#and only after did i remember i have a scanner now. but the first page is all smudgey now so

[himbopunk]

society if i posted anything at normal hours when people r awake. Anyways. Here's bellara trying to wingman lucanis into situations where rook takes their clothes off for completely innocent reasons and rook being a himbo about it ig

Typed out dialogue/text under cut in case my handwritings ass

Page 1

Bellara: Ah!

Bellara: Thanks, Rook

Bellara: ?

Rook: [She is not paying attention to what Rook's saying]

Lucanis: [*looking @ Rook wistfully*]

Rook: Bellara?

Bellara: ...ohh.

Rook: ?

--Later--

Bellara: I didn't expect to see this much of Treviso's...rooftops.

Bellara: Did you, Rook?

Rook: Well

Rook: I've actually been here a few times with my old pirate crew! Saw a /lot/ of the city then. Even got a tattoo!

Lucanis: Really?

Bellara: Really?!

Bellara: Which one?

Lucanis: (what is she up to...)

Page 2

Rook: I don't think I can show it off right now, haha...

Rook: It's on my thigh...

Lucanis: That is alright, Rook. We can--

Bellara: You can just show us at the lighthouse!

Lucanis: Qué?!

Lucanis: That...works too.

Spite: YES!

Bellara: Oh, hey, actually Rook...

Bellara: You have soooOo many tattoos, right?

Bellara: Maybe you should just do a full tattoo tour!

Bellara: Don't you agree, Lucanis?

Lucanis: (Mierda, she's worse than Teia.)

Rook: Oh, yeah sure I guess?

Rook: If you're sure you're okay with it--

Lucanis: Yes.

[hyeahgaku]

JUMP GIGA Winter 2023 Special Interview with Yūto Suzuki-sensei!!

First JUMP GIGA 2023 cover to commemorate SAKAMOTO DAYS reaching its 100th chapter milestone since its serialization!!

In-depth discussion with Suzuki-sensei about his life and work, so on and so forth!!

Please tell us the things that you paid particular attention to when drawing the cover illustration of this GIGA issue.

Suzuki-sensei: The chosen pose is stationary, but I also wanted it to look intricate so I made the silhouette not too thin! I wanted to draw attention to his eyes, so I placed the gun next to his face and chose a strong colour (to create contrast)! I drew the texture more firmly than usual to give off a more powerful effect! I wanted to highlight his skin complexion so I deliberately chose cold colours for his shirt, hair, etc. but later I thought it looked a bit dull so I added the red light for the barcode scanner as an accent colour.

—

A must-see exclusive interview for readers of SAKAMOTO DAYS, and aspiring manga artists!

Suzuki-sensei Profile

Birthday: July 6

Hobbies: Basketball

Special skill: Handicraft

Favourite manga: Hunter x Hunter (Note: This is additional, known info from the one-shot.)

First debuted in April 2019: Published Garaku (骸区) on Jump Plus.

September 2019: Published Locker Room (ロッカールーム) on Jump Plus. In November of the following year, it received a live-action drama.

December 2019: SAKAMOTO •坂本• (SAKAMOTO -サカモト-) was published on Jump GIGA 2020 Winter. (Note: FYI, this was kinda a prototype of SAKAMOTO DAYS.)

SAKAMOTO DAYS serialization commenced in Weekly Shonen Jump 2020, Issue No. 51. It has become a popular serialization today!!!

Suzuki-sensei, you were once featured in GIGA. Please tell us if you have any memories from that time.

Suzuki-sensei: There was that one time when I tried using Clip Studio Paint, I realized that there were many missing tones when I pasted the image. [Turns out that] I did not display the tone area. I remember the person-in-charge told me, “Full analog is better.”

—

Top Column: Suzuki-sensei published SAKAMOTO•坂本• (above photos) in Jump GIGA 2020 Winter after being published in Jump+ twice!! The main character Sakamoto, his family, Shin and other characters have appeared in the series since then. The concept of the story is the same as the serialization version, but there are several differences such as Sakamoto being a supermarket store clerk, and he [and Shin] even killed robbers, so it’s interesting to see the difference!!

*Shin’s comment: This version of Sakamoto-san is so cool~*

Please tell us what’s the biggest growth or change you’ve experienced between when you were drawing one-shots and now.

Suzuki-sensei: When I was drawing one-shots, my stance was that I would just draw whatever I thought was interesting, so the readers could see what I wanted them to see. But now, I always think about how I could entertain the readers, and how I could make everyone find [the story] interesting. As for [my] growth, I’ve been able to use Clip Studio Paint much better now.

Do you have any advice for the new and upcoming aspiring manga artists on how to create a good one-shot?

Suzuki-sensei: I think that “attention-grabbing” and “page-turning” are key elements in a one-shot! It is important to have this thought in mind while you’re drawing - “This one’s interesting!” - and whether you can really draw that or not. It’s also very important that the reader is able to get on board with the story just because it interests them. Readers will tend to notice if you are focused only on making everything nice and neat or if you’re just summarizing things up. After all, these elements are intended to reduce the “stress of reading.” It might sound weird to make [your story] more exciting just for the sake of attracting people to read, but I think that is one good tactic for competing in a one-shot contest!

*On the next page, we will learn more about Suzuki-sensei!*

Top Column: You can tell from reading Suzuki-sensei’s debut work Garaku, that he’s a mangaka who loves manga and movies! The carefully-drawn backgrounds and elaborate camera work are one of Suzuki-sensei’s strong points!

Please tell us how you became interested in drawing manga and how you chose to pursue this career.

Suzuki-sensei: I was worried about my future career path when I was graduating from my graduate school. But then I came across Katsuhiro Ōtomo-sensei’s manga, Dōmu, which helped develop my interest to become a manga artist.

Are there any other creators or works that you feel have influenced you as a writer?

Suzuki-sensei: I really like the manga written by Katsuhiro Ōtomo-sensei, Takehiko Inoue-sensei and Hiroya Oku-sensei. As for movies, I love the director Christopher Nolan.

I heard that you studied Japanese painting. Does the knowledge you acquired turn out to be of use when drawing your manga?

Suzuki-sensei: I think that it is mainly useful when it comes to composition and form. Japanese painting focuses on the concept of creating a beautiful arrangement of shapes within beautiful compositions, and I always keep that in mind with my work. In the near future, I wish to draw more Japanese-style illustrations.

Please tell us about your manga work process and the tools you use.

Suzuki-sensei: I use an analog pen for drawing the characters. The solid colours, sound effects, effect lines, and backgrounds are digitally drawn by my assistants. I use a Zebra hard G Pen for pen work and inking, and also a digital software, Clip Studio Paint!

Bottom Column: The Ferris wheel scene [Sakamoto vs Boiled], which ranked 3rd in the “Spread Campaign” poll, and the coloured single-page illustrations also portray the balance of the margins, cool silhouettes and compositions!

—

Top Column: The world of SAKAMOTO DAYS features characters with many gaps! From the strongest old man, Takamura, to the handsome but merciless Nagumo… The intense gaps are important to highlight the character’s individuality!

(T/n: “Gap” -also known as gap moe- refers to the contrast between one’s appearance and personality, or the difference between someone's actual personality and from first impression you had of them.)

How did you come up with the idea of a “retired assassin”?

Suzuki-sensei: First of all, I thought the idea of fat people being insanely strong is fascinating. So I asked myself, why are they fat? → Because they retired. Why? → Perhaps they got married or something? And that’s how I ended up making it.

Retired Sakamoto’s plump figure is cute, but it is an unusual character design for the protagonist of a shōnen manga. Please tell us the story behind this “fat assassin.”

Suzuki-sensei: I like characters with strong gaps, so I combined some elements from the two extreme opposites, such as the strongest old man and the strongest fat guy. And the result is that I found it more exciting to draw the strongest fat guy. Back then, I wanted to do a one-shot anyway, so I was focused on the story to make an impact. I truly never expected for it to get a serialization. I never modeled my character after anyone but later on when I learned about the movie “Enter the Fat Dragon”, I thought to myself that they are rather similar.

In SAKAMOTO DAYS, there seems to be many unique action ideas, such as Sakamoto repelled with a cough drop and fights inside the trains. How do you come up with such ideas?

Suzuki-sensei: Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always dreamed of absurd action [sequences]. Even in movies, one could wonder how they'd never think about doing this kind of action sequence or direction, and they may even ask themselves, “Do battles even occur in a situation like that?!” I like the kind of direction which would take the audience by surprise!

Bottom Column: One of the major attractions of this work is the depiction of powerful battles! It’s because the locations are familiar to the readers, and the battles are realistic and powerful beyond one’s imagination. It’s important to narrow down the situation in order to bring out the intensity of the battles!

—

Many attractive side characters appear in your series, such as Shin and Lu. How did you come up with such characters?

Suzuki-sensei: Sakamoto is fat and a man of little words, so I figured he needed a handsome sidekick. During a conversation between the two of them, there was this stuff, “killing in [your] imagination.” I wished to portray that and that’s the reason why I made Shin a clairvoyant. He gets along well with the quiet Sakamoto and they surprisingly made a good team. As for Lu, I initially wanted to draw a battle with a Chinese assassin, and in the course of that, she would show up as a pitiable heroine. [I guess] in my case, I often have a “I want to draw this kind of development!” or “This is how I want the story to unfold!” goal in mind, so the characters are born in the process due to that.

*Lu’s comment: So that’s how I was born, huh~*

Among the characters in your work, is there any character that is particularly easy or the most difficult to draw?

Suzuki-sensei: I don’t have many characters that I find difficult to draw but there are times where they do look alike. So I tend to be careful with that. Gaku is a character that I can draw easily among all the characters. He is someone who doesn’t depend on others and pushes forward on his own path, and I admire people like that, so I enjoy drawing him.

*Gaku’s comment: Ahhh, I see.*

Please tell us your favourite scene from Volume 1 of the manga.

Suzuki-sensei: I like the scene where Shin jumps off the roller coaster in Volume 1. I drew it in such a way so that the readers would be able feel the floating feeling during that scene whilst they're reading. When I drew that scene, I thought to myself that I might be good with drawing action scenes! I remember getting a positive feeling [from it].

Bottom Column: A scene that captures the moment Shin jumped off from the roller coaster – from various camera [angles]! It is important to capture the cool moments in powerful action scenes, such as when Sakamoto tried to punch while disassembling a gun, or when Sakamoto approached the enemy from behind!!

—

Top Column: One of the charms of the work is that it will always make you laugh!! In order to make the reader want to meet the characters and experience their world, it is important to make the story “easy” to read! Despite being a world where assassins are rampant, it still seems like a fun world [to be in] and that’s the charm of this work!

Your one-shots Garaku and Locker Room both have a darker worldview, whereas your serialized SAKAMOTO DAYS is a shōnen manga with comedy and action elements. Is there a reason why you decided to go with this genre?

Suzuki-sensei: It’s easier to make a dark story if it’s a one-shot. But with serialization, I thought it might become potentially harder, so I decided to make the most stress-free manga that I could draw and read, and that’s how this kind of setting came about.

Do you already have the ending of the story in mind, or have you not decided it yet?

Suzuki-sensei: Yes, I have already planned a definite conclusion in mind.

Finally, SAKAMOTO DAYS has reached its 100th chapter. Could you give a final message to our readers who are reading the story?

Suzuki-sensei: The series is only able to continue into a serialization all thanks to the readers! I cannot thank you enough. Thank you very much! I’m also very happy with the fan letters that I’ve received. Please keep sending them. Please continue to support SAKAMOTO DAYS!

*Sakamoto’s comment: Thanks for reading this far. I appreciate it.*

*Over 2.3 million copies sold!! Volumes 1 to 9 are on sale now!!*

fin.

[cafalla]

Game Informer Magazine (November 2019, Issue 319) Scans

I try to focus on mainly scanning older items, but I found this Game Informer magazine and couldn't pass it up.

I mean gosh, anything pre-Covid may as well be a relic, right? (jkjk)

Unfortunately the front cover is a bit damaged, but I still really love this art collage of Pikachu and the Sword and Shield starters!

Here's some scans from this issue that I like!

Starting off, here's the fanart page.

These fanart/personal creation corners are my favorite pages in hobby magazines. It makes me so nostalgic for being a preteen and wanting to make and submit my own art in hopes of it being featured!

When I was about 13, I was obsessed with DeviantArt. My dad showed me how to use the scanner so I could scan my own art and post it (on the family computer, of course). My sister came to me one day and asked me to scan her comic that she wanted to submit to the in-game Club Penguin newspaper/magazine.

I didn't play Club Penguin much (I was a Neopets girl), but I fondly remember her being so proud of that comic. I helped her scan and submit it, and asked her every day if it got put into the paper. I don't think it ever did, but it was a fun time waiting to see if it would.

Speaking of Neopets, I also really loved the Neopets paper. I'd spend hours browsing backlogs of the paper to look at the fanart and read the fanfiction that was posted there.

Good times!

----

I thought this League of Legends art was super neat, but the whole premise of this article is hilarious to me.

Like...ok, Riot/League. iykyk.

I'm a fairly new League of Legends player - I started playing after watching Arcane. My bf has been an on-again off-again League player, but I was always too intimidated to get into it. I actually got into it first from Team Fight Tactics, and then started playing ARAM, and only recently started dipping my toes into Summoner's Rift.

Anyways, as much as I love the game, people can be SO mean. So just seeing the article title and thinking of all the rudeness I've seen in-game is pretty funny. I know a lot of good people play and work on this game though, so I appreciate the optimism and work to make the community better.

Granted, this article isn't only about League of Legends. But I think having them as the front cover for the article is kind of hilarious.

----

As a Pokémon fan, I thought this top ten page was a fun look at past gym leaders, especially considering the cover story for this issue is about the new (at the time) Pokémon mainline games.

The judging criteria is not clear at all. That's ok, there doesn't need to be a reason to do a top ten list - I'm assuming these are just this guy's favorite gym leaders. It is refreshing to see some leaders who don't normally wind up on these kinds of lists though, like Wulfric, Maylene, and Korrina.

This is really wanting to make me go back and play Let's Go! Pikachu lol.

----

Ok, so admittedly I knew nothing about Baldur's Gate 3 until the day it came out and I was like 'What the heck is this game everyone on my friend's list is playing?"

My bf ended up buying it for me and we played it co-op. Definitely deserved all the hype and praise it got.

So color me surprised when I was flipping through this magazine from 2019 and saw mention of Baldur's Gate 3.

There's a whole interview in here with the founder of the BG3 game studio. I knew this game was in development for many years, but I just completely missed the hype leading up to it.

----

Now some scans from the main cover story about Pokémon Sword and Shield.

These aren't all the scans from the spread, but I just wanted to show some of them off! I love multi-page stories about things where they feel almost like scrapbooks with how the graphics are arranged.

----

Here's a preview about the Final Fantasy VII Remake.

I've never played a Final Fantasy game, and though I'd love to someday, I'd have no clue where to start. I do love the character designs and I thought this game looked beautiful when it was announced.

And some more previews for various games.

Little Town Hero was actually on my radar at the time, as it gave big Fantasy Life vibes (and I LOVED Fantasy Life). Also, I just learned from this article that Toby Fox was brought in to compose? Amazing.

I looked it up and it's available on Steam, but disappointingly the reviews seem pretty mixed. I'm gonna add it to my wishlist and grab it when it goes on sale.

----

Here's a couple of reviews from the review section.

And an ending fluff page about creepy Pokémon pokedex entries.

And that's it for this one!

The full magazine is available to read over on my Internet Archive account.

Thanks for reading!

[soo-won]

Akatsuki no Yona - Production Booklet | Q&A Corners Translation

T/N: Hi! I got my hands on the recently released freebie with Hana to Yume 19 that explains the making process of the chapters (using chapter 223 as an example) and with a lot of new Q&A, and since I found them really interesting I thought I would translate them! I decided to leave the comments about chapter 223's making process for now as it is hardly comprehensible without the pictures attached with them, and I don't have any scanner at hand...So this post is dedicated to the Q&A corners. Take my translation with a grain of salt as there are some things I'm unsure of here and there...On this, enjoy!

(translation under the cut)

Storyboard Q&A:

How many days do you spend on the storyboard?

It takes me around 5 days, 7-8 days in the worst cases. I spend 3-4 days in a daze trying to remember how to draw the storyboard because my feel for it disappears when I work on illustrations. Then during the two remaining days I finish the drawings, writhing around. 

2. What parts of the storyboard do you pay the most attention to?

I pay close attention to the pacing, as it needs to not just become a bland digest of the events, as well as the tempo fits the flip of the pages and the direction of the eyes. Even in the same chapter, the impressions readers have will change depending on whether a panel is first or in the middle of a page, so I consider the position of a panel depending on the feelings I want to convey. I also consider whether the actions are in line with the characters' personality, whether it's things the characters would say, and discard any development or line that I think doesn't fit the characters.

3. Who are the characters of Akatsuki no Yona that are easy to write, and those hard to write?

Yona, Hak and Soo-won are the hardest to write. The other characters are relatively easy in comparison. If Yona, Hak and Soo-won were secondary characters it probably wouldn't be so hard, but since they are the main characters I have to show both their good and bad sides, and if I make one mistake I'm responsible for ruining the story…

4. How do you spend your break times during the storyboard process?

I pet my cats and I eat what I like. 

5. What musics and dramas do you play when you draw the storyboard?

When I'm in the middle of drawing I listen to a lot of music and watch a lot of dramas, but I don't play anything when I do the storyboard.

6. What were the hardest storyboards to make?

Actually, there are only a couple of chapters that I was able to draw smoothly, but the ones I have the most painful memories of are the entirety of the Xing Kingdom Arc, chapter 125 "The thing I dreamed of" (Volume 22. The chapter about Hak's feelings and reminiscences of Soo-won), chapter 175 "I called out to you in my dreams many times"(Volume 30. The climax of the Sen Province Arc), chapter 176 "Did you hear me?" (Volume 31. The chapter where Yona confesses to Hak) and chapter 203 "The Illusion of dispossession" (Volume 35. The chapter that reveals Mei-nyan's true colors). I was thinking of starting chapter 175 after Hak had rescued Yona, but I just couldn't draw it, and after worrying and worrying, once the shape of the chapter was set, I could draw it sooo easily it felt like a lie. A bad storyboard will never progress.

7. What are your most memorable storyboards?

In the past it was Taejun’s arc, Zeno’s arc and the end of the Water Tribe arc. Recently, it’s chapter 197 “Shaky handwritings” (Volume 34). It is almost entirely a monologue by Yon-hi and Il, and it was my first time at a chapter like that. I had a hard time deciding in which order to arrange each of their monologues. 

8. How do you handle a storyboard when you’re stuck on it?

I ask my sister and my editor for their objective opinions. Like 'If I do it this way, do I get an “ok” or a “no”?' I’m glad when I get an “ok”, but “no”s are also very valuable.

9. How do you feel when you complete a storyboard? 

A part of me is relieved, but I’m still worried and anxious as I wonder if the storyboard is really fine, if there isn't something I should fix, and if I'll be able to meet the deadline.

Completed draft Q&A :

1. What do you use to draw?

I use various things like the I-C manga draft paper, the kaimei shoeki ink, a tachikawa school pen, a mapping pen, screentones, a misnon (a correction fluid), a multiliner drawing pen...

2. How much time does it take between the sketches and the completion of the chapter?

Ideally it takes 5 days, but in reality it’s more 2 or 3 days. I could never make it in time without the help of my assistants. 

3. Who are the characters easy to draw, and those who are more difficult?

The ones easy to draw are Zeno, Yoon, Min-soo, Tae-woo, Hen-dae and the like. The difficult one is Yona. I still can’t draw her hairstyle and facial expressions right… I’m also careful with Hak. If he looks too neat, it may feel like he doesn’t carry any emotion.

4. What do you focus on when you draw each character?

Their facial expressions. They’re very important. For example, even smiles have to be different for each character. So even if they share similar aspects, I take care to make sure the characters’ facial expressions are based on each’s personality. 

5. What do you focus on when you draw action scenes?

I pay close attention to the course of events even when the rough sketches are a mess. Of course, I want to draw cool things, but rather than the action itself, I’m more conscious of how to bring out the dynamics between the characters and the best part of the action. 

6. What do you focus on when you create your character designs?

For example, for the dragons, I paid attention to the balance of their heights, colors and weapons when they were put together with Yona Hak and Yoon. When I’m in a hurry, I use inspiration to determine the shape of the new characters, but I try to remember how much the personality and appearance are impacted by the shape of the eyes and such and draw each of them differently…the best I can (sweat). 

7. Which drafts are you fond of?

The last page of the special story on Kija that was drawn for volume 12. The scene where the first generation of dragons say goodbye to each other and all link their shoulders together in chapter 103 “My lord sleeps”(Volume 18). Then the scene where Hak and Soo-won meet their eyes when they save Lili in chapter 120 “Reach”(Volume 21).

(those are the exact pages shown in the booklet)

8. How many assistants do you have and how do you divide the work?

I have between 2 and 5 assistants. They’re asked to work according to their speciality. I’m very grateful for all the amazing backgrounds and effects they do for me, they’re really saving me.

9.  How do you have fun and relax during the draft process?

When I’m drawing the draft, I try to avoid doing anything else as much as possible, so I can’t really catch my breath, but I’m happy when I find something to my tastes on TV (dramas, animes, movies) while I work. It’s always fun to jabber and laugh at the TV with my assistants. 

10. How do you feel when you complete a draft?

I can finally sleep~! I can eat~! I can take a bath~!

Yona of the secret stories* - We asked Kusanagi-sensei 12 questions :

1. At the beginning, how many volumes did you plan the story to have?

At the start of serializations I don’t have much say on how long it will go on, as it is dependent on the surveys and the decision of the editorial department. I was thinking “How many stories will I be able to draw?” rather than “How long should it be?”.

2. What is the most important aspect of Akatsuki no Yona? 

I'm drawing hoping that people are interested in the characters and their relationships. I'd be glad if this is the case.

3. How do you get the reference and data you need?

For the buildings I took many photos during my research trips. Before the serialization started, I also went to the library to take notes, etc…

4. Were there story developments and characters that took a different path than expected?

At first, I thought of making Vold, who was introduced in the Xing Kingdom arc, a two-faced character, but he turned out to be a gullible, honest and silly big brother type of character that competes with Akatsuki no Yona’s bests. The consequence is the strange character he has become today (in my opinion).

5. What do you focus on when you’re entering a new chapter and story development?

There tends to be a lot of new information, so I reveal everything about the characters and the setting little by little. 

6. What do you focus on when you introduce a new character? 

I release information about their background little by little so the readers don’t forget them. It’s not just for new characters, but it’s easier to write them if they have clear things that are important to them and that they can’t forgive. 

7. What are the characters that take time to draw, and who can you draw quickly?

The characters that take the most time are those with a lot of lines and clothing decorations, such as Yona in her simple attire, Joo-doh and the generals wearing complex armors, and characters who are all injured and battered. The quickest to draw are the characters with simple clothes (laugh).

8. What made you the happiest while drawing Akatsuki no Yona? 

The very best was when readers told me my story was interesting and fun, for sure.

9. Were there other titles you considered for Akatsuki no Yona?

There was a lot. I forgot what they were all exactly, but I think one of them was “Akatsuki no Shoujo Ou” (TL: The (Young) Queen of the Dawn). Since I was too indecisive to choose, Takada-san, my editor of the time,  is the one who picked Akatsuki no Yona. 

10.  As an artist, what is the most enjoyable thing to work on? 

I really love coloring and inking, even if it takes time, and I’m not always satisfied nor make it in time… But drawing storyboards was my favorite thing when I used to draw manga as a hobby. 

11. Do you have any new challenges you would like to take? 

I think I should learn to draw digitally…but there are still a lot of traditional drawing techniques I want to study. 

12. Please tell us your objective for the future.

I want to be able to draw manga that I am myself satisfied with. 

*wordplay with the title of the manga 

[lostinthewiind]

Piss Off Your Parents - Part 1

Ukai Keishin - Haikyuu

Synopsis: freshly turned 18, you want to prove to your parents that you aren't a child for them to push around anymore. First, get a job at the local corner store. Second, use the store owner's 26-year-old son with piercings and a cigarette addiction to piss your parents off. Third, accidentally fall in love.

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: none

Song → 18 by Anarbor

A/N: if you couldn’t already tell, I have planned this as a series/full story. I was torn between writing it on here or on Wattpad or something, but ultimately decided on Tumblr . . . but let me know if you would prefer it on another platform as well! Also, this series will eventually include smut/NSFW content but that will be tagged appropriately when the time comes. As always, I hope you enjoy. 

Next →Part 2

Slamming the front door behind yourself on your way out that morning, you quickly stuffed your earbuds into your ears and cranked your music as loud as you could to drown out the sounds of your parents yelling after you and, consequently, at one another after you had dropped the bomb about your new job on them seconds before you had left, giving them as little time as possible to shame you for it.

After graduating high school and turning 18, you had decided it was time to take your life into your hands, which wasn’t too easy while you were still living under your parents’ roof, but you had to start somewhere and that somewhere was getting a job at the local corner store, Sakanoshita Market. 

You knew that your parents wanted you to go to university and ‘make something of yourself’, but you also knew that you could never truly be happy under their dictatorship-like ruling, so you decided to get a job, no matter how shitty, save your money, move out as soon as possible, and go from there. 

It was definitely going to be a process, and not an easy one, but all you had to do was take it one step at a time.

Rounding the corner and seeing the market in the distance, you felt your nerves begin to bubble inside of you a little. Sure, you had gotten some part-time jobs here and there during summer vacation before, but you had never gotten a full-time job before and had never needed the money from a job like you did now. Before, the cash you made was for extra spending money during the summer and school year, but now the money you would be making would be funding your future. It seemed like a lot of pressure to put on a job that entailed stocking shelves, checking out customers, and cleaning. 

The lady who had hired you had basically explained that since she was getting older and her son, who had been maintaining the place previously, had gotten a new job, the store needed someone to learn the ropes and take care of the place on a daily basis; and since you were young, a fast learner, and didn’t have anything else in your life besides work, you were a perfect fit. 

As the shop doors slid open smoothly to welcome you into the store you had been inside countless times in the past, you suddenly felt completely out of place in the familiar market. Now that you were an employee instead of a customer, the atmosphere had completely shifted. Instead of heading right for the fridges to grab a drink like you usually did, your eyes shifted immediately to the front counter where a figure with its feet up hid behind an open newspaper.

Just like every other time you had visited while the store owner’s son was working, he did everything humanly possible to avoid interaction. Usually, you would have appreciated not being bothered while trying to scan the shelves, but since this time was different, the lack of acknowledgement was slightly unnerving. 

“Ahem,” you cleared your throat, hoping it was enough to catch his attention. It was not. Instead, he flipped the page of the newspaper and you watched as a hand emerged from behind the paper barrier to flick the ashes from his cigarette into an ashtray sitting beside the register. 

Eyebrows furrowed, you really wished that the shop owner herself had been there to greet you for your first day instead of her seemingly useless son. “Hello.” You stepped up to the counter, the feeling of not belonging sinking deeper into your bones. 

Slowly, the newspaper separating you from the man behind the counter lowered and the shop owner’s son glared back at you, eyes half-lidded as if he were seconds away from falling asleep and the cigarette from before hanging from his bottom lip. This was far from the first time you had interacted with him, but you would be surprised if he remembered you as a customer even a little. Whenever he checked customers out, you could tell he was running on autopilot. 

The man’s eyes drifted down to your hands, which were resting on top of the counter now. Noticing you didn’t have anything to purchase, he cocked a brow. “Need help finding somethin’?” 

“Ugh, no,” you answered. “I’m the new employee. I’m supposed to start today.”

His eyes scanned you once more, this time more thoroughly, and you swallowed hard. Feeling as if you were being observed under a microscope, you slid your hands off of the counter and stuffed them into your pockets self-consciously. 

As he inspected you inch by inch, you took the time to take a closer look at him as well. With dyed blonde hair, two earrings in his left ear, an apparent nicotine addiction, and a noticeably flippant attitude toward his job, he was the definition of the type of man your parents would kill you for bringing home. Somehow, this only made him more intriguing. You wondered if he really was as disinterested in everything as he seemed or if it was just this job he thoroughly hated and became someone a lot more interesting when he wasn’t behind a counter.

“How old are you?” he asked out of the blue, catching you off guard a little. While he waited for you to answer, he set the newspaper to the side, dragged his feet from the counter top, and patted out some of the wrinkles from the white apron he had tied around his bright orange sweatshirt. 

“I’m 18,” you responded, not sure why it mattered but also not seeing any harm in answering honestly. 

Seconds later, the door to the back of the shop and storage room opened and the familiar face of the woman who had hired you stepped into view. “Oh, Y/N!” she greeted happily; much more enthusiastically and welcoming than her son. “Sorry about that, I was just getting some last minute things together.” She eyed her son out of the corner of her eye and noted the fresh embers in the ashtray. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

“No, I just got here,” you told her. 

“Good.” She smiled sweetly before turning to her son. “Well, you can head out now, Keishin. Thank you for watching the counter.”

“Yeah,” the man, Keishin, grunted as he untied the apron from around his waist, slipped it over his head, and hung it up on a hook behind the counter. “See ya.”

With that, Keishin left, leaving you and his mother alone. Wasting no time, Mrs. Sakanoshita, whom the store was named after, got right to work on teaching you the basics and gifting you with a white apron of your own to wear while on the job. Since it was the middle of the day and the customer flow was relatively slow, she introduced you to how the register and scanner at the counter worked before moving on to unpacking boxes.

Just like you had promised on your resume and during the interview, you were a quick learner and Mrs. Sakanoshita was more than pleased to see you picking up the job quickly and efficiently. 

By the time the after work/school rush of patrons picking up items on their way home had begun, you were feeling confident in your abilities and, with your boss by your side to answer any questions you may have, you checked out customer after customer, building up muscle memory for scanning items, collecting cash, opening the register, handing out receipts, and sending customers on their merry way. 

All in all, the job was quickly growing on you. You liked the fact that, for the most part, you were the only employee on duty, so when there weren’t any customers in the store, you could work silently on unpacking boxes without having to worry about making small talk or being friendly with any coworkers. In fact, as far as you knew, the only people who worked at the store at all were you, Mrs. Sakanoshita, and her son, Keishin. 

It seemed as though you had really landed a sweet gig. 

After showing you how to lock up, Mrs. Sakanoshita headed home for the night, leaving you to finish stocking the shelves and cleaning the shop before you would head home as well.

Now that you were truly the only person left, you walked over to the old radio you had spotted on the counter during training that day and fiddled with the dials, trying to get some music playing to accompany you during your evening chores. After some careful handiwork and enduring some horrendous static and high-pitched screeching while searching for a station, you settled on what sounded like some old instrumental music and got to work on stocking the remaining shelves.

Throughout your shift, you quickly learned that the store got quite warm during the day and you had needed to tie your hair up to keep the back of your neck from dripping with sweat. The night wasn’t much better either, especially since the lack of customers so late meant that the doors rarely opened, keeping the cold night air outside and the warm store air inside. 

After finishing the last box of supplies, you exhaled and wiped your brow. You were exhausted, that was for sure, but you still had to sweep. 

Deciding to take a quick break, you turned toward the floor-to-ceiling fridges at the back of the shop and pulled open the door, sighing happily when the cool air hit your skin. Exhaling slowly, you snickered when you saw your breath fog up in front of you face. 

“You’re letting all the cold air out.”

You shrieked when you heard a voice in your right ear and slammed the fridge door shut, jumping back in the process. Thanks to the music from the radio and the loud hum of the generator that kept the fridges cold, you hadn’t heard the front doors slide open or the footsteps of Keishin approaching you.

“Jesus!” You clamped your hand over your chest. “You scared the shit out of me!”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Sorry?”

“What are you doing here?”

Keishin glared at you. “You work here one day and suddenly act like you own the place?”

Realizing how rude your question had come across, you composed yourself and rephrased. “What I meant was, your mom didn’t say you were coming back.”

Pointing upward, Keishin sighed, disinterested. “I live in the apartment above the shop.”

“Oh.” Things started making much more sense and you suddenly felt pretty embarrassed for how you had reacted. 

“Yeah . . . oh.” He rolled his eyes, but it didn’t come across necessarily rude but more like he was exhausted and you were adding to said exhaustion. “Why were you standing with the door open anyway?”

As he spoke, he stepped toward you. At first, your feet felt cemented to the floor and you didn’t move. But when he persisted closer, you eventually stumbled back and Keishin opened the fridge door you had been standing in front of to grab a beer from inside. With drink in hand, he eyed you once again, waiting for an answer.

“It’s really hot,” you said, gesturing to his orange sweater. “I don’t know how you wear that thing in here.”

Looking down at his apparel, he just shrugged. “You’ll get used to it.” He turned and started for the counter, presumably to pay for the drink he had just taken. “In the future, stand outside if you’re warm.”

“Okay.” You nodded, mindlessly tailing him. You had to grab the broom from behind the counter anyway, but that was the furthest thing from the front of your mind at that moment. If anything, you were still trying to calm down a little from being startled and now being alone with your boss’s son. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it.” He popped the tab on the beer, settled into the stool behind the counter, and downed at least half of the drink in a few large gulps. 

You watched him, probably a little too closely, and as you did you found yourself reexamining the features you had taken note of earlier that day: the dyed blonde hair held out of his face with a thin black headband, the natural brown hair that peeked out from the roots, the two small silver hoop earrings in his left ear, the scent of cigarette smoke that clung to him like how the smell of rain clung to the air after a heavy storm. 

Noticing your gaze, which would have been nearly impossible to miss, Keishin quirked a brow at you and held out the can of beer toward you. “You want a sip?”

Startled from your thoughts, you shook your head. “I’m only 18.” You reminded him.

“Oh, right.” He withdrew the can and took another sip, this one much smaller than the first few. “Then why are you looking at me like that?”

Eyes wide, you thought quick to come up with an excuse. “The broom.” You pointed to the item behind him. “Can you pass me the broom?”

After handing you the broom, Keishin pulled a slip of paper and a pen out from his pocket and started writing and scribbling things down, sipping the remainder of his beer occasionally and ignoring you completely. 

Trying to avoid staring at Keishin anymore than you already had, you started sweeping at the far end of the store and left the area around and behind the counter for last. Eventually, though, you had worked your way back over to the the silent man and was forced to clean the floor behind where he was sitting, trying hard not to disturb him.

Out of the corner of your eye, you caught a glimpse of what he was so focused on; it looked like a crude drawing of a volleyball court. “What’s that?” you asked, the words leaving your mouth before you realized you were being rude again and snooping.

Keishin, however, didn’t seem angry or annoyed in the slightest. “Volleyball positions,” he huffed. It was clear he was growing frustrated.

“You play volleyball?”

He shook his head and looked over his shoulder at you. “I used to. Now I coach the boy’s team at Karasuno.”

“I went to Karasuno,” you said mindlessly, just trying to make conversation at that point. 

He hummed in response and turned his attention back to the sheet before him. “Did you play volleyball?”

“No. Soccer.”

“Do you still play?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Do you still play volleyball?”

“With a neighbourhood association sometimes . . . but not really.”

“Why?”

The corners of his mouth curling up into a smirk, Keishin looked back to you once more. “I asked you first.”

“It’s not a good answer.” You leaned against the broom handle and sighed. “Don’t have the time.”

“You’re young and just graduated high school. You’ve got nothing but time.”

“Not with this job.”

Keishin scoffed, folded the paper, and shoved it back into his pocket with the pen. “Speaking of which, why would you take such a boring job at a store like this?”

You just shrugged. “I need the money.”

“Don’t you live with your parents?”

“That’s the problem,” you said, noticing the confusion on his face. “I told you it wasn’t a good answer.”

“Do they know you work here?”

“Do they know? Yes,” you answered truthfully. “Do they like it? Absolutely not.”

Keishin grinned at that before finishing his beer and tossing the empty can into the recycling bin beside the front door. “So you’re one of those teens, huh?”

You frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Trust me, kid, pissing off your parents just for the sake of it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“You think I’m doing all this just because I can?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Why then?”

“That story’s too long and convoluted for me to recite right now . . . especially to some old dude I just met today.”

Keishin chuckled under his breath, hands stuffed into his pockets as he headed for the door at the back of the shop so he could head upstairs to his apartment. “’Old dude’,” he repeated, clearly amused. “Don’t forget to lock up before you go home.”

As he turned his back to you, your curiosity got the better of you. “How old are you?”

Stopping in his tracks, Keishin pulled out a carton of cigarettes from his pants’ pocket along with a lighter. After placing the smoke between his lips, he lit it and inhaled deeply. “Too old for you, sweetheart,” he spoke while exhaling, smoke spilling from his lips as he smirked at you. 

With that, he disappeared into the back. You wanted to shout after him that you had told him how old you were without hesitation when he had asked, but you stayed silent instead. 

As much as his presence unnerved you and his superiority complex aggravated you, you still found yourself inexplicably drawn to him. Maybe it was because he seemed completely disinterested in you, or maybe it was because he was everything you were always told to stay away from. 

The one thing you did know, however, was that if everyone around you was going to keep trying to convince you they knew how you should live your life better than you did, you were going to prove to them just how they wrong they were one way or another. 

[fandom-necromancer]

In good company

I had this prepared in case there were no prompts, which there are now, but for time reasons here is a little story of my own! It was initially just the first two pages of this as a start of another wasteland AU big story, but either I will never get to it or so late it doesn’t really matter then XD So enjoy this converted into a short story!

Fandom: Detroit become human Ship: Reed900 AU: Wasteland/past violent successful revolution (non-canon) Warnings: None

The world is dying.

RK900 had read that somewhere on a poster. It had been soggy from the rain, the words reconstructable only thanks to his advanced systems. He found that he had to disagree. The world wasn’t dying, no. A world couldn’t die. And overall, the life on earth flourished. Plants had conquered structures with roots strong enough to split concrete. A tiny flower stronger than most machines humanity had created. It was the human life that had changed. The violent android revolution had chased them out of their homes, their lives. They had run off to find refuge somewhere else only to find there was none. Because androids outnumbered humans. At least in the cities they did. RK900 couldn’t say he regretted the revolution as he hadn’t been alive back then and only had been activated after the fight was already over. But he regretted that he had never seen the old world. Sure, androids had fought for their freedom and their rights and now they had achieved that goal. But at what cost? They were a lost people now. Other than humans they weren’t built to survive and be happy with just that. They were doomed to wander without purpose and direction. Their abilities were adapted to a digital world. Most functions relied on some sort of framework, a network for accessing further data, a constant connection to the internet and other services to provide information. Services that were no longer available, connections that hadn’t been maintained any longer when the humans had run away. Infrastructure that was decaying and decaying metal bodies that had no spares to repair themselves without humans to design and produce them.

When RK900 thought about being free in a world that didn’t need him or serving humans in a world that did, he knew what he would have chosen. He was faced with an eternal life and didn’t know what to do with it. It was the epitome of boredom. At times he even contemplated shutting down and from day to day the urge was getting stronger. He didn’t want to stop existing. He just wanted to rest for a bit, wait it all out without having to witness time passing. He wanted to wake up when he was needed. When something happened. When the world was less lonely, less segregated. Less hateful and less violent. He sat down in a corner of a small parking lot, behind burned out cars and heaps of trash. It was relatively safe there without the danger of a decaying building dropping on him, the cars keeping him from view and the open space deserted as those androids that had fought still remembered the slaughtering.

RK900 took in his surroundings one last time, before nodding and coding his own stasis protocol.

[Code received. Applying new conditions to deep stasis protocol…] [New deep stasis protocol completed:] [End stasis when reactivation conditions are met. Reactivation conditions are:] [-Movement near unit.] [-Events that will lead to unit getting damaged.] [-Any background analysis returning threats, danger or environmental change.] [Commencing deep stasis cycle…] [All passive scanners online] [Stasis cycle: active.] [shutting down.]

-

Gavin ran for his life. Not only had his day started bad, no it had continued worse and was about to end the worst way possible: He had been awakened by gunshots, had snuck out of the building he had slept in, walked in on a few androids that immediately started chasing him, narrowly escaped them by passing a group of humans that thought of the androids as the greater threat and ran from them as they split up. Then around the early afternoon he had been granted roughly an hour of peace to eat something, before the smell of quickly prepared meat had attracted stray dogs. They would have rather eaten Gavin then accepting his attempts of sharing his meal not to be torn to shreds. In the end he had to flee again, giving up his only meal to gain time. Just as he had escaped the dogs, he ran into some androids again. If he was still alive by the time night fell, he would rather believe he died somewhere, and this was the afterlife, and he was in hell where he belonged.

Thankfully, these androids weren’t armed with pistols. All they had were some rocks and really good aim. They seemed to be damaged, too. Gavin couldn’t find any other explanation for why they hadn’t caught up to him yet. He pushed his already tired legs to continue working and suffer through another sprint, as he turned a corner and another. He hoped the androids would lose track of him. Maybe they wouldn’t think of him as a threat when all he had done was run from them. Maybe they would let him go with a warning and his newly acquired bruises and wounds.

Sometimes he thought they did it just for fun. They had won, everyone had accepted that and run to the small communities popping up here and there far out in the countryside, away from the androids in the cities. Gavin hadn’t even thought of fighting back. Hurt one, let alone kill one and the whole mob was after you. They wouldn’t rest. They didn’t have to.

Gavin ran until his knees started to buckle. There was a small parking lot in front of him with an old pharmacy in the middle of it. The roof was already half caved in and didn’t look too stable. Perfect. No android would go in there if it didn’t have to. The run over there was a risk, but hell, what wasn’t. And it promised a break, maybe even a shelter for the night if he was allowed to stay this long. He leaned against the corner of another building, trying to blend in with the bushes around, and caught his breath. His legs burned with an intensity he had seldomly felt and wished for nothing more than to sit down for half an hour to recover. But not yet. Not yet. He had to get over there.

He swallowed and closed his mouth, instead scanning the area for any movement. The wind brushed over a few bushes and grass where they had pushed through the asphalt, but otherwise it was completely still. Now was better than never, so Gavin pushed off the building and ran for the old pharmacy. He tried to keep his body low, even if it didn’t really matter with androids.

Gavin had made it half-way to the pharmacy, when he saw movement around the corner of the building. He let himself fall immediately, sliding over the ground until his back hit the black skeleton of a car. He felt how pain crept to his knees and hot blood rushed to his scratches, but all he could do was close his eyes and pray they hadn’t seen him. He couldn’t go for another sprint, another chase. He was tired and hungry. He wasn’t ready to give up, never had been, but he also knew he had no chance against even a single android. He heard footsteps close to him and opened his eyes. He wouldn’t go without a fight, however quick it would be over.

He froze all over when he saw something he hadn’t noticed before: There was an android, sitting right opposite to him, leaned against a car and eyeing him. He hadn’t moved there. He must have been sitting there the whole time since Gavin had been running over to the building and slid to his current position. Phck. He would alarm the others, likely already had. Likely was the reason why Gavin had been stopped in the first place.

With panic in his eyes, he stared at the other, who didn’t move, while the footsteps came closer.

-

‘Have you seen a human around here?’ The android looked up, beyond Gavin. So the other androids stood behind the car he leaned against. ‘No’, was his answer. ‘We heard breathing.’ ‘That’s me. My subroutine is broken, I am constantly running my artificial breathing.’ Gavin’s eyes wandered down to the android’s chest, which was moving in synchrony with his own breathing. ‘There is a heartbeat, too.’ ‘Maybe your sensors are malfunctioning’, the other android shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen a human here.’ ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘Waiting for better times. I would like to go back to stasis now, if you would leave, I could get back to it.’

Silence, then footsteps that disappeared from their position. Gavin listened for them, then let go of his breathing, sinking down against the car. The other android’s eyes were still trained on him, but Gavin didn’t have the energy to still stay tense. ‘What are you planning?’, Gavin asked finally. He knew he wouldn’t run again, but if this was how he died, he wanted to at least know why. ‘As I said, I plan to go back to stasis.’ ‘Why?’ ‘To wake up when the world is a better place.’ ‘Relatable – wait, no I meant why haven’t you told them about me? Why haven’t you attacked me?’

The android frowned. ‘Why should I?’ Gavin sighed. ‘Because that’s a whole thing! Androids drove humans out and since then hunted us down.’ ‘You didn’t accept our freedom and rights as persons’, the thing answered completely deadpan. ‘Humans make errors!’, Gavin called out, throwing his arms in the air. ‘That’s how we phcking learn. Just because a few didn’t accept you, doesn’t mean all of us do! But even if, that doesn’t justify genocide.’ ‘It did for the humans.’ ‘And that’s terrible, but I also know of humans keeping your kin safe, protecting and hiding them when things went to shit.’

‘Really?’ the android asked. ‘Yeah. What, been too busy killing humans back then?’ ‘I wasn’t alive before the revolution. I was activated about two months after it.’ That let Gavin swallow his next words and really look at the machine. ‘So you never…’ ‘I never killed or harmed anyone, if it’s that what you mean. And I don’t intend to start now.’ ‘Huh.’ Gavin sank against the car in his back. ‘Well, I had to have luck eventually this day.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, everything went to shit, lost my remaining food and was on the run the whole time. It’s not easy to escape your tin-can friends.’ ‘It should have been impossible for a human’, the android said, looking at him more intrigued than anything now. ‘Yeah, well, you are broken, and I have experience. Doesn’t mean it’s easy, but I’ve managed so far.’ ‘Why aren’t you outside the city then, where the humans found refuge?’

Gavin groaned. ‘I’m not good with people, bot. And they need medicine, spare tech, whatever I can find here, I bring back to them. But I’m not one for making friends or staying in some hole waiting for the day androids attack. I needed something to do, I guess. A purpose if you want to be poetic.’ At that the machine seemed to look at him with an intensity, that made him instinctively recoil, now that his strength was gradually coming back. ‘What about you?’, he asked. He was pretty sure the machine would attack him, but other than a few minutes ago, he felt like he could at least try to run, should this all just be a plan to kill him or find out where the others were. ‘What better days are you waiting for? Haven’t you guys won?’

‘Does this look like winning to you?’, the bot asked and looked down. ‘We are decaying without maintenance we don’t know how to do. We can’t produce the missing parts ourselves. We wander decaying cities without anything to do. Humans have the ability to set missions yourselves, you can set your mind to something and do it. It’s more difficult for us. At least for me it is. I was gifted freedom, but no one ever cared to tell me what to do with it. And I know a few others think the same, but they were active before, they have their hate on your kind to rely on or on whatever they did before.’ ‘So you regret your freedom?’, Gavin asked disbelievingly. ‘No, not that. But I would like to have something to do. Something meaningful, something that might change this.’ ‘Change what?’ ‘Everything! I mean, we are talking right now, aren’t we? And we haven’t killed each other yet. It’s possible. But others don’t see it.’ ‘And you think sleeping time away will change that?’, Gavin chuckled. ‘No, but what else can I do?’

Gavin shook his head and got to his feet, standing up to look over the car’s roof. The parking lot was laying as still as it had been before. He brushed off the dirt from his pants. ‘Okay, let me tell you: if you do nothing, nothing will change. If you truly want something, fight for it, whatever way you can. Maybe those you talked with didn’t see it, but there will be people out there that do. Find them, group together and lead by example. That’s all I can advise you.’ The android stood up, too, even if a little slower and more uncertain. ‘And that will work?’ ‘Most certainly not’, Gavin shrugged. ‘But you don’t know that unless you tried it. And you can still go into hibernation if it doesn’t.’

The bot nodded to himself. ‘What will you do now?’ ‘I will go into this building and see if there is anything valuable. If there is, I will take what I can, leave the city and come back with more food to search for more next time.’ ‘How do you do that?’ ‘What?’ ‘Decide what to do?’ ‘It comes with growing up. People tell you what to do until you realise you don’t want to do some of them and do others. And then you start to decide for yourself. I don’t know how to help you with this one, buddy.’

Gavin had turned around to run for the building, but a sudden hand at his arm stopped him. He looked down on it and up to the android, not entirely without fear. Immediately the other let go. ‘May I come with you? For a while? I want to learn.’ Gavin grinned, waiting for the punchline. But the android seemed to mean it. ‘Wait, for real?’ ‘Yes. We could help each other. I have better sensors, I can warn you of other androids. And you could teach me how to… find something to do?’ He wanted to immediately decline. He had been on his own for long enough and survived. But there was something that made him reconsider. It would be a huge advantage to have an android at his side. And to have someone to talk to, who didn’t want him far away from the camp or dead would be a welcome change, too.

And maybe… Gavin wasn’t someone to hope for the impossible, but it still felt nice to imagine the world could go back to how it was before… And if it didn’t work out, he could always lure the bot into a trap if it got aggressive or make a run for it. So, hell… Why not.

‘Fine. I don’t know how I could help you, but I’m not saying no to some friendly company for a change.’

[worldviewcast]

The Origin of Worldview

So this is going to be a semi-personal, but also a semi-explanation post about alot of the background info regarding Worldview.  Yes it’ll be a long somewhat boring wall of text for many of you, but to ME it’s words I feel need to be said and it would mean the absolute world to me if people would take the time to hear me out.  Even if its only gonna be the five of you that continue on after this. Anyway...

Worldview technically started forming in my mind when I was probably about fifteen. (For reference, at the time of writing this, I’m about half a year to thirty-one) I was really into doing comics, I had done probably a hundred pages of a really dumb fantasy comic I came up with when I was TWELVE, a Sonic fancomic, and every morning on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I would upload my micron inked and colored pencil story about some DnD characters into the school scanner to post on Drunkduck which is probably all still there today. Adventure’s Guild is missed in my heart, for sure.  But in between looking for my first job, the constant writing and doodling I was doing, and my schoolwork I was tossing another idea around in my head. A really DUMB idea, cuz ya know I was FIFTEEN. And I wanted to call it ‘My Big Brother the Ninja’. At the time I was influence by all the dumb anime I was watching and my best friend at the time who always wore black and stood about two feet over me. I don’t know if he’ll ever read this, but trust me if he knew I was talking about this he would recognize this story right away.  Well. My first job came around, along with my post secondary college work, and then a tech school I paid for, and.....life really started to get in the way of development. I was more focused on drawing Adventures Guild and other doodles for a long time, and soon enough taking care of my daughter took precedence over everything, and then I started sewing, and doing conventions....and the idea of ‘My Big Brother the Ninja’ was just stuck in the back of my head. Sitting. Waiting. Forming slowly as it waited for its existence - its time in the sun.  And at some point I decided I wanted Android/Robotic like characters too...some of my FAVORITE series are Kikaider : The Animation and Chobits (the books, not the infants show they try to pass a a fully written anime) - things like that. So I KNEW long before Worldview had a proper name I would be writing robot characters with a twist. But I couldn’t figure out what that twist was, what would make it work. The whole idea was still....building. It needed a push.  Right around the time My Hero Academia came around everyone with a creative mind seemed to be suddenly struck with a similar idea - what if unique powers WEREN’T so unique in a world?  This is fairly common now, but at the start of MHA I remember finding it weird that suddenly every half the new shows out had a whole population of super powered badasses in a world where living daily life with it was more the norm than the exception.  And I remember finding it REALLY weird this all came out the same time I evolving a similar idea for my own thing.... I wish I could prove I was evolving this ideas before I saw em but I can’t. I have a much deeper theory about the evolution of cultural art and how influences drive creative minds to similar conclusions but that’s a LONG mental dive for another day.  ANYHOW.

So my original idea in ‘My Big Brother the Ninja’ was the Ninja would be the weird super power in the normal world.  NOW I wanted the NINJA to be the ‘normal’ one...and the younger sister would be the WEIRD one because she DIDN’T have some sort of power or ability.  I fell in love with this new dynamic and now things were REALLY starting to come together in my mind, what kind of powers were people gonna have, just HOW mundane was it gonna be, how many fantasy elements did I want to have?  Because I already KNEW another element I really wanted to include was modern day Paladins - and YES I WILL be covering modern-day style Paladins in Worldview proper, but this meant the universe needed a Deity system, a hierarchy or pantheon.  And the world just started to grow....but something was still MISSING, the binding, the elements of what all I wanted to do -  Aaaaaaaaaand then came UNDERTALE.  And yes this ENTIRE long post is just me mini ranting about how WV came to be so people can TRULY understand just HOW much is inside MY universe so we can stop tagging it as part of the UT Multiverse please and thank you - it’s not that I don’t UNDERSTAND the confusion, but here is your ultimate ‘for the record’ post regarding mine and @little-noko ‘s personal frustrations. Undertale was obviously a HUGE part of pop culture, personal experiences, my life, MANY of my readers lives, I GET why the emotional connection is there and why its the first thing that comes to mind - but the ONLY part I truly was fascinated by with Undertale was the way the Souls were.  PHYSICAL Souls - an actual magical entity that represented a person - THIS idea.  This was my missing piece.  To say artists get inspiration from other artists is beyond an understatement - even Sans and Papyrus are references to Helvetica, right? If not references, inspired by, or ‘great minds think alike’, whatever your argument there....its not uncommon.  And Souls being PHYSICAL was the element I wanted to play with - the idea I wanted to expand on, and so much more I want to go into detail about but don’t want to go into spoilers yet so I’m not going to - and the absolute CRUX of my frustrations when dealing with ‘WV is just UT with different characters’.  Worldview has.....humans. Only humans, divided into four race. Mechanoid. Masic. Skeleton. Metazoan. (The last one exclusively because I wanted an excuse to draw cute cat girls, so sue me)  A pantheon of Gods. It’s own world map. Special BIOLOGY that I have developed to work specifically with the races I have built. Ability trees (diagram to come, don’t worry, we’re just still working out the kinks).  It’s own countries, nationalities, and even it’s own tangible form of afterlife which I blame watching WAY too much Supernatural on but HEY Reapers are freaking COOL man.  It’s absolutely gut wrenching painful to have people argue with me over a world that I have nurtured and slowly tended to for a good fifteen years...now that it finally, FINALLY gets a chance to exist and be worked on....I feel like the one binding element I finally found and played with and tried to expand on is the ONLY element that people care about. As if absolutely EVERY other element that I want to show just - doesn’t EXIST. We started with Finch because its a good transition from the old projects to the new and it’s the earliest event in the timeline - nothing more than that. But I’m almost starting to feel like that was a mistake because it’s TOO familiar.  There’s no going back now, and thats fine. But it does make me anxious to move on to the next ‘chapter’ we’ll be delving into.  MAN.  I hope that helps clarify a few things.  I love answering questions (those that I can) about  WV...so my ask box is always open.  For those that made it, thanks for listening. :) 

[bitacrytic]

The Black Rose

♧

There was a black rose on the third Saturday of every month on Yohan's calendar. Gaon didn't think anything of it during his first month in the mansion, but when the third Saturday of the next month came around, he noticed it because Elijah pointed out how Yohan always got missing every third Saturday.

So there he was, scrolling through Yohan's calendar for the past six years. And surely, on the third Saturday of every month, Yohan had a black rose stamped on it.

No location. No time. No persons to meet.

Just a black rose.

As the second month rolled into a third, Gaon waited.

Yohan spent the Saturday morning in the in-house gym, then he took a shower, ate his breakfast, read in the study, watched TV with Gaon and Elijah, had lunch, read some more books and then by 3pm, he retired to his room.

Around 5pm, Yohan emerged from his room in his prowling hoodie, tracks, sneakers and a face mask, all in black. As soon as he drove off, Gaon took a second car and followed from a distance, watching the bug he'd placed on all the cars from the tablet in the car he was in.

Yohan drove for thirty minutes into town, turned into a high-rise area, and then parked his car before he got into the one building in the area that had no sign board. Gaon followed, walking down the deserted alleyway that Yohan had taken from the back to enter. When he got to the door, he knocked. A screen dinged by the door and Gaon was suddenly looking at his reflection.

"Can I help you?"

"Uh..." Gaon said. "I... I was told to come here?"

"Are you new?"

"Yes," he said, quickly. "I'm here to sign up."

The person on the other side of the screen scoffed.

"Youngsters. Sign up for what? Is this school?"

The man hissed, but the door buzzed open anyway.

The small room was painted maroon, with one bulb overhead. There were two doors, both of which were closed. The black door on his right remained closed, but as the door behind slid shut, the white one on his left buzzed open.

"This way, please," a voice said on an intercom.

Obediently, Gaon entered the room.

"Fill in your information, sign the contract and you may proceed further."

A quiet voice in Gaon's head told him to turn around and just go back. These people kept electronic records. They were asking for credentials and a signature. Kim Gaon was a national judge. If this got out and this was a shady place, he'd be in so much trouble.

But then again, Yohan was here. Yohan wouldn't indulge in anything that could come back to bite him in the ass. Maybe it was safe. Besides, Gaon's curiosity had skyrocketed. There was no way he was turning back.

So he went to the table, picked up the tablet and began reading the contract. He was going to sign it, but the lawyer in him couldn't just click "yes" to Terms and Conditions without knowing what the terms and conditions were.

He filled in his name, scanned his finger prints, took a picture with the tablet. Placed his I.D. card on the scanner and then the T&S page popped up.

The first page was a standard non-disclosure agreement. He signed that.

Then they spent another page talking about community guidelines and etiquette. No rudeness, no violence, no stalking, no interaction with other guests outside of the building unless agreed upon. Various odd guidelines, but nothing wrong with that, so he signed that page too.

By the third page, Gaon was a little confused.

They talked about consent and roles and body proximity. There was a lot of intimation of the human body, in a way that could only be deemed sexual. A long list of rules for Dominants and a long list of promises to Submissives.

It took three whole paragraphs for Gaon to realize what he was actually looking at. A BDSM contract.

Gaon dropped the tablet on the table and stood up, covering his mouth with his hand.

"Do you wish to retract your application, Mr. Kim?" the voice asked.

"I..." he rubbed his face and ran his hand through his hair. "Give me a minute."

"Take all the time you need."

This was a sex club. A BDSM, sex club. Once every month. Yohan went to a sex club once a month. That explained so much about him but raised a whole set of questions. Of course a control freak like Yohan would relegate his sex life to once every 30 days.

Gaon could turn back now. There was still time. He could cancel the application.

But no.

He sat back and kept reading.

He'd never considered the idea of what BDSM was all about, but reading about it, in black and white was both exhilarating and horrifying. When he got to the end of the page, he signed it just so he could keep going and see what it was all about.

The next page asked for his preferences. There were three options: Dominant, Submissive, Switch. Beneath each option, there was a card that had nothing on it but the intertwined drawing of a rose. The Dominant card was black, with a red rose. The Submissive was white, a black rose. The Switch was red with a white rose.

Dominant? Submissive? What was he? Gaon was about to have an existential life crisis in this tiny room just thinking about it. To be safe, he picked Switch. It wasn't as if he was going to partake in any of it anyway. He just wanted to see what it was about.

They asked for confirmation and he gave it. Then a page popped up for payment.

Gaon laughed. The monthly payment was worth twice as much as they were paying him on the live show per month.

This was the moment he snapped out of it. Was he going to pay all that money just to spy on Yohan? Sighing, he clicked on "cancel". He retracted the entire application and watched as his credentials and biometrics were deleted from the system.

"I'm sorry that I wasted your time," he said to the empty room. He received no reply, but the white door opened once again, leading him to ante room where the outer door was already open and waiting for him.

The drive home was solemn and oddly frustrating. He'd learned a lot and his curiosity hadn't been quenched but even he wasn't foolish enough to pull from his savings just to watch Yohan boss some poor, defenseless woman around.

So he did the next best thing. He made dinner, had small talk with Elijah and then went to bed with his computer, searching the area around the sex club. He also tried finding out what he could about the black, white and red roses. There was nothing online about it. Either no one knew it was there, or they were cleaning up after themselves.

Shady and secretive. Just like Yohan.

Gaon was so starved for information that he considered confronting Yohan about it.

"It's not your business," he had to remind himself. "Just move on."

He closed his laptop and turned over to sleep.

Just move on, he told himself. You wanted to know what the black rose was all about and you found out. So just move on. Move on. Move on. Move on.

♧♧♧♧♧

The next morning, Gaon stumbled out of bed in a sleepy haze. He didn't think he could cook anything so he'd just order something for the house. As he turned the corner in the corridor, he collided with Yohan who was still dressed as he'd been the night before. He'd had his wallet, keys and phone in his hand, so the moment they hit, everything fell to the floor.

"Sorry," Gaon said, bending to pick them up.

"Late night?" Yohan asked, squatting to help Gaon who was taking a little too long to pick the things up.

Then again, who could blame him? Gaon was shocked to his core as he stared at the card in Yohan's open wallet.

"Are you okay?" Yohan asked, closing the wallet and picking his phone as he touched Gaon on the forehead. "Are you sick?"

Gaon opened his mouth to speak but nothing would out. For the life of him, on everything he'd ever suspected, Gaon would never have thought that he'd one day see Kang Yohan walking around the place with a white card that had a black rose.

Because even though he hadn't signed up to join the BDSM club, Gaon was pretty sure he could remember what each card stood for.

And the white card with a black rose?

Was the card for Submissives.

[ultraintrovertedgryffindor]

Sweet Pandemonium - Gally (The Maze Runner) Part 16 of 16

Welp, this is it I guess. I’ve never finished a story of this size before, so ngl, I’m proud of myself. This story was originally gonna be a short possibly two parter imagine, I never intended for this to be 16 chapters long lmao. AND, I didn’t do much pre planning either. I kinda just made things up as I wrote, which is why this story is such a shit show. But a big thank you to the supporters of this shit show, it means a whole fucking lot. Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming...

TW: Page 250

I keep forgetting to tag, fucking hell: @multifandom-fangirl4​  @dxllysoutsider​ @gladerscake​

~~~~~~~~~~

( not my gif )

Shakily changing into a stolen guard’s uniform, you found yourself more nervous than you probably should’ve been. 

You just dreaded going back, now with the threat of everyone you care about dying. 

Before, when it was just you risking your life, it was easier. You didn’t really care if you died if you could save someone else, and you knew that mentality was not the healthiest. But compared to Gally, Thomas, or even Brenda, you didn’t feel like you mattered as much. 

What could you possibly have to offer that would be greater than anyone else’s contribution?

“You ready?” Gally smiled at you.

Ah, but being able to be with Gally overpowered those feelings.

“Yup. How do I look?” You teased, jokingly twirling around to show off the heavy uniform.

“Pretty damn good, I gotta say.”

You brushed off the butterflies in your stomach with a scoff. “Well, a good uniform can make anyone look good, I think.”

“I mean, sure. But damn, you really pull it off.”

Your lighthearted conversation was cut short by a sharp cough, looking over to see Newt with an annoyed look on his face. “You guys are bloody disgusting, excuse me while I go vomit.”

“Oh, come on, man. Look at her and tell me she doesn’t look nice.” Gally pointed to you.

“Jesus, keep it in your pants, mate.”

You stifled a laugh as Gally turned a light shade of red, ignoring the suggestive comment with an eye roll. “I’m just sayin’.”

Newt walked away from the amusing exchange, still stifling a few coughs. You couldn’t help but worry. “Does he seem a bit off to you?” You asked. Gally looked to Newt then back to you, the sad look on his face giving you a guarantee that something was wrong.

You would’ve prodded further if it weren’t for Thomas giving the signal that it was time to start infiltrating the W.C.K.D. building.

The way it was planned, Thomas and Teresa would walk in the front together, meeting up with Newt, soon you and Gally would find them, making sure to keep a natural distance away. Brenda’s job seemed the easiest, to you at least, all she had to do was steal a bus. You prayed that Frypan didn’t fall to his death, and that Jorge would get back in time with the Berg.

“You’re worrying.”

You rolled your eyes at Gally’s tone. “Yeah, of course I’m worrying. When do I not worry?”

“Not as much as you’d think.”

Your felt your heavy breaths waft back into your face from the helmet you were wearing not allowing much to circulate. Seriously, how could people do this all day for a job? You ignored the queasy feeling in your gut as you found Teresa with the other two “guards.”

Entering into a stairwell, Gally suddenly stopped the group. “Hold on, hold on.” He said, looking over some sort of electric box. “I can get in here.”

“Kay, throw me the walkie.” Thomas ordered, motioning for you to follow with him to clear the area.

You heard Newt cough heavily as you descended down the stairs with your gun, right behind Thomas. “How long has Newt been like this?” You whispered.

“Now’s not the time, Y/N.” Thomas said, scanning next floor to see that it was clear.

“Thomas.” You pleaded.

Thomas huffed, an annoyed yet mournful face overtaking his features. You knew his answer wouldn’t be good, and you found yourself dreading what he would say. “He’s got the Flare...he’s been like this for awhile now. I just found out myself.” He frowned.

You cast your gaze downwards, tears already welling up in your eyes as you realized what this meant. Thomas didn’t give you a chance to respond as he quickly ascended the stairs back to the others, holding up the radio. “Frypan, we’re in. How you doing?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting there.” Fry voiced. “Tell Minho hi for me.”

“Hang in there, buddy.”

Gally soon got into the box, quickly looking through the various labels until finding the right one. “This’ll work.” He assured.

“Okay, Brenda, what’s your status?” Thomas spoke through the radio.

“Working on it.” She answered.

“Copy. Just make sure you’re ready on your end.”

“Don’t worry, you know I’m gonna be there.”

Gally quickly set up the hacking signal up to the correct wires, shutting the box door with a grin. “Alright, let’s go.” Everyone quickly bounded down the stairs, stopping at the door at the bottom. “Lawrence, we’re in position.” Gally radioed, only to be greeted with silence. “Lawrence?” 

“If he doesn’t turn those bloody cameras off, then we’re gonna be in big trouble.” Newt expressed everyone’s thoughts.

Gally looked nervous, but peeking though the little window in the door, he huffed. “He’ll do his part.”

You pinched the bridge of your nose, sighing heavily before readjusting the mask part of the helmet over your face. “Let’s get this over with.”

Teresa reluctantly placed her thumb over the ID scanner, and Gally quickly encouraged everyone through the door to cautiously speed through the halls to get to where Minho was being held. 

It didn’t take long to find the holding bay with Teresa leading the group, but you didn’t know if getting in would be easy with a bunch of guards inside.

“Teresa, stay back.” You ordered, gently pushing her behind you. The last thing you guys needed was for her getting in the crossfire.

“Ready?” Gally looked to everyone, they all nodded, clutching their weapons tightly.

As soon as the door opened, shots rang out from your side, making work of all the guards in no time. The element of surprise probably helped. “Huh, that was surprisingly easy.” You chuckled breathlessly, almost proud of yourself for getting some decent shots in, the recoil packed a punch though.

“Yeah? Don’t let it go to your head.” Newt sassed.  

Seeing all the kids exit their holding cells with looks of hopefulness, almost made you tear up. What could’ve these poor innocent souls had to endure by the hands of W.C.K.D. You risked a glace at your cousin, and you couldn’t tell how she felt. Did she feel joy that these kids were finally getting rescued? Or all that she saw in those kids was possible cure, dehumanizing them for the sake of her morality? 

You didn’t want to think about it anymore.

“The vault. How do I get in?” Gally’s voice caught your attention. The person he was holding a gun to simply said that he couldn’t. “Guys, this might take some time.” He voiced after looking over the heavy vault door.

You looked around and furrowed your brows when you saw one key person missing. “Where’s Minho? He’s supposed to be here.”

Thomas scowled, storming up to Teresa. “Where is he?”

Teresa quickly went to the computers, looking up his file. “Someone’s moved him up to the medical wing. Thomas, that’s on the other side of the building.”

Thomas sighed. “Okay, take me to him, right now.”

“Alright, I’m coming with you.” You and Newt both stepped up.

“No. No, you guys have to wait with Gally for the serum.”

“You can’t do this on your own.” Newt argued. “And Minho comes first, remember?”

“Just go, we’re wasting time!” Gally called out. “I’ll get the serum, we’ll meet you out back.”

Thomas nodded to Newt, but turned to you with a remorseful look on his face. “No, no, you’re not making me stay.” You expressed. “I’m part of this as much as he is.”

“Y/N, you’ve done so much for us already. I can’t ask you to do this.”

“I’m offering.”

“No, please. Stay here. We’ll be okay.”

You scowled, exhaling sharply. “Fine. Keep an eye on Newt.” You whispered, Thomas nodding then running out with Newt and Teresa. “Please, be careful.”

“They’ll be fine, just watch my six and the kids.” Gally said, starting to saw into the door.

You stood guard at the door, impatiently tapping your foot as you worried about your friends, especially Newt. You wished he had stayed with you and Gally so you could give him the serum as soon as the vault opened. You knew it wouldn’t cure him, but it would give him time, and that’s what he needed right now.

You heard Gally’s saw stop, smiling ear to ear when the vault door finally opened. You went inside to help Gally load up all the vials, the whole room glowing blue from the color of the serum. “Come on, we need to hurry.”

The room was almost empty of its contents, but staring at one of the only vials left, you debated. Emotion overtook logic as you grabbed a singular vial of the serum, gathering courage and turning around, only to be stopped by Gally. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I have to find Newt.”

Gally looked at the serum clutched tight in your hand, putting the pieces together quickly. “No, no way.”

“Who know how much time he had left? This can help him.”

“It’s too dangerous.” He said slowly.

“I can’t do nothing while I know I can help him.”

“You’re not doing nothing. You’re gonna help these kids get to Brenda. I’m not letting you.”

“I wasn’t asking.” You said bluntly, a determined look in your eyes that made Gally speechless. He had seen that look before, and he finally realized he wouldn’t be able to convince you to stay with him.

Gally quickly pulled you into a hug with his free arm, placing a rough kiss to the top of your head. “You better come back to me.”

You smiled softly. “I will.” 

And with that, you took off without a glance behind you, determined to save your friend from a terrible fate. Of course, if you had glanced behind you to see Gally’s face, you probably wouldn’t been complied to stay. But you had to help Newt, he couldn’t become one of those things. You couldn’t save Gally all those months ago, couldn’t save Jeff...or Chuck. You didn’t want history to repeat itself.

You followed the signs that led you toward where the medical bay would be, making sure to avoid being sighted at all costs. You felt silly hiding in small confined places that made your legs cramp up and wish you had more flexibility or stamina at least. It definitely didn’t help that alarms were blaring all around you, making you believe you actually did get caught. But hearing a few guards talk loudly about how intruders were heading to the medical bay, you realized it was just Thomas who must’ve fucked up, or worse Teresa.

This was going to get a lot harder...

All the guards seemed to rally to the medical bay to capture Thomas and Newt, it wasn’t too difficult to blend in with everyone else distracted from the chaos of it all.

You heard gunshots and glass smashing down the halls of the medical wing. Those boys sure were making it obvious, weren’t they?

You clutched you gun to your chest, not feeling very confident about taking on the guards by yourself, but when you saw your friends with a newly escaped Minho struggling to avoid the guards, you knew you had to do something.

You saying a silent prayer, even though you didn’t know if there was any being out there that heard it, gave you some sort of comfort enough to charge the guards that were gaining on your friends. Shooting at will, not even sure you were hitting any guards, you heard a few men fall to the floor with pained groans.

You didn’t have time to be proud of yourself before you felt a sharp pain in the back of your head, immediately falling to the floor yourself with a yelp.

You looked up to see the annoyed face of Jensen, him leaning down and roughly grabbing onto you and hoisting you up to stand. “You’re a real pain the arse, aren’t you, youngblood?”

Teresa jumped when she heard the doors slam opened, gasping when she saw you on the floor with a bloodied face in front of Jensen. “What the hell, Jensen?”

“Look who I found at the med wing, taking out guards left and right.” Jensen sneered.

“I said alive, Jensen!” Teresa fumed, looking at your almost unconscious form.

“I know what you said, Teresa. She’s breathing, isn’t she?”

Teresa scowled at the man before leaning down to delicately lift you to your feet, ungracefully dragging you to a gurney from the lack of help with your dead weight. “Get out. Thomas is still out there.”

“Your wish is my command, my lady.” Jensen bowed sarcastically, turning on his heel to walk out of the room.

Teresa turned her attention back to you. “I’m so sorry, Y/N.” She whispered, quickly fixing up a wet cloth to wipe away at the blood leaking from your nose and mouth.

You groaned at the pained pressure of the cloth, weakly pushing Teresa’s hand away from your face. “Hurts...” You mumbled.

“I thought you were supposed to stay with Gally.” Teresa fussed, ignoring your discomfort to clean your face. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

“I needed to help Newt...” You frowned, holding up the serum that was once safely in your pocket.

Teresa sighed sadly. “It wouldn’t have saved him.”

“But it would’ve given him time.”

Teresa stayed silent for a moment, deciding what to do with you. You furrowed your brows when you felt her strap you to the gurney tightly. “What’re you...?”

“I can’t have you wondering off, plus, you might have a concussion.” Teresa said, inserting a needle into your arm, pulling blood from your veins.

“You need my blood to keep me from wondering off?” You glared. Teresa avoiding your eyes as she readied another needle. “You’re still looking for a cure...even though there is none.”

“I’m just going to run some tests.” She answered simply.

You bit your lip when you felt tears well up in your eyes, gently banging your head down onto the gurney in frustration. How the hell were you gonna escape now?

Gally could’ve sworn his heart almost stopped when he saw his friends jump out of that window. Did these guys have a death wish? But what scared him even more if that there were only three, not four. Please, tell me she made it... “Where’s Y/N?” Gally tried not to shout.

Thomas eyes widened. “What do you mean? We left her with you!”

“She went to find you guys, to give that shank the serum.” Gally pointed to Newt.

Thomas clenched his fists, feeling anger well up in his gut. “Teresa wouldn’t let her get hurt. If anything, she needs her. We’ll get her back, Gally.”

“I know, cause I’m not leaving without her.”

It felt like hours before you talked to Teresa again, her being so fixated on her tests tubes and microscopes. “Any luck in finding your make believe cure?” You teased mockingly. Teresa stayed silent, watching through her scientific equipment for any sign that her cousin blood did anything to get rid of the Flare virus. Teresa slammed her hands on the table when the blood wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. “Guess I’m not the one, huh?”

Teresa glared at you, not appreciating your irritating commentary. She chose to move on to Thomas’ blood that she took back in the church, and her eyes widened when she saw his blood destroying the Flare virus.

Just when she finished making the first serum that she knew would work, the whole building shook as a boom echoed around the whole city.

You strained your neck to look behind you, seeing an almost mushroom cloud of fire at the wall that protected the city. “What the hell...?” Your eyes widened even more when you could faintly see a swarm of people charging through the gap in the wall, quickly realizing that the people were fighting and destroying everything. “Teresa, we have to get out of here.” You said, noticing everyone outside the lab room where thinking the same thing and trying to making a quick escape.

Teresa frowned, storming over to you and removing your restraints, and quickly going back to her experiments. “I can’t.”

You quickly removed yourself from the gurney. “What do you mean? The city’s getting raided. They’ll burn this place down, with us in it.”

“Thomas is the cure, Y/N!” She yelled, making you speechless. “His blood is destroying the virus! He can save us all. I need him.”

“Teresa...if all went as planned, he’s long gone by now.”

“No, he can’t be. Newt is dying and Thomas won’t abandon him, you know that. He’ll be slowing them down. I have to get through to him.” Teresa exhaled shakily. “You can go if you want, I’m staying. I have to.”

You looked to the exit then back to Teresa, your cousin, your only family. In the past, most choices you made were clearly the right ones. But now...you had no idea what to do.

You wanted to choose Teresa...you really did. But you still had the temporary serum, you still had the chance to help Newt. “I’m sorry, Teresa.” You voiced, gaining her attention. “I want to stay with you. But I need to find our friends.”

Teresa’s face fell, frowning. “I understand.”

“I’ll come back for you.” Your voice wavered, feeling intense emotion wash over you, suddenly getting the feeling to tell her you loved her. But you cut the goodbye short, running out of the room and rushed to leave the building.

Thankfully, everyone was so focused on packing up to leave, you had no trouble escaping. But you almost didn’t want to leave the building when you saw the hell on earth that was just outside. But you pushed on, making sure you kept the hold on the vial safely in your hand.

You almost jumped when you heard your cousin’s voice echo around the city’s speakers.

“Thomas? Can you hear me? I need you to listen to me. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I need you to come back. Thomas, you can save Newt. There’s still time for him. There’s a reason Brenda isn’t sick anymore. It’s your blood, do you understand? She isn’t sick because...you cured her. She doesn’t have to be the only one. You just need to come back, and this will all finally be over. Please, just come back to me. I know you’ll-”

The speakers suddenly cut out, as almost all power in the city was down.

You suddenly felt dread wash over you, you had to find Thomas.

Running through the city as fast as you could, you wished you were a Runner, then maybe your legs wouldn’t cramp up every time you exerted yourself. You felt the heat of fires and explosions as you sprinted, dodging multiple guards and people fighting each other. This wasn’t supposed to happen...

Finally getting to a clearing, you stopped to cease the wheezing in your heavy breaths, until you heard screaming. You quickly rounded the corner to see Thomas and Newt...fighting each other.

No...you were too late...

You ran to them, quickly trying to pull Newt off of Thomas, only for his attention to turn to you and tackle you to the ground. “Newt!” You yelled, tearing up quickly at the sight of his dead eyes and Flared up face. “Newt...”

Thomas pushed Newt off of you, giving you the chance to take the vial out of your pocket, but the new Crank got free of Thomas’ hold and attacked you again, the vial violently being thrown from your hand. You internally cringed when you heard a shatter. Fuck...

You felt your vision get blurry when Newt smashed your head against the pavement, the pain resonating throughout your skull and making you feel lightheaded.

You didn’t know what happened after that, you just woke up and Newt wasn’t attacking you anymore. You didn’t hear the sound of struggle anymore. You looked to your left to see Brenda, a look of pained shock on her face. Then you realized, Thomas was sitting next to Newt. 

“No...” You whispered.

You crawled over to Thomas, looking down at Newt’s body. You could barely see anything due to the tears that welled up in your eyes, making the world around you blurry. You couldn’t do anything but stare numbly at your fallen friend, unaware that Thomas had left.

“Y/N.”

You knew that voice belonged to Gally, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. Or do anything when Frypan wrapped his arms around you to give you some sort of comfort, him feeling the same grief as you, if not worse.

Gally felt the pain of the loss too, but seeing everything being burned down too quickly, he had to speak up. “This place is gonna take us down with it if we don’t get outta here...”

Fry gently pulled you away from Newt’s body, reluctantly motioning for Minho to follow. “Come on.” Fry rubbed your shoulder.

You were basically on autopilot on the way to the Berg, where Jorge, Vince, and the kids were waiting to take off. “We have to find Thomas. He went back to the holding facility.” Brenda voiced worryingly.

“That damn kid.” Vince huffed.

The numbness went away enough to remember that you told Teresa that you’d be back for her. You had to find her again, but the Berg was already being lifted up into the air. In your heart, you knew wherever Thomas was, Teresa was most likely with him. That’s something you could rely on, at least.

“Hey...” Gally sat next to you, gently holding your hand. You could faintly see tear marks down his face, his eyes a shade of red and watery. “We’ll find them.”

You wished you believed that, but after everything that’s happened, you felt having hope was childish. You couldn’t bear to hope just for things to end terribly.

“I think I got him!” You heard Jorge shout, everyone, including you, rallying to the front to look out the Berg’s window.

“Yeah, that’s him. I got the hatch.” Brenda said, quickly springing into action.

“Alright, I got him. I got him.” Jorge said, proceeding to carefully turn the Berg around so the now open hatch was facing the burning building roof. “I can’t get any closer!”

Everyone crowded the hatch, calling out for Thomas and Teresa on the roof, reaching out their hands to grab them. Quickly noticing that he was injured badly, you started to reach out as well. “Thomas! Teresa! Come on!”

“Get closer!” Teresa called out.

“Jump!” Vince yelled, his body almost half out of the aircraft trying to reach.

“We gotta get closer!” Gally yelled to Jorge.

“Come on, reach!”

The Berg finally got close enough to where Teresa could help Thomas onto the hatch, everyone quickly pulling him inside. You looked back to Teresa, holding out your hand as far as you could. “Your turn, jump!” You called out. You furrowed your brows in confusion when Teresa made no effort to move, not even to reach out for you. You could see the debate in her eyes, wondering if she actually deserved to live or not. “Don’t leave me!”

Teresa’s eyes softened, almost bringing her to tears upon hearing that short but impactful sentence. In a matter of a few seconds, the next building over was destroyed, large chunks of debris falling, making the roof collapse into itself, taking your cousin with it.

“No!” You sobbed loudly, ripping apart your vocal cords and feeling your heart break in two.

The Berg quickly left the destroyed area, bringing you all back to their base to pack up and finally go to a place called the “Safe Haven.”

You fell back, feeling grief and guilt weigh you down. I shouldn’t have left her...she would be here if I had just stayed...

You looked to see that Thomas passed out, but he was alive. Brenda and Gally quickly patched him up, but he would have to be better treated when the Berg arrived.

Gally just sat next to you the whole ride, not saying anything, not even attempting to give you comforting touches in fear that it would just make things worse, he just sat there to let you know he was there for you.

Everything felt like it was moving too fast, like time sped up without warning or giving you time to adjust. It made you feel nauseous, but you had nothing in your stomach to throw up, besides bile, you which you did upchuck. You huffed at the burning feeling in your throat. “Damn it...”

Gally was right by your side, rubbing your back and telling you everything would be okay. But it wouldn’t be okay. You lost your close friend, and then you lost your only family that you had left. You couldn’t help the new flow of tears, Gally quickly pulling you close to lean on his chest. “It’s okay. Let it out...” He said softly.

“I could’ve...I could’ve...” You hiccupped.

“There’s nothing you could’ve done, sweetheart.” Gally hugged you tighter, feeling your body rack with heavy cries.

Hours later, you finally calmed down, the tears ran out a long time ago. But you noticed the machine hum of the Berg stopped. “We’re here!” Jorge called out, making you flinch at the sudden shout. 

“Come on, help me get Thomas situated.” Vince called out, gathering the group to carry him, including Gally.

You stepped out of the Berg to immediately smell a slight salty scent, you never smelled anything like it. And you heard an unfamiliar sound, almost like white noise. It was just after sunset, but it was still a little light out. But you instantly recognized the light tan sandy ground, the water the stretched out for miles and miles to the horizon.

You’d never seen a beach before, not even before your memory wipe before the Maze. It was beautiful, but you would appreciate it better without the rotting feeling of grief weighing on your shoulders.

You walked to where you saw Vince take Thomas, stopping right outside the entrance of the wooden hut. “Is he okay?” You asked softly.

“He’ll be okay.” Vince answered. “He should wake up soon, but I have to go and make sure things have been taken care of while I’ve been gone.” And with that, Vince walked away with a fast pace.

Minho then exited the hut, meeting you with wide eyes. “Hey...” He said awkwardly, making you give a tight lipped smile. “I’m...sorry, about Teresa. I know how important she was to you.”

You didn’t want to cry anymore, you were sick of crying and the thought alone made you exhausted. “I’m sorry about Newt. He...he was a good guy.”

Minho’s lip quivered slightly, but quickly covered it up with a sigh. “We all lost him.”

You brought him into a hug, not knowing what else to do. It was weird at first, you two weren’t the type to show physical affection to each other, but you felt the situation called for it. Minho hugged you back tightly, trying not to cry at the thought of never being able to hug his best friend again.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m tired.” You sighed.

“Yeah, I think everyone is. It would be weird if they weren’t.” Minho looked past you and smiled to himself weakly. “I think I should get some sleep. I’ll see you later.” You turned to watch Minho walk off, giving Gally a slight nod as he passed him.

Gally walked up to you with a small smile. “I would ask if you’re okay, but I feel like that question is pretty obvious.”

“Yeah...” You whispered. “I’m just fucking exhausted.”

Gally frowned, placing a hand on your shoulder. “Vince already has some beds set up for us. Shall we go?”

You nodded. “That sounds nice.”

You and Gally set up your beds next to each other, at your insistent request. To be fair, in a new environment, you didn’t feel safe at all. Ironic in the “Safe Haven.”

You didn’t get a lot of sleep, constantly worrying about how Thomas was doing. Gally seemed to sense your worry. “He’ll be fine. He’s a stubborn kid.” He said, bringing you closer to him. It did seem to relax you as you fell asleep soon after, but that didn’t stop the influx of nightmares to plague your subconscious. 

The next morning, everyone was up and atom, but you and your friends seemed to have been allowed to sleep in. “Who knew waking up beside you would be so nice?” You opened your eyes to see Gally smiling softly at you. You tried not to blush, temporarily forgetting the events that happened last night.

“You guys are disgusting.” Fry suddenly voiced loudly.

“You jealous, Fry?”

“Are you kidding? Of course I am.”

You chuckled weakly at the interaction, but you sat up and stretched, looking around to see the beach lit up in its full glory. “Wow...” You whispered.

Waking up to such a beautiful sight, it did bring a small smile to your face. You wished so badly that Newt and Teresa were there to share it with everyone too, but you tried to shake those thoughts away.

Later that day, you sat beside Minho and Jorge, watching Gally help build something from afar. “He’s lucky to have you.” Minho smirked, picking at the fruit in his hand.

You smiled slightly, not truly believing it. “It’s the other way around really.”

“Well, whatever. You two are good for each other.” Minho rolled his eyes, making you chuckle. “Thomas...” You heard Minho suddenly whisper, and you looked in the same direction he was, seeing that Thomas was indeed walking through the new area.

You and Minho quickly stood up, slowly walking towards Thomas, along with everyone else behind you guys. Thomas’ eyes were tired, just like the rest of yours probably were. He didn’t smile, you couldn’t blame him. There was nothing to say, so Minho brought Thomas into a hug. You were in so much pain from the loss of your cousin, but Thomas was in love with her, you couldn’t imagine how he felt. He lost two of the most important people to him.

You hugged Thomas too, silently communicating each other’s condolences through the gesture.

That night, you and Gally sat next to each other as everyone else gathered to hear Vince speak at the bonfire that was set up, a celebration of sorts of surviving.

“We have come a long way together.” Vince started. “So many have sacrificed so much to make this place possible. Your friends, and your family. So here's to the ones who couldn't be here, here's to the friends we lost. This place is for you. It's for all of us, but this,” He held up a knife, pointing it to the large stone pillar in front of the crowd, “this is for them. So in your own time, in your own way, come make your peace. And welcome to the Safe Haven!” He cheered, the crowd following suit.

You forced yourself to smile as you held up the drink in your hand, following along with the rest of the crowd that were actually happy to be there. You were too, but it was hard to convey those feelings. Celebrating didn’t feel right, not this soon anyway.

You watched as multiple people lined up to carve their fallen friend’s or family’s names onto the pillar. You knew who’s name Minho would carve, it was obvious. But you didn’t expect Gally to get up and carve a name. Of course you were curious, but it seemed like it would be personal.

You had a name in mind, but you looked over to Thomas who was frowning while reading something. You knew Teresa meant something to him too, they were close, almost as close you and her had been when you were kids. But you two were kids, you two grew apart. You didn’t know her in the end, not truly. You knew you didn’t deserve to be the one to carve her name. You would let Thomas be the one.

You thought back to your past, having more names pop up in your head, only one truly sticking out.

You stood up after the crowd cleared, walking to the stone pillar with the knife in hand. You found the place for the name, thankful that the light from the fire still reached. You held up the knife and started carving the name.

You smiled fondly when it was done.

“Who’s that?” Gally walked up behind you, placing a comforting hand on your shoulder.

You took a deep breath. “My baby sister...”

“You had a sister?”

“Yeah, my parents wanted me to choose the name, but she got the Flare along with them before I could give her one. It was only a week later that I finally gave her a name...even if she was dead.”

“How old was she?”

You frowned. “...three days old.”

“Y/N...I’m so sorry.”

You turned around to see Gally’s solemn face, but you smiled weakly. “I just have to believe she would’ve been better off, or in a better place.”

Gally only nodded, taking his hands in yours and leading you away to walk along the shore. “Things will be better here.”

“You really think so?” You asked, not sounding very hopeful.

“It have to be. We fought so hard for this.”

“I hope your right, Gally. What’ll life be like here though?” You wondered aloud.

Gally suddenly smiled giddily. “We’ll build our own city.” He nodded confidently, making you scoff.

“Oh really?” You raised your eyebrows skeptically, but a smile playing at the corner of your lips.

“Yeah! And we’ll have parties and bonfires every night.”

You couldn’t help but laugh loudly. “Easy there, tiger. We’ve only been here one day. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Come on, dare to dream, Y/N.” He grinned.

“I’ll leave the dreaming up to you, Captain.”

You and Gally stopped and sat on a little incline of the shore to take a break from walking, just watching the sun come up. 

Gally was sitting behind you, his arms wrapped around your shoulders and you leaning into him comfortably. You basked in his body heat, shielding you from the slightly chilly air from the ocean tides. It felt nice, the nicest feeling you’ve felt in the past few days.

You looked up to see Gally’s eyes entranced in watching the waves, his lips naturally upturned in a slight smile.

You leaned up and placed a soft kiss to the underside of his jaw, seeing his eyes briefly close at the feeling and his smile growing into a shy grin. He turned his head and leaned down to place a kiss to your lips. “I love you, you know.”

You grinned. “Yeah, I know. I love you too...so much.”

Looking back to the ocean, you knew you guys were going to be okay now.

~~~~~~~~~~

Welp, yeah...I’m having trouble liking the ending, but I hope y’all do at least. BUT SIKE, this ain’t the end(technically). I’m planning on releasing a bonus chapter reallll soon, for all those heathens that wanted smut ;)

But for those not into that sorta thing, don’t worry! It’s not gonna forward the plot in any way, this chapter is the end of the main story, so you won’t miss anything. Just fluff and smut

[jocazep]

In the Whole Wide Train | Chapter 11

Pairing: Curtis Everett x Reader (Jo, OFC), slight Edgar x Reader

Warnings: Major spoilers for SNOWPIERCER, dystopian society and its countless problems, mentions of forced abortions, language, violence, deaths, slow burn, eventual smut

Synopsis: Having grown up in the Front Sections of the Snowpiercer, you venture down the train when a rare opportunity presents itself, but the excursion quickly changes flavor when you arrive in the Tail Section.

A/N: Sooooo it's been a while... mainly because I didn't want to write the inevitable [SPOILER] of a certain character...but alas, the fanfic must go on. So here we go again...

Taglist: Now closed

Series Masterlist

Chapter 11 - Breaking Bread

“I forgot to ask,” you reached out to grab Curtis’ right arm as the gang shuffled along the green aisles of the garden section.

“What?” Curtis was too busy looking at the overwhelming plants, trees, and vegetables that he thought had long been extinct in the world. It was a beautiful sight, you had to admit, especially compared with the monotone bleakness of the tail section. So beautiful that when Namgoong opened the door, everyone’s eyes, with the sole exception of Mason’s, lit up as this unimaginable paradise was presented to them.

“That little scar on your forearm--”

“It’s nothing--” you felt his arm stiffen beneath your hand, his left hand involuntarily scratching the coat over the position of the scar. To be honest, you could barely remember what it looked like anyway. In the heat of passion last night, your eyes caught a long, even line near the elbow that looked more like the remnant of a precision surgery than a battle scar.

“All right, keep your mysterious cool guy aura then,” The scar piqued your interest, but you decided against pushing for an answer--there will be time after the matter at hand... You grabbed tighter onto his arm, tip-toeing to place your lips near his ear and whisper, “Tease.”

Curtis turned around, surprised. You didn’t need to forego all the fun, right?

“No, no, no don’t eat that--” a worker reached out to Tanya, who had picked up a tomato.

“It’s OK, just a tomato.” You calmed the worker down, rolling up your sleeve, “Here use my credit.” The worker took out the scanner, still hesitant, but obliged you. A small beep sounded and you were on your way.

“What was that?” It was Curtis’ turn to be curious.

“Well up front we have this thing called currency--” you joked, but the sight ahead distracted your audience.

You had come to the aquarium section.

Moments later, the eight of you were sitting along the sushi bar, staring at the plates of exquisite raw fish in front of you.

“So, sushi.“ Tanya took up her serving and popped it into her mouth.

“You people are lucky! This is only served twice a year, January, and July,” Mason decided this was a good time to open her mouth.

“Why, not enough fish?” Tanya quibbed dryly, as a massive manta flowed overhead.

“Enough isn’t the criterion,” You absent-mindedly took over the conversation from Mason as you poured the soy-sauce for your toro nigiri, “It’s balance--”

You lift your head to put back the soy-sauce, only to realize everyone to your right was looking your way, waiting for you to finish your thought.

“What about balance?” Curtis, sitting to your left, asked.

You whipped your head back, a quick moment as you looked at the man--he will need to know sooner or later, right?

“Be...because of that--” you pointed to the whiteness outside, the remnants of a metropolis whipping past, “the only way this aquarium was going to survive, was by becoming a closed ecological system. The number of individual units must be very closely, precisely controlled in order to maintain the proper, sustainable balance.”

“Like so many other things on this train.”

You passed a stern look to Mason, who was bitterly fiddling with the iron around her wrists.

“Whoever designed this got really lucky then,” Namgoong commented.

“Oh no, back in the first year my--” you caught yourself before the word “father” slipped out, “my friends told me they had to get rid of the fish that couldn’t fit into the food chain...”

“What, the restaurant served exclusively fish?” Curtis could almost hear Edgar’s ranting in his ear.

“Some,” You picked at the wasabi, smearing it on your sushi, “a lot of them got made into taxidermies for posterity...” It was only after the room became quiet that you realized you misspoke, “I’m sorry...It was...”

“It’s all right, it’s what actually happened,” Curtis put his arm on your shoulder, pulling you closer towards him.

You couldn’t let it go that easily of course. Remember your surroundings, you were bothered that your father’s voice rang up in your head. But the truth was you probably needed a reminder, after such a long time with the revolters, it’s easy to forget what you were really here for. Better now than later.

But it seemed the meal was just destined to go awry--no sooner had Mason picked up her chopsticks, than Curtis pulled on the chain, jerking the tools out of Mason’s control.

“No,” Curtis palmed out a protein bar, waving it in front of Mason, “You eat this. Know what it’s made of?”

Mason took it up, and threw a quick look at you, only to realize you had pre-empted her by turning your attention to Yuna sitting to your right.

“Curtis my friend, this seems uncalled for--“

“I’m not your friend, and this is 100% called for.”

”Would I be your friend if I had classified information about Wilford?“

Uh-oh. You forced yourself to turn your head--naturally and slowly--towards Curtis and Mason, “Curtis...” You lay your hand on his, and shook your head.

You could swear you saw his nostrils flare up a little, “We have had to eat this for, hell you have had to eat this for--”

“But isn’t the point of the revolt--”

“The point,” Curtis wriggled his hand from underneath yours, and flung the protein bar at Mason, “is to make them pay for what they did to us--”

“Make them pay? Weren’t we fighting for equal quality--“

“Not after what they did to Edgar--”

“How is degrading Mason any help?”

“At least I’ll sleep a little better knowing I made one front-sectioner get a taste of their own medicine.”

The words hung like leaden rings in the air, reverberating through your spine. Mason looked on, unsure how to react.

“Well,” after a long while, you finally opened your mouth, “then let that be me instead.”

Curtis, like everyone else, was taken aback. They watched as you reached out, switching the protein bar with your own sushi serving.

“Jo, that’s not what Curtis meant...” Tanya tried to diffuse the situation, but you ignored her, biting down on the brownish jelly, forcing the rubbery morsels down your throat. It tasted even worse than you remembered.

When you couldn’t stomach any more of the protein bar, you stuffed the rest in your pocket, got to your feet, and walked to the far end of the aquarium.

Curtis made a move to follow you, but Tanya stopped him, “let her blow off a little steam.” Curtis nodded, still hesitant, his eyes trailing your footsteps as they quickened the closer you moved towards the restroom.

Yuna ran past, intent on following you, but was met with the slamming of the steel door in her face. She looked back at Curtis and company, a little confused and hurt.

On the other side of the door, you were puking your guts out, eyes welling up, nose running. It wasn’t just the thought of eating protein extracted from millions of locusts that turned your stomach--the little clash had brought a stern reality check in your head: this is a revolt, and whatever the original intent, if Curtis and Co succeed, there will be suffering and chaos before any sort of balance is reached.

Guess the old man was pretty perceptive after all...you thought as you finally straightened up, wiping your face with water, trying to recall what your father had planned in case the revolt went further than the water section, only to realize Wilford had actively excluded you from that conversation.

You were wondering if he had predicted your eventual realization of the irreconcilable conflict between your visions of change and those of the revolt when a gentle knock sounded at the door. You checked your face in the mirror, forcing an air of nonchalance—you don’t want Curtis to think you had been crying, even if it was just from nausea.

“Are you OK?” It was Yuna’s voice coming through the door.

Eyes dropping a little, you pulled opened the door, “yeah, just nature calling. What’s up?”

Yuna raised the same wrinkled notebook page, pointing at the pencil-colored steel drawers.

“Yes we’ve been through this—“ Yuna pushed the paper closer to you, forcing you to take a closer look. There were shallow indents on the page, remnants of your notes when you made your way down the train.

Oh god. You panicked as you scrambled to remember what you might have written on those pages.

“Yuna, listen—“

“Guys, c’mon, we are moving onto the next section.” Tanya called out.

You nodded in her direction, and looked down at Yuna, “we’ll revisit this?” Yuna put the paper back into her pocket and followed you to join the gang.

As the two of you approached, Curtis tried to find your eyes. He wished he could say that he didn’t mean what he said, but he knew you saw the truth behind the hot-blooded words. Years of oppression had created a beast within him, and it was easy to hate the front-sectioners when they were faceless beings living in his head, or the pompous Mason. But now...

To be honest he had stopped thinking of you as a front-sectioner since well before your passionate evening together. Which makes it all the more frustrating when you chose to remind him of the undeniable fact, stirring awake the beast he thought he had put to sleep. He knows it’s not your fault—you were barely out of school when you boarded the train. And it is terribly difficult for him to imagine the courage it took for you to side with him against your family and friends—goodness he had never thought about that before. Do you still have family in the front--

His train of thought came to a grinding halt as you walked past him, determined not to look at him. Curtis felt his brows furrow further, and jerking the chain, pulled Mason forward.

“Curtis my friend, could we dispense with the chains for the next section?”

“Why?” A half-distracted answer from Curtis as he watched you push the door open with Namgoong and Grey, heading into the freezer section.

“Well, for the sake of the young, the children--“ Mason was barely finished with her sentence when you walked over, taking off your overcoat and draping it over her cuffs.

”What do you think you’re doing?“ Curtis didn’t sound too pleased.

“It’s the school section next,” you said as you strode to the front of the procession again, “kids shouldn’t be a part of this.”

The silence game between you and Curtis continued throughout the freezer section please, you walking at the front, him trailing in the back with Mason. You started fidgeting as you walked past the racks of beef and frozen chickens—maybe giving Mason your coat wasn’t such a great idea. But you were not going to give Curtis the satisfaction, so you did the only thing you could do, walk faster.

“Hey, spoiled lady, wanna slow the fuck down?” Namgoong never actually learned your name, which doesn’t really make a difference to your really...

“Sorry, I’m just not very good with cold.” You said as you slowed your steps until you were in the same footing as the disheveled security specialist.

“Then you’re fucked in this world.”

You couldn’t help but chuckle, “yeah guess I am...” Then you remembered something, “Why does the Yekaterina Bridge mean so much to you?”

“What?”

“I saw you looking for something through the windows when everyone was hanging on for dear life. Must have been pretty important to you...”

A moment of silence as Namgoong stopped his steps. You kept your eyes on him, waiting for an answer. He let out a sigh, raising a hand, “you wanna swipe your implant to open the door, or should I?”

You turned your head—and see the door at the end of the section.

When the rest of the company finally caught up to you and Namgoong, Curtis noticed your fidgeting hands as they raised up to unlock the door, the fingertips showing just a tiny hint for blue. With Mason in tow, he strode up to you, taking your hand before you could retract it.

“Wh—“

“You’re freezing,” Curtis said as the lively noise of children hit you like a heatwave. Bright colors assaulted your eyes and saccharin songs flowed through the concrete doors.

“I’m fine,” you replied, your hand twitching within his grasp, but not quite withdrawing it.

“Look, I feel like an asshole for earlier...” Curtis took a pause as the rest of the company shuffled past into the school section. A pregnant lady led the children in chorus as an educational, semi-propaganda introduction of the train was blaring on the TV at the moment. Thank god you were too old for this when you first boarded.

When it was once again just the two of you hovering at the entrance, Curtis continued, “Here take my coat—” He moved to shrug off his tattered coat, but you stopped him.

“Sure this front-sectioner has had enough taste of her own medicine?”

“C’mon, I don’t think of you as a front—“

That’s not exactly what you were hoping to hear.

“But I am one,” you said as you pulled your hand free, his fingers leaving visible prints on yours, “and up to a month ago, everyone in my life is one too.”

”But now you’re with us—”

“There should be no ‘us’ or ‘them’, that’s kind of the point of all this jazz, Curtis.”

Curtis just blinked at you. You could see the idea behind your words not quite computing within his mind, a mind that had always lived in the darker part of a dichotomy. And a part of your resolution melted away.

“Let’s do this another time,” You laid one hand on his, urging him to put his coat back on.

“Sure you’re ok without the coat?”

“I’ll survive. My blood is still raging hot from our fight earlier.” Curtis was a little bummed at your joking dismissal of his concern, but he knew there was no use pushing you.

“Children, let’s say hello to our guests from the tail section...” To her credit, the pregnant teacher kept her countenance as she took in the group of torn coats and ragged shoes filing past her, Tanya and Andrew getting their grease-stained fingers on a student’s face every once in a while when they thought he resembled their sons.

“Today is the first day of the new year, so we have a special little treat,” the teacher said as a well-dressed, clean-shaven Gerald walked in, to everyone’s surprise.

Amidst murmurs of “Is that Gerald?”, your eyes glazed over, thinking about his wife back in the tail section and her broken hand. And your resolution crumbled further—surely the train could have made room for one more violinist? A cloudy silhouette of the previous violinist took form in front of your eyes—was she the first chair of the Viennese Philharmonic? You couldn’t quite recall, except for the fact that she played at the weekly fete.

You were so lost in thought, and music, to have noticed Egghead walking down the aisle, handing each child a New Year’s celebratory egg.

And then, came the most traumatic three minutes of your life.

Taglist: @torntaltos @emmalbg @ajosieface

[the--highlanders]

4. “Fine, I give up.”

on ao3.

The tell-tale bell’s toll of the TARDIS landing had barely echoed out when Jamie heard something at the door – which could only mean one of two things. On the one hand, the Doctor might have set the TARDIS to land on autopilot. But he did that so rarely, and complained all the way through doing it. Jamie could hardly imagine him doing it outside of an emergency, and certainly not without anyone around to whine to. Or, he could have landed the TARDIS and come skidding through the ship’s corridors at lighting speed to screech to a halt outside their bedroom door.

Jamie’s bets were on the latter. And sure enough, when the Doctor pushed open the door to step inside, he was looking even more ruffled than he normally did.

“Guess what,” he said breathlessly. It might have been excitement – he was sure it was, in part at least – but some of it had to be from how fast he had run. “Guess what I’ve done.”

Folding over the corner of the page, Jamie tossed his book onto the bedside table. “Ye managed tae get them to give us the night off?”

“Well, yes.” The Doctor reached out to him, and Jamie took his hands with a grin, letting himself be whisked to his feet and bundled out the door. “But that’s not all.”

“Dinner at the top of a mountain?”

He grinned wider when the smile faded a little from the Doctor’s face. “Ah. Now, I haven’t quite managed to sort that one out yet, but -”

“You’re workin’ on it,” Jamie finished with him. He had heard it enough times to have learnt it by heart. “You’ve been workin’ on it for three weeks.”

“And they haven’t given us enough time off for me to work on it,” the Doctor countered. “Besides, I have to pick the right mountain. We’ll manage it sooner or later.”

“Aye, I know.” Leaning into the Doctor’s side, Jamie disentangled one hand to wrap his arm around the Doctor’s shoulders and kiss the top of his head. “I’m no’ that fussed.” The Doctor’s hand crept up to find his again, pulling it further down over his chest. “So what’ve ye done?”

The Doctor twisted around to look up at him, half-stern and half-pleading. “You have to guess.”

Heaving out a reluctant groan, Jamie stared back at the Doctor equally pleadingly. All of time and space, and he expected him to guess where they had landed. It was probably somewhere he had never heard of, he thought, with some new treat that no rational person would expect him to guess. Ziplining over a forest of carnivorous plants, or fishing in a river made of metal, or something of that sort. Both of those had been real enough, as it turned out, but he would never have guessed them in a million years. Then again, the Doctor was hardly the first person he thought of if he imagined someone rational.

“Is it a planet?” he asked. The Doctor nodded. “Warm or cold?”

“Cold – well, both, really. But it’s cold where we’re going.”

“Mm.” That was something of a surprise, he thought. The Doctor was a creature of warmth, forever hogging blankets and fireplaces and Jamie’s own body heat. Always soaking it up like a sponge. And the worst part was that it hardly seemed to make any difference. No matter how warm their surroundings were, he would find a way of depositing his cold feet in Jamie’s lap, or slipping his cold fingers up his shirt to warm them in the mornings. For him to pick out a cold place, apparently of his own accord – well, it was unusual, to say the least. But perhaps he hadn’t really chosen, and the TARDIS had simply deposited them somewhere. Either way, it didn’t do much to help him narrow things down.

“We dinnae have tae go runnin’ around, do we?” he asked. “Only I’m fair tired after all that business with the big beastie earlier.”

“Well, then, you shouldn’t have assumed it was carnivorous when you were trying to throw food to it,” the Doctor said, sticking his nose in the air. “And you shouldn’t have ignored the fact that they’re highly territorial at that time of year.” Of course, he was conveniently forgetting that he had pelted away with just as much terror as Jamie had. It was not as if he had remembered that the trick was to stay still, either. But that was always the way of it. “Here we are.” Steering Jamie into the console room, he pulled him to a halt in front of the scanner switch, though he tapped Jamie’s hands away when he reached out towards it. “Not yet. You have to guess.”

“Aye, aye, I’m guessin’.” What more was there to ask? “Do I know the place we’re goin’?”

“Yes, you do. Rather well, I’d say.”

His heart leapt in his chest. It always did, when the Doctor said something like that. It was only very rarely right, but that never seemed to dampen its enthusiasm. “Are we in Scotland?”

The Doctor laughed at that, a little apologetically, like he had known what Jamie’s mind would jump to before he had even said anything. “Not quite, I’m afraid,” he said, still chuckling. “But close. I’ll put it on the list for next time, shall I?”

“I thought it was always on the list.” Searching around for what they could possibly be doing near Scotland – but not in it – he settled on the obvious answer. “Are we goin’ tae see Ben an’ Polly?”

“We’re a little bit late for that, I’m afraid.”

“Oh.” If they were too late for Ben and Polly – well, then, he never stood a chance of guessing it. The Doctor seemed to forget, sometimes, that even after all their years of travelling together, he still didn’t know everything. It was nice, in a way, to have the Doctor be so confident in his knowledge. Even if it was a bit frustrating at times like this. “Och, fine,” he said at last. “I give up. Where are we?”

It didn’t really matter, he knew, whether he guessed right or not. In fact, he suspected that the Doctor would have been rather disappointed if he really had managed to guess where they were. What mattered was the drama of it all. And now the Doctor was fluffing himself up like a bird, sweeping his coattails out like a magician flourishing before a magic trick. There was nothing the Doctor liked better, Jamie knew, than a chance to show off.

“Welcome,” he said, his voice low and conspiratorial, like he was sharing some great secret. “To the great London frost fair of twenty-two fifty. The first of its kind since the nineteenth century.”

“Didn’t we go tae one of these before?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said, a little impatiently. “Yes, we did. But, ah – that was several centuries before this, Jamie. Think about where we were before – and then add six hundred years’ worth of technological change, social change, expansion into space, contact with alien species – it’s an almost unrecognisable spectacle.” Flitting around the TARDIS’ central console, he tapped Jamie on the nose as he passed, making him scrunch his face up and smile. “The first time in hundreds of years that the Thames froze over enough for them to hold a festival on the ice. Imagine the excitement! Two hundred years spent repairing the Earth’s ozone layer, and humanity was rewarded with -” Reaching around Jamie, he flicked the scanner switch. “This.”

For a moment, the screen was so black that Jamie wondered whether the thing had broken down somehow. It would be typical enough for some part of the TARDIS to break, right when they were trying to use it. Especially after all the fiddling the Doctor had been doing to try and ferret out the Time Lords’ interference. He swore that he always left the ship intact – but ever since the food machine had started turning out seedlings instead of vegetables, Jamie had never quite believed it.

Or maybe they were in a darkened room, he supposed. Someone’s basement, something like that. The Time Lords had certainly helped the Doctor to land in roughly the time and place he wanted, but they had not entirely put a stop to his parking mishaps.

Only – there were things on the screen. White specks that he had first passed off as dust, but which were now growing larger and larger, spinning towards them. The screen was grainy enough that it was difficult to tell what they were, but as they came in closer, they started to resolve into something more recognisable. Asteroids, hurtling straight towards them. Things always looked slow in space, Jamie knew, with nothing to measure their movement against. A spaceship could go fast enough to cross an entire galaxy in half an hour and still look like it was travelling at a snail’s pace. So for these asteroids to look like they were travelling fast… He shuddered to think about exactly how fast they were.

“Doctor?” he said, grasping at the shoulders of the Doctor’s jacket nervously. “Shouldn’t we move?”

“… all along the edge of the river,” the Doctor was still going on, “hundreds of thousands of people visited within the first week -” He paused, peering at Jamie. “What do you mean?” Jamie just shrugged towards the scanner. “Oh! Oh, my word, yes.” Scurrying off around the console again, he flicked what seemed like every button and lever he passed. “Goodness me.” The central column began to rise and fall, the TARDIS wheezing back into flight. “Good gracious.” One of the asteroids was almost on top of them now, moving in to take up the whole scanner screen just seconds before the view turned grey and static-y. Pressing one hand over his chest, the Doctor drew a deep breath in and out. “The TARDIS can survive anything, of course,” he said, though he sounded less confident than Jamie would have liked. “But, ah – she doesn’t like it, do you, dear?” He rubbed the edge of the console, and the TARDIS chittered back a complaint. “Gives her indigestion.”

Jamie’s own heart was still pounding, but the static on the scanner settled him enough that he began to laugh. It was just typical, really, that the Time Lords would spend all that effort trying to make sure the TARDIS could get to where it needed to go, and the Doctor would still find some way of ending up in the wrong place. “So,” he said, “the great London frost fair, eh?”

The Doctor scowled at him. “Hush, you.”

“Ye said it would be a spectacle, I ‘spose. I liked the bit with the asteroids.”

“Hush.”

“So.” Sprawling down into a chair pushed against one of the walls, Jamie grinned up at the Doctor. “Are we goin’, or not?”

[siberianoverture]

Don’t You Know - 3

A/N: Hi! I realized I should probably specify when the fic happens, sorry! It all happens a year after Endgame, 2024. I spared Tony, I like the theory that if everyone on the battlefield touched each other the energy would be dispersed, Steve returns the stones and comes back because Peggy Carter moved on, and Natasha comes back. Hope my forgetfulness didn’t cause too much confusion. English is not my first language and although I am pretty confident in it I know I make some mistakes. If you happen to find them please let me know! If you want to be added to taglist let me know! Enjoy!

previous: CHAPTER 2

When Sam came into his friend's room to propose a trip to the city for lunch, he found him standing in the middle of the floor staring at the wall above his desk.

"Buc-" he stops when he follows Bucky's gaze, "what's all this?"

There are two pages ripped from a notepad taped there, both with big black letters in Bucky's neat handwriting. First read 'a girl', second 'forgetting'.

Bucky doesn't look at him, clearly deep in thought, so Sam steps in front of him forcing the super soldier to look at him. Bucky lowers his eyes and steps back until he is sitting on his bed.

"What's going on?" Sam asks again turning slightly to take another look at the wall.

"I can't remember her," Bucky says still looking at his shoes, "there's a girl that worked with Winter Soldier, but I don't remember."

"Maybe it was one mission only so there's nothing to remember," Sam tries but Bucky shakes his head.

"I would remember, I remember everything he saw. There is a person-shaped hole in my memories. Like someone took an eraser and wiped her away."

"I thought they took down all Hydra barriers," Sam begins and Bucky looks up at him, "Oh, you don't think it was done by Hydra. Like a superpower?” Bucky nods, “How do you know it's a girl anyway?"

"Natasha, she said there was a rumor of a girl working with Soldier. She thinks it's her, but I don't think so. Nobody would've called her that, everyone would just say Black Widow. Also, it became quite known we had missions together. It just doesn't add up but if anyone knew it would be her, so I don't really know where to look," Bucky explains starting to ramble a bit so Sam sits down next to him and places a hand on his friend's shoulder.

"Hey, calm down. We'll figure it out."

*

A month passed and they had found nothing.

Bucky had a new routine now: run, breakfast, look for something, lunch, look for something, dinner, look for something until he passed out, rarely in his bed, usually on the floor next to it. This changed only on mission days, if there is a slight chance that he could find something more about her, he goes. The team doesn't ask.

He hadn't told anyone what he was doing, trying to protect himself from everyone's pity, it was Hydra after all. He knew that she might be dead already. It did not stop him, the weird dreams and memories he couldn't catch fueling him. Also, for some reason, he did not want Steve knowing.

Sam is with him whenever he can, sometimes reading some files but usually just keeping him company. With Bucky running after ghosts and assumptions there was little he could help with besides standing next to his friend when mission reports bring back dark memories.

*

"Sam Wilson came back from his mission and is heading to your room, Sergeant," Friday informed tearing him away from reading through old files for what felt like the hundredth time. Sure enough, Sam was soon walking through his door, still in his suit with an old looking manila folder and throwing it to Bucky.

First, there was a list of Inhumans with their photos and their abilities. At the top there was a boy, no older than fifteen, and there was one word in the abilities column: FORGETTABLE. Bucky looked back at Sam.

"I know it's a boy but, remember, there was a series of experiments where they tried to transfer powers," Sam turned the pages, " there was one page missing and here it is. There was one success, and it was a girl." Sam points to the bottom of the page. FEMALE, 737079, 18, SUCCESS. He flips a few more pages. "She survived because they gave her the serum."

"That's impossible," Bucky shakes his head, "There were five bags, they made five Soldiers."

"True, but all of them were different. They had to adjust the dosage or they would kill them. Maybe they had a bit left and used it on her. It wouldn’t be enough to make a new soldier, but to strengthen her enough to survive however they transferred the powers to her."

"If she was forgettable she would be the best spy Hydra had. That is why she's not in any reports, she would do her job, report to whoever, and everybody involved would forget she was even there," Bucky is overwhelmed. He walks to the window and looks out, "If we worked together I have to look through missions that had more than one objective. Killing for me, information for her. She could be still there."

"Yeah," Sam sighs, "Too bad we don't have a photo."

Somehow Bucky is sure he would recognize her.

He starts looking immediately and he finds quite a few matching his criteria. Next day something pushes him to look through recordings from 2014, his last moments as Winter Soldier and everything plays like he remembered, until, late in the evening, he switches to a view from CCTV near the highway with a clear view of him looking for Natasha, her shooting him, him ducking and then when he and men beside him stand up, there's one more person he doesn't remember being there. It's a woman, in suit that almost exactly matches his, only differce is both her arms being covered. She’s head shorter than him, with hair pulled away from her face. He says something to her, she nods and runs away, and he jumps down the bridge.

He stands up from his computer and stretches. Then he calls for Sam and shows him the video.

"At least she doesn't seem to have any metal limbs," he tries to joke but neither laugh, "If she looks like you does it mean she comes with a handy little manual too?"

"Yeah, she might. We should check the place you got the folder from out again."

They walk out arm in arm and head to the hangar. It's dark outside but Sam knows Bucky won't be able to wait for the morning to come.

When they land near the base, system informs them of a car heading in their direction. Obviously Hydra as the base lays in the middle of nowhere.

"I have a strange feeling they are after the same thing we are," Sam mutters turning on the Quinjet's cloaking.

"It means we're in the right place," Bucky answers and leaves the plane.

"Do you know where to go?"

Bucky doesn't answer and enters the base leaving his friend no choice but to follow. He moves with confidence that makes Sam realize he had already been there at some point in his life. They find the elevator and Bucky presses 737079 into the keyboard and it moves.

"It's the number next to-" Sam begins but he's interrupted.

"It translates to 'spy' from hexadecimal."

The door opens to a room with the same machinery Sam saw in Winter Soldier's files. His eyes follow Bucky noticing how tense his friend is when he marches to one of the cabinets with the last century looking hand scanner on its side.

Bucky glances over his shoulder at Sam, his eyes filled with sadness, anger, and a bit of fear. Then he places his hand at the scanner. It shines green and the cabinet opens with a hiss. Inside is a folder, bound in black leather with a red star on it. Inverted image of a book that controlled The Soldier. Bucky feels sick.

Sam grabs the book and drags him back to the elevator, pushing the button for the ground floor and he can't help but ask.

"How did you know?"

"I just did," Bucky rests his forehead on a cold wall and tries to calm himself, "It's like muscle memory."

They run back to Quinjet and see Hydra soldiers entering the base when they fly back home.

*

It is nearly midnight when they land and walk back to Bucky's room. He sits down on his bed, a manual folder in his hand and Sam leans on the desk with his arms crossed. They share a look and Bucky finally starts reading.

"There's no name, just the number again. Born in 1973, obtained in 1990. She was seventeen," he looks up at Sam but can't read his expression, "Trained in espionage, injected with serum in 1991. Makes it possible to take powers from injected Inhuman's blood serum. One injection lasts two hours, max three types can be mixed, max five of each. There are words to put in Soldier mode-" Sam interrupts him.

"Same as yours?"

"No," he reads them with an uneasy feeling, "Seek, bullet, lucid, seven, reflect, set, moon, ten, acid, tenet.” “They are in English,” Sam notices.

“Someone else worked on her programming. All other soldiers were programmed in Russian, native language of person doing the conditioning," He needs to really control himself not to punch anything when he reads next few sentences, "After depletion subject experiences psychosis and should be confined posing threat to itself and others. It is advised to put the subject immediately after calming in cryo-chamber. It is no longer in Winter Soldier mode. It is advised to wipe before mission opposed to after."

His vision goes dark when he glances at the next point and he has to put the folder away. Deep down he expected what he saw but this doesn’t lessen the pain that comes with it. He stumbles into the bathroom and splashes his face with ice-cold water. Sam follows and when Bucky turns off the sink sits him on the edge of the bathtub.

"What does it say?" He asks after Bucky's breathing calms.

"I was her handler."

next: CHAPTER 4

[publiccollectors]

PUBLIC COLLECTORS POLICE SCANNER. Day 75. Content warning for a little of everything. Today was the final day for this daily project. If you’ve been following my Tumblr page, there are 74 other posts that precede this one. I decided last week that 75 days of continuous listening would be a good time to stop. It has just been a very dark time to be doing this project and as it wore on, I increasingly felt like I was writing down the same awful things every day and the only thing that was improving was my ability to organize my notes in a spontaneous—but hopefully still readable—way.

I don't usually fill up the page in any particular order, but it seemed fitting that the first thing I heard was a call for a Walgreens. There is always something happening inside a Walgreens. As usual there were domestic batteries. There are almost always domestic batteries. I haven't tallied up my pages of notes, but I'm sure at least 75% of them include a call about a domestic battery. If it's not that, it's a call about a mental disturbance. Remember when Rahm Emanuel shut down 50% of the city's mental health clinics? I sure do after listening to the police scanner for the last 75 days.

Despite everything I have heard, I still believe that a world without police is possible. There is so much that needs to change. A lot of that starts with us. There are so many things calling the police will never fix.

Everyone will have something happen to them in their lives that could legally justify calling the police. We have to ask ourselves what we think that will accomplish. Even while I was working on this project something like that happened to me. A person rammed their car into our garage door, effectively destroying it. Do you think they left a note accepting responsibility? Of course they did not leave a note accepting responsibility.After noticing the garage door was destroyed, our next door neighbor came over in a huff to alert us. I told him, 'I know, I know. Thank you so much."

He assumed it was surely the people across the alley. He asked if I was going to file a police report. I said no. What would happen if I did? The police might come to their house and get curious about the number of people living there. Maybe they would wonder about that, and I suspect that not all of my neighbors are documented. What would the police do—inspect their cars for garage door paint, even though none of the paint chipped off our door from being bashed in? Look for a damaged bumper? Call in Forensics? It seemed absurd. There was nothing good that could come of it. We did not install security cameras to protect our garage door or the uninteresting things inside our garage.

It was probably our neighbors across the alley, but when I asked a couple of them if they saw anything or heard anything, they said no. I am not sure they are being honest. I am sure that they probably could not easily afford to replace our garage door. I chose to accept this. We have a history with these neighbors that is fraught and complicated. We weren't always on good terms with these neighbors, but we are now. I give them vegetables from our garden. They offer my wife and I food when they are cooking in their garage and having people over. I still say hi to them even after our garage door was destroyed. Maybe it wasn't them. We'll never know. Holding a grudge against a house of probably 20 people feels pointless. Even if someone living there was responsible, 20 people were not responsible.

The garage door cost $900.00 to replace. It was not worth claiming on our insurance. Our deductible is higher than the cost of the door. I truly wish we did not have to spend $900.00 on a garage door. I wish the person that damaged the door left a note and offered to help. They did not. Even though we could have become one of those people calling 911 because of "Criminal damage to property" we chose not to. Why should we have?

The truth is that we actually needed a new garage door. It's probably at least 16 years old. It had already been serviced once in the last year and within a year, it likely would have needed to be serviced again—probably at the most inconvenient possible time with our cars trapped inside of it. So we bought a new garage door about a year early. I love our dependable new garage door. The old garage door was a dull darker color. The new garage door is white and has a brighter surface. Hopefully it is easier to see in a dark alley when you are possibly driving while intoxicated.

Anyway, I'm finished listening to 911 dispatchers and the police every day. All of my pages of notes will be printed as a book early next year. Somehow, I will write about all of this and I'll reprint my 75 pages, spelling mistakes and all. I'll keep you posted.

[koolkitty9]

Novel III Summary  (Chapters 4-6(end))

DISCLAIMER: I Used google translate’s photo scanner, so these will not be 100% correct, but I didn’t have TOO MUCH trouble using it/understanding what it was trying to say. (I forgot to mark where the final chapter started so uhhh)

Started this bc last night @the-hebrew-impact-frame really wanted to know more and I own all three novels, so why not!

(Starts at chapter 4) 

Wombat has told Gora about the monster and all that has happened. Yumoto feels super sad for his “Special close friends”

Gora and Wombat are working together to find Yumoto, and for the first time ever, Gora has closed the bathhouse temporarily. They’re looking everywhere for him, including the city itself.

Gora says something along the lines of not knowing Yumoto as much as he thought he did.

Wombat asks what Gora means and they start talking about how sad Gora looks. Gora then says that he doesn’t know why he’s running around the city like this, and that to be honest, he can’t think of a place where Yumoto is likely to run off to.

Wombat then says “Then ask yourself, isn’t there enough love?”

To which Wombat then apparently denies and asks Gora if he thinks Yumoto’s stories are just rambling to him, or just elusive. Gora doesn’t say yes to this, nor shake his head. Wombat then says to not blame himself for it.

Gora tells Wombat that Yumoto always talked and seemed very happy.

Wombat says that he feels a deep love for Gora when he listens to Yumoto’s stories. Then says they need to search more and say they should check the school.

The duo go there and Gora keeps bringing up about how he keeps repeat asking himself if he didn’t have enough love, and Wombat keeps denying it and tells Gora to stop blaming himself.

They keep talking and remember “OH! We need to find Yumoto!” (They bring this up almost EVERY PAGE)

They go to the clubroom, then the monster attacks. They run to the cafeteria (Gora almost gets hit). They still don’t find Yumoto.

They leave and eventually Aki sees Gora and they start talking, and the narrator says (Pretty sure this is Dadacha’s POV), “Honestly, I don’t care about Yumoto Hakone, rather Akihiko, thinks it’s convenient for him to disappear” BUT They would NEVER tell Gora that unless he’d ask. Gora then tells the twins that they “look better together” than separate

The twins say they’ll look for Yumoto but Wombat mentions how they didn’t even bother. Wombat thinks about Yumoto and says it makes his heart hurt slightly.

Meanwhile Gora and Wombat were still searching for Yumoto (WOW YES).

Then Wombat spots En sitting at a children’s park.

En is confused about Yumoto being missing and says “Doesn’t he love Gora and the bathhouse too much?”

Gora then says this to En: “Yufuin-san is an old man, but he’s fun and like a father. He’s tall, and he says it’s funny because he’s a couple with Kinugawa-kun.” Now I’m not sure if this is how Yumoto described En to Gora but, it’s funny none-the-less.

Wombat/the narrator “Yufuin was a little shocked, but he could imagine the appearance of Yufuin talking to Gora so happily while pouring rice.”

This causes En to think “Dad? Am I like a dad?” even though he thinks of himself more as a big brother to Yumoto. Then En thinks that he also knew little what Yumoto was ever thinking about and says that “Maybe I’m only looking at his surface.”

Then this brings back up the bathhouse and En (Wombat maybe???) thinks “It was here where we first met.”

At a karaoke bar, Gora and Wombat meet up with Ryuu.

“While the girls are terrified by Gora and Wombat, Wombat is usually loved by Yumoto who throws away the microphone and leaves the room saying “SWEATY!” 

Wombat brings up the fact that he stinks like a beast while Gora’s sweat NEVER smells.

They mention how Atsushi was seen with Io and Ryuu mentions that Gora talks as short as possible (I’m PRETTY SURE Ryuu was flirting with a girl here??? idk)

"Oh I never brought my friends home” Gora slowly looks back at Zaou and strengthens his words, "But, when I met you, Yumoto changed! He said I'm looking forward to seeing you more every day!" And Ryuu says "seriously?"

Gora: “Yumoto loves you guys” and thanks them for welcoming Yumoto at the bathhouse, to which Ryuu replies “Yumoto is like my younger brother!” They are screaming this into microphones. 

Ryuu hopes that Io is coming to the bathhouse too after they talk about him.

Io and Atsushi went to eat curry together. Io and Atsushi see Wombat and Gora in the security camera and Io points his spoon in the direction of Gora. 

Gora tells them what happened up to this point and Wombat SHOUTS IN ANGER AT THESE TWO and calls them out for being "confused" and then at the end says "Yumoto talks about you happily to Gora each night"

"Yumoto's life changed when he met you! Yumoto received love from someone other than his family for the first time! I'm saying that I can't wait to see you every day!" (Wombat)

Wombat says that "it's about you, maybe you didn't have friends until now, but every night, happily talking about you, it's never happened before Gora." and Gora replies "ah..."

Then they {Atsushi/Io} reply “Yumoto does that?” And Wombat says “Yumoto treats you like you, I’m proud of him”

Gora thanks them for telling the truth.

"Yumoto always says that Kinugawa is kind like a mother. I really liked the curry you made. Yufuin is like a couple and it's fun to watch" Io (I think)says this to Atsushi, which makes Atsushi laugh and thanks Io for scolding him if he does something wrong within the club

Going back to the bathhouse, the twins are glaring at Yumoto, who’s on the rooftop. 

Now in chapters 5/6

Yumoto is sitting on the roof and everyone is calling to him.Someone tells Yumoto that it’s bathtime and Yumoto keeps telling them that he’s Running away.

Wombat says that he doesn’t understand him.

The twins say they’ll stay back for now since the atmosphere is sad. Wombat talks about love and how he can feel the love in the air between the Hakone brothers (apparently the DC are hugging one another) While Yumoto is confused.

and Wombat is telling him that he has to stay because "the Defense Club will not start without a base" (which could go as "oh ur the leader Yumoto!" or "oh we need ur bathhouse")

Yumoto then says "Please leave me alone! I'm alone--I want to be alone" and Gora is sad and replies, "but Yumoto, everyone's gathering around you. I know because I'm always looking at you from nearby" 

And then Gora reminds him that everyone is waiting for you and tHEN HARU WHISPERS "Well WE'RE NOT HERE FOR YOU"

and then the boys all tell Yumoto how much they mean to him. Ryuu is like "let's get together!" While Io is saying "time is money! I'm sorry I can't say any good words right now"  En doesn't really say much

Atsushi says they need to make curry together and eat it. Then Wombat adds Yumoto can cuddle him

And then Gora tells Yumoto he's not alone (and either he's tearing up or Yumoto is)

and this makes yumoto reply that he's not alone and the light returns to his eyes and Gora says he loves him and adds that all of his friends do too. 

THE TWINS ARE MAKING FACES (Haru thinks  "NO I HATE HAKONE YUMOTO but i can't deny Gora's words")

Then the monster shows up, Gora gets hit and tells Yumoto that it’s okay and he needs to do whatever he has to, to defeat the monster and they transform.

The fight happens, and then at the end they start talking about cherries and friendship. They’re telling the monster about the importance of Friendship (all while the twins are watching them, transformed, on a rooftop).

After this, they heal the monster and they go to the bath. After their bath, Gora gives them food and cherries.

Then back to the twins, GOOGLE SAID “Haru is a frustrated shit.” (I’m pretty sure that’s not correct but i’m not sure).

Back to Wombat, he goes outside and thinks about how Gora looks relieved and how his chopping of wood is comforting.

Then in the last few pages, Yumoto brings up how all of his senpais aren’t at school because they have fevers. As he’s throwing down two pillows like beanbags and then throws a third at Gora. Yumoto also mentions that he wasn’t able to bathe today because of that (That might be an error but lol)

Then they lay down together and the book ends. 

[that-banana-headed-bovine]

Knight Rider 2000

WARNING

This post contains spoilers for Knight Rider 2000, the 1991 film which attempts to expand on the canonical universe of Knight Rider (1982-1986).  Key word, attempts.  I know that this film came out almost 30 years ago at this point, but I also know that this fandom grows a little bit every day, and there will ALWAYS be people who haven’t seen every episode (myself included), let alone every movie!  I happened to catch it on Charge! for Hoff's birthday (yes I'm hella late posting this LOL) with my good friend @trust-doesnt-oxidize​, and boy let me tell you, it was… Something.

From here on out, I’m not holding back from sharing my impression of the film based on specific details from it, so if you want a spoiler-free viewing, go watch it and come back!!  Or… don’t, it’s kind of awful.  I can only think of one thing in canon that it may spoil, and even that appears in early Season 2 and is fairly minor, so if you are curious about it, I HIGHLY recommend watching it BEFORE reading this.  The scenes with the most impact are touching because they come as a surprise, so even if you know the general plot of the film, I would recommend watching it first.

Also this is really rambley because I have a lot of emotions about this series and, by extension, this movie.  I really don’t blame you if you click away here, but if you DO read it all the way through, I would love to hear anything you would like to add, agree or disagree!

OKAY!  Knight Rider 2000 is a movie that exists!  And I hate it!

The film sets up an interesting argument between two groups of people whose names I don’t remember because they were boring (except for Devon, I know his name at this point).  In this interpretation of the “future,” gun control has been implemented to,,, some extent, I can’t entirely tell if there have been some policies implemented across the country or if it is all localized in this one city that even the Wikipedia page for this movie doesn’t bother to mention.  And no, this city is NOT in California for once!  Usually I would be happy to see a change of setting, but considering that everything in this film felt so foreign to the Knight Rider that we know, it would have been nice to at least have a familiar setting.  Anyway, gun control stuff.  The debate between whether these gun control policies are ethical or not is very interesting.  Innocent people are dying because the wrong people have guns and the police are rendered useless when they themselves don’t have access to weapons.  This argument happens to support my perspective on the issue, so I appreciated how it took a look at that side WITHOUT it sounding like we are crazy murderer people, but I digress.  It makes sense that the ban happened in the first place, because much like how the main conflict in Pixar’s latest film Incredibles 2 revolves around society’s over-reliance on superheroes, I could see Knight Rider’s society becoming dependent on technology to save them.  It can be easy to seem like the most advanced tech in that society is present only in KITT and KIFT, and to SOME extent that is true.  However, Shawn does say that it is relatively common in this society for people to have memory chips in their brain.  That counts for something.  And the police DO have a defense mechanism according to the Wikipedia page for this movie, it’s just nonlethal.

So as you can see, I am very interested in the conflict this world sets up.  I sure hope they expand on these conflicting ideologies throughout the film, giving us a clearer idea of why the bans were set in place AND giving us insight into what exactly has caused some revolt against it.  That subject is seemingly timeless, and with how decently the introduction tackled it, I have some confidence that this film could pull it off in a tasteful way.  Wouldn’t that be amazing?   It’s some of the most serious subject matter Knight Rider has ever tackled.  It’s so interesting!

Yeah they pretty much abandon that plot in place of a very, very bad copy of the original show’s “Hearts of Stone” (season 1, episode 14).  Illegal guns exist and are bad, but we don’t really know why.  I may know a little better if I had been listening closer, but I was trying to not get so bored that I missed Kitt’s parts!

At some point during this sequence, we are introduced to Shawn, a happy police officer who is happy to have a family on a happy birthday.  And then she gets shot!  Due to head force trauma rendering her unconscious, she’s sent to the hospital.  She goes in for a risky operation that miraculously saves her life against all odds.

Then, Michael wakes up with Garthe Knight’s face and hears a great story about how one man CAN make a difference!… I mean what?  

Jokes aside, it’s kind of amazing how much this very Michael-esque sequence comes across very differently.  It’s almost the perfect example of why I don’t like this movie.  The surgery is weirdly realistic for a Knight Rider entity.  There’s blood and screens and surgeons and a sterile white room for operations.  Michael woke up in a Medieval castle with one doctor and two random people he’d never met at his side.  Shawn’s situation clearly makes more sense, but is it half as fun and whimsical?  No, no it’s not.  This whole film comes across as depressing to me, and it’s only worsened by what’s to come.  Apparently, she had KITT’s CPU/Microprocessor/something sciencey implanted into her brain.  That’s especially strange since all that I saw was a yellow liquid being injected directly into her skull!  That’s a lovely image, and definitely gave me the idea that there was a full computer chip going in there???  (It may have actually been explained more clearly, and I just looked away because eek weirdly bloody operation scene)  This caused her personality to do a full 180.  So, Shawn is going to be fun, snarky, and full of personality like KITT is because they share memories now!  Right?  Right???

I think they tried to do that, but it came across flat.  So flat.  She speaks in a purposefully monotone, robotic voice and delivers downright mean comments that leave Michael and KITT scratching their heads.  She seems to lack basic empathy until her own memories start flooding back, and at that point, the emotions she show seem so foreign to the character we see that it’s not remotely believable.  You want me to believe that this robotic woman with -10 personality points started nearly crying after one string of memories, albeit a very traumatic one, entered her mind?  This would have been believable if she was entirely changed afterwards, coming across as far more human, but that was only the case sometimes.  It also would have been believable if the film had the same energy that the original Knight Rider show does, where suspending one’s disbelief is necessary to make it past the opening credits.  However, this movie tries to be so grounded that the kind of dramatic beats that would work in the original seem forced here.

Shawn is not the only character who I take issue with, though.  Let’s start with the most potentially problematic change from the usual canon in the entire film: KITT’s personality.  I have very mixed feelings on how he is portrayed.  If you’ve seen as much as a spattering of quotes from this movie, you probably could sense that KITT was… off.  When KITT first comes on screen, he slams Michael with a wave of insults, and none of them come off as their normal joking around.  However, I don’t necessarily have a problem with that because he has the proper motivation to be very, very upset.  He is sitting on a desk as a heap of loosely connected parts that have just enough power to make the signature red scanner whir and make an oddly terrifying red light eyeball thing (Hal???) move.  The first thing he hears is Devon nonchalantly saying something along the lines of, “I’m afraid he was recycled” to explain why KITT has been deactivated for OVER A DECADE and is not currently in anything that moves (my Charge! stream thing lagged at this point but @trust-doesnt-oxidize​ has since told me that Devon DID appear upset about KITT's being sold, but KITT likely wouldn't have heard that and what Devon said seemed to be moreso directed at HOW the chip was sold and not the fact that it was sold in the first place).  KITT is justifiably mad, and if they had kept KITT’s actions in character while his emotions said otherwise, I would have no problem with it at all.

However, once KITT’s CPU is somehow implanted into Michael’s Chevrolet, KITT does not act in character.  Shawn drives, not Michael, so it stands to reason that he would not necessarily listen to her.  She stole his CPU, his life for over a decade.  KITT does tend to listen to human companions, regardless of whether he is programmed to or not, but I can see where this would be an exception.  However, Michael soon intercedes and essentially tells him to cut it out.  Based on everything that the original Knight Rider told us, KITT no longer has a choice of whether to listen or not.  Michael is ultimately the one who calls the shots because of KITT’s very programming.  And yet, in this scene, KITT doesn’t listen to Michael and apparently gets so angry that he downright stops functioning.  Because that happens all the time in the original series!

And if you’re wondering where I got the conclusion that KITT frustrated his circuits to the point where they could no longer work, he said that.  KITT.  Admitted to having feelings.  In fact, he did not just admit to being angry in the moment.  He told Michael that, while it may seem like he is an emotionless robot, he does have a “feelings chip.”  A FEELINGS CHIP-

I am for recognizing KITT’s obvious emotions as much as the next guy.  I think they are often overlooked when discussing his character.  While I don’t think that real artificial intelligence will ever reach the level of human consciousness, the entire energy of Knight Rider comes from playing with this concept by portraying an AI character who clearly emotes interacting with a human who doesn’t seem to know that.  But the thing that makes this show feel so sincere is that neither character plays too heavily into that trope.  While not always knowing how much KITT feels and by extension hurting those feelings alarmingly often, Michael recognizes it enough to work in concert with KITT, apologize for his more major flubs, and consider KITT a friend.  And KITT subverts the trope by never recognizing that he has feelings to begin with.  He will say that he cannot feel sadness but, in the next breath, say that something upset him.  He will say he cannot hold a grudge only to immediately rattle off a string of insults directed at the person he clearly has a grudge on.  The show is magic in how these two characters display a subtle chemistry that always has room to grow because both characters are slowly coming to see each other for who they truly are and supporting one another along the way.  From what I can tell, the original show never fully concludes that arc, and it may even start regressing after Season 1.  However, we can feasibly see how Michael could slowly come to understand that KITT really does feel things just as much as he does.  And we can imagine the relief KITT would feel knowing that Michael was never bothered by that possibility.

So, you can see where I have a big problem with KITT spelling it out so plainly.  The audience gets full confirmation about what has been displayed to us through nuanced hints throughout the series, which sounds a lot more satisfying than it really ends up being in this film.  But worse than an underwhelming conclusion to a thrilling story, Michael knows it plain as day.  There is very little buildup to KITT admitting this.  He barely even sounds moved.  Instead, in this movie, the “feelings chip” is a fact of life that does not need to be covered up in the slightest.  Michael himself doesn’t really… react.  He just kind of nods along, as if he’s saying, “Huh, makes sense, alright.”  After everything these two have been through, if there really was such a simple explanation for why KITT is the way he is… why arguments went south, why the mere mention of a Chevrolet was enough to get a seemingly jealous response, why inconsequential things like music taste and gambling were subjects of debate, why KITT had always acted so exaggeratedly dismissive when topics of emotional significance struck a chord, why every little sarcastic banter had a hint of happiness until it didn’t… don’t you think Michael would do something?  Whether that something would be a gentle, “I always knew that, pal”; a shocked, “Why didn’tchya tell me sooner?!”; or even a sarcastic, disbelieving, “Yeah, right” is up to interpretation.  But there would be something.

And yet, even that concept is flawed.  We learn a lot from KARR’s inclusion in the original series, and what I take away from it boils down to a simple sentiment.  FLAG never meant for their AIs to be human.  I do realize that directly contradicts what Devon says within this film, but I see that as another way for the film to steer the plot in this direction, not as a tie in to the original.  When Wilton says that one man CAN make a difference, he means that.  He isn’t considering that KITT is just as much a person as Michael.  He’s not seeing that, at the end of the day, teamwork is what makes the show work, even if Michael is the glue that holds it together.  So, I think that to say that there is a “feelings chip” is to disregard the entire point of the original, that in this world life finds a way of inserting itself and that KITT’s (and KARR’s for that matter) humanity is an anomaly, not the rule.  At the end of the day, KITT’s humanity can’t be explained away with science.  And really, I don’t think it should be explained away at all.  The show has had an amazing trend of showing us how KITT feels, in all its unorthodox glory, alongside private moments that had me sobbing like a baby.  The movie should just be like a longer, more complex episode of Knight Rider… Although I cannot pinpoint exactly how it should be done in the context of this film, I know there are ways that Michael could have been shown that KITT feels rather than being told.

One last complaint, albeit a more minor one, is the idea that he has to listen to what Shawn says over Michael's authority.  I have spent a decent amount of time thinking about this one point, which has caused a lot of the delay in posting this.  There's multiple reasons why this flies right in the face of what is canon in the original series.  Perhaps the most obvious of these problems is the fact that, in the original pilot episode, it's made very clear that KITT can't assume control of the Knight 2000 without Michael's express permission unless Michael is unconcious.  Devon makes it quite clear in this episode that KITT is programmed specifically to listen to Michael, not just anyone who happens to be piloting the vehicle at the time.  In case there was any doubt about this, KITT ejects two people who are attempting to steal him later in the episode (well, ok, later in the two-parter, I don't know if it was the same episode or not).  The show isn't SUPER strict about this in future episodes, but it does at least acknowledge Michael's authority in a few pivotal moments throughout Season 1 (I can't comment on episodes that I haven't seen yet, but I suspect that this pattern continues).  Of all the rules set up throughout the series, it actually seems to be the most loyal to this one.  One moment that stands out to me is in Trust Doesn't Rust when KITT attempts to stop Michael from causing a head-on collision with KARR, but Michael then overrides him and the climax unfolds.  If one of the most iconic moments in the series is caused by this one bit of programming, to throw it out in the film is to disrespect the basis of the original series.

Speaking of KARR, he provides yet another reason niglecting this detail is such a big problem.  From what we can tell, KARR isn't programmed to one specific driver (at least, not anymore[?]), and so he can override anyone in the pilot's seat.  This is something they seem to highlight in TDR as well, although not so plainly as the previous point.  KARR ends up ditching Tony to gain speed and get an upper hand in the chase with Michael and KITT (although a scene they deleted would have made this a mUCH MORE SENSIBLE ACTION THAT R E A L L Y ISN'T A BETRAYAL but y'know what this post isn't about that) whereas KITT has to listen to Michael even to his own detriment.  If this one feature is indeed one of the major things that separates KITT from KARR, the idea that Shawn can override all of that cheapens the original conflict between KITT and KARR.

...Well okay, let's be real, KARR was never that compelling as an antagonist to begin with because he's a LOYAL SWEETIEPIE-- I'll stop.

And finally, we have the biggest, most bizarre reason that this is a problem:

If Shawn can override Michael's authority, that means KITT can override Michael's authority.

Why?  This would be the first time (outside of episodes where some sort of reprogramming or mind control was involved) in the series that KITT had not only listened to another human instead of Michael, but also listened to that person OVER Michael.  The only difference I can see between Shawn and quite literally anyone else in the show's history is that Shawn has KITT's chip implant thing.  If that's the reason her opinion has more credence than Michael's, then wouldn't that mean KITT's own opinion has that authority?  If that is the case, literally every example I've gone through in the last couple of paragraphs is not just challenged but rather negated entirely.

The most frustrating thing about this scene is that it simply didn't have to happen.  Michael could have gone along with KITT's plan, showing him (and us) that he does trust his former partner even after all these years.  Shawn could have convinced Michael to go along with it using her... feelings chip.  Blegh.  Or we could have had a stubborn Michael force this scene to be delayed, likely improving the pacing overall.  Maybe we could have even seen a frustrated and emotionally exhausted Shawn wait until Michael is not in the car and then plead KITT to give her the truth, no matter what Michael says.  We have seen KITT control his actions without Michael's input plenty of times, and we could have seen some more of his humanity show through if he could relate to Shawn's struggles... after all, he too has missing memories because she has his chip.  They're both going through a bit of an identity crisis.  I'm sure that he could find some workaround in his programming to help her if Michael wasn't there insisting that he does not take this course of action.

But even after all of that fussing over what has been done wrong with KITT, I can’t deny that he is the heart and soul of this film.  There was only one scene in this film that brought me near tears.  I got more of an emotional impact from this one clip than I have from a lot of movies that are undeniably much better.  Michael’s old-fashioned Chevrolet does not hold up in the year 2000, and it is clear that the usual car chase sequence won’t work as police vehicles quickly creep up on them.  I was personally very curious what they would do here.  I figured that KITT would find some way to outsmart the drivers of the police cars, maybe by ending up on an elevated mountain road that trips up the other drivers and causes them to waste time turning around and hopping on that same path.  Or, maybe, KITT would access a road that’s too narrow for the relatively bulky police cars.  However, it quickly becomes clear that this city is made up of wide roads on the ground.  As KITT veers off the road and tells Michael to trust him, the I found myself having to trust him.  This isn’t the way Knight Rider chases usually go, and with all these odds stacked against him, the only thing we can do is hold our breath.  The way this scene is staged to send us into this just as blind as Michael is, frankly, genius.  Water slowly creeps into the frame as a feeling of dread builds at the thought of what KITT might do.

Surely, we are led to think, he will knock into some boxes and turn right back around.  Right?  We’re reminded of the fact that this is not the Knight 2000, that there is no chance of this car floating.  That if KITT does what he really seems to be doing, there’s no chance… but he wouldn’t, would he?  This is the only action sequence in the film that had me at the edge of my seat, staring wide eyed at the screen.  And then, the turn that you want so badly to come doesn’t, and you have to wonder what’s about to happen.  What was KITT thinking?  Won’t Michael and Shawn drown?  And, most prominently in my mind, won’t KITT drown?

For a moment, this scene plays us into believing that, because magic FLAG science that is pretty par for the course, everything is fine.  KITT explains that they have an airtight cab and over 20 minutes of oxygen.  Everyone lets out a collective breath of relief.  We see it in Michael and Shawn, and I know I felt myself relax.

And then there’s a flicker in the screen, and that pit in the bottom of my stomach came right back.  Michael is confused, and KITT explains what we should have realized was inevitable.  This is KITT sacrificing himself.  He even goes as far as to let Shawn know that she can use any of his computer chips that she may need.  This comes off as strange at first, but it goes to show that KITT is, at his core, the same kind soul we always knew.  He acts angry because he feels betrayed, but given the choice, he will chose another person’s life over his own, always.  Even the microprocessor that he is most frustrated over, the thing that seems to drive a wedge between him and Shawn, is just how he is expressing his hurt.  Now, thinking it is the end, he offers it up freely, and Shawn doesn’t seem to know how to respond.  KITT is calm as he says his final goodbyes.  And this is the first place in the film that we get to hear the amazingly nuanced  voice acting that William Daniels is so great at.  KITT sounds collected and at peace with what is to come, but there are also subtle hints that he is at least a bit nervous, a bit sad.  “I know.  I guess this is goodbye.”  He doesn’t want to leave his friends, but he knows that he has to for them to be safe.  Even if the pacing of the film seems to actively try to undermine this moment, it stands out to me as an amazing scene, even if the reaction from Michael is underwhelming at best and the reaction from Shawn is… as much as can be expected from Shawn, but that’s not saying much.  As far as KITT knows in that moment, these are his last words: “Michael, take care of yourself.”  Down to the last moment, Michael is everything to him.

IjustwannamakeitclearquicklythatIthinktheirrelationshipisentirelyplatonicokthankyou

And I felt sad, big time sad.  The movie up until that point was unbelievably boring to me, and this wasn’t a turning point where the movie suddenly became great.  It was a moment so darn good that I almost don’t think the movie deserved for it to have as big of an impact as it did.  But that shows just how powerful this universe is, how wonderfully honest these characters are.  Even after being butchered practically beyond recognition, one scene in-character can still bring you to tears because you have connected with them so deeply throughout the TV series.

AND THEN DEVON DIED IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARDS :D

I don’t like Devon.

Devon was actually more tolerable in this movie than normal, and I can see where people who don’t hate him could be sad that he died  I just,,, he has hurt or talked down to KITT and KARR so many times that I actually could not sympathize.  What’s even more frustrating about that is that Devon’s death is the one that Michael got all sad over when KITT sacrificed his life for him and Devon got kidnapped randomly but okay go off movie you can’t ruin that scene for me.  I knew going in that Devon died, but I was expecting them to spend a lot more time setting it up and making it as dramatic as possible.  Nope, he just got a shot to the old air tanks I guess?  My view of it is nothing more than that it’s a thing that happened.

OH AND DEVON DID PULL ONE HEINOUS ACT.  He said that KIFT was better than KITT in every way other than that KITT has humanity.  SINCE WHEN HAS DEVON GIVEN ONE SINGULAR HOOT ABOUT THE AI’S BEING ALIVE???  TELL KARR THAT???  HECK, TELL DEACTIVATED KITT THAT YOU WERE JUST FINE SELLING OFF AT AUCTION THAT?!?!  Also also, KIFT DOES NOT C O M P A R E TO KITT.  We are coming back to KIFT in a moment, don’t you worry.  For now, I just.  Low blow, Devon, low blow.

Michael was fine too, he played a weirdly small part and that felt off but everything he said seemed pretty in character.  The most out of character parts were when he said nothing at all.  OH AND WHERE HE WAS REPLACING BONNIE but that’s besides the point, no Bonnie OR April… no Bonnie OR April… I’m fine…

…

It feels like this movie wants you to forget that Michael exists because Shawn is here she’s more interesting, right?  Right???

She’s really not.

So back to KIFT.  My favorite part of KIFT is that pronouncing KIFT in your head sounds funny.  It’s like “gift” but if the gift were actually an underwhelming villain of sorts that is overtaken in a garage, parked, by Michael either removing his microprocessor entirely or moving it to a Chevrolet.

I was surprised how not bad KIFT looked.  I had seen stills from the movie that looked really uninteresting compared to the regular designs, and while I still agree to some extent, it was a lot more epic than I would have thought.  Something about how the paint shines on it is captivating.  I was genuinely happy when KITT was moved to the snazzy red vehicle, although a big part of that could have been how disgusting mint green looks with red.  Seriously, including the red scanner on that bizarre seafoamy-bluey car (and yes, I do think it is a very pretty car by itself) was like when people say movies were “inspired” but in the opposite direction.  And the scanner looked weirdly small?  Was it just me?

Am I the only one who feels w e i r d just looking at this??

I think this is the most normal thing to be categorized as being in uncanny valley but there we go, I did it.  It’s not right.

Anyway, as neat as KIFT looks, it is no comparison to the classic Knight 2000 or even Season 3 KARR.  Red can be striking, but not when the classic scanner is also red.  No contrast!

KIFT is absurdly easy to forget, and I don’t think that the car’s design has anything to do with it.  KITT spends most of the movie piloting that car, and while it is not what we are used to, it doesn’t come across as super lame to me, either…or at least, not because of the design.  The biggest problem with KIFT is, I think, simply his voice.  His voice feels so out of place in the movie, and it’s so strange to me considering that Daniels’ voice is integrated just fine.  The recording sounds too crisp, too clean.  KITT’s voice always has a great deal of character, a very Earthy-sounding voice for an AI character.  I actually think that this incongruity is purposeful, and it’s a very clever concept.  We are supposed to recognize that KIFT isn’t human like KITT is.  KIFT sounds out of place in the real world among real people; he’s too neat around the edges.  It’s especially obvious when KITT and KIFT talk to each other.  This is also mirrored by how KITT occupies a well-loved Chevrolet that has little imperfections that make it feel real whereas KIFT is in this red… whatever it is that feels like it comes out of a sci-fi film.  This effect would have really worked if we had enough time with KIFT to understand his personality–or, more aptly, his lack of personality.  What makes this not work is the fact that we spend practically no time with KIFT.  We don’t get to hear what he feels he is programmed to do, we don’t get to hear him deliver the sort of lifeless lines that Shawn did that made her so unlikable, and we don’t even get to hear his voice more than 4-5 times.  Every time comes as a shock, taking us out of the moment of the film.  We could have gotten used to his crisp sound if he had spoken more, and we may have seen the actual plot significance of it.  Instead, it pulls you right out of the movie.

Oh yeah, and the only line(s?) that KIFT delivers to KITT are full-on taunting… that’s not very lifeless of you KIFT.

Alright, just one last thing to really hammer home a point from earlier and conclude this whole thing.  You know what I was saying about this movie lacking the whimsical nature of the TV show?  Well, the final chase puts the icing on this oddly sullen crab cake.

Yes, crab cake. 

Because the pinchy crab that is Shawn makes it quite painful to get this particular cake and icing doesn’t even belong on it anyway.

KITT is racing down the street in this bright red car that I just explained is thematically wrong for him to be driving tbh but whatever, he’s racing in it and comes up to a barricade of randomly stacked up cars.

Oh Yeah, we all know what is coming.

The music swells.  Michael looks at the upcoming barricade with furrowed eyebrows and quietly asks KITT what the heck they’re going to do now.

OH YEAH, we definitely know what is coming.

And at last, for the first time in the film…

KITT veers off to the right and they drive on water.  “It’s really sink or swim with you, isn’t it?” Michael asks, pretending that’s funny as if I am not still emotionally raw from that scene that happened an hour ago.

Apparently, KIFT had that one obscure feature from “Return to Cadiz,” the Season 2 episode where April forces KITT to follow KARR into the ocean on the hopes that waterproof wheels might work maybe, directly ignoring his many attempts to get out of it.  Yay.  I love references to That Episode.  That Episode which baited me with an opening that looked like KARR could have been discovered underwater only to show me that not only was there no KARR, but KITT was going to be bullied into repeating what his brother did when he died.  Wholesome.  Lovely.  Fantastic.  And how did KITT know for sure that would work?  KITT clearly still has some technical hiccups in his own CPU from Michael tampering with it, that was an awful lot of confidence to place in a maybe.

AND MORE IMPORTANTLY…

THIS MOVIE DID NOT HAVE A TURBO BOOST

A TURBO BOOST

I cannot believe that a movie based around Knight Rider did not have a turbo boost (or for that matter, the THEMESONG???).  Like I am honestly still surprised by it.  Almost every episode of the original show had at least one turbo boost, and there is a reason.  The idea of a talking car jumping in midair, sometimes with Michael “WOO!”-ing like a girl, is so fantastically fun that nobody even tries to question how impossible it is.  I think we all know how impossible it is, and that doesn’t matter, it is yet another thing that embodies the heart of this show.

And… not even one.

…

So yeah, that just happened.  I think this is technically a small novel.  Wow.

  I know that I'm still missing a lot... I have a lot of thoughts about this movie, and if you for some reason want more please ask!  I would also love to hear your thoughts on this!  Do you agree with my analysis?  Do you disagree entirely?  Did you notice something that I failed to mention entirely?  Pleasepleaseplease send ideas, I would love to hear them!  Also know that, no matter how much I was disappointed by the movie itself, I am fully open to hearing your ideas about how to improve or expand upon it.  I truly believe that this film introduced some great concepts, and I would absolutely adore seeing them reworked in a way that's more true to the original.  Thank you for reading! :D

[broken-clover]

AU-gust Day 8- Superpowers/Superheroes

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So apparently when I say ‘these are very long, maybe I should make them less long next time’ it apparently means ‘WRITE NEARLY 5000 WORDS AND SUFFER’ I’m having. A day. Not a bad one just. A Day. This more or less feels like a pilot episode for something honestly.

Please do not ask why I keep writing Sin because there is no answer.

Ky had left him in charge of the scanner. Again.

And Sin knew why he had done it, why he always left him sitting in the high-backed chair perched in front of an array of high-tech computers while he and his friends leapt into action. It wasn’t because Sin was any kind of tech genius. It was because it was the best way of keeping him out of the way.

They didn’t even pretend like it was a real task in need of doing. Sol had already rigged the scanner so that it would send notifications to the entire team as soon as it picked up anything suitably peculiar. Ky’s excuse was that they needed him to watch it and make sure the scanner didn’t malfunction, but it never did. It was just a good way to keep him from running around while Ky couldn’t keep an eye on him.

Well, he could have brought him along, but whenever he suggested, Ky just had to get all uppity about it, and say in so many words that he didn’t want his precious baby boy going on dangerous missions, except he’d say it in a way that made him sound completely reasonable and rational, even though he was a teenager now and he was tired of spending time in front of the monitors and doing nothing but sitting on his ass like a useless idiot.

He shifted to prop his chin up on his other arm. The scanner did another rotation around Illyria, but no notification popped up, just like the last thousand or so times. Ugh, he’d been here for hours, when were they going to come back? The distress call had come from the complete opposite side of town, but considering that half of them could fly, and Ky himself could turn into a goddamn lightning bolt, they were awfully slow. So much for ‘just a quick mission’ like he had promised.

Groaning, Sin abandoned the chair and left it to spin behind him. He left the completely empty computer room to head into the equally-empty kitchen, hoping to find something to munch on. In between Sol’s beer bottles, Testament’s vegan snacks and Chipp’s leftover Japanese takeout, there was a plastic-domed pastry box. His excited smile melted off as soon as he pulled it out and peered inside.

“Thank you for keeping our city safe!” Said the fancy frosting letters. Yeah, he knew where it was from. The local orphanage had sent it after Ky and his friends had stopped Judgement from blowing up half the city last week. Because they were a bunch of good-samaritan do-gooders so compassionate and helpful that they got fucking cake from orphans.

He still cut a big piece from it before shoving the thing back into the fridge. Hey, cake was cake. Plus, he could get a kick out of ruining the letters and part of the bright yellow smiley-face under it.

At least being stuck at the base meant nobody raised a stink over him sitting on the meeting table. Sin was careful not to leave any shoe tracks on it, though, after Ky had chewed him out for it the last time. Personally, he thought having a white table was stupid in the first place, but that was the design Ky liked. It was the same reason they had the big sweeping ceilings, elaborate carvings along the walls, and a special designated chair for each of their official members, individualized by their names and insignias (Because his dad really was that fucking cliche)

In between bites of cake, he toed at the fancy lightning bolt carved into Ky’s chair, with ’Thunderseal’ written out above it. Sin remembered when he used to chase his father around the house, pretending to be him with a construction-paper mask and towel cape. He had utterly idolized Thunderseal, and dreamed that someday he would be able to take up the mantle when he became a real hero. It wasn’t a dream he clung onto anymore. Just the shadow of being his son was big enough.

Sin tried to take his mind off things by pulling out his phone. Maybe May would be up for a chat.

‘Anything going on w/ u?’

May always had her phone on her, so it didn’t take long before his pinged with a message. ’Just finished a job! Hbu?’

‘Send pics?’ Just his luck he got her while she was out working. At least maybe he could get a few cool pictures out of it.

Just like last time, it barely took a minute before she responded back with a pile of photos. All of them had May smiling with her teammates in uniform, along with a very irritated-looking (and very wet) tied-up criminal. He’d hoped that the pictures would have cheered him up, but all it did was annoy him further. She was younger and smaller than him by a lot, but she was allowed to go out on dangerous jobs.

Mer-May, the absolute darling of the Jellyfish team of superheroes. Even though they weren’t from Illyria, he still saw stories and photos about them in the paper. They looked like a real team. They probably took all their team members out on missions, and when they didn’t, he bet they had a much better reason than needing someone to watch the scanners.

’Great job! :D’ he messaged back with stiff, trembling fingers, before an errant current made his screen crackle and explode in a burnt cloud.

“Oh for fuck’s sake…” Why did that always happen when he got frustrated, this was his twelfth phone in the last year! Like he needed one more thing to be annoyed about.

Sin was sick and tired of being inside. He abandoned his half-eaten cake at the table and headed for the entrance, swiping his jacket and a spare mask on the way out.

++++++

Nobody gave him much of a second look as he slid along the wires twenty feet off the ground. Anybody who even noticed the crackle of electricity in the first place regarded him with complete nonchalance. Superpowered individuals had become a lot more commonplace, especially with the formation of publicly-known groups like the Jellyfish and the Guardians of Illyria. It was practically a celebrity subculture. Just a fixture of daily life. People with powers no longer had much of a reason to hide anymore.

In his absentmindedness, he nearly fell off-balance and slipped from the wire he was on. He wondered if Ky ever did that on the job. He might’ve been the team’s shiny poster-boy, but he wasn’t as perfect as everyone always acted like he was. It didn’t stop the newspapers and nighttime TV reports from painting him as some flawless guardian angel. Even when he was little, they were always talking about Ky.’s exploits, how he made Illyria a safe place. For the longest time, all that praise had convinced him his father could do no wrong.

Sin remembered the times when he would hold his father’s hand as they skated across the powerlines, helping him keep his balance. Sin always kept his eyes peeled for trouble, and whenever they spotted a kitten stuck in a tree or someone struggling with groceries, Ky would let him take charge to ‘save’ the civilian in need. He used to love the slightly-exaggerated smiles from grateful people and congratulatory pats on the head from his father, but it all felt so infuriatingly patronizing now. He didn’t want to be stuck helping old ladies cross the street while his father and his friends fought the real villains and saved the day. It never felt like he was helping anyone in the long run, he was just doing errands for people and nothing more than that.

He skidded to a stop on an electronic billboard, slid down the maintenance ladder, and found a place to sit. From his jacket pocket, he pulled out a tiny battered book and pen.

‘Sin the Superhero!’ was scrawled across the front in faded, childlike handwriting. He skipped past the scribbled-over and torn pages in the front half, all practically carbon-copies of Ky, until he reached the more complicated doodles and neater handwriting.

‘Hero Name Ideas.’ The list had gotten longer recently, but still none of them seemed to fit him right. He scratched off a couple of older ideas and jot down ‘Livewire’ and ‘Sparx’ at the bottom. Mmm, no, when he wrote them down on paper, that didn’t seem right, either.

“Ughh, why is this so hard!?” Sin groaned to himself, closing the book and smacking himself in the face with it. He wasn’t going to be Thunderseal. No matter what, he was not going to be Thunderseal.

He’d thought of skipping town and joining the Jellyfish, but May’s manager Johnny said that they only accepted female members. There were a few others scattered across the country, like the ones down in Kagutsuchi, Remnant, and Inaba, but they seemed so different from what he was used to, Sin wasn’t sure he’d fit in even if they let him join.

He spotted a convenience store half a block down. Maybe he just needed a snack to help him think. He hadn’t gotten to finish his cake, after all.

Sin slid back up onto the powerline and followed the sidewalk until he found a wall generator to jump into near ground-level. The light burst that followed him when he landed startled an older woman as she headed back to her car, but otherwise nobody paid attention.

The convenience store was awfully quiet for the afternoon, but all it meant was that he could scour the aisles for something to eat. They didn’t have anything meaty, so he settled for red licorice. It almost looked like meat.

“Would you like a bag?” The cashier asked, with the usual feigned-cheer that minimum wage barely afforded.

“Nah, I’m just gonna eat it now.” He replied, digging for a few spare bills in his back pocket.

When he found the money and went to turn back around, he spotted an ominous smear of crimson in his peripheral vision. Out through the front windows, a peculiar-looking girl was stumbling across the parking lot barefoot, stained in what appeared to be blood.

“The hell…?” Sin murmured. He realized he still had money in his hand. “Oh. Shit, uh, keep the change!” All but throwing the money at the poor woman, he grabbed his licorice and bolted out the door, taking a moment to swing his head around to find that girl again before running after her. “Hey! Hold on a second!”

Maybe he was too loud, because she immediately flinched and threw up her arms to cover her head. “I-I’m sorry!”

“You’re...what?” He skidded to a stop right in front of her. Yeah, that was definitely blood. The girl didn’t seem to be in a good condition, if the stumbling hadn’t already given it away. All the bloodstains appeared to be coming from the numerous wounds on her body, mixed together with a handful of ugly violet bruises. “Man, you look in bad shape. Did you get attacked?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” With her arms still covering her, she crouched down and began trembling.

Sin’s features softened. “Hey, I’m not gonna hurt you.” He crouched down next to her, trying his best to sound harmless. “Okay? Not gonna hurt you. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Y-you aren’t?” A single diamond-blue eye peeked between trembling fingers.

“No, I’m not. Are you in danger? Do you need someone to keep you safe?”

She gave him a slow, jerky nod. “Ok! I can do that. My house is really safe, my dad’s a superhero so you don't have to worry about people getting in unless you want them to! Why don’t we go there, and then I can get you some bandaids?”

Another little nod. “Sounds like a plan, then!” He took her hand, helped her back up, and turned in the direction of where he’d come from. “It’s over this way, so we can-”

“No!! No, no, we can’t!” She suddenly shrieked, trying to pull herself from his grip.

“Woah, woah!” Sin let her go in his shock. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t go! I can’t go!” She cried, tugging at her pale pink hair with both hands. “I can’t leave without my sister!”

“Your sister? Where is she?”

Her expression grew haunted. “Oh...oh no...I left her behind...I promised we wouldn’t be separated…”

Sin tried to quell the growing feeling of excitement unfurling in him. Yes, this girl was clearly in need of help. He was finally doing his first real job as a hero, without Ky getting in the way! And he’d found it all by himself! But he needed to keep serious.

“Don’t worry. We’ll get your sister.” He gave the girl a confident grin. “Can you show me where she is?”

Another nod. “Uh-huh. I can show you.”

“Think you can show me from the rooftops? It’ll be faster that way.” She didn’t pull away again when he started leading her towards the generator he had jumped out of.

“Huh? There’s no ladder, how would you- aaaah!”

Sin scooped her up before taking off up the wires to the roof. “I’m a hero, too! I can follow electric currents! So if you can point me in the direction of- oh.”

The sudden movement had apparently freaked her out, and both of her trembling arms were tightly wrapped around him for stability.

“Oops. Um, sorry about that. I forget the vertigo is really bad the first few times.” He tried giving her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “But I promise I won’t drop you, okay? I just need you to show me what direction you came from.”

It took her a moment to unbury herself from her place in his jacket, but she reached out to point towards the heart of Illyria. “That way. It's by the big building with a cow on the roof.”

His grin came back as Sin felt the sparks fly off his feet. “Say no more!”

++++++

Sin had never been to this part of town before, on the ground or otherwise. It seemed like a perfectly nice neighborhood, but for some reason, there was just something that felt...off.

He tried not to worry about it. “Hey, so you didn’t tell me your name. I’m Sin! What should I call you?”

The girl in his arms seemed to have finally gotten used to the harsh movements, only wincing when the harsh wind blew the hair in her eyes. “E-Elphelt.” She said. “My name is Elphelt.”

Weird name, but he didn’t say anything. Even if he wanted to, he was interrupted by her pointing him left. “R-right there! The big white building!”

“This one?” He asked, sliding up onto the roof of what he could only guess was a large warehouse. A few trucks were parked out in front, but he didn’t see any people, nor were any lights on inside. “Are you sure this is it?”

“Mmhm!” She nodded vigorously, though the fear had come back into her eyes. “Please! I can’t leave her behind!”

We’re gonna save your sister, don’t worry.” Sin put her down on the roof next to him, and began searching for some kind of way in. “How did you get out?”

She walked towards one of the building’s edges and peered down. “Stairs! There’s emergency stairs by the windows!”

“Stairs?” He headed off after her. Sure enough, a set of metal stairs snaked down the building’s side. “We can get in through one of those windows!”

The two of them ran down a few flights, only stopping when Elphelt pointed one out. “This one! I think it’s this one!”

“This one?” Sin repeated back. He crouched down to get a good look at it. “I don’t think it’s latched; it should probably just slide open from the bottom.”

“Okay, then let’s-”

“Wait-” He grabbed her hand a half-second before she could slide the window open. “There’s an alarm. It’ll trigger if you pull it open.”

Elphelt recoiled immediately. “How can you tell?”

“I told you I can ride currents, right? I can sense them, too.” He put a hand on the wall next to the window. “Feels like there’s a whole security system set up and wired to the same main hub.” Elphelt was tearing up again in the corner of his eye, and he raised his free hand to assure her. “Don’t worry. Each window has its own sensor alarm. If I can just overload it…”

Sin pressed his eyes shut and willed a bolt of electricity into existence. He slid it between his hands a few times before feeding it into the sensor. After a moment, he felt the current split off between the window and the rest of the system as the wires melted and the plastic exploded.

“Okay, just hold your breath…” He put his hands on the sill. In one motion, he jerked it open and...no alarm.

“Phew…” Elphelt shook her head in momentary relief, before tensing up again. “We have to hurry! We have to hurry!”

She squeezed herself inside before he could even think of doing it himself. Once she had gotten inside, he wormed in after her. “Yeah, of course. But why do we have to hurry? I don’t think anyone’s here.”

The building was as dark inside as it had looked outside. The room they had been dumped into had a high ceiling and a concrete floor, but was nearly empty aside from some storage crates. At least, they looked like storage crates, he couldn’t really tell. From another pocket, he pulled out a rechargeable flashlight, funneled a bit of electricity into it, and switched it on. A narrow slice of light cut through the empty room.

It fell on Elphelt’s horrified face. “El? What’s wrong?”

“We have to hurry.” She spoke in a trembling whisper. “We have to hurry before mother comes home.”

He wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but it seemed important to her. “Okay. We’ll go quickly. What room is your sister in? Can you show me?”

The hallway was slightly lighter, but no less empty. Had everyone gone home already? Then again, he had no idea what this building was for in the first place, maybe there never were people at all. He couldn’t see any security cameras on the ceilings, but even if they were there, he doubted they would be able to see much.

He followed Elphelt down a couple sets of stairs. They both kept their backs pressed to the wall, their footsteps light, and their guard up. Sin glanced over his shoulder every few seconds to be absolutely sure they weren’t being followed.

At one point, Elphelt stopped and held a hand out to him. “I think this is it.”

Compared to the rest of the building, he could sense a veritable feast of electricity coursing back and forth beyond the door they were staring at. It seemed logical that if she was anywhere, it would be in there.

The new room was a stark difference in just how blindingly white it was. Sin had to blink and cover his eyes for a minute while he convinced himself that he was not actually going blind. Elphelt seemed unconcerned with the sudden change, and walked deeper in without him.

“Elphelt! Wait!” He hissed, blinking to clear his vision. The blurry edges eventually smoothed out and sharpened. “Woah…”

Just from a wild guess, it had to be some kind of laboratory. All the glass, fancy equipment, and desks looked like something from the sci-fi shows Sol liked to watch. What kind of science exactly, he had no idea. But it didn’t matter. He had to help Elphelt. Where had she gone to?

“El?” He called out, still trying to keep himself from being too loud. It was a bright white room and she had bright pink hair, how could he not find her in two seconds?

Sin felt his stomach growl as he began to search. Absentmindedly, he pulled out his abandoned licorice and peeled a strand off to eat it. “El?”

He thought he had spotted a flash of pink, but when he approached it, he found a strange pile of pink mush in a large clear dish. He didn’t have the slightest idea of what it was, but it unnerved him. Sin put down his licorice on the tabletop and reached for a glass rod that had been left near it.

What did he think would happen if he prodded it? That was another question he couldn’t answer. It made an odd, gooey noise as the tip sank into its surface. It had looked solid, but the more he pushed into it, the more the glass vanished, even when he thought it would have gone all the way through and come out the other end.

“Sin!”

“Elphelt?” He looked up from his impromptu experiment. Why had he let himself get distracted? Sin pulled the stick back out and set it on the table, and reached for his-

“Where’d I put my licorice…?”

“Sin! Please!”

“Coming, El!” That was more important. He ran off towards her voice. The tables gave way to what he could only describe as giant stove burners built into the ground. “Where are you?”

“Over here!” He saw a hand in the air and headed towards it. It was actually Elphelt that time, instead of some weird arm-monster, thankfully.

“There you are. Jeez, you’re fast-” His eyes went wide.

There was...a girl, suspended in some sort of glassy prison. It hovered over one of the weird floor-burner things, spinning around and around as the room’s lights glinted off it. The girl inside didn’t seem especially bothered by the spinning, or the fact that the ball was barely big enough for her to fit inside. If he didn’t know any better, she looked completely unconscious.

“What the hell?” He looked at his companion. “El, is this her? Is this your sister?”

“Ram…” She said, more to the other girl than to him. Her eyes had gone wet with tears again.

There was an electrical current running under the burner. Without thinking, Sin shoved his hand into it and discharged a bolt of electricity.

He was pretty sure he felt the fluid splattering on his face before he even heard the glass break. The overload of energy had not only shut off whatever the burner was doing, but forced the ball to shatter. He heard Elphelt dive to the ground behind him. Any of the glass that exploded onto him was melted by the heat of his lightning. The smell of ozone and the backlash from overusing his powers was making him dizzy, but Sin tried to focus on what was around him.

Once the chaos had died down, Elphelt crawled back out from the table she’d hidden behind. “Sin?”

“El.” He sent her a dopey, tired smile. “I got it.”

“Ram!!” The girl hurried back over to kneel down by the unconscious body. A few glass shards had nicked their skin, but there was nothing especially worrying. Elphelt seemed to be far more concerned with Ram than she was about her own injuries, anyway. She scooped up the other girl and held her close, placing a hand on her chest as she began murmuring something incomprehensible. Sin watched a faint pink glow envelop her hand and flow into the other’s body.

“Elphelt?” He asked in quiet awe. “You have powers?”

Whatever she was trying to do, it seemed to have worked. As soon as the glow faded, Ram began to rouse.

“Mhh...Elphelt?”

“Ram!” El hugged her sister tightly as her shoulder began trembling. “Oh, you’re awake, you’re awake. I promised I wouldn’t leave you.”

“Elphelt…” She put a hand on her sister’s back and smiled gently. “I’m okay.”

“Th-this is Sin!” When she regained some of her composure, Elphelt pointed at him. “He helped me save you!”

“Yeah. But El, you said we had to hurry, right? We should leave.”

“Oh! We need to leave fast, you’re right.” Elphelt stood back up, but she appeared remarkably calm. In fact, she was smiling. “But we can go even faster with Ram!”

The girl nodded in silent agreement. She looped a hand around her sister’s waist, before beckoning Sin over.

“Faster?” He was confused, but he complied, stepping closer so Ram could grab him by the middle. “I’m not sure what you me-EEEEEAN- !”

The question was answered for him very quickly. His feet were off the ground before he could blink. Ram was shooting off towards the nearest wall, and he had absolutely no way of stopping her.

“Are you insane?!” They were going to fly headfirst into a metal wall! Sin absolutely couldn’t handle hitting something that solid that fast, but he didn’t have any electricity left to try and shock her into dropping him. All he could do was watch.

There was a horrific crunch, and everything went black.

And then blue, as they passed through to the other side without a scratch.

Sin hadn’t realized he was screaming in terror until he stopped. He saw a massive gaping hole in the metal when he turned to look back, but he couldn’t see a single scratch on him, or his questionably-deranged pilot.

“It’s okay, Sin!” Elphelt called. “Ram’s really strong!”

‘Strong’ didn’t seem like a very good explanation on how they hadn’t just smashed their collective heads open, but really, after everything he had been through, it seemed stupid to ask questions.

++++++

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU RAN OFF??”

Sin winced, pulling the receiver away from his ear. “I know, I know, dad, I messed up-”

“MESSED UP??” Ky’s voice shouted back. “You ran off without telling anyone! I thought you had been kidnapped!”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” He said. “But I promise I can explain everything. I need a ride back, do you think you can come pick me up over by Bishop Bakery? The place over at the corner of Hansen and 15th?”

“All the way out there?! Sin, what are you doing in the north district in the first place?”

“Uh, that’s a bit of a long story…” He turned to look at his two new companions. Elphelt kicked her bare feet under the bench as she watched the cars go by, and Ramlethal was sitting cross-legged and bobbing her head back and forth to a song coming out of a nearby radio. “A really long story. Why don’t I tell you all about it over leftover cake?”

++++++

A dark shadow slid along sterile white walls, pacing back and forth and back. Immaculately manicured nails drummed against a pale sleeve, the only giveaway against a perfect porcelain mask of calmness.

“So they both ran away…” A melodic voice echoed off the high walls. “I never would have expected such ingenuity from her.”

The room went quiet for a moment. “Still, nothing I can’t handle. A few steps to shuffle around, but in the end, those girls saved me quite a lot of effort. Brought back to the Guardians on a silver platter! What a stroke of luck.”

She paused. “Oh? The boy? Just another pawn, easy enough to handle. His powers are little more than parlor tricks. I’ll have no trouble disposing of him as soon as he becomes a nuisance."

Another pause. Slowly, the porcelain mask began to crack. “Is that so?

In the blink of an eye, she lashed out to grab one of the trailing tubes. It was squeezed in a white-knuckled grip until the flow was dammed. “Now, you aren’t getting all high and mighty on me, are you?” She asked in a sickly-sweet voice, putting the smiling mask back on. “Don’t forget who gave you all of your shiny new toys. If it weren’t for me, you would still be rotting away in that hospital bed, where nobody could hear you.”

She took a moment longer to grab onto the clear plastic, then let it go. “I’m glad you’ve decided to cooperate. I helped you for a reason, you know. I saw the potential you had...Ah, I ramble so much.” She shook her head. “I’ll leave you to your work. And don’t forget to get plenty of rest. We have so much work to do, and so little time…”

The shadow moved away, melting into all the others with the sound of clicking heels. Once it was far, far away, the faint hum of magic sounded. From another pool of darkness, a half-eaten package of red licorice floated into the faint light. A single braid was pulled out of it, and invisible fingers peeled a stand off to carry it into an awaiting mouth. Artificial strawberry, what a peculiar flavor.

“So…” A silent voice echoed in the darkness. “...Sin?”