#and well we’ve gone over ruby a million times

[hershelwidget]

BEHOLDE. MASKS PEOPLE IN THEIR GLORY

That format up there is Name - Pronouns - Exact Division - Broader Magical Term - Species

Silly silly shenanigans! They are one of the trios ever I love their friendship so much

frankly I am obsessed

Woahhhh

and. lastly

I love how Rosemary and Charley actually have wings and fly accordingly but Philliam is naturally a floating disembodied skull. And the best part is that’s NOT what Charley is surprised about

I am going to be working on their official ref sheets complete with colours soon!! Might even throw in a photo of the actual irl mask on the sheet :0

Please expect more of these sillies!!

[xoxo-teddybear]

The Bakugou Kids - Bakugou Katsuki

(Dad)Bakugou x (Mom)f!reader

Warnings: Fluff, Crack, Cursing

Summary: Bakugou and Y/N love their son with their entire beings, but sometimes, parents need a break. Especially when those parents are responsible for creating a literal demon spawn. He is kind, well behaved, and cute of course! But he does have Bakugou blood in him. With Y/N already away on a girls trip, Bakugou has to find out how he’s going to deal with his (now) many, many kids.

A/N: You passed down your duplication quirk down to Katsuo.

BAKUGOU’S MASTERLIST

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” You asked your husband as you stood at the doorway. “Katsumi may be a calm baby but she’s still a baby. And Katsuo’s quirk just kicked in and it is mine. I would know how difficult it can be to manage.”

“Stop worrying, Babe. It’s just a duplication quirk. And he’s only 5, how powerful can it really be?”Katsuki said, wrapping his arms around you. “Just go on your little girl’s trip with Ponytail and Racoon Eyes. I can handle the brat.”

You looked at your husband with a raised brow and smile before rolling your eyes and giving him a kiss. “Alright then. I’ll see you in a few days!”

With that, you walked out of the house and into the cab to meet your friends at the resort. Katsuki chuckled before walking back into the house to find his son napping on the couch. His spiky, blonde locks were all messed up with bed head while his E/C eyes he inherited from you remained shut. Katsuki walked over to his newborn daughter and picked her up while he took a seat next to Katsuo’s sleeping form, rubbing at his soft hair until he woke up.

“Can’t be all that bad, right Katsumi?”

The baby girl merely cooed with sparkling ruby eyes that mimicked her father’s.

—

Wow. Wrong. He was so wrong! It had only been 2 days since your departure but things had already gone so wrong! When you said your quirk was difficult to manage, Katsuki thought it would be difficult for Katsuo to manage. Not him!

Katsuki should’ve known his son would’ve taken the opportunity to act out while his mother was away. He had always been your little angel while Katsuki saw him as his little gremlin. With Y/N gone, Katsuo has been pushing all kinds of limits. Limits that had Katsuki beat.

Katsuo had been fortunate enough to inherit a quirk. And not just any quirk, but your quirk. Duplication. Basically, he can create copies of himself. When you were his age, you could only create 4, max. Katsuo was different though. He had Bakugou blood flowing through him. He was advanced the second he was born. So now, Katsuki was stuck looking after Katsumi, Katsuo, and Katsuo’s 16 other copies.

“Aye! Number 15, you’re gonna break that lamp! 11 and 8! Don’t wrestle in the mud! Go take a bath! NUMBER 3 GET OFF THE KITCHEN ISLAND! KATSUMI!” The adult blond screamed, looking for his infant daughter, eventually finding her sleeping in her little rocker on the living room floor. “Oh right, you don’t talk yet.”

Katsuki sighed as he slumped down next to his daughter, and leaned his back against the couch. He looked around the room and saw the 17 Katsuo’s making a ruckus around the house. All he could do was question how the hell is 3 month old daughter could possibly sleep through all this.

Katsuki almost lost all hope for humanity until a knock was heard on his front door. Knowing exactly who was there, he quickly got up from his place on the floor and ran to the entrance. “You idiots are finally here!”

Katsuki pulled in his 3 friends, the boys of the Bakusquad, and slammed the door shut. The 3 friends all stood in shock at the sight of the house. Not that it was overly messy or anything. It’s just that there were about 16 more figures in the house that aren’t usually there.

“You gotta help me!” Katsuki said, running infront of them, shaking his best friend’s shoulders. “I love my kids! I do! I love Katsuo, I swear! BUT I DIDNT SIGN UP TO BE A FATHER OF 18 FREAKING DEVILS!”

“Okay! Okay, relax man. We’re here.” Kirishima said, patting his friend’s shoulder as he wept. “How the hell are we gonna take care of 17 little Bakugous?”

“Right? We thought 1 Kacchan was a lot. Then you brought another one into the world, who apparently brought some unannounced friends.” Kaminari joked.

“They’re demons!” Katsuki exclaimed. “This has to be some fucking Karma for the shit I did. I knew I should’ve listened to my old hag better. Now shits came back to bite me in the- HEY! PUT YOUR SISTER DOWN! SHE’S NOT A FOOTBALL!”

Katsuos number 7 and 5 placed a sleeping Katsumi back in her rocker with an annoyed pout before running off to play something else.

“Welllll, there’s nothing that 3 cool uncles can’t fix!” Sero enthusiastically said. “Hey kiddos! Who’s ready to have some fun?”

All the mini blondes stopped their movements, some freezing mid-air, and looked to the slim man. They all shouted in joy at the sight of their uncles and ran to pounce on the 3 men, including their father. From the point of view of the boys in the Bakusquad, it looked like a Bakugou stampede.

“Run, run, RUN, RUN, RUUUNN!!!!” Kaminari screamed as the boys all ran for their lives to escape the herd of Katsuos. This was going to be an interesting day.

—

Safe to say after the day had passed, the boys of the Bakusquad were completely exhausted. Sero had half his clothes torn, Kirishima’s hair fell from it’s great spikes and even lost some red hues, Katsuki’s eye bags had never been heavier, and Kaminari was just straight knocked the fuck out. They were all thrown across the couch as Katsumi rested in Katsuki’s arms.

“What do we do?” Kirishima exclaimed.

“I don’t know.” Katsuki said, looking at his scrambling son(s). “There’s just too many.”

“And we’ve already lost a soldier.” Sero said pointing to Kaminari’s sleeping form. Katsuki and Kirishima followed his gaze and bowed their heads in respect towards the defeated Kaminari.

“Well now what? Is Bakugou just supposed to live like this for the next 3 days?” Kirishima asked.

“Hell no. If I do, there’s not gonna be anymore Katsuki. I’ll just be some body without a soul because my damn gremlins sucked it outta’ me.” Katsuki said with his head dropped down.

“Well how do we get them to calm down?” Sero questioned.

“I don’t know. They’re all mini me’s. Nobody could get me to relax.” Katsuki said in defeat, but that’s when Kirishima had a lightbulb go off for him.

“Except for Y/N!” The red head said, popping up from his seat on the couch.

“Uh, if you haven’t noticed Shitty Hair, this all started because she’s away on her trip.” Katsuki said with sarcasm as he looked at his friend as if he was an idiot.

“I know that! But Y/N wasn’t the only one to tame you, Bakugou!” Kirishima said in excitement.

“So then who else?” Katsuki asked.

“You know,” Kirishima smirked. “Denki’s favorite person. Y/N and.........”

It took Katsuki a second before his eyes popped when he finally got it. “No!”

“Yes!” Kirishima said.

“No way! We’re not going to her!” Katsuki complained.

“Who?” Sero asked.

“Nobody!” Katsuki screamed.

“Oh it’s somebody alright! Somebody who was able to tame the beast in Bakugou the second he was born!” Kirishima said.

“Who?” Sero asked. Katsuki finally sighed before he gave in, realizing this was his only hope for sanity. He grabbed his phone and made a quick call before explaining to his dark-haired friend.

“The demon of all demons...”

—

The door opened to reveal a tall standing brunette and an elder feminine blonde.

“...My mother.”

—

The boys of the Bakusquad all sat lined up on the couch as Mitsuki stood at Katsuki’s end and smacked her son’s head.

“You idiots! Y/N leaves for 2 days and all hell breaks lose?!” Mitsuki screamed at the 3 young men.

“You old hag! Quit hitting me! Ima’ grown man for crying out loud!” Katsuki screamed as he rubbed his head. Masaru simply bounced the sleeping Katsumi in his arms as he watched the scene play out.

“Well if you’re such a grown man then why can’t you manage your own kids without your wife’s help?!” Mitsuki argued, leaving Katsuki silent as he grumbled. The eldest blonde sighed before continuing. “Alright listen, I’ll watch these little devils for the next few days until Y/N comes back. I’d love to spend some time with my grandbrats. Why don’t the 3 of you go take a break and-“

“THANKS! Let’s go losers!” Katsuki said dragging his friends to the exit. Mitsuki and Masaru only laughed at their son’s behavior as they began tending to the kids.

The boys of the Bakusquad all quickly walked out of the house and headed for their cars as they all walked together.

“So, where to?” Sero asked.

“We could go head up that new resort in Tokyo!” Kaminari suggested.

“Naahhh. That’s where Y/N’s having her girl’s trip. Wifey would kill me if she saw me there instead of at home with the kids.” Katsuki said with his hands in his pockets. Kirishima raised his brow at this.

“Oh? So then, maybe we should go back and-“

“You know, on second thought,” Katsuki said with wide eyes once Kirishima made the suggestion. He took his hands out of his pockets and placed them behind his friend’s backs to keep them moving. “Maybe she won’t kill me..if I’m lucky..and wish..upon a shooting star....a million times over. Hah.....yeah. TO THE RESORT!”

As they walked, Kaminari attempted to look at the house once more, prompting Katsuki to turn his friend’s head back around. “No, no, no, don’t look back, they can smell fear.”

[mrspanky]

The Time We Lost: pt 1.

Jason Todd x Reader (female pov).

Content: Angst and language.

Readers note: Hi love, I hope you enjoy this! I had so much fun coming up with this story. Can’t wait to put out part two, because that’s when it really gets good. For the best experience listen some sad music while reading, I wrote this to the songs “Last Cigarette” by Ruby Waters, “What Are You So Afraid Of” by Videoclub, “All My Friends” by the Revivalists, “Ghost of Mine” by Kailee Morgue, and “I Didn’t See You Coming” by Fefe Dobson.

𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫𓅫

It was freezing outside.

You hated asking for help but you broke a little when you stubbed your toe on the pavement and didn’t feel anything through your boot, only to take it off on a nearby doorstep and realize that your toe was broken.

Should’ve worn sturdier boots.

You pondered what to do, stranded on the step, fuming. You knew where you’d end up going you just hoped he wouldn’t be there.

You were in the heart of the city but you remembered the way to his apartment like the back of your hand.

It had been so long, but it felt just like yesterday as you looked around remembering the landmarks that would lead you to your destination.

“Fuck”, you muttered.

There was the coffee shop you two used to go to. Overwhelmed by emotional memories of bad days, and days that hadn’t been so bad, you started to panic. You looked in your wallet. $7.00 looked back at you pitifully.

“That’s enough for a coffee, and if I get a coffee it’ll keep me warm, AND give me enough mental power to think of a solution other than going back to his place”.

Your mind was made up. You walked in the direction of the coffee shop with stubborn resolve. As you entered the door, you bumped into a man.

“Sorry”. You mumbled.

You weren’t really sorry, you were actually quite annoyed, but you were too tired to get into an argument.

“No, my bad”, said the man. Your jaw tightened.

“Tim”, you thought.

You’d recognize his and all his brother’s voices anywhere.

“Well what the fuck do I do? Do I say something? No, I don’t want to talk. Wait, but he might.. know if.. he’s home”. You sighed, and turned around.

“Wait, Tim?” Tim turned around, looked at you, and raised his eyebrows in realization.

“...Y/n?”

••••

“Y/n not to be rude, but you look like shit”.

Tim slid a coffee across the table to you.

“What happened?” He looked concerned. You sighed.

“I’m fine. I was just in the area and I was taking a walk and forgot how cold it was. I left my jacket at home”.

“Which is where..?”

“...Not too far”.

He furrowed his brow.

“You have cement on your shoe and there’s only one street in Gotham getting redone right now. It’s in the middle of the city. Not close”.

He paused and glanced down.

“Also you were limping on your way over to the table just now”.

“Damn”. You thought.

You’d forgotten that it was annoyingly difficult to lie to Tim.

“You’re not ok, are you”. He leaned in.

“Y/n, why are you really going to see Jason?”

You stayed silent.

He looked at you closely, seeming to make up his mind.

He sighed, and got up out of his chair, grabbing your coffee cup.

“Come on”, he gently took your hand.

“Tim..I don’t-“

“-He’s not home right now.” Tim cut in.

He helped you up, and started for the door, then paused.

“Look, I get it. But me and a couple of the other’s are just crashing there right now for a mission. You probably won’t even see him, and you really look like shit. Let’s at least get you a bed for a couple nights”.

You tried to consider his offer.

You didn’t really have any other options.

“Let’s face it y/n”. You thought.

“Todd manor is probably at least a little warmer than the streets”.

Even thinking that name hurt you deeply, but you pushed it down.

“Alright”, you solemnly nodded your head and let him lead you out the door, a wave of anxiety washing over you about the impending painful memory rush you knew was coming.

•••••

The red front door.

You hadn’t seen this door in ages.

He had been so excited to walk through it the first time. You remembered it so well.

He had called you on a Friday afternoon as you were getting ready to suit up.

You had thought he would be calling about the mission you two were working on, but that hadn’t been the case, and you had been so glad for it.

You teased him mercilessly and he teased you right back: But you really enjoyed his company, and you got excited whenever he called, as much as you would deny it back then.

“Hey. I’ve got news”, his voice had solemnly announced over the phone.

“I’m king of my own castle now. I’m gonna call it Todd manor”.

“You got the apartment! Wow. Your very own manor. Time for you to adopt a million kids”. You could practically hear him smirking on the other end.

“Well do you want to see it or not? I’m at the front door right now. I sent you my new address.”

Images of you grabbing your motorcycle and riding over as fast as you could, rushed through your mind. You had pulled up to see him standing there, right where you stood now. You had sauntered up to him, teasingly.

“Ok bird boy, let’s see the new cardboard box”.

He’d looked so happy.

You gasped quietly.

“Tim I don’t know if I want to do this”.

He looked at you quietly.

“He’s not the same, but if you see him, he’s still…Jason. You of all people know how stubborn he is. Not even death could kill that...personality of his”.

He smiled with a twinge of sadness.

“He’s not gone anymore”.

You looked at him, with panic in your eyes.

“Come on. The others miss you.” He opened the door, and you both walked inside.

It was just like you remembered. So much so that it felt like a dream you’d had over the past years countless times, of life before Jason had died.

Tim ushered you forward into the kitchen space. You looked up hesitantly, steeling yourself for whatever your eyes would be greeted with.

Positioned around the kitchen were Dick, Wally, Damian, and Jaime.

You tried to hold down your emotions. You hadn’t let yourself feel how much you’d missed them fully until now.

“Hey guys”. You smiled a little.

“Y/n?”

Dick’s eyes widened in surprise.

Wally was characteristically swift to reach you. He raced over and stood at your side, putting his hand on your shoulder.

“How are you?”

A tear fell from your tired eyes.

“I’m ok”, you smiled softly.

“I missed you guys”.

Wally’s brows were furrowed with worry.

You realized that none of them had ever really seen you cry.

You tended to be too embarrassed and see it as a sign of weakness, but you were too exhausted to hold back right now.

“We missed you too”, Dick said as he walked over.

“Yeah”, said Jaime. “We haven’t been able to find you all this time, we’ve all been worried”.

“I’m fine,” you shrugged. “Just needed to be on my own after...after... you know. And I have been, and I’ve been ok I just got caught up a little I guess. No big deal.”

Tim met Dick’s eyes in silent communication.

The older brother pursed his lips together with recognition and resolve.

“Let’s get you some food”.

After you finished eating you trudged upstairs to shower. When you got the water going, you let the steaming water run down your hair. It felt so good after the freezing gotham streets you’d been experiencing the past week. You sighed. You couldn’t stay here long. Everything was a reminder of what your life had been like before Jason was murdered and you went off the deep end. You didn’t want to remember all the hope that you had had, and how naïve you’d been. For a while after he died, you had broken away from everyone for this exact reason.

You wrapped a towel around you, and examined yourself in the mirror, wiping away the steam so you could see your reflection clearly. Over the time that Jason had been gone, you felt like you’d changed completely. Your naturally y/h/c hair was now a shade of y/c/c, and your previously youthful face looked hardened. Not necessarily in a bad way, you just felt sharper. “Amazing”. You thought. Stress had given you a jawline. You laughed to yourself bitterly. You needed a vacation. Badly. This past year of fighting crime on your own and making somewhat questionable decisions had taken its toll on you. You slipped into the large white t-shirt Tim had lent you, dried your hair with the towel as best as you could, and walked to the room he’d told you that you could stay in.

The room was Jason’s, but he wasn’t home so it was empty right now. It was going to be extremely painful to be around his things for the first time again and you were a bit overwhelmed already, but like everything else today, you didn’t really have a better option. You felt like you were invading his privacy somehow even though you knew it was technically fine. “This is so fucked up”, you thought. You hadn’t even ever been brave enough to not mask your feelings for him with banter, and now you were staying in his room while he was away because you had been homeless for the past week. And you had been homeless all because you couldn’t pull your life together after he fucking died and you couldn’t save him. “I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t fucking save him”, you whispered to yourself, holding back more tears as you reached the door. You took a deep breath, wiped your eyes and opened it.

Cautiously, you looked down as you closed the door behind you, not ready to face everything yet. As you began to turn your eyes upwards, you heard a noise in the direction of where you remembered the window to be, from the tour Jason had given you so long ago. Your fighting reflexes kicked in on instinct and you raised your fists. A red helmeted man entered your line of vision as you stared at where the noise had come from. Your arms fell limp to your sides as you registered what you were seeing. Who you were seeing. “...Jason”, you whispered.

To be continued...

[wocfics]

My Only Sunshine

Part 3

Arranged Marriage Series

Masterlist

JHS x Poc Reader

Warnings: Angst, Fluff, Smut

Word Count: 4k

There was no doubt that Hobi was stressed, Y/N could see if, even if he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. You knew the next couple of months would start to take a toll on him, especially since their tour was cancelled due to the current pandemic situation but they still had to make videos and be careful at the same time. Y/N had been in the studio as well, since being a dance instructor had no breaks, but it was okay since it gave you something to do. For the first few months, they were spent indoors with Hoseok and since they could spend more time than usual with each other, there wasn’t a day that went by that didn’t involve them tangled up in the bed sheets. The honeymoon stage was far from over.

After stepping out of the shower, Y/N got dressed in something more comfortable, grey sweatpants and a tank top. You had already taken Mickey out for his nightly walk around town and he was now curled up in the living room on the couch. Walking out of the bedroom after pulling on some warm fuzzy socks, you made her way into the kitchen to cook something. Being in quarantine really made you have more of an appetite. Y/N snacked a lot but Hobi never said anything about it as long as you were happy. Yeah, you did gain a few pounds but then again who didn’t, right?

Opening the fridge, you twirled the ruby ring Hoseok gifted you on your left ring finger months ago, trying to figure out what to cook up before Hobi came home. Deciding on some soft tofu stew, you grabbed the ingredients from around the kitchen to get started. There were a few times this month that Y/N wasn’t feeling too good, so you did get some blood work done and got a checkup just to make sure everything was okay. They were supposed to email you any day now with her results but it was most likely low blood sugar.

Halfway through cooking, your phone buzzed on the counter right when you were adding the veggies to the boiling pot. Wiping your hands on a towel, you checked your phone while the front door passcode was being punched in. Reading over her email, she looked up to see Hobi, taking off his shoes and dropping his bag down by the front door. Uh-oh. From the look on his face, you could tell he wasn’t having the best of days. 

“Food will be done soon, how were rehearsals?” You asked, watching him make his way into the kitchen and kiss her forehead. You already knew the answer but you wanted to make sure he was okay, since he was gone for practice more than usual due to the new schedule. “It was fine. I showered there so I’m just going to change and come back for dinner.” He spoke quietly. You kissed his cheek and stared up at him. “Only five more minutes, okay? You alright?” You asked, tilting her head a little bit. He shrugged and deeply sighed, not wanting to get into right now. You rubbed his back reassuringly, watching him leave from out of the kitchen and turned back to your email to finish reading the rest of your results.

A message you were hoping wasn’t real but it was. “...your results show a 4-5 week pregnancy and would like to advise you to come in some time next week for a follow up appointment with the ob/gyn…” You continued reading before glancing up to make sure Hobi wasn’t coming out yet. “...two fetuses have been located in the uterus which can run as high risk in your career field…” Oh shit. “Fuck…” You breathed out and turned off the stove once everything was finished. Pregnant? Twins?! This was not happening. You knew how it happened but, you were only a year into your marriage, this couldn’t be happening now. It was too early and what would Hobi think? He wasn’t in the best of moods tonight, how were you going to tell him? It did explain the heavy eating and weight gain, and the migraines. Tapping your fingers against the counter, you quickly pulled out two bowls to place the stew in just as Hobi walked back into the kitchen. Setting the bowls down at the table, you grabbed him a Sprite and yourself some water. Sitting down across from him, Y/N watched him take a few bites of food before digging into your own.

You made sure to put some away for his lunch tomorrow and cleaned the kitchen while he grabbed his things from the living room and put dirty clothes into the hamper. You had to tell him, he was your husband and the sooner you told him, the better it would be for both of them to prepare for it. You took her time walking into the room, just to get into the right headspace for this conversation. From the way he was sprawled out on the bed, he was obviously waiting for you to join him. He removed his shirt but still kept his sweatpants on while he laid on his back and stared up at the ceiling. Climbing into bed after closing the room door, Y/N laid down on your back and waited for Hobi to rest his head on your chest and wrap an arm and leg around you.

He sighed into the cleavage of your tank top and rubbed your side, which made you freeze for a second. You leaned down and kissed his forehead, brushing his dark hair from his forehead. “Tough day?” You asked. He hummed in response. “I’ve been working on this mixtape, I feel like I’m missing something from it and it’s been stressing me out is all.” He confessed. You grinned, rubbing her hand up and down his shirtless back. “You’ll find it, you always do.” “Yeah, plus I’m just nervous about this new album you know? We made it during such a difficult time, I just hope the fans love it.” He pulled you closer to him. “Hobi, they love it. I’ve been seeing so many positive responses. It’s exactly what they needed during a time like this. You and the guys are doing fantastic, especially given the circumstances. I’m proud of you and ARMY is proud of you.” He moved his head to look up at you and brought you down to press a kiss against your lips.

Humming against his lips, you sighed as his hands traveled up your back under your shirt as the kiss became heated. He moved on top of you, pushing his tongue past your lips. You moaned and pulled away before looking up at him. “I have to tell you something..” You breathed out, although that didn’t stop him from kissing and sucking on your neck. “Can it wait? I really want you right now, baby.” There it was. The bedroom voice. His menstruations continued, kissing and leaving marks on your neck as you closed her eyes. “Hobi...I’m pregnant.” You whispered. 

His movements stopped, he leaned up and looked into your eyes. “What?” He asked before sitting up completely. Oh God, was he mad? You couldn’t tell. “I-I-I’m pregnant...I was just told today.” You said quietly. His face went blank, almost like his brain was processing what you had just said. “Pregnant? Like with a baby? Really?” He asked. You raised a brow and stared at him. “Um, yes? Like you know, we’ve had sex a million times the past few months-” “Y/N, I know that, it was mind blowing.” He chuckled and looked down at your stomach, sliding your tank top up and pulling off your sweatpants. “A baby huh?” He asked, scratching his head. “Actually...it’s uh, there’s twins…” You chewed on your bottom lip while staring up at him. He blinked a few times. “Aish! Twins?! How are we supposed to raise twins? What if one gets lost or we can’t tell them apart? We’ll never get any sleep, baby! Oh my God, what about sex? Can you even have sex when you’re pregnant?” He climbed off the bed and started pacing the room. You rolled your eyes and watched him. 

At least he wasn’t upset right? Being pregnant was one thing but having two babies? At once? How was that going to work with your schedules already picking back up? You didn’t have any family in Korea. Yeah, Hoseok’s family was the best and very supportive and they loved you but, what would they think? Would they be excited? How would this work with him going on tour next year?

Sitting up and kicking your pants off the rest of the way, you stood up and grabbed his wrist as he walked past you, stopping and turning towards you. “I’m going back to the doctors next week, we’ll figure it out. Can you please lay back down?” You pulled him towards the bed, sitting down until he stood between your legs and brushed his hands over your curls. 

You leaned back, bringing him down with you until you were back in your previous positions. He moved his head down and kissed your stomach. “I can’t believe this is happening. I always thought I wouldn’t have kids but now I’m getting two.” His cheek pressed against your abdomen for a few seconds before you pulled him back up to kiss him.

“I love you.” He pecked your lips a few times before moving down to kiss your neck again. “I love you too, Hobi.” Biting your lip and closing your eyes, you raked your fingers through his hair, wrapping your legs around his waist. You could feel his hands traveling down your sides until they reached your thighs, where he grabbed at the flesh and gently slapped.

“You’ve gotta be up in seven hours, you sure?” You hummed into his mouth when he kissed you. He moved his hips until they were grinding into you, pulling a moan from you. “Does that answer your question?” He sat up, grabbing the edge of your panties and sliding them off before doing the same with his pants. He never wore boxers underneath when he was home. He leaned down, capturing your nipple and began sucking on it, doing the same to the other as his fingers rubbed and pinched at the other. 

Licking your lips, another moan slipped past your lips as your back arched into his mouth, your fingers locked into his hair. His lips moved back up your chest until they were connected with yours once again. No matter how many times you’ve had sex with this man in the past couple of months, you never got tired of feeling him inside of you. 

You discovered so many different ways to please each other, what worked and what didn’t and what you both were comfortable with. It was shocking with how much Hoseok was open to, sexually but it only made your sex lives even more pleasurable. He was very handsy, always groping some part of your body which you realized was mostly your thighs and ass. That wasn’t surprising at all since the first time you two ever had sex, he had you on all fours just so he could grab at everything easily; he explained this to you one night.

Tonight, he wanted to look into your eyes. You spread your legs a little wider for him as he positioned his already hard member at your entrance and slid inside of you. You whimpered a little, allowing his tongue to once again tangle with your own as he slowly began to rock his hips back and forth, groaning into your mouth. One elbow holding him up while the other one kept your leg on his hip as he thrust into you at a moderate pace. 

You could already feel the knot forming inside of you, begging to snap but another part of you wanted to hold out a little longer for his sake. Burying his face into your neck, his hips picked up pace as he huffed and moaned into the crook of your neck. “Why do you always feel so good huh? Still tight after fucking you everyday.” He nipped at your ear and looked down at you, pressing his forehead against yours.

You couldn’t respond back, your brain too busy registering all of the pleasure he was giving you. You only stared up at him, moaning and holding onto his shoulders as if you’d slip away somehow. Only curses left your lips before latched onto them once again, pressing his body flush against yours and thrust faster, the sound of your skin slapping against each other increasing. 

“Hobi…” You whined, just as your orgasm rushed through your body causing your back to arch into his chest. When he slowed his hips down, you tightened your legs around him and shook his head. “Keep going, please...you’re not finished.” Your words came out slightly slurred, a chuckle coming from him. “I don’t wanna hurt-” “I’m fine, keep going.” You kissed him and closed your eyes as he resumed his speed. 

Legs quivering as they spread apart once again, your moans became louder. When you heard his grunts and moans, you sucked your middle finger into your mouth while looking up at him with half opened eyes, while your other hand reached for something on the nightstand nearby. Opening the cap and biting your lip while grinning up at him. Squeezing the lube out onto your fingers, you tossed the bottle on the bed and moved your hand down to his ass, sliding between his cheek and rubbing at his hole. 

He hissed, biting the side of your neck and groaning as you slowly eased your finger into him and began pumping in and out. “Oh fuck...I’m coming...shit!” He moaned into your ear as you continued twisting and thrusting your finger inside of his ass. Turning your head to the side where he was, you kissed his cheek as his thrusts became sloppy and you felt warmth within you from him emptying his load inside of you. You slowed your movements once he stopped and removed them when he gripped at your waist. 

Once he caught his breath, he sat up and looked down at you, pressing a few kisses to your lips before sitting up and pulling you up with him. “You surprised me with that.” he climbed off the bed, grabbing your legs and pulling you towards the edge before lifting you up and carrying you into the bathroom. Holding onto him, you giggled and kissed the side of his head. “You loved it.” You replied as he set you on your feet in the bathroom. 

He couldn’t lie, the first time you did it he wasn’t sure if he’d like the thought of your finger in his ass just before he came but afterwards? It gave him a natural buzz afterwards, which was much needed after the day he had today. 

Smirking at you, he grabbed a cloth and soaked it with warm water before reaching between your legs to clean you up and then after, himself. You both cleaned up and brushed your teeth before walking back into the bedroom to put everything away and change the sheets. You looked at the clock and gasped. “You sure you’re gonna be okay tomorrow? You won’t be getting much sleep-” “Y/N, I’ll be fine. We’re just doing wardrobe fittings tomorrow anyways. We have a few performances to do in a couple of weeks.” He turned off the light and waited for you to climb under the blanket before slotting himself in behind you and pulling you until your back was against his chest. 

________________________________________________________________

“And...there they are. Baby A is there and Baby B is right there.” 

The doctor pointed at the screen while holding the wand on your gel covered abdomen. Hoseok sat beside you, smiling wide at the screen as a few tears rolled down his face. You were grateful that he was able to take the day off to come with you to your ultrasound appointment, and he informed the boys after they got some news from one of the other members themselves that same day. At least you knew you weren’t the only two getting busy. 

The tech took a few screenshots of the small fetuses before turning off the monitor and cleaning off your small belly. Hoseok managed to quickly wipe his eyes before kissing the back of your hand. “So, you are definitely 5 weeks along. So during your first trimester, which is different for everyone, you’ll experience some changes in appetite, nausea along with some vomiting, hopefully not…” She laughed to lighten the mood while you sat up and fixed your shirt and put your sweater back on.

It was starting to get extremely cold out and the rain was non-stop for the past week so you didn’t want to risk getting a cold. As the doctor continued to tell you the symptoms, some of which you already experienced, Hoseok helped you into your coat. “I’d say to come back in another month so we can see if we can determine the genders of the babies. Your ultrasound photos should be ready out front, congratulations once again.” She bowed as you did the same, thanking her as you both exited the room and out to the front desk. Hoseok took care of the appointment dates and photos while you stood by the door and waited.

Once you two got into the back of the car, you rested your head on his shoulder and yawned. “Tired?” He asked. You nodded and snuggled closer to him. “I’ve been tired a lot lately, all I wanna do is sleep.” You mumbled. “Hungry? We can stop and get you something to eat?” He suggested but you were already sound asleep and lightly snoring. “Cute.” He whispered and kissed the top of your head.

________________________________________________________________

“Hey! Am I late?” It had been two months since your doctor's visit. With your new schedule and finding a replacement for your job until you could come back (which Hoseok implied that you didn’t need to work anymore now that you were pregnant and were going to have kids, in which you told him you needed to return after they were a few months old), you barely had time to even catch up with the girls. 

Tae’s wife put together a monthly gathering of just the wives to her art studio so that they could bond better and catch up on their lives as well as order takeout and do some painting. 

“Not at all, we were just ordering some takeout. Anything you want? I know your cravings are different.” Joon’s wife spoke while tapping away at her phone. You glanced over her fingers to still see, no ring on her finger. Eyeing the other girls, they all had the same look on their faces when you met their eyes before clearing your throat. “Bulgogi and japchae. Food has just been making me sick lately but those seem to be the only things I can keep down for now.” 

Taking off your jacket and hanging up on the coat rack near the door, you took off your shoes as well and walked further inside, looking at the new artwork that was put up in place of the ones sold. 

“Wow, look at that belly! Already?” Jimin’s wife smiled, nodding towards your protruding belly. One thing about having twins was that your stomach was going to grow twice as big as a regular pregnant belly. “Yeah, I know. It’s because of the twins so now it’s twice as big.” You rubbed your hand over your cream colored sweater. Yoongi’s wife grinned from where she sat, at her canvas painting an abstract photo. “Did you find out the genders yet?” She asked and you shook your head. “Next week. Hobi’s hoping for two boys.” You laughed while Tae’s wife brought you a cup of hot tea. You thanked her and sat on the couch in the painting room. 

“I hope it’s two girls.” Jin’s wife spoke up, typing her curly hair up into a bun and pulling out a few strands. “Jin said when he comes back and we start having kids he wants all boys too, I hope we all have girls. Well, YoungMi is already here..” She pointed towards Joon’s wife. “But having all girls and having them be daddy’s princess? So cute!” She exclaimed which made you laugh as you took a sip of your tea and hummed.

Having two girls would be nice, but whatever the outcome, you hope they’re healthy and growing as they should. 

________________________________________________________________

“Let’s see...Baby A...is a girl! Now let’s see Baby B…” The doctor moved the wand around to get a look at the second baby. “This one is being secretive, come on baby...there they are...oh a girl!” She laughed. You wanted to burst out laughing when you saw Hoseok with his jaw practically on the floor. “You owe me those pancakes for a week straight.” You reminded him. He looked at you and kissed your hand. “I was going to make them anyway. As long as they’re healthy I don’t care what we have.” He whispered so only you could hear. 

You continued watching the monitor. The doctor doing the same to get in a few observations. “They are right on top of your bladder, have you been using the bathroom more than usual?” She asked and you nodded. “Way more than usual. About a few times during the night.” You confessed. She nodded. “That’s normal. Try drinking some peppermint tea, they might move around. Other than that you have two healthy girls, they’re growing just the way they should. Of course with you carrying twins, you have to be careful so no heavy lifting or anything that can cause strain on your body. There are some beneficial body butters to use on your tummy while it grows since it’ll stretch a bit more than usual. I’ll see you next month, take care!” She made sure to get a few extra photos of the ultrasound since you realized Hobi liked having them in his wallet and in his bags.

Once you were cleaned off and had your coat back on, you made sure to take care of everything and just wanted to get home to rest. You grabbed food on the way home and once inside you kicked off your shoes and scurried to the bathroom. Hoseok set your food down in the kitchen and took everything out of the bag. Once you finished up in the bathroom and walked back out with your coat in your hand and hung it up, you walked into the kitchen and sat down at the island. 

Hoseok stood behind you and rubbed your shoulders while you ate your food. “My parents called, wanted to know how everything goes when we get back from the appointment. I’m gonna give them some ultrasound photos.” He rubbed the back of your neck, gently massaging it while you ate. You closed your eyes for a moment before nodding. “Definitely. We should do a gender reveal for them and everyone else. It would be fun.” You tilted your head up at him and let him kiss you before turning back to your food.

“You think I’ll be a good mom? What if I mess this up?” You asked. Hobi walked around until he was in front of you and cupped your face in his hands, pressing another kiss to your lips. “Everyone messes up, we’ll be okay. I promise. We’ve got each other and we have help from everyone else so even if we do mess up, they’ll be there to help okay? Don’t beat yourself up.” He wrapped his arms around your shoulders and hugged you, you doing the same, burying your face in his chest. 

You didn’t have the best relationship with your own mother growing up. Even now, when you told her about the news of your pregnancy, she didn’t seem too thrilled. Replying with an “awesome” and a thumbs up emoji. You cried a lot that night but Hoseok reassured you that she just needed some time to accept it. 

You were going to due your best with your babies and give them everything you didn’t have as a child, especially with Hoseok there with you and the new family you formed here.

[coredrill]

alright here are my rwby8 thoughts now that i’ve had a few days to sit on ‘em!! spoilers for the entire volume under the cut

so if anyone happens to open this and is like “wow this is more words than i’ve seen you use ever” lol yup! it’s probably the most words i’ve written since high school lmao. feel free to read through if ya really want but this is mostly just my own way of organizing my thoughts for this kind of stuff rather than making a million different posts on random parts of it. this way if i want to look back in the future and say “haha wow can’t believe i thought THAT” it’s all in one easy location! i don’t expect anyone else to be reading all this shite lol

thoughts on the volume as a whole:

honestly i loved it!! there’s very little that i would’ve changed and most of that is nit-picking stuff. i’m very impressed that this volume was made in quarantine lmao. the animation in and of itself was STUNNING (shout out to the finale’s water animation...the aura break particle effects...the cinnamon topography of the amity scenes...all of the facial & body expressions...the whale disintegrating...)

i’d honestly say that it’s probably my second favorite volume?? volume 4 is still my beloved but v8 was so good. i’ll probably need to watch it through a few more times but god. i LOVED IT.

honorable mention cause idk where else to put it: some of the scores were breathtaking!!! i tend not to notice background music on my first watch unless it really sticks out to me and there were quite a few scenes where that happened in a good way this volume. the ones where cinder breaks into the atlas control room and the one at the end when atlas is flooding are probably my favs!!! also there was this one part where it was just screeching over ironwood and it worked really really well.

okay so now for individual characters. let’s start with ruby:

i would like to fund her therapy

very surprised that she didn’t “break” this volume! i was sort of expecting it to happen--between ironwood, the amity plan only kind of working, the hound, the virus, and the fact that she was separated from her usual support system (qrow, yang, and jaune), i was definitely expecting her to. i’m glad she didn’t though cause it’s gonna be so much harder when she actually does (probably when she finds out that cinder has the relics and penny’s dead...)

massive shout out to lindsay jones for managing to make squeaky-voiced ruby still sound like ruby even while going through a whole host of emotions we’ve never seen ruby go through before!

god. that scene where crescent rose fell into the drink and ruby scrambled after it. my heart dropped lmao.

also. this is likely because i’ve got an engineering degree (which came with a free stick up my butt when it comes to technology in media) but the line where they say “mass no longer matters” wrt her semblance??? WHAT??? bro splitting mass up into smaller chunks doesn’t change the actual mass of the material itself what is going on here 😭😭😭 (this isn’t a real criticism of any kind i just yelled WHAT after they said that line lmao)

weiss:

i have one single weiss criticism and its that, in the scene where she’s leaving whitley to go fight the hound, she says “we still need to work on your attitude” and for whatever reason, the voice track doesn’t sound like it was quite mixed right? like it sounds like she’s just standing there rolling her eyes but my girl is BOOKING it out of the room lmao

other than that: weiss you are PERFECT. she really spent this entire volume saving and taking care of the people she loves!!! and i loved every second of it!!!

i would’ve liked to see more of her and klein/whitley/willow. i think there’s a lot of great stuff in that dynamic (not me crying when klein showed up at the manor...) and especially between weiss and her mother. i hope we get one big schneeuinon in vacuo once they + winter are all in the same location (but that’s gonna be a while i think lmao)

it’s been said a million times before but weiss?? shaking and crying but using gambol shroud anyway?? even though she thinks her teammates are all dead?? giving ruby the staff and pushing her out of the line of fire and pulling blake back to safety??? fighting cinder, a fucking wholeass maiden, with no aura because she needs to protect penny?? only unable to get up and keep fighting after she watches gambol shroud (the last physical piece she has of her teammates) go over the edge??? bro. BRO. i’m legit tearing up just TYPING THAT. god she’s gonna find her team at that island resort and never let them go. gonna be like v4 jaune all over again huh??

blake/yang:

not as much here since they didn’t get a whole lot of focus this volume, but i enjoyed all their scenes! yang just fuckin going at salem was 1000/10.

i will say...i think blake’s gonna kiss yang when they meet up in tropical paradise. and good for her!! (especially if this volume’s been planned since the beginning, it makes sense that this would be the writers’ idea for where they wanted their first kiss to be)

jaune:

going from ren saying “he has no fear. he believes that we can do this” about jaune to, five chapters later, forcing jaune to deliver a killing blow to penny was just CRUEL

the fucking dissonance of jaune haha!-awkward-renora-moment-exit vomit-boy-through-the-portals hit-in-the-head-with-a-rock arc being the one that penny asks..............bro. don’t hmu.

it’s going to be such a long time until we see him smile again.

also. the moment when crocea mors snaps in half...again, my stomach dropped.

but it’s okay! he’ll be fine without a weapon! he’s the ~strategist~! *breaks the fuck down*

it hurts so much too to think about, like oscar mentioned.....even if/when he does reunite with ren and nora, he’s not gonna be the same person he was when they last saw him. he’s not gonna be their goofy, wholesome, soft, snarky, healer team leader anymore. he just got his shit sorted out, he just stopped being actively suicidal, and tbh i think this might affect him worse than what happened with pyrrha. especially since they were compounding in his brain--what he did gave penny more of a choice than pyrrha ever got, but GEEZ.

pain. just. pain.

nora:

NORA MY BELOVED

okay. OKAY. so like she was passed out for half the volume but what we did get of her was fucking amazing

nora’s mom i am going to find you and have some words. i’ve mentioned this before but this woman has the same energy as the mom from grave of the fireflies who was like “i know we’re actively being bombed right now but i’m going to abandon my children and get myself to safety.” SQUARE UP BITCH. i hope we never see nora’s mom in the show because i will become filled with rage

but nora herself??? flawless. perfection.

i really did love her journey this volume. realizing that she wants to become her own person apart from ren, and then telling him that when he says that he loves her?? nora sweetie that was heartbreaking but i am SO SO PROUD OF YOU.

nora putting herself first for once and being told that people love her WE FREAKING LOVE TO SEE IT

except NOW that’s all gonna go haywire 😭😭😭

like...the moment in the finale where you can see she’s hesitant to leave jaune to to go vacuo but she goes anyway because he’s her leader and he doesn’t like splitting up either and she loves him and she trusts him only for her to get STUCK ON THE OTHER SIDE BANGING ON THE PORTAL. that scene fucking BROKE me. you just KNOW she’s gonna be hating herself for going through and leaving jaune (even though nobody knew it was one way!!!) and when the portal dissolves and he doesn’t come through........

she really thinks that she’s lost TWO teammates now. that’s TWO teammates that she wasn’t able to save. she saved ren from the nuckelavee but pyrrha’s dead and as far as she knows jaune’s dead too

and jaune’s her fucking family!!!!!!!

and like. when we see her on the vacuo side of the portal, we see that she’s got the happy huntresses behind her. she did her job and she gathered them but now she can’t get back through and AHHHHHH. FUCK. when she drops to her knees because she realizes.........that fucking killed me. i’m tearing up now just typing this sdmndbm

and like. the worst part is that she just realized that she wants some time away from ren. but everyone else is gone and just like when they were kids he’s all she’s got and they are gonna lean on each other harder than ever because this time they both lost EVERYTHING. not just jaune, but ruby, who was their teammate for a while too. weiss, who took such great care of nora while she was injured. penny, who nora helped with blake’s advice. yang, who ren had time to bond with this volume. FUCK

it’s gonna hurt so bad to watch but i cannot WAIT to see what nora does next and how she moves forward. god. this is gonna kill her. it’s killing ME and i’m just a viewer lmao

ren:

remember that one week where neath went on twitter and was like “i love renora and i’m gonna make that everyone else’s problem”??? yeah. that was a good week lmao

speaking of neath. MASSIVE PROPS TO HIM FOR HIS WORK. he managed to give ren every single emotion in the book this volume and none of it sounded ooc despite ren being such a repressed character before. he did incredible!!!!

I LOVED REN SO MUCH THIS VOLUME GOD. i mean i love him in every volume BUT HE HAD SO MANY GOOD MOMENTS AND SUCH A GOOD ARC

i’ve already talked about it at length but the scene where his semblance evolves is one of my favorites in the whole show. he’s so fucking full of love that it’s literally tearing him apart and when he finally accepts that fact his ENTIRE SOUL levels up!!! he looks at himself and there are pink petals falling off of him because he can’t contain the love in his body anymore!!! it’s there in a literal, physical manifestation and it’s so. fucking. GOOD. FUCK.

and also my obligatory remark about how he was thinking about oscar and pyrrha and his parents in that moment. people he loved platonically and familially. rwby goes so fucking hard for platonic love and i can’t ever thank them enough. to see ren have this realization because he was thinking about oscar.....god i’m gonna cry again LMAO

and then after that the way that he just. looks at jaune in every scene with the biggest fucking heart eyes. i’m gonna fucking combust he loves his  leader SO MUCH. (which. as i mentioned in the nora section. pain now)

and the nora stuff........JUST AS GOOD

another thing i’ve talked about a lot but to see him apologize, be emotionally open, listen to what nora’s saying and what nora needs, TELL HER THAT HE LOVES HER FIRST, not holding a single thing against her, agreeing to wait for her to be ready.........literal perfection holy shit

romance is normally not one of my favorite aspects of any media but i will make an exception for whatever the fuck ren and nora got going on

basically as a ren stan / jnpr stan i was thriving this volume and then that finale hit me and i know i will be in pain until they reunite again

i have a handful of jnr gifs that i was planning to make during the hiatus but now they’re all PAIN aksjhdasjdh

oscar:

deeply worried about the quickly approaching merge. i’m really hoping that oscar and oz stay separate but i also love seeing all the animation/voice acting nuances that indicate that they’re getting closer to the merge.......AH

this volume really hammered home just how strong this kid is. he stands up to SALEM and does the right thing even despite the torture cause he’s so BRAVE and STRONG and when he trusted hazel with the password DESPITE IT ALL. ugh. so good.

i love oscar so much and i’ve loved seeing him grow!!!

penny:

serious stuff coming in the next bullet point but. GOD. her model’s head is so big and i don’t know WHY but this stuck out to me every time she was standing next to someone else. it might be because of the volume of her hair (but yang’s hair also has a lot of volume, and her head is normal sized)??? idk it just threw me off a lot. every time she was like, talking to ruby or something, all i could think about was how her head was bigger than ruby’s ENTIRE TORSO lmao. (also why didn’t they give her human body shoes skdjhaksjh)

that said.........oh, penny 😭😭😭😭😭

i’m surprised that she died but only because i thought her plot armor was pretty thick LMAO. narratively it makes a lot of sense and i’m glad her story ended the way it did.

i’ve seen a lot of people interpreting her actions in the finale as “choosing to die,” but i don’t think that’s the case?? penny’s friends all saved her every single time that she presented her own death as an option. that’s what makes this so tragic, is that they successfully saved her every time she offered that, and that in the end, she still died. she was gonna die anyway. she was impaled by cinder--jaune didn’t have enough time to heal her before cinder defeated weiss (who had no aura!!) and turned on them again. penny made her own choices when 1. she asked to die at the hands of a friend, rather than by cinder’s soul-sucking grimm arm and whatever horrible fate that includes and 2. to choose her successor. and i don’t blame her for making either of those choices! she wanted to die with as much dignity as peace as she could and to choose whose life she would be intertwined with. and while it’s very sad, i’m glad that penny finally got some sense of control over herself and her legacy.

and like...she was so happy when she met up with winter!! she was so happy to have full autonomy for once!!! that scene was both heartwarming and heartbreaking!!!

i also think that penny’s death reinforces the idea that remnant is gonna be very different by the time rwbyjnorqe is done with it. now not one but two kindhearted girls have gotten killed because they got tangled up in the maiden powers—which were originally meant to be a gift!! and i’m very interested to see what the resolution is gonna be!! (i know it’s gonna be in like. volume 52 or something alsjfndnx but still!!)

also, if nothing else, i am very glad that whole “pietro sacrifices the last of his aura to revive her” theory is gone. i hate that theory lmao

i will say, while i enjoyed penny’s role this volume, i do think that maybe some of her screentime could’ve gone elsewhere. i get that there needed to be a lot of focus on her, so that we would be attached when she died, but i think it would’ve been beneficial to spread that screentime elsewhere just a bit, especially since she wasn’t really developing at all. hitting the same point with her like seven times did start to feel a bit repetitive lol. my vote would be for extra time with the schnees, or the jn(o)r reunion at schnee manor, or maybe a scene checking in with pietro and maria!!

emerald:

EMERALD MY BELOVED

YOU DEFECTED!!!! GOOD FOR YOU GIRL!!!!

i hope we get a LOT more time with her in the future. she’s still gotta work out the cinder thing of course but i also think it’s gonna be super interesting to see how she acts now that she (alongside oscar, ren, nora, the hh, and winter) is one of the closest things their group has to a “leader”

also like........good for her for being one of the LEAST traumatized people this volume despite being THREATENED BY SALEM

somebody give emerald a nice long hug

i love her

that is all

winter:

WINTER OH MY GOD

seeing her struggle with her emotions all volume.....only to finally accept them and save marrow’s life.....and because of that choice she realizes how long overdue it was and goes all in on helping the heroes.....and is eventually chosen to become the next winter maiden by the girl who challenged her to accept her emotions in the first place......😭😭😭 chef’s kiss

“you chose nothing. this was a gift.” *demolishes ironwood but doesn’t stick around cause he’s not worth it* *fights cinder* POETIC CINEMA!!!!!

also i cannot wait to see her schneeunion with willow, whitley, and klein.......even if she does have to be the one to tell them what happened to weiss 😭

cinder:

CINDER I HATE YOU BUT ONLY BECAUSE YOU’RE SUCH A GOOD VILLAIN

her backstory was pretty self explanatory but i think this was a good time to spell it out especially while we were in atlas. the culmination of that, her consistent failures to achieve her goals after v3, and watts dragging her really all just came together to make her so much more intimidating and efficient and i loved watching it.

like i know there’s people who don’t like her as a character but she’s always so fun to watch and her va does AMAZING and she’s just. so INTERESTING

also. i cannot wait for her to find out that ruby and neo are both alive (and especially when salem finds out they’re both alive LMAO)

also also her line to ruby about never being born feels.......awfully specific??? i wonder if it’s a hint at some other part of salem/cinder/ruby/summer lore (like her “and i refuse to starve” line from last volume)

also also also CINDER.......lying to salem is gonna backfire on you at one point or another.......HM

salem:

gosh i love salem. she’s such a good villain and i loved all her scenes (especially the fight scene...SO COOL).

very interested in whatever she does next!! since the only remaining lackey she has is cinder (who is now starting to try to manipulate her) and tyrian and mercury, who are in vacuo, i’m curious about her next steps. is she gonna keep recruiting, now that people know who she is?? is she gonna come to vacuo herself?? she could definitely do a WHOLE LOT OF DAMAGE with the refugee situation there, so i’m super excited to see how her next moves play out!!

hazel/tyrian/watts/merc/neo:

rip hazel. glad we were able to get an INSANE fight scene out of him before his death BUT ALSO WHAT’S WITH YOU BEATING THE SNOT OUT OF A 14 YEAR OLD HUH

listen. listen. i know merc-rescues-oscar was never a possibility BUT i still love that idea. it lives in my mind rent free!!!

i feel like mercury’s gonna be so insane after the worst road trip ever in a confined space with tyrian that he’s gonna be immediately redeemed by team sssnn and the power of himbofication upon landing in vacuo LMAO

real talk though, i am VERY interested in what happens when mercury sees emerald again and learns she defected. like, this is his friend, who he’s tried to keep safe the only way he knows how (by keeping his head down and not angering their abuser) and she got out but he didn’t. GOD. AND in the first fight she was in after defecting, she used the move that she learned by watching him!!!! that’s gonna be SO GOOD and i can’t wait to see it!!!

neo is a wildcard and i love watching her fight and i think it’s SO INTERESTING that she went over the side with rwby and jaune and i CAN’T WAIT to see what she does next.

WATTS MY DUDE. what a GOOD volume for him. like the stuff where he yells at cinder was SO COOL to see and it was so funny that he thought that wasn’t gonna come back to bite him LMAO. i think this was super fitting for him and while i like him as a villain, i think this was a good place for his story to end. i had a lot of fun watching his scenes this volume.

qrow/robyn:

I LOVE THEIR SIBLING ENERGY. robyn talking qrow down and them bonding over their semblances together was so great.

i also loved qrow’s semblance...evolving?? changing?? idk what exactly happened yet, but i know that if i too hung out with robyn hill for 48 hours straight my outlook on life would improve dramatically.

i do hope robyn makes it to vacuo soon because she will be invaluable at handling the refugee crisis there.

on the other hand, if qrow gets to vacuo and finds out that ruby and yang (and three more of his adopted kids) never made it........PAIN. oh my god it’s gonna be like summer all over again 😭😭

aceops:

did not expect to get teary-eyed when vine died. and yet i did. that “themes of death” cw on the finale was CERTAINLY SOMETHING HUH

hell yeah marrow!!! what a good boi!!! i loved his defection ofc and him going off on ironwood...chefs kiss

i hope marrow sticks with the main cast. he’s my favorite and he deserves to see his friends again!!!

as for elm and harriet, i’m not sure?? i think harriet still has a lot of work to do before she’s redeemed in my eyes. maybe they can be dropped off at beacon to help glynda fight the grimm/rebuild so that they can be back for the show’s ending but the cast is somewhat trimmed for vacuo lmao

also. i know they’re not aceops. but WHERE ARE FLYNT AND NEON ARE THE MEME KIDS OKAY

happy huntresses:

may marigold is literally perfect in every way

loved them! would’ve loved to see more of them lmao. maybe even just cutting back to them in the crater reacting to some of the stuff going on.

i very much hope we get to see them in the future! i know the vacuans aren’t gonna be happy with the atlas/mantle people showing up unannounced but i feel like if there’s anyone who’s gonna be able to earn their respect, it’s the organized-and-saved-the-lives-of-those-downtrodden-by-atlas-happy-huntresses.

maria & pietro:

okay. SO. my thoughts are either that they made it to vacuo (penny did see where amity would touch down, so it’s possible that a portal was placed in that location and they made it through) or qrow picks them up.

either way, i hope we get to see them again. I LOVE THESE TWO GEEZERS!!!

oh, pietro......... *cries*

ironwood:

not much to say here except that i loved it. i loved how he got more and more paranoid, i loved that he vaporized jacques schnee, i loved that he only went cartoon-villain at the last moment, i loved that he died unceremoniously surrounded by the thing he thought would save them all. i love that cinder got in one final chess reference beforehand. 10/10

the hound:

it feels like a lifetime ago that this guy died but holy shit. holy SHIT.

i want whitley to summon the hound!! it was an enemy that pushed him to grow, i think it would be neat!!

ambrosius:

LOVED THIS DUDE. i LOVE how his powers work!!! like, even though it’s magic, it’s so realistic because that’s how creation works!!! you gotta design the EXACT thing you want or else its gonna be fucked up!!!

like. okay. so (back on my engineering bs again lmao) for example. let’s say i’m writing a program where the user enters a number from 1-10 and it’s displayed on the computer screen. so i write whatever code i need that says “take user input and put on screen.” that’s what ambrosius did when he created the portals and the pathways between them!

and then let’s say i also put a warning to the user that says “only enter numbers from 1-10.” that would be ambrosius saying “do not fall.”

but...the user can still enter whatever they want. what happens if they put in the number 100? what happens if they type a letter? this program only puts numbers from 1-10 on screen, so who knows what’s gonna happen. and that’s what happens when people fall off the railings!!!

“oh, but you told them what numbers to enter” yeah but humans are unpredictable and ya gotta account for the human element when doing stuff like this!! team rwby didn’t account for people falling off--because why would people fall off if they were told not to? but the human element messed that up anyway!!!

anyways i’m a fucking nerd apparently but it was super cool to see that reflected in ambrosius!!! i’m a big fan!!!

like whenever people call him tricky or sneaky...no!!! he was just doing exactly what he was told to do!!!! so good!!!

also i wanna see him hang out with his sister jinn lmao

alright and here’s my thoughts/predictions for v9:

first off i just wanna say that this entire section (this entire post really, but especically this section) is just me spitballing lmao. we literally have ZERO clue what’s happening next or where they are, i’m just throwing out some stuff that’s crossed my mind! whatever crwby gives us is gonna be infinitely better than whatever i come up with lmao

that said, i have two ideas for what could be happening in madagascar.

option one is the one i’ve seen other people toss around, which is the whole wonderland-land-of-the-dead thing. i’m kinda torn on this because i think it could be good for penny’s storyline, but not really anyone else’s?? sure, yang and ruby could see summer, but weiss would see...jacques?? and blake would see...adam?? i’m not sure what weiss and blake would have to say to them/learn from them the same way ruby and yang would.

on that same idea, jaune could definitely see pyrrha, but again, i’m wondering what purpose that would serve? obviously jaune’s actions in the finale were guided by pyrrha (or specifically her mom, and realizing that pyrrha never had a choice either), but it’s clear that that’s the case for all of team jnpr, and it will be probably forever. their scene together at pyrrha’s memorial felt like they were closing the door--specifically--on their grief. on the other hand, those actions are super relevant right now and i will never turn down the chance to see pyrrha!!! it’s just free waterworks babey!!!

neo also has roman, but i can’t really see roman admitting to anyone that he got swallowed by a grimm 😭😭 just seems too embarrassing for him LMAO

for penny, i think this could work nicely. all she ever wanted was to not have her life controlled by others--kind of like alice in wonderland (the disney movie version because i am fairy tale illiterate lmao). if penny gets to exist after death in a land where she gets to choose everything for herself i think she would be very happy!

again, if this ends up being the case, crwby could 100% make it work! (and i am 0% opposed to maya model pyrrha.) i just personally am not as sold on this being the case as some others are.

option two imo is vacuo but in the past. which i know seems kind of weird BUT i have reasons!

so we know a few things about vacuo. one, it used to be an oasis and was considered a paradise until atlas and mistral destroyed it for the dust. two, it has giant motherfucking crabs that people like to eat. yes this is all i have to go off of BUT both of those things are in the end credits scene we got!

also, them landing in past-vacuo makes sense on ambrosius’ level. their “one way ticket” probably didn’t include all four dimensions of coordinates--so i could see them landing in the same x, y, and z as the official doorway, but at a different time. the creation would still do exactly what it was asked to do--drop them in vacuo.

there’s also a couple other things. “vacuo” means “in a vacuum” which i’ve heard v9 is supposed to be. also in before the dawn, sun saw some bigass magic tree that awakened his semblance which this one definitely could qualify as

(okay. side note. when i first saw the tree i thought of the glowy tree from james cameron blue people avatar. IDK WHY, i haven’t seen that movie in years??? i also had to google it to make sure i wasn’t making it up and apparently it’s called the “tree of souls.” which would also make sense if it helped sun awakened his semblance. i don’t think rwby based something off of blue people avatar, it’s probably more likely that blue people avatar is based off of some fairytale/mythology that i don’t know anything about LMAO)

i don’t actually think option two is gonna happen, but it was fun to think about!!

also either option opens the opportunity to time not passing 1:1 in current vacuo & rwby’s island getaway which???????? AHHHHH

alright so now to the actual characters lmao. i mentioned wby earlier. i honestly have no clue what neo’s gonna be up to, she’s such a wild card and i LOVE IT.

ruby and jaune is gonna be...........PAIN. NO MATTER WHAT. i have no idea how ruby is gonna react--she might just be so overwhelmed by everything that she snaps/yells at jaune which. PAIN. but she also might not?? which. ALSO PAIN. i feel like no matter what ruby does, jaune’s gonna blame himself anyway. god. i love their friendship SO MUCH and this is gonna HURTTTT

and on that, he doesn’t have ren and nora this time to pull him back from the ledge. this dude’s guilt complex is gonna go crazy especially since he doesn’t have his team and double especially if ruby/rwby blames him for what happened. god it’s gonna HURT TO WATCH.

on a wildly different note, i hope we do get to see vacuo/qrow throughout volume 9. if i go a whole volume without ren and nora i WILL cry lmao.

also it’s gonna be super interesting to see how their group fares!!! vacuo’s fuckin nuts and i’d love to see winter just destroying the grimm there (3 headed giraffe my beloved) and see how the atlas/mantle refugees handle the climate--and how the vacuans react to all of them LMAO

ALSO!!!! THE SULFER FISH WERE THERE!!! very glad to see that they’re in vacuo too because from the concept art it seems like they have super unique abilities and i’m excited that we may get to properly see them, instead of just cameos!!!

team cfvy pspspspspspsps theodore and rumpole pspspspspsps team sssnn pspspspspsps

and, of course, i gotta mention that any possible jnr reunion WILL tear my heart out and i will probably cry for days. i gotta start emotionally preparing now LMAO

alright and that wraps it up!! if anyone makes it down to the bottom props to you!! i don’t expect anyone to actually read this mess lmao. tldr: INCREDIBLE volume and i’m so hype for v9 already!!!

[let-it-raines]

What a Wicked Game {12/15}

Killian met her in a pub on a rainy night in March. Going inside was only supposed to be a way for him to avoid the rain and fight off the demons in his head. It was a place for him to pass through, not stay. But then he was charmed by a blonde woman with a quick wit who had absolutely no interest in him or who he was.

That was a first. It was also the beginning of Emma Nolan helping to bring him back to life. It was the beginning of everything.

Five years later, with their worlds crumbling around them, Killian can’t help but wonder if this is the end of the peace they have known now that his family knows about his relationship. It wouldn’t be a problem if his father wasn’t the King of England.

rating: mature

a/n: thank you to the mods at @captainswanbigbang​ for running this event and helping to encourage writers to finish their wonderful stories, to @resident-of-storybrooke​ for reading all these words, and to @captainsjedi​ for making the beautiful artwork ❤️

ao3: beginning | current

tumblr:  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 

-/-

October 19th, 2018

October dawns bright and warm, but as it settles in, the warmth disappears into a chill and the brightness of the sky turns to the gray for which London is often known. Leaves are still in the midst of changing colors, from a dull green to vibrant oranges and reds that contrast the sky, and Emma finds herself staring out the large window in Killian’s bedroom to look at the leaves falling from a tree and drifting through the air until they eventually land on the edge of the roof. It’s been seven weeks since she slept in her own bed and had her parents just down the hall from her, and as weird as it’s been, she’s thankful for this.

She’s thankful that every day she is actively making the choice to be with Killian and to work at adjusting to all of the complications that come with this life.

It’s more than a lot, but as she looks down at her arm and sees it without the ugly white plaster and stretches her arms above her head without any pain, Emma reminds herself that time and a little extra care can heal things. The immediate reaction and pain doesn’t stay. It changes and lessens. Her body is healing, her heart too, and the darkness that surrounded her for all of August seems to have almost been extinguished.

Nothing about this has been easy, but Emma doesn’t want to retreat back and walk away again. She still believes that her reasons were sound, that she had to do it in order to take care of herself and protect her heart, and in a weird way, coming out on the other side has made her thankful for it.

Getting into a car crash and possibly almost dying because photographers wanted a picture of her sitting in a car after they found out about she and Killian’s breakup wasn’t great. She could have done without that. She still could. And she definitely won’t be getting in a car on a rainy night anytime soon.

Her physical scars may be lessening, most of them non-existent now, but she’s not ready for that. She’s not ready for a lot of things, but when has she ever been?

“Darling,” Killian calls out, and she gets a little smile on her face at how much his accent thickens on that word, “do you know where my solid navy tie is? It should be with all of the others, but I can’t find it.”

“Where did you last see it?”

“If I bloody well knew that, I wouldn’t be asking where it is.”

He pokes his head out of the bathroom before walking outside and finishing the buttons on his dress shirt. He looks handsome today in his navy pants and light blue dress shirt, and she really doesn’t see why he needs to wear a tie when he looks fine without it. Royal dress code or something. She doesn’t know. Over the past few weeks as she’s isolated herself in Killian’s apartment at Kensington or wandered over to Liam and Elsa’s to spend time with Elsa, she’s found herself going through guidebooks that Elsa had made when she got engaged to Liam. There are all these rules and regulations from how to cross your legs to what nail polish she’s supposed to wear, and while Emma thinks a lot of it is bullshit, it’s the territory that comes with being in this relationship.

Emma will paint her nails ballet slipper pink and cross her legs at the ankle every damn day if that’s what it takes. What she won’t do is be suffocated by the press and by Brennan.

What she won’t do is make Killian leave his family and break his mom’s heart simply because she couldn’t handle the pressure.

If he wants to leave, if it is truly his decision outside of her, she’s more than happy for them to live their lives in a simpler way where Killian doesn’t have to worry about where his solid navy tie is. Leaving may be in their future, but they’ll cross that bridge when they get to it.

But if they’re staying and doing this, she wants to make the best out of the situation. She wants to work with charities that help empower women and children. She wants to do that for men too, to educate them on the intricacies over an ever-changing world. She wants to do good and be good. This family is insane, the money and the traditions and the vault full of actual tiaras like something out of a movie, but they can use their privilege to do good.

Emma knows what it’s like to not have this kind of privilege, and now she may be in a position to help.

“Cool down, Casanova. No need to get all snippy over your tie. Where are you even going today?”

“The opening of a hospital wing and then I’m meeting with a slew of new security guards to interview.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

Killian arches a brow. “Haven’t you spent enough time in hospitals lately?”

“I meant to the interviews, dumbass. Isn’t this for my security, too?”

Killian fidgets with the neck of his shirt, buttoning and then unbuttoning it so that black tufts of chest hair show. “Aye, but I figured I’d go through the candidates first, and then you could meet the top few to see which ones you’re most comfortable with.”

“I can come with you. It’s really not a big deal. I don’t have any plans for the day.”

“Swan, it’s fine. I promise.” Killian walks over to her and sits down on the edge of the bed next to her before taking her hand and bringing it to his mouth. “This is a dreadfully boring process, and my father is unfortunately going to be there for some of it, though I’ll likely leave the room when he does his own interviews. I don’t - after August, he’s convinced that I can’t pick out my own security team.”

“August was...I mean, he was selling information about us because his dad is sick and can’t afford the surgeries and medication back in America. He was willing to risk prison to save his dad. That’s not something you could have predicted.”

A part of Emma understands the words she’s telling Killian, but the other part of her wants to punch August’s fucking teeth out for making her life hell and inadvertently causing her crash.

“You’ve met Brennan. You know how he can be. I could do everything perfectly, but one screw up that’s outside of my control, and I’m incompetent.”

“Your dad sucks.”

Killian leans his head back with his laugh before leaning forward and pressing his lips to her knuckles once more. “In three words, you’ve managed to sum up quite a bit of my life.”

“I’m magical like that.”

“That you are, my love. That you are.” Killian sighs and blinks at her a few times. She thinks he’s going to say something to her, but then there’s a slight shake of his head and she knows the moment has passed. “Give me a little more time, and I swear I’ll talk to him. Seriously. He and I may never get along, but that’s okay. I simply need him to publicly accept you and to sign off on all of these protection measures for you.”

“Killian, you know you don’t have to do - ”

“No, I do. I will do everything I can to protect you, and if that means I have to have an actual conversation with my father where I don’t leave the room until I get what I want, I will. We’ve missed so much time not talking and not taking action. I don’t want to miss any more.”

Emma leans forward and presses her mouth to Killian’s cheek. “I love you. You should wear the white and navy striped tie instead of the solid one.”

He raises his hand to his forehead as he stands from the bed. “Aye, that’s a good idea.”

“And babe?”

“Yeah, love?”

“If Graham Humbert doesn’t make it to the final interview stage for security, Ruby and I will both be pissed at you. He’s who I want protecting me.”

“That doesn’t terrify me as much as it should.”

“Ruby will be vicious.”

“Eh.”

“I can withhold sex, and you just got that back.”

Killian mock gasps, placing his hand over his heart. “You’re a liar, Emma Nolan. I know you find me too attractive to ever do that.”

He catches the pillow she throws with annoying ease, and she hates him for it.

(Not really.)

After Killian leaves, Emma falls back into bed and thinks that she’ll spend her day watching Netflix or doing something else as equally lazy. What better way is there to spend her last day of being twenty-five?

None.

But that lasts approximately two episodes of a show before guilt nags at her, and she’s moving the covers off of her legs and standing from the bed with a frown etched on her lips and the idea that she needs to clean something. Cleaning is not at all her thing unless she’s working at the pub, but she’s been pretty much on vacation (if vacation included recovering from a car crash and having a million talks with your boyfriend over all of the problems in your relationship) for two months, and she’s probably genetically unable to not work for such long periods of time.

She’s in a literal palace, even if it’s nothing like any of the movies or shows, and instead of relaxing, she wants to clean up the spots Killian has let go over the past few weeks from not having a maid to aid him in his ridiculously specific cleaning rituals.

What even is her life?

She starts in the kitchen, going through Killian’s fridge and throwing out everything that’s expired or has gone bad, and she quickly moves on from that to vacuuming every rug and sweeping or dusting the places that get missed. It’s a lot, and if it wasn’t for the music that is playing over the system, she’d have quit hours ago. She’s about to quit now when she remembers just how messy Killian’s closet is because of her absolute inability to hang up her own clothes.

They’ve probably had more fights about that than, oh, you know, whether or not the actual King of England wants to behead her or not.

(Currently, they’re leaning more toward him wanting to lock her away in a dungeon so she can’t cause any more unintentional media frenzies. It’s apparently less dramatic than a beheading because at least she gets to live...this is a weird train of thought.)

Emma’s phone starts ringing, and she pulls it out of her pocket to answer as she walks up the stairs.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, sweetheart,” David greets. “How are you feeling today? Old? Young? Like your life is over because you’re getting closer to late-twenties than early-twenties?”

“You are the most encouraging person alive.”

“I try.”

Emma chuckles and turns down the hallway to go into the bedroom, picking up her bra from where Killian must have tossed it last night and placing it in the hamper. “I’m fine. Killian’s at work opening a new hospital wing, apparently. I’m cleaning. How are you? What are you guys up to today?”

“I’m sorry. Did you say you were cleaning? Are we sure that you don’t have a concussion?”

“Your dad jokes are not good.”

“Every joke I’ve told since the day you were born has been a dad joke, and they’ve all been fabulous.”

She groans and walks into the closet before placing her phone on the table in the center of the room and putting it on speaker so she can do a little work before she loses momentum.

“I’m taking your dad joke privileges away, and to answer your question, I really am fine. I’m just messy, and Killian hasn’t had any of his usual staff in the apartment while I’ve been here. I think the whole August thing freaked him out so that he doesn’t trust anyone around me.”

“Someone close to him was selling information about you that harmed you. I’d be freaked out too. Hell, I am freaked out. If I wouldn’t get arrested for assault, I’d confront the guy.”

Everyone she loves wants to punch everyone who has hurt her, but they all stop themselves because of the fear of getting arrested for assault…she’s not sure if that’s flattering or concerning.

“What are you and Mom up to today?” she questions again, wanting to change the subject. She doesn’t want to talk about all of the shitty stuff that’s been happening to her lately. All she wants is to pick up all of her sweaters from the ground and figure out which ones need to be washed. Focusing on the bad is not how she’s going to move forward.

(And maybe not having to see August Booth’s face.)

“Your mom is downstairs with Will going over some possible menu changes, and I’ve been told I’m not allowed in the pub until I fix whatever is up with this toilet.”

“Ah, so you called me to procrastinate on doing that?”

“You know me so well.”

Emma fills in her dad on everything that’s been going on over the past few days. She tells him that her arm almost doesn’t feel weird anymore and that Ruby came over for dinner two nights again and brought Graham along with her. David is nearly as shocked by that as she was. This might be the longest relationship Ruby has ever had, and it’s good to see her so happy. It’s good that Emma likes Graham in that he’s dating her best friend and also might be protecting Emma’s life from now on if his next round of interviews goes well. In return, her dad gives her far too much information on the date he and her mom went on last night, and then he spends at least ten minutes talking about the difference in two brands of tomatoes.

All the while Emma has almost the entire closet (seriously, her dad talked for way too long and gave too much information about the date like he was talking to a friend and not his daughter) cleaned up. When she moves a pair of jeans that are on Killian’s side of the closet, she finds his solid blue navy tie he was searching for earlier.

“Ha,” she mumbles before reaching down to grab the tie.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says to her dad before tugging on the tie and pulling it up only for a small black box to roll out of it and tumble down onto the ground. “Holy shit.”

“Emma, are you okay?” David asks, but Emma barely hears him over the pounding of her heart. There might as well be an entire drumline in the room.

“Emma?”

“Y-yeah,” she lies even as her fingers tug so tightly on the tie that it might tear. “Hey, Dad? Has Killian talked to you about any...future type things?”

“What do you mean?”

Emma huffs and goes to pick up the box. They could be earrings, right? Or a necklace? Or another ring? She’s got a sapphire one she wears on her right hand. Killian has given her a ring before that wasn’t an engagement ring. That doesn’t mean what’s in this box is one. He buys her jewelry, and it’s not a big deal.

Except…

When the hell did he have time to get this?

How long has he had it? What made him decide to get it? When does he plan on using it? Does he still plan on using it after their breakup?

“You know what I mean. Has he - you know what,” Emma decides, placing the box on the table, “never mind. Don’t tell me anything. I think I’m going to have to call you back later.”

“Whatever you want,” David sighs, confused. “I love you, kiddo.”

“I love you, too, Dad.”

And then the phone line disconnects and she’s left with nothing except for the sound of that damn drumline and the jewelry box that she doesn’t know what to do with. She’s not going to look. She can’t look. There’s no good that would come out of it.

She really wants to look.

Like, really.

“No,” Emma tells herself, grabbing the box off the table and moving to put it back where it must have been before it got tangled in her jeans and in the tie. She puts the tie back for good measure as well, and she’s absolutely going to bite her tongue on bragging about finding the tie when Killian gets home.

He wants to marry her.

She wants to marry him.

Maybe cleaning was worth something.

-/-

Killian comes home that night with grilled cheese sandwiches, which he hates, and onion rings from Ruby’s grandmother’s restaurant, and she doesn’t think she’s ever loved him more.

He tells her that Graham has moved onto the final selections even with Brennan’s hounding and worry over Graham not being trained in the same way as their usual security.

Emma knows that she wants him to be the one who’s hired. She’s not going to trust anyone else, not after everything that’s happened.

-/-

He doesn’t give her any kind of jewelry for her birthday the next day, and she knows what was in the box.

There’s no definite proof, but Emma knows.

Right now, where they are, she’s not ready to get married, but she will be someday. Probably soon. So if Killian were to ask her, she’d say yes over and over again, but the actual getting married part would have to be put on hold until her emotions, Killian’s too, were a little less chaotic.

Love is a really funny thing.

-/-

November 10th, 2018

The cool of the marble pebbles Emma’s skin as Killian helps guide her on top of the counter. His fingers inch over the back of her thighs and up behind her knees where she’s sensitive, and she giggles into his neck while trying to keep herself from bursting into hysterical laughter. Killian keeps the apartment so warm that she didn’t bother to put on anything more than her sleep shorts and a t-shirt last night before going to bed, and she’s regretting that now with every shift over her body over the countertop. But Killian is warm, especially when he steps in between her thighs and she hooks her ankles around his back right over his ass, and every touch of his fingers, gentle and teasing, brings a little more fire to her body.

Especially if he’d stop trying to tickle her while hotly running his tongue down the side of her throat and leaving open-mouthed kisses there.

He’s particularly good at those, and she could spend day after day close to him as he covers her body with affectionate words and delicate brushes of lips that turn into more.

Really, that’s been the last two months, even with her having to wear that atrocious cast for most of it, but they found simple ways to fix that. Being apart and not having those beautiful blue eyes to look into or that laugh to hear after a funny joke was absolutely torture, and having him back in her life, having him back as her person, is something Emma doesn’t ever want to take for granted again.

She will inevitably. It’s human nature. But she doesn’t want to.

Being with Killian is the easy thing. Fighting off the demons is what makes it difficult, but fighting off the demons and conquering them has made her realize that good things often come after struggles that seem impossible.

She’s a sentimental fool now, and she doesn’t care.

(Finding the engagement ring two weeks ago has made her even more sentimental.)

She especially doesn’t care as Killian’s tongue dips into her collarbone and his hands snake up underneath her shirt, warm palms against cool skin in a combination of which she’ll never tire. Emma knows that Killian is a sentimental fool now too. He was before, definitely more than her, but she can see all of the little ways he’s being more affectionate than he was before.

That’s saying something.

But his affection has been obvious lately. In the mornings, she always wakes to him curled around her, hand resting between her breasts and chin nuzzled into the back of her neck. That’s not how they sleep, not usually, so she knows that he does that when he wakes up in the morning while she’s still sleeping. He’s always touching her - hands intertwined, arm around her waist, ankles hooked together - like he’s looking for constant reassurance that she’s real.

That they’re real.

Killian has gone to war for her on multiple occasions, and she has seen the intensity and the fighting spirit that he possesses. She watched him break down over her accident and watched him absolutely vilify every single press association that was involved in that incident or any of the ones that have attacked her in the past or stolen private information from her. She’s watched him deal with the Neal interviews that seem to keep coming despite their falsities, and she’s watched him do absolutely everything that he can to protect her.

Emma never wanted protection or help. She thought that it made her weak to not be able to handle things on her own, but that was wrong.

All of it.

People are going to tell you who you are your whole life. You have to punch back and say “no, this is who I am.” If you want people to look at you differently, make them. If you want to change things, you’re going to have to go out there and change them yourself. Because there are no fairy godmothers in this world.

But there are supportive partners who punch back with you or stand to the side and cheer you on when you need it the most.

“I hate these bloody shorts,” Killian mumbles into her skin as the deep timbre of his voice vibrates down her spine. “I seem to both want you in them and out of them all at once.”

“That’s quite the conundrum you have going on, Jones.”

Killian chuckles before nipping at her jaw and pulling back so that she sees his eyes are blown black. “You are the conundrum, Nolan,” he softly says as his thumbs ghost over both of her nipples, slowly but surely bringing them to peaks. “It’s a funny thing. I seem to always want you. I want you in the mornings, at night, in the middle of the damn day…”

Emma hums while pleasure continues to curl between her thighs, and she wraps her arms loosely around his neck, playing with his hair and running the gemstone of her ring down the back of his neck. “Tell me more about this wanting me in the morning thing.”

The look on his face is positively dirty, and it’s exactly what she wants. So when his hands leave her breasts and move to take her shirt off, she stretches her arms in the air and allows him to undress her until the warm air of the heater is touching her skin. Killian shifts against her so that she can feel his length brushing against where she wants him, a perfect fit in a position that shouldn’t be comfortable, and she melts at his touch as the roughness of his unshaven scruff scratches against her neck and down her sternum to be between her breasts.

“You’re a damn temptress,” he mutters, voice deep and raspy with sleep still lingering. “I wake up and see the smoothness of your skin laid out before me, and my mind is only filled with thoughts of you. I’ve never wanted someone like this.”

“Funny thing, I feel the same way.”

“Do you now?” His fingers tug into her shorts and her underwear, and she lifts her hips as he pulls them down and off of her ankles so that she’s left bare before him, the marble chilling her skin has goosebumps pop up and spread over her.

“I do. Most definitely. You’re quite the catch.”

Killian laughs as he captures her lips, so soft and pliant and warm, with her own. There’s something to be said for kissing just for the sake of kissing, the feeling it sends through her body, and when Emma gently runs her tongue across his bottom lip, asking for entrance, he gladly grants it, tangling their tongues together in one of his favorite dances. She’s definitely picked a partner who knows what he’s doing.

Emma runs her hands through the hair at the nape of his neck and keeps her hand anchored there while the other runs up his spine, soft little taps of her fingertips against the bone underneath his shirt. They stay that way for awhile, lips moving together, until Emma’s hand leaves his hair to move underneath his shirt as well, pulling up at the material until he pulls back and tugs it over his head.

“I feel like we’re on a little bit more equal footing now. You were wearing too many clothes.”

“Was I? I hadn’t noticed. I was a little bit distracted by how unsanitary it’s going to be for us to fuck in the kitchen.”

“That’s literally never stopped you before.”

He huffs and leans forward to kiss her, slow and so impossibly thorough that she feels it all the way down to her toes. “I know,” he grins. “Are you okay up there, or do you want to move upstairs?”

“As long as you don’t hit my head into a cabinet, I’m fine.”

“You’re so beautiful, my love,” he whispers against her skin, kissing the tops of her breasts as her eyelids flutter closed and she recovers from the whiplash in the change of his tone. “I remember the first time I saw you, Emma,” he speaks into her skin as his nose drags along her stomach and arousal tugs at her belly. “You were – are so bloody gorgeous, the curls of your ponytail framing your face and the dark of your eyelashes looking down at me as you told me to get my soggy ass out of the booth.”

“I didn’t say that,” she protests, running her hand through the hair and tugging him down closer to where she’s desperately aching for her.

There’s something about the night that they met that Killian always thinks about. It’s a frequent remembrance, this conversation one they’ve had before, and Emma knows that in moments where Killian is nostalgic, where he’s thinking about how much she means to him, his mind goes back to that night and piecing together all of the circumstances for their meeting.

She doesn’t care how it happened. Just that it did.

No one was ever supposed to love her or treasure her like this. This wasn’t supposed to be how it is for her. She wasn’t supposed to get the good guy. It wasn’t in the cards.

Life has apparently decided to deal her a new hand altogether.

“But you were thinking it,” he whispers against skin, lips pressing against her small tattoo and lingering there. She thought getting that might be a mistake, that the desperation was too much, but over the past few weeks, Killian has held onto it like a glimmer of hope. She did the same. “You looked so frustrated with me, like how dare I walk into your pub in order to get out of the rain.”

“Shameful, really,” she teases, and when she opens her mouth to say something else, she can’t, her throat suddenly too tight to speak while the entirety of the English language escapes from her brain.

Killian’s hands hook around the back of her knees, and this time there’s no playful teasing. Instead, he spreads her legs further apart and bends down to his own knees. She’s about to make a joke about him not hurting himself, a tease over his twenty-ninth birthday last month and how dramatic he was over being nearly thirty, but then he’s kissing her exactly where she wants him, where she needs him.

His tongue drags roughly against her like a perfected routine, and Emma’s eyes tighten. She can’t bear to open them, but then she does and sees the dark mess of hair between the paleness of her thighs. Even more than that, she sees the blue of his eyes under the hood of his eyelid, and she wonders if today is going to be the day that this is all too much for her.

Never.

Killian shifts underneath her, his right hand leaving the curve of her knee to join with his tongue as he kisses her and kisses her and kisses her. Moans filter between them, hers and his, and the tension could be cut with one of the knives that’s in the drawer beneath her ass. It’s all too much - too much pleasure and want and love - and when he slips two fingers into her and curls them, she gasps out his name as a chant that never seems to stop.

“Magnificent,” he mumbles, the sound of his voice like liquid fire in her veins. “Bloody magnificent. Your noises, my darling. Fuck.”

There’s something about knowing that Killian is as affected by things like this as she is, even if he’s the one giving all of the pleasure, and that with the combination of his mouth moving over her bundle of nerves and his fingers moving within her as her falling apart little by little, like the waves cresting onto the shore.

Damn.

Killian presses a kiss to where she’s still fluttering before moving to her thigh, light touches that are nothing more than a blink, a whisper. When he rises from the ground, he grunts, probably from having his knees pressed into hardwood for so long, but she doesn’t think about that for too long when she can feel him hard against her and pressing into her thigh. “Mmm,” Emma hums, pulling herself up and tugging Killian closer to her so that she buries her face in his neck, kissing the straining cord. “You are wonderful.” “Ah, well, that tends to be your reaction after we do something like that.” “Are you fishing for compliments?” “Never.” She chuckles while he does the same, and even without looking, she knows that his eyes are crinkled, joy written across his face.

“Do you want to move upstairs or…”

“Upstairs. Definitely upstairs.”

They move quickly, neither of them in the mood to wait, and while it would have been faster to move to the couch in the living room, this is better. Killian falls back to the bed with laughter on his lips, and Emma immediately hooks her thumbs into his sweats and pulls them down as much as she can before he lifts his hips off the bed to help her out, kicking them off his ankles and onto the floor while she is busy kissing up his thigh, her hand running up his length, feeling the warm hardness in her palms.

“Emma,” Killian moans, voice gruntled. She smirks into his thigh and keeps her hand on his length.

“I am romancing you, Killian,” she promises against his lightning bolt scar before crawling up his body, peppering open mouthed kisses against the trail of his chest hair until she’s leaning over his mouth, her folds teasing him at their hips. “Like you do to me.”

“Darling - ”

“Your eyes, even blown black with desire like they are right now,” she whispers, circling her hips above him to lightly grind down, “are the most gorgeous blue I’ve ever seen.”

She touches his face then, running her fingers over his jaw. “I love your stubble, how it’s black with a little bit of red peppered in, and I love when you don’t shave for a few days and it’s full and just the right mix of soft and prickly. I love the way it feels when you rub it against my cheek in the mornings when you’re waking me up or how it feels against the inside of my thighs.”

She kisses his jaw, running her tongue behind her lips, and the grunt Killian makes curls as little bursts of fire down her spine.

“I love,” she says, running her hands down his biceps as she sits on his lap, right below where she knows he wants her, “the strength of your arms when you hold me, no matter what the occasion. And I love,” she moves her hands through the hair at his chest as Killian twitches beneath her touch, “this hair and how it pokes through the top of all of your shirts. I love the ways that your eyes crinkle when you’re truly smiling.”

I love that you love me enough to want to marry me, she thinks to herself before saying. “I love that you fight for me every day no matter the circumstances.”

She rises on her legs and scoots forward, guiding him to her entrance before slowly, slowly, slowly sinking down onto him. It’s a perfect fit. Maybe not physically, but emotionally, and Killian’s hands grapple for her hips, nails digging into skin. She doesn’t think he’s ever been this quiet for such a long period of time during sex.

“And mostly, at least for our purposes right now, what I love is the feeling of you inside me, thick and full and perfect.”

At that, she starts to move, rolling her hips against him, and it feels so goddamn good that her brief stint as the verbose one in the relationship has ended and Killian is the one to start muttering words of encouragement and curses that would have anyone blushing. She sets a slow, unhurried pace that she knows will draw out pleasure, but Killian doesn’t let her do that for long before he takes control of their movements, speeding up the pace as he thrusts up into her. She lets out a whimper as he hits the exact right spot, and Killian captures the next one with his mouth, kissing her like a man starved of affection and like it’s not ten in the morning.

Suddenly, Killian grabs her hips and rolls them over to change their position, his body encasing hers. He mutters a “bloody fuck” when she clenches her thighs to try to keep him from slipping out, and Emma throws her head back with laughter even if she shouldn’t.

Killian nips at her neck, but she can feel his smile too.

He must be able to tell that she’s getting close, rising higher and higher to her peak, because he releases her hips to grab her wrists, sliding his hands until their fingers are interlaced above her head. He tilts his hips so that his thrusts catch her clit.  Her breath hitches and her legs wrap around his backside, and Emma might actually melt. She thinks that she has. Her limbs are all jelly, and Killian isn’t much better above her.

This is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

There are a million things they should probably do today, but they never seem to move away from bed besides getting food from the kitchen. That’s what she’d been trying to do this morning when Killian distracted her, but she’s not going to complain. This is good and nice and Emma could wrap herself in these blankets and in Killian for the rest of time.

When she wakes later, it’s to the slap of a hand to her skin, and Emma immediately flinches and jolts up, blinking into the darkness.

“Ow, shit, Killian. What was that for?”

“I was just making sure you’re here,” he mumbles, voice groggy.

“By slapping me?”

“Killian,” a voice says, and Emma realizes that Killian is on the phone. He might not even realize he’s on the phone. “Killian are you there? “Killian, have you heard a single word I’ve said?”

Liam. He’s talking to Liam.

Holy shit. Why is Liam calling him in the middle of the night?

“I’ll be honest, no. I’m still mostly asleep.”

“Asleep my ass,” Emma mumbles before reaching over to put the call on speaker phone so she doesn’t have to keep straining her ears to hear him. Killian grumbles something, but she ignores him as she settles herself underneath his arm. “Liam, what’s wrong? Is everyone okay?”

“Elsa is in labor, and we sent all of our nannies home for the night. Can the two of you watch Alex for us?”

“Of course,” Emma sighs. “Bring him over when you guys leave, okay?”

“I will, lass. Thank you.”

“It’s not a problem,” Killian promises, finally waking up. “Congratulations, brother.” At that, the line goes dead, and Emma immediately moves to get out of bed only for Killian tugs her back into him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Emma raises a brow and motions down to the distinct lack of clothes on both of their bodies. “I know Alex is about to have a sibling, which is definite proof of his parents having sex, but I don’t want to be the one to have to explain why his uncle was having a naked sleepover with me.”

“Really? You don’t want to explain sex to a toddler? Shocker.”

She huffs and leans forward to brush her lips over his forehead. “Congratulations on being an uncle again, babe.”

Emma hears his swallow as his head nods up and down in affirmation. “Thanks, love. Let’s go put on some clothes so we don’t scar the lad.”

-/-

-/-

The next chapter is technically the last official chapter. How is that even possible? Thank you all for coming along for this ride ❤️

tag list: @mrtinski​ @klynn-stormz​ @jonirobinson64​ @snowbellewells​ @therealstartraveller776​ @thejollyroger-writer​ @sherifemma​ @shardminds​ @captainsjedi​ @galaxyzxstark​ @galadriel26​ @idristardis​ @karenfrommisthaven​ @teamhook​ @spartanguard​ @searchingwardrobes​ @itsfabianadocarmo​ @owlways-and-forever​ @jamif​ @shireness-says​ @ultimiflos​ @nikkiemms​ @resident-of-storybrooke​ @onepunintendid​ @bluewildcatfanatic​ @397bartonstreet​ @killianswannn​ @carpedzem​ @captainkillianswanjones​ @mayquita​ @jennjenn615​ @onceuponaprincessworld​ @a-faekindagirl​ @scientificapricot​ @scarletslippers​ @xellewoods​ @ultraluckycatnd​ @stahlop​ @kmomof4​ @tiganasummertree​ @singersdd​ @captainswanbigbang​

[rpsocsandcanonohmy]

I’m August

Written for Walker Pride Week

Day 7: Free Space

8 months ago

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to do this. Well, he wanted to do this. He wanted to be seen for who he really was and changing schools was a great opportunity to do that. But to get there, he had to do something very scary. 

“Gramps? Do you have a minute?”

“Sure, Allie. What’s on your mind?”

He cringed hearing that name. “I…. Have you started enrolling us at Sacred Hearts yet?”

“We’re just going through the paperwork. Why do you ask?”

Here goes. “I was just wondering. I...I was just thinking about the whole, ‘new school’ thing. Not really gonna know anyone there, not in the same circuit as our old school...new beginnings and all that.”

“If this is about changing your middle name, the answer is still no.”

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “I know, this is different.”

“What is it then?”

“I’mtrans.” Like ripping off a band-aid.

“....What was that?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m transgender. I’m a boy, not a girl. I feel like I'm stuck in the wrong body. I don't want to be 'Allie' anymore. That's not who I am."

His confession was met with blank stares. He bit his lower lip nervously. This had been a lot smoother when he practiced it with Stella and Uncle Liam a few days ago. Maybe he should've done it then when Liam was still in town. He could've had back up. He could've-

"Who are you, then?"

"What?"

"I asked you what you wanted to be called, dear. Who are you?"

"...August." He'd picked it from the list of possible names Emily decided to include in his baby book.

"Alright, August. Your Gramps and I have a few things to talk about."

"...Okay." It was out of his hands now.

Now

“Are you on your way?”

“Yes, Liam.”

“Good. You’re not gonna stop anywhere on the way, are you?”

“I might have to stop for gas-”

“Just gas. No booze or sight-seeing or anything else.”

“Okay, okay, geeze. It’s like you think I don’t want to come home or something.”

Liam sighed on the other end. “Cordi, you know that’s not it. I just…. Au- Allie wants to talk to you about something and it’s kind of a big deal.”

“Yeah, okay. Do you know what she wants to talk about?”

“I was specifically asked not to give you any heads up on it.”

“Well that’s just concerning.”

“It’s nothing bad,” Liam said hurriedly. “Quite the opposite. It’s just…. She wants to tell you herself.”

“If you say so.” Liam had been mentioning this Thing to him ever since he finished the case. Whatever his youngest had to tell him, it was important and Cordell planned on listening with all the care a good father should. Maybe that would make up for his previous absence. “Anyway, I’ll be home in time for dinner. Tell the girls I love them?”

“Of course. See you soon.”

8 months ago

“Al- August? Could you come here please?”

He walked into the dining area, not sure what he was about to hear. They’d used his real name and not his deadname so he was optimistic. Still, that didn’t necessarily mean good news.

“We’ve been thinking about what you told us.”

Here we go.

“We’ve started working on getting your named changed and once that’s sorted we’ll enroll you under that name.”

That was good.

“But we don’t want to do anything medical just yet. Not without your father around anyway.”

Slightly less good but it could be worse.

“We’ll let you do whatever else you want to do for your appearance. Haircut, binders, new wardrobe, whatever.”

Amazing.

"Thank you." he said, voice breaking slightly at the end. It was more than he'd expected.

"Of course. We love you and we want you to be happy. Maybe we don't understand the whole 'trans' thing but we don't need to."

He hugged them both tightly. "Thank you. I love you. So much."

He couldn't believe this was really happening. He was going to be August Walker. It made him tear up just thinking about it.

Now

“He said he’ll be home in time for dinner,” August said as he entered the living room. “Uncle Liam just got off the phone with him and made sure he knew he had to be here.”

“He’d better,” Stella muttered from her spot on the couch. “He was supposed to be back months ago.”

August rolled his eyes. “Could you relax? You’re gonna scare him away again if you act like that when he gets here.”

“You assume he’ll get here.”

“I choose optimism.” August shrugged and sat on the opposite side of the couch and swung his legs up so his feet sat in her lap. “Besides, Mawline’s making her chili; he never misses Mawline’s chili.”

Stella huffed and rolled her eyes. “I do not understand the faith you have in him.”

“You used to have it too,” he said softly.

“That was before he abandoned us,” she snapped.

“And whose bright idea sent him that way in the first place?” he retorted. He instantly regretted it when her face fell and he moved to sit closer to her. “Sorry. I didn’t-”

“I know,” she said softly, hugging him tightly. She rubbed his back and pulled away with a frown. “How long have you been wearing that?”

August lightly pushed her arms off him and crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s fine.”

“How long?”

“Long enough.”

“You know you can’t wear it all day. The instructions said-”

“I know how to wear my binder, Stella. I’ll take a break later,” he muttered. 

Stella chewed her bottom lip. “...I have some big sweaters if you want. They should be big enough to cover….”

August shook his head. He knew Stella meant well but today was stressful enough as it was. Dad coming home would have been big enough without also telling him that his youngest kid was transgender and had a new name and pronouns and appearance and everything. Maybe he should’ve taken Uncle Liam’s offer to break the news to Dad earlier. But that just didn’t seem right. He felt like he should do it in person.

Of course, that meant now he had to agonize about it all day and wonder if that trade off was worth it. Hopefully it would be.

7 months ago

“Class, we have a new student joining us today. Would you like to introduce yourself, young man?”

That felt so good to hear. “Hi. My name is August Walker. I’m happy to be here.”

“Thank you. Why don’t you take a seat over there next to Ruby and then we can get started?”

He did it. 

He really did it.

He was August Walker.

Now

Cordell pulled up to the house and saw his whole family waiting outside. Well, almost his whole family. Allie wasn’t there. He’d expected her to be waiting on the porch like she usually was when he came home from a mission. Maybe she was just nervous about whatever it was she wanted to talk about?

Stella greeted him first with a tight hug. Then Momma and Daddy. James shook his hand and Stan clapped him on the back. Liam was the last to approach him with his own hug. "Where's Allie?" he asked, looking around the yard.

"Inside, in hi- her room. She's waiting to talk to you."

"Still not gonna tell me what this is about?"

"Not my place to say. Just…." Liam sighed and looked away. "Be careful, okay? She's nervous."

"I will," he promised, heading inside to talk to his daughter. As he headed up the stairs, he wondered what he was about to walk into. It was clearly something important, given all the secrecy and emphasis. Something life altering perhaps? Did something happen? Was she sick? Now he was nervous.

"Allie, Liam said you wanted to-" He stopped when he saw her.

He knew he'd been gone for a long time. Almosy a year. People were bound to change in that time, especially young people. But this…. This was a lot.

Instead of the girly "Pretty in Pink'' princess he said goodbye to all those months ago, Allie sits in front of him with short hair, boy's jeans, and an oversized hoodie. Her room has changed too, from neons to neutral colors and shelves of books instead of horse figurines. She cleared her throat and stood up. "Hi, Dad."

Her voice sounded different too. Lower, a little deeper, like she was forcing it down.

"Hi…."

She took a deep breath and crossed her arms over her chest. "I know this is a lot to take in but…. I'm transgender. I'm a boy. My name is August. Gramps and Mawline let me change my name and everything back when they transferred us to Sacred Hearts High a few months ago. I haven't done any physical transitioning yet because they didn't want to do that without you here. I figured it out a few years ago and I didn't say anything because I wasn't sure how y'all would react. I only said something now because we were changing schools and I thought...fresh start. So. Yeah. That's where we're at." All- August looked down at he- his shoes, likely waiting for a reaction.

It was a lot. If he had a million years to guess what his youngest had to say to him, this probably never would've made the list.

But here they were. Allie wasn't a little girl anymore. He was a young man who named himself August. And he needed his dad, now more than ever.

"....Okay."

"What?" 

"I said, okay." 

August nearly bowled him over with a hug and he hugged back just as tight. "I love you," was muffled against his shirt.

"I love you too, August."

He could process this whole thing later. Right now, his son was all that mattered.

[dwestfieldblog]

A VERY REMOTE ENGLISH TEACHER

Where meditations, rants, reverie and absent seizures cross over... closer to one gun with one bullet, the rose of ruby and the cross of gold...uff, and MENTACIDE IN THE TIME OF MASQUES. Although I have never suffered from the guilty masochistic torture of ‘pleasure anxiety’, Bacchus hath indeed drowned more men than Neptune.  So I stopped drinking for 18 days to fool myself I was doing something positive and threw away enough things to be minimalist again. Arf. Beauty and/or function uber alles.  

Been treading water for three years and trying not to drown...big round of one hand clapping for the former poet. Meanwhile, in this temporary world and perception I have created of it, I am looking at a very possible exile one way or the other...my ‘plan’...a long phased withdrawal or hasty retreat. My wish is to stay, but once I leave, it might well be very hard to return.  Read as many metaphors as you want into that but in spite of my dislike of the conservatively minded Aristotle’s ‘either/or’ nonsense, there do indeed appear to be only two this time. And appear is the operative word. Appearances can be deceptive and emotions (unless raised and focused) cloud over what should be clear. Pain has a tendency to breed worry and fear too but let’s draw a veil over that for now eh? Suppress, suppress, release comes later...breathe deep and try not to cough, onward we go where the game gets rough...Just like Tom Thumbs Blues 65.  

Remember Roman Protasevich...As Lukasenko himself said...‘Belarus stood at the edge of an abyss and I helped it take a step forward’. Look good on your tombstone that will Al. Fecking outrageous the Indian PM only admitted in May that covid was transmitted in the air. He needs removing... as do two thirds of all the other world leaders East and West. Hello Bollsanaro. People are very easy to manipulate when they’re are scared or angry...and right now the world majority are both. But, ‘there is a crack in everything... that’s how the light gets in’... and ‘things could change’, doesn’t have to be for the worse. It can take decades to realise this as actual truth, but still nice to read and try internalise the following last week.’The odds actually favour the optimists, since dissipate structures are more likely to evolve into more information rich (intelligent?) forms than into primitive or chaotic forms.’ All my friends bar my best one are optimists..Hello you:-)

Ever onward deeper downward with Orban in Hungary and his mission of ‘Christian values’, which involves a familiar routine of arresting, beating and disappearing dissenters in the name of Christ and taking over the universities to replace professors with those who understand on which side their bread is buttered. Decent judges long gone. Nice fascist communism...and ex soldiers in France and the Czech republic warning of civil war...

And now spiraling we go into the black hole vortex of Disaster capitalism, ‘Let the bodies pile high’. There’s gold in them thar ills....ISLAND PARANOIA and PERFIDIOUS ALBION! A country which demands a contract, agrees, signs to it and then refuses to honour it. We look worse than ridiculous, we look deceitful. Gentlemen, your places please. Boris Johnson is a clumsy, inept, disgraceful charlatan, con merchant and LIAR. A blustering master bullshit artist, the only decent thing about his recent secret wedding is that now he legally has one less bastard child.  

Recently I read that British people are displaying signs of Stockholm syndrome...in that they dislike those who hold power over them and make the rules but during the time of pandemic, they are the ones who will release the saviour vaccine and get everything moving again. So rather than rocking the boat and daring to express dissent at the DIABOLICAL handling of the last 18 months, they have mostly kept quiet and voted for the same endlessly failing, corrupt and venal politicians who made a bad situation far worse. (That said, it bears repeating that there are a few million in the UK who didn’t quite understand that that the spread of a highly contagious airborne virus can be slowed by the wearing of masks/applying basic hygiene and even took offence at being told what should have made sense to any adult homo SAPIENS half capable of cogitating for themselves. Morons and scum. Same where you are?

By the way BBC...the colossal dearth of stories about the endless government failures in relation to Covid, death, corruption and the NHS...ever since they blackmailed you with threats of revoking the TV licence fee and got you to change Directors has been noted. Long may Have I Got News For You continue the satire and balance needed in a DEMOCRACY. Obey your public servants? Why, when they do not serve few but themselves? Power OF the people? Which ones...the mob? The same bleating pricks who follow populists?

Four eyed beanpole fop Rees Mogg, with his wonderful line that the benefits of Brexit will be seen ‘over the next fifty years’...well yes, that is why most people vote in democratic elections eh?...So they will be dead or ancient before the change they hoped for comes...and the politicians who lead them now, will have all long moved on to revolving door chairman of the board offshore limited liability company paradise. Bread today jam tomorrow fairytales. What I tell you three times is true.  

O, but the English do so love to be told what to do by dumb posh boys who treat them like dirt. Some are forelock tugging and some are self flagellating middle class upper class wannabes who will never get there but still feel proud they are not street level proles. Doby the house elf alien hamster Michael Gove found guilty of breaking the law. Nothing. Internal inquiries run by those connected to the money changing hands find nothing illegal. Corruption for all to see...and ignore. ‘Well, what can we do?’ The uselessly inept serial failure Dido Harding to be in charge of the National Health Service? (she of the collapsed Woolworths, Talk Talk and the 22 BILLION pound loss of the Covid Track and Trace program where non working consultants/insultants, were paid 1000 pounds a day). American style privatisation is coming where only the wealthy or criminal can afford to be repaired and well. Sick.  

Meanwhile, All our imported nurses out, and all the lobster red fat Spanish costa de la sol criminals back in. Great exchange, fair trade and forward thinking. The Kremlin are manipulating/supporting Scottish independence... I read years ago about their base in Edinburgh for Russia Today (the foul insert in The Daily Telegraph) and they were already encouraging it. Rees Smug has accelerated and supported their freedom with his snobbish utterances on countries in the UK other than England and their ‘foreign languages’. With every patronising, arrogant pronouncement, the Eton trifles fuel the fire in Scotland which has a long bitter history of being tortured, murdered and subjugated by their southern masters. Perhaps the chumocracy in Downing Street believe the Celts to be as easily cowed as the middle and working classes down south. Here’s hoping not. ‘Rebellious Scots to crush’? Not this time pal.

As for the future of Britain? A dystopian open prison where the lower social classes toil only at the pleasure of their masters. The higher caste getting richer and all others cast into a living Hell of debt, crime, and sickness. Serve until you die and be thankful we allow you to exist. Increasing in utter irrelevance to the world, other than as an example of how wrong a former democracy can go. This future started decades ago...its baobab roots truly deep now. Better education and critical thinking for the masses in the UK (or anywhere else) is highly unlikely now. Optimism huh? As long as I am not in England, I will still be able to tap into it, but once enclosed long term in the group mind there...trapped in a grey quagmire. Keep smiling...

Several weeks ago, I watched a video on YT of apparently English protestors running after the police in London, some attacking and throwing things, one pulling off the pandemic mask of an officer and all shouting abuse at the outnumbered cops who had to keep pulling back. As always, to get my caffeine rush of fury going, I read the comments and was surprised to see two or three from Chinese names. Almost all comments were against the government (fair enough) and dumb against the lock down, masks, vaccinations etc. Checking again, I saw the video had been posted by CGTN...a media company owned and run by the communist party in Beijing...and not one author of diatribes had mentioned this, nor speculated with a critical thought as to why such an organisation might enjoy turning people against their own democratically elected government (however mind rippingly foul and corrupt they are).

I copy pasted the Wikipedia paragraph about the company onto the page and hoped someone else would make the connection. I wouldn’t mind so much IF there were a credible and decent alternative other than the diseased populist poison for which the demonstrating goons chant. China really cares about the standard of democracy in Britain eh? Persuade your enemies to weaken themselves. Destroying countries by encouraging their ‘patriots’.

(That was written on the anniversary of Tienanmen Square...a few days later Xi Jinping gave a speech saying ‘...a lovable and respectable’ China must be presented to the world and must ‘expand its circle of friends’. Tell that to your teenage ‘dissidents’, Muslims, Falun Gong and Tibetans being tortured and brainwashed in prisons or being used for organ harvesting. Tell it to Hong Kong and Taiwan.) 

Unholy America...against abortion and the pill, sex education’s not Gods will and in the Name of Christ they kill...if truth be known, we’ve failed the test...but Jesus was a Socialist and Republican conservatives hate them. The founding fathers of America were Very clear about separation of church and state with damn good Reason. Another part time Christian, Mike Pompeo wants to be president. Q Onan deepstorm morons/Kremlin stool pigeons aka POLEZNYYE IDIOTY continue to push for Trump and his Big Lie...He with the brain where ‘In the left, nothing is right and in the right, nothing’s left.’ Arf.

Over the last two decades, the dumb have been finding their voice and are now louder and prouder of their dumbass ignorance. 74 million in the US alone, their egos unable to retreat in the face of endless evidence to the contrary, they all double down. Like children sticking their fingers in their grimy ears sing songing ‘la la la can’t hear you’. 74 million versions of Eric Cartman, loud, proud and wrong. And uuff, Megan Markle,  Majorie Taylor Greene, walking Picasso collage (bad car driver) Caitlin Jenner and Ivana Trump in politics...not exactly holding a proud lantern for women eh? I’d like to buy them for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth. Not very PC?  

That was the point. Could easily been written about all of the men written about here too. Next examples follow...

Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones compete for who can be as mentally ill as trump. The Miami school where the husband and wife directors told teachers not to return if they had HAD their vaccine shots because their proximity to students was interfering with menstrual cycles and uuuufff...The sickness of utter mind buggering stupidity. I had my first shot, now waiting to turn reptilian when the 5G masts triangulate my position. Fnord. Covid appears to be killing more overweight meat eating males than females...perhaps testosterone is not useful for the coming Race of non binary mutant hermaphrodites...and look out for the end of the Y chromosome, coming to a temporary universe near you...in 4.6 million years. Yes, really.  

Glad Netanyahu is out at last, smug corruption is never a good look unless one is a rich criminal. Ha.  The Promised land of Israel...If I was in court for serial murder, breaking, entering and stealing and then defended my actions by saying that God had told me to do it, would the Judge; A. Call for a psychiatric report, B. Disregard the statement as unprovable and pass the appropriate sentence, C, say Ok mate, you’re free to go, good luck to you. ? Moses had a good schtick.

The law is only to punish the poor, do you feel as if you suffer from empathy? Once you know, you no longer need to believe. What does ‘reality’ seem to be? The more certain you are, the stupider you get and belief is the death of intelligence. The machine is running the engineers. What is the definition of rationality...the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic. 

Nothing is, but thinking makes it so. Epicurus.  

EVERYTHING NOT COMPULSORY IS FORBIDDEN.

The glamour illusion of the mass of pointless hot influencers needs a constant renewing of the Banishing Ritual as much as all the pigslop bile coming from Fox News and Sky. Bloody long haired commie liberal faggot they cry against any not identical to them. Some days I have only flamethrowers of hatred for these idiots. Other days...not exactly self doubt, just questions...most of us seem to believe our opinions are more valid when there are emotions connected to them. Including me. Again, this seems like a very weak version of ‘truth’, unless disciplined, channeled and focused to a certain end.

Life appears to exist in order to become via chaos.

Most of us are working only not to be homeless, some because of the joy in our chosen work regardless of finances. Until ‘reality’ kicks in the door...the bondage gets tighter when you struggle. How much hardship is the individual willing to endure these days by choice? Surrounded by a universe of distraction and destruction, Maya mewling for our attention. Five years of Trump, rampant populism and Brexit doing a Hexagram 23 on democracy, compounded by the pandemic...all on top of ‘normal’ daily life. The ego feeds and the immune system breaks down. Hard to ignore without being on a mountain or in a parallel dimension and emotion free other than compassion. But BY GODDESS IT CAN AND WILL BE DONE. Ladies of Life Nin Khursag, Isis, Kali, Aradia...Love one, Love ALL. At very least have respect for thyself but be not thou proud of thine arrogance nor thy suffering.  

Or just Remember where you came from, what you were, seem to be and will become.

Heal, heal, more work to do, more love to give, more love to feel, Heal. Stay in drugs, eat your school and don’t do vegetables. Impose your own reality upon and through yourself, breathe, exhale, repeat, and continue, LOVE UNDER WILL. Experience and absorb but ‘It’s a house of tricks, ignore the world’’.

Stay well, be seeing you:-)

[urlneverheardofit]

Chapter 2: The White Lion

The White Lion had never been so far out of his comfort zone. In all of his admittedly short nineteen years on Azeroth, never once had he felt as uncomfortable as he did now. Not while held captive in Onixya's lair. Not even during the incident. 

When Anduin, who was called The White Lion, whether or not he agreed with this title, was about nine years old the evil black dragon Onyxia had taken Anduin hostage to try and get a ransom from the Alliance. What it was she sought from this exchange Anduin had been too young to understand. Still, the boy had used tact and brains to get out of the situation and return to his father.

The incident happened less than six months prior to the present. He had been meeting with the leader of the Horde, a faction known for the savagery of their races, which included orcs, trolls, and goblins. Even so, Anduin had believed that peace could be found between the factions if both sought it. Garrosh Hellscream, the current leader of the Horde, was a dark tan orc male with many black tattoos of all shapes scattering his well-muscled body and had agreed to meet Anduin at a monastery on the understanding that Varian, who wanted nothing to do with Garrosh, would not be present. Anduin had agreed and all had gone well at first.

But something strange happened halfway through the encounter. Swirls of black and white mist, so small they were rather inconspicuous, had begun to seep into Garrosh's being and soon, all he could think of was war. Anduin had been using a massive bell suspended from a metal stand as a symbol of peace. In a fit of rage, Garrosh smashed the bell atop Anduin.

Anduin should have died. He should have died under that bell or during the recovery process. But he did not. He had survived until his nineteenth birthday.

The same day he was here in the middle of a mountain pass.

He already was unnerved by this place. It was narrow and it looked empty but Anduin knew better, he felt eyes on him with every breath he took it was not just a dragon out there. It was a dragon with an entourage of trained killers. A black dragon no less, of the same blood as Onyxia. But here Anduin was not alone. Anduin had his father.

When Anduin was six years old, Anduin's mother had died during a riot, a rock shattering her skull in a single hit. Anduin, thankfully, had not been present at the time but the loss of his mother had been devastating to the whole kingdom. Most of all those who were closest to her in life. Her husband, Anduin's father, had fallen into a depression after that but he had never given up on Anduin or the people who still needed their king. The grief father and son shared had forged tight bonds between the two and now, despite Anduin being a young adult, they still remained close. Anduin was old enough now to serve as an advisor to the king, learning how to rule in the event something happened to his father. Anduin secretly hoped that in the scenario he had to take over for his father, that it would be temporary. That his father would return and resume leading as king.

Anduin was old enough to understand however that was unlikely to happen. When the proud Varian Wrynn stepped down from the throne, it would be because of his death. Along with the High King Anduin had the king of the fallen city of Gilneas with him, as well as some of the elite royal guards. Anduin knew he slowed the group despite the fact no one said it, the bell had crippled a leg almost beyond use. It was slow working with it back to functionality but he could walk with it, as long as he had his wooden cane to support his weight instead of his bad leg. He still was slower than his company, though he doubted Genn or Varian noticed thanks to their bickering about the trip the entire way up. Genn believed that it was foolish to willing hand one's child over to a dragon. Varian, on the other hand, did not want Anduin to die to Garrosh. Still, Anduin tried to hurry it along and had he been anyone else, he wouldn't have noticed that the patrol was moving at his pace, not their own.

Varian stepped proudly into the doorway. "Dragon," he began in a voice that was intimidating and gruff to many but was always comforting to Anduin, it meant Varian had control over the situation and was going to take care of the situation. The responsibility of king was not yet Anduin's burden to bear. Anduin peered around the shadow of his father and gazed into the room. Inside the tiny little tavern, sitting at a wooden table was a strange-looking boy. He had dark caramel-colored skin, and alarming red eyes. His hair was hidden behind a white turban that was adorned with many red swathes of fabric and rubies. He wore huge golden earrings, strangely ornate white-and-gray robes with borders of gold a ruby centered in the center of his chest. Huge gauntlets made of what looked like, black dragon scales, which was alarming on its own, to be wearing the hide of one's fallen kin. He gazed up at Varian with no fear whatsoever, his elbows propped up on the table behind him casually. Though Anduin couldn't read much of the dragon's expression what he could read was at least interested. "I am King Varian Wrynn of the Alliance. We have come to ask for your assistance."

The boy, who looked grown enough, just a year or so younger than Anduin, met Varian's gaze without moving his head. "You come seeking the aid of the last black dragon on Azeroth." He began, his voice was charming and pleasant to listen to, but Anduin supposed all dragons were nice to listen to in their human forms. The boy gazed blankly at his black, claw-tipped nails, which were uncovered. "After all that we've done to you and your kin you come seeking out a black dragon of all creatures, to aid you." He spoke eloquently like he was raised with royalty rather than... whoever watched over orphaned dragon whelps.

Varian pondered this answer for a while. "Perhaps destiny has led us both here to help each other." Varian replied. "After all a great dragon such as yourself does not get by on being idle I suspect."

The boy's eyes rose at the mention of a 'great dragon' he smiled wickedly. "Yes, well, some situations require more immediate action. What is it you sought me out for? Not many could have found me so fast after my arrival."

"My son," Anduin flinched at being acknowledged, the dragon's eyes were on Anduin. It was unnerving, to say the least to have such a powerful creature examine one as though they were prey. "He has been badly injured and needs somewhere he can stay where the Horde will not find him."

"You found me easy enough." The boy pointed out.

"I have," Varian swapped a glance with Genn, the worgen king of Gilneas. A city that no longer existed because of the Horde. Snuffed out just like the life of Genn's son, Liam.The worgen king shrugged, allowing Varian to share as much as he would wish. "Very good help." Varian finished finally.

"Clearly. What would I get in exchange for this favor?" The boy asked. Was he actually considering taking Anduin in?

"We would reward you handsomely." Varian smiled. "Name your price."

The dragon considered for a while. "I will hold onto the Stormwind's cub for the favor of the Alliance and a half a million gold." He grunted finally.

Varian considered for a long while. "If I agree to your terms I will expect a handwritten letter from Anduin every week and do not try to fool me, detailing how he is fairing. At the time the letter is handed over you will receive payments of 5,000 gold."

"That is enough to last... longer than a human's whole lifetime." Wrathion pointed out, cruching numbers.

"Any remaining funds will be given to you when we come to collect Anduin again." Varian reasoned.

The dragon twitched his lip. "Very well, I agree to your terms. Do you agree to mine?" He asked extending a taloned hand, still leaning back with a languid grin.

Varian stepped forward and took the hand ignoring claws scraping against the metal of his gauntlets. "You have a deal, dragon." The dragon's eyes glowed brightly and Varian flinched but made no other move to pull away.

"Are you alright father?" Anduin asked softly as Varian returned to the party.

Varian smiled. "Yes, you will be safe here. A dragon can not go back on a promise made that way." Varian nodded to nothing in particular, Genn's ears flicked nervously but he kept his mouth shut.

"Are you sure?" Anduin prodded. He was tired of having to look over his shoulder constantly. If this dragon could provide any safety he wanted to make sure it was true safety.

"Absolutely." Varian set a hand on Anduin's shoulder and smiled warmly at him. "Go and meet your host, I'll stay for a few more minutes."

[everythingcanadian]

Wainlock + Zane Space Pirate AU

So quick alternate universe idea thing. Thank you @jakobslock and @majimalordofthenight for being there to go along with it. 

So, Wainlock and Zane Flynt. Just hold with me for a bit. 

Like. okay straight from our group chat with minor clean ups. 

ZANE THE SPACE PIRATE A LA TREASURE PLANET.

He wants to swindle a bunch of rich folks but he ends up falling in love with the wealthy man and his explorer employee.

Zane with an open chest from half his buttons being undone. But also the idea that he's sailing a ship IN FUCKING SPACE. Don't forget the hot as hell coat he wears along with a sword an actual sword. Wainwright is being nice to his crew, actually listens to the lower status cabin boys. Sleeps with the crew. Has a few stories to tell. He's paying them all handsomely, even pays one of the cargo runners double for him to run and grab a crate of apples. "Pocket the change, I don't want any money back from you." And Zane starts to get a sick feeling in his belly when he revises his plan to not only ask for triple what he would normally get for something like this into the oasis regions. But the idea that he is going to kidnap and ransomed the pair out as soon as they find the temple of Oular  [News flash all these odd names are made up]. the treasure of millions.

And Alistair is equally as nice with the crew. Helps out in the galley and actual pulls his weight when he's done all he can to get their heading correct among the stars. Actual hands off a trick or two to the cook on how to best cut vegetables. Alistair manages to help fix a tear in the secondary sail that had been there for months. "Sometimes we don't have the time or the funds to fix what is deemed unnecessary. However. Not much is needed for this. A simple bone needle and some strong fishing line will work temporarily." "How temporary?" And it's one of the deck hands that speak up. "Five maybe six months if it's good wire and the storms aren't too rough with this girl." and Alistair pats the mast before he follows the most capable of deck hands up. They hook into the mast netting to keep from falling and Alistair walks him through it. Doesn't take over. Waits for the pirate to get his frustrations out before walking the man through it. "And tie a good strong knot into each thread through. It strengthens each stitch and helps it hold closed even if one of them snaps. This can be applied to clothing too. Especially a favourite shirt. Like the one I’m wearing." And Alistair just scoots his vest open slightly to show off the stitching job he had done the year before on it. Wainwright and Alistair are dining with the crew out on the deck, under the stars as they sail through what could be comet dust. Wainwright brings the wheel-man and the on duty sail turner their supper and eats with them a little. It shows that he respects the crew. "Lord Flynt. Or would you prefer I call you Pirate Lord Flynt." Wainwright watches Zane tense up as they talk in his quarters. "It's been nearly a month so I feel like dropping the mask is either going to get me killed or thrown overboard. Or a better option. However. I know you aren't some navy man, half your crew is on wanted posters in some ports. But I feel that I am as good as safe with this crew. You picked a good lot for your ship. All of them." Wainwright waits for Zane's reaction but only gets a one eyed glare. "Very well. Alistair and myself have known since we hired you to take us to the Oasis galaxy. We want to share with you the fame that is going to come from finding this place. I don't want my name on any part of it. I don't care for fame like my daddy did. I just want the histories of the universe to be known." And Zane is stunned. absolutely stunned. hes quiet as Wainwright explains that he wanted the Flynt crew to be the ones to sail them. "You've sailed through the pull of a black hole and past a double belt of asteroids. I know that you ad your crew alone can fly safely into the area of the Oasis that is notorious for it's gas storms." Wainwright smiles softly. "Pirate or naval admiral or whatever. you are the best of the best when it comes to danger and I for one, respect that. I've paid off the rulers in both the Terra Nova galaxy and the Terra Afer sector [real names but they don’t exist]. You are all free men in those parts. I have read quite a bit on you and your crew Mr. Flynt. I admire your perseverance in the ways of travel. I don't with to be bait or simply diced into pieces. I want to share in what is knowledgeable. I have a lot of money I never asked for. Which means I have a lot of funds for you and your crew should you prove to me that I will not become some plaything once we find this temple. I have an idea as to what pirates do Mr. Flynt. I have a few scars from the first time I was aboard a ship as fine as this." And Zane is left gaping at Wainwright as the man heads out of the captain's cabin. That little rich shit took all the wind from Zane's sails and instead anchored the idea that he isn't his daddy at all.

Zane being fucking confused. But then he calls in his first mate, sits the man down. "Gabriel, these two are not to be harmed. They know who we are. What we've done. And yet- they came aboard willingly. This Jakobs, he knows everything and yet hes paying us what a regular naval vessel would make. Hes got everyone's names, not as threats but as people. All of us, and hes paying us as if we were the navy. These are not prisoners or problems. These two men are my personal guests now. Keep treating them like crew, as they have treated us like equals." "Good. I'd have hated to hurt Sir Hammerlock after he taught me how to play the whole Instringus [made up lol] symphony play-set on my fiddle. Even though he cant play it himself." And Gabriel twiddled his fingers slowly, looking down at his clawed fingers in slight sympathy. "I think they've taught us more than we could ask for, captain, something's we didn't even know ourselves." "I agree boyo, Barnes is even learning how to read from Hammerlock's personal diaries. I have never met anyone who would do that if they truly didn't mean the best." Zane sighs through his nose. "This changes things."

Zane looks at the parchment that he and another pirate lord had signed the week after Zane had found out he was taking a pair of rich men onto his ship to go discovery some whatchamacallit. but now he can't deliver on that promise as Wainwright and Alistair are no longer targets but allies. It takes him a second to realize he fucked up more than royally as Captain 'Handsome' Jack won't take no. he is indeed a dumb of ass and needs to get both Wainwright and Alistair back into his quarters.

Zane panicking when they reach the outer edge of the Oasis galaxy. This is A) one of if not the most dangerous Galaxy if one doesn't know how to navigate it. Zane and Gabriel do. B) Captain Jack is set to meet them at the outer edge where Oasis meets Nobilis which is where they ended up heading to due to Wainwright wanting to stop near Haberst Forture the city planet to settle debts that some of the crew had accumulated. and C) both Alistair and Zane know that Jack's ship looks like THAT So as Wainwright Stays on deck he can see Hyperion son John La Paige or now known as Handsome Jack with a scar in the shape of a cracked star on his cheek. Wainwright can feel his stomach drop as this kid was one of his friends' son. "Do- you know this bastard?" "Yeah- I know him. I used to be his uncle when it was much simpler times. His Grandfather and my daddy were thick as thieves. then one day. poof, John La Paige was gone. His father said he had run away. I had suspicions that John had been taken at age 14 and this is where he ended up." Wainwright sighed. "He was a brat back then. I suppose now he doesn't take kindly to not gettin’ his way."

And it's not long before Handsome Jack is boarding The Sentinel. Wainwright knows that he can't go willingly. Can't make it that easy or Jack will do something else. Alistair is hidden under the loose boards under Zane's bed. It's a thick enough space for an average human and Alistair thanked all his stars he wasn't claustrophobic. Wainwright never put Alistair on the manifest for the crew. Zane never knew that Alistair was going to be the explorer coming with them. Jack probably doesn't know that Alistair is on the ship. But it's better that Wainwright makes sure the love of his life is safe. "Well Well. Well. Uncle Wain in the flesh. Ahhh, it's so good to see you after all this time." "John. I wish I could say the same about you." And it's minutes of dancing around each other before Wainwright makes a reach for his gun, gets instead a knock to his chest from Jack's fist, then a swift kick and a series of blows to his ribs and back. Jack yelling about how he was abandoned and taken. How Flynt had delivered him like a nice little package. And Wainwright played into it. looked at Flynt as if the man had been playing him. Looked at the crew like they had betrayed him. Gabriel had caught on the fastest had already taken the special compass Alistair had been using. "I take it you never figured out that Hammerlock didn't really stay on Port Leio. But he did have a nice compass. Embossed with gold and- proposal rubies. You really thought he had decided to stay there? Please. Anyone who has heard of Temple Oular can't resist going there themselves. Too bad Hammerlock couldn't stomach it."

Wainwright played his horror up as much as he could. Screamed himself hoarse. Yelled till he was blue in the face. and Went after Zane in a show to kill him but Jack's men grabbed him first. Jack then handed over what could only be described as a solid gold small chest filled with what is known as tear drop stars. Specially compacted star dust into the form of imperfect tear drop shapes that are worth millions each. "I feel like I'm short a couple." "You know how fragile those little shits are. Besides, No navigator." Zane gave a glare to Gabriel that felt real. And they all hoped it had been bought by Jack and his men. Zane knew it was when Jack took his time departing, he had done deals with the man in the past. the Pirate king himself. So for Jack to take his time meant he was happy with their exchange. Zane even used his detector to see if anything was off about the chest. "She's true boys!" And even as the deck erupted in cheers at a success Zane could feel his stomach sink as Jack's ship disembarked and started to sail into the Oasis. They waited until Jack's ship was out of range before Barnes went and retrieved Hammerlock. "We have a plan that should he be taken- well it's messy business but he has a specific- uh- thing in his blind eye. Because he can't use it he decided that he should put it to some use. there is a tracker in it should he be kidnapped or killed. He thought that it would be useful in times such as this. However it is a few decades old but it has been serviced. If the specifications are right- and he is sure it was- then it should go undetected as it uses infrared signals and not x-waves. Virtually undetectable unless scanned for specifically with a certain code." "And what is this code?" "An 8 character long pass-code that has absolutely no significance to anyone. maybe on luck but it was randomly generated." Alistair smiles. "Unless he's dead, of which I don't think John- er- Handsome Jack will kill him until he has everything that Wainwright has. that includes the family vault." NOW. Imagine Zane fitting Alistair with a set of pirate clothing that makes Alistair look like a badass and hot as hell. "I'm not sure about the torn sleeve of this coat." "It's just the elbow mate, nothing to worry about. It shows off that metal arm of yours." And that is coming from one of the riggers as he helps cut the coat sleeve specifically to show off the robotic arm.

Alistair comes from below decks, looking like a prime rib steak of a pirate. and Zane looks the explorer up and down, feels himself heat up to the roots of his hair. "Well, I'll be. You can clean up nicely for a navigator." "Oh please. I hardly pull this off. The coat feels garish and the pants- well they aren't as fitted as I'm used to." "That's the point Sir Hammerlock. Easy access and movability are the name of the pirate game. The layers thereafter are for status. And you my de- you look the part of a pirate lord. Off to save your fiancee." "How did you boys find out?" Zane snorts along with a couple chuckles from those milling about the deck. "Anyone with eyes can see the love you two hold. Even I can see it and I only have the one good one." "Your second one is also useful." Zane pauses. "Aye, it is. I take it you know echo tech." "Know about it? Zane Flynt I made the echo eye mark one and four. You are wearing my design. But that is not my version. That is Henry's my old partner's patent." Hammerlock smirks. "That is also the bootlegged version. I can tell because you would have a dial on the one side for heat, infrared, ultraviolet, and normal. I will get you the real one once we are back in Jakobs' territory."

God and Alistair is getting worried as the Oasis system has some of the worst patches to fly near. But Zane and his own Navigator Patelli know how to cruise through the system. "I've been here too many times Alistair. I know how to pilot through the Vandert nebula”

The babe is careful during a worm hole pass by, even this far out they could get sucked in with a wrong move. "One way is the wormhole. The other is the heavy pull of Werq and her many layers of dense gaseous winds. Dont need to be crushed by gravity thank you." And zane gets the Sentinel threaded through no problem along with the crew doing their work properly. "Ain't no navy can pilot like this." And Alistair hums appreciatively. When they enter the "coast" or the temple whereabouts Zane takes Alistair into his cabin for the night. "I dont know what is gonna happen. All I know is once Jack has everything he wants from Mr. Jakobs, including the entry to the temple, hes going to kill him and leave his body. He has no mercy rules. I want ye to be prepared in case we're too late. I dont want to watch you crumble Sir Hammerlock, I dont think I can take watching a dear friend die like that again." "I've known Winny for a while. If he dies- well he will be the last i will love as i do now. We have plans in place should that happen. But I wont burden any of you with my grief should it- should he be on the other side."  Alistair squeezes Zanes hands in his own. "I trust and know you and your crew have done their best, even if it didnt start as such." And Zane takes his chance then and there. Kisses Alistair quickly and roughly, gives everything he has into it.  "I've come to love ye both dearly. I hope it doesn't come to death. But I'll fight as best I can to get you to your fiancee in time. Jack needs to end here and- I have nothing left for me. My crew can mourn me but Gabriel is going to take my place if I'm killed." Zane heads to his wardrobe, pulls out a long box with rich engravings on the box. "Mr. Jakobs had this made for you should you need it. Asked me to keep it hidden and safe. That's why we spent nearly a full week at Port Leio. It has the sharpest blade I've come by in a few years. And it's all yours as I think this is the right time."

When  Alistair holds the sword it feels right. Perfect almost. it was made for him. He may have a rifle but this- this feels like it calls to him. "Mr. Jakobs also had one made for himself and told me to hang onto it. I have a feeling he knew what was going to happen." "Winny did have a sort of intuition about him when it came to gambling and deals." Alistair tested the balance. Zane huffed happily. "He has good taste." His eyes look Alistair up and down. "I hope you're referring to the sword Mr. Flynt." Alistair teases. "Oh- I am indeed." It's not long before they fall asleep tucked together in Zane's bed. holding each other as the night of final rest looms over the ship. In the morning Alistair is petting through Zane's hair, his echo eye off and Alistair's fingers are tracing where it would sit. "You deserve so much Mr. Flynt. more than what was dealt to you. I wish you could see what Wainwright and I see in you. Pirating can only have so many years. And you have outlived them." Zane lets himself drift as he listens to Alistair's whispers. he's not meant to hear them as they are far too intimate for what Zane should want.

And Zane knows that it may very well be his last day. he's going to give his all in order to save Wainwright and kill the dreaded pirate king Captain Handsome Jack. [WARNING: GORE] And lets be real it'll look like At Worlds End from Pirates of the Caribbean. All fighting and yelling and anger but also love and trust and Zane comes through canon smoke and plunges his sword, the one Wainwright asked him to hold onto, right into Jack's chest, but that doesn't mean Jack didn't turn to see who was yelling. And Jack's sword pushes through Zane's ribs at high force as Zane kills Jack through the heart.

Jack is sprawled on the deck, dead and bleeding. while Zane is kneeling over him, hanging onto the hilt of his sword so he doesn't slip any farther down the blade of Jack's upright sword in his own chest. It's hard to breath. he can feel himself slipping. he's heaving actually. trying to get as much atmosphere as he can. And as he starts to fall down a little more onto the blade he looks over at Alistair and Wainwright on the star dusty deck of the Hyperion Master. Zane can see that they're okay now. He's done his job. He tries to smile but he can't, he can't feel much either. And he can see that it's his own blood soaking the front of Jack's clothes, that he's dying. He can hear his name being yelled in slow motion almost as he slips the last little bit where his body is fully kneeling. What he doesn't know is it's Wainwright calling out to him, racing over to him. Alistair quickly next to as they watch him give up.

It's been three months of space travel. three months of getting to know each other. and three months of falling in love with each other. And the pair watch as Zane leaves them. "He knew it was coming my dear." Alistair is holding Wainwright in his embrace, they both have blood and goo and what ever else all over them. Alistair can feel in his bones the path Zane had forged was over. He watched the little red light on Zane's echo eye fade out. However The temple of Oular is in the Oasis galaxy, the galaxy known for it's mysterious magics. Star dust, cosmic radiation, some mumbo jumbo bullshit everyone thought was fake. Nope, all real. [GORE OVER] The Emporatta lake is a glowing body of water infused with life. IE the fountain of youth perhaps. Archer and Barnes are the ones to pull Zane off the sword and cover him in the old tattered flag that they held onto from the ship. The first one they had on the main mast. Gabriel is holding himself tight on one side from fighting but he holds himself as best he can with the crew, all a little worse for wear. Some recovering on the ship. But Zane is the only death. (Idk I don't write it)

And so they follow the tales, using the door to Jack's captain's quarters as a makeshift platform to bring Zane's shrouded body into the waters of Oular. Wainwright and Alistair hold the two other corners as they wade into the water with Barns and Archer. "On the count of three we lower the body into the healing waters. One, two, three." And slowly they let the door sink to the floor of the opalescent water. Everyone has to cover their eyes as the body emits a bright white light, green at the edges. The water ripples as a drum sound bangs loud in their ears. It thrums loud and shakes the planet before altogether it ceases. A loud screech being the final sound before the water moves and Barnes grabs at the hand searching out in the opalescent water. And Zane is floating up in the waist deep shallows gasping for breath and looking around before shakily moving so he's standing. Everything on him is gone. the door is gone. His clothes are gone. the flag is gone. He has a massive scar going from his sternum to where his upper arm touches his side. It's where the sword had cut him, where it was shredding his body as they moved him. He's naked, but whole. "Captain Flynt?" Wainwright asks softly "It's Zane, just Zane. never captain. That was me brother." Zane pants heavily, wiping water from his face so he can see. His eye is still a milky white from being blinded but it looks healthier. his other wounds seem cleaner, not as botched or nasty. He smiles warmly. "I never want to go to the afterlife if it meant leaving you lot. Smart feckers, all of ye."

And Wainwright and Alistair are tackling him into the waters, both of them laughing and crying because holy shit this one man is immortal, he has to be, there is no way. And Zane gets to kiss them both under the lake surface. He's laughing like it was nothing. The crew are running through the water in celebration. And Zane feels so damn good. He's happy. He's alive. And Jack is dead. Alistair and Wainwright share a kiss before taking more kisses from Zane

Oh you bet your sweet ass that they're going to get married at one point. And being a "back then" thing Zane is standing at the steering wheel as they are on the journey home. They're way away from the Oasis galaxy, halfway to the Jakobs section of the Border galaxy. And Zane is more than happy to be the one to marry Wainwright and Alistair. He's got the words written down for them so he speaks out to the crew and the pair as they stand just below the wheel deck. They're in new clothes as they're anchored back at Port Leio. And Zane watches as soon as he asks them to recite their vows. He's happy as hell to be the one to do this for them. He watches them exchange rings before he's has to clear his throat. "As Commander of this ship and Pirate lord of the Border galaxy I am pleased to pronounce you as husbands. Go ahead and kiss as you enter this new chapter of life."

Zane jokingly saying that he'd let them have his bed if he can be posted up i a nice inn at port. And Wainwright laughs. "Zane my boy, I own this port, the luxury hotel is ours for the week. Your ship is going to get repaired. We may also have a surprise for you later tonight if you'd like."

END

[pilot-boi]

Fall For Me: Chapter Three

The Landing

Sometimes when you fall, you need somebody’s help to get back on your feet.

AO3 LINK

“Jaune!”  Ren’s shout rolled out like a thunderclap and her partner half lunged forward. Oscar was beside him, waving his arms in a frantic approximation of semaphore, and wailing at the distant figure. Nora could hear the sudden cold desperation in both of their voices. “Don’t you freaking dare! Don’t you even-”

There was only one way this was going. And she was not having it.

She was already running as the distant figure drew his blade. Her boots slammed into the stone and each footfall was a statement. Each thump a furious scream at what stupid excuse for fate was trying to pull a fast one right now.

Her hands curled tighter inside her gloves and around the handle of her trusty hammer, and she gritted her teeth. She couldn’t be sure, couldn’t be quite certain of the faint prickle of something against her skin. It traced the faded patterns of magically scarred flesh along her palms and arms, from where she had that lightning bolt had struck her so long ago and awoken her Semblance.

It hadn’t been working so far, but now would be a very good time for it to start.

There was fire above her, a deafening crack of out flung crystal shards, and she looked up, then down, and up and down again, as her mind whirled with frantic aeronautic calculation. Jaune’s out flung figure arched backwards from the detonation, hurled out over the yawning gap.

Nora’s boots cleared the edge of the chasm in a headlong launch, and one parting explosive grenade for any extra bit of momentum..

She clicked the trigger of Magnhild and electricity arched up its handle, and there was a definite shiver at her clenched fingers now, and the raw insanity of it all howled in her ears. But she had been matching collisions trajectories enough times by now. From a dozen types of airship, shield launching, and variations on malfunctioning flight, and this time had at least started from somewhere stationary.

The weightless moment stretched out, momentum and gravity vying for dreadful favour. The forces snatched at the gossamer threads of Aura and lift that danced across her, drawn out from her Semblance by sheer determination, if nothing else. The world seemed to be holding its breath. Filled with all the shades of what could go so utterly and completely wrong.

Come on. Come on.

Then she hit the plunging knight square in his stomach, wrapping her outflung arms as tightly as she dared around the other plummeting shape, and the impact jolted a hard-shock through her. Tendrils of too bright memory jolted right along with her, taking her back to Jaune doing this for her all the way back in Argus. She felt her Semblance shiver, Aura given strength failing under the sudden increase in weight.

But the accelerated deflection had been enough, and a moment later there was another rib slamming joly as they crashed into the tiled top of one of the broken slabs jutting from the opposite canyon wall.

Nora clung down hard, wedging her ringing head against Jaune in a vague attempt to hold on with her neck as well. And she had another horrible moment of sliding scrapping weightlessness.

But then her rock torn fingertips scoured the wall to a standstill, splintering dusty fragments trailing around her grasp, and she rammed the tips of her boots into the rock below.

“Oh good lords,” she gasped. The razor thin air scraped her throat and for a good few moments she concentrated just on breathing, half deaf from her own heart beat, and stared dumbly at the stone an inch from her nose. She could feel the faint rise and fall of Jaune’s chest beneath her, feel small twitches in his cheek next to hers.

Finally she managed to pull herself together enough to lean back slightly, raising up so that she could look at him, and not run the risk of dislodging either of them from their precarious shelf.

He was staring. Not at her, even with her filling up what had to be his entire field of vision. Jaune stared through her somehow, his sapphire gaze stretched wide. She shifted slightly and tried to find her voice.

“That was really dumb,” she said quietly, and she wasn’t entirely sure which one of them she meant. Jaune shivered. His fingers twitched, scratching down against the rock as he blinked a few times, and then the stare settled back onto her a little more securely. 

He looked battered. His armor was laced with hairline cracks in a few places, gold inlay dulled and fracturing. Wild blonde hair was singed at the tips, and his exposed skin was peppered with small cuts. Crocea Mors was clutched in a death grip, and she didn’t think he was even aware that he still had it. But he was alive.

Another blink, and his lips moved like a question, although no sound came out. Nora shrugged. She should say something. Anything. That was what she was best at.

“Well, I could have managed not to catch you with my freaking face,” she muttered. Jaune kept staring at her, looking dazed. Nora adjusted her grip again, and tried to put a bit more reassurance into her tones.

“I’m right here, no worries fearless leader. Freaking hope that Weiss gets a move on with her summon, but we’re okay. Kind of.” She craned up, trying to see anything useful past the edge of the crevasse, but all she could make out was the murky red of the sky. 

The noxious sludge bubbled helpfully barely a few feet below them. Nora thanked any gods that might be listening that they were remaining stationary. Even if stationary wasn’t getting them any closer to help. Jaune opened his mouth again, hesitated, and finally managed to speak.

“I was… falling again. I thought it… I was..” his voice caught, halting in his throat and he half turned away, expressions chasing each other across his features too fast to be clear. Nora bit her lip, hoping like hell she hadn’t hit him harder in the head than she had thought. 

But he seemed focused enough now, just shocked. No, not exactly shocked, that didn’t quite go far enough…

A memory stirred, rising past the grim slick of recent horrors, and Jaune’s earlier words echoed back across her mind. When after far too long, after months or years of carrying it with him, they’d finally gotten him to tell them about what had happened at the Fall.

“I remember falling, and light. And then everything I never knew I cared about was gone.”

“I’m right here,” she repeated, more firmly this time, and now all the other meanings welled up either side of those words and Jaune’s fingers curled a little tighter against her arm. She held his gaze, blue on blue, and this time he didn’t look away.

“If you fall again,” she said quietly, into the strange little private moment that seemed to have formed. “We’ll catch you. Ren, me, Ruby, all of us. And if that’s not enough, and if we do lose someone, and you lose yourself. Then we’ll just find you and show you who you are, all over again, just like before. A hundred million bajillion times..”

There was precious little room on the ledge as it was, but Nora shifted as much as she was able to make space as Jaune’s chest shook with tears and a faint glimmer of reassurance sparked in his eyes. He drew her into a bone crushing hug, and she managed a small smile as he shook. The knight drew her somehow tighter to him, as if he was making sure she was there, that he could trust his vision.

“I promise,” she murmured, and was just trying to find a light hearted continuation of the sentence when soft sobs reached her ears. She froze, and then leaned into it as well as she could while staying awkwardly braced against the crumbling stone. 

Jaune was battered and shivering with close-brush mortality, but there was understanding in the moment. He had finally allowed himself to cry. It wasn’t new, not entirely, but now that it had been stated, her promise seemed to brand itself into the air around them.

We’ve got you. All of you, right now. We’ve got you, and you’ve got us. And you’re not getting rid of us that easily. We’ve got your back, everything that you are. And if you need us to, we’ll find you.

Even if you’ve lost yourself.

“You okay?” she asked as they finally separated. There was a faux casual tone to her voice, and Nora nearly winced at how plastered on it sounded. Jaune looked down and blinked, still dazed, as a frown traced onto his features.

“...no,” he admitted. Jaune looked at her, almost confused for a moment. He glanced past her to where she could hear the faint crystalline sounds of Weiss’s summons, and then he let out a long shuddering breath. “I’m not okay. But… I could be. I think.”

He glanced back at Nora as he spoke and, like a curtain lifting, the focus was suddenly back in his face. Not perfect, not even very well pulled together just now, but that old hardlight edge was there again. Jaune looked more like… Jaune, and less like he was about to pull another stupidly heroic stunt at the cost of himself.

Nora’s grin was a beacon. “I think we can work with that,” she said brightly. Jaune managed a wobbly smile as he met her gaze. Yeah. They could definitely work with that. If they made it out of this alive, and in even close to one piece. 

Her Aura had shattered completely on impact with his armor, and even Jaune’s plentiful supply of the stuff was struggling against the malevolent forces in the to heal even the smallest wounds that he had.

And all of that was ignoring whether Ren would kill her first for this latest stunt.

But Jaune was looking more solid than she’d seen him be in months, maybe years. He was holding himself together with scotch tape and luck, but she could work with that.

Duct tape and lots of pancakes hadn’t failed her yet.

[ununniliad]

Burst Beetle Tweseveny #9: “2007: The Umpire's Call and the Last Rung's Fall!“

The figure lands lightly on her feet, wearing insectoid armor in shining black and white! She snaps her fingers, pointing at Tweseveny, then whips her head around and points the finger at M-Plot!

"And I think it needs a referee! Someone like... Burst Beetle XOX!" The camera zooms around XOX and she poses, showing off her cool armor!

Her chest plate has a diagonal checkerboard pattern with white Xes on the black squares and black Os on the white squares. Hanging from her neck is an enormous crimson whistle. Her arms and legs are vertically striped in black and white, and she wears black gloves and boots with white trim. At her crimson belt is a buckle with two chess clocks on them, one with Tweseveny's armored face on it, the other with M-Plot. Her face is a criss-cross tic-tac-toe board, and her eyes are black, circular lenses, one with a raised white letter X in it, the other with a raised white letter O. At her neck is a black bowtie with a ruby at the center, and on her forehead is a ruby chess clock, with white numbers and a black hand!

Tweseveny shakes her head. "Burst Beetle... Zocks?"

"Right, but you spell it capital ecks capital oh capital ecks."

"What is this!?" M-Plot stalks forward. "Who sent you? What are you!?"

XOX holds out a hand and presses it to M-Plot's chest plate. "Babe, I'm not a player in this game. I'm just here to make sure it's fair."

M-Plot pulls back angrily. "This isn't a game."

"Yeah, and if it was, we'd be winning!" Mother Time holds up the Hourglass of wReamThermodynamics and blasts a seething stream of temporal rays at XOX!

Who holds up a single hand and lets the stream splash uselessly against it! "Attacking the ref, that's a penalty!" She reaches down and grabs the whistle, holding it up in the air. She presses a button on it, and as a shrill noise rings out, the Hourglass vanishes - and appears in Time-Waster Lad's hands!

"Hey, what--" He juggles the item of power-- manages to grab it, but drops the Rung of Revamp!

"GOT IT--" Mother Time leaps forward--

And the Time Crapper is there, between her and XOX, M-Plot just to the side.

"STOP."

he speaks in a voice that vibrates thru the bones of all present.

And they do.

He looks up at XOX. "What are the rules of your game?"

XOX nods cheerfully, putting one hand on her hip and pointing the other at him. "You, you get it." She looks back and forth. "It'll seem pretty familiar. Two teams, three of you versus two of you--" She points at Tweseveny. "Transform, please."

Tweseveny lets out a breath - given what happened to the Hourglass, she wasn't sure what would happen if she'd tried. "With pleasure." She presses the pink gem on her buckle, and sheets of printer paper wrap around her, bursting into her armor.

"There we go," says XOX. "And if you can get the Rung and the Hourglass both on one side, you win."

"So," says M-Plot, evenly, fists clenched. "What's the catch?"

"We're moving to a bit of a different playing field. Goes something like..." She looks at Tweseveny and pushes down the button on her Tweseveny clock, holding it down. "You play!" She looks at M-Plot and pushes her M-Plot button, holding it down. "We play!" She looks up in the air. "Let's play!"

She releases both buttons at once, and the corridors of LNHQ shake wildly, knocking everyone off their feet! The roof seems to open up, and suddenly, Tweseveny is being carried up on some kind of white, blocky platform, rising high into a sunny blue sky!

Below, she can see the corridors growing and twisting, forming a maze! At the center of the maze is the Plot Device Room, and she can see Time-Waster Lad running out of it, carrying the Hourglass - and Mother Time giving chase!

All around her, platforms like something out of a video game are rising up - and spelling out words! In fact, they're spelling out "Infinite Leadership Cry.sig"!

This is really weird!! But Tweseveny feels alive! She sees a staircase running down from the 'g', into the LNHQ, a way to help-- and she sees M-Plot standing in front of it, brandishing a blade forged from a clock hand!

"Well," says M-Plot, widening her stance. "Two powerful net.villains against one of the weakest members of the LNH. Perhaps she was on my side after all." She swings the blade around in her hand. "Tweseveny... time to meet the boss of this level!"

She charges forward, and the two clash!

Far below, the Time Crapper picks up the Rung. "Tamela, we've got what we wanted..." He watches her run down the corridor, and sighs, walking after.

Mother Time fires temporal blasts from her scythe, ranting and screaming. "You didn't mean anything you said, did you?! It was all just a trick to get me to lower my guard!"

Time-Waster Lad ducks and dodges. "I really did, tho!" He looks over his shoulder for a moment, then eeps and darts to the side, out of the way of a burst of energy that turns a original painted cel of Manga Girl into crayon art on construction paper. "I like helping! It's good!!"

"Fuck that!!" She slices thru a decorative armoire in her rage. "I don't need anything except what's mine, and that's everything! That's me and my boy! We're strong enough to stand together against the whole universe!!"

Tweseveny dances in tight combat with M-Plot! She can hold her own, but she can't push forward - can't get past to help Time-Waster Lad!

"Hear that, Tweseveny?" says M-Plot, a smirk in her voice as she thrusts, narrowly missing Tweseveny's midsection. "You couldn't make them better! They're just as bad as before! You've failed, utterly!"

Tweseveny grits her teeth. It's true, and it stabs at her, but her head is clear, for the moment, of despair, and she's thinking...

M-Plot is nothing if not smart, and... yes, she's right. The Time Crapper and Mother Time - they're beyond Tweseveny's ability to fix, and, from what he'd said, beyond any hero's. They just need to break up...

...no, not just break up. They'd already tried to push off from each other, time after time. But they're too caught in each other's orbit, helplessly spinning back together. They need to be broken up - forcefully pushed out of each other's lives, too fast and hard to come back together. And maybe they'd end up being toxic in somebody else's direction - but at least there would be a chance!

And then, a second realization - yes, she can hear that! Somehow, she can hear what's going on far down below with perfect clarity. Which means...

Tweseveny throws herself into an aggressive attack, one which M-Plot will have to focus all her skills on dodging! And she raises her voice so all can hear! "Time-Waster Lad!"

Time-Waster Lad skids around a corner, panting as he runs as fast as he can. "Y-yeah?"

"Remember!" Tweseveny shouts. "Flame Wars II!" And then she has to dodge M-Plot's counterattack with all her might!

"Flame Wars II, what--" His eyes go wide, and he glances down at the Hourglass in his hands. "They can't win if..." He smiles the smile of someone with a plan!

He takes a turn, and a turn, and another turn-- and he's back in the lobby of the LNHQ. He runs behind the desk, where he can see the whole room.

Mother Time runs in, stops short. She glares at him, scythe burning with energies, eyes flicking around, trying to figure out why he stopped.

The Time Crapper walks in behind her, one hand seething with entropy, the other holding the Rung. "Give it up, boy. We've already won."

"Yeah!" Mother Time points the scythe at him. "You're just wasting time!"

Time-Waster Lad grins wide. "Yep!" He holds the Hourglass up in the air, and focuses. Once, he was able to waste millions, billions of years. Twenty-four hours should be a piece of cake!

"What..." The Time Crapper turns, looks out the window-- sees the angle of the light shifting, shadows moving, sun lowering towards the horizon-- "No!"

"GRAH!" Mother Time tries to blast him, but the energy skitters off the surface of the Hourglass! The sun sets, the moon rises--

The Time Crapper runs forward, heedless, hoping he's in time--

Time-Waster Lad looks up in the air and waves. "Bye, Tweseveny! Thanks!"

Somewhere far away, a clock strikes midnight, and Time-Waster Lad vanishes, Hourglass of wReamThermodynamics and all.

"No..." says the Time Crapper, inches from where he'd been. He turns, and sees Tamela-- "NO!"

"I don't..." Tamela looks confused, looking off into space, seeing something else, some other existence. Around her, figures appear for a brief moment, figures of herself, a cloud of selves singing, laughing, yelling, dying, living. She looks up at the Time Crapper, eyes wide, guileless. "I don't... remember you..."

The Time Crapper grabs her hand, pulling her away from herselves, but her hand comes apart in his, dissolving into a cloud, as brief a moment as all those others; and as her existence comes apart, she, and her selves, disappear from LNHQ, and from this moment altogether.

The Time Crapper falls to his knees, hand still extended, hidden gaze staring off at where she had been.

High above, the platforms rumble and come apart, separating Tweseveny and M-Plot, as LNHQ draws back together, seeming like a building again, instead of a dizzying labyrinth.

M-Plot's platform settles down next to the Time Crapper. He stares off, in a terrible freefall as the bottom drops out of his life. Then he looks up at M-Plot, voice helpless, beseeching. "What do I do now?"

M-Plot puts her hand on his shoulder, and speaks, not unkindly. "The only thing left for you to do. The thing you've needed to do for a long time. Move on."

The Time Crapper looks down, down into the depths of the universe, and nods, once. "To the past..." He sighs. "Always to the past." He holds out the Rung of Revamp, and M-Plot takes it.

Tweseveny's platform settles across from him. "Time Crapper, wait a second..."

He looks up at her. The bitterness is gone from his vacant gaze, but so too is the hope. "Yes, Burst Beetle Tweseveny?"

"I..." She still feels the shame, but... it'd be worse if she didn't say it. "I meant what I said. You should figure out what you really want, now that... now that this is all over."

The Time Crapper nods. "Thank you. Truly. But..." He looks off into the distance. "I am afraid I have but two choices. One, to separate entirely from humanity - to become fully cosmic, and take part in that great dance. It sounds beautiful... but I'm afraid I'm too weak to choose something so noble." He shakes his head, great sadness hanging off of him. "Thus, I will take the other choice - to stay a net.villain, and seek even greater power. I..."

He hesitates. "Somewhere out there, now, she has resumed her life, with nothing left of me in it..." He shakes his head. I will not seek to bring her back to me. Thank you for teaching me that. But..."

The Time Crapper draws himself up. The shadows within his robe seem to become deeper, and Tweseveny has a strange sensation of vertigo, like she's looking into the depths of space, beyond galaxies and clusters. "In her memory, I will find the greatest powers of this cosmos, and I will take them for my own. And I will force this Looniverse to become what I need it to be." His robe blows in an unseen wind, and the lights of the lobby dim. "And the LNH will battle me, and perhaps one of them will finally, finally, tell me what I need to be. That, Tweseveny, is what I desire."

Gazing into that awful deep darkness, Tweseveny sees one more awful truth. This man isn't the Time Crapper yet. Not the one from the Cosmic Plot Device Caper, from Cry.sig, from Retcon Hour. And he was going to go back, and carry out all those awful plans, and--

"Wait, please, let's..." The words die on her lips.

"Talk about it?" The Time Crapper nods, as one by one, the lights of the lobby wink out. "No, thank you. One day, we shall talk, one last time. But for now... goodbye, Tweseveny. I hope the path you walk is better than mine."

And for a brief moment, all is dark; and when light returns, he is gone.

For a moment, Tweseveny is silent. She turns to M-Plot, and says but one word: "Why?"

M-Plot folds her arms. "Because he's going to save the world." Unlike before, she is not happy, she is not gleeful, she is simply... carrying out a duty.

"Save the world!?" Tweseveny gestures wildly. "He's going to cause so much destruction! We could have stopped it!"

M-Plot shakes her head. "He will provide a valuable counterbalance. If not for his greed, if not for his desire, the Crossover Queen would have taken this world when it was weak."

"But--" Tweseveny clenches her fist. "There could have, must have been--"

"Better women than you have TRIED." M-Plot slams her fist into the wall! "WE ARE NOT THE ONES WHO WILL SAVE HIM."

"Enough." Burst Beetle XOX is suddenly there, next to them, her arms crossed, lenses focused on M-Plot. "I know who you are. I know who empowered you. And I know what your mission is."

"..." M-Plot turns away. "Which one?"

"Both of them."

"Er..." Tweseveny raises her hand. "Could I know?"

XOX turns to Tweseveny, and there was a smile in her voice. "Not yet." She looks back at M-Plot. "She'll tell you."

"The hell I will!" M-Plot snarls, still turned away.

"Yes, yes." XOX waves her hand casually, voice lightening. "But why worry about that, when there's still just one more thing for you to take care of?"

"Ah..." M-Plot looks at her hand, still holding the Rung of Revamp. "So there is."

She holds the Rung high in the air. Tweseveny wonders-- is M-Plot going to use it to power up, give herself some new form or weapon to use in their battles?

But no. The Rung begins to glow, but its light does not spread to M-Plot's body; the Rung itself grows brighter, and brighter, and Tweseveny suddenly understands - M-Plot is using the Rung of Revamp on the Rung of Revamp!

"No longer will the Rung of Revamp simply empower!" speaks M-Plot, voice ringing with an echoing thunder. "Once, its purpose was to create a character anew, to rewrite identities! Now, it returns to that purpose! I cast thee back in time - I cast thee to - Jungle Cheesecake!"

From far away, there is a deep BONG, echoing as if reflected between great cilffs, valleys and mountains; and with each echo, the Rung's light, and the Rung itself, fades, until it is gone.

M-Plot dusts off her hands. "It will have to be found again, ere net.hero or net.villain can use it."

"So..." says Tweseveny, raising an eyebrow. "You're not just here to mess with me."

"Yes," says M-Plot, strained calm in her voice. "I have my own duties to the Looniverses." She looks at Tweseveny, and in her lenses, a resentful glow burns. "And they include ending your playtime, Tweseveny. You are a reckless, irresponsible factor in these histories."

"But--"

XOX steps between them, and looks M-Plot in the face. "Go."

"Fine." The deep BONG sounds again, and M-Plot begins to fade. "You will see me again soon, Tweseveny! Beware! Bewaaaaaare..."

XOX shakes her head. "What a drama queen."

Suddenly, the lobby doors open and net.heroes pour in, fleshy humans and mechanical duplicates alike. They crowd around the Burst Beetles, full of confusion - it seemed that they had returned from their missions during the time that had been wasted, and found themselves outside at just past midnight.

Tweseveny feels light-headed, overwhelmed, and sways on her feet - into XOX's arms. The latter hero holds her close and addresses the crowd: "I promise an explanation, but first - time out!" She presses the ruby on her head, and everything seems to freeze around the two of them.

"Oh," says Tweseveny, trying to stand up. "Very good..." She stumbles again.

"Hey," says XOX, holding her up. "You started net.heroing in the evening after a tiring day of work, and between Carolyn and Time-Waster Lad, you've spent a whole 'nother day doing things. I'm not going to say you need some sleep... but yes I am. You need some sleep."

"...oh." Tweseveny yaaaaaaaawns, wide and deep, and her armor poofs away, leaving her in that same beige skirt and sensible blouse. "Sleep... it's a weird thing for a net.hero to do..."

XOX shakes her head. "We all do it, I promise. Just, usually off-panel." She guides Tweseveny down the corridors. "I don't think Time-Waster Lad will mind you using his room."

"Heh... no, I guess not..." She stumbles along, and it doesn't seem to take them much time at all to reach the door, for XOX to open it, and help her to the bed. She kicks off her shoes, and looks up to see XOX turning to go. "Hey, wait..."

XOX turns back. "Yes?"

"Is..." She rubs at her eye. "Is this... really happening? Am I really Burst Beetle Tweseveny, or is Glenda Gwynnych just pretending to be something more?"

XOX kneels down, takes her by the shoulders, and looks into her eyes, mask to face. "You are... yourself. I can't tell you what that is, but I know this. If you want to be Tweseveny, you don't have to be On all the time. You can have human needs, human flaws, and yet be far more than what they think a human is. That's what this place, this world, is about."

Tweseveny smiles. "Yes... thank you." She reaches up to stroke the mask. "And when will you be Off?"

The smile in XOX's voice is clear thru her mask. "At the end of the game." She stands up, turns away, opening the door to leave; but lingers in the doorway, helmet turning just so, a glance back at Tweseveny; one that makes Tweseveny oddly warm inside, oddly soft, oddly safe.

"Or perhaps... at halftime."

<<<*>>>

Author's Note: Whew! Finally! @-@v Two years in the making.

So what happens with Tweseveny next? Well, my plan is for a 27-issue series, plus a big "movie" special. I have no idea how long that'll take, of course. X3 And I might change my plans along the way. But I'm not gonna worry too much - I'm just gonna have fun, as much as I can. :>

One more continuity note: I noticed that in Infinite Leadership Crisis-era stories, the Rung of Revamp increased several characters' powers without altering them. I think there might be an interesting story in how that came about, but I figured I'd leave that one open, and just draw a line under the whole deal.

Also, after I talked to confidate Emma McGill about Time-Waster Lad, she came up with a list of potential habits for him:

Hair is always a different color

Has a bunch of tattoos that he did himself (pen & ink)

Chronic Doodler

Nails are often painted with whatever is lying around

Master whittler

Definitely picks at everything

Incredible at video games

Known to just start walking in a random direction with no destination in mind

Pretty good at trick shots, lacks the discipline to go pro.

Chronic thread unraveler

Is annoyed that Criticker only has a 0-100 rating system

Has a serious TV Tropes problem

Middling bass player, mostly just likes to 'jam' in his free time

Hair is either buzzed, or a very uneven shag (he cuts it himself)

People think he's very "zen"; he isnt

Chronic list starter

Owns the most elaborate fidget spinner the world has ever seen.

Never leaves home without a ballpoint pen, Sharpie, gum, some kind of fidget toy, & eyeliner

Can turn nearly any thin, flat surface into an airplane

Can play arbitrary numbers of songs' drum lines on arbitrary surfaces

[awkward-cocopuff]

Still Into You: Bakugou x Reader

"Can't count the years on one hand that we've been together.

I need the other one to hold you"

You and Bakugou had been dating since you two were 2nd years high school students. You happily hummed to yourself as the both of you walked hand in hand down the busy sidewalk. "Heyy~ Bakugou our anniversary is coming up in 2 months~~", you singsonged to him. "Yeah, yeah", rolling his eyes with a half smile. "Its kind of early to be worried about that weirdo. Anyway, how long have I been putting up with you again Y/N?", he grinned down at you. There went those damn butterflies in your stomach. You would think those would go away after a few months of dating but they still came back every so often. Especially when he smiled or showed his softer side. You tapped your chin and held up you freehand wiggly all 5 fingers, "This many". Bakugou stopped mid stride and glared at you. Now he found alot of things not worth wasting his brain cells on but knowing how many years you two had been dating was not a waste of him knowing. "I think you're forgetting a year Y/N". You giggled and said, "Nope! But my other hand is busy holding yours". You tapped your pinky finger on his knuckle, "There, six!".

"But when our fingers interlock, can't deny, can't deny, you're the worth it

'Cause after all this time

I should be over all the butterflies but I'm into you, I'm into you

You two had your share of fights in the past. The boy was a walking grenade. And you didn't take any shit. Usually they were drawn out by your stubbornness or his pride. But everytime one of you would come to you senses and try to rectify the situation. After one fight Bakugou slinked into bed next to you and grabbed your hand. He interlaced his fingers with your and pressed your hand to his forehead. "Y/N....I'm sorry...I shouldn't have blown up on you like that....you're my everything." And there they were again making your stomach light.

I'm still into you"

"And even baby our worst nights

I'm into you, I'm into you"

It was night before you and Bakugou's anniversary and he had just dropped the bomb that his agency was making him work the next night. "WHAT? I THOUGHT YOU REQUESTED TOMORROW OFF?!", you questioned him. Bakugou only winced at your raised voice and averted his eyes. "I'm sorry Y/N I can't just work though". You groaned, "Yaknow we haven't actually properly celebrated our anniversary for 3 years". It was true, you and Bakugou hadn't actually gone out to celebrate your relationship since he started at his agency and not to mention you barely saw him the past 3 weeks expect for at 2 a.m. through sleepy eyes when he flopped into bed after overtime. You were starting to feel neglected. It even crossed your mind that he just wasn't as interested in you as he use to be at one point. "I just want you home", you muttered. "Look y/n I sorry but I can't do anything about it", he said rubbing his temple. "You never do anything about it...". Bakugou knitted his brows together, "What?" "You never fight it! The only time is see you nowadays is when I wake up early in the morning for work! You're not even awake! We've barely talked to eachother lately because of all your damned over time!!" "FUCKING DAMN IT Y/N! I'VE BEEN WORKING MY ASS OFF FOR A FUCKING REASON!" You clenched your fist and fought back tears as he roared at you. You turned on your heel and B-lined toward the bedroom. You didnt feel like crying in front of him. "Whatever Katsuki", you hissed and slammed the door. Bakugou's heart ached at how bitterly you used his name. "Fuck...". He trudged over to his coat, pulled out his cellphone and dialed his long time friend Kirishima. After telling Kiri what had just transpired l, all his friend left him with was, "Well it sounds like now or never man...you better do everything to keep her. Took you too long to get her!". Yeah, it took Katsuki a while before he would admit to liking you much less getting to asking you out. You didn't go to U.A. and weren't planning on becoming a hero but, you still caught his eye. Everytime he saw you at the cafe or in the arcade he had butterflies in the pit of his stomach and even now when he heard you laugh, hum or just catch the sunlight the right way they would come back full force. Bakugou reached down and shifted things around until his hand brushed up against a small velvet box. Pulling it out he whispered, "It's now or never".

"Let 'em wonder how we got this far,

'Cause I don't really need to wonder at all

Yeah, after all this time

I'm still into you"

The next day, you sat with Uraraka and Asui at a cafe to play catch up. You two may how not gone to the same school together but you three had made fast friends as you frequented the same bookstore quite often. "What's wrong y/n? you look pretty down today, ribbit". "Yeah" Uraraka interjected but paused, "What did Bakugou do...". You flinched and looked up at the sheepishly from your latte. Your eyes were still a bit puffy from crying the night before. You sighed, "We....we had a fight last night. I was just made that he wasn't home alot recently. But I didnt want it to escalate the way it did". Asui tapped her chin, "Maybe he had a good reason as to why? I can't imagine him not having one. He's been hellbent on you ever since high school". "A good rea-", you were caught off by your phone vibrating and lighting up with a txt notification from Bakugou. "Y/N, I know you are still upset with me but please let me make it up to you. Be ready to go out by 6❤". You blinked hard at your phone, you weren't sure what was more confusing a text this early from Bakugou or the fact he used a heart emoji. Uraraka leaned in to peak at your phone and beamed, "WELL LOOKS LIKE YOU GOT YOUR WISH!"

You heard the front door open at 5:50 PM as you finished getting ready. There was a knock on the bedroom door and Bakugou appeared in the frame. He was wearing black slacks and loafers with a white dress shirt and a red tween blazer. His heart caught in his throat looking you over. Butterflies. Your dl/dc dress fight you perfectly. And your e/c orbs glowed. "I thought you couldn't get the day off!", you exclaimed wrapping his arms around his neck. He kissed your forehead, "I had to pull a few strings. Now let's go I made dinner reservations." After dinner Bakugou pulled you along to the park. The cherry blossoms were and full bloom and the sun was setting giving everything a beautiful glow. You two arrived at the base of a rather large cherry tree and stopped. You could recognize the carved lettering of the two of your initials in a heart in the bark. You brushed your fingers and against it and smiled. Remembering this is where Bakugou confessed to you. Bakugou stepped close to you and whispered your name. "Y/n...I know the past couple of weeks have been difficult. I know that you felt lonely", he bit his lip and reached in his pocket. "But I for sure know that every moment I've spent with you has counted towards the greatest moments of my life", he said getting down on one knee taking your hand. Your stomach started flapping and a blush enveloped your cheeks as your eyes grew wide, small tears forming in the corners. "I'm just as much in love with you now as I was years ago, if not even more. I can't even stomach the thought of you not being by my side. So y/n l/n", he flicked the box open releasing a dazzling ring with rubies as intense red as his eyes around the band, "Will you marry me?". You dropped to your knees and wrapped your arms tightly around him and sobbed, "Yes, Katsuki! A millions times yes!!". He slipped the ring over you finger and pulled you into a deep kiss.

"I'm still into you"

Author's note: I've been listening to this song on repeat for several days. And soft Bakugou is one of my favorite Bakugous. I hope I did them both a bit of justice 💜💜. Ignore the typos if any.

[butasformeblog]

Bob Dylan - Murder Most Foul (Official Audio)

Hear Bob Dylan’s Absolutely Mind-Blowing New Song ‘Murder Most Foul’

Dylan’s first original song in eight years is about JFK’s assassination — but it’s really about so much more

It was a dark day in Dallas, November '63 It was a dark day in Dallas, November '63 A day that will live on in infamy President Kennedy was a-ridin' high Good day to be livin' and a good day to die Being led to the slaughter like a sacrificial lamb He said, "Wait a minute, boys, you know who I am

"Of course we do, we know who you are!" Then they blew off his head while he was still in the car Shot down like a dog in broad daylight Was a matter of timing and the timing was right You got unpaid debts, we've come to collect We're gonna kill you with hatred, without any respect We'll mock you and shock you and we'll put it in your face We've already got someone here to take your place The day they blew out the brains of the king Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing It happened so quickly, so quick, by surprise Right there in front of everyone's eyes Greatest magic trick ever under the sun Perfectly executed, skillfully done Wolfman, oh wolfman, oh wolfman howl Rub-a-dub-dub, it's a murder most foul

Hush, little children, you'll understand The Beatles are comin', they're gonna hold your hand Slide down the banister, go get your coat Ferry 'cross the Mersey and go for the throat There's three bums comin' all dressed in rags Pick up the pieces and lower the flags I'm goin' to Woodstock, it's the Aquarian Age Then I'll go to Altamont and sit near the stage Put your head out the window, let the good times roll There's a party going on behind the Grassy Knoll Stack up the bricks, pour the cement Don't say Dallas don't love you, Mr. President

Put your foot in the tank and then step on the gas Try to make it to the triple underpass Blackface singer, whiteface clown Better not show your faces after the sun goes down Up in the red light district, they've got cop on the beat Living in a nightmare on Elm Street When you're down on Deep Ellum, put your money in your shoe Don't ask what your country can do for you Cash on the ballot, money to burn Dealey Plaza, make a left-hand turn I'm going down to the crossroads, gonna flag a ride The place where faith, hope, and charity lie Shoot him while he runs, boy, shoot him while you can See if you can shoot the invisible man Goodbye, Charlie! Goodbye, Uncle Sam! Frankly, Miss Scarlett, I don't give a damn What is the truth, and where did it go? Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know "Shut your mouth," said a wise old owl Business is business, and it's a murder most foul

Tommy, can you hear me? I'm the Acid Queen I'm riding in a long, black Lincoln limousine Ridin' in the backseat next to my wife Headed straight on in to the afterlife I'm leaning to the left, I got my head in her lap Hold on, I've been led into some kind of a trap Where we ask no quarter, and no quarter do we give We're right down the street, from the street where you live They mutilated his body and they took out his brain What more could they do? They piled on the pain But his soul was not there where it was supposed to be at For the last fifty years they've been searchin' for that Freedom, oh freedom, freedom over me I hate to tell you, mister, but only dead men are free Send me some lovin', then tell me no lie Throw the gun in the gutter and walk on by Wake up, little Susie, let's go for a drive Cross the Trinity River, let's keep hope alive Turn the radio on, don't touch the dials Parkland hospital, only six more miles You got me dizzy, Miss Lizzy, you filled me with lead That magic bullet of yours has gone to my head I'm just a patsy like Patsy Cline Never shot anyone from in front or behind I've blood in my eye, got blood in my ear I'm never gonna make it to the new frontier Zapruder's film I seen night before Seen it thirty-three times, maybe more It's vile and deceitful, it's cruel and it's mean Ugliest thing that you ever have seen They killed him once and they killed him twice Killed him like a human sacrifice The day that they killed him, someone said to me, "Son The age of the Antichrist has just only begun" Air Force One comin' in through the gate Johnson sworn in at 2:38 Let me know when you decide to throw in the towel It is what it is, and it's murder most foul

What's new, pussycat? What'd I say? I said the soul of a nation been torn away And it's beginning to go into a slow decay And that it's thirty-six hours past Judgment Day Wolfman Jack, he's speaking in tongues He's going on and on at the top of his lungs Play me a song, Mr. Wolfman Jack Play it for me in my long Cadillac Play me that "Only the Good Die Young" Take me to the place Tom Dooley was hung Play "St. James Infirmary" and the Court of King James If you want to remember, you better write down the names Play Etta James, too, play "I'd Rather Go Blind" Play it for the man with the telepathic mind Play John Lee Hooker, play "Scratch My Back" Play it for that strip club owner named Jack Guitar Slim going down slow Play it for me and for Marilyn Monroe Play "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" Play it for the First Lady, she ain't feeling any good Play Don Henley, play Glenn Frey Take it to the limit and let it go by Play it for Carl Wilson, too Looking far, far away down Gower Avenue Play tragedy, play "Twilight Time" Take me back to Tulsa to the scene of the crime Play another one and "Another One Bites the Dust" Play "The Old Rugged Cross" and "In God We Trust" Ride the pink horse down that long, lonesome road Stand there and wait for his head to explode Play "Mystery Train" for Mr. Mystery The man who fell down dead like a rootless tree Play it for the reverend, play it for the pastor Play it for the dog that got no master Play Oscar Peterson, play Stan Getz Play "Blue Sky," play Dickey Betts Play Art Pepper, Thelonious Monk Charlie Parker and all that junk All that junk and "All That Jazz" Play something for the Birdman of Alcatraz Play Buster Keaton, play Harold Lloyd Play Bugsy Siegel, play Pretty Boy Floyd Play the numbers, play the odds Play "Cry Me A River" for the Lord of the gods Play Number nine, play Number six Play it for Lindsey and Stevie Nicks Play Nat King Cole, play "Nature Boy" Play "Down In The Boondocks" for Terry Malloy Play "It Happened One Night" and "One Night of Sin" There's twelve million souls that are listening in Play "Merchant of Venice", play "Merchants of Death" Play "Stella by Starlight" for Lady Macbeth Don't worry, Mr. President, help's on the way Your brothers are comin', there'll be hell to pay Brothers? What brothers? What's this about hell? Tell them, "We're waiting, keep coming," we'll get them as well Love Field is where his plane touched down But it never did get back up off the ground Was a hard act to follow, second to none They killed him on the altar of the rising sun Play "Misty" for me and "That Old Devil Moon" Play "Anything Goes" and "Memphis in June" Play "Lonely At the Top" and "Lonely Are the Brave" Play it for Houdini spinning around his grave Play Jelly Roll Morton, play "Lucille" Play "Deep In a Dream", and play "Driving Wheel" Play "Moonlight Sonata" in F-sharp And "A Key to the Highway" for the king on the harp Play "Marching Through Georgia" and "Dumbarton's Drums" Play darkness and death will come when it comes Play "Love Me Or Leave Me" by the great Bud Powell Play "The Blood-stained Banner", play "Murder Most Foul"

[calliecat93]

Are we ready for a good ol’ fashioned Grimm fight readers? I hope you are! So this is the final chapter to contain footage from the trailer, and all that’s left from that are the outfits and the fights in the mines. So… this should be an interesting one. The past two chapters have been pretty strong, so can this one continue the streak? Well, let’s take a look~!

Overview

We actually get multiple perspectives in the beginning, so let’s go in chronological order. First is Clover briefing Ruby, Jaune, and Qrow on the upcoming mission, which is to clear the launch site for Amity Colosseum. The plan is to use an abandoned Dust Mine… but it’s Grimm infested, so they gotta get rid of those nasty buggers first. I really like seeing Ruby and Jaune there and being respected as the respective leaders of their teams. They feel like actual Huntsmen now… which if one zooms in on the holo-screen, we see that they’re labeled as active Huntsmen now! Yay~! Anyways, after the briefing, Pietro gives everyone containers containing their upgraded weapons, modified by both requests and based on what he saw in Vytal Festival footage, and new outfits! Everyone preps, including Ruby… but then Oscar approaches her. We’ll go into that one in a bit. For now though, everyone is ready to go, but Oscar remains behind in Atlas. Still, we see everyone use landing strategies, including Jaune. The boy has grown~! Also, new song~! Love it~!!! 

So it’s Team RWBY with Marrow and Harriet, JNR with Elm and Vine, and finally Qrow and Clover. We get a cute Bumblebee moment as Ruby feels cold, likely from the very brief amount of Aura she depleted when landing. Which we saw on Blake’s Scroll, which all of those were also updated! But when Blake mentions leaving Oscar behind, Yang stops Ruby to question about her lying to Ironwood. Ruby is clearly uncomfortable with this, but justifies it by bringing up the current state of Atlas and Mantle. Blake and Weiss back her up and agree that for now, they should hold back on revealing everything about Jinn, Oz, and Salem. Ruby even says that she /will/ tell Ironwood eventually… but she goes quiet when Yang asks about how Oscar took it. We flashback to Ruby handing Oscar the Lamp since… well, she’s about to go on a mission and having a Relic/Grimm Magnet out in the open could be a bad thing. But Oscar then asks the million-dollar question; isn’t Ruby doing to Ironwood what Oz did to them? We see Ruby look conflicted… but we don’t see her response.

For now, the mission is underway with all the groups going through different sections of the Mines. We get a few bits like Clover asking Qrow about being on a team before, but Qrow responding that working alone tends to be easier. Ouch. We have Nora trying to compliment Ren’s new look… but he dodges the topic. Because we haven’t seen that kind of scene in everything in existence ever. Over with RWBY, they run into a cave-in… which causes Blake to recognize the Mine that they are in. One where an explosion happened, and while no one says it, likely killed several Faunus. Hmm… could this be the same accident that killed Ilia’s parents perhaps? Anyways, this makes Weiss feel guilty for her father’s horrible actions as well as how complacent about it she used to be. Marrow, who is also a Faunus, even pipes in about how due to Atlas’ system/society, humans always stand back and allow his kind to be mistreated despite benefiting from them while they have to do nothing. Plus there are those who still willingly abuse them, like the Schnee Dust Company. After all, again it isn’t said, but remember what we found out was under Adam’s mask…

Anyways, they’ve found a way through via a gap and send Blake in since she can fit through/see in the dark. At first, it all looks clear and with no Dust around they can just blast their way through. But things quickly change as Blake encounters the Geist Grimm. As such, Harriet breaks the wall with her weapon, which seems to give her cybernetic armor. Nice! Before they can give chase, however, they are confronted by some kind of... ugh… bug Grimm. Centipedes maybe? Evil caterpillars? IDK, but they’re creepy as Hell and with my fear of bugs, you can only imagine how much of a joy this was for me.

Cue the action sequence! We get to see some of the upgrades as Yang can now attach miniature bombs to the Grimm that she punches, while Ruby can turn her scythe blade around which increases her trajectory. JNR, Elm, and Vine also get into a fight and we see that the blades on Ren’s guns now have grappling abilities. But we also get to see what the Ace-Ops can do. Marrow has a boomerang/sword/gun hybrid and seems to be able to freeze things… not like with ice, just stop them from moving. Elm can root herself in place while Vine is more or less Mr. Fantastic from Fantastic Four, but it looks like only with his arms. Harriet has a Speed Semblance, something that Ruby excitedly points out since she too has a Speed Semblance. Make a note of that for the end kids!

Back with Qrow and Clover, they’re facing the Geist as Clover tells everyone to head for his location. Unfortunately, it’s able to possess a boulder-sized chunk of ice and begins to have more form the body. Qrow sees that a metal grate is going to collapse due to this and just barely warns Clover, but the Geist is able to go down further into the mines. Qrow reveals his Bad Luck Semblance as to why he was able to warn Clover as well as how he can’t 100% control it. But Clover reveals his own Semblance, which as we all guessed, is Good Fortune. To say that Qrow looks less than happy about it, well… no, that seems pretty accurate. Less than happy. 

Everyone reaches the location, but the Geist has already proceeded to add what I assume is Gravity Dust to its body. So they can’t just smash it the way that RNJR did in V4 since… well… I imagine that exploding Gravity Dust would NOT end well. Before RWBY or JNR can do anything, Ace-Ops is already on the move. It’s a really cool sequence! We get to see how well Ace-Ops works together, seeming to know each others strengths and able to coordinate ad improvise very well off of each other. It’s like with Team RWBY when they coordinate attacks, but there’s this more… professional, higher-skilled atmosphere when watching them in action. They also are able to coordinate knocking off the Dust Crystals and catching them before they hit the ground. It’s an awesome display that clearly has RWBY and JNR awed, and I imagine it’s going to inspire them for later on.

The battle ends with Clover using his fishing line to rip the Grimm straight out of its ice body and Harriet delivering the killing blow. Daaaamn. With the Geist gone though, Dust Crystals start to fall and Ace-Ops starts to round them up. Before Harriet can grab the last one, Ruby beats her to it with the usage of her Petal Burst. But this brings up something… interesting. Harriet helps Ruby up, but she also points out that compared to other Speed Semblances she’s seen, Ruby’s Semblance… doesn’t appear to be Speed Based. Or at least, it’s not the main thing. There may just be something more to it. We don’t get a lot of time to ponder it though as Clover reports the mission as accomplished. But we don’t end on a happy note. We see Forest dropped off back in Mantle… where he runs into Tyrian. Our episode ends with Tyrian striking with his tail, and I think you can figure out Forest’s fate without me needing to say it.

Review

So far… this is my least favorite chapter. But that’s not saying much when we’re only three chapters in. And even then, I really enjoyed this one!

Let’s go over the outfits and upgrades first. It… was a little underwhelming. I was hoping for some more character stuff like Blake debating on cutting her hair and thinking about where she is now compared to back then. Instead… we just have her looking into a mirror. Jaune we at least saw tracing his fingers over his Pyrrha sash. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the sequences fine and I LOVE the results! Everyone looks so good! Even Jaune, who’s new hair I hated the most looks great! I just wanted… well, a little bit more. Still, very least nothing drags like they’d run the risk of if they did extend it, so it is what it is. The upgrades are all fantastic as well! Not sure if we’ve seen all of them, but Ruby, Yang, Jaune, and Ren’s? Love ‘em~!

I also wish that we had more follow-up after the last episode regarding Ruby. I’m happy that Yang and Oscar did question it and I liked Blake and Weiss voicing their support for Ruby. But we don’t get to hear from Ruby about how she feels about her own choices. We can tell that she isn’t happy, but we don’t get to hear her talk about it. I know, that’s kind of her thing and it’s gonna be a matter of when the floodgates finally break open. Still, I just wish that we could hear her perspective about it, but I guess we have to wait. But I did like it being brought up and Oscar asking about it being like what Oz did to them. Take that people who called it bad writing!

Those nitpicks aside, this episode was great! We get to truly see the Ace-Ops in action and they are fantastic! Especially at the end! All of them come off as very likable and have this sense of comradery between them. They work together incredibly well, feeling very coordinated and in tandem with each other. Might be because they’re a military unit, but still. My favorite one so far is probably Harriet since imo she has the most personality with her competitiveness, but has this older sister kind of vibe. Marrow is probably a close second though, especially with how he points out how Faunus are put down by Atlas’ system. It might have been his weird way of making Weiss feel better and not put all the blame about her complacency on her since it’s very much a society issue. It was nice to see someone who seems to be on top despite his status recognize the problem is still very much existent.

Speaking of, there’s a lot of good subtle things in this episode regarding the SDC. We see Weiss push snow off a crate, and her face when she sees the company initials just screams guilt. We see her express this regarding how she used to be and how her father treated the Faunus as she recalls his anger when the accident happens. Speaking of, the possibility of it being where Ilia’s parents died? Nice! Blake’s unnerved reaction as she recognizes where they are and how she clearly feels sad about the lives lost shows how dedicated to Faunus Rights she still is and how much better her and Weiss’ relationship is. We’re likely gonna see the true darkness of the SDC this volume especially after seeing Adam’s scar/brand, and it ain’t gonna be pretty for either girl, so it’s good to have that solidarity between them.

The Mines looked like… well, a mine. So not much to say on the design work, but it was good. The fights were great, especially with Ace-Ops. Music was good, both the score and the new vocal track that played, as brief as it was. I know it's WAAAAY too early, but… SOUNDTRACK NOW PLEASE! The pacing was good. Some nice bits like Bumblebee flirting, Jaune and Nora pouting at Elm’s comment about them not dying, Ruby fangirling over Harriet’s Semblance, Qrow’s still lingering self-loathing about Team STRQ and then meeting a guy who has Good Luck powers. There are just so many good things in this episode. I still have my nitpicks like what I mentioned above, and the ‘Nora compliments Ren and gets mad when he changes the subject’ scene because it’s just so… predictable and not funny, cute, or insightful. I’d have cut it personally. But nothing in this episode was badly done. It was standard RWBY quality, which is great~

Last thing that I can think to note is Ruby’s Semblance. As we learn from Harriet, there’s more to it going on than Ruby may have believed. And… I am all for this! It’s been said multiple times how Semblances constantly grow and evolve over time, and we’ve seen that with people like Weiss. It’s been debated a lot about how it doesn’t seem like Ruby’s Semblance is simple speed with rose petals trailing her since at least Volume 4. What is the true extent of her Semblance? I don’t have an exact idea, but I do believe that the rose petals play a part in it. Especially since my headcanon for a long time is that Summer’s Semblance is being able to turn/scatter into rose petals. Which… has me concerned considering the “Thus Kindly She Scatters” inscription on Summer’s grave. Does Ruby have a similar ability? IDK, but I’m excited to find out~!

Chapter Four Predictions

So as it turns out, the thumbnail/description for this episode came out the same day as the premiere. So I have a good idea of what’s likely going to happen. Going off the title, ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ I think that this is going to mark the return of Jaques Schnee. I know, I hate it too, but it was gonna happen sooner or later. Makes sense since he’s likely going to launch some kind of campaign in Mantle and stir up trouble there that’s likely gonna effect RWBY’s efforts to help the city. Especially for poor Weiss cause as Chapter 2 demonstrated, Mantle does not have a happy view of the Schnee Family. Not sure if we’ll see Mama Schnee or Whitley, though the latter has a good chance, but yeah, asshole dad may very well be making his return. I hope that Weiss kicks him.

But on the upside, due to that and them being in Mantle, I think that we might have a very good chance of Robyn finally appearing. Chapter 4 feels like a very good place to bring her in and let her counter Jaques efforts, as well as letting us see what she and her allies can really do. She is Robin Hood after all, so she’s probably up for some thievery and mischief! We also might hear about Tyrian’s murder spree cause that’s probably gonna cause some tension between Mantle and Atlas. It’s gonna be Beacon all over again kids!

Episode Stats

Favorite Character: Harriet Bree and Marrow Armin Favorite Scene: Ace-Ops vs Geist Least Favorite Scene: Nora and Ren scene in the mines Favorite Voice Actor: Anairis Quinones (Harriet Bree) Favorite Animation: Harriet activating her Semblance against the Grimm Bug things Rating: 7.5/10

Final Thoughts

Overall, competent episode. Not my favorite since I felt it was lacking a lot of the tension and drama of Chapter 2 and the draw-in power of Chapter 1. But by no means is it a bad chapter. It accomplishes all that it set out to do and did it well. It fleshed out the Ace-Ops and made them more interesting characters that you want to see more of. It’s a fun episode that may not progress much in the way of plot or drama outside some minor bits, but it was an enjoyable watch. Which at the end of the day, is all that I could ask for~

[evilcharming18]

Ruby Red Tattoo Shop

I’m late as always but it’s still the 14th in the west coast so...🤷🏾‍♀️

Here’s my entry for day one of Azula Week 2019, Tattoo Shop AU

“You know I don’t think any of us ever imagined you turning out like this,” Zuko says softly as he takes in his sister’s office. The artwork covered the room from the floor to the ceiling, none of the original wallpaper could be seen. Instead, you saw all of Azula’s artwork, the rough sketches and the paintings that she worked on for weeks, the doodles that were done while waiting for her next client and the messes of paint and fire that were thrown together in some of her fits of rage. Everything Azula was and wasn’t covered that room completely, a full expression of what Azula was actually like. What she liked, disliked, felt was surrounding them both. Those walls showed him a completely different person from the Azula he had known in the palace, the Azula he had grown up with, was jealous of, had feared and had overcome. The Azula that was perfect and exact, the Azula who always had a plan and never failed, the Princess Azula.

“Yeah, well neither did I Zuzu,” She scoffs back, keeping her eyes glued to her paper as she continued to draw her latest piece of work. She had a client coming tomorrow and she wanted every line of this tattoo to be perfect. She never gave her clients anything less than perfect. She couldn’t let herself.

“I didn’t even know you could draw like this,” The Fire Lord continues to look around her office, at the intricate pieces of artwork that surrounded him. Never in a million years could he see his sister being an artist, she had never shown an interest in art and for her to grow into not only an artist but a tattoo artist was a shock to everyone. The sounds of her brush moving over the paper were the only sounds that filled the room and Zuko couldn’t help but feel awkward. As if he was with a stranger and not his sister.

“There is a lot that you don’t know about me. It’s not like you ever tried anyways,” While the response sounds nonchalant leaving Azula’s mouth, it hit Zuko like a ton of bricks.

“Azula, that isn’t-”

“Nope, stop right there,” Azula finally looks up at him, a glare fixed on her face and heat surrounding them suddenly. This was the face he was used to, the glare, the anger, the preciseness of every feature of her. And this was the Azula that she was trying to let go. A sigh leaves her mouth and she shakes her head for a moment. “Do not come in here, into my home and business and try to act like we were something we weren’t. That you were some sort of caring brother or that Ursa cared or that anyone in the godforsaken palace gives a damn about me. If you want to come here and check in on me, make sure this isn't just a cover for my plot to take back the throne, go ahead. Want to watch me do what I do best because you’re interested, fine. But don’t try to make some petty excuses when I say nothing but the truth Zuko,” She tells him, the heat leaving the room as quickly as it had appeared and the fallen princess picks up her paintbrush again, resuming the stroke she had left off on. She wanted to get as much done as she could before her client for today arrived. And she didn’t want the stress or discomfort of Zuko hanging over her. She didn’t need to make any mistakes today. She would not let Zuko and his nonsense throw her off.

Zuko stared at his sister for a while after her harsh glare had left her face and her focus had returned to her artwork. Azula was right, back then he hadn’t cared much, his jealousy got in the way of him caring. Caring the way he should have. And after learning about how Ozai truly treated Azula behind closed doors, he only feels guiltier that he hadn’t cared more.

He was distracted by his own thoughts that he barely heard Azula speak up until she repeated herself, “How long are you staying in town this time Zuzu?” She asks him and he clears his throat before answering her. “Not long just until tomorrow. I just wanted to check in before I continued my journey to Ba Sing Se.”

“All alone this time?” She asked, her tone almost curious.

“The Gaang decided to look around the shops around the city.” He answers and she nods.

“No one wanted to accompany you on your visit to your crazy sister huh?” She says with her usual smirk but he shook his head.

“Azula you know that’s-“

“Zuzu I’m kidding, I wouldn’t want them here anyways. Why are you so defensive?” She says and Zuko frowns.

“Because I want you to feel welcome at home and with us,“ Zuko tells her genuinely and Azula rolls her eyes.

“You’ve never tried before so why try now. I am fine where I am-“ Before Azula could finish her sentence the bell above the front door rang and she sighed. She knew exactly who walked through that door. It was her client for the day and she had hoped that Zuko would be gone before she had gotten here. The woman was a dear friend and Azula didn’t need Zuko ruining things for her.

“Who is that?” The Fire Lord asked and Azula puts down her paint brush, closing her jar of ink as she ignores Zuko’s question. She stands from her seat and goes to the shelf on the other side of the room, finding her box of tattoo supplies and the drawing she was looking for. She turns around and looks at him, irritation forming on her face.

“That is my client for the day so you’re either going to leave or sit out there silently and watch me do what I do.” She explains quickly, her voice reminding him of how she used to sound and he nods, moving towards the door of the office so he didn’t irritated her further. Azula leaves her office and is almost knocked to the ground when her client hugs her.

“Azula!! I haven’t seen you in months! How are you?” Imi asks excitedly, still holding her in a tight hug.

“I have been good Imi, I’d be better if you weren’t crushing my lungs.” Azula breathes out and her fellow firebender lets go of her.

“Oh sorry, I just missed you is all.” She laughs and then looks up to see Zuko standing in the corner. She gasps and instantly bows for the Fire Lord.

“Oh you don’t have to do that.” Azula groans as she moved to her chair and table, setting her things down. Azula watched as Zuko turned red and Imi continue to bow. She shook her head and began set up for Imi’s tattoo, ignoring the foolishness that was taking place. Her friend only wanted a small fire lily on her back, nothing too difficult but she still took it very seriously.

“What do you mean, it’s the Fire Lord, of course I have to bow.” Imi tells her and Azula rolls her eyes.

“It’s just Zuko, he’s nothing special,” Azula says indifferently. Zuko makes a face before sitting in a chair on the side.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Fire Lord Zuko,” Imi tell Zuko and he smiles at her.

“The honor is all mine. It is not often I get to meet one of Azula’s friends.” Zuko starts. “Actually, how did you become friends with Azula?” He asks and she smiles brightly.

“I met her in the Asylum, at first she was a little reserved but one day she helped me with a particularly rude guard and we’ve been friends ever since. She’s the best friend I’ve ever had,” Azula freezes at Imi’s answer. She could feel Zuko’s eyes on her as she takes a breath and recomposes herself before finishing up her set up process. She hadn’t expected Imi to say that, sure they were close but Azula didn’t think she was her best friend. She thought Imi would have friends all over, friends kinder and better suited for Imi than her.

“Your best friend huh?” He comments and Imi nods, a bright smile taking over her face.

“Of course. She’s the best person ever, don’t you think?” Imi says as she starts to walk over to the chair and got in position for the tattoo. She removed her top shirt, leaving her in her wrappings that covered her chest, just enough room for the Fire Lily to go on her shoulder blade. She lays down on the chair on her stomach and turns her head to look at Azula who had a frown on her face. “What’s wrong Zula?” Imi asks and Azula looks her, her features softening as she looked at her friend.

“It’s nothing, you ready for this?” She answers and in turn asks, and Imi nods.

“Of course, I’m so excited!” Imi answers and Azula smiles.

“Well then let’s get started,” Azula says. She wipes Imi’s back with the alcohol to sterilize it before placing the ink stamp on her back. The ink takes and there’s a nice outline of the flower on her back. The former princess used her firebending to sterilize the needle she planned on using before taking the first dip into the permanent ink.

Zuko watches as Azula begins to pierce Imi’s skin with the ink covered needle. The girl didn’t seem to be in too much pain though this was clearly not Imi’s first tattoo. The girl’s arms had a ton of them which seemed out of character for a girl as bubbly and happy as her. He paid attention to Azula’s every move as she traced every line perfectly, nothing out of place. It took over two hours for her to complete the piece of art, layer after layer until the ink was dark on Imi’s tan fair fire nation skin. Azula hadn’t even broken a sweat and quickly cleaned off the tattoo before rubbing some cream over the area. She allowed Imi look at the tattoo in the mirror and as soon as Imi saw it, she wrapped Azula in a tight hug again.

“Oh I love it so much Zula, it’s gorgeous! You never let me down, ” Azula stiffens for a second before relaxing into her hug. She could feel Zuko’s eyes on them which made her uncomfortable but she wasn’t going to let him ruin the moment.

“I’m glad you like it. You deserve nothing but the best.” Azula tells her. Azula begins cleaning up around her area before looking back at Zuko.

“Done enough snooping for today. Finally sure I’m not on a rampage,” Azula asks him and he sighs.

“Azula you know that’s not why I’m here, it’s never why I’m here, not anymore. I’m just making sure you’re okay.” Zuko tells her and Azula shakes her head.

“Sure zuzu, and I’m a flying Bison.” She responds sarcastically.

“You know I actually came to invite you back to the palace, we’re having a dinner in honor of the 10 year since the end of the war and I want you to be there.” He tells her and her guard instantly rises back up at the mention of the war.

“Why would I come to that. To be surrounded by people who hate me. I’ll pass,” She dismisses it quickly to keep her emotions in check. She really didn’t want to be having this conversation in front of Imi. Not that she was embarrassed but her past was not something she was proud of and didn’t need to be mentioned in front of the only friend she had.

“Fine Azula, i just thought I’d ask anyway. I actually think it’s time I’d head back to the inn before they send Aang looking for me.” He tells her and she scoffs.

“We wouldn’t want them getting the idea that I killed you now would we.” She mutters and Zuko sighs.

“It was a pleasure meeting you Imi,” He says with a small smile before moving towards the door. “I’ll be back in two months Azula and the offer still stands, you can come home to the palace any time you’d like.” He tells her firmly before leaving out of the door.

A ragged breath leaves Azula’s mouth as she turns to look at Imi. The girl has a sympathetic look on her face and it makes Azula uncomfortable. She could tell that Imi wants to say something but doesn’t know if she should.

“Go ahead, say it.” Azul tells her and Imi nods.

“I think you should go.” Imi rushes out and Azula’s eyes widened. Out of all of the things she could have said, she didn’t expect that.

“I can give you a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t go.” Azula tells her and Imi nods.

“I know but I can tell he really misses you. Sure it had been bad but it’ll never get better if you don’t try.” Imi tells her and she pauses. The girl had a point but why try, she knew that they’d always view her as a monster.

“Maybe so but I’d rather keep what I have than risk losing it for people who will never truly accept me.” Azula tells Imi, who sighs.

“I just think you shouldn't give up yet.” Imi tells her and moves to carefully put her top shirt back on. Once it’s on she looks at Azula again with a small smile. “Just think about it, okay,” She tells her and Azula nods.

“Okay.” Azula agrees, “Will you still come to help me with the shop tomorrow?” She asks and Imi nods.

“Of course! I’ll be here bright and early!” Imi smiles and Azula smiles back.

“Thank you Imi, so I’ll see you tomorrow.” Azula tell her, her voice lighter than it had been. She never expected to have a friend like Imi but she was so glad she did.

“See you tomorrow Zula!” Imi tells her before leaving out of the shop.

Azula begins to clean up the shop so she could close for the day, she couldn’t help but to think about what Imi said. Maybe she should take him up on his offer to visit the palace, maybe Imi was right and he truly missed her and wanted to get to know her. But she was fine where she was, she had Imi, she had her shop. What else did she need, she never had a true family so why did she need one now.