#and they probably managed to talk about that at some point within the first five years id wager

[phoenixwithapencil]

ok ok so- in finally at least watching the ep gladio cutscenes I finally got the damn plot (and I have my thoughts and opinions about that, but that's for a different post)... I want to focus though on the fact that Gladio's ultimate triumph is that he's no longer afraid of if or not he will be able to succeed as noct's shield. And then Gilgamesh says this: "Now, hasten forth— with mind unclouded by doubt and will unmoved by fear. The Last King of Lucis is ill fit to fight without his Shield."

Gladio really doesn't react to this line despite the fact that he totally absolutely should. Because the verbiage is not just 'king' nor even 'chosen king', but 'last king'

Gilgamesh knows something about the future and Noct's fate- that Noctis is going to die. Okay, sure. it's not necessarily that he'll die. there's wiggle room in there. But at the same time, Gilgamesh is all but a demigod, who's using 'last king' the same way everyone else in on the prophecy shenanigans use 'chosen king'. it's doubtful Gladio would take that as a sign that Noct and Luna are fated to dismantle the monarchy. He'd take it as 'noct is fated to die.'

Gladio doesn't get the context of a vision the way Ignis will during his dlc. He doesn't get to know how the man he swore to protect will die.

Gladio's job is to make sure Noct Does Not Die and Gilgamesh is looking him in the eye and saying 'glad you got over your fear that you will fail... but for the record, you will never be good enough. you are destined to fail.'

And then gladio doesn't react at all to gilgamesh's words or the massive implications. because im convinced that the writers room hated this man personally.

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

The Invisible String Theory

PAIRING: König x F!Reader

SYNOPSIS: You didn't expect the man who gave you his coat to be the same one to bust down the door where you and the other women slept - sniper hood scaring everyone within an inch of their life. You didn't expect him to become so important to you, either. (Based on König's in-game backstory).

WORDCOUNT: 9.2k

WARNINGS: Human trafficking, mentions of unwanted touching, trauma, blood, gore, guns, bullets, protective!König, soft!König, nightmares, mentions of bullying, etc.

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

'DATE: 25, NOVEMBER, 2021

LOCATION: BERLIN, GERMANY

TIME OF EVENT: 0230

MISSION REPORT: PENDING….'

You don’t remember much from the day that could be called out of the ordinary. Ever since you’d been moved here with the other girls, everything was predictable down to the time the men would come over, to the point where the screams had to be muffled by pillows. 

Never in your life did you think you’d be part of the nearly fifty million people stuck in this situation, and neither did you think you’d be the one in one hundred who got out. But before you can think about November twenty-fifth and those pale gray eyes, you have to go back to the beginning. To Al-Qatala. 

You hadn’t been with this cell initially—you’d been moved around and bartered off more times than you could count; the initial founder of your predicament was long gone at this point. North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania…you’d been practically everywhere and on every continent barring the obvious last. In Europe, you couldn’t name the countries, but you knew this for a fact: you’d never been to Germany before. 

They had you with five other women in a large SUV in the beginning, this international ring of human traffickers. You had watched from the window, face blank and eyes unblinking, at the men who met near the docks. They had brought you in through Hamburg, first—not only the largest seaport in Germany but the third largest in Europe; you think you read that on a flier at some point. One of those flimsy ones that you find in gas stations with bright lettering to attract the tourists with their interesting facts. 

You wished you were only a tourist. 

You’d watched the men shake hands, and that was when you knew your fate, as well as that of the five other women, was sealed. You were going to all be here for a long time. 

This Al-Qatala cell was ruthless, but you supposed with being around terrorists, ruthlessness was better than being executed. 

For days you’d be exploited with the false promises of moments of freedom, breaks, food, and water. For some of the women it was drugs or money, but when your stomach was empty and your eyes blurring from lack of sleep, even addictions seemed to pale for brief hours. But above it all was the threat of death at every corner. These men would kill you. 

It was only a matter of time unless you could give them what they wanted. 

You yourself had developed a system, and it was probably the only reason you were still alive. Pick one of the handlers, gain his favor, and pray that he treats you specially while you keep up the act of a mindless, weak, woman. 

Ivon was the man’s name this time around. Born and raised here in Berlin before the clutches of his fanatical ideations brought him to Al-Qatala. You hated him.

Hated his touch—hated his scent and how he talked; every bit of him was corrupted like a black dog at a crossroads, always leading people down the wrong path. Your only saving grace was that he was stupid. The other girls called you Cat—said you managed to nuzzle up to someone and soon after got them to give you what you wanted. Everything you wanted except freedom, that was.

You didn’t deny that Ivon did give you privileges, but that was the point. About a week into your stay in Berlin, he allowed you to go into public with him. Arm-candy.

A doll. 

The townhouse you’d been stuck in had disappeared into a spec behind the rearview mirror, the chilled air from outside making you shiver at the lack of heat and the thin shawl you’d been thrown. No jacket. 

The care of your health only extended to how well you were able to work—at the moment you were relatively healthy despite the bulge of bruises and constantly shell-shocked look behind your eyes.

But the trip—the trip. You supposed that was when it had fully started, and you didn’t even realize it before you saw those gray eyes again. 

“Come,” Ivon orders, holding tightly to your arm and dragging you along from the corner shop without making a scene. Your hands loosely brush the wrack of clothes, fabric soft under your fingertips as it sways. 

Fixing your shawl, you try to burrow your neck into it, gaining what little heat is available to you. It was cold out—you were shivering. People send looks, eyes tight as they shift up and down your form, but no one ever says anything. To be this bold, this cell had to have been at this for a long, long time. The realization didn’t make you feel any better. 

That was when you first saw him. 

You were standing outside a coffee shop, quivering like a newly hatched butterfly, Ivon making a call only a few feet away with fast motions of his arms. It was hard not to make a run for it right then and there; hard not to take those few seconds of open air and dash away—start screaming and yelling until the authorities came. 

It would save yourself, but what about the others? They wouldn’t be so fortunate, you’d be sentencing them to death. None of this was simple—it needed to be thought out. Two games of chess being played at the same time.

The irony of it was that König had been off-duty that day. It had been a shot in the dark. 

“Are you alright?” A thick Austrian accent makes you flinch as it appears beside your right ear, grating.

Your eyes snap to the side, moving one foot back as you blink wildly up at the blue-gray orbs that would become a staple. You liked to call it as everyone else did—the invisible string theory. A theory that stated that the universe connected people who were destined to meet one day. Through thick or thin waters, it was inevitable. He was inevitable. 

“Yes,” you say quickly, holding your hands tightly around you. The man ahead of you was tall, almost startlingly so, with muscles more bulky than a boulder and his buzz-cut head open to the chilled breeze. He wore a surgical mask over his lower visage, his hoodie under the thick material of a canvas jacket. “Yes,” you say again, hearing Ivon’s voice behind you still on the phone. “I’m fine, thank you.”

Gray eyes furrow slightly, gaze darting over your head. 

“Are you…sure, Ma’am?” 

“Thank you for your concern,” you fake laugh, eyes pained, backing up farther. That invisible string snaps into place, pulling tight at only those few simple words. 

His stature made you slightly nervous—large, intimidating; those hands could do quite the damage if given the chance. Your eyes had hit and bounced off the identity discs at his chest with little thought, too preoccupied to notice the fact that he was in the Service.

König’s eyes had narrowed softly, dark brows minutely moving in.

Ivon hangs up his phone. 

“Can I help you?” He asks, coming up and sliding a hand around your waist. The man had stared at him for a long minute, and you had felt Ivon tense slowly at the unblinking eye contact. 

This stranger had commented in German a long string of frim words, hands going to his jacket and grabbing at the arms—he slips out of it while still uttering. 

Before you can react, the large coat swallows you whole and you snatch at the heat that’s still inside instinctually, now only realizing how much you were shivering. Your body sags into the weight of the fabric, the scent of sweat and coffee. 

You don’t even pay attention to the growing tones, shocked. People look over to the two fast words being tossed.

Yet it could only last so long. 

Ivon’s hand latches onto the side of your arm, beginning to drag you back and away from this kind stranger like a lap dog while throwing curses behind him. Gray eyes meet yours as old shoes skid and stumble. 

König had taken a firm step towards you that day, his body tense and his hands clenched at his side—ready to do anything on a moment's notice should you ask for it. But all you do is stare, jaw loose, and the given coat still on your shoulders. You just couldn’t understand why he would do that. 

The stranger gets swallowed by the crowd, and just like that, he’s gone. 

That was all it had been; a moment—a few mere seconds in the large plot that was this almost impossible tale. You were glad it had been him, or else the events of the future could have been very different. 

Of course, they hadn’t let you keep the jacket, but the memory was enough to warm you for days even as old pains faded and new ones took their place. 

But those gray eyes would help you in the future, like a guardian; a protector in your dreams as you watched the snow fall from the sliver of outside light in your room with the others. Your mattress was on the floor like the rest, thin blankets and clouds of cold breath wafting up from sleeping forms. 

This was the time it happened, and you’d just woken up to find the curtains shifting as one of the women near it moved in her sleep. Shadows slip past, the light interrupted as it shifts over your tired face with broken fractures. 

You were always kept on the ground floor. 

'CLEARANCE: APPROVED 

TRANSLATING MISSION REPORT ‘RED FREEDOM’…

STAND BY…

Operation Red Freedom took place on November twenty-fifth, 2021, at approximately 0230 in the neighborhood of [REDACTED], at the residence of [REDACTED], Berlin, Germany. A squad of ten highly trained [REDACTED] personnel covertly entered the residence in two teams of five. Fireteam One advanced from the back entrance while Fireteam Two entered the residence from the balcony at the top floor, accessed via ladder.

Squad Leader [REDACTED], part of Fireteam One, set foot in the residence of [REDACTED] at approximately 0238 and began sweeping the ground floor as Fireteam Two cleared three of twelve known individuals belonging to the terrorist organization, Al-Qatala, on the top floor….'

You shift and shiver, your body trying to warm itself as the world blurs at the sides of your vision. Fingers twitch as your hand goes to wrap your waist, curled into the fetal position, creaking emanates from above you. Blinking softly, you frown and take a quivering breath, head nuzzling the thin mattress. 

“Cold,” you say, the following low exhale of air out of your lips only making it all worse as everything seems to drop another degree. The darkness didn’t help either, only that one line of light trying desperately to fill the room like a bucket descending into a dry well. 

You’re only clothed in the dirty and tattered remains of a large shirt, your legs feeling like they don’t hold any blood in them as they quiver without your knowledge—shaking the blanket above you. A few of the girls had said it would be okay to share, but everyone was afraid of the lock on the door clicking open and the men coming back in and seeing them. In the end, you could only look after yourself.

A thump makes you startle, drooping eyes snapping back open as you gasp. 

Head shifting, you blink rapidly upward to the ceiling, confused as to whether that had been a part of a failing mind or if you’d really just heard a muffled bump upstairs. Brows furrowing, you lightly sit up, hands still around yourself and legs limply outward; spine hunched. 

Your fingers had lost feeling, just as your nose had gone numb, but moving helped a little. Your hands dig into your flesh and your ears twitch at every creak in the wood—every pass of silent feet that suddenly becomes all the clearer as the sheen of fatigue slowly leaves your brain. 

Walking? Small pains move along your body like needles, poking and prodding, but you ignore them as easily as you do the vile hands that had touched you. Survival had forced you into a constant state of self-preservation—pain couldn’t bother you, because if you stopped, you wouldn’t get back going again. 

Your head tilts so you can side-eye the door to the room, sleeping forms all around shifting, singular groaning of tired lungs. But there’s something inside of you that stiffens like a prey animal, and you don’t know why. Inside of your sockets, your eyes hone in, bones stiff and your chest stilling as the grain becomes the most interesting thing to you beyond breathing. 

There was someone….out there. 

Watching, the sides of your vision shadow over to focus harder, your muscles tight. Your mind goes to the thumps from upstairs, the moving feet that sounded far more careful and deliberate than the ones your jailors took care to walk with. 

Inside your ribs, your heart patters a bit faster, adrenal glands sending a certain flight or flight through the few veins you hold that aren’t chilled over.

Something was happening. Something wasn’t right.

Only when you move to shake the shoulder of one of the women sleeping beside you does it happen. 

A yell. 

A scream. 

The girls in the room all startle awake, sounds of concern and shock entering the air that you mirror; faces snapping to the ceiling and the door. The townhouse erupts into gunfire and the sound of slamming wood—a warzone that only is separated from all of you by the thin material of the four walls.

You feel yourself being grabbed and held in fear in the dark, as your open face holds the expression of a rabbit in an open field, looking along the long, hidden grass. 

The sounds persist, loud German shouts going up over the house and echoing with heated fever. This continues for minutes, added in with the sound of doors breaking off hinges, bouncing off the ground, and shaking the foundation so hard that you can feel it reverberate. The women go silent. Stone-still. 

But the gunfire—so much gunfire. The constant pop of assault weapons and a pound of multiple booted feet. 

What was going on? You can't make sense of it, so you only freeze and listen; trying to understand the longer the fight goes on, heart hammering; mouth slack-jawed. And then it’s like it never happened.

Silence. 

You share quick looks with the others, all gripping one another and heads angled to the door. The heavy feet start back up again, coming closer. Your mind slashes to the window across the room, but it’s hard to think beyond the sudden body that shakes the door that leads directly to you all—the women scream, some standing up and racing to the glass with the same idea as you. 

'…Squad Leader [REDACTED], and both Fireteams successfully eliminated all targets inside of the [REDACTED] residence, leaving the room occupied by known hostages last to prevent casualties and/or the usage of bargaining chips. Squad Leader [REDACTED] made contact with hostages at approximately 0244 after the final sweep of the townhouse had been completed and all personnel accounted for.

Local authorities had been contacted by neighbors due to noise but were dismissed.' 

The door busts off its hinges and the room devolves into panicked yells and hurled bits of mattress material. Loud pleas and curses stuck like gums to teeth as they were forced out in fear and bone-crushing terror. You remember pushing back into the wall, many others doing the same, as a beast of a man enters the room with his face covered with a loose fabric hood of some sort. 

Large—brutish. Like a demon walking with the color of black printed over his entire body; gear hangs from a combat vest, hands holding an assault rifle as a sidearm is strapped to his bulging thigh. Forearms the side of your head stays near his chest, and in order to not hit his head on the doorframe, the individual has to bend slightly. Over that hood, the lenses and head-gear of a night-vision rig sit heavily before it’s moved back with a firm hand that is nearly double the size of yours.

A monster.

Your entire being is tight with quivering tension, eyes blinking away tears at the smell of blood that rolls in from the hallway. The women at the window duck down, hands to their heads as if expecting a bullet to carve its way between their skulls. 

“Cat,” one of the ladies behind you mutters, voice quivering. You shush her on bitten lips and move her farther behind you. 

“Don’t speak,” you mutter. “Don’t move.”

You don’t know what you expect, but nothing about this is correct. 

The man raises his hands, the rifle slapping his chest as it hangs from a strap. He speaks in German, and the heavy and fast noise of it makes your already addled head spin. No one answers beyond the slide of their own feet over the hardwood floors.

“Ich heiße König,” his head swivels from one to another, “Sprichst du Deutsch? Irgendjemand?”

You stare blankly, panting. 

After a moment, and a slow step forward from the stranger, he speaks again, though this time, it’s in English. 

“My name is König.” His voice is familiar to you, and you blink in confusion quickly, hidden near the back of the shaking bodies. “I am with the German Military, yes? We have conducted a raid on this residence.” 

Military? Raid? 

“...I am not here to hurt you.” He nears one of the women, beginning to bend down slowly. She squeaks, balking back—making him tense and halt. It didn't matter what he said, König was the epitome of a man who was intimidating on body alone; the gear wasn’t helping. Neither was the hood. 

A soldier appears in the doorway, calling out to him in his native language as you flinch at the noise. 

König calls back calmly, trying to keep an air of gentle strength around him.

The second soldier comes inside, dressed similarly despite the lack of fabric over his visage which instantly puts many at ease again. He clears his throat as König steps back, gargantuan hands coming up to rest at his vest collar as his legs shift. He seems a bit put off at the fearful stares from everyone, rolling his shoulders for a moment as he turns his head to look out of the doorway. 

Your eyes don’t move from him, though. A nagging feeling in the back of your skull. 

“We have to leave this place,” the second soldier tells you all, kneeling and resting a hand over his knee. “We’ll get you medical attention. Food. Water. There’s no need to suffer here any longer, hm? We can see to it that all of you will get the best care that can be provided.” A pause. “We can get you back home.” 

That certainly got the attention that was needed. 

Meek questions started falling out, then louder ones before pandemonium was roused in that tiny room pushed to the very back of the townhouse. Home. It was a word that had almost lost all meaning but was still that constant shining light in the back of everyone’s mind. 

Home.

Did you even have one of those left? 

As the rest of your fellows all got to their feet, taking you with them, you had to think over that fact as the soldier guided them gently out of the room to join the others waiting—trying to answer their questions and get them away from the gore before they saw it. 

You stayed behind, feet shifting over the floor and your lips thin. As the silence settles in, you hold yourself a bit tighter and glance at the mattress all mashed together and stained—those thin blankets as you shiver. 

“Are you alright?” Your head snaps over. 

You’d forgotten about König.

He still stands there, still and with his hands at his collar; he clears his throat softly, speaking up from his low utterance. “Please…do not be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid,” you say tinily, your voice cracking in the lie. 

You can’t see his eyes—not with the shadow from his hood or his head rig, but you can see the way his skull lightly tilts to the side, trying to see you better in the low light. 

“That is good,” he answers, not convinced. “I’m glad. I did not wish to scare anyone.” He moves back and motions with a hand to the door from where they hang. “Please. It is best not to linger, yes?”  

“Do I…” you hesitate, shivering. “Do I know you from somewhere?” 

König’s face isn’t visible, but you can still sense the feeling of confusion leaking out of him. The man takes a small step closer, and you gaze up at him until his eyes are visible. 

Blue-gray. 

You stare, mouth parting in shock.

König blinks twice, quickly making a noise in the back of his throat at the sight of your eyes gazing into his—the same woman outside of the coffee shop from days ago.

That little invisible string pulls you closer, small millimeter by small millimeter. 

“You?” You both say it at the same time, laced with surprise and shock. 

It’s a long moment of gazing into each other, a battered body and another more strong than an ox. All fear of the man dissipates. 

“You gave me your jacket,” you whisper, still torn up about it. 

König’s hood shifts as he glances back to the door, German speech over the radio strapped to his chest which he takes in and processes in the back of his skull. But he always looks back at you, eyes crinkled with concern and perhaps even a bit of misplaced guilt. 

A protective knife sides into his side.

“Come.” The man reaches out a hand, hovering it over your arm. You stare at the gloved limb for a moment before softly moving towards it with your breath caught in your throat, hesitant. König’s fingers delicately slide over the flesh, not closing around it until he feels your muscles loosen. “...Let’s get you warmer, Schatz, yes?” 

You blink.

“It’s cold here,” you mutter, letting him guide you along, his gray orbs always keeping you in the side of his vision. 

“Yes,” he agrees, nodding. “Very cold. Have you been to Germany during the winter before?”

Your head slightly shakes, bare feet padding along next to the pair of great boots—you lean closer unconsciously to the promise of warmth. König guides you away from the seeping blood on the floor and protects your eyes from the view of the bodies across the room with his own as a guard dog would. 

“No.” He notices your leaning and brings you nearer to him, letting you use him as a brace. The man knows the effects of shock, and you wear it as plainly as any other. “I’ve never been here before.” 

König hums and his free hand goes up to press into the radio, muttering in his native tongue. He releases the connection and asks as he blinks at you, “Do you require any immediate medical attention?” 

Again, you shake your head. 

“Where are the others?” You sink further into him, being guided to the front door, open to the soft snowfall and a chilled wind as your shoulder hunch. 

“Just outside,” König glances at the bodies across the room—the ones he’d riddled with bullets that still twitch even as the minutes draw longer. Gray eyes going from one to another, the house is heavy with the weight of dead men. Twelve in total and all getting colder just like the temperature outside. König didn’t feel bad about it, and when he’d finally busted open that door to find you and the women, he was satisfied with the blood on his hands. If hell were to be his home, he would walk there with a golden-fanged smile. 

But now wasn’t the time for that. 

“I will bring you to them,” the soldier speaks, snow blowing in from the entrance. “Slowly, now, Schatz, watch the steps. Allow me to help.”

You stop at the doorway, bringing a hand to your mouth to cover a haggard cough as König makes his way down the first concrete step ahead of you—large armored vehicles had pulled up from a ways away. The women huddle around one another, the rest of the soldiers sticking by them and opening the doors to the vehicles as the night gets only more cold and stormy.  

Gray eyes flicker for a moment down to your lack of proper protection, fingers twitching and tapping at his thigh as König remembers your expression the day he’d first met you. 

“Do you want me to carry you?” He says slowly, cautious in his approach. The man wasn’t stupid—he wouldn’t touch you unless you explicitly stated it was alright for him to do so. “I will be gentle, I promise. I do not wish for your feet to freeze, I...” He pauses as you blink, staring into his soul. “I…will not touch you if you do not tell me to do it. You have my word.” 

You continue to stand there for a moment, face unreadable before your head slowly turns to the vehicles in the street. 

The neighborhood was so normal it still caused you to wonder how no one had spoken up and seen something. Rows of connected houses now with their lights on—faces peeking from the windows like little children on Christmas morning; trying to get glimpses of Santa and the man’s reindeer. 

Finally, your gaze moves back to the hooded visage of König, able to see it better under the moonlight and the glare of falling snowflakes—a few of those frozen pieces sitting in the folds of the fabric.

“The hood scared them,” you utter about the others. König stiffens a bit, blinking at you but not looking away. “They’re used to people trying to hide their faces, but yours…with how large you are…”

“I understand.” König doesn't tear away his eyes. “...Did I scare you, Schatz?”

You don’t know why, but for what seems like the first time in years, the question makes you giggle. The beast of a man goes still with his feet on the ground, usually jittery and moving body captivated by the sound as it echoes over the night’s air—the puff of your breath as it moves around his hood; rustling it like leaves on a tree. 

Eyes widening only a sliver more, König’s breath is in his throat.

It was like listening to a bird’s song.

“Maybe only a little,” you whisper to him. “But it’s okay. I’m scared of most things.” 

He licks his lips, but you’re unable to see the slight quirk of them afterward. 

“Then I will make it up to you, yes?” He holds out a hand. “Let me? The car is warm and your friends are waiting for you. My men say they ask about your health.”

You softly nod, the shadow of the house trying to drag you back into it—its blackened arms reaching and latching onto old scars. When your hand connects with König's, the man takes his time putting one foot back to a step and scooping you up from behind your knees. With a tiny grunt, you settle at his chest, calming your heartbeat with the fact that you know he won’t hurt you. 

“I’ve got you,” he says. 

In his arms, your bare legs hang in the air, hand wrapping his neck, and with a slightly nervous look to you as your body hovers. König watches for a moment, hesitating before he begins walking to the same vehicle the other woman had been moved into out of the snowfall. 

“Can you tell me your name,” he asks to distract you from his hold, to get you more comfortable with him as his boots crunch through the packed powder on the ground—making sure to watch his step so as to not jostle you. 

“Everyone calls me Cat.” Gray eyes blink your way, visible skin painted black. König’s head tilts. You can’t help but find it endearing.

“Katze?” He hums, and you can imagine his lips moving slightly upwards from the innocent tone of his voice as if taken by the strange moniker. “That is…interesting.” 

You huff tinily, shivering again as your body moves to curl a little more. 

The soldier quickly reassures you. “Nearly there.” 

The vehicle is in front of you, and a nearby man opens the door for König as he carries you over. Nodding in thanks, the large individual eases you into one of the seats as the blast of warm air makes you sag—the other woman in there mulls closer, grabbing onto you and laughing through tears. 

Looking back at them, you smile and feel yourself get a bit teary-eyed as everything starts to slowly come into focus. 

Glancing outward, you stare at the snow that hits the dark hood of König, sticking and hanging off until the tiny white dots melt from the heat of his body. With his legs shifting he moves back a step and nods to you, eyes moving to stare at the ground for a moment. 

“We will take you to base. From there you will all be given dorms and fresh apparel to—”

“Thank you, König,” you interrupted him. He stares, lips parted with the half-tones of cut-off speech. “And please extend my thanks to your men as well.” 

“...Of course, Katze.” König stands straighter, always twitching fingers moving to the car door as engines start with a grinding roar. He nods again, the loose fabric swaying as the lenses of his rig stay firm at the movement. “There is no need to thank us. Relax. Sleep, if you wish to do it. The ride will be long.” The man’s gray eyes linger for a moment on your own, studying the bumps and small marks on your face. His hand tightens over the door as your gaze is stuck with his own; warmth blooming in his chest. He was glad he had found you. 

König slips out a soft, “There are blankets under the seats,” before he closes the door with a firm thump of metal. 

You can’t help but smile. 

'…Hostages were taken back to [REDACTED] and received minor medical attention on site. Housed in [REDACTED] and were admitted for needed treatments/medications - all details/names listed in File 3 Section 6 for future reference. DNA was placed into databases. 

Next of kin were informed of their family members’ position and/or state of being via phone call to the corresponding government official that then traveled through the appropriate channels once identified.'

You sit as a nurse hands you heating pads for your hands, which you take with a small thanks and clenched tightly, sucking every ounce of warmth from them to stop the shaking. Your body was heavy with the weight of new clothes and heated blankets, the room utterly normal in a way you’d not known for years. A corner table with books and a chess board—a connected bathroom stocked with amenities you may need; even a rug on the tile floor. You don’t know why that was shocking to you, but even the simplest thing was awe-inspiring. Your eyes had even slipped over a tiny nightlight near the door. 

It nearly made you cry. 

Your nurse moves back a bit, smiling down at you kindly. 

“Is there anything else you might need, Dear?” Her accent is prominent, though not as much as König’s had been. She waits for your answer diligently as the pitcher of water and a similar glass sit on your nightstand. 

“No,” you say, shaking your head. Your socked feet rub together like a grasshopper. “I think that’s all.” Your eyelids blink. “But…” you stop.

“What is it?” The lady asks gently, hands slack at her sides.

“The man—König,” you pause. “Is he here?” 

Blinking at you, the nurse tilts her head to the side in curiosity. “Not currently, no. At least, not in this specific building. He and his men are being debriefed across base. They will be there for a long while.” At your blank look, her brows slightly move up in accommodating comfort. “Would…you like me to tell him something for you?” 

Playing with the heating pads in your hands, your face gains a slightly embarrassed sheen. You liked the thought of being near König, truthfully. No one had made you feel safe like he did—him and his selfless action of a large coat given with no intention of getting anything in return. 

“Just,” you breathe softly. “Just that I’m sorry for losing his coat, and that I hope it wasn’t expensive.”

The nurse stares, very much confused but not about to question you. Her feet shift over the floor, and a light nod is sent your way. 

“Of course. I’ll tell him.” She motions to the bed with a hand and explains that whenever you wished to sleep, you were free to use the bed—and the TV was open to you as well, though you might not be able to understand the local stations. With that, she exited the room. 

Left alone, your head moves around the room slowly, taking it all in once more as the small bandages under your clothes pull at your flesh. The tears start slipping down your cheeks with no warning. 

Wrist coming up to your eyes, the limb presses in tightly, water staining the flesh as it dribbles down, and your lip quivers like a worm below it. You don’t know why you’re crying now and not when König had gotten you out of that townhouse. Why now, when there wasn’t anything prompting you to do so? 

But something was prompting you—the knowledge that you would never be going back to anyone who would mistreat you again. You had your own room. Good food. All the water that your stomach could drink down. A nightlight that pushes back the darkness even if you’re so used to living in it. 

Through your soft sniffles, chuckles move out, filling the space with a warm echo. You pull the blankets closer to you and collapse backward onto the mattress, smiling widely at the ceiling. 

That little invisible string dances as your heart pulls at it. 

—

König’s leg lightly jumps from under his table, signing off his name at the bottom of a report before he stands and rubs a hand over the top of his un-hooded head. He grabs the paper and slips it into a manila folder, hands pale with deep scars running the length of them like fissures in the earth. Deftly taking the item, he walks out of his office and begins moving down the length of the building, fingers tapping over the yellowish material with a small connection of flesh and thick envelope. 

Tap-tap, tappity-tap. 

His fingers were always fidgeting—moving, tensing, twitching. It was one of the reasons they never let him become a recon sniper; the more obvious being the blatant size of his body. Both of which had been the cause of much teasing throughout his childhood. 

But König’s mind was on something other than the report in his hands, and it was starting to become a very strong distraction. You. The women. Al-Qatala. 

He was angry he hadn’t acted outside of that coffee shop—angry he hadn't noticed the signs right in front of him even if he had been powerless to stop it then. The soldier’s jaw clenched, the strong muscles of his jaw roving. 

“Verdammt,” he hisses under his breath, glaring at the tile. “Should have done something.”

König gets to his commanding officer’s office and knocks, only staying long enough to hand him the folder with his finished report and leave once more. His mind wouldn’t stay silent tonight. There’s no doubt that he won’t be able to sleep unless he reassures himself that you and the others are okay. 

The man’s head shifts back to the email he had gotten from your assigned nurse, whom he’d taken it upon himself to know the name of when he carried you into the base’s hospital—Eva. 

‘...She says she wants to apologize for losing your coat…”

König’s heart had twisted at that—that was what you were concerned about? He had to tell you that it was alright, or else he would never know peace. Perhaps even ask how you’ve been treated so far, just to make sure that everything was comfortable for you. 

The man’s eyelids move slightly downward in thought, a pull at his heart to walk outside. He passes a few other soldiers in the hallway, nodding to them with a tiny greeting but unwilling to stop and talk. In only fatigues, König exits the main doors quickly, lightly moving into a jog as his body shivers at the sudden chill touching his arms under the black compression shirt. Under him the snow has grown deeper, the large lights illuminating the almost greenish reflections of the winter landscape of open roads and large buildings. 

Curfew was long past—this had to be quick. 

Just a check-in, König tells himself as he nears the hospital, his breath puffing in the air. Then I can wipe my hands of it. 

He slows as he nears the doors, huffing a breath as he pushes on the barrier, opening it with a squawk of hinges and metal. Entering, the front desk staff looked up at him in surprise, muttering his name in question.

“Katze?” He responds, pushing a hand over his head and feeling the melting snowflakes. His cheeks are a light shade of exposure-red, and inquisitive eyes shift over the two individuals slowly. “What room?”

The pair share a glance and tell him in the same breath. Room ten. 

It’s no sooner after that König finds himself there, hand hovering over the handle as the hallway clock ticks beside his right ear. His gray eyes blink at the door, feet shuffling from under him before he clears his throat under his breath, glancing away for a second in hesitation. 

Was this appropriate?

König didn’t have an answer, but the pull in his chest was tight and firm—he just needed to see you. A glimpse, nothing more. He raises his fist and raps his knuckles over the wood delicately, three tiny knocks that hit his ears like bullets from a gun; the bullets he’s put into pathetic Al-Qatala bodies and watched burst like sacks of fluid. 

He waits, hands going to grasp at his shirt collar, pushing out a low breath to calm himself. 

After a long moment, his foot taps the floor, blinking. Again he knocks—a bit louder. 

“She is sleeping, you evolutionsbremse,” he utters, accent low and grating. “Leave her alone.” But even if you are, his nerves peek their head over the brimstone wall of his brain. 

With his fingers caressing the handle, slowly moved to clutch it fully, swallowing the metal in his grip. König takes a deep breath into his lungs, letting it fill them up. Again, he tells himself, just a check-in. 

He twists the doorknob and sets his forearm on the wood, pushing the barrier open. 

König moves so that his body makes no noise, even with how large it is as he angles the side of his head through the opening. He finds a large mound of blankets atop the bed—stacked and layered so heavily that he has to blink in surprise at how you can breathe under them; because you were under them. 

Gray eyes make out the small sliver of skin peaking out from the side of the bed—fingers—and the top of your forehead near the pillows formed around your skull. Unconsciously, a soft smile works its way over König’s lips until he finds himself chuckling.

“Niedlich,” he mutters, scars over his face shifting as he speaks. 

Sighing lowly, König pulls back his head, beginning to close the door once more.

“König…?” Your tiny voice makes him halt like he had in the townhouse. 

Eyes wide and lips parted at being caught, the door remains open, only a sliver visible to your vision as your furrowed brows are stuck at the barrier. A red sheen moves across the soldier’s face in a slow sweep of embarrassment that goes bone deep.

With a lick of his lips, König re-opens the door slightly.

“I did not mean to wake you, Katze.” He finds your eyes and nods to you. “I apologize. Go back to sleep—you must be tired.” 

 “Wait,” you utter, moving your head fully out from under the blankets. König pauses, eyes staring as his other hand comes up to itch at the back of his neck. 

“What is it,” the man asks, opening the door fully and moving inside. “Do you need anything?” 

The question had hit you in your thin slumber, interrupted only partially by the opening of your door to the familiar pull of gray eyes and a strong build. A buzz-cut head. You take a slow breath to wake yourself up more, watching him from your bed. “...Did you know that I would be in that house?”

König tilts his head at the question, sighing slightly and glancing at the clock inside of the room on your nightstand. He frowns. 

“No,” he explains gently, coming closer. “No, I did not. I do not get told such things—only where to shoot and where not to.” The man tries a small smile, kneeling on one leg down by the bed and staring into your sleepy eyes. “But I am glad I found you again, yes? You had me worried.”

“You were worried?” You can’t quite grasp it.

“Ja,” he nods. “Your eyes—they have stuck with me, Schatz, you understand?” 

Your eyebrows pull up your face, blinking in shock. 

“...Yours, too,” you confess. König’s heart flutters, listening until your lips have fallen still. “They’re very nice, König.”

He goes sheepish, lips flicking up into a smile and his eyes daring away for a moment. “You can thank my mother for them, then.” He chuckles. “I have stolen the family's eyes, I was told.”

You chuckle with him, hand coming to rub at your cheek. A silence falls between the two of you.

“I don’t sleep well,” you tell him in the relative darkness, light from the hallway and your night light illuminating the dips and bone structure of his face. “I was awake when you opened the door.” 

He nods after a moment. “Ja.” A pause. “I don’t either…Nightmares?” 

You watch him before nodding tinily. 

“Ah,” he mutters. “They are not pleasant, I’m sorry that they have been plaguing you. Do you…” König wonders if he should leave—this was far more than he had anticipated. “Do you wish for me to stay?” 

 Why had he said that?

The string between the two of you tightens evermore, gaining another thread just as it would for the years to come until it became as unbreakable as steel.

“I don’t want to be a nuisance,” you begin but are quickly interrupted with a shake of a square head and a huff of a sharp nose.

“You are not. Do not call yourself such.” His accent deepens with emotion, eyes narrowing as the dark brows on his face pull in. “If you want me to stay, I will stay. Wake you if you become shaky, yes? Keep the bad dreams at bay.”

“But what about you?” Your voice moves around the room as König stands and goes to the table in the back, shifting one of the chairs so that it’s angled your way. You shift so you can watch him sit back, grunting as his legs move out in front of him, opening so he can be more comfortable. He needed a bigger chair, but he wasn’t going to complain about it. 

“I’m not tired, Schatz.” A lie. His muscles are heavy, and he longs for his bed in the barracks. He pushes out, “Please, go back to sleep. I’ll watch over you.”

You stare for a long while, studying him and how he fidgets in his seat of choice. A small laugh meets the man’s ears as he crosses his arms over his chest. König pauses, blinking over in confusion. His lips move upwards slowly. 

“What are you laughing at, then, hm?” 

“You look like you’re about to break it,” you mutter, head nuzzling the pillow under you as fatigue claws its way under your skin. 

König huffs, fingers twitching over the meat of his biceps as he slouches. He nods jokingly. “Perhaps,” he shrugs, the window behind him letting a slight tinge of cold air in from outside. “It would not be the first, I’m afraid, though it would be quite the embarrassment to do it in front of you, Katze.” He smirks. “But I’ll say, hitting my head on door frames hurts more than letting my arsch kiss the ground.” 

You laugh under your heap, your body jerking to the movement of your lungs. 

“I bet,” you say, fingers grasping one of your blankets and pulling it closer. “It’s a funny image.”

“You can laugh all you want,” König jokes, eyes soft as they gaze at you. “It does not bother me.” 

Your sweet sounds of amusement waft out from under the crack in the door, where a small group of curious nurses mull and listen with glances to one another. A doctor moves past the hallway where they stand, and all scatter on quick feet. 

'…Signed,

[REDACTED]

SUBMITTED: 0517, 25, November 2021

END OF MISSION REPORT ‘RED FREEDOM’

RETURNING TO SELECTION MENU…

STAND BY…'

It’s only after most of the other women leave—sent home to awaiting families or loved ones—that you know your time is coming to a close here in Berlin, Germany. While you’re excited to put this behind you, you can’t help but feel a bit…lost. 

There’s something that keeps you here, on this base, until you’re the last out of all of them, waiting. And then you’re given the green light to go—go home—and suddenly you have a backpack full of necessities and you’re closing the door to your room with the little nightlight’s plastic body pushing against your spine. Yet, you stand in the hallway for a long minute, fingers interlocked. 

You take a long, deep, breath. 

Over the weeks of recovery, König had been a constant companion when he wasn’t needed. He had eased you back into a comfortable state, letting you somewhat lose the black-and-white view you had gained of the world. But there was only so much he could do, even if his soft eyes were still stuck in your dreams—the good ones, of course. 

You needed to go home, and, today, the C-17 was whirring on the tarmac, waiting for you to be transported to a military base far from here where you would be processed and, ultimately, let go. 

Let go. It was jarring to think about, all of that freedom. What would you do with it? Right now, you don’t have the faintest clue. It was the best feeling you can remember having.

Smiling, you take one last look at the room behind you and walk on. 

At the entrance, you say a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to the nurses and doctors in broken German, shaking their hands as Eva kisses your forehead and whispers how happy she is to have had you here for such little time—you know what she means and you chuckle with her at the double-edged sword. 

König waits by the door, holding it open with…you blink at the item in his hands as well as his sudden appearance. Canvas fabric. A coat.

The coat. 

“I had to have it processed,” he says, smiling as you gape at him. “Very long process. It was found in the closet in the townhouse.” 

“Then why are you handing it to me,” you ask, tilting your head and walking closer. 

“I gave it to you, did I not?” The man hums, head tilting as he motions with it again. “It’s a good coat, Katze. Winters get cold.” Gray eyes crinkle gently. “I would hate for you to shiver, wherever it is that you end up, yes?”

You shake your head, cheeks hot. But your hands don’t hesitate to grasp the item, König’s hold on it remains fast, though, and you blink at him as you both keep it gently clasped like it’s worth its weight in gold. 

König stares at you, the door still kept open behind him. He opens and closes his mouth for a moment as you tilt your head. 

“Keep it safe for me,” is what he ends with, but his expression tells you he’s not talking about the coat. 

It makes your arms tingle—your heart skips a beat. 

“I’ll be sure it never gets lost,” you smile warmly, eyes malleable as the make of their color glints. There is a connection to this man that transcends words, and it is tied to you just as heavily as it is to him; unexplainable, incomprehensible, non-describable. 

Enigmatic. 

König’s reverential face is soft with care. 

“Good,” he mutters, unable to look away. “Very good.”

Clearing his throat, his grays dart to the floor, shifting his feet to move backward. He pushes open the door wider for you, and you hold your backpack in one hand as you shift past him and slip into his coat. 

It was exactly how you remembered it, and you sank into the fabric with a thankful sigh and a fluttering of your lashes. You shift the bag back over your shoulders, letting the straps fall into the bulk of the extra material. 

The snow wasn’t falling today, and the ground was shoveled of any white powder too. On the air, you can hear the whir of the C-17. 

König comes up beside you, a hand hovering over the small of your back as he guides you along. For the most part, the walk to the tarmac is silent with the weight of the future. You had no phone. No socials. You didn’t even know if you wanted any, to be honest. Your mind had convinced you that a good bout of soul-searching was exactly what you needed. And you had to do that alone. 

Your lips are thin as your legs take you closer to the plane, König’s scent stuck into the stitches of the coat and covered your senses. 

At the ramp, he stops as your feet take you onto the metal. Closing your eyes for a moment, you turn and lock gazes with him—gray hiding away what other, more human, emotions to be found. It was a slate of carefully crafted acceptance, and your own followed soon after. 

It had to be this. The string wouldn’t break, no, but it had to be stretched to such a point to come back stronger.

“Thank—”

“Don’t,” he says, not blinking, looking up at you. 

You smile. “What do you want me to say, then?” 

“You don’t have to say anything to me.” You hadn't known it then, but the both of you had truly thought that this would be the last of your meetings. It produced a pulse in both of your hearts that would never be told aloud. “....Live well,” König utters. “Heal, Mein Schatz.” 

The soldier wasn't one to give his chances to hope. 

Your eyes follow as he backs up, moving away as you stare. In his head, König pleads with you to stop and give him a reprieve from the hypnosis of your gaze, the addictive movement of your head as it tilts to the side. 

Live well. 

You send him a smile, a delicate thing, and then you back up a step and turn, disappearing into the darkness. 

The string follows, and it continues to do so even as your hands slip into your pockets hours later, bumping into the small form of a black flip phone. The note hidden inside of it. 

 ‘For whenever you find what you’re looking for.’

'REQUEST FOR ADMINISTRATIVE DISCHARGE

REQUESTED BY: [REDACTED]

ENTERED: DECEMBER 15, 2021

TIME: 1422

OPEN FILE?...

REQUEST CANCELED….

RETURNING TO FILE SELECT MENU…

FILE SELECTED….

TRANSLATING…

STAND BY…

REQUEST OF HONORABLE ADMINISTRATIVE DISCHARGE OF [REDACTED] APPROVED ON JANUARY 2, 2022

OPEN FILE?...

REQUEST CANCELED…

SYSTEM SHUTTING DOWN'

You sit in a coffee shop in Berlin, Germany, by the window. It wasn’t just any coffee shop, but you try not to think about all of that. It was all in the past—three years, now. You like to think you’d learned something in that time.

“Danke schön,” you say to the woman who brings you your drink, nodding kindly. You take a small sip, humming and winking at her teasingly. “Perfekt.” 

She chuckles, wiping her hands on her apron. “Möchten Sie noch etwas anderes dazu?”

“Nein, nein,” you shake your head, waving a hand that soft bumps the flip phone on the table. “Danke.” 

The lady walks away, and you take another sip of the hot beverage, never put off by the heat. 

It was winter again, and your eyes followed the flakes as they fell from a cloudy sky, finding the beauty in it easily as you sat inside. The scarf around your neck is loose—your gifted coat open. You smile to yourself and hum, watching people walk past outside, thinking about their lives and how they live them. 

A large form travels out from a shop across the street, a plastic bag in his loose grip. He was not small, no, this man was a beast of height and strength alike. The loping, canid-like, walk was accented by the twitch of his fingers over his quarry. 

Your wide eyes stay stuck to him for a long moment as he moves to the crosswalk, people shifting out of his way as he ignores them. Familiarity strikes like lighting—a buzz down your spine that leaves you straightening.

After a long moment, a breathless laugh sneaks out of you.

There were just some things that people were never meant to understand.

Your hand places your cup back on the table, picking up the old flip phone and pushing it open. Your thumb runs the keypad, moving to the only contact that had ever been entered into the device. 

Pressing, you move it to your ear as you watch with a soft expression, heart pattering. 

Across the way, the man tenses, hand patting his leg before the other hand moves inside his pocket and shifts the item out. People walk away, moving to the other side of the crosswalk as he stares at the contact. 

A minute passes, and all the while you hold your breath.

He presses and moves the phone to his ear, staying as still as stone. As still as a man afraid his hood might scare a group of terrified women. 

His voice graces your ear.

“...Katze?” You beam, trapped in the warmth of the coat around your shoulders.

“How do you feel about coffee, König?” 

Blue-gray eyes had never been more beautiful than when they snapped up to meet yours.

TAGS:

@sheviro-blog, @ivebeentrashsince2001, @mrshesh, @berryjuicyy, @romantic-homicide, @kmi-02, @neelehksttr, @littlemisstrouble, @copperchromewriting, @coelhho-brannco, @pumpkinwitchcrusade, @fictional-men-have-my-heart, @sleepyqueerenergy, @cumikering, @everything-was-dark, @marmie-noir, @anna-banana27, @iamcautiouslyoptimistic, @irenelunarsworld, @rvjaa, @sarcanti, @aeneanc, @not-so-closeted-lesbian, @mutuallimbenclosure, @emily-who-killed-a-man, @gildedpoenies, @glitterypirateduck, @aldis-nuts, @writeforfandoms, @kohsk3nico, @peteymcskeet, @caramlizedtomatoes, @yoursweetobsession, @quesowakanda, @chthonian-spectre, @so-no-feint, @ray-rook, @extracrunchymilk, @doggydale, @frazie99, @develised, @1-800-no-users-left, @nuncubus, @aldis-nuts, @clear-your-mind-and-dream, @noonanaz, @cosmicpro, @stinkaton, @waves-against-a-cliff, @idocarealot

[pureshadough]

crk reread - prologue

(long post with lots of images under the cut!)

why the fuck are the prologue cutscenes so low quality and bitcrunched?

are the ancients ever referred to as just The Five anywhere else in game? i think it's literally just in this single instance. very strange

soul jam's nature was so Dubious during prelaunch. are they unique to the virtue holders specifically, or a universal concept given a title and Emphasis for these exceptionally strong instances of them? we have soul stones which are described as having their essence, but its never been particularly clear if each individual cookie has a soul stone as like, their actual SOUL or not, and if souljam is moreover supposed to be synonymous in this use-case. i think devsis probably didn't really know themselves until a bit of a ways in. interesting to look back on

i have a deep appreciation for how all of the ancients get crowns & diagrams of their kingdoms behind them EXCEPT for lily

and if you didnt manage to catch on to the fact she was the odd one out of the group, this quad shot spells it out even clearer

do we ever see the flags for hb and gc's kingdoms outside of this cutscene? can't remember. surely we do

I still have no fucking idea how she's here for this.

god damn kim has been putting her heart into every single pv line since day one. i need more people to listen to the korean voice acting for this game the delivery is genuinely so fucking excellent across the board

the use of eternity in this sentence is. Interesting.

IVE NEVER NOTICED THAT THEY BOTH START TO CRUMBLE DURING THIS??? dark moon magic is some wild shit my dude

these early early game (practically prototype) cutscenes are SO strange looking by comparison to today. lily looks like shes from a newgrounds flash animation from 2008 here. wet cat

ever wondered why the vanilla kingdom is permanently airborne?

Yeah

it wasn't always airborne

you can also briefly catch the souljams scattering across earthbread in that shot!

small detail people often forget about: while many cookies have indeed escaped the witches grasp after being baked before, im of the understanding here that gingerbrave is uniquely the only cookie to have ever escaped from inside the oven itself, mid-baking process. the kid also manages to avoid most every hazard for the unknowable amount of time he was running before he at last passed out from exhaustion after attacking a wolf. King shit

corporate wants you to find the difference between these two images

oh what the fuck i COMPLETELY forgot about this. all of them knew each other pre-game! what! sure!

okay now This.

are we ever gonna come back around to this one devsis because What the fuck are you talking about. Why. Does this not completely undercut everything going on with white lily. In the first 15 minutes of playtime. WHY DOES STRAWBERRY PROCEED TO NEVER BRING THIS UP AGAIN. GINGERBRAVE DOESNT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE THIUS AT ALL IN THE MOMENT???? ITS SO DARK IN HERE

the sugar gnomes immediately approaching three Actual Children when they happen to congregate within the ruins of the old kingdom they lived at and going REBUILD SOCIETY is so fucking funny to me

i know the intentions of most of this is near-exclusively to teach the player the base game mechanics but the concept of cookie cutters as they function in the gacha being a Real Thing in this universe is so. ????!?!??!?!?!??!?

i recall wizard gets disproven here a few chapters later but Man even the game cant decide on which variation of its lore to go with

SUMMONING BEACON

ahhh yes good old chili pepper and her singular personality trait of Is A Thief. i will be skipping most of her dialogue henceforth

will we EVER elaborate on what this fucking power from "The Legends" is supposed to be. Ever. We are so far removed from this initial plot at this point. devsis has the opportunity to bring back the funniest chekhovs gun in all of fiction

custard cookie's korean performance makes him INFINITELY more tolerable to listen to. dare i say its Cute, Even. he's just a little guy.

thats about it for prologue besides a bunch of really short & unvoiced tutorial cutscenes. I am forever haunted by the fact like 70% of the details established in this like 45 minute stretch have been pretty much completely abandoned in the modern day. GOD I WISH THEY DID ANYTHING WITH STRAWBERRY SEEING A COOKIE GET EATEN. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME. i remembered she had *a* scene involving a witch encounter but not whatever the hell they were trying to do with THIS. The missed potential for her to have the most insane possible conversations with DE/lily. A literal nine year old coped better with seeing god consume its own creation than her. Fuck.

[thestormynobody]

A Sisters Wish

Note: This takes place after this fic. You can probably read it on its own but I personally recommend reading that one first. Thank you once again to Nube for beta reading for me <3

There was an old legend in Bambouche: You must pick up the prettiest shell you can find. Once you do that you whisper a desire into it several times. Some tellings say three, others five or even nine. Having done this you take the shell with you. Keeping it close and safe until nightfall. When the stars are at their brightest you would whisper your wish one more time into the shell then return it to the sea. 

It was said that once a long time ago a fisherman was lost at sea, thought to be dead by everyone. His partner made a wish in this way and  within three days he had returned home safely, though with no memory of where he had been the whole time.

Of course. No one really took this seriously.  After all, it was a little silly, wasn’t it? Just a tale told by the older folks to keep the kids entertained. So then, why was she rowing a boat out onto the water, a shell nestled into her pocket? In the initial days after Petronille was unfrozen she had scoured the town for any sign of Bonnie. She was glad they had managed to make it out ahead of the curse but, now she didn’t know where they were and that thought terrified her to her core.

 It took everything within her to not just set off out of town looking for them. She was no stranger to rash decisions but even she knew this was a terrible idea. Bambouche had been frozen for months. They could be anywhere at this point. She needed a general idea of where to start looking. She’d sent letters out to neighboring towns but she knew there had to be others looking for lost family members as well. Her letter was likely one among many and the waiting was driving her insane. 

So. Why not do this? Couldn’t hurt. Besides, being out on the water has always calmed her so, if anything, it is an excuse to find some time to center herself and come up with a new game plan. She pulls the shell from her pocket and whispers into it. 

“Please, let me know that Bonnie is safe and let them come home soon.” 

It’s. What. She. Wants.

With that, she dips her hand into the water and releases the shell, watching it sink out of view. Nothing happens. Not that she really expected anything to happen really. It wasn’t like Bonnie would just appear on the boat next to her… Though part of her wishes they would. She misses them so much and not knowing if they’re okay is about the worst feeling in the world. 

She lays down on the floor of her boat and looks up at the stars. She hasn’t really been sleeping well and knows tonight will be no exception. Might as well stargaze. She remembers the old fisherwoman who’d taken her under her wing when she’d first arrived alone and scared with a baby Bonnie. 

She hadn’t made herself the easiest to approach but the woman had done so anyway. Showing her how to properly catch and cook fish so that she and Bonnie would not go hungry. She’d known so much about the stars. Often talked about them when they spent late nights fishing together. You could navigate using the stars if you knew what to look for. She had said something else that had stuck with her too… Even if you couldn’t see them they were always there, watching over the people below. It was a connection all people shared.

The thought that no matter where Bonnie was, they were still under the same sky brings the smallest bit of comfort to her now. She’d see them again. No matter what.

Her thoughts come to a stop as a streak of light trails across the sky. A shooting star? Maybe this was some sort of sign? Not that she was…particularly religious in one way or another. But hey, she’ll take some divine intervention right now if it means helping her find her sibling. 

Huh.

That’s getting really close. 

TOO close. 

OH CRAB.

She bolts up right and starts rowing for dear life out of the trajectory of the light that is rapidly approaching. It still nearly flips her boat when it makes impact with the water. “Oh crab oh crab oh crab-”

Wait.

Did that shooting star look…person shaped?? She could still kind of see the shape as it sank quickly under the water. It does look person shaped!! Did a person just fall from the crabbing sky?! 

Without thinking she dives into the water after whatever-whoever this is. The water is dark but fortunately they are very bright. She swims after the quickly sinking light and manages to grab onto something solid. They’re surprisingly light actually. She hauls them out of the water and somewhat ungracefully gets them into the boat. 

So. That’s a person that just fell from the sky…..and their head is a star. Why not? She was frozen in time for months and that was already pretty weird. This might as well be happening. They don’t seem to be moving. Are they dead...? An impact from that height would be pretty devastating to most people but most people also don’t have stars for heads so who knows what the rules are here. Can she do CPR on something that doesn’t have a mouth???

She hesitantly reaches to see if she can find a pulse when suddenly the star’s eyes fly open, they sit bolt upright and grab her wrist. This catches her so off guard she suplexes them right back into the water. Oops.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

There is a star in her boat. They have their arms folded over their body and are looking out across the water. Probably cold. She was too, the water wasn’t exactly warm after all. They don’t seem…mad about her dunking them back into the water really. They'd been more disorientated than anything and as startled by her as she'd been by them grabbing her.

“Thank you.” They say at last after a long silence. 

“Don't mention it.” She is trying so very hard not to ask the obvious question. It’s probably rude to ask someone why they're a star so she settles on the other question at the forefront of her mind:

“How the crab did you end up falling from the sky??”

They stare at her for a moment. “Stars do that sometimes.”

“...sure, but they don't usually also talk.”

“Have you ever met another star?”

“...I suppose not.”

“Well there you go~! Hm. Though I do suppose there must be another reason I'm here. Did you perhaps make a wish?”

“How-?”

“Star.”

“...riiight.” She feels a mix of both hope and skepticism. 

“Your sibling is safe.”

!

“More than that, they're one of the saviors of Vauguarde. You should be proud~”

“Bonnie fought the king?!!” 

Why would anyone let a kid even attempt that?!  But… If they're okay and also kicked the king's butt then…yeah. She's crabbing proud. Then again…

“Why should I believe you?”

“Other than the fact I am a sentient star who dropped in to give you the news? Well. Hm. Let’s see-” They close their eyes for a long moment.  

Something whizzes past her head and they pluck it out of the air. “Ah, here we are.” 

They hold it out to her. It’s paper, folded into the shape of a crane. Paper Craft letter sending was nothing new but the shape is different than what she is used to. Also, they generally weren’t this good at pinpointing someone's location. 

She quickly unfolds it and reads it over using the light emitting from the star. The first half is in an unfamiliar handwriting. Neat. Formal. The writer states that her name is Odile and recounts the circumstances of how the saviors met Bonnie and why they'd allowed them to tag along on such a dangerous mission.

…And she got it. Odile was 100 percent correct that Bonnie would have followed them no matter what they said or did. They were stubborn like that. The letter explains the party’s plans to set out for Bambouche as soon as they are fit for travel.

She moves on to the second half of the letter and her heart skips a beat. She knows that handwriting.

Hey Nille! Everyone says you should be unfrozen by now. You better be!! There's so much I wanna tell you but Dille took up too much of the crabbing paper with “adult stuff”. She said we could send another letter soon though. You should write back so i know you're okay. Though i guess itd be hard to know where to send it when we're on the road. Ill ask where to have you send one next time i write. Did you know in Ka Bue they send their letters folded like birds instead of butterflies? It seems a lot more hard to fold it like that to me but Dile makes it look easy. Aw crab im running out of room to write. Dont go anywhere okay? We're coming to you. Write you again soon! This is Bonnie by the way.

Crammed in the corner because they'd written too large to give themselves the space to say everything they wanted to say was a tiny “Miss you.”

A tear darkens the paper. They're okay. She is so relieved. It seems her wish really did come true. She turns to the star, “Thank you…?”

There is an awkward pause, then they seem to realize she’s fishing for a name. “Loop.”

“Thank you Loop. This means a lot to me.”

“...don't mention it.”

The two sit in silence for a while.

“So… now what?” she asks.

“.....”

“Heh…haha-” they start laughing, much harder than she felt the question warranted.  It takes them a bit to regain their composure. 

 “You know. I didn’t think that far ahead.”

Previous chapter Next chapter

[flavourlessfiction]

Alright, it's JayTim Hunger Games AU yapping time 2.0, I wanna talk in more detail about the districts I would say characters are from and a little bit of the back story.

I answered an ask about Tim, Jason and Cass earlier, and I'm gonna talk more about them too, particularly Tim, because he's probably got the most fully fleshed out backstory by way of Janet having one than the others.

This is long as fuck too but includes Bruce and Dick as well so extra lore drops that isn't just Jaytim related

First and foremost, Bruce is from District 3, with Thomas having been an inventor of some medical technology that was widely used within the Capitol. This gives him some acclaim within the district, and he develops other tech before he and Martha are executed due to an accusation of rebellion. In truth, the capitol demanded the impossible of him and he didn't have the capabilities to invent what they wanted.

When Bruce is 16, he wins his games that are two years before the quell. His arena would be a mutt heavy arena and also involve cave systems, think Jabberjays replaying his mother's screams as she died in an echoey cave.

Bruce would absolutely be a favourite, however, he'd navigate the captiol in a politically savvy way that would enable him to not be victimised to the same extent as other victors, largely because he's a favourite of Ra's and in particular his daughter Thalia who despite being several years younger than Bruce was very determined to make other's know he effectively belonged to her. However, Damian isn't in the picture until about 13 years after his games.

The Drakes are from District 6, which I was looking up details about the districts, and I did not realise it was so massive population-wise. Anyway, Janet was born into a lower-middle-class merchant family, and at the time of the Quarter Quell, six does have two living victors; however, they're both old and do die within five years of her winning.

The circumstances of her Quarter Quell is that the reaping pool is from the children of the wealthy families of the districts, as a reminder of who funded the rebellion basically trying to sow further class divide. And it's kind of bullshit she's in the pool because the population hub they live in her family is barely above water but in a different hub they would have been considered a very wealthy family. Janet is 18 when she's reaped and she wins the games largely from hiding and managing to charm her way into getting many sponsors prior to the games which sets her up to take out the remaining tributes.

It's not until after the other victors die that she realises she needs to marry to protect herself and she marries Jack, who is the mayor of the population hub that Victor's Village is in. This does piss off the district a little bit only because it's perceived as Janet pulling the ladder up with her.

It takes a few years to conceive, but Tim is eventually born 8 years after her games and she's heavily pregnant at that year's games, to the point there is a betting market going if the baby will be born in the capitol, which he is. Tim's early childhood is pretty average, Janet's a loving mother despite her trauma, Jack gets a C- as far as parenting goes, he kinda just doesn't care. And the only outwardly weird thing the district sees about their family dynamic is that even when Tim is as young as 5, he and Janet are constantly seen running, and at really bizarre times.

Like it could be 3am in the dead of winter and there's Janet running with her kid again. And whether it's conscious or unconscious, Janet does teach Tim a bunch of survival skills she learnt in her games, which is hugely contrary to her stance once he's reaped.

But the reason she refuses to mentor him is because Janet knows she's not being punished, she's been an exemplary victor, which she does the math and knows means that Tim is supposed to win the games, which with a Quell upcoming and also a few comments Ra's has made in the past she's like fuck no my kid is better off dead than being in a mother-son victor combo. Her delivery of that decision to Tim was not quite so nice.

However, Ra's sees through what she's doing and has her poisoned three days into training, right in front of Tim, which results in Bruce and Jason becoming his and the female tribute's mentors. I'm not gonna talk about Tim's arena right now, though, because it could be its own post.

Jason comes from 8, Catherine works in a fabric dying factory, which is considered one of the worst jobs in the district due to health complications and also the pay is awful because it's just treated as entirely unskilled. As a result of the constant handling of toxic chemicals, she contracts a respiratory condition and becomes addicted to pain medication, both morphling and attempts and natural relief.

At the time of her death Jason is 10, Willis is still being a menace and just a super shitty criminal but it means Jason is able to continue living in the home and is assisted by a few neighbours but when he's 12 Willis is executed and he's evicted from his home and dumped in a lost boys home, forced to take out tessarae, but he learns how to fight in the home.

He's not reaped until he's 17 and his games is brutal, the cornucopia doesn't have any weapons, and really only contains basic survival supplies such as ropes, shelter supplies and minimal food. So the tributes are expected to make their own weapons or beat each other to death.

Which unexpectedly plays into Jason's hands. However, in the finale he dies shortly after he kills the other tribute, a favourite and possibly the first female victor in years. However, Jason just barely survives her so the capitol revives him, and not only is the capitol pissed to be denied their female victor but also Jason initially can barely function after they revive him. Which delays the ceremonial aspects for a few weeks, and when Jason returns to 8, he isolates himself, constantly questioning whether he's now a capitol mutt and if his thoughts are his own.

By the time his victory tour rolls around he's doing a little better but constantly feels like he's having out-of-body experiences because everyone seems to be talking at him rather than to him even in the districts. That is until he runs into Tim at the dinner in district six. Which is kind of by chance because he's definitely not supposed to be there but Janet's kinda gotten him in every year.

But they first meet in a side room Jason escapes into and at first its kind of awkward and Tim attempts to leave until he lets the intrusive thoughts win, point blank asks Jason if he died after winning and if he did what that was like. Which Jason's like what the fuck the nerve of this kid but does entertain it at the same time.

At the dinner they do get to talking and flirting even more and Jason is left thinking that it's pretty cruel that he got to meet someone who ultimately treated him like a person, maybe even sneaks a kiss, despite his completely bizarre/rude first question, but he'll probably never see him again. Couldn't be more wrong now could he?

Now I am fully on board with @caitwritesao3 saying Dick would be an equivalent to Covey, for this because his family is in District 7 at the time of the hard separation of the districts and that's about as far as you can get from 12 distance wise I don't know if I'd define them as Covey specifically.

Dick's very much a Finnick Odair type, wins at 14, is considered incredibly charming and immediately becomes a capitol darling. Dick uses his acrobatic skills combined with his trade skills learnt in 7 to win and is gifted an arena with forrests that allows him to surprise attack tributes which enables him to take out the career pack solo.

After his win, he tries to refuse the capitol favouritism, which results in his parents being killed, however, the lesson he learns from that is to fall into line and do what they want, still when he gets a girlfriend from his district, which is the head peacekeepers daughter, she gets reaped that year when they're both 18.

This girlfriend is Barbara who he mentors to a win, except she suffers some severe injuries which leads her to being wheelchair bound part-time almost to further the punishment for daring to date Dick, however they do enough that she is still capable of walking so long as it is for short periods and for ceremonial events, and is the last female victor before Cass.

I'm totally down to share more, possibly force myself to be a little more containe,d because this is over 1400 words, hence why I said feed the demon, because I'll share so much about this well-thought-out AU to bully you guys into bullying me into writing an actual fic

[conundrumsofphilosophy]

obviously i don't have any requests yet so i asked a friend for a random scenario to write headcanons about and i was told merc movie night. so :)

scout

- throws a fit about whatever he wants to watch being chosen but it never gets picked because he has terrible taste

- literally guzzles his entire drink within the first five minutes of the movie and then refuses to get up to pee unless the movie is paused

- his attention span is awful so he stops paying attention for half the movie and then bugs someone (probably spy.) to recap him on what happened

- "who's that" "what's his name" "why is he doing that" "wait where are they" "how does it end"

soldier

- attention span is worse than scout's. ends up trying to talk through the entire thing, gets shushed violently

- if the movie really bores him he falls asleep like someone's dad and snores in a way that is so devilish. gets throw pillows pressed over his face

- if he manages to get sucked into whatever they're watching he will randomly bring up things from it weeks later and nobody realizes what he's talking about and he doesn't have the capacity to explain

- gets so comfy cozy on the couch but then tosses and turns the whole time because his comfy cozy never lasts

pyro

- straight up does not care what they watch, just happy they're hanging out

- gets super into the movie and reacts verbally and physically to what's happening on screen

- asks engineer questions if he gets confused about what happened. he rarely gets confused though because he pays such close attention

- loves slapstick comedy flicks

engineer

- falls asleep no matter how much he's interested in what they watch. head thrown back, throat gurgling, demonic snoring emanating from this man. elbowed awake by pyro and scout but it never lasts he goes right back to sleep

- will fuck up some popcorn

- hates when spy's movie gets picked because it's always some foreign arthouse film he does not care to understand. he likes things that make sense and have a good plot

- doesn't bother for a recap on whatever he missed while he was asleep. he goes into movie nights knowing he'll fall asleep so he doesn't get upset about missing anything

demoman

- similarly to engineer, he will FUCK UP some popcorn. he is absolutely destroying that shit and every other snack that's provided. he needs to constantly be doing something with his hands and can't sit still for an entire movie so he just shovels popcorn down his throat

- spends half the movie squinting at the tv because he is so confused. it could be spelled out on screen and he still doesn't know what's going on

- gets up to pee one thousand times and trips over someone every single time

- his movie picks are always great

heavy

- reacts so strongly to high emotion moments in movies. laughs like a maniac at comedies, cries at tragedies. he isn't afraid to show emotion!

- anytime he isn't reacting though he looks so pissed off. arms crossed, back straight, staring dead at the screen

- only one to have never fallen asleep during a movie night. everyone else has AT LEAST once

- will never turn down a little blankie action. toss a nice blanket over his legs he's a happy man

medic

- does not really enjoy movie nights. he enjoys spending some time with the others but it gets to a point where he really wants to be alone and he doesn't know how to politely escape the situation

- cannot handle the sound of snoring so if engineer or soldier are out he is pressing his ear against heavy's shoulder and his own hand over his other ear. he'll guess what the actors are saying

- appreciates spy's movie choices (is the only one that does)

- sits really uncomfortably for the whole movie and has to pace around stretching out when it's over

sniper

- loves a good movie. he really really just enjoys watching a movie he's a simple man. won't complain about whatever gets picked, will just kick his legs up and relax and enjoy it

- expert at rationing his snack and beverage to last the whole time. will not share

- looks like he's asleep but is not he's just very very still and relaxed

- sometimes sits in the floor leaned against the couch rather than on it or on a chair. it's easier for him to get his legs stretched all the way out that way + he tends to give the furniture up for the folks that are going to end up asleep

spy

- as previously mentioned, he always chooses the snobbiest foreignest arthouse films that are no fun to watch and he truthfully doesn't even like that much himself. it's all a facade

- how many cigarettes he goes through during a movie is an indicator of how much he enjoyed it. the more smoked the worse he thought the movie was

- gets really embarrassed if he laughs at something stupid but even spy is not immune to slapstick comedy. he tries to cover it up with a cough but nobody falls for that

- sometimes scout falls asleep on his shoulder and it makes him so mad (he doesn't mind it)

~

yay first post! to anyone who may see this, consider shooting me a request :3

[alientimes]

🀥 ᴀʟʟ ᴄᴜʀꜱᴇꜱ ɢᴏ ᴛᴏ… ᴇᴀʀᴛʜ?

➩ Who dyed this guy's hair? (1)

House hunting was not easy.

Sukuna had come to this sad, sad realization after plopping himself down at an internet café and discovering the wonder of web surfing. Unfortunately, he also learned that humans loved taxes and expensive prices just as much as they liked food. And although he certainly had a lot of money, it was nowhere near enough to get him a house. Or even an apartment. No, he came to the horrible conclusion that he had to room with someone. Honestly, the mere thought was the most disgusting thing in his life, after the brat. But if he were to complete his goal of world domination, it had to be done.

At that point, he was so worn out from all this hard work he just accepted the first offer he saw. His sole glance at it showed it didn’t seem that bad, and at least had two separate bedrooms (which some strangely didn’t offer). He didn’t even check who his roommate would be, and honestly, he didn’t even care. If they pissed him off, he could just kill them, and really, if they were so broke they had to room with someone else, no one would notice if they just disappeared one day. He had the quick thought to just kill them right away, but remembered soon after you had to continue paying rent. 

This whole situation was a shame, sure, but he had plenty of experience sharing space with someone. Although he was only in Itadori’s (the brat’s) body for a couple of months, it was more than enough time to teach him how annoying this was going to be. Even worse, he couldn’t just sit around now. While being bored for a thousand or so years was excruciatingly painful, every moment he had to watch that boy’s dumb decisions was a hundred times worse. Still, there was no way in heaven or earth that it could be as bad as sharing a body with someone. After all, you couldn’t get any more close-contact-yet-unable-to-kill with someone. If he tried hard enough (which he probably wouldn’t, a thousand years of laying around did that to you), he could probably avoid seeing them altogether. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to ask them to cook and clean, could it? Uraume did it easily, after all…

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

Unsurprisingly, you don’t get a scholarship for life. While it would be nice if it did, your savings on money ended after college. Now you had to go back to exactly what you hated: rooming. Now, not all roommates were bad, of course, but you had a track record for having not just bad, but horrible ones. Unfortunately, you didn’t have enough money to rent by yourself, let alone buy your own house, even with all the (read: no) money you saved. And you certainly didn’t want to live with your parents. But on the lucky side, someone agreed to be your roomie fairly quickly, so you didn’t have to face any kind of disapproval, and you didn’t have to live in a caravan you somehow couldn’t afford. 

Your sure to be new best friend didn’t come with a photo, but they did have a name. Sebastian… Sebastian something. You didn’t bother to look at his last name. You thought he had a proper identity, but without the photo, your mind spun up scenarios of serial killers. But that was just you overthinking it. The chances of him being a horrible murderer were basically zero. Of course, basically zero wasn’t exactly zero, but the chances were so slim you managed to push it out of your mind. Well, more like forget about it within five minutes because you became so anxious about your first impression with this guy.

Speaking of first impressions, you were becoming more and more certain that this one would be horrible. Horrendous, in fact. Unspeakable, if you were being generous. You weren’t exactly known for your social adeptness, after all. You’d even call yourself a (anxious) yapper. What if you talked his ear off so much he pushed you out a window, or didn’t manage to sprout a single word, and made the entire situation awkward? What were Sebastians even like, anyways? You had never met a Sebastian before. Were they nice? Mean? Chill? Serial killers? Who knows? Only Sebastians, you presumed.

Most of all, you really, really hoped he didn’t judge you for your interests. Now, it was common decency to, at the very least, not show that you didn’t like something your roommate did, but clearly your anxiety didn’t know that. And it wasn’t like you liked anything too weird, either (or at least, you assumed)! Just a couple of mainstream things, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, Chainsaw Man… well, maybe your interests skewed a little more to the bloody side, but they weren’t all like that! You could settle for a few comedies, and you watched a good show on Netflix every so often (Would sharing your Netflix password make him like you more?). 

And now your anxiety was ramping up even more. Maybe this isn’t the right thing to do, but you’re not a therapist. You took a few deep breaths, trying to calm yourself, and buried all those frantic thoughts in the deepest, darkest corners of your mind, along with some other things that actually belonged there. At least you didn’t have to worry about mixing up stuff and unpacking at the same time, because you had already done that. Great, now you were wondering if you should help him unpack his stuff. Really, this shouldn’t be something to overthink about.

chat i don't know how house hunting (also roommate dealings) work pls don't come after me

also it's actually longer (by abt 300 words) yay!!! <3 actually did a goal i set for myself for once

sorry it's late tho lol

part 2 to Who dyed this guy's hair?

all curses go to earth masterlist

[putschki1969]

2024/05/30 Blog post by Wakana アフタートークイベントのこと！〜自撮りチャレンジは続く〜

❗This is Fan Club EXCLUSIVE content❗ ❗PERSONAL USE ONLY❗ ❗Do NOT SHARE on other sites❗ ❗Join her FAN CLUB! Check out my detailed TUTORIAL ❗

After-Talk Event！〜The Selfie-Challenge Continues〜

I was asked a lot about my nails during the online after-talk event on the 17th, so I'm going to post a few photos of my nails! I asked the nail artist to paint my nails in colours which aligned with my releases from the past five years. Funnily enough, I got so engrossed in talking with the manicurist that I ended up getting my fingers painted in the wrong order! ＼(^o^)／ By the way, when I decided to take some pictures, I really struggled to figure out how to get both of my hands on a photo. I eventually thought that a mirror would probably be the best idea. For some reason, decided to include my face, even though these pictures were meant to be about my nails😎This way, it automatically became part of my continuing selfie challenge! ＼＼\\٩( 'ω' )و //／／Let's go! The truth is, ever since I uploaded my first selfies, the back of my phone has been decorated like this with Kid-sama and Conan-kun, but maybe no one had noticed it before? Unfortunately, when I tried to get all of my fingers in the frame, I ended up covering the faces of Kid-sama and Conan-kun's. It may look like I'm purposefully trying to hide Kid-sama from you, but I really just wanted my fingers to be the focus of the pictures. No matter how many times I tried, I couldn't get all my nails in the frame, so I was ready to give up and tried smiling a bit. (At this point, I think everyone is just super curious about Kid-sama and Conan-kun's faces.) And this is how the nail edition of my selfie challenge ended.

Hello, this is Wakana (0￣▽￣0)／

Taking pictures of your nails is hard! (Am I the only one struggling with this?)

Well, it was a lot of fun chatting with everyone who participated in the online after-talk event on the 17th😊 It was my first time looking back on a live performance together with all of you so I was a little nervous😳💓 On the way to the studio, I was a little overwhelmed by the number of people in the city, I felt a little dizzy🌀💫 It was very soothing to interact with you through the comment section🥰Thank you...🥰 During the broadcast, we looked at photos from the live performance and reflected on the setlist. I also shared some stories from the rehearsals and a couple of backstage anecdotes from the day of the live. Occasionally, I would also read through everyone's real-time comments and react to them. It was only five days after the live performance so the timing was perfect. Everyone's memory was still fresh so I was very happy to hear your thoughts😆It was a refreshing experience✨

During the event we also played a mini-game called "Following the trajectory of my 5-year solo career!" It was a pretty difficult game in which I had to arrange a number of photos from the past five years in chronological order within three minutes😂 I had to judge those pictures based on what I was wearing and while I was able to figure out most of it, I also made a few mistakes 😅I was quite confused whenever I got multiple live photos from the same year. And I got my dress colours mixed up with all those Classical Live photos... 👗 I played three rounds of this game and if I managed to get 2 out of 3 right, I would receive a reward from the staff members. It was really exhausting 🤣 I asked everyone to participate in the comment section, you were amazing!! ! You knew everything right away 😳 Your memory is so much better than mine 😂 At the end, I got 2 right and my reward was a big smile from my staff members!! ! ! Yup, that's it〜〜😂 Kinda underwhelming but still, thank you! 😂

I also read the messages everyone had submitted in the Fan Club section "Bokutachi no (=our) VOICE"📖 You shared your thoughts in such a detailed and articulate manner... I don't really know anyone else who is able to express their thoughts so meticulously 😭✨I'm really grateful 🥺 The messages bring me so much joy and strength that I will still go and read them sometimes. 💪💪💪 By the way, I addressed a lot of your comments during the event but for some reason the comment that stuck with me the most was "When you pulled out the chair, it sounded like the roar of a lion!" 🤣🤣🤣Thank you for this hilarious comment! It really was the sound of a lion roaring!!

Thank you to everyone who participated in the after-talk event!! !Last but not least, I'll post all the live photos that were shown during the stream＼＼\\٩( 'ω' )و //／／ (Photos by Ushijima Kosuke)

Well then, until next time~☆( *'▽'*)/

＊＊＊Wakana＊＊＊

[whatdoessunshinetastelike]

the first five nights at freddy's game was one of the first things i remember seeing when i was younger that gave me a feeling similar to those that "liminal space" photos give off

this shot of pirate cove in particular was one of them

the star pattern felt like something i would have seen somewhere as a baby or something

also cold take ik but the animatronic designs from the first game were some of the absolute best in the series

they manage to look like they could be animatronics from an actual children's establishment during the 80s or 90s like they look friendly on stage (this is one of my favorite fnaf images of all time)

but with different lighting and just the right angle they are creepy as shit (i know this image has been memed to death but it is still freaky on its own i mean the later games can barely ever come close to this)

and these two sides of them manage to coexist. their creepiness FEELS like it could have been unintentional. they're not too cutesy to not ever be scary at all but also not overdone to the point where they just look goofy and unconvincing (looking at you, FNaF Plus)

they remind me of the Cyberamic style of animatronics from chuck e cheese where they look cartoony and cute to some but unsettling to others (as a cec/rock afire fan myself i can understand both sides)

also another cold take that i really agree with: another part of why the first game was so cool is because of how subtle the lore was

i'm not trying to be all "WAAAAAAHH BOOO THE OLD DAYS WERE BETTER THE FNAF STORY SUX" because i don't hate the story (at least in the older games) and i don't at all disagree with the choice to flesh out the story more. it was a necessary part of continuing the title at that point and turning it into a series (also, people probably wouldn't still be talking about it today)

but part of what made fnaf 1 so intriguing is that you knew nothing. you didn't KNOW who these characters were. you didn't KNOW the history of the company, or anything about those involved in creating it. you didn't KNOW if the place was really haunted or if you were just hallucinating. hell, you didn't even know much about phone guy, YOUR ONLY COMPANION, other than that he Worked In That Office Before You at some point (who knows how old those messages really were?)

the only real hints of a backstory you get are things phone guy mentions OR the chance to catch a rare glimpse of the newspaper clippings in the east hall corner

even going into freddy's knowing nothing, you can tell it's pretty run down. there is garbage all around the office and hallways, cobwebs under your desk and in the doorways, weird grime covering the walls, and clumps of wires hanging from the ceiling. multiple of these aspects can be seen in that one above image.

all of that combined with the ambient noises (the ghostly wind-like sounds, weird random knocking, distant carousel music to name a few) work to give you a sense of dread. the whole building felt haunted, not just the robots. even if you haven't read about the tragedies or heard from phone guy, you might still get the sense that something terrible happened here.

but there is one thing you do know: Fazbear Entertainment is a shady, deplorable organization. five children lost their lives to a sick individual, and they stay open. company's gotta survive, after all. assuming foxy (or any of the others) did the Bite of '87 (we are looking at a fnaf 1-only universe here) they just keep it in the building and don't bother to even remove the contraption that took out someone's brain.

and of course if you, the employee who has to look after this dumpster fire of a pizzeria, get hurt or killed on the job, to quote phone guy: "A missing person report will be filed within 90 days, or as soon as property and premises have been thoroughly cleaned and bleached, and the carpets have been replaced"

i think that quote speaks for itself

(i despise how they made the sketchiness and apathy of the company over-the-top in an effort to be funny in the later games i much prefer it being a little more subdued like this but i am getting back into boomer complaint territory so blagh)

this post is getting MUCH longer than i expected it to so here is a small list of Little Things i love about fnaf 1 that add to its overall feel that doesn't really carry over to the other games

the groaning noises sometimes made by bonnie and chica when they reach your office. what is that exactly? is it their voice boxes or whatever else inside them breaking apart? or is it the ghosts? what if those kids are still fucking alive?

the "IT'S ME" phrase that appears relatively often during gameplay. what does that mean? who is trying to talk to us? is it the ghost of someone we know, like phone guy? or one of the kids? did we know one of the kids?

the whole power outage sequence. still chilling

the foxy attack sequence. you're just playing normally when suddenly this animatronic you've never even seen before runs down the hall and pops into your office to kill you. even though the scare really only works once it's still well-done

the fact that we know nothing about our protagonist. it works in this game because it raises several questions that could be asked. who is mike schmidt? why does he keep coming back to freddy's, even though he knows it's deadly? does he want answers? or is he just that desperate for money? is he familiar with freddy's? did he know someone involved? was he the killer?

ditto but for the killer himself. back then, we didn't read about him in the paper and think of the mad scientist furry who co-founded the restaurant and built robots that killed his kids. we read about him and wondered who he was. are we him? or was it phone guy, our only friend? was the person they arrested really him, or is he still out there? and most of all, why did he do what he did?

what the hell was golden freddy? hallucination? ghost? nobody knew

the fact that foxy's eyes are always glowing while the others don't. this has no significance i just think its neat (this is true for all his future appearances too i think)

idk how to conclude this so here are some more pics that i find creepy. happy 10th anniversary fnaf heres to another 10 years of fantasy and fun

(can you tell i find chica the scariest)

[kimbapisnotsushi]

hey all welcome to me rating hq schools based on how homophobic they are on completely arbitrary-not-arbitrary rules LET’S GET IT

(i feel like i need to clarify that high score = not at all homophobic and that low score = disgustingly homophobic hope that helps!!)

karasuno: 1000000/100000 i’m including BOTH teams in this to represent the whole school boys’ vbc i don’t even think i have to cite reasons BUT girls’ vbc i just know that poor little underclassman had a heart attack when michimiya grabbed her face like that

seijoh: i’m going to take off a point right off the bat bc i wanted to deck oikawa so bad the first time i saw him. 9/10 the day is saved because kyoutani and yahaba put so much yearning into that one panel and also because kindaichi has multiple breakdowns over what kageyama means to him every few days or so. kunimi would commit gay-on-gay crime but i’ll allow that he has the right to

date tech: i know for a fact we’ve all been kogane at some point in our lives and also i’m pretty sure all the first and second years were in love with moniwa at some point. onagawa’s nickname is pantalones. aone hyper focuses on the aces of rival teams. having nametsu as a manager is mlmwlw solidarity. 4/10 i took points away because futakuchi is a little bitch and isn’t afraid to show it and would accidentally come across as homophobic in the process when he isn’t

shiratorizawa: see this is tough bc tendou reads all that shounen and semi is SO gender and probably holes himself up in the dorm writing song lyrics about having the biggest crush on tendou and also goshiki and shirabu are obviously pining for their upperclassmen but ushijima has some SERIOUS repression going on and washijou looks like he’d say that being gay is a disease BUT i do think he’s open to learning so like. 6.5/10?

johzenji: they have cute nicknames for each other AND i think they’d kiss the homies good night. also terushima fell in love with daichi within the span of fifteen seconds. 7/10 i took away points because they think saying “no homo” while holding hands stops it from being homo

kakugawa: komaki, asamushi, and minamida all rotate the brain cell between them. they all look like middle schoolers next to hyakuzawa to the point where i keep forgetting they’re not. komaki does the glasses push so i’m giving extra for that. 7.5/10 because when hyakuzawa comes out to them they freak out (out of concern and trying to figure out how to best handle it!) and then freak hyakuzawa out so everyone is just freaking out for a full five minutes

wakunan: nakashima and tabi deserved SO MUCH MORE also i love tabi’s hair so 11/10 the extra 1 is for their break down

nekoma: 1000000.5/10 mostly because i’m biased but hello???? we have DIVERSITY here we can go rivals to lovers AND childhood friends to lovers AND friends to lovers all in one team. nekomata is self-explanatory. the .5 is because i already mentioned before that lev would be such a top tier ally if he wasn’t already swooning over kenma and yaku

fukurodani: akaashi will go on tangents about how historians will say they were just best friends. whenever yukie and kaori cuddle in front of everyone konoha makes gagging noises bc of how sickeningly sweet they are. it’s funny but i’ll be taking points off for that and also because bokuto once got the school computers infected with a virus trying to google “two guys making out”. 2/10

shinzen & ubugawa: i’m putting them together bc daiki and masaki are in love and eri and mako are in love. they go on double dates all the time and also chigaya is a bro he gets trusted with all the secret “dude i think i’m _____” talks and never tells a single soul about them 100/100

itachiyama: iizuna is the mlm awakening at itachiyama. iizuna was SAKUSA’S awakening. komori and sakusa fight because they say can’t both be the gay cousin. whenever iizuna interrupts their bickering they call him homophobic. 9/10 i subtracted a point because their uniforms make me want to claw my eyes out

nohebi: we all know daishou had a thing for kuroo way back when so like. also have you seen hiroo’s hair? those bangs are emo as hell what even is that. 8/10 because they’ll be homophobic against other teams in the middle of the goddamn game to bait them and the only reason they haven’t lost MORE points for that is bc i love kuguri

inarizaki: -117478492/10 i’ll fight miya atsumu myself. i don’t think he’s homophobic he just pisses me off sometimes

kamomedai: they get 475828929392/??? just because i love them so much

mujinazaka: usuri instills fear and admiration in me. also unann and mami are basically an old divorced couple who want to get back together but don’t know how to. honda probably gets shit on a lot for having his whole entire name sounding like car dealerships. ezo is the only one with a brain cell and for that i’ll give 8.5/10

niiyama: maiko doesn’t even know there are labels for it she just thinks girls are pretty and she’d kill for them 500/10

tsubakihara: the headbands are really cute and i like their motto 100/100

[theguardiansseries]

From the Beginning - Chapter 1: Click

Whew. Okay. I believe this is the part where I once said Bonjour, mes chers! A lot of growth and change has happened since I greeted you all like that (like the fact my name is now Andrew! and I was very much not a girl!). Well, if you've read the title of this post then you know what's happening, but... Today is the 20th anniversary of Danny Phantom and I figured there was no better time for a story revival (ha! get it?) to celebrate the show that ended up changing my life and leading me to make the friendships that changed my life. I hope you'll forgive some of my sappiness, but I hope you guys enjoy this story for, what I hope, will be the last and final time!

—

Rating: Teen Audiences

Summary:

Dani Fenton (who is sometimes starting to go by Danny Fenton) is a fifteen-year-old almost sophmore who was just going about her normal life when she figured out she sort of liked being seen as a boy. Oh, then he (he had definitely been a he at the time) got shocked by a machine his parents built to view into another world that they believed contained a world of 'ecotplasmic entities.'

Danny really isn't sure how to tell them that they were right and that he was in the machine when it turned on and that maybe he isn't so human anymore. (He might also not be a girl anymore, but that one was a little more difficult to explain than the fact that he ((she?)) might be half-ghost.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54944266

<Next Chapter>

—

Chapter 1: Click

Thumbs dragging across the fabric of a worn dress that probably should have been replaced a couple of years ago, Dani sighed and wondered, for the fifth time in the last half hour, what she was doing. Her sigh then turned into a short scream as the partition she was behind rattled enough to give her a heart attack. “Sam!” 

“C’mon, it doesn’t take that long to switch from a dress to some shirts and jeans!” Sam called over the partition that she at least caught and fixed before it fell over. “And hey, I could have been Tucker for all you know.” 

Dani snorted, dropping the dress onto a chair already filled with clothes and fixing up the jeans that had been shoved into her arms, along with the two shirts that had also been forcibly shoved into her arms. “You actually think I’d believe that you would let Tucker get within five feet of either one of us changing?” 

“Hey!” Laughing again at Tucker’s offended scoff, Dani felt a lot more normal and calm as she put on the shirts next, first a button up and then a regular t-shirt, struggling to not get her hair caught under them like she somehow always managed to do. She should probably think about cutting it, but her mom loved seeing her baby girls with long hair and all of that. “I think you need to be focusing on the important thing here, you two, and that’s the fact that we’ve been cursed.” 

Rolling her eyes, Dani listened as Sam groaned while probably doing the same. “Yeah? And how are we cursed this week, Tuck?” 

“Are you kidding? How are we not cursed?! Not only is July almost over — our very summer — but now we’re about to enter into the horror that is our sophomore year! We won’t have the grace period that we had as freshmen!” 

Dani poked her head out from behind the partition, still not totally sure she wanted to come out from behind the hideous pink and floral thing Sam’s mom had probably bought for her, but needing to make her point. “We had a grace period?” Because as far as she remembered their freshman year had been absolutely miserable. 

Tucker, as usual, ignored her and kept talking. “And now, here on what could have been one of the best summer days of the year, is a thunderstorm.” The universe, because she had perfect timing and loved to mock Tucker, had the storm rattling with a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning that sent all three of them jumping — except Tucker. He screamed. “Ugh! This is why no one likes thunderstorms!”

Before Dani could really get into the defense of thunderstorms, Sam was rattling the partition again and looking her dead in the eye before Dani escaped back behind it. “Hey, I saw that! C’mon, you can’t hide behind this thing all day.” 

“Watch me,” Dani grumbled, staring down at herself and her layered shirts and faded jeans that probably cost way more than anything Dani owned because Sam had been the one to buy it, and some mismatched socks. “Alright. Fine. I’m coming.” 

“Ah! One more thing!” Seeing something tossed over, Dani scrambled to catch it, pausing at seeing it was her NASA logo hat that matched the shirt she had been forced into (and was definitely keeping no matter how this went). “Since you didn’t want to cut your hair.” 

“Mom would’ve freaked if I came home with hair as short as you wanted to cut it,” Dani pointed out around the brim she had shoved in her mouth, already working to tie up all of her hair before moving to tuck it under the hat. 

Sucking in a deep breath, and reminding herself that it was only Sam and Tucker in the room, Dani stepped out from behind the changing area. If it all went wrong she was at least certain in the knowledge that she could disown Sam and bury Tucker alive at the cemetery. The two wouldn’t even be angry at her for it, either, they would have known that they deserved it. 

“Alright,” Dani sighed, shuffling forward and absently scuffing her foot against the floor to kick up the cuff of the jeans on her right leg. They were a lot baggier than the kind she was used to. “Okay. So… how do I look, then?” It honestly wasn’t that bad of an outfit seeing as Sam had picked it out. 

It wasn’t what she usually wore, but from the relaxed jeans and scuffed up NASA hat to the black NASA shirt and blue button up, she… She thought she looked pretty okay. A glance up had her shoulders dropping, Tucker grinning and Sam near beaming. 

A moment passed and then Sam cleared her throat, putting on her best announcer voice, “Ladies, gentleman, all those in between or outside of, and Tucker, I present to you… Danny with a y Fenton!” Tucker gave a polite audience clap, Dani’s — Danny’s — nervousness starting to be replaced by exasperated fondness for her (his? should she be using he/him/his and all of that instead now?) friends. They were idiots, but they were her idiots. His idiots. (Hm. Weird, but not bad.)

“You guys don’t think it’s too much?” Danny finally asked, picking at the sleeves and re-adjusting the hat even though it rested on his head and covered up his long hair perfectly. “I mean… I’m fine with being a girl, still.” 

Danny was only there because Sam had gotten on a new research kick that involved learning about the LGBTQ+ community when questioning some of her own labels. It had ended with her dragging both her and Tucker down into a rabbit hole of queer history and self-help advice and ended with her thinking that maybe being a him for a bit wouldn’t be so bad. (Apparently it wasn’t normal to look at your body some days and hate it. But it was only some days!)

“I mean. You guys know how I always dressed. Skirts and dresses and things. Isn’t this kind of a big change? Like… extreme?” The name was at least the same, which wasn’t that big of a change and made it kind of easier. The outfit, though, made him look- Well. It made him look like a guy. A good sports bra paired with two shirts did a really good job of making him look pretty flat, too. (It probably helped that he hadn’t exactly hit a growth spurt, yet.)

“It is not extreme.” Sam frowned, pointing at the bed with a firm, “Sit.” She then crossed her arms, drew herself up, and made both Danny and Tucker groan in misery.

Danny threw himself onto the bed with a pout, glancing at Tucker with a quiet, “I thought summer meant we were supposed to be done with lectures.” Tucker snorted, only stopping when Sam gave him a sharp glare. 

The two settled down, Sam eyeing them closely before nodding and starting to speak, “I know I’ve told you about the term genderfluid before, but I’ll go over it again since you probably didn’t pay attention the first time.” Well. That was mean but true. 

Sam launched into her explanation, Danny completely tuned out by the second sentence. It was only Tucker giving him a nudge that kept his brain from turning off completely. A careful glance over at him showed he was smiling — one of his fond smiles that he pretended he didn’t have.

“You know,” Tucker whispered, “You do look pretty good as a guy. And Sam knew what she was doing, making you a walking billboard for NASA.” 

Choking down a snort of laughter, Danny nudged Tucker back with a quick, “Thanks, Tuck.” While Sam was one thing considering how she lived and breathed activism, Tucker was always a harder sell on ‘new’ things. To find him so supportive of something even Danny found weird, still? It was nice. It was good. It was- Shit. Sam was glaring at them silently. “Uh… Yes?”

“How did you two even manage to move on to sophomore year,” Sam groaned, rolling her eyes and leaning against a bedroom wall. “Alright, listen up you nerds.” Rude. “Until Dani, or Danny, figures out what they like best, whether that be female, male, or something else, we can just say it’s a new tomboy look he’s trying out.” 

Sam paused from her lecture, know-it-all attitude fading for their usual Sam. “By the way, how are the pronouns? I know you said you were worried about getting used to them.” 

“Oh, uh…” Trailing off, Danny rubbed at the back of his neck, giving a nervous smile as he looked down at the floor. “It’s weird, really weird, but… good.” It was such a stark contrast, but it felt right - at least for that moment. He wasn’t sure how he’d feel once he left Sam’s bedroom, the most accepting place on earth, but for now… “I like it.” 

“Hey!” Tucker slapped Danny’s arm, the sting making him yelp and jerk before he was swatting Tucker back. Tucker, the idiot, didn’t even seem to notice as he beamed. “This means I have a brother now!” Yeah, great, but why did he need to be hit for that? “And you know what brothers do…?”

“Wha-” Oh. Oh no. “No- No, no, no, Tuck, there is no way-” Danny didn’t even get to finish before Tucker was pouncing on him and wrapped around his shoulders. 

“Brothers sneak other brothers into their parent’s awesome super secret lab.” Why? Why oh why had Danny’s best friend turned out to be a geek obsessed about science labs and ‘mad science.’ 

“You know it’s not a super secret lab,” Danny groaned, not even trying to wiggle free. He knew when he was beat. “We have open hours to come to the lab some days.” 

Tucker nodded, as if he truly understood, and then immediately asked, “Does today have open hours?”

Throwing himself back on the bed, and dragging Tucker with him, Danny whined and called out for Sam. “Sammy, you gotta do something. He’s being obsessive again!” 

“Hey, I’ve done my best friend duty for today by giving you a new look.” Evil. His friends were evil. “Plus you know he’s just going to keep asking.” 

“I will,” Tucker agreed, wiggling closer to hug him tighter. “I will absolutely keep asking at least fifteen times a day — thirty if it’s a weekend.” 

Shoving Tucker off, Danny wiggled and struggled to get to his feet before he was standing up with a loud, dramatic, defeated sigh. “Fine- Fine. We can go check out my parents’ lab-” 

The enthusiastic cheer from Tucker and the smug, taunting look from Sam were completely unwarranted. It took a long moment of Danny reminding himself that he loved his idiots and would gladly kill for them if necessary. It took a long, long moment. 

As always, though, he caved and hid a smile and walked towards the door, trying to complain through his smile as he called back to them. “C’mon, then. If you wanna go see the lab then you get to go through this storm, first.” Ah. Tucker’s misery. It was a good addition to the day. 

⁂

Taking a moment to enjoy the rain and the pounding thunder around him, Danny gave a soft sigh as he finally unlocked his front door, pushed it open, and quickly stepped aside. It was an effort not to laugh as Sam and Tucker nearly shoved each other to the floor in their rush to get inside and out of the rain. Babies. 

Glancing back up at the sky, Danny grinned at the bolts of lightning that seared their way across the sky, lighting up the entire world for just a few seconds. He hadn’t had the chance to lecture Tucker back in Sam’s room, but storms were the best. He probably could have stayed out there for another hour, at least, before he felt himself dragged inside where it was dry, Tucker throwing an arm around his shoulder. 

“I’m gonna level with you here, dude.” Tucker stared at him seriously, ramping up the dramatics as always. “Our friend group needs balance. I’m the tech obsessed one, right? Sam - she’s the nature obsessed one. You are the normal one that keeps this friend group from falling into chaos and killing each other.” 

Danny rolled his eyes, patting at Tucker’s chest. “Trust me, buddy, it wouldn’t be killing each other. It would be Sam killing you.” Slipping away at the offended scoff, Danny adjusted his hat before retrieving the towels that Jazz obsessively kept in the front hall for storms and rainy days. He could never tell her that he found them helpful. 

“Here,” Danny said, throwing a towel at each of them before taking one for himself. “Try to dry off before we go down into the lab. Water and exposed wires and papers do not mix — something I’ve found out the hard way.” Age eight was a terrible year to have been born a Fenton, Danny had discovered. “You know, you’re lucky they’re still out at that stupid science convention thing of theirs.”

Tucker grinned, pausing from where he was trying to brush the water off the waterproof yellow hoodie that Danny was pretty sure he never took off. The ridiculous pockets alone made sure that all of his ‘tech babies’ would be safe from the world. Shame it wouldn’t save them from Sam pouring a glass of water into the pockets if Tucker ever got too out of line. (She had done it, once, after making sure he had recently backed everything up and then bought him brand new versions of everything that was lost.) “Dude. Why do you think I asked you to take us to the lab today- Wait. Is your sister home?”

Oh. This was too good an opportunity. “Dunno,” Danny said after a moment of ‘thought.’ “You know what, let me check.” Clearing his throat, Danny raised his voice, “Hey, Jazz! I’m back! I’m also taking Tucker and Sam into the basement which is usually off limits to look at dangerous equipment that still has exposed wires! If you want to stop me then you should say something now!”

Tucker gave a horrified, panicked squeak while Sam smothered laughter into her fist, shoulders shaking. Danny gave Tucker a few seconds to panic before laughing and shaking his head, “Relax. Jazz is at the library doing some work for her college classes or something. She won’t be back until dinner at least.”

“Jesus, give me a heart attack,” Tucker groaned, near collapsing in on himself in his dramatics. Sam, at least, still seemed amused. 

“They really left you guys on your own for a week? Didn’t you almost burn your house down one time when they did that?”

“Hey, we were young and impressionable children when that happened,” Danny pouted at her, holding it for a few seconds before laughing. “Besides, we didn’t burn the house, we almost exploded the house. Totally different thing.” 

“Totally,” Tucker snorted, shoving at Danny’s shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go already! When else am I ever gonna get a chance to study their tech and poke at it to see how it works? This is the lab of ghost researchers after all!”

“Probably why you shouldn’t get your hopes up,” Danny snorted, even as Tucker raced to the kitchen and the bulky steel door that led down to the lab they kept in their basement. Honestly, Danny was almost completely certain that a basement lab wasn’t technically legal. “You know the code?”

“Same code for your guys’ lock with the extra key outside,” Tucker laughed, the sound of beeping soon followed by the deep, menacing sound of heavy-duty locks being released. Danny took a moment to appreciate the horror/sci-fi movie that was his life before letting Tucker rush down the stairs first, Sam following at a much more calm pace. 

Half-following after them, Danny took a moment to look around the near spotless kitchen. The only spot that wasn’t clean and empty of items was a little pile of chips and snack cakes, a note from Jazz resting on top of the pile and dictating that ‘she’ needed to remember to eat. (She should probably tell Jazz about the whole genderfluid ‘trying out being a guy’ thing soon. Maybe once she figured out if it was going to stick around or not.)

Swiping the note and a bag of chips, she (he! it was he right now) shoved the note in his pocket and headed down the stairs after his friends as he got ready to munch on his new snack. As always, the clean kitchen tile and wooden walls faded abruptly in favor of strong metal stairs and former wood walls made of the same metal as the stairs. 

It had once been cool to learn that they had their own lab in the basement and the entire lab had been built to contain radiation and prevent any possible spreading. Jazz had then taught him that having a place to contain radiation meant that there was radiation to contain. He hadn’t grown extra fingers or heads yet, though, so it was probably okay for the most part - especially since his parents hadn’t been down in the lab for almost two weeks. 

Getting to the bottom of the stairs, Danny didn’t even get to open his bag of chips before almost running into Sam. He pouted, giving her a nudge, “Hey, there’s more than just the entryway here, you know.”

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want any part in that,” Sam said, gesturing straight ahead. Danny peeked out around her and wasn’t sure whether to laugh or groan as he saw Tucker being, well… Tucker. 

His idiot best friend since preschool was just about buried in half-finished inventions and exposed wires that were already twisted around him. They were probably ready to strangle him out of pure spite, especially since everytime Danny came near the lab he was shocked by them. 

The wires did nothing to slow Tucker down, though, his friend a swirl of yellow and green as he moved around the lab and tried to put his hands on every shiny thing that he could. Sam probably had the right idea in staying back. 

“You know, there’s some cool research stuff about ancient ghosts or something on that table way over there out of the line of fire, usually. You wanna-” Danny paused, blinking as Sam was already halfway across the room. Normally she would look menacing crossing a room with such a determined expression, especially with her outfits usually equating to little more than a black hole, but, well. A dripping teenage girl with a white fluffy towel draped around her shoulders did little to scare people.

Shaking his head and dropping his chips and own towel on the stairs, Danny headed over to make sure Tucker wasn’t about to die. He was almost positive that, as he got closer, he could hear Tucker muttering engineering and coding type things under his breath. It was as funny as it was worrying. 

“Remember you promised to not try and hack into government files until you’re eighteen.” Danny threw an arm around Tucker’s shoulders, dragging him back from a table of slightly sparking parts. “Also, while you’re at it, maybe try not to electrocute yourself while you’re down here.” 

“I’m not gonna electrocute myself,” Tucker snorted, batting him away before turning to beam at him. “But c’mon. I mean — look at all this stuff! They’re making technology that shouldn’t exist!”

“Uh huh.” Danny didn’t have the heart to tell him that none of it worked. “Just, uh… be cautious of anything that looks like it could kill you, okay? Half of this stuff isn’t even complete, yet. Just focus on stuff like- Here! Focus on stuff like- Fuck!” 

Tucker barked out a wheezy laugh as Danny jumped back from the stupid fucking device that had zapped him enough to hurt. Tucker’s laugh was doing little to raise Danny’s spirits, too. “Sorry, Danny, but if anyone’s getting electrocuted today it’s probably gonna be you.” 

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Danny grumbled, shaking his hand out and moving away from anything that even so much as looked like it could hurt him. “I’m telling you guys, this lab is out to get me.”

“You think the world is out to get you,” Sam laughed, walking back over to them and looking at all the other papers scattered around. “Okay, so… how does all of this work? Like, okay, secret lab, crazy inventions, and all of it… leads to ghosts? How?”

“Jeez, Sammy, ask the hard questions,” Danny whined, moving to pull himself up on a table and sit. Sam did the same thing on the table across from him and Tucker went back to rifling through tech like the trash goblin he was. “Okay, so… it’s kind of complicated? If you want to be really proper about it and junk, they take part in biological studies to research the development and recreation of ectoplasm and the theorized existence of ectoplasmic entities.”

“Hang on.” Tucker paused, arms full as he looked back at them. “Ectoplasm is that slimy junk that ghosts throw up on people, isn’t it?” 

“No- And stop shoving stuff into your pockets! You’re enough of a walking fire hazard as it is!” Honestly, Danny wouldn’t be surprised if Tucker one day pulled out an actual laptop from those pockets. “Ectoplasm as in, like, an actual element that they’re working on proving to the scientific community at large.”

“They get funding for something like that?” Sam looked down at the papers she had been looking at, expression flat. “This all looks like absolute gibberish — and that’s without counting all the scientific terms.” 

“I mean, it is basically gibberish until they get the proof they need,” Danny shrugged, looking over his shoulder. “That’s why I told you that me and Jazz were outright banned from being in the lab the last couple months. It’s because they were building that.”

Danny pointed over towards the way he had been looking, turning back to see his friends’ shocked expressions. In their defense, it really was something unnoticed until attention was called to it. It was, as his parents like to call it, their ‘life’s work.’

While his parents really were trying to prove that ectoplasm was an actual element, their true focus was to study the entities that were supposedly made of it. There were sometimes months at a time where his parents disappeared into the lab and Danny had been chased out with stern lectures and disappointed looks. After their last spree of inventing, Danny made sure to only come down to the lab and look at what they were doing when he was sure they were asleep. 

Their latest project wasn’t technically their ‘latest,’ either. It was something that they had been working on since Danny was in second or third grade, but it was only in the last few months they had started making progress on ‘their greatest invention.’ 

“Dude… what is that?” Tucker looked like he wanted to run over and pick it apart with nothing but his teeth and nails. Danny made sure to slide off the table he was sitting on and shuffle to stand in front of him so he could at least try to block him when he snapped and went feral. 

“I mean, me and Jazz started calling it a portal, but I think the real term they gave it was the EMD or, uh…” Shit, he had just been thinking about it last night, too. What- Oh, right. “The Ectoplasmic Monitoring Device. It’s basically supposed to use radiation and electricity to form a sort of mirror that they can use to study ectoplasm which, so far as they’ve been able to tell, doesn’t naturally occur in our world.”

“The living world?” Sam crossed her arms and had on her skeptical look that she usually had when dealing with cheerleaders and kids who got caught cheating. “Meaning there’s another world?”

Sighing dramatically, Danny wandered over to the device and gave it a fond pat to the side, expertly avoiding the exposed wires. “If what my parents say is true, then there’s supposed to be another world parallel to our own that is made of ectoplasm. This device was supposed to make it so they’d be able to study that world.”

“Supposed to? What happened?” Tucker frowned as he started looking at all the data banks the portal was hooked up to, Danny leaving him to it. While Danny wasn’t a slouch himself when it came to math and science, he’d leave the actual inventing part up to Tucker, who was much better at it. 

“We don’t really know. They’ve been working on this since I was in second or third grade, I think.” The Portal, which came about after having a bit of a gaming marathon, was aptly named in Danny’s opinion. The thing was huge, created in the style of a hexagon just for structural stability, and had an eight foot long tunnel. It was definitely a portal. It was also off and silent as it always seemed to be. “They said they made a breakthrough a while ago, but I guess it wasn’t enough of one.”

Danny had to admit that they had done a lot of good work on it, though. Whereas before there had been nothing except a multitude of wires and a wireframe structure, now it looked like something more befitting a proper sci-fi movie. There were only a few panels that seemed to be missing and showed the wires and cables that held the portal together, but otherwise it looked like it should have been at least somewhat functional. 

“Danny, you know that this looks like the start of a horror movie,” Sam said, sounding like she was both scoffing and laughing. It probably would have been even funnier if she didn’t sound so right about it. Still, though… 

Unable to resist climbing over the foot-wide gap and into the portal itself, Danny let himself pretend for just a moment that he really was about to enter some grand new world where anything could happen. What would another world even be like? What would a ghostly world be like?

His parents could claim ectoplasmic entities all they wanted when it came to their studies and research, but what they were basically studying was ghosts. Maybe not the horror-comedy cult classic stuff that was around, but real, actual ghosts. What would a world like that really look like?

Would it be full of dead people and just that? Maybe there was old technology that no one used anymore and books no one ever read? Or maybe it was just an echo of Earth, but all twisted and flipped around. Whatever was out there, Danny had little doubt that it would be amazing. 

“You know, it’s kind of weird.” Tucker’s voice brought his attention back to the present, Danny glancing back to see the other was still at the data banks and looking through everything. “Everything’s plugged in, all the readings look good from what I’m seeing, and just… it should be working, but it’s like it just decided not to bother.” 

Danny couldn’t stop his laugh at that, waving around at the room at large. “Dude, they can say ectoplasmic entities all they want, but they’re basically chasing after ghosts.”

“Tilting at windmills,” Sam put in, grinning at the looks Danny and Tucker both shot her. “It means chasing what isn’t there. It was on our English final-”

“Is that what it means?” Tucker’s eyes widened and then he dropped his shoulders and groaned. “Got that one wrong, then.”

Danny snorted and rolled his eyes before stepping further into the Portal, catching a glimpse of Tucker messing with the screens and control area while Sam slipped over to fiddle with dials and levers that, pressed against the wall, fed into the machine itself. Not too worried about it, Danny looked around, absently hearing Tucker mutter about the unworking Portal being a bummer.

“Gotta agree with you there,” Sam called back to him, voice hard to hear from where Danny was standing. It almost reminded him of being inside a wind tunnel when he had been on a field trip with his class. “Could you imagine how cool it would be to explore an entire new world?”

Danny kept silent, but honestly he couldn’t agree more. It would have been amazing if his parents had been right for once and the Portal could one day work. They’d basically be able to explore a new planet.

Now far enough inside to be in the middle of it all, Danny almost continued forward before stopping dead in his tracks as something happened. It felt like being shocked without the pain of it all, breath knocked out of him and some sort of sharp sensation crawling down his spine and prickling at his skin. It was, to borrow his mom’s paranoid words, as if someone had stepped over his grave. 

His friends were still talking outside — he knew they were talking just outside the edge of the Portal — but from where he was standing it felt like he couldn’t hear anything except maybe his imagined heartbeat and quiet breaths. It was quiet enough that he was pretty sure his brain was trying to trick him into thinking someone was talking just so he had something to focus on.

It felt like an eternity of feeling like something was going to happen before the feeling faded away, Danny left confused and standing there before he heard his name called by what sounded like Tucker. Slowly taking a step back, Danny shook his head as he turned around. He was just walking around some scrap metal, as far as he was concerned. He was fine. In fact- Okay. Now Sam was loudly calling for him. 

“Hang on, hang on, I’m coming!” Quickly turning around, and immediately tripping over some exposed metal, Danny stumbled and swore before catching himself on the wall. It may have been scrap metal, but it was still a death trap, Danny supposed. 

Pushing himself off the wall, Danny stumbled again and paused as he felt something under his hand give, like whatever it was was being pressed inwards, a quiet click noise echoing softly throughout the Portal. Frowning in confusion, Danny turned to look at his hand before carefully twitching his fingers apart to form a gap he could look through. 

There, just barely visible through the light spilling in from the lab, was the plastic sheen of a green button. An imprinted word above it read ON. 

“Danny? You okay?” Sam’s voice, sounding worried, had Danny freezing in place even more as he turned to properly look at her. She had a small frown on her face, the beginnings of concern in her eyes and the lines around her mouth. “Hey, what’s wrong? You look like you just saw a ghost-”

The word cut off in the wake of a high pitched whine not unlike what he heard once before when a power generator had started turning on. It was a sound that made Sam’s eyes widen the same way Danny (no, this was definitely Dani, now, who was scared out of her mind) was sure her own had, trying not to laugh hysterically as the whine grew louder around them. She had no doubt that she really did look like she had seen a ghost. 

“Hey, guys?” Dani finally managed through the fear that felt like it was choking her, “I think I figured out why the portal wasn’t working.” 

The whine was loud enough that it seemed to deafen the entire world, Dani unable to hear Sam screaming what was probably her name. She couldn’t hear Tucker, either, the other coming into view and looking to be shouting something before he was wrapping around Sam and keeping her from running into the portal after her. 

It looked like the two were telling her to run, to get out, but Dani just… stood. It felt like she was frozen in place and unable to move no matter how much she tried or wanted it. She was stuck. 

And then it felt like everything happened in one second.

The screams of her friends faded, instead replaced with the sound an MRI machine would make; loud and heartstopping and terrifying. 

Rings of bright white light shone from the small gaps between the metal floor, walls, and ceiling, spreading across the Portal similar to a row of lights in a movie theater. 

The thought of running couldn’t seem to connect with her body, which was rigid straight and locked into place with all her weight still on the button. 

An imagined voice that, for just a moment, sounded like someone was telling Dani to take a deep breath. She didn’t bother fighting off the illusion, merely doing as told because was she about to die-?

A second passed and the thunderstorm was no longer outside but instead it was with her and directly above her and Dani only sucked in another deep breath as she felt the feeling that came right before a static shock only multiplied by a million-

A deep breath, two screaming voices, and Dani braced herself as the storm broke and lightning hit.

—

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[goldenthreadstories]

" five times saved " - Revali mm yes..pain

@bishonenprince sent in a thread for Revali ;; send in " five times saved " for a drabble of five times in which the receiver's muse rescued, protected or saved the sender's muse. these can be times they saved them from a physical attack, or something less intense, dealer's choice!

One of the times he had saved Sora, was one of the first times they had met. Out on the battlefield of a small skirmish between them and a group of moblins. One had tried to sneak up on Sora while he was distracted fighting two in front of him, as he defeated those the one behind was about to strike; did not get the chance to with the speed of Revali's arrow. A true and precise strike from the air above.

Another of the times he had saved Sora; was when the guy thought it was a smart idea to dive from the top of the Rito Village roost. Of course he assumed Sora knew that he would catch him, probably trying to prove some point. Well Revali made sure to grab him at the last possible moment for it either way.

Another saving was once when they had gotten a little lost, the snowstorm came out of nowhere and with his unable to see in the dark and Sora not doing so well in the cold; Revali had to drag the guy into a nearby cave. Luckily they managed to get a fire together and had some food. He saved him by well, keeping the other warm, practically had him in his lap most of the night, warm feathered wings wrapped around the other.

Another time was on the way back to the castle, after a particularly hard fight. The group had gotten separated out. Link & Zelda with Urbosa, Daruk & Mipha and then him and Sora had been forced out into groups. Both of them had been hurt, Sora more than himself. So when the Yiga clan member came out from hiding, Revali's body moved before he could even think. Pushing Sora forward as he took the hit, shielding Sora from further danger. Luckily Link found them at that point and dispatched of the Yiga Clan, Revali still stood there in front of Sora like a shield until the danger was gone and he crashed.

A fifth time that Revali saved Sora, well you might say in a weird way they saved each other. Or at least it might be a little more that Sora saved him to have the chance to protect Sora for always. The night before the Calamity struck. As they awaited the return of Zelda and Link from the Spring of Wisdom. The two sat on watch, keeping an eye out but also got to talk in which Revali gave Sora a gift. One to represent the connection the two had together. Two silver rings, the one for Sora had a bright green gem and the other for Revali had one that had a bright blue gemstone. These rings represented the other and that no matter where they are they are connected.

Even as Revali fell and felt his spirit be trapped within Vah Medoh until the day it could be rescued and released once more. He knew that when that day came he could rejoin Sora once more due to this connection, friendship and bond.

That he would save him once again for as long as he was needed to do so.

[samobservessonic]

We open this issue on a bunch of badniks tormenting a young boy called Tufftee, because like in the early Archie comics, the badniks could talk when the plot requires them to. Once they introduce a larger villain roster, there’ll be less call for them to talk Regardless, Tufftee is interesting because he’s the younger brother of a much better-known Sonic character…

…Sally Acorn!

Now, I’m a big fan of Sally in general, so I’ve been looking forward to getting to this story, which I didn’t realise would turn up so quickly. She only actually appears at the beginning and end of the story, but she’s here! It’s Sally! I also find it a funny coincidence that over five years later, Sally would also be given a brother in the Archie Comics, albeit an older brother called Elias. Now, I do genuinely think that these two characters were made wholly independently of each other and their creators probably didn’t even knew the other character exists (especially since I believe this is Tufftee’s only appearance), but it’s just kind of wild that out of all the characters to randomly give a brother to, both comics chose Sally

Anyway, after Tails rudely awakens Sonic (who is less than happy about that), Sally reveals that her brother wanted to play hero like Sonic and borrowed a pair of his old power boots, which Sonic thinks could still contain a bit of his power. Sonic races off before Tails has a chance to ask what to do and then we get the usual page of Sonic racing through zones, doing action hero stuff. I don't really talk about these parts as much, but I like that they include them as a “this is Sonic doing stuff like he does in the games” thing Speaking of stuff from the games, it’s only a cameo here, but we get our first appearance of the Special Zone:

Now, in StC, the Special Zone has a narrative importance that it doesn’t have in most other Sonic spin-offs. It’s treated as a place within itself and it’s also home to the Chaotix of all people, but we’ll get to that later. For now, Sonic has Tufftee to save

Which he achieves easily enough. We get a few pages of Tufftee being tormented by the badniks, before Sonic comes along to defeat them and rescue him. I love that one of the critters in that panel above straight up looks like someone's pet cat

Tufftee manages to save Sonic at the last minute, which reassures him in his own mind that he’s a hero, even if Sonic isn’t very enthusiastic about it. Also, I didn’t post this panel, but there was a part earlier on where we see that Tufftee couldn’t control the speed that the shoes magically granted him, as a little “there’s more to being Sonic than just going really fast”

We end this issue with the siblings being reunited and Sonic bluntly taking his shoes back from Tufftee, with the warning that they only work for him. Like I said before, I don’t believe we see Tufftee again after this? I can understand why, since StC already has Tails as the younger character working hard to prove himself to his hero, so we don’t need another character basically filling that same role in the comic. Even so, I like it when Tufftee appears with Sally in StC fanwork. Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone make an AU where Sally has both her brothers, Tufftee and Elias, but idk I think it might be interesting? Sally has a lot of middle sibling traits already Also, to wrap us up, I just wanted to talk about the art here, which is a vastly different style to the first two issues. For this issue, we had Casanovas on art duty and, while I haven’t been posting about the non-Sonic stories, this more-detailed style is actually closer to the high-fantasy styles used in the other comics featured in StC at the time. It’s definitely a ‘your mileage may vary’ sort of thing, but I like it purely for the nostalgia of this era of StC. We’ll be seeing a lot more of the fantasy-setting angle in regards to Tails’s backstory at some point as well

[mizzmellos]

Matt Mello night out (or staying in but with takeout & weed/alcohol) headcanons gimme.

Omg yessss <3 so I've said before that they probably don't go out much... so some random staying-in headcanons:

+ Mello likes tequila and Matt likes fruity drinks lol. Mello also refuses to use chaser/mixer cuz it "makes you look like a pussy." When they DO go out and the server assumes the fruity drink is for Mello he gets mad. They both like beer in the summer cuz who doesn't. Mello doesn't drink vodka cuz it makes him angry drunk. And while that's kinda rare he does get belligerent a lot. This is the only time he has unhooked Matt's Playstation mid-game and the only time Matt got so mad he denied Mello sex </3

+ Matt grows his own weed (duh) and knows a lot about botany/horticulture because of it. He doesn't trust anybody else, hates waiting for a hookup, and likes the best quality shit so he figured he might as well. And weed is really hard to find in Japan.

+ Matt is stoned literally 25/7 to the point that he only ever notices if he ISN'T because he's forced to be sober for some reason. Mello smokes occasionally but usually just as a companion to drinking cuz he's definitely the kind of bitch who bogart the whole thing and then gets really paranoid about the cops.

+ When Matt gets to pick the movie (25% of the time) it's always something like Die Hard or some nerdy superhero/action bs that Mello hates/talks over and critiques the entire time. When Mello picks the movie it's a war documentary or some art house film that makes Matt so confused and bored he pulls out his PSP/falls asleep.

+ When they DO go out, Mello loves going clubbing <3 someplace super dark and grimy with plenty of alleys to go do blow and give Matt handjobs in <3 Matt hates all the crowds but Mello always manages to score him molly within the first five minutes of their arrival and then he's happy to listen to music and grind on Mello's ass all night <3

[alpinefury]

Grace and Ted

So this is a shamelessly self-indulgent post, one about family history involving nobody anyone has ever heard of. I'm not posting about it assuming anyone else finds it interesting or important, though I certainly won't be upset if anyone does. It's just something I've been spending a lot of time doing, and I feel a need to talk about it a bit. I'll probably post at least a few more of these at some stage.

I met my great-aunt Grace twice when I was very little, but it was so long ago that I don't remember her face. I never met her husband, my great-uncle Ted, as he passed away almost twenty years before I was born. I can remember their farm, sat near the Norfolk/Suffolk border. Both the farm's domestic and working buildings were arranged around a central open courtyard, creating what what I'd want to call a range. That courtyard was taken up by a large garden in the period when I was visiting, a garden occupied by at least one dog at all times as far as I could tell. The farmhouse proper was one of the first houses I'd spent any time in that felt old. Most of that house's wooden floors were at what you'd call a noticeable angle, the result of many decades' subsidence. It felt like you could have rolled out of bed and kept going! I have patchy memories of china plates set out on display at the side of a dining room, which I've since confirmed with my parents. I wish I could remember other things more definite about that house, and indeed Grace, than what I mostly have, which is fleeting impressions.

Much of what I actually know about Grace and Ted, both their personalities and the story of their lives, I only learned much later, much of it within the past couple of years.

Grace, Florence Grace Stella Emmerton, was born on the 10th of November 1909 in Tottenham, Middlesex (Middlesex no longer exists in any real capacity in England, but even by that stage Tottenham was very much part of London's sprawl). Her parents, my great-grandparents, were James Emmerton and Minnie Grace Emmerton (nee Goddard), both born in the mid 1880s, and both from large working class London families based around St Pancras and Islington. Many members of both families (including Jim) were attached to the railways in some professional capacity. Grace was the eldest of Jim and Minnie Grace's three children. This was a much smaller family than either of her parents had grown up with. Minnie Grace was the youngest of eight Goddard children, and Jim the middle child of another eight Emmertons. I can only imagine the logistics required to keep track of Grace's multitudes of uncles and cousins.

Ted, Arthur Edward George Andrews, was born on the 29th of April 1911 in Blo Norton, Norfolk. Blo Norton was, and remains, a very small village near the county's southern border with Suffolk, near the small town of Diss. His parents were Edward Charles Andrews and Mary Ann Andrews (nee Crowe), who, like the Emmertons, were both born in the mid-1880s. The Andrews, by contrast, were both from the ever-shrinking agricultural labouring class rather than working in the industrial cities. However, Ted's grandfather had struck lucky, and had managed the relatively rare transition from working as hired agricultural labour into holding farmland of his own. Mary was part of a long line of strict Baptist families belonging to that part of Norfolk, and indeed as late as 1901 there was still a Baptist meeting house in Blo Norton, as shown on that year's census, though I don't think that Ted was brought up Baptist in the end.

Ted was the eldest of five siblings, and I believe he may still have a living sibling in the Diss area (who at this point would be well into his late 90s). For all that theirs was a family that owned land in the area, there wasn't a lot of room for all five of them to lead independent lives in that small a village, and whilst Ted's two brothers each had stints as the right hand man on the farm to their older brother each seems to have eventually had enough and moved on. Likewise, both of his sister's seem to have established lives outside Blo Norton, albeit not tremendously far as the crow flies.

Grace and Ted's marriage was perhaps a little unlikely. Whilst personal mobility had increased across the late Victorian era, and would continue to increase in the early 20th century, for the working class in England this still tended to conform to certain patterns. Those from agricultural labouring families were often pushed towards work in great manufacturing cities or trying their hand overseas, and many of Ted's extended family had done exactly that by the time he was born. But, spoilers, I mentioned a farm close to the Norfolk/Suffolk border early on, so it's probably clear by now that Ted did not end up following suit. Instead it Grace who ended up leaving city life behind for the countryside. It was rare indeed that instead someone born and raised in the life of the urban working class ended up 'returning' to a life of agriculture.

Their marriage might have been unexpected, but their first meeting was almost outrageous coincidence. Grace and Ted essentially met by total chance. Grace had become the leader of a troop of Girl Guides based in London, and had taken that troop out into the countryside on a camping trip. The only reason that particular trip went to a village as obscure as Blo Norton is that Grace happened to have a friend from that village, a former boarder in the Emmerton household. It was Ted's land that Grace was able to borrow for that camping trip. His father had died the year before Grace and Ted were married, in 1935, and so Ted had only recently inherited the farm. This would be the very farm that Grace and Ted would eventually live on, the one that I visited as a young child. I wonder how Grace felt after she realised that this chance meeting had permanently altered the course of her life.

Marriage in the 1930s remained a decision with a great deal of practical weight behind it, though this was not mutually exclusive with genuine attraction or affection. But Ted was a handsome man, and I'd like to think that Grace was genuinely attracted to him, especially because from a cold point of view the marriage would have been a mixed bag in the practical senses. She most certainly wasn't choosing poverty; whilst she and Ted were never well off he did own a farm, after all. That had notable cache in the urban working class of that time, as it meant Ted actually owned his own property, rather than paying rent, and indeed had employees of his own.

However, Grace was essentially abdicating any possibility of partaking in the same economic mobility that would later allow her sister Olive, my grandmother, to become a teacher and enjoy a lower middle class lifestyle for much of her life. Grace had embarked on her own career as a seamstress by this point, hardly a comfortable office job but nonetheless a 'skilled' working class job in comparison to working in a factory. Likewise, she wasn't taking on a marital home that would allow her to avoid practical work, if anything becoming a farmer's wife would guarantee a great deal of daily work. Not least, she was also leaving behind her relatively large extended family back home (think of all the many aunts, uncles, and cousins she must have had from both sides of the family), along with any and all friends that she had. With all that taken into account, it feels hard to evaluate the decision to marry Ted as one primarily born out of convenience.

When you imagine this farm, with its farmhouse and working buildings, it's best not to imagine endless rolling acres of crops. Ted's farm, in its working days, was primarily a dairy farm, with only relatively small areas being spared for cash crops and market gardening. Likewise, don't imagine some precursor of a modern intensive dairy farm with a huge herd- my dad doesn't remember there being any more than thirty or so purebred Jersey cows in the herd that Grace and Ted kept, of whom around sixteen would be providing milk at any one time (the others would be suckling calves, last year's calves, or the solitary bull). This was a Small Farm.

But with that in mind, it was still a pretty heavy working life that they led, and the farm still needed multiple workers beyond Ted and Grace. At bare minimum animals would need to be fed every day, not only the dairy cows but also the pigs, chickens, and at least one horse. But the cows were milked by hand, all bottles used needed to be sterilised, crops would need to be sewn and later harvested, buildings would have to be repaired, animals might become sick. The list is almost endless, as anyone who has spent time on a farm will know even better than I do.

Grace and Ted very much kept to the traditional agricultural daily pattern that's now far removed from most folk's lives, rising with dawn and eating a large breakfast, only having a small lunch or just a tea and something to eat partway through the working day, and having a late dinner. That caught them out when my dad was staying with them a few times, as they kept forgetting that a small boy raised outside of that lifestyle wouldn't used to it and would need feeding! But it also meant that, once Ted's health started to decline towards the end of his life, the vast majority of the farm's working dimensions had to shut down.

Despite their lives being focused on what was a very small farm, the pair were still well known in their local community. In small areas, any farmstead that employed multiple members of the community would form a major pillar of that community, almost by default. Additionally, Ted was part of a large family. Whilst many of his extended family had moved elsewhere, or even overseas, others had remained, some of whom also owned farms in the village or the surrounding area. Ted also acted as milkman in the Diss area, to add yet something more to the seemingly endless set of jobs he and Grace gave themselves. This was not just within the village of Blo Norton, but also to several other nearby villages, such as South Lopham and Garboldisham (pronounced as Garbol'sham locally). I can't imagine that Ted actually made a lot of money from this, but it would have made him a very familiar figure to many families across the area, and would have kept him in touch with goings-on, in what was already a very close, almost claustrophobic, set of communities.

Grace and Ted never had children. This was a choice rather than an accident. What prompted this choice was a fear of hereditary 'madness' within Ted's family. I'm not able to discover exactly when his mother, Mary Ann, was institutionalised, but she's listed as a patient in St Thomas' hospital as early as 1939, a hospital that dealt with both short term and 'chronic' suffers of psychological ill health, and remained in such care until her death in 1973. She was listed as 'deceased' on at least one of her children's weddings while she was still very much alive. I can only imagine the trauma that must have led up to that for her, not to mention the pain of being essentially exiled from your surviving children and talked about as though you'd died.

As traumatic as all of this would have been, particularly for Mary but also for her children, it was not the only brush Mary Ann's family, the Crowes, had had with mental health crises. As much as I personally find myself bucking at the assumptions involved, the perception of the Crowes as having a tinge of madness in the blood was very real within that family at that time, and in the case of Ted led to his very definitive mutual decision on the matter with Grace. Indeed as far as we're aware it very much was a mutual decision. I regret to say that my grandmother was rather dismissive, and I don't think actually believed Grace when she claimed this was the reason that she and Ted had chosen not to have children. But with what I know from this vantage point, I see no reason to doubt it.

So what were Ted and Grace actually like, as people? As well as handed down memories from family members now passed, my father has many memories of the two of them along with their immediate circle in Blo Norton, so unlike with a number of my other older relatives I can actually build up a fairly rounded picture.

My father remembers Grace fondly.

She was a kind and entertaining woman, albeit one with a slight tendency to exaggerate, a tendency that caused much eye rolling from Olive, my grandmother. My grandmother was the sister that had scholastic achievements to her name, being the first of her entire extended family to ever successfully get into grammar school (for those unfamiliar with how UK grammar schools work, you need to pass an exam to get into them), and later becoming a teacher. However, it's clear that Grace was actually pretty intelligent in her own right; along with the co-ordination and organisation needed to run a working farmhouse, she was also the farm's book-keeper after marrying Ted, a task at which she seemed to have excelled.

Indeed, despite her embracing the role of a farmer's wife Grace didn't give up on her aspirations of modern conveniences, and frequently earmarked funds to improve the farmhouse. Such projects included replacing the dirt floors on the ground storey with proper floors, installing a proper plumbed toilet, and acquiring a bath, among many others. In other words, she clearly didn't feel that being Ted's wife was in any way counterproductive to the growth in material comforts accessible to ordinary Britons across the 20th century.

My father's memories of Ted are a little more mixed.

He was never an outwardly unpleasant person, as far as I can tell, nor one actually disposed to violence. He wasn't a bully or a poisonous person. However, Ted was not an outwardly cheerful person, nor someone who seems to have excelled at making others comfortable around him. I had wondered, in the past, if that impression was partially created through the mismatch of his lifestyle and culture with that of my father's, but even taken within that context I suspect my father's read of him runs true, given the hints of difficulty in his relationship with his siblings.

He was, it should be said, immensely fond of, and caring towards, all of his animals. He had always wanted to become a full time market gardener, but my father suspects that it would have been too hard for Ted to have given up his animals. My impression is likewise that he was also a caring husband towards Grace. I do also feel it's worth allowing Ted the generosity of remembering that his father died when he was still relatively young, and the unknowable traumas experienced surrounding his mother's institutionalisation. One thing I'm certain of is that Ted was proud of his work and his achievements. My father remembers being in one of the farm's greenhouses with Ted, when Ted said, unprompted, 'They say that God makes them grow, but he doesn't. I make them grow'. Since learning that, it's really made me wonder about the relationship Ted had with the strict Baptism of his mother's family, although I suspect I'll never be able to answer that.

I mentioned that Ted's health declined before his death, and that this had led to the working farm essentially having to cease operations. However, he was only in his 50s when this health decline began, and he was only 60 when he died in 1971. Grace survived him by 32 years, almost as long as their 35-year long marriage. By the time I ever visited the farm, I was unknowingly visiting a place long shorn of its working life, and as a small child you would never have known that, compared to its heyday, the farm was practically a ghost town.

It's a strange flavour of melancholy that I feel looking back on those memories with all of this context I've learned since. Not in the sense that I think of Grace as not having lived a full life, but just in the sense of not having seen the farm as it was built to be, and in realising the enormous hole at the centre of life there past 1971. I don't know that I would have necessarily liked Ted if I'd met him, but I don't know that I wouldn't have, either.

That all of this involves people I'm related to obviously gives me a reason to know and care about this. But Grace and Ted's story was also, when taken across the standard narrative of what English life was like at that time, rather unlikely. That it's an unlikely story that still only really has personal stakes, for them and their families, is something that I think I care about more at this point in my life.

[aeoki]

Magic Lantern - Mysterious: Chapter 2

Location: Yumenosaki Secret Room Characters: Sora & Natsume

TL Note:

Tokusatsu (lit. special effects) refers to Japanese films and dramas that make use of practical special effects. Examples of these kinds of works include Godzilla, Ultraman and the Power Rangers.

Sora: HaHa~♪ Master~ is good at socialising with others~ You can get along with basically anyone?

Natsume: I’m a fortune teller, after aLL. Rather than getting along with everyoNE, I suppose it would be more accurate to say I weave out the story everyone wants to see while watching from high aboVE.

I do this by saying the things they want me to say and making their wishes come trUE.

It’s too late before they realise they’ve been swayed by mE.

NO. They’ve become a part that is essential in building the utopia I wish fOR.

I don’t mind not being the protagoniST. I don’t have what it takes, anywAY. I don’t have to win every time and the world doesn’t have to revolve around mE.

I’ll control all the protagonists – all the heroes – like pawNS and then paint the world in our preferred colouRS.

Sora: HiHi~♪ Master~ you sound like Satan.

Natsume: I am trying to be careful so that I don’t make others hate me and put me doWN.

I’ve seen a few “failed examples” of happiness and unhappiness alreaDY. I plan on watching where it’s leaning towards first and then take the appropriate measurES.

NO. I predicted their motives and intervened in a positive manner at timES, adjusting the advantages and disadvantagES…

And now, I’ve finally arrived at this spOT.

I really have kept you waiting for a long tiME, Sora. But there’s no need to worRY – All the annoying things will be cleaned up very soON.

The thing we’ve been preparing all this time at Yumenosaki Academy and ES will finally bear fruIT.

Firstly, the “Five Oddballs” from Yumenosaki Academy will be left under my managemeNT. I didn’t do it by throwing punches at all the students or brainwashing thEM.  

There’s no point in collecting a large number of slaves or dolls, after aLL.

What I bestowed upon the students of Yumenosaki is A “story”.

It’s a classic story of hard work, friendship and victoRY.  You shouldn’t make fun of it just because it’s both a classic and a fairytaLE.

The truth of this world is hidden in stories that have been passed down from ancient timES.

Boys learn one thing in life – not from his parents or educatiON – but through fairytales and tokusatsu[*] TV shoWS. And that “story” is “just for uS”.

“That’s” what we’ve prepared for thEM.

Sora: HuHu~? What do you mean?

Natsume: RigHT. First, we’ll have most of the current students in the Yumenosaki idol course become members of the strongest units in the schoOL – That means being a member of “Knights” or “RYUUSEITAI”.

Unfortunately, “RYUUSEITAI” is a mess at the momeNT…

It looks like “Switch” or the “producer course” will have to pick the ones that are left out, thouGH.

…It indeed works out perfectly for both me and that rotten heretIC, but I have a feeling it’s all working out exactly how he wanted it to – including “RYUUSEITAI’s” current circumstancES.

Sora: He? Who’s the rotten heretic?

Natsume: There’s no one else like him when it comes to spreading conspiraciES – I’m talking about a certain “Emperor” who has no intention of stepping down from his throNE.

He’s made excusES, saying that he’s hospitalised so he can’t move around so muCH, but it’s very suspicioUS…

It’s not as if he was unconscious or anythiNG, so at the very leaST, I presume he should know what the current situation is like and is simply choosing not to do anythiNG. 

Based on solely the resulTS, “RYUUSEITAI” will be left with the best members and it’ll be the best turn of events…

The kids who end up being left behind would fall under the jurisdiction of StarPro or tHE “producer course”.

It’ll probably be good for the future of the “producer course” if they gain some EXP by taking care of new idoLS.

And for StarPro, they’ll gain a stronger voice within Yumenosaki while also reaping in the benefiTS. It just sounds really good for them, doesn’t IT?

The “Emperor” can also make an excuse by saying he was hospitalised so he couldn’t save anyoNE. No one will resent him and instead, he can gain a huge profIT.

Sora: Hmm? He can’t do anything while he’s hospitalised, so Sora thinks he’s missing out as an idol, though?

Natsume: YeAH. Well, I suppose you could say this is all merely my speculations and me reading too much into thinGS.

The “Emperor” simply observed the situation and made the best move he couLD.

Rather than ending everything and wrapping up the tragedy with unhappineSS, he must have wanted to obtain as much profit as he possibly couLD. It’s like dealing with deBT.

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