#anyways HIS PRONOUNS ARE THEY/THEM!!!
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
updatingranboo · 9 months ago
Note
what are ranboos pronouns? i was/have been under the assumption they used any but someome told me they only used they/them & ive also heard they/he....
i tried stalking ranboos socials to find out but it didnt work out 😭
Tumblr media Tumblr media
ranboo uses they/he! as of december last year they swapped from he/they to they/he, most likely meaning they now prefer they/them the most (but are still fine with he/him used on him) though he’s never actually talked about it on stream or anything :]
they’ve never used she/her, except for when talking about miss beloved (their drag persona) or osmp ranboo (who’s canonically transfem)
166 notes · View notes
anotherpapercut · 2 years ago
Text
hey y'all I have another favor to ask you. a trans employee at a Polk County, Missouri library was recently thrust into the public debate literally just for wearing a pronoun pin and being trans while doing a storytime for a couple of families. if you've got a minute please consider sending a quick message of support for the employee and for the library publicly standing by him
3K notes · View notes
randomwriteronline · 9 months ago
Text
"Ah! You're one of those," a voice came to his ears.
Nuparu turned to find a tall Gaquri standing at the entrance, looking at him curiously.
"I am a Toa," he corrected.
The other nodded: "Yes, I do know that. Forgot the name is all. You're a, uh... Ko?"
"Onu."
"Hm! My mistake. Which element is that, again?"
"Earth. Do you need something?" the inventor cut their small talk short, lightly tapping a tool similar to a wrench against the skeletal frame of what appeared to be a heavily modded chariot: "I'm working on a project."
"You know where Berix is?" the Gaquri asked. He raised an arm: an interesting weapon, with a jagged light blue blade at one end and some kind of projectile mechanism attached to the handle, dangled from it casually. "Wanted to drop this off to him. The thornax launcher's been jamming up more often and I know that boy can make it work like a charm again."
"He's getting parts," Nuparu answered. His eyes rested once more on the blade and he added, tilting his head intrigued: "You can leave it here if you want."
"So you can study some original Bara Magna manufacturing?" the other joked.
"It's not really my field, but it looks remarkable."
He watched the organic being laugh heartily as he approached - with a fairly heavy limp, he noticed: "Remarkable! Now that's a bit of an exaggeration, kid. I made these from some bones, whatever viable scraps I could find from wrecks of the Core War, and a few patches across the years when I could afford it. It's held together by spit and whatever Ackar's friend did to make it spurt water."
"From what I understand, spit doesn't seem like a good adhesive."
"That's what we say here to mean something's parts are real shoddily connected together."
"Hm! Like dried mud. Or aluminum sheet."
"That's the idea. Ah, where should I put this, anyhow?"
"There is fine. What's with your leg?"
The Gaquri gave a grimace: "Nothing much - just my knee acting up," he replied, patting the guilty joint. "Something must have gotten rusted. It happens."
Even through the lack of expression of his mask Nuparu treated him to a baffled look.
"What?"
"Organic parts don't rust," the Toa sputtered. "At least, ours don't."
The other eyed the tendons and muscles peeking through black armor, and his lips perked up in a little smile.
Without a word he placed his weapon on the least cluttered corner of Berix's work desk before redirecting his now free hands to the side of the faulty knee, messing with what appeared to be the graceless stitching of a large wound: his fingers sank deftly into it and pried through the gaps enough to loosen the whole thing, and before the less organic being's flabbergasted eyes pulled down the fake skin and meat to reveal a fully mechanical joint, complete with pistons and springs and even what seemed like wires.
"Don't worry," he chuckled with a wave, "Ours don't either. But most crusty old Glatorian like me haven't been completely flesh and bone in a long time."
If the inventor's attention had been piqued before, he was completely captivated now. He was leaning on his seat towards him, vehicle project all but forgotten, intently studying as many details of the prosthesis as he could see from that distance.
His eager interest made the other laugh again: "Why all that surprise! Don't you see something like this on you every day?"
"Yes, but I'm not you!"
"And what's that mean?"
"You're all flesh! And meat! And skin! How does that work?"
The Gaquri considered something for a moment. "If you can get me a seat and figure out what's wrong with it, I'll be glad to let you have a closer look," he offered at last.
Nuparu pulled the stool from right under himself so fast that he fell on his ass.
He then placed it down with extreme care and patted it insistently.
The other barely held back a snort.
His implant hadn't caused this much of a scene since the first day it had been up and functional.
"The name's Tarix, anyhow," he introduced himself as he sat down a little heavily. "Since you'll be rummaging knuckle-deep through the insides of my leg for the next thirty minutes."
"Hm," Nuparu replied as he kneeled until his mask was all but grazing the joint.
Tarix waited a dozen seconds, and added: "You got one too, Toa?"
"One what?"
"Name."
"Nuparu."
"I see. Ah - nope, nope, don't-" his fingers quickly pinched the mechanical being's and lifted them away from the scarified tissue binding the meat to the metal: "That's real flesh, don't peel that - the nerves still work, you'd put me through the pains of Plude."
"What's that?"
"You folks have a place in your lore built just to torture you forever?"
"Yes, Karzhani. I've been there."
"Huh. Well, I've been to Plude too back when it still existed, and I'll just say that the only good thing the Lord of Sand might've done was collapsing it on itself. So, you get what I mean about the pain."
"Hm. Yes, I can imagine. But how do I - see, to check the individual parts, I'd need to pull them off..."
"Oh - hold it, let me just..."
Angling his leg in an uncomfortable position and hunching down with a hiss, the Glatorian set to work carefully pulling screws loose with the help of an empty pipe he'd fetched from his pocket. The small parts dangled from their sockets without falling, just distant enough from the point the metal touched to allow the top and bottom pieces to be pulled apart without needing to pull the much more easy to lose components out of the whole.
"Hold the calf a moment, will you?" he muttered with the pipe now stuck between his teeth. Nuparu complied, holding the lower half of the leg still as Tarix worked his magic on the inner wires. At last, satisfied, he unfurled his back up once more and puffed satisfied: "There, pull."
When the Toa did so, the prosthesis came apart as easily as a house of cards. Suddenly, in the mechanical palm was a whole calf, still warm with life and undoubtedly organic.
Tarix watched genuinely amused as Nuparu tested the ankle in his hands and on the ground, miming an attempt at a walk as though playing with a very concerning doll with nothing short of pure unadultered fascination.
He posed it as if stuck in a sprint: "Can you feel this?"
"Not a single thing," the Glatorian replied. He patted the metallic femur's exposed head: "And neither can I here. The connections are all in the wires, they go right into the nerves, see? So long as they're apart I can't feel crap anywhere from over here," and he pointed to the flesh that stopped around the middle of his thigh "To the rest of the leg underneath. Not that I should be able to, frankly, if we wanted to abide by nature's whims, but luckily for me us Spherus Magna natives never cared much for that."
Nuparu hummed: "How'd you get it like this, anyways?"
"Oh," the Glatorian shrugged as though it were the most normal thing in the world, "Blew up."
"It just exploded?"
"Not by itself, of course, someone shot the whole thing out of me."
The Toa treated him to an appalled look.
Tarix waved a hand harshly, chewing on his unlit pipe: "The Core War was absolutely barbaric, kid! I've witnessed stuff I wouldn't wish on a Skrall. When I saw that half you've got there in your hand fly over my head as gracefully as the ugliest bird known to any being with eyes, I thought I was going to die of shock like a Mountain Striker with a broken wing. I still have no clue how I managed to keep awake through the bloodloss and pain long enough for the fixers to figure out I was still alive enough to be taken down to the medic."
Nuparu regarded the half of a limb in his grasp with newfound horror and fascination. A whole portion of leg, shot right out... He wasn't sure if even the Vortixx could have had something capable of doing that. Oh, sure, they had plenty of possibly worse things, but even the most blunt tended to have slightly more complex effects than just 'blows a chunk off of you'.
And the fact that they had managed to rebuild the broken joint and connected it to the rest of the nervous system was nothing short of miraculous, compared to the same thing done on a mechanical being - whose organic components regenerate, too.
"And all Glatorian have something like this?"
"Us older ones, yes," the other nodded. He watched with a sort of lazy interest as the Toa turned his attention to the mechanism of his prosthesis, checking for damage as he had promised. "The rookies tend to have the usual stuff, thank goodness - scars, plaques, maybe a limb, some fingers..."
"Fingers?"
"Yes, some of them. They tend to nip 'em a lot during training, you know, when they start to get the hang of it and stop holding their weapons like they're gonna grow a mouth and bite them - they cut tendons often those first few times. Or just the whole thing."
"Really?"
He chuckled, playfully waving his fingers: "Gresh keeps losing them. If you look closely you can tell which phalanxes are still his."
"I thought he was good at fighting."
"He is. He's just young. And a little too brash at times."
Nuparu hummed, moving onto the piece of implant attached to his thigh: "You mentioned limbs, too," he noted absentmindedly: "Is that also common, during training?"
"Losing them? Oh no, that happens out in the desert. Or, used to happen... Well, the desert's still out there, just smaller, so I guess - point is, you'll sooner get one cut off by a Bone Hunter or chewed up by a Vorox than find a fellow Glatorian who'll do that to you, on purpose or not. We made sure to try and avoid that sort of thing when we made the rules for the job."
"And plaques?"
"Oh, these," and he tapped some strange metallic protrusions on the top of his legs, on the side of his arms, and on his shoulders. "Nothing special, they keep armor in place. Easier than having to strap it on. We install them when we come of age."
Their shape was somewhat familiar: "Berix has them too, I think."
"I think everybody gets them - Agori, Glatorian, Skrall..."
"They are pretty useful," the Toa nodded.
He couldn't really imagine how they could have managed to stick armor to themselves otherwise. Maybe through some cloth? But then it might chafe their joints, and they'd have to find a way to insert it in the metal anyways...
He hummed thoughtfully, wracking his brain as he tried at once to figure out both the logistics of putting armor on fully organic beings and whatever was wrong with the implant.
So concentrated he was that he actually jumped a little when the pipe gently smacked his shoulder.
Tarix had a strange look on his face as he pointed down at a spot on his prosthesis: "Don't - it's nothing to be worried about yet, just, watch it," he warned, "That coil there you've got near your index, she's real frisky. Won't be a problem now that it's taken apart, but when you stick it back together you'd better avoid even just so much as grazing it - it'll pull my calf back at top speeds to kick my ass. Been like that since the start."
"Oh! Sounds painful."
"It is!"
With a hand already rummaging through a box of springs, Nuparu offered: "Since I'm here already, I could replace that..."
"Ah, there's no need really," the Glatorian quickly stopped him.
"But it's a liability."
"If it's out in the open like this, yeah, but - well, when it's covered it's a lot more manageable, and the wires-"
"It's still a malfunction. I can fix that without any trouble."
"I get it, but it's - I - hm! Let me explain. See, when - if I cover it up, see, with my-"
"The fake flesh?"
"Yes, that - it still jerks back if touched, but not as hard, you get me?"
"But it still does."
"Yes, and here's the - the thing is, I also have my nerves connected, right? Right, and when the coil gets touched and makes my leg jerk, it... Er... See - have you ever - hm! Hmm-hm. Hold on. Do you... Is there something that you know is not good for your body, but when you do it it just feels nice?"
"No."
"Alright, this complicates things."
"Oh! Oh, no, wait - when I cut metal with a saw, I like to keep myself as close to the sparks as possible so they can hit me because they tingle. It's fun. Do you mean like that?"
"Eeeh, close enough! That's what's going on with that coil."
"It tingles?"
"It... Uh... Sure, let's. Call it that."
The change in tone was weird, and he seemed to be somewhat embarrassed about having brought the subject up.
Now, in regards to asking personal questions, Nuparu tended to be as uninterested in other beings' private matter as much as a Kofo-Jaga is in lightstones.
However, this was directly related to the machinations of an impressive, if a little primitive, handmade mechanical joint.
So yes, he would have loved to pry.
The mental manifestation of Turaga Whenua repeatedly smacking him over the head with his drilling staff was currently the only thing keeping him from inquiring on any activities Tarix might have enjoyed dabbling in outside of his work hours, but luckily for the Glatorian that singular imaginary scenario was also an extremely effective deterrent for any Matoran or Toa that had ever at some point of their lives resided in Onu-Koro.
As such, the Toa just shrugged and diverted his attention onto the object the Gaquri was now nervously twisting in his hand: "What's that, by the way?"
The total swerve in subject matter destabilized the Glatorian briefly. He looked down at his fingers, then back at the Toa.
"A pipe?" he replied.
Nuparu squinted at it a little better: "That does not look like a pipe." he decreted.
Tarix lifted an eyebrow, curiously: "It's just an Agori pipe."
"That's not a pipe," the inventor insisted.
"And how should a proper Toa pipe look like, then?"
"Matoran pipe, maybe-" the Toa scoffed, rolling his eyes and making the other chuckle a bit while the mechanical hands went right back to checking on his implant in the midst of his correction: "First of all, it's far too small to be of any proper use; second, that seems to be made of wood, which is the worst material for this kind of thing - even if you could fit that tiny piece in a proper hydraulic system, long time usage will lend it to rot and come apart much faster, which is why we used to trade iron with Le-Koro to avoid the whole village from caving in on--"
"Oh!" Tarix interrupted him all of a sudden, smacking the object on his palm with a hollow sound: "Oh, you meant - no no no, it's not that type of pipe! It's a, uh -- pipa! Nagele! Sghitt!"
"Don't curse at me, please."
"I'm not cursing at you, it's just different names for this! You really don't have a word for-?" then he cut himself off as he seemed to remind himself of something evidently obvious: "Ah - well, I mean, you don't have a mouth, of course you can't smoke..."
"Yes we do."
"You do?"
"Yes? How else would we hold our masks?"
Tarix blinked, briefly wondered if he should have asked, and decided it didn't matter: "But you don't smoke? At all?"
"No? Unless we get catastrophically overheated or are set on fire," Nuparu replied as he attached the disjointed calf into the thigh again. "Both of which in all fairness have happened before. Not very often, but they have happened."
"No, I meant... Ah, hold it, hold it..."
He stuck the unlit pipe back in his mouth, puffing out nothing a few times with a thoughtful expression on his face.
"See - it's a bit like the coil and the sparks again, the matter with smoking," he decided to start explaining: "There's certain plants, if you dry them and burn them well, that make really pleasant smoke."
"How is smoke pleasant?" the Toa muttered.
"The smell can be," the Gaquri shrugged, "And the taste too. Wait-" and he gently knocked the foot of the pipe on the top of the Volitak before the inventor could interrupt him again "-Wait a second, I can't very well clear this up if you keep cutting in. Alright, so the bigger part here, the bowl we call it - you need to press the dried plants in here and light them up, only a little before the whole thing burns up; once they're charred nicely, you inhale through the shank, and then you puff it back out. That's how the smoke gets in your mouth and you can taste it."
"And how does it taste, then?"
"Ah, depends on what you smoke," was the whistful answer. "Same goes for the smell. The Lebori have a certain bark that gets real flexible when wet - they make whole pipes with it, they burn up real well, but it's a bit too sour for me. Before the Shattering there used to be a type of kelp I liked, and Kiina said they had River Eyes up near the Dormus that made some terribly sweet smoke."
"River Eyes?"
"It's a flower! Small, round, blue, and it grows on river banks. Never got to try them, though, and it's better I don't go around asking for some with the lungs I've got. Like I said, smoking's the same as the coil and the sparks: feels good to do, but it's bad for the body."
Nuparu hummed deeply, rummaging inside the knee as he handled the hanging wires carefully.
"I think I figured out the problem," he announced.
At that Tarix perked up: "Rust?"
"One piston has developed a limestone growth that makes it much harder to move properly, and as a result one of the springs is bent out of shape and chafes right against the nerve."
"Ah! Well, damn. You can get limestone in there?"
"If it's humid enough, it can build up over time."
"Hm... Alright, I guess all those years sweating in arenas and whatnot were bound to do the trick eventually."
"Also there was rust."
"Hm. Where?"
"Three screws. I changed them already."
"Wait, really? When?"
"While you were talking about the Core War."
"Huh! You're quick. And quiet."
The Toa shrugged: "I like working."
He pulled the prosthesis apart for a second time, laying the calf down on the floor. He then leaned back to search through a tool box brimming with bits and pieces - bolts, nuts, coils, springs, and all sorts of other things - with what his mask's stillness still managed to convey as a focused furrowed brow, evidently still thinking about what course of action to take now that he had pinpointed the anomaly to fix.
Changing his mind, he stood up and made his way to one of the various piles of junk and assorted more or less useful knicknacks to start looking for something in there instead.
"Speaking of the Core War," he said, implying he wanted to start a conversation but without really adding to that sentence.
Tarix waited a few minutes, puffing out in silence while watching him shift towels or bottles until he found what he was looking for (a clean enough rag and flask containing a murky liquid), before figuring that he was waiting for some kind of permission to continue on the admittedly not particularly pleasant topic: "Yes?"
"You said other older Glatorians also got implants like this from it."
"I implied it, but yes, that's the case."
The Toa hummed as he settled back before him: "And they're all knees, like yours?"
"You want to ask what their own prosthesis are?"
At that, he got no response.
"You can, by the way," Tarix reassured him, "It's been a damn long time by now, it doesn't hurt as much as say, eighty hundred years ago. We've been living like this long enough to joke about the whole thing and whatnot."
Nuparu mumbled something indistict as he soaked up the rag and began scraping the limestone off of the metal with it.
"Don't act all shy now, kid! As I said, it's no trouble." the Glatorian repeated. A sly smile curled the corners of his lip: "You can't get embarrassed like this every time you have to ask about new possible clients, you know," he jokingly reprimanded him, "Otherwise you'll have a hard time getting any."
"I don't want to be paid!" the Toa replied. "I'm just curious, is all! This is... Well, I didn't expect it to be something you'd have."
"Oh, don't worry, not everybody's missing a whole chunk of leg like me," Tarix chuckled. "We Glatorian like to keep ourselves distinct from one another."
"In implant too?"
"Of course! Let me think, now..."
He inhaled a long breath through his pipe, leaning back a little as the kid continued on with his work, and exhaled with a whistle.
"So, let's see - Vastus, he's got a good chunk of his lower spine replaced and, oh, 'bout three quarters of his intestines," he began: "Kiina had her hip crushed and put back together, and that should be... Ah, nope, nope, half of her left hand and the whole ulna too. Telluris I haven't see in a long while now, but unless he's figured out how to place his brain in a tin can I'd bet his head's all that's left. Certavus, bless his memory, I don't think he had a single original organ left by the end, and Gelu's got bionic feet - one foot, one leg, right, a whole leg, so then Strakk was the one who got his eye shot out and his nose crushed. And the jaw, of course. I don't remember if it was him or Malum who cracked his head but I do think it was him, because Malum had the femur that got split in half and it worsened with that problem with his ribcage where the metal was corroding and messing with his blood... Which is why he had to get his marrow replaced in his leg later on. Oh, and Ackar also had to... Ah, wait, which one was it? Right, right. Ackar, poor guy, his back itself is worse than a Plude street but his real problem's his right shoulder blade, which got essentially pulverized - I was there, ghastly sight - so they had to replace the whole thing, and that was bad enough; but then, and this is the fucked thing, the implant actively degraded the rest of the arm, so he had to keep replacing bits and pieces of it until it was just completely gone."
Nuparu lifted his head, eyes wide and flabbergasted: "The fixing made it worse?"
"It did! He kept having trouble moving it."
"How?"
Tarix raised his shoulders: "Beats me," he replied just as baffled. "It's a common thing for Tapyri, honestly. It's hard to tell if the material's bad quality or has trouble with the heat. Perditus too - after he got half his leg replaced, the damn thing somehow managed to melt halfways and left him limping almost worse than he would if he just didn't have it."
"And he can't replace it?"
"It's grafted onto the bone and the muscle has grown over it. They'd have to carve the whole thing out with it, it's just not worth it."
The Toa stared at him positively appalled.
"That is horrid," he spat, punctuating the adjective with a harsh yank of his hand over the faulty piston, thus launching a loosened piece of limestone to skid across the floor.
"You're tellin' me, kid."
"That's - it's inadmissible. It's insane."
"And I haven't told you about the Agori."
"What about the Agori? Were they fighting too? Do they-?"
"No, not fighting, usually - it's something we got in common with your lot: we're basically the same species, but we are much bigger and they're much nimbler. So you had us larger folk tearing one another to bits properly, while they tended to work as scouts if they weren't busy trying to put us back in one piece."
The Gaquri interrupted himself to stretch his arms up, pulling one towards his head.
The movement produced a loud 'crock!' roughly around the height of his shoulder, followed by much softer pops crackling all the way up towards his wrist as it twisted.
Satisfied with the sound (which instead made the inventor a little uneasy considering their conversation), he moved to massage the sides of his spine with his knuckles, rolling his neck: it seemed to make a curious ticking noise in place of a meatier sound, filling in the quick pauses of Nuparu's rag scrubbing the limestone away.
At last he puffed into his unlit pipe: "If you look at the older ones - the Agori, I mean - you'll see they've got less lower half than upper."
"That makes no sense."
"It does if you don't count implants. We've got them a bit everywhere, I told you, but an Agori with an arm prosthesis is a real rarity. They've got them mostly between their soles and the top of their hipbones."
"And why's that?"
"It's 'cause the lucky ones stepped on mines."
The Toa hummed thoughtfully.
He did not raise his eyes from the almost clean piston: "And the unlucky ones?"
"Well, we were trained to aim for either the neck or the head."
Ah.
Those certainly had been unlucky.
For every thing Toa and Glatorians seemed to have in common, a complete opposite came around. To imagine a Toa willingly kill was already hard, though not impossible - the Mahri themselves had been met with the chance to do so once or twice, and it had been tantalizing to say the least; but to envision a group of his brothers and sisters being not only instructed but even trained to kill, and especially to kill Matoran...
Well, he was glad he did not live in that kind of world.
"That's just how life is," Tarix sighed in the end. "Nobody wins. They've got their metal hips, and I've got my leg held together by wires and pistons. And an artificial diaphragm."
That snapped Nuparu out of his unpleasant musings: "A what?"
"That one wasn't the war's fault, though - well, it was, but it came in later. See, I had some sharpnel that got stuck in there but nobody noticed, and then one day I got a shove in the wrong spot during a match and just stopped breathing. So I had to get a mechanical one, and when I have to put myself under any sort of strain I need to hook myself up to an oxygen supplier to make sure it doesn't collapse under the effort - you know, that tube thing you might have seen on me, sort of like yours."
"Your gills?"
"I..." the Gaquri briefly did a double take. "You call those gills?"
"Yes?"
They blinked at each other briefly.
"Yeah," Tarix conceded, "Yeah, I guess those would be gills for you folks, huh. Makes sense."
"What was it that you had to replace?"
"My diaphragm."
"What is that?"
"... The muscle?"
"Which muscle?"
"The... The one that makes the... Lungs? Work? I understood you did have lungs?"
"Lungs work on their own."
"No they do not?"
"Yes they do. They are muscles."
"No they are not??"
Before Nuparu could further argue his point by lifting his chest plate and forcing Tarix to behold the disquieting spectacle offered by his very much clearly autonomously moving lungs, the unmistakeable noise of a small variety of hollow brass objects gracelessly crashing on the floor and being hurriedly chased after by stomping feet attracted their attention elsewhere.
Berix did not notice them as immediately as they noticed him, since he was busy making his entrance on all fours as he scrambled to pick up a bunch of scrap metal that had spilled from his arms.
The other two beings made no sound as they watched him curse to himself after stepping on a rogue bolt. They decided to simply observe him in silence much like an equipe of entomologists observes a particularly frenetic spider panicking for some kind of fault in its web, making no motion to lend the young Agori any help as he crawled along the ground to collect the scattered pieces of his scavenged treasure of junk.
It was particularly fascinating when he accidentally shoved several bolts in his mouth to the point of almost stuffing his cheeks with them, realized his mistake, and spat them in what looked like an exhaust pipe.
He almost cried when they fell out of it and rolled away again.
Then he lifted his eyes briefly to the other two silent beings in the room and failed to recognize them.
Meaning he then proceded to jump almost three whole bio straight in the air once he figured there were people looking at him - landing on a screw.
"FUCK!" he whimpered.
Tarix waved: "Hello to you."
"Do you need help?" Nuparu asked with a notable delay.
The Agori kneeled to the ground and skidded across it: "No no no, I'm good! I'm good, I'm - hey, hi, Tarix, hi, when did-? What are you-? Uh," he said nervously as he tried to catch as many nuts and springs as possible, "What is going on there? Is it, did I interrupt or, should- should I leave? Again? Should I leave again?"
"Nuparu's fixing my leg."
At that Berix snapped his head with a deafening gasp to look directly at him, the most betrayed expression to ever grace his face plaster across it.
"But I wanted to do that!" he cried out in anguish like a desert fox cub experiencing the horrors of its mother's tongue bath for the first time: "I told you I could do it, I- I replaced Gresh's ribs and, and I fixed his lungs when the Skrall got him and he hasn't had problems with them since, I told you I could do it, I'm good at fixing-!"
"I know that, and Gresh told me you did real well," the older Gaquri stopped him, "But - don't take it personally, kid, you're good and all, but when it comes to my leg I only trust you as far as I can throw you and believe me, it ain't far."
"But then why does he get to do it!" Berix wailed, pointing at Nuparu still scrubbing off the limestone.
"He's got a whole body like this, I'd imagine he knows what to do."
"But I know what to do too!"
"I told you, I'd rather have a specialist on it."
The Toa briefly wondered if being a descendant of the Water Tribe had something to do with how outstandingly wet Berix could will his eyes to look, or if it was just a specifically Berix thing.
Mabe it was an Agori defense mechanism. After all, it would have been pretty hard to want to hurt something that appeared to be the personification of the verbs 'to whimper', 'to whine', 'to sob', and last but not least 'to wail'.
Whatever the origin of such an expression of anguish, Tarix was not immune to its effects: "Oh, don't be like that," he finally pleaded with a tired but guilty tone, and pointed off to the cluttered desk not too far away: "There, I've got something for you too, alright? I came in 'cause my Thornax launcher's busted and you're the best with 'em. Could you fix that for me? Pretty please?"
That was enough to light the younger being's face up again.
With the sort of excited thin howling laugh that a mischievous ghost might have, he scuttled away to the mess of a table that was the headquarters for most of his projects: onto it he dumped the rest of his scraps, not caring even in the slightest that it only helped to worsen the general situation he already had going on as he was already completely absorbed by the thought of the inner mechanics of the weapon at hand.
The perfectly good chair right beside him thoroughly ignored in favor of sitting on the ground in a curled position that would have made a shrimp suggest booking an osteopathic appointment, he immediately started tinkering around to figure what the problem was with the drive and precision of a blood hound.
That had been perhaps one of the best things their unplanned collaboration had brought Nuparu - aside from all the knick-knacks and thingamajigs and vehicles and tools he'd been able to make or just plan out with the Agori, of course. Watching Berix work on something was such a fun and fascinating experience: his intensity gave his body language a sort of visceral desperation that contrasted his careful fumbling motions, pulling pieces apart with his scarred skeletal fingers and letting them fall all around him as though discarded carelessly - yet he somehow always knew where to search when he needed them again, and if in the middle of his fixer's frenzy you asked him for a specific nut or a gear he could pick it up without even looking, always on the first try. The thunderous act of creation and its rhythmic symphony played on rough instruments whisked the both of them away from the world at large, but when the Toa managed to pull himself back to reality (whether done or stumped or just in need of a break) it was enjoyable if not just all-together mesmerizing to observe the other hard at work on his own project.
A loud bang was not enough to deter him from the launcher either.
The equally loud voice that followed with an exasperated bark did, however: "BERIX! THE DOOR!"
"RIGHT! RIGHT- RIGHT, HOLD ON!" he squeaked hurriedly, abandoning (with a little more care) the weapon to scuttle away as fast as he could to the entrance of their laboratory.
The figure that emerged from the held open door replied to his rambling apologies by grunting every few steps - not without reason, seeing as they were carrying the carcass of an older model of chariot intertwined with some other mean of transport that had clearly gotten lodged sideways in its back, trying to balance the hellish thing on their shoulders in a way not too dissimilar to how a shepherd might carry a too small Mahi tired from a day of running wildly.
The mess of a car accident was dropped rather gracelessly onto the first largest spot of floor available; freed from their herculean weight, the being sighed and pulled back their arms, making the rather dull metal vertebrae poking from their skin creak in a somewhat unsettling fashion.
Nuparu briefly wondered if they were encrusted in limestone too.
They sort of looked like it.
Hm.
Now he had to wonder if it was a common yet not very well-known problem for organic beings with mechanical implants. Maybe it had to do with an excessive production of sweat?
While he was busy pondering that, Tarix grinned at the sight: "Hello, my beautiful wife who sucks at killing me," he crooned lovingly.
Vastus turned to him with a smirk, thin feathers raised and brows slightly furrowed in a manner that was much more fond than annoyed: "Hello, my beautiful husband who can't aim for shit," he replied; upon noticing the Toa kneeled before him, he cheekily added: "Committing adultery, I see?"
His partner wheezed a loud gurgling laugh: "Twelve thousand years we've been married! Twelve thousand years and now you mistake me for Gelu!"
"For who?"
"What, you haven't heard about--?"
"NOT IN FRONT OF MY PROJECTS!" Berix shrieked.
The Lebori chuckled - it was a strange sound, some kind of hiccuping hiss - and reached out to rub his hand all over the younger Gaquri's head; the kid swiveled away from him with a soft rattling noise as his annoyed trembling arms shook his scales against one another, face contorting into a piqued grimace, and returned to the launcher to tinker the other two away from his conscious perception.
"And where'd you get that?" the Glatorian inquired, pointing at it with his chin as it was common to do in his tribe and getting no answer.
"It's mine," his husband reassured him, "He's fixing it."
"Jammed again?"
"Seems like it."
"Bet you just didn't clean it properly."
"You don't know that."
"But I'm right," Vastus teased him as he approached to steal the pipe from his mouth. "And over here, what's going on?"
"He's fixin' up my leg. Nuparu, by the way, that's his name - he's a, ah, Ko- nope, Onu-Toa, he said - thought it was rust but I had limestone in it."
"We can get limestone?"
"Might be the sweating," Nuparu interrupted them suddenly. He fixed his unmoving mask onto the Lebori: "Can you turn around, please?"
Tarix snorted at the other's brief baffled blink: "Hey now, kid, I get you've put your hands in me and all, but you shouldn't go around just checking my wife out like that!"
"NOT! IN FRONT! OF THE PROJECTS!"
The Toa looked between the three of them with no clue what any of them was going on about: "I thought there might have been crusts on the vertebrae," he explained. "Since I have the solvent at hand already, I could handle that already if it's the case..."
"That's what they all say," the Gaquri snickered.
His confusion was palpable.
Vastus flicked a playful finger at his husband's head, warning him: "Berix is gonna kick you out at this rate... But I'm sure it's just some dust, kid, nothing to worry about."
"It still would not hurt to do a simple visual check."
"He's right," Tarix interjected while trying to snatch his pipe back and failing: "Maybe you've been building up a limestone deposit this whole time without knowing it."
"I don't have limestone."
"You don't know that."
Vastus smirked at him as he turned around for Nuparu to check: "But I'm right."
"You can't keep answering that and get away with it."
"I can if I'm always right."
The inventor gave a high pitched hum: "False alarm. That's just dust," he confirmed.
A triumphant grin briefly met the Gaquri's eyes as he rolled them.
Nuparu reached into a box to pull out a short variety of springs in order to compare their size with that of the one that had been bent by the affected piston, now cleaned and hopefully ready to work smoothly; careful not to dislodge anything else, he carefully pried the ill piece out and hooked up its replacement.
Satisfied with how the procedure had done, he pulled himself back a little and announced: "I have another question."
"Shoot," Tarix answered instantly.
"What do 'wife' and 'husband' mean, exactly?"
A hot second of silence passed in which the Glatorian regretted opening his mouth.
He glanced at Vastus.
His wife glanced back.
The quiet persisted.
"We're married," he answered lamely at last.
The question he dreaded slapped him in the face with outstanding punctuality: "And what does that mean?"
Having had his fun of seeing his husband's best full-body impression of a yam turning exponentially smaller when fried to a crisp piece of coal, the Lebori finally intervened: "You folks have contracts?"
"We do."
"Marriage is a contract between people where you become part of one other's family. And tribe, if you're from different ones like us."
A vacuous gaze met his explanation.
"Alright, what's confusing you?"
"The 'becoming part of' thing."
Vastus shrugged, his feathers puffing out for a moment before returning flat in a way similar to how certain avian Rahi did before starting a very long song: "It means we become relatives," he tried again. "Here, look - Tarix is a Gaquri and I'm a Lebori, so my family and hers come from different tribes. By marrying me she became a sort of honorary member of the Jungle tribe, and everybody treats her almost as though she was my brother, or my cousin; in the same manner, I became an honorary member of the Water tribe and I'm treated like her sister or cousin."
"So... It's sort of like assembling a team?" Nuparu tilted his head, puzzled: "There's no need for a contract for that. All Toa consider each other siblings already."
The other clicked his tongue as though he'd bitten it by accident: "I shouldn't have used that metaphor," he muttered.
"Why not?"
"First of all marrying your actual blood-siblings is frowned upon."
"Why? What's a blood-sibling?"
"I'll tell you when you're older. Secondly, I can assure you marriage is nothing like siblinghood."
At that, the Toa frowned: "It sounds the same to me."
"Your knee and Tarix's look the same to me, too," Vastus argued: "They're both made of metal, so they're the same thing."
"They really aren't." then he blinked, bright eyes flashing briefly, looked to the ceiling to recollect his thought, gave a loud hum, and met his gaze again: "I see your point."
The Glatorian smiled: "Good kid."
"Back to the point - how do 'wife' and 'husband' fit with all that?"
"That's just how you call someone who's married."
"So they're synonyms?"
"Yes, pretty much."
The answer seemed to satisfy the inventor greatly.
"I'm learning so much about your species today," he commented in a giddy tone. He returned to the discarded robot calf on the floor, dusting off its mechanical parts to make sure not even small amounts of debris would interefere with its functions; just as he plucked it back into the bulk of the implant, he looked again at the two Glatorian and told them with complete and total earnestness: "You know, if you were significantly smaller, quadrupedal, perhaps vaguely insectoid and incapable of speech, Turaga Whenua would have the best day of his life writing down and trying to decypher your absolutely incomprehensible habits."
That was the highest compliment an Onu-Matoran from the island of Mata Nui could bestow upon someone.
It was not categorizable as such by perhaps any other being in the entire universe, considering the source of such an idiom had been cut off from all other known civilizations and it was generally not considered particularly flattering to be told that you would make for a great petri dish for one's paternal figure to microscope if you were any less sentient, but luckily his tone did manage to properly convey the positive nature of his otherwise insane sentence.
So instead of knocking his head off with roundhouse kick, Tarix and Vastus smiled awkwardly in an attempt at not laughing in his face and just replied: "Thanks."
His Volitak did not have a mouth, but Nuparu's grin was blinding.
Berix chose that moment to shriek triumphantly.
"Fixed!" he declared, Thornax launcher hoisted into the air like it was the second making of the Element Lords.
The older Gaquri turned to him with eyes wide: "What, already?"
"It was encrusted with Thornax juice!"
Not even the time to feel bashful about such a silly and easy to fix thing hindering his battling performance so much that his wife was already leaning down into his line of sight with a smirk so wide that he could have just bitten his whole head off with it.
"What did I say?" he teased.
Tarix sighed, a weary smile on his face: "You cannot keep getting away with this."
"Yes I can," Vastus gloated, "If I'm always right."
103 notes · View notes
automatonknight · 1 year ago
Text
Tumblr media
here's the prick i was talking about^ i have so many thoughts and notes about him but they're mostly incomprehensible so when i organize maybe them i'll post them who knows
364 notes · View notes
inkingviolets · 20 days ago
Text
Tumblr media
Oh, and I, I believe We are locked, caged and always provoked By prey left unattended
20 notes · View notes
ffc1cb · 2 years ago
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
i’ve always found it peculiar how during meeting the chargers cutscene the game just assumes your character automatically understands what krem is talking about when he mentions binding (though, granted, it’s all very unsubtle). like, this is a roleplaying game. what if i want to play a character who just doesn’t get it
#dragon age#cremisius aclassi#inquisitor trevelyan#at least give me an in game explanation of why the inquisitor would Know this right away#it's not like transgenderism is a widely explored topic in da lore. the most you can find about it in inquisition specifically excluding#krem and seras countless transmisogynistic lines is one codex that mentions that some previous divine mightve been a trans woman#and the way it's written sucks ass. the infamous sex in thedas codex also mentions nothing on the topic of transness. so like#whats up with that#art stuff#before anyone says anything i fully realize how i look critiquing a bioware game that came out in 2014 on its faulty queer representation#please trust me i know. im just thinking out loud#ALSO. in case it isnt obvious. parsley transed they gender. the joke is that theyre a nonbinary femme now#its hard for me to show it through art because it would involve misgendering them but they dont actually start going by they/them pronouns#until after halamshiral. so like technically if i made them refer to themselves as he/him at any point before that it would be canonical but#its not like my art is chronological by any means and cannot be taken out of context by virtue of it existing as an individual post online#if someone were to reblog an art of them saying hi im a dude theyd go cool! hashtag male inquisitor. or something#the tragic case of sacrificing narrative in order to not get second hand discomfort at seeing parsley misgendered#ANYWAY..........
380 notes · View notes
quietwingsinthesky · 6 days ago
Text
actually no. lucifer does not have unique enochian pronouns that only sam uses. because sam also uses those pronouns for himself and has since lucifer taught them to him. it’s not that he/him is wrong, it’s that sam is more than be encompassed by any language not shared with lucifer.
16 notes · View notes
chokingonfeelings · 2 months ago
Text
Gender Swap AU idea (aka TLJ gets pregnant and bingqiu are girls)
TLJ and SXY fall in love, TLJ gets pregnant, SXY refuses to betray TLJ (not knowing of the pregnancy) and is locked up and tortured in the Water Prison forever while officially getting kicked out for "having ties with demons."
Meanwhile, TLJ is ambushed and sealed under a mountain, barely managing to protect the baby in their belly despite the sharp sting of betrayal. TLJ manages to slow down the baby's growth for a while and lengthen the pregnancy time while they try to heal a bit, but eventually runs out of energy to keep that up and ZZL has to help them, uh, get the baby out. It's a gory process, what with being under a mountain.
TLJ struggles emotionally and physically to care for the baby, so ZZL eventually decides to abandon the child in the forest, arguing that the baby would probably die one way or another anyway, and at least this way TLJ doesn't have to watch it slowly happen.
Instead, a rogue cultivator (SJ) stumbles upon the demonic baby and, at the whims of her beloved disciple NYY, decides to spare the demon spawn and let NYY care for it much as if it was a pet, assuming NYY will get bored sooner or later or the baby won't make it to the year.
The baby, against all expectations, manages to survive and grow into a energetic youth, who SJ treats more like a personal servant than a child/grandchild. That is, when SJ isn't mistreating LBH (NYY named her that bc she liked the Luo river in winter... Look, she was like 9) for being half demon and taunting her about being abandoned to die/being generally abusive. This eventually culminates into SJ throwing LBH into the Endless Abyss during the immortal alliance conference, where SJ reunites with her long lost childhood friend and, aware that she is a shady ass rogue cultivator with a half demon for a """disciple""", decides to clean up her image a bit (or at least avoid getting blamed for the attack) by uh. Quietly getting rid of said demonic disciple.
Abyss arc, LBH fully blackens, goes to the demon realm, hunts down info on her bio parents, visits TLJ to ask them why they abandoned her/even had her in the first place if they didn't want her, TLJ tells her that SXY betrayed them but TLJ couldn't bear to get rid of the baby... And then the baby looked exactly like SXY and TLJ couldn't bear looking after the baby either. LBH comes to the conclusion that all humans/cultivators are Bad, breaks her parent out of mountain jail as a first and last act of filial piety, and they raze the human world to the ground (separately).
CQMS and SJ oppose them, with YQY dealing a killing blow on a weakened TLJ but almost dying in the process. LBH walks in, realizes YQY and SJ have some sort of bond, and kidnaps/tortures/kills YQY to hurt SJ. (People assume it's in vengeance for the dead parent thing but uh, no, she just fucking hates SJ and wants her to suffer)
SJ meanwhile hunts down and acquires Xin Mo as a last resort to avoid the end of the human world as they know it, learns YQY has been taken, and fails to get there in time to save the woman from being kicked into the Endless Abyss in a "fuck you" parallel (already practically dead, since YQY expended what little life form she had still in her to temporarily cripple LBH via self-detonation). LBH and SJ fight, SJ gets the upper hand through Xin Mo's corrupting influence, and SJ "finishes what she started" by decapitating LBH. Then Xin Mo turns against her and she dies horribly of a qi deviation that rips out all her limbs and melts her internal organs.
The story finishes with red and teal flowers growing where their puddles of blood coalesce, and a lotus blooming from the bloody flesh of LBH's severed head. The Endless Abyss rift, still open and active under Xin Mo's passive power, further corrupts the nearby lands and it's left ambiguous whether the rift will ever close or if the monsters there will start escaping it and spread over the lands, potentially dooming the human realm anyway.
......So of course when SY transmigrates into the main villain SJ her first order of the day is 1. Love and cherish the tragic figure of LBH 2. Be a decent mother figure 3. Not yeet her child into the Endless Abyss. 4. Maybe try to orchestrate an early meeting with YQY and get a cushy job at CQMS and some decent cultivation education for her disciples/kids. She needs that job security, goddammit.
(Spoilers: LBH gets the mommy kink of the century and enough mommy issues to make Freud rise from the grave dick-first. And yes, she gets together with SY/SQQ in the end and it's a bit weird for those who Know but nobody has the balls to say anything because LBH has always been Like That... And her life's dream since childhood has always been to be forever with her shizun so like! Good for her???)
(Also, through a series of convoluted events and plenty of face slapping, the Old Palace Mistress is eventually outed as the Bad Guy All Along, and a very fucked up but barely still alive SXY is rescued from the Water Prison. TLJ either gets released or gets a plant body, and SXY and TLJ get the opportunity to start anew with a LOT more shared trauma this time. ZZL is just glad he got to take his pound of flesh when SXY and TLJ rained unholy vengeance on the old palace creep.)
16 notes · View notes
heavenb3nt · 1 year ago
Text
Anyways. Academy era designs
Tumblr media
68 notes · View notes
darlingcloudie-9 · 7 months ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
HAPPY PRIDE MOTNH GUYS!!! SHOUT OUT TO THE GAYS THE GIRLS AND THE THEYS !! ‼️‼️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
(also because I’m bi here’s these sonic mfs i hc as bi/other lol)
36 notes · View notes
totopopopo · 1 day ago
Text
so i’m getting top surgery some time between the months of february and august of this year (would rather february obv but seems like summer might make more sense logistically). the thing is my extended family does not necessarily know that i have any kind of gender thing going on, not because they don’t have access to this information, but simply bc they don’t care enough about me to think about any aspect of my identity (because the world revolves around my cousin and i have always been peripheral). which means there is a very real possible future this year when i roll up to a week long extended family beach vacation like….. sans tits and with two new massive scars……… i don’t plan on explaining anything in advance bc i’m sure my cousin will be emailing everyone her own personal accommodations beforehand and i wouldn’t want to get in the way, but like…. surely at least one of them will notice? even if i don’t go shirtless and i wear a bikini despite not needing one, they will notice, surely? and from there, what happens? it’s a mystery, but also has the potential to be very fucking funny in my opinion
#my grandma and one of my uncles would normally ask my dad about it nervously except idk if they’ll know how to phrase it this time?#it won’t stop them from asking but it will throw a wrench in the works for a little bit as they figure out how#then that uncle will ask ME a bunch of questions and that will be the most awkward and unpleasant part for me#(i do not want to share my gender journey with these people)#my other uncle and his ?wifepartnerpereon? may not notice and will not ask anyone about it#and my two cousins + their parents clan? honestly no idea how they’ll react#the cousins will notice obviously. they might ask me about it#the older one will tell her parents#her dad will probably mention it to my dad but be super weird about it. not in a transphobic way but in a condescending misogynist way#(bc he still sees me as a little girl with no autonomy or common sense)#and then me might make weird comments at me which is whatever#and my cousins mom will probably be sacharinely excited for me and give me a hug and say that’s great!#which does not make her any less of an insane liberal rich white woman or any more of a good mother but i’ll appreciate the sentiment#and my younger cousin will be cool but surprised#except less surprised bc i’ve always done weird shit to my body as far as they were concerned when we were growing up#so i think they’ll see this as just an extension of all the hair dye and piercings and tattoos#my cousins shouldn’t be surprised at ALL bc they and their goddamn parents all follow me on instagram and my pronouns on that app have been#they/them for like 5 years at this point they’ve just never bothered to notice#such is life#i won’t even pretend to know how my one uncle’s girlfriend and her shit daughter will react#they are both as unpleasant as they are utterly fucking baffling#so god only knows.#anyways it won’t change much in the long run bc family vacation will still end up being all abt my cousin anyways <3 god bless
12 notes · View notes
iiscpr · 5 months ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
la guadalupe
12 notes · View notes
cynameru · 2 years ago
Text
Tumblr media
transmascs! get behind shion, she'll protect you 😌
342 notes · View notes
deltaruminations · 1 year ago
Text
Tumblr media
i think about this a lot… if you backtrack in queen’s mansion you can find a swatchling outside kris’s room who says this. they aren’t talking about spamton here. spamton’s room was catty’s (confirmed by a different swatchling standing outside her door), and his name clearly hasn’t been erased. they talk about him openly.
a different guy… name unknown… used to live (or at least own a room) in the mansion but no longer does… same room as kris. the swatchlings know his pronouns but not his name… weird stuff
147 notes · View notes
adrift-in-thyme · 1 year ago
Note
Not sure if you keep taking prompts, but if you do:
Boys visiting Malanya? You can make it really angsty if you know what I mean but it's optional.
Thanks for the prompt!! <33 I put all my Malanya headcanons in here lol. I hope you enjoy it!
Fic beneath the cut (also on Ao3)
Cw for animal injury
—————————-
Twilight bites out a curse. “Ilia’s gonna kill me.”
His fingers ghost Epona’s leg, following the trail of her wound. The gash is deep and jagged, an angry line of crimson.
“How bad is it?” Wild asks from just behind him. Twilight can feel his eyes upon him — his and those of the other heroes. All watching, all waiting to hear the damage.
Twilight chews his lip. “It’s bad.”
Lizalfos are not beasts to be trifled with, especially those with The Shadow’s blood in their veins. And the one that had sliced Epona’s leg had seen fit to make that fact even more clear.
He had cut it down seconds later, but the deed was already done, the injury carved in a river of red upon his loyal steed.
Epona whinnies mournfully and he looks up at her.
I’m sorry, girl.
“We’re out of fairies.” It’s Warriors now, all business despite the blood trickling down his side, and the way he leans against Time’s arm, just a bit too heavily to raise suspicions.
“Potions too,” Legend chimes in, voice hoarse and lacking its usual sharpness.
They have all come away from this latest battle worse for wear. Alive, yes, but wounded and exhausted. It was a surprise attack and a large one at that. Fighting it back had taken more energy and resources than they had had available.
Twilight closes his eyes for a moment and inhales through his nose. They’re in desperate need of healing. But with Hyrule injured as well, he can’t possibly ask him to tend to any of their little party…not even Epona. The traveler is hardly standing as it is.
“We need a Great Fairy,” Time pipes up. He turns to Wild. “Are there any near here?”
The champion thinks for a moment.
“No Great Fairies. But…there is someone similar.” He points to where a path winds between the mountains. “They’re not far from here. Just down that trail.”
A spark of hope alights within Twilight and he grasps it for dear life. “They’ll heal Epona?”
“And us?” Wind asks.
“I can’t promise they’ll heal us, but Epona?” A small grin tugs at Wild’s lips. “Definitely. They’re the Horse God, after all.”
Legend raises his eyebrows. “The Horse God?”
“Yup. The patron God of Horses. They protect them, heal them, and” —Wild swallows and averts his eyes slightly— “Sometimes they revive them. Anyway, their name’s Malanya.”
“Malanya.” Time says the name slowly, letting it roll over his tongue. “That’s an interesting name.”
There’s something strange in his voice, but Twilight doesn’t have time to unpack all that at the moment.
“Take us to them, cub,” he says, rising. He runs a hand over Epona’s muzzle and grasps her reins. “Epona can make it, right girl?”
She bumps her nose against his head in reply, warm breath blowing through his hair. A small smile sneaks onto his face.
You’re gonna be alright, Epona, he promises both her and himself. We’ll get you fixed up. Just hang on a little longer.
True to Wild’s words, the journey is a short one. But between Epona’s injuries and their own, Twilight feels like it’s drawn out into eternity. Every step is agony, every movement another chance for his steed to crumple or someone to collapse.
The monsters they meet along the way do little to help matters. Wild is quick to draw his bow, however, and he takes them out in no time. Still, it seems a miracle when at last the fountain comes into sight.
The heroes come to a halt right before the large flower bud.
“It looks like a fairy fountain,” Hyrule says, frowning. “But the magic feels different.”
Wild grins. “Oh, it’s much different than a fairy fountain, believe me. Now, you guys wait here. I just need a minute to wake them up.”
Epona lets out a small whinny and Twilight rubs her shoulder.
You did it, girl. You made it.
He watches as Wild walks onto one of the large flower petals and stands, hands on hips, waiting. For a moment everything remains the same. Fairy dust floats, and butterflies flit, and silence reigns in the clearing. Then, there’s a sound of rumbling thunder and suddenly the water in the fountain flies into the air, raining down in shimmery droplets upon the group. And from within its sparkling torrents, something large and colorful erupts.
Twilight cranes his neck, following the being as it rises higher and higher. It towers over the heroes, a strange form with the head of a horse and disembodied hands that wave to and fro. Part of him wants to be afraid, but…
He steps closer, tilting his head. There’s something interesting about this deity, something that almost draws him to them. Yet, he can’t decide what.
“Oh, it’s you again,” Malanya says, lilting tone echoing throughout the space. Their voice brings to mind the feel of riding across the plains of Hyrule, the wind in his hair, and the smell of fresh rain and spring grass in his nostrils. “Why have you come to visit? Please, do not tell me something dire has befallen another of your loyal steeds.”
Wild clears his throat. “Well, no one died this time, if that helps you feel better. But Epona” —he steps aside so the horse is in full view— “she’s hurt.”
“As are we,” Warriors pipes up from behind. “So, if you would be so kind…”
Malanya isn’t listening to him, however. They rise impossibly higher, water droplets raining from their adornments. In the next second, they’re leaning forward, trembling fingers reaching for the champion. The heroes step forward, hands flying to their weapons, bodies tensed and ready.
“You test my patience, boy!” Malanya says, and their voice booms now. “Anyone who mistreats their horses so shall feel my wrath!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Twilight sees Time go abruptly still. He shifts slightly, battle stance relaxing just a bit. And when the deity suddenly bursts out into hearty laughter, a strange expression comes onto his face.
“Come now, sheath your weapons.” A hand waves dismissively, their tone what Twilight thinks is meant to be reassuring. “I only jest.”
“We both know you’re not joking.”
It’s Time’s voice now, clear and strong, yet oddly tentative. But when the deity turns to him in a whirl of color and water, he doesn’t budge.
“What did you say?”
A smirk plays on his lips despite the strained situation.
“I said we both know you’re not joking.”
There’s a beat of silence in which the other heroes look between their unofficial leader and the deity, breath held in anticipation. And then something seems to shift in the air, a tension lifted, and Malanya laughs once more.
“You have heart, my dear hero. But, really, who asked you?”
For a split second, something like a smile enters the deity’s pupil-less eyes. It’s gone as soon as it comes, however. With another dismissive wave of a hand, they turn back to Wild.
“I sense no foul play nor evil intentions in any of you…though” —A quick glance at Time– “some among you are filled with mischief. I will heal your loyal steed, and—just this once—your own wounds.”
Malanya lifts their hands, as though preparing to conduct a concert, then sweeps their delicate fingers down and over the heroes. Twilight finds his eyes slipping closed as a breeze washes over him, born upon the wings of fairy-blessed water. Pain he hadn’t even truly registered enduring disappears like a weight leaving his shoulders. And when he opens his eyes once more he can see similar relief displayed on his brothers’ faces.
Ducking down, Twilight runs a gentle hand over the sides of Epona’s leg. But rather than the edges of a gash, his fingers brush unmarred flesh coated in a healthy layer of auburn hair.
She nickers as he rises, already nosing at his forehead, and he allows himself a smile.
“Your friendship with your horse is a strong one.” Malanya’s voice reaches him and he turns to meet their eyes. “It is a precious thing, to share such a connection with the noblest of animals. Remember that it is a two-way road. Your steed trusts you to keep her safe.”
Twilight nods, somberly. Guilt still tugs at him like a leaden weight. Too many times, he has allowed Epona to suffer. Too many times, he has failed to protect her.
I’m so sorry.
Epona nudges him, gently, and the deity chuckles.
“Your horse wishes you to know that she understands…and that all is forgiven.”
A wavering grin tugs at his lips. Twilight presses his forehead to Epona’s for a moment, then drags his gaze back to the deity.
“Thank you.”
They nod. “Now, go, continue your adventure.” Abruptly, they turn to Wild. “I hope to not see you again for a long while.”
“Rude,” Wild grumbles as he hops down from the petal and comes to stand by Twilight’s side.
Twilight pats him on the shoulder, both a comfort and a thanks. Then, he prepares to follow the other heroes as they file back onto the road.
Time lingers, however, the same odd look on his face. And when Twilight pauses to reach out to him, he realizes it is one of pain.
“You coming, old man?” he asks, gently, placing a hand on his mentor’s arm.
Time doesn’t meet his eyes. Instead, he looks upward to where Malanya still looms over them, gazing down at him almost expectedly.
Strange that they stayed, given how Wild claims the gods and fairies always retreat into their buds as soon as their jobs are complete.
“Before we go, I must know,” he says, and there is something in his voice Twilight seldom hears. A vulnerability reserved for moments of anguish or great joy, of bonding with his brothers or embracing Malon. "Are you…her?”
The smile enters the deity’s eyes once more, though this time there is sorrow in it.
“I was once, though only in spirit. So long as you were not at rest, neither could she be. Hence, she asked the gods for this fate, and they bestowed it upon her.”
Twilight watches Time’s face, trepidation rising fast within him. But the old man’s expression has turned steely and he can decipher nothing past the steadfast walls he has erected.
“She is gone now, however,” Malanya continues, gently. “Her spirit has faded, or perhaps merely been set free. And though parts of her remain with me to this day, I am no longer the Malon you know and love. I am merely myself – Malanya, protector, and patron God of Horses. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.”
For a long moment, silence hangs heavy. Then, right when Twilight is certain they will all be smothered beneath it, Time steps back and nods.
“Thank you,” he says, tone clipped, professional.
He is no longer Link, now. No, that barrier is back, the one even Twilight struggles to bypass, and he is the Hero of Time once more.
“We greatly appreciate all that you have done. Farewell.”
If he mourns his wife as he turns away, if he ponders the mysteries behind Malanya’s words as he begins to walk, he gives no indication. But Twilight can hear it on the breeze as they start along the path, a whisper, a cry.
“Farewell, my love. Farewell.”
And when a tear trickles down Time’s cheek, he sees it.
Even so, Twilight would never dream of saying a word.
101 notes · View notes
writterings · 10 months ago
Text
i gotta stop using instagram. i keep almost suicide-baiting bigots in comment sections and delete the words one by one but still get the urge to straight up be like "kill yourself" in response to them saying super bigoted shit about nex benedict
46 notes · View notes