#but I’ll cut the story off there before it veers around to depressing again

[rpf-bat]

Alright, you really wanna know?

(I warned you. The first half of this story is a sad one).

So.....I didn’t drop out of school by choice. I was two and a half years into a four year degree program. I was getting good grades, I was active in school clubs. I had matured out of my Punch Everyone phase, so I actually had a decent amount of friends lol. I even dated a couple people.

And then everything went straight to shit. My folks were....controlling. Like, they forced me to give them the password to my email account, and read every message in my Sent folder. They GPS tracked my phone and yelled at me for going to Taco Bell with my friends, when I “should have been in my dorm, studying”. They drained every cent out of my bank account to punish me for “talking back”, and I didn’t find out until my card declined on a tube of toothpaste at Walmart. (My roommate, J, bought my toothpaste for me. She’s going to be important later.)

Everything came to a head during Christmas break. I was supposed to be picked up to go home, at 8 am sharp. I asked my dad to meet me in the downstairs lobby of my dorm, so that I didn’t disturb my roommates, who would still be sleeping. For some reason, he insisted that he needed to meet me in my actual room.

Somehow, this escalated into a series of threatening texts from him. There’s one I remember verbatim: “I know how to wake that bitch up. Lesbians don’t scare me.”

J got really anxious, and said if he tried to barge into our room, after she told him not to, she was going to call the campus police.

I told J: “I wish I didn’t have to go home, and spend the next few weeks with him.”

J said: “So, don’t.”

She offered to let me spend Christmas with her family, in Atlanta. I accepted.

My father warned me, “If you don’t come home to Florida for Christmas, you will not be going to that school anymore.”

I thought he was bluffing. But then, one night, while sitting on J’s bedroom floor, I got a call from my school’s financial aid office. They informed me that spring semester would cost $15,000, that my father had informed them that he was not intending to pay it, and that I was therefore being evicted from the dorms.

I started a GoFundMe. It raised about $1,000. Not nearly enough. With no choice left, I packed up my things, hugged J goodbye, and moved out of my dorm in North Georgia, back into my parents’ house in South Florida.

My only friends were now 700 miles away.

My parents’ verbal/emotional abuse escalated. I was being called a b***h and a c**t. I had a hairbrush thrown at me. I was being pushed into anxiety attacks. I made the decision, that I needed to either get out of that house, or die.

(Ok, now here’s where it gets awesome.)

Could I really just get up and leave?? I wondered. Where would I go?? Where would I be left standing, in the aftermath?

And then, a phrase popped into my head, that I hadn’t heard in years: The aftermath is secondary.

I rewatched the Danger Days music videos, sitting there in my childhood bedroom, and, as silly as it sounds, it gave me the courage to go through with my plan.

I started calling relatives. Two aunts and a cousin, basically told me, Sorry, can’t help you. We don’t want to be involved in whatever fight y’all are having.

Growing increasingly desperate, I called my half-sibling....who I had only found out existed, a year prior. (That story could easily be it’s own post....but the short version? One of my parents had a child while still in school. Unable to care for the baby, they quietly arranged a closed adoption, and then kept the child’s existence a secret for the next thirty-five years. I was raised as an only child and only learned the truth when I was twenty years old. My brother, and his adoptive parents, had actually been living not far from us, the whole time....)

Even though he, truthfully, barely knew me, my half-brother answered my call. He began driving to my town, to come and get me.

I packed four shirts, four pairs of pants, a toothbrush, my CD player, and my CD collection, into an overnight bag. I understood that I was about to lose everything else that I owned. When I told my parents I was leaving, they grabbed and confiscated my laptop and my phone.

“We won’t let you leave with them! We paid for them, so they’re ours!”

I wasn’t scared. I had J’s phone number written in pen on my arm. I could call her from my brother’s phone later and tell her I was alive.

My folks tried other tactics to scare me into changing my mind:

“I’ll break your brother’s legs with a baseball bat if he steps on my property!”

“We’ll tell the hospital you’re having a psychotic break. Legally, they can hold you against your will for up to three days. So you won’t be able to leave town.”

I knew I wasn’t having an episode. I was calm. I knew what I was doing.

“We’ll call the police and have your brother arrested for trespassing.”

I called my brother, and told him about the last one.

“A lesson, little sister: he who calls the cops first, wins.”

Next thing I knew, a police officer was on my doorstep, to do a “wellness check”. The man was savvy, and asked me if I would like to speak to him on the porch - alone.

“Ma’am, do you want to be here?”

“No. My brother is going to pick me up. They’re going to tell you that he’s breaking in to the house but it’s not true. Please don’t arrest him.”

“Ma’am, I understand. I want you to know, you’re a legal adult, so if you don’t want to be here, and they use force to prevent you from leaving, that’s kidnapping.”

I contemplated these words, as I watched the cop car drive away. An hour later, I was sitting on the front porch with my suitcase, scanning the horizon for my brother’s car.

I lived in a gated community. In one last attempt to keep me from leaving, my parents had called the gatehouse, and told the security guard, not to let my brother into the subdivision.

My brother had already spoken to the cops a few times that day. So he called them again. After a tense, 45 minute discussion between Neighborhood Security and the Lee County PD, my brother was allowed through the gate.

A cop car followed my brother’s car to the city limits, to make sure that my parents didn’t try to pursue and drag me back.

I blasted “Bulletproof Heart” as I flipped off the “You Are Now Leaving [Town]” sign. I never saw that place again.

[eyeofthedrgn]

A Heavy Battle Symphony Chapter 5

Catch up here >> AHBS Masterlist

TW: language, mental abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, violence, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, self harm, self-esteem issues, sexual abuse (only alluded to briefly in future chapters), just a lot of trauma, angst, smut - lots of lovely gay smut

Chapter 5 - With You

When things go wrong I pretend that the past isn't real

Now I'm trapped in this memory

And I'm left in the wake of the mistake, slow to react

So even though you're close to me

You're still so distant and I can't bring you back

"What the fuck is that?"

He was sitting at the breakfast table doing homework, after he had completed his chores when his aunt and Perrington had walked through the front door. Wearing one of the only t-shirts he owned and a pair of shorts, he sighed before looking up at his aunt.

"What is what?" he said, running his hand through his hair. Though, he knew what she was talking about. Why hadn't he kept his hoodie on? Not that that would have helped, the drawings covered his hand too.

She grabbed his arm and forcefully pulled on it. Lorcan let out a hiss. "What bullshit is all over your cast! That cost good money-" she froze. Understanding dawned on her face, eyebrows shooting up. "Oh. Did you find some people to pity you?" Her words dripped with poison. "You know you're worthless, right? No one could ever love you. You are a bastard born, half breed. Your own mother deserted you!"

"She died!" Lorcan yelled. That was too far and she knew it, but she didn’t stop there.

"She killed herself to get away from you, you ugly half-breed."

Lorcan never wanted to believe that. Never. Not that he was an ugly biracial kid, but that his mother killed herself. Why would she want to kill herself when she had him? Or maybe it was his fault. Maybe he drove her crazy enough to take her own life. Maybe...

Maeve just laughed smugly, cutting off Lorcan’s thoughts as she walked down the hall to her room and came back with a bottle of what looked like alcohol and a towel.

"Arm." He reluctantly held his casted arm out to her as she sat in the chair next to him. She started cleaning the metallic ink away. She wasn't gentle. He clenched his jaw and focused on his breathing.

Lorcan had to admit it was a good plan to get the people who were starting to befriend him, to turn their backs instead. Yet another way to break him down. They weren’t friends anyway, why would they care that their mark on him was gone.

The whole time Maeve was scrubbing his arm, Lorcan couldn't stop thinking about how he wasn't good enough for anyone. Not for his mother and definitely not Rowan. He didn't deserve the sparkle that twinkled in those green eyes when they looked at him. Why would Rowan even look at him like that? He was an ugly, bastard born half-breed after all. Too skinny, awkwardly tall, dark olive skin, black eyes.

His vision was blurry from the tears he wouldn't let fall. He couldn't let his aunt see his weakness.

"There," Maeve cooed. "All better." She looked at him with a sick sense of joviality. "Now go to your room." The way Maeve's voice went from saccharin to steel nearly gave Lorcan whiplash. He quickly went to his room after gathering his things and gently closed the door.

Lorcan closed his eyes and tears leaked out. He wiped them away. Why was he so emotional about this? He never got this emotional about anything. Fuck, he hated Orynth.

His cast was a mess now. Some of the designs were smeared beyond recognition, others completely gone. Maeve destroyed it, like she destroys everything. Elide's trees, gone. Rowan's line doodle was smudged into a big blob, but the 'Ro' of Rowan was still faintly visible. Somehow, that made Lorcan feel worse. Why were there so many emotions he didn’t know the names of when Rowan flitted through his mind?

He dug into his sleeping bag, grabbed his journal, pulled a razor blade out of the spine, and went to the bathroom with his pajamas and razor blade. Lorcan's thoughts were a jumble of negativity, he couldn't sort through them so he just pressed the blade to his forearm, dragging through other scars, deeper than he usually did. He grit his teeth through the pain. Lorcan deserved it. He was an unloved, unwanted mixed race bastard. And he was way too fucking emotional.

After letting his blood drip in the sink until he started getting a little lightheaded, he cleaned himself up, and then changed. His torso still covered in an ever changing modern art painting. He thought that maybe Jackson Pollock would be proud to have a painting that looked like his bruises. Lorcan just huffed a laugh at his sick humor.

Back in his room, he wrote in his journal, recording the worst beating of his life and the following days. Including how stupid he was today, to let Elide's smile cause him such grief once his aunt saw the product of his stupidity.

++++

"Mom, he has a cast!" Rowan was so exasperated. He threw his arms in the air.

Rowan's mom knew he was concerned. He had told her about the bruises he saw on the black haired boy's neck.

After dinner, Rowan went up to his room, pulled out his laptop and decided to video call with the group. He just wanted to think of something besides the pain that filled those onyx eyes that were staring at him throughout lunch.

His friend's only helped a little. They were mostly talking about their homework. Elide read one of her new stories for creative writing. Rowan wanted to ask her if she had read any of Lorcan's work, but he didn't feel comfortable asking in front of everyone. So, he didn't.

---

Lorcan woke up at 5am. He checked the gauze on his arm, it hurt. There was blood staining the gauze. I guess that's what happens when you cut deeper. After redoing his bandage and making sure his blade was secured in the spine of his journal, he threw said journal in his newly repaired backpack that broke last night after he was trying to put his schoolwork away. For some reason, he just didn't feel like his journal was safe being left in the apartment anymore.

After dressing and making breakfast for the despicable adults of the house, Lorcan left for school. He left earlier than usual and decided to walk through the park that was between the apartment and the school. Lorcan's hood was down, his man bun was messy, some of his wispy hairs falling in his face, his hands were stuffed in his hoodie pocket. The rain puddles he walked through leaked into his shoes and soaked into the frayed hem of his jeans. Despite having wet feet, it was a nice morning. Except for the undefinable tightness in his chest and the pain in his arm that he tried to ignore.

Lorcan walked one of the winding paths beneath the trees and noticed that some of the greens matched the color of Rowan's eyes. He shouldn't be thinking of those types of things. Never having had a crush before, he didn't understand what and why he kept comparing things back to Rowan or how his stomach would flip when the other boy flitted through his thoughts.

From behind, he heard laughter from multiple people. He switched paths and started walking faster. The laughter was familiar and he had a feeling it was Elide's and Rowan's friend group. Today, he would do his best to avoid them.

++++

Rowan noticed Lorcan ahead of them on the path and then saw him veer away and speed up. When they were about to pass the way Lorcan had gone, he made a decision.

"Hey, I'll meet you all at school." He didn't wait for an answer or reply to the questioning. They knew he was crushing on the new kid.

Rowan was on a mission. Half jogging to catch up with the long strides of his crush, he finally caught up with him.

"Lorcan!"

Gods above, he started going faster.

"Lorcan, please." He stopped suddenly and Rowan jogged a couple paces past him and turned around.

Lorcan's expression was hard, his eyes blank. They were nothing like they had been yesterday when they were almost hopeful. Today they were dull and vacant, it gave Rowan an uneasy feeling.

"Um, hi. I just thought-"

"You thought wrong." And started his swift pace past Rowan.

"But-" Rowan sighed and just did his best to keep up with Lorcan.

He really needed to work on his cardio, he was a bit winded when they got to the school. Lorcan disappeared into the throng of high schoolers. "Fuck," breathed Rowan.

All Rowan wanted was to be friendly with Lorcan. He was sad and frustrated when someone touched his shoulder.

"I'm sure he'll come around someday," Elide said with a knowing look.

"I just.." Rowan didn't know what he was saying.

"I know. Let's go to class." Elide looped her arm through his and they set off for History of Erilea.

---

Lorcan was sent to the library again for his P.E. class. He sat in a secluded corner, hoping Elide wouldn't find him. She didn't. Thank Hellas.

Pulling out his journal, he decided to write about Rowan, about how he didn't deserve a friend in Rowan. It was strange for him to use this journal for something other than an abuse record. Although, maybe this was a different sort of torture, a personal one. He couldn't have friends, and he definitely couldn't have anything more. They would likely be moving in a month or two anyway.

But Lorcan kept going back to how it felt when Rowan had touched his hand. There were butterflies in his stomach every time he thought about it. Did he really have a crush on this guy? For his whole life, he has done his best to keep the world out and now, somehow his walls were cracking. He was desperately trying to fill those cracks back in, he couldn't break now. He wouldn’t let his walls fall for some pretty boy.

The bell rang for lunch, he was starving, but he wanted to be alone in the quiet. He decided to eat quickly and then come back.

That didn't work out so well.

After sitting at the empty table in the corner and shoving food in his face, the silver haired boy sat across from him. He didn't say anything, he just ate. Lorcan just stared at him, food half raised to his mouth. Realizing Rowan wasn't going to say anything, he continued to eat.

His food was gone and now he didn't really want to go back to the library. Somehow it was comfortable sitting here with Rowan, so he just got out some of his homework instead. It really would be best to go back to the library.

++++

Yes! It was working!

Elide had suggested to Rowan that maybe he should sit with Lorcan at lunch and just be quiet. So he did and Lorcan didn't snap or run away. It was progress!

Rowan felt elated at this, especially when it looked like Lorcan was going to leave, then decided to stay. He did his best to hide his smile. But gods above, he was excited. He texted Elide.

RoRo: it's working!

Ellie: That's because I'm amazing! Haha!

RoRo: omg elide

Ellie: I'm happy it's working, Rowan. I really am. :)

Rowan looked up to see Lorcan lost in thought with his pencil down his cast. It probably itched like crazy. But then, he saw it or lack of it. All the doodle marks were nearly gone. Tears pricked his eyes, and his throat tightened. Was yesterday some sort of joke? Gods, he was stupid.

RoRo: he cleaned his cast off…

Ellie: What? Seriously?

He couldn't sit there anymore. Rowan angrily grabbed his stuff and went back to his usual table with his friends. He just hoped that Lorcan didn't see the tears that fell down his cheeks. It was embarrassing how emotional he could be sometimes.

Fen saw Rowan coming over, he was wiping his face, "You're sure he cleaned his cast off? I didn't even know you could do that without compromising its durability."

"There's smudged Sharpie over the part I could see," he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

Everyone frowned. Aelin threw her arms around him. "He's just an asshole."

---

Lorcan had wondered how long it would take for Rowan to get fed up with him and leave. But he wasn't expecting to see him crying as he left.

He felt like shit. Looking at the exposed cast, he saw Rowan's faded and smudged doodle. Fucking Hellas. This day has turned to complete and utter shit and needed to end.

Thankfully, the rest of the day went by quickly. Elide had ignored him in creative writing. Obviously, Rowan had told everyone. This was probably for the best anyway.

____

Thanks for reading! Let know you would like to be tagged.

@thenerdandfandoms @starlightorstarfire

[fourdaysofrain]

Self-Made Man

Summary: A Trans!Tony Stark AU. 

(Lengthy, personal author’s note below the cut, if you’re interested.)

Natasha Marie Stark was born twelve minutes before midnight on May 29th, 1970. She weighed a healthy seven pounds and two ounces when she arrived. She was the most beautiful thing that either of her parents had ever seen. And she was screaming loud enough to scare the pigeons from the trees outside.

Read on AO3

Well, hey everyone. It’s been a handful of months since I’ve been on here. I want to apologize for being gone, but that feels kind of phony. I don’t know. I missed this, though. I can tell you that much. I still checked my notifications every once in a while. It made me really glad to see people still commenting on my fics or passing my links around. Love y’all. 

I guess it’s about time that I tell you that I’m trans. I have been this whole time. To answer a few quick questions, I first knew sometime in late high school, but it was always kind of in the background my whole life, I just didn’t know how to isolate the feeling. I started socially transitioning (i.e. dressing male, coming out, going by he/him) after my high school graduation, and I started HRT (Horomone replacement therapy, that means I inject myself with testosterone weekly. .33mL subcutaneously into my tummy, if you’re curious) on Oct. 12, 2018. So it’s been almost two years since, and I’ve been completely passing as a man for quite a while. Ass-crack hair, sweat, and all. 

This is a pretty personal fic for me, given the nature of it. I’ve wanted to write it for a long time, and I’ve actually had words in the Google Doc since January. It took a lot of long nights to write. It helped that I was back home. I always have an easier time tapping into Trans Emotions when I’m in my home town, for better or for worse. All the memories and relationships I formed pre-transition follow me like ghosts. 

I’m leaving for college in two days, conversationally. 

I see a lot of trans!Peter Parker fics. I’m not dissing them, I love them to bits. But it makes me wonder why fandom is so quick to headcanon Peter as trans instead of one of the other characters. He’s petite, has a higher voice, and has softer features than the other male cast members. I feel like those attributes definitely play a role. It can be easy to see trans men as “uwu soft bois”, or as Men Lite, or as a more palatable version of “normal” (that is to say, cis) men. Those ideas are often flawed and based on transphobic foundations. The reality is, trans men (and by extension, all trans people) have the ability to be indiscernible from their cis counterparts. Everyone likes to think they can pick trans people out from a crowd, but you’d be surprised how quickly I started being read as male. Androcentrism for the win, I guess. 

I won’t be entirely pessimistic. I understand that people my age project onto Peter (I am by no means exempt from that), and that there’s a greater number of young trans people than old, due to a series of depressing reasons. But I still wanted to try a different take on a trans character. 

My experience as a trans man is vastly different than the one I write about here. If anything, I’m closer to fandom’s idea of trans!Peter. My parents were accepting, I had the financial and social means to transition relatively early, and I can fly under the radar easily. The most important difference is the time period. 

I don’t know a lot about the trans experience of the 80s and 90s, which is what Tony would have gone through. I know of one single trans man who began his transition back then, one of the gender studies professors at my university. Even then, he’s from Canada, which I’m assuming has an entirely different culture around trans lives. There aren’t many older trans men. It’s depressing. There’s a lot of reasons for this. I don’t want to get too deep into them, because it only makes me feel sad. The final scene in this fic is extremely self-indulgent with regards to this. I wrote what I needed to hear. 

That’s not to say I don’t relate at all to what I wrote. There are themes that are almost universal for the trans experience. I hope you can parse those out here.

I also wanted to talk about how I showed the change from “Natasha” to Tony. In the early stages of this fic’s development, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to openly say Tony’s deadname (the name trans people are given at birth, and often, but not 100% of the time, change as a part of their transition), but I soon realized that it would make the story much clearer with the inclusion of it. If you’re wondering, I got the name from Earth-3490, where Tony is born a woman (and marries Steve, lol). I chose to show the change between the two with the use of past tense for the first half of the fic, and switching to present for Tony’s life. Often times, it feels like that when you transition. You start living in present tense. 

I also want to make it clear that transitioning isn’t as simple as shown here. From the beginning of mapping out this fic, I was stressed about “Oh, how will he be able to graduate as Tony if he doesn’t start transitioning until after he gets to college,” and “How will Howard react to him coming out?” and “How will he have a playboy persona if he isn’t able to have sex with someone without them knowing?” and a zillion other ideas. It was very freeing for me to let go of some of these obstacles and leave it up to the reader to decide. I alluded to some of the solutions that I came up with, but for the most part, I glossed over the paperwork and bureaucracy aspect to transitioning. But in real life, there are countless red tapes you have to cut for even the simplest of actions. I went to the state court to change my name and sex in March of 2019, and I still have cards in my wallet with my deadname. I had a consult with a plastic surgeon for top surgery (the colloquial name for the double mastectomy that trans men often go through to masculinize their chests. If you’re wondering, genital reconstruction surgery is normally called bottom surgery to mirror this) last December, and I still don’t have a date set. It took me a few months to start T, and I only got it so easily because I went through my unviersity, which does informed consent. Some places have to have proof of 6 months of social transitioning and a letter from a therapist. There is a lot of medical gate keeping in the trans community. I don’t know what I would have done had my parents not been accepting enough to help me through the processes. I am extremely thankful for their support. 

But it’s a lot easier to write about transition happening smoothly. Money helps, which I don’t touch on a lot in this fic, but oh my God, does money help. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford my ~$20 a month T prescription (which I will be taking until the end of my days, likely), and I’m in the process of saving for top surgery. Thankfully with Tony, I can just presto most of the problems away because he’s canonically a billionaire. Eat the rich, folks.

There’s also the intersection with race that is very impactful for trans people, as it is for everyone. Both Tony and I are white, which gives us societal privileges that trans people of color don’t have access to. As well as the fact that transitioning from female to male is a much different experience than transitioning from male to female. We don’t experience trans misogyny, which is a special kind of misogyny specifically related to trans women. (Think of old sitcoms where the joke is that it’s a man dressed in women’s clothing, and that’s what makes it funny. That’s a fairly tame example of trans misogyny. It gets ugly fast.) 

I’m veering dangerously off-topic, but it’s important to talk about. It’s easy for white trans people (and LGBT people as a whole, I suppose) to distance themselves from talking about white privilege or male privilege because they aren’t straight and/or cis. But it’s important to recognize that while we may face unique oppression, we also still benefit from historical white supremacist and patriarchal structures present today in society. 

Sorry, not sorry for getting political. And if I haven’t said it on here, Black lives matter. Of course. 

If you end up having trans-related questions, I want to be a resource for you. Seriously, I’m narcissistic and love talking about myself I don’t mind helping you understand the trans experience. I can’t promise that I know everything, but I also have my own group of trans friends who might know what I don’t, and we can learn together. 

Again, love y’all. Thank you for the continued support you give me. I can’t promise that I’ll go back to my normal level of activity on here, but I might dip my feet back in the pool. <3

[therealmadblonde]

October 23

Up in the morning, out on the job. I hassled the Things, then checked around outside. A black feather lay near our front door. Could be one of Nightwind’s. Could be openers on a nasty spell. Could just be a stray feather. I carried it across the road to the field and pissed on it.

Graymalk wasn’t about, so I walked over to Larry’s place. He let me in and I told him everything that had happened since I’d last seen him.

“We ought to check that hillside,” he said. “Could be there’d been a chapel there in the old days.”

“True. Want to walk over now?”

“Let’s.”

I studied his plants while he went for a jacket. There were certainly some exotic ones. I hadn’t told him yet about Linda Enderby, perhaps because he’d revealed in passing that all they’d spoken of was botany. Perhaps the Great Detective really was interested in plants.

He returned with his jacket and we went out. It was somewhat blustery when we reached the open fields. At one point we came across a trail of huge misshapen footprints leading off in the direction of the Good Doctor’s farmhouse of the perpetual storm. I sniffed at them: Death.

“The big man’s been out again,” I remarked.

“I haven’t been over that way to say hello,” Larry said. “I’m beginning to wonder now whether he isn’t a rather famous man I’ve already met, seeking to further his work.”

He did not elaborate, as we came upon a crossbow bolt about then, stuck in the bole of a tree.

“What about Vicar Roberts?” I said.

“Ambitious man. I wouldn’t be surprised if his aim is to be the only one left standing at the end, sole beneficiary of the opening.”

“What about Lynette? This doesn’t require a human sacrifice, you know. It just sort of greases the wheels.”

“I’ve been thinking about her,” he said. “Perhaps, on the way back, we could go by the vicarage and you could show me which room is hers.”

“I don’t know that myself. But I’ll get Graymalk to show me. Then I’ll show you.” “Do that.”

We walked on, coming at last to the slopes of the small hill I had determined to be the center.

“So this is the place?” he remarked.

“More or less. Give or take a little, every which way. I don’t usually work with maps the way most do.”

We wandered a bit then.

“Just your average hillside,” he finally said. “Nothing special about it, unless those trees are the remains of a sacred grove.”

“But they’re saplings. They look like new growth to me.”

“Yes. Me, too. I’ve a funny feeling you’re still missing something in the equation. I’m in this version?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve discussed this before. If you take me out of it, where does that move it to?”

“The other side of the hill and farther south and east. Roughly the same distance as from your place to a point across the road from Owen’s.”

“Let’s take a look.”

We climbed the hill and climbed back down the other side. Then we walked southeastward.

Finally, we came to a marshy area, where I halted.

“Over that way,” I said. “Maybe fifty or sixty paces. I don’t see any point in mucking around in it when we can see it from here. It all looks the same.”

“Yes. Unpromising.” He scanned the area for a time. “Either way, then,” he finally said, “you must still be leaving something out.”

“A mystery player?” I asked. “Someone who’s been lying low all this time?”

“It seems as if there must be. Hasn’t it ever happened before?”

I thought hard, recalling Games gone by.

“It’s been tried,” I said then. “But the others always found him out.”

“Why?”

“Things like this,” I said. “Pieces that don’t fit any other way.”

“Well?”

“This is fairly late in the game. It’s never gone this long. Everyone’s always known everyone else by this time — with only about a week to go.”

“In those situations where someone was hiding out, how did you go about discovering him?”

“We usually all know by the Death of the Moon. If something seems wrong afterward that can only be accounted for by the presence of another player, the power is then present to do a divinatory operation to determine the person’s identity or location.”

“Don’t you think it might be worth giving it a try?”

“Yes. You’re right. Of course, it’s not really my specialty. Even though I know something about all of the operations, I’m a watcher and I’m a calculator. I’ll get someone else to give it a try, though.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll have to find out who’s good at it, and then suggest it formally, so that I get to share the results. I’ll share them with you then, of course.”

“What if it’s someone you can’t stand?”

“Doesn’t matter. There are rules, even if you’re trying to kill each other. If you don’t follow them, you don’t last long. I may have something that that person will want — like the ability to do an odd calculation, say, for something other than the center.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, the place where a body will be found. The place where a certain herb can be located. The store that carries a particular ingredient.”

“Really? I never knew about those secondary calculations. How hard are they to perform?”

“Some are very hard. Some are easy.” We turned and began walking back.

“How hard’s the body-finding one?” he asked as we climbed the hill.

“They’re fairly easy, actually.”

“What if you tried it for the police officer we put in the river?”

“Now that could be tricky, since there are a lot of extra variables involved. If you just misplaced a body, though — or knew that someone had died but didn’t know where — that wouldn’t be too hard.”

“That does sound like a kind of divination,” he said.

“When you talk about being an ‘anticipator,’ of having a pretty good idea of when something’s going to happen — or how, or who will be there — isn’t that a kind of divination?”

“No. I think it’s more a kind of subconscious knack for dealing with statistics, against a fairly well-known field of actions.”

“Well, some of my calculations would probably be a lot closer to doing overtly what you seem to do subconsciously. You may well be an intuitive calculator.”

“That business about finding the body, though. That smacks of divination.”

“It only seems that way to an outsider. Besides, you’ve just seen what can happen to my calculations if I’m missing some key factor. That’s hardly divinatory.”

“Supposing I told you that I’ve had a strong feeling all morning that one of the players has died?”

“That’s a little beyond me, I’m afraid. I’d need to know who it was, and some of the circumstances. I really deal more with facts and probabilities than things like that. Are you serious about your feeling?”

“Yes, it’s a real anticipation.”

“Did you feel it when the Count got staked?”

“No, I didn’t. But then, I don’t believe he’d technically have been considered living, to begin with.”

“Quibble, quibble,” I said, and he caught the smile and smiled back. It takes one to know one, I guess.

“You want to show me Dog’s Nest? You’ve gotten me curious.”

“Come on,” I said, and we went and climbed up to it.

At the top, we walked around a bit, and I showed him the stone we had been sucked through. Its inscription had become barely noticeable scratchings again. He couldn’t make them out either.

“Nice view from here, though,” he said, turning and studying the land about us. “Oh, there’s the manse. I wonder whether Mrs. Enderby’s cuttings are taking?”

There was my opening. I could have seized it right then, I suppose, and told him the whole story, from Soho to here. But, at least, I realized then what was holding me back. He reminded me of someone I once knew: Rocco. Rocco was a big, floppy-eared hound, always happy — bouncing about and slavering over life with such high spirits that some found it annoying — and he was very single-minded. I called to him one day on the street and he just dashed across, not even paying puppy-attention to his surroundings.

Got run over by a cart. I rushed to his side, and damned if he still didn’t seem happy to see me in those final minutes. If I’d kept my muzzle shut he could have stayed happy a lot longer. Now Well, Larry wasn’t stupid like Rocco, but he had a similar capacity for enthusiasm — long frustrated by a big problem, in his case. He seemed on the way to working out some means for dealing with the problem now, and the Great Detective in the guise he had assumed was cheering him up a good deal. Since I didn’t really see him as giving much away, I thought of Rocco and said the hell with it. Later.

We climbed down then and headed back, and I let him tell me about tropical plants and temperate plants and arctic plants and diurnal-nocturnal plant cycles and herbal medicines from many cultures. When we neared Rastov’s place, I saw at first what appeared a piece of rope hanging from a tree limb, blowing in the wind. A moment later I realized it to be Quicklime, signaling for my attention.

I veered to the left hand side of the road, quickening my pace.

“Snuff! I was looking for you!” he called. “He’s done it! He’s done it!”

“What?” I asked him.

“Did himself in. I found him hanging when I returned from my foraging. I knew he was depressed. I told you — ”

“How long ago was this?”

“About an hour ago,” he said. “Then I went to look for you.”

“When did you go out?”

“Before dawn.”

“He was all right then?”

“Yes. He was sleeping. He’d been drinking last night.”

“Are you sure he did it to himself?”

“There was a bottle on a table nearby.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, the way he’d been drinking.”

Larry had halted when he’d seen I was engaged in a conversation. I excused myself from Quicklime to bring him up to date.

“Sounds as if your anticipation was right,” I said. “But I couldn’t have calculated this one.”

Then a thought occurred.

“The icon,” I said. “Is it still there?”

“It wasn’t anywhere in sight,” Quicklime replied. “But it usually isn’t, unless he takes it out for some reason.”

“Did you check where he normally keeps it?”

“I can’t. That would take hands. There’s a loose board under his bed. It lies flush and looks normal, but comes up easily for someone with fingers. There’s a hollow space beneath it. He keeps it there, wrapped in a red silk bandana.”

“I’ll get Larry to lift the board,” I said. “Is there an unlocked door?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to try them. Usually, he keeps them locked. If they are, my window is opened a crack, as usual. You can raise it up and get in that way.”

We headed for the house. Quicklime slithered down and followed us.

The front door was unlocked. We entered and waited till Quicklime was beside us. “Which way?” I asked him.

“Straight ahead, through the door,” he said.

We did that, entering a room I had viewed from outside on an earlier inspection. And Rastov hung there, from a rope tied to a rafter, wild black hair and beard framing his pale face, dark eyes bugged, a trickle of blood having run from the left corner of his mouth into his beard, dried now into a dark, scarlike ridge. His face was purple and swollen. A light chair lay on its side nearby.

We studied his remains for only a moment, and I found myself recalling the old cat’s remarks from yesterday. Was this the blood he had referred to?

“Where’s the bedroom?” I asked.

“Through the door to the rear,” Quicklime replied.

“Come on, Larry,” I said. “We need you to raise a board.”

The bedroom was a mess, with heaps of empty bottles all about. And the bed was disheveled, its linen smelling of stale human sweat.

“There’s a loose board under the bed,” I said to Larry. To Quicklime, then, “Which board is it?”

Quicklime slipped beneath and halted atop the third one in. “This one,” he said.

“The one Quicklime’s showing us,” I told Larry. “Raise it, please.”

Larry knelt and reached, catching an edge with his fingernails. He found purchase almost immediately and drew it gently upward.

Quicklime looked in. I looked in. Larry looked in. The red bandana was still there, but no three-by-nine-inch piece of wood with an eerie painting on it.

“Gone,” Quicklime commented. “It must be somewhere back in the room, with him. We must have missed it.”

Larry replaced the board and we returned to the room where Rastov hung. We searched thoroughly, but it did not seem to be present.

“I don’t think he killed himself,” I said finally. “Somebody overpowered him while he was drunk or hung over, then did that to him. They wanted it to look as if he did it to himself.”

“He was pretty strong,” Quicklime responded. “But if he’d started in drinking again this morning, he might not have been able to defend himself well.”

I relayed our conjectures to Larry, who nodded.

“And the place is so messy you can’t really tell whether there was a struggle,” he said. “Though, for that matter, the killer could have straightened some furniture afterwards. I’ll have to go to the constable. I’ll tell him I dropped by, found the door open and walked in. At least, I’d visited here before. It’s not as if we’d never met. He won’t know we weren’t that well acquainted.”

“I guess that’s best,” I told him. Returning my gaze to the corpse, I said, “Can’t tell from his clothes either. Looks as if he’d slept in them, more than once.”

We moved back to the front room.

“What are you going to do now, Quicklime?” I asked. “You want to move in with Jack and me? That might be simplest, us closers sticking together.”

“I think not,” he hissed. “I think I’m done with the Game. He was a good man. He took good care of me. He cared about people, about the whole world. What’s that human notion — compassion. He had a lot of that. It’s one of the reasons he drank a lot, I think. He felt everybody else’s pain too much. No. I’m done with the Game. I’ll slip back to the woods now. I still know a few burrows, a few places where the mice make their runs. Leave me alone here for a while now. I’ll see you around, Snuff.”

“Whatever you think is best, Quicklime,” I said. “And if the winter gets too rough, you know where we live.”

“I do. Good-bye.”

“Good luck.”

Larry let me out and we walked back to the road. “I’ll be going this way, then,” he said, turning right.

“And I’ll be going this way.”

I turned left.

“See you soon for the follow-up on this,” he said.

“Yes.”

I headed home. “And you will lose a friend“ — the old cat had said that, too. It had slipped my mind till now.

 Jack was not in, and I did the rounds quickly, leaving everything in good order. Stepping outside then, I located his spoor and tracked him to Crazy Jill’s.

Graymalk watched me from atop the wall. “Hello, Snuff,” she said.

“Hello, Gray. Jack is here?”

“Yes, he is in having a meal with the mistress. He ran low on supplies and she decided to feed him before their trip.”

“Trip?” I asked. “What trip?”

“A shopping trip, into town.”

“He did say something about being low on necessaries, and needing to visit the market soon…”

“Yes. So he’s sent for a coach. It should be here in an hour or so. It will be exciting to see the town again.”

“You’re going, too?”

“We’re all going. The mistress also needs some things.”

“Shouldn’t we stay behind to guard the places?”

“The mistress has a very good daylong warding spell, which she will share. It will also capture likenesses of attempted trespassers. I understand that a part of the reason we are going this way is to see whether anyone tries such a thing. Everyone will see our coach go by. On our return, we may learn who are our most important enemies.”

“This was decided recently, I take it?”

“Just this morning, while you were out.”

“This may be a good time for it,” I acknowledged, “with the big event only a week from tomorrow — and in light of the way things have been going.”

“Oh?” She rose, stretched, and jumped down from the wall. “There are new developments?”

“Walk with me,” I said.

“Where?”

“To the vicarage. You said we have an hour.”

“All right.” We left the yard, headed south.

“Yes,” I told her as we went, “we’ve lost the mad monk,” and I recounted the morning’s events.

“And you think the vicar did it?” she asked.

“Probably. He seems our most militant player. But that’s not why I wanted to visit his focus. I just wanted to learn the location of the room where he keeps Lynette a prisoner.”

“Of course,” she said. “If he has the Count’s ring and the Alhazred Icon as well as the pentacle bowl, he could do some pretty nasty things between now and next week. You said they mainly increased his technical prowess, and I thought you meant for the ceremony. But he could hurt people with them right now. I asked the mistress.”

“Well, that’s technical.”

“But you acted as if it weren’t important.”

“I still don’t think it is. He’d be a fool to use the actual tools that way, when he should be relying on his own abilities. The tools have a way of producing repercussive effects when they’re used extracurricularly. He could wind up hurting himself badly unless he’s a real master, and I don’t think he is.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I doubt a master would run around with a crossbow, shooting at bats, or plan a human sacrifice when it’s not absolutely necessary — just to be safe. He’s insecure in his power. A master aims at economy of operations, not proliferation.”

“That sounds right, Snuff. But if he’s too insecure mightn’t he be tempted to try an operation with the tools against the rest of us, anyway — just to narrow the field and make things easier for himself later on?”

“If he’s that foolish, the results are on his own head.”

“And the person he directs the power against, don’t forget that. It could be you.”

“I understand you’re safe if your heart is pure.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

When we reached the vicarage she led me around to the rear.

“Up there,” she said, looking at a window directly overhead. “That’s her room.”

“I’ve never seen her about,” I said.

“I gather from Tekela that she’s been locked up for several weeks.”

“I wonder how securely?”

“Well, she hasn’t come out, to my knowledge. And I told you I saw a chain around her ankle.”

“How thick?”

“That’s hard to say. You want me to climb up and take another look?”

“Maybe. I wonder whether the vicar is in?”

“We could check the stable, see whether his horse is there.”

“Let’s do that.”

So we headed to the small stable in the rear and entered there. There were two stalls, and both were empty.

“Off on a call,” she said.

“What do you want?” came a voice from the rafters. Looking up, I beheld the albino raven.

“Hello, Tekela,” Graymalk said. “We were just passing by, and wanted to see whether you’d heard the news about Rastov.”

There followed a moment’s silence, then, “What about Rastov?”

“He’s dead,” Graymalk said. “Hanged.”

“And what of the snake?”

“Gone back to the woods.”

“Good. I never liked snakes. They raid nests, eat eggs.”

“Have you any news?”

“Only that the big man has been about again. There was an argument at the farmhouse and he went out to the barn for a time and crouched in a corner. The Good Doctor went after him and there was more argument. He ran off into the night then. Went back later, though.”

“That’s interesting. I wonder what it was about.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, we’ll be going now. Good-bye.”

“Yes.”

We departed and returned to the vicarage. Graymalk looked back.

“She can’t see us from that rafter,” she said. “Do you want me to climb up?”

“Wait,” I said. “I want to try a trick I learned from Larry.”

I approached the back door and I checked the stable again. I could see no flash of white.

Rising onto my hind legs, I put a paw against the door for balance, held it a moment, then dropped it to join the other in pressing on the knob toward its center. I turned my body as I made the effort. I had to try three times, adjusting my grip. The third time it went far enough to make a clicking sound and my weight caused the door to swing inward. I dropped into a normal position and entered.

“That’s quite a trick,” she said, following me. “Do you feel any wards?”

“No.”

I pushed the door almost shut with my shoulder. It had to be paw-openable, quickly, on our return.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Let’s find the stairway. I’d like to see how the girl is secured.”

We stopped in the study on the way and she showed me the bowl and its skull. The bowl was indeed the real thing. I’d seen it many times before. Neither the icon nor the ring lay in such plain sight, however, and I hadn’t the time to try my skills on drawers. We returned to our search for a stair.

It was located along the west wall. We mounted it, and Graymalk led me to Lynette’s room. The door was closed, but it did not seem necessary that it be locked, with her chained up.

I tried the door trick again and it worked the first time. I’d have to see whether Larry had any other good ones…

As we entered, Lynette’s eyes widened, and she said, “Oh.”

“I’ll go rub up against her and let her pet me,” Graymalk said. “That makes people happy. You can be looking at the chain while I do that.”

It was actually the locks in which I was most interested. But even as I advanced to do that I heard the distant clopping of a horse’s hoofs, approaching at a very rapid pace.

“Uh-oh,” Graymalk said amid purrings, as the girl stroked her and told her how pretty she was. “Tekela must have seen us come in, flew off and given alarm.”

I went through with my inspection. The chain was heavy enough to do its job, and the lock that secured it to the bed frame was impressively heavy. The one which fastened it to Lynette’s ankle was smaller, but still hardly a thing to be dealt with in a moment.

“I know enough,” I said, as the hoofbeats came up beside the house, turned the corner, and I heard a horse blowing heavily.

“Race you home!” Graymalk said, leaping to the floor and running for the stair.

The rider was dismounting as we bounded to the first floor. A second or two later I heard the back door open, then slam.

“Bad,” Graymalk said. Then, “I can occupy the vicar.”

“The hell with him! I’m going to take out the study window!”

I reached the corner just as the nasty little man came around the other corner, a riding crop in his hand. I had to slow to turn into the room and he brought it down across my back. Before he could strike a second time, though, Graymalk had leaped into his face, all of her claws extended.

I bounded across the room, a scream rising at my back, and leaped at the window, closing my eyes as I hit. I took the thing with me, mullions and all. Turning then, I sought Graymalk.

She was nowhere in sight but I heard her yowl from within. Two bounds and a leap brought me back into the room. He was holding her high by her hind legs and swinging the crop. When it connected she screamed and he let her fall, for he had not expected me to return, let alone be coming at him low off the floor with my ears flat and a roar in my throat straight from my recent refresher with Growler.

He swung the crop but I came in beneath it. If Graymalk were dead, I was going to kill him. But I heard her call out, “I’m leaving!” as I struck against his chest, knocking him over backward.

My jaws were open and his throat had been my target. But I heard her going out the window, and I turned my head and bit hard, hearing cartilage crunch as I drew my teeth along through his right ear. Then I was off of him, across the room, and following Graymalk outside to the sounds of his screams.

“Want to ride on my back?” I called to her.

“No! Just keep going!”

We ran all the way home.

As we lay there in the front yard, me panting and her licking herself, I said, “Sorry I got you into that, Gray.”

“I knew what I was doing,” she said. “What did you do to him there at the end?”

“I guess I mangled his ear.”

“Why?”

“He hurt you.”

“I’ve been hurt worse than that.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“Now you have a first-class enemy.”

“Fools have no class.”

“A fool might try the tools against you. Or something else.”

I interrupted my panting to sigh. Just then a bird-shaped shadow slid across us. Looking up, I was not surprised to see Tekela go by.

 After lunch and a quick running of my rounds the coach came by, and we all entered and embarked for town. It had room for me to sit beside a window while Graymalk curled up on the seat across from me. Master and mistress faced each other to my right, chatting, beside a window of their own. I’d received only a few minor cuts from the glass, but Graymalk had a nasty welt along her right side. My heart did not feel pure when I thought of the vicar.

I watched the sky. Before we’d gone a mile I caught sight of Tekela again. She circled above the coach, then swooped low for a look inside. Then she was gone. I did not awaken Graymalk to remark upon it.

The sky was cloudy, and a wind occasionally buffeted the coach. When we passed the Gipsies’ camp there was small activity within and no music. I listened to the horses clop along, muttering about the ruts and the driver’s propensity to lay on the lash at the end of a long day. I was glad I wasn’t a horse.

After a long while we came to the bridge and crossed over. I looked out across the dirty waters and wondered where the officer had gotten to. I wondered whether he had a family.

As we moved along Fleet Street to the Strand and then down Whitehall, I caught occasional glimpses of an albino raven, variously perched, watching. We made several stops for purchases along the way, and finally, when we disembarked in Westminster, site of many a midnight stroll, Jack said to me, “Let’s meet back here in about an hour and a half. We’ve a few esoteric purchases to make.” This was fine with me, as I enjoy wandering city streets. Graymalk took me to see the mews where she’d once hung out.

We spent the better part of an hour strolling, sorting through collected smells, watching the passersby.

Then, in an alley we’d chosen for a shortcut, I had a distinct feeling halfway down its length, that something was wrong. This came but moments before the compact figure of the vicar emerged from a recessed doorway, a bulging bandage upon his ear, lesser dressings covering his cheeks. Tekela rode upon his shoulder, her white merging with that of the bandages, giving to his head a grotesque, lopsided appearance. She must have been giving him directions as to our movements. I showed them my teeth and kept moving. Then I heard a footfall behind me. Two men with clubs had sprung from another doorway and were already upon me, swinging them. I tried to turn upon them, but it was too late. I heard the vicar laugh right before one of the bludgeons fell upon my head. My last sight was of Graymalk, streaking back up the alley.

 I awoke inside a dirty cage, a sickening smell in my nose, my throat, my lungs. I realized that I had been given chloroform. My head hurt, my back hurt. I drew and expelled several deep breaths to clear my breathing apparatus. I could hear whimpers, growls, a pathetic mewing, and faint, sharp barks of pain from many directions. When my sense of smell began to work again, all manner of doggy and catty airs came to me. I raised my head and looked about and wished I hadn’t.

Mutilated animals occupied cages both near and far — dogs and cats without tails or the proper number of legs, a blind puppy whose ears had been cut off, a cat missing large patches of her skin, raw flesh showing at which she licked, mewing constantly the while. What mad place was this? I checked myself over quickly, to make certain I was intact.

At the room’s center was an operating table, a large tray of instruments beside it. On hooks next to the door across the way hung a number of once-white laboratory coats with suspicious-looking stains upon them.

As my head cleared my memory returned to me, and I realized what had happened. The vicar had delivered me into the hands of a vivisectionist. At least Graymalk had escaped. That was something.

I inspected the door to my cage. It was a simple enough latch that held it shut, but the mesh was too fine for me to reach through and manipulate it. And the mesh was too tough to be readily breached by tooth or claw. What would Growler counsel? Things were a lot simpler in the primeval wood.

The most obvious plan was to fake lassitude when they came for me, then to spring to attack as soon as the cage door was opened. I’d a feeling, though, that I wasn’t the first ever to think of such a ploy, and where were the others now? Still, I couldn’t just lie there and contribute to medical understanding. So unless something better came along I resolved to give this plan a try when they came for me.

When they did, of course, they were ready. They’d a lot of expertise with fangs and knew just how to go about it. There were three of them, and two had on elbow-length padded gloves. When I pulled the awake, lunge, and bite maneuver I got a padded forearm forced back between my jaws, and my legs were seized and held while someone twisted an ear painfully. They were very efficient, and they had me strapped to the table in less than a minute. I wondered just how long I had been unconscious.

I listened to their conversation as they began their preparations:

“Strange, ’im payin’ us so well to do a job on this ’un,” said the one who had twisted my ear.

“Well, it is a strange job, and it does involve some extra work,” said the one who was arranging the instruments into neat little rows. “Bring over some clean parts buckets. He was very specific that when we render him down, a piece at a time, for candles, there be no foreign blood or other materials mixed in.”

“’Ows ’e to know?”

“For what he’s paying he can have it his way.”

“I’ll ’ave to scrub ’em out.”

“Do it.”

A brief reprieve, to the sound of running water, followed, drowning out some of the whimpers and cries which were beginning to get to me.

“And where’s the cask for his head?”

“I left it in t’other room.”

“Get it. I want everything to hand. Nice doggy.” He patted my head as we waited. The muzzle they’d gotten onto me prevented my expressing my opinion.

“He was a strange one,” said the third man— a thin, blond fellow with very bad teeth— who had been silent till then. “What’s special about doggy candles?”

“Don’t know and don’t care,” said the one who had patted me — a large, beefy man with very blue eyes — and he returned his attention to his instruments. “We give a customer what he pays for.”

The other returned then — a short man with wide shoulders, large hands, and a tic at the corner of his mouth. He bore what looked like an odd-sized lunch pail. “I have it now,” he said.

“Good. Then gather round for a lesson.”

Then I heard it — Dzzp! — a high-pitched whine descending to a low throb in about three seconds each cycle. It is above the range of the human ear, and it accompanies the main curse, circling at a range of about a hundred fifty yards initially.

Dzzp!

“First, I will remove the left rear leg,” began the beefy man as he reached for a scalpel. The others drew near, reaching after other instruments and holding them ready for him. Dzzp! The circle might well be smaller by now, of course.

There came a loud pounding upon an outer door. “The devil!” said the beefy man.

“Shall I see who ’tis?” asked the smaller man.

“No. We’re operating. He can come back if it’s important.”

Dzzp!

It came again, more heavily; this time it was obviously the sound of someone kicking upon the door.

“Inconsiderate lout!”

“Ruffian!”

“Churl!”

Dzzp!

The third time that the knocking occurred it seemed as if each blow were performed by a strong man striking his shoulder against the door, attempting to break it down.

“What cheek!”

“Per’aps I should ’ave words with ’im.”

“Yes, do.”

The shorter man took a single step toward the entrance when a splintering sound reached us from the next room, followed by a loud crash.

Dzzp!

Heavy footsteps crossed the outer room. Then the door immediately across from me was flung open. Jack stood upon the threshold, staring at the cages, the vivisectionists, myself upon the table. Graymalk peered in from behind him.

“Just who do you think you are, bursting into a private laboratory?” said the beefy man.

“…Interrupting a piece of scientific research?” said the tall man.

“…And damaging our door?” said the short man with the wide shoulders and large hands.

I could see it now, like a black tornado, surrounding Jack, settling inward. If it entered him completely he would no longer be in control of his actions.

“I’ve come for my dog,” he said. “That’s him on your table.” He moved forward.

“No, you don’t, laddie,” said the beefy man. “This is a special job for a special client.”

“I’ll be taking him and leaving now.”

The beefy man raised his scalpel and moved around the table. “This can do amazing things to a man’s face, pretty boy,” he said. The others picked up scalpels, also.

“I’d guess you’ve never met a man as really knows how to cut,” the beefy one said, advancing now.

Dzzp!

It was into him, and that funny light came into his eyes, and his hand came out of his pocket and captured starlight traced the runes on the side of his blade.

“Well-met,” Jack said then, through the teeth of his grin, and he continued to walk straight ahead.

When we left I realized that the old cat had been right about the seas and messes, too. I wondered what sort of light they would gi

[homestucknightfall]

In the broadest of strokes, how would the endgame have looked like?

Oh man. Writing out the ending is  a lot easier said than done, because there was just so much buildup and lore and backstory that needed to be laid out first, otherwise the significance of the endgame wouldn’t make any sense

But! Broad strokes! I’ll try and cover as much as I can but my memory about everything isn’t perfect. Feel free to ask more questions if you need a gap filled in!

This summary got a lot longer than I anticipated, so the rest is under the tab!

So essentially what was going to happen next was Vriska, John, Liz, FDave and the rest of the remaining kids regrouping and coming up with a plan to get the Ring of Nightmares back from Cristyle, since it is the only way they know of to subdue her, since killing her is near impossible due to her shape-shifting also regenerating her. Fdave, as a last resort, also asked Aradia to come to Earth to try and help them go back in time to fix this, with the understanding that this timeline would be doomed. Aradia shows up, and immediately points out that “time here feels funny”. She explains that it feels like time here is in motion, but somehow senses that in the background everything feels… stilted. Aradia brings out her time travel devices, activates them, and they explode into white bolts that shatter the space around them. Looks like going back in time is not going to happen.

This plan to catch Cristyle ultimately fails, but Terlock appears before our heroes and reveals how they can beat Cristyle: Hades. His void powers allow him to significantly reduce the powers of those around him, hence why they’ve had so much trouble fighting him in the past. This is also why Cristyle constantly berates Hades, essentially she knows he could kill her if he wanted to.

Hades ultimately ends up pulling a Zuko like pretty much everyone predicted! Though his motives are not to save earth in the long term. His home planet is still very much in jeopardy. Rather he realizes they have a common enemy in Nero and agrees to help thwart him.

Cristyle meanwhile is pretty hellbent on getting vengeance on Vriska somehow. She saw the future where Vriska kills her beloved sister Sylja, and wishes to inflict the same pain upon her, before killing her. In the future, (That FDave hurriedly sent her to, to get her out of the way)  he actually returns to the ship flying overhead, where Raven, the Shinobi (and Witch of Time) who is being held captive there. She takes the Scarf of Time, and the dagger pulled from Sylja’s chest, and Nero finds her. He identifies that dagger as one Sylja had stolen from him, and instructs Cristyle to fuse the Scarf and the dagger, take it back in time, and kill John with it.

Meanwhile, Vriska, John, Liz, Fdave, assisted by Hades, Kate and Gary (who have intel on Cristyle’s whereabouts) are able to track down Jade and Roxy, wake them from their slumbers with Hades’ help, and have them rejoin the group. They come up with a plan now that Hades is on their side to travel back to Cyronilla, find the device Nero was planning on using to overclock Cristyle’s powers, and destroy it. Sylja steps in and provides them with a visual of the location of the device, and it is revealed to be none other than a Quest Bed, one with the Heart symbol imbued upon it. 7 more quest beds are in the room, one for each of the following symbols: Void, Mind, Doom, Time, Space, Light, and Breath. The Time and Doom quest beds have blood stains on them.

Nero later finds out about Sylja’s involvement with giving information to the kids. He speaks to her, and informs her that once Cristyle is no longer useful to him, he has no reason not to kill her. He essentially threatens her with Cristyle’s death after the invasion unless she tells him what she told the heroes. And she gives in. Cristyle is informed about the heroes plans, and blows up Hades’s moon base, including all of his transportation equipment and essentially his only way to access Cyronillia, essentially killing their plans to destroy the Heart quest bed.  Also all the cows he had been harboring died too, which enrages Hades, his disdain towards his sister has now been elevated to outright hatred.

Now the only course of action the heroes have is to simply prepare for the invasion. Sollux, Equius, and later Kanaya and Terezi after the threats on Alternia are dealt with, show up, and start preparing weapons to take down ships all over the earth. What they end up making are a network of giant pylons which will defend the planet once they invasion begins. Fdave notes that this timeline has completely veered off from what he remembered. He has no idea of what’s to come, except for the date that Nero and his fleets are set to arrive. They continue to try and track down Cristyle, but she is uncharacteristically keeping her profile low.

Meanwhile, Rose is continuing her adventure through Nero’s castle. There is a lot of running around, guards looking for her. She finds Nero’s room. There she finds Sburb Artifacts. There is a also Lord of Doom outfit. Rose eventually finds her way to Raven’s chamber. Raven talks to Rose, and explains that she’s been captive here for thousands of years. She directs Rose to her journal from her Sburb days. Raven then asks Rose to kill her to spare her misery of existing in this state, and to save Earth. She explains that the Shinobi have been using her powers to travel to Earth and will use them for the final invasion. Rose asks if that means dooming the Shinobi to being sucked into the black hole, and Raven explains that there are plenty of viable planets in their own universe, and Nero’s decision to take over Earth was based on an old prophecy that he was stubbornly following. Rose makes up her mind, and decides to let Raven die. Raven explains that in her suit, there is a magical ring, the counterpart to the Ring of Nightmares, that is keeping her alive, and that Rose must remove it.

Nero however, steps in at the last moment and completely loses his cool seeing Rose about to kill Raven. He throws Rose against the wall, and as his rage builds, the ground around them begins to shake. Outside, the black hole that has been looming over the plan suddenly begins to violently churn and expand. It is Raven who then speaks to Nero, in a calm and lucid voice. She instructs him that he needs to regain his composure, otherwise they will all be destroyed. Nero is at a complete loss for words, stating that this was the first time Raven spoke to him sincerely in ages. Outside, the Shinobi are panicking.

Raven asks Nero to let Rose go. Nero agrees to her wishes. “As you wish, my love” He says. “Child, there is a ship on the far balcony. You may use it to return to your home” Rose, with Raven’s journal safely hidden from Nero, takes the ship, and returns to Earth and rejoins the rest of the kids.

Vriska and John’s relationship continues to advance. They pretty much have nothing left to do except wait for the invasion, so John asks Vriska to a dance held by his school, with the understanding that this may be their last chance to live out sort of a normal life and have a normal relationship.

Cristyle decides that now she will make her move. When Vriska goes off on her own, Cristyle sneaks up behind her, and stabs her through heart with a kitchen knife. Vriska falls to the ground and dies, and Cristyle uses the resulting blood to take Vriska’s form and return to the dance, Nero’s time dagger in hand. Vriska of course, having suffered a blindside death of neither heroic nor just leaning, revives, and realizes that Cristyle can now take her form. She rushes back to the party just in time to see Cristyle dancing with John, and holding the dagger behind his back. She pierces John’s back with the dagger, and what happens John is enveloped in a red crackling light, and he vanishes. Vriska sees this happen and goes into a fury, attacking Cristyle with everything she has. Cristyle eventually returns to her normal form and nearly kills Vriska again, this time with the circumstances of her death potentially being heroic, until FDave and Hades step in and join the fight. Cristyle realizes she is in trouble, and escapes the situation. (this whole scene was actually partially story-boarded in a scrapped flash animation)

Vriska is now completely distraught. John is nowhere to be found, they have no idea what happened to him, if he is alive, or if he can ever be retrieved. The only real reason she had to be on Earth has been taken from her. She begins to spiral into a depression. FDave steps in after Vriska cuts her hair short, just as the Vriska from his timeline did after everything started to go south. He sees this as an omen that nothing has chance, and he steps in to talk to Vriska. He explains to her than in his timeline, Future Vriska, even after John and everyone else died, fought up to her very last breath to try and make things right. He tells her that he knows her, and he knows that she is never one to give up, and has it in her to do whatever it takes to find John and save Earth. He then tells her the story of what happened in his future, and how Vriska sacrifices herself to save him so he could go back into the past and make things right. This whole backstory was also a flash, and I had started story-boarding 4 years ago and had been slowly adding to over time. It is largely unfinished and there is a lot of gaps, here it is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6yfr3mmnw02hsg6/DaveVriskflash.swf?dl=0(warning: there is some mild flashing colors in this animation that I hadn’t removed yet)

Rose, meanwhile has begun pouring through Raven’s journal, and it is her account of the Sburb session as it happened. Tens of thousands of years ago, the Shinobi had played a Sburb session and created their current universe. The players consisted of Raven: the Witch of Time, Zarlo, the Knight of Space, Icarus: the Heir of Light, Shawntie, the Seer of Breath, Hades: Prince of Void, Cristyle: Thief of Heart, Sylja: Sylph of Mind, and Oren: Lord of Doom.

Rose is very confused by Hades, Cristyle and Sylja’s names being in this journal. As far as she could tell, the three siblings where fairly young and had no involvement with the Sburb game. The Shinobi described in this book where clearly different people with their similarities to their modern counterparts only superficial. Rose reads on and finds that as with any session full of teenagers, a lot of drama ensued. Their was a power struggle between Shawntie, Oren, and Hades. All three of them wanted to be in charge of the team. Oren was the reincarnation of Orpheus, who was essentially Shinobi Jesus, and believed that he was entitled to lead them all to victory. Shawntie however despised Oren and felt he didn’t live up to who Orpheus once was, and asserted that she had to work to gain her prestige unlike Oren who has born with it. Hades, however saw the instability in the two of them. He knew that Oren was deeply insecure and mistrusting, and Shawntie was headstrong and stubborn, and offered to lead the group, as he was the true heir to the Throne of the Shinobi before their home was destroyed in The Game. Oren despised the two of them, Shawntie whom he had never gotten along with was ruthless in her criticism of him, and Hades he despised for more complicated reason.

Oren had grown up believing that he was the prince of his people set to inherit the throne. In reality he was a decoy prince, places their in order to protect the true blood heir, Hades (Sort of like how in the prequel Star Wars trilogy, Padme was the real queen, while the Queen Amedala we saw was just a decoy). When Oren discovered that he would not inherit the throne he began to mistrust everyone around him. He loathed Hades, feeling that he was not raised to be ruler, and therefore has no claim to the throne. Even after it was revealed that Oren was the reincarnation of Orpheus, the savior of the Shinobi, they refused his claim to royalty, stating that Orpheus was not a figure meant to lead, but a figure of self sacrifice for the greater good. Oren was intended to step aside and allow Hades to be the true ruler. Then Sburb happened and all of that stopped mattering.

There were also some LOVE TRIANGLES going on with the 8 Shinobi! Oren was in love with Raven, who wanted nothing to do with him. She saw just as plainly as any what an insecure backstabber he was. Cristyle became enamored with Oren after discovering he was Orpheus’s reincarnation. Sylja was in love with Cristyle, because as a orphaned child, Sylja grew up on the streets, cast out by society. It was Cristyle who was the first one to show her kindness and would offer her food and money any time they encountered each other. They became good friends, but Cristyle was completely unaware of Sylja’s affection for her.

There’s a couple Shinobi I haven’t talked about much yet, as they are kind of irrelevant to the grand scheme of things, but in summary of each of the 8:

Oren: The reincarnation of Orpheus, though thus far he had been failing to live up to it. Hades: The levelheaded and wise beyond his years Prince of the Shinobi.  Cristyle: The intelligent and charismatic hero, her drive and resourcefulness she chose to use for good.Sylja: The soft-spoken and shy orphan girl, shunned by society but brought into the friend group by Sylja. Shawntie: The brash and stubborn leader type. Raven: The bookish and withdrawn spell-caster, and unknown to her, the reincarnation of Eurydice, Orpheus’s beloved wife whom he failed to save in the past. Zarlo: The trickster, used to work in a circus.Icarus: The engineer, is lucky there is no sun in Sburb for him to fly too close to.

So the stage is set, the 8 Shinobi play out their game. Everything is going according to plan, with the Shinobi making good progress in completing their assigned trails and whatnot. As Oren is progressing towards his Denizen encounter, he finds that the way is blocked with 8 locked keystones, each one corresponding to the Aspect of each player in their game. He activates the Doom keystone, and realizes he needs to bring each of the other players to unlock their keystones so he can progress. He manages to convince each of them to activate their corresponding stones, up until he gets to Shawntie. She refuses to help him out, and Oren becomes enraged. They argue, and in a fit of hysteria, Oren kills Shawntie. He is horrified at what he’s done, and hides her body away.

Some time passes and Oren ends up alchemizing a dagger. But, as soon as he picks it up, it begins to emit red sparks, flies out of his hand, and John appears! This knife is piercing his chest, but their is no blood and he doesn’t appear to be harmed.

Rose, upon reading the book, realizes what happened to John, that he was sent back in time to the point in time where the dagger he was stabbed with was created.

John quickly befriends Oren, and soon realizes that he has been sent to a Shinobi session. However, he doesn’t realize that he has been sent back in time. He believes that these Shinobi are currently in the process of playing Sburb, believes that the black hole devouring Cyronillia is Sburb’s way of destroying their planet. John realizes that if he helps the Shinobi complete their session and create a new universe, they will no longer need to search for a new home and can leave Earth alone.

So John proceeds to help Oren, and they locate his quest bed. John explains that when he is ready, Oren must die on this bed in order to resurrected in his God Tier form, and that each of his friends must do the same. Oren, realizes his session might be doomed since Shawntie is dead, and he keeps quiet about this. He doesn’t want John to know he killed her.

John eventually explains to Oren that his home is under attack by his people. The Shinobi want to make Earth their new home. John talks about Earth extensively, and how much he loves it and how much they sacrifices to get their new home. Oren listens intently. He doesn’t comment about how his home was destroyed, and internally he starts to piece things together…

Eventually Oren takes John to the temple with the aspect Keystones. There is one left, the Breath keystone, and John, as an Heir of Breath, is able to activate it. Oren thanks him, and John explains to Oren that he is about to face Yaldabaoth, the most powerful Denizen. However, before they part ways for Oren to face his Denizen, Shawntie appears, inexplicably revived. She explains that Hades found her, and had revived her dream self. She has come back for revenge, stating that Oren is a danger to their entire session and attacks him. Oren and Shawntie fight again, with John being knocked out trying to mediate. Shawntie is victories this time, landing a fatal strike on Oren. She leaves him there to die.

John wakes up while Oren is bleeding out, and realizes they can’t beat their session without him. He carries Oren to his Quest Bed where he dies, and moments later Oren is resurrected as the fully realized Lord of Doom. Oren thanks John for reviving him, but something in Oren has changed. He tells John that he is going to kill Shawntie, and John tries to stop him. But, Oren pulls the knife from John’s chest, and he fizzles out in a burst of sparks. He takes the knife, hunts down Shawntie and kills her.

Upon finding out what he had done to her, the rest of the Shinobi turn on him, but they are outmatched. His paranoia and spite got the better of him, and one by one he killed Hades, Sylja, Cristyle, Zarlo, and Icarus. Even Raven he decides is better off dead than knowing the atrocities he’s committed. However, as he watches her bleed out, he decides he can’t let her die. He brings Raven to her quest bed and she revives as a God Tiered Witch of Time.

Oren falls to his knees before her and cries, completely overcome by guilt and horror at what he has done. He pleads with her that he will do whatever it takes to atone for his crimes. He will do whatever it takes to set things right. He says he will find a way to save this session, create a new empire, and he and Raven can rule together for the rest of their immortal existence. But Raven refuses, and leaves him alone to rot in this failed session.

Left with no other choice, Oren returns to the gate John had helped him open and proceeds to make the trek to the center of his planet down a spiral staircase to confront his only remaining hope: Yaldabaoth.

Yaldabaoth explains to Oren that his actions have doomed the session, but he offers him a choice. If Oren is successful in defeating him, Yaldabaoth will grant him one of two options:

1) All of Oren’s friends that he killed will be revived and able to complete the session and move on create a new world, at the cost of Oren being forever trapped in the core of his planet in the session for the rest of eternity.

2) Oren may complete the session by himself, but the new universe he created will be doomed from the start. The soul of Orpheus that he had betrayed will slowly consume everything until all that Oren had worked for would be destroyed.

Oren, being unable to cope with the idea of sacrificing himself, chooses the 2nd option. He kills Yaldabaoth, and the choice he made is set into motion. Oren proceeds to the new Cyronillia, and creates a new empire in which he is the sole ruler. The black hole that Yaldabaoth promised is created, only known to Oren, and it slowly begins to expand threatening to devour everything. Raven attempts to thwart him, and he captures her and holds her prisoner, hoping that one day she will come to see him as he sees her.

Oren, still struggling with the guilt, reverses his name to Nero. He wants to leave the past behind him and start over as a new person. He knows that Shinobi souls reincarnate, and hopes that as his old friends reincarnate he can make things right with them. But time and time again, as his friends reincarnate, he repeats the same mistakes. He can’t let go of his disdain of Hades, he is terrified to let any new version of Shawntie live past childhood in fear that she will grow up despise him and try to kill him.

It is Sylja who is the most problematic for Nero. As a Sylph of Mind, for some reason Sylja is able to remember every past incarnation of herself, and thus she remembers the atrocities Nero committed. She has been responsible for every uprising against him, and after so many failed uprisings, Sylja lost hope and vowed to never speak again.

Over time Nero grows more and more jaded. And he becomes more and more desperate to find away out of the thrall of the black hole. It is his encounter with John that gave him hope of escape. To Nero, John was a walking prophecy, that one day his empire would seek out a planet in another universe known as Earth, and he would make his new empire there. And thus, he begins his plans to take over. Nero over time decides to take on three children (Shinobi don’t reproduce normally, they are created in a DNA pool and given to Shinobi who are fit to raise them). The three children Nero happen to receive are Cristyle, then Sylja, then Hades. Maybe now that his old friends are finally this close to them he can keep an eye on them… Maybe raising them is how he will atone for killing them in the past, he decides.

So back with the heroes, Rose is now informed about the Shinobi session, and knows what happened to John. And, just in time, John appears back in the school gymnasium, and returns to the group. Vriska is overjoyed, and imbued with a new sense of hope. Rose informs them all of the story of Nero and the session.

And here is where I stop writing for the time being, as this “Broad strokes” summary has ballooned out more than I anticipated. I will try and have the rest of out as soon as I can, don’t be afraid to keep bugging me about it!

Feel free to ask any questions, as there where a lot I skimmed over and a lot of plot threads I didn’t talk about. I will try and answer what I can time permitting.

[triciya]

An Addict’s Premonition

@blame-it-on-weed

“The addiction is each other. A sick twist in their understanding of love.”

(AKA the one where the Squip shocks Jeremy every time he speaks or touches Michael.)

Word Count: 2563

Warnings (general): Arguments, Angst, Broken Bones, Depression, Kind of suicidal thoughts, smut later on if ya’ll want. Implied past self harm. Kidnapping (not the main characters). PTSD with said character.

Chapter 1

The floor of the school hallway creaked as the mass of students hurried to their last lesson of the day. The air was humid and everyone had taken all their clothes off to the last layer, busily chatting with their peers or sauntering with their head drooped because of the heat. Sweat and skin bore down on New Jersey, saffron yellow rays of fire pounding onto the people and concrete.

Take off your jacket Jeremy.

You’re getting more built up each day, those push ups are paying off.

No.

I told you to wear a tank top for a reason, now come on. Don’t you want girls all over you? You`ll be loved.

… Fine.

The squip lounged in the back of his mind as he pulled off his black bomber jacket, a white tank top stretched over his growing muscles.

“The developers have said it should be comi- dude. What the fuck.” Michael stopped mid-sentence, eyeing Jeremy up and down, “What treadmill ran you over?”

“Oh. Squip said to exercise more, no big deal. Plus, the weather is melting my skin off.” Jeremy blushed, slightly flustered and insecure.

“Dude. That’s like… impressive.” Michael’s eyebrow was raised and ignoring the people that kept bumping into his shoulder unintentionally as they passed, he shook his head in disbelief, pouting, “My little Jere-bear becoming a big buff man! Woof!”

Jeremy scoffed, folding his arms over his chest, slouching slightly. Of course, he straightened up once the squip coughed in his head, a warning, “I mean, how can you wear that hoodie all day every day? You’re going to overheat.”

“I’m fine.” He mumbled, his tone changing instantly, pushing Jeremy slightly so he would continue walking instead of blocking the hallway, “Anyway,” He changed the subject quickly with a wave of his hand, “Like I was saying, Life is Strange has a confirmed season two and a small prologue, kind of, is available to play. You should come over to mine after school and we should try it out.”

Video games aren’t cool Jeremy, you should stop spending so much time playing them. Better yet, stop spending time with Michael.I keep telling you this every single day.

Shut up. I’ve said no. You aren’t changing my mind.

The squip stayed silent, clearly disapproving as Jeremy grinned over at the boy he’d been best friends with for twelve years, “Totally! I’d skip the last lesson but I’m kinda failing history.”

“Dude, I told you, History is cool. You can study with me!” Michael skipped a little, it was true, history was the only lesson other than music that interested that kid. It was almost like a story apparently, a novel waiting to be read. An alternate universe with elegance, religion, gender inequality and racism. Maybe a little touchy and horrible as places to live in, but interesting nevertheless.

“Yea, but you like African Tribes, pre-historic humans, world catastrophes! Not… the founding fathers.”

“It all comes together to form today, y'know, everything plays an important part. The butterfly effect or some shi-”

“Jerry! Dude!” Jake came stumbling towards the pair, arm firmly wrapped around Rich’s shoulder, a friendly gesture.

“Jeremy…” He replied awkwardly, everyone was getting his name wrong. Well, at least they knew him at all, progress is progress. Michael stayed silent, frowning slightly.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry. Uh,” Jake snorted as Rich started chortling, “I’m having a party at my place on Saturday, You should join everyone!”

This is your chance, Jeremy! Say, “Yea, I’ll see you there dude!  There’ll be booze, right?” Then give him a fist bump.

Jeremy tilted his head, play rehearsal coming to his aid as he smirked (something that the squip had taught him to do correctly), “Yea, I’ll see you there, dude! There’ll be booze, right?” He lifted his fist up which Jake returned.

“Of course! We’ll get pissed! It’s Halloween!” He started to walk off and Jeremy turned as he walked by, still in awe at how people were approaching him. As though he was cool.

That’s how it’s done.

Shit, squip. You know what you’re doing. I’ve never been invited to a party before!

I know.

Jeremy turned to Michael who had slowly started walking, “Did you see that!?” He screamed, grinning. Leaning his arm on his shoulder, “I can’t believe we got invited to Jake’s party! The biggest party of the fall! Our last year and I`m finally getting somewhere!“

“Well, uh, have fun I guess?” Michael shrugged, throwing Jeremy’s arm off and pulling his sleeves back to his elbows.

Jeremy stopped and looked at him with a confused expression, shoes screeching on the floor and crossing his arms, “You aren’t coming?”

He avoided his gaze, “I wasn’t invited.” They veered left into the class, most students already there, sitting on the desks and fanning themselves with text books and make-shift origami fans.

Jeremy waved his hand dismissively, “Bro, ‘course you were. Join me, it’ll be great.”

“I won’t feel like I’m supposed to be there. Out of place.” They flopped down into their seats, the scorching rays of light from the window thankfully avoiding their desks which were opposite each other, Jeremy sat backwards on his chair so he could chat to Michael.

“I’ll be with you every step of the way, c'mon!”

“Ugh, ok. Here,” He pulled out a handful of sour candies from his hoodie pocket, Warheads, “I’ll have the green ones, you’’re the pink this time.”

Jeremy hummed, their faces scrunching up simultaneously as they swallowed them.

“But I won’t stay lon-”

“Jeremy! Why didn’t you answer my messages?” A shrill voice split Michael’s voice in half, flats slapping against the floor and a shimmer of gold hair passing everyone by as Brooke confronted Jeremy. Her eyebrows were furrowed and arms crossed, smelling of honeycomb and chocolate.

Play it off.

Jeremy grimaced, “I’m sorry, my phone was off. I was at Michael’s.” He pointed towards the guy in question, apologetically smiling to his pissed off girlfriend.

Jeremy. You’ve got to listen to me. My calculations do say that Michael is the only thing in our way.

“Oh. Hey! God, are you still wearing that old thing. You’ll overheat, Michael. Seriously, take my water.” Brooke fished out a water bottle from her Gucci bag.

“That’s what I’ve been telling him!” Jeremy took her hand and threaded their fingers together, something the Squip told him to do whenever she was upset.

“Whatever. Don’t do it again.” She stopped and pouted, looking like a kicked puppy. She was always insecure about herself and he hated making her feel bad but his Player One always came first.

Kiss her. She needs emotional support and desires physical contact when feeling negative emotions.

“C'mere.” Jeremy drawled, placing his hands on hips, one arm around her back once she started to lean down, a blush dusting over her cheeks. Their noses brushed together, eyes closed, Brooke fell into it, a soft sigh running smoothly between their joined faces. His lips were chapped from hours of biting them whilst hers were soft, clear lipgloss making them move easily against each other as it intensified.

Jeremy didn’t feel anything for her.

Don’t get him wrong, she was such, such a good friend. Always there when he felt his worst and Michael couldn’t be there. She had witnessed multiple of his mental breakdowns, much to the squip’s dismay, and still loved him to the bone. But he didn’t love her back. She was a pawn in his game. It was dumb. Hurtful. Disgusting. But the squip said it was the only way.

As long as Jeremy kept her happy, which he really did try, he didn’t feel as bad about it. He’ll let her go gracefully when the time comes. Not like those guys that break up over text, such as her last boyfriend.

The bell interrupted them and Brooke gave him a shy smile, skipping over to the front of the class where her seat was books clutched against her chest.

When Jeremy turned to ask Michael something, he was already gone, his chair still pulled out from under the table and green wrappers littering his desk.

 The class finished abruptly, a technical problem with the computer caused it to cut out in the middle of class and they had to read out of a textbook for the rest of the lesson. Of course, no one did. When the bell rung,  Jeremy got his things together slowly, knowing well enough that the onslaught of students would crush him against the door if he didn’t go last.

He was worried. Like, really really worried about Michael. Sure, he skips lessons constantly but not once he’s already in the class, not unless he was having a panic attack.

The school was mostly empty of people by the time Jeremy got to his and Michael’s meeting spot near the fire escape door opposite the art rooms. Thankfully, he was there, leaning against the wall browsing through Tumblr on his phone. He looked rough. Hair dishevelled, back hunched and hoodie bunched up with wrinkles in awkward places.

“Hey. Are you ok?”

“Oh, what? Uh yea, yea I’m ok.” Michael jumped up, startled.

“Dude, you left in the middle of lesson. Don’t you trust me to tell me things?” Jeremy crossed his arms, slightly disappointed and upset, @I don`t want you dealing with attacks by yourself.”

“Of course I trust you! It’s just, nothing. I felt a little queasy, not a panic attack and you were occupied so I didn’t want to disturb you.” Michael backtracked, standing up a little straighter, “Anyway, we should get onto that new lis preview. The cruiser’s parked out back.” He managed a forced smile as Jeremy sighed, letting go.

“Fine. Just, don’t do it again without telling me.”

“Yea yea, bro.”

The car journey was comfortable, if that was the right term to use, with Michael bobbing his head to some lofi ghibli mix on youtube and Jeremy sticking his hand out of the car to feel the wind on his skin. The sun was still scorching and they had all the windows rolled down, in hope of cooling down the drive. The cruiser had spent the day meeting the heat.

Jeremy hated this. This underlying sense of unease because of the squip. He knew Michael was against it and was really worried about what it would do to him. He just wanted things to be easy. He wanted to be popular. He wanted someone to love. Christine was his original goal but as much as he likes her, he knows it won’t work out. He’s still trying of course. But for now, he’s settled on Brooke, she’s kind and sweet and doesn’t hate Michael.

Take the upgrade. He doesn’t agree with us.

Oh shut up. That’s how life works.

They pulled over into Michael’s driveway, Jeremy smiling at Michael who ignored him. He frowned, shrugging it off and pulling out his phone to see some unread texts from Brooke once he got out.

Bunn-ke: Jerry!!!

The name stuck even after they established that his name was, in fact, Jeremy.

Bunn-ke: I found this black and white kitten near my house and it’s just playing and biting my fingers!!!

Bunn-ke: It’s ADORABLE!!!

Bunn-ke: You should come over and see it! I don’t wanna take it home because then its mama won’t find him so if you can come over soon we can pet it together!!!

Ben&Jeremys: I can’t come earlier than 5 sorry. But it sounds cute, send a pic!

“Jeremy, come on.” Michael shouted from the front door, getting there without him realising it.

“Oh, yea sorry! Brooke.” He shoved his phone back into his pocket and jogged to catch up, closing the door behind him. Michael didn’t respond and instead shuffled down into the basement without a word. He didn`t seem to be avoiding him, more so lost in thought.

Bunn-ke: Oh. ok. I guess.

They flopped down into the beanbags, loading up the Life is Strange Preview. The game started, music as ethereal as ever, wrapping the room in a film of calm as they opened up bags of Doritos and marshmallows, taking sips of fanta every now and again.

Jeremy. Look at him.

He did what the squip told him to. Almost automatic, used to listening and obeying.

Look at the way he’s slouched, he bites his lips when concentrating. He’s unfit, you can tell with how his hoodie bunches up in the wrong places. All those patches just make him look like a mess. He is one by the way. How do you deal with him? He’s bringing you down.

He’s my best friend. Look, I’ve told you a million times, I’m not abandoning him.

It’s taken you months to be invited to a party! Your relationship with Brooke is on the verge of falling to pieces and Christine is further away than ever!

Christine won’t work out, she’s amazing and everything but ugh, I’m not good enough. And Brooke, I should just break up with Brooke, it feels wrong to use her like that. She’s a nice person.

“You’re mumbling.” Michael sighed, running a hand through his hair and pausing the game. He turned to look at Jeremy, eyes darkening with a silent stare, almost as though he was waiting for something.

“Oh. The squip’s just being a nuisance.”

He sighed, pulling at the strings of his hoodie in frustration and bursting.

“Seriously. I can’t do this anymore. “He threw his hands up in the air, "You’ve been getting more and more cold with me every day! What is it even saying to you! It’s talking about me isn’t it?” He nodded, taking a shuddering breath, the anger sudden.

“Micha-”

“No! I’ve had enough! I can’t stand seeing you and who you’re becoming! It’s like you don’t give a shit about how other people feel and all you need in popularity and your trusty little buddy the squip! One day you’re going to be in an asylum begging for that thing to be taken out!”

You see. He doesn’t need you. You don’t need him. He thinks you don’t give a shit, let’s show him just how much we can do that.

“Michael! You’re my best friend! Of course I care!”

“Yea, well you don’t seem to care about yourself!” Michael was shaking, lips quivering and the sound of his pacing echoed around the room, “Trust me! For once! Let’s try get rid of it! You’re cool without it. You’re you. Please.”

“You don’t understand. Without the squip, I’m just a loser.”

“Ah, I bet that’s what you think I am.”

“No, God no!” Jeremy shook his head trying to reach forward but Michael flinched.

“Don’t touch me. Go spend time with your girlfriend. We’ve been tiptoeing around each other for four months. Let me do you a favour, just leave me then. Go fuck Brooke over, go get Christine who doesn’t feel comfortable about your crush on her, go fuck Chloe. Go and live a perfect life, just don’t go crying to me when some fucking video game shit happens and the Squip starts taking control of your body.”

Jeremy felt his skin boil, dread quickly bubbling up into pure anger, “Oh, I see, so you’re jealous!”

“Jealous! Don’t you dar-”

He stood up, pointing a finger into Michael’s chest,

“You’re just jealous I have a squip and you don’t!”

Michael glared back at his best friend, “Jealous of that siri reject? Fuck no!” His voice cracked as he ran a hand through his hair.

“That I have a girlfriend and you don’t! You know what, maybe you should stop being so selfish and let me be happy for once, huh!?”

“You know nothing about me.” Michael whispered this, tears gathering in his eyes, “Get out.”

“Fine!” Jeremy picked up his jacket, slamming the door behind him and not looking back as he left through the front door and called Brooke to come pick him up.

“Fine.”

Tagged: @multiotp @nyan-nyan-nii @axel-the-flower-prince @beagle-girl-36 @crazilyawesomeme @timpaxew @cannonu @oh-my-love-I-write @jealpe12 @oh-my-mettaton @crispwiz @alice4897 @scarlet-the-cat

[tsaritsa]

a strange fate with wandering limbs / ch xii

this story can also be found on ff.net or ao3. 

FIRST CHAPTER PREVIOUS CHAPTER NEXT CHAPTER

On June 19th, Riza Hawkeye falls asleep at approximately 11.28pm. On June 20th, she doesn’t wake up.

Edward is fairly sure he has never felt more awkward as he sits in a chair next to Mustang in some lawyer’s office a week after Captain Hawkeye’s funeral. He isn’t entirely sure why he’s been summoned – he can’t think of any reason why he would need to be present at the reading of a will (and he’s unsure of what reason why the Captain thought to include him). It is a small drab room, painted in a yellow that has not aged well – he can see the marks where condensation has cut through the faint blackness of mould beginning to form at the base of the wall.

It’s fucking depressing, and he doesn’t want to be here at all.

There’s a sudden banging, and the man who Edward assumes is the lawyer enters the room, nearly tripping over himself with boxes and plainly marked files. It’s too much for one person to handle with grace, but Mustang simply watches with what Edward can only describe as disdain.

This was going to be a fun interaction.

“Sorry about that…” the lawyer mutters, unceremoniously dropping the boxes next to his desk and shrugging in a well what can you do? manner when they go spilling all over the carpet, dust motes being thrown into the air.

He sits down in the chair behind the desk and it creaks and strains under his weight. “Well,” he begins, clasping his hands together and flashing an oily grin that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “You two are here today because of the last will and testament of a certain Riza Caroline Hawkeye.” A beat passes as he eyes the two men up. “Sorry for your loss,” he adds, trying (and failing) to sound even remotely empathetic.

Mustang snorts in derision.

“Luckily for you,” the balding man continues, as if he was never interrupted, “is that this is a very simple matter indeed. Her instructions were minimal and direct. I doubt there will be any disputes over this.” He leans over his desk to grab another file, and the chair groans dangerously as he does so. Edward would be tempted to find all of this funny if the reasons for his being here didn’t exist.

He flicks through the file quickly, and extracts a single sheet of parchment, covered in stamps and a crumbling wax seal on the bottom left corner.

“I’ll begin reading it now,” he says. “Please don’t interrupt while I do so.”

The man clears his throat.

“I, the undersigned, Riza Caroline Hawkeye of 346 3b Newland Street, East City, hereby declare this to be my Will.  I hereby revoke all previous wills or testamentary writings made by me. I nominate Jacob Marcus Collinger of 37 Adelaide Road, East City, to be the Executor of my Estate. Should he be unwilling or unable to act as executor, I nominate Rebecca Elaine Catalina of 93c Coppermine Road, Central City. I direct that my estate shall devolve as follows:

To Edward Aristotle Elric, I leave my dog, Black Hayate, in your care.

To Roy Nicholas Mustang, I bequeath the residue of my estate.

In witness whereof I have signed this will at 48b Willowstone House, on the 11th of June, 1917 in the presence of the undersigned witnesses who in my presence and in the presence of each other have signed this will as witnesses. Signed, Riza Caroline Hawkeye; Jacob Marcus Collinger; Rebecca Elaine Catalina.”

Jacob clears his throat noisily and watches the two of them with beady eyes. “Very simple indeed,” he says matter-of-factly, laying the paper down on his desk. “Are there any objections?”

“Yes.” Mustang says shortly. “Hayate isn’t going to Edward.”

A strange smile settles on Jacob’s face. “You’re Mustang, then.” It isn’t phrased as a question, and Edward can almost see the hackles beginning to rise on the Flame Alchemist’s back.

“What of it?” Mustang replies, a silky timbre creeping into his voice. This is quickly veering into dangerous territory and Edward shifts in his chair, jaw tensing as the two men gauge each other.

“She said you might be…what’s the word? Ah, difficult. Regardless, she has instructed that her dog goes to young Edward here –” he gestures a stubby hand towards him. “From what I can remember her saying, she felt the city wouldn’t suit him well as he got older. However, if Mr Elric here also feels the same way…” he trails off, and he two men look at him expectantly. Edward shrinks a little under their stare, wishing that the floor would open up and swallow him whole.

“I think…” he begins tentatively, very much aware that his former superior undoubtedly has the gloves somewhere on his person, “that we should respect her wishes. This isn’t really about either of us.” He swallows, and fiddles with his fingers. “And no offense General,” he continues, enjoying how the leer slides off the lawyer’s face quicker than his son stealing a cookie when Winry’s back is turned, “but you have more important things to do than take care of a dog, Hayate or not.”

Mustang’s jaw tenses, but he doesn’t say anything.

Edward turns back to the lawyer, who is looking significantly more uncomfortable as he leans back in his chair, avoiding looking at Mustang entirely. “Was there anything else we needed to be told, or can we go now?”

The relief is palpable on the man’s face and he shakes his head quickly. “Just this letter,” he says, pointing to a small envelope on top of the folder embossed Hawkeye, R. C. It simply says Roy on the front, in a sweeping set of lines that Edward recognises immediately. Mustang picks up the letter gingerly, and levels a hard stare at the sweating man behind the desk.

He stands up, and his coat brushes Edward as he passes. “Fullmetal,” he says gruffly.

Edward looks up in confusion.

Mustang jerks his head towards the door and leaves: Edward follows tentatively, muttering a hasty goodbye to the lawyer as he passes.

He walks with the man to a park nearby where the lawyer’s office is, and Mustang sits down on a bench near the artificial lake. He’s still grasping the unopened envelope tightly, his knuckles almost blanched completely white.

Edward sits down next to him and watches the swans gliding across the still waters of lake, unsure of whether he should speak or remain silent.

“Fullmetal-” Mustang starts, but he shakes his head and sighs. “Edward,” he begins again, handing him the unopened letter. “Could I trouble you to read that, please?”

Edward stares at the older man in shock. “I- that- that letter is for you, I don’t think I should-”

“Ri-” her name catches in Mustang’s throat and the man sighs heavily, closing his eyes. “R- Riza did not say who could or could not read this letter, she only addressed to me.” His arm is still extended, and Edward cautiously accepts the envelope.

“Please read it when you are ready,” Mustang says quietly, leaning further back into the park bench, gaze settling somewhere on the far side of the lake.

Carefully, as not to tear the envelope, Edward slides his thumb under the lip and slowly undoes the thin glue. He pulls out a single sheet of stationary and opens it.

The paper is old and crumpled, with stains marring the edges. It was dated the same day that the will was signed for, he notes, eyes quickly running over what few sentences remain of a woman he can only begin to admit now was like a mother to him. There is intimacy in these words that he should not be reading – he practices them with his mouth, silently. They are familiar, and Edward wonders where he has heard them before.

“Roy,” he begins shakily. “No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.” He pauses here, trying his best not to cry. Her handwriting is achingly familiar – her z’s that loop just so and the little jumps where her pen left the parchment. He exhales heavily.

“Yours always, Riza.”

Mustang doesn’t respond beyond shifting a little on the bench and Edward desperately wants to leave the park right this instant. This was something that was intensely private – and while it answered many questions he had – it also raised far far more, and Edward didn’t want to deal with that particular box right now.

It is certainly far more than he wants to consider right now, on a park bench with a man who is looking increasingly catatonic as the minutes pass.

After a while, Mustang holds out his hand once more, and Edward quickly places the letter back into the envelope and hands it back to him. Mustang tucks it into his breast pocket and adjusts the scarf around his neck. It wasn’t a particularly chilly day, but Edward notices how the older man’s hands are shaking.

He doesn’t say anything.

Neither does Mustang.

what riza is quoting in her letter to roy is a line from shakepeare’s much ado about nothing. it’s my favourite play of his (check out the david tennant and catherine tate version if you haven’t – they are comedy gold). as we know, the bard is always up for interpretation: but i always understood that quote from benedict to mean that he cannot and will not love beatrice in the ‘proper way’ – compared to the likes of hero and claudio who, while going through all the proper motions of love, still end up in a worse state than beatrice and benedict ever manage (and perhaps, it can be argued that beatrice and benedict have a love that’s truer and has more basis than that of naïve hero and claudio).

in any case, i would happily argue that roy and riza do not love each other in the proper way, the traditional way – and that is why we enjoy them together so much!!!!!!

[dat-imagine-tho]

First Impression Part 2

Pairing: Cedric x Reader Requested: Yes Warning/s: Slight dark themes (hinted at guilt and depressive state). I promise it has a happy ending.

Prompt: “First impression. That was amazing love. I love your writing. Would you consider writing a part 2 to it. Where he doesn’t die after the goblet of fire. Cedric brings his day to the last quidditch game of their time at hogwarts to watch his girlfriend play.”

Shoutout to my twin @newton-scamandr (also goes by @newts-case-of-imagines ), and @thestrawberryblondehobbitbatch for the encouragement and general support/friendliness. I couldn't work your ideas in this time even though they were amazing!

This story follows the proceedings after Cedric does not die in the Triwizard Tournament, in my story Task #3, however, you don’t need to read that first (or at all). All you need to know is that Cedric let Harry solely take the Cup, therefore only Harry ended up in the Graveyard. (Different to Cursed Child as well haha). Cedric is also playing as he was the team Captain. Note: I'm uploading this via my mobile and don't know how this will effect formatting. Enjoy!

News broke quickly: Voldemort was back!

Cedric seemed far from ok, he held a lot of the proceedings over his head. No one else knew, only Harry and Cedric knew how close it was that things could have ended differently. Had Cedric grabbed the cup with Harry, he too would have ended in the graveyard that night.

Cedric’s mind was succumbed with guilt. What if he had been there? He could have helped Harry! Maybe Voldemort wouldn’t have been revitalised, to live once more.

Something was off, “What’s wrong, Ced?” Your voice cut the silence that had dawned on you both. This seemed to break through to his distracted mind. However, he didn’t look at you. His eyes still averted but were no longer distant, still locked onto the yellowing clouds cascading the light blue sky. Nothing escaped his thinly lined lips. His jaw was clenched.

“Ok, get up.” You stated “What?!” Bewilderment spread across his face as he finally looked at you.

“I,” You smiled at him, “am getting you out of your head. You’ve spent far too long in there, it’s not good, Cedric.” You held your hand out to him. He stared at it and then back at you. “I have an idea, but you have to trust me.”

With a small amount of confidence, he relented, taking your soft hand in his calloused one.

You were set on a mission, as Cedric trudged along behind you, your hand pulling him along.

You had reached your destination; battered green from use with three huge goal posts on each end. You turned and smiled at your boyfriend. “The quidditch field?” Cedric asked, with an eyebrow raised. “Yep,” You couldn’t contain your smile, “I asked Professor Sprout if I could book the field for an hour.” Still not convinced, he spoke his unchanged mind, “You brought me to the Quidditch pitch to practice for tomorrow’s match? I think we’ve practiced enough, don’t you?” You sighed in a dramatic fashion still with an unrelenting joy, “No, this isn’t about practice. This is about fun.” Cedric was curious now looking at the two brooms awaiting you on the field and the quidditch Set. “Well. What are you waiting for,” you challenged. “Accio broom.” Your broom instantly flew vertically into your waiting outstretched hand. Following suit, Cedric summoned his own.

You kicked hard off the ground and flew around the grey sky. Looking across at Cedric who floated casually parallel to you, “Well Captain, what do you say to a friendly race around the field?” You always knew that Cedric had a competitive side you hoped he would unleash at your words.

A grin finally graced his lips, even if it was mischievous in nature. He spoke the next words that kicked off the competition, “You’re on!”

The stadium blurred around you in reds, greens, yellows and blues. The both of you soaring coming up to the first bend. Except, Cedric didn’t follow you, he was no longer neck to neck with you, he had cut the corner!

That is it! You thought, you were going to wipe that grin from his face he was without a doubt currently wearing. Leaning forward you picked up more speed. Almost slipping off the end. You continued forward and was since again by his side, the final bend came closer. You turned sharply using your body weight to bump him. It had worked, Cedric had veered off course just before the first goal post.

Although not falling, he was forced to make a turn causing him to lose a lot of ground and ultimately the race. He didn’t even reach the middle of the field where you had originally started before you had come to a landing. Without finishing he met you on the ground. “You cheated.” He spoke sternly. With a crooked smile you shrugged, “You didn’t expect me to go easy on you, now did you?”. Finally laughing for the first time in days, his grey eyes locked onto yours. “Whatever, cheater.”

Cedric walked towards you slipping his arm around your shoulder. “Well, I think I’ve had enough of quidditch.” You teasingly tested him, “Really after merely one little race?” Scoffing And rolling his eyes, “I thought you would be just as sick of it as I am with all the training we did.” With an eyebrow raised and a smug grin, you corrected him, “You mean the training you made us do?” He laughed. “You act like our last game isn’t tomorrow.” “True. True. Counter point, you act like it’s the only thing going on. Cedric, I’m deeply worried about you. What happened in that graveyard-” “I wouldn’t know what happened in that graveyard. I would know. I was supposed to be there.” “But, you weren’t Ced. How could you possibly have fared against the darkest wizard the world has ever seen?” A quick intake of breath before you continued “We all know, some stupidly act like they don’t - they’d rather hide behind oblivion in false security, but we all know you-know-who would rise one way or another.” He still looked unsure, “That thought of ignorance should have been tossed out the window following Harry’s first and even second year of Hogwarts, hell, even following the end of last year!”

You finally looked away from him, you couldn’t bare looking him in the eye any longer. “If I can’t convince you, I don’t know what else to do. I can’t fix you, there’s no magic word or cure.” You trailed off, unsure of what to speak. Silence seemed best, or the only option.

“I know. You don’t think I don’t know how illogical this is? I - I can’t seem to control it - I don’t want to sometimes. What ifs and a weight bare down on me. I know you can’t do anything, or anyone can do anything, I don’t expect anyone to "fix” me. But I do need you to be there for me, and although you may have felt like you were alone in my presence, I needed you. All I ask, is patience, while I sort this out.“

You stared at each other with intensity. "Ok.” Was all you uttered.

A nervous laugh escaped Cedric’s lips as his right hand instinctively rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, that got quite depressing. Do you want ice-cream? I want ice-cream.” Taken aback by the sudden change in tone you responded in utter confusion, you drawled out the word, “Sure.”

———————————–

Once settled in the warm atmosphere of the well known shop you looked at Cedric. His eyes were not looking at you, rather the menu before him. Without breaking eye contact from the laminated paper he asked, “What do you want?” Without missing a beat you replied, “Whatever you’re getting.” You couldn’t really think of food right now, not with what was currently taking place; you couldn’t put your finger on what was going on in Cedric’s mind.

“Two ice-creams and two hot chocolates, please.” Cedric addressed the waiter. He looked to you just in time to see you raise an eyebrow in a quizzical look. “Ice-cream and hot chocolate?” You asked. “Yes. Couldn’t make up my mind, why not both?” He shrugged.

After a small wait, the waiter placed an ice-cream each drizzled with hot chocolate sauce assorted with strawberries and bananas cut in slices circling the plate. They left and came back quickly with two hot chocolates finished with whipped cream sitting atop with chocolate powder sprinkled on it. They then to your delighted surprise place two chocolate frogs on the cream. Quickly sinking in the foam, the frog in your mug paddles to the edge of the mug and clings to the side while the one in Ced’s mug stays in the centre tredding hopelessly in the beverage, making itself spin in circles.

You laugh with amazement and peek upwards towards Cedric who smirks knowingly towards you.

“That’s why I like coming here. For the hot chocolates.” He clarifies with a nod.

A small smile tugs at your lips, one that falters easily at seeing the boy before you try and piece himself back together.

“Dad used to take me here when I was little on really special occasions and we’d order the hot chocolates and watch the enchanted frogs swim around in the mug before melting into nothing. A little morbid, I know. But it always made me laugh as a kid.” He looks down into his mug with a faint smile and a sparkle that the reminiscing seemed to spark to life behind his grey eyes.

“I’m glad it can still make you happy, Ced.” You say with a genuine smile at your lips.

A moment silence passed between you before it was broken. Cedric looked at you in amusement. “What?” You asked with slight annoyance. He just raised a hand reaching towards you, “You have whipped cream on your face.” His thumb wiping it off in one stroke, using his napkin to clean his finger. You looked at him intently, “I can’t believe you’re a cliché”. Cedric gasped, “hurtful” he raised his hand to his chest in mock horror.

———————————–

“Alright, everyone! This is our last match for the year.” Cedric addressed the nervous lot before him. “We’ve had a tough year, and bad news recently,” he looked to you slightly, you offered him a saddened look before he continued his speech, “but I’ll be dammed if I let it affect our match!” Cheers erupted through the tunnel. “Three cheers for Cedric!” You yelled at the top of your lungs, your team members followed suit, chanting their praises for their Captain.

You walked heads held high and a determined look in your eyes out on the field. You stood by your boyfriend as Madam Hooch approached to start the game. With a handshake of sportsmanship between the two Captains, the game was ready to begin. “Hey (Y/n),” Cedric whispered in your ear. You turned to see him give you a wicked smile, “Let’s kick some Ravenclaw arse.” You laughed and mounted your broom.

Ravenclaw was the first to score, followed by Hufflepuff five minutes later.

Another ten minutes had past and neither team had scored. You were very much evenly matched. Lucky for you, you were determined to find the snitch. You saw a shimmer of gold in your peripherals and jerked your head to its origin. You were saddened to realise it was someone’s wrist watch reflecting in the sun.

Ravenclaw had taken the lead. You fought desperately as the Ravenclaw’s Seeker chased the snitch. They were exactly one point ahead, if they managed to catch the snitch now it would be all over and you would lose the game.

There were several close calls as you tried to divert the other team’s Seeker without obtaining a foul. Despite yourself you had received a strict warning when you came close to committing an obstruction foul.

The game continued on, and the Ravenclaw Seeker glared daggers at you. Your close contact had allowed the snitch to very well disappear from sight. Essentially, and somewhat unintentionally costing Ravenclaw the game. For now.

The opposing team had since scored three more goals! You were down one player, he was sidelined but quickly rushed to the Hospital Wing with a probable concussion. He unfortunately took a bludger to the head, lucky he had landed when he did! Cedric was in hysterics yelling out commands to the team who were losing moral very quickly.

This game had Ravenclaw victory written all over it.

As you threw your head back in annoyance you realised how stupid this action was, as you had to quickly shield your eyes from the blazing sun. You saw it then. The snitch! You blinked rapidly hoping it wasn’t a trick. You took off after the glinting object. Following it this way and that.

You were darting through players as it swerved sharply. Reaching out you swung and missed. Leaning further forward on your broom you inched closer and closer. An outstretched hand again reached desperately. Your fingertips just touching the flying ball. You closed your fist and at last, grabbed the desired golden snitch securing the game for Hufflepuff.

———————————– Back in the change rooms Cedric boomed, “Three cheers for (Y/n)! Hip hip!” Your teammates screamed, “Hooray!” “Hip hip!” “Hooray!” “Hip hip!” “Hooray!”

Quickly followed by the Hufflepuff chant; “Where the Puffs, we know our stuff! You can’t beat us, we’re super tough. Follow us near and far The good finders that we are. Not for the glory, That’s our true story. Hufflepuff, Hufflepuff, Black and yellow, Good for a laugh, we’re a friendly fellow. We will give you a fair go. Don’t get in our way, though. Who are we?! Hufflepuff! Who are we?! Hufflepuff!”

Walking out of the tunnel back onto the Quidditch pitch with Cedric’s arm slung over your shoulder. You both were giddy from your win. “You played really well today.” Cedric stated and kissed your temple.

Amos approached you both, absolutely astounded. His grin was so large it looked painful. You wondered how his face didn’t split when he began talking, “Absolutely amazing! I can’t believe it! I mean I can, I knew you could do it, but- I can’t believe it! You won!” You both laughed at the man’s almost nonsensical ramblings of happiness.

“Thanks Mr. Diggory.” You smiled warmly at him. “Please call me Amos.” He interjected. You were shocked. He was normally so formal, you felt like you had finally scraped through to the next level with this man. First name basis! Just in time too as he looked down to see the telltale glint.

He looked to his son with his mouth agape. “When?” He’d asked. “Just now.” Cedric could not conceal his smile, but looked over his father’s shoulder, afraid to see Amos’ eyes. Your eyes, however, were searching Amos’ for an answer that you hoped you would like. Your stomach in knots.

“I could not be happier!” Amos explained. Grabbing your hand, “It’s a very nice ring,” he said to you but quickly addressed his son, “Cedric, I hope you spent a decent amount on this. You only get engaged once, and she is obviously too good for you.” He joked with a cheeky grin on his face. You came to Cedric’s defence, “I would marry this man with a plastic ring on my finger, or no ring at all!” Cedric looked into your eyes and kissed you quickly but passionately.

Amos cut in, the immediate second you two separated, “Well, what are we doing here?! Let’s go to the Leaky Cauldron to celebrate!”

[murasaki-murasame]

Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 14 [Chapter 4 - Trial]

Huh.

Thoughts under the cut.

Well I can’t say this game doesn’t know how to surprise me!

I, uh . . . was not expecting it to be Gonta, at all. I really don’t know how to feel about it. This seems like the sort of case I’ll need to sit on for a while.

Anyway, just to get it out the way from the start, I’m honestly glad that my whole guess about Kokichi’s motives in all this were wrong, since, as I also said, I figured that if I was right, it’d probably be handled badly and just be a really uncomfortable experience. Although on the other hand, my main issue with this case is that I just . . . feel a little empty about what ACTUALLY happened, motive-wise.

I may as well just dive right into my issues with it all. The bottom line is that Gonta being the murderer just . . . came out of nowhere. I’m not saying that you couldn’t suspect him from the start, it’s just . . . he didn’t feel relevant to the case at all until the very last minute, and we had no real way of guessing his motive. I don’t really dislike the idea that he tried to kill everyone as an act of mercy, but it kinda came completely out of nowhere and there was no real way to predict it. And the whole detail of Gonta having lost his memories of even committing the crime made the whole thing just feel . . . weird. I don’t even know if I’d say it was depressing, it just . . . felt weird.

Like, I’ve talked before about how much I love and adore Gonta, and how much I wanted him to beat the odds and survive, but instead of feeling sad about him dying, I’m just left like ‘wait what’.

I also feel like, even though I technically didn’t guess the culprit right at all, the logic of the entire trial felt really . . . simple? I was actually almost disappointed at how simple it was. I expected something much more complicated.

Like, for example, near the start of the case I thought that maybe the avatar user error was about how Kokichi might have hacked into the program in advance to disable the paralyzing effect on his avatar, so that he could have killed Miu and then hid behind that rule as a cover to say that it was impossible for him to do it. But I guess we were meant to take that whole plot point at face value because there wasn’t any real twist to it beyond it being an explanation for why Kokichi wasn’t the culprit.

And on the note of the avatar user error, the whole thing with Gonta screwing up felt . . . lame? Like, you definitely could have guessed it in advance if you thought about his dialogue instead of just brushing it off, so I’m not calling it unpredictable or completely out of nowhere, it’s just that it felt like a disappointing answer to that little mystery. It pretty much didn’t even serve a real story purpose beyond making Gonta more sympathetic in the end, since him just lying to hide his guilt would have caused more or less the same end result. It also lead to the Alter Ego thing I guess, which in itself felt like a slightly weird repeat of, well, Alter Ego, and to a lesser extent Mini-Mechamaru, but I guess that got immediately taken out as a plot point in the execution. It was just weird all around.

I also spent the entire case suspecting Kaito because, well, even though I thought he didn’t intentionally do anything, I thought that maybe Kokichi had messed with something in the program that caused Kaito to unwittingly be responsible for Miu’s death. Maybe there was some weird body swapping/fake identity thing going on that confused the system and made the log-in/out data inaccurate. Who knows. Then I thought later on that the motive put into the game might have been something to motivate him to kill Miu, like info on a cure for his disease. I’m obviously glad that none of this happened, since it means that he gets to stick around for a bit longer, but still.

It’s also just a bit weird that the entire point of this trial was basically ‘Kokichi is pure human evil on every level, he’s a genuinely awful person who manipulated someone into murder, and then spent the entire trial being annoying and insulting people’. I wasn’t expecting much in the way of a redemption arc or whatever, but yikes. Doing all that pretty much just to make everyone else feel bad and make some sort of a moral point to prove his superiority is . . . eh.

I also don’t know how to feel about the idea that he might not have even been telling the truth about the outside world to Gonta, and that everything he did really was just deceitful manipulation to engineer a killing game for no real purpose other than messing with people. Which added a whole other layer of weirdness and, to a degree, pointlessness to everything that happened.

It does still raise the question of what he actually saw in the outside world, especially if the implication is that it’s not equally as bad as the academy or even worse. But it was delivered in a way where it didn’t do much to make me any more curious about the truth.

They also revealed the deal with the tile stone at the end of the chapter, and so I guess that was also just Kokichi being manipulative and wanting to make himself seem powerful and important. Huh. It doesn’t really . . . tell us anything new. So that’s a bit disappointing.

I mean, I’m still curious about what the hell is even going on in this story behind the scenes, but this chapter didn’t necessarily change things too much in that regard.

A big part of this is probably just that I’m still not a fan of Kokichi as a character, especially after this chapter. He’s just kinda awful. He isn’t even that interesting or nuanced in terms of him being an antagonist out to perpetuate the killing game. He mostly just comes across as a self-absorbed compulsive liar. I really hope he gets more interesting during the rest of the game.

It’s kinda hard for the whole message he tried to send of ‘the truth is depressing and you all suck for wanting to discover it!’ to really land with me when it’s, again, not exactly a new point, and he went about it in a really contrived and forced kind of way. I know it was obviously intentional, but I related pretty hard to how everybody’s reaction in the end wasn’t ‘wow you’re right Kokichi, the truth IS depressing!’, but instead ‘what the fuck is wrong with you, Kokichi?’. I don’t exactly think that Shuichi of all people needs to be told that the truth is depressing and maybe isn’t worth pursuing. That’s literally his entire emotional hang-up.

I wonder how much of my perpetual annoyance at Kokichi is caused by how I really adored Komaeda as a character, and that Kokichi doesn’t really compare favourably to him. It feels wrong to compare them, but it’s impossible not to. I just feel like Kokichi feels way more shallow and one-note and unsympathetic than Komaeda ever did.

Also, just to continue this whole rant a bit more, now I’m left confused about the little stinger moment in the virtual world, and his apparent grudge against Kaito. I feel like none of that came up at all. This isn’t even entirely about the fact that my speculation about how that all connected and what Kokichi’s motives were was wrong. As I said, me being wrong about that part is almost a relief more than anything. I’m just confused that NOTHING seemed to happen with those details. Kokichi definitely pinned a lot of the blame on Kaito throughout the trial, but near the end it’s like he just shrugged his shoulders, went ‘actually Gonta’s the culprit’, and then the entire trial just veered off in a completely new direction. It was odd. I really thought that Kokichi had a grudge against Kaito specifically due to some sort of jealousy and bitterness, but . . . maybe not? Or maybe it just hasn’t come to the forefront yet? Both of them are still alive, so maybe it’s just being pushed off until later. The fact that the moment of Kokichi talking to himself about how he acts when he finds someone he likes didn’t really come up again was more confusing and weird, though. That seemed like such a big, ominous, mysterious little moment, but it kinda got forgotten about. I hope it’ll come up again later.

I feel like I’m more or less alone in being so annoyed at Kokichi since everyone seems to love him. Well, I see where people are coming from. I mean, I loved Komaeda as a character, so it’s not like I don’t get the appeal of manipulative and antagonistic characters. But something about Kokichi is just insufferable to me.

Then again, I’ve also seen lots of people hate Shuichi for being boring, and even though I get where people like that are coming from, I can’t help but side-eye everyone’s tastes. Shuichi is my wonderful boy and I will protect him.

Anyway, before I forget, I should comment on the Monokubs for a minute. For one thing, I was surprised to see them BOTH die during the execution. But most of all, I’m almost 100% certain now about them somehow being related to the survivors of whatever killing game Rantarou took place in. Or something like that. The way Monotaro kept talking about how he was on the verge of remembering stuff kinda spells out that he was involved in some stuff in the past. I’m not sure where that’s going to go, though.

Back to the case, as I said before, it just felt . . . simple. And the surprising parts didn’t really feel ‘difficult’, they just felt . . . surprising. I dunno how to put it. I feel like there were only a tiny handful of moments in the entire trial where I felt unsure about exactly what to do. The vast majority of the time I instantly knew what the answer was. Sometimes the exact wording of the answer threw me off a bit, but I basically always knew what the game expected from me. I think I mostly got a bit thrown off at a few of the ‘pick a truth bullet out of the entire list to answer a question’ moments. The Hangman’s Gambit sections were also a little iffy but I think all of them were ones where it just took a while for me to understand which exact phrasing of the answer the game expected from me.

Even in chapter three where I basically guessed the culprit immediately, the actual logic of most of the debates still threw me off big-time. I really doubt that it’s JUST because I decided to play this trial during the afternoon rather than at midnight like the earlier ones.

Thinking back at my last post, I think I guessed most of the main points of the trial in advance. There were definitely things I didn’t fully grasp, but most of them were things that I don’t really feel too bad about not being able to guess, in hindsight. I do feel kinda dumb about not considering that the toilet paper could have been used as a rope, though. I think it just threw me off that the roll seemed entirely ‘intact’, and not as if it had been unraveled out.

I wonder if the game genuinely expected me to be surprised by the details of how the virtual world worked, because I figured that out immediately.

I’m really happy that Kaito wasn’t the culprit, one way or another, even though it makes me feel even more bad about suspecting him yet again. I don’t think I can be blamed for that, though. And really, I didn’t think he intentionally did anything. I was just paranoid that Kokichi might have done something to somehow make Kaito unwittingly kill Miu.

It was definitely interesting seeing him be the Argument Armament person this time around. It’s not unprecedented to get cases like this, but still. It’s mostly intriguing because I still feel like the game is setting him up to be a culprit later, in the sense that his illness might eventually push him to murder someone in a desperate attempt to escape and get treatment. So in that case, I just wonder if they’d use him a second time for that section, or if they’d have a separate person step in to defend him like what happened in this chapter. The latter option seems more likely, but getting two cases like that in one game would seem a bit odd.

And on the whole note of Kaito maybe being a killer later, I hope that it’s not intended to be a huge surprise if that’s where it goes, since we’ve spent the entire last chapter and a half setting up this whole plot point in the brightest neon coloured text possible. I guess we’ll see.

It’s also worth considering that we probably only have one case left in the game, MAYBE two if we do cut the cast down to just two people in the end, so if Kaito IS meant to be a killer soon, it’d be a bit lame to have what would potentially be the final killer be so predictable. Ignoring the obvious emotional weight it’d have, there’s just the simple fact that if there’s just one case left, then if there’s one specific character who’s being set up as a future culprit, there’s no real alternative option. Even if there’s two cases left it’d basically be a 50/50 possibility. But with how this chapter went, and how it ended, I feel like whatever’s going on with Kaito will come to a head in the next chapter. So we’ll see.

It’d definitely be depressing as hell to see Shuichi need to expose Kaito as a murderer and lead him to his death. Hypothetically. And it’d hurt to potentially see Kaito spend an entire trial lying to Shuichi. But we’ll see. Maybe I’m completely wrong about where this is going.

Come to think of it, I feel a little silly about devoting this entire chapter’s set of free time events to Kaito since he ended up not dying, but hey, it’s not a bad thing. Even if I definitely think that playing his events got me into an inaccurate head-space in terms of trying to guess at the direction of this chapter, it was still nice to see his events through to the end. It would have been worse if he’d died before I got to see them all. Especially since I really did love his free time events as a whole. I’m glad I did them.

And on the note of free time events, part of me wants to try and max out Kokichi next just to see if maybe there’s some redemptive core to his character to potentially shift my feelings toward him, but for one thing I have a feeling that for story reasons Shuichi will refuse to spend time with him now, and for another thing, I don’t even know if I care enough to keep talking to him. This late into the game I’d rather do what I can to max out Maki’s free time events. I hope I can get that done in time.

Oh, and before I forget, I feel a bit stupid for not realizing that the key card Kokichi had gave him access to the secret room in the library. I had to see someone else point that out for me to put two and two together. I genuinely forgot all about that plot point, since it never really came up again after chapter one. I suppose that if anyone wanted to call it bad writing, that Shuichi never seemed to figure out what it was for, I couldn’t really blame them, but I don’t feel too annoyed about it.

Anyway, that’s basically all of my main thoughts on this trial. It was . . . a weird one. From what little I’ve seen of people’s thoughts on the game, I think I’m probably in a minority for feeling so deflated and disappointed in response to it. That’s fine. Not every case is going to work for everyone. I just think it took some bizarre turns in it’s final act, and wasn’t anywhere near as complex and interesting as I expected.

After how intensely negative this entire post was, I should clarify that I didn’t outright hate this chapter, and I’m not gonna stop playing the game or anything. It just didn’t really work for me in the end.

On a positive note, I guess I should specify that I really appreciate Miu’s attempts to set up a scenario to kill Kokichi in. Her whole plan was great, even though it was pretty easy to guess in advance. But I mean, I can’t help but cheer for anyone who wanted to murder this dude. I ended up liking her character in general a lot more than I thought I would. Apparently she was designed to be as intentionally off-putting as possible, which I can see, but she was so over the top that I couldn’t help but like her. I think most people would agree with me on that.

Also, as a side note, I took a look at the extras menu for the first time. I figured it’d have spoilers in it so I kept putting it off, but in the end I just felt that if they gave me the option to look into it now, there probably won’t be any spoilers. And I don’t think there are, thankfully. I'll probably just flick through it all once the game’s over, so I just sorta skimmed through the list, but the ‘intimacy scenes’ option kinda caught me by surprise. I know that there’s gonna be a bonus post-game Dating Sim Mode, but I didn’t expect to see this sort of option in the extras. I imagine that, unless it’s a joke option of some kind, it’s probably equivalent to the rank ten social link events in Persona, or something. I’m not exactly expecting anything, y’know, explicit, even from an option called ‘intimacy scenes’. I think that was what it was called anyway. I’m kinda surprised that the option seems to already be available, and that it’s not part of Dating Sim Mode. But I didn’t check it so maybe I’m wrong about it. I’m basically just expecting romance-y date/confession scenes, and/or some fanservice-y CGs. Since the title image thing for it seemed to have both Kaede and Shuichi on it, I hope that the events in it aren’t confined to just one or another of their POVs. That’d be nice. I have the same sort of hope for Dating Sim Mode, as I think I said before.

Basically what I’m saying is that I want my Shuichi/Kaito romance route, even as a non-canon extra thing. That’s basically all I want, lol.

But yeah I think that’s it for today. Not sure if I’ll play any of this tomorrow or if I’ll take a break.

[carryonmyobscurialson-blog]

Life's a Ball

Summary:

With sweaty palms, the boy seemed to throw his whole weight into launching the ball – and it was airborne for just a second.

As subtly as he could, Percival whispered the word "Accio..." From the most distal corner of his mouth.

The ball flew to him with a sudden and powerful trajectory – Percival smiled as he heard Credence's delighted gasp from where the boy stood – and Percival met the ball with his bat right as it approached him, sending the leather ball veering off into a further corner of the yard.

Pairing: Credence Barbone/Original Percival Graves

Note: I come back on tumblr and theres a depressing decline in Gradence things on here. :( Time to spam the tag with random one shots I guess? Here's a fluff.... with kind of a sad ending.

Under the cut as always, original link (here).

It was many times over that Percival asked Credence something he'd like from the store -- and many times Percival was frustrated hear Credence answer "No, Mr. Graves." 

There were some occasions where Credence would respond that they needed celery or carrots -- or some other grocery type item that the house needed for the pantry.  

"No, Credence," Percival explained gently, "That is not what I mean. I want to know if you want anything from the store... for yourself. Like a treat."  

"A treat?" Credence would cock his head in confusion, completely oblivious to what that might mean.  

"Yes you know, like a candy bar or a toy," Percival spelled it out for the boy. He bit the inside of his cheek, feeling silly for suggesting a toy when Credence was hardly of the age to desire toys.  

Although – admittedly – it was sometimes hard to remember that Credence was actually an adult.  

While his frame was actually taller than Percival's own, Credence slouched so much that you could only actually tell the extent of his height when the boy was lying down.  

Even after a few months of staying in Percival's brownstone, Credence still carried the body language of a nervous child meeting a stranger. It was something Percival yearned to break him out of, but as director of magical security its hardly as though he had any time to unravel anyone else's deep, ingrained personality traits.  

Credence was also still frightened of imaginary things and anything that went bump in the night.  

And Credence was largely ignorant to many of life's simplest pleasures – like a home cooked meal or a relaxing stroll in the park. Percival would never forget the first time he had given Credence some coffee, for some reason forgetting that not everyone has drank coffee before -- but that was a story for another time.  

So -- often -- Percival found himself regarding Credence as a child even though he knew he really wasn't. 

After all -- what was a child rather than a soul who was still yet naive to the complexities of mortal existence?  

"A ball," Credence responded one day, taking Percival by surprise, "I'd like a ball."  

"What... what kind of ball?" Percival asked him over the table where a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon were laid out.  

"A ummm..." Credence looked thoughtful for a second with a speck of egg still dangling adorably from the corner of his mouth, "What do you call them... oh yes, a baseball."  

Percival was confused but intrigued.  

"Isn't that a no-maj thing? Why on earth would you want that, my boy?"  

Credence shrugged, "I've always heard kids wanting to play baseball with their dads. You don't have to if it's any trouble at all though, Mr. Graves." 

"No, no," Percival insisted – he was rather perplexed by Credence's reasoning, but as this was the first thing Credence had ever actually requested, Percival wanted there to be no reluctance on his part, "A baseball it is. I'll get it right after work." 

And so Percival did.  

It had been a long time since he had been in a No Maj store -- and as he exited the place Percival mused to himself that he hadn't been missing out on much.  

There were all sorts of new types of machinery and gadgets – metal trinkets for which Percival did not know the purposes of.  

Thankfully, the simple white ball with red embroidery had been easy enough to find... evidently, baseball was more popular than ever with the No Majs these days. It made sense then, that this was some kind of integral tradition for No Maj children – and Credence was curious for a taste of it. 

Still not sure what to make of that whole "with their dads" bit though.  

Credence was quite gleeful when Percival handed him the leather ball upon his arrival. Happiness was a wonderful look on Credence -- and it was a look Percival aimed to see much more of.  

"There you are my boy, one baseball," Percival smiled at his beaming roommate, who cradled the toy with the gentleness of someone receiving the holy grail.  

"Thank you so much Mr. Graves!" Credence said breathlessly, rotating the ball with his fingers as his dark eyes studied it's surface, "I'll pay you back somehow." 

"Not at all Credence," Percival had to restrain from rolling his eyes at the silly notion, taking this time to unload the rest of the supplies he had purchased during his errand run. "It's a gift." 

"I've never had a gift before," Credence said softly, his eyes still not leaving the ball. 

The admission – although hardly shocking – stirred something ugly in the belly of Percival's emotions. And so he changed the subject to avoid ruining Credence's exuberance for his gift with some scathing comment.  

"So, how exactly is baseball played, Credence?" Percival asked curiously as he waves his wand to get the dishes going.  

"I have no idea, Mr. Graves," Credence then confessed, "I was hoping you could tell me."  

Percival turned towards Credence, unable to hide his astonishment.  

"You what?!?" Percival couldn't help but scoff, "Credence, I don't know the first thing about No Maj games."  

"Modesty and her friends played it," Credence pouted slightly, "I figure it can't be that hard."  

Percival was tempted to explain that the difficulty of understanding the game's concept was hardly the problem here.  

He simply didn't have time to spend on such a silly practice. It wasn't necessarily just because it was a No Maj sport (although admittedly that didn't help) --- Percival Graves just hated sports in general. 

Yet Credence had looked so damn eager and excited – and truth be told it was the most excited Percival believed he had ever seen the boy thus far. Why – for this of all things – Percival could  not even begin to guess... but who was he to stand in the way of anything that might make up for all the things Credence deserved yet never received?  

And so – together, Credence and Percival learned the rules of baseball.  

Thankfully -- as both of them were individuals of high intelligence – it took neither of them long to learn all they could from available reading materials.  

After maybe a week since having obtained the ball and later a bat – Credence and Percival were ready for their very first attempt at "baseball practice". 

Credence played the role of pitcher at first, with Percival a few feet away, gripping the neck of the baseball bat.  

"Just throw it as hard as you can, Credence," Percival instructed his already demure pitcher.  

Of course, Percival knew at least to hit the ball off to the side rather than to send it flying back to Credence.  

A heavy-ish projectile zooming quickly in the direction of Credence Barbone's face... wouldn't that be quite the trainwreck? 

And finally -- Credence threw it... but also kind of didn't at the same time. 

After only maybe a few seconds of being airborne, the baseball descended to the moist grass on which they stood with a soft thud.  

They both stared at it for a moment before Percival spoke up again.  

"That's okay Credence," Percival said with a gentle patience that he would never have thought himself capable of, "Just pick it up and try again. This time, try to really pull your arm back as far as it can go before you throw it."  

Already embarrassed by the first failed attempt, Credence nodded in acknowledgement before he bent down to pick the ball up.  

Another throw. 

Credence had definitely taken Percival's advice to heart, and Percival saw him throw back his hand and stretch it as far back as it could go --- but the ball only made it some of the way to where Percival stood before it fell again, rolling its way to Percival's feet after it landed.  

Percival sighed, and he looked up and already he could see that Credence looked on the verge of crying. 

He really  didn't have time for this. 

"I'm sorry, Mr. Graves," Credence mumbled miserably, his eyes dropping down to his shoes and the green grass around it, "I just wanted to do something with you, and I always hear about other kids playing this with their dads and parents, so I just thought.... but turns out I'm no good at this either..." 

The boy's shoulders shuddered violently with the underlying pressure of a repressed sob.  

Percival swallowed hard, feeling strangely gutted at the silly but sad explanation.  

If there was ever need for a reminder as to why Percival mistook Credence for a child sometimes.. 

Sighing, Percival picked up the ball this time and he handed it back to Credence, who at first could only look at the object resentfully.  

"Let's just try, one more time," Percival insisted, "Please? For me?"  

Credence took it with uncertainty, but Percival was still overjoyed that Credence hadn't just given up all together.  

He stepped back and got into position.  

And Credence pulled his arm back... as far as it could go.  

With sweaty palms, the boy seemed to throw his whole weight into launching the ball – and it was airborne for just a second.  

As subtly as he could, Percival whispered the word "Accio..." From the most distal corner of his mouth.  

The ball flew to him with a sudden and powerful trajectory – Percival smiled as he heard Credence's delighted gasp from where the boy stood – and Percival met the ball with his bat right as it approached him, sending the leather ball veering off into a further corner of the yard.  

They both stared as it's found its  landing spot in a barren patch of sand and grass that was in the northwest corner of Percival's backyard.  

The ball rolled around in a circle before it finally came full stop. 

Percival ventured a glance at Credence -- and Credence was all proud smiles and confident demeanor. Unsurprisingly, the sight of it  made Percival's own lips curve into a glowing smile.  

"I did it, Mr. Graves!" Credence exclaimed merrily.  

"Yes, you did, my boy..." Percival walked over to where the boy stood, using his free hand to reach out and rub soothing circles on Credence's back, "I'm so proud of you."  

"Would you have time to play more?" Credence asked as he walked over to retrieve the ball.  

In truth, Percival really didn't have time – but the proud expression of accomplishment on Credence's face was something he had never quite seen before, and Percival had known right away that the way it made his own heart feel warmed with affection and endearment had now become a new addiction.  

"Yes, my boy," Percival smiled at him sweetly, "I will always have time for you."  

So -- they kept playing. 

Credence kept throwing... but not really. 

Percival kept whispering secret summoning charms – and then hitting the ball just so it wouldn't wander too far, or too close to Credence's face.  

Both their smiles kept growing.  

But most importantly... Credence had finally begun to feel some sense of self accomplishment, and Percival had unknowingly just experienced one of the first things that made him fall in love with the gorgeous man child that Percival would come to love for the remainder of his days.  

And it was not for another 40 years later that a much older Credence Barebone threw a baseball at the sky above the cemetery where Percival had been laid to rest -- and Credence wondered when his throwing arm had gotten so weak.