sniffed at each shoe, batting them aside before settling for slipping a coin into the toe of a red slipper with white wool trimmings. 

“Excellent choice,” Mistoffelees approved. “Now we have one coin left each.” 

“Okay! Where to next?” 

“Next is the back verandah.”

With that, Mistoffelees jerked his head in the direction of the verandah and went off at a trot, Mungojerrie following directly behind him, getting stuck part way through the cat flap, unlike the tiny Mistoffelees who simply eased through it with no effort whatsoever. Mistoffelees licked his paws patiently as he waited for Mungojerrie to squeeze his chunkier body through the cat flap, groaning and making dramatic noises until with a plop he finally fell right through it. 

“Finally!” Mungojerrie panted, shaking himself off. “They really should make these flaps bigger!” He cast Mistoffelees an odd look. “Wait, can’t you open doors with your magic?” 

“I can,” Mistoffelees confirmed. “It was just more entertaining this way.” 

“For you.” 

Mistoffelees laughed, even as he ambled away to a table, sniffing around before gagging and recoiling at the smell of spent cigarettes. 

Why? Why humans? Why are you like this? 

He gestured at Mungojerrie to jump up on the table. 

“Ew!” Mungojerrie shuddered, gagging. “I’m not going up there.” 

“Ah, guess you hate that smell too.” 

“You wanted me to do it instead, didn’t you? I hate that smell as much as you do.” 

“Know what,” Mistoffelees said, flicking a paw so his coin levitated up high and over the table. “Magic works.” 

A satisfying clink of metal on metal told them that Mistoffelees’ last coin had been successfully deposited in the stinky ashtray. 

“Perfect,” Mistoffelees said with a satisfied air. “Now for your coin, Mungo.” 

Mistoffelees thought hard, where a human would not expect to find a coin, and wonder how on Earth it got there. He recalled that there was a corner of the verandah where they left curious tools that looked like it might have been for the garden or for building, except there was a plastic yellow helmet, a compass, and what looked like a tiny magnifying glass that could easily be held in a human’s palm. 

“Their helmet,” Mistoffelees again led the way, jumping up onto the bench where the item of interest was resting. “Put the coin right in there.” 

Mungojerrie jumped up to join the black cat on the bench, and plonked the coin right into the helmet, where it rattled for a few seconds before coming to a rest. Mungojerrie grinned, now offering a high five to Mistoffelees, but the latter simply jumped back down to the ground, pausing to look up at Mungojerrie expectantly. 

Mistoffelees sat down as Mungojerrie tumbled ungainly to the ground again next to him. Mungojerrie held out a hand as though offering a high five, but Mistoffelees dutifully kept all four paws firmly on the ground. 

“What, no high five?” Mungojerrie’s bottom lip trembled like he was about to cry. “For the cutest cat you know?” 

That would be me, thank you. 

“Is that so?” Mistoffelees asked airily. 

“What, you don’t think this face is cute?” 

“Not as cute as mine.” 

Mungojerrie winked, laughed a little, reaching out as though to pinch one of Mistoffelees’ cheeks, the latter again drawing himself out of reach. 

“Love when you join me and Rumpleteazer, you know. If Munk could see you now!” 

Mungojerrie guffawed like this was the most hilarious scenario in the world It probably was to Mungojerrie, if not to the mildly unimpressed Mistoffelees. 

“I hate it,” Mistoffelees deadpanned. 

Mungojerrie winked at him, his grin huge. “No you don’t.” 

Sure I do. 

“No, you don’t,” Mistoffelees corrected. 

“Sooo…” Mungojerrie sing-songed, getting up to chase his tail. “Next on the agenda, my fellow cat in crime?” 

And here we go again. 

Mistoffelees affected the deepest sigh he could, pretending to be absolutely the most put-upon cat in all the world. 

“Next? You ever hide forks in the garden?” 

“Why?” 

“To mess with the humans, Mungo.” 

“You love this, Misto.” 

“No I don’t.” 

“Yeah. Yeah you do. You’re a big criminal cat like me.” 

“If you say so.” Mistoffelees quickly itched at an ear before standing up and striding away to the back door. “Okay, let’s go find those forks.” 

I definitely hate every last second of this. Definitely. 

[tanked-up]

Fake Dating + Only one bed trope :)

(I know it’s long, but it’s worth it I promise - pt1)

—————————

Ghost: Remind me again why we’re doing this, capt’n?

Price: Just grab the intel with Soap and head back.

Ghost: Okay… but a ball?!

Soap appears all dressed up: Have you not been to a ball?

Ghost: Do I look like a man who’s been to one of those fancy parties, Johnny?

Soap: Eh, anyways… ye’ like it?

Ghost: Like what

Soap: My outfit!

Ghost: Oh. Well, uhh… it’s agreeable.

Soap: Ye’ kidding, LT

Price: Alright boys, enough with the chit chat. Get on goin

Ghost sighs: Alright, come on-

Soap: Wait, are you going like that?

Ghost: What’s wrong with this

Soap: It’s not formal, at all

Ghost: I have another change of clothes, I’ll wear them when we arrive to a hotel.

Soap: Wait- We’re staying at a hotel!?

Price: Where’d you think you’d be staying, Soap? Plus, change clothes, you will be arriving late and probably won’t have time to go to the first event of the party.

Soap: Alright, capt’n

Price: Also! I forgot to tell you both. Now, I know this might cause a bit of… tension, or anger between the two of you…

Ghost: Great, the surprises keep on comin

Soap: Just listen.

Price: Okay, so there’s only one bed.

Ghost: Come again.

Soap: Hm?

Price: You heard me fellas. Now get going

(Price drags them both out of the room)

Soap: Wait but-

Ghost: I’m gonna get ya for this, capt’n

——————————————————————

(In the limousine which Price had to rent as a disguise of course)

Driver: Alright boys, bit of a change in route.

Soap: What do you mean?

Driver: Where heading to the hotel first.

Soap whispers to Ghost: Enough time for ye’ to change, LT. No excuses now

Ghost: Fuckin hell, Johnny.

Soap: Also… about the bed. I can sleep on the floor-

Ghost: You’re sleeping on the bed, I’ll sleep on the floor.

Soap: No! Ye’ know your trouble for sleeping, the beds the best opt-

Ghost: Johnny. Don’t be a pain in my ars and give me a headache. Your sleeping on the bed, and that is final.

(They both stay quiet for the rest of the trip to the hotel)

——————————————————————

(2 hours pass)

Driver: Alright, we’re here.

Ghost: Good

Driver: Let me help you with the- Is he asleep?

Ghost: Oh, seems like it

Driver: Want me to wake him-

Ghost: Don’t bother.

Drive: You know this is a rental, right. I don’t have all night-

Ghost: Don’t. Bother.

Drive: Okay then

———————————————————————-

(In the room)

Soap: Sorry for falling asleep earlier-

Ghost: It’s okay.

Soap: Man it’s cold

Ghost: What is this.

Soap: Ye’ve got to be kiddin me.

Ghost: You heard Price, right?

Soap: Yeah! He specifically said “Hotel”

Ghost: Son of a bitch

Soap: This is a junkyard. Maybe we’re in the wrong place?

Ghost: I’m too tired to argue, let’s just get some sleep.

Soap: Whatever ye’ say…

Soap: Why’s there’s a bunch of Newspaper on the floor?

Ghost: Beats me. I’ll find someplace comfortable-

Soap: LT.

Ghost: Soap, no

Soap: It’s just for tonight!

Ghost: No! You take the bed, it’s more comfortable

Soap: But, then you’ll be uncomfortable.

Ghost sighs: I don’t care, besides, I probably won’t even sleep.

Soap: Fine- You heard that…

Ghost: It sounded like a squeak…

Soap: If there’s a mice, I will literally burn the whole place down, I’m not kidding, LT

Ghost: I’ll help ya

—————————————————————————

(3:30 am)

Soap: Are ye’ awake?

Ghost: Hm?

Soap: Are ye’ okay and comfortable?

Ghost: Since when the carring?

Soap: C’mon, LT… this beds big enough for both of us.

Ghost: Johnny, I said- Oh Shit

Soap: What?!

Ghost: Fuckin splinter

Soap: That’s it, I’m draggin you

Ghost: Soap- no

Soap: Fine, then I’ll sleep on the floor as well.

Ghost: You’re pissing me off, Johnny

Soap: Good

(Soap proceeds to lay besides Ghost, on the wooden floor)

Soap: This floor creaks a lot.

Ghost: Mhm, why can’t you just let me be on the floor.

Soap sighs: I feel, bad. Ghost

Ghost: Why bad?

Soap: It’s just… that you’ve done so much for me, and your always there besides me, and then there’s me always screwing stuff up and dragging ye’ with me-

Ghost: Johnny-

Soap: Ye’ know I’m right, LT… and now you here on the floor, it’s just- seems wrong. You’re always giving me the nice things and you end up with the worse.

Ghost: I’m used to it-

Soap: It’s not that! See, that’s exactly why I wanna change that. I need you to feel loved, and appreciated…

Ghost scoffs: Loved is the last thing someone can gift me, Johnny

Soap: You don’t seem too tough to love…

Ghost: Is that so?

Soap: What I meant was-

Ghost: No no, you’re just the first person to ever say that to me…

Soap: Oh… well, I- I’m happy?

(Ghost let’s out a small chuckle)

Soap: Did I just make ye’ laugh…?

Ghost: Maybe

Soap: Does that mean there’s a heart capable of loving, inside ye’ Ghostie…?

Ghost: Go to sleep, Johnny

Soap: With pleasure.

[goodlucktai]

If you're taking prompts and like this one might I request Sabo's pov on 'if I go I'm going on fire?'

That fic absolutely floored me it was so incredibly good. I just had to lie there and process it. But I can't stop thinking about how afraid Sabo must be that Ace will be angry but it would never stop him from going to try to help Ace, who doesn't even know he's not the last of the three...regardless if you want to write this I just had to tell you how much I loved it!

quite the keeper of you

read on ao3

x

When Sabo was fished up out of the sea as a child, all he had to his name were the clothes on his back and an ancient monocular telescope tucked safely away in his inner coat pocket. And that was all he had. And when he woke up initially, he was half out of his mind, hysterical, begging not to go back to wherever he’d come from. So for all he knew, he wasn’t leaving anything worthwhile behind. 

It’s a sick joke. He’s waiting for someone to pull the curtain back and laugh, to let him in on it. 

“You’re my brother!” Straw Hat screams, claiming Portgas D. Ace for the whole world to hear, plunging headlong into a war like it didn’t make sense for him to be anywhere else. The broadcast is shaky, grainy, but Sabo can still see the way Fire Fist’s face crumples in terror and anger and something specific to older siblings—something Sabo’s heart recognizes in that split-second.

Did you know? If you share a cup of sake, that makes you—

Sabo stands frozen, his brain on fire, the rest of his body encased in ice. Images were crowding forward; a rainforest with rich, colorful foliage and giant beasts, a bandit hut that was always waiting for them when they decided to give into the elements and slink inside for the night, a junkyard they picked through for treasures, though it took forever nowadays, because one of them always had to look after the little crybaby and make sure he didn’t drag something stupid home. 

A kingdom square, unkind faces looking down on them. A treehouse where they could see for miles. A tiny body crawling under his blanket during a storm, and the automatic way Sabo put his arm around them, mumbling without waking up all the way, “This is the last time, Lu.”

For a moment, in the footage, it looks like they’ll get away. They’re running to the wharf, backed on all sides by allies, and Sabo finds himself holding his breath. Straw Hat is beginning to flag, but Fire Fist has a firm hand wrapped around his arm, is pulling him resolutely towards the sea. 

Then for some reason, he stops. He whirls to face Akainu, face distended in a snarl. 

No, no, no, you idiot, Sabo thinks with a fury that nearly blinds him. What are you doing, keep running, freedom is right behind you! 

You idiot, come on!

When there’s an enemy in front of me, I won’t run. 

When it happens, Ace is seconds too slow to stop it, an arm’s length away, his face the picture of horror. All around Sabo, the air goes out of the room with an audible sound, everyone sucking in a short, pained breath. 

“Oh, no,” Koala whispers, putting her hand on his wrist. “Sabo, I know you really liked him. I’m sorry.”

Her sympathy is genuine and meaningful—she liked that rookie pirate, too. It’s impossible not to like him. His devil-may-care, take-no-shit attitude, how daring and reckless and joyful he was as he threw himself into each new corner of the world. Sabo always found himself gravitating towards Straw Hat’s Wanted posters the same way he did Fire Fist’s. He always lingered to look at their faces an extra second. He never knew why.

And now Straw Hat is—

This means that from now on, the three of us will always be—

The broadcast starts to shake. The transponder snail is curling and shriveling away from what must be an intense heat. A Devil Fruit awakens on Marineford, broadcast to the world, as Fire Fist Ace lights up like a supernova and cremates everything in front of him. The man who killed his brother dies in seconds. His own allies are pushed far away, back and back and back. No one is able to reach him. 

And he’s screaming. When the transmission ends abruptly, Sabo can still hear him screaming. 

He’s weak, and a crybaby, but he’s still our little brother. Look after him for me. 

##

When Sabo boards the Moby Dick, he’s alone. He sailed in a straight line from Baltigo to intercept the Whitebeards without waiting for approval or permission from anyone. He didn’t even requisition the cutter, he just took it.

Less than two weeks after the Summit War, it’s a grave-faced group that greets him on the ship. Sabo doesn’t see the gargantuan figure of their captain abovedeck, so he casts around reflexively with observation haki and deduces that he must be resting in his quarters. 

“What business does a Revolutionary have here?” Marco the Phoenix asks, with as much veiled threat as Sabo expected, though decidedly less than he deserves. 

“Fire Fist,” Sabo says. All around him, hackles go up. “I’m here to speak with him.”

“He’s not exactly seeing visitors at the moment,” Marco grits out. 

“He’ll see me,” Sabo replies, as steady and solid as a rock face that the ocean crashes against. He speaks as if his hands aren’t shaking, as if there isn’t a pit in his stomach that it’s hard to breathe around, as if he feels anything else but cold.

It takes four minutes for Portgas D. Ace to appear. He walks like a puppet, something recently brought to life that is still figuring out its autonomy. His eyes are dark and endless and if there’s a spark left in them at all, Sabo can’t see it from where he’s standing. Ace turns his head and picks Sabo from the crowd as the outlier remarkably fast, hardly needing haki to do it. 

It takes four seconds for confusion to surface through the apathy, hints of it touching Ace’s face; the narrowing of his eyes, the downward turn of his mouth. And then it’s six seconds after that for understanding to set in, a swift river rush of it, followed by a tiny little silverfish dart of wonder. And then grief and rage trample over everything else, hand-in-hand. 

Ace is on top of him an instant later. It’s a full-body tackle, and they go rolling across the deck in the type of knockdown, drag-out brawl that Sabo only just remembers from another life. It was like learning how to swim by jumping in the deep end—the wild boy from the forest had taught Sabo how to fight as if his life was on the line. They skipped things like how to tuck in your elbows and untuck your thumbs. Ace’s lessons involved finding the soft underbelly of your opponent and digging into it with tooth and nail. 

The accident at sea that stole his memories away took those lessons, too, but his body remembered them. And while formal training with the Army was much different than wrestling with his brother in the woods, Sabo always had a bit of a nasty streak his teachers despaired over.

“You don’t have to bite,” he remembers Hack saying with measured patience. “This is a class, not life-or-death.”

Of course it is, Sabo had found himself on the verge of snapping. If I don’t fight for my life, someone else will take it. If we don’t fight for each other, no one else will. 

But he didn’t know where the thought had come from. And he was discomfited by the way his instructors were watching him, and the way Koala stared at him, at the smear of blood left on the corner of his mouth, like she suddenly saw something in his face that she recognized in herself. So he didn’t say anything at all.

Now he knows. Ace showed him how to protect himself in a brutal, bloody, final way, because Ace loved him enough to want him to exist at any cost. Live, those lessons taught him. Survive. 

Voices cry out and feet stamp around like people are trying to get close enough to tear them apart—but Ace’s fire shoves his crewmates back, a wall of snapping, snarling teeth that towers above Sabo from all sides. 

It licks against him without burning. Ace’s hands are another story. He’s hitting to hurt.

Sabo absorbs every blow, and even when his face is tender and swelling and his lip is bleeding, it still doesn’t feel like enough. 

Ace clutches the front of his waistcoat and hauls him half upright, expression twisted into something bleak and hateful. It’s the way he looked at Sabo when they were children and still strangers to each other. The first time they were strangers to each other.

“If you were going to come back from the dead, it should have been for him,” Ace snarls. “What the fuck are you doing here? What’s the fucking point now?”

I should have been there is on the tip of Sabo’s tongue, but it seems a waste of breath to say something everyone already knows. I’m sorry surfaces next, is the obvious right thing, but what he actually says is, “I had to come.”

His voice is just barely more than a whisper. Ace’s face only screws up more. 

Ten years ago, it would have gone without saying. Maybe they wouldn’t have needed to speak at all. The only person in the world who really understood Sabo, who could look him in the eye and practically read his mind, was his best friend. His twin brother. 

But now he’s staring at Sabo like he’s never seen any creature like him before. 

“I had to,” Sabo chokes out. “Ace, I had to.”

Even if you hate me, he doesn’t say. You’re my brother. I’ll always come for you. 

Ace drops him. Sabo’s head hits the deck with a solid knock, his brain ringing inside his skull like a gong. He’s still waiting for his double vision to clear when Ace lays down next to him. Their shoulders are touching, and even when Sabo’s starts to shake with the force of his sobbing, Ace stays pressed against his side. 

Their shoulders are touching, and the fire, when it finally closes in, still doesn’t burn. 

##

“I’m stepping down,” Ace says suddenly. “From the Whitebeards.”

Sabo rolls his head to the side to look at him. Ace goes on staring up at the sky and doesn’t look back. They’re still sprawled on the deck. Ace’s crewmates have been giving the brothers a wide berth since they stopped seemingly trying to kill each other but a wary few of them are still lingering nearby. If they’re close enough to overhear, they don’t give any indication. 

“The Straw Hats,” Ace says, “Luffy’s people. They’re monsters, like us. They love the way monsters love. They’re gonna drag as much of the World Government down to hell with them as they can. I’m going, too.”

He lifts his hand, holding it out above him. It ignites, merry orange flames crackling from his skin, sending shadows flickering across his blank face. Then all the color bleeds away until it’s a ghostly thing, shock white with hints of blue, and the packed heat becomes searing and uncomfortable. It superheats the air like a flash fire; Sabo can feel it in his lungs, but he doesn’t move away. 

Luffy burned. His last breath was agony, choked with smoke. There isn’t a force on this planet that could hurt Sabo as much as knowing that. If the fire in Ace’s hand leaped over and caught him and he went up like rice paper, it wouldn’t even come close. 

“Don’t want my name attached to Pops anymore,” Ace goes on. “Don’t want him claiming the consequences for my choices this time.”

Sabo asks, “What did he say?”

“Called me a stupid kid,” Ace recounts like it’s something that happened to someone else. “Said I could go as far away as I wanted for as long as I wanted and my family would be still waiting for me when I decided to come back home.”

There’s a quirk at the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile. It’s some distant cousin of wry humor but not the real thing. Sabo gets the joke—“come back home.” As if that’s a place that exists anymore. 

“I told my boss the same thing,” he offers, “more or less.”

His conversation with Dragon was less a conversation and more the total destruction of the communications room. Sabo doesn’t remember all of it. He does remember the rawness of his throat, the leftover ache of screaming, “Why weren’t you there? Why weren’t we there?” and the splinters in his hands from the broken furniture he’d hurled at the walls. 

“I’m on sabbatical,” Sabo says mildly.

Ace finally turns to look at him. He’s different from Sabo’s recovered memories of him. He’s different from his Wanted posters, even. Gone is that proud, angry little boy, and that devilishly grinning pirate. He was a big brother before he was anything else, and now he isn’t that anymore. It’s carved a hole into him, scooping out the golden, shining parts that it took years to cultivate. All that’s left is the burnt remains of something once wild and beautiful. 

He could be all those things again, Sabo thinks. If he tried. If he leaned on the support and love of his crew. If he let himself hurt and then let himself heal. If Sabo were a better person, he would make Ace try. 

But he isn’t. Sabo is burnt remains, too. 

“Pops told Luffy’s monsters it was suicide,” Ace says. “He says there’s no way we can accomplish what we want to do. He doesn’t get it.”

“No,” Sabo agrees, not unkindly. “But he will.”

Life is a series of lessons. 

Sabo taught his brothers how to steal, how to be cunning—how to slip through High Town in their ratty shoes and dirty clothes like they were invisible, the way he learned to maneuver the mansion his parents lived in. Ace taught them how to fight bigger, stronger people—how to go for the soft, unguarded places, how to dig in with your teeth until you won. 

Luffy taught them, too. Every single day. How to be silly. How to laugh at themselves. How to face the day like it was an adventure instead of a challenge. How to pry open the guarded cages of their hearts so that it became possible for other people to sneak in there down the road. How to dream huge, impossible dreams, and go on dreaming them even when no one believed in you but you. 

This, their stubborn little brother showed them, day after day after day, grin stretching beneath a straw hat that Sabo would never get to watch him grow into, hands always open and reaching for them, is what you fight for. 

And the Marines thought they had any right to touch him. To take him. To drive a fist through the heart of the one purely good thing in this world. The audacity leaves Sabo breathless. 

“There are battles we have to lose,” Dragon had said, sitting in the middle of a ruined room like he’d been chiseled from stone, the beginnings of a terrible, pitch-black storm in his eyes, “in order to win the war.”

But there was no such thing as winning now. Not for Sabo, or Ace, or the Straw Hats. There was only taking as many of those people down as they possibly could, and making it bloody, and making it brutal, and leaving behind something that it would be impossible to ever forget. Something historians would discuss only in whispers for the next hundred years. 

They’ll remember him, Sabo thinks, eyes roaming away from Ace, back towards the sky. Maybe there are stars up there tonight, maybe the moon is full and beautiful. All he sees is the blackness in between, the empty space. We’ll make them remember. We’ll teach them what it means to do what they’ve done. 

And then they would finally see their little brother again, and they would tell him all about it. 

[chebyshevptera]

How do you imagine a kind of Skybound but in a timeline where the Jay main ship is Plasma?

i can’t imagine that it’s that different !

i probably need to rewatch skybound, but i think it’s pretty easy to separate the romance from the season if you just tweak some stuff . obviously it doesn’t erase the fact that it IS about romance, but you know

ramble under cut : )

instead of jay’s arc revolving around his feelings for nya, i think it would just be about him feeling insecure and doubtful in himself . his internal troubles are very easy to note if you pay even the smallest bit of attention to him and i doubt nadakhan would have any difficulty exploiting them . his first wish could easily still result in him being led to the truth about his birth parents because he could still wish that he wasn’t poor. he could still wish that he wasn’t born in a junkyard, because that is essentially one of jay’s biggest insecurities

i like to imagine that his “i wish that I wasn’t alone with you!” wish would summon kai instead of nya , for the romantic drama of course <3 but it wouldn’t make much of a difference, and i think it would still lead to kai being captured first , especially since nadakhan can tell jay is in love with kai . kick him to his knees from the start, and then he won’t put up as much of a fight

nadakhan would still be after nya because she looks like delara, but instead of jay being in love with nya and constantly talking about how she “isn’t into either of them”, he would just be defending nya . sticking up for her like he did with dareth, attempting to help her . this would probably drop the misogynistic subplot with jay taking his father’s advice, but he’d still be a lying punk because that’s just who jay is .

the ending, i think, would still be the same too . nya being desperate for her independence is not something exclusive to her romance with jay, so if jay had tried to be overbearing and help her at the start, i still think she wouldn’t have taken his hand. jay likely wouldn’t have said “it’s okay, we’re just having our first fight”. rather, something more platonic but nonetheless triggering to nya , albeit unintentionally.

i can’t reaaaally figure out what it is, but you know…

thus, when she dies, jay feels guilty because it is all his fault . he’s the one who caused it, and he would be distraught over that fact. he would likely wish for nya to take his hand not out of any romantic implications, but because he wants things to go back to the way they were, before he ruined everything

i would sprinkle in a few plasma moments here and there though <3 jay getting flustered and panicky whenever kai finds his father’s estate, kai being worried about jay when they all finally get out of the djinn blade and pulling him aside to ask what happened to him, yada yada

i’m sorry if this wasn’t the response you were expecting ! these are just my thoughts : ) this is a really cool ask and i had a lot of fun thinking about it though so tysm anon! sending you lots of fruit ! ❤️💙

[wordarttmn]

Omori Observations 6

And let’s start one of the game’s most musically dense areas!

Peçac

I can play cards again!

Dot eyes Kel

let’s follow the bloody footprints that didn’t use to be here

Man i wish

Space Road 1979 is very atmospheric and has hints of white space. Much like a place by a lake did.

Crossed the snake but didn’t succeed in talking to him

See In Your Fantasy is not really an otherworld track, but serves as a hint of what’s to come.

Sugar Star Planetarium feels like it never pauses, maybe because of this 6:4 rhythm. It feels like it never takes a breath. Like Hero might feel right now.

Omori found Kel’s joke funny for sure

Biganòs

I like the direction birds

Chelle is blocking that direction for no reason whatsoever

I’m IRL in a place that stinks (near paper factory i think)

Lost, then Found! Is an upbeat, extended remix of the sleepover theme. That mixes it with another theme i think. One i can’t give a name to right now, but it appears in one of the RW video games iirc.

Aww mèrda, qu’èi desbrembat mon aparelh fòto a l’ostau. De que sèrv un bon sejorn au camping se pòdi pas préner nada fòto‽

I get that’s his name but i took it as a translation prompt

Forgot i set up OneNote to auto insert interrobangs like 6 years ago, that’s neat!

The duckies (obviously based on that one optical illusions) also have ordinary houseplants. Nothing special about them.

Ishós

Three Bar Logos is one of my absolute favorite tracks. Probably #2 overall. it’s just so catchy! Also i got lucky to get to play it this morning on the train station’s piano.

While at it i like how So, How’d We Do? Is one of the most deep fried tracks in the whole game.

Snaley is me when cross people

I Will Catch Up! Is one of the songs that sounded so good in the concert. it’s also got that ooweeooweeooweeoowee in the back that’s barely noticeable if you don’t pay attention.

Otherworld’s color palette is inverted from the vast forest.  Trees have light emerald wood and heliotrope pink leaves

Hikikomori sprout mole

They are us right?

La Bohèira

The probably automated train voice is really struggling with that name, pronouncing Là Boaír

I completely messed up the veggie kid’s line. They probably don’t mind though.

I figured out i had to put Omori in the poem even before i knew this was a song. it’s just musically obvious

Loam has to be one of the weirderst Weird NPCs

MOONWALK!

Morcencs

Lv 6 for everyone. Aubrey learnt Counter

Good For Health, Bad for Imagination is not a track that should appear that early in the soundtrack by any means. Yet here i am.

Quaspy lampshading something that won’t be relevant for a while

I’m making Kel use rebound on all the oranges, they are too easy to grind

i’ll pause now because i’m changing trains soon

Dacs

we’ll see how far i can get today. Probably won’t enter the junkyard just yet because I’ve got 28% battery

I like how Chelle is not a quest. you’ll find her donut immediately and the game won’t care at all.

Sad orange doesn’t get oneshot

The scarecrow has the most sophisticated way of speaking

Also, omori overall is a game with a big vocabulary. The kind of vocabulary i have no problem with by virtue of being french, but i’ve seen native english speakers struggle on every other word in this game. that’s how i noticed.

Kel has an actual character arc wrt his height lol

Level 7 everyone. Already. And headbutt is actually strong

let’s go steal stuff from the sprout moles colony, because i want to be able to heal, fight that shark plane, and go back to the camping ground to save. All before my PC turns off.

No idea what this right here is about. Is that a quest?

Most Horse - 1st Place

We Sprout Moles are highly intelligent creatures

In a way they’re not wrong - they’re not smart, but they’re sentient which is more than can be said for nearly all non-boss enemies in this game.

They’re smart enough to be characters but dumb enough to be effectively disposable and i do have things to say about the disposability of sprout moles

Pujòu

But why?

Omori keeps calling their furniture weird

The sprout moles corpses in the walls are definitely making the place more morbid

They didn’t have anything tasty and i’m at 13%.

Unironically. And yes i know they’re belgian

Better defeat that plane quick and save

Got it in three turns which is pretty good

Hey!

Finally save just as i reached Ortès. that’ll be it for today. Probably.