#as established by litERALLY FUCKING KILLING HER OFF BY DROPPING HER DOWN A WELL

[agirlinthegalaxy]

Okay, but one of the things that annoyed me about s2 of Locke & Key was that Jackie’s death seemed entirely bc of Tyler’s short-sightedness. The other thing that annoyed me was how the show treated Eden, which I am remarkably less forgiving towards. (Look, the entire show kinda has the Lockes as dumbasses, but there isn’t an in-universe excuse for the second one.) So alternate suggestion:

When Kinsey and Scot use the Head Key on Eden, we see that she’s still in there. Eden, our Eden, the human Eden, the Eden who had enough of a heart of gold to risk her life to help the people she bullied who in turn magically controlled and manipulated her body, she’s still there. The darkness and the mannequins are slowly overrunning her head, but it’s still Eden’s head.

So consider instead if Kinsey and Scot escape and tell the others about their realization. The Savinis and the others are like :/ well that tracks but Scot asks how they’re going to save her and the others are kind of just like 😬😬 Eden? Eden who is like a total raging bitch that one? Jackie, as Eden’s best friend, insists that they have to do something and they’re still kinda like ehhh but Kinsey finally speaks up. This is our fault. Eden wouldn’t have been involved at all if it wasn’t for us, we have to help her.

And so the thing is that there isn’t. really a way to save someone from demonic possession. Erin points out don’t you think we’d have done that if there was a way? Maybe something about a journal from Ellie or one of the Keepers of the Keys researching ways, a note about how they wish they could have saved Lucas. And so they realize that they have to create a way now.

Blah blah, Dodge creates the Demon Key and Tyler realizes that he can create a key and they trap Eden at some point. (Look this isn’t a full season rewrite, I’m not doing all that rn.) But anyways, Tyler, with Erin dead trying to reach Lucas and Jackie confused and worried about Eden with the loss of her memories, creates the Alpha Key. 

Meanwhile, Jackie confronts Kinsey and Bode and demands to know what the hell is going on and they restore her memories and she catches up to speed and has the realization that her best friend is a demon and possessed Eden is spitting all these things at her about how you didn’t even notice, too wrapped up in your new magical life and boyfriend and friends and so much for being best friends, right Jackie? just full on demonic tormenting with Eden’s body and voice.

Tyler comes back and reveals that he has the key, but they’re worried about using it on Eden bc what if it goes wrong? And they’re arguing over it while Eden laughs at them and then Dodge attacks and everyone is scrambling and Jackie goes missing in the midst of it all and then it’s over and Tyler is yelling for her, fear and panic in his voice, when she reappears, quiet and solemn. Tyler desperately hugs her and she just leans against him and says softly Eden was one of my first friends y’know. One of my only friends and she tearfully laughs and Tyler is starting to get worried and Jackie just looks up at him and her expression goes vaguely demonic for a second and he tries to draw back in horror at what happened but she grabs his arms and demands use the key on me. If it works, then we can save Eden. If it doesn’t... I don’t want to end up like her, Tyler.

And without really any other options bc Eden is significantly farther along the corruption process that they really can’t say what Eden would want, Jackie is here and okay for at least a minute and like the show, they think it works and they celebrate and even demon Eden is quiet for a minute before the tears start and Jackie dies in Tyler’s arms and in between Tyler’s breakdown about her, Eden, the real Eden, comes through for half a second to call out for her, breaking down in tears before the demon regains control.

And maybe they still can’t save Eden, but at the very least, they can take the literal demonic parasite off of her soul before she dies and she also doesn’t fucking die by getting thrown down a well!!!

[space-blue]

Disappointed in the Vander backstory

I fully expected that it was coming, but I'm disappointed in the timeline all the same.

The "Vander got upset because a fight against Piltover Silco instigated killed the woman he loved" was literally my first draft for my longfic Fathers and Daughters, and I ended up scrapping it because I felt it was too cheap and wouldn't justify the violence of his actions against Silco.

"When she died I lost my head" he says in the letter.

But when she died you actually dropped your gauntlets and picked up the girls and everyone has been assuming this was the moment you swore off violence...

The fact she goes on to let Vander name her kid, and seems to be thick as thieves with them, and ALSO tells them of the pregnancy before she builds up the courage to tell her partner... Tells me that surely... SURELY by the time Vi is 10-11, whatever she is on the bridge in season 1, she would KNOW SILCO as her mom's bestie, no??? Not just Vander.

It feels like this entire angle is pulled under the rug to simplify the conflict in act 1.

I do appreciate being right on the money with Silco knowing and being friends with the mom, and having known Vi as a baby. I think it makes sense, especially if he was an important community leader.

I just hate her death being the catalyst of Vander's actions against Silco. It means that the timeline actually like this:

Mom-Silco-Vander are best friends. Silco is "Bozo 1" and has been leading the transformation of the Lanes with Vander's help. He's already planning his nation of Zaun. His notebook is literally saying "NZ" for Nation of Zaun.

At an ONGOING confrontation with enforcers, Silco throws a molotov cocktails that doesn't seem to even kill an enforcer (Powder and her innefectual bombs parallel? The entire scene is intercut with the monkey bomb clapping so... The scene leading to a friend's death also parallels the events of Jinx's birth.)

As the smoke clears/the POV looks down, we have the reveal that the girls' Mom is dead.

Vander admits the blood was on his hands as well, meaning he either started this confrontation with Silco, or fought just as badly/increased the violence (and we see him murder enforcers later on). Anyway he admits to carrying the blame, and apologized in person to Silco for the dubbed "betrayal".

Then he went home, shaved, dragged Silco into the Pilt, and tried to drown him *because their common friend died at the failed uprising*.

He's then haunted, seemingly, by visions of Silco being dead:

To me it's sort of weaker and sadder, as it establishes Vander as someone more flawed and less ruthless. It's not that he wanted the Lanes, it's not that Silco was getting in the way of what he wanted.

Vander was out there happy with everything they were dishing out, right until their actions cost the life of a friend, and he broke, emotionally, and BLAMED it on Silco, going so far as to kill him (or try).

He surrendered his gauntlets, picked the children up, tucked them in at home, shaved (I cannot stress this enough), then took Silco into the fucking river and brutally attempted to murder him.

Then he massively regretted it and left little breadcrumbs of apologies in case Silco found them and returned to him.

So, canon couple, first off lol

Fellas, is it gay to hang your jackets inside each other's in your secret hideout? Is it gay that all your core hidden memories begin with your mate smiling at you?

Yes, yes it is. Zaundad is canon and I'm not taking commentary.

Secondly, that means Vander was an emotional ticking time bomb who wasn't ready for the price to sacrifice in order to gain their freedom. I really wonder what the alternative reality would have been like, were Silco the one dying on that bridge.

Anyway, it brings some twisted sadness to the situation, because the mom wanted Zaun "no matter what" for Vi's sake, her child's future. But Vander decided that lives weren't worth spilling over that dream and tried to kill Silco over it, before teaming up with Grayson to continue enforcing a status quo.

So that means that Silco, even as he raises Jinx, is continuing her mother's dream, of building Zaun, a country that's safe for her children, "no matter what".

But very sadly the show also acts like Silco doesn't know the kids, and like the kids don't know him. Powder, sure, but Vi not knowing Silco is just downright stupid. Not even knowing him by name? When her mom was out fighting alongside him??? The mom is ALSO a miner, very clearly working with Silco and Vander, alongside the nameless poor husband.

I feel like this doesn't really solve the issues that were already raised when we speculated about act 1. It just clarifies that Vander was truly, willfully a force of oppression inside the fissures, working against the revolution necessary for Zaun becoming possible.

But it implies Silco didn't recognise Powder and Vi, and that Vi didn't recognise him or understand how he knew Vander. It's a disservice to the story, because that tie, that old bond, could really have worked to dramatize the sacrifices Silco is ready to make, as well as the depth of Vi's hatred for him.

But the show acts like they're strangers and that Vander's death is the core beef between them until Jinx enters the picture.

And then there's the Benzo scene, when Vander holds his wound from Silco's knife, and says "we both know there's worse than enforcers out there" WHO ARE YOU FUCKING TALKING ABOUT??? Yourself? You seem to be the worst thing around here! It seems clear he knew Silco was alive but had nothing to blame him for by then.

I'm left with holes that take the shape of "shock value" and "plot twist".

"Ooooh Silco knew the mom, twiiiist, but please don't think about the implications, because we wrote season 1 without taking this in consideration."

Feels like another job for fic writers, but IDK if I have the strength for it. I just like my own version better.

At least now we know that Silco did not IN FACT DO anything to "deserve" what he got. I'm sorry, but throwing a molotov at enforcers when fighting for your freedom is based and Vander was dishing death right there next to him.

The base violence necessary for change, eh? Vander just delayed the price being paid for Zaun's creation.

[ellabsprincess]

you told me you wanted to write an ellie smut and i'm desperately asking you to make a college!ellie one with her underneath your desk, eating you out and trying to stay quiet because she doesn't want to disturb you while you're busy doing your homework/project 🛐

OH MY GOD MEIJI BABY YOU DESERVE THE SLOPPIEST HEAD FOR THIS ASK GOOD LORD - wanna recreate this fic? ;)

anyways thanks baby i literally RAN to go write this

enjoy loves <3 <3 <3

"stay quiet, baby"

word count: 1.2k

warnings: 18+, bit of crying (reader is a stressed college student), sub!top!ellie, dom!bottom!reader, fluff, ellie's a good gf, college au, fingering, cunnilingus, mommy kink (if you're not into that then look away), established relationship, idk i think thats it

"ughh somebody kill me"

the essay you had procrastinated for weeks was finally due, and you absolutely did not want to write it. it was on a topic you had no interest in, and you just wanted to enjoy the spring weather rather than be cooped up in your dorm finishing this meaningless project.

as you laid you head on your dorm room desk and groaned and complained to yourself, you felt the desk vibrate. lifting your head up and turning your phone over, you saw a message from your girlfriend.

how's the essay going baby?

you quickly responded.

literally horribly i haven't made any progress :( i'm bored and all i wanna do is just spend time with you

want me to come over? i could help you and try to motivate you?

you knew damn well that spending time with ellie never actually helped your productivity, but the need to see your girlfriend overpowered any rational thinking in that moment.

yes please!!

i'm on my way :)

a few minutes later, you heard a familiar rap at your door. rushing up from your desk, you flung the door open and grabbed ellie in a bruising hug

"woah, missed me baby?"

you nodded into her flannel shirt. she just laughed and helped guide you both back inside your dorm. she led you back to your desk, helping you sit down while she crouched beside you.

"how can i help?"

"i really don't know," you responded. "i'm just so burnt out at this time of year and i just have no motivation to do this. i'm fucking bored of this class and i just want to spend time with you."

you felt the tears begin to well up in your eyes, and a look of concern flooded over ellie's face.

"shh baby, oh no, don't cry." she wiped away the wet streaks that had begun to adorn your face. you sniffled and she pulled you in for a quick and reassuring kiss. "i know its hard, but i promise you can do this. i believe in you and we can spend all the time together you want once this project is done, okay?"

you began to catch your breath, and the tears began to stop, thankfully, as the weight on your chest felt like it had lifted slightly.

"are you sure you want me here? i really don't want to distract you, love," ellie posed.

"no no! i promise i really want you here, you're actually helping me a lot. i think i just needed to cry and rant a bit," you reassured her.

"okay, good. i needed to see your pretty face today anyways."

her long hands stroked your thighs, and you giggled. something about the way ellie was so strong and powerful, yet she was willing to drop to her knees at any moment for you never failed to turn you on.

"you know, i think there's one more way you could help me, baby," you said, stroking ellie's hair and leaning in towards her face.

"oh really?"

"yeah, get underneath the desk for me."

ellie's pupils blew wide as she obeyed, keeping her hands steady on your thighs as she maneuvered to kneel between your legs underneath the desk.

god, you loved when your girlfriend was so obedient for you. of course, you loved her dominant side, and sometimes all you wanted was her to take control and fuck you until you couldn't remember your own name. but when she got subby? that made you go feral.

"take off my pants baby"

massaging your thighs as she made her way up to your waist, she unbuttoned your pants and slowly moved them down your legs, enjoying the new sight of your pretty white panties. she reached to pull them off of you as well, but you quickly smacked her hands away.

"i just wanna see your pussy mommy," she looked up at you with puppy dog eyes.

"no, you're gonna be a good girl and taste mommy through her panties, okay?"

she just slowly nodded before leaning in and pressing her tongue to your wet, covered folds. you sighed in relief and relaxed into your chair at the feeling of her desperate mouth on you. finally feeling the relief you had craved the entire day, a newfound sense of productivity washed over you, and an idea was born.

you reached down and grabbed ellie by her auburn hair, pulling her away from you, causing her to whine and moan.

"okay, you can take mommy's panties off now, but you can't make any fucking noise, baby. i'm gonna work on this project while you make me cum over and over, okay?"

"yes please mommy just let me taste you, please," ellie was so desperate when she was subby. it was almost pathetic how addicted she was to your taste.

"such a good girl, begging for mommy's pussy," you said, releasing her hair and allowing her to slide your soaked panties off, leaving you bare to her.

ellie wasted no time before attaching her mouth to your clit, sucking lightly and causing you to let out a near pornographic moan. her skilled tongue traced eye-rolling patterns over and over on your sensitive and throbbing clit, almost causing you to forget your project. but when she relented to move her tongue from your clit to your hole, you returned to your computer screen.

you typed out boring word after boring word, but you didn't mind, not when you had ellie's tongue fucking in and out of you at a seemingly impossible speed and causing wet and sinful noises to fill your dorm.

she was trying so hard to stay quiet, but the taste of you was so intoxicating, and ellie began to let out a few whimpers and quiet moans.

"baby, what did i say about making noise?" you corrected her. She quieted herself and muffled her noises by taking your clit into her mouth once again.

"ellie, be a good girl for mommy and put those fingers to work too," you breathed out, overwhelmed from the pleasure as you tried to keep focus on the project.

ellie obeyed and brought two fingers up to your hole, circling it before plunging them inside. you were so wet from her mouth that she easily slide in. she felt you clench around her digits and let out an accidental moan, but you let it slide because the vibration of her moan on your clit made you see stars.

the wet squelching sounds of your pussy grew louder as ellie quickly pumped her fingers in and out of you, sucking harder on your clit. you were near the edge, you knew it.

"oh my fucking god"

"yesyesyesyesyes"

"such a good fucking girl"

your praises were music in ellie's ears as you begin to lift your hips and grind against her face, desperate for release.

as ellie added a third finger, repeatedly reaching that spongey part inside you, you moaned ellie's name loudly and finally came all over her face.

catching your breath, as you felt ellie's fingers leave your quivering hole, you pushed away from your desk to find her beneath you. she had a blissed-out on her face, and her chin and mouth were still shiny from your release.

"holy fuck baby," you exclaimed, growing more aroused at the sight of your perfect subby girlfriend, on her knees and pussy-drunk for you.

"how much of the project do you have left?" ellie asked.

"a few more paragraphs?"

"then let me taste that pretty pussy again."

[penguinkyun]

chapter 147 review

you all know the superstition of walking under a ladder right? well the other day I walked under a ladder and I think all that bad luck has been relegated to this manga specifically. lets get into it shall we?

anyways to quote samejima abiko: you turned my babies into idiots. how in the name of hoshino ai did ruby not recognise Kamiki Hikaru, known to look a lot like Her Brother of Eighteen Years Hoshino Aqua, to the point he is Literally Cosplaying His Own Father in the movie. YOU ARE TWINS. HOW DID YOU NOT SEE YOUR OWN FEATURES. the only explanation is that they both received face blindness from ai. the reason why aqua couldnt find kamiki for years despite looking a lot like him. he just did not recognise the fucker.

honestly this chapter really just framed exactly how badly ruby has been done as a character by this arc. the movie arc is from chapters 108-147. that spans 39 chapters making it officially the longest arc in oshi no ko. In chapter 108, she is in double black hoshigan mode, angry at everyone, and especially at aqua for revealing their secret and wanting to get revenge on the guy who killed both ai and goro. we progress through till the interpersonal audition mini arc where ruby is confronted with her past life as sarina tendouji, forced to face her issues with abandonment and her previous toxic mother and the story was setting up to give her an understanding with ai and have actually deal with her past life issues…and then aqua had to go and be a good brother. im kidding, but really, the reveal hit a reset button on ruby’s behaviour but in a way that somehow also did a 180 even on her previous arc self.

@all-of-her-light has a really good post on rubys character arc so i won’t go much into detail but, the arc has a lot of contradictions with her; when ruby says she’s been acting all her life, but that recontextualizes her actions in a way that feels utterly wrong to who her character was established as, someone desiring to be an honest idol and going very far to emulate that. every single one of these threads are dropped in favour of ruby emulating a 2010s little sister, leaving very little room for any introspection about ruby with kana, aqua and even ai (despite 134).

like in 134 she sees the suffering ai had to go through and decides she won’t be an idol like her mother and in this chapter she? wants to be an idol just like ai? I thought she already got past this! And since this arc is ending wow has there been no resolution for the aqrb. incredible. this is like the rbkn conflict again, with no proper resolution aside from them being friends again, because none of the actual issues have been addresses, such as ruby intentionally shoving kana and mem out in the cold and bringing herself into focus in public eye (which was handled by management in the same way ai and first gen bkom was and well. we saw how that turned out.).

anyway. in the end ruby apparently has returned back to square one on understanding ai, with no resolution for either of her relationships with aqua and kana and we’re only left with the tiniest glimpse into how she feels about her father but nothing about yknow. ACTING AS HER MOTHER’S CORPSE FUCKING HELL—

despite ruby’s parallels with yura katayose before her untimely death via kamiki (back with the milk) i dont…really think he was going to kill ruby here. His expressions in this chapter are nowhere near murderous, and look rather concerned actually. Even when looking at his hand, it doesn’t look like he was trying to push her down the stairs, but instead reaching out to hold her shoulder or something. also

WHITE HOSHIGAN???????? WHITE HOSHIGAN HIKARU?????????

important lives, lives of value, the weight of life…these things do keep cropping up with kamiki huh?

ALSO NINO IS BACK SHES HERE SHES BACK EVERYONE THIS IS NOT A DRILL

so. i had theorized that the reason akane was so absent was because she was off doing detective stuff on kamiki and the actual reason is infinitely funnier. my darling girl. akane. were you perhaps by any chance stalking him to try and catch him in the act of literally killing someone. did you not fear for your life at all. i'm just imagining she gives the same glare everytime kamiki catches her in the act of stalking, like this is somehow exactly where shes supposed to be. good for her. its even funnier that both nino AND kamiki are aware of this and have just. done nothing. i need a montage of akane stalking kamiki stat.

I DIDNT THINK YOU MEANT LITERALLY AKANE

finally. some kamiki pov. this is enrichment for me. interesting he says "pay my dues" regarding what? ai? the twins? something else? also that kaburagi mention,,,, implying that he was the one to push for kamiki to be anonymous and not kamiki himself. the secret villain kaburagi agenda grows…

side note: it always strikes me how much ruby with double black hoshigan looks like a horror movie porcelain doll.

girl you are terrifying

anyway wow we're really. we're really skipping past the rest huh. so no introspection on how ruby feels playing the corpse of her mama and finally knowing exactly how everything went down that day huh. okay. thats really just par for the course atp.

and now again. the timeline, especially for hkai is…are we even filming in order? i thought we finished filming melt already…

here it looks like the actual breakup and this takes place post concert where hikaru brings the flowers (with kindaichi the tokyo blade director…shrimptresting) in panelling but we're shown theyre still on good terms during murder suicide. so the timeline we have for us in the movie is apparently:

hkai meet and go on a date -> ai confronts airi and hkai actually begin dating -> hkai are still on good terms a year before dome concert when murder suicide occurs -> breakup occurs sometime after that (making it quite recent before ai's death, which would make the conversation they have on phone make sense, with hikaru asking if ai wants to get back together)

the issue with that is how did ai hide this from everyone, incl. her kids? while i do think hikaru wanted it hidden because he goes off the grid from 16-25 im still??? how??? this is so confusing (they might've filmed out of order but then its still ????)

and we didn't get two major things: The I Cant Love You scene and whatever the forgiveness was about despite it being mentioned earlier this chapter. also kamiki has not been shown to be connected in anyway to the murders other than the movie becoming The Kamiki Movie halfway through so…aqua's plans that he came up with as a toddler sure are confusing huh.

and again. we were utterly robbed of any introspection ruby could've gotten on, once again finally knowing what happened that day considering no one told her anything and she only saw the blood on the frosted glass. speaking of people who know what happened, if we're talking about aqua, who has a panic attack every time he remembers this and was not shown to be present, im concluding gotanda kicked him off set for that moment. hes grounded. forceful self care by your mentor making sure you don't make yourself have a horrific panic attack again.

god. ending this review on a good note that i enjoyed hikaru's pov and nino being back but it really served as a highlight to why this arc annoyed me so much and especially rubys character assassination

sigh. break next week on account of golden week in japan and then finale or pre finale arc. lets see what that brings us, shall we?

[lloydfrontera]

So I think it's pretty well established that one of the biggest sins of Lloyd and Alicia's relationship is that they just don't interact enough to justify them being endgame.

So imagine an au where Suho get's transmigrated into the body of a palace servant instead of Lloyd Frontera. He'd still be forced to work hard and bust out his civil engineering knowledge to make money because I assume palace servants are mostly paid in room & board. But of course Alicia would notice this talent and want to keep him close. And since Suho doesn't have a Barony to go back to, he has no reason to turn down her jobs as long as she keeps paying him. (This is going off of the novel's characterization of her where she tells Lloyd that she isn't a tyrant and won't force him to work if he doesn't want to).

Plus I'm positive she suffers from Swordmaster Syndrome like Javier, so Suho would definitely offer her his lullaby service in order to gain some sort of leverage over her as well. There could even be rumors that the two are actually sleeping together and that's why Suho keeps getting jobs and titles. It would be really funny if whatever body Suho transmigrated into was just as plainfaced as Lloyd and the entire court is throwing a tantrum over it. Especially if Alicia is completely unbothered by it as she has spent her entire life surrounded by stupid and petty rumors. And since anything relating to romance is one of the few things that can fluster Suho, I could see him being secretly bothered by these rumors, even though he tries to hide it. This could then force Alicia to grow an empathy bone and help this man she has genuinely grown to trust and care about, and maybe even love.

As their relationship and level of trust progresses, I think it would be different enough from Lloyd's relationship with Javier to be interesting. Where Lloyd has to reestablish, for lack of a better word, trust with Javier and then prove that he would make first a good lord and then a good friend (and lover lol). Whereas with Alicia Suho would not only have to prove himself to her, but also overcome the huge power imbalance and status between the two of them. That could actually be a great way to visualize how close their growing as Suho rises in noble status to become closer and closer to her equal.

Speaking of Javier, if the restoration of fate is still a threat he might wind up being one of the main protagonists. Because Suho wasn't transmigrated into LLoyd, he wouldn't have saved the Barony so Javier begins his journey as the lone protagonist destined to lose virtually everyone and everything he ever loved. But also Suho wasn't there to build up his trust with him, so when Javier learns that either he or Suho has to die or else the entire continent is screwed, he has no reason to believe that Suho isn't some loose cannon threat. But by this point he has gained the trust with Alicia and there is no way she is letting Javier kill the man she loves. Maybe she orders Javier's execution/suicide, but would the other nobles/kingdoms allow that after Javier has spent years as a wandering hero? So now Suho is left with three options; 1. Die, 2. Somehow find a way to kill the most overpowered man in history, 3. Let everyone he knows and loves die, mostly at the hands of the woman he loves the most.

god. when are you dropping the fic again.

this is a way more compelling way to make me interested in alloyd than anything bk moon ever wrote. what the hell.

personally i cannot handle the idea of lloyd and javier not being close in any way shape or form it literally doesn't compute in my head but. this is so fucking good i can ignore the screeching little gremlin in my brain.

just a comment, i don't think alicia suffers from swordmaster syndrome. she's already a swordmaster by the time the novel starts, she probably powered through her insomnia and then learned how to shut down her augmented senses to fall asleep just like javier expected to be able to do when he became a swordmaster. javier just had the misfortune of becoming reliant on the lullaby service and then was unable to quit it once he already experienced it. alicia didn't rely on it before she was swordmaster and so suho wouldn't have been able to leverage it against her once she was.

but everything else is fucking amazing i love it <3

[gartenofbanny]

Moxxie’s Moral Compass isn’t consistent with his actions.

Moxxie is the nicer and morally better character in Helluva Boss. Millie just kills because she's a maniac like that, Loona kills whenever she's told to, and Blitzo kills for his clients, but doesn't really care about the collateral damage or aftermath. Moxxie is the only character in Helluva Boss who at least tries to minimize the destruction, while still completing his job in the process.

Well, that's what I'm shown and pieced together in the first episode of Helluva Boss, but it doesn't follow through like many other things in this show. The actions Moxxie takes in later episodes contradict his morals established in the first one and today I'm going to list those actions.

 The Actions

In Spring Broken, after Blitzo gave the rest of the main cast a plan in order to get a lot of kills to win their competition, Moxxie says that they can't go up there to mindlessly kill or massacre, but later on in the episode Moxxie and Millie proceed to kill humans on the random. This raised a question within the episode that is, Moxxie and Millie shouldn't be entirely sure that the people they're killing are their targets and if they were then how did he know? They needed Loona to identify the targets for them so that they can kill the targets in a less populated area, and yet this scene either shows that they didn't need her at all or they're just killing aimlessly which negates what Moxxie said. Either Moxxie's morals are inconsistent or the entire plan featuring Loona was pretty much pointless, but either option shows that the writing for this scene was not consistent with the rest of the episode. 

 He attempts to give cannibalistic children who worship Satan and their father a second chance at life but doesn't do so with young adults that seemingly didn’t even do anything wrong. Literally, all the humans in Spring Broken did was drink alcohol, take drugs, and party. So Moxxie’s morals for this scene specifically was out the window. 

In the next episode, C.H.E.R.U.B: Moxxie and Millie are shooting and killing people in a rotation while making out. Even though Millie was doing the shooting, Moxxie didn't do anything about it and just continued to make out with his wife.

Compare this to the scene all the way back in episode 1 where Blitzo was about to kill Martha, but Moxxie prevents him from doing so because he doesn't want Blitzo to ruin a seemingly wholesome family. So, again, when it came down to killing cannibalistic children and their father, Moxxie couldn't do it and gave them a second chance.

But when it came to people that were just watching an opera that happened to be in an unexpected battleground and were killed as a result, it's fine? Like he literally does not care or even thought about what he did, he just makes fun of the Cherubs because they caused Lipton's death unintentionally. This is giving me a damn headache.

I almost forgot to mention that Moxxie pretty much encouraged Lipton to off himself throughout the episode, regardless if it was for the mission or not, Moxxie from episode one likely wouldn't have been acting like that at all. He probably would've just killed Lipton straight up in order to speed up their job, not watch some guy off himself, and not waste time trying to be in competition with the Cherubs.

And lastly, this problem with Moxxie’s morality not being consistent with his actions can actually stem all the way back to the pilot, but people mainly dismiss this because it's the pilot. I'm still adding it anyway despite it being the pilot it still doesn’t make sense. So in the pilot, Moxxie accidentally shoots and fatally wounds Eddie and is pretty much traumatized after they rushed him to the hospital. It was likely Moxxie's idea to do so.

Though once Loona gets a call that Eddie was the right target, he helps Blitzo and Millie by making sure Eddie was dead, by cutting apart his fucking body, placing it in a trash bag, and dropping it in front of Eddie's mother. So what was the point in making Moxxie feel bad for killing a kid when he doesn't feel bad for the kid after Blitzo kills him?

Conclusion

I would pretty much forgive all of this if Moxxie was established to be as cruel as Millie and Blitzo, but he wasn't and I still don't believe that he's depicted that way, especially with EXES and OOHS out. Honestly, I don't know what to expect at this point because if this problem stemmed all the way back to the pilot then I am positive that something is wrong. Anyway, that's all I have for today, thank you all for reading and I hope you all have a nice day! ❤️

[kobblefort]

Rushsly: The Early Days 2

She's done it! Osgi made a wool turban. Besides "menacing with spikes of sheep wool"(???) it has no real interesting aspects, but it's pretty valuable and now I have one less kobold meltdown to worry about. The kobolds also demanded I build a temple for "The Goldenrod Creed," a religion about worshipping rainbows and the rain. And yeah sure I can get down with rainbows, I fuck with rainbows.

Looks pretty cool I think. Their priest is called "Holy Fish." I gave the job to a new arrival called "Cokuk Warnbarbs" and I'm sure I won't regret placing a hateful, greedy kobold in a position of religious authority.

Humans showed up to trade and seem to just be stuck here. The rabbits haven't left either. We didn't actually have any crafts to trade with the humans so they just sort of stood around. Eventually I read that when this happens you can get them to leave by deleting the trade depot. However this also made the humans just drop everything they brought and leave. I guess that made it our stuff. Well this could be a funny exploit but I don't know if they'll just see it as stealing.

Before the migrant wave even finishes I have to make it clear that this is not a hunter-friendly fortress. If you want to run around shooting arrows do that shit somewhere else. We don't do that here.

We're getting quite a sizeable population now and whoa hey hold up what the fuck

Some ratfolk dickhead broke in!!! A peasant Almda is just punching the absolute fuck out of her. Just going at her head like a fucking speedbag.

I mean holy shit

I love when they say this.

As Almda beat the ratfolk to death, a woodcrafter created their masterpiece across the room. Can you imagine being that kobold. Just like "whoa, that's crazy. I'm busy though"

Things are going smoothly. I'm trying a different bedroom setup for once. Glass production is going kind of slow, they keep canceling stuff because they "need sand-bearing item" (it's usually right next to them but they won't use it for some reason) I'm sure there's some way to fix this but I'm not sure what it is. "I ball to remember" - thought that came to me so vividly while i walked through the kitchen that I had to say it out loud. "I ball to forget" the only logical conclusion to that thought.

Rushsly was elevated to a Warren (kobble version of a barony) and crystal glass operations are up and fucking running baby!!! Big things poppin!!!!! We also have enough fucking iron and billon to get absolutely rich but the faster the economy go up the sooner we're likely to get raided and there's still no military here. You might be wondering how I got all these magma furnaces without embarking on a volcano or digging into Caverns 3 well baby I fucking cheated. I busted open DFhack with ` and I went to gui/liquids and I made some little magma pockets. I don't know how to get kobbles to move around buckets of magma without killing themselves in the process but if I did I would still probably do this. I'm still ultimately just using the resources I have and I'd never outright cheat to fix a kobble's mood or survive a siege or anything like that, sometimes I just get sick of the clerical bullshit! Maybe that sounds fun to you. Maybe it sounds insane for me to say that about a game that is, in essence, literally just clerical bullshit, but what is more insane than caring? I am still going to attempt to make steel completely legitimately, if you think me speeding things up so that I don't have to deforest the entire map and wait three times as long for the coal to actually get moved around ruins the integrity of the fortress then I don't know just stop fucking reading and you'll be better off.

We are also establishing a hospital even before we establish a barracks (I have decided to go the military route after all though traps are still in the cards) and guess how I got those water tiles two z-levels beneath those wells. Go ahead guess. Actually it's not a great solution because they will eventually dry up given enough use and I certainly don't want to manually re-fill them but by the time that becomes a problem I should be able to breach the caverns (relatively) safely and make me a mother fucking pump stack. I refuse to use windmills because I believe they make power too easy while also providing a really bad defensive weakness (I have had a forgotten beast break in through the axle tunnels and slaughter my entire fortress because of that one-tile-wide vulnerability) so drawing waterwheel power from the caverns is simply what I'm going to have to do. And yes I know that's a weird double standard for a guy who magically summons the water and magma from console commands but this is not a competitive game!!! When you boot up Dwarf Fortress it's YOUR choice whether you want to play as some kind of omnipotent god, minor deity, or literally just advisor to your little ant-farm of fake people. And I like being a minor deity with power over little time-and-effort-saving things but ultimately leaving matters of actual survival in the hands of my kobbles.

Just found a fat-ass native platinum vein, you wish you were me so bad.

A big part of why I'm so hesitant to breach the cavern layers is actually just that once you do, all your un-floored areas start growing cave fungus, which I hate. It can even start growing trees which will bust through your entire base but you can't really cut them down early you just have to literally build floor over them which is annoying and takes up so many resources. Some of it, like the red fungus, looks cool but most of it just looks ugly. However it does let you pasture your animals indoors which is always a boon, invaders fucking love to kill animals and if you can just have them sealed off in their own little chamber where nothing bad happens to them you don't have to worry about them. Once the kobolds get barracks set up and a bit of training under their belts I guess I'm just going to have to deal with it.

Right we've fucked around long enough, barracks time. And I smoothed them because if they're going to be stuck "constant training" they may as well get to enjoy the place. I particularly like having the dungeon right next to the barracks because it means any attempted jailbreakers will have to try and sneak through a room full of heavily-armored goons who are in the middle of swinging their weapons around. I don't really have the logistics set up for leather armor but I have an absolute fuckton of iron so it might be good enough to just make a 10-kobble melee squad and 10-kobble xbow squad with iron armor. For some reason, holding off until I have steel production up and running just seems like a bad idea.

I saw this notification and thought "oh shit, is there another thief or something" but it turned out my kobble actually just had a panic attack at work thinking about her friend dying in the Fucked Up Bridge Incident. This is a fucked up game. If you ever ask "what kind of god would make monkeys that get anxiety and have to drive big metal boxes to go operate a deep fryer all day," well, us I guess. We do that. Maybe this is what "god made man in his own image" means right. We've literally evolved so much that we can simulate being the same uncaring god doing the same awful things to little unassuming people. As above so below. I feel pretty normal playing Dwarf Fortress. It feels like a very natural behavior to me. Am I simply taking after my own creator

Ratfolk tried to sneak in, but gave up the element of surprise by shooting at some boar halfway across the map. Welp time to lock shit down! To be honest they seem more like they got lost on a hunting trip than they came here to fuck with us but we don't actually need to go topside for much of anything. And that "anything" includes making a good 10 or 20 sets of iron armor. Be our guests ratfolk... stay as long as you like.

Sometimes when I'm just sitting here doing this, I think about how happy I'd be with a soul-sucking spreadsheet job. Like the guy from OfficeSpace was such a bitch! What was with Generation X and going "no maaan, you don't want a job with fixed hours where you don't get cut or burned or blow out your knees! Having the same weekend every week and only having to worry about fucking up your posture will suck your soul out, maaaan!" Passing papers around pointlessly and doing fake social niceties for it sounds great. If it's so bad then give up your fucking paid vacations and holidays off and liveable pay and just switch places with the guy pushing carts around the Wal-Mart parking lot while 60 year old Xanax addicts in pickup trucks and SUVs try to run him down as practice for when they finally live their ultimate wish fulfillment by driving their car into a bunch of protestors for daring to temporarily mildly inconvenience them.

Not now bunnies

Oh I guess they have no beef with each other. That sort of makes sense they're both rodents right. Well uhh they just keep standing there on the edge of the map.

It seems kind of arrogant for William Shakespeare to say "All the world's a stage." Maybe not arrogant, but I don't know, of course you see it that way, you're a fucking playwright. What about everyone else? To the dishwasher, is all the world that salad you barely even took three bites of? What about to the soldier? Is all the world a target, a threat, an enemy? It is convenient for us to only see life through a pinhole. Both for us and the next pigeon up on the higher wire. Life isn't really a play or a fight or any one thing but as long as you never drop out you don't have to worry about that. You can stay right on a track and become a software engineering guy who can't cook instant noodles for himself or tell the difference between different species of trees. People always told me "ginkgo biloba trees smell like cum" but I've never smelled it. I've never really considered cum to have a smell, maybe I just don't have smelly cum. I mean I know the smell of a cum rag you toss in the corner of a room that you ended up forgetting for way too long and had to throw away, but that's more of just a bacterial smell to me I think and I've never smelled something like that while I was walking out in public, even around ginkgo biloba trees. It feels like you can generate infinite cum in life sometimes, like even when you haven't eaten or drank you can still make some come out of you, but you will run out eventually. I'm not sure about the "semen retention" guys, I kind of believe more in the "balance of fluids" thing. You can definitely have an excess of cum sometimes and it makes you act like a fucking idiot. If you don't jack off or otherwise dispel excess semen (as if anybody even has sex anymore - Not gonna catch me doing that nerd shit!) at least once every few days everyone can tell and they think you're wound-up and stuck-up and way too aggressive over little things. At the same time if you masturbate too much that's also weird and everyone can tell that too. Just do it once every two or three days to keep your levels normal. Hop on e621, punch in "breast_expansion dragon" and you're good to go. You're normal again.

Some migrants showed up, got into some martial trances, and then all died futilely to the four ratfolk rangers that kinda just won't fuck off. Well, actually, one of them went home. I guess he got his fill of fucking around. I don't really feel the urge to take revenge because I didn't know any of those guys really. We don't really need a fish cleaner and we certainly don't need any milkers or shearers so I don't know what to tell you. Bad day to show up. You really should have phoned ahead. You really should not have showed up to your girlfriend's house after she ignored your calls for like 3 hours obviously she was cheating on you!!! Sometimes a girl is just giving you those psilocybin mushrooms to try and subtlely convince you that you want to break up instead of just saying "we should break up" maybe direct communication isn't that great maybe you should just play weird interpetive-dance games with each other trying to change each other's minds instead. Sorry. I said I wasn't going to talk about David Cage.

Alsrta, previously the gelder, is now our Caravan Voice (manager) because Anl was stuck in a strange mood that I thought was going to fail but we managed to sneak a kobble out to collect a single log for him. She seems better at it anyway. Also, after drinking booze straight from the barrel even though there are plenty of cups, she gave birth to three children: Anl Crystaldepth (badass name) Iltos Coveredspells (decent name) and Zhatrsi Homagebutters (I'm sorry lil lady) making the need for protection clearer than ever. Death and birth within just moments of each other. Existence, even in this little pixelated simulation, is far too complicated to ever summarize with just a witty quote, but we keep trying. Maybe there really is an all-encompassing philosophical Theory Of Everything that's catchy and fits in as many characters as a tweet. Before they let the Twitter Blue perverts write as much as they want, I mean. I'm not sure 140 is realistic but 280 could probably fit it. Everything in the whole universe can be flattened into one slogan. Why else would everyone be trying to build an ideology out of little quotes and zingers

The kobolds are dancing around and listening to stories casually like there aren't any murderous ratfolk creeping around outside. Feels kind of opposite to real life. Everyone locked away in their McMansion is glued to one of three boxes telling them that everything is going to hell and everyone is out to get them and that we are in an untold flood of violence and despair. Then you go outside and you walk through that "bad neighborhood" and it's just people going to the store to get fucking groceries like everybody else. But I guess kobolds live more communally. And I can't say I'd ever want my bedroom to be right next to anyone else's ever again - even if I do get a box and a cabinet!

Some of that food they be making sounds good as hell

Kody Inkblighted has an appropriate name for someone who is regaling everyone with poetry. Apparently it also thought the last person doing poetry sucked.

DANKNESS AND NOTHING MORE LOL!!!!!

That peasant got their head bashed in with a crossbow so fucking hard that it exploded. That's pretty fucked up. I guess it's kinda even for our kobble punching that thief in the head over and over until they died but we only killed one of them and they killed five of us and it's not like we went out to fuck with them, they were literally sneaking around trying to steal our stuff. Well folks I hit 30 images and I'm high as fuck and honestly the things I'm about to do to a tuna sandwich would not be allowed on television in ANY country. I'll be here though not doing shit else so expect another post in I don't know a few hours I guess

[dailyoyo]

okay so the rough idea of this came from jokingly tossing around the concept of adult yoyo going to law school and becoming a corrupt lawyer (no i dont remember where it came from). and it somehow turned into a general joke of a terrible au where theyre all adults and none of them were ever rudies, never meeting each other and many of them ending up either miserable, worse people, or both. evil-ass au

(art by mod pseud. i hate looking at it) as previously stated yoyo becomes a lawyer. who is, like, evil on purpose. like he saw the "slimy lawyer" stereotype and was like "I WANNA DO THAT FOR REAL". if he was in ace attorney his name would be a play on perjury probably. he might be actually competent as a lawyer but he is definitely cheating non-fucking-stop

since this is based on paradox canon beat is gouji's kid. and well realistically speaking if beat never runs away he just grows up to continue the vicious cycle. but as much as i like writing cycles of abuse that kind of just makes beat Less Interesting Gouji. so for the sake of this we decided he fatally pushed gouji down the stairs as a teen and inherited teh company way too young. and grew up into a deranged rich failson who kiiiind of still has good intentions and recognizes that rokkaku group is corrupt (AND POSSIBLY STILL LITERALLY KILLING PEOPLE?), but doesn't know how to meaningfully change it so he just goofs off and does dumb shit instead. possibly at some point in time he burns the rokkaku hq down on purpose and lawyer yoyo defends him in court about it. and yoyo is trying to be chill but he hates beat for being annoying and wants to wring his neck

mew is, unfortunately, a cutesy true crime vlogger. i'm so sorry. it would be funny i think if she ended up making vids on the rokkaku arson case

corn gets the gifted kid crash and burn syndrome. he works in IT at rokkaku group and he hates it there. he fantasizes about becoming a hacktivist and leaking gov docs and shit like that but hasn't the time or resources for it. probably makes obscure open source software that does really niche shit in his free time for fun. stable enough income to have his own apartment.

gum doesn't have a permanent residence, makes use of her childhood friend status to crash on corn's couch. drifting in and out of jobs, never able to hold one for long, getting fucked up at bars and parties in her free time. might have a complex about being a "burden" to her best friend though she doesn't admit it's eating away at her.

i guess cube and combo never end up going to japan and just continue whatever they were doing in america. at least coin survives! (unless he comedically dies for some unrelated reason. struck by lightning or a falling piano)

maybe garam actually successfully becomes an entomologist. it'd be nice to give SOMEONE something actually cool here LMAO. but tbh i feel like he'd be more likely to drop out of college partway (unmedicated adhd kicking his ass.) and just vibes getting by on a retail job and doing his own thing posting really sludgy splatoon-ass music on soundcloud and posting pics online of cool bugs he saw.

i don't know why i feel this way but i think soda just slowly becomes a shut-in :(

boogie is established in paradox to like, have an apartment and a mediocre mundane job already, but she feels like one of the hardest ones to imagine wtf she's doing in her free time if she's not a rudie? (maybe it's just because i havent dedicated enough thought to her. i need to fix that though maybe in a better context than this one.) like if she's not doing graffiti and skating i feel like she'd STILL be doing stunts and shit? like idk parkour and dangerous tiktok challenges and stuff?

i HAVE NO IDEA for clutch. robs a bank and fucking dies idk man

jazz funnily enough in paradox is stated to have JUST been a regular speed skater until the death ball incident, after which she was just so done with this shit that she was like "whatever. im doing graffiti crimes now". maybe in this au shes the ONLY one whos actually a rudie

the robots probably just dont even get made.........

also almost none of these guys would even end up knowing each other, MUCH less be friends. also their names would be different bc they arent going by street names but im not giving every single one of htem legal names XD i dont even know when some of the guys i hc as trans would have transitioned in this timeline??

This evil-ass au sucks. Sorry.

i need to talk about the evil cursed-ass None Of The GGs Become Rudies au at some point i keep thinking about it. its so funny awful

[witchy-jadda]

rott spoilers ahead

so i’ve given myself some time to think about everything and try to process it all and here are some of my thoughts on trollhunters: rise of the titans...

- straight off the bat, i loved the intro. opening with blinky telling the story of what happened up until this point was incredible. i would have loved if they had circled back to this though (i saw someone else say it should have been him telling the story to jim and claire’s kids and i loved that idea!)

- i also liked that they didn’t waste time at the start, instead they just jumped right into the action which was fun.

- honestly, i thought jim’s plotline throughout the movie where he basically thought he was useless without the amulet was just really not fun to watch. i understand why it was there and it played into the climax but i really did not find it one bit necessary seeing as i felt that we have grown beyond that. i felt it was overused. we’ve been there before and jim is aware that he’s the trollhunter, amulet or not.

- douxie being so soft with nari was genuinely one of the most heartwarming parts of the movie. i feel that we were really robbed of so much potential with douxie in this movie though. we didn’t see nearly enough of him. it seemed that the writers were picking and choosing when to remember how powerful he is. switching with nari and connecting to her are two examples of when they actually used his power, but aside from that they just disregarded it a lot.

- and speaking of forgetting how powerful people are... i’m genuinely so hurt and let down over what they did to claire. do they not realise how powerful she is? did they just forget about her character arc? it sure felt like it. she got to use her powers a few times (connecting to nari, portalling the titan, etc) but mostly it felt like she was saying she was spent and therefore unable to do anything. she is so strong and so powerful, and that’s just so empowering - especially for young girls. and then it kinda felt to me that rott was reducing her to basically nothing more than jim’s love interest.

- okay another quick note, it kinda felt to me that krel’s potential was also pretty wasted? he barely did anything and i just think he deserved more too.

- ew okay i don’t even want to think about it but i know i can’t discuss rott without talking about the mpreg thing. seriously, what the fuck was that? at first, i thought it was going to be a joke. i thought aja and krel were gonna wind steve up and see how far they could go with making him think he was pregnant just for a little bit of comic relief. but then he was actually pregnant. and so i laughed, because even though it was dumb it was kind of funny. weird and unexpected, but kind of funny. but by the time the movie was over it just didn’t sit right with me. looking past the fact that it was just more of them making steve’s character into a joke, i couldn’t see the logic in giving so much time to that subplot when other characters (claire, douxie) and other relationships (claire and douxie’s friendship) were sidelined. maybe if he had gotten a whole season the mpreg thing could have been included as comic relief or whatever, but with such limited time i really don’t see the point of wasting so much time on something so pointless. 

- speaking of steve, i need to talk about creepslayerz... they really deserved more :( like i get that eli literally helped steve through child birth and then named one after him which was lowkey adorable but i loved their friendship so much and i was really hoping to see more of them. i was kind of hoping they’d get to do more as well. look i gave up on hopes of a romance long ago (even though i still really wished it would happen) but i hoped that at least we’d see some more of their friendship.

* by this point my brain has decided to forget absolutely every point i wanted to make... cue the brain fog (we don’t like her) and allow me to take a moment to read back and try to find my point again *

- i don’t think i can stress enough how much i loved the visuals in this movie. holy fucking shit it was just phenomenal. like wow. the art was absolutely fantastic and i’m really hoping for another the art of... book because i love the art of trollhunters and i feel that they could do with updating it to include the newer stuff. but yep, the animation quality was incredible and i don’t have a bad thing to say about it because just wow.

- speaking of art... a moment of appreciation for character designs. just wow wow wow. we love to see such intricately designed villains. we love to see growth in our other much loved characters. and the locations too? fantastic. beautiful. amazing. loved it.

- another moment of appreciation for jim. the hair. the scars. the injuries. the winter jacket. the fact that he looked a little older.... loved it. loved it, loved it, loved it. i cannot wait to spend hours pouring over reference pictures to draw them all.

- and claire... her armor being weathered and worn. her eyes!! her hair looked great as always. i just love her...

- nari nari nari... my goodness, her magic is so beautiful. i wish we got to see more.

- also, the jlaire moments were very cute. their kisses? so soft. they literally love each other so much. i adore them.

- what happened to the babies from the darklands btw? is not enrique just chilling in the lake’s house with a ton of babies? 

- barbara deserved better. i would have liked to see her and strickler happy.

- on that note, why the actual fuck did they think a few explosives would win against magic?? literal ancient magic and these dumbasses were like huh i guess we should blow it up. i’m sorry, what?? y’all are stupid.

* currently trying to think of every possible point that isn’t to do with the ending because i really don’t want to think about that yet *

- the whole thing with archie and charlemagne felt super unnecessary. like usually characters sacrifice themselves and it’s like sad and you can see the reasoning and stuff. but they literally could have gotten out. i really did not vibe with that. it felt like they just did that to leave douxie with no one.

- that trollmarket was beautiful though.

- speaking of trollmarket... they really restored the heartstone just like that? are you joking? i was not impressed at all. the heartstone was dead and gone, could not be destroyed. did they just forget that? half the shit in wizards wouldn’t have happened if the heartstone could have been restored. very pissed off by that. it was dead, that was it.

- okay back to jim... love that he pulled the sword from the stone. it was cute that it was a group effort, kinda would have preferred if it was just him but that’s just a me thing. and maybe me and my daylight tattoo are biased here, but excalibur is not half as pretty as daylight.

- not gonna lie, jim yelling come on trollhunters! kinda got me. i was very emotional watching this.

- i think the most in character jim moment of the whole movie was when he dropped excalibur, he didn’t have his armor, he was all alone and he decided to make a fist and fight the wizard/god with literally no weapon or means of defence. i don’t think y’all understand how much i love this dumb self sacrificing selfless boy. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, he is literally one of my most favourite characters of all time. i love him with all my heart.

- the armor!! wow wow wow. that was a fucking cool scene. beautiful.

- jim getting stabbed or whatever with that fucking spear thing nearly killed me.

- okay here goes... toby. my sweet toby. jim and toby’s friendship is one of my absolute favourites ever. my goodness. and toby getting in the van and going to save jim was incredible and such a toby thing to do. of course he would think of doing that.

- but like seriously... claire and douxie are so fucking powerful and they were both just like lol i guess we can’t do anything to help jim? i’m sorry what?? don’t tell me that claire wouldn’t go full on black and purple eyes and get herself up their to him. i just... i’m so bothered by the fact that they were sidelined y’all :|

- also, do not seriously try to tell me that aaarrrgghh!!! would let toby go on his own. he would have went with him. he would have followed him.

- literally as jim was falling the first thing that went through my mind was oh aaarrrgghh!!! is gonna run up and catch him.

- and while we’re on the topic of aaarrrgghh!!! why tf did they have such a build up that something was going to happen to either him or blinky for literally no reason? wtf

- aaarrrgghh!!! would not have let toby go alone!!! if he had been there, he would have protected toby, he would have saved him and none of that mess of an ending would have happened.

* ugh here’s the bit i was dreading... the ending *

- first off, i am choosing to ignore it.

- time stone? really? we’re... we’re gonna do this? literally one of the most original things i have ever watched is now - at the literal last possible minute - rip off another movie?? really?? whyyyy???

- i literally cannot express how much i hated it. it was so fucking unnecessary.

- he didn’t need to go back that far!!!

- i’m actually trying to block this out but i suppose i have to at least touch on it. jim would never ever put that burden on to toby. he just wouldn’t. before even looking at all of the other issues with toby getting the amulet, i need to say that. it just wouldn’t happen. he struggled so much with being the trollhunter, he wouldn’t put that on toby. 

- also toby literally never wanted to be the trollhunter?? he never wanted the amulet? he wanted to be a duke and have his war hammer and go on adventures with his best friend and his wingman and eat mexican food.

- okay so um i guess they all just forgot about unbecoming? cool cool cool.

- seriously though, was it not established many times that jim literally had to be trollhunter? and if he wasn’t it would be draal and everything would go to shit? did they just forget about that??

- having jim just decide to give toby the amulet literally takes away from the entire meaning behind jim getting the amulet and becoming the trollhunter. the amulet chose jim. merlin chose him. out of all of the creatures in the world, it had to be jim. he can’t just give that to toby!!

- and as much as i love toby, he would not last a day as trollhunter.

- and that’s not even beginning to mention all that jim erased by not becoming trollhunter. no father son relationship between him and blinky. they didn’t stop steve from picking on eli so no steve redemption and no creepslayerz. is he just going to allow enrique to be taken? toby will not have the same incentive to go into the darklands to save him if that’s the case. strickler will not show any sort of sentiment towards toby either. and then the big one...

- IS THAT FUCKER REALLY GOING TO ALLOW CLAIRE TO NOT GET HER POWERS??? WHAT???

- if jim isn’t trollhunter and the whole thing with enrique doesn’t happen then claire will never get her shadowstaff. let’s be real, strickler probably wouldn’t even need angor rot with toby as trollhunter. somehow i can’t see him making it that far...

- if claire doesn’t have her shadow staff then the whole thing with morgana won’t happen. she won’t destroy the shadow staff and then she will never develop her powers. would jim really rob her of that?

- okay i can’t do anymore, it’s too much for me now...

- i touched on this already in a separate post but i gotta say it again... i did not enjoy the destiny is a gift bit at the end. first of all, jim having toby find the amulet literally takes the meaning of that speech and his destiny away instanty. and second, i just could not stand hearing emile hirsch say the words that belonged to anton yelchin. it was just uncomfortable.

aaand i think i’m done. maybe i’ll have more later but i have a headache now from all of this.

[river-bottom-nightmare]

Nightwing #80 Review

woot woot i’ve kept it up for three issues lets gooo. i liked this issue more than the last one. there’s a lot of fanon dick characterization peppered in, but not so much that it puts me off entirely. also, i’m getting increasingly concerned about bitewing. but i did like tim in this one, very nice

look at all the blue and purple and pink. honestly at this point, i’m a broken record but come on come on come onnnnnnn. the blue and pink is very pretty though. this cover’s a bit offputting at first, and a bit spiraly, which i’m sure was the intended effect.

this is a genuine concern of mine. dick’s a vigilante, and he doesn’t have the same sprawling network and resources that bruce does. (even if he is a billionaire now, he hasn’t amassed the same collection of crime-fighting equipment that bruce has.) 

i’m not sure if he’ll be able to take care of bitewing. damian’s got plenty of pets, but alfred used to take care of them, and now bruce plus the rest of the batfam is taking care of them. as far as we know, babs only drops by occasionally, and the same goes for dick’s family and friends. will dick be able to give bitewing the love and time and affection that a traumatized puppy like her needs? i really hope so.

she does look adorable in this panel tho.

dick. richard. richie. baby. why are you shirtless.

you have scars upon scars. probably chemical burns. bullet wounds. weird fucking squiggly lines from knives that only psychos with blade fetishes use. no normal person has the body that you do. and you don’t think that showing up shirtless in front of the police is going to raise suspicion? you don’t think that the people accusing you of murder are going to look at someone who looks like they’re a fucking mob enforcer and go hmm that’s a bit suspicious?

put on a SHIRT jesus CHRIST it’s like you’re not even trying to hide your identity.

look at this pompous little princess demanding only the highest quality head pets i’d burn down latvia for her. (no offense latvians it was the first country that popped into my head.)

pretty boy pretty boy pretty boy pretty boy-

no seriously kudos to the artist here. his expression is so human i wanna cry. dick, right now, is sheepishly asking a question. he knows he’s not going to get into any real trouble, he knows that he’ll be able to talk his way out of or somehow maneuver his way off this mess. but he’ll play nice for the police, so he’s asking a friend for a favour, part self-condescendingly and part oh-well-what-can-you-do.

and his expression reflects that. rather than a stoic expressionless face most male comic characters have when asking someone for something (or all the time really), rather than the weird desperate supposedly “seductive” face that most female comic characters plus dick grayson have when asking someone for something (or all the time really), he’s making a face that i pulled like yesterday. or the day before that. it’s kind of silly, kind of casual, very much human. i like it.

thank god. proper (in character) acknowledgement for officer grayson. yea, fuck cops in general, but i like that they included this line.

obviously, he’s not talking about the actual criminals, he’s talking about the police force itself. the bpd was too corrupt, and dick realized that he wasn’t helping. not only does one clean cop not make a dent in an overall dirty force, but dick was putting his allies in danger too. not only that, but it wasn’t good for dick’s mental health either. he was spreading himself too thin, and surrounding himself with some of the worst of crime 24/7 did a number on him. dick’s got a history of self-sacrificing tendencies, and i’m just glad he’s not a cop anymore.

dick has a gotham rogues mug. they make gotham rogue mugs, and dick has one.

what kinda city looks at it’s frankly horrible crime history and long list of certifiably insane serial killers who are all still alive and actively committing war crimes and goes “oooooh yea imma put that on a coffee mug!” gotham, that’s who.

this isn’t important i just like how all of bitewing’s barks are blue

back straight, hand on his hip, cheerful smile on his face as he says he’s being accused for murder. love that for him.

they couldn’t have said “yea it’s complicated” in a better way even if they put the words “yea it’s complicated” right there on the page in bold red letters. literally all the love to the artists.

dick please. you’re KILLING ME what the actual fuck IS THAT???? WHY DO YOU HAVE A MUG OF THAT???

anyway nightwing collects novelty mugs confirmed.

this paneling is so beautiful. 

tim’s the focus, but he’s not the first thing you see. he’s placed in a way that forces the reader to drag their eyes all the way up the page in order to reach him. it us know just how high up tim is carelessly crouching, especially close to the ledge of the building too. i cannot think of a single better way to introduce a character, and this character in particular: you instantly know this is a version of tim with plenty of experience and training, is comfortable in his body and knows his limits, but still hangs onto that civilian awe of being in a high place and overlooking a brightly lit city.

absolute classic robin. i love it. 

this isn’t even that important but it made me happy. this is how you train surf.

you don’t crouch or bend over when you get to a tunnel, which is oddly enough what most people think (at least from my experience). you bend backward. that not only 100% ensures that you’ll make sure you’re low enough to make it through the tunnel (because you can see the top of the tunnel, unlike when you crouch or bend), but it also makes it easier to get up: all you have to do is push up with your arms into a bent stance, and you’ll be in a ready, moving position. from a bend or a crouch, getting up is more awkward and more slow.

on a meta level, i like that this creative team knows what they’re doing when it comes to the small, almost unimportant stuff like that, because it makes the action more real. (as real as you can get with a guy running around stealing hearts.)

on a in-universe level, it once again drives home both dick and tim’s experience and professional level skill.

regardless of who you side with in the “should tim drake be robin again?” debate, you gotta admit that tim’s rebirth robin suit is r a d as fuck. if i’m not mistaken, this is the same one he was wearing in 2019 young justice for a little bit? it’s cute and hella cool i like it.

remember what i said about human expressions? doesn’t happen as often to tim bc he’s a Child, but it’s still nice to note when someone humanizes him, too. (that’s why i love the duckboy panel so much lol.)

me, at first: that’s not a “good call” dick that’s just common sense

me, now: sprinkled throughout the entire comic we can see dick bending to tim’s instructions if only briefly, joking with him to keep the mood light while still maintaining a serious mood and retaining control over this particular outing. this implies that dick’s doing it intentionally, purposefully leaving places in his sentences blank and offering affirmations, in order to encourage tim and train him in things bruce might not necessarily touch on, such as social chameleoning and misdirection techniques and love/affirmation from a family member. dick is not only a loving and supportive big brother, but he never stops training his younger brother in better vigilante tecnhiques because he wants tim to be better than him. in this essay i will-

d o g g o

also bitewing is getting so many head pats today i’m living for it

look at him, standing on a telephone wire with ease. nice flex, dick.

also look at how he’s silhouetted. the moon’s full bright, bright enough that the sky around dick is light, too. (at least. i’m like 99% sure that’s the moon.) not like most batman comics, where it’s sometimes hard to distinguish bruce from the background, which is entirely on purpose.

gotham is a dark gritty city, and so is bruce. the two of them are one. bludhaven may be a bit of a mess, but it’s being portrayed in all these different shades of blue and purple and pink, that are all light enough that dick stands out from the background. he hasn’t been swallowed up by the city, and chances are that he won’t ever be. also, the colouring helps establish bludhaven as a city too. there’s still hope for it. the light colouring means that it’s not going to sink into a pit as deep as the one bruce wove gotham into. the whole point of this nightwing arc in particular is to turn bludhaven into a better place, and it’s (most likely) letting us know early on that dick is going to accomplish that. he’ll struggle, but he’ll do it.

so dick??? dick designed his escrima sticks with a situation like this in mind? he created his signature and most iconic weapon (other than his chatty mouth), with a built in feature that turns his escrima sticks into tim’s signature and most iconic weapon???? just so that if he and tim ever got into a situation where tim didn’t have his staff, dick could make sure tim had the thing that would give him an edge over anyone he was fighting??? he’s such a big brother oh my goddd.

also tim’s smirk in this is just *chef kiss.* a staff is something he can work with, a staff is something he wields like an extension of his arm, a staff is means that someone’s about to get their ass kicked because tim’s about to beat the shit outta them.

this is my new phone background.

they really made sure we remembered that hey, those first few months when bruce was grieving too much to be any sort of a mentor to tim and was still unwilling to properly train him to be robin out of fear that he would end up like jason, dick was the one who stepped up (once he got over himself and his own fears and hangups with bruce) and trained tim to be robin, trained him how to fight and flip and fuckin fly out there, all while changing his own style a bit to be the more experienced one in the partnership while still trusting said partner to hold their own, so dick and tim have a very unique and cohesive fighting style that makes it hell for anyone who fights them together, didn’t they?

[lazywonderlvnd]

Hi, if you are still taking prompts; A magically powerful Harry not noticing that his magic does things to make Draco happy. This can be pre-relationship or established relationship. Like it starts of with his tea being exactly as he likes and always the right temperature. Then evolves to rooms changing colour or weather changing or people being unable to invade Draco’s personal space due to an invisible barrier or something ridiculous. Btw Draco doesn’t notice as well.

anon.....you really killed me w this one. i’ve been so emo over this wyugeahrwiw might end up writing smth longer tbh bc this concept is literally the only thing that matters to me!!!!!!! i hope u enjoy i had so much fun with it ❤️❤️❤️

“Harry, you do it. Please.”

“No.”

“Please!”

“We’re fucking watching something, Draco!”

“So just pause it!”

Harry grabs the pillow on his lap and slams it onto the sofa next to him. Hermione can see dust rise in its wake. He pauses the telly. 

“Are you doing it?” Draco asks hopefully. Harry scowls at him. 

“Well you won’t shut up until I do, will you?”

“Definitely not.”

Harry disappears into the kitchen and Draco sits there looking smug.

“It’s kind of sick how you get off on bossing him around,” says Ron, his tone one of simple observation. His fingers are idly playing with Hermione’s hair, but she doesn’t think he notices he’s doing it. 

“If I’m not mean to him a few times a week I break out in a rash, Weasley,” Draco says blithely. “Besides, he makes it perfectly. I don’t know how he does it, it’s always exactly the right temperature and sweetness and all that. I s’pose his years as a house-elf for those Muggles gave him plenty of time to perfect the art.”

“You’re a twat,” says Ron. “And my mum makes tea better than him.”

“Well you’re just a pitiful little mummy’s boy, aren’t you, Weasley? We can hardly trust your opinion.”

“Hark who the hell’s talking,” Ron scoffs. “Least I’m not twenty-three and still calling my mum ‘mummy’ like the world’s biggest bloody ponce.”

Draco splutters but before he can retort Harry’s coming back into the room hovering four cups of tea that float placidly to each of them. Draco looks exactly like a satisfied cat as he takes his and Harry drops back down onto the sofa next to him. Not too close, but certainly not too far, either.

“Literally exquisite,” Draco declares after he’s taken a sip. Ron rolls his eyes.

“It’s just tea, Draco,” says Harry, and he grabs for the remote to turn the film back on. “You’re such a demanding little brat. Merlin’s fucking tits.”

But Draco looks happy and Harry looks suspiciously content as well. Ron turns to her and makes a silent gagging face. Hermione snorts and puts a finger to her lips. They’ve decided not to say anything yet.

*

“Wasn’t this place a lot … uglier last time?”

“What?” Harry says absently. He’s not listening — he’s got all his attention zeroed in on a stack of parchment he’s holding. They’d only barely dragged him along to lunch; earlier the captain of the English National Team had apparently owled him a great number of brand-new Quidditch plays and required Harry’s extensive thoughts and notes before their next practise, which was tomorrow morning. 

“Uglier,” Draco says emphatically, and Ron mutters something she doesn’t catch. “Remember? The walls were that tragic egg-yolk colour.” He shivers. Hermione thinks it might have been an honest-to-god shiver of revulsion. She also thinks she knows what’s happened, even though the extent of it surprises her.

“Maybe someone heard you whingeing and changed it,” Ron apparently can’t stop himself from saying with a snigger. Hermione elbows him hard and he shoots her a glare, mouthing, he doesn’t know!

Harry would usually be the one to take the lead and get them a table when all four of them go out to eat together but today he’s too wrapped up in his Quidditch plays, so Ron steps forward and does it, which makes Hermione’s chest flutter pleasantly. He’d blush down to his bones if she ever said it aloud but he’s quite capable of being a leader in Harry’s absences. 

“Whatever happened,” says Draco pointedly as they’re led to their table, “it’s a great bloody blessing, I was genuinely unsure I’d have the mental fortitude to survive another assault like that on my delicate senses. And, I mean, this —” he gestures to the walls, which are now an admittedly pleasing dark teal above a white trim “— is stunning. It’s my favourite colour.”

“Is it? So weird they picked your favourite colour completely by coincidence,” Ron says, and Hermione elbows him again. Draco notices nothing and neither does Harry, although he does finally set the plays aside once they’re seated at the table.

“Are you complaining about the wall colour again?” he asks drily. They would both be extremely displeased to know they sound like an old married couple. Draco snatches haughtily at the paper napkin on the table and unfolds it to place over his lap. The first time he’d ever done this at a regular, decidedly not upscale restaurant Ron had taken it upon himself to spend the entire meal adopting a posh accent to match Draco’s and saying things to the waiter like “Don’t you have crystal?” while holding up a glass cup full of Pepsi and then commenting “These aren’t real silver, you know” after making a show of inspecting the titanium utensils. 

“I can complain about hideous design choices if I want to,” Draco tells Harry with his nose in the air. “Thankfully they’ve rectified it this time.”

On the other side of the restaurant, Hermione sees two employees talking, one of them gesturing at the wall with utter bewilderment. She doesn’t point it out.

*

“Twelve o’clock,” says Ron, nodding past Draco’s shoulder. “Some bloke staring you down hard, Malfoy.”

Draco looks excitedly behind him, but what Hermione takes more notice of is the way Harry’s face falls a little. She can’t help but wonder if he even realises it’s happened. She’s almost certain he’s aware of his feelings for Draco even though he still hasn’t said anything to her (and she’s been waiting months now, the effort of holding her tongue growing only more difficult by the day, and she knows Ron’s always seconds away from shouting at him) but she doesn’t think he knows how obvious he is. Draco doesn’t seem to know either, but she thinks that’s because Draco feels exactly the same way. She’d have called them morons, but she remembers too well how long it had taken her and Ron.

“What the fuck, Weasley,” Draco hisses, turning back around with a scowl that makes Ron laugh and Harry perk up again a little bit. “He looks like he hasn’t washed his hair in weeks.”

“Now, now,” says Ron, “mustn’t judge books by their greasy covers.”

“Then you go shag him if you think he’s so fit.”

“Maybe I will,” Ron says airily, as if he really is considering it, and Hermione can’t help chuckling and kissing his cheek. Then his expression changes to one of wicked amusement, which makes all of them look round to see the bloke coming their way. Hermione glances at Harry to find that — oh yes, he looks flustered and vaguely upset.

“Hullo,” says the greasy bloke to Draco as he comes up beside him at their table. He’s really not terrible-looking, but if she’s learned anything about Draco in the last couple years it’s that his standards amount to models and Harry Potter, so this man has almost no chance.

“Hello,” Draco drawls, reminding her fiercely of his younger self at Hogwarts. “I’m not interested.”

“Right little narcissistic bugger, aren’t you?” the man says. And now, finally, he’s begun to look as revolting to Hermione as he’d done initially to Draco — a repellent personality can do that. “Maybe I just wanted to come and have a chat.”

“Then why aren’t you looking at any of the rest of us?” Ron asks, sounding halfway between amused still and a little put off.

“Can you leave, please?” Draco interjects, cringing away from the man encroaching slowly on his personal space. And suddenly, as he looks on the verge of antagonising Draco further, he shifts his feet and slips, landing right on his bum with a yell of surprise. All four of them get to their feet to see, but there doesn’t seem to be any liquid or even slimy food for him to have tripped on.

“The fuck ...?” the man says, getting back to his feet. But when he moved towards Draco, he only slips again, on absolutely nothing at all. Something clicks and Hermione looks at Harry: he seems as confused as anyone else (if obviously pleased).

She looks at Ron then, who catches her eye and lifts his brows like he’s thinking the same thing.

Draco’s suitor gets up once more and steadies himself, looking a bit dazed. Some deep animal instinct seems to tell him to stop trying, and with a wary glance at Draco he finally leaves.

“Well that was a bit of a fucking scene,” says Harry. Draco, coming out of his own startled daze, laughs.

“Yeah,” Ron says sarcastically, “wonder what could’ve possibly happened.”

*

“I really thought it was going to rain,” Draco mopes where he’s standing at the window. It’s grey outside but it definitely doesn’t look like rain and Draco appears so upset about it that Hermione actually feels badly, even though she’s quite glad for the clear weather. 

“Just shut the curtains,” Ron suggests from his place on the floor. He’s sorting through Harry’s collection of VHS tapes, trying to decide on a good Halloween movie. Not that he’s ever seen any of them, and Hermione suspects he’ll end up choosing whichever cover he likes best.

“It’s not the same!” Draco wails. “The thunder and lightning is all part of it, you uncultured pillock! The atmosphere is all wrong.”

“It’ll be just as good when we shut off all the lights and draw the curtains,” she assures him, but it doesn’t remove the look of disappointment from his face. It’s a pouty sort of thing that echoes the brattiness of his youth; she imagines a five-or-six-year-old Draco giving his parents similar looks when he wasn’t getting what he wanted.

 At that moment the front door opens and Harry walks in carrying two grocery bags, one of which contains alcohol, which Hermione can tell by the way the plastic is bulging around the cans.

“The fuck are you all doing here?” he says by way of greeting.

“You said eight o’clock, fuckhead,” Ron tells him without looking up. “But it’s fine, I’ve had time to pick a film and Malfoy’s had time to moan about the weather.”

“What’s wrong with the weather?”

“I wanted a storm!”

At that exact moment, a flash of lightning lights up the sky behind Harry where he hasn’t even closed the door yet. Seconds later a downpour begins, and then there’s a rolling crash of thunder.

Hermione’s eyes widen and once more she finds Ron’s gaze, who looks about as shocked as she feels. Draco, meanwhile, has his hands over his mouth and looks like a child on Christmas morning.

For the first time since his magic had begun picking up on Draco’s wishes and granting them of seemingly its own accord, Hermione sees Harry look suspicious. He peers behind him at the storm suddenly raging outside his house before slowly closing the door. When he turns back he looks directly at Hermione, who looks away quickly.

They set up the food Harry had gotten — all kinds of Halloween-themed sweets — and once everyone has their drinks (“Make mine,” Draco tells Harry, “you do it best”) and is comfortable on the two sofas in the room (Harry and Draco are, as usual, as close to each other as they can get without actually touching) they start the movie: The Thing, which Harry swears is one of the greatest horror films of all time.

Funny thing is, an hour and a half into it she looks over and, with a jolt, realises the two of them are kissing half-covered beneath a blanket. She elbows Ron, who positively beams when he notices.

“Fucking finally, dear sweet Merlin,” he whispers, the sound muffled by the continued rain and thunder. “I nearly hit him upside the head when he made it rain, are you fucking kidding me?”

“Shh!” Hermione hisses, though she’s smiling. “They’ll hear you. We’ll rag him about it tomorrow.”

A soft sound of laughter comes from the other sofa that Hermione identifies as Draco’s, and when she risks another peek after a moment she sees that Harry has a hand on Draco’s jaw, and that he’s smiling.

[waynedunlaptheorgandonor]

watched s11ep1

i will provide you with a quick review before i disappear back into the ether of twd avoidance

lots of spoilers under the cut. also i wrote way too much and i worked all night and haven’t slept so i didn’t bother to reread literally any of it, so it might be completely nonsensical, tho if you don’t expect that from me by this point idk whose blog you’ve been reading

enjoy:

hokay, first off, i’ll start by saying that i enjoyed it more than i expected to. i’ve been avoiding any sort of discussion about stuff, but my google algorithm is so fucked at this point that i still get recommended articles and stuff every now and then, so i was already pretty aware of what i was walking into, and was expecting it to be eh, but actually i prob enjoyed it more than i enjoyed the finale

(don’t get too excited tho, the finale was rly boring lmfao)

anyway

episode starts off with a tense scouting mission

it takes .005 seconds into the episode for caryl to exchange a look of longing, establishing that they are still having weird conflict and are both too fucking stubborn to do anything about it even tho they hate it desperately

i imagine that will continue for a while

rosita, kelly, carol, maggie, what’s her face with the bad hair, and lydia (i think that’s everyone?) lower down to some army bunker or something, where a bunch of walkers are taking a snooze, and the girls are very respectful of walker naptime, and do their best not to wake them up

obviously they eventually wake up, but i’ll get to that in a sec

as they’re tiptoeing through the walker tulips, there’s this split second where carol spots a machine gun, and looks at maggie with a face like, “can i plzzzz, i am mad horny for that machine gun,” but maggie tells her no. (i 110% expected her to defy orders and accidentally wake up all the walkers, but she actually behaved herself for once. well. mostly)

never fear, tho, after the girl gang collects a bunch of MREs they go back to wait for the dudes waiting up top to pull them up, and bc men ruin everything, one of the ropes break, and daryl catches it before it falls, but then a slow motion drop of blood falls on a walker’s face, and just like that, walker naptime is over, and carol uses her bow and arrow for two seconds before she is like “fuck this” and whips out the machine gun

yes, she is super hot using it

yes, daryl watches her do it

anyway, all the other girls get rescued, and carol is about to be pulled up, but bc she is a #girlboss, she first makes a beeline for one more crate full of MREs. daryl covers her while she gets the loot, and when she gets back up top they have another charged moment as carol hands him back his knife

just fuck already, jfc

titles!

cut to alexandria where everything is still not smilestimes

BUT, we do get to see uncle daryl run and hug rj and judith (and dog), and FUCKING HERSHEL JR, LIGHT OF MY LIFE is also there

istg, they could not have casted a better child, i a d o r e him

oh, and some friends of maggie’s show up too, idk

cut to a staff meeting where everyone is like, whomp whomp, we’re all gonna starve to death unless we figure out something quick

cue maggie going, “oh, i know where food is, but it requires me to tell you my tragic backstory, in case anyone didn’t watch my bottle episode”

she tells her dramatic backstory about all her friends getting slaughtered by the reapers for no apparent reason, and then she’s like “anyway, let’s go back there!”

no one thinks it’s a great idea, but a group of people decide to go anyway, including daryl and gabriel. rosita is super pissed that gabriel is going, and carol doesn’t go, probably partly bc it’s a shitty fucking idea, and also bc they have to keep caryl apart bc otherwise they’ll fix their problems ahead of schedule and they won’t be able to drag out the needless angst

daryl looks kind of annoyed that carol doesn’t volunteer to go 

bitch, i thought you wanted her to stop putting herself in the line of fire! make up your damn mind!

moving on

cut to a thunderstorm, where, if you look closely, you’ll notice daryl is wearing the STUPIDEST hat i’ve ever seen. just get an umbrella, jfc

for some reason negan is with them, bc ig he knows his way around washington dc, and no one in six years has bothered to figure out how to get around the city and/or get a map, and he is like “hey guys, maybe we shouldn’t try to walk in this fucking hurricane,” and everyone is like “FUCK YOU NEGAN, YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF US!!!” 

this will be a common occurrence 

but eventually daryl is even like “actually, it’s rly unpleasant out here, and my hat is mad stupid, can we go inside plz?”

so they go inside an old metro station, which is actually a rly cool cinematic choice. i rly like the idea, and they executed it rly well

speaking of executions

there are some fucking RULL CREEPY walkers. idk why they bothered me so badly, but they were what they at first assumed were corpses wrapped up in tarps, but turns out none of them had been properly put down, so they go through killing these rotted bodies that had supposedly been there since The Fall, and it’s very gross and cool

this entire time, btw, negan is like “hey, i know i’m a shitty person, but i have some rational arguments about why we shouldn’t be doing this right now,” and everyone is like, “FUCK YOU NEGAN, YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF US!!!” and he’s just like “god fucking damnit”

(i forgot to mention that at one point, when they’re headed into the metro station, negan is trying to warn ppl of the potential danger, and everyone is ignoring him, and he tries to talk to daryl, and daryl is like “fuck you, you think we’re BUDDIES?” and negan is like “oh, ok, so you’re gonna be like that too? fanfreakingtastic” and it’s very funny)

anyway. a fat monster zombie escapes its tarp at one point, and tries to eat some npc, and negan saves him, again is like “hey, anyone else realize that this is a FUCKING BAD PLAN?”, and everyone is like “we don’t care, you’re still shitty and we’re not listening to you, and you don’t actually care about random npc i would literally not be able to pick out in a lineup bc his face is so generic, you’re not the boss of us!!!”

it’s at this point that negan finally is like, “why am i even here? bc i know how to get around washington dc? do none of you have a map?” and i was like, “right?! that’s what i said!” 

it’s then revealed that maggie only brought negan along to murder him under the guise of “oops, he got hurt in the line of duty, it wasn’t my fault,” and daryl has this look on his face that says, “i seriously need to stop hanging out with lethal women bent on revenge bc it’s gonna give me high blood pressure,” and maggie has a badass moment where she points a gun she has for some reason at negan and is like “i have like, one shred of human compassion left inside of me, and if you keep pushing me i will fucking kill you without a second thought, so shut the hell up”

(in her defense, negan had just dropped glenn’s name to purposely antagonize her, which was rude as hell)

(for the record, i’m completely on maggie’s side here, but negan still is right that trapping themselves in a metro station is a bad call)

anyway, moving away from that briefly

i think this jump cut happens sooner, i don’t actually remember, but whatever who cares, point is, we get to the part of the show that actually matters, and that’s anything involving my love, juanita “princess” sanchez

and also eugene, yumiko, and ezekiel

they are being asked increasingly invasive questions by commonwealth ppl, some of which i wish they actually would of answered (what do they use to wipe their asses with?? surely toilet paper has long since become extinct)

zeke, who is so much more tolerable as a character now that he’s not larping as a king, has this incredibly weird and sort of sexually charged moment with a dude in an orange stormtrooper costume, where he’s like, “i bet you were an asshole cop back before The Fall, you stupid fascist, #fuckthepolice, mb literally? idk, this moment has a lot of pent up aggression that could easily translate to hate sex, it might just be the intense eye contact, but w/e, let’s just move along,” and then he has a coughing fit to remind the audience that he’s currently dying of cancer, and orange stormtrooper is like “lolz, loser, drink some water you dumb piece of shit”

cut to the wholesome foursome sitting at a picnic table in a guarded courtyard eating gruel, and yumkio, who finally has a personality, and princess are like “hey, this place fucking sucks, can we leave?” and zeke is like, “yeah, i met this orange stormtrooper who i think might be dtf and/or murder, so we should probably bounce”

but eugene is like, “but i want some hot stephanie ass, and also some bullshit excuse about how mb commonewealth will save alexandria” which, they left before things went super downhill, right? idr. it was after hilltop fell, but they don’t know alexandria got fucked either, if i recall? w/e, not important

two seconds after he says this, they talk to some people who are like “we’ve been here for four months, or maybe it’s been nine, i don’t actually remember, i’ve stopped processing the passage of time,” and the wholesome foursome takes this as a bad sign, tho that’s just the life i’ve lived as a night worker during a pandemic, so i was like #mood

but then they watch some guy get dragged away screaming to get “reprocessed” and eugene is like “ok, nvm, let’s bounce”

(my theory on what “reprocessing” is, is that they’re stuck in a room and have to watch hours and hours of customer service training videos on vhs from the 90s)

i definitely got my jump cut scenes mixed up bc i think the negan accusing maggie of a murder plot thing happened in between this scene and then the next commonwealth scene, but w/e, i’ll just finish what happens in the commonwealth arch

the wholesome foursome are trying to hatch a plan to escape, except princess, my love, is distracted watching some stormtroopers flirt, and the other three are like “wtf, dude, how can you even tell any of them apart?” and princess then tells them every stormtroopers backstory bc she is brilliant and pays rly close attention to shit, and the other three are like, “this is useful information, thank you for being an insane person”

their plan involves yumiko and eugene dressing up as stormtroopers and leading princess and zeke out of the place, which works fine actually, except on their way out they come across the Depressing Wall of Probably Mostly Dead Missing Loved Ones

they’re about to leave, when princess is like, “wait, yumiko, you’re on here, that’s weird huh?”

sure enough, yumiko  is on the wall, with a note from ig her sister 

the scene ends with yumiko going, “guys...i can’t leave...i have tragic backstory to unveil”

tragic backstory to be continued ig

back in murder metro town, npc and some other npc have stolen all the supplies, there’s a train blocking the track, and a horde of walkers are coming towards them, so things are not going fantastic

they horde is too big to take down, so they start to climb on top of the train car to get away

but dog runs away!

and daryl, being every pet owner ever, is like “gotta go get my dog, guys, try not to get killed while i’m gone, c u soon!” and he ducks under the train and disappears

#priorities

the episode ends with maggie climbing up the train car but getting grabbed by a walker and dangling off the edge, and negan is there and they have a lion king moment where maggie is like, “scar! help me!” and negan is like “long live the king, bitch” and walks away into the shadows, leaving maggie to a potential death

which, while i know isn’t actually going to happen, would be a really fucking funny move on the writers’ part

like, “look, lauren’s back! and now she’s dead, bet you didn’t expect that!”

anyway

my assumption is negan will actually end up helping her up or something, continuing his ambiguous morality bullshit that actually isn’t ambiguous bc he BEAT GLENN TO DEATH WITH A FUCKING BAT WRAPPED IN BARBED WIRE IN FRONT OF HIS PREGNANT WIFE

the maggie/negan arch is kind of dumb, but whatevs, i’ll tolerate it, as long as my boy glenn gets justice in the end

anyway, cue credits!

final assessment: good episode. i’m much more interested in commonwealth than the reapers, tho i am hoping that daryl’s personality-less ex turns out to be a monster killing machine with no conscience, that’ll be fun. princess is a gift from god. hershel jr needs his own tv show. needs more carol (and caryl)

the end! going back into my walking dead free chamber! see you next episode!

-diz

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

April 4th (Part 1) [Start of Arc]

[April 4th, Hot Rod Diner, Washington DC]

*It’s a relatively quiet morning in the Hot Rod Diner, an old stylish American dining establishment. However, the patrons of the café, as well as the staff, cannot enjoy a quiet breakfast, due to a noticeably loud discussion coming from one booth.

Stop!

Aw, come on, learn to take a joke!

I KNOW how to take a joke, it’s just that when a joke goes on for so long it starts to get annoying.

Who do I have to kill to get you to DROP IT!?

Alright! ALRIGHT! I’ll stop! It’s dropped, it’s on the ground, it’s away in the wind. Like a- like a little paper bag! *Whoosh!*

Good!

*The two pause their conversation as the dark-skinned woman finishes stirring the milk into her cappucino. In unison, she and the girl with the long hair and the hoodie begin to drink their respective drinks.

Seriously though, happy birthday.

UUUUUGGGHH!

GAHAHA! I’m kidding! I’M KIDDING!

You are...INSANELY annoying!

Hmph! So I’m told.

In all seriousness though, today really SHOULD be your birthday. How come it’s not?

Because that’s not the law of nature, Canzanilla. I was born in December, not April, so therefore, December is when my birthday is.

Yeah, sure, but...do you know what the date today is?

Yes, it’s The 4th of April.

Right!? How is it that FOUR Kaiden wasn’t born on the FOURTH day of the FOURTH month!?

Because, like I LITERALLY just told you, that’s not how nature works! You are born when you’re born.

They should’ve cut you out for today. Get you out a little early.

And they should’ve aborted you...

WOAH! Woah! You can’t talk about abortions, that’s illegal! Also, jokes aside that hurts!

Dude, I would die if they cut me out this many months prior, so it’s not as if your joke was any less crude.

But I guess I am sorry. Maybe I went a bit far.

I still think God or whatever’s in control of nature should’ve kept it consistent. Your sister was born on Feb 2nd, right?

Yes, but she’s the only one in our family with that gimmick.

*The woman, Four, swigs her coffee.

Besides, even if it was my birthday, I wouldn’t need you to play it up for me. I’m not into decorations, I don’t want presents, and I’m very on the fence about cake.

Oh come on, you love the cake at my place.

Yes, but I don’t go to your place for cake, I go there for coffee or some other such caffeinated drink.

Then why the hell are we here? Why are we in this dump instead of my place?

I think you know why.

*Four suddenly gestures out the window. The other girl follows the line of her gesture towards a high class looking building on the other side of the street.

Hm...now that I think about it, it’s around 12...

Oh, cool. Now I know the exact moment you decided to be a twat.

Hehaha! 

*The green girl suddenly downs her drink and stands up.

Let’s get truckin’.

Yep.

*The two girls stand up. As they do, they walk towards the counter and pass the other patrons, who shift in their seats to put as much distance between them and the girls as possible. The dark-skinned one licks her lips.

Mm-mm~ Tastes like sweet and salty goodness.

Tastes like I’m gonna be stuck with the bill, amaright?

Well, you said it yourself, it’s my birthday~

Oh, so NOW it’s your birthday, that’s interesting mio amico...

Heh.

Oi! Give us a check!

*Less than subtly, the girl boasts these words, and the people at the desk are quick to hand her the bill and take her money, desperately waiting for her to leave the diner.

Damn, this place really DOES suck. Talk about bad customer service.

I think you’re just jealous.

I think you need to fuck off.

*The two girls wait by the door and nod to each other.

Both: Let’s go kick some ass~

*They open the double doors in different, and yet similar manners. The dark-skinned girl, Four, slams the the door open with her hand, but the other girl roundhouse kicks it open. They alarm passersby on the street with the sudden burst, but they continue to casually walk across the street towards the building.

Red Velvet, right?

Huh?

That’s your favorite cake, yeah? That weird red one?

It’s not weird, it’s great. It’s like...I dunno...you know how a Rolls Royce is a super expensive, super high-class car? That’s how I feel about Red Velvet but like...The Rolls Royce of cakes.

Yeah, but a car’s still a car. Y’know?

*The two girls step inside the building. All goes quiet...but then all of a sudden...

*SMMMAASSHH!*

WOOOHOOO!

GO GO GO!

*The two colorful characters suddenly BURST straight through the buildings window! The green-haired girl is carrying an assortment of files and fliers underneath her arms, as well as holding a bag that seems to contain a lot of money. While the other is lugging around a huge metal safe! They run as fast as they can away from the building towards a getaway truck they evidently places beforehand. The dark-skinned girl gets in the front passenger seat and holds the safe, while the other tosses the bags and files into the back of the car, and then hops in the drivers seat. Wasting no time, the car screeches round the corner and the girl drives as fast as they can.

Is it in here!

All packed! I remembered this time, I swear!

*The dark-skinned girl smacks the dashboard in front of her, opening up a draw filled with an array of bottled liquids and chemicals. She takes a few, and then sets up a miniature lab on a pull-out desk in front of her.

Remember, drive carefully so I don’t spill any of this crap.

Not something I can really promise...

*She indicates to the rear view mirror, where several branded police cars are rapidly gaining on them.

Man, that was pretty fast.

Right, you focus on that. As for me?

Hey, you!

Huh? Wh-What?

No, not you, I’m not talking to you.

I’m talking to YOU, person reading the blog! That’s right, I can see ya’!

Now you’re probably wondering one, or all, of three things. What the fuck is going on? Who the fuck are these people? And are they fucking deranged or something?

I’ll bet you’re thinking right now that I’m some kinda supervillain, or I’m gonna be a threat. Well, that’s gonna have to depend on how you treat me and la mia famiglia!

Oh uh, that’s “my family” in Italian, in case you were wondering.

But I guess with that, I should introduce myself, for those who didn’t do any kinda research on me beforehand. I’m Maya! Maya Canzanilla!

And I know I look like I’m the guilty part, and that I’m just some kinda no good criminal, but you know what? Sometimes you CAN judge a book by it’s cover .You get me?

Heh. Yeah, sure do. You’re defo a wild card.

Say hello one and all to Four Kaiden!

Super Genius, Super Serious, not to mention Super Attractive! You’d couldn’t pay to see what kinda genius things she’s whipping up in her little kitchen! Like what she’s doing right now! Developing a highly potent acid to melt through the safe we’ve just snagged!

Also, side note...Today’s her birthday~

No! No it’s not! My birthday is in December! And-

Maya! Y-You’re about to run a red!

So? We’re on the run from the cops? What does it matter if we break traffic laws?

Yeah, but we might crash! 

Nah, we won’t. I got a plan. Look!

*Maya nods towards the side of the road, where someone is standing with a smartphone, looking back and forth between the lights and the traffic.

[Split in half due to length]

[akitokihojo]

Monster - Chapter 19

chapter index

“How far off are we talking?” Inuyasha asked, kicking out the fire as the rest of his team hurried to pack up camp.

“Ten miles, give or take.” Koga answered.

“How are you so sure it’s Hakudoshi?” Kagome asked next, strapping her bag over her shoulders.

“Anyone want to fill us in on what a Hakudoshi is?” Miroku implored with a bemused frown.

“A short, evil minion that we need to kill.” The wolf demon answered.

Blinking blankly, Miroku shifted his eyes over to Kagome for an actual explanation.

“Naraku created a group of demons. As far as we know, he had five. We killed one already, so now he’s down to four: Hakudoshi, Kagura, Byakuya, and Goshinki. Hakudoshi, we really don’t have a lot of information on other than he’s a child and has long, white hair.”

“He’s a child.” Miroku gasped.

“An evil one!” Koga feebly defended.

“Miroku, think of it as a design.” Inuyasha spoke. “Remember how we explained Naraku to you? How he’s an inorganic half demon? Anything he creates is essentially inorganic, as well. Child or not, Hakudoshi is still a demon of his that needs to go down.”

“Excuse me?” Koga sort of gaped at how that bit of information was so casually mentioned and how no one else was the least bit fazed by it.

“He’s just a little boy though, right?” Sango inquired sympathetically. “Isn’t there a chance he can be turned around and saved?”

“No, I think he’s a bit too far gone.” Kagome grimaced. “We had a friend that was sort of tortured into shape by Naraku’s guys. Hakudoshi was the main offender and was a fan of sharp objects.”

“Oh, okay. Evil child with a knife. Got it.” Miroku cringed, immediately throwing aside any further argument he could have thought of.

“The only one that’s worth saving is Kagura, but that’s a story for another time. We’ve gotta get going.” Kagome added.

“Hello?” Koga called, demanding their attention. “Inuyasha, what the fuck did you just say about Naraku?”

“Oh, that he’s an inorganic half demon? Yeah. You didn’t know that?” The hanyou shrugged sardonically. It was high time the secret got out to all that were involved since everything was so real now, but that didn’t mean he planned on sitting Koga and Sesshomaru down to have a nice, mature, informative conversation. That just meant he’d openly talk about it in front of them so that they could piece it all together on their own. It wasn’t like they could do much with it, anyway. He kept it under wraps for the protection of himself and everyone around him. Now, there was no further reason for it.

“Yeah, come on, dude.” Miroku arched a brow, playing along. He felt it was only his right since the guy just tried to punk him. “Even we knew that.”

“How the fuck… Inuyasha, what are you talking about? What does this mean?” Koga questioned seriously.

“It means he’s not a full demon like he wants everyone to believe. I can tell you’re looking for his weakness though, and I don’t know that. Technically, at this point, him being half demon is useless information. It’s nothing more than a fun fact. Half demon or not, he’s still a force to be reckoned with.”

“No, but half demons have specific traits about them, don’t they? They have a time of the month dedicated to basically emphasizing their weaknesses, right?”

“We turn human, yes.” Inuyasha tried not to grumble with his admittance. It was common knowledge. What wasn’t was the day and time it happened. “Naraku, doesn’t. I don’t exactly know what he transforms into, but it’s definitely not human, and potentially even more damaging to him. Be that as it may, do you know when that is?”

“Obviously not.”

“Then, it’s useless information.”

“How do you know this? Did you see it?”

“A long ass fucking time ago, I did. I was a kid; I wasn’t paying attention to the phase of the moon. Unless you know where he is and want to camp out every fucking night outside his place to wait and see if you miraculously feel his demonic energy die off, I’m going to have to repeat, this is all useless information now. It serves as nothing more than a stab to his ego.”

“Dammit.” Koga hissed. He was hoping that since it was new information to him, it’d be something they could grasp onto and utilize in the future, but the mutt was right. No one knew where Naraku was hiding, and camping out was obviously out of the question. Not to mention, a monster like that with the pride he harbors would take extensive efforts to protect himself during his moment of incapacitation. As quickly as he’d clung to the hope, the wolf demon was going to have to drop it. “Can you guys keep up while running? We should head out.”

“Kagome, get on.” Inuyasha kneeled, securing her rear as she climbed onto his back. With a little hike up, he was set to carry her at a decent speed.

“Kirara, let’s go.” Sango firmly ordered, and the small cat demon by her side let out a little meow, hopping into an open space as she transformed into her larger, saber-toothed version.

“Uh, there are things you don’t see every day, and there are things you see that make you think you took a little too much of Kaede’s good shit. What the fuck is that?” Koga pointed to the large cat demon, beyond perplexed.

“Kirara.” Sango replied nonchalantly, jumping on the demon’s back with ease. Miroku followed, not quite as skillfully, but not as sloppily as he used to either. “She’s my cat.”

“You’re not high, buddy.” Miroku grinned. “This is not an illusion.”

“Kagome, you’re from a weird ass village.” He shook his head, heading off in the direction he came from as he led the squad forward.

Koga had had to slow his pace down a bit since he knew he ran faster than the average demon and he didn’t want to lose his new comrades, but he was glad to hear no complaints from anyone. In fact, it was him that ended up doing the complaining. By the time they reached the fork where he’d left Sesshomaru, the high and mighty dog demon was nowhere around. As fruitless as it was to even call out for him, given his scent and aura weren’t in the immediate vicinity, the wolf demon still found himself audibly searching.

“Let me get this straight,” Inuyasha began, safely setting Kagome back down to her feet. “You told Sesshomaru to wait for you?”

“Yeah.” Koga frowned.

“And, you actually expected him to listen?”

“He said he would!”

“Did he say he would or did he grunt?”

Koga paused as he recalled the conversation with Sesshomaru, realizing it was the latter that he’d received. “Fuck!”

“Who’s Sesshomaru?” Miroku asked after climbing down from Kirara.

“Inuyasha’s older brother.” Kagome answered.

“Half brother.” Inuyasha corrected.

“They don’t get along.” She continued with a grimace.

“From the smell of it, he’s long gone.” The hanyou mentioned, his nose in the air to gather the area. “He went right. We’ll go left. There’s no use in you trying to catch up with him, so just come with us.”

“What happened to no teaming up?” Koga meagerly mocked, barely putting any effort behind his deriding tone.

“You can come with us, you can stay behind, or you can seek out the imp fucker. I don’t care. I was just giving you another option.” Inuyasha rolled his eyes, leading the way toward the left route.

“Alright, alright. No need to beg, Inuyasha. I’ll help you out, but only because you asked so nicely.”

Inuyasha barely bit back his groan, his head falling as he kept walking. He was going to regret this, wasn’t he?

“Koga, you never answered my question from before.” Kagome said, jogging a little to walk beside him as they all continued down the path. “How do you know this is Hakudoshi? Didn’t you guys say the underlings all give off the same scent as Naraku?”

“Oh, yeah. They do. We caught something feint and followed it. You’re not gonna like this, but we ended up coming across a house at the edge of the woods -“ Koga paused, pointing behind them to the West. “And, everyone inside was…”

“Dead?” Miroku attempted to finish for him, wondering if that was the word he was going for.

“I mean, yes, but a little more than that.”

“How can you be a little more than dead?” Sango asked.

“It was gruesome, okay? The bodies were mangled. It was an entire family torn to shreds. The smell of Naraku was strong there, so we followed it out. We got all the way to this path here, and the scent of him went down both ways. Hence, why I came and found you. That way, no matter what, more ground is covered and we can hopefully corner the fucker. Sesshomaru was adamant that it couldn’t be Kagura, Byakuya doesn’t look like the type who’d want to dirty his nails doing something like that, but who’s the one we discovered has a thing for torment? Hakudoshi.”

“You cannot possibly be that stupid, can you?” Inuyasha gruffly asked, abruptly stopped in his tracks as he spun around. His brows were furrowed and his lips turned down in disapproval. “This is most likely the biggest trap anyone has ever willingly walked into.”

“No, that was definitely considered.” Koga plainly responded. “But, it’s a chance we have to take. And, one you readily hopped on board with without any further information.”

“Because, I decided to trust you for once. A big mistake on my end, clearly.”

“So, if you knew it was potentially a trap, you’d let it all slide and allow him to get away?” The wolf demon challenged.

“I would have taken a moment to establish a plan.” Inuyasha scowled.

“Hakudoshi could theoretically lead us to Naraku. Sesshomaru and I already came up with a plan. Cover more ground and pin him.”

“You’re forgetting one major thing here, Koga.”

“Goshinki.” Miroku concluded. It was the only name he’d heard that hadn’t been considered.

“Right.” Inuyasha assertively confirmed. “That’s a creation we have literally no information on, and you two are going off of assumptions. Assumptions that could get us all killed.”

“What’s happened to you, Inuyasha? You used to be so carefree and reckless.” Koga teased. “Now, all of a sudden, you’re rational and want to put as much thought into everything possible? Why’s that?”

Inuyasha didn’t answer. His jaw clenched tight, and his amber eyes pierced through Koga’s blue irises.

“Oh, got it.” The wolf laughed, patting Kagome’s shoulder. “It’s because your sweetheart almost died, right? Well, don’t worry. I’ll be right here to save her again if anything happens.”

“You son of a -“ Inuyasha ground out, stopping himself before he could throw a punch at him.

“Koga!” Kagome pushed his hand off of her.

“Kagome, what?” Miroku demanded, marching forward.

“Goddammit.” She grumbled before turning to him. “Look, there was an incident, but I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

“Naraku’s puppet kicked my ass; I told you that already.”

“You didn’t tell me it’d almost killed you!”

“It’s not imperative knowledge, Miroku. It happened, it’s done, I’m okay, so let’s drop it.”

“What happened?” He repeated more sternly.

She hesitated. She didn’t want this to make her cousin worry more, which was why she’d chosen to never include that tidbit of information in the first place. It wasn’t necessarily her most prideful moment, either. It was terrifying. For she and Inuyasha. Bringing it up would help no one, and would ease the pressure on no one’s shoulders. Still, Miroku pierced her with his indigo stare, and she felt compelled to give him something.

“He tossed me off of the mountainside and into the river after the heavy rains had filled it. Koga saved me.”

Miroku could say nothing, his hand flying to rub the tension from his forehead as he closed his eyes. This was why she didn’t want to tell him. What good is it doing? It seemed to only be reinforcing his stress and the longer he was silent, the heated sighs leaving his nostrils, the more uncomfortable she was becoming. She could only hope he was taking this long because he was processing the information and throwing it away. He got what he wanted, there was nothing anyone could do to change it, and now the best thing to do was to let it all go.

But, then his dark blue eyes transferred to Inuyasha. “I thought you’d said she’d been safe with you.”

“Hey!” Kagome quickly shouted, though she didn’t immediately regain his attention. Nevertheless, she spoke. And, she spoke powerfully. It was like she could feel the admonishment sitting heavily in Inuyasha’s chest, and she wasn’t about to allow that to overtake him again. “It is not his fault! My safety is in no one’s hands but mine, so don’t act like I need bodyguards standing at every side of me! I am not fragile, you know I’m not fragile! I know it upsets you that you weren’t there, Miroku, but that’s the thing! You weren’t there! You don’t know how it all went down! So, don’t blame Inuyasha, because you don’t know how hard he was trying to save me!” Finally, his look had shifted back to her, and it seemed his frown became something less angry and hinting more on the remorseful side. “Redirect it towards me! Ask me what I had done wrong! I can list everything! I was too scared, I let my emotions get the better of me, I wasn’t strong enough, I hesitated - I can go on! But, you’re not gonna do that, are you? If you aren’t going to blame me, then I can guarantee you that it’s not going to make you feel better to place the blame on anyone but Naraku, so just drop it! It happened, it’s done! Let it go, Miroku!”

Swiftly, while the heat still bubbled in her core, Kagome turned around to face Koga. “And, you! What was that? Were you just trying to gloat because you didn’t like that Inuyasha opposed you!? Grow up!”

“I - I didn’t know that not everyone here was aware of what had happened.” Koga feebly defended.

“No, you just didn’t think before you said anything! You were throwing whatever you could out there to get under his skin! If you want to tag along, you need to learn to communicate better, understand!? Work with us or go find Sesshomaru!”

Then she turned to Inuyasha, sighing out some heat and allowing her glower to relax a little before speaking to him. He was innocent, he didn’t deserve her temper. So, with one exhale, she pushed as much infuriation from her being so that she could continue semi-reasonably with him. “I don’t really think that there’s any way we can come up with a plan for this. I think the best thing we can agree on is to be on high alert. Expect the unexpected. Or, did you want to turn around?”

“No, you’re right.” Inuyasha agreed.

“Okay.” Kagome breathed, though she faced the others in challenge. “Anyone else want to say anything?”

The group was quiet, and she’d noticed Koga’s tail drooped almost fearfully, his azure eyes on the floor and away from her. Good. It was immature of him to bring up her near death experience anyway; he should be ashamed of himself. He didn’t just cause Inuyasha to recoil, but gave her, her cousin, and Sango grief in doing so, as well. What an idiotic move.

“Great. Then, let’s keep going.” She concluded, turning around on her heel and walking forward at a quick pace. Everyone else, though, had to stay put for a quick breather.

“What did I tell you about pushing her?” Sango asked Miroku, coming forward to give him a half-sympathetic rub on his arm.

“Yeah, I know.” He grimaced, turning to follow after his cousin so that she wasn’t wandering off alone. “I’ll go calm her down.”

Inuyasha pinched the bridge of his nose. “The answer you were looking for is, I’m not sixteen, seventeen years old anymore, Koga.” He sighed. “But, it does also help to have someone else to consider when making your decisions. You should try it sometime.”

“That was terrifying.” Koga admitted.

“Yeah.” Sango laughed, her cat demon companion following her forward. “That’s what you get.”

Kagome could hear the footsteps approaching, easily identifying the gait as Miroku’s, and as soon as he was close enough, she glanced over her shoulder at him. “I’m sorry I left home without telling you, and I’m sorry if that felt like betrayal, but can you please try to get over it?”

“Well, that was blunt.” He muttered. “I wasn’t betrayed, Kagome. I was worried sick. Look, stop for a second.”

“No, because then the others will catch up and I don’t want them to overhear us.”

“Okay, fine, fair enough. Just try to look at it from my point of view. Please. Our entire lives, I’ve spent looking after you. Not just after I moved in when dad and uncle died, but always. I was the one who gave you the boost on top of the counter to get the cookie jar, and then helped you down. I was the one who put a bandaid on your knee when you tripped and fell. I was the one who stood in front of you when the henchmen came to our village. I know you don’t need protecting, but I’m your older brother. Whether you need it or not, I want it for you. I like to know that you’re safe, and when I don’t, it scares me.”

“That’s very sweet, but it also sounds like you’re saying if you weren’t there to monitor the situation yourself and something went wrong, you’re going to be judgmental about it.”

“How did you get that from anything I just said?”

“‘I like to know that you’re safe, and when I don’t, it scares me.’”

Miroku grimaced. “That wasn’t supposed to be turned against me.”

“I don’t know what you want from me, Miroku. I’ve said I was sorry like ten times already. I can’t go back to two months ago and change my mind, and even if I could, I wouldn’t. You can be mad at me all you want, I completely understand, but can you please try not to take it out on Inuyasha?”

“I didn’t take it out on him. I asked him a simple question.”

Kagome stopped walking then, pinning him with a stare that read right through his weak facade.

“O-okay,” He babbled awkwardly. “So, it was less simple and more a question that put him on the spot. I met the guy yesterday, Kagome. I don’t know him yet, so if he’s telling me he’s ensured your safety but Koga’s telling me you almost died, I feel like I have the right to -“

“Be judgmental?” She interjected, walking again.

“No.”

“He never said that, anyway. He’s contributed to my safety, but no one can ensure anything. Especially out here. You said it yourself last night, you and Sango have been through the wringer, as well. How many times have you guys been really hurt to the point where you needed to lay low?”

He bobbed his head in a small motion. “A couple times.”

“Right. It’s impossible to know what to expect outside of the boundaries of home, and we’ve all had to learn that the hard way. I’m not asking you to be his best friend, I’m asking you to take common sense into consideration, and to think before you react. You cant control what happened in our separation, and you just need to come to terms with the fact that I’m fine. I know you want to protect me, and I sincerely appreciate it. I do. I want to protect you too, which was why I suggested you two go home. But, you made your choice, and as much as I wanted to fight you on it, I respected it. It’s not like you’re blind to the craziness we’re dealing with; I’m sure you’ve gotten a pretty good taste of the morbidity out here. All I’m saying is, what’s done is done. Let it be done. Stop trying to make up for lost time, and just be with me now.”

“Okay, okay, okay. I get it. I’m sorry, but I’m also not sorry. I didn’t want to upset you, but it’s sort of shocking to find out you’d almost died. You can’t blame me for responding in a manner that wasn’t exactly the most positive.”

“In my defense, you weren’t supposed to find that out.” Kagome sighed. “I’d wanted to keep that from you, and clearly for good reason.”

“Why? Why wouldn’t you want me to know that?”

“Because, that information only hurt you, Miroku. Are you telling me it’s a good thing you know now?”

“Okay, I see your point.” He finally relented.

“It’s not like I’m trying to keep secrets from you or offend you in any way. I’m just keeping my business on a need-to-know basis.”

“I understand now. I do. Is there anything else I need to know?” He gave a crooked grin to try and lighten the mood.

Kagome heard the footsteps of the rest of their group coming around the bend not too far behind them now, and she peeked over her shoulder to make sure Inuyasha wasn’t in sight. Still, to be respectful of his sensitive hearing, she chose to keep her voice low. “Yeah. The day I’d almost died, it was really hard on Inuyasha, too. He was scared he’d lost me. He’d felt like he’d failed me. So, what you said - salt in the wound, Miroku. Not cool.”

“Oh. Ouch.” His smile stiffened. Faltered. “My bad. I can’t even apologize to him, though. I take it from the way you’d whispered that I’m not supposed to know.”

“Yup. Just keep it in mind for the next time you want to act like a tough guy. You don’t know the full story. I know that’s what’s bothering you, but handle it.”

“Are you saying I’m not tough?”

Kagome stopped walking and analyzed the size of her cousin’s biceps, teasing him by pursing her lips disappointedly as she pinched the muscle. The flicker of her brown eyes up to his said it all and Miroku gasped.

“Is this what I get? Is this the treatment I get because I care about you?”

“No, it’s the treatment you get because you’ve got puny arms.”

“The audacity! You’re small, too!”

“Miroku, she stabbed a guy in the groin with an arrow yesterday. I wouldn’t say that if I were you.” Sango chimed as they all appeared down the trail.

At hearing that, Koga’s eyes went wide, aghast, and he swiftly spun around on his heel mid-step to head back in the direction they’d come in. He’d been the most recent to piss her off, so it was evident he was the one she’d have no problem turning on if he spoke out of pocket again. He’d much rather head out to find Inuyasha’s brother than stick around to potentially share the same fate as arrow-dick-guy. Before he could take another step though, Inuyasha snagged the back of his vest, dragging him along.

“Keep going, wolf. She’ll only turn on you if you pretend to be alpha.”

“Inuyasha, I am alpha. I’m literally the alpha wolf of my pack.” He murmured unnervingly to the mutt.

“I know.” He smirked. “I want to see what happens.”

“Uh,” Inuyasha heard Kagome up ahead, noticing she’d stopped walking, she and her cousin facing off to their right. From his vantage point a little down the path, he couldn’t see what they were gazing at, but he could tell there was a break in the trees right where they stood. “It’s a cave.”

“Do you sense anything?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

She was right. The scent was feint, but Naraku’s trail ended here and went inside. He could feel demonic energy, but what was disconcerting was, he couldn’t pinpoint just how dangerous it was. Even worse, from outside of the cave, he felt eyes on him. Eyes he felt would only peer harder the moment they went inside.

“You got anything to help prepare us?” Sango asked. “We haven’t faced anything belonging to Naraku yet. How strong are we talking?”

“That sword on your hip,” Inuyasha pointed. “It’s not just there for show, right?”

“No. I’m highly skilled with it.”

“Good. You’ll find it’s a valuable asset to keep you alive then. Other than that, all I can say is to stay vigilant. If Koga or I tell you to back up, you back up. We tell you to get down, you get down. Understand?”

“You two went from arguing to playing co-leaders?” Miroku asked with an arch of his brow.

“You got heightened senses?” Koga asked. “You got keen instincts?”

He scrunched his nose in regret of his remark. He was on a roll today. “No, but I’ve got nice hair and great listening skills.”

“Wonderful. Then, you’ll be just fine.” The wolf remarked with a wink, bravely leading the way inside.

“Hey, you okay?” Inuyasha checked, grabbing Kagome as he sort of forced her to walk slower and stick behind everyone with him. His arm wrapped around her shoulders as he pulled her closer to kiss her temple, her stride falling in line with his.

“I’m fine.” She dismissed. “Sorry for what he said back there.”

“Don’t be. You still mad?”

“Nah, I was more frustrated than anything. I get where he’s coming from, I just don’t know how to make everyone happy right now.”

“Don’t worry about making everyone happy, kid. He’s spent over sixty days worried about you. By now, it’s almost a learned behavior. Show him he’s got nothing to worry about. Show him what you’ve got. Just like you did with me.”

The advice made sense. It made a lot of sense. Miroku had always stood in front of her, shielded her from so much while growing up, so simply telling him no one needed to do that anymore wasn’t going to be as effective as showing him what she’d learned she could do. He hadn’t been there to see her develop into the conjurer she now was, so his absence went both ways. He was going to have to drop his need for control, and she was going to have to demonstrate her formed abilities.

In reply, she smiled and nodded, glancing up to the hanyou in appreciation. Kagome gave a little perk of her lips to silently request a kiss while he was still so near, and he grinned, leaning down to quickly give her what she’d wanted.

Inside the cave, it was dark. Ominous. Inuyasha was right, he felt closely watched. Almost studied. He jogged ahead to catch up with Koga, the hit from his boots against the cavern floor echoing off the surrounding walls.

“You feel that?”

“Yeah.” Koga agreed, blue eyes searching for the culprit. There was nowhere for anyone to hide, though. Not so close to the entrance at least. The only way to discover the source, he felt, was to delve deeper, but deeper was where it would definitely grow increasingly dangerous. A turn of events they were prepared to expect. No matter what, Koga didn’t like the feeling swimming in his gut. “Come out of hiding! You wanted us to follow you, right!? Well, here we are!”

The wolf demon’s loud voice bounced off of the walls, repeating down the chambers the cave harbored, but no one replied. No one came out from behind a rock, or a nook in the siding, no one approached, no one was there. Except someone was. Someone had to be. This was Naraku’s scent, there was no mistake of that, but for some reason, the demonic aura was so engulfing, it almost felt like they were inside of a demon, itself.

“Well, if they didn’t know we were here before, they sure do now.” Inuyasha remarked dully.

“We give off demonic energy, ourselves, dipshit. Of course, they knew we were here.”

With a roll of his amber eyes, Inuyasha trudged on beside him, remaining observant of their surroundings as they traveled through the tunnels. The deeper they walked, the more sinister the feeling became. It was like wading through a sludge of demonic energy, and that sludge was toxic and thick, almost entrapping. Still, there was no way to pinpoint the source. It was all around, and he was trying to figure out the direction of a stronger pull, but he couldn’t.

Kagome fell behind. Just slightly. Out of nowhere, a very subtle dizziness began to hit her, but she didn’t want to worry anyone. She hadn’t had much water today, so maybe she was a bit dehydrated. It wasn’t bad at all, so there was no need to bring it up or ask for a small break. Maybe it was the energy of the cave. It was putrid, that was for sure. Definitely similar to what she felt when Moryomaru was near. Vile and rotten.

That had to be it. It was just overwhelming. Kagome tried to blink her slight case of vertigo away when the tiniest ache in her head pinched right over her eyes. No one else was reacting, though. Were they not affected by this? With a deep breath and a thick swallow, she pushed it all aside. If the demons of the group, more sensitive than she, could go forward, then Kagome could, too.

The further they went, the worse it got. She found herself squinting to see straight, tensing her throat so her pained sighs wouldn’t alert anyone. Her head wasn’t consistently throbbing, but came in waves. Not even quick waves. In fact, she couldn’t grasp the pattern, sporadically coursing through and causing Kagome’s brow to crease and her nose to crinkle each time. Again, she tried to gather if anyone else was having adverse effects to the atmosphere. Koga and Inuyasha seemed relatively uncomfortable but that was the extent of it, Sango and Miroku appeared fine, and Kirara had reversed her transformation to perch in her owner’s arms. Then, Kagome’s vision blurred momentarily, and her fingers twitched. What was wrong with her?

As much as she didn’t like it, she was going to have to say something. This wasn’t going away. Something was off. She was feeling a haze drifting over her, and it almost seemed like it was legitimately clouding her vision now. Kagome opened her mouth to gather Inuyasha’s attention, but her voice didn’t seem to work. Her body stopped as they all kept going, though she hadn’t told it to. Her brain was sending signals to her legs to keep walking, to her mouth to speak, but her command seemed to be meaningless all of a sudden.

And, when she blinked that time, she opened her eyes to see the bars of a cage before her. It was pitch black all around, not a sound to be heard, not a person in sight. No longer was she dizzy, and her head pounded no more. To her right, her left, beneath her feet, and above her head, she was surrounded by metal that sealed her in. The bars were cold and didn’t budge at all when she thrusted her bodyweight into it, trying to shake the lock free.

The shock to go from behind her group to wherever the hell she was now in a split second had her shaking, her lungs pumping as a panic sprung over her. She called for Inuyasha, Miroku, Sango, Koga, but no one answered. Her voice merely echoed in the darkness she was trapped in, the rattling of her cage from her forceful jerks against the bars hitting her ears over and over as the sound bounced off of walls she couldn’t see.

When she heard someone speaking, Kagome held her breath. Ice pebbled her skin. The voice was that of a child’s, a young boy’s, yet it held the underlying hint of menace. It was like she could sense the smile he wore, the enjoyment on his tongue, but he wasn’t talking to her. What he was saying, it didn’t make sense.

Inuyasha felt a spike, and both he and Koga stopped immediately. Ominous energy no longer filled the air. It was focused now. It was heavily concentrated in one spot. Behind them. The hanyou turned around to scour the open area they’d reached deep within the cave, spotting no one that didn’t belong, but then his stomach unexpectedly sank. It dropped so low, he thought he was going to be sick. The threat they were feeling, it was coming from Kagome.

She stood there, her hands raised up as she steadily moved her fingers one-by-one, her expression blank. He could hear the smallest mumble coming from her lips, but what she was saying, even he couldn’t make out. A sense of dread was overcoming him. Why was he feeling this? Even Koga seemed struck, confounded, saying nothing, but instead, actually taking a step away. The evil, it was growing. Evolving.

Miroku and Sango had turned to look, and Miroku was quick to notice something was wrong with his cousin, but as he went to step forward, Inuyasha hastily reached for his collar, pulling him back.

“Kid?” He cautiously asked. Kagome didn’t even look up from her hands. “Kagome?”

After a moment, she sighed and shook her head, her dark tresses fluttering around her shoulders. She made a few more subtle sounds from her mouth, the only clear word Inuyasha gathered being, “testing.” Otherwise, it was almost like she was learning to speak, clicking her tongue once or twice to discover how to make audible noise. Her brown eyes wandered around the large cavern, blinking as if to adjust to the dull light in the cave, panning over them, up, and then coming back to land on him.

“Kagome.” He tried again, this time more seriously. His heart was pounding as it would in the face of an enemy, his instincts were ready for an attack, but everything felt wrong. This was Kagome. This was his Kagome. He wasn’t supposed to feel this with her; it was all wrong.

Her plush lips parted, and a breathy, “huh,” was released. Her voice was high, sweet, and a timbre she rarely used.

Inuyasha let go of her cousin, knowing he was staying put now, and his fists clenched at his sides. Worse, Tessaiga began to quiver in its sheath, calling for his attention. It only did that in dire situations. It only asked to be released when he neglected to recognize it needed to be wielded for his own protection. It was wrong. It had to be malfunctioning because of the weird aura.

“Oh,” She sighed again, beginning to speak more clearly from then on. “There it is. Finally. That was tough - she’s a tough one.”

“Kagome -“ Sango tried.

“That’s not Kagome.” Inuyasha said, cutting her off.

A smile began to curl at her lips, and it scared him. It scared Inuyasha. It was crooked, arching more in one corner before it expanded on the other end, and her tongue tipped out between her teeth in a playful manner that made his blood go cold. That wasn’t Kagome’s smile, that wasn’t the grin he loved so much. Even Miroku twitched agitatedly at his side, stepping away before he looked at him with disturbance hindering the glow in his eyes.

“What’s wrong with her?” Miroku asked.

“What?” Kagome leaned her head to the side. “Don’t you recognize me…?” Her voice trailed off at the end as she nibbled her bottom lip. “Miroku?”

She seemed unsure of the name she spoke.

“Or, are you Miroku?” She asked, pointing to Koga, ending with a frustrated groan as she tapped her head. “Hang on, it’s a little jumbled in here. She wont let go just yet.” A few more taps. “Come on, lady. Let it go. Ah, no, I was right. Miroku.”

“What’s going on?” He reached, jaw taught.

“And, you’re Koga.” She pointed again to the wolf demon, completely disregarding the question. “Which obviously makes you Inuyasha, and you’re Sango. Got it.”

“Who are you?” Koga asked, stoning as he nobly squared himself.

“I’m Kagome.” She giggled.

“Who are you!?” Koga repeated in a lethal growl.

“Woah. Someone’s testy.” Her smile shifted to a wry smirk. “What are you so upset for? I haven’t done anything yet.”

“Don’t make me ask you again.”

“Or what? You’ll choke me out? Kill me? Look at me, pal. Whose body am I in? If you come at me with those claws of yours, it’s not me you’ll be touching. Come on, use your brain.”

Koga didn’t rebuttal, clenching his jaw and slanting his eyes dangerously, and her gaze bounced around to gather the discomfort written over all the others’ faces. Inuyasha, in particular, seemed the worst off. His hardened features screamed his seething anger, but his golden irises communicated something much different. Something more desperate.

With a grumble in the back of her throat, one that was small and held the attitude a young teenager would, Kagome rolled her eyes and lolled her head slightly, a small stomp being given from her right foot. “You guys are no fun. I’m Hakudoshi. Duh. Who the hell did you think I was?”

“So, this is what you can do? Mind control?” Koga glared.

“Way to simplify it. Don’t do me the dishonor.” Hakudoshi gestured to his entire self inside of Kagome’s body. “This is much more than mind control. I have control over her heart, brain, soul, you name it. Kagome has left the building.”

“Where is she?” Inuyasha questioned, his voice coming off husky.

Hakudoshi pointed to her head. “Right up here. She’s annoying as shit, how do you handle her?”

“Let her go. This is your one warning; let her go.” The hanyou growled. “You hold onto her, you hurt her in any way, not a single one of us will blink when it comes to ripping you apart.”

“You’d hurt your precious lover?”

“You think we don’t know your body is around here somewhere? You honestly think we’re that stupid to believe your entire entity is inside of her right now? No, you’re in this cave, we know that much.”

“But, where?” Her smile widened tauntingly. “This cave goes on for miles, and what makes you think you have that sort of time on your hands? You can go searching for me, but what’s your plan? Is someone going to play babysitter while the others go on a wild goose chase? Not a single one of you is strong enough, and that’s what’s fucking funny. Two humans and three demons against a conjurer. From the looks of it, three of you would be too sentimentally stunted, maybe four of you, and the last one - that’s you, Koga - would just get absolutely wrecked. Or, are you going -"

“Get out of her head, you stupid, fucking brat!” Inuyasha demanded, his claws biting into the heels of his palms with rage that was only building at an uncontrollable speed. How did this happen? It couldn’t have been that quick. Did Kagome feel anything weird, anything abnormal, or was Hakudoshi stealthy while he slid inside and took command.

She arched a brow at the interruption. “Well, that was rude.”

“You’re forgetting something, Hakudoshi.” Miroku spoke. “So long as Kagome is in there, she can still fight back. If one of us has to restrain her while the others go searching for you, so be it. Kagome wouldn’t allow you to hurt us.”

Hakudoshi guffawed, laughing hard as Kagome’s frame doubled over to clutch her stomach. “What!? Again, look at me! I have complete control over her!” He boasted, flailing her arms about. “This is all me, you fucking moron! Kagome can’t stop shit right now! She had just enough darkness in her heart for me to grab hold, and now the fight she’s putting up is worthless. I can utilize the knowledge and skills she’s learned by flipping a switch in her mind. If I want to kill any of you with her abilities, I can and there isn’t a damn thing you guys can do to stop me!”

“What darkness?” Inuyasha asked.

“I’ll actually entertain that question, because it was hard to find and I’m proud of myself. Apparently, holding Kikyo while she died was what did her in. Just a tiny bit. It’s been eating at her for a while now, hasn’t it? That’s not where it started, though. There was a little girl? One she failed to save, or something?” She grimaced carelessly. “I would say that created the smallest, dark spot in her heart, and Kikyo’s gory death made it about the size of a small ink stain. She’s resilient, I’ll give her that. But, not resilient enough.” That last part was almost sung while he emphasized each word of the sentence, tapping her finger in time. “All I need is an inch. So long as there’s darkness, I can take rein.”

Kagome could hear everything that was being said from within her cage, listening to this little boy speak through her. She could hear the others reply to her. It was like she was just a bystander to a conversation while she was also the main focus, and it was driving her insane. She felt completely powerless, rattling the metal bars as hard as she could, but the lock refused to give.

It didn’t surprise her to have darkness in her heart. In fact, what surprised her was how small it was. Kagome was the type of person to pick herself back up again, she never lost hope. In the era they were living in right now, darkness surrounded them, but it was what they fought for that made the difference. She knew that was what had divided her from Kikyo. She knew she’d been strong enough to avoid allowing it to take over her. But, she was human. Kagome was a human who’d been through a lot, who’d had her heart broken, who’d seen others have their hearts broken, who’d had her world turned upside down over and over. So, she wasn’t upset to know her heart had taken a hit. She was upset that her anguish was being manipulated against her.

How was she going to get out of this? Her back was bare; she didn’t have a single weapon on her. She stood in her cage in nothing but the clothes she’d donned that day, stripped of her bag, her arrows, and even her father’s blade in her boot. It was like the demon wanted her to feel as vulnerable as could be, to watch helplessly while he plotted in her own body.

Still, she shook the door of her crate, the metal hitting loudly, echoing, muting her scream as she demanded to be set free. Kagome refused to be a prisoner in her own mind, her own vessel. If he thought she was annoying now, she was going to create as much noise as she possibly could to give this guy a pounding migraine. Hopefully it would throw him off or distract him, though he seemed well versed in tuning things out. It was the best option she had until something better came along, and it was more important that she didn’t sit back and take it.

“Naraku’s not going to be too happy to learn she’s still alive.” Hakudoshi mentioned. “Though, given there was no validation of her death, he was fifty-fifty on the possibility, so maybe he’ll just do his notorious grunt before giving us our next orders to kill her. Which brings me to my next course of action. See, I honestly didn’t expect all of you guys to show up, no less the conjurer. I was trying to draw in Sesshomaru. I’ve been bored and felt like taunting him a bit, and since Naraku asked us to dispose of him, I figured I’d have some fun beforehand. Goshinki went one way, I went the other, and I was really hoping Sesshomaru would follow in my direction, but my dumbass of a brother broke his muzzle and found some villagers to eat, which stole Sesshomaru’s attention from right under me. Anyway, in you guys walk, and the moment I saw the conjurer, I couldn’t resist. Now, I’m toying with the idea of taking her back to Naraku. It’d save us both an enormous amount of time -“

“No.” Inuyasha rumbled.

“-and he can choose whether to keep control over her and use her to gain the power he’s always wanted, or kill her on the spot and remove any inconsequential threat she thought she ever was.”

“Like hell!” He barked.

“Right, right. Of course, you object. That’s to be expected, but it brings us around full circle. Obviously, you all were going to die the moment you set foot in this cave. No matter what, Sesshomaru and the wolf were going to be goners today, and Koga made our jobs a hell of a lot easier by bringing Inuyasha along. The rest of you are just bonuses, I guess. The thing about me is, I’m not really the, um, remorseful type.” Kagome leaned her head to the side, the smallest smile curling her lips. “I like it when people scream. Watching blood seep from wounds excites me more than anything I’ve ever experienced. I couldn’t have imagined a better scenario. Now you all get to die by the hands of someone you care so much for.”

“Kagome.” Sango stepped forward, a valorous pinch to her brow appearing. “Kagome, you have to fight harder. I know you’re in there, I know you can hear me. Kick his ass. Push him out. Push him out.”

Kagome’s eyes were on Sango now, and for a moment, her expression had completely fallen. Her lips were straight, brow was uncreased, and her entire body had stilled. Then, she dropped her gaze, a shudder running over her, and a pout formed so fully that her chin quivered.

“S-Sango?” Kagome trembled.

“Kagome!” Her friend called urgently. “We’re all right here! We know you can do it!”

“It’s so cold.”

“Keep fighting! Keep -“ A flash of heat ran through Sango’s veins when she stopped, realizing Kagome’s frown had crumbled and it seemed like she was pinching back her laughter. Gradually, her stomach shook with amusement and a snort came through her nose, giving in to the one-sided humor of the situation as she laughed.

“Man, you should have seen your face!” Hakudoshi gloated. “How could you fall for that so easily!? You’re clearly not the brains of the group!”

“You’re despicable.” She said through clenched teeth.

“Thank you.” He replied with a grin.

“You guys need to go.” Inuyasha spoke lowly. “Find Hakudoshi. Kill him.”

“What’s that you’re saying over there?” Kagome rose her eyebrows in question, her head inching to the side curiously. “Trying the whole divide and conquer thing?”

“Go.”

“Inuyasha…” Miroku started, appearing more tense than he had before.

Was he expected to just run off and leave her behind? Sure, Inuyasha was strong and he and Kagome clearly cared about each other, but this was his family. This was his cousin, his little sister, being manipulated right now, and he was being told to leave her to someone else to take care of? That wasn’t going to sit right with him. It was logical that Inuyasha would be better at tending to this situation given he was stronger and faster, but Miroku was struggling with the aspect of leaving her at all.

Hakudoshi took the moment to shrug everything off of Kagome’s back, heedlessly dropping her bag to the floor before returning her quiver full of arrows where they belonged.

“Ah, that’s better.” She spoke, wiggling her shoulders freely before pulling an arrow free. “Miroku, tell me she won’t do it again.”

“You need to go.” Inuyasha insisted, giving the guy beside him a pressing look. “Get out of here.”

“I can’t leave her.”

Hakudoshi lined up the nock of her arrow with the string of her bow, utilizing Kagome’s skills by simply reaching into her brain. It didn’t matter if he had never shot before. Kagome knew how, and it was her being he inhabited. Anything she knew how to do, he was able to do as well. Pulling the string back, he leveled his aim, lining the arrowhead up in Miroku’s direction.

“Awe, let him stay, Inuyasha.”

“Look, I can’t protect you and her at the same time. It’s better if you go and find him. You need to save her.”

“Inuyasha’s right, dude.” Koga concurred. “We’ll only be in the way, and for what?”

“To help!” Miroku strongly stated.

“Where’s that arrow aimed, Miroku? You think you’re helping right now?”

“They’re right.” Sango said, backing up. “Inuyasha can handle this. We’ll be of more help if we find that bastard.”

“But-“

“I can sense your anxiety.” Hakudoshi grinned, teasing them all, adding to the tension on their shoulders. “You really think it’s gonna be that easy to find me? Do you think my body is somewhere in this cave, sitting helplessly alone? Don’t take me for a fool. Of all of Naraku’s creations, I am the genius. I am the more cunning. I am the imperceptibly strong one. You think Naraku made me a child for nothing? No. It was to deceive everyone. It was to strike more fear. You may only see your precious Kagome right now, but believe you me, you’ll be an idiot to think finding and killing me will be as easy as running off to save the day.”

“Oh, shut up!” Inuyasha commanded angrily. “The only thing you’re good at is fucking with people’s heads. You want to make us think it’s going to be difficult so we second guess or stall. Well, it doesn’t fucking matter. Either way, you’ve fucked with the wrong person.”

“Oh no, I’m shaking in my boots. Whatever shall I do?” She giggled. “I’m not just good at messing with your head, Inuyasha. Want to watch me drag you all down one-by-one? She’s yelling right now. Kagome’s trying so hard to break free, and she’s frustrated that she’s gotten nowhere. She’s beginning to lose hope. She’s really reliant on her weapons, isn’t she? Without them, she’s powerless, and boy is that catching up to her right now. ‘Inuyasha! Inuyasha, please!’” Hakudoshi called out in the exact scream Kagome was internally fighting with.

The hanyou flinched painfully, his jaw tensing, and a trembling breath left his nose. Every muscle in his body went unbelievably taut for a moment, horrified by how scared she was. He’d had to fight his instincts to protect her, because he couldn’t. He couldn’t do a damn thing for her right now except face her as she currently was.

“Miroku, she just wants to make you proud. Awe, you two have such a sweet bond, don’t you?” Hakudoshi said, violating Kagome’s mind as he discovered her thoughts, her emotions, laying them out on the table for everyone. No longer did she wear a smile. In fact, she seemed nothing short of serious now. As if hurting people was a business matter. “Grew up together, got into trouble together, lost your fathers together. The look on your face when you watched your one remaining parent die has stuck in her head for even this long. Wow, it’s so vivid, too.”

“Stop it.” Miroku muttered.

“You only held it for a moment before you realized she was looking. Then, you wiped it off and never showed it again, and she didn’t know why. But, it’s stuck with her ever since. Oh god, and your fathers went down in flames, didn’t they? Fire and bloodshed, demons everywhere, they were doomed from the start. You were trying to stop the bleeding even after your father shut his eyes. She saw you put on that brave face when it made the least amount of sense, and since then, she’s felt like she needs to put one on with you too in order to be taken seriously.”

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I know her better than anyone does. She knows perfectly well that I respect her and take her seriously whether she’s got a brave face on or not.”

“Knowing her better is irrelevant, Miroku. I’m in her head. I can see everything. You want me to scream again so that you’ll believe me, or what?”

“No!” He quickly sputtered, terrified to hear her desperation again. “No.”

Hakudoshi blinked, lowering the bow and arrow Kagome held. Her plush lips were relaxed together, and her gaze lowered just for a second before he looked back to her cousin.

“Her heart’s pounding right now. She’s scared. She really doesn’t like that you’re the one I’m threatening.” He cocked a brow in speculation, and as he continued speaking, it was more to converse inward than anything. “Would you rather Inuyasha? No? Sango? No, again? Koga?” He sighed in irritation, re-stringing the arrow. “Then, silence.”

“Go.” Inuyasha urged, feeling the gravity of the situation upsurge dauntingly. “You guys need to go.”

“What are you gonna do?” Miroku inquired when Koga grabbed his shoulder and began pulling him back to continue through the tunnels.

“Whatever the fuck I can.”

“No! I’m staying with you!”

“Oh, please do.” Kagome’s voice sinisterly brushed their ears while she once more aimed.

“Miroku, I know you don’t trust me yet, but right now, you’re going to have to!” He barked, shoving Miroku away. “What the fuck are you so worried about!? If anyone’s in fucking danger here, it’s me! So, if I have to tell you to get out of my way one more fucking time, I’m gonna kick your ass!”

“Let’s go, Miroku!” Sango dropped Kirara to transform, reaching for her boyfriend’s arm to pull back.

Kagome inched her arrow back further, pinching an eye shut for better aim.

“We’ve got this, Inuyasha.” Koga promised.

Inuyasha had turned away to regard them for a split second, grateful that Miroku had finally given up his obstinance, when he felt the incoming threat. Thinking as quickly as he could, he pulled Tessaiga, the sword transforming as each inch was freed from its sheath, jutting it out to successfully block the shot that was too close to hitting Miroku in the back.

In his peripherals, he’d caught Kagome waver. Her head had notched to the side and her hands twitched. Her face had twisted almost painfully, but before long, her deadly stare was back. As if it had never left.

“Oh, you’re fast!” Hakudoshi grinned.

Tessaiga transformed when defending against her arrow. It had been calling for his attention on his hip. No. He was almost scared to see if his hunch was true, but he had to. Turning back forward, Inuyasha squared, holding Tessaiga in the direction Kagome stood and watching as it stayed transformed, swirling with energy that should have died off. As if betrayed, he nearly dropped his sword to the ground. It was detestable, compromised, ruined, wrong. Tessaiga didn’t work against Kagome. It wasn’t supposed to. He’d figured out a while ago that it was meant to aid her. It was meant to protect her. Fate was a funny thing, and it managed to tell him he was born to be by her side, not opposing her.

“Inuyasha.” Miroku whispered apprehensively.

The hanyou slid his sword back into its sheath, and then removed the sheath entirely from his belt, tossing it to the side. “Go. I promise, I won’t hurt her.”

Finally, he heard them run off, the sound of their feet fading down a corridor as they rushed to find Hakudoshi. There was a chance. Before, her fidgeting, that was Kagome trying to regain control. It had to be. Hakudoshi had almost struck her cousin, of course she was going to object powerfully. Inuyasha could reach her, he was confident of which. It was going to be tricky, but it was possible. She was conscious in there.

“So, it’s lover versus lover, is it?”

“Kagome.“

“You realize you’re part demon, right?”

“Baby, I know you’re giving it your all right now, but you’ve gotta put in a little more effort.”

“All I have to do is flip that switch in her brain to use her conjurer abilities.”

“Push him out, kid.”

“It won’t even take a lot. You’re only half demon, so with the power coming from her, I’d say ten percent would be enough to do you in. Twelve percent to be safe. Six percent if I want you to suffer.”

“Come on, kid. Fight.” Inuyasha pushed.

“Oh, give it a rest.” The grumble in her voice was deep, another octave she rarely used. “All you’re doing is agitating her; you’re not helping her any. What is this? You think some motivational speech is all you’re gonna need to save her life? Or, is it your own life that you’re more worried about?”

Inuyasha could barely fight his glower. It felt off giving it to Kagome, but it wasn’t Kagome it was intended for. It was Naraku’s minion. Hakudoshi was lucky it wasn’t he going after him, because Inuyasha would make his death agonizing. As if he didn’t already hate Kagome being touched as it was, she was now being held captive from the inside. He wanted Hakudoshi to beg for forgiveness before he ended his meager existence.

At the exact same time that Koga had sensed something was off, Kirara gave a low growl of warning, reinforcing the wolf demon’s decision to stop immediately. The further they’d gone down the corridors, the darker it had become, and the drip of water echoed loudly in a cavern up ahead. Quickly assessing it, Koga could tell there were no living beings anywhere near, but that somewhere in the cave was another dangerous demon. It was either Hakudoshi’s body or the fucker wasn’t lying earlier.

“There may actually be someone else here. With him.” Koga mentioned to the others.

“Are we near them?” Sango asked.

“No. I can’t tell where they are, but the further we get from Kagome and Inuyasha, the more clear their energy is becoming.”

All he smelled was Naraku, though. Which meant, no matter what, they were going up against an underling. Considering he was traveling with two humans, Koga almost wished they were facing an off-brand demon. These were like mini bosses before the big boss, and Koga just wasn’t sure how skilled these humans were with the weapons belted to their sides. Would they pull through and be actual assets to him, or was he about to have to keep their lives in tact while facing a direct descendant of Naraku, himself?

“Stay close. Follow orders. You go against anything I say, I’m knocking you out myself so I don’t have to deal with saving your sorry asses. Got it?”

“Who died and made you king?” Miroku grimaced.

“The previous leader of my clan.” Koga snorted.

Miroku and Sango exchanged a bemused look before shifting back to Koga.

“I’m the leader of the wolf demon pack. That may mean nothing to you, but let it mean something here. I know how to look out for people, I know how to make quick decisions in the heat of battle, and I know how to make the best calls. We’re all fighting for the same thing, right? So keep up and don’t hold me back.”

“How about, you don’t hold us back.” Sango countered, slanting her eyes brazenly. “There. You wanted a challenge, right? You wanted to make sure we weren’t submissive and weak? Well, go ahead. Lead the way, King Wolf Demon. We’ve got your back.”

“How far ahead do you think they are?” Miroku inquired, gazing into the dark shadows in front of him.

“Not sure.” Koga replied, impressed by the boldness of the woman. She was gutsy, he could grasp that much. “It helps that Hakudoshi’s presence isn’t hanging over us anymore. Now that it’s centered, whomever’s with him is standing out.”

“You can’t follow their scent?”

“I only smell Naraku, but it’s all over the place. It’s like they’ve touched every fucking wall in this maze to throw us off.”

“They probably have.” Sango agreed. “It would be a good reason to back up Hakudoshi’s arrogance regarding our difficulty finding him.”

“So, we go forward, right?” Miroku asked.

“Only way to figure out where the scent gets stronger. Be on your guard.”

Kagome was protesting as hard as she could, wrestling, yelling, trying to break the lock on her cage. Hakudoshi was reaching back to equip another arrow, and he was moving agonizingly slowly. His way of taunting both she and Inuyasha with the threat.

“Stop it!” She demanded. “I won’t let you hurt him!”

But, she went ignored. Time and time again, she went ignored. What did she have to do? What had she done earlier to make Hakudoshi’s control falter when he’d shot at Miroku? She was frantic and scared, and she was resisting. She was resisting, and that resistance was like the spark of a flame in the kindling. While she pulled back, there was a thump in her core that pushed forward, but what was it? How did she fan the spark to grow into flames? How did she do it again?

“What would you do if I spoke to you entirely like I was Kagome from this point forward?” Hakudoshi asked, aiming an arrow at Inuyasha.

The hanyou didn’t answer. The bastard would have him dead in a second if he didn’t think up a plan, and he needed to be quick. He’d need to dodge and then he’d need to disarm him. That was the best course of action. Pinning her down would be second. He had to believe that the rest of the group would pull through, would kill the brat and free Kagome. Until then, he was going to have to do everything he could to survive, which may very well be as difficult as facing Kagome in the flesh. He knew what she could do, and this child was inside of her putting her skills to the test. Against him. If he really could utilize her conjurer powers, Inuyasha would have to be incredibly careful. It was ironic to think about, a demon using conjurer powers, but wasn’t something he was willing to underestimate. Technically, he was just possessing her, not completely encapsulating her body as it was easy to assume. Which meant, Hakudoshi probably wasn’t all talk.

“Her mannerisms are right here.” He pointed to her head, nearly nicking her flesh with the arrowhead. “Oh, whoops.” He flinched too casually, cringing at his mistake.

Inuyasha had had to tense rigidly to avoid reacting. He couldn’t feed into Hakudoshi’s bullshit. It would egg him on. It could potentially cause him to actually hurt Kagome, and Inuyasha refused to allow that.

“So, anyway, what’s your plan? You really gonna fight Kagome? Or are you gonna take every hit she throws at you?” When Inuyasha neglected to answer, she shrugged her brows. “Silent treatment, huh? I bet you wouldn’t ignore your girlfriend.”

Her expression softened, brown eyes shimmering as they always had as a very soft curve appeared on her lips. When she spoke then, it was in her natural tone, and it struck Inuyasha directly in the heart. “I understand if you can’t fight me. This is scaring me, too. But, can you do me a favor?”

It took everything in him not to respond, but he’d failed to keep all of his reflexes at bay. His amber eyes flickered away and his frown deepened momentarily before he forced himself to look back at her. Whatever existed of Kagome’s smile had shifted as she now worried her bottom lip between her teeth, and her gaze had fallen to the rocky floor beneath their boots.

“Inuyasha, I really don’t want to hurt you.” She tremblingly admitted. “Kill me before I do. I can’t stop him. I’m trying so hard, but I can’t stop him. So, you have to stop me.”

“No!” He growled. “Stop it! Hakudoshi, stop it!”

“Baby, please.”

His stomach clenched painfully.

“Why can’t I break free? What do I do?”

“God fucking dammit, stop it!” Inuyasha slammed the heels of his palms into his temples.

Kagome began to walk closer, and the hanyou had to remind himself to take a step back. The aura coming off of her, the threat, it wasn’t hers and it was to be heeded. This wasn’t his girl he was up against; he couldn’t be fooled so easily. But, each step away from her was physically painful. He was supposed to be protecting her, but he was refusing her quivering form.

“Why won’t you let me near?”

“Knock it off already!”

“You have to promise me that you wont let me hurt you.” She whispered.

“Hakudoshi!” He back stepped again.

With a small groan, the demon relented. “Fine. This will be more fun, anyway.” He said, making Kagome grin as she lunged to attack Inuyasha.

Swiftly, he grabbed her wrists to protect himself, flinching back when she’d almost cut his face with the arrow. Getting her to drop the bow was easy, but her grip on the sharper object was white-knuckled and fierce. Already, he knew his hold on her was too strong, but he couldn’t let go just yet. He could feel the danger levels spiking, which made him believe Hakudoshi was legitimately using her conjurer powers. If he didn’t make her drop it soon, if Hakudoshi cut him, he could be severely hurt, and then what? Lose Kagome? Allow his death to sit on her shoulders? Neither were going to happen.

“Kid, keep fighting for me, okay?” He said directly to Kagome, thrusting her back against the cavern wall to smack her hand against the uneven rock. Finally, her grasp relented and the arrow slipped from her fingers.

“Remember when Naraku was holding me over the cliff?” Hakudoshi continued his charade, speaking as if he were Kagome again. “Just before I was thrown over, I wanted to tell you that I loved you. I didn’t want to die without you knowing.”

“Stop it!”

“And, I know you know now, but I feel like I should remind you.”

No, no, no. He couldn’t hear that. Hakudoshi or not, he didn’t want that tainted in this moment. They said those words so rarely, spoke their feelings through actions and other versions of affectionate discourse, but whenever that phrase did come out, he didn’t want it to throw him right back into this incident. He wouldn’t have it taken away from them. He was frenetic to shut Hakudoshi up.

He’d acted without thinking. It was a natural impulse, and before Inuyasha knew it, his knee was being thrusted up into Kagome’s diaphragm. She doubled over with a violent cough, her breath coming raggedly, unevenly, struggling at first until Hakudoshi started laughing with saliva dribbling over her lower lip.

Inuyasha had backed away in unrestrained regret, holding his hands out at his sides as if they’d abused their privileges. How could he? He’d hurt her.

“Holy crap, dude.” Hakudoshi guffawed, and Kagome’s voice both caressed and defiled his ears. He wished the possession changed her tone to the child’s. It was painful to hear her be talked through, no matter how out of character it’d been or not. “You really kneed her. That wasn’t even a warning tap either, that was a full on hit!”

“Fuck, baby! Fuck! I’m so sorry!”

“What kind of abusive boyfriend are you?” He asked, standing straight.

“Oh, fuck off!” Inuyasha ground out, setting his jaw irately. “You can’t get under my skin with that shit.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Hakudoshi bobbed her head. “Only, ‘I love you’ will do the trick.” She grinned tauntingly, picking up her foot to pull out the knife in her boot.

Kagome slowed down a moment. Too long, she’d been fighting the restraints of her bars and it was getting her no results. She needed to take a minute to analyze the situation, no matter how difficult it was to do right now. It was easier to let her nerves get the better of her, to keep fighting and struggling, but it was fruitless and Inuyasha needed her to come back to him.

She looked closer at the lock keeping her closed inside the cage. So many times, she’d kicked it with everything she had, applied her entire bodyweight into it, and the only thing she’d achieved in doing so was creating loud clanks to echo in the darkness she currently resided in. The lock didn’t look to have received any damage whatsoever. That was impossible. It should have at least sported a dent, or a nick. Something. This was getting her nowhere. Why?

Because, she wasn’t shut in by a key. Of course. She was confined by demonic energy. She’d been so heavily consumed by Hakudoshi’s that she hadn’t even been able to feel the power engulfing the thick, black padlock. That being said, she still wasn’t sure how the hell she was going to get out of there. Yet again, she was held back by her inability to transmit spiritual power into her hands.

That wasn’t going to work for her right now. Kagome had no other options. She couldn’t wait for an alternative to appear, because nothing ever would. She was going to bust out one way or the other, and this was how. Hakudoshi had no right to threaten Inuyasha with the power that was hers. It was hers. And, she was going to use it exactly as she willed.

Koga’s heart was beating hard, his lungs were pounding. It felt like they’d been traveling through the cave for way too long and only ended up turned around, but before he’d even sensed it, Kirara caught onto something to their right. She led the way, her hackles raising, her growl growing more violent when they finally found the right path. Koga felt it, too. Up ahead was a threat waiting for them. Literally waiting.

“For a while there, I honestly thought you’d never find us.” A woman spoke, her arms crossed over her center. “The child’s been out for half an hour now? Forty-five minutes? Were you guys walking or something?”

For a quick moment, Koga took in the sight before them. They were in another opening, one just a smidge more narrow than the other they’d left Inuyasha and Kagome in. Water had leaked in through the cave ceiling, coating the ground in puddles all around, the drip loud to his ears. The woman in front of them, she was tall. More interesting, she looked to be about as done with anyone’s shit before anything had even happened. It was like the expression of annoyance was forever etched into her skin, her eyes naturally slanted in that manner. Her hair was brown, medium-length, worn half up in a twisted bun that a white feather decoratively stuck out of. Red painted her lips, nearly matching her bold irises, and along her body, she wore a plain, black dress that dipped down low in the center of her chest.

On the floor at her side, a young child slumped in his seat. His hair was white, long, untamed. He was unconscious and still he managed to give Koga the creeps. Nothing more needed to be studied about him. That was Hakudoshi.

“Kagura?” He asked, just to be sure.

“Don’t try to be my friend just because you know Sesshomaru.” She shook her head, rolling her eyes. “I’m still under orders to kill you and protect this freak.”

“Because of Rin?”

“Because of Naraku.”

“Because he has Rin?”

She sighed out heatedly, shaking her head in irritation again. “You clearly already know the answer to that, so why are you asking?”

“Don’t you think it’d be easier to save her if we knew where Naraku was?” Koga tried, carefully stepping forward with a subtle hand gesture for Sango and Miroku to hang back. “Give me something that I can pass on to Sesshomaru. Better yet, come with us. We -“

“Stop.” She ordered abruptly, and it was said in a tone that brought Koga to listen. Very slowly, very steadily, she shifted her head from left to right, her scarlet eyes never parting from his azure. It was her way of conveying something she couldn’t say out loud, but whether he understood was up to him. Hakudoshi wasn’t completely unconscious; he could still hear everything. The last thing she wanted was him bringing anything back to Naraku, and that fucking rat would. “Back up.”

“I don’t want to fight you.” Koga admitted, following her gaze as she glanced over to the child’s limp form, then back up. What was she telling him?

“Then, this’ll be easy.” She said. This guy had to be as daft as they came. There was only one way to make this painfully obvious, so careful of the ruffle of her clothing, she grabbed her ear and once more looked at Hakudoshi. That seemed to do the trick. Koga stiffened slightly, nodding in comprehension.

“Kagura, what am I supposed to tell Sesshomaru?”

“Nothing.” She frowned. “You aren’t leaving here today. So, I suggest you fight, or you’ll die in shame.”

As Hakudoshi lunged at Inuyasha, Inuyasha had to be quick to grab Kagome’s wrist again. He couldn’t afford to be conscientious or apologetic right now. He had to disarm her and pin her down. Swiftly, he stepped a leg behind her ankle, shoving her back to throw off her balance, and dropped down to the floor with her. He tried smashing her hand against the ground to make her fingers release their grip on the blade, but they actively refused. She held onto the knife for dear life, and Inuyasha had to shove the worry that his clutch was bruising her to the back of his mind.

“The first time we made love -“

“No! Shut up!” Inuyasha demanded, silencing her sweet voice. “Get out of her head!”

“Make me.” She rumbled seductively, the switch in her timbre nearly giving him whiplash. “Of course, that brings us to the third time we made love.”

“Fuck you.” He growled, pinning her still as she tried to buck him off. “Those are intimate moments between she and I.”

“Not anymore.”

Inuyasha thrusted her hand along the ground again, fighting against her incessant battle to stab him, but still she clung to the dagger with a grasp that would not yield. He was just going to have to pry it away from her, then.

It was difficult, but his main focus had to be her dominant arm. He couldn’t let go of it whatsoever, so he had to figure out a way to use his hand that restrained her left. Dragging it down, despite her opposing struggle, Inuyasha managed to capture it beneath his knee, freeing his own hand to force her fingers to release the knife. She’d given a jolt and the sharp blade clipped his palm, making the hanyou hasty to retract back.

“Man, I really messed that up, didn’t I?” Kagome giggled. “I’ll admit, it’s hard to multitask. This lady’s got it down to an art.”

There was no conjurer power that backed up her attack, and Inuyasha got fucking lucky. His hand was seeping blood now, but he didn’t have time to even think about it. It was actually working in his favor. The more blood that got on her hand from his prying, the more slippery her grip became. Finally, Inuyasha stole the dagger away, dropping it to the side of his leg as he quickly rolled her over to her stomach.

God, he’d forgotten how fast she could be. Immediately, Kagome was pushing up against him, and he’d barely been able to really define his dominance. He had to apply his knee to her back to shove her back down while he expeditiously scooped the arrows from her quiver and threw them out of reach.

“You fucking jackass!” Hakudoshi protested on a wheezy breath.

Inuyasha removed his knee, realizing his bodyweight was hindering her breathing, and everything else was by pure instinct. He’d jerked one hand behind her back, hiking it up so she had limited use of her shoulder, and took a solid grip in her hair. Maybe he’d gotten too lost in the moment, too aggressive. He could feel how forcefully he was pinning her down, feel her cheek scrape against the rock, but it wasn’t until she cried out that he slackened.

“Ow. Inuyasha, you’re hurting me.” Kagome moaned.

“Shit!” It was reflex, his reaction to let her go. But, he shouldn’t have been so precipitous. He hadn’t realized her free hand had reached for the blade he’d thoughtlessly dropped so close. Kagome rolled over nimbly, and Inuyasha hardly had time to react. She swung the dagger at him, and he was incredibly fucking grateful it was in her non-dominant hand, because it was held at an angle that gave him the advantage to jump away without harm in the nick of time.

“Wow, you really are weak for her.” Hakudoshi commented, rising to Kagome’s knees. “If you don’t wisen up, those emotions will be the very thing that kill you.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Inuyasha responded, wiping the blood from his hand on his pant leg, a vain effort as he felt more warm liquid cover over the burning wound. He had to ignore the angry spot on her cheek he’d caused, one that went right over the small scrape she’d received the day before, making it larger, darker.

“You know, maybe I’m going about this all wrong. Maybe I’m attacking the wrong person.” Kagome smiled mischievously.

Immediately, Inuyasha knew where Hakudoshi’s thought process was headed and he stiffened.

Steadily, Kagome lowered the knife to her thigh, scratching the blade against the texture of her pants. “What if I -“

He’d moved promptly, he had no choice. He went to pin her down again, to steal the dagger from her grasp once more. He was going to throw it so far away that it’d be lost in the shadows and worthless to find in the depths of a struggle. But, Hakudoshi got the better of him that time. Inuyasha hadn’t established proper form, and Kagome bucked her hips upward, tumbling his balance and rolling him over.

Good fucking god, she was strong. He was hanyou, he had formidable strength, and yes, the fear of hurting her was drastically holding him back from doing anything too impetuous, but he was now in a pressing conflict. The knife was inches from his throat, and she was pushing all of her weight down into him. Inuyasha was lucky he was quick enough to stop it in time from stabbing him through, and now he was fighting to keep her lifted so she didn’t succeed.

“Kagome, baby!” He called warily. “I could really use your help right about now!”

“Kagome says to suck a dick.” Hakudoshi grinned.

“Kagome!” His options were limited. Rolling her off of him was a feeble choice if she still had the fucking knife, though it gave him an opportunity to pick himself up and create space. There was the potential that she’d be faster in that sort of predicament, and that obviously needed to be taken into consideration. He desperately needed to disarm her and he needed to act quickly, because she was bouncing her weight down on the dagger now in an attempt to wear out his muscles.

His best option was to take her by surprise. He needed a split second, that was all. He had no choice, and he would make up for it in whatever way that he could later. For now, Inuyasha fixed his grip on her hands holding the knife with one palm, trusting the strength in his arm, and with the one he now freed, he slapped Kagome in the face with what was absolutely too much vigor. But, it worked. Hakudoshi was discombobulated for an extremely brief moment, a gasp leaving her lips, eyes wide from the jolt of it, and Inuyasha utilized the time to push Kagome back and rip the knife from her fucking hands, throwing it in a direction unknown even to him.

Hakudoshi began thrashing against Inuyasha. He hit him back, he scratched, he laughed wickedly, and it was difficult for the hanyou to take hold of Kagome’s wrists again with how wild Hakudoshi made her flail. Inuyasha was trying. He was sorely trying to get her under control, only really failing to block one good hit from her, and when he’d thought he had a forearm in his grasp, Kagome sprung off of him, ripping herself free to run toward something.

He rolled himself over and pushed himself up, his body going insurmountably tense in response to what he was facing that his gasp was silent and nothing more than a hitch in his chest. Hakudoshi had snagged an arrow and her bow, and was inching it up to aim at him. Kagome’s smile was one of victory, her bottom lip stained with blood he’d caused her to bleed.

She was furious. She was screaming. She was desperate and frantic. This was her body, and Kagome had no control over it. This was her mind, and it wasn’t listening to a thing she was saying. What caused her stomach to ache painfully was that she could feel Hakudoshi pulling her spiritual power, rounding it up, saturating an arrow as he aimed it at Inuyasha. Hakudoshi had the upper hand, she could practically see it, and her panic was beginning to overwhelm every inch of her.

“Inuyasha, run!” Kagome cried, but unsurprisingly, she went unheard. Until Hakudoshi had the audacity to tease by repeating it. His tone held no inflection. It was said casually, carelessly.

“Inuyasha, run.”

“Please! Run!”

“Please. Run.”

“No.” He replied gruffly, and Kagome froze, realizing he was replying to her. “I won’t leave without you.”

Hakudoshi inched her arrow back to create a tauter string, and she could feel that he was about to release it. No. No!

Feeling helpless, Kagome shook the bars of her cage again, frenzied enough to try anything to save him. She was hot all over, her heart was pounding erratically, her mind was racing a mile a minute.

“Stop!” She screamed. “Stop it!”

This wasn’t supposed to be happening. This was her body, dammit. This was her mind, this was her heart, this was her ability. Why wouldn’t her powers work for her? Why would they never work this way? She’d been trying to burst the lock, and nothing. Failure was not an option right now, she needed to recondition her strength.

Protect yourself for me, my little bird. Keep it in its cage.

Her father. His words. It rang so relevant right now that it hurt. She was nothing but a little bird trapped in a cage, but it was the most unsafe she’d ever felt. Her papa thought it’d be her salvation, to hide away, but this was irony at its worst. The fact of the matter was, her powers weren’t what put her in danger. It was the people around her. The people against her. Locking her gifts up to defend herself had been the counterintuitive option all along.

“They’re mine, Hakudoshi! Stop!” He was about to shoot and Kagome was terrified, shouting so loud that her voice broke. “They’re my powers! You can’t use them!” She rattled her cage defiantly, feeling a pull in her abdomen that helped her push against her restraints. “They’re mine! Not Midoriko’s, not Kikyo’s, not yours, they’re mine!” Hakudoshi released his shot. “Get out!”

Inuyasha grunted, the sharp strike of her arrowhead piercing the right side of his chest, causing him to stumble backwards a few feet until he hit the wall. There was nothing in her arrow. He was dealt nothing more than a painful blow through his flesh. Still, he found himself holding his breath anxiously. Her powers would have taken effect by now, right? The tail of the weapon stuck out in front of him, and he watched it to see if it would disintegrate. When nothing happened for thirty seconds, Inuyasha nearly slumped in relief.

There it was, she could feel it. Hakudoshi’s hold on her was destabilizing. Warmth radiated from her being, and Kagome urged it to grow. He was trying to reattain his control, like hands slipping over an oil-slicked rope, but she couldn’t allow that. The fire charred the kindling in her core and raged violently within her. It hurt, but she didn’t care. She let it expand through her veins, through her flesh, through her fingertips.

“Get out!” She repeated vehemently, doubling over as she vividly visualized the demon expelling from her soul. “GET OUT OF ME!”

Inuyasha watched Kagome’s frame fold, falling to her hands and knees as unrestrained grunts and groans left her mouth. Her fingers raked against the rock beneath her, and letting go of a cry, she stumbled down to her forearms with a wild tremor that racked her entire body.

“Kid?” He spoke through heavy breaths from his lungs.

“Get -“ She was fighting. She was pushing so hard, and he felt a manic energy soaring from her that greatly intimidated him. Kagome was giving more than what she had to free herself that her voice came out low and throaty, like she was forcing her words out while her body was battling intensely that it was nearly impossible to use her vocal cords. “Get out!”

It was her. Inuyasha’s stomach twisted achingly, desperately needing to support her, to be next to her. “Kagome!”

He ripped the arrow from his chest, clenching his throat to swallow the pained moan. It was unimportant in retrospect. Fuck his discomfort, he had more critical things to worry about right now. Inuyasha pushed himself from the cavern wall, sprinting over to Kagome’s crumpled body and skidding to his knees.

“Don’t touch me!” She screamed at him, and the hanyou went rigid. His hands hovered just inches above her back, twitching as he struggled with himself to listen to her.

“Kagome, it’s me!”

“It’ll hurt you! My power! It’ll - It’ll hurt you!” She claimed through choked exhales.

It was emanating from her. That’s what he was feeling. He may not be able to see it, but she was shrouded in her conjurer strength, seemingly able to do what she’d never been able to before as she fought back against Hakudoshi.

“He won’t -“ Kagome released a wrenching sob, trying to pick herself up to her hands but collapsing back down. “He won’t let me go. He’s still here.”

“Keep going, baby!” Inuyasha encouraged, dropping his palms to the earth while staying as close as allowed. “Fight him! You can do this!”

“Get out!”

“You can do this!”

Kagome whimpered through the engulfing and searing heat of the flames, taking as deep a breath as she could muster in an effort to fan the fire and keep it growing. Blinking open her eyes, she could see how vibrant the lavender of her power was, appearing like a legitimate blaze from her skin. At this point, Hakudoshi’s presence was barely lingering. She needed to be diligent to make sure there wasn’t an ounce of him left in her soul. If she wasn’t thorough in getting all of him out, he could potentially seep back in to take rein of her again.

Never. She wouldn’t allow it. She was going to make him regret ever taking her hostage, she was going to make him regret ever using her against her people.

“Let me go!” She demanded, slamming her fist against the ground.

“Good, Kagome! Fight him! You’ve got this!” Inuyasha shouted.

He was in her heart. He was clinging to the small fleck of darkness that’d been created from the times she’d endured, his grimy hands slipping but catching, slipping and catching again. Kagome tensed her breath then, concentrating her strength there as it torched and incinerated whatever presence he left within her. It was overkill, but it was necessary. She felt like she’d inhaled smoke, coughing and sputtering when she finally breathed again, but that was it. She was freed.

Hakudoshi was gone.

Inuyasha felt her powers calm, but didn’t reach for her just yet. Gradually, the stiffness in her muscles noticeably decreased. Kagome was gasping in air, her back excessively rising and falling with how her lungs pumped, but progressively, her body was relaxing.

“Kagome?” He whispered.

She couldn’t help the chuckle of relief that left her mouth, or the way her arms refused to work with her, failing to even try and pick herself up. Her head went from the balance on her forearm to the hard surface of the ground as her rear sank back to rest against her legs. It didn’t matter that her head scraped along, nothing mattered in that moment. She was too fatigued to care, or feel pain, or worry about anything more.

Extremely sluggishly, Kagome reached out with one hand, blindly feeling around for Inuyasha. He was still there, she could sense him, but words weren’t coming to her right now. All she wanted was his touch. She wanted to feel his warmth, his callouses. With her opposite hand, the side she’d yet to try, the side she’d assumed he had to be closer to, Kagome turned it over, sliding it out in the hopes that he would know what she wanted.

Inuyasha swallowed thickly, hoping he was reading her right. She was searching for him, wasn’t she? With her hand opened for him, he slid his fingers within, feeling the sweat that coated it and sighing out so deeply the moment her fingers curled to hold him there.

“Is it you?” He asked, unable to control himself any longer as he scooted closer. “Are you back?”

Kagome hummed, nodding lazily.

Inuyasha made haste to pick her up. He released her hand, grabbing around her shoulders to pull her to a sit so that she wouldn’t have to push with her defeated muscles. Her dark hair was everywhere, but she managed to sweep her arm over to fix the tresses out of her face, a small smile curving her plush and blood-stained lips. But, her eyes. Though lidded, they glimmered with tears and the earthy tones pulled him right back home.

“You did it.” He chuckled proudly, sweeping hair behind her ears as he admired her for all that she deserved. “You did it, baby.”

His fingers trembled as much as she, the ice was finally leaving his bloodstream, and Inuyasha cradled her jaw when Kagome finally got a good grasp on supporting herself. As tears fell to streak her cheeks, he gently swiped his thumbs to clean each one, careful of any sensitive marks that marred her face.

“I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Kagome leaned into his attention, uncaring of how she felt or looked while she couldn’t take her eyes from the wound in his chest. Though his shirt was black, she could still see the blood causing the cloth to stick to his skin, seeping through in a thick coating. Her fingers shakily reached for the injury she’d inflicted, stopped by his quicker hand when he grabbed her wrist and brought her knuckles up to kiss.

“I’m sorry.” She cried.

“Don’t be. You saved my ass, kid.”

“No, I -“

“You didn’t hurt me. I promise. This wasn’t you, baby, remember that.”

Feeling like she needed him or else she’d be unstable and incomplete, Kagome urgently grabbed his shirt and pulled for him, nearly losing her meager balance in the process. Inuyasha wasn’t hesitant in the least to comply. He moved closer at the same time he gathered her forward, hugging her tight while breathing her in.

“Are you okay, kid? You okay?” He rushed to ask, taking her jaw again to tilt her head to the side and analyze the blemishing of her face.

“I’m fine.” She replied.

Inuyasha swiped his thumb over her bottom lip and froze when she winced. Reflexively, Kagome sucked in her lip, finally tasting the copper as her tongue traced over the cut that bled. It must have collided against her teeth when he’d hit her. She could hear everything, she was aware of the general happenings of the fight going on, but given it wasn’t a direct reality for her, it was weird coming back to deal with the repercussions of it.

“Oh, that was a good one.” She commented, and Inuyasha immediately released her, a look of panic striking his expression. He’d almost backed away fearfully before Kagome reached for him, and she steadily pulled his hands back toward her. “No, it’s okay! Inuyasha,” She hovered one of his hands by her cheek before she nuzzled into it. “It’s okay. I promise.”

“I hurt you.” He breathed contritely.

“You didn’t do it on purpose. You were defending yourself. I’d have a problem with you if you hadn’t.” Kagome brought the other back to hold her as he had been.

Inuyasha curled into her, tilting her face again as he softly brushed a kiss to her scraped cheek. The tremble in her fingers was increasing, the shock of the situation really settling in. They rested on his forearms, her hold barely there anymore. She had to be fucking exhausted. It had to be so hard just sitting up right now. Her eyes were sunken and hooded, her smile was present but listless, her skin was pale and clammy, yet she still pushed through it all instead of collapsing and saving affection for later.

With a kiss to her forehead, he decided it was best to gather everything up. The battle wasn’t over. As much as he wanted to get her out of there, he needed to help the others, and Kagome was undoubtedly safer with him at this point.

Making sure she could support herself, he stood to find the knife he’d tossed. Thankfully, her scent was good guidance, and he was able to locate it hidden in the shadows in the distance. He fixed that in his belt before he picked up her arrows, unsurprised when he heard that grumble come from her as her stomach clenched in pain. Inuyasha made his way back calmly, smoothly, setting everything down beside him so that he could pull her hair out of the way. His hand was gentle as it stroked her back, soothing her heaves while she vomited.

“You’re okay.” He kissed her shoulder. “You’re okay, babe. You did such a good job. I’m so proud of you.”

Kagome coughed, a shuddering whimper following her discomfort, but Inuyasha continued to console her the best that he could. This was to be expected. She’d busted her ass saving them both and presented a level of power neither of them had yet to see. He’d take care of her tonight. He’d watch her carefully, he’d tend to everything she needed. Thankfully, Kaede had given them some of her medicine that helped Kagome the first time around, so she’d at least be able to sleep through the evening and fight the fever with a little help.

He helped her crawl away from the mess, whispering that he’d be right back when he walked in the direction of their kicked-aside bag, grabbing Tessaiga not too far off along the way. He pulled out the canteen of water and opened it up, ambling back and handing it over for her to sip on.

“Where is everyone? Can you smell them?” Kagome asked as she handed the bottle back over to him.

“Yeah.” He gave a small nod, replacing the lid before reaching for her arrows to drop back in the quiver over her shoulder. Her bow was within reach, so he stretched from his spot, dragging it their way. “They’re somewhere deep, but I’ll be able to find them.”

“We’ll return for the bag later.” He said, helping her to her knees so she’d be able to rise easier. Turning around, the hanyou readied himself for her to climb on his back, keeping a grasp on her hand to help leverage her up before he scooped up her rear to support her.

Thankfully, he not only had multiple scents to guide his way, but just a mile in, he could catch the sounds of fighting, of yelling. The cat demon’s roar was distinct and echoed, and Inuyasha picked up his pace.

As he got closer, he scouted out a spot to tuck Kagome in. She was already growing feverish; he could feel it through his clothing. Her part was over, she’d done more than enough. Now, he needed to protect her.

“Stay here, okay?” He whispered as she settled into her little nook. Her body was tired, and she leaned against the rocks for support.

“I want to come with you.” She said, but everything else about her communicated otherwise.

“No,” He shook his head, smiling softly while pushing her bangs from her eyes. “We’ve got it from here, kid. I’ll come back for you. I promise.”

Inuyasha leaned forward and brushed a kiss to her forehead, feeling how she subtly relaxed. “Tell me you’ll stay here. Nod.”

Kagome gave a listless nod, her face expressionless as she fully sank back now.

“Good girl.” He cooed. “I’ll be right back.”

It looked like he hadn’t taken the exact turn everyone else had. The tunnel he inhabited inclined and he came out on a ledge overlooking the scene below. There was a wind picking up in the cavern, one that only bewildered Inuyasha for a second before he pieced together who the woman facing off with Koga and Sango was. Kagura could control the wind, keeping their advances at bay while assaulting them with sharp thrusts of rocks shooting mercilessly through the air. Miroku and Kirara faced a child, a malicious grin on the little one’s face as he whipped his white hair over his shoulder.

Hakudoshi.

Taking out his sword, Inuyasha jumped from his ledge, slicing through the current Kagura flared with a wind scar that carved a passage. The moment his feet were on the ground, he raised Tessaiga over his head and slammed it down, watching Miroku get shoved out of the way by the feral cat demon as his attack went straight for the evil child. A barrier protected Hakudoshi, forcing his second wind scar to trail right over him in a circular motion before dying off as it hit the far wall.

“Long time no see, half breed.” The boy sneered.

“Inuyasha!” Miroku called. “Kagome, where -“

“She’s fine. She’s safe.” He quickly replied, amber eyes never parting from the purple ones belonging to the demon child.

“Eh,” Hakudoshi’s top lip curled cynically. “You tend to use those words lightly, don’t you.”

“Fuck you.” Inuyasha spit.

“You did quite the number on her.”

The hanyou nearly dropped his sword in his vehemence, marching forward. He could see the arrogant twitch of Hakudoshi’s mouth, thinking he had the upper hand with his barrier, but with a tightening of Inuyasha’s grip, the fang of his sword grew red and he stabbed it through. The wall around the child disappeared, and it was pleasant to watch his expression dwindle instantly. His small legs hurried to back up as he tried to rebuild another barrier, but Inuyasha went and broke that one two, reaching forward to strike his face.

“Not so tough now, are you?” Inuyasha grabbed the demon by his neck, lifting him up, ignoring the way Hakudoshi clawed at his wrist and hand to be set free.

“Kagome blames you for not saving her when she was thrown from the cliff.” Hakudoshi claimed through his clenched throat, choking but still speaking tauntingly with whatever willpower he had. “She saw you trying to grab your sword, but couldn’t understand why you weren’t able to get it because it was right there. She thinks you should have been stronger. Stronger like Koga. Like your brother.”

“No, she doesn’t.” He evenly refuted.

She’d lied. She’d never intended to stay behind and wait. Kagome just knew it was the only way to keep Inuyasha from worrying. She would be upset with herself if she didn’t do everything she could to help, and there was still some fight left in her.

At first, she’d tried climbing to her feet, but her legs shook and gave out from beneath her. Twice, she’d tried to stand, but it was no use. Not even with the wall as support was she able to walk up the incline. Just trying to pick herself up was exhausting, her stomach wringing painfully, and she’d had to pause to pass some bile. Trembling horribly, Kagome wiped her mouth clean, continuing forward on her hands and knees.

It was a strenuous path uphill, but Kagome pushed herself as hard as she could, swallowing thickly to fight through her body’s resistance. She could hear the action, she could hear Hakudoshi spewing nonsense to try and hurt Inuyasha again, and she could practically feel just how livid Inuyasha was as he faced him. She wanted to see to his end. She didn’t want to risk him getting away. If anyone needed to be disposed of in Naraku’s army, it was him. He was the termite, the demon who destroyed you from the inside out, and he was going to choke on his arrogance today.

“Kagome thinks you could have done more to save your mother.”

“You’ve lost your spark since you can’t speak through her anymore.” Inuyasha firmed his hold on Hakudoshi’s throat.

He wheezed, his voice breaking, but still he continued. “You were fourteen, you weren’t helpless. Just inexperienced and stupid. That’s no excuse. You could have helped her.”

The hanyou turned around, walking back the way he came.

“Kagome believes she would have survived if only you were full demon. Your mother would have been better off.”

“Kirara,” He called, holding the child a little higher. “Hungry?”

Tossing Hakudoshi, the saber-toothed cat leapt forward and caught him in her mouth, biting down and vigorously shaking her head from side-to-side. His screams echoed as he was mauled alive, ripped apart in Kirara’s teeth.

Kagome perched on the edge of the ledge on her knees, aiming an arrow in her bow downward. It was almost too much effort to pull the string taut, the muscles in her arms quivering horribly, but she powered through. Supplying a lethal dosage of her power into her weapon, she locked on the best she could.

“Kirara, drop him!” She ordered, and the cat was obedient to the ring of her voice. Spitting the maimed demon out, she backed away and Kagome released her shot, killing off the wicked underling of Naraku.

She’d had to catch herself before falling forward, her balance off kilter, her body weak, her stomach objecting, but she swallowed the bile the best that she could. She had everyone’s attention now and there was still one demon left.

“Kagura!” Kagome stressed demandingly. “Go! If you want to protect Rin, then go! Now! Otherwise, we’ll have to kill you, too.”

“You aren’t even going to try to ask questions?” The woman asked through a tense jaw and uneven breaths. “You’re just going to let me go? Just like that? That doesn’t seem like the wisest thing to do.”

Aggravated, Kagome pulled an arrow from her quiver in a means to challenge her attitude, aiming it in her bow. It worked. She was stopped promptly by Kagura’s quick reaction to raise her arms in way of yield.

“Alright, alright.” She murmured. Her scarlet eyes looked the countering woman over, how she was fighting just to stay up. She was dangerous. She was a force to be reckoned with, and she could tell that with nothing but a glance. Kagura was there when Hakudoshi came to, and he hadn’t been touched with her around defending him. Which meant, Kagome had pushed him out. No one had ever succeeded at doing that before. Hakudoshi was violent and sadistic. He’d make a home out of your body and then kill you while he was in it. But, when he regained consciousness here, he was pissed. Which meant, he lost. He didn’t get up as easily, either. He seemed out of breath, he carried himself as if he’d been wounded, as if his strength had been compromised, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been sent back not only with a damaged ego, but damage to his being, as well. “I hope you win, conjurer.” Kagura said before backing out, leaving the cavern.

With a breath of finality, Kagome let her hands fall to the ground beneath her, supporting her body the best she could. Spotting her cousin gazing at her with pressing concern, she gave a feeble wave, a smile containing minimal effort accompanying it as she gave a thumbs up. Miroku chuckled exasperatedly, rubbing his forehead in agitation before running his fingers through his hair.

“You said you’d stay.” Inuyasha said as soon as Kagome’s eyes glanced his way.

“Sorry.” She mouthed. Matching his tone, as light as it was, was just too much energy right now, and it was a struggle on its own not to collapse.

As if reading her fatigue clearly, Inuyasha effortlessly made his way back up to the ledge to check on her. The backs of his fingers caressed her cheeks, pushing hair from her face. She was burning up; it’d hit her hard this time. They needed to get her to a place where she could safely recuperate.

“I don’t think any of those things Hakudoshi said.” She whispered on an exhale. Her body gave the slightest sway, and Inuyasha’s hands moved to her sides to prevent her from falling.

“Shh,” He soothed. “I know you don’t.”

“I - I would never.” Kagome looked as if she were about to cry, sparring against her exhaustion to stay upright. “I think you’re perfect the way you are.”

“Kid, stop.” Inuyasha lulled. “Come on, you need to rest.”

“Is the fight over?” Her brow furrowed tight, and one of her hands pressed into his thigh as she wavered again. It was like she couldn’t feel his support. “Are there - there anymore demons?”

“No. It’s over.” He shook his head. It clicked. She was about to pass out, and at the perfect moment, Inuyasha caught her when she fell into his chest. Giving it a second, he waited. Her breathing was still there, her pulse was still beating, but she was undeniably unconscious. Honestly, it was surprising that she’d lasted this long.

With a sigh of relief, Inuyasha held her tight for just a moment longer. Everything was fine now. Her body was forcing her to rest. Kagome was going to be extremely unhappy when she woke up later, but for now, she was okay. He pressed a lingering kiss to the top of her head before adjusting her legs so he could scoop an arm beneath the backs of her knees. She was safely cradled in his hold as he stood, silently gesturing to the others that it was time to leave.

| previous chapter | <-

[maxwell-grant]

Cass wouldn’t even begrudingly tolerate [the Black Bat], because she’s even less lenient than Bruce on killing and far more willing to throw down.' - THANK YOU for remembering that.

Cass is my favorite Batfam member, the only one really that I have an active interest in reading about. I'd be incredibly ignorant to not bring bring up such a crucial aspect of her characterization. And even if I didn't personally care for her, well, last thing I'd want is to be another source of frustration for Cass fans. Lord knows there's enough of those to go around.

mousebrass also asked: On that note, how do you imagine a meeting between Cass and the Shadow going?

Fair warning: This one took me 6 hours to write, and it became a hell of a lot longer than I imagined. I liked Cass a lot, but I never quite realized I had this many feelings regarding her until I was tasked with writing this, and a lot of things clicked for me regarding my plans for The Shadow thanks to this ask. @mousebrass, thank you. I mean it. I think I may have found something here I've spent years looking for. Hope you enjoy the post.

I'm thankful that this scenario is only really taking place in a hypothetical fanon where both characters can get a fair shot, because I wouldn't trust DC with this premise. I don't trust DC with either of them as is.

There's a lot of ways that this crossover could go on about taking place naturally, initially because Cass is already connected to some of Batman's pulpier elements, due to her connections to Lady Shiva and the League of Assassins, and one could connect Cass to Myra Reldon (who really should just be race swapped if ever brought back so she can stand out as the cool character she is, without the yellowface gimmick holding her back). There's two things I think are crucial to making the most of this idea, and the first of which has to do with the subject of killing. I usually don't like to come up with hypothetical team-ups for The Shadow that focus too much on the fact that he kills, because it's far from the most significant aspect of his character to focus on, much of it is written from a wrong understanding of the character, and it never amounts to anything other than perfunctory. But here, not only is it completely unavoidable to discuss, here there is actually a very, very substantial grounding as to why this has to be such a big part of the story.

The first and foremost thing that's gotta be established to everyone reading that doesn't know already is this: Cassandra Cain, more so than Batman, more so than any other DCU hero, has a tolerance towards murder lower than zero, and this is completely non-negotiable. She will throw herself on the path of an assault rifle to stop men trying to kill her from accidentally killing each other. The defining moment of her incredibly grim backstory is that she was trained from birth to be the world's greatest murderer, and her first kill traumatized her so badly that she has pivoted as far away from that as possible. I stress a lot that the Shadow should not be written as the trigger-happy maniac comics made him into and that the pulp version killed mostly to defend himself and others, generally left criminals to the police if possible, offered plenty of second-chances, had stories dedicated to the rehabilitation of criminals and so on, but none of this would matter to Cass.

Cass has literally chosen suicide over the prospect of living with murder on her hands time and time again, and The Shadow kills. When he kills, he does so without remorse, with unshakeable certainty. He hates death, he doesn't want lives to be at risk in the first place. But people will die if he doesn't do anything, and what he can do, what he exists to do, is turn the tools of evil against evil, and murder is the oldest tool of evil there is. He doesn't kill because a war scarred him, he doesn't kill because he's got a demon in his soul, he doesn't kill because he's mentally off balance, he doesn't kill because he's evil or sadistic or arrogant or anything of the sort. He kills because the men he fights chose death when they sought to harm innocents and fire guns at him. He kills because he is Death itself.

Regardless of how compassionate he is or can be, regardless of the fact that he's motivated by a desire to protect people, regardless of how justified he is, he is still dropping corpses and laughing maniacally doing so. Cass's real arch-enemy isn't Shiva or David Cain, it's Death, it's the thing that she's fundamentally most opposed to. And guess what The Shadow gets compared to often enough? Literally the very first line of the very first book where we get to see him, this is how we are introduced to him:

So the premise here is that we are taking a character who is defined by her fundamental opposition to death with every fiber of her being, who understands death on a level no other human being does, who is traumatized and hard-wired to detest death at all costs and to choose suicide over it, and asking her to team up with The Grim Reaper.

Even if he received the most abject lesson conceivable on the sheer wrongness of murder, even if he does put down the guns around Cass out of respect for her, he cannot protect his agents and others if he cannot shoot or kill those who try to harm them, and the protection of the agents is absolutely non-negotiable and not at all something he's willing to fuck around with by trying out gadget kung fu superhero alternatives. The Shadow has chosen to throw his life away for their sake time and time again, and no matter how appaling or disgusting Cass finds his deeds, even if he concedes that she's right and should be right on all accounts and that he is fundamentally a monster who has no right to judge others, he would not concede on his mission and he would make it very clear she would have to put him down violently to stop him from protecting others this way, and death has not stopped him before.

And to be upfront in case there's anyone who doubts it, Cass would kick The Shadow's ass, if they had to fight. She is the strongest fighter in the DCU, she lives and breathes fighting and combat in a way no one else does. And The Shadow's not one of those characters who is supposed to be invincible and the best at everything all the time always, he can and does lose fights and scrapes to people far less adept at it than Cass. He's a great fighter, obviously, he hauls bigger men than him through doors and was disabling people with Vulcan neck pinches decades before Spock, and he would definitely have an edge in other areas, but he's out of his league here. Frankly, I don't see The Shadow raising a finger against Cass unless she's been brainwashed into killing people by bad writing. Not because she's a woman, that doesn't really stop him from dealing with evil. But because, for one, she's practically a child compared to him age-wise. Two, he'd obviously know beforehand of her capabilities and how futile it would be to fight or even provoke her. And three, the Shadow's whole thing is knowing. The Shadow Knows and all that. Knowing comes with understanding.

He'd understand very quickly that there is no way someone this young could grow so quickly into the world's greatest fighter without horrific treatment that no one should ever be subjected to. He'd see the movements too practiced and quick, the self-control, the strength and speed far beyond even the trained warriors he's seen, the places where she's been scarred and is good at covering it up. Assuming he doesn't already know about her life story, any meeting between the two would lead to him very quickly figuring out that there's something much deeper about her opposition to killing than just moral reservations, something deeper than Bruce's own gun trauma.

Denny O'Neil's 2nd Batman and Shadow story was about The Shadow secretly helping Bruce overcome gun trauma, and Bruce rejecting The Shadow's intentions to hand him a gun. And to make it clear, people tend to assume that The Shadow only helps people for utilitarian reasons, which is not true as I've tried to demonstrate many times now. I don't want to convey that he would want to help Cass overcome her trauma just so she could be more efficient or something, absolutely no, he'd help her because he helps people in any way he can. I think a story with The Shadow and Cass might involve a similar premise, The Shadow understanding that she has been traumatized very deeply by death and refuses to accept it on any terms, trying to help her overcome it, only to learn that she does not want to "learn" anything she doesn't already know, that she has weaponized her trauma into a source of strength, and wishes nothing more than to help others with it.

And here's where we get to the part that allows the two to be on less antagonistic terms, because one thing that also very strongly defines Cass, at least the Cass I like reading most, is her stubborn, almost desperate need to believe in the best of people, that people can and will change for the better. Like The Shadow, her strength too is knowing, it's perception, the things that she knows about people that words cannot convey. Just as there are many things The Shadow would grow to understand about her that others would not, there would be many things that The Shadow would not be able to conceal from her. Things that no one but her would figure out. Things that, despite her age and lack of experience compared to him, he would have to defer to her knowledge on, which reverses the usual dynamic The Shadow has with people. And perhaps one aspect of that reversal, it's that maybe it's she who winds up secretly manipulating The Shadow into overcoming a deeper issue.

Cass's perspective on killing is shaped not just through trauma, but from a painfully intimate understanding of not just what happens to someone at the time of death, but the cost of murder upon the human soul, the ways it warps people into things they never should have been. Killing is a deeply, deeply serious matter, much more so than fiction seems ever willing to go into. Of course we suspend disbelief for fiction, there's nothing wrong with that, but if a story starts asking questions, starts poking holes into fantasies, they should not be disregarded.

And so it begs a question: How has it affected The Shadow? Is he really as remorseless as he appears to be? Is the fact that he's only killing evil people really of that much use? What's the cost of living as someone who has to know so much about so much evil in so many hearts? Knowledge never comes without price, and knowing evil is his tagline. When he enlists Harry Vincent, he makes it very clear that he has lost lives as he has saved them. From when is that regret coming from? What lives did he lose then? Is he saving people by damning his soul or merely prolonging the inevitable by piling corpses on another end of the scale?

If there's a character that could meaningfully start bringing these questions forth, who could ever truly get The Shadow to stop and reveal things to the audience he never would otherwise, maybe Cass could be that character. A girl who was raised to be a monster, who is treated as a monster and an aberration in-universe (and even outside of it), and turned that into a strength she uses to help others, who cares about everyone and refuses to let others be dehumanized as she was. Who better to know what lurks in the Shadow's heart?

Sometimes when I get an ask, I bullshit my way through infodump walls of text until I can structure it into something vaguely resembling a point. And sometimes, and I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes I get a very, very clear word on my mind related to it before I start writing, that almost seems to be a beacon pointing where I need to get to, and I work my way into getting there. Once you sent me an ask about crossing over The Shadow with Cassandra Cain, the word that came to mind the very second was Language.

It's an interesting relation the two have with language. Language is of course a very substantial part of Cass's character, who does not process language and linguistic development the way most people do, and instead reads body language to the point of superpower. Many stories revolve around Cass's relation to the concept of language, the help she may require from others in getting around things beyond her upbringing, and ways in which she has mastered beyond anyone's scope. Though she is mute, language is her power, what makes her what she is, and she is someone that Batman freely admits could kick his ass if she ever felt like it.

For The Shadow, language is also his power. He speaks all languages and connects allies all over the world, he is an expert ventriloquist, he is able to project his voice beyond what's physically possible, he can imitate voices perfectly to the point of being able to conduct group conversations single-handedly well enough to fool even the people whose voices he's imitating, much of his presence and terror and manipulation are done through his voice, arguably the very reason he exists in the first place is entirely because a radio actor's voice performance was so good and captivating that it tricked people into thinking the character was a real star and not just a glorified narrator. The man you cannot see, but only hear, the perfect hero for radio. And then of course the laugh, which I have a whole separate post on and which, in many ways, acts as a substitute for language in the novels. He uses the laugh so often as a substitute for statements or words, even to himself, that it's pretty much his own personal language. And language is at the core of how he deals with people, as he knows the right language to use to manipulate and move and help them. He knows what to promise, what to reveal, what to omit. He knows what to say, how to say it, when to say it. Language is the strings by which he puppeteers the world around him (and he can talk to animals, at least of one kind).

The Shadow and Cassandra Cain have mastered two different types of Language as throughly as anyone can possibly master them. The Shadow can talk a group of hardened criminals into killing themselves, Cassandra can punch a heart into stopping without killing it. The Shadow echoes his voice "through everywhere and nowhere at once" to whip crowds of thugs into frenzies, Cassandra outraces missiles and was tanking bullets as a child. The Shadow can lie and usurp lives so masterfully to fool even the families of those he's passing off as, Cassandra is a living lie detector who gleams inner conversations from miniscule reactions. The Shadow can speak every language known, Cassandra is the greatest master of the world's most universal language other than music. The two are supposedly human, but every now and then, something comes along to call that into question because of the things they can achieve. They cannot hide secrets from each other the way they do to everyone else. They are driven by a deep desire to help others, to make something out of the circumstances of their lives. To weaponize that which dictates they should be evil and monstrous into a relentless force of good.

Language is the root of understanding. And if nothing else, as impossible as a conciliation of their approaches to crimefighting may be, I think there could be an unique understanding between the two. Perhaps, and this is a bit crazier a concept but one that seems to be where I might have been heading towards all along, even Cassandra Cain finding a calling away from the frayed dynamics of the Batfamily, away from the Bat's looming presence, to become The Shadow's successor, swearing to uphold a mission of justice through non-lethal tactics while he stays on the backseat guiding her. If The Shadow could trust the safety of his agents and the protection of the innocent at the hands of someone as capable and selfless and good-natured as Cassandra, I think he'd be all too happy to be able to trust someone in such a manner, to no longer be the Master of Darkness, but instead to serve the next generation that's weaponized darkness without submerging in it. To achieve, and perhaps return, to his strongest, highest self: A disembodied voice heard, but not seen. Once again the narrator, not the star.

It's a concept I've thought about very extensively for the years I've been a Shadow fan, but now it occurs to me that, if I had to appoint a successor of The Shadow, someone who could take up the mission but shine on their own right, even improve it with the right guidance and circumstances, it would be Cassandra Cain. The Orphan, The Shadow of the Batgirl. Daughter of the greatest assassins, meant to be the world's most lethal murderer, instead pivoted to being one of it's greatest heroes, but never allowed to shine as she should. But in the darker, less restrictive and wilder world of pulp heroes, in The Shadow's world, a beacon would shine all the harder. Perfect strengths attached to perfect opposites, joined together for a greater good, unstoppable after together having weaponized that which most take for granted: the power of language to move worlds.

[youareinlovees]

Hi do you mind doing like a breakdown analysis or just a general summary of what cruel summer’s about? I’ve been able to price together bits and pieces from your blog but could really use some help understanding the overall storyline

Sure! It started off as a general summary but I realised it would be easier if I went through line-by-line instead. 

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Fever dream high in the quiet of the night

You know that I caught it

She’s setting the scene here – it’s the middle of the night and she’s experiencing some kind of intense feeling that makes everything seem like a fever dream. Is it an emotional high because she’s so happy or maybe a drug trip or some kind of ~other high? There’s no clear cut answer but she says the other person ~knows she’s feeling this way, so make that of what you will.

Bad, bad boy, shiny toy with a price

By referring to him as a toy, she’s establishing that this is a no-strings attached, almost transactional situationship. It’s similar to “toying with them older guys / just playthings for me to use” – a line that’s heavily influenced by the public’s perception of her, so she’s saying that a) it’s set around the same timeframe, ergo 2016, and b) once she gets him out of her system, she’ll ditch and move on just like all those times before.

You know that I bought it

He’s well aware that they’re ~friends and this isn’t a defined relationship. Maybe it was something they agreed on, or maybe it’s an unspoken understanding, we don’t know.

Killing me slow, out the window

I'm always waiting for you to be waiting below

This actually reminds me of Tangled, like the idea of some sheltered princess falling for a normie who shows her a whole new world, and ultimately deciding to leave her life in the tower behind and run away with him? I could be reading into things too much but it’s a fun parallel for sure.

Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes

This is about her thought process: one part of her is deciding to take a gamble on the relationship – she might get hurt later, or the world might find out she’s seeing yet another guy and burn her alive for it, but she figures the risks are worth it. But at the same time, she’s like “here we go again 🙄” and doesn’t like that she’s so invested all of a sudden.

What doesn't kill me makes me want you more

The “what” in this line could be referring to a number of things. Maybe she’s talking about all the mess that’s happened this year and how shitty it’s been, and she’s using him as stress relief now. Maybe it’s about the lack of labels on their relationship and how that’s killing her, but makes her even more determined to get him to commit somehow. Or maybe it’s the general feeling of being so attracted to someone you think you might die.

And it's new, the shape of your body

It's blue, the feeling I've got

And it's ooh, whoa oh

It's a cruel summer

This is fairly straightforward, like they’ve only just started seeing each other so his body’s new and she feels blue because… 2016.

It's cool, that's what I tell 'em

No rules in breakable heaven

This is more of a general commentary on how she goes about a fwb situation, like it doesn’t have to be exclusive and pretty much anything goes. She also talks about the fragility of their relationship – they might be in heaven but it’s very much breakable and could end anytime.

Hang your head low in the glow of the vending machine

I'm not dying

I think this was meant in a literal sense, like they’re meeting up somewhere and he’s leaning against a vending machine and scrolling through his phone. She walks over and absolutely loses her mind over how hot he looks and realises that she’s down baaad. For a moment, in the midst of the ~cruel summer~, she’s not dying because she’s distracted by other priorities basically.

Alternatively, the snacks in a vending machine aren’t the healthiest way to deal with being hungry, and fucking your Words With Friends bestie isn’t exactly the healthiest coping strategy, but she really couldn’t care less.

We say that we'll just screw it up in these trying times

We're not trying

Both of them decided they didn’t want to get into a proper relationship, like she was fresh off two breakups and Going Through It, and his first movie was about to drop and he was going to head off to Asia for a promo tour soon. It doesn’t feel like the right time to define things, so why bother?

So cut the headlights, summer's a knife

I'm always waiting for you just to cut to the bone

The headlights being off represents them sneaking around and seeing each other in secret. She then says that although this summer’s already been so painful and shitty, he has the potential to hurt her the most by breaking things off or not reciprocating her feelings. And because she’s so cynical about love now, she’s expecting to get burned sooner or later.

And if I bleed, you'll be the last to know

If things do end badly, she’ll make sure she seems completely unaffected, because the last thing she wants is for him to think he broke her heart or whatever.

I'm drunk in the back of the car

And I cried like a baby coming home from the bar

This sounds super literal, and some people have connected it to the first verse in Cornelia Street, but I think this situation happens later on.

Said, "I'm fine," but it wasn't true

#TAYLOR: vulnerability 🤢 honesty 🤢 being upfront about how I feel 🤮

I don't wanna keep secrets just to keep you

It’s killing her that she can’t tell him about how she actually feels, because what if he’s not on the same page and she scares him off? So in order to keep their relationship going, she has to keep it in.

And I snuck in through the garden gate

Every night that summer just to seal my fate

Basically, it was always inevitable that she would fall for him, but their constant meet-ups intensified those feelings even more.

The garden gate mention seems to be a continuation of the fairytale imagery in “I’m always waiting for you to be waiting below” except now she’s the one reaching out to him. It’s also reminiscent of “I sneak out to the garden to see you” in Love Story, which is all about fairytale endings. But now on Cruel Summer, she’s subverting that imagery because real life relationships are complicated and raw and nuanced, and not at all like the idealised perfect love she used to write about.

Also, because this lyric is between them being in the back of the car and her screaming I love you, it separates the two situations so they’re not necessarily about the same thing.

And I scream, "For whatever it's worth

I love you, ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?"

He looks up, grinning like a devil

And finally, it all becomes too much and she’s no longer able to hide her feelings, because she suddenly screams that she loves him. He looks up from whatever he’s doing, and is like 😁😁😁 because it turns out he’s equally as whipped, and the rest is history!