#but it turns out that's a pretty good idea because Ashes Reborn already did it

[dravidious]

You're pretty neat

card games

[walker-journal]

Legend of the Vermilion Bird (Adam +Leah)

Characters: Leah Ramirez (Phoenix- Julie), Adam Walker (Hunter-Tapir)

Location: Just outside the Vural Property

Timing: Shortly before the events of And From the Ashes

Summary: After killing a Torple, Adam consults a wary Leah about the nature of phoenixes 

Content Warning: Woerm gore

The forest road was alive with the subtle rustling and animal calls of spring as Adam skinned a large Torple that’d shuffled onto the Vural’s property, instinctually drawn by the taste of spellcraft that practically saturated the area. The Hunter supposed such predators were a hazard of having so much mojo concentrated in one place. Being a muggle himself, Adam wasn’t in much danger from these lumbering magic-eating worms, but the Hunter felt it behooved him to quietly take care of threats to his significant other’s family. 

The Torple looked like the big-mouthed lovechild of a naked mole-rat and an earthworm with massive human teeth. Even seated on a hefty moss-covered rock, Adam was barely taller than the corpulent segmented creature. It’s webbed limbs were spindly in comparison to its body while its enormous yet unsettlingly humanoid mouth made it a wonder the Torple could move at all. It jaws were immovable once latched on, but it was the thick glistening layer of magic negating mucus covering the magivore that made Adam preemptively take a machete to it outside the boundary of his hostesses’ wards, lest its mere presence unravel them. 

Adam worked a curved ulu knife down the dead Torples’ sides, scraping the anti-magic slime off with the skinning blade and scooping it into nearby barrels. He vaguely felt Leah’s approach before he heard her footsteps, the icy-heat of her paranormal presence growing stronger as she approached. Once he caught sight of the familiar face, the Hunter took his hand  off the handle of a hidden blade and got back to scraping Torple slime. 

“Hey Library Warrior, could I have a minute? I need to ask you about something.” 

Having Bea back in town felt like relief.  When she died, Leah had been so caught off guard that she was always waiting for the other shoe to drop now that she was back to life.  At any given moment, she expected another phone call from Nell or Felix or anyone telling her that it happened again, that there was no way to fix it this time.  And New York felt so tauntingly far away, especially to someone who had barely ever left White Crest.  And so the news that her best friend was coming back to town made the tension ease from her neck- had she been holding her shoulders that tight the whole time she’d been away?

Maybe she had been spending too much time at the Vural Sister’s house that weekend (to be fair, one-third of the sister trio would have said any time Leah spent there was too much, but that’s besides the point), but for the tension to truly escape her, she need some real, tangible time with her friend. 

While Bea was busy inside cooking, Leah chose to explore the property outside, eager to soak up some sun and enjoy the chill of winter finally breaking.  She grimaced when she happened upon Adam, and watched him with an unamused expression.  It was kind of easy to ignore that he was a hunter, most of the time, but not when he was slicing something up right in front of her.  She let out a breath when he called out to her, sitting on her hip.

“What’s up?”, she asked.  She was sure he was just curious about a book, or something- maybe he lost his copy of Green Eggs and Ham.

“What is that there?” she asked, gesturing to the creature he was scraping.  Damn her and her innate curiosity and thirst for knowledge.

“I need to ask you about Phoenixs,” Adam replied with the blunt directness that frequently came when one was focused on multiple tasks at once. “There is a fire chicken that’s gone supernova in a valley. Luce is like...a fire scientist but she isn’t sure what would make em go..” Adam made a sound in his throat evocative of an explosion. I was wondering if you’d heard of anything like that,” the Hunter asked of the Not-Spriggan. 

Adam patted the enormous human-mouthed earthworm with a gloved hand as he scrapped more slime from the corpse into a bucket. “This is a Torple, they hunt people who do magic,” Adam supplied. “The Vural place is kinna a beacon with the Hogwarts stuff going on.” 

Leah felt her eyebrows furrow at Adam’s statement- both at the boldness with which he said it, and the statement itself.  She felt heat rise to her cheeks- did he know about her?  Was the knife he held over the creature actually intended for her- her tears or information or life? But no, Nell wouldn’t let that happen, right?  Nell would have at least warned her if he found out.   She felt herself visibly relax when he explained more, swallowing before she responded.  “Luce told me about this, but… what makes you think I know anything about phoenixes?”, she asked, trying to remain stoic and unblinking.  “They’re just about the rarest known creatures- information is pretty rare on them.”  The last time they spoke on the subject, Adam himself had thought phoenixes only ever spent time in their firestate, which was laughable, at best.  “You want to explode them?  I don’t think Luce is down with that idea. And neither am I, if you’re taking my help.  You need to find a way to cure them, not kill them.”  Killing the corrupted phoenix would be very, very easy.  Adam could take notes from Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West, if he wanted to be cruel like hunters tended to be.  

She pressed her lips together, unable to look at the slaughtered earthworm for too long.  Torples.  She’d heard of them, but not a ton.  She’d have to see if they had anything written up on them when she went home later tonight.  “Well- it’s good that you got it, then”, she said with an awkward nod, glancing at the bucket.  “Is the slime useful, or something?”

“Because you’re like... a supernatural librarian lady,” Adam pointed out as if this somehow gave Leah some form of nerd-omniscience. “I figured that you’d be a person to ask about something that rare y’know?”

Leah seemed to misinterpreted his amazing sound effects. “Hey hey hey,” Adam exclaimed with a note of petulance, holding up his slimy free hand in a staying gesture. “Look, that Phoenix was already exploding when we found it ok,” he asserted with boyish pique. “What I mean is that I was wondering if you knew how we could switch them into I dunno... unexplode mode, like a song, some herbs they like, an off button, we’ll take anything.” 

Adam went back to driving his blade into the annelid’s side, exposing the yellowish nerve cords beneath its ridged skin. “It interferes with magic,” he explained. “Honestly, because of how many damn Chickcharneys there are around here, I end up dunking alotta people in this slime to try and bounce the Chickcharney curse off them.” Adam chose not to mention the part where he’d erased a wizards wards with this slime and accidentally become an accessory to murder. 

Leah let out a slow breath, watching Adam carefully.  He wasn’t… wrong.  But what were the ethical implications involved with helping a hunter learn about one of the rarest, most vulnerable species that existed? 

What were they if she let someone like Adam try to figure it out on his own?

She rolled her eyes at his defense, but held her hands up in apology.  “Sorry- I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”  Even though it was so hard not to with a hunter. She walked closer to him as she continued.  “I told Luce that I have an idea of how the phoenix got so out of control, but up until now, I thought it was only a myth.”  She paused- could she really trust him?  When she thought about it, she wasn’t sure, but maybe it didn’t matter.  What difference would it make if Luce and Adam were working together in this?  One way or another, Adam was going to find out.  Better it be out of the horse’s mouth.  

“We call them corrupted- it means that their ashes were on corrupted ground when they were reborn.  Sometimes the corruption happens right away, and other times the phoenix could be well into adulthood, with a life and a family before it happens.  There are no warning signs, either.   I don’t… I still haven’t found a cure in my research, but…”  She took a deep breath before continuing, and her next words came out faster than she intended.  “If this phoenix doesn’t survive…whatever you end up doing... the best way to help them in the next life is to keep their ashes somewhere safe and sacred.”

At that imagery, Leah couldn’t help but crack a smile.  “Are you telling me you make a habit out of performing Torple Slime Baptisms, so to speak?”

The palpable feelings of otherness intensified as Leah got closer, there’d been a time when Adam would have immediately gone into fight or flight mode when his Hunter senses reacted. But in White Crest he’d had to acclimate. That conditioning was an asset when hunting alghoul out in the sticks, but here it could end up him going all kill-zone on a librarian. 

Adam paused his gory worm skinning and listened to Leah as she spoke. He noticed the use of the word ‘we’ but kept silent and impassive during the explanation. It turned out that Luce had already tapped Leah on this matter, which was unsurprising. But while he’d hadn’t doubted that she was knowledgeable, Adam’d already suspected that Ramirez wasn’t your average bibliophile, but she knew even legends of the legend. 

“We ….as in the Maine librarian’s union?”  Adam’s question was playfully phrased. There were many species, secret societies, and so on that did not appreciate their ways being pried into, and Adam didn’t want to start shit with the one person who seemed to have solid intel on Chernobyl phoenix. 

“I would rather they survive,” Adam assured. “At the end of the day I’ll do what it takes to protect civilians, but from what you’ve said it sounds like this is some demon radiation juju that they didn’t have any say in.” 

Adam inhaled. “But, if it does come to that, has your research given you any idea of a holy place that’d work for keeping the ashes safe? Maybe some place sacred to uh...I don’t know if Phoenixes worship any gods,” he admitted. “But maybe somewhere that means alot to their culture?”

The unexpected jocularity of the question, from Leah especially, took Adam openly off-guard, teasing a sheepish smile from him. “Uh yeah actually,” he admitted while scrapping some more slime off the giant mage-eater worm into a bucket. “It’s not glamorous and the clients always hate it, but the Torple-dunkage sometimes works for really minor stuff like that.”

Leah blanched, blinking at Adam’s question.  Had she been so careless to say we?  “I uh… we as in, me.  Of course. Me,us.  And the other people who are interested in supernatural history.”  She swallowed, unsure if Adam were picking up on her status as a phoenix or her status as a scribe.  Possibly both, right?  This close, he had to be having those creepy senses that she wasn’t as human as she appeared.  Either way, it was bad news.  

“I’d rather that too, but I don’t think it’s unrealistic to prepare for the worst, either.” Something Adam said struck a chord in Leah, and she couldn’t stop herself before she commented.  “I mean, that’s true of most supernatural creatures though, isn’t it?  Born or bitten, werewolves, zombies, and vampires didn’t have a say in.  Do you grant them the same courtesy when they’re out of control?”

“I know a few places that could work”, she said, crossing her arms over her chest.  Whether she would tell Adam unless he absolutely needed them- that was another story.  “Not necessarily a culture to be had per say.  Because of their rarity and ability to blend in, it’s not often a phoenix ever meets another like them in their lifetime.”  She and her family were so incredibly lucky to have each other to love; to grow and learn from when they were the most vulnerable.  “I...know a family that would take care of the baby once they’re reborn, too, so-... if it comes to that, it’ll be all covered.”   

Leah let herself get a good look at the creature, taking as many mental notes as she could to write down later.  Sometimes Adam wasn’t as bad as he seemed.  “I think most people would be pissed if you dunked them into a baby pool of slime and sludge.  I certainly would.”

“It depends,” Adam answered without any attempt at dissemblance. “Gotta measure their life against the lives of those they’d kill when outta control,” the Hunter continued as he got down from the rock he’d been perched on to move his flaying blade to the Torple’s lower portion. “Most humans just get ripped in half if they meet a vamp that's gone all hunger frenzy, but I was born strong enough to match them,” he reasoned. “In the ideal scenario I wrestle the vamp or whatever off the civilian and get them to snap out of it.” 

Adam took the long strip of worm skin over to a tree and slung it over one of the branches to dry in the sunshine. “But uh, reality doesn’t give ideal scenarios most of the time y’know? Sometimes you have to make a split-second judgement or alotta people die,” the Hunter admitted. “ But yeah, I guess the best answer I can give you is that I try.” 

“That uh...sounds pretty lonely, being all human torchy and not having anything to relate to what the hell is going on,” Adam admitted, as he walked back to the Torple corpse. “Do you do the supernatural foster care stuff alot Leah?” 

Adam rolled his eyes amiably at the resistance to necessary alien-worm slime dunking. “Hey  Chick-a-Curses are worse though. Like all of their hexes are bad, but the one your head twists backwards...gah!  I either have to bribe a witch to visit their hospital room and decurse them, or I have to sneak in and pour worm slime over some poor bastard in a hospital bed and hope it works.” 

“Most vamps get stabbed if they meet an egotistical hunter”, Leah countered immediately.  “I appreciate your attempt to be civil in the way you handle things, but I don’t find the same to be true for most hunters.”  She couldn’t help but get into these debates with the hunters in her life, and if she were being honest, she didn’t really tire of them, either.

“It’s not all bad.  I know you assumed at first that they’re literal chickens, but like I said- phoenixes spend most of their time looking like humans.  And while a lot of them end up growing up not knowing what they are until they sneeze some smoke or look for a reason feathers are popping out of their foreheads, they’re not lost for companionship.  I’ve even heard tell of families who are able to stay together throughout their cyclical lives, raising each other generation after generation.  This is incredibly rare, of course.”

She blanched at Adam’s next question, opening her mouth and closing it.  She thought of the golden goose egg, still safely incubating in her basement, surely ready to hatch at any moment.  “I… how did you know I meant myself?”

Leah couldn’t help but laugh at his anecdotes, no matter how much she wanted to disavow them for being those of a hunter.  “That doesn’t sound like a fun way to wake up- are witches so untrustworthy of you that they don’t trust that your slime is for good?”

Adam rolled his eyes with a smirk. “Y’know, if I made the same argument in reverse about ‘most vamps’ being violent and evil you’d call me out for generalizing and being a bigot Ramirez,” he pointed out. 

Adam decided not to point out the fact that statistically the deaths on humans at the hands of vampires were uncountable orders of magnitude greater than vampires dying to Hunters. But frankly, it was pretty fucking obvious that Leah considered one supernatural life precious, but human lives were just numbers to her, devoid of emotional significance unless she knew them personally. 

It’s pointless to argue with people like that. 

“You don’t know ‘most Hunters’ Leah, not even close,” Adam pointed out bluntly, “Look Ramirez you hate people like me for reasons that are obviously personal. I’m fine with that.” the footballer said with a shrug of his broad shoulders, as if he felt this truce of hate sufficient. “It’s chill. 

Despite the slip into harsh words, Adam continued to listen patiently to the talk of phoenixes, families, and cycles of rebirth. It was all pretty surreal honestly. What would it be like to be with his family across a thousand lives over and over?

He wouldn’t know. Adam had grown up being raised with the knowledge that every moment with his family was precious, that he needed to learn how to survive on his own before they fell one by one in the line of duty. 

Adam hacked into the Torple with an unnecessary force as his chest constricted. 

“Do they line...remember each other each rebirth? Or are they all new different people each time?”

Leah’s unexpected motion of surprise caused Adam’s attention to flick to her instinctively, but her following question dispelled the moment of tenseness. “I didn’t,” he admitted. “I more meant that you seemed to already have homes in mind as if you were a supernatural social worker or somethin.” 

“You….really down to be a fire mom Leah?”

Adam considered Leah’s question for a moment. “I think that magic, like all resources, should be used for the betterment of society,” Adam said, hinting at a certain level of utopianism behind the memes and crass commentary. “But I can’t force everyone to think that way. If I’m going to bug a busy sorceress to leave her research to cure some rando she doesn’t know, I need to be able to pay her. Just how it is.’ 

Leah rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest.  Adam was ignoring the fact that the violence that came from vampires was out of their control, and many of the deaths that came from them were for a need to survive.  Hunters, however, had plenty of control over what they did, and though there were a few gentle ones like Adam or Kaden, most would do what they did for sport, if given the chance.

“Neither do you”, she shot back.  And he’d never had to fear them, either.  She’d read countless stories about the atrocities they’d committed, and so excuse her if she didn’t trust a hunter as far as she could through them.

Again, his questions about phoenixes gave her pause.  Was this information relevant?  “It depends”, she explained.  “Not always concrete memories that you or I might have from last week or last year, but it’s more like… glimpses or feelings.  Sometimes even that doesn’t pop up right away, either.  Most phoenixes end up with a touchstone through most of their lives to help them connect.”  The touchstones didn’t always work.  She felt an invisible buzzing pull from the stone around her neck, taunting and teasing.  

She blanched at his elaboration, embarrassed that she’d assumed so quickly.  She didn’t hate the idea of that type of job, if she were being honest- supernatural social work sounded extremely fulfilling.  “Maybe I am on the side”, she teased.

“If it came down to it, yes.  But even if I couldn’t, there are arrangements I could make, if I’m being completely transparent.  Do you think you’d do the same thing, if you needed to?”

“I agree- but sometimes an idea like that is hard, because the idea of a better society can be so subjective and even divisive, you know?  What you and I think might be wonderful isn’t going to be the same as Joe who works at Excalibur.”  It was true,  Excalibur Joe had told her more than once that he thought the world would be better off without traffic lights.  “That’s not to say I don’t think betterment can happen- it’s just that the hard part is figuring out exactly what that betterment is for everyone.”

“You're right,” Adam allowed with the rueful triumph of someone who felt pain after a headbutt but took satisfaction in his opponent getting the worst of it. 

“Hmmm that sucks,” Adam mused as Leah explained firebird memories. “Guess that’s why we haven’t just solved all history questions with a few Phoenix interviews,” he reasoned.

Adam was quiet for a time as he flayed off more worm skin and yellow cutaneous tissues. “Maybe that’s better though,” he admitted after a while. “Dealing with one lifetime of going through shit is hard enough to deal with,” said the young man who trained and exercised himself to exhaustion in order to sleep. “Having to remember like other lives of horrible crap too? Don't think I could deal with it, i’d completely lose it.” 

Well ok, lose it sooner than most Hunters, Adam admitted to himself, knowing that after a time the human brain can only see so much before you start to break inside. 

“I think you’d do good at it,” Adam noted, meeting Leah’s joke with earnestness. “A foster advocate for kids i mean.” 

“Mhm. My parents adopted Hunters who were orphaned or whatnot, and I’d do the same,” Adam explained, to the question of whether he’d adopt as if there were only one answer. “Whether I take in kids or am a father, I’ll teach em how to survive,” said the Hunter, something in his tone suggesting this grim promise was the purest expression of parental love. 

“People are never going to agree on betterment,” asserted the young man born into a world of war with a shrug. “We just gotta decide what parts of our ideal world we have to get by force,”  and when talking things out is better,” said Adam. 

Leah had her mouth open, ready and willing to argue more, when Adam said that she was right.  She closed her mouth, sending him a resolute nod.  She sure was.   If only it were this easy to convince Kaden.

“Maybe, but I think it’s more the fact that they’re so rare.  Knowledge about them might even be scarce on purpose, in order to protect them.”  Did Adam know about the healing tears? Would he understand why they needed protection?  “Perhaps every life doesn’t have to be horrible, though.  It must be torture to know you’ve lived, say… three or four lifetimes before but have no idea about everything you learned throughout them”.

She smiled sheepishly at his compliment, pressing her lips together in earnest.  “Thank you”, she started.  “It means a lot.”

Adam raising children into more hunters was decidedly not what Leah was talking about, but his comments about his parents intrigued her.  “You had a lot of adopted siblings growing up, then?”  She didn’t want to delve into what he might have meant by ‘teach them how to survive’.

“I guess I just wonder who gets to decide”, she mused, turning back toward the house as she heard her name called in the distance. “My ideal would be to not have to do it by force, but I suppose that’s why Luce insists I’m an optimist.” She let out a breath, pressing her lips together in a smile.  “Did you have any other questions… about phoenixes?”

Adam nodded. “I mean I have alot of family in general like siblings, cousins, so on. As a kid it didn’t make much difference which ones had my blood or not. Some little Hunters were adopted fully, others just came to live with us and be trained for a few years,” the Hunter shrugged, indicating perhaps that his household had been a lively place full of both laughter and endless preparations for war. 

“That’s always the trick huh,” Adam affirmed with a grimace. “With Democracy you just get mob rule and decisions made without long term planning. With some elite body you get corruption and unaccountability,” the frat boy noted with a salience his professors would never hear him express in class. “I don’t think anybody’s solved that question yet.” 

Adam glanced toward the house and looked back to Leah, brown eyes intent for a time, hands dripping with the slime and blood of the massive witcheater. 

“Thanks Ramirez, I think I have what I need,” said the Hunter with the soft finality of someone who’d just come to a decision. “....sorry for keeping ya,” 

[the-wanted-man]

𝔹𝕒𝕕 𝕋𝕙𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤 ℍ𝕒𝕡𝕡𝕖𝕟 𝕀𝕟 𝟛𝕤

FFXIV Write 2020 | Parts

noun • a piece or segment of something such as an object, activity, or period of time, which combined with other pieces makes up the whole. noun • some but not all of something. verb • (of two things) moving away from each other.

'Parts’ pulled from an amazing scene with the super awesome @luck-and-larceny​

She walked away and already he was feeling lighter. The way he patted his pockets when she was out of sight was only habit - he was sure nothing had been taken from them save a dumb card marked ‘Darlin’...

Stupid. The whole night had been one bad idea. 

Hooves of rolling thunder stopped at the edge of his camp where he hopped from the saddle of his horse and led the agile creature in by its ropes. Tied its lead of to some branches and then paused uncertainly before the fire. That was a generous term. It was more just the pit now, with the previously burning wood turned to charcoal. Cold, like him. 

He shivered and rubbed his arms absently, trying to ease the gooseflesh off his skin. It wasn’t actually cold, but he felt it. Something was different about this place now. It had some kind of energy he couldn’t begin to understand, or maybe it was all just in his head. His eyes drifted back to the dead fire where much had come to light, and he considered the alternative - Maybe the magic had been there the whole time, and he’d only just come to realize it.

"OK, Roman," she said quietly. "First... Is this area that we're in a place you usually camp at? Is this where you usually sit and think? Lay and dream? If not, where have you done that the most since you've been here?"

It wasn’t the first thing he’d given her of himself, but it was the first thing he’d hesitated to. Physical things were fine. He was...admittedly already planning his next gift. Something made by hand. Stories were fine too. He liked telling her things,but really only when it felt like it was on his terms. This question was almost like she was asking too much. The places he went held parts of him. If she knew what it meant, then she would come to hold parts of him too. He wasn’t sure he wanted that. Not really.

Still, he’d told her yes, his midnight fortune teller, because even in the relative ignorance of his request he knew that this at least was important to her and in a way, it was a piece of her too.  And so they’d sat by the fire, while the Hunter in the stars watched them watch each other, and spill secrets that had meaning only to them. She’d asked what he’d wanted to know, and though his heart said one thing, his lips uttered another.

    Love.     

              “Death.”

Her pretty blue eyes had gone so wide, and he’d felt...excited. Proud, to have surprised her.

"Okay, love," He remembered kind of liking the familiarity if not the name. It’s not that he didn’t like the name, he was just very careful not to like it. "Death then."

Why had he chosen that? Why had she said that? Why did he like that.

She spread the cards out in front of her. "I don’t read cards like other people do. I can tell you why sometime if you like, but it probably doesn't matter... But if you could just indulge me a little, I bet we learn something."

She had squeezed his hand then, and he had liked that too.

"Close your eyes. Think of one thing worth living for. Think of one thing worth fighting for. Then think of one thing worth dying for. When you can paint a picture of these things in your mind, grab 3 cards and show them to me."

They weren’t easy questions, but they were answered easily in a single word: freedom. He chose his three cards, noticing how she watched him all the while and maybe there was something in that look, but whatever it was faded when she flipped his first card. He didn’t like that dimming, whatever it was.

"First, I need you to know that every card is open to your own interpretation. I say a thing and it sounds wrong? It's probably wrong. I told you I'm only right half the time. But I forgot to say that you are right 100% of the time."

Far from a promising start. He didn’t think it was common practice for fortune tellers to flip a card, and start reassuring.

"What you live for: The Star. This usually comes right after or during a period of turmoil. It's about...ah... finding yourself or others or..." She frowned, and he wondered why? What thoughts were hidden behind the crease in her brow?

"The Star is like... the Hunter, right? Or Nymeia! It's something to believe in or follow when everything feels hopeless. You live for discovery and renewal and...ah. That sound hokey? Or does it sound right?"

It wasn’t that it sounded right so much that it was that it felt right. He felt it trying to rob the smile he was firmly keeping in place to mask his sudden trepidation. He felt it like an oncoming thunderbolt. He just felt it. These cards were plucking parts of him too. His education rationalized against it but his gut wasn’t settled. He told her it was right, that she should keep going. He should have stopped, but he didn’t abandon the paths he set upon. He was stupid that way, he thought.

"I don't know how to interpret this, Roman. You have to help me..." Her thumb caressed the corner of the card in question as though trying to coax it into speaking fir itself. It didn’t.

He probably would have helped her with anything if she asked.

"What you fight for: Five of Cups. So um..." She ran a hand through her dark hair, tussling her bangs. "Usually Cups are a good suit. Optimistic, joyful, romantic even. But 5 of cups is... different. Uh... It usually shows up when something in life hasn't gone the way you want it to. It represents...regret mostly. Disappointment. Melancholy. Feeling... stuck. Or like the past won't let go. I... I don't know why it's what you're fighting for."

Ah. That image looked familiar. A man staring at three spilled cups while he ignored two full and upright behind him. He looked forlorn. He felt something aching to her description of it all. That was familiar too. When he fought for the things he regretted, was it for love or was it for Death? He’d had a choice in both, up to a point. Was it the constant disappointment he seemed to chase, for something that didn’t seem to work?

Or was it the constant need for excitement Any kinds. All kinds. It didn’t matter what happened in the end if he was warm. It could just as easily be both. Fire was passionate, and bold, but it was destructive too. It couldn’t feed itself. So it took what it could, hungrier than any starved animal could be. Was he the type of person to self-immolate? Perhaps, beneath the guise of a greater nobility.

Something stung harshly at that revelation, and though he told her he didn’t know what any of it meant, he knew that she knew he was probably lying. His voice was shaking. He was definitely lying and she definitely knew.

"...Roman, I... We can stop this now if you want,"  It was nice, hearing his name from her. It sounded like she cared. He pursed his lips. That was dangerous though. And she wasn’t supposed to.

"Ok. So the last one. What you'd die for? It's... It's the Tower." The art of the card was ominous, a tower teetering on the edge of a cliff, destined to fall. "This looks bad," she said rather unhelpfully but corrected herself, "But it doesn't have to be. I'd die for the Tower too if it came down to it. Roman, this card..."

"This card is change and the destruction of something. Upheaval. It's chaos." She gave him a big smile. "It's freedom from something. Revelation. Something else will come crashing to the ground and it might seem like it's bad at first. It might seem like there's no hope at all. But whatever it is that comes down had to come down for something new to be reborn from it.

Ignore the art of this card and imagine it as a phoenix instead. It burns so bright it kills itself and from its ashes it is born again and renewed. Maybe this means you'll see a lot of destruction. Maybe death. I don't know. But whatever takes you in the end will only do so because you tore something down to make something else instead. Freedom."

The word should have been sweet, the way his name sounded from her lips but it wasn���t. It had a bitter quality to it. Freedom through death, but death nonetheless. And if it wasn’t that, then this was all a scam. This woman had stolen a name to get close, and she was speaking of phoenixes and things she really shouldn’t fucking know about and he felt that blazing, rise of heat in his chest and all that angry, all consuming inferno and he wanted all his parts back, every little piece he’d given her down to a card with a stupid heart and a stupid meaning that said ‘Darlin’....

But she looked just as shocked as he was, if not confused. If not scared and he hated himself deeply for making her even remotely feel such a way. She also looked at him kindly and she didn’t leave like he thought she was going to. She stayed the whole night even to pretend everything was fine, and on into the morning over breakfast and eggs, and until he’d dropped her off at a dusty aetheryte in town where she eventually winked out of sight. He’d decided then that betrayal didn’t suit her anyways.

"Did you know...That when I take things away... I replace them with something else?”

It was the last thing he’d reflected on. Memento. She had such a name for a reason. Now he had one of his own: a stormy blue sphere with swirling spirals of ash inside. He didn’t have a lot, so when he’d found it he’d known, and he’d wondered if she knew how much she had actually taken, and how much she had come to replace. There was a type of niceness to that thought, and to the type of friend who liked to give, just as much as she took.

There was left over bacon, and left over eggs so he set the fire again, and got comfortable with a book and with the magic in the air. Maybe, just maybe, he could stand to be a little more generous. A little less paranoid. The cards hadn’t been anything good. Had been scary he felt, for them both but he didn’t have to listen to them. He didn’t plan on it anyways. He cracked open his book, viewing parts of anatomy and learning how to heal them.

It was all going to be fine.

.to be continued...

[thecandywrites]

Of Heaven and Fire Part 5

Am I evil? Yes, yes I am. Will this backfire? Spectacularly. Like a bad car accident you can’t help but watch as everything collides and then explodes. Is it sweet juicy smut with a heaping pile of angst? HELL YES. Come, suffer with me. Enjoy. @probablyclever​ @funmadnessandbadassvikings​ and @imherefortheforthefanart​ 

You started to struggle as you could feel your body quickly adjust to the increasing pressure as you looked at what had taken ahold of you before you froze, your jaw hanging open. It was the biggest mermaid you had ever seen in your life, it was bigger than the damn ship! 

“Oh shit.” You breathed before she looked at you and you felt like you were looking at a giant...female version of...your dad?

“Wait, grandma?” You asked before she smiled at you. “Hey sweetie, hang tight, we’re almost home.” She said before she swam to a massive cave where sunken ships were lined up on the walls like toy boats before she let you go before she got comfy in a spot she clearly sat in a lot before a blind deep sea shark swam over to her and parked in her lap before she started to pet it like a cat. 

“Why are you so big?” You asked as you looked up at her in awe. 

“Oh the older us sirens get and the deeper we live, the bigger we get.” She waived off. 

“Were you always this big?” You asked as you swam up to a sunken ship and sat on the mast to be closer to her and more or less eye level with her. 

“Oh no, I was no bigger than you were at your age.” She smiled sweetly. 

“How...did you find me?” You asked. 

“Oh that light you gave off was unmistakable. Only a moura gives off that kind of light and then when you awoke as a siren and you healed that monster, I just knew it had to be my Rhen’s offspring, tell me, how is he? Last I heard from him he moved up to the mountains.” She invited. 

“He did, they settled in Suchi, a moura halfling colony. He and my mother are very happy. I am the sixth of their 12 children.” You answered proudly. 

“Only 12? I thought he would have had at least 2 dozen by now.” She mused with a proud smile.  

“Well she’s still young, she could give him a dozen more if she tried but things are cramped in the house as it is, even with four of my big siblings moving out to start families of their own.” You answered. 

“So, tell me all about it.” She invited before you very happily told her all about your home, your family, the colony, the traditions and festivals and culture as she listened attentively before another little shark swam up to you and you pet it like she pet hers before it settled in your lap before the conversation shifted to your current situation and your predicament as you stroked the belt at your waist with one hand as the other pet the shark as you noticed the chain hang down just past your tail fin. 

“Well, come on, there’s beings down here I want you to meet, they’ll have an answer.” She invited before she reached out and you readily got in her palm before she closed her hand around you gently but firmly enough to keep ahold of you before she swam further down to the vents where you found the mated pair of oriental water dragons, guarding a clutch of eggs as various schools of fish swam around them in the rich waters. 

“Meet Pantaou and his mate Yingshen.” She introduced. 

“Hi, I’m Benyana,” you greeted as they both turned to look at you as you tried not to shit yourself. They were HUGE and between them and your grandmother you felt incredibly small. 

“This is my granddaughter, she’s the daughter of Rhen, one of my sons who chose to live on land with his father, she’s a moura siren. I think one of the first.” She answered as the dragons looked at you with eager eyes. 

“Actually I have a request to make of you, there’s a fleet of boats that like to fish near here are they fishing too close to you?” You asked them. 

“Yes, their nets get way too close to the nest.” They confirmed. 

“If their nets will stop getting so close would you stop icing the ships?” You inquired hopefully. 

“Why do you care?” They asked. 

“Because the fleet’s captain’s cousin, who’s a prince and this is how he keeps me captured, if you would stop icing the ships, he agreed to free me so I can go home.” You explained as you lifted the chain and held it out to them as your grandmother grew hot with anger as they both came forward and looked at it. 

“No, even if you were to succeed, and even if he were to say you’re free, this would not come off.” They told you. 

“What? Why?” You asked. 

“It has a special kind of magicked spell like curse, here, can I taste it?” Yingshen asked before you swam forward and placed the chain into her mouth and hooked the belt onto the smallest of her front teeth as she carefully closed her mouth and tasted the silver on her tongue and the tip of her tongue tasted the belt itself before she carefully opened her mouth and let it fall from her jaws before you swam a distance away so you could view all of her face. 

“So what’s the curse?” You asked. 

“It’s both good and bad,” she scrunched up her face as she rubbed her tongue onto the top of her mouth and against the tooth itself, as if savoring the flavor. 

“The spell cast onto it- it’s a love spell, a very strong one, only when you love your captor, will it come off, but by then, you’ll feel bound to him forever.” She revealed and your iridescent glowed red as you felt anger start to consume you as you just floated there, if he was in front of you right now, you’d drown him and rip him to shreds! How dare he!

“Is there any way to break it other than falling love with him?” You asked, trying to keep your head and your wits about you. 

“Yes, being reborn as a siren has already weakened it, turn back into your moura form and it will weaken still, be reborn in the ashes and it’ll come off, the spell itself was cast with you in particular. It’s a fated love spell. Very hard to break. Only love or death will break it, but you are lucky, you can be reborn. It will get weaker still when you change from a siren back to your moura form, it may even come off if you were to truly even like him. Normally that in itself would be enough but because it’s you and because it’s him- you have to go to this extreme degree.” She said. “The other way however would be just to kill him. I can sense he’s on one of the ships, it wouldn’t be difficult to topple the ship and drown him.” She offered. 

“No, the captain and crews of the ships are friends of mine, the captain, Cugas has been trying to fight for my freedom, it is because of him that I am asking this favor. Cugas is a good man and his crew are innocent. I don’t want all of them to die because of the sins of one.” You answered as you folded your arms over your chest as you reconsidered your true circumstances. 

“Well since you feel that way, we will grant your request. We will no longer ice the ships.” They swore. 

“Thank you- your excellencies.” You thanked them graciously which got them to smile before your grandmother got a wicked idea and she lit up her own iridescent markings, so bright you ventured they could be seen for miles around. 

“It’s time to introduce you to the rest of your family dearest.” She insisted before more sirens, merfolk and selkies came down to the depths before your grandmother gave her introductions to your aunts and uncles and cousins before she whispered something to an aunt who nodded before the family took you by the hand and led you home with them, to much shallower waters where there were all kinds of cave and coral homes as you looked up and noticed that the hurricane was now in full swing and hoped that Cugas and his fleet were ok before their friends and neighbors were brought to meet you. You were so happy to be so welcomed by them so warmly and especially happy to meet your younger cousins who took to you like one of their own as they celebrated by taking a giant clam and cutting it up for you as you readily took it and ate it the hunks of it since you hadn’t eaten since breakfast and you felt it was closer to dinner time by now as they all fawned over your fins and moura marks on them as they were eager to hear all about your life in Suchi and your family which you were so happy to talk about as you noticed a lot of your cousin’s friends started looking at you quite longingly before they started to leave, one by one and then all at once before they returned, more gifts with them, mostly gold and treasure from sunken ships and when they came back, they pulled you to a ship wreck that had quite a bit of treasure in it. 

“Oh, thank you,” you thanked them graciously as they put necklaces and crowns and bracelets and rings galore on you and on your waist until you felt you had some trouble swimming because it was weighing you down so much as they were particularly handsy putting it on you, their touches stroking and lingering as you felt your blush bloom on your face and travel down your neck to your chest and noticed it literally glowed underwater as they all smiled victoriously at you before one of them even got so bold as to kiss you. You couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty but you were still so angry at Brock that your vindictive and spiteful nature won out and you gave in and kissed them back which they took as a clear invitation and before you knew it, all the jewelry they put on you they quickly took off to free up as much skin as they could before you were practically swarmed by them, all of them kissing and licking and playfully nipping at you all over and it felt so good, to be the center of attention and feel like a queen or even a goddess, being fawned over by a gang of mermen and male selkies and male sirens, all of them handsome in their own way. 

The male sirens were the most similar to the male moura, very very pretty and a bit leaner but still quite a bit of muscle, their claws and spikes sheathed in the spines of their fins could be the sharpest and most deadly while the mermen had the classic good looks and amazing muscles with a thin layer of fat for insulation while the selkies were rounder and bigger and had a huge layer of fat over their hulking muscles to insulate them and they were the warmest since they were warm blooded while mermen and selkies were cold blooded by nature and before you knew it, your own cloaka had opened and started to produce a thick mucus to cover the opening so that the seawater wouldn’t get into your canal and you happily laid on a selkie like a bed since he was so warm and squishy as the others then began to take turns making love to you, all of their members spearing your entrance, their own mucus mixing with yours so that your reproductive parts were protected and filling you with their various seed until you felt your lower belly bulged from it all but you were insatiable, the more they gave, the more you greedily took from them without giving much because even the smallest of affections were rewarded with praise of you, praise of your strength, your beauty, your awesomeness and how you were the sexiest being they had ever seen let alone touched and you were gloriously overwhelmed by the euphoria of it all and with as much as you had “suffered” the last couple of weeks, this more than made up for it, reaching your orgasm so many times you lost count, but every time you did, your moura marks would light up and pulse which was extremely entertaining for them and the bigger the orgasm, the brighter you lit up and the more intense the pulsing and they grew obsessed with watching you reach it over and over and over again and your cries of ecstasy like music to their ears as their own sounds were music to yours, even though you felt the notes were perhaps just a note off, never quite right. The lighting up part you were used to as a moura, but under the water- it was particularly beautiful before they tried to double up and triple up so that you had multiple members in your canal at once as they moved in a rhythm as you were stretched to the max and it went on like this for hours until you were so exhausted you passed out, all of you forming one big sleeping pile in the ship as you were in the middle, delightfully warm despite the cool currents around the ship itself, happy and finally sated, your canal still practically buzzing and a little sore from being stretched so much as every inch of you was drenched in euphoria. It was enough to keep the nagging guilt at bay. Besides, you deserved to be loved, worshiped, adored and fawned over didn’t you? After the hell Brock had put you through, this was your reward, besides, now you knew you had family in the sea and the invitation that if you ever wanted to leave, you’d have a home and family here and more potential mates than you knew what to do with. 

Meanwhile your grandmother had gone back to her lair and filled the most put together ship with as much treasure as it would hold before she went to the harbor of the Hurricane Crusher Clan, her presence stopping the storm from hitting the harbor altogether, like the whole area was now enclosed in a cocoon of peace while the storm raged all around it, the clan being the bigger, stronger, fiercer clan Rhoslan had warned you about. 

“Warchief.” She demanded when she got there, the orcs nearly pissing themselves to see a siren so big in the water, so much so that only her head and upper body fit into their massive harbor before the others pulled the warchief to the docks. 

“Mermaid, please tell me what we have done to offend you.” He pleaded. 

“How well do you know the Stormbreaker Clan?” She asked thoughtfully. 

“They are our neighbors, have they offended you? We will gladly kill them for you if you wish.” He immediately offered as she smiled evilly. 

“Oh no, the clan itself I have no problem with, I understand they fish the black waters over the dragons though.” She noted. 

“They’re very stupid, granted that’s where all the best fish are but after they iced our boats, we stopped fishing there.” He answered. 

“Good, right now they’re fleet are in the eye of the hurricane, when the hurricane ceases in a few days, they will come back and their boats will not be iced. You see, the prince of that clan…” before the warchief frowned. 

“You mean the warchief’s son?” He questioned. 

“Yes, Brock.” She said, the name dripping from her lips like venom.

“Oh yes,” he nodded in understanding. 

“He has captured my granddaughter.” She said. 

“Oh, I see, a grave mistake indeed.” The warchief nodded in understanding. 

“Yes. My granddaughter is very special and one of a kind. Her mother is a heavenly moura, the very beings causing the hurricane because they are having a festival- without a care to the rest of the world, but to wage war with them is futile, because there are more of them than in the stars in the heavens, impossible to number but her mother is also unique, she has a good heart and feeling and is an amazing woman who left the heavens to be with my son because she truly loves him, she is kind and good and honest and loves my son wholeheartedly which I couldn’t be happier about and has given my son more heirs than he has fingers and toes.” She smiled proudly before her face grew stony again. 

“However, my granddaughter has inherited her mother’s gifts and abilities and nature along with her father’s gifts as well, she’s very intelligent tempered with a good and honest heart and it’s because of her innocence, that she was captured and in a futile effort to free herself of this slavery that Brock has imposed on my beloved granddaughter Benyana, because my son, who is a siren halfling himself, she is a siren moura halfling, the first of her kind that I know of and the most beautiful creature to ever grace the planet, everyone who sees her loves her and she has power and abilities most could never concieve of but she needs to be protected at all costs, if her siblings have the siren in them- I know not but I wish to find out. But Brock- he drowned her to turn her into a siren so that she could swim to the dragons and request that they not- ice the boats, risking being eaten herself, which they have very graciously agreed to. So that means that your own boats may now fish there without threat of icing if you keep your nets shallow enough so as not to disturb them and I will personally make sure your nets are overflowing with the fish, all you need to do is point out which ones you want and you’ll have them. And if you will grant me my request- I shall make your clan the richest among the other orcs, with this.” She offered as she pulled the ship wreck out and put it onto the base of the dock, the gold spilling out of it before the ship itself came apart- leaving a mound of gold there. 

“Name it, it will be done.” The warchief vowed as he knelt down reverently. 

“Brock has enslaved my granddaughter by a spell, one of the ways to break the spell is to kill him. But I want the pleasure of his spilled blood, after he returns Benyana to her home, safe and sound. I will see to it that Benyana makes it back on the fleet of ships, when they return, I want you to form a peace treaty with the Storm Breaker clan and I want all of you to be one clan and I want you to mend the rivers so that all these ships can go straight to the bottom of the mountains with ease because I want Benyana and her family to freely meet their relatives in the oceans, because the river that that clan sits on goes straight to the feet of the very mountain she lives on, make it wide enough and deep enough that sirens, merpeople and selkies can swim in it all the way to the mountains and do not ever disturb them, merchants travel through both ports bringing their goods there and come out with more gold than they could ever spend in a lifetime, for passage through the rivers you may ask for a small percentage of their gold, this alone will keep you wealthy so that war and raiding are no longer necessary, build up their port so that it will become great, because this will make my granddaughter happy, she is especially fond of the warchief's family especially their younger daughter Kari- see to it that she is treated like a pampered princess and the rest of her family are treated with love, care and respect because despite Brock, the rest of them have treated her very well and I wish for them to be repaid in kind, one of your edicts will be to free all slaves, both in your clan and in thiers. And then I want Brock to free her and take her home to her family and I want a new home built for Benyana and her family, I want it to be the grandest home in Suchi, whatever you spend in doing this- I will repay tenfold, then you will escort Brock down the mountain by whatever means necessary, bring him here, and leave him to me.” She demanded. 

“Consider it done.” He agreed.                                                                                                                       “Great, I’ll see you soon then, I will keep my protection on this harbor so that it and your ships will not have any harm come to them and once you give me Brock, I will give you two more ships, all practically bursting with treasures which should be enough to repay you for your efforts and services. Do we have a deal?” She offered her pinky for him to shake which took both of his hands to barely reach around it as he shook it. 

“Deal.” He readily agreed before she carefully backed out of the harbor and stayed at the mouth, her body like a break for the waves so that the harbor and the clan surrounding it was protected from the hurricane. 

[jane-fucking-seymour]

Legend of the Six Chapter 18: Countermeasures

Words: 5372

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Reblogs appreciated! 

Anna of Cleves, the Dragonslayer, Battlereeve of Holbein and Last Daughter of the Rose.

That was her full title as of recent. It had grown since she had set out of Holbein to protect her friends, and she’s pretty sure it’s going to chance at least once more: to an even longer title, or to be stripped down to just Anna of Cleves, the Traitor.

The first is a list of accomplishments that few will ever achieve or surpass.

The other is way shorter.

They both have their advantages.

She was thinking about that very thing, a bag in her hands, as she slowly comes to a stop in the middle of the forest. She’s still a ways away from where she’s sure Avril and Bessie will be, and the fighting hasn’t reached here yet. She didn’t expect an enemy this far out from the battlefield.

Though, really, can she consider the woman in front of her a real enemy?

The woman in question speaks, hand on her sword.

“By Order of the Realm, I demand you stand down.”

Anna looks down her nose at the woman in question.

“Lyrena.”

Lyrena - Maria - narrows her eyes, tensing.

Anna has a hand on her sword, but it’s not unsheathed. 

“I’m not here to fight you,” Lyrena replies. 

Anna tilts her head, considering her options: she could strike first, but she doubts Catherine would much like hearing about that. She could just try to walk past, but she doubted that Maria - Lyrena - would let her.

Anna knew what Catherine was up to in the Blessed Sanctuary in Holbein; it couldn’t be interfered with, but this situation in particular needed to be handled with great care.

Anna takes a deep breath.

“Are you going to fight Catherine? Because if you are, then you’re here to fight me.”

Lyrena tensed, a hand on her own sword, but she shakes her head.

“I’m not.”

“Then why are you looking for her?”

“Never said I was.”

“You didn’t need to.”

“You’re stalling.”

“It’s working.”

Silence. Lyrena straightens up a bit, shaking her head.

“I’m not going to fight her… not if she’s truly who she says she is.”

Anna leans back, a bit more relaxed now. “You’re still doubting that?” 

“I don’t know who to believe at the moment,” Lyrena narrows her eyes. “I watched her die.”

“You didn’t, though.”

“I did.”

“You didn’t.”

“I held her as she did.”

Anna leans back in thought for a moment before she tilts her head in thought.

“You know, one of the things I never understood about you, Maria-”

“Lyrena.”

“-Maria, is how you just let yourself believe it without verifying.”

Lyrena looks angry. “What?”

“The death of a Blessed… it would have been a lot more dramatic, wouldn’t it have? You’ve seen it before, after all. You know how Blesseds die - like a Phoenix, reborn from ashes. Much like how they’re created, actually.”

Anna circles around Lyrena now, fairly comfortable in the given situation; she’s not the one under the spotlight right now.

“Did you honestly think Catherine would just die like that? You’ve seen Blesseds die before, Maria, I know you have. So why did you believe that she was just cut down like that?”

Lyrena shrugs, but she looks highly uncomfortable. “The King and Mary told me as such. And Mary was furious and angry and I… needed to take care of her.”

Anna’s gaze softens.

“Exactly what Catherine would have wanted you to do.”

“Exactly.”

“Still doesn’t explain why you made yourself believe it so easily.”

“Do you have any idea how much I looked for her?”

Anna is silent, so Lyrena continues.

“I looked EVERYWHERE for her. I was supposed to have a link to her if she was alive, I was supposed to know. I didn’t know shite.” 

“So that’s why you thought she was dead?”

“I thought she was at the very least not on this plane of existence,” Lyrena explains. “I thought they saw her being taken to another realm and trapped there. It was a bunch of grunts, a bunch of soldiers, I figured they just didn’t know what they saw.”

Anna says nothing once more, so Lyrena continues.

“I have always had a connection with Catherine, even before we became what we are. It never faded but it… never was really there again. It confused me.”

“Maybe it was intentional.”

Lyrena raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“Maybe it was intentional, on Catherine’s part,” Anna replies. “Maybe she was trying to protect you or something. I know she can dampen her powers, she’s been doing that ever since I started travelling with her. Maybe she’s powerful enough to do that on multiple levels - like her connection to you.”

“And leave her alone without help? Why would she do that?”

“To save you. If Henry was on the warpath and, from what I heard from Catherine herself, was willing to slaughter anyone in his way, I would imagine he would have came after you next.” Anna nods. “Almost certainly, actually. So maybe Catherine kept you in the dark because she was protecting you.”

Lyrena looks down. “So she… left herself open to attack and peril… to protect me?”

Silence.

More silence.

Then, a very frustrated growl.

“That bloody idiot!”

Anna chuckles at that as Lyrena puts a hand to her head in shock.

“Of COURSE that’s what she did! She had this planned all along, didn’t she? Oh, when I get my hands on that girl, I swear-”

“She’s in the Holbein Sanctuary,” Anna replies. She steps out of the way. “Go on, then.”

Lyrena raises an eyebrow. “You’re just going to let me go?”

“Yeah.”

“You trust me now?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re her Squire, and now that the light’s been shined on the situation, I highly doubt you’ll hurt your Blessed. Pretty sure there’s a law about that, actually.”

Lyrena chuckles at that before she shakes her head.

“I might hit her, in all honesty.”

“Good, then you can knock some sense into her about being so selfless that it almost costs her her life.” Anna smiles. “If anyone can do it, it’s definitely you.”

Lyrena nods and, with a pep in her step, rushes off and away, towards the Holbein Sanctuary.

Anna chuckles before looking up at the sky.

“Didn’t really take long to convince her of anything, did it, Kitty?” Anna asks, a soft smile on her face as she looks over at the path in front of her. Once she was sure Lyrena was gone, she moves forward and into a nearby cave.

She walks in taking very careful, specific paths through the winding cave, eventually ending up in a supposed dead end…

… and with a knife to her throat.

“What brings you to the shadows?” Comes a voice from behind her.

With a deep breath, Anna recites the words.

“A rose that bleeds with the heart of its people.”

The dagger is put way. Anna can’t help but smile.

“I know it’s been a while,” Anna says, slowly turning to look at the woman in question. “But I would have thought that my best Scout in Holbein would have been able to recognize me regardless of-”

But then, suddenly, Anna is completely knocked backwards by the force of the hug her Scout gives her.

Anna laughs as the girl hugs her tighter.

“Hello, Bessie. It’s been quite a long while, hasn’t it?”

“It’s been years, you absolute-” Bessie starts, but then she just hugs Anna tighter.

“I know, Bess. I’m sorry,” Anna says quietly, pulling the girl close. “Has Avril been treating you well?”

“Yeah, and I can’t believe I missed you last time she saw you!” Bessie says, standing up to let Anna up. “We’ve been putting up the good fight, as always. It’s been a bit rough with you away, but we’re making do.”

“As I expected you two to do,” Anna replies, a gentle hand on the girl’s shoulder before they start walking towards camp. 

Bessie smirks. “I heard you guys really made up last time you were here.”

Anna rolls her eyes. “We didn’t think we were going to see each other again, Bess.”

Bessie raises an eyebrow. “I found that hard to believe when Avril said it, too.”

“Yeah, yeah, you little brat.”

“Hey!”

They continue the banter until they reach the headquarters and, of course, Avril herself.

“Hey, babe.”

Avril looks up and is very much relieved. “My two favorite people,” Avril says, moving past Bessie to hug Anna. Then, softer, so only Anna could hear: “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

“Same, my love,” Anna says. “But we’re not done yet, are we?”

Avril sighs. “We never are.”

“We almost are now, though. We will be soon. Once we take him out of power, we’ll be done.”

“But then it’s a contest for the crown of the Realm.”

“I already have an idea and I know that the majority of the Six are on board with it.”

“Majority, eh? That’s incredible, even Jane and Anne?”

Anna’s face hardens. Avril frowns. “What?”

“Jane… Jane is no longer with the party.”

“What happened?”

“She killed Katherine.”

“Oh.”

They’re all silent. Bessie’s eyes are wide for a moment before she squeezes them shut. She seems to be praying as Avril continues.

“So Janey was working with Henry all this time after all? That might explain how we got jumped, she’s probably been feeding information back to the Realm.”

Anna nods, quiet, and Avril gently smoothes out the girl’s hair.

“I’m so sorry about Kitty, love. I know how close you two were.”

Anna slowly nods.

“We… will do something about that later,” Anna says with a nod. “In the meantime, I need a favor.”

“Anything for you,” Avril replies with a small grin.

“Could we take these to your blacksmith?” Anna asks, showing her a bag. Avril looks inside.

“Dragonscales?” Avril asks, raising an eyebrow. “Where in the world did you find these?”

“Off the dragon I killed,” Anna replies nonchalantly. Bessie laughs when Avril gives her a look.

“Excuse me???” Avril exclaims.

“During a bump in the road just before Seymour betrayed us,” Anna replies with a shrug. “Got my hands on a few before coming here - they washed ashore, I’m assuming, because there was plenty there. I think there’s enough in there for gauntlets, not much else.”

Avril nods, handing the bag to a soldier, who quickly rushes off in the direction of the blacksmith.

“We’ll get that done quickly,” Avril says. “While we’re waiting, let’s chat, yeah?”

Anna follows Avril and Bessie for a while, to a spot in the woods surrounding them, going until they are sure they’re out of earshot of anyone else.

“So… had a lot happen, hm?” Avril asks, leaning against a tree.

“It was honestly going really well until Seymour pulled that,” Anna says with a sigh. “Anne was distracted by her suspicions of Catherine that she really didn’t see this coming. None of us really did.”

“I thought you said you had some suspicions about her reign?” Bessie asks.

“I did,” Anna replies, “but it was moreso about her work at the Heart. I just… never thought she’d betray us like that. And Kitty… she didn’t deserve that. Not at all.”

Avril steps in then.

“Do you think she’ll expand what you saw?”

“Almost definitely,” Anna nods. “Mind Magicks will be at their peak, as well as anything else she worked on… I’ll need to confirm with Cathy what it was, but I imagine she delved into more dark arts than just the mind.”

“Do you think anyone can best her magicks?” Bessie asks.

“Probably not unless there was something in the library in Seymour.”

“Not even Blessed Magicks?” Avril again.

“Catherine didn’t seem to think so, but maybe with our new… reinforcements, from the Sanctuary, she’ll be able to whip something up.” Anna’s tone softens. “It would be nice to see what the spells that fell Katherine be able to be completely countered.”

“Without any practical means as of yet, it’s the best choice we have,” Avril says.

Bessie frowns. “What about Elizabeth? Does she know of anything? She trained under Jane and Cathy, right?”

Anna shrugs.

“I’ll ask Elizabeth next time we see her.”

“Is Elizabeth truly with you?” Avril asks.

“As far as we can tell. Anne’s going to confirm when we meet again.”

“So basically, the next time you lot meet, it should be time to go.” Avril concludes.

“We should be, yes,” Anna replies. “We split up to make preparing a lot faster, considering what’s happened when we’ve waited a bit too long. Admittedly, we were kind of wandering for a bit, but Catherine managed to whip us all into shape soon enough.”

“And now there’s a chance to take him down, right?” Bessie asks.

“I think the Dawnlight Faire will be the best bet,” Anna replies. “And it’s a bit poetic: a new dawn with a new Realm. I think the rest will like that.”

“That’s only a few weeks away,” Avril says. “You’re sure you all will be ready?”

“I don’t think we’ll have a choice. The Dawnlight bolsters a king’s power every time it comes around thanks to the festivities. He’ll likely try to make another push for Holbein then- if he doesn’t have it by then already, anyways.”

Anna sighs.

“Regardless… now’s not the time to speculate. I’ll need to consult Catherine, but I think that’s the decision she’ll make for the Six.”

“She’s the leader?”

“She was born to be one.”

Bessie stands up. “We’ll likely need to head back, by the way. The blacksmith’s probably done with your gauntlets.”

Anna blinks. “Already? That’s fast.”

“He’s the best at his craft in the Realm or Holbein, of course he can get it done fast. He’s a very high level smith, you know,” Avril replies, walking back towards base. 

Anna and Bessie, with a shrug towards each other, follow.

When they get there, sure enough, the gauntlets have been made.

“And you’re sure they’ll be fine?” Anna asks, raising an eyebrow at the items on the table.

“Of course!” The blacksmith replies. “Made them special for you. The scales are actually wonderful material to smith, it was almost like cutting through butter once I got them hot enough. I think they turned out rather nicely.

The gauntlets almost matched the red in Anna’s armor, with the tips acting like claws in a sense. They’re bound together by soft leather; Anna knows she’ll likely be able to move quite well within them just by looking at it.

“You’ve certainly done well, sir,” Anna says with a grin, taking them and trying them on.

When Anna puts on the gauntlets and for a moment, they do nothing. But then, suddenly, magicks from the gauntlets surge through her arms and into her body, her eyes going dragonlike as she gasps, eyes wide as she gets a vision of the dragon itself, staring straight at her.

“Anna?” Avril asks, steadying the woman. “Are you okay?”

“I… think so…” Anna looks down at the gauntlets with a smirk. “Oh, looks like you had some power to give me, eh?”

She extends a hand towards a lighted torch and, after focusing, curls her hand into a ball. The flame fizzles out immediately. When she releases her hand, it comes back to life. Anna holds out her own hand and, suddenly, there’s a fireball in her hand. It’s unlike any magicks that Anna’s been able to control before; it’s more wild magick, more natural.

She feels the gaze of the dragon in her mind soften with approval.

Bessie makes a low whistle sound.

“So… the dragon’s scales… allow you to manipulate fire?” Bessie asks, eyes wide with wonder as she moves over to the scaled gloves. 

Anna blinks, looking down at the gauntlets. “I… guess so?” She shrugs, looking back at Bessie with a shrug. “I see the dragon in my mind now. He’s impressed- oh, and his name was Peleazar, for what it’s worth.” She looks down at the armor that was now fitted comfortably over her hands. “The Gauntlets of Peleazar.”

“Quite the name,” Avril quips, touching one of the gauntlets. “They’re a bit warm to the touch.”

“I think, if I practice enough, I can make my swords a bit hotter to the touch, then, right?” Anna asks.

“How am I supposed to know?” Avril asks, but Anna chuckles.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean you. I meant the dragon.”

Avril blinks before responding.

“...Oh, yeah, right, that’s a totally normal sentence to say.”

Bessie bounces on over, looking the gauntlets over closely. “You can probably do a lot with these, right? And the dragon… wants to help us?”

“Not really,” Anna replies. “At least, that’s what it feels like. It’s more of a respect thing, I think. I beat him, so he wants to respect that.” She shrugs. “That’s what I’m getting, anyways.” Anna tilts her head. “The soul of a dragon literally at my fingertips, eh? This’ll be interesting.”

“Leave it to you to get all the fun equipment,” Avril quips, gently nudging Anna with her shoulder. Then, with a nod towards the forest: “Think you and your new gauntlets can take care of a few Realm men?”

Anna nods, moving towards the spot Avril nodded towards. “How many?”

“About 20,” Bessie says. “Mostly footmen. No ranged weapons from what I saw. Their ranged squadron might have been the one that Ellie’s unit took out.”

“Good, I’ll make this quick, then,” Anna says with a nod, quick to hasten her step towards the enemy. It was a thrill to the battle that she absolutely adored, but this time around felt… different. 

She felt more powerful than ever.

With a deep breath, she felt the dragon’s presence in the gauntlets, surging energy towards her heart and mind. The dragon’s gaze fell upon her once more and, with a bloodcurdling yell within her mind, she felt Peleazar’s spirit flow through her.

She suddenly pulsed forward at breakneck speeds - faster than Avril and Bessie by a longshot - and took on the men head-on.

As soon as she saw them, time seemed to slow to a crawl; it was a peace and serenity that helped her focus and realize what she wanted to do, the path to victory suddenly more clearly visualized in her head than ever before.

Oh yes, she thought, she and Peleazar will get along quite well.

As she moved, she used her own intuition and skill to take down the men; while the dragon’s soul allowed her to essentially slow down time and some more magickal abilities, it didn’t help her aim or otherwise utilize her skills. It was utility, not actively helping. It seemed to want to help, but the battle itself was up to her.

Anna would have it no other way.

Her movements are fluid - they always were, it was the signature of the Ruby Knight of Holbein - but had a bit more spark thanks to Peleazar’s fire literally at her fingertips. The men around her try to attack at once, but a quick swing of her blade brings about a fire so bright and scorching that it staggers three men and blinds another.

“That’s… incredible!” Bessie says. Avril stops slightly in front of Bessie, watching as well.

“Quite the show,” Avril says, watching closely, “but I need you to go survey the area. We need more information, there’s no way these guys can be the last.”

Bessie nods, though she’s not taken her eyes off the battle just yet: Anna is fighting with the strength of 50 of the best warriors of Holbein, a fire in her eyes that is moreso an amplification of her usual strength in battle than it is a new flame entirely. 

No, Avril thinks, this is still Anna, absolutely. She’s just getting some extra help from a - as far as she can tell - friendly dragon.

Avril looks back at Bessie and raises an eyebrow. “Well?”

Bessie snaps out of it, looking back at Avril. “Oh! Right. Going!” 

Bessie is quick to instantly pulse away, practically dancing in the tree branches above them as she moves effortlessly away to do her job.

Avril looks back at the fight and, when she sees Anna start to straighten up, is quick to take a throwing knife out and strike down the last man.

Anna raises an amused eyebrow.

“I could have gotten that,” Anna quips.

Avril shrugs, walking towards and then past Anna. “You know how I always like the last word, babe.”

Anna rolls her eyes goodnaturedly before the two start to rush back to camp, swords at the ready.

When they’re surrounded by 40 or so men, they end up back to back, swords and shields at the ready.

“I kind of feel sorry for them,” Avril quips with a smirk.

“They never learn, do they?” Anna asks. 

Bessie returns just in time to see the ending of the ill-fated, very swift battle: the Battlereeve of Holbein and her Second in Command are a deadly combination for a few reasons, but especially due to their fighting styles together.

Well, Bessie thinks, they certainly don’t call them the deadliest combination in Holbein for nothing.

When they’re done, the three of them enter the main battlefield, working closely together with the other Holbein warriors to help take out the rest of the push. With most of the current Realm squadron defeated, the remaining soldiers go to retreat.

“Looks like we’re good for the moment,” Bessie says, watching from a treeline as the men rush off. Avril, directly under her, looks at what Bessie is looking at and sighs in relief.

Anna, however, narrows her eyes. 

“This isn’t right. The Realm just doesn’t… retreat.”

It’s just in time for an explosion to happen somewhere to the south.

“That’s near the base,” Bessie says, and immediately Anna is on her feet, rushing towards the mayhem. Avril and Bessie, of course, give chase.

Immediately upon arriving, they all stare in shock: it’s not Realm against Holbein here. It’s…

“Do we have a mutiny?” Avril growls out, standing in front of Bessie as she gets her sword out.

“No,” Anna says, shaking. “It’s… it’s the Madness. Oh, gods, that’s why there wasn’t many - because they were… they turned our own.”

“Did they control them at all?” Avril asks.

“I don’t think so, there wasn’t any time,” Bessie replies. “They just… broke people’s minds.”

“We had been warned that there was a new type of Mind Magicks on the field but this… this is terrifying,” Avril finishes, right before she looks at Anna. “What do we do now?”

Anna, however, is just… frozen, on the spot, the flashbacks to various warriors turned to Madness, the ones she had to strike down and the ones that she met too late, the ones that turned on their families and, in a moment of consciousness, realizing what they’ve done with a horror Anna can’t describe. The Madness was a terrible thing that turned friend against friend, family against family, and now it was driving her forces apart.

“Anna! Orders!” Avril yelled, but Anna can’t shake it just yet.

Not when the one that’s rushing towards her looks so much like Katherine.

The woman’s eyes are wide, pupils dilated, and nose bleeding; telltale signs of the Madness having taken hold. Anna can’t help but wonder if this would be what Katherine would have looked like if she had succumbed to it instead of-

It’s the second swipe of the woman’s blade that makes Anna finally snap out of it as she, with a gentle “I’m so sorry,” throws the woman into a nearby tree. She looks up and, with a new focus, nods.

“Help who we can, strike down who we can’t. They’re too far gone.”

Avril nods and heads over to a group of men that are fighting the Madness-plagued soldiers. Bessie, still shaking, follows along, though she keeps an eye out for her fellow Scouts, hoping that they hadn’t fallen to the Mind Magicks.

By the time they’re through, the wave is defeated, but there are far more Holbein on the ground than the Realm.

The body preparations go throughout the night, with the remaining Holbein forces working to identify and separate the dead from both sides. When it’s done, a company of white knights with the Realm crest appear in the dead of night.

“Reapers?” Bessie asks.

Anna nods. “Let them through, keep the peace.”

The Reapers say nothing as they take the Realm’s dead and move along. White knights with the Holbein crest appear and do the same.

“Usually they’d get a Blessed to bless the bodies at their Sanctuary, right?” Bessie asks, tilting her head as she watches the Realm’s Reapers do their work. 

“That’s right,” Avril nods. “A kingdom’s Reapers are part of the Blesseds. They’re not actually Blesseds, though. They just help move bodies from battlefields to Sanctuaries for Blesseds to perform Final Rites.”

“But…” Bessie frowns. “The Realm’s Sanctuary is destroyed, isn’t it?”

Avril frowns back as Bessie continues.

“So where are they taking the bodies?”

It’s a question that goes unanswered, as the Reapers eventually disappear into the shadows with their job completed.

For the night, it’s peaceful.

After checking on the remaining men and making sure scouts headed back to Holbein with the request for reinforcements (as well as a letter from Anna to her parents), the trio gather in the privacy of a tent to try to figure out the next move.

Anna, however, can’t seem to shake today’s events for the moment.

“That’s how they took the First and Second Forgotten Kingdoms,” Anna says, voice barely above a whisper. “That’s what Cathy said, at least.”

“The Parr girl was well known in Weston as a cleric, right?” Avril asks. “I imagine she saw as much of this as we did.”

“And as it progressed,” Anna agreed. “Gods, this is-”

“I know,” Avril says with a nod. She looks out at the battlefield. “We’ve… lost a lot of people today.”

“Too many to hold this position,” Anna says, “but that’s not what we need to do right now. We honor and bury our dead, we honor their dead, then we retreat back towards Holbein. We need to play defensive now.”

“We can’t just go off playing defense forever,” Avril argues, and Anna shakes her head.

“You’re not going to. When the Six take him down from the inside, from the Capitol, we’ll make sure to give you the signal. For now, I just… need Holbein to hang on. Just a little longer.” Anna looks back at Avril. “Just for a few more weeks.”

“This is a… crushing defeat, Anna,” Avril says with a sigh. “But I’ll make the call for reinforcements. We’ll hold out.”

Anna nods. “Thank you.” She looks at Bessie. “You and your squad is needed more than ever.”

“We won’t fail,” Bessie says. “I’ll grab the intel, Avril will make the adjustments, we’ll be okay. We can hold out for as long as you need us to.”

Anna watches Bessie, determination evident, before Anna nods with a soft smile. “We’ll win. I swear. This fight… it’s a very tough loss. Many people died. But we can’t let them die in vain. The First, the Second, and all the others lost to the Realm’s butchery… they will pay. The lost will be redeemed.”

Avril nods and, when Anna leans against her, gently takes her hand.

“We need to rest, all of us,” Avril says.

“No, we need to honor the dead, and-” Anna starts, but Avril cuts her off.

“There’s nothing we can do about that right now,” Avril replies quietly. “We need to rest. Come on.”

Bessie waves at them as Avril leads Anna away. They end up in a private area of the headquarters - what’s left of it, anyways - and closes the door behind her.

She takes Anna, puts her on the bed, and gently pulls her close.

Anna immediately nuzzles into the crook of Avril’s neck. Avril smiles at the contact, pulling the woman impossibly closer.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, babe,” Avril says quietly.

“I’m thinking that the Reapers will have their hands full very soon,” Anna says against Avril’s skin, sighing. “And that there will be more to lose.”

“You know,” Avril says. “This is what I love the most about you.”

Anna raises an eyebrow. “I thought it was my backswing?”

“Close second,” Avril banters back with a chuckle. “But I mean your heart, Anna. Even back in the battle, you were trying to see how many you could save, not how many you could cut down. It’s why you’re such a good leader - and the best thing Holbein has going for it.”

Anna frowns. “It doesn’t feel like enough sometimes… but I know that I have you and Bessie and the others to back me up.”

“Of course you do.”

“We’ve got a long way to go, Avril.”

“But it’ll be worth it,” Avril replies. “It has to be.”

“They’re fighting dirty. They lie and cheat and are committing war crimes.”

“And they’re the most powerful country in the world, they can get away with it for now.”

“Someone has to stop them.”

“That’ll be us.”

“Yes.”

There’s silence as Anna’s grasp on Avril relaxes and she closes her eyes. Anna nods.

“We’ll stop them.”

Avril gently kisses the top of the girl’s head and closes her own eyes. They’re both asleep relatively quickly.

Hours later, Bessie Blount is standing at the nearby overlook, watching with curious and sharp gaze at the forest below. She doesn’t even stop looking as she drops down from the treeline to meet who she knows is there - Avril and Anna, arriving after a decent night’s rest.

“Enjoying the last of the night, Bessie?” Anna asks, smiling as she feels Bessie lean her head against her shoulder. “Could be the last peaceful night we have for a few months.”

“I imagine so,” Avril replies with a nod. “Lots of things are bound to happen soon. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.”

Bessie nods silently, looking out at the sky for a moment before she looks up at Anna.

“Do you think the others are doing okay?”

Anna keeps looking ahead. “I know they can handle themselves, but… Cathy was off to lead a revolution. Anne might do something she’ll regret, but she’ll pull through for Katherine. Catherine’s got her hands full and Jane…”

Avril looks down. “Do we need to mention that one?”

“She’s still part of the Six,” Anna replies. “She’s still part of our group. And we promised to get justice for her, too.”

Avril is shocked. “You honestly don’t think of her as a traitor? She killed Katherine, Anna-”

“I know, I was there.”

The harshness in Anna’s voice makes both scout and second look at the Battlereeve. Anna’s face is hard, anger clear, but something else…

In the distance, as Dawn breaks, a ray of Blessed energy shoots into the sky.

Anna stands up taller, stepping in front of the other two.

“I need to go,” she says simply. She looks over at Avril and Bessie. “Catherine needs my help.”

“Do you think Catherine is in trouble with Maria?” Bessie asks with a tilt of her head.

“She might be,” Anna replies. “I’ll need to go fast, then, don’t I?”

She looks down at her gauntlets and, with a smirk, throws her hands out and to the side in a dramatic fashion. As she does, ethereal wings spawn from her back. 

She smirks, testing them by flapping a few times, before she goes for broke and just jumps…

… straight into the air, and now she’s flying.

Avril looks impressed, Bessie looks starstruck.

“I’ll meet up with you soon,” Anna says with a nod.

“You better,” Avril replies. 

Anna and Avril share a moment before Anna nods, waves, and heads out, flying into the waiting dawn.

Bessie looks over at Avril. 

“Are we ready, then?”

Avril nods, turning from the edge to head back down towards camp. The scout dutifully follows as Avril continues:

“Let’s start the end, Bessie.”

[neverwatchedonepiece]

601-602: "Shaking up the New World! Caesar's Horrendous Experiment!" and "The Deadliest Weapon of Mass Destruction in History! Shinokuni"

Don’t think Law’s up for it, Caesar...

This may be a controversial opinion, but I think Caesar is great.

Not a great person, obviously. I mean, if you think Caesar is a wonderful person, you probably need therapy. But. As a character? As a villain in the crapsaccharine world of OP which is rammed with strong personalities? Yeah. Absolutely a good, fun-time villain.

So far, he is unrepentantly, unashamedly wicked. He is a business-minded, deceitful, manipulative snake with charisma through the roof, who also happens to be an excellent scientist. He has a flamboyant, dramatic, highly-strung personality, which is super entertaining. He has a memorable design and a hilariously expressive face. (YMMV, of course. I know a lot of people hate villains like Caesar, but I love them.)

It’s early days yet. I mean something could yet happen that might make me go off him (e.g. I hate it when villains are woobified). But right now, Caesar is stealing the show. I look forward to watching each episode because I wonder what that deranged monster is going to do next.

Now Luffy and Law’s fight back is about to begin, I await his screeching downfall with baited breath. (As much as I love villains, I also love watching their plans unravel.)

Last Christmas, a Clown Kept Your Heart

And the very next day, he gave it away.

Next year, to save himself tears, 

Law allied with Strawhat Luffy.

I’ll bet that joke has been done to death, undeath, and back again, but come on! Who can resist such low-hanging fruit? Caesar Clown is the gift that keeps on giving.

He was on sparkling form again across episodes 601 and 602.

The action kicked in with Smoker’s Marines hammering at Caesar’s front door. One Marine began to notice they were the only ones left outside. Caesar’s minions had hoofed it round the back. Wasn’t that strange? He was ignored. (Don’t worry. We heard you, random fodder Marine.)

An airship passed overhead (they must be a thing in the OPverse as the Marines recognised it.) Caesar arrived with the Lab Kiddies in tow.

“Come on, children, you can get off now,” he sang. “And remember, this is your home. Don’t ever go out on your own. And of course you can have candy soon. Go straight back to the biscuit room. I’ve left plenty of candy in there for you. Now, I have to go back to my research room. Relax and enjoy the delicious, delicious candies.”

Trans: you kids are bugging me already. Beat it back to your room so I can get back to marketing my chemical weapons to dodgy brokers round the world.

The black-haired girl called Mocha had a flash of regret. She was lucid for just long enough to realise she’d just walked right back into hell again. “Nami and the others were very nice to me!” she screamed, banging on the door, “why is it so scary here? Is it because I’m not a good child?” (Caesar must have said stuff like that to them before. Bad things happen to you if you’re not a good child. I only give my crack-candy to the good children, etc.)

Back in Caesar’s lounge/bar whatever it is, Vergo got a fucking spoon stuck on his face while drinking coffee. That guy must have adhesive stubble, or something. He was wondering what was taking Caesar so long?

Speak of the devil and he shall appear, right? 

The first thing Caesar did was apologise to Vergo for keeping him waiting. At this point I still had no idea why Vergo was there. To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure why Vergo showing up is a bad thing for Law. Like, of course Caesar would rat out a threat to his boss, but if Caesar had Law’s heart, he could have just squished it once Monet told him Law had been making arrangements with the Strawhats behind his back.)

Caesar bitched that Vergo didn’t have Smoker under better control (because when Smoker showed up, Caesar had a brief ohshit moment). Vergo admitted that Smoker is a wild card and that no one has control of him. Buuuuut.... now Smoker will be dead soon, so it was all cool.

Law Pushes Caesar’s Buttons

Caesar, who had missed the welcome party, took a moment to become acquainted his his new hostages and indulge in a spot of button pushing.

“Look at yourself, Law. I bet you were quite helpless against Vergo, hm? The deal I had with you worked in my favour.”

Now the heart-in-a-box squishing stuff makes much more sense. Turns out Law can also shamble his own heart into a box (not the best idea when dealing with a treacherous snake of a scientist, to be honest).

When Law first turned up, looking to stay on Punk Hazard, Caesar said: “In exchange for letting you stay, you’re going to give my people legs? Fine. But since you’re stronger than me and I’M the boss of this island, if you want to stay here, I need insurance. I want to entrust my dear secretary Monet’s heart to you. In return, I keep your heart and it’s a deal. As long as we have each other by the balls, you can’t do anything bad and I’ll feel safe.”

Interesting. Caesar sees Law as being stronger than him. Probably a known haki user? Caesar can’t be that strong then. He’s just tricky and/or has a strong fruit. Also, notice Caesar did not volunteer his own heart. He volunteered Monet’s.

For a moment I wondered why Caesar was blaming Law for the whole trust issue. Hadn’t Caesar called Vergo on Law for some random, unknown reason?

Nah, turns out Monet had overheard Law’s plan to kidnap him and forge an alliance with the Strawhats.

I mean, sure Caesar is pretty evil and all, but if I were him and my lodger was teaming up with some dude and planning to kidnap me, I’d call my boss for backup too. Why he gave the heart to Vergo is kind of a mystery, but whatever. I’ll find out soon enough if I need to know.

Law, being caught out, went straight for the roast.

“You’ve been saved by your diligent secretary, eh? I should’ve been more careful about Monet. Since the “Master” was so dumb, I didn’t care much.”

Ooooooooh, Caesar was maaaaaaad. He hates being called dumb. (I bet it’s that superiority complex. Vegapunk has always been the glorious, lauded genius while he has to work in the shadows for psychos.) 

Just before Caesar took out his wounded ego on Smoker’s heart, Monet said the Smiley-cam video feed was ready. 

No, You Didn’t, You Sentient Gas-Blob Murderer! How Could You?

So Caesar immediately switched his attention to his Big Marketing Campaign. A caged Marine could wait. Not a priority.

All over the OPverse, brokers and dodgy characters watched Caesar’s Big Moment (by the way, did I see Laffite in 602? I spied a tall top hat and a bottle of Jack Daniels-type booze on a table). 

Caesar gleefully explained how Smiley worked. Smiley was the HS2 poison gas bomb that killed almost everything on Punk Hazard four years ago. However, there was a problem with Caesar’s experiment last time round. It killed *almost* everything. Despite being at death’s door, some inconvenient survivors insisted on surviving. How rude!

To counteract that, he has given Smiley a boost that will sort the whole survivors issue.

And, oh, the fake tears! The hilarity when Smiley would not do what the fuck Caesar said. “SMILEY, I MISSED YOU! THIS BRINGS BACK WONDERFUL MEMORIES OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION! I HAVE A DELICIOUS TREAT FOR YOU---- WAIT, DON’T EAT THAT NOW... well, um... I suppose it’s okay... YES, HAHAHAHA, EAT THE TREAT!”

You’re not fooling anyone, Caesar. xD

The giant candy Smiley munched fizzed like a seltzer. Smiley was not feeling so good. It was kind of a shame, actually. I’d grown to like Smiley. It was like a giant, deadly, disobedient dog who does not listen to a word its human says when food is involved.

And Caesar disguised Smiley’s death as a treat.

With a Slasher Smile Like That, You Probably Petrify People on a Daily Basis

Well, Caesar would say Smiley is reborn. “Good work, Smiley! I will see you again! Be reborn, Smiley!”

But Smiley is definitely dead. (The whole bit with the apples was kind of confusing but I think I’ve worked it out... Smiley must have eaten an animal DF to become the sentient gas blob he was. This explains why the shot kept panning to apples in a sack. Then, when Smiley died, one of them turned into a Devil Fruit. Smiley had given it up when he died.)

R.I.P, Smiley.

And welcome Shinokuni, the Land of Death: the latest and greatest weapon of mass destruction!

Caesar definitely must’ve fallen out the psycho tree and hit every branch on the way down when he was a kid, because, man, that guy was *way* too excited to watch his fodder goons come croppers to Shinokuni. 

“Yes! It worked! No one can get away this time. The problem last time was survivors. They could still run even after being poisoned. This gas clings to their skin like ash, enters through the kind and paralyses the whole body! Yes, give us a good glimpse of hell!”

Now, I don’t know if any of you guys have ever watched a movie called Event Horizon, but there’s this messed up scene when the rescue crew discover the ship’s log of the crew who disappeared on a spaceship seven years before. The log is... yeah... it’s messed up. It’s like a glimpse of hell. (Don’t google it if you hate horror movies.)

(Something tells me Caesar would have been totally okay on the Event Horizon. Knowing him, it probably would have been his fault. He’d be in a room, absolutely fine, while literal hell is breaking loose outside on deck. xD)

That Moment When Everyone Really Hopes It’s Usopp

While Caesar is sacrificing pets to achieve an upgraded pet, the rest of the Strawhats were still outside while the Purple Mountain of Oh Shit What Is That? was thundering down the mountain and over the island. 

Zoro, Sanji, Brook and Foxfire had a front row seat! They were smart and ran sideways. This bought them a bit of time while Caesar’s minions were Pompeii’d. 

And that running scene was golden, by the way. I’m disappointed I limited myself to one screenshot of it. Loved it when Sanji tried to figure out what was going on and Foxfire yelled, “Shut up and run!”

Zoro was generally impressed by the all-round quality of running on show, but suggested if the assembled could run faster than the wind, that’d be great. Luckily, they caught up with a sled-pulling dragon (that Caesar deliberately set free so his minions would be stranded). I’m guessing the dragon will head home and that will be how Zoro and the others end up back in Caesar’s lab.

Nami and Usopp also managed to hitch a ride before the Purple Gas Cloud of Doom hit their patch of the mountain. Brownbeard hauled himself out from under a huge metal pipe. He gained the strength to do this from sheer hatred of Caesar Clown (lol). Brownbeard wants to save his crew from Caesar, which is kind of nice. He’s a good guy after all. Usopp suggested they join forces because they wanted to save the experiment kids from Caesar.

Brownbeard knows where the lab is and probably knows most of the entrances. He’ll smuggle Nami and Usopp inside no bother, I’ll bet.

Caesar’s Need To Show Off Will Be His Undoing

While most of the free Strawhats were hauling ass away from the Purple Cloud That Is No Longer Smiley (I’m still weirdly bitter about Smiley), Luffy, caged in the lab watched as Zoro and the others ran faster than the wind. Once Luffy established that, hey, the Samurai Guy getting his legs back was not a top priority right now, (lol, Robin!) he tried to shout advice to Zoro.

Unfortunately, Luffy, you can’t shout through a video feed. But Caesar hear him and floated over to gloat. “Are they your friends, Strawhat? Unsurprising. They’re strong. But soon they’ll run out of breath and be poisoned. And eventually, there will be only an uninhabitable land of death. No one outside this lab will survive. And neither will any of you! Now, prove it to the world! Before this weapon of mass destruction, a pirate with a 400 million bounty, a Vice-Admiral and even a Shichibukai are totally helpless against a tide of death.”

A lever was pulled.

And I think Caesar made his big mistake: letting the Strawhats out of his sight.

Law (I think it was him) chucked a rolled up message to Chopper, who fretted in the shadows about what to do. “Don’t do anything.”

This Face Does Not Bode Well for Caesar

Because now the Strawhats are out of Caesar’s line of sight, they can talk tactics, regroup and launch their fight back.

Can’t help but think if Caesar had not insisted on using the Strawhats as an example, he could have disposed of them quietly in the lab, or used them as test subjects forever. Of course, that would have been - bam! - end of manga. And we cannot have that.

Three cheers for Caesar’s need to show off! His arrogance and ego have prolonged the plot!

Thank you, Caesar, for that one dumb thing you did. xD

Chopper saw what you did that one time and is judging you.

[notspoondere]

The End of an Era - September 2017 Banlist

Longform analysis of the previous format and banlist under the cut.  I haven’t read any other analyses of the banlist prior to writing this, so the material underneath is all original.  It’s also my first impressions, so bear with me if I forgot a few details here and there.

The past few formats of the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG have been extremely diverse and creative, with a great number of decks competing for the #1 spot... of being the second best deck after Zoodiacs, who, according to Yugiohtopdecks, are now the most represented deck of all time in terms of topping tournaments. It would not be an understatement to say that it is possibly the strongest non-FTK deck ever created, and by far the most consistent. In case you missed that somehow, here's a list of just some of the ways Zoodiacs have impacted the metagame (Take a shot every time I mention a unique support card for an entirely different archetype if you want to get wasted really quickly):

It was figured out fairly quickly that any Rank 3 engine would be able to summon any Zoodiac from the deck through M-X-Saber Invoker. There are a few good 1-card Rank 3 engines in the game right now, but all of the unlimited generic ones use a normal summon--because the only one that didn't, Speedroid Terrortop, got limited as a result of its use in this deck.  (Note that Speedroid Taketomborg, the monster which Terrortop searches to make a rank 3, is not a “Garnet” in the sense that the entire engine fails if you draw it. Drawing both still makes the Rank 3 without eating your normal summon.)

In addition, Fire Fromation - Tenki could search any monster in the deck, since Zoodiacs were also all level 4 Beast-Warriors. This got the card briefly Limited in the OCG.  (Note that the deck already had three copies of Ratpier and three copies of Barrage, which could pop itself to summon Ratpier from the deck, so in effect, the deck ended up with 12 cards that searched or summoned Ratpier before Ratpier was Semi-Limited on the next list after the archetype’s release.)

Upon release, a Rank 8 spam variant was discovered with Coach Captain Bearman. Zoodiacs had access to an 8-axis and it turned out to be suboptimal.  Keep in mind the once-per-turn 1-material summon for each of the Zoodiac Extra Deck monsters does not mention Level; it only has to be a Zoodiac monster.

Elder Entity Norden was used in most decks (including Zoo for a time) as an Instant Fusion target to make a quick Rank 4. Later variants after Chakanine's release used Zoodiac Broadbull to search Lunalight Black Sheep, which you could discard to search Fusion Substitute and repeatedly Fusion Summon Elder Entity Norden in order to repeatedly make Daigusto Emeral, which, in so many words, allowed Zoodiacs to draw 5 cards off of one Speedroid Terrortop (or plus similarly hard off of Barrage), which would surely include powerful hand traps like Maxx “C”/Ash Blossom/Ghost Ogre/etc. This was finally the tipping point for Norden in the TCG, as he was Forbidden on the June 2017 emergency banlist soon after. Note that the OCG had already banned him by the time Zoodiacs were released. (Also note that this would not stop players from griping about drawing Speedroid Taketomborg.)

Even after Norden was banned, the deck was by far the most powerful deck in the format. Paleozoics had a decent matchup, but fell by the wayside as True Draco appeared, towering over Zoodiacs in terms of raw power but not in terms of consistency (and eventually a hybrid of both took first at the NAWCQ). Forgotten cards like Shuffle Reborn and My Body as a Shield saw serious play in preparation for the Zoodiac mirror, while cards like Dimensional Barrier and Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit fell off and quickly reappeared once people figured out the deck wasn’t going anywhere. Targeted destruction was considered powercrept until this deck appeared. They even started appearing as engines in rogue top decks like Lightsworn and Pendulum Magicians. Even after getting banlisted twice, even after people started maindecking Droll & Lock Bird, and even after Links, the deck prevailed. (In the OCG, it still managed to appear after Barrage and Drident got banned and Ratpier got Limited by abusing the card advantage off of Broadbull to work as a stun deck. Or so I heard.)  Eventually, and without question, Zoodiacs created a Tier 0 format.

Until today, that is. Took them long enough! Let’s get into the cards.

Forbidden:

Dinomight Knight, the True Dracofighter

I’ll mention this alongside Ignis Heat, the True Dracowarrior since they both have similar effects, although the latter was Limited. This is a fairly straightforward hit to the True Draco deck’s access to quick and cheap card advantage on the opponent’s turn. Ignis and Dinomight were not the strongest cards in the deck, but they added a lot to the deck’s consistency.

Grandsoil The Elemental Lord

This card creates a bunch of FTKs off of Firewall Dragon and is played in virtually no other decks. Dino FTK got Top 32 at YCS Toronto recently, and Konami has never been kind to FTK decks ever since they let Frog Burn win worlds. Ugh.

True King Lithosagym, The Disaster

The True Kings were not exactly the new-age Dragon Rulers people expected them to be. In fact, they (mostly Lithosagym) only saw play in one deck: True King Yang Zing Dinosaurs, which eventually won Worlds this year. And we all know how Konami feels about decks that manage to win Worlds.

There was a pretty long combo that let you consistently pop two Babycerasaurus to summon this thing, letting you banish cards from your opponent’s Extra Deck for doing something you would have happily done already. It also made up half of the materials for True King of All Calamities, a boss monster that actually has no hand trap counter short of Psy-Framegear Gamma, which saw play for partially this reason (and for other handtraps, but...). I’m glad to see this gone.

Denglong, First of the Yang Zing

Denglong was usually the other part of True King of All Calamities, since you could change his level to 9 by dumping any of the True Kings into your Graveyard. He also led to a 1-card double Quasar negate combo off of one Souleating Oviraptor (or Fossil Dig, or basically any way to summon Oviraptor). I really doubt Yang Zings will be playable after this, but Yang Zing Dinos needed to get hit for sure and I guess this is one way to do it.

Daigusto Emeral

Wait, what the fuck?

...

Seriously? Gusto have a banned card now? Who thought they had it in them.

The Gusto archetype has never made much of a splash competetively, but they eventually got a generic Rank 4 (that they can barely use) in the form of Daigusto Emeral, which was a key part of the Zoodiac Fusion Substitute combo... which was totally wiped out last banlist. The deck still ran two copies for a while after, but eventually once Link Summoning came around, the space just wasn’t there. Few decks run it at all nowadays.

Which makes its appearance here all the more confusing. Seriously, Konami, what the fuck?

Zoodiac Broadbull/Zoodiac Drident

The era is over. Broadbull was a free +1 and Drident added another threat to any board. The best cards in the best deck ever are gone. Or so we hope.

Limited:

Ignis Heat, the True Dracowarrior

See Dinomight Knight.

Miscellaneousaurus

A monster that gives Dinos protection during the Main Phase, recursion from grave, a free engine to summon a level 1 Tuner from deck, and an easy way to build up a huge Tyranno Infinity when needed. Miscellaneousaurus did all this and more. The OCG hit Oviraptor instead, so I’m surprised this got hit, but either one hurts the deck a lot (although I think Oviraptor is the stronger of the two).

Zoodiac Ratpier

A card that summons itself as an engine was just a great idea, wasn’t it? Now the material effect is completely unusable, so Ratpier is just an archetypal Foolish Burial on legs. How the mighty have fallen.

Dark Hole/Interrupted Kaiju Slumber

This is an interesting one. Slumber was obvious because it was another two copies of Dark Hole that synergized with the Kaijus that everyone would have run regardless, but Dark Hole at 2 has been a thing for a while. For what it’s worth, getting hit by this hurt a lot if your board consisted of the only Link Monsters your deck had the space for, but if that was that huge of a concern, they’d have hit Raigeki too. Hmm.

Gateway of the Six

Six Samurai managed to top at a Portland regional some time last year. I don’t know how, but the guy who did is an absolute hero. Otherwise, the deck has done nothing for years, and this card is at 3 in the OCG and Six Sams are doing nothing there.

True King’s Return

Archetypal Monster Reborn on a deck that seriously didn’t deserve it.

Semi-Limited:

BLS Envoy of the Beginning

It is weird to say that this card is now completely irrelevant, but here we are.  BLS Envoy has been power crept. What a game. (It’s probably still fun to play around with, though.)

Luster Pendulum, the Dracoslayer

Luster Pendulum was a free reoccurring +1 after a Pendulum Summon, but that hardly matters now that Extra Deck Pendulum Summons are restricted by the new format. He’ll probably still turn up in Pendulum decks, though; do not take this to mean that the card is bad now.

Mathematician/El Shaddoll Fusion

This got limited because of Shaddolls a long time ago, and that deck has been dead since they hit Construct.

Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier

I have literally only seen this card played in Mermails since its errata. It’s doing nothing at 1 and will do nothing at 2.

T.G. Hyper Librarian

Synchro spam is also more-or-less dead, so this is probably fine coming back as well. Level Eater is still creeping in the distance, however...

Brain Control

Same story as Brionac, has seen no play since its errata.

Burial From a Different Dimension

This has been at 1 for a long time, hasn’t it? I think it was hit because of Zombies or DAD or something.

Keep in mind that Zombies are still quite good right now. This is flirting with danger, Konami... I say as I order two copies for Zombiesworn.

Preparation of Rites

Nekroz hype? That’s the deck that got this limited, and they’re almost playable now that nearly every other deck has been nerfed. We’ll see.

EDIT: This is for Vendreads, don’t know how I didn’t realize this immediately.

EDIT 2: Vendreads don’t use this card, what am I saying.  This is for other decks.

Unlimited:

Debris Dragon/Dragon Ravine

Remnants from the Dragon Rulers banlist. These haven’t seen play in a while at 2, probably won’t at 3.

Honest

This used to be quite the hand trap, but battle hand traps, much like battle traps other than Mirror Force, have fallen by the wayside.

It’s still worth considering for the surprise factor, IMO. Who still runs Honest in 2017!?

Rescue Cat/Witch of the Black Forest

More cards that have seen no play since their erratas.

Rescue Rabbit

Holy shit.

This card is still way too good.

I think this is supposed to tell us to go buy World Chalice, but this is the nuttiest way to go about doing that I could possibly imagine.

Konami, are you feeling alright?

Summoner Monk

Rank 4 spam card that’s seen less and less play lately.

Charge of the Light Brigade

This has been Semi-Limited for a long time due to its use as a mill engine with Lumina/Raiden. Putting it at 3 helps Lightsworns, obviously, but it also helps Infernoids, too. Not significantly enough for either of them to become tier 1 again (probably), but still, it’s appreciated.

Wavering Eyes

Hardly relevant, since Pendulum mirrors don’t happen much and decks aren’t so focused on popping their own scales. Back in the day, though, Konami made a huge mistake printing this as a common.

EDIT: I could not possibly have been more wrong. This card should not have been unhit, holy shit. Pendulum mirrors are actually everywhere since the deck’s only expensive card is Duelist Alliance and this card is too fucking good.

EXTRA:  Cards That Did Not Get Hit, Somehow

Master Peace, the True Dracoslaying King

The True Draco boss monster, often cited for his poor design, is still obscenely powerful.

Dragonic Diagram

The True Draco Field Spell, which let you pop a card in hand or on field to search a True Draco spell/trap once per turn and gives Tribute Summoned True Draco monsters battle protection once per turn. This card seriously does too much.

Did you know that Diagram dropped to $20 per copy in anticipation that it would get hit by the banlist? It used to be $60.

EDIT: There is currently a listing for a $1 copy of this card, but you have to buy a $420 Ghost Beef in order to get it. Now that’s value.

Maxx “C”

This card is the sackiest card in the game right now. It singlehandedly wins games going second, and has done so so many times in high-level tournament play that I was sure it’d get hit. Even the OCG put it to 2. It looks like it’s still around, but who knows for how long.

Card of Demise

A key draw card of some Chain Burn and some True Draco variants, Card of Demise is a nearly free +2 for any deck that doesn’t Special Summon during their turn, or any deck with a lot of backrow. Many players, myself included, are frustrated with this card’s design and the playstyle it promotes, but Konami didn’t hit it at all here.

Trickstar Reincarnation

Independent of any synergies with the rest of the archetype, comboing this with Droll & Lock Bird makes your opponent banish their entire hand and draw nothing in return. This is still legal; Konami has decided that this is totally okay.

Kill me.

EDIT:  Extra 2:  Cards That Did Not Get Unhit, Somehow

Ritual Beast Ulti-Cannahawk

Please, Konami, my family is dying. This deck’s opening combo is a hard draw of two cards and it only goes +2.

El Shaddoll Construct

#FreeHim

Evilswarm Exciton Knight

Why did you even reprint this if you weren’t going to unban it?

Shurit, Strategist of the Nekroz

Hahaha just kidding. Fuck this card.

That about wraps it up. This next format is going to be crazy. Or maybe it’ll just be True Draco again, who knows.

The next set, Circuit Break, comes out in the TCG on October 20th (Sneak Peek on 14th/15th), and the next banlist comes in November at the soonest.  If True Draco doesn’t come back from this, it will be an interesting month until SPYRALs take over the meta entirely (as is likely to happen, given their results in the OCG.)

Until next time.

[insanescriptist]

I know you don't like Self Insert Story lines but if you did do one in the Katekyo Hitman Reborn universe, who would you be reborn as if you had to fill the role of a new OC character? Think of it as you doing a SI without any of the things you find that other people do that you dislike aside from the OC character part, which is kinda needed unless you'd like to take over a Canon characters life.

My main dislike for SI-OC fics is just hatred for bad writing.

First, I generally hate the whole ‘reincarnation’ bit as a whole. Mostly because most authors drag it out. Like here is baby who remembers being adult and dying and has full complex thoughts and can see perfectly clear even though that’s not physically possible for human babies?

It’s just poorly handled a lot. Not always, but a lot.

And when it’s not ‘remembered from birth’ it is ‘remembered due to near-death experience,’ which is vaguely better. But the near-death experience never quite seems to have consequences other than suddenly remembering another life. Like where is the trauma? The other people reacting? How are other people reacting to SI-OC suddenly seeming to change?

It just never seems to happen.

Second, a lot of times there’s assumed knowledge. Like hello, ninja, I’ve clearly been reborn in Naruto. See, canon character! This is my family member! Eeep!

This just makes things worse, really. It’s a bad sign for a fic, in terms of writing skill. Some fics turn out fine despite terrible beginnings but by then it’s like chapter six, the SI-OC is maybe eight and plotting to insert themselves in canon-character’s life.

Third is the assumed responsibility that the SI-OC takes on. Sometimes it is for a good reason as character X is now my younger sibling! I shall protect character X who I already liked and deemed precious! I don’t want character X to suffer character Y!

Sometimes there isn’t a good reason. Beyond, this is the Main Character of the show and I don’t want character Z to get friendly with X because Z is going to betray us all in episode six of the show!

This sometimes results in possessive and obsessive and manipulative behavior. Which isn’t really acknowledged beyond, ‘I hate having to do this but character Z is lying to you and I know this because I vaguely remember the script to this show!’ Which is again, bad writing.

It’s also not acknowledging that doing so is going to be somewhat self-destructive. Worse is people doing things they’re not inclined to do because of this person -it’s self-destructive, not heroic or noble. Someone who objects to fighting plans to be a med-nin except there’s issues on becoming the medic part and so end up as ninja anyway and then there’s angst and drama and it’s just messy.

And then I tend not to care because the SI-OC tends not to be interesting due to investing so much of their time and self into this character X but they never establish their own character.

It’s another boring day, so I yawn and want to go back to sleep. Mother objects to this so I end up dressed -unwillingly in this stupid uniform- and fed in short order and then walked to school.

Reminder to self, burn the school uniform again. It’s disgustingly cute and I hate it. Maybe this time the teachers will let me wear what I want to class?

Class is again boring. It’s easy. There’s a vague feeling of having done this before and I have. The year before this and the year before that year. There’s a nagging thought that this should be more interesting but all that is interesting is that Wasagawa-sensei’s tie wasn’t done properly and Yuhi-sensei’s shirt was very sheer and she obviously hadn’t realized that if you wear a thin white shirt you should wear a skin-toned bra under it, so the bra is not obvious. White shows up under white and it’s just obvious that’s there.

Bad form for both of them being teachers. At least I kept quite about it this time, since adults don’t like to have mistakes pointed out to them. My ‘peers’ don’t either but they at least know they can come to me for homework help.

How to burn this uniform though? It’s too difficult to go out and buy a simple lighter, can’t get a middle school student to get it for me as I don’t know who would of them and it is very hard to start a fire without wood even if you know how to do that.

The memory of burning through leaves with a magnifying glass comes to me. I’ve never done that, but it’s nice to know that focusing the suns’ power is very good for starting fires. A pile of leaves, the stupid school uniform and I’ll have a pretty bonfire going.

So how to get a magnifying glass? Too much interest in science might net me a kiddie microscope since I do like Science. Maybe a detective? Because detectives have magnifying glasses and Sherlock-style clothing. That’s a good plan of action.

In the mean time, vandalizing the shirt with something is a fun idea. Maybe at lunch? Mother handed me a bento, maybe there’s a sauce I can use to get rid of it?

What can I say, I really hate the uniform more than any mere parental disapproval?

“Hibari Azuma, stop daydreaming and translate what’s on the board to English!”

Oh, so they want me to show off? Ugh, such an awkward sentence.

“The boy goes to the market to fetch his mother the milk she wanted.”

“Good diction as always.” The teacher says, as if getting tongue and brain to cooperate and make language understandable is hard. Just a matter of thought and practice. The way Ayumi mangles the next sentence is familiarly cringe-inducing, even if I keep getting snippets of Spanish mangled by an American Southern accent is equally terrible if not worse. The sense of deja vu waves in and out at all times before it fades.

School is easy and terrible and the uniform is going to burn. Pretty sure that mother has nail polish remover? That and a magnifying glass will make a bonfire for sure.

Maybe middle school will be better. Better than wearing some sort of sailor costume. If I wanted to wear one of those, I’d join the navy or something. Not go to school.

Huh, maybe I wouldn’t even need the detective bit, if I could get some glasses or something. Anything that had glass with a curve to focus the light rays…

Arson’s not the most usual hobby but I’m bored and a boy. Boys can do all sorts of things that girls can’t. It’s nice to have some behavior just flat out excused, no consequence. Like burning the school uniform because you hate it.

Well, there’s reputation and all that to consider in theory, but it’s not like I have grand dreams and a vision of what I want to do. Travel yes, maybe write and do things that others dream about but yeah… it’s something of a pipe dream. The world doesn’t work like that for most people and passion is nice, but doesn’t always pay the bills and can be detrimental to health.

Clearly I am a born drifter who just so happens to be cursed with practicality and an unending hatred for my elementary school uniform.

Ashes, I swear, it will be ashes.

Basically, I’m against turning SI-OC into plot-devices so as to do a fix-it or make things better while not doing anything but doing that.

[zainapbaraketcaryl]

#TransformationTuesday: Carol’s Rise Up on ‘The Walking Dead’

This #TransformationTuesday we’re focusing on ‘The Walking Dead’s’ Carol. From her evolution from background survivor to fan favorite and so much more!

It would be easy to write-up a feature onThe Walking Dead’s Carol (Melissa McBride) that included the words pragmatic and badass. But those who love her know that she is so much more than just those two adjectives.

McBride, who arguably knows Carol best, would agree. In an interview in June 2016 with Variety, she described her connection to her fictional counterpart:

I look at her, I don’t feel badass when I’m playing her. I don’t feel like she feels like a badass. These are all just heat of the moment decisions. She’s not a puffer, she’s not puffing out. She’s just like, ‘Oh god what I am gonna do? I got an idea, I’ll do this.’ She’s just Carol to me, I just love it. I root for her, I adore her because of that.”

In my very first feature here at Hidden Remote I discussed something similar in a feature all about what made Carol so relatable. How her fighting spirit was admirable in a world that had only ever taken from her. She’s immediately and repeatedly underestimated, it’s the opposite of who she is but it defines her as her own person. In that piece I specifically described it as, “[a] moment that Carol once and for all separates herself from who she was: she once was Ed’s battered wife, she once was Sophia’s mom. Now she’s just Carol. Just like the walkers were once someone.” And it’s a narrative point that’s made over and over again. It’s not that Carol isn’t who she seems anymore. It’s that she’s not what anyone expects. Especially when they think of a warrior or a soldier (or a lover) and her subversion of those tropes and deviation from the norm has earned her those titles in more ways than one.

Carol has consistently toed a thin line between showing both physical strength and emotional strength. Going from stoic to vulnerable in the blink of an eye (seriously she tells whole stories through her eyes!). It’s not an easy space to move between either. During her emotional breakdown throughout season six that culminated in her leaving Alexandria because she could no longer kill for her family (with absolutely zero appreciation for that sacrifice!) some fans were confused as to why she suddenly turned into someone who cries all the time.

The fascinating thing about Carol is how fluid her change is. It was always happening right in front of us from the moment she picked up the ax to rid her life of Ed (Adam Minarovich) once and for all. But the specific change we’ve seen in her emotional wellbeing has been the locus of an entire arc that’s been going on since all the way back to Season 4 in “Indifference” (S4E4). Perhaps more commonly known as the episode that Rick (Andrew Lincoln) literally makes the worst decision ever after Carol’s revelation that she killed Karen and David to protect the family. In that episode she tells a quarantined Lizzie (Brighton Sharbino), “You fight… and fight it. You don’t give up. And then one day, you just change. We all change.”

There are many different situations that have propelled Carol to this point. She doesn’t give up after she loses Sophia (Madison Lintz), she adapts. In fact Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn) makes a pretty airtight case that her choice to remain outside the discussion of what to do with Randall makes her complacent. And she lives with that still (most likely representing that “R” in the first name on her list of people she’s killed). And McBride has pointed to her choice to pick up a stick to fend of the hoard in the season two finale as her making a distinct choice to fight.

Since then she has done exactly what she has to do to protect her family with very little regard for the pain it has caused her. She tells Daryl (Norman Reedus) in “Consumed” (S5E6) that every version of herself – the person she was with when she was with Ed , the mother she was to Sophia, even the person she always thought she should be when things were good at the prison all got burned away – “Everything now just… consumes you.” And Daryl’s appropriate response was, “Well, hey… we ain’t ashes.” In fact, he spends that whole episode trying to convince her that she’s still alive, that there’s plenty to live for and she’s right there with him trying.

The reality of Carol’s inability to “feel it” comes when they get to Alexandria and she immediately takes the opportunity to go undercover. It’s a combination of disassociating from her very personal PTSD and that perpetually lingering little voice that sounds suspiciously like Rick that constantly tells her she doesn’t belong. She lives like that for just long enough that when she finally drops the homemaker act in season six, she crumbles to an absolutely heartbreaking effect. It doesn’t help that Morgan (Lennie James) foists his “no kill philosophy” on her to an abusive point. She was already cracking and while in a lot of ways he was just trying to help that’s not what she needed.

She’s lost. And that’s confirmed even more so when she faces her similarities with Paula (Alicia Witt) in “The Same Boat” (S6E13). Carol can no longer just be the person that protects everyone. She wants to maintain her humanity and no amount of hiding in plain sight or hiding in a – albeit odd and impulsive – relationship was going to fix it. She’s lost in Season 6 and it’s why she isolates herself in Season 7. Ezekiel (Khary Payton) even tells her she could, “Go or not go.” But Carol doesn’t feel present and so she chooses to be by herself. To push everyone away, insisting that Morgan tells anyone that might ask about her that she left. It’s only a partial really attempt to find herself, she’s able to be who she wants but she’s still kind of hiding from her own truths until she isn’t. Until she can’t.

Some would prefer the killer version of Carol over the emotionally broken woman but to love her is to love all of her. As we’ve watched her evolve on the show and specifically wending her way through again her very physical and emotional pain season seven, it’s once again brought to the forefront that she was made for this world. But that hasn’t come about without a huge sacrifice.

Carol has yet to share with anyone what happened to Lizzie and Mika (Kyla Kenedy) but that’s exactly why “The Grove” (S4E14) is such a fundamental aspect of her development. I’ve used a lot of quotes to illustrate her personal struggle but none are as significant or commonly misquoted as “Look at the flowers.”

The Walking Dead made a bold choice to kill a child as a mercy in that episode. Add to the fact that Carol of all people is the one forced into that position. It breaks her. It breaks Tyreese (Chad L Coleman) too and he tells her never to talk about it. And so overtime the moment has been distorted as something to cheer but fans of the show often forget that Carol is crying in that scene. That she cries when she faces off against Morgan in her conviction to kill the Alpha Wolf. She has always been vulnerable it’s just been years (for us anyway) that that’s the only thing we’ve seen her do. But Lizzie and Mika have had a lasting effect on Carol and her narrative as a whole.

When we catch up Carol and Daryl in “New Best Friends” (S7E10) after their emotional reunion, she sits in front of the fire and tells him again that she could kill if she had to but that then the last part of her would just burn away. The moment is so significant because Carol is very much being allowed the opportunity to express herself (but seriously Gimple I need to know what happened in between their reunion and their next scene together it was light out and then it’s dark, what did they talk about, tell me?!) and it’s to literally the only person she trusts with her heart (fight me!). It’s especially worth noting that she does so much more than cry in this scene, she finds her smile too.

It’s a catharsis that takes it’s full and complete shape until the next episode. While the hallmark of the beginning of “Bury Me Here” (S7E13) is Carol’s realization that there was definitely a reason that Jesus (Tom Payne) brought Rick and Co to the Kingdom, she knows what she has to do before she confronts Morgan and what she’s doing it for now. Even though she kind of sort of already made that decision when Daryl gave her the “husband going off to war” hug and then she very much looked like she wanted to follow.

The Carol we see in “Bury Me Here” is the Carol that has been waiting to be reborn for so long! And it was refreshing to see her finally take that step. It felt earned. Ben’s (Logan Miller) loss weighs heavily on everyone that episode, especially considering he asked to miss the drop to learn Carol’s awesome walker killing skills. But she doesn’t blame herself in the way she would have in the past. She’s not that mother figure anymore (seriously cash me outside how bout dat?) and she doesn’t need to show it by consistently rejecting children like the way she tried to push Sam (Major Dodson) away. She hasn’t been that person in a long time and she knows now it’s too painful a persona to adopt again. But that’s the thing, she’s done pretending. Being in the creepy house, reading romance novels allowed her to collect the pieces of herself. Daryl allows her to keep what she has left of herself by lying. But Carol knew deep down that Daryl lied to spare her.

And so when Morgan ends up telling her the truth about Glenn (Steven Yeun) and Abe’s (Michael Cudlitz) death it doesn’t break her. She reacts and her eyes once again tell the whole range of emotions she’s trying to suppress but it’s not because she’s afraid of breaking down anymore. It just reinforces what she’s now finally ready to do. And it’s a breath of relief for the entire fandom who have been waiting to mourn.

Her life is no longer this constant push and pull between what makes her human and what makes her feel like a monster. And nothing displays that better than her choice to sit down with Ezekiel and Ben’s brother Henry (Macsen Lintz) to help replant the garden, finally and truly injecting new life into that “Look at the flowers” arc.

This is not to say that Carol’s story is in any way complete. This has just been one chapter in an ever-evolving narrative that has finally been given some much-needed closure. She has so much more to do like kissing Daryl and we can’t wait see what that is a shower with Daryl!

That being said, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) better standup straight because the Queen is back and she will go to war to achieve the peace they all deserve! We’re looking forward to her at least hopefully rocking some awesome Kingdom gear in the finale!

[rhnuzlocke]

Episode 13

Scene 13:

[The next day they are all hiking north along Route 119. They run into a few trainers and battle them but Naihi stays out of sight so as not to arouse suspicion. They are alone again when Latios materializes before them. Everyone starts, but Ren and Tāraki immediately relax. The rest do too after another moment except for Naihi who gapes at him in wonder.]

Ren: Hello Latios. Are you feeling any better?

Latios: Yes, thank you. My sibling's power works very quickly. Are these pokemon all with you? How can there be seven?

Ren: Oh, right, introductions. Tāraki you know, then we have Akahata, Panahi, Māia, Ao and Pohaku. And this is our latest member Naihi. She's traveling with us until we get to Fortree before bonding with a pokeball. Everyone, this is Latios, Guardian of the Eons.

[Latios dips his head to all of them and they all dip their heads back except for Naihi who bows low. Ren opens her mouth to speak, but Panahi cuts across her.]

Panahi: Before you all get caught up in your world-saving nonsense, I have a clam to shuck with you!

[Latios turns to look at her.]

Ren: Panahi—

Panahi: [She holds up a wing to silence Ren.] If you're the Guardian of the Eons and it's your job to save the world, why drag my girl into it?

[Everyone else looks a little horrified at the level of disrespect, but Naihi looks positively stricken. The only one completely unruffled is Latios himself.]

Latios: Sometimes problems created by humans are best solved by humans. And though I have been granted great power, it may not be sufficient for the task ahead. She may have knowledge or intuition that I lack. There is also security in numbers. This is why the Eon Guardians have sought allies ever since the first incarnations died.

Panahi: [grumbling] Fair enough. But why not partner up with a stronger trainer, one with more experience? Like one of the Elite Four maybe?

Latios: I admit to not being acquainted with these trainers, but I am quite confident that I have chosen well. It is not power alone that determines worthiness. There are other qualities which I look for as well.

Panahi: [flushing in frustration] She's already been through so much! It’s not fair! You don't care at all what happens to her!

Latios: You mistake me. Though I have lived many lifetimes, it is in my nature to care for others, not callously disregard them. And as her partner, I promise that I will do everything in my power to protect her.

Panahi: There's a difference between them sending one or two goons after us and what you want, which is to go after them. That's much more dangerous!

Latios: I do not propose to face them head on and certainly not at this stage. She is not ready, nor am I. We could not hope to stop them that way. But we have time. Time for us all to grow stronger. with a few moves here and there, we can make more. And we have allies to aid us. I would have no one fight this alone. [Panahi begins to tear up in frustration and he floats up to her. He takes her beak gently in one paw and strokes the top of it softly with the other and his eyes glow white.] You are scared for her. I understand. But do you really think, based on her actions thus far, that she would not fight them anyway?

[Panahi shakes her head and he lets go, eyes no longer glowing. She covers her eyes with her wrists and sniffs.]

Ren: Oh, Panahi… [She kneels down and hugs Panahi.] It's going to be okay.

[Ren hugs her tighter as Panahi cries into her shoulder. Naihi steps forward and bows again.]

Naihi: My Lord Latios, I hope her manner did not offend you. She cares very deeply for our trainer.

Latios: Not at all.

Naihi: Thank you, my lord. I am most honored to meet you.

[They talk for a while, but Ren loses track of their conversation, although she does absorb that Naihi is overjoyed to meet Latios and serve him on their quest. Mostly Ren focuses on calming Panahi down. Once she is feeling a little better, the group continues north.]

Ren: So Latios, correct me if I’m wrong, but most legendaries are immortal.

Latios: Indeed they are.

Ren: But you keep referencing previous incarnations, so are you immortal or…?

Latios: I am and I am not. My sibling and I are born, we age, and we die, but we are also reborn. I have many memories of past lives and in some ways I do not alter, but in others I am never the same.

Ren: Whoa. I had no idea. Do you and Latias die at the same time?

Latios: Not exactly, but we are never very far apart.

Ren: That must make things weird.

Latios: Definitely strange to a creature like you. In the last cycle, I died first and the previous Latias raised me. Then she died and I raised the current Latias. So really we are more than siblings. She is also mother and daughter to me as I am to her… Although, I do have to say that we have existed together so long that it is most often the sibling dynamic that wins out.

Ren: [laughing at his expression] She knows how to push your buttons, huh?

Latios: Yes.

Ren: I don’t have any siblings, so I'm not sure I can relate.

[There is a pause.]

Latios: Do you have other questions?

Ren: Yes. Do you know anything else about Team Magma and what they are trying to do? We're pretty much in the dark here.

Latios: With Steven's help, we were able to learn a good number of useful things. First, that Team Magma's goal is to find and awaken Groudon.

Ren: What? But why do they want to do that? I mean, wouldn't that be terrible for everyone?

Latios: If woken and set loose without their sibling, they would boil away the oceans and reduce the forests to ash. It would be a drought more catastrophic than the planet has seen in many eons. Only your anorith would remember the world as it was before the last such event.

Ren: [that stops her dead in her tracks] …I—I knew it had to be serious, I just—that's so much worse than—great Lord Arceus, why?!

Latios: Obviously they plan to capture Groudon and bend it to their will. They may be misguided, but they are not so self-destructive as to actually seek the end of the world as you know it.

Ren: Okay, but what do they want to use it for? That's a huge risk to take.

Latios: They wish to create more landmass. First an island and then perhaps add on to the mainland once they have proof of concept and have swayed more to their cause.

Ren: But why? What are they going to do with it?

Latios: They feel this will help their fellow humans by giving them more space to develop and grow. As I understand it, they have long lobbied without success to open more of the current land to settlement. This way they would not be disturbing protected pokemon habitat and so couldn't run into resistance that way. They are… well intentioned and plan to be generous with the land they create.

Ren: But what about the ocean? I think plopping another island in it out of nowhere might disturb some pokemon too. Especially if it's anywhere near the coast. What about the reefs?

Latios: Humans tend to be shortsighted about such things. In any case, I very much doubt they could control Groudon and it certainly isn't worth the risk.

Ren: What if Kyogre woke too?

Latios: That is the far more common occurrence and it would mitigate the effects a great deal. However, it would still prove fairly disastrous for the people and pokemon in the region. Then our only real hope would be that Rayquaza calms them before too much damage is done.

Ren: Wait, who is Rayquaza?

Latios: The third of the climate trio with the power to negate the other two. They are somewhat more sympathetic to the plight of humans and pokemon. In the past they have spared humankind and the planet from great disasters, sometimes alone, at other times in partnership. They never sleep but reside high in the atmosphere beyond the reach of normal pokemon.

Ren: Wow. You're gonna be useful.

Latios: I should hope so.

Ren: Sorry. I was just afraid you weren't going to tell me anything to be mysterious or because of top-secret taurosshit reasons.