#anyway so part of why i spent so much effort trying to get people to care about papa in the past couple of chapters

[grison-in-space]

I'm genuinely sorry, I was really tired and couldn't think of the word that mad pride movements use. I'm new to all of this. I thought you would be more open to it because you've reblogged from radical leftists (anarchists and communists both) within the past couple of weeks and they're all for Veganism afaik. The argument that all brains are different but equal and should be treated the exact same is a primary aspect of mad pride from my understanding, and that speaks to me about animals just having different brains, and that they don't deserve to be exploited and killed for us just because they're different. I'm not spamming people with it, but I was inspired by an ask by a nonvegan and started asking popular bloggers why they weren't vegan to open up conversation and potentially change people's views on animals. If I've made you uncomfortable I'm sorry, though I admit I'm really confused by your standpoint. You do know that the only reason communism hasn't succeeded is because of America? Anyway, sorry again, I'm also autistic and I didn't mean to dismiss your legitimate dietary needs. Can I recommend acti-vegan's posts? While I understand that you can't go vegan, perhaps their blog will at least help you understand our points, they're much more well-written than my asks and they have plenty of legitimate science resources at hand. Thanks for listening, I'll take your advice into account. I'm not trying to not listen, it's just frustrating because so many people say they get it but they don't change, and if they truly got it they would, you know?

Okay, I get that you didn't mean to be offensive, and fuck knows I shouldn't throw stones when it comes to forgetting specific words. (This happens to me fairly frequently; it's a thing.)

The argument that all brains are different but equal and should be treated the exact same is a primary aspect of mad pride from my understanding, and that speaks to me about animals just having different brains, and that they don't deserve to be exploited and killed for us just because they're different.

So yesterday I actually wrote out and then deleted a whole paragraph to the effect of "part of my deep, deep frustration with animal rights activism hooks into my commitment to the phrase 'nothing about us without us,' because I frequently see the same kinds of emotional projection without making the effort to listen to animals on their own terms from animal rights activism groups."

The first thing I need to make clear to you is that this--veganism and animal rights activism (ARA) more generally--is not new to me. I am in my mid-thirties and I have never had a job of any kind that did not revolve around animals in some way, I've spent time in rescue spaces and vets and universities, I'm queer and I have spent most of my life in leftish progressive circles, so it's kind of hard to miss.

Essentially, you are proselytizing to me as if you were a newly baptized evangelical convinced I had never heard of Jesus, because if only I had heard and understood his holy word, I would be converted instantly to his light! It's not any less irritating when the belief system isn't explicitly a religion.

More under the cut, because this one is long.

Disclaimer one: Veganism isn't synonymous with ARA ideology, but it's deeply entangled with it, and ARA ideology drives the movement of veganism as a (theoretically non-religious) ethical decision. And I object very strongly to the framework imposed by ARA activists. When I say I am not vegan, I am saying that I have considered the ethical framework that underpins veganism as an ethics movement and I have deliberately rejected it.

The second piece of context you should know that when I talk about being a behavioral ecologist, I mean that I'm a researcher who works on animals and that my framework is rooted in trying to understand animals in their own natural ecological context, without necessarily comparing them to humans. There's a lot of ways to study animal behavior you might run into, including attempts to understand universal principles of behavior that transcend species (animal cognition) and attempts to understand how to better treat animals in human care (animal welfare). You know Temple Grandin? Temple Grandin is an ethologist (the field that gave rise to behavioral ecology, also focused on animals within their species context) who worked on animal welfare (finding ways to make slaughterhouses less stressful to livestock, among other things).

Third point: my profession also means is that I work directly with animals--in my case, currently mice--and that I do not think research with animal subjects is wrong as long as all efforts are made to ensure maximal welfare and enrichment for the animals involved. This is another major bone of contention politically between my entire field and ARA groups, and you should know that I have also spent my entire professional career under the shadow of, well, people who care strongly enough about those ideas to invade my workspace and potentially seize my animals and "free" them into a world they do not have the tools to survive in.

So there's where I am coming from. Let's get back to what you're saying. Here, I'll quote again in case you have the same crappy short-term memory I do.

The argument that all brains are different but equal and should be treated the exact same is a primary aspect of mad pride from my understanding, and that speaks to me about animals just having different brains, and that they don't deserve to be exploited and killed for us just because they're different.

Point the first: Even within humans, I don't think that all brains should be treated the exact same. Especially in a disability context! After all, what is an accommodation if not an agreement to treat someone differently because they need certain things to access a space? Accommodations by definition fly in the face of this "treating everyone the same" understanding of fairness. I think all (human) brains are equally valuable, and I think all brains are worthy of respect, but I do not think that it's wise or kind of me to assert that everyone should be treated in the same way. For one thing, I teach students. If there's one thing teaching has taught me, it's that a good teacher is constantly assessing and adjusting their instruction to meet students where they're at, identify failures of understanding, and keep the attention of the classroom.

Point the second: animals do have different brains from humans. That does not mean that animals are inferior, but it does mean that they are alien. There's a philosophy paper, Nagel, What Does It Mean to Be a Bat, that you might find illuminating on this front. Essentially, the point of the paper is that animals have their own experiences and sensory umwelts that differ profoundly enough from humans' that we cannot know what it is like to be a different species without experiencing life as one, and therefore we must be terribly careful not to project our own realities onto theirs. That is, our imagination cannot tell us what a bat values and what it experiences. That is why we have to use careful evidence to understand what an animal is thinking, without relying on our ability to identify with and comprehend that animal. I have watched ARA groups deliberately encourage people to shut their reasoning brains off and emotionally identify themselves with animals without considering within-species context for twenty years. This is a mainstream tactic. It is not an isolated event and for that reason alone I would be opposed to them.

Point the third: there is a definite tendency in lots of people to care deeply and intensely about both animals and people who are seen as "lesser" in status--children, poor people, disabled people, etc--just as long as those groups never contradict the good feelings that come from the helper's own assessment of themselves and their actions. In humans, when the "needy" point out that some forms of help are actually harmful, the backlash is often swift and vicious. This is why animals are such an appealing target of support and intervention. They can't speak back and say "in fact, you are projecting my love of this frilly pink tutu onto me, and I think it's uncomfortable and prevents me from walking." They can't say "I kind of like it better when I don't have to worry about getting hit by a car, actually?"

(By the way: this is also why it's offensive to compare disabled people to animals, because this is generally done at least in part to silence the voices of disabled people speaking for our selves and our communities. We have access to language, and we use it, thank you.)

All forms of animal welfare intervention going right back to the founding of the first RSPCA have been incredibly prone to being hijacked by classist, racist, and otherwise bigoted impulses. This is because animals offer an innocent face for defense that conveniently cannot criticize the actions taken by their champions, and they therefore provide a great excuse for actions taken against marginalized members of human society. Think about the very first campaign the RSPCA ever did, which was banning using dogs as draft animals: a use that is not inherently harmful to dogs, which many dogs actively enjoy, but also one that was specifically used by poor Londoners and which in fact immediately resulted in a great butchery of the dogs that Londoners could no longer afford to feed rather than allowing poor people and their dogs to continue working together. No one was, of course, challenging the particular uses of dogs or any other animal favored by the wealthy. This kind of thing is so, so, so common. Obviously it doesn't mean that all interventions to prioritize animal welfare are inherently bigoted, but it does mean that we have to be critical about our choice of challenges.

On top of everything, the animal rights activist movement's obsession with "exploitation" is a function of the idea that humans are sinful or otherwise Bad in how we interact with animals by definition. For example, take the chicken rescue near me that is so obsessed with the possibility that some human somewhere might benefit from an animal in their care that they implant every hen they adopt out with hormonal implants such that the hens no longer lay eggs--a function that is normally a natural byproduct of a chicken's reproductive system, fertilized or not. A mutualistic relationship involves both parties benefiting, and that is the case for an awful lot of human relationships with animals. In general, the idea that associating with animals is a thing that can only harm animals rather than being a trade between two species to enrich one another is all over these groups. It's just so myopically focused on human shame that it prevents practical interventions that might benefit everyone, and often promotes interventions that don't directly benefit animals but sure do make humans miserable. For example, this kind of thinking is why groups like PETA are absolutely awful at effectively rescuing unwanted dogs and cats: they think pets living in "bondage" with humans are an essentially sad outcome, rather than one that might be mutually enjoyed by all parties.

I'm tired and my meds haven't kicked in, so I'm not currently going to handle the communism thing except to point out that while the US absolutely did destabilize a number of leftist regimes in South America and Africa, Russia and China between them have certainly not treated their own people kindly, either (and more so their own client-nations, as with the former members of the USSR). Please do some reading about the Holodomor and Lysenko in Russia (and frankly all of the details of Stalin's regime) and the Cultural Revolution in China in particular. Khmer Rouge might be worth looking into, too. I am not saying the US's hands are clean, you understand, because they are not; they're as steeped in red as anyone else's. What I am saying is that for people living on the ground, communist revolutions have this nasty habit of turning into bloodbaths and arbitrary slaughters. Do not let your distaste for the US's bloodsoaked imperialism (which, yes, is and was bad) let you fall into the trap of becoming a tankie.

And if you don't know what a tankie is, you really, really should take some time to learn.

[placeinthemiddleofnowhere]

How 'bout I stay here and you fight? 

Pairing: König x Reader

Summary: You’re determined to find out why everyone thinks König is so scary, afterall he’s just some guy that’s taller than most people right? He’s probably harmless! Well, he’s a little scary, but you still like him anyway.

(No use of y/n or mention of gender/race)

AN: Let me start off by saying I'm sooo sorry for the time it took me to update this, I know that it's been quite a gap since the last upload. Hopefully the wait was worth it though, because I have written about 30 pages for you here, so there's lots to sink your teeth into! As always, thanks for all your support and interaction and all the questions you have about the series, having everyone's lovely messages and art means a lot 💕 knowing I have this community to come back to while I stress out about life stuff is amazing, so thanks for being there! Enjoy the next update ☺️

Part 8 of A Rocky Start - Full Masterlist Here

-☠️-

“Ghost before you-”

“Before I what, Sneak?” Ghost spat, shaking with the effort it took to contain himself. “Before I tell Price? Before I jump to conclusions? What? You gonna try and tell me those aren’t what I think they are? Are you going to keep lying to me? Well go on then, tell me what you think I want to hear, Sneak. It’s what you’ve been doing this whole time isn’t it! You selfish little lying fuck.”

“No! I never wanted to lie to you Ghost, I just-”

“You never wanted to lie to me? Yet, you let me believe that König had screwed you over that day in the gym. Mustn't have been some cheap lay by the looks of things, that must have been you that clawed up his back like that! And to think all this time, I thought better of you,” he snorted, pounding the wall next to you with his gloved palm. “You made us look like idiots running around after you, trying to make you feel better all this time! You’ve had us all concerned about you while you’ve been fucking that cunt behind our backs!”

You whimpered and shrunk into the cold plaster at your back, distantly feeling like you were lying on a slab at a morgue. Everything in you said that it wasn’t long until you were going to be meeting your end. Ghost was wide eyed and loud as a lion as he tore into you, now slapping both his hands on the wall and sandwiching you firmly between him and it. You gulped and clenched your fists, trying to swallow the burning feeling that crept up your throat like a trail of gasoline. Everything was falling apart and you couldn't even see the pieces through the wreckage to try and save them. 

“I didn’t intend for that to happen…it just happened that way. You assumed that König had slept around - I didn’t say it - I just didn't correct you. I couldn’t correct you!”

“Do you think that helps? Do you think it’s better knowing that you took advantage of my trust - in all of the 141’s trust? Do you know how much it hurts to realise that someone that you thought you could count on could be capable of deceiving you for months? That someone that you treat like family apparently doesn’t give a shit and would throw you away for a bit of Austrian Muscle? He’s barely even a person under all that fight and armour, he’s a fucking monster, Sneak, and yet you’ve left us for him!”

You clenched your teeth and rubbed the tears from your cheeks, furiously shaking even though you tried to resist. Ghost knew he had you overwhelmed. He was taking full advantage of your upset, taking his revenge on you now and tearing you down. After all those months you spent running ahead of him, keeping on top of all your lies, you’d really thought that you might manage to get away with it all. Not anymore. Your feet were knocked from under you now.

“I- It- It wasn’t like that!” You protested, choking on your words.

“How wasn’t it?” Ghost roared.

“Because he’s not a monster! We care for each other, he- he cares for me, Ghost.”

“Oh, clearly! You’d have to, it has to be worth it, doesn’t it? You’ve made your choice haven’t you? You’ve gambled your place in the 141 all these months and now your chickens have come home to roost. You think you broke our trust by going against my order that day on the field? How do you think this elaborate fucking lie is going to look to Price? It’s going to ruin you, Sneak.You’re going to break up the team!”

“You mean- you, and Pr- Price is going to kick me out?”

“Who knows what the fuck he’ll do! All I know for fact is that this is going to shake the trust of everyone here. It sure as shit rocked my faith in you, who knows what the others will think when they hear about this. Doesn’t make sense to keep someone around that’s capable of going behind our backs like this.”

A boulder settled in your stomach then. Ghost’s voice had dropped severely low, his angry snarling dying down to a quiet threat. His eyes were narrowed and staring at you with a deadly precision, betraying the scene that surely played in his head - the one where he strangled you for making such an idiot out of him. 

“Ghost, please,” you whimpered, closing your eyes. “I didn’t want things to be this way. I had every intention of staying away, but it’s just…Well…I couldn’t give up on König, I care about the team and I love you all like brothers, but that doesn’t mean I could just abandon König and all the feelings I had for him. I just… I just thought that I could have both.”

You felt like an idiot saying it out loud. 

In that moment a haunting realisation overtook you, the minute you opened your eyes and saw Ghost’s almost hollow mask sockets staring back at you through the gloom, you knew something. You’d made your choice all those months ago. You’d chosen König. That’s how everyone would see it anyway, they’d never understand how much you wished you could be a part of both worlds. 

You knew Ghost could see exactly what you were thinking. He snorted as all the features in your face drooped, backing away from you. You sniffed and pushed yourself off the wall, barely keeping yourself from stumbling as you chased after him. 

“Ghost, wait!”

He chuckled, his throat emitting a dark and choppy sound, one you hadn’t heard before. You shivered and tried to catch up with him, boots slapping hard and fast against the floor as you attempted to match his furious pace.

“Ghost, please, you can’t tell Price yet!”

“And why’s that, Sneak? You want a little accomplice in this, hm? You want someone else to go against Price just to make you feel better? The 141 isn’t a fuckin’ joke, even if you want to treat it that way.”

“I’m not asking you to lie!” you cried out, finally skidding to a stop in front of Ghost. “I’m asking you to wait.”

“Why would I do that?” he scoffed.

“Because we have a job to do,” you said, steeling yourself as much as you could even while tears still ran hot as acid down your cheeks and over your jaw.

“Oh, so now you care about doing your job, huh?”

“I care about you all, I care about the team, I care about this job more than anyone could ever know. Even though I fucked up…even though what I’ve done says otherwise, I do care. That’s why I’m asking you just to hold onto this until the job’s finished. I know exactly how this will go down Ghost, I know everyone will say the same as you have. Do you think this is what the team needs right before going away?”

You sighed and rubbed a palm over your sweating forehead, running your fingers over the wet strands of your hair. You’d been caught dead centre in your web of lies, the least you could do is untangle it with a sense of grace. Let your ruin come at the end of your last mission, let Price handle it all with a clear head, it was the least you could do. You had to make him see that.

“You can’t afford to lose anyone before you go after, Rousseau,” you continued, “Not the night before we leave. Just let me help you with this and then I’ll go to Price myself after all this is through. Just let me try to make things right and then…and then if- if Price wants to kick me out he can. I accept that…just let me help.”

Ghost halted in his tracks and balled his fists, kinetic energy fizzling away as he seemed to consider swinging them. You winced already, scrunching your eyes as you prepared for him to send you flying, but the hit never came. He opted for rolling his shoulders back instead and he paused on your words. For a moment, you worried he might reconsider and give you that well deserved blow, you weren’t completely relaxing yet. Tension sizzled through you both like a bomb fuse. 

Deep down though, you knew he wouldn’t follow through on any of the dark thoughts swirling in his mind. Simmering in the burn of his gaze was a man that was deeply hurt. Even though you were probably one of the lowest life forms in his eyes at that moment, you were still family and he would never punish you like that. Even if he would willingly watch you go into exile.

“You’re telling me you feel fit to operate right now?” he asked, his words coming out with careful measure. 

“There’s no other choice. I have to be,” you said with a bitter laugh, feeling like if you continued anymore, you might go hysterical. “All I know is that if we bring this to Price now, it puts the whole mission at risk and becomes a distraction. I accept that I fucked up, and that you probably can barely stand the sight of me, I do. For the sake of a mission though…don’t you think that we should get through this and let the team deal with it after? The last thing anyone needs is this. Please Ghost, you know I’m right. Even if this is the mission I go down on, at least let me do it without putting the others at risk because of what I’ve done.”

Ghost grunted and looked away from you, letting his body sag as he weighed your words. You’d gotten through to him, you’d delayed the inevitable. You knew it. You just needed him to say it. 

You wished that he’d just tell you he’d let it go completely. For a hopeful second you wondered if maybe some time would stop him wanting to let Price know at all. Though that was never going to happen - if not for the fact that he was hurt from being lied to, then it would be the complete destruction of his faith in you. 

Why couldn’t you have just listened to Ghost from the start? Why had you hurt him like this? 

It was all getting too much to carry. Your heart thumped slowly and filled with lead and oil, thickening the blood in your veins like tar. Your whole body felt wrong, your lungs were gasping just to get by. Your head was spinning as it tried to process all that had happened, rattling with the drum beat of your pulse. It took every ounce of energy you had left just to stay upright, feeling like you might start swaying as you lingered in Ghost's heavy shadow. 

“Alright,” he said eventually, voice gruff and distant. “Fine.”

You swallowed thickly and risked eye contact with him. That only served to reignite his anger though, the shadows in the hallway seemingly shivering around him as he loomed over you again.

“I won’t tell Price yet, but I’m warning you - you wait a single moment to tell him when we get back from this, then I’ll find that dopey Austrian cunt, and I’ll string him up and make you watch as what little light he has in him leaves his miserable fucking corpse. Do I make myself clear?”

You froze before nodding stiffly, body jerking as he shoved past you. 

“Clear,” you whispered, talking to no one as you were left alone in the empty grey corridor. 

-☠️- 

You confined yourself to the darkness that night. You were alone in your room, curling your hands around your knees in bed with the lights off, heavily breathing like some kind of demented horror movie creature. The Only thing that haunted you though was your mind. 

There was no getting away from it, no sharing the load with anyone else, who was there to tell? It was just you and your horrible thoughts, locked up tight together with no respite from any voices of reason. It wasn’t like you could tell the others. 

König had tried to message you, but you couldn’t face him. You just messaged something quick back, reading only a couple lines of what he’d sent you first. You couldn’t talk to him either. There was no way he could know about what Ghost knew or otherwise you’d be kicking off the fight of the century.  

Even with the complete lack of light in that tiny space, you still continued to see the bright whites of Ghost’s mask in front of your face. His hard blue eyes were burning holes into you like the pits of hell. It had your heart racing. Your skin felt too hot, your lungs burned with effort, feeling like they would burst with your heart ramming into them. Nothing could calm you down.

Knock.

Knock. 

You froze in your place, back stiffening somehow even further against the corner you’d shoved yourself into. You weren’t expecting company. Part of your mind wondered if Ghost had given in and told Price. Though as you thought on it for a few more seconds you knew in your heart of hearts that the moment, if Price knew about your relationship he sure as fuck wouldn’t come quietly knocking on your door. The sound was too soft, like someone that was trying to be discreet. 

Only one person that could be - surely.

You padded over to the door and took a breath, holding the cold handle in your palm for a moment and letting it recenter you. If it was who you suspected it was, you couldn’t let him know that you’d been found out. He couldn’t get mad at Ghost and give you away. He couldn’t have the stress of your relationship reveal running through his mind while you were in an active warzone. If something were to happen to König because of your stupidity, then Price finding out about you both would be the least of your worries. 

Why had you chosen the path that had put everyone you love into such a horrible position? Why had you lied so much to them all? 

You swallowed the lump in your throat and closed your eyes for a second, only just opening the door as a tall figure had begun to retreat in the darkness. You watched as the giant stopped in his tracks and then you smiled softly when he walked back to you. The red tears of his mask were the first things to reveal themselves as he stepped into the flickering light that buzzed by your door. 

“Did I wake you?” König asked, honey thick voice coming in at a low whisper. 

“No,” you sighed, gesturing for him to come in, “couldn’t sleep. How come you’re here? You haven’t messaged.”

“I couldn’t sleep either. I wanted to see you before we left - see you alone,” he answered, stepping into your doorway. “And i did message, you messaged me back - remember? You were a little blunt with me, so I got worried.”

Oh.

You shut the door behind him and watched as he walked confidently past you and over to the lamp by your bed. He’d only been in your room a couple of times, despite your insistence he shouldn't risk showing up. Though even those stolen moments were enough for him to remember the layout as if the room were his own.

He flicked the switch on your lamp that sat on your bedside table and looked back up at you then. He was bathed in warm yellow light like an angel that had been sent to soothe your troubled head. Even his eyes seemed to melt through the edge that had settled over you. 

“You don’t look very good, darling,” he noted, frowning over at you. “What’s wrong? Have you been crying?”

He tilted his head at you and with that, seemed to remember he was still wearing his mask. His eyes had grown wide like pale blue whirlpools. With fumbling hands, König tugged the fabric over his head and got himself out of the draped material, his tired face was revealed. His hair blew around before it settled into a messy nest on top of his head and his dark eyes refocused on you once he’d been freed from the hood. They were baggy with exhaustion. 

You knew that feeling well. Not that you could tell him the real reason why.

“Hm?” he hummed, walking towards you now. “What’s got you so upset?”

You shook your head and tried to smile at him, accepting the hug that he wrapped you into with a sigh of relief. You didn’t have a good answer for him. Instead you pressed your head into his chest and inhaled his scent, taking in hints of gunfire and metal that his mask had left behind and, of course, the faint notes of your berry tea - betraying his thievery. 

“Have you been stealing my tea again, mister?” you asked, trying to distract him.

“Me? Stealing from you? Never,” he chuckled, the sound reverberating through his body and soaking through to yours. 

“More like all the time!” you grinned, finally chancing a look up at him again.

“Well really, you only have yourself to blame,” he said, stroking his thumb across your chin. “You should never have got me hooked on it if you didn’t want me to indulge myself every once in a while.”

“Mmm…Is that so?”

“Yeah, that’s so.”’

You shook your head at him and tapped him on the arm, prompting him to release you. He let you go, but followed immediately behind you when you went to sit on the bed. He took little time in swiftly drawing you back into his hold once again, nestling you both into the wrinkled sheets on your sad little bed, adjusting himself into your extra cushions. 

His presence might have been making you feel uneasy, the pressure to not tell him anything growing with each passing second. However it was undeniable that the weight around your body was helping you, scattering your worries the tighter he held you.

“Are you going to tell me?” König pressed.

“Tell you what?”

“You know what,” he said dryly. 

You huffed out a sigh. He wasn’t going to let it go though, he repositioned you then and made you face him, keeping you pinned and lying on your side. 

“I know that the reason you smell of berries is because you don’t lift your mask all the way when you drink my tea. Then it gets damp and rubs off onto your shirt,” you said softly, smiling to yourself as you thought of him guiltily sneaking cups of it.

He looked down at you pointedly and rolled his eyes. Ok, so he wasn’t going to let it go then. You stared back at him for a moment before you lay back against his chest and proceeded to close your eyes, reaching out into the beyond to try and think of something to say. Anything other than the truth behind your insomnia. 

“I’m worried about this op,” you whispered quietly. “And what comes after.”

“What? Why?” he asked, wrapping his arm around you tighter. “Why on earth would you be worried?”

“There’s a lot riding on it. It’ll be dangerous too, more than any of the other missions we’ve been on,” you shrugged. “Then there’s the unknowns that’ll come after it as well.”

“You know what will come after it,” König said, a smile weaving itself into his voice. “We will go to Austria together and I will take you on many adventures and buy you lots of good food, real food.”

You laughed a little at what he said and relaxed against him. You could feel the steady rhythm of his heart thudding away behind your head, working away, strong as ever. Maybe the world wasn’t going to completely end, you thought distantly to yourself, maybe even if you didn’t have the 141 you could still make the best of things. Hell, maybe you could move to Austria. 

In choosing König, you weren’t going to be alone after you were kicked out. You would still have him. It didn’t lift the burden that was sinking your heart any, but it sought to bring some light back into your mind. The thought of mountain trails and mornings waking up to his gentle kisses and calloused hands trailing their way down your back weren’t so bad, maybe there was something even a little enticing about those thoughts... 

Your life would be in tatters, sure, but it would still be worth living. There would still be some happiness, even if you were down the love of four family members… Even if you never got to speak to them again. 

“I am looking forward to our trip, that’s for sure,” you replied measuredly. “I just…I mean- I guess I don’t know what things will be like after all this is over. We’ve been working together through this mission through our whole relationship and now that it’s coming to an end… I dunno - I guess I’m just intimidated by all the unknowns.”

You felt ok saying that. It wasn’t completely false. In reality you were far more worried about the situations you knew you’d face rather than the ones that were unknown, but ultimately Price being told about your relationship was still a mystery in terms of punishment.

You had no idea what he might decide to do with you once he’d found out about your betrayal. For all you were aware he could’ve been planning to send you off to one of the worst deployments that you’d ever known in your life. What then?

“You always worry so much” König sighed, tracing his hand up your body so that he could stroke the side of your face. “Know that whatever we both do next…no matter what…you will have all of my heart, and I will do anything to make sure that you get to hold it in your arms whenever possible…because I love you.”

You froze in place, eyes going wide as you processed what he said. He had spoken the unspoken, he had finally put into words the feelings that you knew were there, but both of you had been too guarded to let slip. He was telling you that he loved you, giving you a gift while you lied straight to his face.

“I love you and I will do anything to make this work. I’d dig a hole through to the otherside of the world just to be with you, there’s nowhere you can be sent to that I won’t find a way to reach you,” he whispered, pressing a kiss into your cheek. 

You let a little breath of silence hang in the air for a moment and bit your lip, feeling a tear track its way down your face while you battled with your throat to stay silent. You couldn’t let him know what you were actually upset about. 

You loved him too after all. 

And for that reason you couldn't reveal the truth that Ghost had uncovered, it would send him spiralling. Would compromise him and mission. You could put him in danger, more so than you had already by involving Ghost - and soon Price’s - wrath. 

“I love you too, König…” you murmured. “I love you so much.”

He let out a breath at your admission, you felt it whistling past your neck. You shivered, and tried not to think too hard on what would happen when he found out you’d withheld the truth from him that night. 

“I love you so much, in fact, that I’m looking past the fact that you chose the night before a huge operation to tell me that,” you said with a laugh, trying to distract yourself from the demon’s in your head. 

He laughed too. You both relaxed into the vibrations of each other's bodies and then lay quietly for a moment, staring up at the old scuffed ceiling above. 

Though you couldn’t linger there for long. You pushed your way out of his almost iron grip and rolled around, propping your head up so that you could see his face. You were surprised to see the look of consternation that greeted you. It was like looking into a mirror. His eyes were half lidded as he looked down and his lips were pursed, the pink line of his scar stretching taught as he thought deeply on something.

“Well, seeing as you love me too… Would you offer me some assurance?”

You reached over to him and cupped his jaw in your hands, adjusting his face so that he’d meet your gaze. You searched his eyes for a moment and suddenly something clicked in the place as you were finally broken out of your wallowing. 

“Assurance for whatever it was that you couldn’t sleep over?” you guessed. 

He nodded, the scratch of his stubble sharply rubbing against your palm. You smoothed your thumb over his cheek and he leaned into your touch, somehow looking younger and smaller than he usually did. 

“Things will be intense tomorrow…I will be breaching rooms with countless unknown men that will be shooting at us, and I’ll be having to make quick decisions - act on instinct. Whatever you see tomorrow, know that I love you and that I wish you didn’t have to witness any of it. In another life, I’d spare you from ever having to even know about it. I just need to know, that after we come back, no matter what you see, that you won’t run from me. As much as I’ve tried to protect myself, I know that that’s all over now. I know now there’s no way to save myself from the hurt, the same way I couldn’t protect myself from anyone else I’ve ever loved in my life. I just want to know that you’ll give me a chance to explain myself if you see something that you don’t like again… that you won’t leave me.”

Oh König…

You felt the remainder of your tears threaten to spill over and flood your sheets, but you held them back and closed your eyes instead, thinking for a moment.  You hadn’t reacted well the last time you’d heard him at work. How would you react if you were to see him in action now? 

You shuddered at the thought, but let it pass quickly. At the end of the day, you were all going there to reap an unspeakable violence to a group of people that had committed atrocities in return. There were no pure intentions and there were no good players between any of you. There was only putting an end to a group that threatened to kill innocents. If König was going to be at the head of the speartip, then he had to be damn sharp. You couldn’t have him ineffective with worry over what you might think.

Couldn’t put him at risk.

“König, I promise that whatever I see…whatever I think or feel in the moment…I won’t shut you out. We can talk about it all when we get home again. But whatever you do, don’t put yourself in harm's way trying to protect my feelings. We’ll make it through this together, no matter what, ok?”

He smiled at you, a twinkle returning to his sapphire irises. He turned and kissed your hand, you still held his head, and you both closed your eyes for a moment, revelling in the private moment between yourselves. 

“Ok,” he finally replied. “I feel like I can sleep now. Why don’t you try to get some rest as well? See if you can shut off that busy mind of yours.”

You both settled into a silence after that, letting yourselves relax into the calm. At some point you turned back around and a little while later, König switched off your lamp. In the back of your mind you worried that you’d be discovered come morning time, but König assuaged your fears before you could air them and whispered to you, tickling your ear as he told you that he’d set an early alarm. 

“I love you, König,” you whispered, your half smile lost to the night.

It felt like something to giggle over, like a secret between school children. You could barely contain your smile. 

“I love you too,” König replied, pressing a kiss to your temple, “I’ll love you always.”

-☠️- 

König had stayed true to his word and had left while the sky remained dark, shutting off his near silent alarm on the second ring and scurrying out quietly before anyone would be any the wiser. Anyone that didn’t already know anything anyway.

It felt like Ghost had almost sold you out the moment that you’d stepped foot onto the transport. The sound of your boots nervously clanging against the metal ramp drew his attention, and all at once his conversation with the Captain ceased and he fixed his eyes on you with a glare.

It was enough to freeze you into place, forcing you to maintain eye contact with him until he released his mental hold over you. You Clutched furiously onto the handle of your backpack, hoping like hell that it wouldn’t shake too badly.

For a few painful seconds you were stuck still, though just as you thought that Ghost might say something after all, he turned away again and blanked you completely. Price gave him a frown and said something low under his breath, but whatever it was Ghost shook his head and carried on with what they were discussing before.

It was like some kind of twisted game of red light/green light. If that’s the way he’s going to play things this’ll be a hell of a way to go out, you thought to yourself. That is if you even made it out of the mission.

You were supposed to be on Ghost’s team, and at that point you weren’t completely convinced that he would bother too much to look out for you anymore. No, now it was just you and Horangi, and as much as König seemed to get on with him, you and he had never exchanged more than a couple of words to each other. 

Would Soap and Gaz offer swapsies?

You shook your head at the thought of Gaz ever going off plan, especially one that Price had approved. No, instead of hoping for better, you faced reality and took a seat far away from Ghost, throwing your stuff down for what felt like the last time. You sank down on your cracking knees, settling next to your bulging bag and holding it like a plush toy. The squishy material was solid under your grasp and made a great pillow for you to rest your head on. It was enough to lull you into a sense of security, enough to make you close your eyes. 

“Sneak!”

Your head shot up and you lost your breath, staring wide eyed into the direction that you’d heard the voice come from. Was it Ghost? Was he going to reveal everything just to spite you now that you were getting comfortable?

No. Soap looked down at you instead, shooting you a grin as he saw how much you’d shit yourself at his shout. Stupid bastard. You hit out at his leg and huffed when he sat down next to you, feeling like his loud obnoxious voice in your ear was just about the last thing you needed.

And just to sour your mood more, just to make matters all the better, he shoved your shoulder and almost sent you keeling over and tumbling over to Ghost and Price. As if Ghost needed another reason to want to get back at you. 

You threw your hands out and pushed yourself up, attempting to shove him almost twice as hard back. He’d dodged at the last second and had you wheeling forward this time, though at the very least you had your bag to fall onto instead of Ghost this time. 

“What the fuck are you being so childish for?” you grumbled, recovering and rubbing the sore spot where he’d shoved you. 

“Ooft, someone’s grumpy, eh?” Soap tittered, smile never leaving his face. “Did you not get much rest last night?”

You grunted and folded your arms, staring straight ahead like you might melt the plane’s walls. 

“The fuck does it matter to you?”

“I’ll take that as a yes then - as usual.”

Soap raised his brows, challenging you to defend yourself. Normally you’d probably shove him again or throw a verbal barb at him, but that day you were in no mood to play. Especially not when the truth was going to come out sooner rather than later, and you weren’t convinced you were going to be on joking terms anymore. 

No, it wouldn’t be long until he knew about you and König, and your mind was already filled with the sight of his angry frown setting itself upon you. It was better that you didn’t make it all worse by pretending everything was fine, you reasoned, so that being the case you ignored him and planted your head back down on your bag. 

“Crabbit little twat,” Soap snorted. “Better find your sense of humour before you wake up again. And if you’re gonna be in a mood with me, then you can forget sleepin’ and drooling all over me too!”

You grunted in response, and gave him nothing else. You were too sick with worry to respond properly, even despite the ache that developed as you realised that that might be one of your last ‘friendly’ interactions with him. The weight in your heart increased tenfold, feeling as if it were a sand timer growing heavier by the minute. Better not to think about it. Better to shut it all out, to shut down. 

Unsurprisingly your mood wasn’t lifted by the sleep you caught up on. It only served to keep you from agonising about your situation until the plane slammed down onto the dodgy countryside landing strip. That shocked you back to life again. From then on, until you reached the safe house, your mood remained sour and kept the others from bothering you much.

When you got there, of course, you had to buck up and try to act normal. You couldn’t have the others picking anything up, couldn’t let them think you were anything else except tired and grumpy. It wasn’t that far outside the realm of normal, you never slept very well whenever you had to travel away anyway. 

When it came time to go over the briefing, you quietly set yourself as far away from Ghost as you could muster and stood around the projector wall, listening to Price’s briefing intently while you locked your arms into a folded position. The light splashed across his face in brief interludes, his weight was shifting from foot to foot as he walked you all through the plan in his booming voice, he was restless. He was right to be. 

Price knew that the intelligence that had been gathered was of questionable accuracy - he told you all as much and Laswell confirmed it. She didn’t look that much more confident that him. The men who’d spilled their guts to the interrogators had varying degrees of incentive to reveal the true nature and layout of their base and all of you knew that they were highly fantastical to boot. It didn’t matter how many exercises you’d run through, none of you could’ve really known what was in store for when you raided the warehouse. 

You’d looked round the room as he’d talked about that, scoping out the faces of all the men that you were going to fight alongside. Your eyes slowly ran over the 141, König, Horangi, and all those of the other team that Price had assembled to lock down the perimeter. There were hard eyes all around, everyone stayed quiet, listening to the captain until his very last word. Even Laswell had limited interjections, she was just as stone faced as everyone else, letting Price take the lead.

“I want all of you to be at the top of your game. On a mission like this there is zero and I really do mean zero margin for error! You make a mistake on Rousseau’s home turf and you will get yourself or one of your teammates killed. All of you must communicate, I want clear positions and status updates on comms. You will tell me where you are in the warehouse and you will let me know who you come across, is that clear?”

You all responded, an impassioned “yes, sir!” rang throughout the room, ricocheting off of the walls and back into the crowd  like a bullet. 

“Good,” Price said curtly. “Now, enough talking,we move out in thirty minutes. And remember - Zero margin for error! Clear communication! Don’t get yourselves killed.”

“Yes, sir!”

You all sounded off for the last time and set to work scurrying around, gathering gear and preparing the trucks for departure. You’d be driving out until you reached the edge of the forest and from then on you would be trekking out to the compound, a group of old warehouses that had belonged to a logging company before it had gone out of business years before. You were in for a hard day.

Though as Ghost reminded you, when he icily stared at you from the otherside of the room, the hardship wasn’t going to end at capturing Rousseau. Your problems were only going to multiply from that day on.

You were the first to break eye contact that time, nervously shifting away and grabbing your gear, double checking your ammo and your pockets. You stroked your hands up through the curves and rough textures of your armour and bags and went through your mental checklist, trying to fill your mind with something other than all the swirling thoughts that threatened to compromise you. 

“All good, Sneak?”

You snapped your head to your left side, meeting Gaz’s tilted stare. 

“All good, Sergeant,” you answered, repacking a few of your rounds. 

“Sergeant?” he chuckled.

“Did your rank change while I was asleep?”

“No, but you seemed to,” he shrugged.

“I’m stressed, there’s a lot at stake here,” you said, swallowing down another of your silly lies. “But all that matters is that I’m here right?”

Gaz shook his head as you reminded him of the words he’d said to you months before. Ever since he’d lectured you about letting König distract you, you liked to tease him and call him mini Price, reciting his words back to him without fail. I wanna go out there knowing you’re here with us and not turning yourself into a walking target. You’d do your best Price impression whenever you recounted them. 

You didn’t bother this time - not while Price was in the room with you. Gaz rolled his eyes and patted your back, almost turning away to sort his own things before a smile lit his face. 

“Well with a good attitude like that I might just keep you around when I get promoted to Captain,” he laughed, walking away before he could see the smile dropping off your face. 

Gaz might’ve wanted to keep you around - but would Price? 

-☠️- 

It was unsurprising, to say the least, that you were going to discover John Rousseau’s last stand wasn’t going to be easy. No. He was intent on going out with a bang.  

It had been a difficult breach, you’d lost a couple of the men that Price had sent to crack the warehouse open with you. They’d fallen in the fatal funnel that had been created when the enemy worked out your entry point. Despite the high levels of bloodshed though, König remained mostly unharmed.

You’d tried not to let yourself get distracted by him, but even still, had found your eyes magnetised to him at times, had seen him shooting quickly and forcing enemies close when he needed to, basically folding people in half in an effort to break them. Some of the sounds their bones made still echoed in your ears. 

Everything had moved so fast. Your mind had very little bandwidth to process it all. One moment you were on the first floor, desperately trying to locate the stairs and get to Rousseau’s ‘war room’, the next you were deep into the building, continuing to blast through doors with Soap at the head while you, Ghost and Horangi secured the rear. 

Gunshots echoed out throughout the hallways, lights flickered and sparked and rained down electrical orange confetti as they were shot from the ceiling and swung out like some kind of deadly assault course. The floor in front of you flashed white and gold and soon you were drowned in darkness. All the lights in the room crashed down into their final resting places.

Ghost was in the room across from you, Horangi was with him too. You’d decided to separate when you’d seen a lone man run into the little office, you were convinced you’d seen someone hauling a massive gun across his back. It was hard to be sure what it was, maybe some type of PKM, but whatever it could have been would do a lot of damage, you knew that much. Though now, as you were left alone in the shadows, it had felt like your mind had played tricks on you.

Your breathing was shallow, and no matter how thick your earbuds were, your ears were still ringing from all the abuse they’d had to endure. It felt like you’d been crammed under an old church bell and someone was hitting it on all sides. There was a lightning storm in your head and a heatwave through your whole body. 

Part of you was almost begging to be in the debrief with Price already. 

You flicked your night vision down and scoped the room, tracing through the green fog for any signs of enemies. There was nothing obvious. The pulse of your speeding heart thumped away steadily in your ears while the room remained deathly still. Where the fuck are you?

Something flashed out of the corners of your eyes and before you could even turn to see it, you were being overwhelmingly set upon. You stepped backward and leveraged your weight, getting yourself in a good position to strike your assailant and baulked when he stopped you in your tracks and smashed you against the wall. 

Ouch.

The air shot out of your lungs, your goggles had skewed over your eyes, but after a few seconds of shock you were thankfully able to dodge the figure from hitting you and shoved them off to your side. With tears in your eyes, and knees screaming out, you got yourself up. 

It was fight or die. You picked up your gun, scraping the heavy weapon against the floor, and unloaded it into your attacker, just as he tried to rush you again. 

His body collapsed to the floor in a spray of mist and you watched motionlessly as he fell forward and into a lifeless heap at your feet. The gun was like a lead brick in your arms, but still you held it aloft, waiting for anyone else that might try to get the drop on you.

Why’s it so quiet?

“Sneak, what the fuck was that?” Ghost called out. “And where the fuck did you run off to?”

You could hear him distantly through in the other room, but his voice was also straining loud and clear over the busy comms, you knew your reply would be too. All of you had been running around for a lot longer than you would’ve liked. Then again, it was a blessing that you were still up and kicking if anything. There had been so many surprise attacks launched on you, you were lucky to only sport a few bruises for your troubles. 

“In the room across from you LT. Took down an enemy, heading back to you now.”

You took one last look around the ruins of the office, and once satisfied there were no more hidden assailants, you walked toward the doorway. After plastering yourself to the wall, you took a look up and down the hall, pivoting out a little just to be sure no one was going to take a lucky shot. All clear. Well, one end of the hallway anyway, the other was completely blocked off by a stack of fallen units and desks. 

Probably not a good sign.

Were they directing you?

You crossed the threshold fully and bolted into the next room, locking eyes with Ghost as he perched his foot on a fallen desk chair, it was rattling from his weight. Horangi gave you a nod from Ghost’s side and glanced over to the head of the room, keeping watch over Soap as he set up his charges with no small amount of grumbling. That wasn’t a good sign either. 

Your body was getting tired, your back was aching from all the weight you’d been hauling round. The only thing getting lighter was your ammo. You were praying that you were close to the end, hoping that wherever this supposed room was that Rousseau had locked himself into, it was going to reveal itself soon. You didn’t know how much more you could take.

“Stay on that door Sneak, make sure no one else goes looking for hiding spots” Ghost directed. “What’s taking so long, Soap?” 

You turned and followed Ghost’s order, side eyeing König as he stood over your struggling teammates, dwarfing Gaz and Soap under his watchful stance. He was breathing heavily, you could see the dramatic rise and fall of his hood giving away his fatigue. Other than that though, you were relieved to see that he was still unhurt.

Focus!

You snapped your attention to the hallway again and ignored your boyfriend, pulling your thoughts away from him completely. It had been a long time since you’d been on a mission with König and you were unused to the amount of space he took up. He was clouding your thoughts, sending your brain churning out worry like a spitting volcano as he kept charging through doorways and getting up close and personal with men as if he were indestructible.  

You shook your head and cast your eyes through the shadows, watching out for movement. You couldn’t linger over König any longer. 

Soon you realised that there wasn’t any noise. It wasn’t right. Things never went the way you’d trained for almost one hundred percent of the time, but it was strange that there hadn’t been more men around. You’d encountered most of the men on the way in and now that you were further into the heart of the building they were sprouting up in numbers few and far between. That combined with the fact the building felt strategically blocked off in areas was all just one big red flag, waving and buffeting like a sail in the breeze. 

“LT, there’s explosives already set here,” Soap shouted. “I couldn’t be sure before…but they've hidden them in the door casing. Powerful stuff by the looks of it too. If we try to get through this we could end up blasting ourselves to the moon by the looks of it.”

You whipped your head around and back to the group at the door, watching as they all stepped back. All at once everyone's heads snapped to Ghost and he frowned deeply enough that it could be seen through his eyeblack.

“Price, did you get that?” Ghost asked, speaking clearly for the comms. 

“Copy,” Price said, his voice crackling through all of your headsets. “Can you find an alternative route ahead?”

“Not on this floor,” Ghost responded. “This is the only way up.”

“Fuck!”

You winced at Price’s outburst and bit your lip. Should you speak?

Fuck it.

“There haven’t been a lot of men compared to what we expected either,” you noted. “Anyone else get the feeling we’ve been set up?”

Everyone else seemed to have the same thought, Gaz nodded your way, König looked like he wanted to scratch his way out of the walls and take you with him, Ghost narrowed his eyes. Was he annoyed you’d stated the obvious? You frowned over at him, but he moved shortly after that, sidling up to the window and taking a cautious peak outside. His back visibly stiffened as he caught a glimpse of something. 

“Price, there’s a truck heading out the gates to the south side. Do you see it?”

“We’re tracking it now. Ghost, take both of the teams out of the warehouse, whatever’s going on, I don’t like it. Meet us back at the extraction point, copy?”

“Copy, Captain.”

Ghost motioned his head in the direction of the doorway you were still guarding and while the others filed toward you, you stayed in place. You had to ensure no one would surprise them while they stepped out of the room. Ghost passed you and patted your shoulder, his touch like a lightning shock to your system. 

As much of a professional as he was, you hadn't expected him to be at a point where he was making an effort to praise you. A warmth spread over your chest then. 

Nevertheless, you couldn’t let yourself get too carried away. You put it to the back of your mind and followed up the rear of your group, looking around as you passed through the hallways of fallen men. Bodies littered the floors and by then most of the hallways were dark and devoid of any lighting. The green haze of your night vision goggles continued to wave unsettlingly and the crunch of debris was ever present under your boots. 

“We need to move slowly and quietly,” Ghost directed, heading toward the front of your group. “If the bastards have set up bombs there’s no telling what way they were trying to direct us and what happens if another one of them catches us alive. Any one of them could have a detonator, and we know from previous encounters they’re not shy about martyring themselves for the cause.”

Your heart rate picked up, but still you kept marching ahead. The group moved forward like a little troupe of ants, following your masked leader to what you hoped was safety. Each skittering stray piece of furniture under your feet had you jumping, every breath you took was like a gust of wind. Even with your ears ringing it felt like every bit of muffled noise was coming through like the beginnings of a dance anthem.

Knowing that someone with the power to blow the whole building on you might jump out at any second wasn’t great for your weakening composure. That wouldn’t stop you though. Your group powered on down the halls until you reached the lower stairway, and each of you took every step with care, pointing your weapons in different directions just to be sure that every angle was covered. 

With your gun pointed down, you were able to see that there was activity on the bottom floor, you could see people moving down below. You tapped Soap on the shoulder and pointed them out, allowing him to pass on the message until it carried on through the line and down to Ghost. All of you stopped moving then and watched the little group, stuck in silence while they propped open a piece of wood that had been covering a doorway in the stairs.

Ghost extended his arm and gave you all a series of clear hand signals, watching down the line to make sure you all read him clearly. Stay silent. Stay on me. We’re following them.

There was more pressure than ever to make sure that your steps were soundless. Your heartbeat was in your ears and your body was buzzing with how tightly your muscles were wound. Every step took you closer to the bottom and to the hatch, every successful movement gave you hope that you wouldn’t be found out. 

When your group reached the bottom, you were able to see that the men had replaced the sheet of wood and old construction PVC to try and hide the secret exit. Clearly that hadn’t been meant for your eyes. Perhaps it was lucky that you’d come to the stairway at the right time - it was hard to say, maybe they’d meant for exactly that to happen.

Ghost looked to König and together, without having to communicate, they shifted the board and König took position at the front. As always, he was first to breach.

All of you crept into the blown out entryway and were surprised to find a tunnel at your feet, complete with a very haphazard ladder built down into it. Aside from that, the little room you were in was empty. König replaced the piece of wood over the door once everyone was inside and soon you were surrounded in complete shadow, staring around at the others through the green hues. 

“Price, we’ve found a tunnel under the stairway of the building. What do you want us to do?” Ghost enquired, keeping an eye on the tunnel to make sure no one down below indicated that they’d heard him.

The comms were quiet, nothing but the ghostly whisper of static crumbling away at your ears. All of you eyed each other, stares hard enough to the cut the air between you all. The little room was getting hot with all of your bodies filling it, each breath getting harder to take. 

“Price, come in,” Ghost demanded. “Laswell? Anyone?”

Nothing. 

“Fuckin’ hell,” Soap breathed.

You pursed your lips and kept your stare fixed on Ghost. His eyes were jumping between you all like he was deciding on his lunchtime football team. He took a moment to think, trying to bring clarity into the stuffy room, he was probably waiting for Price to come back in too, but nevertheless the line remained dead.

“Right. Here’s what we’re gonna do. More than likely this entire building is rigged to blow, we need to get out, but more than likely this tunnel is a sign that Rousseau must be here. He would never have left all his men behind, he likes to make a show of being on base and ‘protecting’ and taking control of his men. König, you’re gonna lead Horangi and Gaz through the back entrance at the loading bay and head to the extraction point, find out why command isn’t talking to us. I’m taking Sneak and Soap with me and we’re gonna see what’s down there, see if we can’t dig Rousseau out.”

“What?”

All of you turned your heads as König spoke, the sharpness of his voice coming out muffled through his hood. 

“Did you not hear me right?” Ghost asked.

“I heard you clearly, Lieutenant,” König sneered. “But I don’t agree with that course of action. You can’t just go wandering around tunnels with only two people with you, that’s suicide. Price gave his orders before the line went down, he was very clear, therefore we should all be going to the extraction point.”

“This isn’t the time to disagree with me, König.”

“It is if you’re going to get yourself and two of your subordinates killed,” König said, clearly gritting his teeth. “Not to mention you’re abandoning us with god knows how many men waiting outside to stop us from leaving.”

“Nice of you to care about what happens to us,” Ghost remarked, “Then again there’s probably only one person you’re trying to protect here, isn’t there?”

Your stomach dropped to your feet. It was like a small fire had broken out in the room and now you had the urge to go beating down the secret entrance and throwing caution to the wind. Was this really going to happen?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” König asked.

“You know what it means. Now would you like to press the issue or would you like to get back to your job and do what you’re being paid to do, you fucking goon.”

König seemed to shoot you a sideways glance, you couldn’t really tell with his visor down, but before you could think to warn him otherwise he decided that it was indeed time to press the issue. Every fibre of your being wanted to throttle him then. If your choice was crawling into a death tunnel or ending up in an argument between Ghost and König during an operation, then tunnel of death it is!

“Paid personnel or not, at least I’m trying to get us all out safely,” König retorted. 

“All? Trying to make sure we all get out, or just trying to make sure you’ve got a warm hole to crawl back to at the end of this? Which is it really?”

There was an almost tangible silence in the room. It was as if there was a thick bubble coating you all, preventing a single whisper of noise from escaping. You couldn’t even hear the others breathe, not over König anyway. He was panting like a charging bull, breaking through the bubble, he sounded like he was ready to tear Ghost down into a stump.  

“Ghost, what’re you talking about?” Soap said, not able to contain himself. “We shouldn’t be arguing, we should be moving! Let’s just go.”

“You’re not going down into that tunnel, Sergeant!” König warned, making a move to stop Soap.

“Or what?” Ghost asked, rising to his full height and jumping into König’s path.

König stood silently, he didn’t say anything - but he didn't allow Ghost to intimidate him either. He stood perfectly still, besides straightening his back, and eyed his opponent. The two of them looked like windup toys ready to strike. 

“Nothing to say?” Ghost sneered. “Then move.”

“Lieutenant, be reasonable,” König said. 

“I am being incredibly reasonable, König,” Ghost laughed, a dark chuckle rumbling from his throat. “In fact, judging by the way you’re acting, maybe Sneak can tell you just how reasonable I’m being.”

Everyone’s heads turned to you, navigating the thick silence that followed with ease. Their night vision goggles stared you down as if they were being programmed to move in sync. You swallowed a thick lump in your throat and gripped tightly at your gun, holding onto it like it was the only thing tethering you to reality. What were you supposed to say now?

“What’s going on?” Gaz sighed, clearly at the end of his tether. 

“Tell them what’s going on, Sneak,” Ghost ordered. “Tell them exactly why this little song and dance is happening right now. Go on. Let them know why Captain Rags has his face in a twist over you going down into the tunnel. Let’s get it out there for the world to know.”

Every one of his words hit you like a knife in your gut. There were blades sticking out at all angles and it was taking all your strength just to stay up. So this was it? You were truly going out in a blaze, but it was far from glorious. 

“Sneak?” König said, his voice strained with confusion. 

“König, Ghost found the pictures in your wallet when he knocked your stuff off the rack yesterday,” you said quietly. “He knows we’re together.”

“What the fuck!” Soap whispered.

“Sneak, what do you mean you’re together?” Gaz asked. “You can’t be together, Price will fucking kill you…”

Horangi remained silent. 

“Apparently they’re not ones for following orders,” Ghost sneered. “Otherwise we wouldn’t even be having this discussion would we?”

Ghost looked between you both and you growled out at yourself, sinking into disbelief that all of it was really happening. It felt surreal to be standing around arguing in a building that was full of god knows how many explosives. Why was it that König could never just follow orders? Why couldn’t you? The room was so hot it felt like you were all starting to cook, smelt like it too. 

“König, just do as Ghost says and take the others,” you commanded. “At this rate we’re all going to get blown up and this whole argument won’t even matter.”

“Sneak-”

“No, König! Just go, we can all talk about it later.”

“That’s if you even make it back later!”

“Don’t think like that. Just take Horangi and Gaz back to extraction and find out why Price hasn’t answered us. Otherwise none of us are getting out of here!”

König continued to stare for a second more, but finally he’d seen sense. He shook his head and furiously muttered something to himself in German before he walked back to the exit. He gave you one last look and with that, slid back the wooden panel and walked out with Horangi in tow, missing only Gaz as he left you all. 

With the door open and König gone you felt like you could breathe a little easier again, but as soon as you looked back at the others, the feeling went away. Gaz shook his head at you and walked out, mumbling something that was too low to hear and soon it was only you, Ghost and Soap left. 

“Steamin’ Jesus, Sneak. What the fuck were you thinking? Have you really been lying to us all this time?”

You sighed and looked at Soap, watching the way his mouth downturned in disgust. A horrible nauseous feeling permeated in your stomach and in your throat, but you couldn’t pay too much attention to it. You had to keep your head on more important things. 

“Clearly I wasn’t thinking,” you sighed. “Look, I’ll answer whatever questions you want after we’re out of this, but we need to get moving.”

“Agreed,” Ghost said, already heading for the tunnel. “We’ve had enough distraction already.”

Ghost cut Soap off from interrupting, shooting him a hard look before he took a flashbang from one of his holsters and primed it. He threw it down the tunnel and waited for a reaction. Nothing. After being met with silence, he quickly flew down into the darkness, leaving you and Soap up top. Soap surely burned a hole through his night vision and into you. 

You shivered and followed Ghost, cautiously setting your foot on the ladder, not liking the way it wobbled with Ghost’s weight and yours. There wasn’t much to be done about it though. You had to get down there quickly and make sure he had backup.

You scurried down and stuck one foot behind the other, releasing each of the metal rungs like they were on fire. It didn’t take long until you were at the bottom and eventually Soap followed you both and rather nicely decided against booting you in the head on his way down, dropping to your side instead.

“There’s no one here, but they’ll have heard that, no doubt,” Ghost warned. “Stay close and lets find out what these fuckers are hiding down here.”

You nodded your agreement and followed him down the tunnel, watching the rickety support beams with a cautious eye. König had been right to worry.

What’s he thinking right now? Is he hurt?

Not again, stop thinking about him. Focus! 

The tunnel didn’t seem like it had been in operation for very long. Something that had seen more use would surely have been built better, you reasoned, not looking like it could crumble at any second. As you took a few more twists and turns and continued to follow the path it didn’t seem to get much better. The walls looked hastily dug out and like any little disturbance might bury them. Though as you all turned another corner and followed the winding walkway, you were surprised to find yourself in a rather large cavernous room.

It was built solidly and looked far more like a permanent structure, it was supported by thick metal beams from which overhead lights were suspended and hanging down from long wires. It also contained a plethora of scaffolding like shelves, housing a few abandoned looking wooden crates, some of them looked like they’d been raided, others were dusty and dark with disuse. You flipped your goggles up and watched the two men at your sides repeat the action, finally noticing the true extent of all the grime and blood that had covered them both. 

“What is this place?” Soap wondered out loud. 

“Looks like some kind of storage facility. Well, it was one anyway,” you remarked.

You didn’t miss the way Soap narrowed his eyes at you from the side of his vision. He advanced forward through the looming racks while you stayed behind and watched the other men go. You had to give yourself a second for the bile to stop rising in your stomach. To say that being on an op with two men that had it out for you was making you feel uneasy was an understatement. 

However you didn’t have the luxury of lingering on for very long. Once you noticed Ghost heading to the set of shelves that blocked your view of the head of the room, you started to follow after him, ensuring that he’d have some cover. Part of you felt better being around someone that had had longer to digest the news. 

Once you’d flown past the racks and over to Ghost you began to realise that there was a thrumming noise emanating from the far side of the room. It rumbled and growled and grew harder on your ears the closer you got and as soon as you made your way round the racking you saw the source of it. A big set of metal doors.

Soap joined you from the otherside, clearly finding the rest of the room just as empty as you had. Ghost looked over to Soap then and back at the door, motioning for him to get close. 

“Soap, do you have the borescope?”

“Aye, hold on, I’ll sort it.”

Soap reached into his bag and pulled out the long snake of wire and fetched his drill. From there he made a small opening in the door with quick precision and sent the coiled camera through, taking a look at the monitor as he did so. The monitor quickly flashed on and you and Ghost were able to peer round and see a flurry of men running around a mixture of freight and pickup trucks, loading cargo onto them. There were some that were beginning to drive off, halting just as they made it onto the big ramp then ran up the far side of that room. 

How on earth had they managed to hide that? 

You frowned as you watched on, realising that the last trucks were beginning to get closed up and prepared for driving off, you could hear the echoes of the doors being slammed shut. The men were shouting louder now, driving each other to go, go, go. You watched Ghost out of the corner of your eye, waiting for him to make a decision. All until the final man walked into the centre of the room, he was surrounded by a group of heavily covered up muscle men toting machine guns like they were little more than big boys with pretend sticks in the playground. The man walked in the centre of them with a confident strut - he looked just like he did in the videos.

“Holy fuck, is that Rousseau?” Soap whispered.

Ghost nodded tightly.

“Brothers! We have done well today, the enemy safehouse has been destroyed and the rest of the soldiers will still be trapped in the warehouse trying to route us out. Let us leave and go to our new base, onwards and upwards my friends!”

The enemy safehouse has been destroyed? Price? Laswell? Were they ok?

You widened your eyes, but you didn’t get much time to think about Price and the others. 

Rousseau had sped over to one of the trucks and once inside, had set off a cataclysm. The doors to the ramp opened, bathing the basement in startling sunlight and from there the explosions began, a loud series of bangs that shook the room like a hurricane, each one unsettling the walls and floor as they got closer. It felt like a tiger leaping ever closer, ready to land straight onto your belly and tear you open. 

What the fuck!

“We need to get out of here!”Ghost roared. “Head for the trucks, we can try to get into the one at the back. 

He kicked at the door and luckily it burst open, allowing you all to run forward and into the next room. Because the room was so long, you were still covered by shadow and no one seemed to notice your group’s appearance. No one was shooting at you anyway. 

Your throat burned as you ran, your mind was racing, intent on following Ghost as he stuck to the walls, keeping yourselves hidden in the darkness. He was racing out ahead while you and Soap tied with each other, running neck and neck and panting like hounds as you propelled yourselves ahead of the blasts. The room was really shaking now and while the last truck began to pull away and ascend up the ramp, your eyes teared up. 

No, no, no. Not like this!

You pumped your legs a little bit harder and Soap did the same, managing to sprint ahead like you were all in a murmuration, moving fluidly and in sync with one another. With that effort made, you all managed to jump onto the last truck, detaching from the wall at the last minute before attaching yourselves to the back. You all grabbed onto what holds that you could, affixing yourselves to the bolts that kept the doors closed and held on for dear life, watching on with horror as you saw the warehouse burning up in the distance, leaving it in a trail of smoke. 

It was then you were finally able to hear the crackle of comms and a blended mixture of broken up accented shouts, German, Korean and English. The others were trying to contact you. 

Had they made it out ok? 

“Gaz, is that you?” Ghost shouted out, trying to adjust his headset while he gripped onto the bolt. “We’re on Rousseau, we’re out of the warehouse. Did your team make it out?”

If you weren’t busy being terrified for everyone’s lives  you would have rolled your eyes. 

“LT, is that you?” Gaz called out, his voice finally coming through clearly. “Are you all ok?”

Ghost didn’t get a chance to say anything to that, he was quickly cut off.

“Lieutenant, respond!” König snarled, his voice snapping out like an angry wolf. 

“We made it out,” Ghost confirmed. “Did you hear what I said? Where are you? We’re following Rousseau, we’re on one of his trucks. His men must’ve been instructed to set this up for him upon capture. They must’ve had a plan to move when they knew we were coming.”

“We made it out, we started heading for the extraction point, but we got cut off by Rousseau’s forces in the woods. He must’ve left men behind to try and stop us from getting out, we got em’ though. We still haven’t heard any word from Price. What direction are you heading in? Should we follow?”

“We got word that they destroyed the safe house,” Soap said. “Price and Laswell might not’ve made it.”

You finally turned and looked up, blinking back at the rush of air as you changed direction and looked at Soap. He looked like a terrified cat that had got itself stuck up a tree. Both of his hands must’ve been white knuckling the bolt from under his gloves - he was holding onto the same one as you, standing over you while you crouched low and hooked your feet into the groove of the bevelled doors. The extra grip was helping your shaking body. 

Why couldn't Ghost have just let you and König pair off? You’d have taken jungle warfare over hanging off the back of a speeding truck anyday. It would have avoided the whole stupid argument back at the tunnel too. In that moment, while you held on for dear life, you realised that there was a lot of things that you’d have wished that could’ve been done differently. 

“Don’t follow us,” Ghost said, taking back control of the line, “Try to find out if anyone made it to the extraction. You hear that, König? Make sure that we can make it out of this, don’t do anything stupid!”

“Hard to say what’s stupid when your definition seems so different to mine,” König snarked.

“König, don’t be a smartass! Just try and find Price so we can get Rousseau,” you growled. 

Ghost tilted his head at you, clearly surprised that you’d been the one to tell him off for that. As much as you were relieved to know he was ok, and as much as you’d like to comfort him, you knew the mission was much bigger than yourselves. Getting everyone out safely and trying to successfully capture Rousseau was the most important thing and you could only do that if you were apart.

The line remained quiet for a second.

“Ok, we’re heading to the extraction again now,” Gaz confirmed. “We’ll let you know when we reach point.”

“Copy, Sergeant.”

You looked up at Ghost and then at Soap, watching as both men struggled with staying stuck to the truck. This wasn’t going to work long term, you could feel your own arms wanting to give out, it wouldn’t be long till you’d all come tumbling off and crashing onto the dirt road. You had to figure out a way to get to a more secure location. 

“Ghost, do you think you can hold on to the truck and try to support my weight at the same time?” You asked.

“Why?” he barked.

“If you hold onto me, I can try and climb up the truck and get myself on top,” you explained. 

“And then what about us?” Soap growled. “All very well sorting out a nice place for yourself up there.”

“If I move up there, then you can crouch next to Ghost and open the door on the side we’re standing on,” you said, glaring up at him. “That way we can all hold it so it doesn’t swing out and you two can climb in and shut it.”

This wasn’t the time for accusations. You waited for them both to share their thoughts, and jumped when the truck hit a bump. It almost sent you all flying. Soap yelped and hugged into the bolt tighter and Ghost grunted. You fumbled as your feet were displaced and wobbled, your hands slipping off of the bolt and sending you sprawling backwards. 

Ghost reached out and grabbed you in the nick of time, just when you thought you were about to be grated parmesan on the side of the pebbled road. You huffed out a breath and grabbed a hold of the bar, swallowing down your pulse as it tried to climb out of your throat. 

“Right, get on with it,” Ghost said, “I can only hold you for so long.”

You shook your head and had to remind yourself of the plan. That close call rocked you.

Without any more interruption, you grabbed onto the bolt on Ghost’s side with both hands and swung your legs up, planting them against the wall while Ghost kept his hand flat against your back. As you got higher up, his support dwindled, but from there you were able to reach around the top and kick your legs against the doors. With one last grunt you were able to get yourself fully on top of the truck, but kept yourself belly down on it, ensuring that you wouldn’t be seen. 

“Ok, I’m gonna hold onto the door now. Open it when Soap’s in position.”

The other two fumbled around, getting themselves steady. After a few moments of contoroting themselves around one another they were able to open the door, it was heavy and it took everything in you not to go flying out with it even with Ghost holding it from his position too, but you were able to stop it just enough so that Ghost and Soap could climb in as they both took turns to hold the door alongside you.

Once they’d disappeared inside and snapped the door shut, you realised that there was a small fault in your plan when you were left gripping on for dear life. Not to mention how much colder it was on top with all the wind rushing past your face. Then there was also the bugs…

“Nice work, Sneak,” Ghost congratulated, voice coming in quiet over the line. “I’m gonna get soap to drill a hole in the ceiling. Have you got your knife with you?”

“Yeah, why?” you asked, frowning as you slowly worked out where he was going with this.

“That should give you something decent to hold onto.”

“Are you serious? Can’t you guys cut a hole in the ceiling for me?” you huffed.

“Who do you think I am, Qui-Gon fuckin’ Jinn?” Soap retorted, you could hear the drill going in the background. “Must’ve forgotten my lightsaber at home. Beyond blowing the thing off, how am I gonna cut a hole in the roof, sneak?”

“I’m not asking you to melt the whole roof off soap, you must be able to make a small hole with that drill, just make a few drill holes and weaken the metal!” you growled. 

“Negative. We need you up there, Sergeant,” Ghost interrupted. “We need someone who can see ahead and tell us when the trucks are stopping or if we leave the forest. If they reach base or they leave us with no cover we need to get ready to jump off and hide.”

You sighed and watched as the drill bit poked its way out behind you, grating through the metal with a sound like grinding teeth. You would need to turn and slide forward a few inches to be able to reach it, but it looked like that was your best way to keep on top of the truck.

Without anymore stalling, you flipped around and watched as it disappeared and appeared a couple times more, forming a ragged little line. That would be enough for your knife to eat through.

You shakily reached behind you and to your knife holster, gripping the handle like a vice in your hands, whatever you did you couldn’t let it fly from your hold. With that in mind you quickly extended your arm and stabbed it through the hole, gritting your teeth as your hand slammed into the metal. That was surely going to bruise,

“Could’ve done with some warning, Sneak,” Soap huffed. “You almost took my finger off.”

“Poor baby, maybe you’d like to swap places,” you retorted. “See how you like holding onto the top of a truck with nothing but your hands.”

“Watch it, or I’ll send that knife flyin’ out,” he barked back.

“Shut up, Soap,” Ghost growled. “Keep the line clear. Sneak, let us know what you see, copy?”

“Copy that, Ghost.”

You hardened your gaze onto the horizon, watching as the trees came waving by and flew into your periphery, and adjusted your position. With both hands firmly wrapped around your knife, you were deadset on keeping your fingers wrapped around it with a snake like constriction. In that moment you were picturing it as Rousseau’s neck, already seeing red as you thought about Price and König and all the shit that you’d been through since chasing after the bastard.

You were going to get him. You were going to make him pay. 

If König, Gaz and Horangi didn’t get back to you soon with good news, then you were fully prepared to unleash hell on him. It didn’t matter what Price was going to do when he found out about you and König, it didn’t matter about the rising blood and seething vitriol that would surely come with the revelation. Price was the one that helped shape you into the soldier you were, he was the one that had gotten you back alive from countless missions, he was your reason for marching on in some of your toughest fights. He cared about you and he believed in you - it was why he was so protective in the first place.

If Price was gone then it wouldn’t be long until the killer met the same fate…of course only after suffering for their actions in the meantime. 

Next part here

[perfectlovevn]

Perfect Love Dev Log #24

I was going to upload this yesterday actually, but the recording system I was using didn't want to work, so today it is. I've been pretty busy hanging out with friends for my birthday ad me rushing to do a bunch of birthday stuff, so I haven't been working on it as hard as I should. Plus I've been like obsessed with people's fanart of this game because you guys are way too good at drawing and finding things out, I'm getting like fanart every day I'm so happy.

Anyways, like mentioned in the previous devlog, this is Emil, Desmond's best friend and person he won't shut up about. I finished making all of the sprites and expressions for him, though I had to go back and forth because I had to resize one of the sprites, and then I had to add in even more expressions and stuff. He has a bunch of the little effects like sparkles and emotes that I spent way too much time animating. I found out about different types of easein and out functions so that get me hooked on transformations again. Like it was way too much time trying to figure out how to get things to move up and down or disappear in a way I want them to. He only shows up in this one scene, so I'm not sure why I'm putting so much effort into it. It's because he's fun to write is why probably, haha.

For his route, I'm going to change up his nametag (the thing that says Emil in it) as well as if you try to quit out since I think it would be cool to have a different guy floating for the extra scenes specifically.

I have to remind myself to rewrite part of the picnic scene with Eris since I feel like Eris's dialogue is a bit wonky. That and some other things like adding in more nicknames/names for things. I think my process will still be doing all the sprite assignments and then working on the sfx/music like I did before. After this scene, I'm going to work on Desmond's scene with his girlfriend, Iya.

[yoru-no-seiiki]

SERIOUSLY, MINORS AND AGELESS BLOGS DNI, I WILL FUCK YOUR MOM WHILE YOU PLAY ROBLOX.

link to [part one] for those unfamiliar w/ my yan! cool kid works

@yuiiasathesilly both parents actually. these three come from a relatively affluent family. someone has to pay for all the hairdye yan! cool kid uses. in fact the both are them are kinda disappointed that the boys haven’t been using their resources as much as they want em to. cool kid has abused it the most, having an entire apartment ready for yan! reader to be kept in

@onyanjune mc does have backups! and good eye. the reason why they only deleted it in their phone is cause it’s what they have on them at all times. meaning that they’re giving our prez some leeway instead of immediate action in terms of blackmail.

in terms of their efforts, it’s purely cause they want their integration into the family to be smooth sailing. before yan! loser was an outcast he used to be pretty well known for his rich family, his brothers, and his high grades. yan! reader noticed that he usually kept to himself and suffered a little bit in terms of his siblings outshining him so much so they set out with that plan to make him completely reliant on them. it was mostly a backup that they had for yan! cool kid but he’s too above other people in general to care. same with yan! prez.

they aren’t trying to make their beloved jealous, hell they’d die if they ever accidentally hurt him in any way, shape, or form. yan! reader worships him too much. it’s more of side effect if anything. they do like to pretend as if they don’t think about him 24/7. which is frankly more annoying to yan! cool kid since he can’t exactly threaten/beat up his future spouse like he can with his brothers.

anyways off to our scenario (inspired by @carnivorousyandeere and i’s talk about sex positive/liberal parents lol)

“dad, i’m going to pursue someone from my class.” yan! cool kid leaned back and forth, rocking his dinner chair.

“oh? that’s great son. i was worried that someone as handsome as you wouldn’t put your face to good use.”

“yes yes, your father and i were worried that you weren’t bringing anybody home. all of our colleagues keep talking about how their children have been sleeping around but here we are with your monk of an eldest son and shut-in of a youngest.”

ouch.

“when i found out that all those condoms we bought you weren’t being used for sex i was devastated!”

“right son! and the lingerie sweetie! tell them about the lingerie!”

“mother, father! we’re eating!” yan! president yelled. he was already used to his parent’s lack of respect for privacy. it wasn’t their crude words that made him uncomfortable, it was the fact that his younger brother was coveting what was already his.

but his mother, as always, does not listen, “and we spent a lot of time getting those for you three to enjoy. and for what?”

“well, who is this lucky person?”

“they’re—“

“i’m full.” yan! loser stood up, wiping the food off his face and leaving. the door to the dining room slammed shut with a bang at his wake.

“as i was saying, they’re my classmate. the one whose house i went to before.”

“oh! the one whose pictures you have all over your room.”

“. . . yes.” yan! cool kid almost regurgitated out his drink from their nonchalant invasion of his room. his rebellious instincts told him to scream at them and question their behavior. but if he wanted to get their help he had to play into his role perfectly.

“oh son! just tell us what we have to do, we’ll support you all the way.”

bingo!

or not.

there was one thing yan! cool kid failed to factor into the equation. the fact that yan! president had been doing such a play since before the younger one even learned how to talk.

“what’s wrong, pumpkin?”

yan! president began his part with a gag. an expression of guilt, disgust and a hint of grief.

“it’s just that. . . i was planning on asking them out too.” and then, the tears. “they actually work as the secretary to the council and . . . no one else has been there for me like they have.”

“oh dear.” their mother looks at the two of them in worry. she already knew this was going to get messy quick.

“i’m sorry, dearest brother. i just can’t bear the thought of losing them.”

“you—“ yan! cool kid slammed his hands on the table. now at his full height which causes his chair to fall behind him. his fist pulled back, ready for impact and aimed squarely on the bridge of yan! president’s glasses.

“why don’t we all calm down, okay?” but their father manages to pull him back, overpowering the young man easily. with a smile he eases yan! cool kid away while their mother held yan! president in her arms. “we’ll think of a way for both of you boys to get what you want.“

“you. prepare a room for a new addition to our home.” their mother spoke, her fingers running through her son’s locks “we’re family we’ll get through this together.”

meanwhile under the cover of dark. . .

yan! loser pants, a hand in his pants as he pumped his cock to full mast. his meager, melodic moans muffled by one of your used pe uniforms covered in dried sweat and your scent. his eyes trained at the video of his eldest brother taking you.

he hated it. hated the way you seemed to be enjoying it (you weren’t). but since they looked alike it was the closest he could get to an image of you and him together. even if his brother couldn’t last a few rounds.

he moans one last time as he releases his spent into a condom, swiftly tying and throwing it to the rest of the pile that threatened to spill over from within the bin.

in his post masturbation haze, he wonders how all that liquid would look inside you instead and whines as he feels the blood rush back down there again.

[scarletttries]

What One Piece Characters Are Like With A Reader With Walking Sticks...

Request: "So... I was thinking, how about headcanons of the straw hats with a S/O who has a disability with their feet and use walk sticks to move around freely but they can use their walk sticks as their weapons too! I would truly appreciate it if you could add Buggy the Clown and Dracule Mihawk in the headcanons too, thank you."

Pairings: Luffy x Reader, Zoro x Reader, Nami x Reader, Sanji x Reader, Usopp x Reader, Buggy x Reader, Dracule x Reader

Luffy:

- Luffy sees every characteristic about a person as an unending strength and advantage and your disability would be no different. Luffy wouldn't even have to see you fight before he begged you to join his crew, being able to see just how special you are in a way unkind people tend to overlook.

- The first time he sees you use your sticks as a weapon, that might be when Luffy really falls in love, cheering and screaming at the top of his lungs as you take down the enemies pursuing the pair of you and pulling you straight in for a kiss the minute you two are alone.

- Luffy treats you with the saming loving exuberance he does his whole crew, but somehow dialled up by a thousand since you have his whole heart. His beaming smile follows you everywhere you go, and he always feels safe and at home with you by his side.

Zoro:

- When Zoro first accepted the bounty for your capture, he had to admit he thought the price might be a little too generous. He followed you for the better part of a day, sure from the kindness you radiate that he could almost just ask you to come with him and you'd do it with a smile. And then he saw the way you easily fought off two other hunters who had come to take you in, watching the whole encounter with a smirk on his face as he realised no price would be enough for your capture.

- Instead, Zoro introduced himself to you that evening, coming clean about why he had come to find you, and hoping you would take mercy on him and let him buy you a drink anyway. Luckily he had been right about your kindness and you hooked the nearest bar stool with your crutch and dragged it close enough for the pair of you to sit knee to knee for the rest of the night.

- After a night of swapping stories and weapon handling tips, Zoro is infatuated, knowing he's found an equal partner and fellow free spirit he could explore the world with free of worries. You two are famed for taking on the most difficult bounties, never backing down from a fight, and rarely keeping your hands off each other.

Nami:

- Nami has spent so much of her life being wildly underestimated that she recognises a dark horse when she sees one. She's trying to pull a grift in a bar inside a military base, but can't get a word in edgeways with every cadet tripping over themselves to help you; fetching you drinks, offering out their arm every time you want to change seat, trying to one up each others brave stories as you applaud their efforts. Only Nami sees your true capabilities as you take keys from their pockets as they settle beside you, or make an obvious mental note of their name to use later. As the night descends into star speckled darkness she follows you back to your boat, determined to find out your plan and not paying enough attention as she rounds a corner and trips straight over your outstretched walking stick.

- Laid out on her back as you smile down proudly at her, she can feel her stomach do a flip. She never wanted a partner in crime before tonight, but when you extend out your hand she can feel herself drawn to you and the possibilities the two of you could get into together.

- She happily accepts the hand you offer and in return gives you her unwavering loyalty, the two of you becoming the unexpected family you had both always been seeking.

Sanji:

- Bless poor pathetic Sanji, he truly does not know how to handle himself around you. His heart is so immediately head over heels that he wants to treat you like the undeniably precious gem that you are, even when you can look after yourself far better than he's ever looked after himself.

- Deep down he knows you can handle yourself, and that he never has to worry, but dear god does he love you so much that he's going to worry anyway. He's going to offer you a piggyback whenever you have to walk more than a few steps. He's going to sprint ahead of you and pull out a chair even though he's more likely to fall over than you are. And you better believe he's going to constantly fear that you're not eating enough and he needs to feed you right now.

- Sanji is truly captivated by everything you do, and when he sees you fight, that man just drops to his knees in worship of your strength and skill. Honestly Sanji would fall to his knees and beg for your affections and company any time you asked, so completely devoted to you and your happiness, even if he's not always showing it in the most helpful way.

Usopp:

- Usopp can hardly believe how cool you are when he sees you fighting off fellow pirates with your walking sticks. Before the battle is even over he's narrating your incredible skills and the badass way you defend yourself when your enemies underestimate you. By the time all your foes are on the ground he is bounding over to you with a beaming smile on his face and his hand stretched out to shake yours.

- Usopp has always struggled to be brave, but somehow being around you finally brings out the best in him. He finds himself more willing to lead the pack, to step up and be his own captain, wanting more than anything to make you feel proud of him.

- Usopp will never not think you're too cool for him, but he's so grateful and excited the first time you kiss him that he practically sprints off to tell Luffy the good news, leaving you stood blushing as he shouts with joy that he feels like the luckiest guy in the world.

Buggy:

- Buggy knows how much strength it takes for someone to turn a disability into a personal advantage so you know he really truly appreciates you for exactly who you are. He likes to keep you very close, not for some outdated feeling of protection, but because he genuinely values your insights on all the decisions he faces as a captain.

- Buggy isn't afraid to put his hands on you, lifting you onto his pirate throne or pulling you suddenly into his private captain's quarters to steal a moment of your time. He's impatient when it comes to spending time with you, a hollow feeling creeping up inside of him whenever you have to be seperated.

- If you're ever feeling tired or worn out, Buggy will happily leave an arm wrapped around your waist to guide you with his intense strength, grateful for his strange gift if it means he can support you wherever you are.

Dracule:

- It's not often anyone manages to land a hit on the world's greatest swordsman, but that's exactly what you do when he inadvertently sneaks up behind you in a winding village street. Instincts taking over you catch him off guard and sweep his leg with your stick, sending him tumbling to the ground with an absolutely awestruck look on his face. Naturally you apologise as you realise he wasn't actually sneaking up on you, but by then the damage is done and Dracule is head over heels physically and emotionally.

- He insists on apologising himself but only so he can offer to make it up to you by buying you dinner tonight, immediately overwhelmed with feelings for you and desperate not to be parted from you so soon.

- He's so easy to talk to, a life spent roaming alone rarely letting Mihawk connect with anyone like this, and when the night draws to a close he's sure he'd die happy if he never spent one more night away from you.

[artzee-bee]

Jealousy

Fandom: My babysitter's a vampire; Ethan Morgan x reader

Request: "basically, reader acts like she hates ethan because she thinks he has a big crush on Sarah, but eth hears her talking about him to Erica or smth??? I just think it would be sooo cute tysm"

Genre: fluff

Warnings: cussing

A/n: anyone wanna come up with titles for me? I'm done.

~~~

“Is she still staring at me?”

“Yep” Ethan went to adjust the hood of his hoodie again.

“Can you be any more obvious than that?” Benny remarks and Ethan’s hands go down slowly

“What’s her deal anyways? What did I even do wrong?”

“Why are you asking me? How would I know?”

“Hey guys!” a certain blonde boy appears , with a tray of food in hand

“Rory, sit down and eat your food!”

“Well someone’s in a bad mood today, damn Benny.”

Ethan is still staring down at his lunch. The mere thought of putting something in his mouth feels overwhelming. Anxiety runs through his body and he can’t stop his leg from shaking under the table. He’s trying not to make it obvious that he can feel your gaze on the back of his head from the other side of the room but that’s very difficult.

“What’s wrong with you E? What's wrong with everyone today?” Rory, the ever-so-oblivious, picked up on him acting weird. That’s definitely a bad sign.

“Y/n has been tearing him limb for limb with her eyes for the last 5 days and he has no idea why.” Benny answers

“Why?”

“...didn’t I just say…” and the normal banter starts again

Ethan does the same thing he’s been doing every night for the last 3 days: think. Think back to the day you stopped talking. Where was he? Well at school, it was monday. What did he do? Nothing unusual. Just classes and then lunch with the guys. He’s gone through his routine a dozen times by now, there was nothing to point out new and the more time passed, the more blurry his memories got.

The most frustrating part was how sudden it had all been. You two were so close, in fact you were the closest you had ever been. Ethan met you around 3 years ago now, when you joined their little friend group but in the past month, it was like you and him were growing so much closer within your own relationship. There was a lot more time spent between just the two of you, a lot more messages exchanged. Late night video game competitions and sometimes study sessions, although those would more than definitely turn into a regular hangout session with no work done. Ethan was enjoying how much more time you would spend at his house everyday and how happy you seemed to always be. He felt so comfortable with you. There was a sense of never having to worry about being anything other than himself, because he knew, without a doubt, that you liked him just as he was. He didn’t need to show off, and that was nice!

And then suddenly you’re not wishing him good morning when you walk past his locker. You take a seat at a different table in your shared classes. When Ethan approached you to see what’s up, you quickly made some lame excuse and got out of there, every time! You stopped replying to messages, let alone come over like you used to. At first he thought you were going through something and needed your space, so he tried to respect that. But the more time passed, the less ignored he felt and much more resented. The nasty glares, purposeful ignorance of him. You didn’t even make the effort to reply to him when he approached you at school anymore, instead walking right on ahead without eye contact. Now you were sitting at a different table for lunch, staring arrows at the back of his head. It was really aggravating how what he considered to be a nice, open and honest friendship was now turning into what felt like a rivalry. He didn’t like accepting it but your behavior was growing aggravating. It was getting on his nerves and even he could tolerate it any longer. He couldn’t stand the thought he did something wrong. He was perfectly innocent! None of the people he asked could think of something he did wrong. HE couldn’t think of something he did wrong. You were so absurd for this! You were so absurd in your behavior for no reason at all!!

The days passed on like that. One week turned into 2 and you still weren’t talking. In fact Ethan had resolved to send you his own nasty glances. When he catches you staring at him again, with the same aggravated frown, he simply raises his eyebrows in a challenge instead of pretending not to notice. It sure didn’t help mend things but he was exhausted of you. If you were looking for attention you’d have to find it elsewhere!

And things kept getting worse! Ethan was still upset and could not get over you. Could not go back to being his old, cheery self knowing you were mad at him. He tried to push his questioning thoughts away but sometimes they were just too much. One positive thing came out of that though: he created a mechanism. When he felt his head too heavy with thoughts, he would go out for a walk. It’s not anything he generally did, but it helped now and it was probably good for him to get some fresh air so it’s ok. That’s how he found himself hearing your laugh. At first he thought he was imagining but no, it was definitely you. Even tho he wasn’t sure where the noise was coming from, it was definitely you!

He tried following the sound, which led him down the street to a convenience store. He didn’t have to pass the corner of the building to know you would be there. He could now clearly hear you and Erica talking.

“It’s not my fault!” your annoyed voice was somehow comforting after so long of no contact

“Listen, I’m never gonna be the one to blame you. If anything, boys are always at fault!”

that got a laugh out of you. So sweet and innocent, it made Ethan feel weak. He knew he shouldn’t be listening into your private conversations but God, it was too interesting to back out now.

“Whatever. I mean he can like who he likes, it’s not my problem to deal with but also, I don’t wanna just sit on the sidelines and watch that happening. Gross!”

“Do you think she would say yes to him?”

“Erica I seriously don’t wanna think about it”

“I mean Sarah is way out of his league in the first place. And definitely uninterested. I mean could you actually imagine them together?”

“Ethan and Sarah? Yeah, I’ve done my fair share of imagining, thanks!”

This made E’s heart drop to his stomach. Him and Sarah? What the hell was this about? There was nothing going on between them. Yes, she was a pretty girl and he used to have a crush on her but that was a long while ago now. He’s swiftly moved on since she made it very clear that she was uninterested. Plus, the closer they got, the more he grew to understand that they would really not work, so it was all fine. So why were they the subject of conversation?

“Of all the girls in the world, you were the closest to him. Honestly, if he was gonna fall for someone, it should have been you!” and you scoff at this

“Well it wasn’t. I heard them talk. He’s into Sarah and all the guys are supportive of that. They are good friends and I wish them all the best but he made his decision and it was not me so I’m moving on in the only way I know how. Creating distance.” “Whatever you say girlie!” Erica’s voice seemed uninterested

Ethan left after that. He had heard too much. ```

He couldn’t find the courage to approach you about what he’d heard immediately after. A part of him was worried you would get mad for listening in on your conversations, the other part of him kept questioning what he’d heard and if it was really true. Did you want him to choose you? Because he will. He already has damn it, just didn’t have the courage to express it. Is that why you were so cold all of a sudden? Would this count as jealousy? He blushed anytime he thought about it. You were jealous because you wanted to be with him! How much luckier can a guy get?

At first he wanted to talk to Benny about it, get some advice but on second thought, decided not to. For a small second he considered asking his mom but quickly changed his mind. He had never really had ‘girl problems’ if you can even call it that, he wasn’t sure who to go to for advice. 

It took about a week for him to build up the courage to talk to you. He had pondered the idea back and forth basically every waking moment and was never sure what to do really. When he saw you waiting at the bus station one day after school, all alone and scrolling on his phone, he pushed back every thought and insecurity he felt and approached you, almost mechanically.

“Hey!” his voice cracked a little, giving away the nerves swirling in his head. You barely spared him a second of your time to look at him before going back to scrolling 

“How have you been?” he tried, admittedly lacking the old confidence he had around you

“Just peachy. You need something or what?”

“Just making conversation.”

“yeah…don’t really feel like it. Long day, y’know?” but when you caught his eye, the boredom was so clear in your eyes. It hurt him more to see you didn’t even care about hiding your distaste for him anymore

“Yep, got it.” Ethan laughed in response. All his courage, gone! Within seconds!! That irritated him so much. He had prepared for this. Went through every possible scenario, even tried acting out some speeches in his room in preparation and you still had him at your feet with a glance. He felt pathetic and for the first time ever, genuinely enraged by this whole situation. You used to be best fucking friends and look at you now! All within a matter of weeks and from a misunderstanding at that too!!! He knew how to fix this, he just had to say it so why couldn’t he? 

“I don’t even like Sarah like that…'' he snarled, under his breath and frankly it was a miracle that you heard him over the white noise of the busy town.

“Like shit you don’t.” 

That’s what you had to say? Of all fucking things that was your first reaction?!

“How would you even know how I feel?”

“Clear as day on your face and actions! I don’t need to be a mind reader to crack into that big head of yours!”

“You have no idea what you are even talking about! I act with her the same way I act with all my friends!” Ethan’s voice failed to hide the anger surging through his body. Now, as he faced you completely, head tall and fists clenched in frustration, you seemed just as uninterested. Your gaze didn’t shift from the cracked screen of your phone, shoulders hunched, totally disengaged. It just fueled E more.

“ You don’t even have a problem with Sarah!” he started again, throwing all logic to the wind and speaking whatever came to him “ You just hate that she’s a girl! You would have made this shit up regardless of who it was I got close to!”

Finally, your attention was on him!

“What the fuck makes you think I care enough for that?” you stood up, looking him in the eye

“You mean to tell me we’ve been friends for years with no problems but the second a new girl enters my life and I start spending time with her, you act all crazy and throw a fit? What am I supposed to make of that?” “This has nothing to do with Sarah to begin with! See? There you go making false assumptions again and acting all smart about them, like you actually did something!” “I’m not the one making unbased theories and running with them! You never even asked me about my feelings for Sarah! You just draw a conclusion yourself and then go complain about me to Erica, don’t you?” Anyone would have been able to see the dots connecting in your head at that time. You didn’t spend that much time with Erica anyways.

“You were there?”

“I was behind the corner of the store”

“You were hiding?! What the hell?”

“I wasn’t doing anything! I was out on a walk, I happened to hear your voice!” but his explanation gains him nothing but an irritated scoff. You go back to your phone, seemingly ready to ignore him again, but that just won’t be enough

“So now that all the cards are on the table, can we address the elephant in the room?”

“As I said, you like Sarah. It’s very clear. And that’s fine and you can do whatever you want!” your voice didn’t carry the same rage as before, much more mellow and distant. 

Detached.

“I liked Sarah! A long time ago. I don’t now!”

“Okay” said with absolute indifference. Ethan, couldn’t help a roll of the eyes

“You’re unbelievable!” “What do you honestly want me to do right now?!”

“Just say that you like me, if you do!” “I fucking like you Ethan! God damn, I’d think you’d be smart enough to piece it together yourself but clearly you’re just-”

The grasp Ethan had on the back of your head felt strangely powerful and as he pulled you into him, locking your lips together, you genuinely felt yourself considering if this was the same man you knew! Truth be told, Ethan thought about this moment forever! About kissing you, about confessing to you! When he heard your conversation with Erica however, perspectives changed. Now all his thoughts were clouded by you confessing to him, admitting that what his speculations were, in fact, true. He thought about what he would say, how he would react to receiving that confirmation. He practiced the soft smile he’d give you in return, the quiet but tender confession of his own feelings. One thing he never expected himself to do is to aggressively pull you by the back of your neck and kiss you powerfully. He never thought himself the kind to have enough confidence to just go in for such a shameless kiss, but in that moment he wanted nothing more than to just shut you up!

It took a little bit to register, to wrap your head around the sharp pull of your hair and the sloppy moves of his lips on yours. Every conceivable thought in your head told you to pull away, slap him, tell him to leave you alone but your body had a mind of its own and you found yourself tugging him closer by the collar. Your lips moved on his with just as much intensity and fervor as his! The build up of emotion, frustration, anger, all of it boiled down to this moment. Ethan’s hand sneaked around your waist, pulling you impossibly closer and finally, as if satisfied with this outcome, his grip on you loosened. His kisses turned progressively softer. The hand in your hair moved to cup your cheek and almost instinctively, you followed his lead, letting go of the tight grip you had on his shirt, resting your hand of his chest instead.

It felt like a real kiss. Like all the kisses you dreamed about every time you thought of him. You knew your cheeks were burning up and that now, after your anger had subsided, the reality of your situation, the confession, Ethan’s fingers pressing into the plush of your waist, all of it made you shy. When he finally pulled away, bruised lips and breathing heavily, you couldn’t look at him. All this time, you used your anger to cover for just how weak in the knees this man had you but now, somehow, even that had been stripped away.

“I…um..sorry about that! I...should have asked” Ethan was blushing just as much. He was starting to second guess his actions. He took 2 steps back, giving you room again, the feeling of your ragged breaths so close to his lips made his head spin

“It’s ok” you whispered. This was an unusual situation. In one move, all your cards had been turned upside down and now there was no point in even trying to deny the truth.

“So are we good?” Despite trying to sound confident, you could hear the edge of nervousness in Ethan’s voice. It’s the kind of knowledge that comes with many years spent together, and the thought makes you smile.

“Yeah. We’re good.” “Can we possibly be more than good?” Ethan’s chuckles, as if he already knows the answer, if the blush on your cheeks is anything to go by anyways. You giggle in return and nod.

[aledethanlast]

If I'm already on the topic of the foxes and grown ups, let's talk about Kevin.

I think Kevin mellows out a lot by the time he goes pro. In part because there's not nearly so large an axe over his neck anymore, but largely because around his fourth year, when pro teams start seriously trying to recruit him, he realizes that his caustic and dismissive attitude towards his teammates can't really fly anymore. It's a Raven behavior, a label he's both disavowed and been disowned by, and most coaches are not his dad who will let him do whatever and kowtow to his expertise. He was an assistant coach for one semester, and never a captain. His behavior has a deadline and if he misses it, it might end his career. He's gonna need to make an actual effort.

And he wants to make the effort! He always admired the Trojans for their good nature, and while he is definitely a fox, he thinks he'd very much like being part of a more friendly team.

So when he signs on to his first pro team (the culmination of six weeks of studying various teams for play style, lineups, press reputation, and point stats), he feels ready to turn over a new leaf. If nothing else, he thinks he'd like to make more friends now that he doesn't have Andrew and Neil around all the time. And the team seems like a nice bunch! They're talented, driven, he can see how he can mesh with them.

This sentiment lasts him about a week.

"Put Neil on the goddamn phone," he says as he slams the door of his car.

"Kevin," his father says on the other end of the line. "We are at practice right now."

"I know, that's why I called you."

His father sighs in the way he does when he needs a few seconds to debate who he should blame for this latest headache. Then he hears a fist on glass on the other end, and a minute later the little fucker says "Kevin. How are you."

"I don't know how you did this or why, but I am going to fucking end you."

"Please be more specific." Smug little motherfucker. Kevin slams his foot on the gas and pretends it's Neil's neck. Though he eases up a bit when he almost tailspins out of the parking lot. He hasn't driven a car in six years, fucking sue him.

"Practice ended three hours ago, Neil. I am now leaving the stadium. Can you guess what I was doing in that meantime?"

"Rediscovering the lost city of Atlantis," Neil says, deadpan, and when Kevin goes to trial for homicide he is going to play this recording back for the court and they're going to call it justified.

"No, see, by the time Gotlieb started talking about Atlantis, I knew he was fucking with me. That doesn't salvage the two goddamn hours I spent trying to convince my teammates that the pyramids weren't, I shit you not, built by Napoleon." He pauses as he reconsiders what just came out of his mouth. "This was Andrew's idea, wasn't it?"

"Kevin, if you only talk to people about exy, they're going to think they can only talk to you about exy. Now your team knows you're an actual fucking person. Have fun with that."

Plague upon his fucking house. "Are you expecting a thank you?"

"You promised yourself you'll make more friends. I'm just holding you to it. So...yes."

Kevin doesn't say it, and he tells himself its because Neil doesn't need the ego. Somehow Neil hears him anyway. "Drive home safe, Kevin."

"Go get your rookies in line, Captain," Kevin says, and hangs up. He dials Andrew next; he needs to know just how much of Kevin's thesis Andrew turned into conspiracy fodder.

[skulljackxiii]

GrojBand Comeback Tour - Kin Kujira

Support me over at Patreon: www.patreon.com/skulljackxiii

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: When looking back at the show and remembering what Kin was like, he didn't feel that much different than his brother, but I guess that was part of why they got along so well. Anyways I thought that in this version, he plays more in his role as a genius, where he's more dedicated and prideful towards his intellect. Of course I'm still keeping him as a weird and hyper personal so that he easily goes along Corey's and his brother's antics, but he flips a switch when it comes to his projects. Let's say that something goes wrong with one of his inventions or if something offends his knowledge, he would be go on a tirade and start cursing left and right when he's alone, though comedically he would immediately calm down in front of his friends as if nothing happened. He never directly goes off or shown to have any kind of hostility towards anyone, but there is only one exception, Kim. Whenever Kin sees Kim, they both can't help themselves but get hostile and have this kind of pissing contest against one another to see who was more smart. Kin doesn't exactly know why he's so honest when it comes to Kim or how she gets on his nerves so quickly and the same could be said about her as well, the only one that seems to get a clue is Konnie.)

Role: Kin is one of the key members of Grojband, taking the many vital roles as the band's keyboardist, audio technician, and remixer; many of the final music productions is almost entirely relied on him. Along side that, with his knowledge of science and machines, he's also relied as the band's auto-mechanic for the maintenance and repairs for their tour bus.

Bio: Kin lived in Japan most of his life with her brother Kon and the rest of the Kujira Family, along with another named the Kagami Family. Parents of both families were inseparable friends who spent many years together, thus he and his brother grew up knowing the children of the other family, Kim and Konnie. Kin was fond with Konnie and treated her like family, but for he couldn't quite get along with Kim. Whenever he saw her, he would start to flare up and butt heads with her over every little thing, especially when it came to academics. This is because unlike Kim, Kin was not born as a prodigy, in fact he did quite poorly in school to a point where at times even his brother would have better grades than him. It bothers him at times, especially when he compares himself to a natural born genius like Kim, but that didn't discourage him from improving his mind. Kin has always prided himself with learning and especially towards things he didn't know or quite understood.

For years, he constantly studied, analyzed, and improved all his effort in order to surpass Kim and show that his hard work could overtake her natural born talent; though she didn't make it easy and would gloat whenever she came out on top. As this continued, Kin would only grow from all his failures until one day he finally did it and beat Kim in a subject, that being music. His hard work paid off and since then both him and her would go back and forth trying to out due the other in all kinds of fields. Despite whatever awards or recognition either one gained from their rivalry, they didn't pay heed as they solely focused on one thing, each other. 

One day, his parents were informed to be transferred overseas for work, so the Kujira Family, along with the Kagami Family, moved to America. With his weird personality, it didn't take long for Kin to get along with people in his first couple of days. He was quite the busybody as so many people tried to get him into so many after school clubs and communities due to his dedication and intelligence. But the one that finally got him was actually a band from his brother's classmate, Corey Riffin. Kon wanted them to play music together since Kin already accumulated many music awards from being a ceremonial pianist and a composer. He was hesitant at first, but after hearing Kon out some more and finally meeting Corey, he was more than willing to join up.  After meeting Corey in person and hearing his dreams, his words resonated with Kin and made him really want to see what he'll do next.

[thornybubbles]

JJBA Yandere Scenario: Jealousy (The JoJos: Jonathan, Joseph, and Jotaro)

NOTE: Going to make a part 2 to this including Josuke, Giorno, and Johnny. The weird issue I was having with this post seems to have gone away. Though if anything looks weird or incomplete, let me know, please.

Jonathan

Jonathan's been through a lot. Thanks to Dio, he's spent much of his childhood feeling alone and unwanted. Dio stole his father's love, turned everyone in town against him, brutally killed poor Danny, and even drove his beloved Erina away from him. You’re the only one that stayed. You're the only one that continued to stand up for him when everyone else gave into Dio. 

So that's why when he sees you looking at your friend with eyes filled with such fondness and adoration, it stirs up a dark anger in him that is so intense that it frightens him.

Jonathan does an excellent job of reigning in his emotions. You will only see that same sweet smile he always has, but you won't see the way his smile drops into a scowl as he excuses himself and turns away from you and your friend. You won't see the way he grips the doorknob so hard his fingers leave dents in the brass. 

Jonathan hates the way he feels. He has no right to try to lay claim to you. He will just have to accept that fact that you will only ever see him as a friend. So that was that. He was going to lose you,too, and then he really will be alone. His anger dissipates and he goes into a depressive state that lasts for weeks. During the day he wanders far away from his father's property and into the forest. He can't bring himself to go into town for fear of seeing you and your friend together somewhere. Staying home is out of the question. He can't take Dio's constant questions. Even though they've started acting more civil with each other, Jonathan can't bring himself to ever fully trust his adoptive brother. Dio seems far too interested in his relationship with you for his liking. 

"Why don't I see you with your little friend anymore, JoJo?" Dio asks. "You seemed so close as children. Did something happen?" 

Jonathan isn't sure but he thought he heard a hint of glee in Dio's voice as he asked that. 

Jonathan makes an effort not to snap at him. It's not his fault that this is happening. Not this time anyway.  

"Sometimes people grow apart when they grow up. The responsibilities of adulthood can distract one from childhood friendships. That's just the way life is. And if you'll excuse me, I don't wish to speak on the matter anymore." Is Jonathan's reply before he exits the room.

Dio doesn't miss the misery in Jonathan's voice and he revels in it. 

"If you say so, JoJo." 

Jonathan ends up spending most of his time in the part of the forest where the two of you would play games, tell stories, and just laugh and chase each other for hours. Erina would join you sometimes… before she started avoiding him.

And now he lost you, too. 

Of course. Why should he ever be allowed to be happy? Even without Dio being the cause of his misery, it seemed life itself was against him. He slumped to the ground and propped himself against a tree. He was sure his father would scold him for getting dirt on his clothes but that was nothing new. His father was always scolding and shaming him for something. That is, when he wasn’t singing Dio’s praises.  

Jonathan sighed, closed his eyes, and leaned his head against the tree trunk. He wasn't going to think about that. He wanted to think about you and the short time you spent together. He would think about the time he tried to scare you with a bug only to have you laugh at him and hold the bug in your hand like it was nothing. He wanted to think about the time you fell out of the tree you were climbing, got up, brushed yourself off, and went right back to climbing. You didn't cry at all. He wanted to think about the time you looked Dio right in the eyes and told him to shove it where the sun doesn't shine (mind you in a much more ladylike manner). 

You were both a gentle hand and a fist of strength, perfectly balanced in every way. You gave him a sense of hope and courage in one of the darkest times of his life. He could sit here and bask in the warmth of your memory until he just stopped living. That would have to be enough. He couldn't have you, but nothing could rob him of his memories of you. Not even Dio. 

He must have dozed off at some point because he found himself being shaken awake. He may have been imagining it, but the person shaking him sounded an awful lot like you. 

"JoJo! JoJo! Wake up!" 

Jonathan's eyelids flew open. It was you!

“Oh… what?” he rasped. His voice was hoarse and his throat felt like it was on fire. He didn't care though. You were here with him and that's all that mattered. 

“Why… are you… here?” He asked, genuinely confused by your presence. Shouldn't you be with your friend?

“Why am I here?” you repeat. “Why do you think? I came to find you, you ninny!” 

Jonathan just blinks up at you in confusion. 

“I haven't seen you in weeks and when I asked your father about you he told me that you've been acting strangely. He said that you wandered the house at night instead of sleeping and that you haven't been eating. So I started looking for you and I found you out here sleeping in the woods!" 

“O-oh…” Jonathan couldn't say more than that. He didn't really know how to answer. That, and he felt horrible. He was achy all over and his head was hurting. 

You placed a hand on his forehead and he froze at your touch, mind going numb.

“Jojo, you're burning up! How long have you been sitting in the cold like this?” You asked. 

Was it cold? Honestly Jonathan hadn't even noticed that the temperature had dropped. It was already night time. Had he really been out here for that long? 

“Why have you been doing this to yourself?” You ask, your voice hitched with worry. “Has Dio been bullying you again?” 

Jonathan said nothing. He just shook his head. 

“Then why?! Was it something else?” You ask. “Was… was it something I did?” 

Jonathan caught something in your eyes when you asked him that. It was something that opened up a very dark place inside of him. Guilt. You felt guilty. You were blaming yourself for his pitiable state. 

"I just... I didn't want to interfere." He says.

“Interfere?” You ask. “Interfere with what? What are you talking about?” 

“You… and your friend.” He says. “I see the way you look at him…”

Your face flushed. 

"I-I don't l-look at him that way!" You stuttered out in embarrassment. 

“You don’t have to hide it.” He says, trying to speak up. The action was putting a strain on his voice, making it sound worse… just as he intended. 

“JoJo…” you start to say, but he doesn't let you finish. 

"Listen... I never told you how I felt, because I thought it would put a strain on our friendship... We've been friends for a long time, haven't we? You were there for me for some of the most difficult times of my life and I adore you for it... It's because I love you so much that I'm willing to let you be happy with someone else... even if it means I'll never see you again . I just want you to be happy …” He ended with a very real, but perfectly timed cough. 

You grabbed him by his flushed face and made him look at you. 

“Don't say things like that, JoJo!” you cry. “You make it sound like I plan to abandon you!” 

He grasped one of your hands weakly. “I don't matter, dearest. I told you, if he makes you happy…” 

"That's enough!" you said sternly, placing a finger over his lips and silencing him. "I don't want you to say such things anymore!" 

Your face was etched in anger, but your eyes glistened with unshed tears. It was working. As much as he hated stooping to such deplorable tactics like guilt-tripping, but by God, it was working! He could hate himself for it later. Right now, he was basking in your attention.

You removed your finger from his lips and he smiled up at you in a state of mindless bliss. 

"Yes, ma'am." he rasped, before going into a coughing fit. 

You let him go and stood up. He whined pathetically at the loss of your touch. You assumed it was due to his sickness. You got to your feet with a determined look on your face. 

“I'm going back to get your father and some of the servants. They're going take you back home so you can get some rest. Then I'm going into town to fetch a doctor.” You stated. 

Then you leaned down and planted a kiss on Jonathan's warm forehead. Jonathan could've died right then and there and died happy. 

"Don't move from that spot, JoJo!" You said as you hiked up your skirt and began running towards the Joestar Mansion. 

“I'm not going anywhere.” JoJo tried to call after you but his voice was too hoarse and you were already out of earshot. 

"And neither are you..." He added under his breath. 

 Joseph

While Jonathan tries to hide his jealousy, Joseph puts his on full display, but he plays it off as a joke. 

"So you're going out with him, again!?" he says with a pout. 

"Yes, JoJo. I have other friends besides you, you know." You say, tired of having the same old argument every time you go out with someone that isn't him. 

Joseph whines like a child and plops down on your couch. He crosses his arms and stares at the wall with a sullen expression. 

"I don't have a problem with you having friends, it's just that ever since you've been hanging out with that weirdo you act like I don't even exist! I hardly ever see you anymore!" 

You almost felt sorry for him until he called your friend a weirdo. 

"JoJo! That's enough! I know you don't like him but I won't have you calling my friend names!" you scolded. 

JoJo huffed but continued pouting on the couch in silence. 

"Why do you act like such a child? We have this argument every time I go out with someone else. It's exhausting! It's not like you're my boyfriend or anything!" 

Ouch. Okay, while what you said was true, you didn't have to just blurt it out like it was nothing. Joseph gives you a hurt look before suddenly doubling over in pain. He clutched his chest, fell off the couch and lay on the floor writhing in agony. 

"JoJo! What happened? Are you okay?! JoJo!!" you say in a panic. You drop to your knees next to him. 

"JoJo, tell me what's wrong!" you cry. 

"I don't know!" He groans. "I just suddenly felt a terrible, sharp pain in my heart! I... I think it's the knife you stabbed into it when you said that just now!" 

At the realization that he was faking so he could pick on you, you became furious. 

"JOJO! YOU SCARED ME HALF TO DEATH!!" you shout, slapping him in the shoulder. 

Joseph curls up trying to protect himself from your slaps, but he's giggling the whole time. 

“I thought something was wrong with you, you silly ass!” you shout, a slight sob coming through in your voice. 

Joseph sits up, his grinning face only inches from your own. 

“Ah, so you do care about me!” he teased. 

Your face immediately turned red and you scooted away from him, unable to look at him with him grinning at you like that. 

“Shut up, you pain in the neck.” You mumble feeling shy all of a sudden. 

Joseph was infuriating, but when he teased you like this, you couldn't help but fall for his charms... just a little. Up to this point, you had only ever viewed Joseph as a friend, but lately you've begun to see him in a slightly different light. 

The problem is that Joseph knew that. 

“I'll make a deal with you, JoJo.” You said after regaining your composure. 

“If you quit complaining every time I go out with my other friends, then I'll make it so Saturdays will be the day that I hang out exclusively with you. Does that sound fair?” 

You have Joseph's full attention now. 

“Really?! Just you and me?!!” He asks, getting more and more excited by the minute. 

“So….does this mean… um….” he stutters, looking around nervously as if he isn't sure that he should say what he wants to. 

“Does it mean what?” you ask. 

“If we’re going out every Saturday… and it’s just the two of us… can we say that… we’re dating?” he asks with a hopeful smile. 

Your face flushes again and you look away from him, irritated at how cute he's being right now. 

"Fine." you sigh. "I guess you can say we're dating." 

Joseph lets out a whoop of joy before sweeping you into his heavily muscled arms. 

"Thank you! You won't regret it I swear!" he promises. 

As he pulls you to his chest, you don't see the smug, self-satisfied smirk he has on his face. He's finally got you right where he wants you. It took a while, but he finally got you to like him enough to go out with him. And every Saturday?! This was better than he hoped for! You'll have so much fun hanging around with him that you'll forget all about that weirdo friend of yours.

Check and Mate, darling.

Jotaro

Jealous Jotaro is all cold glares and quiet fury. Every time you and your friend are seen together, Jotaro always seems to be hanging out in the background, staring daggers into the back of your friend's head. You don't know what your friend could've done to earn Jotaro's disdain, but it's very clear that he doesn't want you to be alone with him. The problem is that Jotaro won't tell you anything. Any time you confront him about it you're met with the same response. 

“I just don’t like the guy.” 

You don't understand why and Jotaro never explains. Your friend isn't even a Stand user, so it can't be that he suspects him of being an enemy. 

Your friend may not be a Stand user, but you, unfortunately are. So it takes all of Jotaro's willpower to keep Star Platinum in check when he's around the two of you. Jotaro can feel his Stand's rage stir up any time your friend gets a little too close or handsy with you. There's really nothing suspicious about the way your friend interacts with you. His touches are only of the platonic variety, but each hug, head pat, or playful shove send Jotaro into a silent rage. 

He'll chomp down on his cigarette, nearly biting it in half and almost has an aneurysm from trying to keep Star Platinum from popping out and punching the guy's head off of his shoulders. 

But none of that matters, because Jotaro already has a plan in play. He just needs to be patient and careful. 

For the next few weeks, you start getting an uncomfortable feeling that someone is watching and following you. You often try to find the source of this feeling, frantically looking over your shoulder and seeing no one. You even send your Stand to search around, but it comes back to you shrugging its shoulders after failing to find anyone. You tell Jotaro about it and he gives you a serious, concerned look and tells you to be careful. 

"Just because DIO's out of the picture doesn't mean some of his lackeys aren't still around looking for revenge. Just stay alert and let me know if anything suspicious happens." He says. 

You nod your head and go about your day, casting worried glances into every shadowy corner. 

Jotaro understands your concerns, but he's fully aware of what's really happening, so he's not too worried about it. He watches you until you are out of sight, then he lights a cigarette. He's been thinking about quitting, but he needs the nicotine to clear his head right now. The first part of the plan was taken care of, but he still had work to do. 

A few days later, you come to him with a worried expression. 

“Someone's been in my house.” You tell him before you even say your morning greeting. 

“How do you know?” He asks, instantly alert. 

“My diary's missing.” You tell him.

"Your diary?" he says, curling his lip with a disdainful sneer. 

"Yes!" You say, annoyed with his attitude. "It wasn't in my desk and I can't find it anywhere in my room or anywhere else in the house." 

Jotaro thought for a moment. 

“What did you write in it? You didn't write anything about Egypt did you?” he asked with a serious tone. 

“Of course not! I wouldn't dare! I didn't put anything important in it just in case someone did find it and read it.” you say. 

“Then why would someone want your diary?” He asks. 

"I don't know, JoJo! I ​​just know that I can't find it." You shout, frustrated that he doesn't seem to be taking it seriously. 

“Did you check your locker?” He offers. 

"I don't bring my diary to school, JoJo." You sigh in exasperation. 

Jotaro huffs at your tone. 

"Don't get snappy, I was just asking. Good grief. If you're that worried about it, I'll come by after school and help you look for it." he says. 

You agree to that and go to class feeling a lot better. 

You don't find your diary, but for the next week or two, you do start finding pictures of yourself on your windowsill. Fortunately, none of the pictures are compromising but they are worrying. Whoever took them seems to have been following you all over town and at school. So your feeling about being watched had been right. How your Stand hadn't been able to find your personal paparazzi you didn't know, but Jotaro was going to hear about this. You took the pictures to school to show him. He wasn't happy. 

“Where did you find these?” He demands. 

"On my window sill." You state. "Whoever's stalking me wanted to make sure that I knew it. I'm not gonna wait for their next move. I'm going to take those pictures to the police." 

“Don’t bother.” Jotaro says a little too quickly. 

"Why not? I need to..." 

He cut you off. 

“The police won't be able to do much. Stalking cases are tricky and require a lot more evidence than just a few pictures. We don't even have a suspect, so they won't have anything to go on except for what you tell them.” he says. 

“So what am I gonna do then?” you ask. 

“I'll take care of it.” he says plainly. 

Another few days pass and Jotaro hasn't told you much. You've been worrying and fretting but you know Jotaro wouldn't tell you that he'd take care of it unless he had some kind of plan. Sure enough, you found yourself playing the part of bait while Jotaro followed along behind you in secret. You could spot him every now and then behind parked cars and buildings; black coat fluttering in the wind. It gave you a sense of calm even though you could feel that extra presence behind you. You didn't bother to look behind you. You knew you wouldn't see anything. Finally, just when the tension was getting unbearable, you heard someone yelp and you whirled around to see Jotaro holding your friend up by his collar. 

"Jotaro? What on earth...?" you said, wondering why Jotaro was attacking your friend. Unless... no. It couldn't be!

“Empty your bag.” Jotaro said. It was a command not a request. Your very frightened and confused friend let his book bag drop from his shoulder. Its contents spilled out onto the sidewalk. Among the items were more pictures of you and your diary. 

"It was you!" you shouted, unable to believe your friend could be guilty of something like stalking. 

Your friend tried to defend himself. He tried to convince you that he had no idea how that stuff got in his bag. When Jotaro asked him why he was following you, he just said that he was going to the convenience store to buy some sodas . He didn't even know that it was you in front of him. You weren't buying it and neither was Jotaro. The taller male grabbed your former friend by the hair and forced him to look him in the eyes. 

"I don't know what your game is, but if I catch you anywhere near her again, they'll have to use your dental record to identify you when I'm through with you." 

The statement wasn't a threat or even a promise. It was a guarantee. 

Jotaro dropped the boy to the sidewalk where he scrambled to gather up his things before running for the hills. Jotaro glared after the boy long after he was out of sight. After a moment he turned to you and asked, 

"You alright?" 

"I-ah... no. Not really." you said. 

You couldn't help but think back to all the times Jotaro gave the boy dirty looks whenever the two of you hung out. 

"You knew, didn't you?" You ask. 

“Knew what?” Jotaro says, placing a cigarette in his mouth and lighting it. He took a drag off it and blew the smoke into the sky. 

"You knew about him. That's why you said you didn't like him. You knew he was a bad egg from the start." you say. 

Jotaro just shrugs.

"I had a feeling, yeah." 

You rub your hand down your face. 

“Dammit! I should have listened to you. Your gut feelings have never been wrong before. Not back in Egypt and not now. I should've stopped hanging around him the moment you said you didn't like him!” You say with a huff of frustration. 

"Don't beat yourself up about it. You couldn't have known." Jotaro says, taking another drag from his cigarette. 

You stand there, fidgeting. Your emotions are going haywire. You feel betrayed by your friend, angry at yourself for not seeing the signs sooner, and oh so grateful to Jotaro for always being so reliable. 

Jotaro's hand on your shoulder pulls you out of your thoughts. 

“Why don't you come over to my place for dinner. I can get Mom to make that stuff you like.” Jotaro offered. 

"Yeah. That sounds good." you say. 

Jotaro smiles to himself as the two of you begin the walk towards his house. 

That went smoother than he thought it would. It took a little bit of time to set it up but it worked out beautifully. Of course it was him that had been stalking you and taking the pictures. He knew your Stand's abilities and weaknesses like he knew Star Platinum's. It was as easy to avoid its notice as it was for him to avoid yours. Having his Stand get his hands on your diary was even easier. All he had to do was hang around outside your window until you went to sleep and have Star Platinum grab the diary from your desk drawer. Of course he read it. He couldn't help himself. He was delighted to know about your little crush on him. After that, all he had to do was place the pictures on the window sill for you to find. As for framing your deadbeat friend? It was a simple matter of having Star Platinum slip the “evidence” into his bag when no one was looking at the end of the school day. Of course, there was the danger of him finding the diary and the pictures, but what would he say about it? If he brought it to your attention he would essentially be doing Jotaro's work for him. Setting up the “stalker trap” was a little bit tricky, but it was a simple matter of having you walk down a path he knew your friend took on a regular basis. He always went to that particular store to get sodas at that particular time. The rest was child's play.

Jotaro had decided at some point during that 50 day trip that you were his. You had no incentive to join the hunt for DIO at all. You weren’t a Joestar descendant. You weren’t a friend of the family, and Jotaro hadn’t saved your life, so you didn’t owe him anything. You were simply ready and willing to put your life on the line to help a classmate save his mother’s life. That’s all, and that meant something.

Jotaro wasn’t about to hand you over to some wormy little nobody that just showed up out of nowhere. You belonged to him. He already decided. 

[crystalninjaphoenix]

Old and New Family

Shadow City AU - Chapter Two

A JSE Fanfic

Well I did not expect to post another part to this so soon, but I am going on ANOTHER trip so I figured this would be a good time to do a second part so I can actually use my free time instead of writing all the time while I'm there XD Remember, this AU is still TECHNICALLY in its concept stage, I am NOT posting this regularly yet. But hey, maybe this could be a thing, whenever I'm too busy to write something new I could post a chapter of this? No guarantees but that would be fun.

After the double-length first chapter, this is a much more reasonable (for me) 6400 words fdjsahdljkh Chase is still getting used to being dead... undead? One of those things. But there are some practical matters that need to be taken care of. Meanwhile, we get a look at what it's like being a werewolf through Jackie's experiences. Surely nothing will go wrong! Heh. Hope you enjoy!

First Chapter Found Here

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Being a ghost was very different from being alive. Well, obviously it was. But Chase didn’t really understand how different it was until he was a ghost himself.

There were the big differences. The whole ‘not being able to touch things unless you think really hard about it’ thing was probably the biggest difference of all. He was also invisible. He didn’t cast a shadow, and he couldn’t see his reflection in the bathroom mirror. But he could see his own body and his clothes... or... his ghostly clothes? Were they part of him now? It felt like they could come off, but he didn’t want to risk losing them so he left them on. Another thing he noticed was that he couldn’t go too far from his house. He could get a bit into the street, or into his neighbor’s gardens, but beyond that it felt like a tether around his chest was keeping him in place.

There was also the thing about breathing and blinking. While being alive, those processes happened automatically. Now they only happened when he made an effort to control it. And there was no benefit to doing it. Air didn’t go into his lungs. Tears didn’t moisten his eyes. Breathing and blinking were now pretty much only to ground himself or to communicate his feelings to other people. 

All of these were pretty big changes.

But there were also the small differences. Chase spent most of his first night as a ghost—after he’d gotten used to the whole ‘being dead’ thing (or managed to put it out of his head enough to function)—trying to touch things. He could never manage for more than a few seconds. But when he did, he found that things didn’t tickle or itch anymore. He then took a moment to really think about himself, and noticed that he didn’t feel any spit in his mouth. His mouth wasn’t dry, either, it was just... normal. He noticed as well that he couldn’t feel temperature anymore, or that draft that always breezed through his hallway. And when he wanted to move somewhere, he didn’t actually have to walk. He could just think about going somewhere and he would float over. But he kept moving his legs out of habit. It made him feel more... like a person.

And only after a night of experimenting, once he saw the sun rising again, did he realize that he didn’t feel tired. He didn’t have any of the dully fuzzy feelings associated with sleepiness. Which made sense, but he hadn’t realized how used he was to feeling tired until it was gone.

Out of curiosity, he tried to lie down on his bed and sleep anyway. He passed right through it and ended up on the floor. Hey, why didn’t he pass through the floor, too? That was a mystery. But if Jack really came back like he said he would, Chase could ask him. He might know. For now, he laid on the floor instead and tried to sleep...

Sleep didn’t exactly come. But something else happened. Chase had never meditated before, but he thought that this was similar. He didn’t think. He didn’t move. The world around him faded away, but didn’t disappear completely.

As evident when he heard a knock at the door.

Chase sat up, and started to head towards the living room... then remembered. He was a ghost. He went through stuff. His head was currently sticking up through his mattress. So instead, he stood up and went through the outer wall, going in a straight line towards the sound.

Jack was waiting on the doorstep. Chase went up to him, half-wondering if he should see if he could scare him... but Jack saw him coming first and turned to him. “Hey.” He smiled in friendly greeting. He wasn’t wearing the SPDFI jacket from yesterday—that must have been a uniform. Instead he was wearing a white T-shirt with a red circular design on it, and had a pair of glasses. “I told you I’d stop by tomorrow. How are you holding up, Chase?”

“I’m... fine,” Chase said slowly. “This is still… weird. It’s gonna take some getting used to.”

“Well I’m here to help!” Jack said cheerfully.

“Is that what you do? You just go around helping ghosts?”

“Uh... basically, yeah.”

Chase narrowed his eyes. “Are you going to exorcize me or something? Make me, uh, move on?”

Jack chuckled good-naturedly. “That’s not how it works. There’s not a force in the world that can make a ghost move on if the ghost isn’t ready.”

“Really? Nothing?” Chase asked, surprised.

“Well, I’m told there are spells that could exorcize a ghost from their current location,” Jack said. “Like... kick you out of your house, for example. Or if you’re possessing someone, they’ll kick you out of their body. But no, they can’t send you to the other side or wherever.”

“I can possess people?”

“If you’re a strong ghost.”

Chase nodded slowly. “Am I a strong ghost?”

“Yep.” Jack smiled. “You’re actually the strongest ghost I’ve met!” He leaned against the closed door, scanning the street—making sure that no one saw him talking to himself like a crazy person.

“Really? Huh.” Chase looked down at his hands. “What’s it like to be a weak ghost?”

“Well, the weakest ghosts out there aren’t really people,” Jack said. “They’re more like... just a presence. Like emotions that soaked into a place. To me, weak ghosts look like disembodied glowing lights that change shape. Like amoebas. But regular everydays can’t see them at all—uh, an ‘everyday’ is just a normal human without powers or anything. Anyway, as ghosts get more powerful, they become more and more human. An average ghost will act like the person they were when alive, but focused solely on their unfinished business. They look a lot, uh, wispier than you do.”

“That’s... that’s so strange.” Again, Chase looked at his hands. They were a bit translucent, but weren’t ‘wispy’ in any way. He glanced up at Jack. “I, uh... still have questions. A lot more questions.”

“I’m here to answer,” Jack said. “But first, I have some questions of my own first. They won’t be... They might be troubling, but I need you to answer.”

Chase got a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Sure... go ahead.”

“Well, I... gotta know some... legal stuff,” Jack explained. “Did you, uh... have a will?”

“...no,” Chase said quietly. “I thought about getting one, but... I-I don’t know. It felt like... giving up.”

Jack nodded. “Well, in that case. Do you want to keep any of your stuff? That’s not, uh, legally allowed, not normally, but I’m getting an idea, so I can arrange it, if you’re okay with it.”

“I...” Chase thought about it. About all the things in this house. Most of the furniture came included with the rent, so it wasn’t his to give away. And he wouldn’t need stuff like his clothes and his bedsheets. He thought about keeping things like pictures and souvenirs from vacations. For sentimental value. But... Stacy and Declan probably deserved to have those. After all, he couldn’t... couldn’t go back to them, could he? The least he could give him were things that reminded them of him. “Nothing’s coming to mind...” He decided to get off this train of thought before it got too existential. “Wh-what do you mean, you’re getting an idea?”

“Well I was looking for a new place anyway,” Jack said slowly. “So I figured that if you were okay with it, I could... move into your place. I wouldn’t change anything too much,” he hurriedly added. “I’d be more like a roommate than anything. But if you want, I could stick around to help out.”

Chase stared at him silently. His first instinct was to protest. This was his house. What if he didn’t want a roommate? But after a moment, he sighed. “Mr. Wood is probably gonna put the house up for rent soon anyway. If anyone else is gonna move in, it might as well be the guy who can see ghosts.”

“That’s the landlord?” Jack asked.

“Yeah. He’s a jackass, I’m warning you now. I bet he’s gonna charge you way too much for a house that someone fucking died in.”

Jack laughed. “God. Sounds terrible.”

“He’s a real piece of work. But he’s mostly hands-off, so there’s that at least.” Chase paused. “D’you think I could go haunt his ass?”

Jack laughed some more—then abruptly stopped. “Hey. Do you know that car?”

A blue sedan was pulling up to the side of the road... right outside Chase’s house. It was soon followed by a dark gray truck. That sinking feeling was back. “The... the truck is Mr. Wood, s-speak of the devil. The blue Accord is... is Stacy’s car.”

Jack glanced at Chase. “...your wife.”

“Yeah,” Chase whispered.

The doors to the cars opened up, and people started to get out. Mr. Wood was first, and he marched straight up the front path to where Jack was standing against the door. “This is private property, you know,” he said sternly. Mr. Wood was an older man with steel gray hair who always wore tweed. Chase had always thought he was intimidating, but that might just be because he reminded Chase of a teacher, and he hadn’t done well in school.

But Jack just smiled and stood up straight. “Sorry. I’m a friend of Chase’s. I thought I’d pay my respects.”

“You’re a friend of Chase’s?”

Chase inhaled sharply at the sound of the voice. Stacy was right behind Mr. Wood. She looked mostly the same as she always did. Her hair was a darker brown than Chase’s, naturally curly, kept in her usual shoulder-length style. She wore the same sort of outfit she usually did on her days off the office. A white blouse with puffy short sleeves and dark-colored jeans with a brown belt and matching brown boots. The only real difference from the last time Chase had seen her was her eyes. Her dark brown eyes were rimmed with red, with dark circles underneath.

And holding onto Stacy’s hand...

“Oh no,” Chase whispered. “Stace, you couldn’t get a babysitter?”

Declan didn’t much resemble his parents on the surface. He’d inherited his white-blonde hair from his grandmother—Chase’s mom—and while Chase and Stacy both had rounder features and slender builds, Declan’s tiny face was more square through the baby fat, and though he was tall for his age, he was already shaping up to be more solidly built. But Declan had Stacy’s eyes and Chase’s nose, so there was still a resemblance when all of them were together. He was usually very independent for his age, but right now he held tight to his mom’s hand, clinging to her. His blue t-shirt with the killer whale graphic was rumpled, and Chase immediately knows that he slept in it.

“Yes, I’m a friend of his,” Jack said, staying remarkably calm. “My name’s Jack. Jack McLoughin.” He held out his hand for a handshake. “You’re Stacy, aren’t you?”

Stacy didn’t take his hand. Chase laughed a bit. She was never all that fond of handshakes in the first place. “He never mentioned you,” she said slowly.

“We met, uh, fairly recently,” Jack explained, slowly lowering his hand. “I’m... sorry for your loss.”

Stacy nodded curtly, but Chase noticed the way her mouth trembled. He knew when she was holding back tears.

“Yes, well, your respects have been paid,” Mr. Wood said curtly. He walked around Jack to get to the door, opening it up. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we have business to take care of.”

Jack looked surprised at the sheer insensitivity of this statement. Chase leaned closer. “Told you. He’s a jackass.”

Mr. Wood grumbles something about the lock on the door being broken—apparently the police had to break it down yesterday to get in—and he walks into the room, followed by Stacy and Declan, and, after a moment, Jack. The living room looked the same as yesterday. Well... someone cleaned up the blood. But there was still a slight dark discoloration on the carpet. Stacy’s eyes flicked to it, an expression of horror crossed her face, then she subtly stood between Declan and the stain, blocking his view of it. “The furniture is house property, including the mattress,” Mr. Wood was saying. “Leave things that would benefit the house, like toilet paper and cleaning supplies. But you can take everything else.”

“Um...” Jack coughed. “That’s not legal, you know. If Chase bought the cleaning supplies, they should go to his next of kin, regardless of where he lives.”

“What are you, a lawyer?” Mr. Wood asked.

“No... but I do work with the police and so I do know some lawyers.”

Mr. Wood’s face immediately drained of color, and Chase couldn’t help but laugh. “Well... take it if you want,” he grumbles to Stacy.

“Thank you,” Stacy said politely. “C’mon Dec. Let’s go look at... Let’s go get Dad’s stuff.”

“I wanna stay here,” Declan said, speaking up for the first time.

Stacy’s eyes flicked to the stain. “I... don’t think that’s a good idea, pumpkin. I-I mean, what if I need help to carry everything?”

Jack coughed. He glanced at Chase, a question in his eyes. “They can have it all,” Chase said. “I don’t mind.”

Jack nodded. “If you need help, Mrs. Brody, I could—”

“Oh I don’t—I um... Stacy is fine,” Stacy said. “And that would be... appreciated, but don’t trouble yourself.”

“No, it’s no problem,” Jack insisted. “Do you have boxes?”

“I-in the car, with some bags, too,” Stacy stammered. “I thought we’d look, first.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah. Makes sense. You know, most people don’t... move stuff around at this point. This... early, I-I mean.”

Stacy shot a glare at Mr. Wood. “Apparently there’s a policy that if things stay in the house for up to a week after a lease is broken, they become house property. I figured sooner was... was better.”

Chase’s eyes widened. He knew about the policy, but he just assumed that there could be exceptions. Like someone fucking dying, for example. He glared at Mr. Wood, then leaned up and whispered into his ear. “I’m gonna haunt you for this, fucker.”

Mr. Wood jumped and looked around the room wildly. When he couldn’t see anyone, he cleared his throat and moved on. “Yes, well, go on then. Start in the bedroom.”

Stacy nodded and started to walk down the hall, taking Declan with her. Or at least trying to. Declan didn’t move. He was too busy staring... right at Chase.

Chase stares back. Declan couldn’t see him, could he? He gave a little wave, then swayed back and forth. Declan didn’t wave back, nor did his eyes follow Chase’s movements. Maybe he... caught a glimpse of him, or something? Did he hear him whisper?

“Declan?” Stacy asked.

“I wanna stay here,” Declan insisted.

Chase went over to Jack. “Uh... can kids see ghosts?”

Jack subtly shook his head. Looks like he’s also noticed where Dec was looking. “He can stay here a bit, can’t he, Stacy?” he asked. “He’s old enough to take care of himself.”

“I...” Stacy sighed. “Alright, Declan.” She let go of his hand. “Just for a bit, though.” She glanced at the stain again. Then she headed down the hallway. Jack and Mr. Wood followed her.

Declan looked around the living room. This wasn’t the first time he’d been here. He stayed over on weekends, bringing his sleeping bag and an air mattress to make Chase’s recording room into a makeshift bedroom. So he wasn’t looking around because this was new to him. He seemed to be... looking for something.

Chase stayed where he was, looking at Dec in turn. Should he... try to say something? Or would it just spook him?

After a moment, Declan reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and pulled out a piece of paper and a coin. He sat down on the floor by the coffee table and unfolded the paper on its surface. Chase went over to look. On the paper were the words “Yes” and “No” written in pencil. Declan put the coin down on the paper between the two words. “Um...” He stared at the paper for a moment. “Dad, are you there?”

Chase realized what Declan was trying to do right away. A small smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Did you get this from the internet, buddy?” He asked, sitting down at the other side of the coffee table. “Hope you didn’t go onto any shady websites for it.” He looked down at the coin on the paper. Maybe he could move it? He reaches out, concentrating...

For a split second, he could feel the cold metal of the coin beneath his fingertip. And then his hand passed through the table.

“Shit,” Chase muttered. He tried again. But got the same result. He managed to touch the coin for a second but when he tried to move it, his finger slipped through. He tried a couple more times, but couldn’t move the coin a hair.

Declan was staring intently at the coin, clearly waiting. He cleared his throat. “Dad? Are you there?”

“Yes, yes! I-I’m here, Dec, I promise!” Chase said desperately.

Declan jumped slightly, looking towards where Chase’s voice was. “Dad?” He whispered. “Dad, i-if you’re here, move the coin.”

“I’m trying, I promise,” Chase said, reaching for the coin again. He just had to focus! He knew he could do it if he just focused! Maybe—maybe he could move the paper instead?! Maybe he could pick it up and cause the coin to shift?

But no, he couldn’t grab hold of the paper, either. He went back to the coin, but made no progress there either. Maybe he felt it shift slightly? But there wasn’t anything significant.

After a few minutes, Declan slumped, shoulders drooping in disappointment. He scooped up the paper and the coin and stuffed them in his pocket, then walked down the hallway towards where all the grown-ups were gathering.

Chase stayed where he was. He watched Declan go down the hallway, then slowly looked down at the table’s scratched surface. Why couldn’t he focus? Why couldn’t he do it? Jack said he was a strong ghost, didn’t he? So... why?

He was vaguely aware of people moving and talking, of the light from the open window shifting as time passed. But he stayed where he was. He didn’t think anything at all.

“...no problem, really.”

“Still, thank you. It was good to meet you. I know it’s only been one day since... everything, but you’re the first person who’s been kind about it.”

“Really, it’s nothing. It’s for Chase, you know?”

Chase finally snapped out of his trance. He looked over at the voices and saw Stacy talking with Jack, while Declan waited nearby. Stacy nodded. “Still, thank you,” she said softly. “We’ll be going, now. Are you serious about moving?”

“Well I don’t want to be.. . rude,” Jack said slowly. “But clearly this guy is going to put the house out for rent again as soon as possible. I... think it’s better than a stranger moving in.”

“Whatever helps you,” Stacy sighed. “Chase probably wasn’t too attached to this place anyway. He didn’t move in all that long ago.” She looked around the room. “Personally, I’ll be happy to never see this place again.” She opened up the front door. “Goodbye, Jack. See you at the... s-see you there?”

“Of course,” Jack said. “Goodbye.”

As they all left the house, Chase stood up and followed them. He watched as Stacy and Declan got into the car and drove off. Mr. Wood had already left, it looked like. Jack started walking down the sidewalk, but then looked back at Chase and stopped.

Chase hurried over to him before he left the range of where he could go before getting pulled back. “H-hey.”

“Hey.” Jack nodded. “Do you think everything went—”

“Can I tell them?” Chase asked.

Jack blinked. “Huh?”

“C-can I tell them that I’m—I’m still here?” Chase clarified. “Or is there some supernatural set of rules that says I can’t do that? Because—cause there’s always something like that in stories, a-and I mean, when I was alive I definitely didn’t know ghosts existed—s-so can I tell them?”

Jack’s expression softened. “That’s up to you, Chase. If you think that’ll help them, and you, then you can tell them. But... you probably can’t do that on your own.”

“I-I have to learn how to talk and stuff first, right?” Chase said. “To do that.”

“Yeah.”

“Then—then you have to help me!” Chase instinctively tried to grab into Jack’s shoulder before he remembered that he couldn’t touch things and stopped himself. “I have to—I have to figure this out!”

“Yeah, of course.” Jack smiled. “I’ll do what I can.”

Chase relaxed. Good. Good, he could... he could tell them. They would know he didn’t leave them like that. With that settled, he turned his attention to other matters. “So, uh... d’you know why I don’t pass through the ground but I go through everything else?”

Jack looked surprised, then laughed. “Ghosts can’t pass through things that are six feet—two meters thick or more, and the ground is usually thicker than that, unless there’s a basement or cave.”

Chase nodded. “Got it. Also, uh, I think I’m really starting to process that you said vampires and werewolves were real, so like, what the fuck? Are you going to elaborate on that?”

Jack grinned. “I am, but I think you should really get used to all this before I dump the whole fucking lot on you.”

“That’s fair, that’s fair.” Chase nodded. “So uh, are you going to come back sometime soon?”

“Well it’s getting late, but yeah, of course. Maybe tomorrow or the day after.”

“Okay.” Chase exhaled. Weird how he could just do that without inhaling first. “I’ll see you then.”

“See you!” Jack smiled. “In the meantime, you should probably practice being seen and such.”

“Got it. Uh, well... Bye, then.”

“Bye.” Jack waved, then continued down the road.

Chase watched him go. Then he turned back and headed back to his house. It was emptier now. But Chase tried not to dwell on it. He sat down on the floor and decided to spend the day practicing with his ghost powers. The sooner he got used to them, the sooner he could adjust to his new life. Or rather, his new afterlife.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“I dunno, Jack, I’ve never met a ghost before,” Jackie said.

“Well Chase would be a good one to start with, then!” Jack said cheerfully from the other end of the phone call. “He’s basically just a guy who floats and disappears sometimes.”

“Hmm...” Jackie glanced around. He was currently outside the city, sitting against a tree. The tall buildings of Scuabyrg were visible in the distance, tinted orange with the sunset, but his immediate surroundings were sparse trees and rolling hills. “I dunno.”

“Look, you don’t have to decide now,” Jack said. “It’s going to take me at least a week to move into the house. You can wait until then. But if it works out, I think that having you, Schneep, and Marvin over would be a good way to introduce him to, uh, everything.”

“You don’t think it’ll be a shock?”

“I think it’ll be a shock no matter what. But he’ll have a lot of questions, and you guys would be more qualified to answer questions about werewolves, vampires, and witches than I am.”

“Speaking of which, I’m in the middle of werewolf business right now and it’s kinda rude that I’m just on the phone while it’s happening.”

“Well you didn’t have to pick up.”

“I’m not gonna just not pick up a phone call!”

Jack laughed. “You’re like, the only person I know who thinks that way.”

Jackie rolled his eyes. “Anyway, I gotta go.”

“Talk to you later then.”

“Later.” Jackie hung up and looked around to see if he’d attracted any attention.

There were eight other people out in the field with him. Seven of them were busy cleaning up the picnic they’d had earlier. But one was hovering nearby. A younger guy, with long blonde hair and big gray eyes. He looked a bit like a stereotypical American surfer guy. The impression was probably helped along by his ocean scent—not like Schneep’s ocean scent, that was closer to a candle mimicking a salt breeze. This guy’s scent was a bit rougher, like sticking your nose in beach sand. “Oh, uh... sorry,” he said. “I just—I realized I-I could hear the guy on the other end of your call. It was weird.”

Jackie smiled. “No problem, Bryson.” He stood up. “So, having fun?”

“Yeah, so far!” Bryson smiled a little. “I didn’t realize there was all this space so close to the city. Cities usually tend to all run into each other... you know?”

“Yeah. Well, the Night Council makes sure that there’s some stretches of nature nearby, where everydays aren’t gonna just walk up and interrupt stuff like this.” Jackie shrugged.

“Hmm.” Bryson looked around. “Are you, uh... sure this is gonna work?”

“Shifting while the sun’s still out? It’ll be harder than during the night, but you can do it.” Jackie patted his back reassuringly. “The rest of us are here to make sure everything goes good. I mean, not everyone, but when you have sixteen people it gets kinda hard to coordinate stuff, y’know?” About half the pack had work or other commitments today. Almost all of them had wanted to come, but this wasn’t too high a priority, so they had to bow out. They’d all meet up for the full moon in a couple weeks.

“Hey Jackie!” A woman with long brown hair shouted over at him. She wore a white scarf around her neck, as well as a cream sweater and a brown skirt with leggings. This was Lily. “Are you going to just stand there or are you actually gonna help?”

Jackie made a face at her. “Gimme a moment!” Lily rolled her eyes and continued putting tupperware containers into the picnic basket.

Bryson looked at Jackie nervously. “Are you allowed to talk to Lily like that?”

“Huh? What d’you mean?”

“Well, she’s the alpha, isn’t she?”

Jackie took a step backwards. “Uh... so, still getting used to things, huh?”

“Ohhh right, I’m not supposed to say that word, am I?” Bryson remembered.

“I mean, you can, but wolf packs have just been using ‘leader’ or ‘head wolf’ for a long time, so they’re used to it. And ‘alpha’ has some, uh... implications.”  Jackie shook his head. “But it’s not just that. Look, don’t think that you can’t talk back to Lily or make comments like that. You can do whatever. I mean, as long as you’re not a dick about it. Being a leader does ask for some respect. But if you ever find a wolf pack that actually buys into that ‘obey the head wolf without question’ ‘alpha, beta, omega’ hierarchy bullshit, try to avoid them. The leader’s probably on some... some fucking power trip.”

Bryson nodded understandingly. “I, uh... still think I’ll be nervous for a bit. But thanks. That helps.” He smiled, a bit more relaxed.

“Jackie!” Someone jogged over to the two of them. She looked a lot like Lily, but instead of long brown hair, she had bright red hair styled in a pixie cut, and wore a red tank top with slightly darker red jeans. Fittingly enough, she was named Scarlet, and she was Lily’s sister. “Have you seen Leo?”

“Leo? No, I haven’t.” Jackie shook his head. “Didn’t he have an evening shift?”

“Yeah, true...” Scarlet frowned. “But I thought he said he’d leave early so he could be here.”

Jackie shrugged. “Maybe his boss wouldn’t let him leave.”

“Maybe. Ugh.” Scarlet shook her head. “Well, we’re going to start soon. We can’t wait for him. It’d kinda defeat the purpose if the sun set. You okay, Bryson?”

Bryson nodded. “Y-yeah.”

“Great!” Scarlet gave a thumbs-up. “Okay seriously, Jackie. Come help pack stuff up.” Then she turned and headed back to the others.

“So... Scarlet is a nickname, right?” Bryson asked, trying to sound casual.

“Nope.” Jackie shook his head. “Apparently their parents weren’t very creative. The kid with red hair is called Scarlet, and the kid with a floral scent is called Lily.”

“Their parents knew their scents when they were born?”

“Yeah, didn’t the two of them tell you? Their parents were also wolves, so they’ve been wolves since birth, like the Singh twins and Tasha.” Jackie grinned at him. “They didn’t have to learn all this stuff like we did.”

“That... does make some sense,” Bryson said. “Now, uh... we really should help, I’m starting to feel bad about it.”

Jackie laughed. “Let’s go, then.”

A few minutes later, everything was neatly put away into bags and baskets. Scarlet shaded her eyes and looked over at the sun. “We better start soon,” she said. “You ready, Bryson?”

Bryson took a deep breath. He bounced up and down on his feet a couple times. “Alright. Fuck it.” Then he took his shirt off—

“Whoa!” Scarlet blinked, then laughed. “I thought we said you didn’t have to do that!”

“I like this shirt, I want to make sure nothing happens to it.” Bryson stood there awkwardly, holding the shirt, until Jackie walked over to grab it and put it in a bag with the picnic baskets.

“Remember to concentrate,” Lily advised him. “Breathe steady! You remember the exercises?”

“I do, I do.”

“Do you want us to look away?” asked another wolf—Kelly, who was around Jackie’s age.

“No no no, I got it,” Bryson insisted. He closed his eyes, taking deep breaths. The others tried to stay quiet so he could focus. Some did look away after all. Jackie’s mind drifted a bit, remembering his early days of shifting as well. It was difficult to get used to. Jackie himself really struggled with changing in the daylight hours, feeling self-conscious about changing shape while in bright light where people could see. But just like any other physical skill, it got easier with practice. To the point where shifting could be as easy as breathing.

Jackie blinked—and suddenly, while he wasn’t paying attention, Bryson was gone. In his place was a gray wolf sitting on its hind legs. The others all shouted and cheered, and Jackie snapped back to attention. “Wait wait wait, I missed it!”

“Well, sucks to be you, then, Jackie!” shouted another wolf named Paul. Two more wolves suddenly shifted form and jumped at Bryson—Jackie recognized them as Charlotte and Rodrigo, who were close to Bryson’s age—and the three of them wrestled on the grassy ground, barking and rolling around.

Lily laughed. “Alright, alright! Stop horsing around!”

“Don’t you mean wolfing around?” Jackie asked.

Scarlet made a ‘ba-dum-tss’ sound with her mouth, and Lily rolled her eyes. But the three younger wolves did stop wrestling. Bryson seemed very happy with himself, tongue sticking out as he panted heavily. “Here we go!” Lily said, clapping her hands together.

The rest of the wolves all shifted as well. Jackie stretched, blinking and shaking his head. Even in human form, a werewolf’s senses were more keen than an everyday human’s, but being in wolf form sharpened them further. He could hear birds chirping in the farthest trees, and the city was now emitting a distant hum—the sound of cars and buses and other busy things. Not to mention the smells. The enhanced smells had been the strangest thing to him when he first transformed, being able to pick up on the scents of people and animals even while in human form. In wolf form, it could be overwhelming to a new werewolf, to know that everything had a smell that you couldn’t pick up on before—sometimes multiple smells, if an object had been in contact with a lot of other stuff.

The pack all took a moment to socialize, nudging each other, wagging tails, a couple play-fights. Then there was a howl. A white wolf was asking for everyone’s attention. It was Lily, of course; she and Scarlet were identifiable by their bright coats (Scarlet’s was red, of course.) Lily pawed at the ground, then jerked her head to the side. The other wolves all barked in agreement. Then, in unison, they started to run.

Jackie had enjoyed sports and running even before becoming a werewolf, but there was something about running in wolf form that other exercises and physical activity couldn’t compare to. It was something in the combination of the wind in his fur, the feeling of the ground rushing by underneath his paws, all of it going faster, faster, faster! Jackie howled with delight, and a few others howled back in agreement.

The sun set, but that didn’t make much difference to them with their enhanced night vision. Jackie ran faster, up to the head of the pack, where Lily was running with Bryson, making sure that he was getting used to his new wolf body. Jackie barked and nudged Bryson as he ran, asking him how he was getting along. Bryson looked back at him with a big grin on his wolfish face. Jackie barked again and fell back. Lily had a handle on this.

Unlike regular wolves, they weren’t out on a hunt—though they would definitely be capable of hunting down animals if they wanted. This was just to blow off some steam, hang out with each other, and help Bryson get used to being a wolf with the rest of the pack. So, not long after sunset, the pack circled back to the place where they’d had the picnic. They grabbed the bags—which had handles for humans but also connected to each other in a way similar to saddlebags for wolves—and ran back to the city.

Jackie’s pack lived in a big brownstone apartment building called The Heartwoods Complex. Not the whole building. Just the seventh floor. There were nine total, including the ground floor, so they were pretty high up. Meaning they couldn’t just sneak into their homes through a window or something, so halfway there they all shifted back to human form. They made small talk, asking about each other’s work and lives and friends outside the pack.

But as they got close to Heartwoods, they all slowed down, falling quiet.

There was a smell of blood in the air.

Jackie looked down, noticing small red dots on the ground. A blood trail. It would have been very easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it. The others saw it too. “This way!” Scarlet shouted, darting forward, and Jackie followed,  the rest of them soon behind.

They ran the rest of the way to the Heartwoods building, and then ducked to the side, as the blood trail went down the alleyway between it and the neighboring apartment building. Lying right outside the side entrance to Heartwoods—the one that only residents had the key to—was a lump of gray and black fur. The smell of blood converged around it, nearly covering up all the other scents that came with a living thing. The musk that identified it as a werewolf, and the scent that identified the individual... which in this case was a familiar scent, something citrusy.

“Leo!” Lily gasped, running past Scarlet and Jackie. The others all seemed frozen for a bit before rushing forwards—“No no no, give him space!” Lily shouted. They all stopped. “Leo, can you hear me?” The wolf whined in response.

Jackie leaned forwards. The blood was coming from... bite marks. And scratches. An animal attack. Of course, there were plenty of werewolves in Scuabyrg, so that’s where Jackie’s mind went first. But Leo didn’t have any enemies among other wolves... why would one have attacked him? Was it just a random animal? But there weren’t many normal animals that could beat up a werewolf like that. So—was it something else supernatural?

“Someone call 9990!” Lily shouted. “Someone else call everyone upstairs!”

“I got the hospital!” Jackie said, taking out his phone. He dialed 9990 and held it up to his ear while other people took their phones out to call the rest of the pack. He could hear Paul calling Ishani, his wife, and Kelly checking on her best friend Cassandra.

Jackie’s phone call was picked up immediately. “Night Emergency, what’s the problem?” asked the operator.

“H-hi, we’re outside Heartwoods, and—Do you know where that is? Nevermind!” Jackie shook his head. They could probably figure it out! “M-my friend is hurt! He was attacked by an animal—I-I think he’s too hurt to turn human again—”

“Calm down, sir,” the operator said. “You said turn human again? What is he now?”

“A wolf—we’re wolves,” Jackie explained. 

“How severe are his injuries?”

“I-I don’t know. He’s been bleeding for a bit.”

“Alright. And where are you?”

“Heartwoods Complex—it’s flats and stuff. Do you need the address?”

“No need. We’ll find you, sir. In the meantime, do what you can to stay the bleeding. Do you need first aid instructions?”

“N-no, I think we got it.” Jackie pulled the phone away for a second. “Can we stop the bleeding?!”

One of the wolves, Nao, ran forward, taking off her jacket and pressing it to the worst of the wounds, applying pressure.

“Someone will be on your location in five minutes,” the operator said.

“Oh good.” Jackie let out a breath. “Should I stay on the line?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay.” Jackie looked around at everyone. “They’ll be here in five minutes.” He saw the rest of the pack relax. But the tension didn’t completely leave them. Not until the emergency services came to take Leo away, leaving the rest of the pack waiting there, nervous and confused.

[frozenjokes]

CuteGuy Would Prefer Greatly If HotGuy Never Ever Had Any Nice Things, But Especially Not His Good Friend And Roommate Cubfan135 (3/3)

prev

this part ended up much darker than the first two, related to Grian’s mental state after the cut. He thinks and says things he does not mean or want, so please check the ao3 link for the content warnings.

Grian gave himself a few days to recover after his fight with HotGuy, too sore to do much else than sit at his laptop and send out job applications; something he should have been doing anyway, but looking for work with a criminal record was nothing short of demoralizing. So what if he had a history of violence- so did everyone in this damn town, only some people were better at running from the police.

At least Cub was always around to help, sending links for possible options and filling out applications at his side; honestly, Grian wouldn’t be able to accomplish half of what he did without Cub’s help. Even then, the process of writing and waiting was stressful, and Grian was never good under pressure. Anxiety made him restless and restlessness made him lash out, and he didn’t want to lash out, not at anyone who didn’t deserve it.

So he gathered his things as the sun set, comforted, at least for now, by the idea of release. Maybe he’d catch a petty thief in the act, or spot some asshole from an earlier time- oh what he would give to get his talons on Cub’s shitty manager, but that was off limits, especially now. Regardless, it would only create more work for Cub in the long run, and Grian wasn’t trying to cause him any more grief.

Cub was.. pretty down after the night with HotGuy. He hadn’t gone out once besides to work, and while he wasn’t visibly upset, he was distracted, and just a tad clingier. Cub needed a lot of downtime, and usually he spent that time alone, but in the past few days he lingered in the common area, and sometimes even Grian’s room if Grian hadn’t left it in a while. Grian never minded. It was nice to hang out like that, quiet, doing separate things, but doing them together. Though, it was much harder to squash the temptation of ‘Bother Cub Instead Of Working’ when Cub was right there.

Grian wouldn’t have it any other way. He just wished he could help Cub feel better.. Especially when it was at least partially his fault Cub was so down in the first place.

He didn’t know exactly what Cub and HotGuy had been texting about, but it was clear enough that Cub was pretty upset. Grian didn’t fully understand why; was it really such a big deal to fight, even if it was staged? Was it the being misled? Now, Grian didn’t want Cub to have anything to do with HotGuy, but this didn’t feel good either, especially when he had a part to play. If Cub knew it was Grian behind the mask, would he be just as upset that Grian had gone through that much effort just to try and force a rift between them? Well, in fairness, Cub would definitely be more concerned with Grian having a supervillain alter ego, but that wasn’t- it didn’t matter.

Still, he felt guilty.

It was guilt that stopped Grian at the front door when Cub called his name. Guilt, that kept him home to watch a movie when Cub asked instead of going out like he desperately wanted to. And the next night, when Cub asked to play board games, and the next, when Cub told him simply he just didn’t want to be alone.

But the next night, over a week after the incident with HotGuy, Grian was too restless, too anxious, too stressed. He needed to leave, he needed to fly, he needed to hit something so he could just be normal again. So when Cub asked him to stay, Grian said no.

“Please.”

Grian hadn’t expected ‘please.’ He didn’t like ‘please.’ He didn’t like the way Cub said it at all. “I’m just going for a fly. We can play cards when I’m back.”

“Can’t you fly during the day? Doesn’t the sun feel better?” There was something too desperate about Cub’s tone, like his composure was just crumbling away. It was wrong. Grian felt his stomach turn.

“I like the cold. I like the moon. And it’s too busy during the day, I don’t have to pay as much attention in the dark.”

Cub wasn’t satisfied. “Grian, I want you to stay. I’m asking you to stay.”

“I-I know-“ Grian felt his own composure begin the crumble, his knees beginning to feel weak, “I just have to go, Cub. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

“You don’t have to.” Cub met his eyes, and saw directly through him. Grian could have thrown up.

“I need to,” he insisted, almost shrilly, but Cub did not budge, he didn’t understand.

And all at once, everything came crashing down. He was so stupid. He- Grian- This wasn’t about HotGuy at all! Cub didn’t care about HotGuy- they were barely even friends, and honestly, Cub had never been all that romantically inclined- Maybe he’d been angry with the hero, but that wasn’t why Cub had been staying home-

Cub saw the spiral behind Grian’s eyes, and the change was instant.

“Grian, come here, please. This isn’t- we can figure this out. I’m not angry with you, I promise I’m not angry. We’re going to figure this out.” Cub took a step forward, arms raised. Grian’s breathing hitched as he took a step back. He felt his hand tighten around the door knob. He saw Cub’s eyes flick to the spot, then freeze. “Don’t run.”

Grian was out the door faster than Cub could lunge to reach him, and even without wings, Grian was in far better shape, far faster, and they both knew it. Grian beat his wings violently, drowning out the sound of Cub’s voice calling his name. He needed to go. He needed to be away. He needed to run. He didn’t want to hear himself think.

…

High above the dappled city lights, the first bar with music loud enough to hear from the sky called his name. The lights were garish and red, the people loud and grating, and it was everything he needed to stop thinking forever. Maybe he could get a guy to buy him a drink, and really make some bad decisions. Panic heightened his delusion. He wanted to black out. Didn’t want to remember where he was when he woke up, or anything about the night before. He wanted to wake up in the woods miles away from town. He wanted to wake up in a stranger’s bed. He’d never had sex before. He hoped it would hurt.

Something like mania clouded his vision as he stumbled into the bar, or maybe it was the lights. It was crowded, so crowded, and people were bumping his arms and his wings as they danced and again he was sure he would vomit over the sensations. He needed more.

Grian reached half-blind for the first man he saw, grasping for contact he viscerally didn’t want. The hand his talons fell across was big, peppered with scars and adorned with dusty gray rings- the skin didn’t quite feel right, though the person attached to the arm turned when he was touched, distracting Grian with his large green eyes.

“Dance with me?” Grian heard himself say, and the man grinned, wide enough to swallow him whole.

“I’d love to!” He took Grian’s other hand, pulling him closer, and Grian pushed in, whether to avoid contact from others or drown himself in the stimulation of one man instead, he had no idea. The crowd shifted around them as they danced, loud and careless and sharp, everything was so sharp and they were touching his wings, they were touching his wings and he needed them to stop. He held the hands of the man he was with like a vice. His grip must have hurt, his claws surely, but his partner never reacted and never let go. Grian felt his mouth hang open as the crowd enveloped them both, choking on the proximity. Someone stumbled against his back and Grian wanted to die. He couldn’t get enough air. He couldn’t breathe.

Someone was speaking, but Grian couldn’t hear them over the music. Maybe he wasn’t listening at all. He had to keep dancing. The current song switched over to something new, and Grian wretched as the base shook his entire body. He was going to die. He felt himself being pulled and had no choice but to follow. People were talking. Someone was talking to him.

He didn’t remember leaving the crowd, but he must have, because he was sitting on a stool at the bar, and he could breathe again. He was holding something, something cold, and was disappointed to discover it was water. Fuck, he was thirsty. He drank the entire thing.

“Shots. I want shots,” someone said, and that someone turned out to be himself. “Whiskey. Or tequila. Yes, tequila.”

“Uh, no. I don’t think so,” someone annoying said, and the annoying voice belonged to a person with a very broken nose, whoa, wild, and hey this was the bad hands guy!

“I’m having a bad day. You should buy me tequila shots.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve had enough.”

“I haven’t had anything!”

“Then you’re either on hard drugs, or something is very wrong.”

“I’m sober!” Grian snapped, “And nothing’s wrong with me- nothing’s- you’re making this very hard on me, so if you won’t buy me something to drink, I’m going to go back to dancing.”

“Well, you’re shaking like a leaf and burst into tears while we were with the crowd, so I’m kinda thinking you’re not doing so hot. Honestly, I was surprised to even see an avian in a place like this- I was pretty sure you guys liked your personal space. Everyone’s different, I know, but still.”

Ah. That’s why he felt so wet. Hm. Bad Hands Man seemed to think for a moment, before waving the bartender over, which pleased Grian until he asked for another water.

“What’s your name, stranger?”

Grian considered not answering out of spite, but at the same time, he was still thirsty, and being annoying and having bad skin wasn’t a crime. “Grian. I’ve come up with my own name for you, but it’s not nice.”

Bad Hands Man snorted, the smile returning sharp on his face, “You can’t just say that and not tell me. Maybe I’ll like it.”

“Bad Hands. Because I hate touching you.” Bad Hands Man blinked a few times in rapid succession, which Grian found to be very satisfying, throwing him a smirk of his own before going to sip at his water.

“You know, I kind of want to be offended for several reasons, but I also kind of respect you for that. I don’t want to be called Bad Hands though, so give me a second to come up with something else.”

“Well I call you Bad Hands Man, not Bad Hands but- hey, what are you doing?” Grian hopped off his stool, poking his head over Bad Hands Man’s shoulder where he was scrolling on his phone through- baby names? “What- Do you not have a name?”

“Oh, I’ve got one, but you could be fae. I won’t risk it, no, no. Strangers get fake names. Occasionally, if I decide I like you enough, you’ll get my other fake name for good friends only.”

“What? When do I get to know your real name?”

“Hm. Suspicious.”

“I’m not suspicious! We live dead in the middle of the worst city in the world- there’s hardly a tree for miles! There are no fae here!”

“That sounds like something a faerie would say,” Bad Hands Man trilled, then laughed at Grian’s reddening face, “I’m joking, I’m joking. I’m not going to tell you my name though.”

“But I want to know! I- oh, is this a superhero thing? Are you just trying to cover yourself? Or are you one of the villains, and really trying to hide it.”

But Bad Hand Man’s lip curled at the mention of superheroes, and Grian had never respected someone so instantly in his entire life, “No. I wouldn’t be caught dead in all that riff-raff. The only reason I’m here is because, as you said, this city is cold and dead and devoid of all things green. They won’t catch me here.”

Grian stared for a moment, processing. “Whoa. You’re kinda nuts, aren’t you?”

“The same people that call me crazy give their names freely when strangers ask.”

“So.. everyone?”

“My point stands.”

“You know, I’m not sure if it does.”

“Well, do you want to help me pick a name? I’m thinking about something with an ‘M,’ take a look,” Bad Hands Man showed Grian his phone, and Grian very much did want to do that, so he paid close attention while Bad Hands Man scrolled slowly.

“Micah. I’ll call you Micah.”

Micah looked pleased, nodding in his approval. “Is there a reason? I’m just curious, I like to know why people pick the names they do.”

“My-cah!”

“Mycah!”

“My-cah!”

Micah broke the back and forth, laughing, though Grian could have gone for hours, “So what’s the reason then?”

“I like the way it sounds.”

“Oh! Guess I could have figured that out on my own, couldn’t I?” Micah chuckled, and Grian Looked at him for what felt like the first time. He was handsome, really, in most senses of the word. His hair was relatively short and pulled back into what was quite frankly, a silly little ponytail. He had glasses too, but even despite the harsh light in his eyes, Grian was pretty sure they didn’t have lenses. His outfit was fun, his dark top cropped to an almost ridiculous degree, while his pants were red like his glasses, floral patterned, and little too short on him, but cute. Grian cringed inwardly at what he must be looking like right now; a total mess certainly, feathers probably all puffed up and hair wind-blown to hell. Well! If Micah hadn’t abandoned ship already, Grian might still have a chance here.

“I!” Grian began, holding himself a little higher, “Think you’re cute.” He preened, pleased with his grand show of affection, more so when he opened an eye and saw Micah smiling.

“Thanks. This is a new outfit, a little different from what I’m used to, but I kinda like it. Usually I show a bit more chest and less stomach, so this is honestly a bit weird for me. Good though. I’m always looking for a little change.”

“Well I definitely wouldn’t say you’re hiding too much when it comes to the chest.”

“You think it’s too much? Maybe it doesn’t leave much to the imagination, but that doesn’t bother me.”

“No! Not too much at all! I like it! I like you.”

“I’m glad,” Micah looked away, the smile falling just slightly. With some distress, Grian wondered what he was doing wrong. This was how this was supposed to work, wasn’t it? Was he forgetting something? A bead of mangled frustration crept through, a reminder of the pain, the fear, of the desperate need to run. He needed this. He needed this to work.

“I want to go home with you,” Grian was painfully aware of how breathless he sounded, a result of his hiking heart rate.

“Grian..” Micah began, but Grian couldn’t handle the gentle rejection on his tone, he needed to be better, more desirable-

“You could have your way with me. You could do whatever you want.” Pathetically, he felt like crying. He needed this so badly and he was losing, he just couldn’t stop losing.

“Grian, no. Stop this.” Micah was firm, and Grian felt like shattering.

“Please.”

“You’re not well. Where do you live? We could walk, or I could call you a taxi. You need to go home, okay? This place isn’t good for you. Is there anyone I could call? Anyone who could pick you up?”

“No!” The sound ripped out of his throat with a wretched sob, “I have nowhere to go. I have no money- I have nowhere to go.” Just like that, everything was wrong again, everything was awful. Why did this have to be so hard? What would it take for him to just be normal, to stop being so hopelessly angry all of the time?

“Hey, Grian, it’s okay. You’re going to be okay. Let’s go outside, alright? Let’s go outside.

“It’s not okay-“

“Breathe with me. Breathe. Can I take you outside? Can I touch you?”

“Don’t- not my hands.”

“Can I touch your sweater?

“Touch-“ Grian pulled in a strangled breath, but he just couldn’t keep the air in, “Yes- The sweater.”

“The sweater’s okay?”

“Yes.”

Grian was painfully aware of his hands, of his wings, of his skin, as Micah guided him along, cringing at the attention Micah brought when he loudly cleared the way, but also grateful for the lack of accidental brushes against his feathers. He didn’t think he could take it. He didn’t think he could survive.

The nighttime air was a massive relief, and Grian managed to take his first real breath through heaving lungs. There was a bench right outside, and Grian all but collapsed onto it, burying his head in his hands and curling inward. It was too much. It was just too much.

He didn’t look up when Micah spoke.

“My place isn’t far from here. I have a spare bedroom, and the door locks from the inside. You could use it, if you want, for however long you need. My work is unpredictable, and I can’t promise I'll be home much, but maybe that’s better for you. There’s not much to eat there right now but- I can grab groceries tomorrow morning. You don’t need to tell me anything, or pay me- it doesn’t matter. I don’t want you on the streets tonight, okay?

Grian didn’t know what to do with that. He barely processed any of it.

“I promise you’re going to be okay. You’ll be safe.”

He didn’t like that promise. No one could know what was going to happen to him. What might become of him. But damn if Grian didn’t want to believe it. To collapse and curl up and feel a little less like everything was falling apart.

“Okay,” he managed, his voice little more than a whimper, “I’ll go.”

[lesbianmaxevans]

meant to make a post months ago LOL but some heartbreak high jumbled thoughts (after watching thru a second time to refresh my memory LOL)

quinni is probably the best autistic rep I've ever seen. when she decided to stop masking her autism >>>>>> her speech during the debate >>>>>>>>>

ca$h is probably the best ace rep I've ever seen. ca$h and darren's relationship is literally everything I've ever wanted, I feel like ace characters are never allowed to date someone unless that person is also ace/celibate, so it means soooooooooooo much to me to see a relationship btwn someone who is very into sex and someone who is very uninterested in sex. and to see darren be so committed to their relationship even tho it's difficult just warms my heart so much

I think the way harper's trauma is depicted in s1 is really raw and beautiful. this show gives everyone the space to be messy and her spiraling after her bodily autonomy was taken away is very realistic and imo good to see. that being said I need girlie to get some therapy and form a healthier relationship with sex asap.

I am once again uncomfortable with a show about minors having so much explicit sexual content. whyyyyyyyy is this allowed

darren, quinni, malakai, and missy have never done anything wrong ever in their lives :) also missy and malakai are bisexual icons, I love them both so much

writers go to jail for the missy/spider plot. he spent all of s1 being such a vindictive asshole to amerie bc she rejected him and then he was publicly shaming missy (albeit thankfully w/o naming her) for the same reason. he's incessantly misogynistic and racist. he also had the idea of the fraudulent accusation of mrs obah sleeping with a student bc he wanted the slt classes cancelled!!! and fueled the reactionary bullshit that voss was trying to start. like whyyyyyyyy are the writers trying so hard to redeem him I'm sick of this (if he actually sticks to his speech in 2.08, I'll be thankful tho. I still won't like him lol but at least he won't be making everyone else miserable anymore)

ppl hate dusty too much. like yeah he undeniably was in the wrong for his part in starting the rumor about mrs obah and amerie. but imo he's put in more effort to altering his behavior (as seen by him being a safe person for darren to go to) than ant or spider and both of them were involved too and I don't see ppl at their throats like they are for dusty.

I live for chaos and drama so the malakai-amerie-rowan triangle was soooooo fun (altho I wish there hadn't been the extra drama with the rowan being "bird psycho". just stick to the love triangle messiness. also do not get me started on rowan threatening malakai WHAT WAS THAT why did the writers do that 😑 anyway I want rowan back in s3 and making amends w the ppl who were collateral damage in his revenge quest against amerie)

also re the love triangle mess, it seems like the writers are intending for amerie/malakai endgame and I do like them but I feel like the show did gloss over amerie's repeated boundary violations (which honestly was also a problem with her dynamic w harper in s1 too, like girl you have to let people come to you instead of badgering them into talking to you and trying to force them to confess things). like everyone repeatedly told her to give malakai space as he was processing that he was bi and she just kept hovering and trying to force him to open up. like.... girlie please he just needed some time to figure out his feelings.

sometimes the show wants to treat the women as #girlbosses when they actually do things that are really fucked. like I don't hate harper, but the speech she gave to embarrass dusty at the basketball game was really gross and the narrative treats it as epic and her standing up for herself when she and dusty took advantage of malakai not being sober and the fact that he was in a bad headspace after just being attacked by that cop. also the writers act like dusty deserved this just bc harper thought he was acting weird after the threesome like...... is he not allowed some time to process his feelings about a new experience??? like..... how did the narrative treat this as a #girlpower moment what the hell

the demonization of mental illness is pretty uncomfortable. we only really see the symptoms of harper's dad (and presumably rowan) when they are actively being a danger to people. like mental health issues that cause ppl to see delusions doesn't equal that person being violent but the show kind of ties their anger/violence to their mental illnesses... which is another reason as to why I hope rowan sticks around for s3. let's see more of him being soft while still acknowledging these symptoms.

amerie going back to save rowan is one of my fave moments. like she has come such a long way from the girl who aired out everyone's personal business :')

[floororangejuice]

BION Information master post!! (abibaz oc)

real image of me after making all of this or something

hit the read more to get blasted with everything or something

HEADS UP!! THINGS WILL BE PURPOSFULLY LEFT OUT OF SOME INFORMATION!

I want people to find some things out through hints and clues hidden in art, so there may be a big chunk missing! Also, his story isn't FULLY finished yet too, so there will be a lot more to come. This post will (if I remember to) be updated along with any major art/information I make about him! (FEEL FREE TO ASK ME ANY QUESTIONS TOO!)

BASIC NEED-TO-KNOW INFO

Bion and Bryne are the same person. Bryne is the person/version of himself when he was alive, and Bion is the spirit that remains after death.

I just wanted to clarify this as this can be something that is easily mistaken if you see me draw them at different times/in different posts, sense at first look they can seem like completely different characters.

In my interp of abibaz, it takes place somewhere in the 90's, so that is also where his story takes place.

BASIC LORE (quick/low effort summary)

Bryne is a poor-ish guy living on his own and looking for a job and in some way ends up applying as an IT guy for the school. He applies for this job because it somewhat relates to his huge interest in computers, and he is already desperate enough for any job so this place seems perfect for him so far.

Upon entering the school for the first time, he can immediately tell something is off. He cant place his finger on exactly what it is but it does raise some red flags for him. Even so, he continues on for his interview and gets hired yadda yadda I dont really know how to explain that part and its not important.

Though, adding to his suspicions about this place, he has to meet and be around Alex now. I dont know how to word it in a good way, but basically he thinks Alex is a massive freak.

As time goes on, he gets more and more curious about what is happening in the school. Kids keep going missing, if there is any at all, and the place constantly smells like iron and rot. Bryne tries to research about the school online, trying to find any documents or reports about the school, like possible crimes that happened or any leads on the disappearances, but keeps coming up empty-handed.

This leads Bryne into a spiral, he keeps trying and trying to find information, it just seems right out of his reach. He spends most of his time at work in his own classroom, in the back with his personal computer most of the time because of this. That computer is like a sort of personal companion to him now, with how much time he has spent there alone with it.

Alex is aware of Bryne's researching, and after a while started to have his own fun with him. Setting up red herrings and letting information slip as a way to reel Bryne back into a game he almost had set up from the start.

Anyways, as time goes on Alex starts to get bored of this, and decides one night to finally get some real enjoyment out of this.

He was ready. The clock seemed to tick exceptionally slow that day, there was nothing different about that day from the rest, all but that usual feeling of dread seeming to hang heavier on Bryne's shoulders.

Alex slinked into his room, looming over him just watching him before making his presence known. He just started talking to Bryne, placing a hand on his shoulder and getting close to his level. Bryne could sense that something was wrong with this little meeting of his, though he did this type of thing this one felt wrong.

Bryne started to head out of his room and to the exit doors, hurrying his pace as he got further away from his room. Though when he finally reached the exit, he found the doors to be locked. No matter how much he tried he couldn't get them undone. He was now stuck here, unsure as to why. He started to panic, Bryne had always been weary of Alex, and now his suspicions have been proven. He was stuck there with a monster.

Now, I dont feel like I have the capability or patience to write the whole next segment, but to quickly summarize it: Bryne gets fucking hunted and chased through the school, becoming exhausted and more panicked over time and ends up heading back to his room, then Alex corners him there and kills him by giving him so much blunt force trauma to the face through smashing his face into a computer screen. yay!

I will probably try and write it out better at a later date when I have it more clearly thought out and have the energy to

anyways, here is a quick demonstration of what that looked like:

really good mock-up i know right

Anyways, after this there is a week period(important) of time where he is dead, his body rotting away, semi-untouched. Bion apears within one of the computers as, well, him, and has to re-learn what it feels like to exist again along with his newfound unstable emotions and overall physical form.

He now has a hatred for Alex that burns brighter than the sun, and in simple terms is extremely violent over even the mention of him.

I'll add more onto Bion's way of processing thought and emotion later, but it is a pretty key part in everything he does. He is extremely impulsive.

MORE ON BION

Bion is a massive recluse, hiding away in his computer most of the time, rarely ever coming out. The computer is his safe space, leaving it even voluntarily causes him to get horribly stressed. The only times he ever fully leaves is when he is driven by an extreme emotion. (usually anger)

Touching him is most times lethal, he is electrically charge. Holding onto him or touching him in general causes a feeling of numbness after a period of time, intensity varying on his emotion and the time touching him. (it feels like when one of your limbs falls asleep, but a bit more painfull)

GAME MECHANIC

If Bion was ever added in game, or if I felt like ever attempting to mass mod the game, his mechanic would be to locate Alex.

He would be a (mostly) neutral character, helping the player by showing where in the map Alex is with a pop-up map. It would only be accessible in his room. Along with this Alex would be unable to enter the room at all, but he could just camp at the door and completely trap you, so it would be wiser to be quick while in Bion's room.

Bion's room is also located in a semi-inconvenient spot, near the end of a very long corridor with the only exit down that hallway being one of the rooms with a red key required door. (I'll add a map of where his room is later)

He also has the chance of being a hostile character too. If you provoke him with enough questions about himself, his past, speak of Alex, or bring a special item to him. Any of these will result in him killing you instantly, or becoming one of the hostile character that chase you in the game from that point on.

I also have an idea with him for an Easter egg ending that is related to his lore, but i have to do some more developing on it before I explain it to the public.

EMOTIONS (?)

Because he is a spirit now, his reactions and emotions are alot more raw and intense, causing him to lash out often or go into violent spirals. He is his greatest enemy. (other than Alex)

His most common emotion that happens is rage, appearing whenever his mind starts going down a path of thoughts about how he was wronged, and the monster that he was wrongfully made into.

His rage and his fear of new things causes him to become more of a recluse than he already was. He cant even go out of his classroom without being reminded of how he was made into such a beast.

Bion can still feel and react like a normal person, and is still somewhat the same man he was. Whither that is good or bad is for you to decide.

The way he comes off when not in any fit of emotions is more flat and mechanical, being inside machinery for so long has changed the way he talks a bit, becoming more formal and thought out.

ART + MORE

Here are my Toyhouse pages for both Bryne and Bion where you can find most if not all of their art, which includes lore art.

(lore art will be specified in the bio of the images, and you can usually tell because there is more effort in the details)

BION

BRYNE

ALSO, Bion has a twitter account! its mostly fun silly stuff, but occasionally there will be lore related posts!

@B10NSC0MPUT3R <- link to his account!!!

btw this is going to be updated with more soon!!!!! im probably going to add some facts + more clarifications later!

[gottagobackintime]

I really, really, really don't want anyone on the team to go: "I/we know" when Colin comes out.

Can you imagine how terrifying that would be for Colin. He's spent so much time and energy trying to hide who he is. And to then hear "Yeah, we've known all along, so your effort didn't really matter." That would be horrible. Because who else knows then? If his efforts were for nothing, anyone could know. In Sunflowers he asks Trent how he knew, so it was important for him to know what he'd done for Trent to know about him. And he laughs when he finds out why, because it wasn't him being him that made Trent find out, it was because he actually saw him being intimate with another man. So that was a relief.

I get were people are coming from when they say they want to see one or all of them saying that. I really do, it's the "We love you and accept you" part, but it wouldn't really be that, because Colin has been hiding in plain sight. And I know some people feel relief when they hear those words, I personally would hate to hear those words, even as someone who wants to be perceived as queer. Because to me it's about the fact that you're opening yourself up, being vulnerable by coming out. And then you hear someone more or less saying "You didn't really have to do that because we all know anyway", when it should be about the person coming out and what they are willing to share, and what they are willing to tell you. Be supportive and sure if they ask if you knew, you can be honest. But for me, saying "I know" as your first reaction, it just isn't nice.

BUT, these are just my feelings on the matter. And if you want that to happen that is fine, I just wanted to put this alternative take out there.

This is why I love Colin's storyline so much because so many of us can relate in some way even if we, like Trent, aren't professional athletes. And we all have our own perspective and expectations because of our own experiences.

[amadeusgame]

The World's Longest And Most Sentimental Development Log (Marketing Retrospective)

It's been a month since the demo release, and Amadeus: A Riddle for Thee ~  Episode 1 ~ Waltz has just reached 100 wishlists on Steam. I'm incredibly grateful for the support and interest.

Because this has been the month following a major release, most of my efforts have been focused on communications as opposed to development. I still want to discuss these efforts, both as a retrospective for my own reference, and in case anyone else finds it enlightening. This was meant to be a short and to-the-point marketing discussion, but it accidentally... and inevitably... transformed into something incredibly long and sentimental.

The long and short of it is that I've had an overwhelmingly successful month by my standards. Discussing marketing means I have been analyzing why that is. In doing so, I slowly became aware of just how much of my entire life has been building up to this.

I originally planned to mention other things in this update... discuss the recent demo livestream, announce an upcoming "100 wishlists" celebration... but those no longer really suit the tone of this update. I will post about them another time. I wasn't prepared to celebrate 100 wishlists this quickly, anyway! I had no idea I would get that much in the first month! I'm not ready to make that announcement! I would like to do something appropriate for this milestone, so please give me some more time to put proper thought into it.

You can reference here for the livestream video and other resources: https://linktr.ee/amadeusgame

I don't expect very many people to read the rest of this. But I am writing it anyway because it's important for me to express. And if you got anything out of the Amadeus demo, you probably got the fact that I am a bit of a long-winded and sentimental person. Bearing that in mind...

On Marketing Amadeus

Overall, I tried a lot of different things—many of which flopped—based on the question "what kind of communications would I like to see, as an audience?" Some combination of all of these somehow worked. I don't think it is particularly useful to try and pinpoint what specific individual things made Number Go Up the most, because the real takeaway was that I put enough messages out in enough places that over 100 real actual human beings came across them and were interested in what I am making. That number is probably tiny to people trying to earn a living in games, but as someone just hoping to get my art out there... the number 100 is significant and motivating.

I am happy to share the things that I've tried, and my impressions of how well they worked for my situation and purposes. Before that, though, I must stress that having assets to share in these communications in the first place was an invaluable step, especially since visuals and aesthetics are a very core part of my game.

Creating Marketing Assets

(When uploading a game to Steam, there are approximately 8 million different aspect ratios and dimensions you need to create branding assets for, so I chopped that source poster up into different pieces and spent about a week just making different combinations of them to suit various needs.)

Again: I was not thinking ahead to the Steam page when I drew this in October, not really. I was just drawing something that I wanted to draw, inspired by art that inspired me. If I hadn't indulged that desire and "procrastinated" a bit, I wouldn't have the assets to advertise the game when it came time for launch! This is something that I've experienced again and again throughout the process of development: making things for fun, doing things on impulse, taking breaks and indulging whims... many of these activities somehow end up being essential for the game. If I had refused that self-indulgence to focus on Important Development Stuff, I wouldn't have the cool piece of art I needed to successfully advertise the finished game on launch. Moreover, the final art in the game would not be as good, because I wouldn't have gotten ideas about art direction from making this poster.

(Also... I wouldn't have had as much fun making the game. Since this game's budget is $0 and all of my free time, it REALLY matters that I am having fun while making it.)

Even more important than these visual assets, though, was the trailer. How many games have I checked out just based on the trailer? I recently purchased Raging Loop on Steam, a game I have been considering for months, because I finally watched the trailer and realized "okay, this game is me-core." The trailer is so important. It's not about how pretty the trailer is; it's about whether the trailer shows me a game that I, in particular, want to play. I don't know who my audience is, but considering my goals and inspirations, I think it is something along the lines of "hipsters who love some combination of Umineko, werewolves, and unique aesthetics." So I needed a trailer that would connect with those people. A trailer that, if I watched it, would make me realize hey, this game is me-core.

Making a trailer is its own skillset, though! Completely separate from game development. Communicating something in video form is different than communicating it in another medium.

Fortunately... I have actually done a lot of just-for-fun video editing projects very recently! I edited together a "trilogy" out of roadtrip camcorder footage I took, and also put together the video for an audio-visual collab album. I already have tools and a workflow that I like to use.

I am developing a game, but it has helped me so much to have experience making a stupid trilogy of camcorder footage roadtrip videos.

I worked on those video editing projects because they were fun. I had absolutely no ulterior motive. In doing so, I still gained an important skill that transferred directly to marketing Amadeus. As someone who has always struggled to focus on just One Thing, it's incredibly affirming to realize that having done a lot of random stuff is actually really helping me as a solo game developer. I feel like I've finally found an art form where this is an important skill, and not a hindrance or distraction.

So... well, I suppose this means that I have no useful advice for other developers. I want to be honest about my experiences, and my experiences are that I only was able to prepare good marketing assets for Amadeus because I did a lot of for-fun art projects outside of game development. From my perspective, this is amazing news: it tells me that allowing myself space to be an artist and a person outside of this project has actually helped make the project itself better. It tells me that there are no downsides to being experimental and giving time to other projects too. But to anyone reading this hoping for some advice on putting together marketing assets, I'm sure it's the least helpful or relatable thing in the world. I'm sorry about that.

Getting the Word Out

Once the demo released, it became a matter of presenting the materials I had in the right ways, and in the right places. This is what I have been spending most of my waking hours doing this month. A non-exhaustive list of everything I've tried:

E-mailed all of my professors from grad school whose courses influenced my compositions for the game in some way. (This wasn't so much about the numbers, it was just motivating to get nice comments back. :D)

Joined a few Discord servers for communities dedicated to indie game developent; tried to engage in meaningful conversations there and check out other games while also sharing my own work. (I'm asking others for a favor, to take a look at my work, so I try to check out theirs too in return.)

Posted the trailer on the Visual Novels subreddit. (This flopped.)

Posted weekly* on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and a few other places. (This has been the bulk of my ongoing communications; see below!)

Posted on a forum I joined last year to discuss music composition.

Found and followed a lot of other indie game devs making things that interested or excited me.

Shared it in a Discord server I moderate** as a "creative mod." (I host monthly art-focused events, curate spaces for sharing art, etc.; see below.)

Shared it with basically all of my friends! Especially friends who are also artists and creators!

To sum, I used every single available avenue to talk about it. But I really need to expand on the two points bolded and asterisked above. I have something additional to say about them, and I cannot overstate how much it matters.

*Weekly Posts

As indicated, ongoing weekly posts on various platforms are the meat of my marketing. I post regularly, but it's really important to me to not just post the same stuff all the time and annoy everybody. I try to highlight different aspects of the game each time, use different framing, and do a variety of weird and silly stuff. Some things perform unexpectedly well and others are complete flops. But I think it's been key to not be afraid of failure and just try things. That way it's still interesting to the people who already checked out the game, while hopefully reaching new eyes too!

(Full disclosure, however: sometimes I will do something that has 0 chance of doing numbers, just because I think it would be a fun thing to post. Since I am completely self-motivating on this project, I have to do things that are self-indulgent, or I will burn out. So, hypothetically, I might be compelled to, say, post a photo taken on an Instax analog camera of the game hooked up to a CRT TV.)

(Step 1 of marketing is to have fun and be yourself?)

BUT ALSO!

AND THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS POST!!

I only have any sort of audience on these platforms because of other, unrelated things I've been doing for years. I met a LOT of people on Twitter and Instagram through cosplay and Tales of Symphonia speedrunning, who stuck around somehow. I met some people on Tumblr from recent Ghost Trick ROMhacking, and others from Homestuck meetups in 2012. I met people on Discord from a forum about video games I joined in 2006. I was already connected with a lot of like-minded people to share my game with! I know—I KNOW—that this is something that is only easy to say in retrospect, but: doing stuff and meeting people over the course of a lifetime has added up. I hope that this will continue to be true, and maybe some people who find me through Amadeus will stick around for whatever comes after, once I've fully completed the 5-episode story I have to tell here. And I will see it through.

So, please bear this in mind when reading about how I promote my self-indulgent game every week on Instagram. I did not attend Anime Expo 2015 in order to build an audience for the visual novel I would make 9 years later. I was just meeting and connecting with other cosplayers, because I thought I would still be doing cosplay indefinitely. But many of those connections have persisted over the years, and some of those people are interested in my game. None of this seemingly-unrelated life experience is wasted. In the words of one of my teachers from grad school, "it's an accumulated life." I have ended up somewhere unexpected, and I did not plan to end up here, but all of those past experiences were still a part of getting me to where I currently am.

**Discord Server Mod

I want to highlight this particular place where I've promoted my game, because it's important in a way that connects with basically all of my rambling above. I want to make it clear that absolutely everything that went well this past month started so much longer ago than that.

In this point, I am not saying "step 1 of indie game promotion: simply have been a creative events moderator on a Discord server for years first!" as this is incredibly useless advice. Hear me out for a moment.

About 2 years ago, there was no "creative events" moderator on this particular Discord server. It was mostly a space to talk about video games with friends. You could also post art there if you wanted, and you might have gleaned a react or two.

Also about 2 years ago, I began to think very deeply about my relationship with art and the internet. When I was a tweenager, there was this video game forum—a forum that migrated to the Discord server in question recently—where you could post your art (usually video game fanart, but could be anything), and the moderator would always engage with it and provide meaningful, thoughtful feedback. That space is one of the biggest reasons I drew so much when I was younger, and worked so hard trying to learn how to draw and shade and color better, because I wanted to have my efforts praised, and I knew they would be.

2 years ago, I desperately needed a space like that again. Lacking one, I decided to pick up the torch left behind by the moderator from my tweenage years, and become the person who would always, always provide thoughtful engaging feedback when people posted their work there. Literally some "be the change you want to see in the world" shit. I knew that someone else doing that for me fundamentally altered the course of my life, so I wanted to try and be that for others if possible. More selfishly, I hoped that this would also create the much-needed space for me to share my work and get feedback and responses, too.

Now, about 2 years later, that channel is pretty active. People regularly share their creative works, and it is one of my favorite places to post my own stuff because people are really good about engaging with each other's stuff there. It's been one of the most important places for me to share progress on Amadeus, because that external motivation helps a lot. And once the demo came out, I have absolutely no doubt that this server was a significant proportion of the initial support and momentum it received on launch.

I did not even have so much as a delusion of being a game developer when I made these changes in the Discord server. I was working in IT and considering applying to music school. I just wanted to build a community around art.

So, why am I writing about my 2-year journey as a Discord mod in my development update about marketing? Hopefully it makes a bit more sense now. I'm really trying to emphasize that the marketing I did this past month didn't start last month. It started 2 years ago on this Discord server, it started in 2006 when I joined that video game forum. Really, my marketing efforts have gone as well as they have because—whoops, I am tearing up writing this—I have made a lot of incredible connections in a lot of communities over the years, and now that I have something very important to me that I want to share, they have really helped support it. I've had some friends go so far above and beyond what I would ever ask them to do in sharing my game, and that kind of support just... I can't put a number on it; it's invaluable.

In Conclusion

Go to conventions and meet cosplayers. Speedrun a 6-and-a-half-hour-long JRPG from 2003 on Twitch. Join a forum and when it migrates to Discord, organize art events and comment on other people's work. Draw self-indulgent stuff and make silly roadtrip videos scored with Logic Loops. Make 90% of a ROMhack of a Nintendo DS game. Get completely obsessed with other visual novels on itch.io and write essays in their comments.

My name is Leo, and my marketing advice is You Only Live Once. I hope this helps. Have a wonderful evening and I look forward to presenting you with a more coherent update next month.

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 34 of Harrow the Ninth

I sat on this for a while, because I was trying to work out exactly what was going on. Then I wound up getting my Sims 2 back into a playable state and inadvertently spent a lot of time playing the Sims 2 haha

Anyway

Is this just because BOE is in a constant state of fighting against the Nine Houses and thus all their stuff is a bit battle-scarred, or was this shuttle in particular involved in a fight recently?

So Palamedes will become an animated skeletal arm instead of a talking skull. I should have realized that this story puts too much effort into having accurate anatomy to have talking skulls with no attached lungs or vocal tract

Also, I guess Palamedes is either not attractive enough or not female enough to get a sexy arm-creation scene with Harrow

If Camilla would get in trouble with BOE if they found out Harrow was making animated skeletons possessed by the ghosts of dead necromancers for her, that means they probably don't know and didn't plan for her to meet up with Harrow on this planet. But she knew Harrow was going to be there, she was specifically looking for her in the exact right part of the planet and everything. Probably only Harrow would do - regular non-Lyctor necromancers (like for example, Judith) can't do necromancy on thalergenic planets or in space without a bunch of people dying to generate thanergy, and the other Lyctors have no particular reason to want to do Camilla a favor (most of them don't even know who she is). So, somehow Camilla found out that Harrow was going to be on this planet at this time without BOE finding that out (since I'm sure that BOE would probably have objected to Judith being within range of a Lyctor they don't trust) and convinced BOE to let them go to this planet (I'm guessing, since Camilla later says they are still with BOE, and therefore they didn't like, escape from BOE in this shuttle or something). Based on Judith's dialog about a BOE mole, that leads me to suspect that the mole is Mercy, who is the main person who would be able to engineer Harrow being on this planet by herself for this period of time, which makes some sense, since we know that Mercy has some secret that she is bribing Augustine to keep from John. But if that's the case, I'm not sure why Mercy would share information with Camilla and friends that wasn't shared with BOE proper, since as previously stated, Mercy has no particular reason to do Camilla a favor that I know of

This seems to be suggesting that the poster is of Gideon, but no one was making posters of Gideon, and also, I wouldn't describe her as "unsmiling" and "adamant". But if Commander Wake was Gideon's mom, it both makes sense that there would be a poster of her inside this BOE shuttle and also that her appearance would remind Harrow of Gideon strongly enough to cause this reaction

What dangerous information could per-Work Harrow have thought that Judith (or for that matter, Corona) would have that Camilla did not? Or was there more to the letter that Camilla received that asked her not to talk about certain things?

This is hilarious, I can just see them fighting over the pen here

Is this the rapier that Gideon brought with her to Canaan House, and then abandoned during the fight with Cytherea in favor of her two-hander? Ianthe obviously took Naberius's rapier for herself, but there were several other dead cavaliers whose rapiers were never mentioned again, and whose necromancers weren't around to collect them (Magnus, Jeannemary, Colum) that she could have taken from, and I think Colum's would have even been in the same room as her after he died, and based on the early scene in Gideon the Ninth where they were trying to find a decent rapier for her, those others would probably have been in better shape. I wonder why she took Gideon's

On this read-through, this makes me think that Camilla's letter probably did say something about not talking about certain subjects, and that she conveyed this information to Judith and Corona while Harrow was in the River

So, after the last chapter of Gideon the Ninth, but before the epilogue when Harrow was rescued by the Erebos, BOE arrived at Canaan House, rescued/captured all of the non-Lyctor survivors, including Judith who would have clearly been an enemy officer, and stole Gideon's body. Why? I guess since Judith used regular EM-frequency radio to contact the Erebos and tell them about what had happened, that could have been intercepted by BOE and maybe they thought there would be something useful there? I guess they could have already been in the system, given that Commander Wake probably went to Pluto and died there at some point in the not too distant past. I guess they probably know something about Lyctors, and also how to recognize Lyctors, if they left Harrow and Ianthe alone - Ianthe might have seemed too injured to still be alive, but I don't think Harrow was that injured at the end of the book? And also there's the thing where Commander Wake probably knew Gideon the First personally. I guess they might have just taken them all because they couldn't leave them alive to inform the Erebos about them, and they maybe aren't the sort of people to just kill people like that, but why take Gideon's body? Did they recognize her as Commander Wake's daughter?

John said before that he thought that Cytherea was working with BOE, which sounded like a conspiracy theory back then, but if Mercy is working with BOE and BOE turned up at Canaan House just after Cytherea died, that might actually be a sensible conclusion to draw. BOE probably does benefit from that, there could have been potentially eight new Lyctors as a result of the Lyctor trial, which would have tripled the number of extant Lyctors. Cytherea's main damage seemed to be about the nature of Lyctorhood and not stuff that BOE probably cares about, but I guess she could have been both working with BOE and also doing it for her own reasons