#back to my cave i gooo

[fungstr]

ahhn nene? (the kitty nene design on the left belongs to @/Bunsofloves on twitter)

[falling-star-cygnus]

ONE BADASS BILLY COMING RIGHT UP >W< -> these two know what's up

thank you all so much for your kind words, by the by!! words can't express how thankful i am that you enjoy my content <3 Masterlist

bare with me, this is about to be a dumpster fire of attempted trick shots and angsty dialogue. LET'S GOOO 🙌

It all happened in an instant.

The shot was lined up, non-lethal upon the Boss's request, and he swore he could see target lines painted in gold-

And the roof caved in on him.

"You've gotten soft, Kid."

It was one of the special occasions that the Hares' weren't making a deal for a Hollow Raid- one with some kinda mechanic enthusiast this time. Why were all the mechanics they met so hellbent on prying into his wiring anyway?

"And I don't just mean your mettle."

It made it hard to find a consistent repairman.

Billy didn't know what his bullet ended up hitting- when the shot went wide- didn't remember much of anything after his head was kathunked by a heavy piece of tin, but he knew it lodged in something fleshy. And he really hoped it wasn't one of his girls.

"Guess some things never change though, huh?"

....really hoped it wasn't one of his girls.

Squirreling his way out of this batch of rubble was thankfully... relatively... painless. At the very least the android kept the majority of his oil inside this time. If Billy ignored the piece of rebar in his abdomen then it wasn't there, and it clatters to the ground forgotten all the same anyway.

A note sits innocuously among the tattered remains of the warehouse, a single geometric flower etched in the corner. It's expensive paper, cardstock the android thinks, with roughly the same feel as a hit card.

Fitting. ________________________________________ Heey, Kid. Enjoy your power nap? By the time you read this, we'll be long gone. So don't bother searching too hard, kay? ;) Or blowing a fuse, the Hare broads are safe. For now, anyway, the tiny one- white hair?- put up one hell of a fight when you went down. Jeez. Anyway, I think you know how these things work. Deliver 5000D to XXXX and you'll get your girls back If you're quick about it, we won't even declaw your kitty ---------------------------+_____________|\_/^

Billy crumples the note before even reaching the sign off. He doesn't care. The location he was given was one he was familiar with, a little hole in the wall where foot traffic was light.

A hole in the wall where everyone had some sort of involvement with each other. No one would be there by accident.

No one would leave by accident either.

The android can feel a familiar buzzing under his plating. A buzz that tinted his video sensors with target signs rather than faces and made his trigger happy fingers even twitchier.

It was terrifyingly familiar.

He wanted to sink into it, let himself fall into old habits until the Boss ordered him out of it. And why shouldn't he, anyway? His family was gone. The people who let him be Billy instead of Billy Kid, the feared enforcer, were gone.

"You've gotten soft, Kid."

War was not a place for soft metals, or gentle hands, or off-beat dances. Billy had gotten careless, allowed himself to become too lax in the clumsy love of people who didn't quite know how to be a family.

This was his fault.

Something bumps into his sneaker.

Billy just barely manages to keep himself from shooting it down, and it's only because the tiny thing's green body registers as familiar.

"Amillion?"

Nicole's little Bangboo, as quiet a thing it is, chitters at him- clutching at his ankle like a needy dog. Billy hates that it soothes the fire ant itch- that need to hurt- under his plating somewhat.

"Did you get yourself hurt?" the android questions as he crouches down.

"Ehn-na. Nah, Nah!"

...yeah, he doesn't know why he asked either. Amillion is a hardy sucker. For a Bangboo, at least.

"Na- ehn-na! Ehn!"

It sticks out it's plush little hand, waving it was such insistence that Billy feels compelled to take it between his fingers. The android keeps his grip gentle, despite-

Discomfort spikes in Billy's head as memories- familiar, warm, memories- are inputted directly into his video processors.

Braiding soft hair, powering off in the sun with the smallest Hares curled into jacket, dancing in cramped living rooms with the weight of socked feet on smooth metal.

His family chases away that burning rage that had threatened to drown him- a life ring in a sea of brownish red tar that drags him back to his body.

"Ehna..."

It takes a few more seconds, mostly because every wire in his body is clinging to the remnants of his girls' voices, but the android snaps back to the present.

Amillion pats his palm with a comforting chirrup.

...right.. Billy wasn't a mindless weapon anymore. He wasn't going to act like one. ->;<- Slinking into a rusty warehouse with a bright green Bangboo hooked onto his shoulder theoretically should've been harder than it was. Especially considering his own choice of bright red leather.

Or- as Nicole would say- his choice of R255 leather.

Heh.

Billy missed his boss.

The android descends on the group with a flurry of bullets, ignoring the screams that ring out as the metal shells find new homes in kneecaps, elbows, and feet. Immobilizing shots.

Not lethal ones.

Although Amillion might not have gotten that memo, considering it's little machine gun causes... quite a few lackeys to drop. But what Billy doesn't dwell on can't hurt him. His abdomen throbs.

It doesn't take long for the head honcho to come scurrying out of his hidey hole.

What do you know, flooding an anthill with blood works just as well as flooding it with water.

The android shoves his gun into the hollow of his jaw.

"Where are they."

"Hey, hey, hey-!" he tries to backpedal, hands raised up by his head, "We can talk about this, yeah? Calm down-"

Billy is freshly out of patience, and apparently- so is the Bangboo, because they pull the hammer back at the same time.

"They're not hurt! Just- oh, who am I kidding, you're not going to kill me." He's not, but Amillion might.

"You've gotten soft, Kid."

It's odd to hear it said again, that phrase that's been rattling around his memory banks. Maybe he has.

Maybe it's not such a bad thing if it means more warm memories to look back on. The android pulls the gun back-

"Wow," the man chuckles, low and mocking and borderline hysteric, "You really have! Showing me mer- hrk!?"

-and pistol whips him.

"Believe me," Billy starts, holstering The Girls to take the man by the back of the neck, "Putting a bullet between your teeth sounds pretty good right now."

The man gulps and if the android had a mouth he'd probably grin.

"Killing you would be mercy."

Compared to what my girls' are going to do to you after I make sure they're ok, Billy tacks on- in the privacy of his head. His fingers twitch on the back of the man's neck.

"If I find out you've hurt them..." "I haven't! I haven't, I swear, they're all ok!"

...and this was the man that called the android soft? He caved so quickly..

After everything is said in done, the man hadn't been lying. Nicole, Nekomata, and Anby are all ok- sans the slight irritation of rope burns and metal cuff chafing. [Anby had to be restrained more effectively]

The girls' let him fuss over them for all of a few minutes before returning the favor tenfold. Which he didn't think was fair- the android wasn't the one that got kidnapped!

"You have a hole in your abdomen!" Nicole nearly screeches, shaking him by his lapels but being careful not to dislodge Amillion from the hook on his shoulder, "Billy!"

"You were in danger!"

[jamroses]

Maybe in another life, pt 2

word count: 600 warnings: still none ? summary: Diane tells Todd a huge secret about her life and who she is in the cave. tags: dead poets society, neil perry, todd anderson, charlie dalton, knox overstreet, gerard pitts, steven meeks, richard cameron, anderperry taglist: at the end :3 note: im still a HORRIBLE writer so any constructive critism is welocome !

-

Todd felt like his world had just shattered for the second time, why didn't his friends understand? He was just trying to help, but it seems he had only made matters worse. 

He turned to face Diane, who he remembered was still in the cave. 

“I'm so sorry, this wasn't supposed to happen. God, I feel so stupid.”

He felt tears starting to stream down his face.

“Oh Todd, you couldn’t have known this would happen. You were just trying to help, I'm sure they'll see that, we're all grieving.” Diane spoke softly, 

When Todd looked up at her, she saw his tear filled eyes, she saw the pain in his eyes. 

He was crying as though he had lost a lover, not just a friend.

Todd's sobs grew louder, and more tears streamed down his face. Diane got up and sat down next to Todd. She took him in his arms and he didn't resist. He cried into her shoulder as she held him. Not saying a word, not even knowing, Todd thought, 

how much Neil really meant to him

-

Some time had passed, and the sound of rain falling through the trees onto the soft leaf covered grass could be heard from outside the cave. 

Diane slowly got up, “Todd it’s getting late, I’ve got to get back to my hotel.” 

Todd frowned, “You’re staying in a hotel? I thought you’d be staying with your parents.” 

“They uh, don’t really like to associate themselves with me anymore. I’m surprised they even told me about Neil.” Diane answered. 

Todd was confused, “What?” 

Diane sighed and sat back down again, “It’s a long story, I’ll tell you but you have to swear not to tell anyone else, or to judge.” 

“I swear,” Todd looked serious, “Dead Poets Honour.” 

Diane smiled a little;

“About 3 years ago I met a person, 

They meant a lot to me and we spent a lot of time together. We were roommates at first, then we became friends, we sat together at lunch, did our homework together, gradually we became best friends, spent every waking hour together, and eventually, we fell in love.”

She paused and looked at the cave wall in front of her, 

“We couldn’t tell anyone of course, it would ruin both our families. So we tried to hide it, we were good at it, of course. Until we weren’t. One day, I decided I should write to Neil to tell him about Her. I was so excited, 

I was so in love. 

But in my excitement I had forgotten that all mail sent to Welton has to go through the parents, so naturally when my parents got mail they opened it, to read what was inside before sending it to Neil. 

And that was the end of it, I was shipped off to England to go live with a great-aunt I had never heard of. Completely cut off from everyone here, including Her.”

“Are you going to visit her while you’re here?” Todd asked, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. She was like him, she knew what it was like to have the thing you love most ripped away from you. 

Should I tell her?

“I can’t, my parents said if I ever try to speak to her again, they’ll disown me. I can’t risk that, not right now.” 

Diane looked heartbroken, and Todd's heart ached. He wished he could help her, since her love was still alive. He felt he should try and do anything in his might to help her. 

But first he would have to tell her his secret, 

his and Neil’s secret.

“Diane.” Todd spoke softly, “What if I told you I was in love with you brother?” AAAA HERE U GUYS GOOO SORRY IF ITS A BIT SHORTER SKDHFJSDGFDSG

@fromhusk @zymogenn @poetrusic1959 @sihfce @please-hear-me-out (lmk if u want me to add u<3)

[solaneceae]

float like a feather, sting like sharp talons

Philza drops by Étoiles' brand new dojo for a friendly sparring session, and ends up getting quite a lot more. Namely existential dread, the thrill of a good hunt, and the comfort of shared trust. @apthotiosis this is a commissioned fic! read on ao3

He whistles, eyes lingering along the thick, wooden support beams and rice paper walls surrounding him. It’s a surprising sight, tucked away in a corner of what he can only describe as a mess of a base, mostly empty, the walls still a rough (and frankly ugly) mix of dirt and cobblestone that hasn’t been cleared out even after six months. “So. That is your dojo.”

Étoiles nods at his side, a big stupid grin on his face. “Do you like it, Phil?” he asks, eager as a pup as little Pomme zooms around the cave in an improv game of tag with Tallulah — ever mindful of how her lag (sorry, asthma) sometimes stalls her in her tracks. He glances at them fondly, silly, eggs, babies. “I do,” he hums, because it is pretty. Especially if you ignore the rest of the cave outside because God, it’s fugly as shit and Étoiles knows it. The plant hybrid smiles, all teeth and gums, and squints with star-filled eyes that always seem to glow despite not working like they used to. Phil still doesn’t get why what was originally a completely harmless veggie plant has evolved to bear such predatory teeth, but he can’t say it doesn’t suit his friend. “He likes it! Let’s gooo, big win for me, big win. I can die happy now.”

“Oh my god, stop. Kristin’s married, you know.”

Étoiles gives him a mock-shove that is more of a real one, because Étoiles never holds back, especially not with Phil. “Oh! Oh, so I can’t be nice to Lady Death? I can’t just visit her because she’s cool and she likes me also? I am married to the grind, Phil, you know me!”

Phil shakes his head, exasperated and fond. “You’re a nerd is what you are. Did you know she calls you her tech support?” Étoiles makes a confused noise. Tallulah peeps in the background, mimicked by Pomme, a chorus of play and yesyes, because all the eggs have picked up on that one by now. (Mimicry is a powerful thing, and the eggs are highly social creatures who thrive on it.)

Phil elaborates, circling the build to assess its structure better. “Because of the sweeping edge bug thing, and Richas’ cancelled death last week. You find the kinks and loopholes in death mechanics better than anyone she knows.”

Étoile beams at that. “That’s so cool. I’m Death tech support!”

“You certainly are. Do you think it’s because you picked Death? In the entity rooms?”

The green-skinned man shrugs, then gasps and takes off running after Pomme to stop her from setting up waterframes everywhere to display obscure anime edits for Tallulah because her internet, her lag Pomme, you’re going to make her void! Phil glances at them (safe, no danger, good) then back at the dojo, running his palm down a beam to feel its grain. It’s smooth, recently stripped of its bark. “Huh,” he says.

He doesn’t understand why his friend chose to build this underground when dojos are usually suited for wind-swept plains or mysterious forests. Then again, Étoiles has never been much for coherent aesthetics. That, and he probably thought it would be more mysterious to hide it under the ground, knowing him. “It’s. Well, very dojo-like,” he walks through dark support beams and onto clean, recently-oiled planks, coming to poke at one of the wooden sticks idly rotating above an altar to send it spinning in the opposite direction. Étoiles trots back to him with an egg under each arm (Play, dad, Pomme warbles. Play, silly, Tallulah beeps from within her cracked shell.) and lets out a guttural noise, visibly bothered by the sticks being out of sync, and it makes Phil snort. Silly. Silly. “Did you build it all by yourself?”

“Yeeaaaah.”

“You’re lying.”

A dramatic gasp. The warrior puts both eggs down to throw his hands in the air. “I’m not lying! Pomme, ma légende, dis-lui.”

Bomp. [me and richas did it. papa helped, very much :DDD]

Étoiles comes to brush his fingers against the red sign, letting the device tucked into his ear translate the written words into spoken ones. He whines, puts a hand over his heart as his ears droop. “Ahhh, trahison. Disgrâce. Tu m’détestes en fait Pomme, c’est ça ? You want me to dig down to bedrock and die forever? Or it’s because I can’t see, so you think I’m shit?”

Bomp. [papa…] Bomp. [t’a pas besoin d’être aveugle pour avoir des goûts douteux en déco :X]

“Okay, okay. I go die in fire then, goodnight.” Then Étoiles pours lava into the cobble floor and stands in it with a huge smile. His body catches on fire immediately, skin quickly shrivelling up and blackening under the heat. Pomme peeps at him loudly and hits him with her scythe, then douses him in water and healing potions — which immediately prompts Étoiles into sparring mode, laughing and hyping his egg up with a string of ‘oh she knows, she knows the play’ and ‘strafing, comboing, keep at it’ as his body heals up. Philza watches the display for a few seconds before getting bored, choosing to walk past the layer of light wood circling the dojo to take a look inside.

It’s even prettier than the outside, with all the paper lanterns and little fountains and bamboo shoots. His geta clack against the wood, then go silent on the woven straw flooring at the center. “Why’re all the posters in Japanese?” he remarks when his friend comes back from his little mock-tantrum with his daughter in tow, squinting at a crude montage explaining the belts system. Philza can gather that it’s based on how much HP the dojo master has left after a duel, because Étoiles has been yapping about making a dojo with that exact system for months now. (Is that a jar of mayo at the top? The hell?) Guess the eggs returning has been the push in motivation he needed to actually commit to that build, despite his insistence that he is very much a builder now, thank you very much, look at all the wool I have.

Étoiles perks up, grins in a way that lets Phil know he’s about to do a bit. “Oh, you don’t know? You don’t know that I’m literally Japanese, Philza?” he chirps, picking up one of the sticks on display before running circles around the other man, poking at his legs playfully. His boots are off, Phil notices. “Speaking of! Shoes off Phil, come on, come on!”

“You literally told me you grew in a field, mate,” Phil laughs, airy and wheezy and light as he evades the attacks. “The little legume who could! In rural France! Where does Japan come into play here?”

“Aaaah, Philza, Philza,” the warrior shakes his head, hitting the other on the shoulder to push him back out and onto the cold cobble floor. “Shoes off I said, it’s a rule. I don’t want shit on my tatami, I already had to clean it up sooo many times with the whole server fucking around in it yesterday. And Japan lives in my warrior’s soul. It’s all that matters.”

“F’course it does,” Phil complies regardless, shimming out of his geta before walking to the little shoe rack in the corner to tuck them inside. “There. Happy?”

“Very. Also, trivia time, culture time: did you know that cucumbers aren’t legumes? They are fruits, Phil! And vegetables don’t actually exist, they’re all either fruits or roots or leaves or flowers...”

Phil stares at him. “...You don’t get to stand there and tell me my avocados are fruits, Étoiles. What the fuck.”

“Umm, they are berries, actually—”

“Oh fuck off and come kill me already.”

“With pleasure, my bro.”

 

Armors come off next, quickly magicked back into inventories. Phil walks up to the altars to pick up his own stick (unenchanted, as plain as it gets) and spots Étoiles off to the side, rolling up his sleeve to check on his insulin levels before rolling it back down. “We eat one gapple each, yes? My sugar is low,” he explains as they both get into position on both ends of the tatami.

“Sounds good. You got yours?”

Étoiles laughs, summoning a golden fruit from his inventory and spinning it over his finger like the insufferable showoff he is. “Always. Autofeed off Phil, no cheating.”

“Alright, you little shit,” Phil summons his own gapple and bites into it with purpose, feeling the warm tingle of magic-saturation in his stomach as the rest of the apple vanishes into thin air with a few golden sparkles. He turns to the eggs, settled on top of diamond blocks they’ve just placed. “Tallulah, do a countdown for us please?”

Signs are placed, one by one, as Pomme hypes them up with Megalovania, perfectly timed with the Pigstep now blasting out of a music box. Bomp, three. Bomp, two. Bomp, one…

Bomp. [GO PAPA PHIL :D]

Étoiles shoots off towards him as soon as the letters show up on the wood, jumping up and swinging his stick down for a crit. Phil dashes to the side, the blow just grazing his shoulder. “Nice cock, Phil!” Étoiles gasps, all sharp teeth and waggling eyebrows, and it takes the avian back enough for the other to get a few hits in. “Motherfucker!” Phil laughs, breaking the combo and pushing the cucumber back with a few crits of his own, adrenaline starting to flood his brain and paint the world in sharp edges and colors. “You little shit! Stop doing that!”

“Do what, Philza? I’m just bantering, just chilling.”

Étoiles’ combat style hasn’t changed despite the blindness, Phil finds — he’s insanely precise and quick on his feet, which is a problem. He decides he won’t be able to outrun or out-speed him, so he elects to block most of his strikes with his own stick instead, relying more on instinct than observation. “He’s blocking, he’s blocking,” the warrior’s voice chants through the flurry of swings and the clack of wood against wood. “Strafing, strafing, he’s the best, he’s the GOAT. Hit me, Phil! Don’t just defend, hit me!”

And dammit, Phil tries pretty hard — but Étoiles is insane and he’s just a little too fast even without speedbridging, just a little too smart with his feints. Phil goes down after two minutes, the last hit clocking him across the temple and sending him to the (thankfully a little soft) floor, ears ringing and white stars dancing across his darkening vision. He wonders if it’s a little like how Étoiles sees the world now. Probably not. “Four hearts, Phil,” Étoiles announces, laying his hands on Phil’s side — the pain fades, the world comes back into focus, and his brain rattles with the doom-doom of revival. He hears fireworks going off, probably Pomme’s. “That’s good, very good. That’s a brown belt! I think you can kill me soon, easy. Again?” the cucumber chirps, offering his hand, and Phil thinks that if Étoiles had his tail it would probably be wagging right now.

He groans in agreement, grasps his friend’s hand and is pulled back on his feet. “Yes. Again.”

Round two goes similarly. “Again.” So does round three. “One more.” After his fourth consequential victory, Étoiles looks pensive, and Phil is getting a tad frustrated — he’s muted his comm for this, as he often does, but he can usher a guess at what Global chat looks like, spammed with his half-death messages and maybe a brief bout of concern from whoever else is online at the moment. “Fuck, man,” he rubs at his neck where a particularly vicious strike has left the skin an angry red, molted with purple. He’ll feel that in the morning, if he doesn’t get a respawn. “I don’t think I can do it. No black belt for me.”

“No, no, you can,” Étoiles insists, circling him — dull, greyed out eyes scanning for something. “I think…”

“Looking for something, king? How’s nebula-me looking?”

“Like the GOAT, you know that. But since you ask, you’re more blue today. With some red.”

“Cool. Wish I could see like you do, for a day.”

“You don’t. It’s pretty, but annoying. It’s harder to make out details inside the, ah…” he mumbles something in barely-legible French. “Je sais pas comment on dit. Les contours. The lines at the limits of a drawing.”

“Outlines?”

“Yes. I see the outlines well, but everything inside is messy. To me everything is just, shapes. And the bigger a thing is, the harder it is for me to understand it. Eggs are easy, because they are small and simple. People are harder.” He waves towards Phil. “Like, I can’t know if you’re smiling or frowning, I have to listen to how your voice sounds.”

“Huh. That’s interesting.”

Étoiles hums, stops at his side. Cocks his head like an attentive dog. “Ah. You should take your backpack off, Phil. It’s slowing you down.”

Oh. Philza shifts, hesitant. “I wear it all the time, it doesn’t nerf me that much.”

“No, I think it can make a difference. Let’s try it?”

Mh. He hadn’t planned on doing this today. Showing his kids had felt right, natural. Showing Fit had required a few deep breaths, but not much else. Étoiles… is a trickier case.

He does want to show him — the french warrior is one of his most trusted friends, and someone he knows he can rely on in a pinch. The guy is loyal to a fault, always looking at Phil like all it would take for him to lay down his life before him was a single word. It’s a bit scary, in a way, and always makes his hindbrain buzz pleasantly. But Phil held things like mutual trust in high regard, and Étoiles had broken that on the first day of Purgatory.

They had talked since then, and it’s clear to Phil now that it had been an honest mistake, a temporary lapse in judgement. Plus, it’s not as if Phil hadn’t lost his own mind within the first twenty-four hours in that red hellscape. Still, even though he has forgiven Étoiles, the cracks don’t feel completely healed just yet. “I don’t know, mate,” he pulls at one of the straps of his backpack self-consciously, feeling its weight pressing his wings tightly against his back. “I can’t get you under four hearts, I doubt taking it off will give me that much more.”

“Phil. Phiiiiil. Trust me?”

Tall order, Phil almost jokes, but refrains. “I do trust you.”

“Then trust what I’m saying. I know my shit, you’re being slowed down, you can’t spin as fast or jump as high with this thing, it’s basic physics. I want you to have all the chance on your side.”

Philza purses his lips, glances to where Tallulah sits off to the side. She jumps to her little feet and places down a sign, while Pomme rummages through her backpack next to her. He can’t help but coo when the bright ‘<3’ shows up in stark white against the magenta wood. “Right. Okay.”

Étoiles can’t see, not normally. So maybe he won’t be able to make them out, bound tightly against his back as they are. And if he does, then that is fine. No need to make a fuss of it. So Philza walks up to Tallulah and drops the black pack next to her, giving her a little headpat in passing. “Watch over that for me, okay?” he smiles at her, and she peeps at him with purpose, jumping on top of it and doing the egg equivalent of puffing up her chest. Pomme is in her own red backpack now, little legs kicking the air as she reaches as deep as she can. silly, egg, baby, egg, he croons. “I’ll be right back. Got a green ass to kick.”

 

“He is back,” Étoiles whoops when he steps onto the tatami. “Oh, he is ready, so ready. Are you full hearts?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. We go on three, one, two, th—”

Phil takes off at the first syllable, and oh, yeah, the lack of weight on his back means he can lean forward more without gravity winning, and that means he reaches Étoiles right as he reaches the end of his three. He thrusts his stick forward, the blunt tip digging itself right into the other’s abdomen with enough force to make him stumble back, winded and sputtering. “Argh—”

Phil doesn’t let him recover, getting a few good hits in before his opponent parries and attempts an upward swing that he barely evades by sending his body backwards, dangerously far. The weapon grazes his chin, and his wings try to open to regain balance but they’re still bound against him. “Shit—” he steps back quickly, arms pinwheeling, and it looks a little silly but it works, and he does not crash onto his back like an idiot.

Étoiles stares at him from the other side, breathing hard, eyes wide, a palm against his diaphragm. Then he smiles. “Oh. Ohohooo. Okay, now we’re talking. Let’s go.”

Moving more freely doesn’t make the fight easier, not by a long shot, because Étoiles adapts quickly — but it does make it more fun, and that’s already an improvement in Phil’s eyes. He gets less crits in, because jumping up leaves him too exposed to revenge strikes, but he gets more light hits in between sidesteps and mad dashes. “He is so fast!” Étoiles cheers, ducking to dodge a vicious strike to the head. “Oh, he is so good, go Phil go!”

Run, dodge, strike, strafe, dash. Every muscle in Phil’s body strains to keep up as he pushes it past its limits, arm aching from the repeated shocks against the stick, but he barely feels it thanks to the adrenaline flooding his system. A hit to the back of his knee makes him stumble, but he recovers into a roll and trips Étoiles with his stick in retaliation. The cucumber groans, scrambles to get up, and Phil sees an opening right there on his foes’ unprotected throat. He zeroes in on it, takes the first step, raises his weapon and—

 

There’s a jagged shape in his peripheral vision.

 

He falters. Tries not to look at it, tries to keep his eyes on target, target that’s about to get back up, quick, quick, do it. 

 

There’s a purple shape in his peripheral vision.

 

He fails. Sharp angles and eerie glow, that shade he’s come to dread. The amethyst crystals hum out their ethereal song, taunting him. He doesn’t see Étoiles anymore, and his world is drowning in high-pitched static.

 

Purple. Purple everywhere. The room is too dark, too dark, darker yet darker.

Time slows down. No. The edges of his vision are fraying, dark tendrils creeping in. He feels himself falter, adrenaline making way for cortisol and making his hindbrain, no, fly, fly, run, nonono. He’s losing his footing, his grip around the stick growing slack, palms getting clammy. No, no, not now, please. His breathing picks up, faster than it’s been at any point of this duel. The amethysts glow an eerie violet, jagged shapes growing out of the thick, wooden beams around him, and he swears the room has gotten even darker. “Tallu—” He doesn’t make it to the end of the name, because then something smacks him in the back with unrestrained force.

Right on his left ulnare, the wingbone left exposed with no fat or muscle to cushion the blow.

Pain explodes throughout his left wing, the shock propagating all the way into his back and making him yell out, a gasp-screech that is very not human. Tallulah peeps loudly somewhere at the edge of his awareness, papa, no, bad! as he falls to his hands and knees, panic spiking, bad, bad, hurts, getoutgetout—

“Oh merde! Phil, ça va ?” He hears glass breaking, smells melon and gunpowder and something both earthy and spicy — Nether wart. Étoiles is healing him, putting a stop to their duel, and the realisation drags him out of that weird fugue state. “You never made that sound before, I think it’s bad. Are you okay?”

“Amethyst,” the older man growls between clenched teeth, letting the potion effects refill his health bar — fuck. Pain signals were always limited during PvP, but this had somehow broken through the server’s capping function. Étoiles makes a noise of incomprehension, his hands just hovering over Phil’s shoulder, not quite touching. “What?” he says, and Phil hears the patter of little feet rapidly coming closer. Pomme and Lullah.

“Please, just... Can you see the amethyst?”

He doesn’t know why he’s asking, of course his friend can’t see it, because that shit isn’t real. Or at least not to anyone but him. Through the haze he can feel Tallulah’s warm shell bump against his arm, hear her little worried chitters. He doesn’t trust himself to tell her he’s fine.

But then, Étoiles raises an eyebrow and turns his head towards the wall, blinks. A frustrated noise. “Euuuh Pomme, je t’adore hein, mais ça va pas trop avec le reste en fait. Tu peux les retirer steuplait ?” Pomme crouches, one-two, then summons a pickaxe and walks towards the crystals, and proceeds to casually break all of them.

Oh. Her backpack, all her rummaging. She’d been trying to decorate the dojo while they were busy sparring. 

Philza lets out an uneven breath, runs a hand through his hair — his forehead is damp with cold sweat, and it sucks. Okay. Okay. Real, then. Just a really, really bad coincidence. Bad timing. Bad everything. He lets out a breath, the tight coil in his chest slowly loosening. “I’m sorry Pomme,” he gives the little egg a smile that he hopes to the Gods isn’t shaky. “Got distracted by the shiny, you know how it goes. Crow brain go brrrrr.”

Pomme falls dramatically on the floor at that, places a red sign that reads [sorry ;_;] “You’re good, you’re good, don’t worry.” Tallulah places a flower next to Pomme, bomp, [RIP manzanita]. Phil chuckles at their antics, heartbeat slowing down to a more normal pace. Jesus Christ. “You like shiny things, Phil?” Étoiles asks. “Did not know that.” He looks around, scans the dojo for any stray shine. “Mmmh. All good, I think. Sorry about Pomme, she likes amethyst stuff.” Then, quieter, “I think it reminds her of Baghera. She has an amethyst farm in her castle.”

Oh. Phil glances at Pomme, who thankfully seems fully absorbed in a sign-based conversation with Tallulah. “That makes sense. She must miss her a lot.”

(Dad, are you proud of me? I just killed a silverfish.)

“Can I see your wings, Phil?”

And, there it is. The other shoe. Phil lets out a heavy sigh, wincing when the movement makes his joint twinge in lingering pain — he’s pretty sure nothing’s actually broken or sprained, at least not any worse than before, but it still hurts. “So you saw them.”

“No no, I can’t. But I know they are there, somewhere. I’m sorry I hit them, I can’t tell where they are if you don’t have them out. Told you it was annoying.”

Ah. That makes more sense. He doubts Étoiles would voluntarily target them. Still… “How do you know about them? And, why?

“Philza, you need to understand something. And the thing is, I’m really dumb. I want to see them because maybe I can help, if I hurt them. I fix.”

“No you’re not, stop that. And you didn’t do any permanent damage, you’re fine.”

“No, wait. I’m stupid with lore, but I have eyes and ears. Jaiden showed she had wings, pretty sure Baghera has some but she hides them, I assumed you were the same.” Ah. Fair enough. Phil hasn’t been as subtle lately, and the crow jokes could only go for so long before people started to pick up on how literal they were. “Also, Kristin told me.”

Wait, what. “Wait, what?”

“Ye ye. First day of Purgatory, I died a lot.  She said she wanted to exchange fofoca, so I told her about things, and she told me about you because she likes me. Did you know, I asked her if I could get wings too? It made her laugh. I guess tech support is not a high enough position to get flying benefits, sad times for me.”

Mother fucker. It’s hard to be upset when everything that spews out of Étoiles’ chattermouth is so consistently funny. “Well. I would’ve told you sooner than later, anyway. S’fine.”

“So you let me help.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll let you take a look, if that’ll make you feel better about it.”

“Let’s goooo, we got trust. Sit down please?”

Phil snorts and complies. He spots Tallulah running back towards him to climb onto his lap with a quiet warbe. good? Phil warbles back, good, yesyes, and rests his chin on top of his egg’s soft locks of hair. He hears Pomme hitting her dad behind him. “Ouais Pomme ?” Bomp, a short silence. “Badboy est là ? Ah ouaaais. Il veut encore t’exploiter pour ses boutons de l’enfer là ? POV, tu aides le fou du QSMP avec son escape game pour pas qu’il te tue.” More hits, Pomme’s little click-chirps. Étoiles laughs. “Okay, okay, t’inquiètes. Va l’aider, moi et Phil on va parler de trucs chiants de toute façon. Je te vois plus tard ?” The sound of a warpstone going off. “Saluuut.”

“Is Pomme leaving?”

“Yeah, she wants to build stuff with Badboy.”

“Oh god. Please tell me it’s not another find-the-button map.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna spend ten hours finding those fucking things again soon, let’s gooooo. So your wings, who else knows? I bet Fit knows. And your eggs.” Tallulah nods in Phil’s hold.

Étoiles’ lack of big reaction feels nice, but he supposes he should have expected it — the guy never makes a big deal out of anything. Except when it’s about banned materials. Or the Nether. And finding buttons, new trigger unlocked. “Add in pretty much everyone in the original Bolas, king,” he huffs as Étoiles settles behind him. His unseen presence makes a brief shiver of danger, danger go up Phil’s spine. It’s fine. It’s fine, he soothes himself, idly rubbing at the scar at the center of his chest through his robe. “I lost my shit with them around. Stopped caring as much. They saw them on day one.”

“Isn’t that a good thing? Half the people on this shit island are like, creatures. Not humans. Nobody cares. I’m literally a fruit, Phil.”

Phil chokes on his own spit. “Jesus Christ, you have no idea how funny what you just said was.” Tallulah chirps and wiggles in his hold, places a sign. [*side-eyes u*] it says, and that’s somehow even funnier than if she had actual eyes to side-eye people with instead of the blank expanse of her brown-spotted shell.

Étoiles blinks. He cocks his head to the side, in that specific way he does whenever he’s listening to what he calls the ‘voices of the stars’. (Something akin to his crows, from what the older man has been able to gather.) “Oooh. Oh, is it a gay joke Phil? That doesn’t work man, we are on Gay Island, everyone is gay here, or they don’t date at all. And you are incorrect, because I am in the second group, héhé.”

“Didn’t Antoine call you his boyfriend once?”

“He calls me a lot of things.” Étoiles shrugs. ”He’s also an asshole and my DJ partner and my friend and I love him very much, but no, it’s not like that. And I am married to dark metal and dungeons anyway. Now I’m going to unbind your wings and move them around, okay?”

“Mh. Go for it, king.”

To his credit, Étoiles is methodic in his approach — unknotting the binds and carefully tracing the upper edges of his left wing while the other spreads out with difficulty, a few black feathers coming loose. Étoiles lets out a surprised oh, gently grabs the other to help it unfurl, and Phil feels him poking at the bottom of his regrowing primaries — right where the white ones, usually hidden beneath the outer layer unless he spreads them wide, grow in diamond-like spots. “I know this pattern, right there. You have Elytrian code too, Phil? I thought it was just crow.”

“Ah, so Kristin didn’t tell you everything then.”

“No. And she didn’t like, out you, you know. She only told me because she knew I knew, she only confirmed it. People with wings have like, a way they move? I can’t explain it, I just see it.”

“Body language expert Étoiles, ey? Have you known a lot of avians before?”

Étoiles stays quiet for a second. When he speaks again, he sounds perplexed. “Huh. I don’t know. I guess I knew Baghera? Memory stuff, it’s annoying.”

Phil frowns. Right. “You told me a little about your childhood, though. The village, the farmers?”

“Yeah, that’s a thing that came back quickly after the crash. But everything after that, I don’t remember.”

“Man, fuck this island. I’m sorry.”

Étoiles hums. His fingers start combing through his bottom feathers, lingering among the white ones. “I think. I think I went to the End before, Phil.” His voice has gone softer, airy, like he’s not quite anchored in the present. “I think… maybe, I’ve seen Elytrians before.”

“You have?”

“Mmh. I think I killed one. Yeah. And I took its elytra. It was a good fight.”

The revelation doesn’t shock him — Elytrian hunting is a common activity for those who reach the End, and elytras are a highly sought-after item in most worlds. (Philza would know.) “Were you a hunter? Before the island.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t like hunters.” And Phil can’t see Étoile’s face from his position on the floor, but his words are dripping with contempt. “Hunting for yourself is one thing. Making money off it, it feels wrong. And they don’t even fight, they make traps. I don’t like that. If you’re too shit at fighting to win fairly against something, you don’t deserve the loot. Bâtards de merde.”

And Phil laughs, because this he understands. “Ever the honorable warrior, aren’t you Étoiles.”

“Dude, I have so much honor. I told you, I’m literally Japanese.”

“Right.”

“And like I said, I am your arms. I am your sword, Philza Minecraft.”

Phil’s wings fluff up slightly, a croon of ownership-claim threatening to spill out of his chest. Mine. “Étoiles…”

“I am, it’s not a bad thing! Purgatory sucked. I didn’t like it. But it was better at the end, when you were telling me what to do. Who to kill for you.”

Phil croons, leaning back into Étoiles’ careful hands. “I see. You never called me dad though.”

“Fuck that!” Étoiles laughs, bark-like and airy. “That cult leader shit was weird. You’re Philza.” And there’s a quality to the way he says it, something that feels both casual and reverent. “First of his name, GOAT of PvP, Avoider of Lore, greatest man alive—”

“Woah there—”

“—husband and Angel of Lady Death, and father of dragon eggs. You’re not my dad. Why everyone has daddy issues on this shit island?”

Phil snorts. “I don’t know, mate. But I won’t judge. I think it’s fine if seeing me as a father figure brought them comfort. It was literally hell out there.”

Étoiles hums. “Maybe. Also, you didn’t answer my question.” Phil lets out a confused huh. “Earlier, when I asked why you were hiding that you had wings.”

…Shit. Curse Étoiles’ one-track mind, his deflection tactic had been foiled. “It’s not— shit like prejudice I was afraid of, Étoiles,” he admits, quiet and somber. The other man stops his ministrations, fingers dug deep in his primary coverts. “I know this island is a goddamn circus show. Mousey screams she’s a demon to whoever will listen and nobody gives two shits, I don’t know why Bad even bothers pretending he’s not. That’s not the problem. It’s just…” He sighs. ”The Federation has eyes everywhere, man. I feel like if I show them off too much, they’ll fuck them up again. Maybe even worse than last time.”

Étoiles is silent. His motions resume, slower, more careful and deliberate. “The first time, you say,” he eventually hums. There’s something dangerous in his voice. “So it’s because of them, that they are like this? Your wings.”

“Pretty much. Woke up on the train, boom, clipped. No more flying for me. I don’t know why they didn’t do the same to Jaiden, she said she didn’t want to fly, or didn’t know how? I can’t remember too well, but maybe that’s why. Less of a threat. Honestly, I’m just glad they didn’t do it to her. She’s family now.” Even though her loyalties are a point of concern, he couldn’t help it. She is Bolas, she is flock. And he had held her as she screamed out the temporary loss of her shiny blue wings, that first night in Purgatory. “No avian deserves that shit.”

“You don’t either, Phil.”

“I know that.”

“I’m just saying it because you have the voice! The one you use when you think bad things.”

A wry smile. “How dare you call yourself dumb, man. How fucking dare you.”

“It’s what I do! I kill things, I see people’s true souls, and I shit on myself.”

They stay quiet after that. Étoiles stretches out his wings, flexing the joints one at a time, muttering quick apologies when Phil hisses a little too loud. “Sorry, sorry.”

“You’re good. Keep going.” So he does, until Phil no longer feels the pins and needles of blood flooding back into his wings, until the joints no longer feel like rusted cogs. He even gets a little preening in, dislodging matted down and crooked secondaries, and it feels nice. Tallulah is dozing off in his hold, warm and safe. His egg, his baby, his hatchling. “Thanks mate,” Phil hums, a little out of it by the end, hindbrain thrumming pleasantly. Flock, good, yesyes. “You’ve done that before, I can tell.”

“If I have, I don’t remember. Okay, now stand— sorry Tallulah, were you sleeping? Sorry, your dad has to stand so we can see. Yes, nice. Now try them.”

Phil chitters quietly, furling and unfurling his wings experimentally — the constant pain is still there, but minimal, very bearable, and they do feel less stuffy. Lighter. “It actually does, yeah.” Tallulah does a little dance at his side, twirling and playing a few cheery notes on her flute. “Good job, seriously.”

“No probleeeem, Phil, my bro. Last round?”

This guy, I swear. “I’m a little tired,” Phil groans, cracking his neck as he stands, stretches his wings out as far as he can — it still aches, but feels miles better. “But okay. I’m going to put Tallulah to bed real quick, she’s eepy.” Tallulah nods in confirmation, takes out her warpstone right as her papa does. “Then let’s fight, one more time. After that I’m going home and conking the fuck out.”

Étoiles makes a sound that probably means something like ‘holy shit say less king’. “Okay!”

Five minutes later, and he’s warping back to Étoiles’ cave like a man on a mission. And in a way, he is. “Welcome back, worthy challenger,” the cucumber greets him, crossed-legged in the middle of the dojo, and Phil snorts because the music box is blasting Smash Bros music now. “You’re such a fucking nerd, oh my God.”

“It gives me strength, Phil. It’s my final form.” Étoiles gets up, stick already in hand, bouncing on his heels with anticipation. “Autofeed still off?”

“Yup. How’s your sugar?” Étoiles checks his monitor quickly, gives a thumbs up. “Good. No holding back?”

“I never hold back, Phil. Let’s go.”

There is no countdown this time — both opponents slip into quiet assessment, circling each other slowly, slowly. Étoiles does a strange head-tilt, ears flicking to track Phil’s footsteps, the sounds of feathers ruffling. Phil’s eyes do not stray from him, hardened and focused, picking up on the change in the air. Étoiles wants him to go all out. So he will. And he has a plan.

(The bigger a thing is, the harder it is for me to understand it.)

Time to put that to the test, then.

Étoiles charges first this time, quick-footed, swerving at random moments to keep himself a hard-to-track target. Phil almost bursts into incredulous laughter because holy shit, he’s Naruto-running, what the fuck— but manages to keep his focus, waiting until the very last moment to thrust his wings downward with enough force to send him soaring abovehis opponent. Then, right as his feet touch the tatami and right as Étoiles screeches to a stop to spin back towards him

he spreads his wings

wide, wider

casting huge shadows on the four walls of the dojo

and lets his powers roll off of him like a dark mist, sparking with magic and wither-decay.

(The bigger a thing is, the harder it is for me to understand it.)

It’s a gamble, a costly one that saps his Feds-capped magic like crazy — but it pays off, because Étoiles staggers back, confusion etched across his features. His head subtly snaps in all directions, like he doesn’t know where to look, his ears swivelling to try and pinpoint him. Bingo. Phil has made his nebula-self big, toobig for Étoiles, rendering the warrior effectively blind. Well, double-blind.

Phil doesn’t wait for the other to find a counter to this, curls his wings forward then snaps them back — they launch him forward at breakneck speed and create a gust of wind that makes the paper lanterns swing on their hooks, and then Phil is slamming into Étoiles like a literal hurricane.

The plant hybrid gasps, fingers slackening from the sheer strength of the impact — his weapon slips out of his grasp to clatter against the ground and roll out of bounds. His body describes a perfect curve and hits the wooden floor with a loud thud. He barely has the time to blink the dizziness away before something presses against the side of his neck, and he freezes completely. “Gotcha,” Phil preens, looming above him. The end of his stick is right against Étoiles’ pulse point, the threat crystal clear, and he’s a writhing mass of burning stars and cosmic fury.

The energy rolling off of him washes over Étoiles in waves, makes his skin tingle, and he recognizes it as withering. Withering coming from Philza himself, whose outlines are impossible to pinpoint, lost in the cloud of magic and giant Angel wings.

...Okay, this is sick as hell, Étoiles thinks, and he can feel somethingwithin him grow, a presence rejoicing in the back of his mind. Ink bleeds into his eyes, then under it, twin lines of darkness going down his cheeks and neck. (Flashes of a white spiral on a dark expanse, of whispers and stolen Time.) He feels cold, but he feels good about it, and he’s not scared at all — this is fine, more than fine. Withering is harmless for Death-touched things. Things like him and Phil. He laughs, loud and ecstatic, this is fun, so fun! “Aaah. Clever bird, clever Phil, I like. Okay.”

Then something wraps around Phil’s ankle and pulls it forward, breaking his balance and making him hit the ground ass-first with a startled caw. He grits his teeth, shoots a glare towards his leg to see—

—blinks at the sight of a green vine wrapped around his ankle. His eyes trace along its length. He’s seen this before, but only once, months ago. Right after harvesting a freshly-regrown Étoiles out of the ground, a week after his Code-related demise. “Oh,” Philza says, and Étoiles smirks in return.

His tail is long, as long as he is tall, and covered in large, healthy green leaves. It swishes against the tatami in a serpentine motion, the leaves rustling quietly, and Phil notices a half-star-shaped kink at the end of it. It’s... well, it’s pretty adorable actually, but something tells him Étoiles wouldn’t like that descriptor. “You kept it,” he says instead, fight-darkened eyes sparkling with something like kinship-euphoria. “You grew it out.”

“I did, I listened to you. I keep it wrapped around my waist, it works.”

“Told you it could come in handy.”

“You did. You’re always right about things, Philza.” Étoiles steps into a fighting stance, hands curled into fists, tail lashing left and right like a whip. Phil understands, lets out a quiet chuckle as he sends his own weapon flying out of the arena. So they’re doing it this way, huh. More than fine with him. “Nothing’s off the table then,” he hums, hands curling like claws at his sides, sharpening talons glinting ominously in the light of paper lanterns. His friend hums approvingly, and it’s all Phil needs to pounce.

They no longer try to evade, instead crashing into each other to cause as much damage as quickly as possible. Étoiles throws a jab, Phil retaliates with a smack of his wing to destabilise the other before slashing at his chest, tearing at his shirt and drawing the first blood. Because yes, Étoiles bleeds, deep cuts marring his dark green skin, chlorophyll sticking to Phil’s hands. Étoiles hisses, gets behind him and wraps his tail around Phil’s throat to choke him. Phil gasps, coughs, briefly flails before smacking the other with his wings until the tail goes slack. Phil rips it off him and whirls around to pull at it sharply — Étoiles falls, but not before grabbing onto Phil’s robes to pull him down with him.

Things get messy after that — a flurry of feathers and leaves and punches and kicks, one that clocks Phil in the jaw and makes him taste blood, one at the side of his head that makes him see stars. He hisses, screeches, swipes, again and again, and Étoiles blocks some of them with his arms, arms that gain more and more tiger-stripe cuts, but many go through and eat at his health, heart after heart. The warrior retaliates with a headbutt that makes the Angel’s world darken for a second, burning blood getting into his eyes and half-blinding him. Maybe it’s more fair this way, not that it slows him down at all.

They punch, claw, snap their teeth at each other like rabid dogs — chipping at each other’s health with no care, no limits. Dark red and greenish white smear against the straw tatami, but that’s fine, that’s okay, they are playing, they are having fun, and Philza feels alive, alive, alive!

(The whole time, Étoiles never touches his wings. Which goes against the whole ‘nothing off the table’ thing, yet Philza is grateful for it. He’s also grateful none of the eggs are here to see this.)

Philza has no idea how long this lasts, lost in the thrill of a fight the likes of which he hasn’t experienced in decades. But eventually the doom of someone getting downed makes every muscle in his body lock up, and he’s still standing. Or, kneeling over Étoiles with his talons right above his jugular, the other hand pinning the warrior’s hands above his head to keep him from hitting back. Semantics.

Étoiles has gone limp, heaving, his body a canvas of bruises and bloody cuts. “I win,” Phil realizes, wings quivering, all fluffed up in a show of victory. “I… won.”

“Well played, well played,” his warrior wheezes out in response, and Phil’s never seen anyone so happy about getting their shit kicked. Except maybe one person. But he won, Phil won, Étoiles is down and he himself still has… yes, two hearts to spare. He has won. They can stop. Right here. Right now.

But then. Étoiles, stupid and crazy and wonderful Étoiles, tilts his head back to offer him his throat, his binary-scarred face twisted in a feral grin. Philza gasps and leans back a little, eyes wide “Take your win, my bro,” he chirps, happy as can be, tail thumping against the tatami like an overpet cat. Tap, tap, tap, the countdown to his demise if Phil doesn’t up him soon. “Do it. You won’t. No balls, no bolas.”

And those words are the last push Phil needs for his Elytrian code to take over. He bares his teeth, eyes darkening to a pitch black that eats up his entire sclera, until the white of Étoiles’ teeth gets reflected back at him — not that he can see it. 

Phil’s wings spread out behind him, huge and dark and awe-inspiring even in their frayed state, and the withering aura that exudes from them paints Étoiles’ eternal night in bursts of star-speckled purples and reds and blues.

It’s beautiful. And it’s terrifying. Étoiles is about to get killed by an Angel of Death, and he’s never been so goddamn scared and excited in his life.

 

Phil feels insane. He’s going feral, going sicko mode, or whatever other colloquialism that means his mind is drowning in the thrill of hunt, hunt, prey, yesyes. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Étoiles scared before, but there’s no mistaking those too-wide eyes, that subtle tremor in his friend’s wrists as Phil’s hand tightens around them. He can smell it too, like cut grass left to decay in the hot sun, and it’s making the End’s superpredator in him go zoomies inside his skull.

He growls, low and bone-deep and dangerous, his talons pushing harder against the paling, sweat-damp skin of Étoiles’ neck. prey? flock. prey. prey? kill, eat, yesyes. Étoiles isn’t human, but he has something close to a heart, and he bleeds like one — greenish white chlorophyll that smells strong and tastes awful, bitter.

(Phil knows that, because Purgatory happened. More specifically, Bolas happened, gas masks and ritual sacrifices and fresh blood always lingering at the corner of their mouths. He misses his flock — misses all the ones that are still gone, carving cookie-cutter negative shapes in his heart — everything else about that hellscape, not so much anymore. Maybe he’s healing, just a little.)

 

His talons are just a hair away from perforating Étoiles’ jugular, so close to making not-quite-blood pour out like a fountain. But then he freezes, going silent, because the part of him that is still sane recognizes that this is a terrible idea.

It’s a terrible idea because Étoiles is bad at knowing when to stop, bad at spotting the line between what challenges him and what hurts him. And Philza understands that this, this is a bad. The cucumber hybrid is a creature of instants — fugue moments, rash decisions, the kind you would look back on later and go oh, yeah, that was dumb and maybe not worth it. Hence Philza has to be the responsible one, has to ignore his base instincts screeching at him to hunt, kill, kill, lest this ends badly. Like Étoiles getting mauled to death by what is supposed to be his most trusted friend. Again. (They don’t talk about that time. Just like they don’t talk about Étoiles’ betrayal, neither want to reminisce over Phil’s teeth tearing his throat out in the middle of a Hunger disaster. Not-so-fun fact: Étoiles doesn’t taste like cucumber at all.)

“Enabler,” the avian warbles, talons slowly lifting off the hollow of Étoiles’ throat. “M’not killing you.” And Étoiles, like the little shit that he is, has the gallto pout at him. “Why not?”

“Because then I’ll have to regrow your ass in my potato field for a week, you twat.” Also I think it’s not good for you, and my sanity is at an all-time low so I don’t need cold-blooded murder to push me over the edge, he adds in petto.

Étoiles blinks. Huffs out a laugh, something a little unhinged, but also a little relieved. “Ah, yeah! I forgot, because I respawned normally in Purgatory. Okay, you win.” The warrior’s smile softens to something more like him,  and just like that, the tension vanishes, the buzz of fear and aggression replaced by something light and playful. Étoiles baps his hands against his chest, grabbing at his robe to tug him down into a hug.

And Philza’s hindbrain floods the rest of him with happy, happy, yesyes, because Étoiles isn’t really a touchy-feely person and neither is Phil, but this feels right. “GGs,” the crow says back, warbling and chirping like crazy, the black in his eyes receding. yesyes, mine, mine, yesyes, yesyes! And to his surprise, Étoiles responds, not with a crude imitation of his own bird sounds, but with something… different. And Phil’s not sure any word in his vocab could ever describe it accurately — but something deep within him knows that if starlight was a sound, this would certainly be it. “Oh, oh, he is so good. The GOAT, the actual GOAT, best man on the planet Philza Minecraft,” Étoiles mock-sobs against him. “He wakes up in the morning casually being the best, and he takes care of two eggs and says fuck to the president’s office from the wall, and he finally beats me. My legend, Felipe, Felipe!”

Phil shakes from the force of his hilarity — a regular occurrence whenever he hangs around his favourite pickle man for long enough. silly, he warbles between fits of belly-aching, hiccup-inducing laughter, and he leans down to nuzzle against his friend’s mess of dark green hair (leaves?). silly. silly. flock. “I do see Forever wave at me from his office sometimes,” he hums, once he’s calmed down enough to speak again. “He makes kissy faces at me through the glass, so I flip him off.”

Étoiles hums in acceptance, finally pushes Phil back to shimmy out from under him with a small héhé to lay on his back, starfish-style. Phil rolls onto his own back, and they both stare at the interlacing wooden beams of the dojo roof for a little while, basking in the fuzz of a fading adrenaline rush.

(Phil hasn’t seen his favourite Brazilian as much lately. Silly, sun, friend-protector. He probably has his hands full, what with returning to his political duties after so long. Still, Philza worries — he thinks of black tar clinging to sun-kissed skin and tired sienna eyes, above a smile that just doesn’t shine as bright as it used to.) “I kinda like it, though. It’s like our good morning. Never tell him I said that.”

“I wooooon’t, I promise.”

“Thank you. For the fights.” Philza closes his eyes. He is here, he is real, everything about this moment is so real. It’s comforting, a balm on his fraying psyche. “It was fun.”

“It was so fun. Please fight with me again like this sometime, no sticks, yes? You have to come back so I give you your black belt anyway.”

“Maybe. We’ll see.”

“I can hear you smiling, Phil. You want to, I knowww.”

“M’not smiling at all, dumbass.”

Étoiles does that high-pitched hum of his that means he’s not buying it, reaches towards his friend — his leader, his wielder, his death-touched Angel. Cool fingers, untouched by code, playfully trace over each of Philza’s features, feeling out the dimples and the crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes — pun very much intended. “You’re so bad at lying, Philza,” he sing-songs, playful and content. “I know you too well. Maybe I can’t see you, but I can see you.”

And goddammit, Philza actually does feel seen in this moment, anxieties melting away for now. How does he do it. How does this reckless, thrill-seeking cucumber man with a limited (albeit pretty good, and improving) grasp on English so consistently drop the most gut-punching lines in this entire server. Étoiles is something else. “...Yeah. I see you too, mate,” Phil breathes out, and the rough texture of the tatami is starting to dig criss-cross patterns into his back, but he wants to stay like this. Just a little longer.

 

(Philza is damaged goods. But so is Étoiles, and so is everyone he knows. But maybe they can both pretend, for a little while.)

[wonderousmonarch]

Kamen Rider Wizard Thoughts 7

through the power of food and dragons we can save the day

Episode 18

- there's a new gay boy in town

- I'm more impressed that Kosuke can spin a mayonnaise bottle around like that

- the dubious sogman

- this phantom looks like corn on the cob

- I love these two.

- his driver needs to spell Lion because he'll forget it

- the day they convince Haruto to try a new donut is the day Haruto unlocks his final transformation

- bros name is NOT mayonnaise

- ooh backstory time

- I hate it when I'm doing archeology in collect and then the horrors happen

- "this ring... it looks so... collectiblr and marketable"

- he was one ruin over from the stone mask

- just let Nitou finish off the phantoms

- Wiseman is making more appearances outside of his little cave

- I feel like more people would notice if there was just a guy swimming through a river

- IS THAT JK FROM FOURZE

- Nitou is intimidated by evil woman

- uh oh she rizzed him up :(

- Rock Magic Stone??

- the twink who delivers rocks

- bro just wants to sketch

- soggy wizard. wizard who sings

- they really just looped the dramatic part of the song over and over again there

- BUFFA!!! LIKE FROM GEATS

- the boys are fighting. he was convinced by a pretty girl to kill

- at least he's giving them a chance to convince him again

Episode 19

- STOP FIGHTING!!!

- FALCO! "Personally, I prefer the air"

- mayonnaise wizard

- oh yeah. Koyomi and her piss rock

- bro is yapping to a painting

- :(

- oh he didn't know the phantoms kill people

- damn this "selfless vs selfish" shit is compelling. It feels strange to throw in a character with super selfish motivations into this cast of people who are doing things because it's the right thing to do, but I like how it changes things up. idk basically I'm in love with the inner conflict that Beast has to face

- uh oh. the sogman appears

- oooh Land Dragon time... cheese wizard

- hey it's that place from Ex-Aid where Gemn uses Hyper Muteki

- the soggy ghouls

- LETS GOOO BEAST

- "Ghouls, attack!" me too

- also I didn't comment on it earlier but "it's lunchtime" is so silly

- wait beast can also go into the underworld? I was gonna ask

- I mean it makes sense but like still

- oh this thing is icky

- Koyomi with the cheese ring delivery

- oh this is probably my favorite one

- "no turning back now" what do you mean by this you rock twink

- is Beast going to be able to eat a phantom inside of an underworld?

- GRAVITY?

- DAMN THE FUCKING BEAMS

- he's gonna throw a big rock at him

- the CLAWS

- goofy aah run cycle

- the letter 🥺

- oh? this isn't going to work is it

- oh bro

Episode 20

- damn episode 20 already

- the fucking typhoon has rolled in

- new rings :)

- the spell that gets you gussied up

- "when are you gonna use that" oh Koyomi. you're in a TV show dear, the opportunity will present itself

- the steroid spells

- hi wisemannn :) I like his design

- damn Phoenix just fucking boxed those guys

- bro is having one of those "conflicts" we hear so much about

- beast in the intro :0 that goes so hard

- Peppa pig ass house

- another musical monster. they should all get together and start a band

- I feel like everyone knows who this fucking wizard is they could totally track him down and like. pipe bomb the antique store

- Beelzebub??? yeah looks about right

- oh I love them

- bro got the drip ring

- "Violence isn't the only thing I know, it's just my favorite thing to do!" oh phoenix

- man let Shunpei dance

- oh Beelzebub is using her friends against her :(

- oh yeah and Rinko is tracking down Pheonix's old identity but Beelzebub's plan is more interesting

- OH MY GOD he's fucked up and evil

- I think Rinko is about to fucking die

- he's got a nice apartment for someone who died in an eclipse

- goddamn this is so fucked up

- he's going to "ask" him. politely convince him via gunpoint

- "Hold on Shiho, these backflips are important to defeating the Phantom"

- Strong Wizard....

- BEAST TIME

- Now we're thinking with Portals...

- GOOFY freeze frame

Episode 21

- Can't wait to see how Haruto fucks this one up

- bro said "wots all this then?"

- yeah I saw that one coming

- holy shit it's that other wizard

- killer queen act 3

- his says "NOW" while Haruto's says "PLEASE" like Haruto has to ask to tap into some power while this big wizard commands it

- oh yeah Rinko is fucked

- she doesn't know he's Phoenix lol

- I like Phoenix alot

- they brought Haruto to the fucking Cathedral of Shadows... they're gonna fuse him into a more powerful demon

- oh wait they have the dragon rings on pedestals. they might actually be fusing him in the cathedral of shadows

- bro's got cybermites

- "Warn him not to let me devour him" oh Haruto you are in for a bad time im sure of it

- they're eating donuts together :)

- where the fuck is Beelzebub's base. why does he have a fucking aquarium

- oh he's still in control....

- they NEED a different clip to show other than Phoenix just fucking screaming

- mmmhmmmhmm I don't trust him

Phoenix seems super sus rn

- oooh... dragon ring

- HE'S COUNTING IN GERMAN ON HIM

- fuck yeah Phoenix. RISE! RISE! WHERE IS YOUR ANGER!

- Haruto's flashbang technique

- oh boy haruto LOCK IN

- OH IT'S A GAUNTLET! THATS SICK AS FUCK

- IT MAKES CLONES???? THIS IS SO COOL

- the fuck force 4 has arrived

- wait this is just the Four Sword from Zelda

- holy shit four dudes one dragon

- the four different "fwee"

- man someone get Beast something to fucking eat. he hasn't been able to get a meal in so many days :(

- also Rinko is fucking dying. she may have made a mistake telling Phoenix to do whatever he wants

things are heating up and I don't mean because Phoenix is freaking out. very excited to see where this goes

[mynameisnotsoda]

YES PLEASE INFODUMP ON THE PISS SMP, I SAW AN INSTA POST YOU MADE IF IT AND I WANNA KNOW MORE/pos

OH MY GODDD AHAHAH LETS GOOO !!! MY EVIL PLAN TO SPREAD THE PISS SMP PROPAGANDA!!!!!!!!!! Okay so

In the beginning, we werent going to do lore, it was just meant to be a server for fun! Me and my brother explored and gathered materials for a while and he ended up taming a dog! Thats where the lore starts. It all started when that damn dog died.

So, he ended up naming the dog Piss, cuz it was funny, and we were exploring more at night. Piss ended up chasing after a spider and fell into a ravine and sadly passed away. (Now in character) Cyrus laughed his ass off, Ezra (he shares a name with my brother just bc he goes by Father Piss for the rest of the series) shouted "PISS YOU FUCKING DUMBASS" and it fucked him up pretty badly even if they both played it off like joke at first.

Cyrus and Ezra settled and started building their bases, however, Ezra was actually making a church. For a while he kept cryptically laughing and saying "oh my beautiful creation" and everyone was pretty worried, of course, but no one thought anything of it. Doc went off to build their base elsewhere (across the lake from the mainland since it was a small island only disconnected by a few blocks) and Cyrus went mining.

While everyone was doing their own thing, Cyrus kept dying in The Pit. It was just a small cave entrance that was really steep and there was lava and a ton of mobs in it, he died a lot from skeletons and burning. He's had a vendetta against skeletons since then and tends to avoid the nether as much as he can. Thats how he got his burn scars.

After that, Ezra finally finished the church. Everyone was invited to the grand opening! (Although in canon only doc and cy made it, ive rewritten it to where everyone else actually came) Ezra declared himself Father Piss, bringing peace and harmony to all the lands in the name of his dog, Piss.

The only problem was.. Father Piss slipped up, it was actually a cult. Cyrus was outspoken about not wanting to be apart of the cult, Father Piss declared him a traitor and killed him. Which is the first time anyone had really lost a life. (Death by mobs/environment arent permanent but DO cause permanent damage to the body over time. Death by players are limited to three before they stay dead. AND lives are counted by red hearts on the napes of their necks, they become black when a life is lost)

When Cyrus respawned they got into another fight, also ending in death. Out of fear, Doc impulsively joined Father Piss' cul- church.

Cyrus was exiled from the Pisslands (names by Father Piss of course) and wandered around the woods for a while. He began construction on a small house in the spruce forest but overnight Father Piss and his goons found it and vandalized it. Out of fear Cyrus ran to Doc, hiding out in their home for the next night.

Thats when he got a great idea! He created the entrance to his bunker on the hill next to Doc's house, Father Piss would've never guessed he stayed so close and he was right! He spent days making that bunker and over the following weeks he just grew more paranoid and afraid of Father Piss.

Eventually, Father Piss requested to meet with Cyrus, at Piss' grave by the ravine. They met up and Cyrus was led back to the church, skeptical but too afraid of angering him to protest. He ended up being imprisoned behind the church. He spent hours talking to himself and playing with sand as it was the only thing left in his inventory. He was scheduled to be executed the next day, however Cosmic busted him out! Laying down her first life for him to be able to get away.

Cyrus then decided to make a second bunker, connected by a LONG tunnel for him to escape through if needed. He spent months making it, he kept a nether portal in the second bunker and tamed a dog that Argent named Swaginator. His friends didnt visit him often, apart from Doc or Argent. He rarely left but when he did it was ALWAYS to see Doc, the love of his life. He was so clouded by anxiety that he wasn't able to be there for Doc. Doc was dealing with their own problems from within the church, not wanting to do Father Piss' bidding and unable to leave.

This put a strain on their relationship, but Cyrus really did try to make an effort. He began experiencing auditory hallucinations which only made his paranoia regarding Father Piss worse, which quickly deteriorated his mental health.

One day, he decided to go into the nether for some supplies to make his bunker look nice. He ended up running into Homeslice, one of Father Piss' goons, and he panicked. Not realizing that he hadn't been noticed he started swinging, he knew it was over as soon as the fight started. Father Piss had been alerted and the two of them cornered him to the ledge, before Father Piss swung his axe and took Cyrus' final life. His body fell into the lava pool below.

After a few days, he came back! As a ghost, he lost all his memories and the first person to see him was....Father Piss. It wasnt hard to trick him into finding his old bunker before raiding it. Ghostrus was completely unaware and blissfully complied with whatever Father Piss wanted for a while. Although he grew weary of Father Piss' instability.

Ghostrus built a house on a mountain near Doc's house and kept a close eye on them. He felt incredibly drawn to them but didnt know why, as he didnt entirely believe that they were married when he was alive.

Axel then joined, making a house on stilts in the sea, he became very close to Doc. Argent also became close to Doc, as they visited his restaurant often! Then again, it was the only restaurant and it was right next to her house. Slowly the three of them became friends and eventually partners.

Ghostrus on the other hand decided to start a taco truck, which was just a front for his drug business. He laced his tacos with coke to keep customers always coming back for more! Father Piss became hooked on his food.

More people moved into the Pisslands, the community grew and so did Argent and Ghostrus' respective businesses. He created a drug empire for himself, which gave him a lot of power. With the lack of memories and moral compass, Ghostrus created an image of himself to be the sweet and friendly taco truck owner. While behind the scenes he was a cynical and uncaring asshole.

He enjoyed the chaos that Father Piss created and became the worst version of himself for it.

AAAAAND THATS ALL WE HAVE SO FAR !!!!!! the rest is much blurrier and not concise so ill stop there, but thats the lore thats absolutely canon as of now ! Ty if you read this far :33

[missamyrisa2]

I love it when the tickle tools have names and pronouns. Like Mr. Feather, Mrs. Vibe. Like Mr. Feather is coming for those cute feet! Or Mrs. Vibe is so excited to meet your drippy cunny or these spiders are coming for your helpless pities!

Then you might positively love it when I'm having a little conversation with my tickle crew as they line up to their job site on your body. You're like a bound giant, held to the earth as this fellowship gathers to go to work ~ "oooh mr. redquill you are just rarin' to go aren't you! Sooo fluffy and excited yess you are let's get you set up on the northwestern cave, our survey from the probies that there's giggles in there!" I wiggle my index finger in agreement, having just completed a pokey strokey survey in your underarm. Mr. Redquill skitters up and begins tracing the outer rim in circles with that soft tickly tip before fluttering inside. "I know, I know girl. You're so excited! Is anyone as excited as our supple gem Susie? I love her little purple streak, and I think today she's pulled duty at the navel base~" I prattle on, twirling Susie the blush brush and flipping it up to show the purple heart-shaped pattern in the fibers before excitedly dusting it down your twitching belly. "Ahh look at those giggles flow~ my goodness you two are the dynamic pair for sure~ Mr. Redquill look at you go with those fluttering strokes, nice form! Awww Susie that's such an elegant dance ~ let's up the frequency and reallllly get our production line rolling~!"

Once you're nice and blubbery giggly, I'll whistle out and call them back. "Okayyy first shift is over~ my goodness that was amazing. Take a nice break because the buzz crew is next! We've got our elements lined up and ready, I see the cute clitty on the horizon which means it's cunny buzzing time~" I sing out and pull up my oversized magic wand, snickering and humming thoughtfully on the bulb. "Oh yes, wakey wakey Bella Buzz Buzz, my adorable triple-B. It's your turn~" With a hum, Bella Buzz Buzz starts up and almost magnetically aligns to your wanting royal area, body all twitchy and adorably tickly. The bulb hugs to your swollen girly button and I start modulating Bella. "Work with me girl, we gotta coax it out nice and steady ~ niiice and steady, gooood Bella. You think we need to raise it? Okayyyy you've never been wrong on a jobsite yet, let's do it!" I snicker and steady your hip, pushing the vibrations up and guiding Bella around in tight circles. "Mmmh tough mantle, we gotta break through. Yes, I think you're right BBB, we need the crew~ Sorry first shift, we need you back ~ this is a tough cookie to crumble~" I giggle and adjust Bella down to allow Mr. Redquill to sit atop your button while Susie slides in on your regal lips. "There we go team, see those wiggles? That's some gooood tickly quakes. We're gonna hit payjuice, I know it! Now, the trifecta~ c'mere Bella, come on girl~ let's bring it home~"

I position Bella Buzz Buzz between my knees and hold her handle steady to let the bulb rest on the royal deployment zone, mr. Redquill and Susie holding their lines as the vibrations overclock their bodies and send a torrent of fluttery electric tickly sensations down your most girly regal parts~ "Amazing! Keep it up crew~ Mr. Redquill you are simply astonishing, my visual scan is confirming that you're working the clitty witty senseless, and Susie my gosh girl, that's a knockout dance. Bella Buzz Buzz you're a rockstar! Bring it home girl, let's bring it homeee~" I giggle and keep my crew working hard ~ we aren't stopping until we get our prize. "And there we gooo!! I see the girly flow! We have cumdrops!~"

[thegeminisage]

ok, i got about an hour and a half to play some zelda!!! i'm in rito village cuz i got my frog armor. my map says there's a chasm here so i'm gonna get some korok seeds and see if i can find it

god i miss kass.

i havent ben back here since i did the wind temple, so there's a lot of sidequests lol

ok, i NEVER would have found that chasm without help. the opening into the cave is SO tiny

off to a fantastic start. landed by a yiga hideout AND a lightroot!!

oh! it's isolated! i guess that makes sense cuz in the overworld it's surrounded by water. i was gearing up to do some Depths Exploring though, i kinda miss it??

i notice mineru didn't meet me. so she really is only in one little section until i do the dungeon. blegh

oh, it's not a proper yiga hideout, there's just a diary. something about a weapon with blue stone. PLEEEEASE be a timeshift stone please please please (guy who knows it wont actually be a timeshift stone)

CRYSTALLIZED ZONAI SHOP LETS FUCKING GOOO

aw and a schema stone

siren call of the depths: i kinda wanna explore more. i was gonna go back up to rito village and knock out some of those sidequests but fuck it

as with the overworld i have a lot of the eastern section knocked out and have barely touched the western half. so i guess i'll go clean up in the east. unfortunately i have not been marking ANY of my boss encounters bc i didnt want to look at this map too closely so i'll probably wind up doing them all again lol

i don't know, am i taking some of the joy of exploration out of the depths by looking at this map early? i guess so, but i don't want to forge on without it, and the internet has spoiled me for the whole thing anyway. besides, they're not detailed enough that you can really tell what it'll look like once you get there. i think some surprises will still remain

i am going to turn on hands i think lol. that's one surprise i DON'T want, not down here

i guess if things get too hairy or tedious i always have my bike...it's been so long since i learned about them, yet since then i've barely set foot down here at all. i was doing koroks. so it's been a REALLY long time since i've properly explored down here.

tiny dark spot by hateno so im starting there. warped to a nearby root and found the two new ones i need pretty much instantly without even using the spoiler map - they were just hidden behind a wall

i read somewehre that the weapons the ghost soldiers hold for you, the unrotted ones, will only be weapons you've already broken above. which is stupid cool but then WHYYY do i never get royal broadswords...they're my favorites...

another mine...i guess that's to be expected. why do they all have the names of the cities above though? like, hateno didn't exist throughout the ages, it wasnt in oot or whatever. you can't tell me every city in hyrule is 10,000 years old. i guess lin's sheikah slate is naming the mines and using the names of the villages it knows? but IT'S 10,000 years old too. i love totk but the way it breaks the lore is so fucking frustrating, especially since i was finally excited about the lore actually being COHESIVE for the first time after skyward sword.

ooh, this diary mentions a hidden yiga academy behind a waterfall in gerudo...i've been spoiled a bit for that questline too but i feel better that i found the tip organically

oh. i found a "researcher" lol

LMAOOOO she's asking me to pick my own demise. incred

good GOD what is that...i shouldn't have answered...i picked burny bc i actually hate freezy more but what in the name of god

i mean i killed her basically instantly but that was a little alarming! i wish i got a schema stone for one of THOSE

MORE refinery shopping. i already have enough for one battery upgrade and i'm close to getting a second

oop yeah there's upgrade #2

and another schema stone!

ok, doubling back to check and old map mark i missed...

GLOOM TREES BAD

oh it's cap of the sky! i actually already have one of those lol but i can sell this one

ok, let's see...there's a tiny dark spot under gut check rock, so i'll get that next...

i have like. 630 arrows lol and it's a good thing too bc i got spotted by a monster camp and just took them out from a tree

zonaite really isnt hard to collect...like, at first having to get 4000+ to max your battery seemed impossible. but the hard part is that the refineries don't sell a lot at once so you either have to warp around or wait to turn it all in lol

i like how weather attack makes food useful again? like i stopped making food to help me with heat or cold bc i had armor...BUT i can't have armor to defend me from the elements AND the attack up from the elements at the same time. if i want both, i need food for one or the other! it's very clever. now i need to be more mindful when cooking instead of just doing the same health and stamina refills over and over

i really hate how hard the lava air effect makes it to fucking SEE down here. jesus

killed a flux construct. sick nice etc

found a proper yiga hideout >:)

minecart tracks??? i want a cart too... :(

sadly lacking in cart to cart combat. 0/10 stars

ok, working my way down towards the spring of power. i want those bargainer statues lol

i like exploring the depth a lot better when shit is lit up. i didn't realize until now but it's exhausting not to be able to see ANYTHING. i think that's why i got so tired of it so quickly before, even though i was also having fun poking around. finding one light point after another is fun and that requires darkness but it's also really difficult to navigate the terrain when you can't see AND there's gloom

found my mf statue. i cant believe i walked right past these before...you wouldn't know they're there unless you're looking :/

YESSSSS HOOD OF THE DEPTHS...finally.................

i had almost 700 poes so i had plenty to buy with lol

ANOTHER yiga hideout!! have i done this one?? it looks familiar...

oh yep lmao i sure have. bummer. at least i can mark it off my map :/

ok, thats all i have time for!!!

[phantom-of-the-501st]

For character bingo— the phantom. :)

Let's gooo!!!! (You're getting pics with this one!)

And a bit (a lot) of waffle because I have a lot to say about him rn

He may have killed a couple of people, kidnapped someone, and threatened to kill her fiance, but he's sad and lonely and I want to give him a hug. 🥺

I don't necessarily think he should be forgiven, but I think he should be understood. He's a man whose actions are all deeply rooted in fear (which is why Jon Robyns is my fave because he really digs into this side of the character).

Also, I don't think that the moment that Christine kisses him is the moment he realises that she doesn't love him like she wants her to, but that's a whole ramble for another time if people want that

And that man looks awesome!!! I mean look at this!

Ramin Karimloo (POTO 25th Anniversary at the Royal Albert Hall)

It's my favourite Phantom outfit. The bedazzled cape and the hat are 🔥 I'm just saying, if it was socially acceptable, I would be running around dressed like this so much of the time!

"If anything happens to them I will cry"

Bestie... been there, done that.

Ramin Karimloo (POTO 25th Anniversary at the Royal Albert Hall)

It's the ending... the ending always makes me cry 🥲

Also, Chrisitine is a stronger woman than I am. He killed someone and she was like "NOPE, uh uh, that's it, I'm not going back to him noooope" and I'm just like "...but you heard Music of the Night, right?"

This is a good time to share this pic of Jon Robyns and Holly Anne Hull that dropped the other day :)

📸 @my_photography_journal on Insta

I would cave in in 2 seconds ngl

But I do think that guy could do with a couple of trips around a salad spinner

I guess I'm just gonna wrap this up with one of my favourite quotes about the Phantom from the book:

"He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar." -Gaston Leroux

He's a man who wanted to live a life of love; to love and to be loved. But the way society treated him drove him to living a life of hate.

[medusanova]

Hello Mate! Your anon is back ✨

You had me biting my nails while I waited for your answer but I also get that life gets in the way. Having said that, I’m here to take you away from reality and into Rivusa fantasyland ✨ here are your next questions:

If you could pick a color for Musa, which one would it be?

On a scale from 1-10, how much do you want your main character to suffer/ have a bad time?

When asked for a Rivusa slow song, which one comes to mind?

Choose between: cave or sewers.

And we’re done for the moment. Do you know that feeling where you have a million questions but as the idea is not yet defined you are not sure how to ask them? Fun times

See you next time my Dear~🎶

Hi hi hiiii! Haha if nothing else, I am definitely here to keep you on your toes!

More fun questions let's gooo:

1. Though she committed literally every fashion felony possible in the show, I did very much like her in her mind fairy-inspired purples. Though... darker shades are the best bc I'm emo af so like a deep purple/indigo is the sweet spot for me. (Seee, isn't it lovely?!)

2. Is 100/10 an option?! I simply ADORE suffering, agony, blood, tears, mental anguish, etc. Give it alllll to me - but ONLY as long as there's some semblance of a happy/bittersweet ending to soothe the pain (:

3. Oh god music is my weakness and has now become the sole reason for this response taking as long as it is haha - I think I might just have to give you options? Make you make the decision instead of me *evil cackle*

So first we have the classic-est classic: Your Call by Secondhand Serenade

Next we have my very own wife's: If You Ever Did Believe by Stevie Nicks

And the last one will have to be: Only One by Yellowcard (but definitely the acoustic version)

4. And my vote is for caves!!

I'm feeling your pain too, but I hope these answers get you at least a little step closer to where you're headed. I still have a whole month of wiggling with excitement to endure over here before I get your gift!

Toodles, my friend xx

[two-reflections]

OK, LET'S GOOO ✨

So, before I get to my interpretation, I'm going to post a bunch of background info about the Salamanders' recruitment strategy.

Trust me, it will make sense soon.

One source for Salamanders interacting with Nocturnean children can be found in Deathwatch First Founding (2012), on page 21:

When not engaged on operations or training for them, the Salamanders live amongst their people, and each is the headman of a smaller community of families. The people of Nocturne therefore grow up in the company of god-like warriors, to whom they themselves are related, and they aspire above all else to join their ranks and fight for the Emperor. As every Salamander practises the trade of the smith, so many take young apprentices into their service, the best of these being judged worthy to become aspirants and undertake the trials to join the Chapter as neophytes. The trials are like those fought between the Emperor and the Primarch, though no man alive could perform such mighty deeds as were seen in that epic undertaking. Nonetheless, the Salamanders are uniquely blessed by their close ties to their kith and kin, and the people uniquely honoured in turn.

Similar sections can be found in other books, but this is the most detailed descriptive quote I've found on the topic.

For a character who seems to have this background, the best model we have for an apprentice is Val'in. From Nocturne, Chapter 3:

Val’in was descended from the survivors of the 154th Expeditionary ship the Salamanders had found in the subterranean depths of Scoria. It was one amongst several other revelations, the substance of which currently resided in a vault on Prometheus. As for the boy, Ba’ken had been his rescuer after he’d guided the Salamanders through the myriad cave systems beneath Scoria’s surface. Val’in and a few others had been taken off-world and brought back to Nocturne. Unlike some, who found life on the death world too harsh to survive, Val’in had adapted well and been chosen as an aspirant.

As you can probably see, though, there is a slight conflict even within Deathwatch: First Founding when it comes to recruit selection. It speaks of an apprentice stage, but this ISN'T where children are selected to become aspirants who start undergoing organ implantion surgery and completing the trials of Vulkan. That comes later, only for those "judged worthy."

The concept of recruitment is probably mentioned in most detail on Page 259, Section "Recruitment" of the First Founding Art Book. (2023)

The rigours mered out upon potential aspirants to the Chapter are harsh, and Nocturne makes for the perfect training ground to weed out those who do not possess the inner strength and fortitude to become one of the Fireborn. Failure in these trials often means death, which might seem at odds with the tenets of the Promethean Creed that relate to the preservation of life, but the Salamanders also believe in the idea of a crucible and the tempering of initiates within it. Those who enter do so willingly, and those who perish simply return to the earth, as part of the cycle of Nocturnean death and rebirth."

Gruelling marches across ash wastes and desert plains under a burning sun are merely a foretaste of the trials ahead for any potential recruit. The native fauna also provide a staunch challenge, and tests vary from hunting to evasion. Whether trekking the Pyre Desert pursued by a pack of sa'hrk or pitted one-on-one against a leo'nid out in the vastness of the Arridian Plain, there are creatures aplenty to root out the strong amongst any cohort of aspirants. What this provides is a highly varied and changeable training regimen.

Recruitment is generally based on at least two elemental principles, the majority of these being variations of earth and fire. The trials of Burning Sands, of Bleeding Stone, and of Searing Fire and of Savage Beasts have all, during one occasion or another, been used to temper aspirant intakes.

Thing is, most of the trials this section is talking about actually happen once the boys have already been selected and have started to receive their Space Marine organs. This section has kind of mashed two things into one. It's really hard to find descriptive mentions of how they choose recruits aside from the First Founding bit I mentioned which speaks about apprentices, and it's super unclear about how their selection/judging happens.

But bring taken in and raised by the Salamanders is clearly not the only path to becoming a battle-brother. Here is Techmarine Ha'garen thinking of his own recruitment, from Forge Master, Chapter One:

Ba’birin was the son of a dealer in sa’hrk hides. His family had taken in the orphaned Ha’garen when his parents had died in the Time of Trials. The two boys had bonded. They were both apprentices to Ba’birin’s father, though Ha’garen had shown none of his foster brother’s promise as a tanner. Then they were recruited. They triumphed together. They became Scouts together.

Both Ha'garen and Ba'birin were raised in a family setting, and were training to become tanners for long enough that one of them was actually doing well at it before they were somehow recruited. This seems to be the case for a lot of other Salamander characters too: Sol Ba'ken was born to Themian hunters and lived with them until a leo'nid killed most of his family and he took revenge on it. He was obviously not 6 when this happened. Tsu'gan was a little rich boy who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, and he still has that attitude as a Salamander.

So, we can outline a path into the Chapter:

(Optional) Apprenticeship to a Salamander from a very young age

Some sort of selection at an older age

This begs the question, if the Salamanders have ways to select boys of around 11 to undergo the process, what is the point of this apprenticeship option?

Now we get to my theories/headcanons.

I believe a lot of the point of this apprenticeship system is less to produce battle-brothers but more a mix between an orphanage and a boarding school. Crucially, it is NOT only for potential Space Marines.

Yes, the best of the male apprentices will go on to become aspirants, and the best of the best will survive the trials and the surgeries to become Astartes. But that's also true of boys who stand out in their cities, get good grades, kill the creature that killed their families, etc.

What is special about the apprentices, though, is that kids raised by the chapter will grow up knowing both Nocturnean religion and the ways of the Salamanders better than anyone. They'll spend their childhood helping out in forges and generally seeing how things are run in the Chapter. They'll be less likely to struggle with transhuman dread, too. (Though Nocturneans seem to have much less of that anyway. Guess it wears off when you wake up to the sound of Great-Great-Great-Great Granduncle Tan'vir singing off-key while he grills up a feast for the whole neighborhood.)

These apprentices are the kids who probably grow up to become pilots, mechanics, brander-priests. When these folks choose to stay as chapter serfs, they become a loyal workforce with family-tight bonds and high job satisfaction. They also give back by looking after the next generations of apprentices. One Salamander probably can't raise a lot of kids at once, but with support from his brander-priest(s) and other serfs, a single Salamander may have up to 20 children at a time who he serves as a father-figure for.

If these kids eventually choose to leave instead of staying with the chapter, they return to their cities or tribes literate, well-fed and healthy, with strong blacksmithing skills. Adult bastion kids (or forgechildren, as I sometimes call them) would be in high demand. They would fill city councils, merchant guilds, run libraries, open factories. Even if they were once foundlings with no remaining family, people would be incentivised to take them in.

I think this apprenticeship makes sense as a strong building-block of Nocturnean culture. Seeing how useful a chapter-raised person would be to society, we have to ask:

Why would this only be limited to boys?

Simple answer: It wouldn't.

The Salamanders clearly have other ways to recruit promising boys. Chapter serfs, even brander-priests, don't need to be male. Society at large is DEFINITELY not just male.

I think women aren't only among the best blacksmiths on Nocturne. I think they must also be among the best tribal leaders, logisticians, engineers, merchants, civic officials, professors, etc. When the best boys are often scooped into the Chapter, the girls HAVE to be trained. Heck, even before the Salamanders, this was probably the case. Nocturne is such a hard place to live. Women in such a place CANNOT be idle or decorative. Survival is everyone's business.

So, yes. I absolutely support there being a ton of burly ladies running the planet. This is the reason why almost every high-ranking non-Salamander Nocturnean in my fics is female, though that's not well reflected in the current ones I have on my Ao3 because they tend to show up in my longer projects which aren't ready to be posted yet.

Also, if anyone is curious, a few of these thoughts on different backgrounds for chapter serfs and Astartes are reflected in this short story I wrote a while ago. And there will eventually be more. I will die on this hill.

Y'know, smithing is probably dominated by women on Nocturne. Think about it. The best boy apprentices would probably go into the neophyte trials, but the best girl apprentices can't. So they stay behind and keep smithing until they become masters unto themselves. Look I'm just saying Nocturne has a bunch of brawny women churning out spectacular metalwork, is that too much to ask for

[the-ink-of-roses]

mutual pining™

— you and dick both love each other, but unfortunately, it's in different forms

note: the reader uses she/her pronouns <3 warning: violence, fighting people, a n g s t not proofread, we die like thomas and martha wayne

yj!dick grayson x reader

request: Can you write (you don't have to btw) a headcanon yj!dick grayson x reader that's sorta like a Marinette and Adrien situation where dick likes reader at school while reader has a crush on Robin at yj — 🦋 —

a/n: hi, guess who's back!!! me, after like. five months? more than five months? but yes, it's been a loooonnng time, hasn't it boys? but yes, i'm back!! and also working on something with the amazing @vitaminsssss <3 also im not too confident about this, but here you gooo <33

*cracks knuckles*

so!

you were the founding member of the team, who fought alongside ( preferred mentor )

and obviously you knew the infamous robin

and the fact that no one really knew that robin's identity

out of pure spite—"if that short gremlin can keep his identity secret, so i can i and you can't stop me"—you decided to keep your identity secret and ( preferred mentor ) agreed

mainly because you wouldn't stop annoying them, but that's not important-

anywho, mr sunglasses here saw you hanging upside down and arguing with your mentor for it and went "holy shit, i think im in love"

wally was so confused

as y/n, however, you were in robin's school, where you knew him as the infamous dick grayson

your drive to keep your identity secret made you act clumsy

i.e. purposefully falling on desks, on people, dropping things, the usual

annd like a knight in shining uniform, there he was!

always, literally always, catching you

it was mainly because aside from babs, you were his only other civilian friend and he didn't want you to suffer from brain damage

but you literally fell for him

on the fateful night

it was a late gotham day and the two of you were chilling in the library and boom, you fell down the stairs.

somehow he caught your hand

this man just almost defied physics and gravity for you

how could you not be in love????

dick on the other hand was like 'oh thank godie! friend has no brain damage!'

babs has cried at least once seeing you two because she's so frustrated

so has wally but thats when you're ( h/n ) and robin

speaking of hero persona

back in the cave its like

robin: *love sick rambling*

you: oh hi my very good friend :)

robin: *screech*

wally: *sob*

artemis: *gets the popcorn*

kaldur: *shares the popcorn*

conner: *confused*

megan: *sympathizing with robin*

zee: *cringes*

it was chaotic

and then, one fateful day

wally, out of all people, finds out your identity

you are worried at first, ofc, but its wally

your friend, teammate and someone you trust, so youre not too worried

but wally just sits down and yells after he figures it out

que you dragging him to barry because you think he hit his head really loud

wally is having an existential crisis

he's seen you practically in love with dick grayson and robin in love with you

and now, as best friend supreme it is his job to make sure you two get together

he drags the rest of the team onto his plan

kaldur is the first to agree because he might combust if he sees robin making heart eyes at you during a briefing one more time

safe to say, nothing works

everything they do, nothing works out!

in wally's eyes

y/n is giving up on her feelings for dick, and h/n is noticing robin more because he offered to help with tasks

and dick has almost accepted the fact that h/n doesn't like robin in a romantic way, but damn, y/n is such a good friend and person! she even covered up for him thrice

*screeeching*

until

it is the day of faith

literally, fate is fighting alongside the team

against a brat man child who is the personification of a chad

klarion

you're chilling as a civilian in the hostage situation

until you get hit trying to cover robin from one of this chad's henchmen blasts

why did you as a civilian?

god knows but you couldn't let robin get hurt

robin sees r e d

anger takes over him in literal sense and he lashes out at all the henchmen there

like. no shit, sent seven to the hospital

wally and conner have to restrain him

like. hold him down

and wally literally tells tornado and fate to take you guys to mount justice

robin is like. "no we can't reveal our identities"

wally has had enough now, especially when it's a magical wound they can't heal there

he goes "bro, that's h/n"

robin: "fr bro?"

wally: "i swear bro"

you're rushed to mount justice then!

wally runs you there because, "cmon you little bitch, do not die on me now. you are this close to living your happily ever after, b i t c h"

black canary, zee, and dr fate rush you to a room to try to heal the wound

you dont wake up for the next week

wally is scared because he just revealed your identity

but ( mentor name ) assures him it was the right thing to do

dick on the other hand is having so many existential crisis, its all crisis and no more existence

"the person i fell in love with, then fell out of love with and then fell in love with are the same people"

he's not feeling the aster, don't worry about him

when you wake up, he's the only one there, because its late at night and he didn't wanna leave you alone

he squeezes you

literally

and goes on this rant about how you shouldn't have jumped in to help him-

and youre like "oh hi dick"

because he's in civies

and you both kind of just go "shit the other person knows now"

because yes, dick knows youre h/n and you know dickie is robin

*screaming*

but it all works out though

somewhat

because you two kiss somewhere after the initial panic had died down

but you don't really talk about that much

its like friends who kiss each other

but its fun!

and it agonizes wally and kaldur

so

taglist: @citrinesparkles @hyperfixations-dc @wereisthepie @littlemaladaptivedaydreamer @sleeqyxpqnda @azulawayne@wonderlandifulcat @evermoore580 @sol-the-salmon

join the taglist here!!

i used to be @/battlenix

[lumpiya]

shaw pack as adventure time quotes B)

this is also my first time posting on tumblr and i’m still learning how to use it soooooo don’t kill me pls-

—————

darlin: i’m also exhausted emotionally…

sam:

darlin: wait no… i mean- i mean physically

—————

david: no, they’re clones

angel: … what are clones?

david: sigh agroupoforganismsorcellsthatareproducedasexuallyfromoneancestororstocktowhichtheyaregeneticallyidentical

angel: … how did that happen

david: it’s a long story

angel: *smiles* i love long stories

david, done with their shit: GAA

—————

(headcanon that sweetheart hates kids)

sweetheart: hey kids! *picks one up and drop kicks it*

—————

(babe and sweetheart snuck into angel and david’s room to find something)

*door slowly opening*

sweetheart: TURN INVISIBLE *cloaks*

babe: i c a n t

sweetheart: well hide then!!

babe: uh- hide wherrrrrrrreeee

angel: i know someone’s in here… i heard someone say where

babe: *paniks and grabs an orange and peels it*

*door opens all the way*

angel: no sign of the intruder-

*babe squeezes orange juice in angel’s eyes*

angel: MY EYES-

—————

*milo and ash breaks down door after a 911 text from babe and sweetheart*

ash: MATES YOU’RE FREE!!

*babe and sweetheart just playing a board game*

babe: :o they broke the door. the door is broken now

sweetheart: FIX THE DOORRRRRRR

*ash and milo walk in awkwardly*

milo: fix the door?? what??? what? fix the door?! fix what- what’s going on here?? fix the door ash?? what’s going on?? fix the door

—————

*ash and milo spying on david and angels first date with binoculars*

milo: here he comes! they’re talking

ash: lemme see *grabs binoculars from milo* i can read their lips

ash:

“angel with a high voice”: hey shorty you should pick your boogers and then fart.

“david with a low voice”: you look kinda like a big pink baguette

*milo snatches binoculars*

milo: GET SERIOUS ASH

—————

ash: it’s just a prank man, for laughs

david: pranks… for laughs… yes of course… just a harmless prank… for laughs… aaaaaa… hAhHahHahaHahahahHahahhHahHhahhHahHha

ash: hahahahahaha

david immediately stops laughing: 12 years suspen-

—————

milo looking for sweetheart: sweetheart…. sweetheart-

sweetheart uncloaks and jumps on his back: SWEETHEART CHOP *chops his head with their hand* if this was a real attack, you’d be dead

—————

angel: SWEETHEART AND BABE IF YOU EVER COME TO THIS APARTMENT AGAIN ILL HAVE YOU DOUBLE DIPPED IN GOLDDDDD…. unless i get a written apology

—————

david: if you only knew what monstrosities that lurk around every corner-

ash who’s in the back seat: *throws rock at david* DARK ARTS

david: RRRRRRRR

ash, milo, and darlin: hehehehehehehehe

david: STOP LAUGHING. YOU’RE STRESSING ME OUT.

*crashes front of the car into a wall*

david: *immediately runs out* SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU MESS WITH THE DARK ARTS *kicks back of car twice* ILL GET YOU DARK ONE. YOU RECKED DAVID SHAW’S MINI VAN *stumbles back into the van* RRRRRR

—————

*ash accidentally dropped a sandwich that he was extremely proud of*

ash who’s back in the kitchen: ehhhh okay let’s do this. i can make another awesome sandwich! creation realm, inspire me once again!

*looks out window at chimes*

*chimes break and fall*

ash: ō_ō okay

—————

sam: all these people are so terrified! all scared of their own shadows

darlin: we can rule over them! like gods! *queue deep voice and rubbing hands together* angry gods

—————

(angel trying to get sweetheart to like kids)

sweetheart: uhhh… uhh… goo.. goo gooo…

*baby smiles*

sweetheart: mmmmm goo- goo goo- ahhhhhh

*baby’s smile fade*

sweetheart: *aggressively pats it* duh- duh- bluhhhh- do- du-

*pats turn into balls of fist*

sweetheart: blululululululullululululul *stops* MMMMMMMMMM PUT YOU IN MY OVEN *aggressively pushes it off their lap and gets up and looks at angel* ITS GROSS

—————

(ash and david trying to clear out a cave but they’re investigating it first)

*both of them lying on a cliff looking down at all these live skeletons*

ash: *farts*

*fart echos and the skeletons at the bottom hear and see where the two are and start charging

dave: ASH

ash: I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE FUNNY-

—————

babe who got kidnapped: 🎵🎵hm hm hm hmm hmm hm hm hm hm hm, broke up dimension you’re breaking my heart, i’m lookin for a broke up boy to break me apart🎵🎵 just kiddin, i got a boy! *pulls up unflattering selfie of ash from wallet*

—————

angel: woooaaaaaa pshhhh bwooooaaaaaaaaaaaaa pshhhhhh waaaaaaaaaaaaooooooooooo pshhhh beoooooooooo pshhh

david who’s been getting slo mo punched for the last hour: stop it

—————

[yunkiwii]

✧ D-3 Baking Cookies with Jacob

jacob x gn!reader ; sfw, fluff ; established relationship, it doesn't really go as planned tho, one swear word is said

wc: 816

from the collection: christmas with my biases

The tiny flakes of snow slowly falling outside your bedroom window, landing on the grass of your backyard and sticking to the others already there from the night before, were far more interesting than your last online class of the day. 

The teacher’s voice was muffled by your thoughts, wondering if Jacob, your boyfriend, was already on his way to your dorm. And, as if it were destiny, your phone screen lit up from your desk with a short text from the boy telling you he would be there in five minutes, and he hoped the class would already be over by then. You smiled at your phone. “It will be over for me, that’s for sure” was your reply, exiting the zoom call as soon as you heard his car pull over in the parking lot right next to the backyard, exactly five minutes later like he had said. 

“I’ve told you before to not skip or leave classes early because of me.” Jacob greeted you with a pout when you opened the door, throwing yourself at him with your arms wrapped around his neck, and kissing the pout into a smile. 

“And I’ve told you before that I like you more than my classes.” You cheekily smiled at him when you pulled away for air. “Besides, I only do that with the ones that aren’t important. I’m not that irresponsable, don’t worry.”

You link your hand with his, dragging Jacob into the kitchen behind you. The contrast of your warm skin with his cold one makes him melt into your touch, not wanting to let go, and pulling you again closer to him when you try to break contact.

“What’s up babe?” You giggle when he holds both your hands, resting his head on your shoulder.

“You’re just really warm and I like it…” he nuzzles his face further onto your neck, his hair tickling you behind your ear.

“Jacoooob!” You whine, trying to move away from him as you both laugh, “We have cookies to bake! Let’s gooo!”

Jacob caves in, freeing you from his soft grip before placing a kiss on the tip of your nose, “Thank you for keeping me warm.” And you thought that the way he smiled would be enough to keep you warm. 

✧

Baking Christmas cookies was your way of celebrating the holiday together before having to part ways to your respective hometowns and to your families. The recipe was fairly easy, and not many ingredients were needed, so both of you were pretty confident it would turn out great.

“Wrong! This is all wrong!” You let your hands fall on your sides in defeat as you whined at the liquid-looking beige dough. Jacob stood next to you, silently pondering what was missing. Had you skipped a step?

“Maybe… we should add more flour?” He hesitantly asks, just as confused as you.

“Even more?” You look back at him questioning, and with a shrug of shoulders you both just decide, “Why not?”

Adding and mixing.

Mixing and adding.

Some more adding and some more mixing and you hear Jacob huff, putting down the flour sachet a little too harshly on the counter, and a cloud of thin flour flies up in the air and directly into his face.

“Well… this isn’t getting better.” He laughs, the cheerful sound bringing your attention to him and you lose it when you see his now slightly more white face.

“You- you look like Casper, the- the little ghost you know?” Your voice barely comes out in between your laughter, already having some trouble breathing and Jacob slowly breaks down too, not resisting the contagiousness of your happiness. 

“Don’t you- don’t you mean the-” your boyfriend lets himself slide down against the counter and onto the floor, sitting there with his hands on his stomach, unable to pull himself together, “the friendly ghost!”

“OH! Right!” 

The tears were already running down your cheeks, whose muscles were getting tired and in pain. The good kind of pain. Neither of you were sure what was so funny about the situation. Maybe you were just happy. Either way, your legs couldn’t take it anymore either, leading to you joining Casper the Friendly Ghost on the floor.

It took you an awfully long time to calm down, deep breaths settling in just for a fit of laughter to break into your chests again. But, when you finally did, you gave up on trying to get the dough malleable enough to turn it into cute christmassy shapes, simply rolling it up in balls and shoving them into the oven as they were. 

✧

“I wish we could spend Christmas together. Like, for real.” You confess later that day, snuggled on Jacob’s chest as you played with the stripe of his hoodie and his hand caressed your hair.

“Maybe next year we could bring both our families together…”

“Maybe we could…” You smile at the thought, content that at least you had this day. Your early Christmas day. “This was really nice though.” You look up at your boyfriend, getting amazed about how he still looked good from that unflattering angle.

“The cookies were shit though.”

© yunkiwii 2021, all rights reserved. please do not repost or translate

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[gh0st-tale]

alright im gonna go autism mode on this post

you hit the guy hypnotizing someone to interrupt their concentration on the spell hynotizing them

wizards cant cast in leather armor bc the armor is stiff and they aren't trained to make the somatic gestures required for spellcasting in such stiff armor (i mention this bc i also didnt understand wtf that was about until it was explained to me)

dont get me started on all the damn charima casters /lh

paladin auras just. are that cool

im gonna add some stuff from my lvl 1-20 campaign i just finished (to be clear it was pathfinder not dnd but still)

our wizard and bard used Weird a lot and it's such a cool spell. its basically just Brain Fuck: The Spell

the wizard. was a half orc. the big nerdy half orc wizard who went down more than anyone would just Refuse to Die it was beautiful. she was an acountant

i played a champion (pathfinder version of paladin) and if i was near an ally when an enemy tried to grab them i could pretty much just go "um, no" (they had to roll a check but sTILL it was very good bc otherwise they usually got swallowed whole)

our bard once tried to get us out of a monster's stomach by teleporting the monster. bc the spell only targets 1 creature. only reason it didnt work is bc she missed the role

our rogue was legendary in stealth. he could just. turn to the side and not be seen. by anyone. even mfs with truesight. like he turned 2D but also invisible

my brother, our fighter, had poor will saves and often got mind controlled by enemies to attack our party. he crit on someone in our party. Every. Single. Time

i had a horse companion who the gm gave a swift wind (from she ra) voice and her catchphrase was "LETS GOOO!!!!" she was the bravest horse that ever lived.

the wizard ended up taking a minor quasit npc as her familiar for the entire campaign

the plot of the campaign was basically fixing the mistakes of the dead god of humanity who the entire party hates despite being a neutral god but ALSO all our enemies hated him so basically it was just one big "man, FUCK THIS GUY" from both sides

the aasimar cleric had to miss a session while we were in an evil drow city and the gm decided that he got kidnapped as a slave and we had to buy him back, AND his dinosaur companion, and then perform surgery on the dinosaur bc all of their gear was in the dinosaur's stomach

also while in the underdark we were the first people to survive an enounter with an eldritch being that had an ability with a range of planetary

some weird aberration tried to make me its mother

there was one session where i rolled at least FIVE nat 20s in combat. that was a good day

i was given a magic shovel by a community of pug people. the kids wanted my autograph

at one point a town we were in was being besieged by xulgaths (troglodytes, the main enemy) because a gug (creepy abberation) wanted a statue of an outer god that was in the sea caves beneath the town. the statue had also been causing the townsfolk to have horrible nightmares. when we told the mayor about what was happening, he said "so, you're telling me we could get rid of the statue that we didnt even know we had that's causing the nightmares, AND get all these xulgaths out of here?"

i could probably go on all day but those are what came to mind

Unsorted list of funny dnd things

Barbarians and orcs can refuse to die.

Certain barbarians take half damage from everything except being insulted.

Berserker barbarians cannot be charmed nor frighten because their brains don’t work well.

Standing near a paladin makes it more probable that you don’t brainwashed.

If you wants to snap someone out of hypnosis you shouldn’t hit them, you should hit the person hypnotizing them.

There’s monk subclass that basically is only there to allow you to do kamehameha.

All Clerics can raise the dead.

Wizards don’t know how to cast spells while in leather armor

1/2 of the base full spellcasters use the rizz stat for magic.

Because of a misunderstanding from a popular voice actor and dnd streamer, a race a became more cow like.

There’s a subclass for the monk class called “Drunken Master”, which is funny in it of itself, but it’s basically a person pretending to be drunk so people underestimate them and then kick them in the balls.

Goblins have an ability called fury of the small, which basically means that if you attack a creature larger than you every once in a while you deal more damage.

Kobolds used to have an ability called cower, grovel and beg.

There’s a subclass that makes you surround yourself with magical bees.

Barbarians get mad at surprises

Halfling are only alive cuz they’re lucky.

Borrowing is extremely op.

The idea of peasant rail gun.

Only martial artists and trained warriors can attack more that 2 times a turn without additional features. And at certain levels, only sometimes.

There’s a spell that’s just called “Weird”

Rogues and monks can take 0 damage while engulfed in flames.

[taeyamayang]

hola hola~ i love your 1k event idea!!

could you do ran haitani w/ 2, 35, 3?

thanksies 🥹

a/n: hellooo ofc!! that cute little emoji tho omg,, thanks for joining the event and i hope you like this! btw your numbers are tragically aligned, if that makes sense lol anyway here we gooo

• ran haitani; established relationship

• "If memories made us who we are, who are you when you lose them all?"

• hurt/angst ending

--

waiting is an arduous job. you are not the most patient person one could know but it is all that you can do right now.

a huge fraction of ran's life was spent on a rather perilous path but ever since he had slid a ring on your finger, he changed drastically. he was more mature, more careful, all for the sake of your safety. he promised, alongside loving you until your last breath, that he will be a husband you can be proud of.

but one night, when the sun is long tucked behind the moon, ran comes up to you with an expression hard to read.

"what's wrong?" you ask when he suddenly bends his knees infront of you, arms crossed on your shared bed at your side where you lie with his head lowered.

he utters apologies repeatedly without meeting your gaze. at the moment you cupped his face to lift it, tears begin to roll down his cheeks.

"tell me what's wrong." your soft hushed voice echoes in the silent night.

"my brother, h-he's got into trouble. i promised to you that i'll live a honest life but i can't let him be. i know who did it to him. it's an old foe from back in the day." he chokes on words, eyes meeting you. "(y/n), i don't know what to do."

you knew from that point that you are left to one choice. you can't be selfish by holding him back. rindou is the only family he has before he met and married you.

albeit, little did you know that the decision you were about to make will lead to your worst nightmare. apparently, harming rindou is a way for the gang to lure ran out of his cave. his brother is just the first part of their long-plotted revenge on him.

days after he left your home to meet ends with the gang members, a civilian found him lying unconscious in one of the small alleys of Tokyo. he was bathed in his blood, barely recognizable with the amount of bruises and cuts on his face and body. once his identity was uncovered, you were summoned to the hospital.

the severe concussion caused him to knock unconcscious. now, all you can do is to wait for him to wake up. the doctors said that if the stranger was a minute late into finding him, it will only take a miracle to save him.

hence, you spend your days and nights waiting for him. closely watching his face for a miniscule muscle movement or anything that can tell you that he is alive apart from the machine attached to him.

then on one ordinary day, when you were fast drifted to sleep next to him your head lowered to the space next to his torso and your intertwined hands, his eyelids unravels slowly. he groggily blinks as his vision adjusts to the lighting in the room. you are awaken from nap when you feel his fingers twitch. your head whips to his direction and you see him staring at the ceiling.

"ran! you're awake!" you stutter-scream, cupping your mouth in surprise. tears threaten to roll down from your lids as you peer at the person you love the most.

you bring your hands back to his but as soon as he feels your touch, he winces. he peers at you with a scowl on his face. when you attempt to close the gap between the two of you, he looks at you with a disgusted expression.

"who are you?"

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