#battling my slow writer demons over here

[foibles-fables]

another rangshi WIP teaser because it’s taking me a whiiileeeee (surprising nobody)

[astronomywriting]

Scars 🩺 Shinobu x Fem! Reader 🩺

WC: 1.9K Words

Vocab: [L/N]= Last Name || [F/N] = First Name || [E/C]= Eye Color

Content Warning: None I believe, but if there is do let me know

Premise: In which Shinobu kisses your battle scars?

A/N: First time writer here, please give constructive criticism if you have any! Also not beta read fully, so I apologize for any mistakes.

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You sat against the trunk of a fallen tree. Dawn had now encompassed the land, allowing you to catch your breath. Another day meant another grueling mission of fighting demons, and as of late, each mission seemed to come with a new scar. Of course, injuries were never avoidable when fighting demons, no matter how weak, but recently you had been taking much more of a beating than usual. Whether it was sluggish mistakes or a slow reaction time, after every task, you found yourself clutching a part of your body as blood stained your hands.

Today was no different, as a battle against a seemingly underpowered demon left your right arm completely immobile. As it became increasingly clear how deep the gash was, it was all too obvious that this injury would scar over. A common occurrence that had now turned into a loop of some sort. Even the Kakushi, who would arrive shortly thanks to your crow, had begun to notice how many injuries you were beginning to rack up. But it wasn’t just the Kakushi; it was also the residents of the Butterfly Mansion taking notice too.

Most notably, your girlfriend, Shinobu. Each time she saw you come in for treatment, you could’ve sworn you saw a look of worry on her face. Though you were never sure, as it was quickly masked by a smile. She knew you were capable, which is why it certainly didn’t help that every time you visited Shinobu, she would ask questions.

“Oh my, another one?”

“Are you alright?”

“[F/N], dear, what’s happening out there?”

Which, at their core, were inherently normal questions. A reflection of the healthy relationship so delicately crafted by Shinobu and you, but you felt like you were adding to her stress. Not only did the Hashira have to worry about fighting demons herself and dealing with patients, but having her see you get injured more and more seemed like another inconvenience that you’d rather your partner not have to deal with. The truth also being, you yourself didn’t know how to answer such questions. Over the last few months, in which you had consistently been sent out on missions with no break, your skill had deteriorated. Leading to more Butterfly Mansion visits and more scars appearing all throughout your body.

As you clutched your right arm, thinking about the nasty scar that would appear within a few weeks, a rustle from the nearby bushes made you snap your head up. Luckily, your hearing was still in peak condition.

“Here she is! We found her!”

Ah, a Kakushi.

“Huh? [L/N]-San, you’re injured again?”

You let out a weak chuckle.

“Hey, Yoshi,” you say with a small smile while raising your left arm so you can wave. Yoshi was a Kakushi you had gotten to know over a few months. There was never a shortage of them, but Yoshi always seemed to find you when you were injured, creating a small friendship between the two of you. “It appears so,” you chuckle, beginning to relax your body. Now that the Kakushi were here, you could rest a little bit.

Another rustle of the bushes made you slightly perk your head up, but it was just another Kakushi, one you had not met before, seemingly female, with your crow perched on her shoulder.

“Ima-San, do you know her?” The female Kakushi turned her head, curious.

“I’ve run into her a few times over these past months, Hanai-Chan,” Yoshi explained as he moved to inspect your arm. He was no Shinobu, but for the time being, he’d steady your wound with his minor medical knowledge and equipment.

You begin to zone out as Yoshi finishes stabilizing your arm, and Hanai helps him slump you over his shoulder. Your eyes grow heavy, and your muscles relax. The soothing sound of grass and leaves being crunched on as they carried you lulled you into sleep.

____________________________________________

You opened your eyes slowly, only to immediately close them as you let out a small groan. Your arm was killing you, and the pulsating pain drew another groan from your throat. You tried to open your eyes once more, but the bright light from wherever you were was too much. Using your left arm to shield your face, you are able to slightly open your eyes and get a sense of your surroundings.

There’s a ringing in your ear that is accompanied by a rather nasty headache. Your mouth was dry, which in turn made you long for water. As your [E/C] eyes took in everything, you realized your right arm had been patched up. The old gauze was a bit bloody, though, and needed to be changed.

You are lying down, but as your body became more aware, you soon found the strength to lay on your back. To leverage more comfortability, you put your pillow on your back. As you get a good look around now that your eyes have adjusted, you realize you are at the Butterfly Mansion. The room you were in was single, which you expected. Ever since you and Shinobu started dating, she made sure you warranted your own space. She had mentioned there being some rather interesting patrons in the main room, and that for your sake, it’d be best you get your own area.

You raise both of your arms and put them side by side. Your left arm already has a few scars in various places, but there was one tear that was considerably bigger on the lower forearm. You look to your right the bandaging is coincidentally also on the lower forearm.

“Great,” you mumble, your voice raspy. God, you needed that water.

Your mind travels to other scars across your body. Luckily, these are all small, minor scars. One on your temple, neck, and hands. These healed scars were much older, some of the first you gained throughout this odd strike of skill deterioration. You put your arms down, as they had now grown tired. You close your eyes to take in a breath, and as you do, the door knob jiggles.

You look over as the door opens, and your [E/C] eyes meet purple ones. She gives a warm smile, which you know isn’t her usual mask. She’s carrying a few things, items you assume to be medical equipment. She walks into the room and quietly closes the door behind her. Shinobu sets the equipment down on a nearby desk and pulls out a chair.

“Hey, ‘Nobu,” you start, relaxing muscles you didn’t even know you were tensing.

Her eyes don’t meet yours anymore, as she’s focused on rummaging through her assortment of equipment.

“What did I tell you about staying out of trouble, dear?” She says, pulling out a pair of scissors.

“Hey, this time I swear the demon got the jump on me. I thought I dealt with it, but last second it swiped at me,” you explain.

Shinobu giggles as she grabs your arm, using the scissors to cut away the old bandage.

“Oh my, whatever will I do with you, silly girl?” Shinobu giggles, tossing away the old, bloodied bandage. She grabs some antiseptic before pouring it onto a cloth. “This might sting a bit, okay, love?”

You nod as you suck in a breath of anticipation. She applies the cloth gently, and while it does sting for a bit, before you know it, the cloth is already being removed.

“Sorry for making you worry, Shinobu,” you mumble as she wraps on a new bandage. “I don’t mean to keep getting injured; I just haven’t been on top of my game and—“

Shinobu puts her finger to your lip.

“I think I know what’s happening, dear,” she says, that trademark smile of hers never disappearing. “When’s the last time you’ve had a break?”

You open your mouth to speak, but Shinobu puts her finger to your mouth again.

“An actual break, not medically issued resting, or a nap in between missions. An actual break.”

You open your mouth, but quickly close it again.

“It’s been…a few months,” you admit.

Shinobu makes a hum of acknowledgment.

“Now that just won’t do,” she says, shaking her head. “You’re not on top of your game because you’re overworked, dear.”

It dawns on you that she’s right, like usual.

“You’re telling me being overworked is the cause for all these ugly scars?” You groan.

Shinobu giggles.

“Nobody ever said they were ugly.”

“Yeah, but they’re sure as hell an eyesore if you ask me,” you frown as you lift up your left arm to inspect it.

Shinobu leans toward you and grabs your arm. She plants a kiss on each individual scar, from the lower forearm all the way up to your wrist. Before you can get a word in, she leaves a small kiss on your temple— the small scar that emerged from a foolish mistake while fighting. Her lips travel to the right side of your neck. You remember this scar all too well: the razor-sharp claws of a demon, the blood. You couldn’t tell if the kiss made you shiver or the memories. Finally, Shinobu takes each of your hands and places a kiss on them individually.

“Your scars make you who you are, [F/N],” she smiles. She takes your bandaged arm and leaves a small kiss on the freshly wrapped gauze. “But, I don’t want to see you hurt, so I’ll keep you here for a month or so,” she begins to stand up.

“A month?” You start. “But this arm injury won’t take that long to heal,” you say, turning your head in confusion.

“I know, but consider this your break,” she says, a sly smile dawning on her face.

“But,”

“Doctors orders, you just sit there and relax, okay? I’ll be back to check up on you soon.” Shinobu cuts you off, leaving no room for an argument. Before leaving, she cocks her head at you. “Oh my, your face is rather red; should I fetch you some water?”

“No no! I’m good.” The raspiness in your voice comes back.

“Okay, I’ll be back later, love,” Shinobu smiles and exits the room.

You rub your left arm, and the kiss she left on one of your scars is still present. Maybe taking a break is long overdue.

[kaylopolis]

Alastor's Shadow (18+) - Afterword

Alastor x F!Reader

Synopsis: There’s a new Overlord in town and it isn’t the Radio Demon. Six years after you fell into Hell, you have finally earned your seat at the table as Pentagram City’s newest and baddest and with the Extermination coming six months earlier than planned, it is now time to implement your ultimate endgame. After all, who doesn’t love a bit of power and chaos? Your plan brings you to the doorstep of the Hazbin Hotel as Charlie’s newest Redeemer, but who you find waiting for you will not only turn your entire plan upside down but also challenge your grab for power… 

Tag List: Slow burn, rivals to lovers, eventual smut

Masterlist Link: Masterlist

Spoiler Warning: Please read this after the Epilogue

Dear Hoteliers,

Before we begin, there is one thing I’d like to address: why did I kill Alastor?

Alastor’s death, believe it or not, was not about Alastor.

While you were dying, your thoughts were not fixated on him, nor were they fixated on Mary Marie if you read that alternate ending. They were about the abuse you experienced as an Angel of God. After all, this story, the very first thing that brought you to the Hotel was revenge.

But this was not a story about revenge. That all changed in Chapter 14 “Picking a Fight,” when you and Alastor finally caved and gave in to your feelings for each other.

No longer was your Endgame plan clear cut. Things got complicated. Alastor had to accept you and the plan or it didn’t work. Why? Because, again, you thought your story was one of revenge.

Alastor’s death - the demon saving you, looking after you over the years he was “dead,” and the lengths you went to revive him - changed that narrative. Because now it was not about Alastor accepting you and the Endgame plan, but you realizing that your story could not go on without him.

Literally, hence the time jump.

I did this for your character development, closure of your character’s arc, and because it has been the theme from the beginning of this work: power born from love is a thousand times more powerful than that born from fear.

Hence, the power, chaos, and love modified mantra I ended with.

So, if love was the solution/closure you needed why were you so fixated on the abuse as you died? Why did you not find resolution in those final moments (hence the “your fault” present during this scene)? Why was there no healing from your triggering past during this fic?

I intentionally did not want that sub-plot to find an ending because that’s not how trauma works. It’s an ongoing process - a battle to fight everyday. We have our good days and our bad, and we do not let it dictate our lives, but it’s a battle nonetheless.

I’ve always taken issue with movies and books romanticizing trauma and a character becoming empowered from it, using it as willpower to take down kingdoms literally and metaphorically. Culture wraps up trauma in a nice pretty bow and sticks it on a shelf and calls it a day when, in reality, that’s not how healing works.

It is a battle. An ongoing battle many of us spend our entire lives fighting.

How fitting that Mikaela’s a soldier…

But I’m not here to rehash this subplot. I’ve said my peace for you all to synthesize on your own because I find writers have many hidden motives we don’t catch while reading, and, as a writer myself, it makes me incredibly sad when a reader misses it because the story is SO much better if you understand them.

That being said, I’m here to reflect. After all, it’s what an “Afterword” is for.

I’ve never written a fanfic before but I am a fantasy writer. I decided to use this piece to explore romance, smut, and to fantasize about Alastor because how can you not? Vivienne inadvertently dropped us a hottie who has taken the fandom by storm!

I started this piece off as an “eventual smut” piece. Trying to practice my writing in a way the great Alastor Fictive writers on here would be proud to read: @minkdelovely , @hazelfoureyes , @hurthermore , @krahk , @fraugwinska , @macabr3-barbi3 (seriously go read their stuff, it’s AMAZING). Yet, around Chapter 14 (I call it the “Golden Chapter” in my head because I consider it to be the climax of not only the fanfic but of my writing as a whole. I’m quite proud of that chapter and honestly spent a long time debating ending the story there, but so many things were still unfinished) I found that I didn’t particularly have a talent for writing smut, nor did I enjoy it in the same way I enjoy writing fantasy.

This entire project was a discovery and a challenge for myself, and I grew A LOT as a writer.

Looking back, if I had to do this again, I would change quite a bit after Chapter 14. Maybe I will in the future, but as of right now, I have school and another manuscript to complete.

That being said, I have fallen in love with Mikaela and plan on using her in the future for my own book. (I will obviously not use any of Vivienne’s stuff because copyright laws exist, but I just love the character’s personality.)

I’m not planning on writing more on Tumblr anytime soon, but the series will stay up for future readers to find and enjoy.

My only goal with this was to reach a few people and have one person - just one - say they liked my writing. :)

Thank you, Hoteliers. Without you, this project wouldn’t have happened.

To power, chaos, and love!

As always, stay smutty <3

kaylopolis

Btw looking for feedback, feel free to send me a message!

-> Link to Masterlist

Tagged Hoteliers:

@sirens-and-moonflowers @wonderlandangelsposts @saccharine-nectarine @goyablogsstuff @mommymilkers0526 @eris-norwega @missgirlsstuff @alastor-the-radio-demons-blog @sillywormtrixareforkids @its-a-dam-blue-brick @cloverresin20 @blue-bird251 @speedycoffeedelight @littlebluefishtail @sawi1987 @mopeyghost @beelz3bub @fraugwinska @minamilinaqueen @demoarah @diffidentphantom @divineknightmare @animecrazy76 @sleepykittycx @graunta @reath-solia @satansdaughter123 @mysticatto @freshonyourpages @chibistar45 @rapunzelbro @stephydearestxo

[nanamis-bigtie]

a lot has happened lately, but so far i haven't made any official statement about my decisions and the path i want to take as a writer. it was a long road of trial and error & detailed examination of conscience in regard of my bad habits, gained experience, and goals and expectations. there are some massive changes that i need to address, followed by explanation of my decisions. i know i don't need to explain myself but i feel it's only fair to my loyal readers to share at least little insight into the context.

I. One Piece goes on indefinite vacation...

not going to lie, i was falling out of this fandom for years. it's started in 2021 when i fell victim to bullying and stalking, initiated by a widely-known (and still active, as far as i am aware of) x reader writer. it's the biggest reason for my slow withdrawal but not a sole one: pressing discourse around my comfort characters, toxic environment i fell into when looking for a relief from relentless bullying, forcing myself to write for topics and characters i didn't even like, readers overstepping my boundaries over and over again, falling into a trap of purity culture...oh, the list is long. way too long.

i still love one piece but i don't want to create for it en-masse anymore. right now it's just a wound that's far from healing, i need to treat it at my own pace. aside from an occasional poke at sapphic topics and my fav trio, i doubt it will appear in other way than commissions or gifts for friends. and some characters (kid, sanji, marco, katakuri, shanks & a few more) will never return.

II. ...but new fandoms arrive!

jujutsu kaisen is right now the main love of my life & will remain as the main fandom for long. but i found more series and characters i adore enough to feel that creative spark buzzing in my veins. soon you should see fics appearing for: demon slayer, chainsaw man, haikyuu and hell's paradise!

i'm keeping my head low rn when it comes to requests but i want to hold at least a kinktober open for them so you definitely will have an opportunity to see your faves from those series from me!

III. It's a gender neutral & afab Y/N sphere now!

it's something that was inevitably floating over me and my fics (and some of y'all definitely caught the whiff of it already), but i couldn't quite find courage to put a hard limit. we all know how it is in the y/n circles: way too many people expect from writers to cater to everyone, and treat it as a personal offense if you prefer to play in your own sandbox. as if writing y/ns was "activism", not a fandom activity like any other.

so, i won't force myself to write against myself anymore. i feel the most happy and comfortable when i make my y/ns gender neutral and when i'm giving them vaginas (and sometimes boobs) when i'm writing smut with them. i don't want to battle my weirdly-veiled dysphoria to force female reader out of myself. i don't want to stress myself while writing amab y/n, from the sheer biological fact of being unable to relate via lack of penis, to being sick and tired of the toxicity and misogyny that m!reader circles reek of.

so, gender neutral and afab it is. sometimes i will stray towards afab nonbinary or transmasc direction, if i feel like i need some good gender vibes coming from my fics.

it doesn't mean i will never write different y/ns. commissions, gifts for friends, exchanges, random ideas for a plot that requires a specific kind of y/n, sapphics feels, and such will appear here and there. i will also interact lots with f!reader fics, since it's what i see lots around & don't mind reading, if i feel more fem or if it's from a writer i like and trust.

incoming ino x reader (that i hope to publish tomorrow) will be the last non-sapphic f!reader that will appear for a long while. all requests i'm keeping in my drafts right now will be turned into completely gender neutral or from fem to more general afab reader (i don't have any requests for amab readers rn anyway). unless you really don't want to have f!reader taken out of your request - then please, let me know, i will delete it so you can head with it to a different writer.

IV. Never miss a fic again - sign for a tag list!

and now a little treat! if you don't want to miss a fic about the topic that might interest you, you may sign for a tag list by filling a simple form!

V. And what am I going to do now?

write, write, and write even more! i wanna write the in the heat of spring drabbles before the spring is gone, have three fully-fledged multichapter fics outlined and itching to be written and posted, and an interactive event with which we will welcome the summer 💦

in june i want to publish a few sapphic fics that i had in mind for a while now & later towards the second half of summer (think august-september) i'll smile at you again with a kinktober i really want to complete this year!

there might be a few smaller events on the way, depending on how busy i'll be. there's an idea for dilf enjoyers and for a chubby y/n, as well as many others that still didn't take a clear shape.

i also didn't forget about the kiss event and nonsexual acts of intimacy for the fluff enjoyers!

if you survived this wall of text (or just scrolled down here lol understandable) - thank you for your patience, understanding, and support. whether you're here with me since the very beginning or clicked the follow recently, i'm happy to have you here �� if you have any questions or just want to talk, my askbox is open for any kind of interaction! and if you want to support a poor writer who has way too many health-related spendings lately, you can buy me a ko-fi ❤

[genshinemblem564]

Sagau x SMT

Hi, sorry for being so absent. My anxiety meds lost their effect and I only got my increased dose prescribed a few days ago. I also picked up a copy of SMTV the same day and I have been HOOKED. So now that I'm able to function again, I thought I'd write something. SMTV is the only SMT game I've played, so i may get some things wrong if i go too much into details, and rather than be another fanfiction, this will be more of a storyboard. (I've already got two other fanfics I need to work on) Anyway, sorry this got a bit long, but I hope you enjoy.

CW: Reader, (Y/N), and you used interchangeably at the start

• There are many ways you could write this, but I find the one that works best for me is in the form of a reverse isekai.

• The characters that appear vary slightly depending on the reader's age and academic advancement. For example, if reader is in high school, Xingqiu may be brought along to help them get close to you. If (Y/N) is in college, it would be someone older like Kaveh. Regardless, the characters that would appear are Xiao for obvious reasons, Faruzan, because they at least gathered that your written language was different from theirs, a few archons of your choice, and Childe, sent by the Tsaritsa as he was the first, and only depending on your progress, Fatui member to earn their creator's blessing. There were supposed to be a few more, but I couldn't think of any at the time of writing this.

• The characters who are looking for you do their best to blend in while doing so, only speeking when prompted, while the others all take part-time jobs so they can afford any resources necessary to find you, and to make sure they aren't living on the streets.

• The crossover starts in the same way regardless. You and a character are walking home when you come across a crowd of people blocking the path. It seems transit had been delayed, so you decide to find a detour, and on a secluded road when the two of you are alone, a crack in reality forms before bursting open to form a portal.

• You felt uneasy, but before instincts could take over, a swarm of monsters came through and dragged the two of you through, the shock of it all causing you to pass out, and when you wake up the first thing you see is Xiao.

• The portal had long since closed as Xiao was preoccupied with your safety. He explains all of this before dropping two swords to the ground, whether it's the choice weapon of you or the character doesn't matter, the weapon he brought for you needed to be light or it would have only served to slow him down.

• From here, your elemental powers awaken slowly and in their weakest form as you strike down the first few daemons with zio.

• The way you recruit demons works more like catching pokemon. Walking through this strange world, you were ambushed by a pixie. You instinctually held out your hands to shield yourself, only to let loose a spell. When you opened your eyes, the pixie was still there, and Xiao was confused as the demonic energy had completely vanished from this being. You purified Pixie.

• After exploring this land a fair bit, you spotted a group of angels being attacked by a powerful demon, and you decide to help them out. After the battle, the angels expressed surprise at the sight of a group of purified demons, and they requested, almost demanded, you speak with their superior.

• After your demons grew enough in power, they were able to make their own portals to and from that world.

I think I'll leave it here, while I definitely would like to write more on this, this was also an exercise to get my brain back into the writing mindset after not being able to for so long. I also have two other fanfictions that I should focus on first, as stated above. I might write more on this as those come closer to ending, but if any writers want to use this, feel free

[rottenhashira]

Hiyaaa~~~ 🎋

I’m Alex or Ly.

I go by any pronouns.

This acc is 18+. Even if its just to focus on a kny AU, it will contain smut or suggestive drawings.

I’m a digital artist and an inexperienced writer(for fun!)

KNY only! Not spoiler free!

STATUS: HOLD

Rot Hashira is an AU made by myself, I am just one person working on this au so content might be slow.

This is just a resumed version, there’s so much more to the story and lore of this au which will be told with art pieces. Plz be patient 🎋🪷

The AU takes place right after Tanjiro Kamado(Sun Hashira defeat Muzan with the help of the kamaboko squad, which are Hashira aswell(I would like to mention that NONE of them are minors, they’re all adults in this au).

Once Kamado defeated Muzan, the ghost of Yorichii appears before Tanjiro and only he can see him. Yorichii shows Kamado a vision of the future, that this war was not finish but it could be if he takes action right here and now. Kamado thinks he is ready for his last task but only if he knew…

Yorichii’s ghost guided the young hashira to the place of his mission leaving the others behind to rest, the hashira comes to a stop in front of a deserted cabin not so far from the battle field he just been in. Once Kamado realized that his final enemy lies behind this door, he took a deep breath in to prepare his lungs since this enemy won’t run away and its unlike anyone he has faced before…

An infant rested in the cabin, in a well clean wooden crib. A baby girl to be exact, dark long hair, tiny, sharp nails and ruby red eyes with a slit in the middle similar to the ones of a cat’s pupils. “Its just an infant… its just a girl… what sort of image and threat does she poised that I cannot avoid?…” Kamado looked at the infant in awe as Yorichii’s ghost stand beside the crib leaning over it “This is non other the offspring of the demon king, Muzan. Know that she’ll grow from a girl to an avenger, one fueled with vengeance once come of age… if you don’t end it now you wont have no one to save.. you can say goodbye to Nezuko, your friends… your family..”

Kamado quickly dropped his blade and took the infant on his arms to comfort her “I can raise it as my own! I’ll take her far from home! I’ll make sure her past is never known! Please I’m on my knees for you!” The sun hashira begged on his knees to Yorichii’s ghost who looked down at him in disappointment.

“Please dont make me do this Yorichii! Please there has to be another way, please guide me!” Kamado yelled with tears in his eyes, he could only picture his younger siblings in this infant… he just couldn’t..

“Young Kamado… I apologize. It seemed I’ve chosen the wrong soul for the task.” Those wore Yorichii’s last words before vanishing, leaving the sun hashira alone with the infant.

Kamado decided it was best to escape from everyone and everything he knew. He took the infant and ran, ran till his legs failed him, till his lungs ached in pain, far… please so far..

Kamado’s heart ached at the fact he had to leave his friends and famiky behind with out a goodbye. He left behind the Rengoku family, the man who adopted him and his sister, who gave him a family to call his. The love of his life, Kanao… even tho she kept rejecting him, he loved her with everything he got. His best friends, Zenitsu and Inosuke, brothers at this point, he couldn’t congrats him on his 3rd happy marriage. The reason he even became a demon slayer, Nezuko… he hated he couldn’t tell her anything or even leave her a letter, he hated he couldn’t congratulate her on her second child with her new husband Muichiro…

Tanjiro took the infant far, so far, a journey that took him a month to reach to. He took her to a mountain house he bought, the house was very similar to the one he lived when he was a child. He decided to call the infant “Hina” which meant sun or bright! She was his sun, Hina gave him the opportunity to live a tamed lifestyle he craved, he loved Hina like if she was his.

Years passed and Hina grew up like a well taken care of Framboyán tree. You couldn’t even guess she was the daughter of such cruel man like Muzan, she was a kind soul thanks to her father, Tanjiro. Kamado was luckily abled to give her an animal based diet like him and since they were a small family, they had lotz of time together so he taught her sun breathing, the fire dance his father passed down to him and he passed down his ear rings to her.

Years passed and they lived happily together until one night… a young looking hashira found them. The hashira had a white haori and bells decorated his sandal’s back, he had long pointy fox ears which were pierced with bells and red ribbons, he also had a fox tail… he was a demon? A demon as a hashira? Who?…

Kamado’s heart raced knowing exactly why he was here, kamado reached to a certain age where his skills were now failing him so he couldn’t do much but that didn’t brought him down, he will protect his daughter.

The demon hashira paused dropping his figthing stance “Tanjiro?…” the hashira let out with a curios tone. “Tanjiro is that really you? Its me! Sabito! We used to be partners in the demon slayer corp!” Sabito let out rushing closer to him, he circled him to inspect him from head to toe. “Look at you! You’re not so bad for an old man!” Sabito let out with a friendly chuckle until he took a good sniff.

“Tanjiro, you smell… different.”

//skipping catching up details

The fox friend could sniff a smell, it wasn’t putrid or terrible like demons commonly have… in the contrary, it was a scent of vanilla, he didn’t knew how to put it but it was a tamed smell… so comforting and relaxing but it had a strong hint of power, the smoke before the forest fire…

Sabito stepped in between Tanjiro and his house in a defensive posture to protect his old friend. A young lady walked out the door, her face expressed concern for her Tanjiro, her irises glow a ruby red just like Muzan’s and this shocked Sabito. Sabito’s hands trembled around his blade’s handle as a soft growl sneaked up his throat “I thought we killed you! You’re like a fucking plague!” The river kitsune spit with venom.

Tanjiro quickly stepped in between them to ease Sabito, Sabito didn’t backed down realizing that Tanjiro was defending this beautiful young woman who was clearly a demon, Muzan. Tanjiro was now considered as an enemy, betrayal... both of them broke into a fight to the death, Tanjiro had the advantage with his sun breathing technique but before he could slash Sabito’s neck he had flashbacks of their friendship so Kamado redirected his blade away from his throat, slashing some hair off Sabito. Sabito took this as an open door and used his demon blood art to leave a serious deep injury on Tanjiro’s chest with heavy pressured water.

Hina saw it all, she rushed to her father aid in terror, she cover him trying to protect him as her tears rushed in. Tanjiro made sure to comfort her in his last moments… “please… promise me you won’t eat human flesh… never.” Hina nodded in confusion as she cried hysterically begging Tanjiro to stay with her as Sabito was shocked seeing a demon with Muzan’s blood pump in their veins protecting a human.

Once Tanjiro’s hand became weak, Hina was fueled with anger and vengeance, Hina aimed her hand to Sabito as her arm’s veins were turning blood red, her nails becoming longer as her mouth drooled. Sabito’s eyes widen as he felt his internal organs moving, his blood was moving to places it shouldn’t, his body didn’t respond to him, this body wasn’t his anymore… blood rushed up his throat, every exit in his body was leaking a concerning amount of blood as his veins pop through his flesh.

Tanjiro reunited enough strength to hold her arm, this made her drop everything she was doing and attend her dying father, her focus was on only him. “Please don’t… I-I’ll wait for you Hina… I’ll always be with you…” Kamado dropped his hand as he took his final breath in Hina’s arms, Hina cradled her hold man’s corpse, her cries filled the forest and Sabito was no where to be found.

“Hashiras huh?…” the voice of a man was herd in the darkness of the forest. Two glowing orbs appeared, rainbow colored that coexisted just right in his irises.. a demon.

“What do you want?.” Hina growled as she just finished her father’s grave.

“I want to help you… princess…” The white kitsune grinned extending his arm to her.

Credits:

Teeth Divider: @//mmadeinheavenn

Art: @//rottencoreflesh101

Story inspiration:

[ordinaryschmuck]

Why I (Want to) Love Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure

Salutations random people on the internet who most likely won’t read this. I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

When I heard Disney was making an animated series based on Tangled, acting as a continuation from the original movie, my initial thought was, "Why?"

Sure, Disney is infamous for its unnecessary sequels of the story after happily ever after, with the many, many, many failures that follow suit. Even then, though, most of these continuations were movies that kind of have the potential to tell more of a story. But what more could be said about Tangled? Sorry to spoil a movie that's over ten years old at this point, but by the end of it: Rapunzel lost her golden hair, was reunited with her parents, fell in love, and lived happily ever after. Her losing the golden hair is the most essential part of that list because how can you do a series based on a Disney princess when her most iconic feature is gone? Then I found out that the series forced a way for her hair to come back, and my new initial thought became, "Oh man. This is gonna suck, isn't it?"

Despite the hesitation, I decided to give it a chance anyway. After all, I've been pleasantly surprised before. Things like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, and even The Owl House (yes, really), were shows (and a movie) that I didn't think would be that special. Only to find myself enjoying nearly every minute. So after watching Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, I can certainly say I was surprised...but it was entirely for the wrong reasons.

And to explain how requires spoilers. So if you haven't checked the series out yet, I highly suggest you do it to form your own opinion. Just keep in mind that it's a bit of a mess, but it can be an enjoyable mess...sometimes...let me explain.

WHAT I LIKED

The Animation/Art Style: The series swapping from 3D to 2D might have been the most brilliant decision anyone could have ever made with this series. Usually, when an animated movie gets turned into a show, the most noticeable downgrade is always the animation. Whether it’s not as detailed or not as fluid, it's always subjective that the movie is better animated than the series. But by switching up the styles, the contrast becomes objective instead. 2D and 3D animation each have their pros and cons, so deciding which one is better is nothing more than a matter of opinion. So by changing the style, Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure avoids getting complaints of being a downgrade from the original movie. It also helps that the art style of the series is really unique.

The best way to describe how the show looks is that it's like a coloring book brought to life. At times, everything looks like it was drawn and colored in with crayons, which sounds like an insult, but in actuality, it's one of the best features of the series. As much as I love most animated shows nowadays, I will admit, they all look a little too similar at times. Then here comes Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, which tries to incorporate a whole new style that successfully sets it apart from most shows.

As for the animation itself, it's really well-made! It's remarkably expressive when required, while the movements are really fluid during the correct scenes. Sure the fighting can be a little floaty during some action set pieces (yes, those exist here), but the dialogue and comedic moments are really where the series shines with its animation. I may have problems with the series as a whole, but I give credit where credit is due for the perfectly executed effort that I see in every episode in terms of animation.

Rapunzel and Eugene’s relationship: This was not something I was expecting to enjoy from the series. In the movie, Rapunzel and Eugene were fine. They were the typical Disney couple that worked off of each other enough that it was always entertaining, even if it was unbelievable that they fell deeply in love with each other after, like, two days. They weren't bad, but they weren't anything to go crazy over.

But the writers for the series said, "You know what, let's make these two adorable in nearly every scene they're in." And they are!

Even though I don't believe in their relationship in the movie, I fully believe it here. Both characters have a large amount of faith in one another on top of having endless love for their partner. Like how Eugene knew Rapunzel would be fine when taking out an airship or how Rapunzel couldn't bring herself to say a bad thing about Eugene when making Cassandra a sparring dummy of him. It's legitimately pleasant to watch, to the point where I put Rapunzel and Eugene in my top ten list of favorite fictional couples. They're that good to me, and it's one of the reasons why I don't jump on the bandwagon of shipping the two main female characters together. I'm all for LGBTQA+ representation, but give Cassandra her own girlfriend. Rapunzel's taken, and most of my enjoyment of this show comes from her and her man. So, you know, keep things as they are.

Cassandra (Seasons One and Two): Seeing how I've already mentioned her, let's talk about Cassandra, shall we? Because when making a series based on a movie that had only four prominent characters, with two of them being comedic animal sidekicks, you're going to need to introduce more members to the main cast to write more potential stories. And Cassandra, in Seasons One and Two (I'll get to Season Three), is a worthy addition. She acts as a strict straight man (I know the irony) who interacts well with Rapunzel and clashes perfectly with Eugene on occasion. She was passably entertaining in Season One and developed amazingly in Season Two. Her growing frustrations with Rapunzel's actions lead to a slow build-up that made her betrayal heartbreaking but somewhat understandable. And as for the results in that betrayal...yeah, I'll get into that later. For now, I'll just say that Cassandra was a pleasant addition to the main cast, especially when she was a part of the main trio, and she's yet another good surprise that the writers supplied for the series.

The Songs: The songs are...not going to be for everyone. Most of them are passable yet kind of generic, while others sound like they belong on Disney Junior (Looking at you, "Bigger Than That"). But when Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure makes a hit, MAN, it is a home run. Numbers like "Ready As I'll Ever Be" and "Nothing Left to Lose" are sung phenomenally, orchestrated well, and are songs I can listen to on repeat multiple times. And "Waiting in the Wings" is not only something I consider to be the best song in the series, but it's also something I'd place as high up on Disney's best due to how f**king incredible it is. "Waiting in the Wings" is a powerful ballad that manages to be both tragic yet inspiring on top of how well it sums up Cassandra as a character. The writers may not always be on top of their game when it comes to music, but songs like these prove that they know how to earn that Disney name.

And that’s all I have for the likes...Oh boy. That’s not a good thing is it?

WHAT I DISLIKED

It Peaked at Season One: It did. It really did.

Season One felt like the writers had a grip on what type of show they wanted: A slice-of-life series with Rapunzel dealing with the issues of her kingdom with a meager threat of these black rocks growing in the background. It was all cute and well-balanced for the most part, but that all disappears in Season Two. Because now it's sort of about this adventure, but because Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure set itself as a slice-of-life series, there need to be these small-scale stories that intertwine the grand narrative being told. The issue is that the story comes to a grinding halt one too many times as fans are forced to sit through these filler episodes that, while not all of them are bad, still feel like a distraction. And by Season Three, the series does feel more focused while having some slice-of-life episodes added to the ongoing story instead of distracting us from it. But the writing isn't as strong, there are several plot holes in the narrative (how did Rapunzel's sunstone get into her dress?), and there is way too much time going back and forth on Cassandra's morality. They claim that she's a villain while arguing that there might still be some good in her, and they continue this train of thought for nine episodes when it really could have been settled in two. For me, it's a bad sign for a series when the first season is the best one. Because if it's all downhill from there, what's the point of even watching?

It Tries to be Epic: This might have been the worst decision the writers could have made.

Now, here's the thing: I don't mind grand epic tales of adventure and battles against demons. If anything, I'm all for them...when it's appropriate and fits with the tone of the series.

Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure suffers a similar problem Frozen II has, in which the writers felt like a big, life-threatening adventure was the perfect continuation of a meager, personal story about the relationships of characters. It isn't. If anything, it's completely missing the mark about what the original story was about. And sure, sometimes writers can succeed in telling personal stories through grand adventures. Just look at The Owl House and parts of Amphibia. But with those shows, it's established within the first few episodes that action and peril will be a series staple. With Tangled, while there was some action and peril, it's all very subdued compared to how high the stakes got raised in later episodes in the show. Especially in the series finale.

And, I mean, c'mon. You're making Rapunzel an action hero?

Judy Hopps? Yes.

Moana? Maybe.

Raya? Most definitely.

But Rapunzel? The character who’s all about optimism and seeing the best of others. That's the character you're going to morph into a hero that fights against an evil demon laid dormant for years? Did you even watch the original movie? Yeah, sorry, but I just don't buy it.

If you want to tell an epic story that gets the blood pumping for fans addicted to adventure, go for it! See where the wind takes you. But make sure to set that tone as early as possible while also making sure that it fits with the characters. If not, the end result is a series that feels like it's trying to be something it’s not.

Eugene is Kind of an Idiot at Times: It should be noted that Movie-Eugene and Series-Eugene are practically two different characters. In the film, Eugene was more or less the straight man, as he often questions the wackiness in the world around him and keeping Rapunzel grounded in reality. For the series, most of that personality got transferred to Cassandra. Thus making Eugene's new role in the series act as the egotistical imbecile. Sure, he had those moments in the film, but not as frequently, and it really pains me when the writers really lean hard into a minor aspect of his personality. Sometimes there are moments when Eugene acts like his original self. But it's all small scenes that are spread apart with entire episodes where he has half a brain cell. I'm sure some people didn't mind this change to the character, but as someone who adores the movie version of Eugene, I can't help but feel disappointed.

The Villains are the Worst: Now, I don't mean the one-off villains that show up, cause some chaos for a bit, and disappear at the end of the episode. Those are characters with fun personalities, occasionally cool designs, and do their job as villains of the week. It doesn't matter if their motivations are laughably simple, as their purpose is to be enjoyable characters above anything else. So I actually enjoy those villains...it's the ones that act as season-long antagonists that really grind my gears.

The purpose behind these types of foes is to build up how evil they are throughout the season. The issue is that the writers try to give these characters, or at least two of them, a point. To be fair, this can work. Just look at Killmonger from Black Panther and sometimes Karli Morgenthau from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. You understand and probably even sympathize with the logic and reasoning these characters have. It's just that their actions couldn't be farther from what you would do. The problem with Varian and Cassandra is that they have the motivation, but it's not written suitably for the story.

Cassandra is a whole can of worms I'll get to in a minute, but Varian is someone I can easily discuss for a brief time. Because while I can comprehend his pain for having his father frozen in yellow rock, I don't think turning evil is the best decision to go with that character. Because A. Everything is his fault. He blames Rapunzel for not helping him, but even if she didn't have a crisis to deal with, there was nothing she could have done to stop it. His frustrations are not only unjustified, but given the fact that this wouldn't have happened if he listened to his father in the first place, it feels like him becoming evil is too drastic of a turn. And B. Varian worked much better as a supporting character rather than a primary antagonist. He was just this hopeful, if not a clumsy scientist who wanted to prove himself, who causes minor catastrophes due to not thinking ahead. Turning a character like Varian into a villain is a bit of a misstep because if the guy acts hilariously incompetent as a good guy, it makes little sense to have him be intelligent and ten steps ahead of Rapunzel when being evil. If he were to become more serious and careful when helping the rest of the main cast, I'd consider that character progression done properly. But becoming a villain is just an overreaction.

However, none of that compares with my issues with the main antagonist of the series: Zhan Tiri. This goes back to my problems with the series making itself too epic. Because if Zhan Tiri existed in any other show, I probably wouldn't have any problem with her. She's built up well throughout all three seasons and is kind of threatening at times. But she doesn't belong in a series based on a movie that dealt with a small, personal issue where it wasn't even the character who killed the villain in the end. It was her love interest and animal sidekick. Even if Zhan Tiri works well as a character, the fact that it doesn't feel like she belongs in the show makes her too distracting to enjoy. And that's why these villains suck. If not poorly written, they don't belong in a series that should focus on small-scale issues. And if you can functionally write an antagonist that appears for only one episode but flounder with ones that show up in several, well, that's just embarrassing.

Cassandra (Season 3): OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH BOY, do I have some words to express with this character. Like with Movie-Eugene and Series-Eugene, Cassandra from Seasons One and Two is frustratingly different from the psychotic IDIOT from Season Three. Basically, just take the issues I have with Varian, multiply them by ten, add them with some bafflingly stupid decisions, and you still wouldn't get how much Season Three-Cassandra frustrates me!

First off, her motivation...what the f**k were the writers thinking? The big reason why Cassandra betrays Rapunzel and motivates all of her misdeeds was that Cassandra's mother was Mother Gothal...EXPLAIN THAT LOGIC TO ME?! Because Cassandra should know what type of woman Mother Gothal was. She should know what Mother Gothal did to Rapunzel in the first eighteen years of her life. So how is Cassandra being abandoned by Gothal the central motivator to cut ties with Rapunzel, who is probably an even bigger victim in this scenario!? Seriously, Rapunzel was cut off from the rest of the world and treated as an unknowing prisoner because she was beneficial to Gothal. Cassandra was adopted into a household with mutual love and got to actually live her life. In no way does it make sense for her to be angry at Rapunzel.

Nor does it make sense that the writers try to play it off as a good thing in the song "Crossing the Line!" Sure, it sounds nice, but thematically, it gives across the opposite feelings that the audience should have. Because if Cassandra cutting ties with Rapunzel is meant to be tragic and awful, why is the music suggesting it's the best possible thing that's ever happened for the character? If you like the song, fine, but even you have to admit that it's thematic nonsense.

But, sure. Cassandra's evil now, and she considers it a good thing. Whatever. I'll take it as long as it leads to good stories...but here's the thing: In the penultimate episode before the three-part series finale, Cassandra asks a question. A question I would have never expected her to ask, despite everything that has happened in the last season. A question that was so baffling, I had to legitimately pause the episode to process the fact that she asked something so stupid. Because Cassandra, the character who is intelligent and grounded in reality, asked, "Am I the bad guy?"

I was honestly shocked to find out she was shocked! How, in the flying, everlasting, cock-a-doodle-doodling F**K does a person like her not pick up that maybe, just maybe, she isn't the hero in this story!? Call me crazy, but endangering the lives of people you once called friends and family, dressing in black, AND HAVING A GIANT EVIL-LOOKING TOWER MADE OUT OF F**KING SPIKES aren't qualities I would give to a hero!

If Cassandra was like Thanos, a character so wrapped up in his ego that he can't even notice how evil he is, I would understand. But she doesn't have an ego. Anger, yes. But for the most part, her personality is based on having logic and reasoning. So turning her into a villain and having her unaware that she's a villain is an act of lunacy that I am incapable of understanding. I don't know who's idea this was, but whoever is to blame...you've got issues.

>Sighs<...This series isn't good, is it?

IN CONCLUSION

I like the animation and some of the characters...but that's not enough. Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure is a mess of a show that tries to do too much for a story that should have so little. Meaning that it's a D+ for me. I want to enjoy it and give it a higher grade, especially with how much I hear people praise this series. And if you do enjoy it, all the power to you. Your opinions are valid, even if I highly disagree with them. Because for me, this is a show that I won't get myself tangled up in again in the future.

[kitkat1003]

Everything is Blue

Chapter 1:  His pills, his hands, his jeans

MK just wants everyone in his life to be safe and happy, to never leave him.  He'll do whatever it takes to make that happen.

And, luckily for him, the voice in his head has the perfect plan to make that happen.

(Or, the author contemplates how slow the possession was for DBK in episode 10 and considers how MK would fall)

Ao3 link

This is a 13k monolith of a first chapter, but I'm very proud of how it turned out!  I threw it together in 4 days with the help of my beta reader @imnotcameraready on tumblr, famous for the Chivalry is Dead sanders sides au.  Give it a read, it's on Ao3 and tumbr!  It even has a sequel!  Seriously, she’s a great writer and edited this thing in like 2-3 hrs after I threw it at her.  A godsend.

Anyway, happy reading!

When MK knocks the canisters off of DBK’s back, he thinks that’s the end of it.  He wasn’t exactly given the rundown on how the cannisters worked, nor does he know why whatever was in them caused DBK to go crazy, but at the very least he only had to fight the one guy instead of the entire family. It was weird to fight with Red Son and Princess Iron Fan (shouldn't she be Queen, at this point?  She's married to Demon Bull King, after all. Do they not have the paperwork?) but not unwelcome. He wishes they could be on the same side all of the time.

Because he was raised on stories of Monkey King’s adventures, which frequently discuss the Demon Bull Family, and he’s always thought they were interesting in those stories.  He thinks Princess Iron Fan is super cool, even though she’s scary and actively wants him dead.  Red Son is...well, he wasn’t what MK expected, but that isn’t exactly a bad thing.  If anything, MK thought he’d be older.  He doesn’t understand how demon aging works.

Tangents aside, he watches them disappear in a gust of wind and groans, flopping forward as he bemoans the fact that they left again, when he’d just beat them.  Well, he hadn’t actually fought all three of them, this time.  DBK had fought more people than he had.

He jumps as the cave begins to crumble from all the damage that it took from the fight, scrambling to find a way out, when—

A New Vessel?

A voice curls into his ear, a soft whisper.

Young.  Powerful.  Weak.  Freedom.

He looks down, and he sees a white light sink into his skin.  Cold seeps into his every pore, bone, and nerve, his muscles tensing as the temperature drops.  His teeth chatter, and when he lets out a startled breath he sees white air drift in front of his face.  The warmth of his powers—his Monkey King powers—is smothered, and soon all MK feels is the cold that keeps him in place, rooting him to the spot.  It’s a miracle he’s even standing.  

What is this?  

What’s happening?

His eyes dart to the cannisters.  The empty canisters.  There was something in there, earlier, right? Where did it go?  

Is this?  Wher e it w  e n    t?  

Wha t   i  s  . .   .  ?

It’s hard to think.  His thoughts are newly cracked ice upon a lake, pieces crashing slowly against each other and fracturing further, splintering into nothingness.

New Vessel.  Rest.

His eyes slide shut, out of his control, as his consciousness, like everything else, is smothered by the chill.

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He wakes up on the shoulder of the Monkey Mech, as the last rays of sun are streaking across the steadily darkening sky, like a lighthouse beam against the dark sea.  He sits up, staring far into the horizon, as confusion pulls him out of the just woken up daze.  How did he get here?

“MK?” He jumps, startled, and turns to realize that Mei is right next to him, a concerned smile on her face.  He stares at her, trying to figure out why she’s here, how she got here.  Then again, he doesn’t even  know how he got here.  He feels dizzy just trying to remember. 

“You alright, kid?” Pigsy’s voice comes from his other side, and he forces himself not to jump, turning to look at his boss.  Tang and Sandy are there too, and Sandy waves while Tang smiles in greeting mid slurp, bowl of noodles in hand.

“What happened?” he’s missing time.  He defeated DBK, and then...then nothing.  There’s a feeling of coldness, at the thought, but the memories don’t come.

“I found you on the ground after the Bull Clones all sort of fell apart. I figured you passed out after trouncing DBK, so I picked you up and got you out of there.” Mei doesn’t seem concerned, but MK is, just a little.  He’s never passed out after using his powers; rather, using them often results in him getting an energy boost.  He thinks back on it, trying to remember any time this has happened before.  Macaque comes to mind but even then he wasn’t tired once his powers returned.

His ruminating on the ordeal is cut off by a bowl of noodles being shoved unceremoniously into his hands.  He blinks down at it, and then turns to Pigsy  

“Here, kid.  Eat. You look pale, and skinny as ever.  Can’t have my employee lookin’ half starved.” He smiles at Pigsy’s attempt to hide his soft side, picking up his chopsticks with a grin.

He eats, and the loud conversations of what they’d just accomplished arrests MK’s attention so that the questions about DBK, the cannisters, the voice that he swears he can hear in the back of his mind, fall away like sand in an hourglass, time never able to be reclaimed.

The sun finally vanishes and stars dot the sky like sequins on a gown.  MK curls in on himself, hunched over the bowl a little, missing the sun's rays and the finished soup’s warmth.

He shivers, but there’s no breeze.

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The bonus of living in such a technologically advanced age is that city reconstruction is pretty fast. Hospitals are rebuilt first, people are brought in en masse. MK spends his time volunteering there, because noodle shops are low on the list of things to be rebuilt and he needs to be useful.

MK tries not to be too guilty about the wreckage, though most of it had occurred because he was late to stop DBK. He'd been kept at Flower Fruit Mountain for a few weeks because Monkey King was worried after the incident with Macaque. Wanted to be sure MK's training ethic wasn't too messed up, wanted to be certain Macaque hadn't left any lasting effects or impressions.

It was a punishment, MK knows, for being a two timing student and for making Monkey King have to deal with a demon enemy when he’s made it clear that he’s retired. Doesn't matter that they only ever trained in the morning and early afternoon, then spent the rest of the day hanging out. MK has watched Monkey King: The Animated Series fifty-three times now, most recently with Monkey King during the duration of his solitary confinement at Flower Fruit Mountain. They'd both piped up with commentary, MK about the production and animation, and Monkey King about the inaccuracies that MK filed away for his sketchbook.

But even so, it was a punishment for MK’s failings. Why else would Monkey King keep MK close, keep him away from his family and friends, keep MK away from the outside world?

It takes two and a half weeks after the battle with DBK for MK to go back to work delivering noodles. He'll sometimes buy extra and drop it off at a random hospital nearby, for the medical staff. They're overworked because of him, because he was away for so long.

He has to be better next time. He doesn't know when DBK will be back, doesn’t know how to sense him. Is he able to do that? Can he learn to sense when his enemies are nearby? That would solve a lot of problems, near rid him of worry. Maybe Monkey King knows?

That thought has him swinging by Flower Fruit Mountain on the weekend, with a promise to Pigsy to be home before midnight.  MK is an adult only by age, after all; Pigsy still treats him like the 16 year old he found half dead outside his shop.

When he steps onto the mountain’s sand, though, he feels unwelcome.

The mystic energy that had beckoned him in the first time he’d arrived has shut its doors, like a silent way of saying 

Leave. 

Not a single monkey comes to greet him, but he can see their eyes, hidden in the trees. They regard him with suspicion. He frowns at them in confusion.

He hears a hiss in the back of his head and winces at the ensuing headache, stepping forward in hopes of pushing past the pain. Every step he takes makes the pounding in his head louder and more painful, and MK closes his eyes and focuses, reaching for the well of power he knows he has, the power that makes the staff feel lighter than air. 

It’s like sticking his hand through a well of ice, and his wrist is paralyzed by the time his fingers brush that warmth, the light curling around his palm.  Gold sparkles in his vision, and the unwelcome air starts to recede, as if the island recognizes him again.  He heads in deeper, and lets out a breath as the headache ceases.

He doesn’t have to head in too deep, because Monkey King comes through the waterfall in a rare moment of MK’s mentor leaving the inner sanctum of the mountain.  The waterfall itself moves like a curtain out of Monkey King’s way and the sight has MK focusing on that rather than the expression on Monkey King’s face, until he looks up.  

Monkey King’s eyes are sharp, darting around, an expression MK only recognizes from the suspicion and distrust Monkey King gave Macaque.  MK fidgets beneath that gaze, though it isn’t directed at him, uncomfortable.  He hasn’t done anything wrong, has he?  He wracks his brain for any new missteps, but finds very little.  Still, his anxiety skyrockets by the second. 

The look vanishes, though not completely, when Monkey King’s eyes catch on the sight of MK.

“Hey bud!  Impromptu visit?” Monkey King greets.

MK tries not to shy away from the air of suspicion that colors Monkey King’s tone.  Is MK really that untrustworthy? He did mess up badly by trusting Macaque, and Monkey King is right to distrust him.  He bites his lip and tries to ignore the swell of guilt that sets like a stone in his stomach at the memory.

“Yeah, just-uh-just wanted to train, y’know?  Don’t know when DBK is coming back.” He shrugs, and Monkey King nods, only half listening.

He still looks on edge. “Cool.  You uh...you bring anyone with you?” 

Now that’s concerning. MK scrambles to find a supposed intruder, hands gripping his staff tight in preparation for battle. “No?  Unless-Oh no, is there someone here?  Is it a demon guy?”  What if he led a bad guy here?  What if he messed up again?

He jumps as a monkey lands on his head, picking through MK’s hair in typical grooming fashion, and then Monkey King laughs, loud and almost relieved.  MK turns back around to face him.

“Nah, must be my nerves.  Maybe DBK left something on you, messed with my senses.” Monkey King waves a hand, nonchalant, and MK perks up in ease at the reminder.

“Oh!  That’s actually why I’m here!” He takes careful steps forward, trying not to jostle the monkey on his head.  “I was thinking-I didn’t know DBK was in the city and destroying stuff, and a lot of people got hurt.  But!  If I could sense him, like you can, I could stop him quicker!  Right?” He’s bouncing on his toes, nervous and excited all at once, and Monkey King smiles down at him fondly.  

“Sure, why not?  If you’re up for some meditation, that is,” Monkey King turns, waving at MK to follow. 

The monkey on MK’s head hops away, and MK sprints after his mentor with a wide grin.  “Totally!  I’m, like, the best at meditation.  I’m like a meditation wizard!”

Monkey King laughs all the way to the training grounds.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Training actually is easier than he expects.  MK blusters a lot, but he isn’t dumb or unaware of his limits.  Sitting still isn’t his strong suit, so sitting still while not being able to talk, tap, fidget, or do anything else other than think is basically torture.

But, when he gets into the meditative position with Monkey King, something clicks.  A cool blanket settles on his shoulders, eases out the desire to move.  It’s so easy to be still, and quiet.

Frozen.

“You weren’t kidding,” Monkey King tells him, and MK grins a little, face warmed by the praise.  “Now, when you’re like this, you have to let every other sound and feeling fade out.  Nothing else matters but the energies around you.  Mine’s pretty easy to see cause, yknow,” 

MK can practically see Monkey King scratching his chin and grinning with barely hidden pride.  “I’m a pretty powerful guy.  DBK would be similar, he’s got a pretty loud aura too.  Now, just try it, kay?”

MK nods, and takes a deep breath.  The sounds around him-bugs, monkeys jumping around and talking to one another, the wind, the ever present sound of something in his head—those all start to fade away.

Wait, what was that last one?

He lets them all go, and then forgets the feeling of the cold, the grass, the fabric touching his skin.  Nothing exists except his own mind, and then.

He gets to see the bright light that is Monkey King.  Golden and red and royal in its feel, it’s near blinding.  He has to blink a few times to get used to its light.

“Woah,” he murmurs, and Monkey King opens one eye, before blinking both in surprise.

“Woah, already?  You sure you haven’t done this before?” Monkey King crosses his arms over his chest, almost offended, and MK is reminded of how betrayed Monkey King looked when MK had shown off the skills he’d learned from Macaque.

“Nope!  Maybe defeating DBK gave me a confidence boost?”  He shrugs, and then stands, looking around.  Monkey King’s expression sits in the back of his mind, and MK bites his lip.  “Did I, uh, did I do something wrong?  I didn’t…,” he trials off, worried.

“Maybe,” Monkey King mumbles in response to his first reply, mostly to himself.  “Oh-no, no, you’re fine, bud.  I think I’m just a little paranoid,” he laughs it off.  MK is too busy glancing back towards town to process Monkey King’s pensive expression.

“I can see Mei!  She’s...very green.  Did she always have a dragon?” It’s curled around her, like a protective barrier, snarling and poised to strike.

Monkey King chuckles. “You’ve got yourself some powerful friends, kid.  Not surprising.  Like knows like, even when they don’t know what like is.” He puts a hand on MK’s shoulder, and then starts.  “You’re freezing.  It’s not that cold, is it?”

MK blinks a few times, and everything comes back, the colors and sounds and feelings of the world returning to normal.  Monkey King keeps looking at him, as if MK is a puzzle he’s yet to solve.

“I don’t know, maybe?  I’ve been feeling a bit chilly, lately.  Maybe I’m coming down with something?” He’s been a bit stressed out, between Macaque and DBK and the reconstruction, and he’s heard stress can cause illnesses.

Monkey King sighs, after a moment, and scratches his head.

“I think I’m becoming an adult,” he says, like it’s a crime, and he shrugs again.  “You’re probably fine.  Just, take it easy the next few days, alright?  Practice meditating at home, or when you’re on the job.  When you’re as good as me, you can turn it on whenever you need to,” Monkey King puffs up with pride, and his tail swings back and forth leisurely.  MK watches his tail more than he listens to what Monkey King is saying.

“Okay.  Anything else for today?” It’s only been an hour or two, they have plenty of time.  

Monkey King deliberates.  Then, he grins, stepping back to position for MK’s inevitable first attack. “Tell you what.  We’ll spar for a bit, and then you can bring up that new show you kept ranting about a few weeks ago.  Kay?” 

MK’s eyes sparkle.

“Heck yeah!”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

MK’s muscles aren’t sore when he gets home.  He actually lasted a couple minutes sparring this time around, and Monkey King had rewarded him with peach chips and an arm around MK’s shoulder as he eagerly pulled up the show he had dove into during his free time on the TV.

Pigsy sent him upstairs with a bowl of noodles and a stern reminder to sleep early so he wouldn’t be late for work. He finishes the noodles in record time and, once he has showered and put on his warmest pajamas, pulls out all of the blankets he can find.  He just wants to be warm, just a little, even though it doesn’t make sense that he’s feeling this cold.  He’s not tired, he doesn’t feel achy, his sinuses are clogged—none of the other symptoms of being sick are popping up, so why is he so cold?!

He’s practically buried in blankets by the time he feels comfortable enough to rest.  For the first time in a long while, he doesn’t dream.

Things go back to normal, somewhat.  There’s a niggling something in the back of his head, and there’s guilt and the ever present chill that has MK wearing long sleeved shirts, but otherwise MK falls back into his typical routine, which is nice.  He missed his friends, between Macaque and DBK and training.  It’s good to see them again.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The first time he starts hearing the voice in his head, he’s getting yelled at by Pigsy.

It doesn’t happen as often, anymore.  MK is scatterbrained, but he genuinely tries to do his best at work.  Sometimes, he gets mixed up, because he’s only one kid and he’s never been good at focusing, no matter how hard he tries.  It’s hard for his stressed out and ADHD ridden brain to remember whose order is whose, especially when it’s the dinner rush and he’s running behind.

Today was a particularly bad day.  He’d accidentally given a customer an order with peanut oil in it, when they had an order specifically without peanuts due to their severe allergy.  Pigsy had gotten a very angry phone call, and he passed that rage at MK, rightfully so. 

MK can only apologize so much, so eventually he quiets and lets Pigsy let off steam.  Luckily the customer hadn’t tried to sue, but MK knows the review Pigsy likely got was scathing.  He deserves a bit of a tongue lashing for that, he thinks.

It was an honest mistake.  Cruel, to yell at one so young.  Why is he so mean?

The voice in the back of his head, new and different, nearly makes MK jump.  Pigsy notices the change in MK’s expression and mistakes it for fear, and that gets him to quiet down.  He dismisses MK with a sigh and a wave of his hand, and MK heads upstairs, feeling guilty and confused.

 That voice….it didn’t sound like him, did it?  When he tries to recall the sound, it mirrors his internal voice, but in the moment it seemed different.

 It’s probably nothing.  After all, if something was wrong with him, wouldn’t someone else have noticed by now? Wouldn’t he have noticed by now?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The voice keeps popping up at random intervals, random moments.  When Mei gets annoyed at his ramblings.  When Tang pushes him away when he’s begging for a story, because Tang is busy eating.  When Pigsy yells at him for being late for work, for messing up.  When Sandy awkwardly pushes him to leave because MK can’t take a hint, some days.  When Monkey King looks at him with something akin to disappointment, exasperation.

They’re tired of you.  They want you gone.  They’re plotting against you.  They’re going to betray you!

And, see, that would bother MK if he didn’t already know that.  He knows people don’t like him, find him annoying.  He knows he pushes too much, messes up a lot, misses social cues.  He knows that he’s not a good enough successor.  And that just makes him want to do better.  

As for the whole betrayal thing, plotting against him, it makes sense.  He isn’t offended or anything if they are, in fact he’d be more surprised if they weren’t, you know?  He’s the Monkey King’s successor.  He has all of the powers, has all of the strength and invincibility, with a caveat or two, but he’s also still just a teenager.  If they aren’t worried that he could go rogue, mess up and decide to be selfish, then that’s stupidity on their part.  Trusting him with anything is never a good idea, so knowing that, should he mess up, his family will be able to enact swift justice is a comfort rather than a worry.

And yeah, it’s a bit embarrassing, knowing just how annoying and useless he can be.  He flinches more often at their glares, gets quieter.  He doesn’t want to make them mad at him, he doesn’t want to lose them because he isn’t good enough.  He just needs to focus, be better, help out more often.  If he does that, hopefully they won’t leave.

The voice, after a few months or so, had backed off for a week.  He’d felt a weight lift from his shoulders, and smiling was easier.  Pigsy had seemingly relaxed at his good mood, and Mei seemed cheerier when they’d gone out to the arcades.  He hadn’t realized he’d been worrying them.  

Are you so sure they’ll stay?

A single phrase that pulls the rug out beneath MK’s feet.  He knows he isn’t good enough, but everyone knows that he at least tries, right?  That should endear them to him enough for him to prove he’s worth their time, right?  He can be good enough, he can do better, he just needs time!

Not fast enough.  They’ll get tired of you, and then they’ll leave.

The cold feeling in his chest feels so much heavier, as he panics in his room.  He’s supposed to be asleep, but the blankets don’t do much anymore.  He’s losing feeling in his fingers.  He keeps fumbling with things, even the staff, and everyone is getting annoyed at him.  And he’s so tired, all the time, and yet it’s so hard to sleep.  He doesn’t understand what’s happening to him, but he knows that whatever it is, it’s going to ruin the equilibrium he has between being a failure and being good enough to keep around.

What happens when he loses it all?

You can be better.

Can he?

Wouldn’t everyone love you if they were safe?

Well, he can imagine not having to worry about DBK would make them far less stressed out.  If he can do that, then maybe they won’t get so easily annoyed at him.  He knows stress can make people snappy, and there’s a lot to be stressed about, like the economy and death by demons.

You can make them safe.

How?  

Listen to me. 

And MK knows it’s weird to make a pact with your own mind, but he thinks he’s pretty good at following directions, so he nods, and doesn’t sleep at all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The plan isn’t an easy one, and MK doesn’t know if he really wants to follow it.  The words turn over and over in his head. He doesn’t know if they’re right or not.

Maybe it would be better, if he wasn’t so nice.  He beats the bad guys, sure, but he isn’t that violent with them.  They try to kill him, but it’s never personal.  He’s the successor to Monkey King, it just makes sense that they’d go after him.  He’s not upset, really!

Even though the calabash has him looking over his shoulder.  They have earthquakes a lot, they live near a ring of active volcanoes, and each one puts him on edge, expecting a lie to turn his whole world apart. And the spider lady tried to eat his friends, tried to kill him.  And Macaque nearly hurt Monkey King because MK let him get close.  And DBK and Princess Iron Fan won’t stop, not until they get revenge or something.

Red Son is...he’s MK’s age.  And MK has noticed just how much DBK and Princess Iron Fan belittle Red Son, and he’s their son.  It’s too familiar for MK’s liking, and it makes the desire to bring Red Son to justice lessen.  Maybe, if he got Red Son’s parents out of the way…

You could have anything you wanted.

All MK wants is for his friends and family to be happy.

This is how you’ll do it.

MK doesn’t give in.  Not yet.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

MK considers it when he goes over to see Sandy, one afternoon.  They’re just doing some leisurely painting practice, nothing like painting the whole boat.  After the whole clones thing, Sandy had learned that he should probably figure out which color he wants to stick with in the long run before asking for help in such a task.  So, he asks MK to come over and brainstorm.  You know, sketch out some ideas, test paint samples on different areas of the boat, see how it looks in light and dark.

MK also helps with the many litter boxes around the ship, as well as top up the water and food bowls all around.  He gets appreciative nuzzles from the myriad cats around the barge, so it isn’t so bad.  Then, he and Sandy will have tea, and Sandy will listen to MK ramble on about anything and everything until either Monkey King or Pigsy or Mei calls him to go do something (he gave Monkey King his number.  Occasionally he will get an incomprehensible text.  He’s pretty sure Monkey King has a Nokia phone).

Today, when they’re having tea, MK considers.

“Hey, Sandy?” He starts, more hesitant than when he’s ever asked the man a question before. 

Sandy notices, and MK sees him soften his pose even more, looking warm and welcoming. “Yeah, MK?”

“Do you think I’m too soft on villains?”

Because he beats them, but he always lets them leave, lets them escape.  They get to heal, recoup, and come back stronger every time, and people get hurt.  MK doesn’t want to be the type to attack first, to never ask questions, but at this point there aren’t too many questions to ask.

“You’ve got a good heart, MK.  You don’t have it in ya to go at ‘em too hard,” MK clenches his fist, his other hand gentle against the teacup lest he break it.  He did that a few times when he first got his powers, unused to the extra strength.

“That kinda doesn’t answer my question,” MK tries not to say it through gritted teeth.  He can feel his tea getting frigid, and bites back the burst of white air that would make Sandy ask questions.

He wouldn’t know how to answer questions about that, which is why he can’t deal with them.  That’s the reason.

He’s saying you’re weak.

MK hides a grimace, and lets his heart ache silently.  He sips the tea.  It’s ice cold.

“What brought this on?” Sandy asks, instead of answering the question, which grates on MK’s nerves more than it should.

“I let DBK get too powerful,” he says.  “He destroyed the city again, and people got hurt.  If I’d just got rid of him before, those people would be okay.”

Sandy sighs, taking a sip of his tea.  A cat hops into MK’s lap, curling up, but after a few frigid moments hops away.  Apparently MK is too cold for its liking.  He tries not to get offended by that, but the hot well of shame and longing persists. At least the feeling is warm.

“MK, you’re still learning.  Mistakes are bound to happen.  Those who got hurt will get better, and the city is rebuilt better than ever!  You don’t have to carry everything on your shoulders.  And,” Sandy looks away, and suddenly he looks a lot older than MK thinks he is.  “Honestly, being too harsh to make an enemy stop can feel good in the moment, but it does more harm than good, especially to the person who does the fighting.”

And MK leaves it at that, but thinks he doesn’t mind if it harms him, if it keeps everyone else safe.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Another story!” MK begs, spinning on the barstool.  Pigsy always tells him not to, something about wearing down the seat joint, but at the same time Pigsy never really stops MK when he does it either, because MK only does it when he’s very excited and hyper.

Tang finishes his bowl of noodles with a chuckle, pushing up his glasses on the bridge of his nose in a practiced motion that MK is oh so familiar with.  MK taps the front of his sketchbook with his pencil impatiently.

“Alright, alright.  Tell you what, I’ll tell you the story of the Baigujing, or White Bone Spirit,” Tang’s voice falls into storyteller mode, and MK is immediately entranced.  Pigsy, from the kitchen, slams down a pan and groans.

“Not that one, Tang.  I hate that one, you know that,” MK turns to his boss and is surprised to see an embarrassed flush on his cheeks.  What in this story would Pigsy have to be embarrassed about?

“Hey, MK wants to know all the Monkey King stories.  I’m not going to rob him of knowledge,” Tang argues back.  He leans close to MK and whispers “Pigsy couldn’t sleep for a week after I told him this one.”

“That is not true!” Pigsy barks, indignant, and MK laughs.

Tang chuckles to himself, and Pigsy turns back to his work with a grumble.  Right now is a lull in business, right after the lunch rush and before early dinners get called in, so MK is taking his break and Pigsy isn’t too upset by it.  It’s just enough time for a story.

“Okay.  The Baigujing was a shapeshifting demon, who saw Monkey King and his group of traveling companions as they passed by.  Her eyes caught on the human monk, Tang Sanzang,” MK perks up.

“Hey, that’s like your name!” he points out, and both Tang and Pigsy look startled.  Tang coughs, awkward.

“Yes-well-uh, it’s a family name,” he amends quickly.  MK tilts his head to the side.  “Anyway, she decided she wanted to taste the monk’s flesh.  So, she disguised herself as a little girl, coming up to the group and offering them poisoned fruits.  Because she was so powerful, only Monkey King could sense her treachery, and he hit her with his staff, seemingly killing her.”

MK gasps, doesn’t understand the fury that builds behind his eyes.

Tang glances at him, for a moment, and then jumps.

“MK?  You okay?” He asks, and MK blinks.

“What-yeah!  What happened next?” Tang looks him over, gaze catching on MK’s eyes, before he sighs and continues.

“The Monkey King’s companions were shocked and appalled.  They thought he had killed an innocent girl!  He tried to explain, but they didn’t believe him.  The Monk buried the girl, who turned back into the spirit.  She tried again, once as the supposed mother of the little girl, and then the grandfather.  Monkey King managed to show her as a skeleton spirit during their last encounter, clearing his name, but then his companion, Bajie, told Sanzang that Monkey King made it up.  Thus, Monkey King was abandoned, at least until the Monk was captured by a demon Wujing and Baijie couldn’t defeat, and Bajie had to apologize to bring him back,” Tang finishes, and MK’s face settles into a pout.

“Bajie’s a jerk!” He crosses his arms.

“He apologized,” Pigsy mumbles, from his place in the kitchen, where he slices scallions violently.  “More than once.  Not that it matters.” 

“Monkey King didn’t exactly endear himself to his peers,” Tang amends.  “Perhaps if he had been less full of himself at the time, they all could have gotten along better.  But, all four grew to be better people by the end of their journey.”

MK finishes a sketch of the scenes Tang had described with a flourish, and he tilts his head to one side.  “Kind of rude to just attack the lady, though, couldn’t he have tried to talk it out?” He doesn’t know why he feels the need to defend the demon, but she doesn’t seem too bad.  

Tang makes a face.

“She wanted to eat a person, MK,” he says, and MK makes a face that mirror’s Tang’s expression.

“Right.  Eugh, gross.  Anyway, thanks Mr. Tang!” he hops off the barstool and puts back on his collared shirt, making sure his headband doesn’t slip down.  “Any orders, Pigsy?”

Pigsy jerks his thumb to the few on the counter.  MK picks them up, and continues on to work, the story sitting in the back of his mind.  He stumbles a bit while walking.  He doesn’t feel the key in his hand, his fingers numbed over time.  He should be concerned, but everything else seems fine.

He kind of wishes he could have met the Baigujing.  She doesn’t seem too bad, besides the people eating.  Maybe they could have worked it out.

Who does Sun Wukong think he is, deciding to serve justice anyway he sees fit?

MK frowns and buttons up his shirt.  His chest feels like ice.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He’s so, so tired.

MK looks at himself in the mirror when he wakes up and his skin looks paler, his lips a little blue.  He has bags under his eyes that vanish by the time he leaves the bathroom, a bottle of concealer and a tube of lipstick on the bathroom sink that he doesn’t remember buying.

His memory’s been growing spottier, too, missing minutes, hours.  Mei talks to him about a high score he beat at the arcade and he nods along, no clue what she’s talking about but not wanting to worry her.  He hasn’t gone to see Sandy in what feels like years, but gets a text from him thanking MK for taking care of the cats one afternoon.  There are sketches in his sketchbook he doesn’t remember drawing, from stories Tang told him that he can’t remember hearing.

He’s lost feeling in his hands and feet.  He’s dropped enough bowls of soup for Pigsy to go from mad to worried, and he shoves MK off to Flower Fruit Mountain because it’s warmer there, and MK always looks cold.  

He stumbles when he hits sand, nearly bowls over with how much the island rejects him, how much it wants him not to be there.  This is supposed to be a safe place, but the sand feels like needles and the wind slices at his face.  Monkey King comes rushing out like a bat out of hell, teeth bared, but he sees MK, kneeling on the beach, and runs over.

“You okay, bud?  You look…,” he doesn’t say awful, but MK knows he’s thinking it.  MK looks awful, feels awful, is awful.  And the solution to that is right there, waiting for him, but he doesn’t want to take it because he’s a coward.  The voice in his head gave him an ironclad idea, a perfect plan, and he’s been ignoring it because he’s scared.

Weak little vessel.

The hiss in his ear makes him wince, and he trembles as Monkey King helps him up.

“Tired,” he manages, leaning against Monkey King because he hardly has the strength to stand.  

“I can see that.” The try at levity has MK chuckling, but Monkey King is soft and warm and all MK wants to do is suck that warmth into himself, so he can stop being cold for one second.  “Why don’t we head to my place and watch something.  There’s always my show, right?”

MK nods, blinking slowly, and Monkey King takes a step forward.  Suddenly, they’re at Monkey King’s house.  When did they get there?  Why are they here again?

He’s set on the couch.

“There’s something off about your aura, kid.  Touch anything mystic or weird back at home?” Monkey King runs his fingers through MK’s hair, and MK leans into the touch.  Warm.  Safe.  

He shakes his head, a full minute after the question is asked.  Monkey King hums in thought.

“How do you even see auras?” MK mumbles, words slurring a bit as he talks.  “Teach me?”

Monkey King’s hand stills, and MK whines a little, prompting his mentor to continue the motions.

“I already have, bud,” Monkey King whispers, more to himself than to MK.  MK blinks in confusion.  He doesn’t remember that.

Rest, Vessel.

The voice whispers so sweetly in his ear.  It’s nice, sometimes.  Mean other times.  MK wonders if that’s his fault.  Is he so bad that even his own head is mad at him?  How can he be better?  He’s trying so hard.

The TV is turned on.  MK doesn’t register the sound, but the light makes him turn his head away.  Monkey King turns down the brightness with his remote.  Another monkey rests on top of MK for a moment, before jumping off.  It shivers at the temperature of MK’s jacket, his skin, and moves over to Monkey King’s shoulder.

MK rests his head on Monkey King’s lap, and closes his eyes.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He wakes up in a dream.  He stands on ice.  Each step he takes is careful, lest he slip, and even still he stumbles and fumbles.  He can see something in the distance.

“Hello?” he calls out, but the person doesn’t answer.  The closer he gets, the more he can make them out.  “Mei?”

It is her, but then her head drops, straight off of her neck.

“NO!” MK screams, running to her, and he stumbles and falls.  His knees hit ice and they burn with the chill that sinks through his pants.  He slides to her body, cradling it and her head as if he could put her back together with hope.

He turns, looking for a reason for this, and when he looks up, all of the adults in his life are standing around him, their faces covered in shadow.  Tang, Pigsy, Sandy, Monkey King—they’re all looking down on him.

“Look what you let happen,” Pigsy growls out.

“She’s dead,” Tang continues.

“You didn’t save her,” Sandy drones on.

“You let her die,” Monkey King spits.

“No…” MK breathes, and the tears build in his eyes and down his cheeks, freezing on his face.  It burns.

You have a choice, vessel.

The figures of his friends vanish into mist, and MK curls his arms around himself.  He misses the contact.  He hates to be alone.

A woman wreathed in white kneels down in front of him.  It hurts to look at her, and MK averts his gaze until she tilts up his chin so he can look nowhere else.  Her face is ice cold, yet inviting.  He can’t look away from her eyes.

Don’t you want them to stay?  Don’t you want them to be safe?

MK nods, quickly.  Of course that’s what he wants.  More than anything, he wants that love, that adoration.  He wants his family to be safe, to never leave.

You know what to do.

It feels like ice is creeping up his skin, encasing him in frigidity.  She holds out his hand, and he can do nothing else but take it.  The cold reaches its peak, and suddenly it’s warm.  It burns, and yet the warmth is inviting, a relief after months of being so, so cold and confused and tired.  He is past the point of cold, of freezing, of sub zero.  He is warm.  He is ready.  

He is hers.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He wakes up well rested, and the cold that had settled into him still feels like the burn that is a welcome respite from before.  Monkey King is still asleep, and MK leaves him there, leaving the house and walking slowly out of the inner mountain.  

He leaves footprints of ice where he steps.  The monkeys watch, from the trees, trembling as their eyes gaze upon something inhuman, sitting in MK’s skin.  MK has never felt better.  He knows what to do now.  He knows how to make things right.

The staff in his hands feels heavier, for a moment, but MK grips it tight and bends it to his will.  He pogos out of the island with ease, letting the wind whip his hair back.

He hasn’t blinked in a while.  He forgot he had to.  He blinks because the wind makes his eyes sting, and touches the ground with a gentleness he didn’t know he could master.

He lets his eyes glow gold, searching.  He remembers, now, how to look at auras.  He remembers a lot of things now.  It’s like the pressing weight of being weak for the sake of niceties has vanished, and now he is sharp and ready.

The only question is which of his enemies does he go after first?  He needs to get all of them, keep them secure.  It’s the only way the town, the city, will be safe.

The small fry first.  We’ll work our way up to the demon king.

Right, that makes sense.  MK grins to himself.  It’s so nice to have someone constantly helping, constantly making sure he’s doing the right thing.  He’s useless on his own, but give him a direction and he’ll follow it to the letter.

He can see gold and silver, in the distance.  He forgets their names, at first, but their auras jog his memory.  Yin and Jin.

They put him in the calabash.  They weren’t good at it, but they were good enough.  They’re demons.  Dangerous.  He needs to make sure they don’t hurt anyone else.  

He heads to their home, not in a hurry.  There’s no rush to the inevitable.  Is this what self confidence is?  The feeling of knowing you can do it, that you will do it, that no one can stop you?  It feels very gratifying.  He lets the glow in his eyes vanish, because he doesn’t want to startle everyone around him.  

His phone buzzes.  A text from Pigsy, demanding to know where he is.  He responds with ‘Dealing with Monkie Kid stuff.  Be back soon!’ and a string of emojis that Pigsy will find incomprehensible, before continuing on his trek.

He reaches the door, and hears a conversation.

“So, our plan has three steps.  That’s an improvement,” Yin seems to be pacing, from what MK can hear.

“Step one, capture the monkie kid,” Jin pipes up, and MK fights back a laugh.  “Step two, take the staff from him.” 

As if they could.  MK almost has to admire their tenacity.

“Step three, take over the world!” Yin finishes, and MK takes that as his cue to step in.

He knocks in the door.  Polite.  He still has manners, after all.

“Huh?  Jin, did you order out for dinner again?” Yin barks out.

“We don’t have the money for that!” Is the response.

“Hasn’t stopped you before,” Yin grumbles, moving to the door.

Here they come!

MK counts the steps Yin takes to the door, itching with anticipation.

“Hello?” Yin opens the door, and then jumps in surprise.

“Hi!” MK waves, and taps his staff on the ground.

There’s a thunk; not a thud of a body, but a thunk of a block of ice.  MK pats the statue with a fond look.  He’ll chip away the extra pieces later.  This is his first attempt, it’s normal for it to be less precise.  He can get better at it with practice.  Jin turns, from his place at the desk, and his eyes widen when he sees his brother, frozen on the floor.

“Yin—what did you do?” Red eyes glow dangerously, and MK wonders if they would be more ferocious if he threatened one over the other.  Jin gets up, teeth bared.

“This,” MK replies, tapping his staff on the ground.

Jin takes a step forward and freezes in place. Or, is frozen, MK supposes.  He looks at the brothers, safely imprisoned, and wonders.  Where is he going to put them?  There’s not enough room here for all of his enemies to be placed.  What’s a good place to set everything up?

The cave?  The old villain hideout?  

That’s perfect!  After all, it would be the funniest form of irony, right?  Turning a villain hideout to his base for his world saving plan.  Gosh, he’s so smart.  Because this is him, all him.  He finally is smart enough to know what to do.  He has to clear out the cave, first.  It’s not far away, hidden beneath the sewers.  There’s a path to it from the area where the staff used to lie.

He sets Yin and Jin next to each other, considering their poses.  He thinks they look a little off, but he can fix that, right?  He can fix anything, given enough time.  That’s what all this is, fixing the problem of demons who’ve escaped because of DBK’s release.  He nods to himself, and heads off.  He has rocks to clear out, he has a cave to excavate.

But, he promised Pigsy that he’d be back soon.  That stops him short.  He can’t skip work!

This will make him far happier in the long run.

Still, what’s a few hours of work to make Pigsy happy now?  He shakes off the one track mind and puts his staff away.  The ice won’t melt fast (or at all) and he’s got time.  The flash of cold he gets in response to that thought doesn’t inspire comfort, and he second guesses himself a few times, but he heads to the shop anyway.

“Hey Pigsy!” he waves, and Pigsy glances at him and jerks a thumb over to the pile of orders on the counter.  “On it!” 

MK swoops them up and sets them all on the delivery cart.  Pigsy glances at him again, and then freezes.

“MK?” he asks.

MK turns, blinking a few times.  “Yeah?” he responds, and Pigsy peers at him, almost suspicious.

MK tilts his head to the side in confusion.  A part of him is glad that he has concealer on, because they don’t have the time to chat about MK’s new skin tone, not with all these orders.  He watches Pigsy shiver, muttering something about the A/C acting up, before Pigsy shakes himself off and sets his hands on his hips.

“I thought-your eyes-nevermind.  Get those orders out!” Pigsy barks, and MK stands at attention, giving Pigsy a salute.

“On it!” He promises, sliding out of the shop and hopping onto the delivery cart.

It only takes an hour, which is much faster than he usually is, but focus comes easy when he’s driven.  The faster he gets this done they faster he gets to get back to his real work.  The work that will make things better for everyone.

Right. Of course.

His shift ends when the store closes, and he’s gone before Pigsy can say anything about his work ethic or ask where MK has been or is going.  He rushes to the construction site, dives below, rushing past the decaying plants where there once were flowers and a growing tree.  Without Monkey King’s staff, there’s nothing making sure the plants live.  MK frowns at the sight but stays focused on the task at hand.

Aim.  The staff can be as large as a mountain if it needs to be.  Crush what’s in your way.

He nods to himself, breaking through the rubble that has blocked off the tunnel.  The ground shakes, the whole underground rumbles with power, and he hopes he’s not keeping anyone up.  Then again, it’s not too bad if it’s just for a night, considering how many nights later he’s going to keep quiet.  Everyone will be able to rest easy once he’s done.  

He huffs a breath, and it comes out white.  He should be concerned, but honestly it looks cool.  He remembers to blink, because his eyes are starting to burn.  He doesn’t know why he keeps forgetting.

He makes his way to the cavern, and uses ice to keep the ceiling up.  Pillars rise, frost fills the spaces between rocks that would have cracked and splintered eventually.  The floor remains untouched, save for when he fills in the cracks that could trip someone up.

He doesn’t remember when he got these ice powers.  They seem new?  Why hasn’t he used them before?  How come Monkey King never told him about them?

Monkey King’s always had ice powers.

Has he?  MK isn’t so sure about that.

You’re his successor, not a carbon copy.  It makes sense you would have different powers than him.

Right.  MK nods to himself.  Now, time to get Yin and Jin!  Carrying them is going to be a challenge.

It takes him an hour to get them both there, and another half hour to figure out where to put them.  He has to consider DBK’s size.  Wait, does he have to go and get the spider demon lady?  He shivers at the thought, a deep well of terror sinking in his gut.  Even as self assured as he is now, spiders still terrify him.

I can take care of that.

Really?

Yes.  But first, rest.

Right.  He needs to head back to his house.  Pigsy will be worried if he doesn’t come home soon.  He heads out of the construction site, skipping all the way home.

He barely sleeps.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The week is certainly a busy one.  MK spends any time not with his friends searching, and he spends far less time with his friends, nowadays.  The spider demon isn’t easy to find.  He does manage to get some small fry lesser demons he hadn’t met before and now never will.  He doesn’t need to meet people who will inevitably try to kill him and those around him.  Far better to prevent the attack than deal with the aftermath thereof.

His collection of ice sculptures is growing.  MK likes to spend time chipping away at the blocks to them more polished.  It’s like sketching, in a way, or cleaning up a sketch.  It also gives him an opportunity to practice a more precise use of his ice powers.  He can make a mean ice chisel now, and he’s learned how to force the limbs of those frozen into the position he likes.  Yin and Jin stand on top of each other, like they did in their introduction.  The expressions on their faces aren’t what he likes, but he can cover it with frost and it’s like it was never there.

He meets up with Mei, one afternoon.

“Hey, MK!” She barrels into him, and immediately jumps back.

He reaches out, missing the contact, but she shakes out a shiver.  “Dang, you’re cold!” She slugs him on the shoulder, and he laughs.

“I feel fine.  Maybe you’re just being dramatic,” he shoots back, and she laughs with him, before her eyes glance at his face and she freezes.  “What?”

“Your eyes,” she murmurs, all joking replaced with concern.  He tilts his head to a side in confusion.  “They’re blue?” She adds.

“Oh!” he says, and the words that come out of his mouth don’t sound like him at all.  He doesn’t think he thought of them, and he doesn’t feel his lips move but the sound comes out anyway.  “I’m trying out some contacts.  Do you like them?” He bats his eyelashes at her, all in jest.

Her confusion melts into a smile. “I like your regular eye color better,” She admits.  “But those look cool!”  

She grabs him by his wrist, using his jacket as a buffer, and drags him to an arcade.  Every machine he touches sticks a little, the joystick and button a tad frozen by his touch, and he doesn’t win a match by any means, but he doesn’t mind.  Every time Mei leans close to him it feels like a victory.  Even though he feels warm, at least a sort of freezer burn warmth, the people around him have pulled away.  He’s too cold for them.  

He needs contact.  

Someone trips Mei as they’re running around the arcade.  Her nose bleeds, and MK feels his hackles rising.  Someone hurt his friend.  A demon?  A scan of the area reveals no such thing.  Just a mean person.  He can hear them snickering as they walk away.

Mei is more important than MK’s anger, so he takes her outside and finds some tissues, cleans her up.  He takes her out to her favorite restaurant (not Pigsy’s, though they’ll never tell him that) and they end the night with a race around town.  Her bike is an electric green streak, and he’ll never catch up, but he gives it his all before they finish outside his place.

“See ya later!” Mei still sounds a bit stuffed up from the nosebleed, and MK waves until she’s out of sight.  When she disappears, his expression shutters, anger against her unrecognizable assailant returning in a flash.

He’s been getting rid of demons, but that’s not enough!  Mei still got hurt, because people are unpredictable.  He heads to his room and paces.  How can he fix it, how can he make it better?

Maybe more than demons should be frozen.

MK stops in his tracks.  Now, there’s an idea.  But to freeze them forever, that seems like too much.

Not forever.  Just until they know how to behave.  Think of it as a pause button.

It would be nice if things just stopped for a moment.  Then he could have all the time in the world to fix it.  Once he gets the demons out of the way, he can do that.  Then, once everyone learns to behave, they can come out.  However long that takes.

He can be patient, for his friends.  This is all for them, after all.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A day after that, and he’s found the Spider Demon’s lair.  Every step he takes inside makes him shake, and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to take her.  He’s so nervous, so scared.

I can help, remember?  Just take a deep breath.

He takes a deep breath.

Close your eyes.

He closes his eyes.  

He doesn’t open them, but they open anyway.  Everything is washed in a soft layer of white, like frost, and his body moves but he doesn’t tell it to.  The fear he felt is muted, and he settles into the comfort of its absence.  He asked for this, right?

The spider demon—she wanted to be a Queen, right?  MK hadn’t been really paying attention when she went on her rant, too petrified to listen—skitters out, and when she locks eyes with him, she smiles.

“Aww, is the little monkie boy back to play?” She giggles, and MK’s body throws the staff at her.  She ducks with a yelp, and scrambles back.  “Ooo, we’re rough, now?  Seems you’re not so scared anymore,” She purrs, but he can hear the nervousness in her voice as the staff comes back to his hand.

“Iͥ ʷgͣˢoᶰtͤ ͮoͤvͬeˢrͨ ͣiͬtͤᵈ.” The sound comes out of his mouth, and it doesn’t sound much like MK at all.  Huh.  His body takes a step forward, and ice spreads out from beneath his foot.  “Tͭuͧrͬᶰnˢs ͦoͧuͭtʸ,ͦ ͧyˢoͪuͦ'ͧˡrͩe ͪnͣoͮtͤ ᵇtͤhͤᶰeʷ ͦsͬcͬaͥrͤiͩesͣᵇtͦ ͧdͭemͫoͤn ͥoͫuᶠtͬ ͤtͤhere.” 

The Spider Queen’s expression shifts, and she tries to run, but MK’s legs are faster. He watches himself move, jumping over stones and cliffs and any obstacle.  The webs she tries to trap him in freeze, and he slides across them as if his feet were skates.

Eventually, he corners her.  MK watches his body close in, and suddenly he’s back in control, staring her down.  Satisfaction crawls up his back, a cold grin splitting his face in two.

“ʷWͪhͦˢoˢ'ͨsͣ ͬsͤcͩaᶰrͦʷed now?” He grins, and she screams.

Ice, it turns out, is a great muffler.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Finding DBK’s hiding place is harder.  MK locates it just outside the city limits, in an abandoned scrapyard.  The perfect place to get parts for new bull clones and other random things Red Son can come up with.

He decides to go on the weekend, but as he prepares the night before Monkey King makes an appearance in his room.

“Hey, bud,” MK jumps at his arrival.

He must have been hiding as a bug or something, like when MK first found the staff.

“Monkey King!” He grins at his arrival, hopping up.  “What’s the occasion?  Is there something new you wanted to teach me?  Is there a demon we have to fight?”  We, not as in MK and Monkey King, but MK and himself.  Because he’s not one, not really, and that’s fun!  He hates being alone, after all.

“No, no,” Monkey King chuckles, overly fond.  Right, MK hasn’t been to Flower Fruit Mountain for a week.  “It’s just-you left pretty early, and, uh, you didn’t say anything about our next training sesh, you know?  And, uhh, pretty sure you shouldn’t be slacking off on that.”

The half hearted scolding aside, MK almost thinks that Monkey King missed him.  But that’s ridiculous.

“Well, you were sleeping when I got up, and I had to go to work,” The lie slips easily off of his tongue.  “I didn’t want to wake you, so I left!  Um, we’re busy tomorrow, but Sunday works for training, if that’s cool?” He rocks back and forth on his feet, ever excited.

“We’re?  Who’s cooler than me to hang out with?” Monkey King reaches out to ruffle his hair, and MK can feel the shiver that jolts through the monkey’s body at the touch.  Monkey King doesn’t comment on it, though.

“I promised Mei we’d hang out.  It’s been a busy week at the shop, so I haven’t been able to party with her,” He doesn’t know where these lies are coming from.

Sometimes he talks and it’s not him at all.  He should be concerned, but honestly he doesn’t mind if his other self takes the reigns.  He fumbles over his words way too often to be annoyed that someone is smoothing him out.

Polished like an ice sculpture; MK thinks he could be beautiful if he was like that.

“Alright, fine.  You and your friend can….do whatever it is kids do these days.  Am I an adult—oh my god I’m an adult,” Monkey King flops back onto his nimbus cloud with a groan while MK giggles.  

“Anyway, get some rest, bud.  You look tired,” is the last thing Monkey King says to him.

“On it!” MK salutes, and Monkey King floats through the window and then rockets off.  The papers in MK’s room all swirl from the blowback, and MK grabs one of the sketches that floats back down.

He doesn’t remember the last time he asked Tang for a story. The last time he sketched anything else at all.  But, a hero doesn’t need hobbies so trivial.

He plans.  Plans for how the city is going to look like, when he’s finished with it all.  He doesn’t need to write down the steps to get there, he has his head voice for that, but the city.  How it will look, when he’s done.  He has to figure it out, draw it out, and pin it to the wall so he can look at it every morning and evening and remember why he’s doing this.  So he sketches.  Pins the piece to the wall.  

Squints.  He doesn’t like it.  

Back to the drawing board.

His wall is covered by the time the sun rises, and MK still isn’t satisfied.  But there is no time to waste.  So, he picks up the outfit that feels all the more new—blue isn’t a color he expected to like, but blue is cold is safe is good is the burning warmth he needs, so he leaves the orange jacket and red headband hanging off of his desk chair.

Looking at himself in the mirror, he can barely tell the difference!

He is gone before Pigsy comes up with breakfast, before Pigsy calls for Tang to look at the mess MK left behind, enough drawings of the same thing for anyone to get the picture.  He is gone before Pigsy and Tang investigate, speak in hushed tones, and call for Sandy, Mei, and eventually Monkey King.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Getting to the outskirts of town is the easy part.  Infiltrating DBK’s base is a bit harder.  It’s not heavily fortified, but MK thinks that’s more because he has never tried to infiltrate such a place.  He doesn’t really attack first, he just protects.  But that’s not good enough anymore, clearly.  He can’t just be protective, he needs to be proactive.

He slides past the guards, freezes them for good measure.  After all, they’re going to be made useless once he takes their leader down, so it’s not as if he’s wasting anything.  There’s also always the chance they get wise, and MK doesn’t want his entrance ruined.

The inner sanctum of the base looks more like a house, made large to accommodate DBK’s figure.  There are pictures on the wall, from painted portraits to black and white to color photos.  MK supposes that the Demon Bull Family has been around long enough to have portraits taken in all sorts of mediums.  He wonders if they have statues, a shrine?  He bites back a giggle at the thought.

The booming sound of cloven footsteps alerts MK to DBK’s arrival, though by the sounds of two voices approaching, Princess Iron Fan must be with him.

“Red Son has been pulling away from us,” the gravel in DBK’s voice is soft, somehow.  MK listens in with interest.  What is it they are doing to their son now?

“You tried to kill him.  He can’t help but take it personally,” is Princess Iron Fan’s reply.  “He barely knows you, and he’s young.  He’ll grow out of it,” she waves a hand, unconcerned.

MK glares at them.  The temperature in the hallway drops, until Princess Iron Fan shivers.

“Darling, I thought this house had a heating function?” Princess Iron fan curls her arms around herself, and DBK picks her up and sets her on his shoulder, suddenly on guard.

“It does, the boy made it so,” he growls, sniffing around for intruders.  MK decides to let himself be known.

“Hi!” he says as he pops out from around the corner.

“Noodle boy?” Princess Iron Fan questions.

“Little Thief,” DBK growls.

“Actually, I go by MK,” he corrects cheerily.  “But, anyway, could you hold still?  This will be harder if you move,” He twirls his staff casually.  DBK growls, and Princess Iron Fan places a hand on the side of his face to silence him.

“MK,” Princess Iron Fan starts, with a forced air of politeness.  “We are in your debt for helping save my husband.  However, if you attack us, we will have no choice but to fight back, and we will not be kind.”

She grins, self assured, and continues  “And you know what happened the last time you tried to fight me.”

Fire.  Volcanoes.  She had tried to kill him and, more importantly, she had made his friends cry.  But things have changed, haven’t they?

MK giggles.  The sound echoes, and the hallway gets colder.  Frost crawls over the walls, and MK looks up with eyes that glow.

“Aͣcͨtͭuͧaͣˡlˡlʸy,ͥ Iͭ ͪtͥᶰhᵏiʸnͦkͧ ˢyͪoͦuͧˡ'ͩllͬ ͧᶰfiͥᶠnʸdͦ ͧmᵏeᶰ ͦʷtʷoͪ ͣbͭˢeᵍ ͦhͦaͩrᶠdͦeͬrʸ ͦtͧo ᶰbͦeͭatͭ ͪtͣhͭaʸnͦ ͧbeͨfͣᶰorͤˢeͨᵃᵖᵉ,” He jumps up with a smile, and sprints forward.

Something dawns on her face, and Princess Iron Fan stands.

“Darling, we need to run,” She says, quickly, but MK jumps and bounces off of the walls and is eye to eye with her before she can explain.

She doesn’t even have time to grab her fan.

DBK jumps back as the block of ice slides off his shoulder and he roars.

“Father?!” MK hears Red Son’s voice from afar and ignores that for now.

“I will tear you to pieces you ingrate!” DBK shouts, and MK laughs.

“ʸYͦoͧu ͨcͦoͧˡuͩᶰlͭdnͤ'ͮtͤᶰ ˢeͭvͦᵖenͫ ͤbʷeͪaͤᶰt ͥmʷeͣˢ wͥᶰhʸeͦnͧ ͬI ͪwͤaͣsͩnʸ'ͦtͧ ᶠtͦrͦˡying!” he shouts back, dodging a blow that sinks DBK’s fist in the wall.

The frost slides from the wall to DBK’s arm, gluing him there.  He fires the gun on his other arm, and MK dodges. 

“Nͥiͩcͥeͦ ͭshot!” He dances around the room.

DBK takes a step in the wrong direction, and slips on the ice cube that is his wife, dropping to the ground.  MK wastes no time, and DBK’s roar is silenced abruptly.

Finally.

Finally.

“Noodle Boy!  What on earth are you doing?!” Red Son looks rather steamed, if the smoke coming off of him is any indication.

“Hi, Red Son!  I was just taking care of your parents,” MK gestures to the popsicles on the floor.  Red Son stares, face a mixture of confusion and horror, and MK barrels toward him.  “Now they can’t be mean to you anymore.  You can make fun inventions and not have to be a mean guy all the time!” Honestly, if anything, Red Son should be thanking MK, but MK doesn’t do this for thanks.  He takes a few hairs and blows on them, and his clones start to work on moving the new additions to his cave.

“You—” Red Son is at a loss for words before landing on “Give me back my parents!”

See, MK was worried about that.  He would likely have responded the same, when he first left his parents.

“But I worked hard to get them out of the way!” MK pouts.  “But, I get it.  You don’t understand.  You just need to ᵍcͤoͭolͦ ͧdͭowͦᶠn,ͦ ͧoͬkʷaͣʸy?” MK reaches out, places a hand on Red Son’s shoulder before he can be stopped, and Red Son is going to freeze too, when—

Red Son explodes, and MK burns.

It’s not enough to melt the ice, no, but MK is thrown back against the wall, eyes wide.

The chill in his bones vanishes with a screech, and all he can hear is screaming.  For a moment, something rises within him.  

This is wrong.

He shouldn’t be doing this, he can’t be.

He isn’t a bad person, he isn’t cruel. He wouldn’t do this.  

He needs to stop, he needs to—

And then the flames vanish, and so does Red Son, and the cold slips back into place with brutal efficiency.  MK blinks, tries to remember where he is.  Right, DBK and Princess Iron Fan.  He got them!  Great.

His clones have been destroyed in the blaze, so he makes some new ones, and heads back to base.  

A shame he couldn’t get Red Son to understand, but they all will soon enough.

Good job, vessel.

MK feels warm.  It burns.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He’s deliberating back at his hideout about where his newest statues should go when he hears a sharp gasp from behind him.  He turns, and Mei is looking at him with something that looks like horror, but that can’t be right.  Why would she be horrified by something so beautiful?

“MK?” she starts, cautiously.  “What…happened to you?  You look really bad, why are you wearing blue?”

“I like the color!” he asserts.  “And I’m fine!”

She purses her lips, and then tries again.

“Um...MK.  What is this?” She points to the frozen menagerie behind him.

MK does not pout, even though he feels like he should.

“You ruined the surprise,” he grumbles, arms crossed over his chest.  “I stopped all the bad guys!  See?” he gestures to them.  “Now they can’t hurt anyone.”

There’s a pause, before Mei can catch up, where MK asks, “Hey, do you think people would want to put them in a museum?” He taps his chin with his index finger, deliberating.

“How did you...does Monkey King have powers like this?” she tries, a third time.

“No, I don’t,” MK jumps at the sound of Monkey King’s voice.  Monkey King floats down on his cloud, hopping off and looking at MK with an air of suspicion.  “Kid, how are you doing this?  Why are you doing this?”

“‘Cause they hurt you guys,” MK has been itching for a chance to explain, to get someone to understand.  “And the-my head voice gave me the idea.  Once these guys are all gone, everyone can be safe, and no one will leave!”

“Head voice?” Pigsy comes from behind a pillar.  “MK, what are you talking about?”

“You know, the voice in your head that sounds like you?” He explains.  “It-it told me how to do it.  And I’m not a carbon copy of Monkey King, it makes sense that I’d have a few new powers, you know?”

“No,” Tang appears, from somewhere.

When did all of his friends get here?  He can see Sandy, Mo in tow on his shoulder, peeking in. 

“You shouldn’t have any deviations.  Maybe your transformations would be different, but to go so far as to have ice powers?” Tang pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, and his glasses flash.  “That shouldn’t be possible, given Monkey King’s power set.”

“What’s going on, kid?” Sandy’s voice is very soft, as he approaches, just like when they were on the boat.  

“Nothing!” MK’s voice is cheery as ever.  “I’m just fixing things, okay?  I think you need to ˢcͪhͧiͭllͧᵖ ʷoͧʲuͥᶰtᵍ,” he reaches forward, and Sandy and Mo are ice.

Mei screams.

“What?” MK looks on, bewildered, as his friends stare at him in horror.  “He’ll be fine!  It doesn’t hurt.  I’ve been freezing for ages!  It gets warm after a while.”

His eyes glow, and Tang pales.

“Baigujing,” he breathes, and MK turns to him.

“What about her?” he asks, and Tang puts a hand to his mouth, biting his lip and glancing between the rest of the group and MK, unsure.

“Bud,” Monkey King takes a few cautious steps toward MK, as if MK were a cornered animal.  His feet slip a little on the ice, but not enough to stop his careful approach.  His tail is poised and very still, not so much as a twitch from it.  “I think you’re feeling a bit...um, scrambled right now.  Why don’t you hand me the staff, and we can talk about this?” He gives MK a soft smile, but MK frowns.

If he takes the staff you can’t finish your work! Does he think you don’t deserve it anymore?

“But I need it,” he responds, simple and to the point.  “It’s mine.”  Right?  Because Monkey King gave it to him.  Gifts can’t be taken back, right?  MK’s still worthy, right?

Monkey King takes a deep breath, like he’s biting back a retort.

“Preeeeetty sure I let you borrow it.  ‘S called ‘Monkey King’s Staff’ for a reason, bud.  C’mon.” 

Another step forward.  MK grips the staff tighter.  

“MK, please,” Tang calls from his other side.

Don’t let him take it!

“We need you to let go!” Mei’s voice hits his ears.

They’re all lying to you!  

“Kid-I-c’mon, just let ‘em have it and we can go home,” Pigsy’s voice breaks, and MK feels like he’s going to break with it.

Is he even going to let you keep your home?!

Monkey King is close enough that MK can feel the heat of his power emanating off of him, of the great Sun Wukong.  His paws are soft and somehow even warmer than his power as he curls them around MK’s grip on the staff.

They don’t understand! They’re going to abandon you!

“That’s it, easy does it,” Relief colors Monkey King’s tone, and he smiles at MK as if MK were the sun.  It’s too soft to be true.  “Just hand it over, and we’ll make sure everything’s okay, alright?”

He starts to tug, pulling the staff out of MK’s grip ever so gently, and MK flinches as the voice rings loud in his ear.

YOU NEED IT DON’T LET HIM TAKE IT FROM YOU HE’LL RUIN EVERYTHING—

“It’s MͫIͥᶰNͤE!” MK shouts, and he slams the side of it into Monkey King’s stomach and launches his mentor across the room.

Monkey King crashes into the wall, groaning as he pushes away the falling rubble.  MK’s eyes are wild.  

“It’s mine, and you can’t have it!  I need it!” Ice crawls over his right hand, cementing his grip.  

Tang sees it, takes a step back, and turns to the two horrified bystanders.

“Run!” he shouts, and Mei bolts.  Pigsy stares, motioning for Tang to run, but Tang is too close to MK to do anything.

“What’d you do that for?” MK frowns, lowering a hand onto Tang’s shoulder.  Pigsy makes a choked sound.

“Go!  Bajie, get out of here!” Tang shouts, far more desperate than MK expected.  Why is everyone so terrified?  This is just a misunderstanding.

“Okay, tͭiͦmͦeˡ ͣoͭuͤt ͭfͦorͬ ͧᶰyˢoͣᶰuᶻᵃᶰᵍ,” MK pats Tang’s shoulder once, and Tang is rooted to the spot.  MK freezes him slower, because Tang isn’t strong, merely smart.  And if he does it slow, then he doesn’t have to chisel away the extra later.

Mei comes roaring in on her bike, and she picks up Pigsy by the back of his chef’s coat, throws him on the back of her bike, and zooms off.

“Tang!” Pigsy screams, but his voice gets farther and farther away.

“What’s wrong?” MK is so confused.  He looks to Monkey King, who is just sitting there on his cloud, horrified.

“Sun Wukong,” Tang says, voice hard.  The ice is up to his chest.  “Get out of here.  Bajie is going to be a wreck after this.”

“Can you make sense!” MK throws his hands up, tired of being ignored, talked over, walked over.  “Or at least ˢsͪtͧoͭp ͧᵖtalking!” And Tang goes silent, frozen.

MK turns back to Monkey King, and finds that his mentor has vanished.

Well, that won’t do.

After them!

MK jumps onto a disk of ice and slides across stone, feet still as the ice barrels over any obstacle, leading him past the dead sliver of a great mountain and up onto the streets.  Mei just has made her way to ground level, aided up by Monkey King, and MK zeroes in on them.

They pass by cars, and MK ignores the blaring horns as he slides over city streets.  The ice trailing behind him makes cars swerve out of control, but he needs to get to his friends.  They have to understand.  This is all for them!

The ice shoots forward, and he gets closer and closer, until Mei’s back wheel hits frost and the back of the bike jerks one way, the front the other.  The bike slips onto its side with immediacy, and Pigsy and Mei go sprawling as Mei’s bike falls apart, skidding across the ice.

Oh no.

“Mei!” he runs to her side.  

She groans, her bike suit torn.  He doesn’t even think about Pigsy at the moment, too worried about his best friend to think of the other person he hurt.  Plus, Pigsy’s a full grown adult, and MK has never seen Pigsy hurt like Mei is, so it doesn’t even register that Pigsy could be as injured as she is.  Her left arm has a large patch of skin that’s been burnt off by the road, and her legs are bleeding from various places.  Thankfully, she was wearing a helmet, so MK doesn’t have to worry about something so serious.  

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.  Are you alright?  Where does it hurt?  I’m sorry!”

Some ice might help with the pain.

Right, right, icing the wound always helps.  He goes to make some, the power swirling in his hand, when a horn from a car blares, making him wince.  

Gosh, humans.  They’re so annoying!  If they could just stay out of the way, because he needs to fix this, that’d be great.

Remember the pause button?

It seems very inviting.  MK nods.  

Right.  A pause button.

“Just a sec, Mei,” he leaves her groaning on the ground, turning to face the city.

He slams his staff into the ground.

Ice shoots out in a wild dash.  It crawls over and into everything.  Cars, buildings, people—everything freezes.  He hears some screams, and watches people try and run for the hills, but the cold is faster. It billows down the streets, kicking up a white haze that is almost impossible to see through, that the pedestrians tripping on ice and solidifying get lost in, but it’s a snowy sheen that MK sees through perfectly. He can see the polished figures of buildings, glistening beneath their ice, the little mounds that must be people beneath the thick layer of ice. 

It’s all so pristine. So perfect.

Finally.

Finally.

MK is glad for the quiet.  With him and himself in his head, it’s hard to deal with outside noise. He just needed a moment of calm, to get to the task at hand.

The task at hand...Mei!

“Mei, are you—” he stops.  Mei and Pigsy aren’t there.  

His eyes search for them, and he can see Monkey King hurriedly pulling them up onto his cloud.  “Wait!”

Monkey King looks at him, and MK’s face is pleading.  He just wants to do right.  Why don’t they understand?  Once he fixes it all, everyone will be happy.  Can’t they wait?

“Sorry, bud,” Monkey King says.  

MK doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for. A rush of panic tries to grip his brain, something that was once so familiar, something that was once so him, but it disappears in MK’s desperation to act.

The cloud zooms off. He throws a hand out, running after it.

“NO!”

This is just like his dream.  At the edge of the city, a wall of ice rises.  It sparkles in the light of the setting sun, and MK raises it higher, and higher, as Monkey King and Mei and Pigsy and everyone he cares about most gets farther and farther away.

Monkey King punches through the ice, and they disappear into the horizon.

MK drops to his knees. They land hard on the frozen ground.

“You said they wouldn’t leave,” he whimpers out, crying because it hurts and he doesn’t know exactly why.

It’s more than just regular pain.  Something warm and different and yet familiar stings.  Something knows this isn’t right, this isn’t how it’s supposed to go!  If this was the right thing to do, why would everyone leave?

“I have to stop!” The words are forced out of his mouth.  

MK doesn’t know when the words are him and when the words are something else.  He doesn’t know who he is.  What’s right?  What’s wrong?  How can he tell?  

He’s just been listening to his own head, but his own head is arguing with itself.  

He slams his free fist into his temple, to try and make things settle.

Chains drag him to the ground, leaving him stuck.

You are doing everything just right.

The voice is soft in one ear, but on the other side MK hears No! On repeat.  No, this isn’t right.  You froze good people.  Innocent people!  You froze Tang and Sandy!  You made Pigsy cry!  You hurt Mei!

They don’t understand yet.  Monkey King is notoriously stubborn.  He isn’t ready for his successor to pass him yet.  All you have to do is wait for them to come back.  And they will.

It’s harder and harder to hear the argument against this.  

The voice sounds so self assured.  The warmth that doesn’t burn gets weaker and weaker, like a fire out of kindling.  

He wheezes, and tears turn to snowflakes on his skin.  He chokes on his own breath.  It comes out white and fogs his vision, but he can’t find it in himself to care.  

Everyone’s gone.  

He’s alone.  

This can’t be right.

It is.  You just haven’t done enough yet.

That, MK understands.  The need to do more, be more.  It makes far more sense that he hasn’t done enough, than anything else.

“They’ll come back?” He asks, and his voice sounds so loud in the quiet.  He feels a hand brush his hair back.  He leans into the touch, but it’s gone.

Of course.  

MK stands.  The chains vanish, and he smiles.

“Okay then!  Let’s get to work!”  

He hasn’t let go of the staff in ages.  He doesn’t think he can.  He turns to the mess he’d made in his rush job, the frozen city’s statue.  He has to fix that, it’s unsightly!  Mei and Pigsy and Monkey King won’t like a mess.

As he plans, as he hopes, he feels a smile in the back of his head.  It feels like a snowball to his skull, chilling and yet a comfort, somehow.

Wonderful work, Vessel.  We’re going to do great things together.

[arcaneranger]

Final Thoughts - Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun Season 2

My favorite comedy of 2020 returns with a slightly improved production job, a really annoying new opening song, and just as much pure charm as ever.

Charm is absolutely a key word I would use to describe what makes Welcome to Demon School! so good. Yes, it's funny, but even when it's in between jokes (or worse, something isn't landing), the show is able to coast on its demonic-Lisa-Frank aesthetic and the inertia of its characters until the next thing that makes you laugh.

And those characters are basically all featured heavily this season. Despite having fewer episodes, I feel like I got to know every single member of the somewhat expansive cast better over the course of this second season, and seeing the friendship that our protagonist develops with his demon friends is extremely wholesome. I actually commented to one of my fellow writers that it didn't seem like Iruma even needs to still be concerned about his classmates finding out that he's secretly a human, because they all have developed so much respect for him that I can't imagine they would actually eat him at this point.

And Iruma himself remains one of the show's greatest strengths, as a protagonist with personality flaws that only make him more endearing. This season truly fleshes him out into a more complicated character as we get to see his "evil" side, and this alter ego version of him is driven, relentless, and yet still fairly selfless in his pursuit of a goal that benefits the entire class. (Side note: Evil!Iruma sitting on the Demon King's throne is easily one of my top ten anime moments of 2021.)

All of that being said, this season's second half does unfortunately get a bit dragged down by an extended story arc taking place away from the school, and while that isn't a bad thing on its own, the "demonic amusement park" setting is pretty quickly made irrelevant when the place gets wrecked by giant kaiju and then several episodes are spent fighting said kaiju. There's a few good character moments here for the rest of the class, but it goes on for too long, and focusing multiple episodes on slow-paced action battles doesn't really suit the strengths of this story.

All of that being said, by the end of the season, summer break is over and the kids are returning to school, with a new ultimatum and a lot of hard work ahead of them. Season 3 is coming in October, and I can't wait to see how this turns out.

8/10.

[dreamofmysoul-tsc]

I'll Stay Here With You Until This Dream Is Gone

A story about Matthew Fairchild and James Herondale

Title from “Burning House” by Cam

I’ve never written fanfiction before, nor am I really a writer, but this idea has been poking at my mind for awhile now so I figured I’d write it down. I probably won't write more fanfic btw, my brain just wouldn't let me rest until I wrote this 😅

Little nods to The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor if you squint

This story follows the theory that Matthew becomes a Downworlder; in this story he is a vampire, although it isn't that important. Also, lots of angst. Suffer with me y'all. Enjoy!

CW for talks of death and the afterlife

January, 1963

Watery, gray light filters through the thick, velvet curtains despite their best efforts to keep the sun at bay. The house sits quiet, empty save for its owner and a single butler. A man sits at an antique writing desk, blonde head bent over thick sheets of paper, each embossed with a golden MF. He writes slowly, thoughtful of each word he inks onto the pages. A glass of water sits precariously on the edge of the writing desk, half empty.

A series of swift knocks resounds throughout the home. The man doesn't raise his head, expecting his butler, Mr. Wingrave, to answer it. As expected, he hears the door creak open, followed by a quick, muffled exchange. Whoever decided to darken his doorstep leaves as fast as they came, the door closing shut with a resounding thunk. His butler begins to ascend the stairs, but the man continues to write his letter, a half smile beginning to turn up the corner of his mouth.

His bedroom door swings open. "Mr. Fairchild?" Wingrave stands on the threshold, a folded note held in his hand. It is without an envelope, as though whoever wrote it sent it off in a hurry.

"Yes?" Fairchild says distractedly, mind still occupied by his letter.

"A note for you, sent by a Mr. Owen Herondale, sir."

This causes Fairchild to pause. Why did his godson, whom he had visited just last week, send him a letter so early in the morning? Despite his best efforts, he feels a mix of curiosity and mild concern begin to build.

"From Owen? Whatever for?" Not expecting a response, he accepts the note from Wingrave. He unfolds the thin paper and feels his stomach drop.

Father is dying. Please get to the townhouse as soon as you can. He needs you.

-OH

James. His Jamie. He reads the succinct words over and over, unable to fully understand, or perhaps fully accept, their meaning. Of course he knew James was getting on in years, he isn't that in denial, but he had never fully sat back to think about how he would go on or what he would even do when James was gone. Now reality is crashing down on him, harsh and cold, as he lurches out of his seat and grabs for his coat. He barely gives himself time to put his shoes on before he's running out the door, only to be reminded harshly of his vampirism when the winter sun scalds his face. He can't find it in himself to care, ducking his head and sticking to the shaded walls of buildings as he sprints flat out toward Curzon Street.

Thanks to his vampire speed, he manages to limit his sun exposure and make it to Curzon Street in record time. He bangs on the townhouse door, red tears already welling up in his eyes, unnoticed until they begin to fall, cold, down his cheeks.

Owen opens the door immediately, black eyes wretched and lips pressed into a thin line, clearly trying to prevent himself from falling apart. He looks so like James, who always hated to cry too, that Matthew almost lets out the sob building up in his chest, yet he holds it in for Owen's sake. Matthew wraps him in a fierce hug, tucking his godson's face against his neck like Owen used to do when he was a boy. Owen holds onto his godfather's coat, trembling but still trying his best to keep it together.

Owen pulls back, sniffling and red eyed, voice hoarse as he says "Dad is upstairs in the bedroom. He's been asking for you all morning. I'm sorry I summoned you so early, but I just don't know how much time he has left." His voice cracks as he says it, tears finally falling. Matthew holds his face in his hands and wipes them away, pushing his hair from his forehead. Despite being in his 40s, Matthew will always see him as the chubby faced little boy Owen was so many years ago.

Taking a deep breath, Matthew ascends the stairs up to Jamie's bedroom. Cordelia, having passed a year prior, would've reprimanded him for getting dirt and slush on her lovely rugs. He almost chuckles at the memory.

James' door is already ajar as Matthew gently pushes it open. It takes Matthew yet another valiant effort to hold in a sob. James lays back on the bed, hands folded over each other, white hair fanned out behind his head like a halo. He holds a gold necklace in one hand, a miniature globe attached to the end of it, and a photograph in the other.

Matthew takes a seat in the cushioned chair by the bed and rests his hands on the duvet in an attempt to stop their shaking. "Jamie," he whispers, voice hoarse.

James' eyes crack open, still the same champagne gold as when he was a young man, and miraculously, he smiles. Matthew finally lets out the cries he's been holding in upon seeing that smile, warm and earnest, a smile that can only be described as so perfectly James.

James sets the objects in his hands aside and reaches out a surprisingly steady hand as Matthew meets him in the middle. He holds onto James' hand like it's a life raft, pressing his knuckles to his forehead and doing nothing to quiet his crying.

"If I had known it'd be this soon-" he chokes out, red tears staining James' calloused hands.

James cuts him off gently. "None of that, Matthew. What was I supposed to do, wait around until death came for me? My body is giving up on me, Math. I knew that my time was coming and that's exactly why I need you here. Because despite everything, I'm afraid. And although you no longer have the rune, we are still parabatai. I'm afraid of what comes after, Math, and I...please, just sit with me."

Matthew looks up, bloody tears dripping steadily onto James' poor bedsheets. He squeezes his parabatai's hand and he nods. "Of course I'll stay with you, Jamie bach. Whither thou goest, I shall go, remember? Even if I can't feel you, I won't let you go into the dark alone."

James lets out a soft chuckle as tears form in his eyes and squeezes Matthew's hand in return. "Thank you, Math."

As the day progresses into night, Matthew finds himself laying next to his parabatai, pushing his white hair back from his forehead and listening to his slow, wheezing breath. James sleeps and Matthew watches, afraid that if he so much as looks away from him, his friend won't have a hand to guide him into his afterlife.

Owen visits periodically to check on his father, occasionally clutching onto his hand and looking on with heartbroken eyes. He's even so kind as to offer his godfather blood, blood that they kept refrigerated for his visits, but the thought of stomaching anything causes bile to rise in the back of Matthew's throat.

Earlier, while arranging himself on James's bed, he finally caught a glimpse of the photograph James had held in his hand. It was a photo of them in their teenage years, Matthew's arm draped over James' shoulders, dressed in fashions well out of style, bright smiles on their faces. Matthew remembered that day well. It was a hot day in June and they'd gone to Regent's Park to enjoy the summer weather and catch up on reading. What had started as a peaceful summer day had ended with Matthew dramatically-and loudly- reciting passages from Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest while passersby looked on in faint amusement or unmasked annoyance. James had been mortified, repeatedly begging Matthew to stop through fits of laughter, ending with the boys play wrestling in the grass as James attempted to grab the play's script from Matthew's hands. They had ended up with grass stains all over their shirts, leaves sticking up in their hair, and Matthew was fairly certain he'd almost upended their picnic basket into the pond. It had been one of the best days of Matthew's life.

Matthew laughed through his tears as he gazed down at the photo, holding onto James' hand even tighter and continuing to watch him. He had once called James his heart and now he realizes how true he had been. James was always steady and strong, a presence he could rely on when he oftentimes couldn't even rely on himself. He kept Matthew tethered to the earth while Matthew in turn kept James from getting lost in his head. Matthew the kite, James the line. And without the line, Matthew wasn't sure what he was going to do.

Logically, he knew this would happen. James would die and Matthew would live on, unchanging. And one day he would realize he had lived more days without James than with him. The sense of panic he felt at the thought of forgetting his laugh, his dry wit, the specific way he annotated his books, even the way he made his tea, was so strong it almost knocked the breath out of him.

But as he takes in the face of his parabatai, his best friend, that panic winks out as quick as it came. Matthew's death was uncertain, but it wouldn't evade him forever. And although Matthew never considered himself a spiritual man, he believed that he would see James again. He had to believe that, otherwise he knew that his grief would threaten to eat him alive. Matthew knew that James' grief had threatened to eat him alive, too, after Cordelia's passing. If Matthew can gift his friend a peaceful end, he hopes with everything he has that Cordelia will be there to guide James home.

James dies not in the thick of battle or at the vicious claws of a demon, but in his bed, left hand held in the iron grip of his parabatai. He dies gently, quietly, breath suddenly stopping, hands going limp at his sides. Matthew hears his heart stop beating before James even exhales for that final time, pressing his forehead to his friend's and letting himself cry, guttural and grief stricken, unashamedly weeping into his parabatai's neck. Distantly, he hears his godson enter the room despite the late hour. Distantly, he sees Owen fall to his knees next to his father's bedside and clutch at his arm, joining Matthew in his lamentation.

And so, he holds onto James' hand and he cries. And he hopes with everything he has that he will see him again. He keeps that hope in his chest, a lighthouse on a distant, stormy shore, as he closes his parabatai's eyes and whispers, "Ave atque vale, Jamie bach. Hail and farewell."

[drops-of-moonlights]

What are your issues with S3 of Winx Club?

Okay, so. I am going to get long and ranty and annoyed overall on this post. I shouldn’t even have to preface this, half of the people that follow me have critical thinking skills I hope, but you can have whatever opinion on S3 and all the things I’m gonna touch on this post, I do not care and you should not either, live your life however the fuck you want yadda yadda yadda. Now:

The first thing that comes to mind is the pacing, and just how fucking terrible it is. Every single event takes so long and its so slow for the first 18-or-so episodes (a lot of situations really did not require two episodes), only to be suddenly kicked into high gear and have 7 different “final” battles one after another. It felt like it was just happening to end the season already and so they could keep working on SOTLK, and like I get you’re working on both and all but you COULD have afforded to at least PRETEND you gave a shit, Rainbow.

Next topic is Valtor, who is my absolute least favorite villain in the series, and yes, I am including the S5-S7 villains on this. This is where it’s not much a fault of the character itself (well. not ENTIRELY a fault of the character), but a fault of both the narrative and (and for this I am petty) the fanbase. Valtor, to me, is the most generic villain in the franchise, a different flavor than Darkar but by no means less bland - Valtor is your standard “hot” prettyboy villain who tries to charm the protagonist to his side with the empty promise of answers, and THAT COULD HAVE BEEN INTERESTING... if the show ever bothered to do anything with it other than Valtor creeping on a senior highschool student for 26 episodes. Because it’s all a farce, there’s not an actual connection between them outside of Valtor feeding her lies about her retconned parent’s backstory (we’ll talk about this more later) and both of them having God’s power inside them. My second point on Valtor is that he singlehandedly ruined the Trix’s characterization to simply be your standard evil henchwomen that thirst after Valtor’s dick because truly they all have terrible taste in men, and nothing else, and it’s annoying as all fuck, ESPECIALLY when you compare the Trix as Darkar’s lackeys a season earlier, where they stayed mostly the same personality-wise and only allied with the Phoenix out of necessity and survival. And the worst part? Valtor doesn’t do shit in the season! Like, at all! He only ever gets Chimera, Cassandra and Diaspro on his side, blinds Aisha and that’s literally it as far as confrontations with the Winx go - outside of fighting them when they get the Water Stars and the three last battles, he spends most of the show’s time fucking around random planets getting weird magic and sitting broodily on a chair, and apparently this makes him a good villain???? Okay, sure.

And since I mentioned them, let’s get on the Water Stars for a bit, and while yes, this is the one part everyone agrees on that was weak as fuck, it still brings attention because WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT. All this time there was this antithetical force to the Dragon’s Flame, super-mega-ultra powerful little thingies that could douse the Flame’s power almost permanently, AND YOU ONLY BRING THEM TO ATTENTION NOW AGAINST VAMPIRE AESTHETIC. Do you have any idea how fucking useful they could have been against the Trix in S1???? If they had gotten the little squishy motherfuckers two seasons earlier the War of Magix would have been over quicker. And it’s not like Bloom would have been in much risk, she barely had any Flame left in her.

In a similar situation, we have Enchantix, which is my second most-hated form after Tynix for similar reasons. One, where in the fuck were all the Enchantix fairies during S1? Fairy Dust is supposed to be this OP magic, and could have also been very useful against the Army of Decay. Two, the way to earn Enchantix, for what is retroactively just the final base fairy form, is far too obtuse and complicated for the average fairy, not to mention incredibly limiting - you just have to hope someone from your realm is in a dangerous situation so you can fling yourself into danger and probably die, and all you get for it are some opera gloves and a pair of barefoot sandals. Like sure a super powerful magic upgrade also happens but still, it’s such a specific situation to find yourself in that it’s no wonder no one ever graduates Alfea, it’s literally borderline impossible unless you like traveling. My last point on the transformation, and this one is a bit YMMV, 3 of the 6 Winx did not actually earn Enchantix. Bloom counts for this, but it’s an actual plot point (though it was terribly handled) so I let it slide most of the time, but Musa and Tecna? Musa didn’t even get to sacrifice anything, she just suddenly got the form and that’s it, GALATEA was doing more of a sacrifice to let everyone leave the burning library without her than Musa was. Tecna also got Enchantix without saving anyone from Zenith, and before you even type it out, no, it was never said Tecna saved the entire universe by closing the Omega Portal. None of the three English dubs nor the original Italian ever say this. That’s entirely just fanon. I have headcanonned it away as “some of the prisoners were Zenithian” to justify it for myself, but overall it was very obviously just shoehorned in because as always, the writers don’t know what to do with Tecna.

“But Drops! What about Nabu???” I can already hear you type, and no, I do not like Nabu. I don’t hate him either, outside of the fact I reject the idea of Aisha being into men in any way, shape or form, but he is very much worshipped as the Golden Child in the fandom and I’m tired of it. You can see a better description on my feelings about Nabu (as well as how the fandom loves to demonize Sky for the shit he pulled in S1 but hold nothing against either Brandon or Nabu, who pulled the same shit) here.

There *is* a part of S3 I like, that being the Solaria Usurpation arc, but it’s the one sole thing that I legitimately enjoy in the season and I’m not gonna stick around the fuckton of episodes that interrupt the arc just for that.

But what I hate the most about S3, above all this, is how goddamn irrelevant it is. Outside of getting the Winx Enchantix, NOTHING about the season is remotely relevant lore-wise or plot-wise, and the show itself acknowledges this! Even SOTLK pretends S3 never happened and the girls just got Enchantix somehow! Because of the drive Rainbow had to end the franchise’s original arc with fancy shitty CGI, they ended up making the original last season of the show, what was supposed to be the best thing before the movie, into the biggest waste of time instead. You can really just watch the episodes each girl gets Enchantix and then the final episode and you wouldn’t miss anything at all.

So the TL;DR for all this is “I hate S3 because Valtor sucks, Enchantix sucks, the pacing is garbage and there’s really nothing nice in it outside of like 3 episodes”, and I refuse to rewatch it ever again.

[houseisekai]

House Miisekai Prologue: The Adventure Begins!

House Miisekai Masterlist Here

====

Our story begins in the land of Miisekaitopia! (No, I couldn't think of a better name.)

It is a world where everyone from both storylines and unholy amounts of AU's can live in peace without worrying about wars breaking out every 4 seconds.

At least it was.

The darkness came without warning, a great and terrible shadow threatening all of Miisekaitopia! An unspeakably huge dick came and stole everyone's faces! Then, to add insult to injury, put those faces onto monsters across the land!

But, we shall follow the perspective of Sara Valestein, Instructor of Class VII and the original House Isekai...

Sara casually strolled through the hills, enjoying the sunlight and wind blowing gently across her.

(Sara) "...Goddess I am so bored."

She had been kicked out of yet another bar recently for drinking too much.

Again.

Left with nothing to do, she decided to take a trip to nowhere in particular, going wherever fate took her.

Sara continued muttering to herself, mocking the established "rules" for drinking in a tavern until she noticed something flying in the air.

(Sara) "Is...that a face?"

She rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn't seeing things, and saw the eyes slowly float over to a nearby butterfly.

(Sara) "Uh...?"

(Sara) "GAH!"

The horrific creature began floating faster towards Sara, which prompted her to run full speed ahead towards the closest town.

As she ran out of breath, she ran towards anyone would even take a minute to listen.

(Sara) "H-Hey, there's some freaky bug thing out there with a human face!"

BE-LOP!

Tiny lines of text ran down the guide's face.

It showed too many messages at once for her to properly read it, and the person remained completely still.

(Sara) "...Hello?"

(Everyone) "..."

(Sara) "...Right."

Sara moved to the next person she saw.

...

Sara saw a platypus with a name tag 'Perry' calmly sitting on the market stall.

(Sara) "Hello, anyone here?"

The platypus stared at her, not saying a word.

(Sara) "...What in the hell is with this town?"

Next try. That would probably work.

...

(Anakin) "What did we get ourselves into this time?"

(Obi-Wan) "I'm not sure but...I do not like this a single bit."

(Anakin) "At least you're in a taller body, my head barely reaches your stomach!"

(Obi-Wan) "It's not the first time."

(Sara) "Hey, excuse me ma'aaaaaaaaaa...What in the?"

(Anakin) "Listen lady, we got our own problems right now. We're not in the mood-"

(Obi-Wan) "What my young padawan means is that we unfortunately cannot spare any help if you need it ma'am."

(Sara) "...Evidently."

Sara nervously walked away from the two grown men in a child and woman's body.

(Sonia) "Did we get transported again?"

(Gundham) "By the works of dark magic, no doubt..."

(Sonia) "Oh, looks like there's someone over there. Hello ma'am, do you know where we are?"

(Sara) "Eh?...Huh. That's a good question. Where is this?"

(Sonia) "Oh well, I'm a bit more comfortable knowing that someone I like is with me here!"

(Gundham) "I...uh...er..."

(Sara) "That's cute. Ah, to be young again..."

Sara left the two to talk amongst themselves before finding the next...person?

It was an extremely fat rabbit that was grey and white.

(Sara) "What in the hell-"

BIG BIG CHUNGUS, BIG CHUNGUS, BIG-

(Sara) "Okay, screw that."

Sara finally saw the mayor and approached him, and when he turned she almost jumped.

It was a Piranha plant. She thought so anyway, it was covered in white polka dots and bright red.

(Plant) "Ah, welcome to the town miss?"

(Sara) "Uh, Sara. Sara Valestein. Listen, there's this weird face that attached itself to a butterfly outside your place! You're gonna do something right?"

(Plant) "Did...did you say a face float down? OH NO."

(Familiar Man's voice) "OH YES."

(Sara) ?

(Anakin) "Uh, master?"

(Obi-Wan) "I've got a bad feeling about this..."

The platypus, fat rabbit, and the discord notification looked up into the skies, getting increasingly alarmed.

(Gundham) "THIS DARKNESS...IT'S...IT'S OVERWHELMING!"

(Sonia) "His voice sounds grating like Souda's..."

(Plant) "COINS PRESERVE US! IT'S..."

[Imperial Will - Final Fantasy XIV OST]

(Dark Lord Chris) "KNEEL BEFORE YOUR GOD, AND OFFER YOUR FACES UNTO ME!"

(Sara) "...Faces? You mean like services or...?"

(Anakin) "Maybe that's metaphorical?"

(Obi-Wan) "I'm not sure I want to find out-"

(Chris) "NO, YOU REALLY DON'T. ALSO NO. I MEAN IT LITERALLY!"

Several faces began to fly off the townspeople.

First was the platypus's face, quickly followed by the discord notification and Anakin's.

(Obi-Wan) "ANAKIN!"

Then it was Sonia and the fat rabbit's faces that floated next to Chris.

(Gundham) "AAAAAAAGH!"

(Plant) "OH MY GOD, THIS IS HORRIBLE!"

(Sara) "Can someone tell me what the hell is happening?!-"

(Chris) "THESE NOW BELONG TO ME! NOW, GO TELL THE OTHERS WHAT YOU'VE SEEN HERE, FOR I WILL BE COMING FOR THEM NEXT!"

Chris flew off into the skies, the faces following closely behind.

(Sara) "What an asshole!"

(Plant) "ADVENTURER, PLEASE YOU HAVE TO HELP US!"

(Sara) "Right uh..."

Sara reached for her sword and pistol, which was nowhere to be found.

(Sara) "Well, that's just great..."

Obi-Wan struggled to walk over to here, still not accustomed to his body and looked at Sara.

(Obi-Wan) "Ma'am, I'm afraid I cannot go into battle myself to assist with this matter. And we don't appear to have our weapons either..."

(Sara) "So, what do you reckon I do? Ask nicely?"

...

(Sara) "Damn it."

OUTSIDE OF TOWN...

Chris was floating away from the town when Sara finally caught up to him.

(Sara) "HEY, JACKASS!"

(Chris) "...Oh, you mean me. I-I mean, OH, IS SOMEONE TRYING TO BE THE HERO NOW?"

(Sara) "Don't play smart with me you glasses wearing freak! Give back their faces!"

(Chris) "Or what? You're going to fight me?"

Sara cracked her knuckles.

(Chris) "...Oh shit. Uh, here have it."

The face slowly floated over to a slime, which reattached itself and began hopping towards Sara.

(Anakin's voice) "OH MAN, I THOUGHT THE KID BODY WAS BAD!"

(Chris) "Uh anyways, LATER!"

Chris quickly flew away from Sara, leaving her and Anakin's face on a slime.

(Sara) "Alright, LET'S GO!"

Sara drove her fist into the slime, which quickly bounced off.

(Sara) "...Oh right. It's a slime."

The slime retaliated by knocking Sara onto her back.

(Anakin's voice) "Sorry!"

(Sara) "Damn, my weapons aren't anywhere to be found either!

"I AM THOU...THOU ART I..."

(Sara) "Oh, what is it now-HURK?!"

Sara reached for her head as the voice boomed thunderously.

"THOU ART...Okay, no we're not rhyming. I'm your guardian spirit, Sara!"

(Sara) "Really now? And where were you during Erebonia?!"

"ANYWAYS, it seems you're in a bit of trouble! Do you need some help?"

(Sara) "It's either getting help or getting killed by a damn slime of all things, so...Yeah, sure."

"Good choice! Now, I bestow upon you the awesome power of the guardian!"

(Sara) "You're gonna explain later where I got this from, right?"

"That depends, do you want the plot to get moving? Our other posts are slowed down as it is, and this has gotten too meta in just the first few lines of this."

(Sara) "Ugh, fine."

Sara's outfit shined forth and became donned in armor, wielding a new sword.

(Sara) "Hey, you cheap bastard, where's my gun?!"

"This is a fantasy RPG, why would you get a gun? Just kill the damn slime already!"

(Anakin's voice) "WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?!"

(Sara) "Hold on, I'll getcha outta there, HIYA!"

[COOL QUIRK: WEAK POINT]

Sara took one swing of her sword and smacked the slime into the floor, it quickly disappearing.

Anakin's face floated off the slime and back to the town.

"That was..."

(Sara) "Really anti-climatic."

"You should uh...probably go back to the town and check up on Anakin."

INSIDE OF TOWN...

Anakin's face slowly floated back onto the child's body, making him trip over.

(Anakin) "AGH!"

(Obi-Wan) "So, how was it?"

(Anakin) "I was just put into a slime's body, how do you think I feel?!"

(Obi-Wan) "Same as usual, got it."

Obi-Wan turned to Sara, who now looked like a proper knight.

(Obi-Wan) "You have our thanks for helping us, Miss?"

(Sara) "Name's Sara."

(Anakin) "Thanks for helping me out there. What are you gonna do? We'd join you but our bodies would just get in the way."

(Sara) "I'm going to uh...Hey, what is the plan?"

"What do you think? You're the only hero in a fantasy land."

(Obi-Wan) "Is she alright?"

(Anakin) "Yeah, she started doing this earlier, no idea what's up with it."

(Sara) "Might as well go after the others, see what happens I guess. Anyways, I'll be back once I restored this town, until then!"

Sara held onto her sheathe and ran out of the town, those still faceless watching her leave.

(Gundham) "Please hurry. Sonia is...unsettling me."

(Plant) "Miss Valestein, you're our only hope...!"

(Anakin) "Think she'll be okay? That talking thing is really concerning me."

(Obi-Wan) "Probably...?"

[Chase Me - Faky]

(Sara) "Right so...do I just go forward?"

"Where did you see him fly off to?"

(Sara) "Was a lot more focused on trying NOT to get murdered by the slimes."

"It was just a slime, you've killed enemy mechs and demonic beasts like it was nothing!"

(Sara) "That's when I had my weapons and ARCUS unit!"

"..Still. Should've had no problem. I probably didn't even have to interfere."

(Sara) "Good goddess, am I going to be stuck with you? Actually WHO even are you?"

"The narrator! In a sense anyway."

(Sara) "What-"

And so begins the tale of Sara Valestein and her quest to defeat the Dark Lord Chris!

What friends will she encounter on the way?

How much of the meta can we break more than we have?

How many more jokes will the writer run into the ground as this series goes on?

FIND OUT NEXT TIME, ON HOUSE MIISEKAI!

(Sara) "...What?!"

STARRING:

And yours truly as the antagonist for this story!

Here's to some more god-awful written meme stories like this one, everyone!

[lloydskywalkers]

There’s Insurance for That

In which Skylor buys lunch, stops a criminal, and learns the best way to blow up the kitchen electronics section, which is a pretty normal week for her, she guesses. Or, five places the ninja are no longer allowed into, featuring Skylor.

(been hitting a bit of a writer’s block with everything else lately, so here’s this...disaster, i guess?? because these ninja are definitely a disaster in this, but i was having fun so. this is the bed bath & beyond fic btw, in case anyone was wondering gdfkgdh)

1. My. Kazami’s Ramen Place

At this point, sadly, Skylor’s used to it.

It’s around a quarter to noon on a Monday, just as she's leaving the noodle shop for her well-deserved lunch break, when a familiar scream splits the relatively-quiet afternoon air on this side of Ninjago City.

The only reason Skylor does not immediately dissolve into panic at said scream is because she is — also sadly — familiar with the variations of it, and this one sounds less like it’s Lloyd’s “I’m-in-terrible-danger-and/or-pain-again” scream, and more like his “I’m-free-falling-on-purpose-from-the-sky-again” scream. Which is, in and of itself, not entirely concerning. In fact, it’d probably be more unusual not to see Lloyd go falling from the sky at some point during any of the ninjas’ higher-than-eight-feet battles, because somehow that’s become a habitual thing. The sky is blue, fire is hot, Kai uses hair gel — Lloyd is going to drop screaming from the sky at some point this month.

So instead of panicking, Skylor figures she’ll just stand in the vicinity until Lloyd either climbs out of another dumpster, or lands on top of her. Kai doesn’t seem to be around to catch him, so Skylor’s prepared to step up, even though it looks like Lloyd’s got a pretty good handle on landing, at the angle she’s watching him from.

Still though, she muses. You’d think he’d have started actively wearing a parachute at this point.

“Kai suggested that,” Lloyd says, after he’s finally able to stand straight, and he’s not quite as cross-eyed. He frowns at his reflection in a store window as they pass by, scuffing at his windblown hair again. “But it gets in the way, you know? It throws off my backflips.”

“That’s a nail in the coffin right there,” Skylor agrees, leading them across another sidewalk. Lloyd’s attracting a lot of looks, with his bright green battle gi and razor-sharp sword strapped across his back, but fortunately no one’s started crowding them yet. Probably because the razor-sharp sword strapped to his back. “Can’t have your fighting style completely crippled,” she adds.

“I don’t backflip that much,” Lloyd huffs. Yes, you do, is on the tip of Skylor’s tongue, because she’s seen him fight, but she decides not to pick that battle…this time.

“Besides,” Lloyd continues. “I don’t really need a parachute, anyways. I always make sure to aim for like, somewhere safe to land. Relatively safe. Safe-ish.”

Skylor eyes him. “You landed in a dumpster.”

Lloyd bristles in offense. “I did not! It was a perfectly respectable recycling bin.”

“Same thing, if you ask me.”

“Not even close. Dumpsters are gross. Recycling bins you just crash through a whole bunch of cardboard and old newspapers. It’s luxury trash diving.”

Skylor just sighs, shaking her head, and edits the text she’s been tapping out for Kai.

Skylor > found your kid in a recycling bin

Skylor > taking him to lunch bc you’re clearly starving him again

Skylor > he’s alive btw

Kai > oh thank fsm

Kai > tell him he’s grounded

Kai > u never take me for lunch :(

Skylor > maybe if u dropped on me from the sky sometime i would

“Hey, are the others busy?” she asks Lloyd in afterthought. “Like…fighting anyone?”

“Huh?” Lloyd blinks. He then flushes, rubbing the back of his head. “Ah, no. We’d pretty much finished up the fight when I, uh…there was a break-in, on the Bounty? We had the guys all taken care of, but they blew part of the mast up, and it left debris all over the deck, so I kind of…maybe….tripped…”

Lloyd is bright red by the time he finishes the sentence. Skylor wouldn’t feel so bad about it, if she wasn’t doubled over laughing at him in the middle of rush hour traffic.

“You are a trained ninja,” she breathes out, between snickers.

“I know,” Lloyd moans.

“You’re like, part god.”

“I know,” Lloyd moans again, into his hands this time. Skylor has to grab his shoulders and forcibly drag him along down the crowded street, trying not to cringe inside at all the looks they’re getting.

“Kai says you’re grounded, by the way,” she says, as the last of her laughter fades.

That snaps Lloyd out of it. “He can’t ground me,” he scowls. “I’m leader.”

“Stop falling from the sky, and maybe he’ll give it a rest,” Skylor replies, glancing down as her phone buzzes again.

Kai > I’d join u but I’m stuck on prison delivery

Kai > nya’s coming to pick up the demon spawn tho

Skylor > nice I’ve been wanting to buy her lunch

Kai > cruel

“—don’t know what you mean, I don’t fall that often, and most of the time it’s on purpose, anyways—”

Skylor chooses to ignore Lloyd’s slightly-concerning, sulking rambling, and pats his shoulder instead. “Nya’s coming for lunch, too,” she says. “Does ramen sound good?”

“Oh, yeah.” Lloyd brightens, seemingly cheered by the reminder he’s getting food out of this. “It’s been a while since I’ve eaten out.”

“I can tell,” Skylor says, eyeing him. “Cole hasn’t been cooking for you, has he?"

“No, but we put Zane on mandatory break so he could relax a bit, and we’re all suffering for it.”

Lloyd and Skylor both jump at Nya’s voice, not having heard her coming up behind them.

“Nya!” Lloyd beams. “Skylor is — ouch, hey, let go!”

“That’s what you get for giving me gray hairs again,” Nya scolds, digging her knuckles into Lloyd’s hair. She looks up from the hold she’s pulled him into, and smiles brightly at Skylor. “Hi, Skylor. Nice to see you.”

“Hi, Nya.” Skylor gives a little wave, watching Lloyd squirm out of Nya’s grasp in amusement.

“So, ramen?” Nya says, giving Lloyd one last elbow in the side before joining Skylor.

“Yeah,” she says. “I was thinking the place down on seventh, the Sobahouse, I think?”

Lloyd and Nya both stiffen, their steps slowing. Skylor pauses, turning to stare at them in confusion. “That’s not the one owned by someone named Mr. Kazami, is it?” Nya finally asks, hesitantly.

“Uh, yeah, it is, actually,” Skylor blinks. “He’s pretty nice, we go to the same grocer on weekends.”

“Ah,” Lloyd says, carefully.

“Hm,” Nya hesitates.

Skylor looks between the two of them, now completely stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.  She really hopes no one is getting pictures of her like this. There are enough flash articles about the rumored orange ninja cryptid on the internet as it is. “Is that…a problem?”

Nya pointedly stares at the sky as if it’s the most interesting thing she’s seen all day. Baffled, Skylor tries the weaker link. Lloyd swallows, avoiding her eyes as he bounces from leg to leg, as if the mere thought of trying to enter the restaurant is terrifying. Which is mildly alarming, because this is the same kid who power-walked straight into a prison full of escaped violent criminals, his psychotic ex, and his undead murderous dad without hesitation.

“We can’t,” Lloyd finally mutters, staring at the sidewalk. Nya elbows him in the side, hissing “weak link” as she does. Lloyd just glares at her.

“O-okay,” Skylor says, unsure. “I mean, that’s fine if you guys want to go somewhere else. I just didn’t know you…didn’t like this place…”

“No, we do,” Lloyd grinds out, and he looks more embarrassed than terrified now, so Skylor aborts her half-formed plans of speed-dialing Karloff. “We just can’t. Go in, that is. We’re not allowed to.”

Skylor stares at him. “You’re not allowed in? Why not?”

“Because,” Nya forces through gritted teeth. “They banned us.”

“They what?” Skylor gapes.

Nya presses her lips together tightly. Lloyd stares very hard at the ground, as if desperately trying to convince himself to keep quiet. Skylor can pinpoint the moment he breaks, his expression contorting as he throws his hands up wildly. “You blow their electrical system up one time—”

“Oh guys, no,” Skylor groans, before bursting into laughter at him for the second time that day. Lloyd looks incredibly unappreciative, his expression scrunching up in annoyance like she hasn’t seen since that one stupid skating match with Chamille, and that just makes her laugh harder.

“We were trying to save them!” Nya defends indignantly. “It’s not our fault they had weak wiring—”

“I just got a little too into it, it’s — it’s Nya’s fault, she’s the one that said it’d be cool if I tried to do shockwave thing like in—”

“That was a mutual thing and you know it!”

“Oh guys, no,” Skylor wheezes into her hands.

“It worked!”

“Poor Mr. Kazami,” Skylor manages, through snickers. Lloyd’s shoulders slump, his upper lip pouting, and Nya crosses her arms, as if refusing to look ashamed.

“It’s not like the other guys aren’t banned from anywhere, either—”

“Alright, alright,” Skylor waves her hands, taking pity on them. “We’ll go somewhere else.”

“Good,” Nya mutters, as Lloyd exhales in relief. Skylor just snickers again, leading them down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. She bites her lip, shaking her head, before a thought occurs to her.

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘it’s not like they aren’t banned from anywhere’?” she frowns. “You guys are banned from more than one place?”

“No,” Nya says firmly, before Lloyd can even speak up. “Forget I said anything.”

Skylor will do no such thing, but she decides it’s in her best interest not to pursue it. Nya is not the sort of person to trifle with, and she does want that ramen.

She gets her answer soon enough, anyways.

2. Ninjago City Aquarium

While Skylor has the early shift on Tuesdays, she does get the afternoons off, which is pretty nice for the most part, if it didn’t mean she’d be bored for the rest of the day. So she hits the grocery store and decides to take the long way home, partially because walking is supposed to be good for you, and partially in hopes that one of the ninja will drop in on her again.

She’s not disappointed.

Granted, a minor explosion going off from inside the Ninjago City Aquarium wasn’t exactly what she was expecting today, but the figures in bright red and white arguing furiously outside the security perimeter are par for the course.

It’s a little odd that they haven’t already rushed in yet, Skylor notes, but with the way they’re loudly yelling at each other in the middle of the street, she figures she’ll find out soon enough.

“No, Kai, it is our civic duty to follow the laws put in place for the safety of civilians—”

“Oh come on, you get brainwashed into a slightly-murderous emperor one time and now you’re a stickler for everything?!”

"One time was enough, Kai!”

“Uh, hi guys,” Skylor approaches the two, hesitantly. “Is everything alright?”

“Skylor!” Kai whirls on her, his eyes wild. “Thank FSM, you’ve gotta help us out — they won’t let us in!” He shakes his fist at the aquarium doors, before springing for the security gate. “Let us in, let us in—”

“Shaking the gate like an animal is not going to convince them, Kai!” Zane pleads, prying Kai away. He shoots Skylor an apologetic glance as he wrangles Kai into a gentle chokehold. “We would greatly appreciate your help, if possible. There’s a low-threat criminal with an unfortunate assortment of weaponry who ran into the aquarium, and we’re legally unable to pursue. If you could try to drive him out, perhaps?”

“I — you — you’re what?” Skylor has the weirdest sense of déjà vu, before it’s lost in confusion. Her head swivels from the frustrated expression on Kai’s face to the pleading one on Zane’s, then to the grocery bags in her hands. She looks back up at Kai, who’s now giving her the puppy eyes. Something from inside the aquarium explodes loudly.

“Sure,” she sighs, handing Kai her grocery bags. “Just one guy?”

“Just one guy,” Kai exhales in relief. “You’re a lifesaver, Skylor, I — hey, are these those snack cakes they made to look like us?”

“Yes, eat them and you die,” Skylor hisses. She turns to Zane, holding her hand out half-hesitantly. “Lend a girl some ice powers?”

“Of course,” Zane nods, letting her take his hand. There’s a brief moment as Skylor melds her power with Zane’s, absorbing the icy force and mimicking it to her own — a part of her notes vaguely that it’s stronger than the last time she borrowed it, but she shakes it off, pulling her hand back and tugging the hood of her jacket up, mentally hoping no one writes another article about the possible existence of a cryptid orange ninja after this.

“Alright,” she says. “Be back in five.”

“Thank you,” Zane says fervently, as Kai sputters, “Hey, why didn’t you borrow my power?”

“Because fire is explosive, and you’ve gotta be banned from here for a reason!” Skylor calls back, ice already misting over her fingertips as she sprints inside the aquarium.

“You’d be surprised,” Kai mutters, after her retreating back.

***********************

“So,” Skylor says, flexing her right hand and wincing briefly. That last right hook she’d thrown at the guy might have been a little too hard, in hindsight. But he was being a jerk, and threatening to set off a bomb near the little seahorses — and it did do the trick, so now the aquarium can have the host of cop cars off its back. Skylor feels pretty accomplished in her good deed for the day, actually. “Why, again, couldn’t you guys have taken care of that yourselves? Not that I minded,” she adds, quickly. Using the ice element had been fun. She’d forgotten what she could do with Zane’s powers.

Kai gives a nervous laugh that’s so fake it almost hurts, especially with the pained expression he makes at the end. Zane just rubs his temple with a hand, looking eternally weary.

“Like I said, we are legally not permitted to enter the aquarium, until…when was it again, Kai?”

“Five years from now,” Kai mutters. “Or whenever the director dies.”

“Yes, five years from now,” Zane repeats, with a dead sort of look in his eyes. “So your assistance was very much appreciated. Thank you.”

“It was no problem, but — wait, hold on, how are you banned from the aquarium for five years?” she stutters. “I mean, I can get Lloyd and Nya with the ramen place—”

“Ha! They told you about that? It was great—”

“Kai, please.”

“—and I can understand Kai, but you, Zane?”

She feels a little guilty for calling him out so bluntly, but it’s Zane. Zane doesn’t just get banned from places, she has to know. And he doesn’t look too upset at the question. Kai looks mildly betrayed, but not that much. They both know Skylor’s point is too valid for him to argue with effectively.

Zane gives another bone-weary sigh. “There is a small chance, that there was a time we were pursuing another villain here, and during that battle, I might have…underestimated the amount of ice I was putting out.” Zane shifts, looking pained. “Which in turn accidentally spread to any bodies of liquid that happened to be nearby at the time, which perhaps were filled with rather expensive aquatic life.”

“You froze a fish exhibit,” Skylor deadpans.

“They were merely in extreme hibernation,” Zane grits out. “They would have been fine, had Kai not tried to fix the ice.”

“Hey, it made sense! I could melt it quickest!”

“Except you didn’t just melt it, did you? No, you had an entire fish fry—”

“The poor fish,” Skylor says, staring at them blankly. “What were they?”

“Like, these rainbow fish, from way up north, I think?” Kai says. “I swear I didn’t make it that hot.”

“The water was boiling, Kai!”

“You fish murderer,” Skylor says, the corners of her mouth trembling with the laugh she’s holding back. Kai glares at Zane, then her, then Zane again.

“I didn’t freeze them solid.”

“Whatever the cause of their death, they died, and we’re banned now,” Zane says, hastily. “End of story. Would you like to take this back to the Bounty, Skylor? I know the others have been wanting to see you, and we can at least offer you tea in thanks.” He eyes the grocery bags Kai’s still holding. “Unless, of course, you wish to return home…”

“Nah, tea sounds good,” she smiles. “Besides, I bought the snack cakes for you guys to try anyways. They’ve got little squashed ninja faces in icing on ‘em.”

“You’re the best,” Kai says, looking somewhat relieved, and oh, he definitely ate one while Skylor was in there. She’s going to have to pay him back for that one…

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she says airily, figuring she’ll take her revenge later. “You can tell me more about the fish massacre on our way back. By the way, Pixal wouldn’t happen to have heard this story, would she?”

Zane gives her a look, and she almost feels bad about it. “I’m going to regret inviting you, aren’t I.”

“Maybe,” she grins. “Jury’s still out.”

3. An Entire Drugstore Chain

Wednesdays are always busy at the noodle shop, for reasons Skylor has yet to figure out. Fridays she understands, but the middle of the week? Nothing kills your drive like knowing you’re going to do this all over again in a day.

It’s good money for the shop though, she reminds herself as she locks up that evening. Any money is good money for the shop, because her stupid dad made sure she’d have a real hole to dig herself out of there, but Wednesday money is always especially good. Even if she ends up leaving the shop late and can’t get the noodle smell from her hair for the next three days.

Normally, she’d trudge home and crash into bed after these kind of shifts. But tonight is different, because she stayed long enough at the Bounty yesterday to get invited to game night, and once you’ve promised the ninja you’re going to bring snacks for Monopoly, you can’t just say no. Not unless you want Lloyd to shoot betrayed glares at you the rest of the month.

Besides, she’s promised Kai she’ll sneak out to the movies with him afterwards, and she can’t just go breaking that promise. Plus, she’s not heartless enough to deny Cole cake when he’s got the most spectacular black eye she’s seen all year bruising up around the left side of his face.

“Lucky hit,” Cole grumbles, after she’s been caught staring too long. She hasn’t wanted to ask him about it, since it seems a sensitive subject and he’s already taking the time to help her pick up (carry) all the snacks. But it’s impossible to miss, even in the dim streetlights they’re walking under, and Skylor cares about her friends, thank you very much. “We busted some drug dealers today, and I got too relaxed.”

“They normally really aren’t any match for you, to be fair,” Skylor offers.

“They weren’t this time either, that’s the sad thing,” Cole says, scrubbing a hand through his thick hair as they wait at the stoplight. “This was all on me. I kinda deserved it.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” Skylor tries to console him, even though the ugly red at the edge of his eye says otherwise.

Cole gives her a bleak look. “Jay made a joke, and I laughed at it. And then I got hit across the face with a baseball bat, mid-laugh.”

“Ouch,” Skylor hisses through her teeth. “Never mind, that’s bad. Was it a good joke, at least?”

“No, that’s the thing,” Cole groans, as the light finally turns red, allowing them to cross the street. “It was terrible. And I still laughed hard enough not to notice a bat coming for my face.”

Skylor grimaces. “You were just being a good friend, I guess,” she says, and Cole snorts. “Like you are to me, right now,” she continues, glancing ruefully at the shopping list she’s been sent. “I was going to say I had it handled, then I actually looked at everything you guys asked for.”

Cole laughs sheepishly. “Yeah, that’s…that’s us, I guess. Sorry about that. We’re paying for it all, don’t worry.”

“What?” Skylor blinks. Oh no, no way. The ninja have done enough for her, the least she can do is cover a couple bags of popcorn and like ten things of M&M’s. “No, I got it. I owe you guys, anyways.”

Cole bristles. “No way. We owe you, if anything. The amount of times you’ve covered our tab at the noodle shop?”

“How about the amount of times you’ve saved my noodle shop?” Skylor shoots back. “That outweighs a few measly tabs.”

“The only reason we had to save it was because we were there in the first place,” Cole points out. “We’re danger magnets.”

“I’m sorry, I’m the daughter of Chen, remember?” Skylor huffs. “I can attract enemies all by myself.”

“Not as many as we do,” Cole says. “Also! You helped us beat Chen, and get Zane back. We’re eternally indebted to you.”

Skylor narrows her eyes. “Only after I stabbed you all in the back. So I eternally owe you.”

“Bold of you to assume we haven’t all stabbed each other in the back at some point,” Cole scoffs. “Trust me, you’re nowhere as bad as Lloyd — he like, single-handedly ruined our whole month by letting a bunch of snakes out.”

Skylor pauses at that, torn between refuting his argument and asking how in the world Lloyd, of all people, could possibly manage to wreak enough havoc to—

Actually, she doesn’t have any trouble believing that at all. But to be sure— “Lloyd let the Serpentine out? All by himself?”

Cole looses a bit of his fire, and scuffs his shoe awkwardly across the sidewalk. “I mean, we did give him a pretty hard time when he was like, eight years old and homeless and starving, so uh, it might’ve been a little...provoked.”

“FSM’s sake,” Skylor mutters, staring at the sky and trying not to be surprised, because she really shouldn’t by now. “I can’t believe you guys are all still alive.”

“Neither can we, if it helps,” Cole shrugs, grinning. “But you know, technically—”

“If you make another ghost joke, we’re skipping the cake section,” Skylor says, firmly.

Cole sulks. “Jay would’ve made a ghost joke,” he mutters.

“Jay also got you hit in the face by a bat, so his judgement is questionable as it is,” Skylor shakes her head. “Oh! There’s a drugstore right here, wanna hit that instead?”

“Sure,” Cole says. “As long as it’s not…oh.”

Skylor makes it another three steps before she realizes that Cole’s fallen behind. Confused, she turns to stare at him where he’s frozen on the sidewalk, looking up at the bright red drugstore sign and biting his lip.

“Everything okay back there?” Skylor says, wondering if he didn’t get hit in the head harder than he’s let on. Cole nods, but he also takes several steps back out of the streetlight, hiding himself from view of the store.

“Here’s an idea,” he says, suddenly. “How about we go anywhere else.”

Skylor stares at him, a sinking feeling in her chest coupled with the slowly-growing-familiar sense of déjà-vu. “Cole.” He doesn’t meet her eyes, and Skylor sighs. “Please tell me you haven’t been banned from somewhere, too.”

“It’s not just me, Lloyd and Jay also got banned,” Cole snaps, before realizing his mistake and ducking his head.

“You’re kidding me,” Skylor says flatly, looking back at the drugstore, then to Cole. “This is like, the shadiest drugstore on this side on Ninjago. How?”

Cole mumbles something under his breath, and Skylor strains to make it out. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I kind of, um, threw Lloyd through their wall,” Cole mutters again, looking as if he’d like very much to disappear entirely into the street side. Which is funny, because—

His sentence finally registers, and Skylor blinks rapidly. “Wait, you what?”

Cole’s eyes widen, and waves his arms quickly. “Not like — not like Garmadon-throwing him through a wall! He was fine after.”

Skylor has a brief, bizarre kind of moment to digest the fact that there is a distinction for throwing the youngest of their team through a wall, before Cole continues.

“I was aiming for the window — that one right there, see? The robbers were already on the move, so Lloyd was like ‘launch me, Cole’ and I said ‘great idea’, but we were also maybe high on adrenaline at the time and I forgot how much of my lava punch I had going, so I overshot and ended up smashing him through their wall, a little bit.”

“You smashed him through their wall. Just a little bit.”

“Hey, it worked. He took out all five guys in one go and only had a tiny concussion after—”

“How do you even have a tiny concussion—”

“I still don’t get why they were so mad, I mean we stopped the robbery! Sure, half their storefront wall sort of collapsed afterwards, but like, we got their money back.”

“So that’s why they were closed six months for renovations,” Skylor groans into her hands.

Cole crosses his arms, glaring stubbornly at the store’s sign. “It wasn’t six months,” he protests. “It was only like, four. I don’t see how that gives them the right to ban us for life.”

“For life—” Skylor can’t decide if she wants to laugh at him, or cry because her list of places she can hang out with the ninja is shrinking faster than she’d thought possible. She finally blows her breath out, rubs a hand across her face, and glances back down at the shopping list.

“You aren’t banned from the one on eighth street, are you?”

Cole bites his lips. “We’re uh, banned from all of them. It’s a chain store, so…”

“Of course,” Skylor sighs. “Walmart it is, then.”

And if anyone pesters them about being late, she’s going to ask how many times, exactly, somebody’s smashed Lloyd through a wall. Because really. This is getting ridiculous.

4. Bed Bath & Beyond

Thursday is normally her day off, but whatever she had for dinner last night gave her freaky dreams, so Skylor ends up puttering around the shop early that morning just to take her mind off it. It’s a bit overcast outside, and the forecast predicts rain, so Skylor’s already making plans to curl up in her bed and watch movies all day, and maybe get a bit of laundry done.

She should know better.

It’s a commonly known fact that the ninja, Kai especially, would do pretty much anything for their pseudo-little brother. Skylor’s actually heard Kai, on multiple occasion, threaten to die for Lloyd, then immediately try and make it reality. No one ever really appreciates that, Lloyd especially, but Skylor can give him credit for trying.

However, it’s a commonly overlooked fact that Lloyd would do anything for his pseudo-older siblings. It’s an even more commonly overlooked fact that Lloyd is the spawn of satan, and was raised at a boarding school for future villains and terrible children. Combined, these two facts mean that while you should definitely fear Lloyd trying to die for you, you should probably fear him trying to look out for you more, because it’s likely going to end with somebody dead. Or at least the total disruption of your plans for the day, as Skylor opens the shop windows to come face with an absolutely terrifying expression on Lloyd’s face, followed up by a deadly calm “Kai came home sad last night.”

Skylor scrubs at her eyes, and thinks, it’s too early for this.

A while back, when she was still stuck with her jerk of a father, Skylor might have found Lloyd’s part-Oni expression of doom intimidating. Now, however, she just rolls her eyes, and sticks one of the little ‘50% Off!’ stickers she’s been putting on rice cakes across his forehead.

“The dog died in the last movie we saw last night,” she explains, as Lloyd sputters at her.

He pauses, nose wrinkling. “Oh,” he says. “Boo.”

“Yeah,” she says, stepping back and allowing him to neatly front-flip through her window. Darned show-off kid, she thinks despairingly, watching him land perfectly on her freshly-waxed floors.

“Well, you’re good then, I guess,” he says, expression lightening. “That makes sense. How many movies did you make it into this time, by the way?”

“Only four this time,” Skylor sighs, turning to plaster the rest of her stickers on the nearly-expired rice cake packages. “We caught the beginning of that new superhero movie, then the opening fight of some spy movie, and the middle of that one horror movie with the dolls.” Lloyd shudders. “Yeah, Kai wasn’t a fan either. Anyways, we made it into this new romance one, but we ran into a theater employee on the way in and Kai had a guilt attack, so we stayed until the end of that one.”

Lloyd tsks. “Oh, Kai. And he’s so sold on his bad boy image.”

“One day he’ll embrace the fact that he’s just a big softie,” Skylor nods. “One of these days.”

“Yeah, when hell freezes over,” Lloyd snorts. He glances around at the empty shop, then back at her. “Hey, today’s your day off, right?”

Skylor gets a sinking kind of feeling in her stomach at that, alarm bells going off in the back of her head. “It might be,” she says, warily.

“Good,” Lloyd grins. “You should come to Bed Bath and Beyond with us, then.”

Well, she wasn’t expecting that. “Why…would you be going there?” she asks, blankly. Do they have a secret ninja weapon bargain bin she’s been missing out on? Is Bed Bath & Beyond secretly hosting an illegal crime ring she’s been unaware of? Does she need to return the shower curtain rings she bought there last week on basis of being a good citizen?

“Zane froze the blender solid before practice this morning,” Lloyd explains, his mouth twisting a bit. “We were making smoothies and someone accidentally brought up the Never Realm.”

“Ouch,” Skylor winces sympathetically. She’s still not heard the entire story of what went down during the ninja’s jaunt out of realm, besides a whole lot of panicked texts from Pixal and half-explanations from Kai, but she knows it wasn’t fun, especially for poor Zane.

“Yeah,” Lloyd sighs. “So now our blender is dead and we can’t make smoothies anymore, so we’re buying a new one before Nya can start strangling people. Wanna come?”

Skylor eyes him shrewdly. At face, it’s an innocent enough request. She’s certainly been invited to worse places than a household furnishings store, and picking up a blender is quite possibly the simplest thing the ninja have ever asked her to do. Which probably just means it’s going to go horribly and the store’s going to blow up ten minutes in, but hey, Skylor’s day was looking pretty boring anyway.

“Sure, why not,” she shrugs. “Lemme stick the last of these on, and I’m in. Just — hey, no, I’m selling those!”

Lloyd freezes in place, the rice cake package dangling from his fingers. He gives her the most pathetically sad-eyed look she’s ever seen, and not for the first time, Skylor finds herself wondering how this is the same kid who runs a highly-skilled ninja team of unimaginable power.

“Just the one,” she finally relents, because Skylor is a spineless weakling when it comes to puppy eyes, apparently. Lloyd beams, snatching the cakes up happily. “And just because you look like a starving vagrant again.”

“I do not,” Lloyd protests, through a muffled mouthful of rice cake. “I’m just super in shape. I’m jacked as heck.”

Skylor rolls her eyes. “Sure you are, you — hey, I said just one!”

***********************

So Skylor ends up at Bed Bath & Beyond on her day off, five minutes after the store’s opened for the day, and already wishing she’d slept in later.

Nya brings her coffee, though, and their bright-eyed enthusiasm at reclaiming their means of smoothie-making is infectious, so Skylor finds herself in high spirits as they walk through the store doors, almost to the point where she lets Lloyd go for stealing all her rice cakes.

However, she’s already let him get away with too much as it is, so Skylor decides to take her revenge by ruffling Lloyd’s hair, before informing the sales lady that it’s her “darling little brother’s thirteenth birthday, and he’s finally outgrown his kiddie bed, could you point us to the big kid ones, please?”

Lloyd’s attempts at strangling her are thwarted by Nya as the lady smiles airily, before pointing them to the back, and Zane has to drag Kai along with them before he suffocates on the laughter he’s choking back.

“Family shopping trips are always so much fun,” Jay remarks, as they browse the bedding section, having been successfully distracted by the animal-shaped pillows. They’ve already had to flee the lamp section, after Lloyd and Jay started having a little too much fun, despite Kai’s despair over being robbed yet again of a new lava lamp.

“One day,” he mourns. “One day, I will own another.”

Skylor pats his back consolingly. “I’m sure that’s what everyone else whose lava lamps got smashed by a giant stone colossi say.”

“I still don’t see why we can’t invest in a cappuccino maker,” Nya pouts, as they pass the coffee appliances section. “Look, there’s one on sale, too!”

“Because you can and will abuse the use of it, and then someone will end up going to the hospital for extreme heart rate elevation,” Zane glares pointedly at her. Skylor smothers a laugh as Nya scowls.

“I’m not that bad,” she grumbles under her breath, only for the others to all chime “ice cube incident” in unison. Nya goes a dark shade of red and glares at the floor as if she’s capable of lighting it on on fire with her eyes, but she doesn’t argue back.

Skylor doesn’t even want to know.

“Alright, here are our options,” Cole announces, when they’ve finally fought their way to the blender shelves. “We can get the same one we had, just a little smaller, or we can get this other one that’s half-off.” He squints at both tags. “Having looked at our bank account recently, I vote the half-off one.”

“No way,” Jay argues. “Do you see how small that one is? I can’t make my triple-espresso energy-drink smoothie with that!”

Lloyd stares at him in concern. “That’s…probably a good thing?”

Jay glares at him. “You’re one to talk, Mr. night owl.”

“I’m with Jay, that one’s way too small,” Nya says. “It won’t do.”

“What, and the other one’s better?” Kai shoots back. “Look how cheap it is, I could break this thing in my sleep.”

“The online reviews for both are perfectly fine,” Zane adds, half-heartedly, as if he already knows they’re all going to ignore that particular statement.

“What about this one?” Jay says, his eyes lighting up as he gestures to the extra-large, fancy blender. “Think of all the smoothies we could make, Cole. Think of the milkshakes.”

Cole pinches the bridge of his nose. “We are not investing in some fancy blender, just for you to complain it’s too complicated five seconds in.”

Skylor crosses over to the blenders, glancing at both. “I mean, you could always just return it…later…” She trails off, realizing that everyone’s suddenly gone deadly silent. She looks up, and starts as she comes face to face with the store manager, who is frozen in place, his mouth half-open as he stares at them with wide eyes. Behind her, Skylor is highly aware of six ninja going similarly still, all utterly quiet.

“You,” the manager finally squeaks out. “You are’t supposed to — you can’t be in here, not again—”

“On second thought, let’s get a blender next week,” Cole says, quickly.

“Yeah, I can live without smoothies a little longer,” Jay agrees, rapidly paling.

Skylor’s at a loss. “What’s going—”

Before she can finish that sentence, Kai and Nya both have hands on her arm and pull, hauling her along as they break into a dead sprint for the exit.

“Explain later!” Kai yelps, dodging employees as the manager shakes his fist at them, his yelling following them through the doors.

“I filed six restraining orders! Six!” he shrieks as they slip out. “Do you know how long that took?! Two of them don’t even exist in the legal system!”

Skylor doesn’t miss the incredibly unsubtle fist bump Lloyd and Zane share, nor the near-tears  sigh of despair from Cole.

She really, really doesn’t want to know.

***********************

Except that maybe she does, so there’s nothing stopping her from asking as they walk home, having bought smoothies from the corner store instead (that they are not banned from, which Skylor is starting to think might be miraculous).

“I don’t know why I’m surprised at this point, but how did you get banned this time?” she asks them, after a particularly long sip of smoothie. “Did you demolish half the store there, too?”

The ninja are silent for a moment, all refusing to meet her eyes. Then—

“It was Jay’s fault,” Cole declares.

Jay whirls on him, his expression wounded. “I trusted you,” he whines. “And you — you bed bath and betrayed me.”

“Because you bed bath and blew up the bedding aisle!”

“It was the kitchen electrics aisle, give me some credit.”

“Oh, because that’s so much better.”

“It is, do you know how hard I’d have to be trying to blow up the bedding aisle? It’s all weighted blankets and like, silk and stuff, no conduction at all—”

Skylor returns to her previous stance on not wanting to know, sips her smoothie in silence as they break into loud arguing in the middle of the street, and hopes once again that no one’s getting any pictures of this.

5. Jamanakai Village Candy Shop

Friday’s her busy day, so Skylor’s spared any chaos other than a jammed mixing machine for the day. It doesn’t come to a head until Saturday, when she cautiously accepts the ninjas' invitation to scout out potential terrorist activity in Jamanakai.

The terrorists turn out to be punk kids who got a little too obsessed with the idea of the Golden Master, which is an unfortunate choice of role model for them, when they have to face up to the ninja. Zane just looks mildly annoyed though, and Lloyd stares into the sun for a full minute before rolling his eyes, so the kids make it out alive.

“We weren’t going to kill them, geez,” Jay says. “Maybe just…lecture them, a bit.”

“Oh yeah, lecture them,” Kai scowls, cracking his knuckles. “The Golden Master, are they kidding?”

“To be fair, they don’t have the same experiences we do,” Cole points out, but he doesn’t look too opposed to the knuckle-cracking, either.

“No harm was done,” Zane says, a bit wearily. “We should simply let it go."

“I dunno, I say we should’ve hung them from a roof for a bit,” Lloyd says, evenly.

The other ninja all cringe in unison, except for Nya, who smothers a coughing sort of laugh. Skylor stares at them, bewildered. “Why would you hang them from a roof?”

“Not sure,” Lloyd says, his lips twitching. “Probably because crime doesn’t pay, muchacho, or something like that—”

“Alright, alright, we get it,” Kai says hastily, clapping a hand over Lloyd’s mouth.

“The guys would know,” Nya smirks, ignoring the looks of utter betrayal she’s getting. “That’s what they did to Lloyd, wasn’t it?”

“Nya, why,” Jay moans into his hands.

“You — hung Lloyd from a roof?” Skylor repeats, thrown for a loop. “Why on earth would you do that? What if he like, fell and died?”

“He was fine,” Cole assures her, hastily.

Lloyd is quick to protest, glaring at them. “No I wasn’t, it was literally scarring! Look, I got this scar from scraping my arm when I fell — oh, wait, oops, that one’s from the Never Realm, it’s this one here.” Lloyd winces as he finishes, suddenly looking contrite as he shoots Zane an apologetic look. “The Never Realm one was from Boreal though, don’t worry.”

Zane looks down, his face shadowed. “It was still my—”

“Nuh-uh,” Jay cuts over him, wagging his finger. “Remember the rule?”

Zane hesitates, looking as if he’d very much like to remember no such thing, but he finally slumps, relenting. “Scars dealt to each other while under the influence of malicious possession by person and/or ancient malevolent artifacts do not count, regardless of extenuating circumstances or deep inner psychological issues that may be brought to light during said influence,” he quotes dully, on a defeated sort of sigh.

Skylor doesn’t know whether to be impressed at that, or depressed that it needed existence in the first place.

“Exactly,” Jay nods. “Which means that any scars from you, Zane, or Lloyd — oh, and Kai, I guess — and Cole, technically, with the Hypnobrai that one time— wow, that’s, hm, that’s a lot of us.”

“If you count the dark matter, we’ve all been possessed,” Zane says, drily.

“Not me!” Kai says, mock-cheerfully.

Jay shakes his head. “Nobody got scars while we were on dark matter! I checked.”

“Why are you saying it like we were on drugs or something?”

“Speak for yourself,” Lloyd scowls. “I’ve still got that stupid ankle one.” He glares at the offending ankle, as if it’s personally disappointed him.

“That was the Overlord, not us,” Nya reminds him. “And uh, your dad, technically.”

Lloyd’s scowl just deepens, his eyebrows tilting downwards hotly. “If I had a dollar for every scar that’s from my dad…”

“I hear you,” Skylor sighs. ���Dad scars are the worst. They really know where to hit.”

“Right? It’s always personal with them,” Lloyd shakes his head. “Dads are the worst.”

A beat passes before they both realize the others have fallen quiet. Her and Lloyd blink, and Skylor fights back the urge to cringe at the looks they’re now receiving.

“Well,” Jay says, bleakly. “This is a, um, miserable turn.”

“Hey, hey, no sad faces,” Lloyd scolds, reaching for Kai’s face, which is indeed sporting a pathetically teary-eyed kind of look. “Get that look off your face, off, off—”

“I’m not — stoppit — I’m just— hey, stop it— that’s my face, you brat—”

“Guys, c’mon, cut it out, you’re making a scene,” Cole scolds, pulling them both apart. “How about we stop and get ice cream before we go, okay? To like, cheer us up. Because that was completely depressing, no offense, guys.”

“None taken,” Skylor says, as Lloyd nods in agreement. Cole looks relieved, even if Kai’s still looking a little weepy, and he directs them down another street, heading toward a brightly labeled ice cream shop. Skylor can see tiny rows of candy inside, and there are a bunch of kids gathered around the little stand the owner’s set up at the door. It’s a cute place, all in all — the candy looks good, and it seems pretty cheap.

So it makes zero sense that Lloyd, of all people, would suddenly go painfully tense in the middle of the street, and refuse to take another step forward.

“I can’t go in there,” he whispers.

Skylor’s having that sense of déjà vu again. The rest of the ninja trade confused glances.

“Uh, Lloyd?” Kai says, hesitantly. “They sell candy in there, you know.”

“I know,” Lloyd grinds out, his teeth clenched painfully together. “I’ve been in there before.”

“You have?” Cole frowns. “You — oh.” Realization dawns in his eyes, and he’s suddenly biting his lip, holding back laughter. “Oh, I forgot.”

“Forgot wha—” Jay looks between the two of them, then back at the shop, before something sparks in his eyes as well, and he doubles over in laughter.

“Shut up,” Lloyd hisses.

“Why are we laughing at Lloyd,” Skylor finally sighs, as Kai and Zane break into barely-stifled giggles as well, and Nya rolls her eyes.

“So, um,” Lloyd swallows, shifting anxiously from side to side. “You know how I said they hung me from a roof? There might’ve, uh, been a reason for that.”

“Of course there was,” Skylor says.

“I kind of threatened them, a little bit, and uh, tried to steal half their shop, one time.”

“Of course you did.”

“Lloyd,” Nya sighs. “That was forever ago.”

“I stole from them,” Lloyd bites out. “If I show my face in there again, they’ll kill me."

“I highly doubt they will resort to murder, Lloyd,” Zane says, flatly. “Besides, you did not actually succeed in stealing anything, because we caught you and hung you from a roof. Remember?”

“Yeah, and then I came back with the Serpentine, and made it worse!” Lloyd exclaims. “Just go in without me, I’ll sit out here and cry.”

“We’re not just gonna leave you outside,” Kai rolls his eyes. “C’mon, let’s mend some old wounds. Just go inside and apologize.”

“I would literally rather die.”

“Lloyd, seriously.”

“I’ve done it before, don’t test me.”

“Lloyd.”

“You can’t make me, I’ll fight you—”

“Alright, alright, we’ll find a different shop!”

***********************

“Okay, I have to know,” Skylor finally asks, as they pass the outskirts of the village, heading back to the Bounty. “How many places are you all banned from, in total? Because this is ridiculous. I can’t take you anywhere.”

“I mean, you can’t take us anywhere even without the bans, anyways,” Cole says wearily. “To be fair.”

“We’re not that bad,” Lloyd protests, only to wilt immediately under Skylor’s stare. “There are just…a few places…”

“Zane, how many is it now,” Nya asks, rubbing her temples.

Zane is quiet for a moment, slowly ticking off his fingers as he stares upwards. “Did we ever decide if that one museum counted?”

“The vote was yes,” Jay mutters.

“And the Explorer’s Club, did we decide that one?”

“I’d say that’s a pretty hard ban,” Lloyd winces.

Nya huffs, crossing her arms. “I still say it doesn’t count, because like, everyone’s banned from there, with their stupid stuck-up membership requirements.”

Zane takes this into account, his eyebrows furrowing. “That leaves us with…seventeen places we cannot return to, I believe? Unless I missed one.”

Skylor’s left wordless, gaping at them. She knew there was a lot, but seventeen—?!

“I’m almost a hundred percent sure we’re also banned from the Never Realm,” Kai points out. Zane gives him the iciest look Skylor’s ever seen. Kai simply shrugs. “What? Just stating the facts.”

Lloyd frowns. “I don’t think we are? I mean, Akita wouldn’t—”

“Oh, Akita wouldn’t,” Jay cuts over him, a gleam in his eyes. “Would she, casanova?”

Lloyd goes scarlet, sputtering. “I told you, she kissed me! On the cheek! I just stood there, you can’t—” He buries his face in his hands, and despite her amusement (and rampant curiosity, because this is Lloyd and kissing), Skylor feels bad for him. “I can’t believe I ever told any of you about that,” he whines, sounding tragically upset with himself.

“You were the one having a mental breakdown over it,” Nya reminds him, almost gently. “You need to work on setting boundaries, bud.”

“It’s not like I didn’t tell her I had horrible issues with romance!” Lloyd throws his hands up, frustrated. “Because I did, in painfully honest detail—”

“And yet you refuse to open up to me about it,” Kai says plaintively.

“Turn into a dog for a bit, you might get lucky,” Lloyd grumbles.

Skylor doesn’t want to know. She really, really doesn’t want to know. “Well,” she finally says. “I do know one place you aren’t banned from.”

They all look up at her, and Skylor shakes her head. “You fly me back to the shop in time for dinner, and noodles are on the house tonight.”

Six faces brighten considerably. “Seriously?” Cole says. “Skylor, you’re an angel.”

“Seriously, the best person ever—”

“Our favorite cryptid orange ninja there ever was—”

“Yeah, yeah, keep flattering me,” Skylor sighs, trying not to smile, and failing woefully.

She doesn’t know why she still hangs out with these people, getting banned from everywhere in the city. What a bunch of nerds.

[littlepumkinseed]

More FanFiction writing

Of course it’s Moroha X Hisui

(Guys they need a ship name-)

I’m not a good writer, just so everyone knows but

I love this pair so much even though their actions with each other have been small.

So this one sets place after they find their parents,

First off I don’t know how they're going to find them.

Second I’m just going to assume there was an amazing battle and they won, yay! And now Towa and her gang and the Inu gang, plus Kohaku-

And third I wrote this before I watched episode 5, and I did not see the Miroku cameo so just assume he was trapped along with everyone else.

Warning for Inu’s mouth

Everyone now are on their way home.

The newly freed parents are now beginning to notice the little things between their kids.

🥀 A Little Thing 🥀

God she was tiny. Tinier than Kagome and that was saying a lot when Inuyasha considered the size of his wife. Kagome stood right under his chin but Moroha, his baby girl, stood an inch or two under his shoulder.

She was a little thing, Moroha looked like a mini Kagome…. But she was just like him.

Now that worried him.

She was a handful when she was a child, he had always worried about her, but now he was now terrified.

Yesterday to him Moroha was only a four year old, small, wild, and innocent. Inuyasha had promised her the day she was born that she would never have to live what he’s lived through. That she would be raised with both a mother and a father with as much love that a child needed and more, and he failed. He wasn’t there, and she didn’t even have Kagome. She’s been alone for ten years.

Ten god damn years.

She’s grown up the same way he had, so it only makes sense that she would be just like him.

In the final battle Inuyasha noticed how Moroha charged in, he saw her attitude, how she seemed to have copied his best moves without ever learning from him. She fought with a sword like a pro even though when she was four she only ever played with a wooden sword. Her laugh though, that was all Kagome.

When she was four he had a lot of worries but now that she was older he had over a hundred.

His number one worry right now though was boys. The boy he’s worried about the most right now is Hisui, the monks own mini copy. Also from the talk of his brothers twins, it seems like Koga might have his own son.

Just his luck.

But sense he hasn’t met the little prick Hisui is the only one on his hit list.

He began to see the little things between Hisui and Moroha on their way home from the final battle.

Hisui was quick to offer Moroha help if looked like she needed it.

Moroha constantly teased Hisui, mostly about his hair. It looked neat and well groomed in the front but when it was up in the back it wasn’t small like Mirokus, Hisui’s hair was fluffy and tangled. Moroha tended to tug on it.

When the group was walking both Hisui and Moroha would slow down to joke and talk in the back.

Near the second day on their way back home they stopped by an inn. They were tired, some of them still even a little injured so they decided to stay the night. The Inn had a bath house, Sesshomaru's twins and Moroha went first, Hisui went with Kohaku to discuss with the demon slayers. Sango stayed, she said she was retired and didn’t want to spend her entire life fighting especially because she already lost ten years of it.

Sense all the kids have left he was going to pull Kagome aside to not only kiss her, because he’s only done that once in the past two days and he has ten years of kissing to catch up on, but he was going to tell her about the little Hisui thing but apparently Miroku wanted to bring it up first.

The moment Hisui left, Sango was spreading out the sleeping mats, and Kagome was sorting through her old yellow backpack, now Morohas.

“Isn’t this surprising people?! Not only are we alive and well, but! Our children are now young adults! And we are planning a wedding!”

Inuyasha chokes.

“Miroku what are you talking about?” Asked a skeptical Sango.

Inuyasha knew what he was talking about.

“Miroku, you've been back for less than a week and you're already playing matchmaker?” Asked his Kagome.

He was going to have to kill Miroku before he killed Hisui.

“Kagome from my experience you're the matchmaker here.” Bozo gestured to him and Sango. This caused his wife to laugh.

Maybe Inuyasha could snap his neck and make a run for it. Grap Moroha along the way, maybe Kagome would understand.

“Who’s getting married to Miroku?” Sango asked getting up from the bedding, crossing her arms.

“Why, Hisui and Moroha!”

…

“MIROKU-!”

“That’s wonderful!”

“And how would you know that husband of mine?”

“Kagome?! Why is this wonderful?! She’s fourteen!” Inuyasha practically screeched at his wife. “Calm down Inuyasha! She doesn’t have to marry him it’s just cute she has a boyfriend-“

“That’s what your friends from the future called me and we got married!”

“Well Inuyasha in our era it is appropriate for girls of 14 to wed.”

“Shut up Bouzo! In Kagome's era girls got married over the age of 18! You’ve been trying to get Hisui with Moroha since the day she was born!”

“Miroku tell me how you would know our son is marrying Moroha?” Sango hands were now on her hips as she stomped over to her husband.

“Don’t you see? The way he looks at her is the way I look at you Sango, and Moroha looks at him the way Kagome looks at you Inuyasha.”

“Well isn’t that beautiful? Too bad your son isn’t fit for Moroha.”

“Inuyasha! Hisui is a nice young man!”

“HE'S A SMALL MIROKU KAGOME”

“Um from what uncle Kohaku has told me I take after my mom more…”

The adults in the room froze.

Turning slowly they faced the sliding screen door. There stood an amused Kohaku and a flustered Hisui.

“You take after me..?” Sango asked quietly

The rather red Hisui gave a simple nod.

…

“OH THANK GOD” Sango cried and ran to her son and dragged him in an embrace.

“What's with all the commotion?” Towas voiced echoed from the hallway, coming around the corner the young youth stood with a towel around her shoulders, her white hair still wet from the bath. She reminded Inuyasha almost nothing of his brother.

“From what I can hear it’s about Hisui, what do you do this time?” Setsuna is the one that reminded him of his brother the most. She makes him shiver with her cold glare.

“Oh don’t yell at him Setsu!” His daughter's teasing voice rose as she pushed past the twins. Her hair was down, now she really was a mini Kagome.

Mini Kagome skipped over to Hisui, her wet hair left droplets of water on the ground as she moved.

Sango chuckled as Moroha elbowed her son, Hisui looked absolutely mortified.

Maybe if he’s scared of him Inuyasha wouldn’t have to kill him, he’ll just stay away from Moroha.

“I’m sure they're just teasing him! Isn’t that right Hisui? Wow your red.”

“Is someone going to tell us what you guys did to Hisui” Towa asked as she walked over to a sleeping mat.

“Well you see-“

“Don’t tell them Miroku!”

“But I-“

“I This stupidity has gone on long enough.”

“Why are you still here anyways!” Inuyasha hollered looking out the sliding door on the other side of their room where Sesshomaru stood outside looking at the forest.

“I’m here for my offspring.”

“Then why don’t you join them inside?”

“Because I would rather not get caught up in another one of your groups' love quarrels.”

Inuyasha was going to kill everyone but his wife and daughter. This

Was

Not

A love discussion, Moroha isn’t in love with Hisui. She isn’t going to marry anyone! They are going to go home and he’s going to raise her the best way he can with what little time he has left-

Oh god. Inuyasha sniffed the air, as did his daughter in the background.

He knew that scent and apparently so did his daughter.

“Sorry to cut the conversation short but I got to go!” Moroha yelped as she ran past Inuyasha and through the door passed Sesshomaru who was also sniffing the new scent that had entered the air.

“Inuyasha what is it?” Kagome asked besides him

“Fucking. Wolfs.” Inuyasha growled as he stomped out of the inn next to his brother as two whirlwinds zoomed over the grassy hills.

Coming to a stop the first whirlwind was easy to see.

Koga.

Besides him a young youth appeared from the wind. One with a matching face of Koga’s.

Fuck. The wolf pup had a wolf pup.

This isn’t going to be a little thing.

-Fin

@mandirox @misteria247 @nat-the-cat-123 @hopidoodle @dreamerredstreak @adorablemoroha @crazyimmunity92 @beanyboobee @nectarine500 @raevofdamned

[astoldbygingersnaps]

Harper’s 2020 Fic Wrap-Up

my very good friend and incredibly talented felow writer @sagemoderocklee came up with the idea of doing an end of the year fic wrapup in an attempt to polish the turd known as 2020, and since i actually managed to get some writing done this year i figured, why not jump on the bandwagon? 

a lot of super duper fucking shitty things happened in 2020, but i will always be proud that in this incredibly chaotic, stressful, and challenging year i managed to produce almost 180k of content (and that’s not even counting the writing i started in 2020 but haven’t published yet). so, to celebrate what’s been a pretty big achievement for me, i wanted to go through the various projects i’ve spent the last twelve months working on and give a preview of my plans for 2021.

let’s jump in!

projects i worked on/completed in 2020:

first off, let’s start with the beast to end all beasts, my personal baby, and honestly probably the reason most people follow me -- star trek au:

something bigger than the sky (shiita; 44,163 words; completed): 

i’ve said this before, but the whole idea for star trek au was literally just a joke between me and my-then girlfriend, now-fiancee, and eternal shiita enabler alexa aka @durintrash (by the way, if you follow me for my fics and you DON’T follow alexa for her corresponding art WHAT, exactly, are you doing with your life????) where i sat in a space-themed diner and said ‘haha imagine itachi as a vulcan.’ but then i blinked and suddenly somehow i’d written the prologue and the first chapter of SBTTS in the span of a week. it’s like i was possessed by a fanfic demon.

it sounds super cheesy but i honestly can’t say enough how important this fic has been to me and how much it’s pushed me to be a more productive and more dedicated writer. previously i spent a lot of time Thinking about writing and occasionally i’d put a few words on the page and then i’d go... do... something... else. but star trek au was the first idea i loved enough that it actually pushed me to write and keep writing and not give up even when i was confronted with things like writer’s block and worry over the quality of my writing. so thank you, star trek au, for being the light in a very dark year for me. 

by the end of SBTTS, i felt like i accomplished everything i wanted to do with the story’s beginning installment: i introduced all the characters and set the groundwork for their development; i showed what life on the corvus was like and how starfleet, the federation, and the universe functioned; and, more than anything, i was able to sketch out both the main protagonists -- itachi and shisui -- with all their strengths and flaws, show their relationship to one another, and hint at how that relationship would progress. 

all the stars are closer (shiita; 75,195 words; completed)

considering how slow i used to be at writing, i thought it would be, like, twelve years before i managed to get to the second part in the series. BUT then covid happened and i half-lost, half-quit my job, and like a lot of people this year i ended up with a lot of free time on my hands. and so, like a fucking demon, i finished this part in two and a half months. 

when i originally planned this part out, i really thought it would be a lot shorter and a lot lighter atmosphere-wise than it turned out. instead, this second section of the story ended up being pretty meaty in terms of length and in subject.

that said, overall, i’m really happy with how ATSAC turned out. i loved the way the characters progressed, how the relationships deepened, and how we were able to see this universe grow bigger and more complicated. and i’m very satisifed with how it set the stage for part three, which takes us to...

lovers alone wear sunlight (shiita; 41,518 words; in progress)

there’s... a lot about this part that i just can’t talk about yet, a) because it isn’t finished and b) because it contains some of the biggest plot points in the entire series thus far. if you’ve been keeping up with the stardates thus far (which i encourage you to do!) you know what part three is leading up to: itachi leaving the corvus and the dissolution of shisui and itachi’s growing relationship. 

with that in mind, i’m... more than a little terrified about writing part three, which is why the third chapter has been languishing in my google drive for months now. (and also why i started not one, but TWO new fics to cope with my writer’s block. whoops.) chapter three is where all the parts come together and shit hits the fan, and i can only hope that everyone will be as excited to read it as i am to publish it. 

next up, the two other projects i began this year:

salvation comes only in our dreams (shiita; canon divergence; 16,835 words; in progress)

for a long time, i’ve wanted to write something that’s actually set in the naruto universe and works to correct a lot of the flaws that i see in the series. there are a lot of things that bother me about naruto, but i think one of the things that frustrates me the most is the really messy and in some ways offensive resolution to the uchiha coup plot thread, and i wanted to write a story that dealt with the complicated themes of the series--imperialism, oppression, genocide, child soldiers--but, like, didn’t suck and completely drop the ball. thus, the massacre au was born. 

my main goal was to tell a story that showed a lot of these characters in ways we’ve never seen them before, specifically itachi. i didn’t want to write itachi as just an idealist who suffers and Suffers AND SUFFERS for konoha yet still remains loyal to the village for some unfathomable reason like he is in the series. i wanted to write an itachi that was sharper, more jaded, and more suspicious of the world around him, but overall was still a good person with a kind heart. and for shisui, well... obviously there’s a lot going on there, too. 

this is easily the darkest story i’ve ever written, and as the plot thickens it will certainly get darker with relationship dynamics that are complicated and unhealthy At Best. i hope that as the story goes on it’s a ride people continue to enjoy, as i was super pleasantly surprised at how popular this fic became (compared to my usual stats, at least) 

oceans between us (shiita; alternate universe; 15,039 words; in progress)

it’s good to know that i continue to be the most ridiculously niche version of myself as yes, i wrote a fucking shiita atonement au. 

with each fic i write i try to have a very specific voice that suits the particular piece and distinguishes it from other stories that include the same characters. for example, star trek au chapters tend to be more fun and light-hearted (especially shisui POV chapters) and lean more into the action movie and sci-fi adventure feel of the star trek universe, while the massacre au is written in a way that’s much heavier and guided by itachi’s emotions and experiences. my main goal with this story was to give it the same romantic, operatic, almost hazy quality that the movie has, which reflects the period setting and also the nature of this grand tragic love story. 

i knew from the beginning that there were going to be a lot of things that i cut from the film in my retelling, like the lola subplot and obviously the setting of pre-wwii england. i also knew i wanted to explore some of the aspects of the film that were implied more than outright stated, like the themes of classism and upper-class privileges. and more than anything i wanted to structure this piece around this idea of tension building and building until it finally snaps and there’s just a world of mess and hurt and loss that affects these two characters in two very different ways. 

also, the sex scene. i haven’t written a sex scene for anything in, like, a decade, so that was a lot of pressure. but i’m happy with how it came out and i think it ended up being an aspect of the story that felt like both a natural progression and necessary to show the affection these two people have for one another.

originally i was just going to end the story with shisui going to jail, but when i told alexa this i genuinely thought she was going to kill me. so, that didn’t happen lmao. but the more i tried to imagine what a second chapter would look like, the more i realized she was right, and it would have been a terrible idea to end the fic there. as for whether or not the final chapter will keep That Ending... who can say?

goals i have for 2021:

finishing lovers alone wear sunlight and, if i’m very lucky, beginning the fourth and second to last part of star trek au (yes, as it currently stands this 160k+ word series is only halfway finished. sorry not sorry)

publishing the next chapter of salvation comes only in our dreams (i don’t know when it will drop. i don’t know anything about this fic. please do not @ me) 

completing oceans between us (the second and final chapter is currently sitting at about 4k words and will probably end up at about 15k in total)

completing and publishing a new fic i’ve started at the very end of 2020, which is the shiita jurassic world au nobody but me and alexa knew they wanted. it’s essentially a 90s romcom with dinosaurs and i cannot Wait to share it. (it’s at about 9k right now and will probably end up being around 20k to 23k in total... maybe...)

FINALLY starting my dream project: the shiita olympics au i’ve been planning for years, where itachi is a figure skater and shisui is a hockey player (i’d like to keep this under 150k but at this point trying to keep my stories at a managable word count is a losing battle)

anyway, that’s it! if you managed to get this far in this very self-indulgent and shameless bit of self promotion, congrats! also, a very big thank you to everyone who’s read my fics, left me kudos and comments, and spent their time on my work, because it really does mean the world to me. 

here’s hoping 2021 is a much healthier and happier year for us all! 

[ggukkieland]

📕BTS Fic Reads - 2020 August

Okay so I’m such a hoe for fics that I probably have about a hundred on queue but I can’t help appreciate all the works that these awesome writers put here on Tumblr and AO3. 

Here’s my attempt to organize my readings - though if my mood fluctuates, I’d just end up going through my reblogged fics for reading or sorting through my watchlist of ongoing/incomplete fics/series

✅ -  done reading   | S (smut) F (fluff) A (angst)

🥕[Ongoing Series - to check weekly]🥕

Dangerous Pairing @nightowls388 - KNJ |  supernatural  au, fantasy au, forbidden romance

[2/?] “Whether you’re a vampire or werewolf, love is still love. Betrayal is still betrayal.”    

Queen Cobra @fantasybangtan - KTH | mafia au, undercover au, arranged marriage, enemies to lovers, thriller, s, f,a

[8/?]  when your boss offers the chance to take down the nation’s most lucrative gang from the inside out, you know you’ll do it no matter what the cost… even if that means entering an arranged marriage with the kingpin himself.

Arranged by obiwrites (AO3) - JHS | arranged marriage, unrequited love, angst, pining, jhs in love with someone else

[19/?] If you thought entering an arranged marriage with the person you love would be a dream, you were in for a rude awakening. Jung Hoseok was far from the doting husband you’d dreamed of and most of it could be chalked up to the fact that he was in love with his best friend. And you are without a shadow of a doubt, not her.

Image, Bad Boy @kittentaegu​ - JJK | badboy, fwb, angst, smut, more angstttt (I binge-read on this for the angst), adorable JJK when he’s not an fboi

[14/?] I chose to read this on AO3. Incomplete, but Ch 14 had such a satisfying ending -  When by chance you walk in on the school’s infamous bad boy, not once, but two different times in one day; your life quickly spirals out of control.

I’ll Sue You, Min Yoongi by hosexi (AO3) - MYG |  neighbors, enemies to lovers, angst, smut, lawyer!reader

[9/10] Yoongi is the neighbor from hell

Whiskey Neat and Whisking Trips by lacielre (AO3) - KTH | comedy, fake dating au, baker!reader, veterinarian!taehyung, funny 😂🤣, ex!Jin

[2/4]  This is a story about the night you poured your heart out to your ex outside his apartment building as a stranger yelled at you to “shut the fuck up,” and that stranger, who was just as wounded as you, was Taehyung, and he needed your help.

His Side, Her Side @scriptaed - JJK | he said, she said, f, a

[11/?] a collective snapshots in time shared between two, whose fates were undeniably intertwined and futures would never come to be  - one last chapter before series ends 😥

Black Swan @softlyjiminie - PJM | professional dancer, enemies to lovers, fake dating, figure skating, s, f, a

[2/?] a life of skating was all you’d ever known, your heart craving the feeling of ice beneath your feet and the light brush of cool air against your skin under thousands of sparkling lights… what a shame, if only you’d known that one night, one accident could rip you from the life you’d grown to love, leaving your career in the unsteady hands of the prince of ballet, park jimin.

The Key to my Drawer @jjungkookislife - KTH | bestfriends to lovers, s, a

[10/?]  A key, a drawer, and a secret Taehyung planned to take to the grave

The Nanny @jjungkookislife - KSJ| lawyer!seokjin, nanny!reader, single dad au

[2/?] Jin hires a nanny for his son, but when he hires you, he gets that and so much more

Acatalepsy @1kook - JJK |   survival au, apocalypse au, s, f

[2/?] Jungkook didn’t understand, and the longer he ponders it, he realizes maybe he never will. Some things are just better left unknown, he supposes. But that didn’t mean one had to face them alone. 

Aphrodite in War @jungblue - JJK | angst, exes au, fake dating au, roommates, sorority/frat wars, college au *this is really good 😍😍*

[2/?] Everyone knew about the war that had been brewing on the edge of campus for the past two years. Sorority versus Fraternity; a showdown for the ages. However, when the escalating antics between them yields the consequence of possible suspensions for both chapters, the presidents of each house must come together to try and figure out how to end this battle… Which is kind of hard, considering they were the ones responsible for it in the first place.

Palate Cleanser @btsmakesmehappy - KTH | agent au, fwb, strangers to lovers, s, f, a

[5/?] Part of The Company series -  Taehyung needs something to take his mind off his broken heart. His best friend, Jimin, suggests that he should meet another woman and the first woman he met was you. Would you help him even though you have your own problem, that you hate men?

Bad Guy @taehoneys - JJK | college au, fratboy au, badboy, good girl(?), 

[3/?] chose to read this on AO3 A certain video circulates the school after your big mistake and you never do mistakes, but you did this time…a big one: J e o n J u n g k o o k

Good Girl Series:  Good Girl || Sweet Girl || Smart Girl || Brave Girl  @bonny-kookoo - JJK |  good girl au, bad boy au, roommates, established relationship, s, f, a

[5/?]  Jeon Jungkook was known to have a specific type when it came to his partners; tall, gorgeous, dominant and older. When a new girl answers to his ad online searching for a roommate, he didn’t quite expect such an innocent being to turn up at his doorstep And what he definitely didn’t expect was his growing interest in her and the feeling of having her under him, all submissive and ready to be ruined. 

Agent of Love @ppersonna - JJK |  social media au, agent au, s, f, a

[1/?] as the FBI agent assigned to your phone, Jungkook keeps a diligent watch. he takes a special interest when you try your hand in online dating AND online sexting. desperate to keep you from bombing yet another potential date, Jungkook breaks his vow of silence to assist you in your plight to get laid.

Irregular Heartbeat @ppersonnakookies - MYG | social media au, surgeon!yoongi, intern!reader, 

[5/?] hot girl meets hot guy at a bar, lets him buy her a drink, then hooks up with him in the bathroom without even asking for his name. your typical friday night cliché. except for the fact that you’re a virgin, and the guy you drunkenly lose your v-card to is your superior at your new job.

Somewhere Only We Know @userseok - JJK | hybrid au, pining, angst, fantasy, smut

Prequel SOWK 1 SOWK 2 [being revised by author] Epilogue [to be posted]

you’ve been chasing after jungkook for years. after a harsh verbal altercation between both of you, you decide to leave him alone and pursue a relationship with someone who seems genuinely interested in you, thinking he would never return your feelings.

Elysee @ironicarmy - KSJ |  angst, drama, CEO!Seokjin, personal assistant

[1/?] Being the CEO of Korea’s largest fashion house is no easy feat. But to be the person behind the man, that being his assistant, is an even harder spot to maintain. In a company filled with affairs, bribery, deceit, lies and blackmail, you must struggle to survive and, eventually, climb your way to the top of the food chain. Seokjin, your boss, trusts you more than anyone, but when exactly does the line between friendly camaraderie blur with carnal desire? 

Beautiful Deception @jiminwreckedme​ - MYG? | mystery, thriller, ex!yoongi, angst, smut

[3/5] When your ex-boyfriend’s wife goes missing, you are the only one who can help him find her. But in a world where everyone is a friend and everyone is a culprit,  how will you find out what happened to the woman he loves?  Without falling for him all over again?

🥕[Completed AUs/Series/Drabbles -  to read]🥕

One Thing Right @hobios - JJK | fake marriage au, childhood friends, enemies to lovers, fluff, angst, slow burn, smut

01  02  03  04  05  06  07  08  09  ✅ (done, read it twice - this is just perfect ⭐ holy grail status)

Carousel @yoonia - MYG | mafia au, arranged marriage, heirs, CEO!Yoongi, suspense

Index: 16 Chapters & Epilogue | Drabbles and short stories |  Playlist |  Fan Edits

*a re-read this holy grail of a fic 🥰

Risk It @kookiesjoonies - JJK | social media au, exes to lovers, angst, smut ✅

Driving Me Wild @joonkookiemonster - JJK | demon prince!JJK, roommate au, comedy, fluff   ✅ (done reading, this is really cuuute 🥰)

Redefining Destiny @threeletterislife - JJK |  soulmates, enemies to lovers, mafia, fluff, crack, angst

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 (*have to read Yoongi’s story first*)

Rattled @gukslut - JJK | single dad au, angst, pining, enemies to lovers, neighbors, smut 

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three  Chapter Four   Chapter Five  Chapter Six  Chapter Seven  Chapter Eight Epilogue ✅(done)

*was reading this when it was ongoing, but stopped at Ch 5 (angst was too much for my heart 😢) - thrilled to binge-read this from the start 😍

Guarded @xjoonchildx - JHS | mafia au, enemies to lovers, slow burn, tsundere, smut

01 02 03 04 05 06 Epilogue  ✅

Never Falling @yoonia - PJM |  Enemies to Lovers!au, Singer!Jimin, non-idol!au, Assistant!reader, Smut, Angst, slow burn ✅(done)

Spellbound @minflix - PJM |  witches au (sort of based on the secret circle),  smut, comedy, fluff, light angst, enemies to lovers

Lie @yoon-kooks - PJM | angst, fluff, based on movie “Flipped”

0 // 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 // 6 // 7 // 8 // 9 // 10 // 11 // 12 // 13 // 14 // 15 // 16 // 17 // FINAL

On the Sidewalk of Champ Elysees @taeramisu = KTH | journalist!KTH, exes to lovers, smut, angst, paris, slow burn

Little Monsters @yoon-bug - MYG | established relationship, unplanned pregnancy, s, f  ✅

Take One @taetaewonderland - MYG | pornstar!yoongi, fanfictionwriter, strangers to lovers, s, f ✅

The Habits of a Broken Heart @softykooky - JJK |  soulmates au, unrequited love, art student!JK, english student!Y/N, angst, fluff, subtle enemies to lovers  ✅(done)

Into the Wilderness @gukyi - PJM | camp counselor au, unrequited love, friends to lovers

Oops @honeyj00ns - JJK | love at first hear, comedy, fluff, smut, “ You don’t know who the wonderful voice singing in the shower is, but you need to know”  ✅

A Song Request @n8dlesoupguk - JJK | drabble, romance,  where you always listen to the same radio station and he lives in the apartment complex opposite of yours ✅

Oh My God, They Were (Quarantined) Roommates @ot7always - JJK | roommates, quarantined life, college, smut, fluff ✅

Your Favorite Cardigan in Summer Nights @prodkkyu - JJK | one shot, angst, high school sweethearts, exes au, summer fling  ✅

Crimson Park @heartbeatan - JJK |  mafia, boss!reader, mystery, angst

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 (Final) ✅

Pranks @mysecretatticsstuff - JJK | enemies to lovers, prank wars, angst, smut, fluff ✅

Too Long, Didn’t Read @fortunexkookie - KTH | college, writers, enemies to lovers, fluff ✅ (done reading, love love this)

You’ve Got Mail @minyoongijjangjjangmanboongboong - JJK |  Barista!Reader, Graphic Design Student!Jungkook, angst, ex-lovers, enemies to lovers  ✅ (done reading, love this)

Love at First Oink @glodenclosetau- KTH | social media au, neighbors, friends to lovers, piggies 🐽, romance, fluff, comedy ✅ (done - the cutest smau ever)

Sugar @seokjxnnie​ - MYG | ceo!yoongi, escort!reader, personal assistant, smut ✅

Amor Vincit Omnia @sunshyngal - MYG | Mafia au, arranged marriage, angst, violence, drama

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20  ✅

My Euphoria @beyochu​ - JJK | fake dating au, fluff, ceo!jungkook, florist!reader, romance  ✅ (done, really adorable)

All Aboard @ve1vetyoongi​ - KNJ | smut, officeworker!namjoon, enemies to lovers  ✅