#as if him throwing a glass at her and being overall controlling isn't already a red flag???? bro

[jounetsunosymphonia]

dama de noche (night-blooming jasmine, literally lady of the night)

a horror comic i did for a school project a little while back! something something, the real monster was man.

warnings: domestic abuse, murder, some blood

it's kind of Long so the rest is going down here ⤵️

if you made it all the way down here, thank you for reading!

[opencharacters]

Happy New Year Mr. Mouse

A short thing I prepared in honor of this occasion. I'm aware Mickey Mouse is not public domain outside of the US and that Disney can still use their trademark laws and fancy lawyers. But this means so much to me in just what I've believed about copyright for years. Disney isn't the main villain in the fight for a more robust public domain but they certainly are and were one of the big ones. It feels nice. Let us celebrate. Here is a short fic I wrote in the Mouse's honor on this day. Happy public domain day everyone!

An anthropomorphic mouse, wearing overalls and a hat arrived at the local bar. He distinctly was wearing no gloves, something unusual for this time of year given how cold it could get but most of the other bar flies didn't think much of it.

"I'm sort of part of the gang now boys, give me a frosty one to celebrate"

The bartender was a woman wearing a scarf and steampunk looking goggles resting on her head.

"Ah the king himself joining my little bar, you know what for the occasion its on the house" the woman said, pouring the mouse a beer and sliding it over to him.

"Name's Jenny" she said. "And you need no introduction. You're Mickey Mouse, right?"

"That's right ma'am"

"You know you just being in here is gonna upset some powerful people right?"

"I've served my 95 years, I deserve to be here" Mickey said, proceeding to take a long chug at his beer.

(Web Archive Link)

"I don't argue with that, in fact some of the folks around here have been counting the days. Congrats"

"Thank you"

"Seen my brother around?"

"Oswald?" Jenny asked.

"Well, yeah I guess I should've been more specific"

"Yeah he's always around somewhere. I'm sure he'd be happy to see you"

There werent many people in the bar, people could come and go but there was certain requirements for entering Jenny's Public Drinkery. The crowd that day was mostly a few regulars like Sherlock Holmes a detective type with a deerstalker hat or Winnie the Pooh, a yellow-ish brown bear distinctly lacking any red shirts in fact he had burnt all his red shirts on the first day he arrived.

People found it to be odd but it wasn't uncommon for people to destroy something that symbolized their previous cosmic shackles that tethered them to the unseen forces beyond their control. They relished in their newfound freedom.

Besides those two there was Yrina, a blonde woman wearing odd looking pink clothes and blue gloves, like a flashy looking cosmonaut. She had arrived wet and disoriented and talking about sea monsters yet didn't elaborate.

"Mickey, cheers to your freedom. Cheers to all our freedoms" Yrina said, being already on her way to being drunk despite her only having been there for an hour or so. "Never take it for granted Mickey"

She proceeded to chug a huge mug of ale and slam the tankard down on the table, demanding a refill which Jenny obliged.

"Sorry about Yrina, she's a space pirate and her manners could use a bit work" Jenny whispered to Mickey.

Changing her volume she said: "You know Mickey, we were kind of not sure how this day would go. I was thinking of throwing a party for you with all your siblings and stuff. But I guess chatting to me and these three is your welcome party. Sorry about that"

"No ma'am its fine. You've been kind. I can mingle later on and this is nice. I do know Winnie, him and I go way back" Mickey raised his glass in the direction of Winnie and nodded.

"You're very kind to be there when folks like me break free. From what I've heard it can be disorienting and overwhelming and being here now I can vouch for that.

"Yeah that's why I built this place. I wanted to be there for everyone. To give them a welcome"

"How do you have time to greet all these people?"

"I'm Jenny Everywhere, I can handle more things than you can shake a stick at"

"You certainly made me feel welcome and at ease. I think I'll sit here for a while and take it in and then try to find Oswald"

He took off his hat and threw it in the garbage can next to him.

"Happy New Year everyone" Mickey cheered, met with equal enthusiasm from everyone there.

[stagnantmako]

what if scenario #2

how much would change if weiss was the younger brother and nero the older

ohh good question.

so, overall, we’d see more of the nero we saw in dirge than the one in intergrade. as in - a very focused, driven person that doesn’t care much for violence. he’s singularly focused on weiss’ protection and care. being the older brother means he shoulders the burden and isn’t hiding in weiss shadow, he’s casting one long enough for weiss to hide in and probably forcing him to stay there.

nero is wildly reckless when on his own but if weiss’ safety is involved then he’s cold, calculating, and focused and only very soft when dealing with weiss. he doesn’t really care about his own safety, only weiss’, and that takes a very different turn when he’s also the protector.

additionally, nero being the older brother means one key change: his mother didn't die when he was born. 

i've never headcanoned her as a very maternal figure, i've always assumed her to be a scientist who picked up grimoire and lucrecia's research. but any affection is more than nero got, and affection in those early months is important. i imagine injecting yourself full of stagnant lifestream can't do great things to you, so she probably wasn't long for this world, but he got time with her and wasn't immediately shunted into a glass container.

weiss is probably then a byproduct of her trying to rid herself of the lingering effects of the stagnant lifestream. not an intentional pregnancy or an experiment, just something that happened. she passes away shortly after he's born. nero's maybe four or five at the time and has some control over his powers and is largely obedient. they've long since learned that if they hurt him, not only do they risk the wrath of the project head (his mother) but also that the little monster lashes out viciously when cornered.

but she's gone now. nero doesn't really understand death - he's still a child, and although already possessing a body count, hasn't fully made the connection with what it means to kill someone. and so he throws a tantrum when he can't see her and they tell him she's gone. that's the first time they lock him up.

and after repeated tantrums without his mother to soothe him, they decide to stop letting him out.

he meets weiss a few years later, when they're halfway certain he isn't going to kill the other boy outright for taking his mother away from him. they explain that they're brothers, that means they're connected in a way they aren't with anyone else on the planet, and that weiss is his mother's last gift to him. something, anything, to make nero easier to manage. and against all odds it works.

because nero is horribly lonely. and this thread of connection is all he has.

the sable is surprisingly gentle with this rambunctious toddler, who despite remarkable circumstances, seems to be so utterly ordinary. nero's hands are wrapped up to restrain his powers and that makes him clumsy, and he counterbalances it being exceedingly careful when handling him. he's keen to learn absolutely everything about taking care of him, and they learn that so long as they can tempt nero with time with weiss, they've got a handle on how downright vicious he can be.

a budding monster is tamed.

the older they get, the more they trust nero and the less nero fights back against their experiments. every now and again there's a threat, unspoken but understood, that should nero fail to behave and met their standards - weiss will begin being subjected to the torture they put him through. nero understands that part of being a big brother is being a shield, and so he strives to protect weiss with everything he has. he brute-forces control of his powers so he never has fear of hurting him. at thirteen and eight they're moved into dorm housing and nero's tasked with keeping him alive.

( not that they really care. weiss is, by all accounts, a disappointment. he serves as motivation for nero to behave. )

by this point they've bound his arms. scarlet's installed prototype wings. he learns to do household chores (and he learns to do household chores, struggling with basic concepts as they were never needed in the tank he'd called home for so long) with a set of mechanical hands built for evisceration. he wipes dirt off weiss' face without leaving so much as a nick in his perfect skin.

when he's deployed for missions, something that happens with far more frequency considering the use of his powers and that refusal means losing his privileges, he leaves weiss in the care of argento. they're not really friends but nero's not really friends with anyone. but she's strong and, unlike most others, has never tried to take his head off for personal gain. nero doesn't terribly mind it when people do, mind you, as deepground is survival of the fittest and he sees little problem with people making attempts on his life. but it does lend a certain trust to her that others don't have.

nero keeps weiss away from it. no matter how badly he knows weiss wants to be a hero and a fighter. all his life he's told weiss that when he goes to the labs he's being made stronger, enduring experiment after experiment for that end - and while true, it doesn't convey the horror of it. 

it's a terrible thing to do, to shelter someone from their own reality. but he wants weiss to maintain his innocence longer than most. most of the other children his brother’s age are the children of scientists with only mild enhancements, and then the handful that are older are all like him. evidence of man trying to play god and creating monsters instead. most of them are dead now, with more dying as the experimentation ramps up.

when he gets back from one a mission, argent meets him with a grim expression. weiss had gotten into a scrap with rosso - who, understandably jealous of the fact that weiss has a protector and frustrated with being ignored by nero all her life, had been waiting for the opportunity to pounce. nero is panicked until he sees his brother is fine. there's not a scratch on him.

weiss runs up to him, delighted to show him this new trick. his brother, with no enhancements, is suddenly showing rosso’s fighting style. worse still, he’s all of nine and wants to be just like his brother. and nero, who has lived his formative years in this new deepground and was born and bred for war, is oh so proud.

and then a new fear sets in. because he knows what being special in deepground entails.

he tells weiss to hide it. to never, ever show anyone. he grips his shoulders so hard it hurts and demands him to promise. the scientists can't find out. no one can know. does he understand?!

and weiss doesn't.

but he's never seen nero look like this before. and so he agrees, afraid of his brother and for his brother. nero leans forward and rests their foreheads together and draws him close with those metal arms. weiss hugs him back automatically and unreservedly, pressing his face in his shoulder, and nero apologies with his breath catching. he didn’t mean to scare him, he doesn’t want weiss to fear him the way everyone else does. he has worked so hard to not be something weiss shies away from.

but he’s terrified.

and he realizes that they can't stay here. no one can find out. because he watches what they do to rosso and knows from the despair in her screams that she can't last forever. but he has to bide his time.

deepground worsens. weiss grows from a chubby cheeked child into a young man, straining against the unremarkable label they’ve given him. he sees in his brother’s eyes how he longs to compete with his peers - not  just to compete, but to thoroughly trounce to show his superiority - but weiss listens.

nero knows there's a rebellion coming. he’s been steadily planting the seeds as they go. spreading quiet rumors about deepground, about where prisoners of war are taken, about the missing children snatched from families in the dead of night. his goal is to get to general sephiroth - they’re not terribly far apart in age, he knows the general had a childhood spent in a lab, but the restrictors never let him close enough.

but down here things are bad and getting worse. most of the other faces he was born and raised with die, unable to cope with these new training regiments. rosso survives but when he looks at her he no longer sees the headstrong girl he knew, just a hollow-eyed wraith that only feels alive when she's causing someone to bleed. 

he doesn’t want weiss to be like that.

so he gives a plan. one of daring-do. one that promises they both escape. weiss uses his snd to download the plans for the building and they go over the route, again and again. nero divulges what he knows of AVALANCHE and promises that when they’re free, weiss can show off his light as he always wanted to. he can destroy shinra.

and so when the rebellion happens, something already doomed to fail because the best the surface has to offer can’t stand against the worst deepground has, nero has his plan ready. he shoves a helmet on weiss’ head and forces him into the uniform of a recruit. weiss is tall for twelve and no one will question it. he grabs his brother by the arm and runs, and runs, and runs. the elevator guards are all dead, above and below, and no one has called for backup. 

he shoves his brother through and into argento’s waiting hands. she knows the surface and she can be trusted. he ignores the hands reaching for him and demanding he come too. he wants to - he intends to, if he can, through a different route - but weiss isn’t their focus. 

weiss is nothing to them. he’d saw to that. nero is nothing if not calculating and he knows they’ll write argento as dead too, for a pacifist in a warzone doens’t last long.

it would be a lie to say that what followed had been his plan. really, he knows he’s buying time. being the diversion for the real escape attempt. argento soothes weiss and lets him know nero’s coming later, and maybe he would have if things had worked in their favor.

they take him down before he manages to get even a quarter of the way there. frankly, he should be dead from the damage done to him, but nero is nothing if not resilient. 

unlike weiss, he tells them. weiss had been reclaimed by the planet. a stray bullet had hit him and that had been that. nero hadn’t even had a body to hold, just lifestream slipping through his fingers, and that was why he’d exploded.

it’s believable - nero had burst into hysterics when he’d reappeared in the chaos, taking down friend and foe alike. all that careful control abandoned in favor of rage that deepground had forced him to make this choice. he’d been uncontrolled and wild, nothing at all like the reserved young man he presented himself as.

deciding without weiss as insurance this experiment isn’t worth it, nero shows them a fraction of his powers and they decide it would be better to put him back in his glass cage and put him to sleep. taking him out only when shinra has no other choice, or when they have an experiment they’re dying to test. 

without weiss, there’s no emperor to unite deepground. nero lacks the charisma and interest. he’d accomplished what he set out to do. he got weiss out before the doors slammed shut forever. now he’s listless and anxious for death to release him from this isolation. 

by the time anyone gets to deepground most everyone is dead. the one surviving restrictor send the survivors after him, because he recognizes little weiss and is oh so furious that he’s loose and so much more than they were told. 

he doesn’t send nero after them. which is all weiss wants. nero. though it must pain him to see rosso and shelke both so far gone. but restrictor laughs and says that he wouldn’t send nero out, since whatever made nero nero has long since fallen to ruin. 

when all is said and done, weiss probably finds his brother floating in a tank in the heart of the reactor. one of the only areas still fully powered, still fully capable of keeping him subdued and sedated. he’s alive but unconscious, wasted to nearly nothing. the entire building he’s housed in is full of that dark, twisted lifestream. it spills out of the doorways and windows. 

the reports warn that he’s an artificial weapon that lacks humanity. that nero is sadistic beyond belief. he delights in causing and receiving pain and nothing else.

the rest of AVALANCHE discusses whether they can afford to risk setting another sephiroth loose on the planet. whereas weiss remembers the brother who worked so hard to turn weapons into things capable of providing a comforting touch, and doesn’t hesitate to press the release.