#any thoughts/suggestions about ships/powers/domains/plots for any of these characters welcome

[ghostlynimbus]

Characters I'm currently trying to develop more for my gods and goddesses au:

- Jonathan Byers

- Max Mayfield

- Heather Holloway

[flyswhumpcenter]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled. I don’t have any request left, so feel free to send in suggestions for this card!).

I need to write more Makaito smh

Y'all don't even know how surprised I got to see @mythgirlimagines had sent me a request. Most of all because I rarely get those, but man, that was a good surprise. I had to ask her for another duo (as I know nothing about UDG, not gonna lie), but I always love more Makaito in my life despite the appearances. I always get crazy about the worldbuilding in this AU, but in short: everyone has powers (yes, everyone, even your grandparents). They're called mages. There are three types of mages: weapon users, spell casters and healers. Sometimes there are hybrids between these models (of 2 kinds at the same time). Hybrids are chased by bounty hunters for plot reasons. Maki used to be one, but she's become a "hunter of hunters". I think that's all you need to know for this fic? Oh yeah, this fic contains some French because the main setting, the city of Hellesimbault, is heavily based on French culture. It just made more sense to keep some French in.

It should have been angstier than that, but I was in a fluffier mood today, so here you go. I really need to provide more for this ship.

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Flickering Lights

Summary: The night has never been safe for anyone in the darker streets of the city, yet a duo makes it way through the shadows with vigilent crimson eyes and purple thunder. Still, even the most attention doesn't always give away damage people can take, doesn't it?

Fandom: Danganronpa V3 (magical people AU) Ship: Makaito (Established)

Wordcount: 2.2K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version available here.

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Quartier de la Lune, Hellesimbault, January. The dire cold blew in harsh winds as the dust and garbage littered on the barely lit ground fly right against the ground, their mass never quite taking off. The artificial lights flicker in incoherent rhythms, drilling into the skulls of passers-by with their constant noise you can’t quite get used to, even after hearing it for a while (it just stops being your main nuisance). The rest of the streets leading to the old Moon Temple is sunk in the night’s darkness, with only a few flashes and bursts of clarity piercing through the sea of shadows.

Personally, Nerio was one of these shadows, and had always been. She had gone through everything possible: abandoned girl, orphan raised along the nice and the bad, forced through the grinder to become a bounty hunter, now on the opposite side of the underground war. Hidden under her hood, crimson eyes focusing on any light and ears open to all possible noise, she was used to the darkness.

In fact, she was in unison with the underground, hostile, familiar universe of Hellesimbault’s darkest streets and ruins long buried by modern civilisation.

 In the shadows, she felt safe as soon as she was wearing the mask of Nerio, named after a goddess of war, a bloodthirsty figure in need for a vengeance and taking it out onto bounty hunters with no hope of redemption. It felt good to shoot arrows at criminals like those who had forced her into the network as a preteen whom life hadn’t directly shown its atrocious parts to yet, and it was the one way she had ever felt alive: reclaiming her rotten childhood and early teenage years by showing them she’s now better than them.

She hadn’t quite killed her abductors, even when an untold furry had possessed her into doing so by hindering any semblance of reason she could have had, only because some guy who couldn’t get enough of her had put his hand on Enyo’s shoulder and whispered to her, in a disapproving but paradoxically soft voice:

“Maki, that’s enough.”

 That was the day where she had truly stopped only considering herself as Nerio, bloodstained shadow and reluctant, yet effective, bounty hunter turned hunter slayer, a figure of the shadows, and more like whom she had been during in the daylight all this time.

All thanks to an absolute idiot she had met in class because he wouldn’t stop not wanting to talk to her.

 Their tandem made no sense. She was a figure of the night, a girl shrouded in darkness, content being left alone. Her arms and legs were covered in scars, her hands calloused from handling her magical weapon, her feet permanently threaded with the liquified mana of her former adversaries. Her spirit was calculating, her character quiet, her face always covered with a mask. She never had had friends before high school had come around, before people flocked to her because she had apparently stopped being threatening to some. That was around this time that Nerio started to fade and Maki took her place, progressively, until Nerio was the persona and Maki the person.

If she was used to the horrors of Hybrid trafficking, he couldn’t have. He was a benevolent figure of the day, loud to the point of being obnoxious, rude but well-meaning, never second-guessing anything, acting before he thought. His arms and legs, displayed by much more revealing clothes than her elbow-long sleeves and opaque tights, were defined yet not showing a trace of damage like a recently sculpted statue, his hands were strong but their skin soft, his character remarkable, his face displaying a smile and never hiding anything from sight. He was popular, dizzyingly so, people constantly around him, but he had his inner circle. He had come to her, introduced himself, asked her who she was and, before she realized it, he had accepted her into this inner circle so few would have even dared dreaming about entering in the Cité Scolaire, and that was when her façade crumbled before his friends and him. Before she knew it, Kaito had found himself a night persona, Uranus, who barely was different from the person.

It pained her to have him as her partner for this very reason: he was too good for the shadows, too bright for the darkness, and he’d only be busted before she could save him. She wasn’t ready to lose him to the urban abyss, but he insisted, and his presence was too warm for her not to want it.

 Still, Uranus had impressive fighting skills. His dream to one day be the first mage to reach space and discover if there was a world aside from theirs had pushed him to maintain a perfect form, despite an unfortunate illness trying to limit his life. She’d have expected him to be a weapon user, like she was, but the equivalent to his crossbow life had given him was a cape whom had the powers to create the tiniest blackholes and power up his offensive magic. They were power units in vastly different domains, sure thing, but she was still impressed by how many enemies he could take at once and still win over.

The main issue of their duet was their range: it was too long for close combat. If an enemy was to sneak up on them and force her to switch her weapon for her fists and kicks, there was no doubt she’d have a harder time taking care of them. He was more or less the same: long-range spells, very poor to non-existent support magic, a blackhole strategy that’d be more of a double-edged sword and, of course, his fairly frail constitution outside of his training. Neither was a healer, so they couldn’t possibly count on that either.

 Under the full moon of the harsh January, lights flickering above them like candles on a tomb flowing with the wind, they were fighting against an ambush. A bunch of low-grade Hybrid bounty hunters, eyes staring at them with an indiscretion she was getting tired of, their hands on their weapons and only waiting for the duo to slip up. Nerio wouldn’t give them the pleasure to kill her and take her corpse away for them to get compensation for a murder, so she shot arrow after arrow, ignoring various attempted status ailments thrown at her and gusts of winds repeatedly trying to flip her skirt up. All she had to hide under the hem of her dress were tights and a holster with a material hatchet in case she was in a desperate situation; but using it in front of Uranus felt dirty. It’d be nothing but a cheap shot at life when she had proved to him countless times before she was more than competent.

Their number was dwindling more quickly than her mana, sure, but the fighting was tiring her out, most likely him too, and they had class to attend tomorrow (Kaito had managed to convince her, with the insistence of the overly cheerful Kaede). She’d better make it quick, so she charged her cheapest shots in and didn’t mind the drawbacks of wasting more of her power endurance to quickly put an end to the fight. Rapid-fire, crimson arrows it’d have to be, in the end: not quite her Final Gambit spell, which she was still trying to control, but still one powerful enough to clear through the ranks and through her mana reserves. Any child of the shadows would have learnt that exhausting their magic entirely was nothing more but signing their worse-than-death fate: being forgotten in the icy streets of the underground city.

 Their adversaries were most likely scummy opportunists, because they disappeared after a few arrows had been thrown at them. It didn’t prevent her from exhaling a sigh of relief, the danger of the streets weakening around them as the lights stopped flickering. Too much magic in the air to make the one used by the electric network function properly, she supposed: it didn’t matter this much, to be frank. All she wanted to do was go back home, now that she had exterminated the vermin for the night.

Maki turned her attention back to her partner who, like her, was still transformed into his battle attire. He looked just fine, smiling at her with his darkness-eating grin and a thumbs-up. Giving him a nod, they silently decided to go back to their base, where surely Kaede and Shuichi were waiting for them before going to sleep at last. Despite her earlier loneliness, she felt safe and welcome around their little group, her companions, her friends.

 Yet, despite the peace of hearing nothing but their footsteps and breathing, the mandatory silence of the underground nights pushing them not to speak to each other before they’d safely make it to their home, there was something bothering Maki. It wasn’t the sudden silence: she was used to activity dying down and coming back much, much later, when they wouldn’t be there anymore. Thinking silence was a trap in those uncharted territories was a beginner’s mistake: it was a sign towards the right direction. The narrow walls always made sounds resonate and echo to a hunter’s ears.

It was a smell in the air, the faint smell of iron. It was close to her, yet hindered by something, and she couldn’t quite put her hand on where she had smelt it before. Her confusion merely lasted a few moments, though, until she realized it couldn’t have been anything but blood tainting something, its scent retained by something else, but remaining detectable nonetheless. One source and one source only: the dark crimson puddle she was seeing on her partner’s attire.

 “Kaito,” she suddenly said, stopping in her tracks.

“Hm?” He turned his attention to her, hand mindlessly over the epicentre of the issue. “What’s wrong, Maki Roll?”

“You’re injured, you idiot. I thought you wanted us to tell each other everything.”

Her eyebrows frowned.

“I am? I promised I would tell you everything, Maki Roll, you must be imagining things!”

She knew when he lied, when his voice would sound fake, when his eyes looked too much to the left and when he wouldn’t stop laughing nervously. It disturbed her that none of these cues were there.

“Your hand,” she only said as an explanation. “Look at your hand, you fool.”

 Kaito, luckily, understood immediately what hand she was referring to. He took it off the wound, eyes glancing at his mostly untouched palms, then the growing stain. It surprised it at first, almost sending him in a panic, until he breathed out and ignored the nervous sweat beads pearling on his temples.

“Ah, fuck, you’re right Maki Roll! They must have gotten a hit on me… Let’s get home fast then!”

She felt a tiny smile make its way onto her face.

“I’m surprised you didn’t feel it,” she replied as they resumed their walk, gaze often glancing at the stain. “It doesn’t look too deep, at least, if you can walk this easily.”

“Yeah… Most likely a bad cut. Nothing my sidekick can’t heal!”

“…you’re going to ask Shuichi to heal that for you?”

He blinked.

“On second thought, bad idea. It’ll heal by itself soon enough.”

“That’s also a terrible option. At least put a bandage on that thing, you moron.”

“Got it!”

 His eyes grew wider as he stared at her. Now, that was a look she didn’t like in the slightest: he usually gave it to her when he had a shitty idea to propose.

“Hey, Maki Roll,” he pointed his finger at her arms, “you’re injured too!”

Surprised, she stared at her forearms right afterwards, only to notice he was referring to small bruises and scratches.

“Oh, come on, you know this has nothing in common with what you could have been bleeding from, Kaito. It’s merely a scratch.”

“You should be careful too, then, if you scold me for being careless.

“I know what I’m doing, unlike you, but thank you for the concern.”

“Hey, I know what I’m doing too!”

“Sure, sure.”

 He showed her a hand, palm turned to her.

“Don’t worry, that’s one not stained with blood”. His grin.

She found him ridiculous and beyond cheesy, but took his fingers in hers anyway, enlacing them together.

“As long as you don’t need me as a clutch, it’s fine.”

“Of course I don’t! I’m Uranus, Luminary of the Stars!”

Oh god. He was ridiculous, and such an idiot, but her life had only improved ever since he had arrived there. She could only partially attribute it to his idiotic side, in a way.

“Your predictability is utterly disappointing, sometimes, you know that?”

“I also know you secretly love it, Maki.”

“If you say so. There’s no discussing with you anyway.”

 Right in front of her, he brushed his other hand on his attire’s pants, barely giving her the time to frown in disgusted surprise, and swiped her hood in a swift movement with the back of his hand. All of this to put a kiss on her forehead, a childish peck, that nonetheless makes her cheeks slightly heat up.

“You’re an untameable idiot, Kaito.”

“I’m your idiot, though, Maki Roll.”

She looked away, chuckling despite her best attempts at controlling herself.

“…I know, I know.”