#blitz dodging in the second one...!

[alastor--altruist]

oof ow my heart!

Love working on multiple Stolitz fics at once because these two idiots never communicate the same way twice.

In [redacted fic wip 1] it’s Blitzø being the insecure denier-of-feelings, but in [redacted fic wip 2] Stolas gets to try his hand at not communicating in a Different Flavour! Then in [redacted fic wip 3] they both communicate perfectly well…. but only because they’re fucking about it lol.

[demonslayerunhinged]

Unhinged glaze

Sanemi is HIM

I really love it when Sanemi haters not only make him out to be some monster but also try to downplay his demon-slaying abilities.

First off, do you see how fast he's killing these demons?

He slices them to shreds before they even have time to react! The only slayers who have shown this type of speed are Zenitsu and Tengen.

Look at how he took out all these motherfuckers at once with just one swing!

Just look at this!!!

Haters also like to say that Muichiro blitzed both he and Obanai, I'm sorry did we watch the same anime? He literally dodged Muichiro katana throw point blank! This is awakened Muichiro mind you!

And he did it by doing this Neo-how-low-can-you-go move, pulling himself up with just the power of his abs! Core strength goes crazy yo!

During his 'training' with Giyuu he dodged not one, not two but THREE of Giyuu's attacks MID-AIR!!!!

He was also the ONLY one to notice Nakime's paparazzi!

He was able to sense a creature that made no obvious sound or indication of its presence with his back to it, he knew it's size, speed and predicted the trajectory of its jump! All of this within a split second! Even the haters have to admit, this scene was cold as fuck!!!

So please you can hate on Sanemi all you want but don't downplay his abilities or try to minimize his awesomeness.

This queen ain't no scrub! 🙌🏼

[anthurak]

Thinking more on Psychonauts (since I’m still replaying the first game at the moment lol) and how while it’s never really commented on all that much, Raz’s acrobatics training as part of his family circus is actually a HUGE part of his abilities and the gameplay.

As in, it’s the in-universe justification for the game’s platforming.

For example, just look at Oleander’s Basic Braining from both a gameplay and narrative perspective: Gameplay-wise, it’s the opening tutorial level that introduces the basic controls and all the platforming mechanics that will define the rest of the game, and because of that the level is pretty easy and forgiving to the player.

Now where this gets interesting is when we consider that it’s pretty clear that for the rest of the campers, Basic Braining is basically a horrifying death with most not even being able to finish.

So it’s basically implied that the level being so easy represents that for Raz, it WAS easy. Specifically BECAUSE of all his acrobatics experience. While all the other kids were struggling with ridiculously long ladders, net walls, rope-swings, multiple trapezes, dodging machine-gun fire or just getting blown up by random landmines, Raz the trained-before-he-could-walk acrobat was absolutely blitzing through all of that. He got through it so fast Raz almost stumbled onto the big bad’s evil plan simply because Oleander never thought he’d get through the course so fast!

And the fun thing is that this unspoken emphasis on Raz’s acrobatics skill permeates through the entire rest of the game, and even explains a few metanarrative elements! Like you know how it’s implied that Raz pics up new psychic abilities and skills ridiculously fast for a kid his age while at camp?

Well, aside from his natural talent and drive to learn, from a gameplay perspective we can assume at least part of it is Raz picking up a bunch of those Psi cards, Challenge Markers and Scavenger Hunt items scattered around the camp. Most of which just so happen to be squirreled away in some VERY hard-to-reach places. At least, hard to reach for anyone without years of acrobatics training.

And that’s not even touching on what happens when Raz picks up Levitation. Like for the other kids, levitation is just a fun gimmick to zip around rolling on a glowing ball. But as we see with Raz, he’s practically FLYING.

Is it any wonder Ranger Cruller is surprised when Raz gets half the scavenger hunt done in an afternoon? And is pretty sure nobody has ever done the whole thing when Raz finally finishes the hunt?*

And I think this all plays very nicely into the narrative thru-line that runs across both the first and second games: That for all the baggage that may come from them, Raz’s connection to his family is still an important part of his life. Particularly with how this plays into the end of the first game with Raz reconciling with his father, and into the second game with both reconciling and dealing with several of his broader family issues.

That regardless of what he learns as a psychonaut, the lessons Raz learned from his family will always be of help to him.

*I mean, aside from the fact that one of the items can only be obtained through use of a psychic power that doesn’t seem available to campers, and another item straight-up isn’t even in the camp.

[inbabylontheywept]

An Honorary Troll

Breaker paused a moment, taking in the sight of the mage in front of him. The robes, the beard, the aloof expression - those were all typical.

The staff was not.

“You cast with that?” he asked, half impressed.

The mage swung the thing off his shoulders overhand and planted its blade into the dirt. It was the first truly threatening staff Breaker had ever seen. The blade on its end was almost as long as the haft itself, counterbalanced at the end by a polished lump of amber larger than a goose's egg. The damn thing looked more like a polearm than a casting aid.

Breaker waited a few moments to see if the human was going to respond to his question. He didn’t. Part of him, the proud part, was happy to finally be taken seriously. The smart part of him suspected he was going to miss the advantage of being underestimated.

Breaker unslung his massive warhammer from his shoulders, its half-slowed fall still weighty enough to be felt through the mages thick work boots, loud enough to be felt in both of their chests.

Then he blitzed the length of the bridge.

The mage’s eyes widened, his wizened hands beginning to twitch out a ward. Breaker knew there wasn’t time. The gap was too short. He was already beginning his overhead swing of the hammer, half falling, the full power of his speed, strength, and weight poured into one crushing blow. He knew that the secret to hitting a mage was giving them everything you had, as hard as possible, as fast as possible, as close as possible. The more time they had to think and react, the more dangerous they’d become, and the more time he had needed to chase and smash, the more tired he’d get. Thank the Gods this was gonna work. Extended fights were-

The wizard grinned.

A spell went off. Not a ward. Simpler. A small jet of flame shot out of the amber orb, rotating the blade to vertical in a fraction of a second. The wizard half relaxed as he planted the staff in the gravel, looking forward like a huntsman versus a charging boar.

Breaker knew he couldn’t slow down. He couldn’t dodge. The one mercy he could see was that the tip was aimed at his chest, not his gut. He’d rather choke on blood than rot from the inside. He closed his eyes before impact, not wanting to see the blade sink into him.

It didn’t.

He heard the crunch of gravel give way to the crunch of his nose as the mage threw a haymaker into his sidestep, staff moved helpfully to the side. He was half glad for the blow because it helped him get his center of balance back under him again. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to get a blow in with the hammer again, it needed too much time to build momentum, but he still turned to face the wizard, every instinct insisting that he couldn’t take his eyes off the little man for more than a moment.

He turned out to be right. If he’d turned his head half as fast he wouldn’t have had enough time to dodge the cudgel end of the staff, swung like a bat at the back of his skull. If he hadn’t been outmaneuvered at every step of this fight, he’d have assumed that swinging from the direction his bad eye was on was just luck. The fact that he knew it was intentional implied that his opponent had a level of martial expertise that even most knights lacked.

With no space to use the hammer, he used the next best weapon in his arsenal: His body. His leg snapped out hard, his massive height letting him connect the blow easily with the old man’s chest. He felt something give, and watched with some small satisfaction as the human went bouncing down the bridge’s center path

Well, he didn’t need an invitation.

He couldn’t move quite as the fast as he’d launched the mage away, but it was a close thing. The pause gave him time to get the momentum he needed to swing the hammer. He felt like an ox behind a cart, the weight behind building into something unblockable, undodgeable, un-

Unbelievable.

The little man ended his tumble on all fours, splayed like a tree frog. The hammer was already bearing down on him, too late in the swing for Breaker to change course, even as he watched the final twitch that signaled a ward was cast. The hammer slammed into the mages hunched back harmlessly, the force of the blow charging the ward like a magical battery. The maniacal grin the little man had worn ever since that first blitz widened half a step further, silver molars on full display, and then-

He flew. Rather than directing the force into some sort of attack, rather than buying himself time and space, the two classical friends of all mages, the little bastard directed all of his stored up energy downwards. The blast launched him up, bringing him from all fours at shin height to eye level in a fraction of a second. He probably would’ve headed up another six or seven feet if he hadn’t grabbed ahold of Breaker’s left horn. His upward momentum swung him full circle around it, his journey ending abruptly as he drove the armored soles of both of his decidedly un-wizardly boots into the back of Breaker’s skull.

If Breaker had been an ogre, or a nightkin, or even a giant, he’d have been out cold. But Breaker was a full-blooded troll, and the horns on his head weren’t just for ornamentation. If he charged a brick wall there was a coin flips chance he’d be the winner. The boots never stood a chance.

The wizard managed to get two more vicious, if slightly panicked kicks in before Breaker’s fists managed to catch up. They grabbed him by the collar of his coarse green robe and yanked him forward, over his shoulder. The old man looked slightly sheepish, dangling from the inhumanely large hands of his opponent.

Breaker cut to the chase.

“You could’ve killed me on the first charge.”

The mage nodded. There wasn’t a whole lot else he could do. His robes were caught so tightly in the troll’s grasp that they acted like a straitjacket.

“Why didn’t you?”

The wizard went for earnestness. He’d been told it was his saving grace.

“You did not deserve death. This is your bridge. I just could not afford the toll.”

The robe tightened further as the troll’s fist clenched.

“Do you wish that you killed me when you had the chance?”

The wizard snorted.

“Murder you, for the price of a goat? No. If I could make a wish, I’d wish I could swim.”

The troll let go with one fist, its thumb trailing back to its mouth. A large, sharp tooth clamped down on the meaty pad of the digit, drawing a thick bead of green blood. The wizard’s confusion blossomed into disgust as the ichor was smeared from his forehead to his chin.

“The fuck-”

His curse was interrupted by the troll.

“I have decided to make you kin. And my first gift to you, great kin, is to grant you your wish.”

The second fist, the one still gripping the front of the wizard’s robes, flung itself forward. The wizard barely had a moment to curse before plummeting into the water below.

Several seconds passed.

Breaker waited.

The wizard arose, sputtering, from the depths. He turned, trembling from the cold, the rage, and the sheer disbelief of what he was experiencing.

“It’s four feet deep.”

Breaker nodded.

“Yes.”

It was almost heartwarming, the way the wizard laughed as he began wading his way towards the far shore. Breaker’s hands gingerly roamed over the goose eggs growing from the back of his head, larger than his own horns had been when he’d passed the trials of manhood.

If nobody gave you headaches like kin, that little man was troll enough for a small army.

[redwinterroses]

So I've been watching my Decked Out vids with @/capriciouswriter207's maps of the dungeon open in other windows, trying to follow along and learn the layout. And at the moment, I'm mainly watching Hypno and Etho, which makes for an interesting comparison of their play styles.

Hypno's runs are SO much easier to follow than Etho's. Partly because Etho will sometimes edit out a few seconds here and there, and the clips can be a little confusing, but mostly because Etho just goes SO FAST all the time. No hesitation, almost no sneaking, he just blitzes the dungeon every single time.

Hypno is a much more cerebral player, with which nets him a lot of wins because of how he's able to think three steps ahead. He's playing Tango/the dungeonmaster as much as he's playing the dungeon itself, and he's constantly looking for new details and possible secrets. He's a thorough player -- and for someone trying to follow along, his detailed narration and methodical method (like how he always, always goes straight/right out of the gate and never left) make it easy to track.

Etho is way harder to follow. He strafes a lot more, he spins and dodges and starts one way and ducks another at the last second... But in the end, he ends up coming out on top because he's so able to think on his feet. If something takes Hypno by surprise, he has a tendency to think too much and freeze up for the critical half second it takes for him to get ravagered. Etho is just so good at reacting -- he has hair-trigger instincts and can reevaluate a situation faster than most people can even realize it's happening.

But boy does it make him hard to follow along with, lol.

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

9 Days of Lancaster: Injury

Oniyuri was a ghost town. 

Ruby took the lead, bouncing up until she stood on horseback and peered out at gray walls. The buildings looked dilapidated, as did the fence now that I thought about it. I checked the map. “That’s strange.” 

“Another destroyed town?” Ruby wondered.

“We should search for survivors.” I stowed the map and took off. 

“Don’t leave me in the dark!” Our blindfolded prisoner shouted. 

I sprinted towards the circle shaped opening in the walls. Ruby made it there first and in a single great leap no normal woman could pull off, she landed antop of the walls. She bounced from there to a watch tower which had no platform to stand on from which one could watch. 

I checked and found nothing. Ruby dropped down, her legs easily taking the thirty foot fall. She lifted the platform in question from where it lay beside the tower on the ground, checking under it. “Anything?” She called out.

“Clear over here.” I moved from the building I’d been checking. “The place seems abandoned.”

“Hey I found something!” Ruby called out to me. She brushed aside leaves where a small sign had been overgrown. “Oniyuri,” she read. “This is it? What happened?” Ruby wondered, her voice coming out small in the courtyard. 

Grimm claw marks on what was left of a door. Shattered windows and broken down walls. 

I didn’t hesitate, it was time to get moving. “Come on, let's push through here.” I mustered, sticking around so much negativity wasn’t going to serve us any. 

My hand rose to my weapon, pulling at the hilt slightly. Nervously. I felt something. I wasn’t alone in it, either. Ruby peered ahead through the scope of Crescent Rose. 

A man in brown and white flipped into the courtyard, landing neatly with a bowed posture. 

The man said nothing but his hands flicked out claw like weapons drawing on either hand. Without a word he blitzed towards us, no, straight towards Ruby, with a manic laugh.

Ruby intercepted him first, lashing out like an insane tornado. The man danced back, giving ground easily.

Ruby snapped a kick out and followed it with a spray of bullets. She twisted and he ducked under the massive swing before raising his arm and stepping inside her guard. A clawed hand lashed out and Ruby had to lean far out of the way to dodge it. She gave a gasp as she did. Put on the defensive, a swift kick from the clawed man forced her back. The man went high but kicked low again, Ruby ate the attack with a grunt. 

The man laughed like he was in hysterics all the while. He whipped out the blades on his forearms, Ruby blocked them with Crescent Rose but didn’t block a jump kick which caught her center of mass. She rolled back but the man had speed to spare, he was able to catch up to her.

He crossed both arms, scissor-slashing at her but she caught the blow against the barrel of her weapon. A high crescent kick lashed out at Ruby followed by a jab. She rotated Crescent Rose to block but the man was within her range and didn’t miss with the brutal shoulder check that flicked her to the ground.

I was there to cover Ruby immediately. The man slid beneath my slash and bounced up at me, landing on the edges of the shield. The man peered down at me with a wide grin. I glared up at the man, and I swung the man back and Ruby hit him hard with Crescent Rose, clipping him.

He launched back through a white wall, cartwheeling through the air. His yellow eyes glowed out at us from the building. Ruby got back to her feet preparing Crescent Rose for a second assault.

“We’re not looking for a fight!” I called out to him. 

Though you’ve found one by attacking Ruby.

“Who are you?” Ruby wondered. 

The man flipped down. “Who I am matters not to you, or- well I am curious about you.” He pointed at me.

“Not interested,” I returned.

“No?” The man continued, he seemed to take it in stride. “Well, I suppose I only really matter to you.” He pointed behind my tank at the backline Ruby. I didn’t so much as take my eyes off the man. 

“Me?” Ruby wondered.

The man broke down laughing. “You really don’t have the slightest clue, do you? Oh how exciting this must be.” That laugh was really getting on my nerves. 

“What do you want?” Ruby demanded.

“Oh the rose has thorns. My little flower, I’m here to whisk you away with me.”

“And what if she doesn’t want to go with you.”

“Well, I’ll take her.” He made it sound so obvious. Like getting through and killing me would be the most straightforward thing in the world. The way he’d danced around us so far… the fight didn’t look promising. 

“Yeah. You'll have to kill me,” I vowed anyways, my shield at the ready and sword poised to strike from behind it.

“ Perfect ,” The man purred.

I blinked and the man was gone. My eyes traced his outline but...

“Jaune!” Ruby called out to me in warning. I felt the danger from behind me. Ruby immediately opened fire, trusting my aura, armor, and shield to see me through. I began to turn around towards the blindingly fast opponent. 

The man had to duck under Ruby’s fire, unable or unwilling to press his attack and eat the bullets with his aura. The man bounced in the air, spinning like a top off my shield. I threw him off. Pressing my attack with a shout.

The man turned it into an elegant flip and kicked Ruby so hard she flew off her feet. I swept my sword at him. I tried to catch him off guard but the man cartwelled under the attack. 

Too telegraphed. 

His heel came down on my head, a cry of pain left my lips before I could stop it followed closely by a second one as I was swiftly side kicked in the face. I fell backwards and our aggressor charged at Ruby again, unrelenting. 

My semblance activated, strumming through me like a cord, I dashed forward and Ruby did too, we scissored him and I spent my semblance now faster than ever, as soon as I got it, really. 

I bunkered behind my shield, waiting out the shockwave Ruby’s speed and my attack had created. When I peeked. Our opponent was still standing. He’d… caught my attack with his tail. A long brown scorpion’s tail which protruded from his lower back and a deep gash in his aura from where Ruby pounced. 

Now she stalked around the outside of a wide circle with him and I in the center, waiting for the right moment to strike like a wolf. 

The man giggled. “Surprise.” He kicked off the ground and then towards me. He kicked me twice; brutal kicks seemed to be the man’s style in conjunction with his claws. 

“What is this about?” Ruby stepped forward. “The WhiteFang? Roman Torchwick?”

“Plastic soldiers and pawns. My heart and body belong only to our goddess.” The scorpion took an arrogant bow. 

“Cinder.” Ruby murmured. Her eyes narrowed up at him. 

The bitch herself.

“Hm. Only in her wildest dreams!” With that the man launched towards us again, kicking off the roof he was on hard enough to splinter it. His tail whipped out at Ruby. She deflected it but a brutal punch knocked her down again. 

I sidestepped the tail twice but not the following kick to the back. I tried to rush him, trying to flank him but the man’s foot colliding with my shield stopped my approach. Against this opponent the shield was just getting in the way. I slid the sword into the shield and slid it off my arm, drawing the massive sword from it. 

My foe was fast enough to get in on me but hopefully with a little range and a little luck...

The blade clicked into place, the simple mechanism snapping into position easily. The blade was enormously heavy compared to the bastard sword I’d been wielding, I gripped it in both hands to steady it. I wasn’t sure I’d be fast enough to catch the man with it, but I’d promised I’d die before I let this creep take Ruby and dammit I would.

I dashed forward but my opponent dashed away from him towards Ruby. He punched her twice with the brutal blades and flicked her into the air. With blinding speed, the man was already where Ruby was going to land, he wound up and comboed a kick to her stomach. 

I could see her aura break in a radial pattern from the foot. 

“Ruby!” I shouted.

The man glanced up at my charge, his eyes widening in surprise for a brief satisfying moment before I caught him center of mass with the broadsword. I started by drawing an ‘x’ in the air and on his body. The glow of my sword stayed where it struck him, holding him in place.

Next I carved a shallow ‘L,’ with two cuts. Low and then rising. I watched him. He was stuck in place still, like he was in butter or stuck in slow motion.

I finished with a tremendous slash all the way through the patterns I had drawn which showed through the air. I cut through the sapphire blue haze and shattered the shapes I carved in the air with a flash. 

I watched a crackle of purple sweep out across his torso from where the sword impacted him. You can't fake that. One hundred pounds of brutal steel impacting him had hurt him. I held Crocea Mors steady in one hand. Steady, easily, even with just the one arm. 

It was light. I swung it casually across his body and back towards neutral, glaring at the man. 

“Jaune!”

“Stay down Ruby!”

I began to charge the next one. 

I watched the man roll across the ground before he stopped, catching himself with the hooked blades. He let out a viscous sound, part snarl, part laugh. He scuttled towards me, low towards the ground but…

I met him in the middle and Ruby shot him in the face. I refused to give ground and allow the lunatic to get any closer to Ruby. Crocea Mors swept forward but was deflected off the man’s right wrist blade. I reversed the blade, bringing it around his body and back down. 

My foe grunted, catching the blade again with both wrists. 

The tail…

I leaned out of the way as the tail lashed through his space. It whipped from over the man’s head towards me but I’d seen it coming. The man was getting predictable. Plus with six feet of metal between us, I was outside his range. I brought my blade down towards the tail and the man reared back, giving ground and watching me warily. 

I didn’t let up. I jumped, raising Crocea Mors over my head in a tremendous arc and brought it down against the man again. The man braced his tail and blades against the attack but three hundred pounds of man and metal bore down on him. I watched as the man’s feet sunk into the cobbled ground, aura sparking from here his tail braced against the blade. 

Believing he saw an opportunity the man rushed me, closing the distance that my long arms and sword provided. I lashed out with a low kick, unable to bring the blade to bear in time. It connected against the side of the man’s knee. I threw my weight into another kick with the other leg, a round kick which impacted the man’s gut.

My jab and follow up brought him the space I needed to bring Crocea Mors around in a low flat arc. It sung through the air with thick satisfying noise, but not nearly as satisfying as the sound the blade made against the man’s aura. 

He rolled back and I chased him.

I need to end this now.

I jumped like I was going to hammer him with another massive overhead blow. He raised his weapons in defense. It was a tomahawk landing and I stepped in and grabbed him out of the empty hop. I tossed him into the ground and where he bounced I pursued. I slid my sword into the ground and brutally shoved the edge into his chest. I tore up the cobblestone street behind me as I did.

I screamed out a battle cry, trying to land a decisive blow. I rushed forward with all my might and thrust Crocea Mors forward. The man slipped to the side, dodging by a fraction of a hair. He followed it with two brutal kicks and three jabs into my chest. Then he sank his hooked gauntlet into my stomach. 

I grunted. It wasn’t so bad. He hit like a fucking pussy. 

I spat up some blood and looked down. 

It was pretty bad. The worst, even. 

“Jaune!”

“What’s the matter?” The man mocked. “Run out of power? Or do you have another one in you?” Tyrian twisted his fist and the blade sank further into my stomach. The tail came around and hovered just before my face. Giggling and wiggling the tail right in front of my mouth before it vanished, the pressure disappearing from me accompanied by an agonized howl. 

“Jaune, oh lord, stay with me!” 

I didn’t. 

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

I was, for the record, not tired of waking up with Ruby taking care of me. I was not. I was tired of being shot and stabbed, but not the rest of it. The rest of it was awesome. 

I was in a real bed as opposed to our tent this time. Ruby was in the bed next to me and she stirred slightly in her sleep where she clutched my arm. I sighed looking at her. Fuck she was dangerous. She was just sleeping there with her bangs down over her face and her arms around one of mine. Her lips looked so pink and soft and barely parted. 

I started to sit up. Poking at the bandages and stitches in my chest, I winced a little. She stirred with me, her eyes blinking open as I rose. 

"Don't touch it!" She shouted-whispered as I twirled a sitch and gasped. Oh yeah, none of that analgesic stuff. What was I? A pussy?

I almost passed out from the pain, though. My vision tunneled and I swayed back into the pillow. 

The blades left deep marks which even my armor and aura wouldn't prevent from forming scars. She shoved my hands out of the way and placed her own there instead. “Does it hurt?”

I groaned. Her fingers were cool and my chest felt inflamed. 

I was lucky he hadn't decided to open fire with the weapon point blank. That would have turned my torso to hamburger and I doubt whoever Ruby found to put me back together could handle that much gut-shot. 

Not because they were a bad surgeon. It would have probably just have been super lethal. 

I nodded. “I'm not super comfortable.” I confessed. “What happened?”

“I cut his tail off while you had him, uh, distracted.” Ruby said with some venom. “He ran off but there's no way that he'll be recovering without help and I sent word out once we arrived.”

“And our prisoner?”

She tapped the tips of her pointer fingers together. "I had to let her go. I needed the speed to get you here." She sounded like I was going to be upset with her over it. Over saving my life. 

“Which is?” I wondered.

“Higanbana.” 

“Thank you. Ruby. You saved me again.” 

Silence met me before…”I put you in danger. Didn’t you hear him?”

“I heard him laugh. He was nuts Ruby.”

“He was here for me.”

“So am I.”

“Butt! Stop being sweet for a second and listen to me!” She protested. “He worked for whoever Cinder is actually working for. This is serious business."

"Ruby, these people were always your enemy." She chewed her lip. "That makes them my enemies, too. Plus Cinder's friends are absolutely against us. Nothing has changed except we know one of their faces."

"I suppose…except he didn't work for Cinder. He works for someone else."

"And I don't work for Ozpin. Just you. A different beast is all, Rubes."

"He was a monster." I nodded along. He was, that Tyrian. He could have killed me but he was having too much fun torturing me. 

I was ever so grateful. 

"Let's stop him next time," I decided. 

"Do you really think we can?" Ruby asked. I nodded. He hadn't been invincible. 

"He took us by surprise and we don’t have any real team attacks which use both of our semblances. Speaking of, did you catch his semblance?"

She shook her head. "He never used it. I'd recognize his weapons though. I gave the village a description but…"

If they weren't hunters or had a hunter's mindset they might not really get why that was important. 

"Sounds like you took care of everything."

"Right. So you just rest now. You worked so hard for me. Let me look after you for a bit."

What? Had she missed the last few months of constantly saving my life? Her lips pressed softly against my cheek and then she moved them against my lips and she sighed a little next to me. 

I felt her relax next to me on the bed and wrap her arms around me gently.  I couldn't help but unwind either. Muscles ached and bruises throbbed but I hardly felt either as I slowly let her pull me back down. 

I found my anesthesia when she slipped her tongue into my mouth and one of us moaned softly. She smirked and I knew it must have been me. Her lips turned up against mine. She was having a little fun taking care of me and who was I to take that from her? I chased her tongue back into her mouth and she wrapped her lips around my muscle and sucked gently. I moaned again. It had been a bait. She made me chase after her. 

She pulled back suddenly. “Jaune there’s been something I’ve been meaning to tell you. It’s about my eyes.”

“Okay.” I’d seen them, they were fantastic. “What about them?”

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Have you ever really tried to relax? I mean to squeeze all the relaxation you could out of a time period and just let the people who profess to care about you look after you while you heal and rest and try and figure things out. What an unbelievable nightmare. 

I could not for the life of me sit still. I was going stir-crazy in ‘safe’ Higanbana. I was just supposed to let Ruby handle things and try and focus on just getting better but in the end I found myself pacing the small hotel room and narrow city streets over and over again. 

And Higanbana was for the most part truly safe. It had high walls and guards with good discipline. Some of them even had their aura unlocked. It was maddening. 

My only saving grace was Ruby who had the energy to keep me from being bored out of my skull. She even asked me one early morning with bright eyes and a finger to her lips, “Jaune?”

“Mhm.” I wondered. Her voice was a certain timber that made me want to reach out and grab her.

“Can we go on a date?” She finished. She could have asked me to stab myself with that tone and expression and I would have. A date, though?

A date. 

A date. Of course. We were a couple after all. She would want that kind of thing. But what would that kind of thing look like?

It looked like me listening to her gush about my semblance and weapons over ice cream which she fed me, because I was hurt. 

“Your semblance is actually wild Jaune. Really.”

“Really, really?” I asked.

“Just imagine how you can force your enemy into some of your traps.”

“My traps?”

“Please, it’s how you fight. You make people think they’re safe and then you surprise them. That was true even before you unlocked your semblance.” 

“I do?” 

“You play mind games and think about it this way. The moment you start charging your semblance your opponent is in disadvantage. If they let you charge it, then you’re winning. If they approach you to stop you from charging it, then they're still playing your game and you’re still winning.”

“Huh. I think I have to stand still to charge it.”

“Even so you can force the enemy to approach you or you’ll get better kill and movement options.” She nodded with her words and glowed as we walked through a park together. 

She had loved the idea of enlightening the guards with aura and had taken to doing three or so a day while I healed. I wanted to step in and do more but she shut me down.

We found a small place which sold these little treats with sherbert in them. Ruby chirpily ordered for both of us while I just watched her move and talk.  

We took a rest together, over the next few days it was some of my favorite times, just strolling through the Animatic courtyards and gardens in public places. 

“Plus you are always forcing the enemy to approach you or you’ll be even harder to deal with. You don’t need a gun if you can fight like that either. Though…”

“I don’t like guns.”

“You have hers still.” I looked down. I still had Viriscient’s gun. I pulled it from a belt and handed it to her. 

“Here. You take it,” I said. 

“Why me?”

“You’ll get more out of a sidearm than I will.” I returned with a shrug. 

“Still…” she took it anyway and looked at it both ways before flicking it apart. She quickly took a look at the internal mechanisms and hardly turned her nose up at it. “It is nice… is it really okay to use it? I mean it was a bandit’s.”

“If it's by you then it's not a bandit’s anymore.” I shrugged. “You could always take it apart and see how it works.

“I think I’ll keep it then.” She smirked. “Also, you're implying I can’t tell how it works.” 

“You’re right I should know better.” I earned a quick cold kiss for that, ice cream still on her ruby lips. 

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

[bittersweetblasphemy]

How am i supposed to act like im Okay after that episode????? LIKE!!!!!WHAT?!?!?!? It was gorgeous and my heart is ripped in two and trampled onvthe floor and each of this two buttholes have half

And Fizz looked So Good oholy fuck i love him and the crew fucking up cherub shit im dead i love them all so much im gonna go cry on the floor until the next episode bye

would the compilation of Stolas saying Blitzy i just found cheer you up?

but yeah no i am so beautifully devastated. i reblogged something earlier about how much more satisfying it is that this mess was them reacting to sudden emotional confrontation rather than just a general misunderstanding.

like i was stunned when Stolas actually explained his full feelings and thought for a hot second that they'd really get together. Like maybe Blitz would need to work through it, but the way he clearly thought Stolas was saying it disingenuously and then fell back on his old habits to cover the hurt???

Like I bet you even if he never could admit it to himself, Blitz was dying to hear Stolas confess to loving him. But it's so impossible in his head that anyone could care about him- i mean, hell, Loona makes a fucking point about it earlier in the episode- that he just plain doesn't believe it could be real. and it fucking hurts. but to hide that hurt he mocks it and wraps it back into sex and roleplay. he says he loves him back but only in this safe pretend space. but when Stolas doesn't go for it, and continues to be genuine, it clicks that it's real.

"What, what? You were serious!?" [20:50]

it's all hitting him so fast and so hard. love is too complex and it's left him fucking shattered too many times. and if he can't deflect into jokes or horny, if he can't keep up the defense, he switches to offense. now it's anger. and he lets out all of the doubt and hurt he's been carrying.

maybe he needed space to process, but he was so startled and hurt initially that when he deflected, Stolas, understandably, took it as a rejection of his feelings.

"I have wanted you for so long. The fact that you couldn't believe that I might have these feeling about you, that your first instinct is that it's always about sex, that's enough to know what this is."

i am dead. i am on the floor. deceased.

because now Blitz is being told that he's the one whose feelings are disingenuous. and he lashes out with his first direct FUCK YOU at Stolas.

"You spring this feeling bullshit on me, are you fucking kidding?"

kudos to Brandon Rogers because the anger is just so fucking genuine and raw. all of the hurt comes out, and it's directed at the only other person in the room. and he ends it with "Let's go!" like he's expecting a full-on fight. he's expecting a back and forth screaming match, though maybe not actual thrown hands. he's so clearly not expecting to have made Stolas cry. he's not expecting the calm, if sorrowful final goodbye.

Blitz is used to yelling and screaming and throwing hands. Stolas is used to being hit, and submissive and quiet. even at his most angry at Stella, he barely raises his voice to her. he regularly dodges her throwing things at him. and the one time he touches her in an altercation is to prevent her from hitting him. what must he feel to have Blitz, the man he loves, following him around his home and screaming at the top of his lungs?

the conflict between them is one i didn't see coming but was just so fantastically played out like i am floored. i really do hope to see them overcome it in an equally satisfying way.

i really did love seeing Fizz this episode too. he looks so genuinely happy! i really hope we're gonna get to see more of him. maybe him and Asmodeus nudging them back together? as another open goetia/imp relationship it'd be really great to see them supporting each other.

[zelphin124]

LCB-3: Chapter 13

This was definitely interesting to write, because there was very little to no dialogue in this chapter, with few interactions as well. Thankfully, Jekyll and Hyde's wandering off has ended, and I hope to not have to write another chapter like this haha. Enjoy! Masterpost Chapter 12 <--> Chapter 14

~o0o~

The painter stood to her feet, clutching her chest. Shi IDs work better on lower health… It shouldn’t… hurt this much…

The damage felt like Hyde’s insides had ruptured and exploded. Her heart thumped rapidly and everything ached as if her own muscles were being torn apart from the inside. She felt as if she would hurl anything she ate at any moment up. She glanced up, swallowing her agonizing pain and adjusting her sword. Her knees shook and buckled as she kidnapped the strength to stand, pushing through with all her might. The golden bough was right before her; she needed to find it as soon as possible. It would damage her pride to go back and apologize, anyway. 

The voice boomed down the spire, echoing in the shadows. It mattered not to Hyde, but it was nonetheless distracting. There was no clue or indicator of where the voice came from, but it felt like the source was up the large tower. She glared at the spire that fell on top of her. Perhaps she should’ve been more observant of her surroundings instead of charging at the demon syndicate blindly for what he carried. There was nothing she could do about it now. 

The painter calculated a proper path up the spire, seeing various pathways and success predictions to climb it quickly. Her speed was unmatched compared to other IDs she had tried; she felt like a cheetah in the Shi ID. She rushed toward the spire with great speed, flying on wings she could not see. 

She had to make her way up it quickly. Hyde knew she wouldn’t succumb to receiving help and relying on her allies… they had shown no sign of appreciation or care toward her. She was not going to be saved, nor would she admit she needed to be. The work ahead belonged to her and her alone.

Jekyll’s plan wasn’t so bad. If she wants to stay with these bastards, she can. I’ll separate myself and go back to where I belong… Her memory blurred with the IDs, and the sheer mention of Jekyll being apart from her made her heart ache more than it already was. She clenched her chest, wincing and wrinkling her nose. What the hell is wrong with this version of me? 

Hyde launched herself upward, easily passing the obstacle and making her way to the first floor of the spire, glancing around. She saw vague details of a playground. She raised her eyebrow. What the–

The ground started to stir. Parts of the ground crumbled inward, revealing various pebbles that piled up on each other before a monster-like leg stuck out from them. 

Nah. Hyde didn’t waste any more time on the floor. Her feet fled the ground and sprinted past the first floor up to the second, not slowing down. My health is too low to face that many monsters…

However, the monsters kept unburying themselves on the floor. Hyde didn’t stop to observe the rest of the floors in her blitzing rush to climb up the tower. To her surprise, there wasn’t any resistance from the enemy; they were too slow and could not keep up with her speed. On each floor, various monsters rose from the soil, scaling in difficulty. However, none of them could catch her as she blazed past them, ascending to the third floor… fourth floor… she ran and dodged each enemy, unwilling to engage in combat with how low her health condition was. It would be rough trying to go back down the spire, but each one of the opponents couldn’t impede her progress going up. 

Until they did. 

By the time she reached the fourth floor, the enemies became incredibly numerous; various peccatulum blocked her path. The air grew thin as she reached the clouds in the sky, and it slowed her down just enough to force her to engage in combat. It didn’t stop her determination, but she had to clear a path to continue. 

I see you have a death wish, Hyde didn’t waste any second. She swung her sword toward the mass of monsters, slicing a few of them perfectly. She blocked a few of their beginning attacks with ease, using her speed to her advantage. She tried to guess what type of peccatulum they were, but she could only recall information about the species from the Limbus Company handbook she read rather than specific details about them. All she knew was she had to kill them if she wanted to continue forward. 

They lunged for her, using their sharp legs and big jaws to clamp down around her. They scraped open a few of Hyde’s wounds and scratched her skin deeply. They would leave scars, and Hyde wasn’t too happy when one of them decided to attack her head, making her blood drip over her eyes. 

She went first in each turn, shocked at the significant damage she was able to build up and slam onto the group that surrounded her. She knew this ID used poise, but perhaps she didn’t realize how powerful it truly was until she was in desperate need of it. Her skills didn’t let a single attack on her go unnoticed without a counter. The damage she dealt to the monsters was shocking, and after a long, gruesome fight, Hyde managed to walk through a sea of blood and make her pathway through the onslaught. 

She avoided the rest of the enemies as she used her evade to flee, sprinting away up to the fifth floor. She counted, realizing the fifth floor was the only thing between her and the top. She smiled with glee. The bough is close, I can feel it so vibrantly. 

However, resonating with the golden bough on something so high in the sky wasn’t a good thing. If Hyde were to fall from the floor, it would likely be to her death. There was nothing but jagged, rough cliffs below her. She slowed down, careful not to trip over anything as she finally took the time to observe the floor before the top. 

Hyde stopped and stood still as her gaze locked on a large, burning building before her. It was rather block-shaped, and it burned with an endless fire that didn’t seem to immediately consume the building, but it was clear it would be a fire difficult to put out. In the center of the field belonging to said crumbling building stood a silhouette of a four-legged abomination. It sat in the middle of of field full of corpses. Some were burned, and some were fused together in some strange expression of art. There were humans mixed with other humans, monsters, and monsters mixed with monsters… any combination of limbs and faces of various humans and monsters, Hyde saw. It was a mass of distorted flesh, carrying a whiff of agony within its atmosphere. 

The large monster in the center moved, cranking its hideous head toward the painter. It spoke in an inhuman voice, but Hyde could pinpoint a subtle, feminine tone to it. “…The mind is fated to distort. The only thing I had; it got twisted. A noble mind lasted a lifetime, plucked. What I'd lost once, lost again. And ultimately rejected all. Thus now we party. Wondrous and everlasting.” 

Great, more descriptive messages from monsters who do not understand the true art of simplistic words. Hyde glanced behind the monster into the building, spotting a burning man. He screamed, but it was difficult to see anything else about him. She decided it would be best to place her attention on the monster ahead. 

As she took a closer look at the monster, it was clear it and its minions were fused with some of the peccatulum she faced earlier. The monstrosities on the floor were created by the four-legged abomination, at least that’s what the painter could gather. Normally, she would admire the craftsmanship of a 3D object such as the ones before her, but it was so poorly done, it only made her disappointed. All of my students could’ve done a better job than this lousy effort. 

Fusions had been a common theme throughout the lobotomy facility. Did every abnormality resonate with someone? She couldn’t answer that question. It was clear there was a clear focus on Jatayu throughout the mission, with many things showing up from his past. What did he have to do with fusions? Had he been forged with something before, or was he going to be? The altar came to mind and left an unsettling taste and feeling in Hyde’s mouth. She glared toward the minions of the monster in the middle. She could pinpoint a few types of peccatulum fused with the humans on the floor, as she had figured out what some of them were weak to on the previous floor. Wrath, Gloom, Envy… She narrowed her eyes at the others, unable to name them. Her current ID only consisted of those three sins, which proved useful on the previous floors. 

Peccatulum fused with human bodies might have been a subtype of distortion. However, she put two and two together, realizing the large abomination before her was likely someone who had reached a mental breaking point, distorting. However, nothing in the book mentioned them being fused like a mixed salad. The subtypes of monsters didn’t make too much sense to her, nor did she care. As long as they bleed, they can die. Hyde told herself, crouching slightly. It was difficult to tell if the enemy had spotted her or not. 

She swallowed hard, inhaling sharply. The battle was going to be tedious and likely fatal if she didn’t plot correctly. Her gut feeling told her it wouldn’t be as easy as the battles before, and her health was depleting by the second. She knew if she sat down to rest and recover, she would pass out from the loss of blood. Pure adrenaline kept her going, along with a vague sense of dread. She was alone, and not even Jekyll was here to comfort her. She was always better at gauging where their health was and when she needed to rest, but the silence in her own head pained her very soul. My thoughts echo without response… how terrible. 

How long would this fight last? Would she even survive to tell the tale? Hyde couldn’t answer those questions, nor could she bring herself to ponder them for long. The enemy moved slightly, and it forced her to consider her actions. The goal was to get the golden bough assumedly at the top at all costs, even if it meant dying in the process. 

…I could pull off the excuse of clearing up the path ahead if I do have to explain myself to the rest of the party… Hyde thought, heaving a sigh. Perhaps… perhaps I was wrong to leave them behind. I hope Dante is doing alright… 

Dante… the cold manager with no remorse for his companions. He pretends to care, until it really comes down to things, just like Danves… it’s all for show, isn’t it? 

A scream from the burning man in the building snapped Hyde back into the present. Was he the source of the loud voice she heard when she first got to the spire’s base? He wasn’t a threat at hand, but the current threat moved closer to her along with its toys. She walked sideways, silent on her feet. Getting around the distortion might be futile, but sneaking around it like she did the previous monster might help. Had it spotted her? Would she be able to leave it behind? 

Her questions were answered very quickly. The distortion stood on its every leg, turning its awkward head toward her as she moved. It had – as Hyde could only describe it as – a supernatural sense of direction and senses. It sensed her movement and followed suit, clicking its heels together. As it did so, the fused minion rose like a swarm of zombies and stared at her. There were too many to fight properly if they all came for her at once. Music strung its notes around the field the moment the heel clicking stopped, playing a wrapped, child-like tune. 

“A tale of two, intertwined, split apart. Love betrays and harms, hatred burns, and blinds. I cannot have either, and neither is preferred. So instead, we party, forgetting that which tore out our hearts. Last one, standing, a wonderland borne of our distorted hearts.” It spoke poetically with grace in cryptic speech. The distortion danced, swaying haphazardly without rhythm. The fused bodies raised in suits almost as if commanded by the feet slamming onto the floor. Their features became more clear: vermillion beasts of muscle entrapped within indigo wheels, fiery tendrils of crimson ensnared in electric appendages of violet, or blooming flowers of emerald sprouting forth from watery bubbles of cyan organisms… More sinful combinations of abominations untold quickly filled the battlefield, outnumbering Hyde.

Quickly realizing what was happening, Hyde concluded there would be no outrunning nor out-combatting the mass of destruction heading toward her. She would’ve audibly sworn if a tongue rested in her mouth, enabling her to speak. She was boosted at her lower health, perhaps she could put up a good fight before she died. Her heart caught in her throat; she was not excited for the pain she was about to endure that would likely multiply the scratches and aches across her body. 

She had cleared quite a bit of path for Dante and the party. She shook her head, wondering why she even thought about helping them, as they did nothing to assist her the entire time she was here, right? Part of her felt bad for leaving them behind, but Hyde disregarded it as the depressed feelings she received from the ID rather than her own conscience and guilt. 

Hmm… so be it. I refuse to partake in its gimmick, Hyde snarled at the distortion. I will slaughter anything that comes near. This monster shall face my wrath. Her last bit of sanity left as she smiled, chuckling to herself. Let’s bake this floor in blood. 

She stood still near the edge of the floor with the drop below her. Hyde raised her sword as time seemed to have slowed. She watched the enemies with careful eyes. She did not trust the fused peccatulum, and would not play into its gimmick. Her breathing about stopped as she waited, patiently… silence filled the room. They would have to make the first strike before she slaughtered them… or so she hoped. 

From Hyde’s perspective, many fused bodies continued to put themselves together and come after her. The hoards of disgusting creatures were beyond numerous, seemingly endless. They continued to arise from the ground where the distortion continued to dance. They approached the imposter like a wave as the bigger monster continued to click its heels. 

The first three lunged for her. Hyde raised her sword and sliced the first one, barely dodging the second. She recouped and clashed with the third one trying to rip out a part of her flesh. She pushed it back and sliced off its arm. The first one got back up and sliced a sharp object across her back. She winced and kicked it in the face, blocking the second one as she aimed for its head. 

Three more peccatulum joined the party. Hyde could not manage to land an attacking blow as she was forced to defend and clash with all her actions, barely catching each enemy as they came to attack her. More came to the monster’s aid periodically, failing to land a blow as Hyde evaded most of the attacks, but it was difficult to keep up. More kept swarming her each turn. But the time she killed one, sending it flying off the cliff, two more would replace it. It took all her strength to clash with each one, losing count of how many she slayed and how many she was defending against. She desperately tried to get them to hit each other, but their target was clear and they swarmed her, dealing significant damage and tearing out various parts of her, adding it to themselves. Whatever remaining stamina Hyde had left depleted. She cried out in pain, suffering from the new wounds. It was a painful way to die–

”I… I will... not let you harm them...”

A reverberating voice filled the air, a voice rather odd yet familiar. Hyde took a moment to push the mob back, breathing heavily as tears left her eyes. She glanced down to where the voice came from. A large shadow soared upward from the depths of the cliffs and pits below. Hyde was unable to comprehend the figure before it came flying down. It was a large, towering entity with massive, black wings tipped with colorful feathers. The figure loomed over the field before it came crashing down onto it, squashing the wave of peccatulum under its claws. It stood with a large and imposing posture, its back to Hyde and toward the distortion. 

J… Jatayu? 

”I... I can’t lose another loved one!” Its squack was dripping in pain and agony as it flared its wings. It flared its wings open, smashing another wave of monsters underneath its presence and crushing them to dust—

That was all Hyde saw and heard before the shockwave of the new being’s arrival reached her. She reached out, knocked back as the air escaped her lungs from the impact. She felt her feet touch the air… and didn’t come into contact with the ground again. 

Hyde was hurled towards the open air as she spun in circles, immediately falling down the spire to the cliffs thousands of feet below. The sight of the large bird disappeared over the ledge of the cliff, gravity stealing her gaze away from the show. 

Hyde spun in circles, gasping for breath as the wind pushed against her face, making it impossible to cry for help. There was no controlling her fall or where she would land, as the ledges were too far away and would sever her arm if she tried to grab onto them at the rate she was descending. 

It took falling a few thousand feet for Hyde to finally spread out her body, attempting to slow her fall. She stopped tumbling in circles as she did so. She silently cried in pain as the wind ripped at her flesh wounds, blood seeping out of her rapidly. Observing the ground for a soft place to land was useless; there was nothing that would break her fall and let her survive. This isn’t how I end… not this pathetically… Hyde growled at herself, almost disgusted with her failure to stay on the platform. 

She closed her eyes, turning her body to face the sky and the bright sun that gripped her skin and burned it. Her thoughts ran back to the bird that had attempted to save her. His voice… it sounded like Jatayu. Surely, that couldn’t be him… Her denial didn’t resonate with her gut. She started to tumble in the air again. It… That was him… what happened to him?

Her eyes widened in horror. Did he go to the altar? What did the party do to him? 

She passed the third floor, descending quickly toward the bottom. Her fall picked up pace as the wind rushed past her. Faster and faster she tumbled, about to meet her end at the bottom. Many questions polluted her mind as she plummeted to her death, more platforms and ledges becoming visible to her while she looked at the spire. The floor she was on disappeared above the clouds amongst the stretching tower. Hyde closed her eyes, waiting to meet her end and the hands of hell once more. 

Two bright flashes of red distracted her. Hyde opened her eyes to see the bright objects swooping from the ledge she fell from. They fell after her, stretching their hands as they sped like missiles toward her. Their pursuit of Hyde drowned out all combat noises. They barely made visible the silhouette of a bird taking off from the ledge and ascending higher into the clouds. Its shadow forced the red objects to shimmer, revealing their figures to be feathers: bright feathers. 

…What? Hyde tumbled further, reaching her hand out toward them. She passed the second floor of the spire, approaching the ground as it threatened to catch her first. She faced north, glancing at the feathers darting in her direction. It would be too late to break her fall completely, but she had to try. 

Her fate was going to hurt, and she wasn’t sure if Dante would bring her back after she left the party, nor did she consider how long she’d have to spend in hell. Her pain would hurt Dante so much if he tried…

Yet, despite her shortcomings, two feathers desperately tried to reach her, as if they were hands of kindness extending toward her. Hyde gripped the wounds on her arms, giving a soft smile as she still outstretched one of her hands towards the feathers. They were getting closer, but so was the floor. 

She faced the bright sky, not willing to meet or know when her end would come. She saw the sun, glistening in its bright beauty and kindness radiating from its radiant light. That soft emotion eased Hyde’s heart. Perhaps… it was better to die this way. 

Hyde reached out one more time to the feathers, and she grasped them with the tip of her fingers. They had successfully reached her as if they were guided by the will of another. Suddenly, her arms were wrapped up in their soft touch, pulling her up with extreme force that almost made Hyde hurl on the spot. They shifted her upright, reducing her fall as her legs dangled downwards, aided by her slowing her fall via spreading herself out earlier. 

The ground greeted Hyde mercilessly. Her landing wasn’t perfect; she tumbled and made a loud thud as she hit the ground with her feet; she was convinced she broke quite a few bones in her foot as she did so. She rolled across the ground, gasping in pain as the feathers surrounded her body, easing her fall like a soft cushion. 

Everything in her body was throbbing for help. Hyde let out a painful cry of agony as she sat up, gripping her feet. A few of the bones were sticking out of her shoe, and it forced tears down her eyes. She could not describe the pain she was in…

But she had survived the fall. 

The two large and downy feathers wrapped around her arms and body gently pulled her up, nudging her to try and stand. Hyde coughed, blood spilling from her lips as she adjusted her ponytail, trying to oblige. It took great effort to stand, but the feathers acted like soft bandages, easing the pain ever so slightly. They glowed with a warm, comforting, and kind light, as they had broken Hyde’s fall. They exemplified a care Hyde was never shown, that Hyde could not comprehend. Their aura felt similar to Jatayu’s, which convinced Hyde they were from him… or whatever monster he had become. 

Hyde stumbled to the ground, everything in her body aching. Blood seeped from her wounds and feet. The feathers couldn’t cover each one, and her vision slowly became blurred. She ran her weak fingers through the feathers, tears streaming from her eyes. Guilt claimed her soul. I… I had made sure Jatayu disliked me and knew his place… yet he sent these… and saved my life. She didn’t understand, nor could she. Why? 

The feathers let out a type of comfort she never felt before. She didn’t want it to end. She buried her face into one of the feathers that wrapped itself loosely around her chest. She sobbed into it, partly from external pain, partly from internal pain. She questioned over and over the motive of the feathers and why they decided to help her… why Jatayu decided to help her as if she was a close companion, rather than a harsh coworker who was bent on him learning the harsh realities of life. 

Why have you shown kindness to me? I do not deserve it… I never wanted to deserve kindness and yet here you are… here in the presence of your feathers… 

Her fingers told her foggy brain that the feathers were larger than she had thought, and they were incredibly thick. Each of them was bigger than her arms if she stretched them out. The giant vulture had many feathers like them on the coat of his wings, glimmering all sorts of colors. She couldn’t be one hundred percent sure that the vulture was Jatayu, but she knew the feathers had saved her life. They radiated a soft warmth as if Hyde was basking in a spring sun’s heat. 

It was only because of their glow that was Hyde able to see a few of her surroundings. The particular cliff she had fallen down appeared to be more like a hole. Hyde grunted in pain as she sat up, looking around. It was difficult to process any information as she became overwhelmed with various pain stimulations, blurring her vision and mind. However, it was dark like a pit around her despite the red beacon of light coming from the feathers. There was an aura that Hyde was not alone in this pit. Call it a golden bough resonating or anything else, but Hyde felt as if someone had been here before, stuck in this pit, holding onto something that glowed and gave them hope amid the darkness. Something akin to a memory, or a vision, perhaps… Hyde couldn’t tell what it was. However, she had a deep, reassuring feeling that someone had been helped out of this situation before; perhaps it was the vulture, Jatayu, as the feathers lent their suggestion to, that was once here and helped out. 

It seemed as if the feathers were returning the favor, gently tugging on Hyde’s arms, begging for her to come and follow them, urging her to stand despite her pain and go back into the light. Please come, Hyde felt they were saying something like that. Stand, come to the light, we got you. 

Hyde couldn’t see any light, but she had no other choice than to trust the feathers at hand. …Alright, I’ll try. I… I need to– a-a– She winced at the thought, her pride taking a serious blow. Apologize to Jatayu… She grimaced at the word, gasping in pain as she stood to her feet, crunching the bones that were sticking out of her shoes. 

Blood seeped from her feet as the feathers assisted her, guiding her down a dark tunnel that winded back and forth. She adjusted her sword on her back and held onto the feathers as if her life depended on it. She was in no condition to fight, and could likely die if someone blew a gust of wind on her wrong. She limped slowly in the direction of the feathers as they tugged gently on her arms, guiding her. They worked to save her life, the least she could do was follow them and offer an apology to their owner. 

Some of the bleeding had stopped on her wounds, making it slightly easier to see and stumble after the feathers with each step. She had to lift herself, but the feathers assisted in any way they could as if they were semi-sentient. It felt as if they were more than just feathers, which further convinced Hyde Jatayu had something to do with them. He is someone who is associated with feathers in his egos, a lot… 

The sun peeked through the dark tunnel, letting Hyde register that she had come back to the base of the spire, the trail’s beginning. Hyde’s bones came into contact with the dirt, and she was never thankful enough to be in so much pain in a place where she could be found. By the time she stepped onto the trail, the feathers stopped tugging. 

Her vision began to blur rapidly without the feathers keeping her sanity intact. She was exhausted and wounded beyond help’s extent; it was a miracle she had lasted this long. The pain multiplied in every corner of her body, providing a strong, burning, and ripping sensation in every limb. She barely moved her head, spotting the familiar flames of her manager at the tip of the stairs. Hyde crumbled immediately onto the floor, the feathers being the only thing that broke her fall as they wrapped around her. Dante? Didn’t… he travel in… the back… of… the… party…? She curled up and gasped in pain, her final tears leaving her eyes as they became dry and soulless. She felt a stream of blood come from her head and feet, and she was too beat and exhausted to get up. Darkness claimed her mind, and the last thing she saw was the manager… the one she had pushed away, the one she had forsakened… rushing towards her.

[detroitpedxing]

In Interviews, Kamala Harris Continues to Bob and Weave

Her media swing showed how she often responds to uncomfortable questions by acknowledging them, yet not fully answering them.

Running an abbreviated campaign in the final sprint before Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris blitzed the media this week in a series of interviews to speak to voters who say they still don’t know enough about her.

One thing they learned: how she keeps answering the question she wants, not the one that was asked.

Politicians, and presidents in particular, have long treated the ability to bob and weave through uncomfortable questions while remaining on message as a skill to be mastered, like the precise footing required of a carpenter navigating a high-pitched roof.

Bill Clinton’s famous line, “I feel your pain,” was deployed to diffuse an activist’s plea for details on how to end the AIDS epidemic. George W. Bush sabotaged questions about climate change by treating facts as partisan assertions. Barack Obama took his message to social media and largely avoided interviews with White House beat reporters.

This week, Ms. Harris put her own stamp on the art of the dodge.

On “60 Minutes,” she declined to answer a question about whether she considered Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, to be a close ally. She also refused to detail how she would pay for a $3 trillion economic plan.

When asked on ABC’s popular daytime show, “The View,” about accusations from Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida that she had only offered to help with a hurricane as a presidential candidate, she swiftly implicated the criticism as proof of his own partisanship. When Howard Stern asked her on his SiriusXM program later that afternoon if she would select Liz Cheney, the Republican former congresswoman, for her cabinet, Ms. Harris refused to be buttonholed. “I gotta win, Howard,” she said with an air of first-things-first. “I gotta win. I gotta win.”

Her media swing provided a glimpse into how she often responds to unpleasant questions without answering them, questions the very premise of questions she finds unfair and can take it upon herself to reword a query she considers unhelpful.

Ms. Harris, 59, can turn the typically defensive crouch of a non-answer into a bit of verbal jujitsu, as she did in declining the opportunity to identify Mr. Netanyahu as an ally. She can nimbly field a query and quickly lace her reply with trip wire for her opponent, as she did last month in her debate with former President Donald J. Trump.

A trained prosecutor, Ms. Harris is lawyerly, argumentative and fundamentally defensive. She often deflects or sidesteps. She can speak passionately about her values in a way that leaves listeners feeling as if the question had been acknowledged, even if the substance remained unaddressed. To avoid delineating her stance on some issues, she will instead focus on her dedication to progress and inclusion.

Her verbal acrobatics may be contributing to the impression that some voters have that they do not know her or her policy views very well. It has become a key weakness as she rushes to sway millions of undecided voters in the battleground states.

Her opponent is playing a different rhetorical game, maybe a different sport. Mr. Trump continues to shatter the norms of generally accepted practices of political communications. He is known for defending blatant lies. He rambles and reverts to nearly decade-old slogans to avoid answering a question. He regularly sheds a prodigious amount of exaggerations and falsehoods. After two presidential campaigns in which he took pride in ignoring fact-checkers, he has recently refused to participate in interviews or debates that include fact-checking.

The roughly three dozen interviews Mr. Trump has given in the past five weeks have been almost exclusively with conservative outlets or with hosts who are openly supportive of his White House bid. He has declined an invitation for a second debate with Ms. Harris, and canceled an interview he had previously agreed to with “60 Minutes.”

There is no fair way to assess Ms. Harris’s performance while sharing the spotlight with Mr. Trump, an opponent who, earlier this week, insisted he had visited the Gaza Strip, the site of a violent war he has claimed he would end within days of taking office, without any record of him setting foot in that part of the Middle East.

But voters’ lack of familiarity with Ms. Harris means she has little choice but to endure the inequity. In a New York Times/Siena College poll last month, one out of every four voters said they needed to learn more about Ms. Harris — compared with just one of every 10 who said the same about Mr. Trump.

Voters wanting more information about Ms. Harris were primarily young and Black or Hispanic, according to the poll. They typically did not identify with either political party and largely consumed news from social media or online outlets rather than newspapers or cable networks.

Of former President Donald J. Trump’s recent interviews, all but one have been with conservative outlets or with hosts who are openly supportive of his White House bid.

Ms. Harris’s schedule was essentially a media map of those specific demographics.

During her appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, a chatty entertainment program popular with Gen Z and millennial women, Ms. Harris took aim for the first time at comments made by Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee. She called his remarks about “childless cat ladies” in positions of power “mean and mean spirited.”

It was the 65 minutes she spent with Mr. Stern that was the most personally revealing.

Within the first few minutes alone, she engaged in a debate over Prince’s best album (she said it was “1999,” while Mr. Stern maintained it was the “Batman” soundtrack) and drolly dismissed her husband, Doug Emhoff, as a Depeche Mode fan from her perch as a self-described “hip-hop girl.”

Oct. 2, 2024

David Axelrod, the former Obama strategist who had publicly urged Ms. Harris to engage more deliberately with the media, praised her performance this week.

“Most candidates hone those skills during primary campaigns,” Mr. Axelrod said of Ms. Harris’s truncated campaign. “She was thrown into the deep end of the deepest pool there is 90 days before a general election. And if she isn’t exactly Katie Ledecky yet, she seemed a lot more comfortable than she was a few weeks ago — and the sheer repetition of doing these will help.”

Her appearance on “60 Minutes,” the one traditional news program she agreed to this week, offered some of the clearest examples of her weaving talking points with hints of policy.

Bill Whitaker, the correspondent conducting the interview, asked how she would pay for her $3 trillion economic plan, and Ms. Harris responded by touting the potential benefits for the middle class. When he pressed her, she suggested raising taxes on the highest earners. When he doubted Congress would agree, she said, in not so many words, that she was trying to win an election — not a favorable score from the Congressional Budget Office.

“I cannot afford to be myopic in terms of how I think about strengthening America’s economy,” Ms. Harris said. “Let me tell you something: I am a devout public servant. You know that. I am also a capitalist. And I know the limitations of government.”

In one revealing exchange, she was repeatedly pressed on the war in Gaza and the wedge that conflict had driven between Washington and Jerusalem as Mr. Netanyahu has refused calls for a cease-fire and defied America’s appeals for restraint by invading Lebanon.

Asked if the United States had “no sway over Prime Minister Netanyahu,” Ms. Harris described diplomatic relations with him as “an ongoing pursuit.”

Mr. Whitaker pushed back. Mr. Netanyahu “was not listening,” he said. Ms. Harris responded with a similar answer: The administration was “not going to stop pursuing” an end to the war.

Mr. Whitaker made a third attempt. This time, he asked bluntly whether she considered Mr. Netanyahu to be “a real close ally.” Ms. Harris seized control of the questions.

“With all due respect,” she began, “the better question is, ‘Do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people?’ And the answer to that question is yes.”

It was a move that at first blush appeared to be an audacious display of chutzpah over what was or was not a “better question.” Instead, it may stand as a historic marker in U.S. foreign policy: The potential 47th president of the United States deliberately declined the opportunity to call the Israeli prime minister an ally. And did so with an artful dodge.

[fantaatix]

it's moxxie day

you know what that means

i remember having a moment after i saw this calendar when the full moon first came out because aww look blitz makes time for his friends outside of work

and then i had another moment once apology tour came out because if that episode takes place on october 31st, full moon might take place in september, specifically in 2023

and if THAT's the case, then september 10th could very well be moxxie's birthday!! cos he's a virgo!!! yippee!!!!

okay that's not all this post is about but i didn't have it done in time for the weekend (fever things yay)

usually when i make these posts they pop into my mind as a header and the header for this one would've been "you ever notice how moxxie has trouble with running?"

but obviously that's kind of a boring ass post on it's own so i also talk about strengths/weaknesses, specifically in moxxie's case

"moxxie has trouble with running?" yeah, i think it's a fair claim

i'm pretty sure he has the most time spent running out of the entire cast, actually, but i'm cutting this post really close to midnight and i'll be damned if this doesn't go up on MOXXIE DAY on the MOXXIE RANT ACCOUNT during VIRGO SEASON

evidence:

murder family

-you can hear him panting during this little shot but it isn't heard when he runs back to the house later in the episode

loo loo land

-panting isn't heard but it's certainly seen

harvest moon

-emphasized how much trouble he has keeping up with blitz and striker

-i won't count the panting here since he was literally just being choked out but. running!

also, kind of unrelated: striker is literally backing him into a corner before this. scratches the door, closes it, backs him up against the desk--you know, signs someone's about to attack you?

but moxxie's still caught off guard, even though he mentions having an "instant dislike" of striker on first meet, and even though he's very skilled at dodging most projectiles.

so it's not that he can't detect oncoming danger, i think it's that it depends on the context in which the danger comes at him. moxxie can't tell that striker is intending threaten him through body language alone, he needs to go into a fight knowing that a fight is going to happen in the first place.

in cherub, the cherubs literally pull out angelic crossbows so it's fair to say moxxie's guard was up as soon as they got hostile. and also they all just indulged in blitz's wonderful mannerism of intentionally pissing people off for the sillies (and sometimes for the not-so-sillies), so he probably saw this coming anyways.

in truth seekers, blitz tackles moxxie to the ground so he doesn't get shot, but it only takes the portal being closed for him to go into fight-mode. in a similar fashion, blitz only tries to fight the agents after moxxie is shot with the tranquilizer. otherwise he's running away.

where did you learn parkour, little man.

but my last backing points about the running thing which kind of ties into what i'm saying here;

mission: antarctica

-they're all running from the hoard of penguins but moxxie falls behind millie and blitz

-millie seems to take notice of this and helps him run up the steps saying "mox, come on!"

think about that for a second. that doesn't seem like a line they wrote in initially, it sounds like something they added in after they saw the storyboards. moxxie falling behind isn't a detail super important in the context of the short, but could be an important detail overall.

especially if you compare this to the heist scene in exes and oohs. difference being chaz didn't stop to help moxxie but millie does.

so yadda yadda yadda, you could blame this all on coincidence but i think it's an implied struggle. solid "your curses are your blessings and vice versa" kind of thing we have going on here. your flaws are often correlated to your strengths.

to build on that idea, moxxie's an accurate and precise shooter but he lacks in physical strength compared to millie and blitz. moxxie's very agile (dude literally has no scars) but he has trouble running for long periods of time. he's great at finance and filing paperwork but it doesn't seem like he enjoys it.

he's got all these great skills but he has low self-esteem and an inferiority complex.

back on that striker point from earlier, moxxie's not so great at reading the room but he's pretty great at reading individuals.

-first meet with striker and he already has an instant dislike of him.

-gets thrown into jail and gets celled with a stranger but has an instant trust of him because he mentions his daughter.

-the ENTIRE drug trip sequence from truth seekers??? that almost 1-1 read he has on blitz, especially compared to blitz's interpretation of moxxie in HIS drug sequence? do you get what i'm saying here?

HMM i wonder why that might be??? surely not an ability he developed from his childhood??? or after being used/abandoned by chaz??? and all that quality time with his Papa??? surely not??????

okay i got it all out. happy birthday you little gremlin freak

[jay-marti]

Howie vs Dr Ashley or slyvie

Hey! This is a great suggestion because it allows me to talk about my head canons when it comes to the power of Mundies! My belief given everything we’ve seen so far is that Humans in the Epithet World have no upper limit when it comes to physical traits, such as strength or speed, hence a Mundie like Howie has the ability to grow in power forever, or at least to a vastly superhuman level. Generally I see it like a JJK Sorceror vs Cursed Spirit situation, An equally stated inscribed will generally beat an equally stated mundie, but a higher stated mundie will generally beat a lower stated inscribed.

To the actual fight itself.

Howie is a Nova Class and is naturally a beast, his two best feats being his speed build, performing complex tasks in seconds and nearly faster than the human eye, and bending a whole wrench, WITH ONE HAND, and unbending it, WITH ONE HAND, and it seems he wasn’t putting that much effort into it.

Sylvie on the other hand has a good series of hax and abilities with his Sheep, Dust, and his Trump Card of Beefton.

Ultimately I don’t think even Beefton could stand up to Howie’s pure physical might. Sylvie and Beefton both struggled to keep up with Mera in speed, who moves a bit faster than the average human, compared to Howie who is said to be faster than Percy, someone who can dodge bullets, or at least react fast enough to predict their trajectory. I’d also argue Howie is stronger, yes Beefton caused more damage overall but that was over a longer period of time and clearly displayed more physical effort from Beefton than the Wrench Feat did for Howie, who we really haven’t seen the limits of for Power, Speed, or Durability for, I’d wager that Howie is stronger than the AC Unit that crushed Beefton. Even the Sleep Dust probably wouldn’t work as I imagine Howie would just resist it through stamina alone.

Overall, The way I imagine the fight going is Howie either immediately speed blitzes Sylvie before he can do anything or even if Sylvie does activate Dream Big, Howie could to just out brute Beefton in a hand to hand fight.

TL: DR- With Better Strength, Speed, Durability than both Sylvie and Beefton, Howie Honeyglow works to win this fight with Low Difficulty

[helldustedstories]

@madefate asked: ❝ Hey. ❞ Blitz doesn't feel the pavement beneath his knees when he slides to a stop, or the force at his back when he drapes himself over Stolas, still kneeling, palms slamming to the other side of him, determined to provide cover no matter what. His eyes close for a second until the dust settles, and when they open again, his expression is proud. It's protective and fierce and completely determined, and he wastes no time getting an arm around Stolas' middle to get them both the fuck out of dodge.

❝ Like I said - never again. I'm never leaving you alone again. ❞

unprompted // always accepting

He should have known that Andrealphus had been manipulating all of this behind the scenes; he'd always been hungry for power, and Stolas' divorce to Stella had set back his own ambitions. But if he could vacate Stolas' seat, then maybe he could convince Paimon that he was the logical next step to take the throne, instead of Octavia. And failing that, he would try to get his niece on his side, so that he was the real power, the one making the decisions.

Andrealphus wasn't like Stella; his schemes were subtler; he kept his hand close to the vest until it was far too late to do much to stop him. Despite not being much older Stella herself, he had had some input on their marriage, for one thing. And now he had managed to turn most of the Goetia family against Stolas.

When the prince had stood up to him this time, refused to allow him to influence Octavia, to get her under his thumb as well, the peacock had made a case that he was a traitor to the Goetia, to all that they stood for, and that he should be excommunicated, something that hadn't happened in eons. But when everything had gone wrong, Stolas had ended up on his own, trying to keep his daughter safe when almost everyone he knew seemed to be against him.

And then Andrealphus had shown up, had caught him off-guard, and hit him with something that kept him from accessing his powers. He could still feel them, but it was like they were locked behind a wall, as though he couldn't reach them. But even with that obstacle, there was no way he was going to let the bastard get away with this, not when he'd threatened the only people Stolas cared about.

Stolas thought he'd managed to get a message to Blitz, using the connection they now shared: a way for them to communicate in emergencies, especially if they couldn't access their phones. He was very glad Blitz had insisted upon using the spell he'd developed; he just hoped he'd gotten through before whatever Andrealphus had shot him with took hold. It was hard to tell much of anything with his magic as inaccessible as it felt, which meant he was going to have to fight a different way.

He'd held out as long as he could, doing what Blitz had taught him, taunting his former brother-in-law, trying to get him to slip up and make a mistake. But Andrealphus was not Striker, and all he'd done was manage to make him mad.

While the marquis had seemed content to play with his food, when Stolas struck a nerve, ice-blue eyes narrowed, and a spear of ice shot towards Stolas, who managed to twist enough out of the way that it only grazed him, leaving a trail of black blood in its wake. There wasn't even anything for him to take cover behind, not with where Andrealphus had herded him.

He was going to have to make his stand here in the drive, mostly powerless, on his own. But just as Andrealphus started to approach once more, as Stolas was about to get to his feet, he heard the voice he'd both been hoping for and dreading. Because it meant that Blitz was here…., but it also meant that he was here. That just meant that he was going to fight even harder, that he couldn't give up, not that he'd been inclined to, not anymore.

Blitz throws himself in front of Stolas, using himself to protect the prince, and he can feel his heart leap into his throat at the idea of him getting hurt. But he was here, and Stolas would not let anything to happen to him.

Stolas feels Blitz's arm around him, and he practically clings to him, looking around for Andrealphus.

"I wasn't sure I got through," he admitted, but then his eyes widen, pupils pinpricks in crimson depths, displaying just how serious this situation is. "We have to get out of here; Andrealphus--"

But before he can finish that statement, the Goetia in question seems to glide slowly down the drive of the palace, leaving shards of ice in his wake.

"Do you really think you're going to get out of here?" the peacock sneers, tail feathers fanning out behind him, even as ice begins to gather around him.

And Stolas laughs at him, even from his position on the ground, Blitz's arm still around him. "I've never been afraid of you, Andrealphus…., but clearly you can't actually face me, without trying to make me powerless." His words, though directed at Andrealphus, are carefully chosen to let Blitz know what's happening, why he wasn't fighting the way Blitz knew he could.

[kuzann]

Just finished writing this segment for the next chapter of Paradigm Shift and I'm actually liking it a lot. It's still raw and needs to be cleaned up but I wanted to share. Have some Danny panicking over his mom potentially getting hurt. :p Current word count: 11.2k words

Danny’s head swam as Valerie flew out of the arena on her board. He drifted back a bit, for what little good it would do him when the fight started.

“Alright, you ectoplasmic menace,” Maddie said as she widened her stance. “Impress me.”

“I’ll do my best,” Danny managed.

“Begin!” Kara cried.

Maddie whipped an ecto-blaster out of her belt pouch and fired on Danny the moment Kara’s voice rang out over the arena.

Danny distorted his body to dodge the attack. She’d already caught him flat-footed. If he could just pin her down with ice maybe he could pull off a win without hurting her too much… And without getting too hurt himself.

A chill gathered as his power forced the heat from the air around him.

Maddie paused and pulled a shield-like device around from where it hung on her back and slipped it onto her right arm.

Danny flung a wave of chill at the ground at her feet, the ice already forming as it drew near.

Maddie flung her arm in a backhand, and the wave exploded into billowing steam.

Shock overwhelmed him for a few vital moments—when had she made that one!? He’d never seen it before, but it had clearly been designed for countering his ice. Danny flew back, but it was already too late.

An ecto-blast blitzed out of the steam cloud and hit him dead in the chest, knocking him to the ground. Danny hit the floor hard and struggled to get his bearings as Maddie stepped out of the steam.

Maddie paused only to swipe the mist off her goggles with one forearm, then took a grenade-like device from her belt pouch and tossed it after Danny.

He scuttled away, having temporarily forgotten about his ability to fly in his panic. Danny covered his eyes and went intangible, figuring it might be a sort of flashbang as he jumped away—

The assumption was only partially correct.

With a sharp bang the grenade exploded. Danny saw the sickly green flash through his arm and eyelids a split-second before the wave of energy washed over his body. He fell back and rolled as if trapped in the surf on a stormy day, battered and stunned when he finally came to a stop some distance away.

The beam of the Fenton Thermos caught him before he got the chance to stand.

A cacophony of sound started up, audible even through the walls of the Fenton Thermos: cheers and shouts of surprise, as well as calls of “Let him go!” and “Leave Phantom alone!”

Danny’s senses finally returned to him in full as the thermos began to move.

“What do you think you’re doing?” said Kara’s voice, muffled slightly by the metal walls. Even with the barrier between them Danny could feel the lurking threat in her tone.

Panic set in as he realized what his mom was trying to do. He trusted Jazz and his friends to bail him out of the thermos when his mom got home, but that wasn’t the problem—his mom was trying to break Kara’s rules, and that was sure to draw her ire. If Maddie ended up fighting Kara she might not—

“Phantom’s a menace. He puts the city in jeopardy almost weekly just so he can fight other ghosts,” Maddie replied calmly. “If you want me to take my role as protector seriously then you must let me remove him.”

“All combatants are under my protection during the tournament. If you wish to take one home as a prize then you must defeat me in the arena first.”

“Don’t!” Danny screamed, his voice echoing back at him within the thermos. His breaths came out as pained wheezes as dread squeezed his lungs.

“Quiet, Phantom,” Maddie snapped. “You don’t have a say here.”

“You can’t fight her! I watched her demolish a ghost who’s way stronger than me before the tournament even started!” Danny yelled, desperation working its way into his voice. “You can’t win!” It didn’t matter how much stronger than Vlad his mom might be, Kara was magnitudes stronger than him. A vision of his mom on the ground, beaten and burned, forced its way to the front of his mind.

“I’ll take my chances, Phantom.”

“You can’t...” Danny said weakly. All Kara had to do was land one solid blow on Maddie and it would be over... Possibly forever. Vlad had only withstood as much as he had because he was far more durable than a typical human.

“Mom!” Jazz’s voice rang out, just loud enough to carry through the wall of the Thermos despite the distance.

There was a pause, apparently as Jazz scrambled down into the arena.

“Jazz, go back to your seat,” their mom said, her voice gentler but still firm.

“Mom, you saw the news earlier! You saw what that ghost did to Vlad!” Jazz said, her voice wobbling. Even without seeing her face Danny knew she was on the verge of tears. “You can’t fight her! What am I gonna tell Danny and dad if you get hurt?”

Tears gathered in Danny’s eyes as Jazz started crying. His mom could be teetering on the brink of mortal danger and he was powerless to do anything about it. She would never listen to Phantom, and he couldn’t reveal his identity now even if he wanted to—the arena was being filmed, if he revealed his identity to her here everyone would know, and his entire family would be in danger as a result. All he could do was wait and hope.

“Jazz, sweetheart...” The thermos swung as their mom pulled Jazz into a hug.

Please listen to her! Please, please, please! Danny covered his face in both hands, hoping that their mom would listen now that Jazz was crying; Jazz cried so rarely, it always made their parents pay attention when she actually did.

At last their mom sighed. “Alright, I’ll settle things with Phantom some other time.”

[darkmaga-returns]

Putin made the right choice, which was always driven by his rational calculation of what was in Russia’s objective interests as a state, not due to “Zionist influence” like some in the Alt-Media Community now ridiculously claim to defame him after being mad that he didn’t lift a finger to save the Resistance.

The Iranian-led Resistance Axis has been defeated by Israel. Hamas’ terrorist attack on 7 October 2023 prompted Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza, which set into motion a series of conflicts that expanded to Lebanon and Syria. Israel has also bombed Yemen and Iran. Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s leaderships were destroyed, leading to a ceasefire in Lebanon, while the Assad government was just overthrown by a Turkish-backed terrorist blitz that severed Iran’s military logistics to Hezbollah.

These outcomes were already surprising enough for those who believed the late Nasrallah’s claim that “Israel is weaker than a spider web”, but many were shocked that they occurred without Russia lifting a finger to save the Resistance, with whom they thought that it had allied against Israel long ago. That second-mentioned false notion will go down in infamy as one of the most successful psy-ops ever conducted against the Alt-Media Community (AMC), and ironically enough, by its own top influencers.

It was explained in early October “Why False Perceptions About Russian Policy Towards Israel Continue To Proliferate”, which readers should review for more detail, but which can be summarized as top AMC influencers telling their audience what they thought they wanted to hear for self-interested reasons. These include generating clout, pushing their ideology, and/or soliciting donations from well-intentioned but naïve members of their audience depending on the personality involved.

[neutral-emerald]

SWAP AU SUMMARY BLITZ GO

I have had this Roleswap AU sitting around half-told because I (genius) thought it would be a good idea to tell the adapted plot of Sonic Heroes through little comic snippets, and then realized that the points I wanted to cover could not be easily conveyed through comic snippets. Well, NO LONGER! I am now going to write up a summary of most of the games I have notes on, with doodles interspersed where I see fit!

Firstly, a summary of games I've previously covered! Mostly covering Sonic and Shadow, because they're kinda the centerpiece(s).

Sonic Adventure

Not a lot to say about this one, actually. It's kinda just a prelude to SA2. Rest assured that it DID happen, though.

Sonic Adventure 2

Sonic gets taken out of stasis and tries to blow up the Earth, much like canon!Shadow does. I go into the details of his motivation in this post, and kinda nudge at some of his interactions with Shadow in this one. Relevant to note is that Sonic mistakes Shadow for a Prototype of the Ultimate Lifeform, and then eventually concludes that Shadow is the real Ultimate Lifeform, rather than Sonic.

Sonic Heroes

There's two comic snippets I've made of this, here and here. To summarize/explain:

The first follows up on SA2, with Shadow still bothered by the stuff Sonic said to him about being a prototype, and being unaware that Maria found and has spent all this time reviving Sonic.

The second comes in two parts: First, Tails finds Sonic (and Knuckles, who was trapped in this vault as a casualty of the Shadow Androids having taken over (reminder: the Shadow Androids are swapped with Metal Sonic)), and discovers that Sonic has lost all his memories. Second, Team Sonic bump into Team Shadow, which Shadow isn't terribly pleased about seeing as he's spent all this time thinking Sonic was dead.

It is at this point that I left this whole AU sitting on a cliffhanger for several years. But NO LONGER! I will now elaborate on what happens next... under this readmore bc this is gonna be a long post.

So the main conflict between Sonic and Shadow would be based on the fact that Shadow desperately wants Sonic to elaborate on what he was talking about when he implied Shadow was artificially created like him. Sonic, who might I remind you has amnesia, doesn't know any more about it than Shadow does. Shadow thinks this is a cheap attempt to dodge his questions, they fight, you know how it goes with temperamental hedgehogs.

Now, as I mentioned, the Shadow Androids have been swapped with Metal Sonic. I don't feel like figuring out the details of what that means for the Androids, but what it means for Metal Sonic is this: Maria wasn't sure if she'd be able to save Sonic's life, so she drafted plans for a robotic body to transfer his consciousness into as a last resort. Whether she actually has the technology to do such a thing isn't entirely relevant; what matters is that Tails discovers the blueprints for this and perhaps even a half-built prototype, and it raises the question of whether or not the Sonic he found Knuckles guarding is the real deal, or just a robotic doppelganger.

And that all covers what I have to say about Sonic Heroes, which leads us into...

Shadow the Hedgehog

The Black Arms attack. Alien invasion, y'know the drill. Due to his swapped status, Sonic is the one with Black Doom's DNA in him, so Sonic is the one who gets approached and told to come help take over the planet.

While Sonic is getting seduced to the dark side to varying levels of success (I do NOT know how to adapt the multiple routes system and I'm not even going to try), Shadow is having an absolute time of it. He's started experiencing intense intrusive thoughts/compulsions directly in response to the aliens, driving him to A: Destroy the Black Arms at all costs, and B: Gather the Chaos Emeralds. Not that he wouldn't be doing those things regardless, it's just that some previously dormant part of his brain has switched on and is forcing him to do those NOW, RIGHT NOW, RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY. NO TIME TO THINK ABOUT OTHER THINGS DO IT NOW.

This leads him into conflict with Sonic, who may or may not be tentatively on Black Doom's side for the promise of answers about who he really is, and/or who is also trying to gather the Chaos Emeralds. Again, Shadow the Hedgehog's story has way too much going on all at once to coherently adapt within the purview of this post.

The TL;DR for the ending is this: It turns out that just like Sonic accused back in SA2, Shadow is an artificial being created by Gerald Robotnik, but he's got nothing to do with the Ultimate Lifeform project. Rather, he was created with the express purpose of destroying the Black Comet when it would return 50 years later. He was put in stasis as a baby and unfrozen some ~35 years later by Maria's parents, to be raised as their own and prepared for his eventual purpose of fighting off an alien invasion. Unfortunately, Maria's parents died when they were still young, so he just kinda stumbled ass-backwards into a bundle of sleeper-instincts and has to figure things out as he goes along.

Does a pretty good job in the end, though.

I could get into Sonic 06 too, but that one's pretty disconnected from the arc that these games form, so I think I'll save it for another time. Sorry for the long (long, LONG) wait for all this!

[rejectclone]

I’ve been on a huge Splatoon kick for MONTHS at this point, so I’ve finally decided to make a Coroika-like OC team! Because since they’re kinda Coroika themed, they have two names, so they’re either named after their gear OR have a codename they use while battling! 🎨🔫

🦑💙🌀 Low-Vis AKA Reject 🌀💙🦑

* Female inkling, she/her

* Natural ink color is is a bright turquoise, which is almost blinding when it’s caught in bright sunlight

* Hairstyle is the iconic Hippie cut, and she’s never changed it in her entire life

* Noticeable facial feature is some near-constant dark circles under her eye mask, even though she does get a full night’s worth of sleep every day. Additionally, the shaping of her eye mask is quite odd, as it’s almost shaped like a pair of sunglasses and is ‘flat’ on top, akin to a straight line

* Sloshing Machine main, secondaries Octobrush (biased towards Sloshers and Brushes + Rollers in general, and they absolutely LOATHE Splatlings and Blasters)

* Hails from Inkopolis, born and raised there for their entire childhood and young adult years

* They’re a indie sofubi artist who moved into Splatsville to sell her original (ancient human culture inspired) sofubi figures to some solid success so far. She does make ends meet by working at Grizz Co., but she has been making good money with her tendency to win small Anarchy tournaments at a good rate

* S+ ranker, pretty big Splat Zones and Tower Control fan, but does enjoy playing Turf incredibly causally

* Leader of the team and is a excellent all-rounder type player, but tends to be a bad sore loser though when suffering from multiple losses in one day, ESPECIALLY after getting a real bad pull from the Shell-Out Machine *cough* pulling a meal ticket *cough*

🐙💗🎛 Aux Box AKA Spare 🎛💗🐙

* Male Octoling, he/him

* Natural ink color is a soft light pink, almost cotton candy-like

* Hairstyle is the Afro cut, but he does have a small X shaped scar on the back of it

* Noticeable facial feature is that due to years of using his favorite main weapon, there is a noticeable ‘dent’ below his right eye socket, on top of his eye mask. Additionally, there are faint scars on top of his knuckles, due to how often his fingers would hit the backside of the trigger guard….. plus getting into occasional fist fights with other competitors

* ONE-TRICK E-Liter 4K Scope main, as he refuses to secondary anything (you’d have to literally kill him to make him just TOUCH any other non-special weapon)

* Hails from Splatville, as he was born and raised there his entire life, amongst other incredibly lucky Octolings whose families dodged being forced to fight in the Great Turf War. Hence, his appearance and demeanor is radically different when compared to Octolings who were in Octavio’s army and defected, and he also seems to be totally disinterested in learning more about his culture’s history

* Once projected to be the next breakout Turf War star in the world, he had suddenly became spiteful in playing that mode and began to dominate Anarchy instead. He seems to be very closed off when being asked why he changed his initial goal in life, and becomes easily agitated when pressed even further on it

* X-Ranker, VERY BIG Rainmaker + Clam Blitz fan and he still absolutely crushes it in Splat Zones and Tower Control

* Second member to join the team, as he was impressed by Low-Vis’ prowess in a random Splatfest match, and was shockingly open to making a causal team, although he does overtake the leadership role every one in awhile (and he does rule with a iron fist, either to incredibly positive success or devastating failure)

🐙💜🌫 Yamagiri AKA Haze 🌫💜🐙

* Female Octoling, she/her

* Natural ink color is a bright lavender, but she can also turn it into a deeper red, essentially on-command

* Hair style is a mixture between the ‘traditional’ Octarian hair cut, and the Pony cut

* Noticeable facial feature is that oddly enough, her eye’s sclera are still tinted green. Additionally, she wears black eyeliner on top of her naturally purple eye mask, to try to fit in more amongst other Inkfish

* Mains Splatana Stamper, secondaries Octo Shot (the LEGITIMATE REAL thing, not at all the replica version)

* Hails from Inkopolis square, but she initially came from Octo Valley and moved into Splatsville for a fresher start in rebuilding up her life

* A former Octarian Army member, she has become disillusioned by the actions of her past and now deeply craves normalcy, once she heard the Calamari Inkantation

* Diehard Tableturf player, as she has a near-complete collection of every card that’s in active play and is a very tough competitor to beat. She makes a living off of the thrill of buying card packs and selling off the rares and secret rares she pulls, and does box set unboxing streams (although she only shows her hands when opening up the card packs, and even wears gloves when she does it to help obscure the shape of her fingertips)

* Third player to join the team, as she genuinely dislikes playing Turf or Anarchy, but does do it for the extra money and tickets at least, as she’s also addicted to the Shell-Out Machine, just like Low-Vis

🦑💛🎣 Paintball AKA Delta 🎣💛🦑

* Male inkling, he/they

* Natural ink color is a muddy yellow, but it can clear up to a more bolder yellow when they’re submerged in other Inkfishes’ ‘cleaner’ yellow ink.

* Hair style is the Spiky-Haired cut, but sometimes he does change it to the Buzz-Cut by just shaving off the spikes on top

* Noticeable facial feature is that the fangs on their beak are so long, that they peek through their lips, essentially causing them to have their mouth always agape so it doesn’t hurt as much. Additionally, their upper arms/upper legs/shoulders/back has some odd looking birthmarks, almost as if his natural biological ink is bleeding through his skin, and is dripping down their entire backside?……

* Krak-On Roller main, secondaries Explosher but on incredibly rare occasions

* Hails from Inkopolis Square?….. not even he himself is sure.

* Supposedly suffers from retrograde amnesia, as they lurk around Splatville at ‘dead’ hours, seemingly just ‘observing’ what’s going on in the area, with a almost dazed expression. It’s unknown where he even lives, as he’s almost always found at the Grizz Co building

* Profreshional Overfisher, as they’re UTTERLY OBSESSED with working at Grizz Co, as he works well over his usual full-time shifts to the point where the company had to tell him to literally go on vacation due to legal reasons. It is said that when out on the job, his normally dazed and meek behavior is RADICALLY changed to a more strict and intimidating aura, almost as if they’re a whole other person?…..

* Last member to join the team, as they are horrifically shy amongst others and is seemingly too scared to use his Kraken special for some odd reason?….. It is a miracle how Yamagiri managed to coax him into joining the team, as she does see potential in having a high ranking Salmon Runner who is INCREDIBLY acutely aware of his surroundings, when in the heat of battle