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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 9 months ago

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Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 10: Nobody Likes You, Everyone Left You]

A/N: I sincerely apologize for the delay, but Maggie Sundays are back, besties!!! And we have a new poll! Be sure to check it out AFTER you finish Chapter 10 🥰

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title and chapter title are lyrics from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Word count: 6.8k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

Here’s how it happens.

Let’s say you’re on a subway, or at a bus stop, or walking in or out of a grocery store, maybe fumbling with your purse or corralling small children, or talking on the phone, or wondering how you’re going to make rent, or trying not to drop one of your shopping bags, and out of nowhere some stranger lurches over and grabs you. They are filthy and noxious and moaning, and you assume they are insane, or on hard drugs, or maybe both. Your fellow upstanding citizens rush to your aid and the assailant is apprehended and carted off, unbeknownst to you surely to infect many more blithely unaware victims.

Maybe you notice that you were bitten, even just barely, even just a scrape of the teeth hard enough to scratch the skin; maybe you don’t. If you do notice and you seek medical attention, the best a doctor will offer you is disinfectant and antibiotics, maybe a rabies shot if they’re extra ambitions. Perhaps you have too much on your plate already without a detour to the doctor’s office (or perhaps you don’t have medical insurance), and you opt for at-home remedies, a vigorous scrub with hydrogen peroxide and a large rectangular Band-Aid slapped on top. Of course, none of this will do you any good. It was over the moment a drop of zombie saliva slipped painlessly into your bloodstream and began to replicate there like an invasive species, like an insurgent force. It only takes once.

You go home, and maybe when you start to feel really bad you call an ambulance and go to the hospital, and when you turn you bite anyone you can get your claws on there. Maybe you die at home and then attack your partner, your children, your parents, your roommates; maybe this new version of yourself ends up chewing bits of gristle off the bones of your dog or cat or ferret. And if any of your victims manage to escape once you’ve gotten a taste of them—no matter how fleetingly, no matter how trivially—they are sure to die in agony and reanimate too, and to pass along this plague you’ve gifted them, the bloodiest game of telephone.

Now millions are getting sick, fevers, headaches, purging, bleeding, but where do people go when they need a doctor? The hospitals are overrun, the clinics are swarmed, and doctors and nurses are falling ill too. There are unimaginable reports of the carnage. There is censorship to smother the panic. There are public figures vanishing from sight. There are zombies-in-progress boarding planes, checking into hotels, tottering onto cruise ships with armfuls of luggage, sweating through their bedsheets in crowded military barracks, silently ticking timebombs as the world as everyone knows it hurtles towards its end.

You would be amazed what people can refuse to believe. Once you believe something, that makes it real.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are no shovels, so Cregan tills the earth with his axe and then you dig with your hands. There are no headstones, so Rhaena finds a large sand-colored rock and writes on it with a jagged piece of slate: Baela and Briar, Summer 2024. Then she hesitates, the slate hovering in afternoon air, amber sunlight and eighty degrees, dust thick in the wind. She wants to say more. There needs to be more. How can two lives end with five words? At last Rhaena adds: Mother and child who perished en route to California. They were loved. They mattered.

“That’s good, Rhaena,” Luke tells her, voice gentle, hands on her shoulders. She stares at the grave for a while, and you don’t have time to waste; the bear could return, there might be wolves or mountain lions, eventually the sun will set and you will be stranded in an infinite darkness like the ocean at night. But Aemond waits until Rhaena is ready. She tucks the shard of shale into her backpack, and then you are fleeing once again: from this day, from this world.

You hike back to I-80 and walk west towards the next ranch. All of you are here in south-central Wyoming, and yet none of you are: you are in the earth with Baela, you are back in Nebraska where Jace died, you are in Ohio where he was swept away by a river, you are in Pennsylvania where you and Rio climbed down from a transmission tower, you are in your lives before the world ended: Saratoga Springs, Boston, cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a part of Kentucky called the Wildlands. Aegon is limping along on his own and shoving Rio away each time he tries to pick him up.

“Stop,” Aegon says, wincing and exhausted, his bandages coated with dust.

“Come on, Honey Bun. You’re going to rip your foot open—”

“Stop it!” Aegon demands. “I’m not going to slow you down anymore! I’m not going to be a burden!”

There is a sound you don’t immediately recognize: a rumbling, a squealing. A car is pulling up alongside you. Instinctively, you unholster one of your M9s and raise it as you turn.

“No, no, no, we’re cool!” a woman says, showing you both of her hands. She is around fifty and driving a Subaru Outback; there is a man in the passenger’s seat, perhaps her husband, and two wide-eyed, hoodie-swathed teenagers in the backseat. “Are you…are you guys okay?”

All of you stare blankly at her: shellshocked, distraught, covered in dirt and blood. “Yeah,” Daeron says eventually.

The woman peers around, east, west. “Do you have a car or something?”

“We have a Tahoe,” Cregan says. “It’s out of gas.”

“We have a few cans in the trunk,” the Subaru woman replies. “I can give you one, five gallons. That will get you to Rock Springs, and you should be able to find more supplies there. We came through that way, it wasn’t too bad.” And then, before anybody can ask if she’s serious, the woman steps out of the car and opens the hatchback. She lifts out a red can and hands it to Rio, who is standing the closest.

“Thank you, lady,” he says, astonished.

“I’m sorry about that,” you tell the woman, meaning the fact that you were prepared to shoot her.

Rhaena adds: “We’ve had some…bad experiences.”

The Subaru woman smiles. “Haven’t we all. Where are you headed?”

“West Coast,” Aemond answers quickly: vague, guarded, inviting no further disclosures.

She nods; she can’t trust you, and you can’t trust her, and everyone agrees, an unspoken acknowledgement of what the world is like now. “Well, you don’t want to go anywhere near Salt Lake City.”

“But that’s the only direct route,” Aegon says, crestfallen.

“I know.” The Subaru woman is sympathetic. “And it’s going to burn a hell of a lot of gas and time to drive all the way around, but you have to. There are tens of thousands of zombies, and a lot of people are trapped there without fuel. I’m telling you, if someone sees you driving by in a working vehicle, they’ll try to put a bullet in your head so they can take it. So don’t give them the opportunity.”

“Okay,” Aegon says glumly, already pulling his map out of the pocket of his khaki shorts to plot a new course.

“Stay far away from Chicago,” Rio offers the Subaru woman in return. “And any nuclear power plants.”

“We’re headed south,” she says, then grins. “I’ve got a sister in eastern Tennessee. We’re going to learn how to fish and cook moonshine and make clothes out of deer hide, and live up in the mountains where nobody will ever bother us.”

People glance at you, the resident Appalachian; and you remember the crackling of woodstoves, flecks of ice in the creek, kicking up snow as you ran through the woods, following tracks of deer and opossums and raccoons. “It’s a beautiful place. I think you’ll like it.”

Rhaena asks the Subaru woman: “Is there anything we can do for you? To thank you for the gas?”

“Oh, I couldn’t take from a bunch of bloodied people who are stranded on the side of the interstate.” But her eyes catch on the pistol in your hand and stay there, envious, longing. You have another, so you give it to her.

“The safety is on. There are only nine bullets left, unfortunately.”

“That’s nine more than I had before,” the Subaru woman says as she takes the U.S. Navy’s standard-issue Beretta. Then she says to everyone: “Good luck.”

“Same to you, ma’am,” Cregan replies. The Subaru woman gets back into her car and disappears eastbound with her family. The nine of you that are left—ten, if you count Ice—trek back to the Tahoe, where Rio pours five gallons of combustible liquid gold into the gas tank.

Rhaena climbs into the driver’s seat and turns the key in the ignition. The rust-red Tahoe growls to life, the engine idling. Then she rests her arms on the steering wheel and breaks down sobbing. In the passenger’s seat, Aegon looks up from his map—which he is annotating with a glittery green gel pen—to gaze at her with shining, wounded eyes. After some hesitation, he extends a hand to hold one of hers. From the seat behind Rhaena, Luke is rubbing her shoulders and murmuring words you can’t hear.

Aemond says softly: “Rhaena, you can take some time if you need it.”

“No,” she insists, her voice quivering but determined. “We can’t wait. We have to get as far as we can before dark.” She shifts the Tahoe into drive, guides it onto I-80, and speeds west towards Rock Springs and the Utah border.

Rio is saying something to you, but at first you can’t grasp it. Helaena is scratching Ice’s ears as the massive grey wolfdog lies sprawled across her lap. Daeron is sniffling and wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his orange t-shirt. Cregan is talking to Aemond about needing to find an auto shop so he can get supplies to change the Tahoe’s oil and filter. One of Aegon’s mixtapes whirls in the CD player:

“My face above the water

My feet can’t touch the ground, touch the ground

And it feels like I can see the sands on the horizon

Every time you are not around…”

You are watching Aemond, your heartbeat growing loud in your ears. He won’t look at you at all.

~~~~~~~~~~

As the sun begins to set, you find a vacant house on the outskirts of Coalville, Utah overlooking the Echo Reservoir. You wash away the remnants of Wyoming in the cool blue water, dried blood and caked-on dirt, hopes eclipsed by horror. Dinner is soup spooned out of cans from the pantry—Dinty Moore beef stew, Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle—and caffeine-free sodas, Sprite and Fanta and Seagram’s Ginger Ale. Then Rhaena and Luke go straight to bed, and Helaena scuttles through the house with a flashlight to search for clothes, making each person a separate pile on the dining room table: large flannel shirts for Cregan, pastel-colored polos for Aegon. Aemond and Cregan are outside on the front porch, Daeron is carving sticks into arrows on the kitchen floor, Aegon has been passed out in one of the children’s bedrooms since Aemond debrided his burns again and dosed him with the last of the Vicodin. Fortunately, Helaena found a translucent orange prescription bottle of Tramadol in the upstairs bathroom, so Aegon won’t have to suffer too much tomorrow.

Rio tosses and turns on the living room couch. You know what’s wrong, but you have to wait for him to say it. You stay with him, kneeling on the beige carpet in the murky artificial luminance of Rio’s Moonbeam flashlight, threading your fingertips through his dark curls. And then at last Rio asks something that you know must have crossed his mind a thousand times since you left Saratoga Springs, but he’s never voiced aloud: “What if Sophie and the baby are dead?”

“They’re not.”

“But you don’t know, nobody knows—”

“Bryan, they’re not dead,” you say, and he is listening.

“I joined the Navy for Sophie.” And of course, you’ve heard this before. “I was just a stupid kid who couldn’t commit to anything, not work, not school, not a future with her, so she dumped me. And I decided I was going to get her back by proving I could make commitments after all. I could sign my life away for five years, and come out of it as someone who would be a good husband and father. And now…what if by enlisting and being so far away when everything happened, I abandoned her? What if…what if she’s gone, and she died terrified and in pain and alone, and I’m the reason why?”

“Sophie and the baby are waiting for you in Odessa. You have to believe that until we get there.”

“Because if they’re not, my life is over?” he asks bitterly, this man you have never known to be wrathful, defeated, weak, hopeless. But these are beasts that live inside all of us, waiting to be shaken awake by the perfect string of calamities.

“I believe they’re still alive.”

And Rio looks at you, wanting desperately to be convinced. “Why?”

You’ve never believed that you are someone who knows the right things to say; but you have to try. “If your parents’ community in Odessa is like you’ve always described it to me, I can’t think of a better place for someone to hide from all the disorder and the violence. It’s remote, but there’s support from other families who are living the same way. People have gardens, cows, goats, pigs, chickens, enough canned food to live on for years, homemade clothes and systems to collect rainwater. There are women who’ve had five homebirths and men who’ve built houses with their own hands. And the people in Odessa have guns and know how to use them. I think when you told Sophie to go there, you saved her life. And now she and the baby are both waiting for you to come home.”

“We’ve crossed this country by raiding dead people’s houses.”

“Yes. And we’ve met survivors too.”

Rio takes a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling; and now he is calmer. “Okay,” he says, grabbing your hand where it rests on his head and smacking a noisy kiss onto your knuckles. “I’m sorry. Thank you. I think I’m done freaking out for tonight.”

“You good?”

“I’m good.”

“Try to sleep.”

Obediently, Rio closes his eyes, and within five minutes he’s snoring.

You rise and open the door to the front porch, thinking of what you’re going to tell Aemond when he is low, distracted, wary: You did everything you could, Aemond. It’s not your fault. It’s this world, it’s poison, it’s cursed, and you can’t turn back the clock to when it wasn’t. You’re just one man. But you can try to save the people who are left.

Yet Aemond does not speak to you, doesn’t even notice you; when you peek outside you are on his blind side, and he is deep in conversation with Cregan as they keep watch in the moonlight.

“I mean, yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too, man,” Cregan is saying. “A mansion by the ocean sounds nice and all, don’t get me wrong, but that ain’t me. I don’t see myself somewhere like that forever. Hell, I’ve never even seen the ocean, and to be honest I never really cared to. But a community of folks who are living off the land out in the woods? Those are my kind of people, that’s a place I could be useful…”

You retreat back inside the house, flashlights and shadows, doubts and fears. You stand there in the quiet for a while, then go to Aegon’s bedroom, where he is awake now and snuggling with Ice in a child’s bed shaped like a red racecar, listening to his pink Sony Walkman—Ava, the gleaming rhinestones proclaim—through one earbud.

Aegon coos as he ruffles the dog’s shaggy grey coat: “You’re so sweet, Blue Raspberry Icee. You were always my favorite flavor. Do you miss 7-Elevens too? Wrinkled old hot dogs and taquitos on rollers, drenching tortilla chips with the nacho cheese and chili dispenser? Did you guys even have 7-Elevens in Iowa? No offense, but your home state kind of sucks. It’s just fields and barns and whatever. You would have loved Boston. You could have fetched my golf balls when they rolled into ponds.”

Then he sings along to the song he’s listening to, effortlessly melodic but so softly you can barely hear him:

“You really had me going, wishing on a star

But the black holes that surround you are heavier by far

I believed in your confusion, you were so completely torn…”

Aegon spots you in the doorway. He smiles, then turns serious when he gets a good look at your face. “You okay, Mint Chocolate Chip?”

He feels like the only person you can say this to. You confess in a weak, hoarse whisper: “I hate this world.”

Aegon offers you the other earbud. “Then let’s go somewhere else.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“Come on,” you say to Rhaena as Rio and Luke rummage around inside the Shell gas station for food, drinks, batteries, medicine. You know they’re fine; you’ve already cleared the store, and you can hear them in there laughing. Rio is telling Luke about the bizarre Thanksgiving dinner you once had in Chinhae, South Korea: duck instead of turkey, fried rice with pears and squash instead of stuffing, candied sweet potatoes for dessert, a choir of solemn schoolchildren brought in to sing—for reasons you will never understand—Africa by Toto. You take your remaining M9 out of its holster. “Target practice.”

“Really?” Rhaena asks excitedly. She volunteered to stay back at the little blue mobile home with Aegon, Daeron, and Helaena—only a mile away—but you knew she needed a distraction. Truthfully, you do too. Aemond is in the Tahoe somewhere searching for gas with Cregan, a strange new alliance. He still hasn’t really spoken to you. You are trying to give him what he needs, but you don’t understand what that is.

It took all of yesterday to navigate around Salt Lake City, stopping every few hours to scrounge for gas, gallons siphoned piecemeal from cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats on trailers, four-wheelers left forgotten in garages and backyards. It was after nightfall when you rolled into Battle Mountain, Nevada, a gold mining town in what is known as the Cowboy Corridor, beginning at West Wendover just over the Utah border and ending in Reno. Today supplies must be replenished; tomorrow I-80 will take you to Winnemucca, where U.S. Route 95 branches off north towards Oregon while remaining on I-80 leads southwest through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and into the Bay Area of California. A decision needs to be made, which means Aemond will have to talk to you tonight. You’re relieved. You don’t want to have to be nervous and watchful with him, studying every inflection of his voice, reading some dire premonition in each line that creases his face. You’ve spent enough of your life that way already.

Battle Mountain is cloudless and hot and sandy, dry shrubs and gnarled mesquite trees, flat secretless earth. Staggering towards the Shell are three zombies, all dressed in faded blue uniforms like a mechanic’s or a miner’s. You hand Rhaena your M9.

“How many bullets do you have left?” she says, still a bit giddy.

“Fifteen. And you can have five of them.”

She raises the pistol and closes one eye. “I’m going to miss.”

“Well you’re not going to hit anything if you don’t turn off the safety.”

Rhaena giggles. “Oh, right. Whoops.” She clicks the tiny lever, then takes aim again.

“Line up your sights. Front looks like an I, back looks like a U. Put the I in the center of the U, and keep looking at that front sight. That’s where your bullet is going. Don’t blink when you fire. Don’t be scared of the recoil, that’s not your problem, your priority is getting the shot. Your arms are a little stiff…yeah, perfect, nice and limber. The recoil won’t hurt so much that way. Don’t try to fight it, just accept that it’s going to happen. If you’re all tensed up because you’re anxious about the recoil, it’ll throw off your aim, so forget about it.”

“Okay,” Rhaena says. “I am actively attempting to forget.”

“Remember, try not to blink.”

“Don’t tense up. Don’t blink.” A few seconds pass, and she pulls the trigger. There is a spray of dark curdled blood from one of the zombie’s collarbone, but it’s still stumbling towards the Shell. “Damn,” Rhaena says defeatedly, then tries to pass the M9 back to you.

“What are you doing? You have four more shots.”

“But I’m going to miss. I’m going to waste them.”

“Practice isn’t wasteful. You have to know how to do this in case something happens to me.”

“You do it,” Rhaena insists. “I’m terrible.”

“Is it alright if I help you?”

“Yeah,” she says, her doe-like eyes brightening. “Okay. Totally.”

“Go ahead and aim.”

She raises the pistol and peers through the sights. You stand behind Rhaena, place your hands lightly over hers, adjust her angle just barely. When she fires—she’s still tensing up just before she pulls the trigger, a common mistake—you hold the M9 steady. The bullet explodes through the same zombie’s rot-soft skull and the corpse tumbles facedown into the dust.

Rhaena gasps, exhilarated, triumphant.

“No celebrating yet. There are two more.”

“Right.” Very businesslike, she lines up the next shot. You provide your slight adjustments; a second zombie receives a lethal dose of lead.

“Want to do the last one on your own?” The third zombie is quite close now, maybe ten yards. It should be an easy kill.

“Okay…but if I miss, you have to save me.”

“Obviously.”

All on her own, Rhaena aims and pulls the trigger. She hits the zombie near the top of its head; an inch higher, and it would be functionally unharmed. But the corpse’s skull snaps back and its blood and brains spill out onto the asphalt of the parking lot, and it is of no further danger to anyone. It is carrion for the scavengers: raccoons, foxes, condors, vultures, crows.

“And with one of your allocated bullets to spare,” you say with a smile, accepting the M9 when Rhaena surrenders it. “Good progress.”

“That felt great,” she admits, perhaps a little dazed.

You know what she means. “It’s nice to have some control over what happens in your life.”

Luke is saying to Rio as they reappear from inside the Shell: “Maybe those Korean children were singing Africa because they knew your unit had been in Djibouti. Maybe they thought you were homesick for it or something.”

“Oh my God, you know what, kid? You might be right. I never even thought of that.”

“Find anything?” you ask.

Rio shrugs, adjusting the straps of his backpack. “A few bags of trail mix, a box of Band-Aids, some Life Savers, cans of Arizona tea. Oh, and Marlboro Golds for Honey Bun.”

“You shouldn’t be encouraging Aegon to smoke. It’s bad for him.”

“Give him a break, he’s sad and crispy.”

You can’t think of a rebuttal. The four of you walk back to the mobile home.

In the small patch of parched dirt that serves as the driveway, Cregan is—with great difficulty—shimmying out from beneath the Tahoe. Then he reaches back under to grab a pan of old motor oil. “Just about done here,” he announces. “Gotta put the fresh oil in and then we’re set for another 5,000 miles.”

You glance around. Ice is panting in the narrow aisle of shade of a mesquite tree. Aegon is napping on the tiny front porch, sprawled on his back and snoring, his plastic neon green sunglasses shielding his eyes; Helaena is surrounded by a jumble of empty cans and stirring a pot of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs as she heats it over a fire. She begins dishing out bowlfuls of it. Rio, Rhaena, and Luke all graciously accept their dinner.

“Did you guys find gas?” you say to Cregan.

“Not much. A few gallons.”

“Where’s Aemond?”

“Said he’d be back soon.”

“What?” You are incredulous. “You left him? He can’t be alone out there, Cregan. Someone has to watch his blind side.”

“He ain’t alone. He took Daeron.”

“What’s Aemond looking for?”

“He didn’t say. I didn’t ask.” Now Cregan is pouring a bottle of Pennzoil into the Tahoe, and Rio is prodding you with a bowl of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs, and Aegon is waking up and yawning loudly.

“What’d you bring me?” he says, lazy and grinning; and when he receives his pack of Marlboro Golds, he immediately sticks one between his teeth and lights it. Luke goes to sit by a shrub and then jumps up when he hears a rattling noise. Almost too swiftly for you to process it, a streak of red-gold scales slithers across the earth and vanishes into the desert.

“Western diamondback rattlesnake,” Helaena notes. “Venomous. Potentially fatal.”

“Great,” Luke says, carrying his bowl towards the front door of the mobile home. “I think I’ll eat inside.”

Aemond and Daeron don’t return until shortly before dusk, the sky turning to rust, lavender, gold, fire, blood. When they walk in, Rhaena is curled up on the floral couch—shredded in spots by a cat, though there are no signs of it now—and reading Mockingjay. Luke is sitting with her and keeping watch with periodic peeks out the window. Ice is resting with her muzzle propped on her large front paws. You, Rio, Cregan, Helaena, and Aegon are playing Uno on the floor.

“What color?” Aegon asks Helaena when she puts down a wild card.

“Blue.”

He groans. “How do you always know what I don’t have?!”

“Rhaena,” Aemond says, and then tosses something to her that glints in the artificial, sickly yellow radiance of the flashlights. She catches them in midair: a set of keys. She is mystified.

“What are these for?”

“The Ford Expedition that’s parked outside.”

“What?!” Luke says, twisting around in his seat to snatch the curtain aside and peer through the window. “Oh wow. Yeah, it’s out there.”

Rhaena is staring confoundedly at Aemond. “Why do we need a Ford Expedition?”

“Because that’s what you’ll be driving tomorrow.”

“What’s wrong with the Tahoe?”

“They will be driving the Tahoe to Oregon,” Aemond says, pointing to you, Rio, and Cregan. “We are taking Expedition to California.”

Everyone is too stunned to speak at first; even Daeron looks at Aemond doubtfully, as if this is the first time he’s learning of it. Aegon’s hand hovers frozen in the air above the draw pile of Uno cards. Ice whimpers.

Rio chuckles uncertainly. “You’re…you’re joking, right?”

“No, I’m not,” Aemond says. “When we leave Battle Mountain tomorrow, you’ll take I-80 to Winnemucca. We’ll take Route 305 south to Austin and then head west so we can get off the interstate and avoid the Reno area.”

Your voice comes out dark and poisonous. You can feel your eyes glaring, searing; Aemond won’t look at you. “What are you talking about?”

“We can’t stay together?” Luke asks.

“No,” Aemond says again, and now he’s getting impatient. “We have two different destinations. That’s been the situation since the day we met, and now it’s time to split up.”

“Why can’t we all travel to one place and then the other?” Rhaena says. “We could drive to the Bay Area, see what’s going on at the beach house, and after—”

“I can’t wait,” Rio interrupts. “My wife and baby are in Oregon, I’m going straight there even if no one else is.” As distracted as you are, you touch your palm to one of his broad shoulders. You’re going too. You promised.

“So we’ll drive to Oregon first,” Aegon says agreeably. “Right? We could do that. Go north and then swing by the Bay Area later.”

Aemond shakes his head. “It’s almost impossible to find gas now. There is just enough in the Tahoe to last it until Winnemucca, and just enough in the Expedition to get it down to Austin. There is no guarantee we’ll be able to find more. Every day there’s less gas and food and bullets, because there are less places that haven’t already been looted. There are 400 miles between where we are right now and either Odessa or San Franscisco. There are another 400 miles that separate those two destinations from each other. So let’s say we drive all the way to Oregon and then can’t find any gas to go south to the Bay. How long do you think we’d last like this on foot? A month? Because that’s how long it would take us, assuming not a single rest day. So if we travel to one location together, there’s a good possibility we’ll all be trapped there.”

“Maybe I’m okay with getting trapped in Oregon,” Aegon mumbles.

Aemond lashes out fiercely. “Are you serious? What about Criston, what about Mom?!”

“Maybe there are some things about home that I don’t miss!”

“Then go the fuck to Oregon!”

“You know I have to stay with you!”

Aemond scoffs. “Because you’re so capable of protecting anyone.”

Aegon rubs his sunburned face with both hands. He murmurs softly, miserably: “I’m trying, Aemond.”

“So that’s it?” Rhaena says, staring at you and Rio and Cregan, stunned and mournful. “We’ll just never see each other again?”

Aemond shrugs and averts his gaze. He doesn’t have an answer; maybe he doesn’t care.

Aegon turns to Cregan accusingly. “You helped plan this?”

“Nah,” Cregan says, avoidant and downcast, which is unusual for him. “I mean…I said I didn’t really see myself spending the rest of my life with a bunch of millionaires in a California mansion on the seashore, and that’s still true. I’d rather live in Oregon with people who are more like me. But that’s different than wanting to split up forever. I could always try to find y’all later for a visit, I guess…”

“Sure,” Aemond replies briskly. “Whatever you decide to do afterwards isn’t my problem. But you get them to Odessa first.”

Rhaena bursts out with sudden urgency: “This feels wrong. Don’t you see how this is wrong?! We’ve been through so much together, and now we’re just going to wave goodbye and disappear? Leave them to fend for themselves?”

“You want to add 400 miles to our trip?” Aemond asks her, and Rhaena falls silent.

“You know,” Luke begins. “We…we’ve already lost people. Maybe Aemond’s right. Maybe we’re forgetting how dangerous the world is now. It would be great if we could stay in contact, but the most important thing is to get everyone safely to where they need to be.”

“Exactly,” Aemond says, and something jolts awake in you as you remember what he told you in Nebraska, and in Wyoming, and in so many quiet moments that you’ve shared since you met, each an oasis in the desert. He said we would figure it out. He said he wasn’t going anywhere.

“So you were lying when you pretended not to know what we were going to do when we got to Nevada.”

Aemond nods towards the front door. “Can I talk to you outside for a minute?”

You stand up; Rio watches you apprehensively, wondering if he should follow. Your eyes flick to his. I’m fine. He relents, redirecting his attention. Aegon is slumped and despondent; Helaena is starting to cry, and Cregan tries to console her. She’s saying that something bad is going to happen, but she doesn’t know what.

On the porch of the mobile home, beneath a lilac sky pierced with stars, Aemond does not attempt to hold your hands or kiss you goodbye or give any other indication that you have ever been someone who mattered to him. “This isn’t personal. This is what gives everyone the best chance of survival.”

“You’re afraid of making a mistake and getting hurt,” you tell him. “And I understand, I know what that feels like, but Aemond…with the way the world is now…you can’t afford to wait for things to happen or cut them loose to see if they’ll come back to you. You might not get another chance.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Aemond says flatly. “Your route is safer than ours. Less cities, less zombies.”

“You’re honestly going to act like you are completely unbothered by the thought of never seeing me again?”

“I don’t know what you expected. I’m just some guy who helped get you off a transmission tower back in Pennsylvania.”

“Really? That’s all you are?”

And then Aemond smirks to himself, a cynical, mocking twist of his lips, something so dismissive and so cruel you almost believe for a razor-thin second that you could hate him. “Look, I’m not the one for you. Go to Oregon. Fuck Cregan.”

“There is nothing romantic between me and Cregan!”

Now Aemond seems annoyed. “Well, you two seem exceptionally suited for each other.”

“Because we both grew up shopping at Dollar General and know what it’s like to have an alcoholic parent?! That makes us soulmates, that’s the end of the calculation?!”

“Then find a man like him!” Aemond flares. “That’s what you really wanted, right? That’s what you were after this whole time. Some hero to convince you he’s worth it. Someone to break you in.”

You are seething, thunderstruck. “And you just said that in the most hurtful way possible to…what, prove how little you care about me?”

“I didn’t say I don’t care about you.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

“We were never going to end up in the same place.”

“Except we were, you told me that, you told me we’d figure something out, I mean, you…you…you said you’d be there if I wanted kids someday, what was that if not some kind of commitment?!”

“You don’t trust me,” Aemond says, so sharply and so abruptly it startles you.

“I do,” you object softly.

“No, you don’t. And I don’t blame you. But there’s nowhere for us to go from here.”

You can feel yourself becoming young and powerless and desperately afraid. “Please don’t do this, Aemond. It won’t bring Jace or Baela back. If we don’t have a plan before we split up, this is over. We’ll never find each other again. We’ll never have another chance.”

And he shakes his head like this was such a needless mistake. “I knew you’d fall in love with me.”

He’s leaving, you think, hazy and omnipotent like a nightmare, the present inseparable from the past and the future. I left my family and now my family is leaving me. “I’m not in love with you,” you reply as ruthlessly as you can. “I think you’re right. Cregan is a better man.”

“Yeah,” Aemond snaps.

“And I need someone like him.”

“Yeah,” Aemond says again, staring into the west where the last rays of the sun are sinking below the horizon, you erased as you stand where his left eye would once have seen you.

“And you need someone who’s going to fuck with your head so much you can’t possibly mistake it for something real.”

You walk back inside the mobile home and leave him speechless in the dying light.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I drew this for you,” Aegon says, handing Rio a folded piece of paper torn from Helaena’s spider notebook. It’s a map, illustrated in forest green gel pen ink. “Your route is actually really straightforward, it’s impossible to get lost. You’ll follow I-80 northwest to Winnemucca, then Route 95 north until it intersects with Route 140, and you stay on 140 all the way to Odessa. The only real city you’ll go near is Klamath Falls in Oregon, and I’ve marked that. Route 140 mostly stays along the outside, but you can cut it wider if things look dicey. The whole trip is just a couple days by car, assuming you don’t have to spend too long hunting for gas. But listen…” He points to the green dot labelled Winnemucca. “Between here and Denio Junction up by the Oregon border, there’s 100 miles of nothing, just desert. So make sure you have more than enough supplies to last you in case something happens. Then from Denio Junction to Adel is another 85 miles with no towns in between. So just…be careful, okay? You’re not back east anymore. Things are a lot farther apart, and it’s harder to find everything. If you run out of gas or bust a tire, you can’t just call AAA to come pick you up.”

“We got it,” Rio says, touched but trying not to dissolve into too much sentimentality. The three of you are standing in the short dirt driveway the next morning, Aegon putting most of his weight on his good leg. Cregan is waiting behind the wheel of the Chevy Tahoe that once belonged to his parents. Ice is peering out at you through one of the rolled-down windows. “Thank you, Honey Bun.”

“No problem. Now flip it over.”

Rio does; on the back of the first map is another, this one from Odessa south to the Bay Area, a place just north of San Francisco called Bolinas.

“Go all the way to the coast and follow it down,” Aegon says. “You don’t want to bump into Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, San Jose, any of those places. Too many people.” Then he smiles, kind and warm. “I’m going to see you guys again, one way or the other. But first I have to make sure Aemond is safe. And Rio has to meet baby Otter.”

Rio laughs. “Man, don’t even joke about it. I’m seriously concerned that’s my firstborn’s name.”

“If you end up not staying in Odessa, leave me a note carved into a tree trunk or something so I can track you down.”

“You do the same at the beach mansion.”

“Totally.” Then Aegon turns to you; and although he’s still smiling, his eyes—those pools of murky, melancholy blue that remind you of the Gulf of Tadjoura, Corpus Christi Bay, the East China Sea, the Indian Ocean—are catastrophically sad. “Tortilla Chip, it’s been real. Don’t forget about me.”

“I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.”

He pats your backpack and winks, and you don’t understand why until ten hours later when you’re lying on the rooftop of an abandoned RV in Winnemucca, Nevada, gazing up at the stars as Rio and Cregan swap stories to weave affinity until it’s thick like a braid: Rio hiding a dead lemon shark in the Jeep of an officer he hated when you were stationed at Key West, Cregan’s fiancé leaving him after she got a field hockey scholarship to the University of Iowa. You haven’t found any gas for the Tahoe yet. You’ll have to search again tomorrow. You reach into your backpack for a pack of Life Savers and instead are surprised to discover Aegon’s pink Sony Walkman. The rhinestones spelling out a doomed little girl’s name glint in the moonlight.

You slip in both earbuds and press play. Aegon left it paused at an Enrique Iglesias song; you assume he must have been thinking of Rio.

“You look at me and, girl, you take me to another place

Got me feelin’ like I’m flyin’, like I’m out of space

Something ‘bout your body says, come and take me

Got me begging, got me hoping that the night don’t stop…”

You try to see constellations in the night sky instead of random, indifferent distant suns. You try not to remember the way Aemond was when you thought his mark on you was permanent.

“Girl, I like the way you move, come and show me what to do

You can tell me that you want me, girl, you got nothing to lose

I can’t wait no more

I can’t wait no more…”

You spot a glimmer of light among the stars and choose to believe it is a comet rather than a fighter jet, or a forgotten satellite, or the refracted remnants of a solar storm, or something you only imagined and that never existed at all.

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond x you #aemond x reader #aemond x y/n #aemond targaryen x y/n

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nikoshinigami · 9 months ago

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More KHR thoughts - Hibari Kyouya

I love how Hibari is both super straightforward and yet also easily misunderstood. He's not abusive, but he is vicious. He's not antagonistic, but he is the hammer who sees all problems as nails. He's not a brooding stoic who struggles with anger issues, he's a chill guy who likes simple pleasures and smiles often.

Hibari is a character who is happy with his life and his place in the world from the very beginning. He knows exactly who he is, what he wants, how to get it, and that he is capable of getting it on his own merits. He is fair, not bending the rules when it suits him but following them even if it means he himself loses out. He only begins to be someone who is defined by the strength of his rage when the mafia comes in and messes up his idyllic home, demanding he play by their rules even though it is they who impose themselves on him. He is dealing with an invasive species that is wreaking havoc on the peaceful world he has constructed around him, and his only recourse is to beat them back as he would any other threat.

Temperance is his virtue which he proves in his self-restraint, but his silent struggle as a character becomes one of preservation. He is trying to preserve the peace and order within Namimori and the version of himself he knew and was content with. Rather than a big fish in a small pond, he's the monster in the loch that might flourish in deeper waters but feels at home where he is. Hibari has no delusions of grandeur; he does not desire more territory, more power, or means of conquest. He becomes, despite his best efforts, Vongola's sideshow attraction: watch and see how livid he can become, marvel at the damage his small body can take and still keep going, be astounded by the carnage he can unleash. Hibari will always choose to protect and never walk away from conflict, and though he genuinely does relish in a good fight, all he wants is to wrap things up and go home to lay in a nice patch of sunlight knowing all is well and all are safe.

#katekyou hitman reborn #reborn khr #hibari kyoya #khr

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sailorgundam308 · 2 years ago

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Karlach isn't a good girl

Listen, LISTEN. I love her, okay? Now that's out of the way. I see many people reducing her personality to the "big friendly labrador dog" thing. And while it's cute and all that, I disagree. Let me get into why I think Karlach isn't the goodie nice girl she puts a lot of effort to be. She has just returned to Faerun when we meet her in game, and she IS trying her bestest to start anew, to be the best version of herself now that she is free. But it doesn't mean she was always like that, or that her past has not changed her. I think it did - quite a lot, in fact.

Let's start with Gortash. She worked for this fucker. Granted, she might not have known he was such an evil bastard at the time, but she was his bodyguard. And by bodyguard, it is implied that she was his bully, his enforcer and debt collector - you know, the kind that breaks knees and kills people. When she meets an old friend in the city, that friend asks her if she is still in "the business of intimidation", and offers her to come see weapons. Even though Karlach, in her mind, might have been convincing herself that doing such a job was to help someone she respected, she still did it. And that is FINE. She was a young orphan, a tiefling in a place where tieflings are discriminated against harshly, poor and without much perspective. Of course a guy coming over offering her a well paid job that she excelled in would seem like winning a lottery. Still, she was a pretty shady violent person doing it. Now, the Hells. Avernus. She was sold to Zariel quite young still, and went through all sorts of torture and other perks enslavement gets you. For 10 years. She was scared shitless while there, especially in the beginning - she says so herself (to Halsin). All the carnage she inflicted was not (very) voluntary. She HAD to, or she would be the one getting killed. But she enjoyed it - or grew to. She likes violence, the adrenaline of it, the rush of excitement. The thrill of it, she says, is second only to sex.

Continuing on. Avernus, as well as the other layers of the Nine Hells, is not like the Material Plane. The place itself influences you. It means that being in Avernus for any time changes/corrupts/influences who you are. The longer you stay there, the deeper it gets. It did so to Zariel who was a literal angel. Avernus (and it's Archdevil's personality) insidiously get in your body and heart. It is just the way it goes, lore-wise, in DnD. If a fucking SOLAR wasn't immune to it, Karlach - young and lost - certainly wouldn't be either. Even more so because she was near Zariel all the time. I strongly believe Karlach was getting more and more exactly like Zariel - who herself is a fierce berserker warrior who charges head first into battle. Zariel is KNOWN to be this crazy strong, insane, fearless and (in her mind) righteous demon-smiting war machine. Sounds similar to a nice red tiefling we know, doesn't it? Now, did Zariel chose Karlach beause she was already like this, or did Karlach took after Zariel while she fought with her? Hard to tell. In any case, Karlach's 10 years in the Hells did change her. Needless to say, Avernus doesn't change you for the better. It doesn't mean that Karlach became "evil" - she is obviously far from it. But she is chaotic, violent and bloodthirsty. She is also selfish. There are several situations where this personality trait of her comes up.

It may sound kinda wild considering how she offers to help everyone and even sacrifice herself (since she's already dying anyway) - when we meet her. But that's the thing: she is being as selfless as she can now because she has been very selfish for a very long time (proof she has a conscience). Perhaps, she is terrified of what she was becoming and is trying to make amends, to revert whatever evil was growing in her.

She mentions herself that she did not help the tieflings of Elturel when their city was pulled down into Avernus. She did not get out of her way to help them. Instead, she thought that if "she was living that nightmare, they'd have to live it too". She would not put her neck on the line to help another - which, not so coincidentally, is typical behavior in the Hells (again, proof that Avernus was indeed getting to her). The Hag's Vicious Mockery targeted specifically at Karlach mentions how she is willing to "sell everyone's soul's if it means she can save hers". We do not know exactly what it refers to - soul coins, throwing others under the bus, ignoring people in need - but it reinforces the idea that Karlach was not the nicest person for at least 12+ years. Granted, the devils around her were much worse - but they are DEVILS in HELL. So.

Generally, in game we notice that her effort to survive and stay alive has pushed her selfishness to grow. But it still is selfishness. Another example is how she disapproves (together with Astarion), if you say to healer Nettie that you "swear to drink the Wyvern poison". She wouldn't drink it. She'd rather kill Nettie (that gets hostile).

Another hint at her grey-ish personality is when she talks to/about Wyll after he is punished by Mizora for not having killed Karlach. She mentions that she would NOT have done the same in his place. That he was better than her. Again, she would not put her skin on the line like that. She would and has turned a blind eye to situations and persons if it meant it would guarantee her survival or avoid injury. (Mind you, I 100% belive she would do this sacrifice if she was in love with someone, though.)

She will ask to, and will use Soul Coins even though she knows it's morally a sus choice to do so. If you play as her she will repeat to herself "I won't use them, they are people's souls - and I am GOOD." like she is trying to convince herself. Because she would fucking use them to smash some big fuckers in a blink - and feel awesome while doing it. Even as her, she keeps insisting "But... maybe I can use them... JUST when I really need them." Additionally, when she talks to the bugbear merchant in Moonrise Towers and he offers her soul coins, she doesn't really feel guilty for the stories of the souls in them. She even says at some point "they are already doomed, so why not use them anyway", justifying that she will only kill evil bastards with them. In any case, the morality of her choice is debatable. It makes clear that Karlach is not "lawful good" by any stretch.

Let me reiterate that just because I am saying all this about Karlach, doesn't mean I dislike her. I think she is abso-fucking-lutely the best character in the game. But I hate to see her personality "flattened" to nice happy go lucky gal. I think she has a grey-tinged personality - she has good and bad aspects to herself; she has character flaws too.

But I also think that she is trying her damn hardest to be the best she can be right then. The opposite of what she's been. Maybe it is because she has so little time left, that she needs to be the absolute best version of herself while she can. Perhaps she is trying to be what she would have been if her parents did not die - because they seemed like great loving parents. And I think Karlach didn't turn into a broken evil maniac because of them, the way they raised her while they were alive. But she lost her mom at 6, her father around 13-15. After that, it was struggling on the streets, Gortash and Zariel - betrayal, violence, carnage, war and loneliness. It is too naive to think a person would not change after all this, that Karlach would not carry more scars than those she shows on her body. To her credit, she turned much MUCH better than anyone would have. She WILL kill with a grin on her face, seek violence, blood and even revel in it - she learned to relish it and now it's part of who she is. She is selfish, she will look out for herself and has no qualms about killing or throwing people she doesn't care for under the bus (if she sees justification for it). BUT she knows what evil is, and doesn't let shit happen to people who don't deserve it. She will side with those who suffer prejudice and fight against what she sees as injustice - but even she has a limit to how far she'd go.

If you raid the Emerald Grove, she will leave the party. To me, this screams of her trying to right her past wrongs. She left the Elturians to their fate once before, so she MUST save them now that she has another chance - and that it won't cost her her life. I love her being 1/3 brutal killing machine (and fucking LOVING it), 1/3 ptsd, fear and overcompensating trauma under a smile, and 1/3 just trying her best, really, and being lovely for it. Phew. That was a long rant. I guess I just wanted to organize my thoughts about it a bit :V

#baldur's gate 3 #karlach #bg3 #bg3 spoilers #spoilers #opinion #karlach is not evil #but shes not a well of pure heartedness and good either

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dovahhmonn · 2 months ago

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Alessio De Luca

Blurbs and Sketch below

‧˚꒰🍷💋ྀིྀི ꒱༘‧

Alessio De Luca was always meant to be a survivor. But he wasn’t a Reagent, fighting for his life in Murkoff’s trials—he was the thing they had to survive. The moment Murkoff got their hands on him, they twisted him into something else, something useful for their experiments. Now, he stalks the testing grounds as part of the Ex-Pop, a relentless obstacle designed to break the weak and torment the strong. He’s not just a brute, though—he’s a predator who enjoys the game as much as the kill.

He’s still a playboy, but the thrill of conquest has changed. Before, it was about the chase, the seduction, the satisfaction of knowing someone wanted him. Now, it’s about control. He plays with the Reagents, luring them in with charm, whispering sweet lies to see how desperate they’ll get before he turns on them. He enjoys their moment of hope, the brief flicker that maybe, just maybe, he’s different from the other monsters—until he proves them wrong.

His chemical burns give him a permanently lopsided grin, the scar tissue pulling at his smirks in a way that makes them look unnatural, stretched too thin. He knows exactly how unsettling he looks and uses it to get under people’s skin. Some Ex-Pop go full animal, but not Alessio. He still talks, still taunts, still keeps up the act of the smooth criminal he used to be, just with a much darker twist.

Murkoff gave him a toy that suits his personality perfectly—a pistol that looks like it shoots harmless paintballs but bursts on impact with acid. He plays with it like a cat with a feather on a string, testing shots, making sure his victims feel the burn before he actually does any real damage. He never wastes a round. He takes his time, savoring the way panic sets in when they realize those harmless-looking pellets aren’t a joke.

The docks and Franco’s domain are where he feels most at home. He doesn’t just respect Franco—he sees him as a boss, the way he used to view the mobsters he ran with back in New York. Alessio knows how to play the role of the loyal underling, staying in line when it benefits him. But he’s always watching, always waiting for the right moment to rise higher, to get more than what Murkoff has currently given him.

Unlike some of the others, he still remembers the man he used to be. The smooth talker, the dealmaker, the guy who always had a way out. Now, the only way out is through, and he’s made his peace with that. He doesn’t fight against what Murkoff turned him into—he thrives in it. The trials are just another kind of business, another game, and he’s damn good at playing it.

He loves the chaos of it all, the screaming, the desperation, the way people react under pressure. Every Reagent is different, and he takes pride in figuring out their weaknesses. Some beg, some try to fight, some think they can reason with him. It’s all the same in the end. He’ll drag them through the dirt, watch them break, and then move on to the next.

Even in the middle of the carnage, he keeps his charm. He leans in close, murmurs filthy promises, tells them what they want to hear before he ruins them. If he lets one escape, it’s never out of mercy—it’s because he wants to hunt them down again later. He likes to think of it as giving them a head start.

And yet, sometimes, when the trials go quiet, he catches himself humming old Italian love songs from his childhood. A habit from a past life, from a version of himself that no longer exists. He never lets himself dwell on it for long. The moment he realizes, he stops, smirks, and shakes it off. There’s always another Reagent to chase, another game to play, another soul to burn.

NSFW BLURB

De Luca is a man of indulgence, and that doesn’t change when it comes to sex. He treats it like a game, a conquest, a way to exert control and satisfy his insatiable hunger for pleasure. He’s not the type to settle down or grow attached—love is a fairytale, but fucking? That’s real. That’s something he can hold onto. He’ll take what he wants, enjoy it for as long as it entertains him, and then move on before things get too complicated.

He likes variety, both in partners and in the way he plays. Dominance comes naturally to him, but it’s not always about brute force—it’s about control, about making someone want it, beg for it, even if they know they shouldn’t. He enjoys the power he holds over people, whether it’s a slow, teasing buildup or something rough and immediate. He’s not gentle, not in the traditional sense, but he knows how to read a partner’s limits and push them just enough to keep things exciting.

Alessio has no shame and even less patience for prudishness. Dirty talk is a given—filthy, unfiltered, and laced with amusement, as if he’s constantly testing how much his partner can take. He’ll whisper in their ear, drag out his words just to watch them squirm, chuckle when they try to keep up. He’s not above mocking them a little, especially if they’re shy or hesitant. He wants reactions—whimpers, gasps, pleads—and he’ll do whatever it takes to pull them out.

He’s a man who enjoys excess, and that extends to the bedroom. One partner is fine, but more? Even better. He has no qualms about sharing or being shared, as long as he’s still getting his fill. He thrives in situations where pleasure and chaos mix, where lines blur and inhibitions crumble. A good time, to him, is something messy, primal, and unforgettable.

Alessio is tactile, always using his hands, his teeth, his body. He leaves marks—finger-shaped bruises, bite imprints, scratches from where he’s held someone too tightly. He doesn’t mind taking his own share of damage, either; he wears it like a badge, something to grin about the morning after. Pain and pleasure aren’t opposites to him—they feed into each other, heightening the rush, making it all the more intense.

He’s insatiable, and he knows it. One round is never enough. He’ll push his partner past exhaustion, coaxing, teasing, demanding more until they can’t keep up. He doesn’t need love, doesn’t need commitment—he needs heat, passion, the rawness of skin against skin, the proof that he’s still alive, still capable of feeling something real in a world that’s tried to strip it all away.

Aftercare isn’t something he naturally thinks about, but if a partner intrigues him enough, he might linger—tracing the bruises he left, smirking at the wrecked state he’s reduced them to. He’s not the type to cuddle or whisper sweet nothings, but he’ll light a cigarette, share a lazy comment, maybe even run a hand through their hair if he’s feeling particularly indulgent. If they expect tenderness, they’ll be disappointed—but if they just want to bask in the afterglow of something wild and unforgettable, he’s more than happy to oblige.

For Alessio, sex is about pleasure, control, and the thrill of the moment. He doesn’t do promises, doesn’t do “forever.” He’ll ruin someone in the best way possible, make them crave him even when they know they shouldn’t, and then walk away with a grin—because in the end, he always gets what he wants.

How he might proposition a Reagent that catches his eye

Alessio is a manipulator through and through, and when he sets his sights on a Reagent, he plays the long game—or the short one, depending on how desperate they are. He knows that fear and survival can twist people into making choices they normally wouldn’t, and he exploits that at every opportunity. He doesn’t need brute force to get what he wants; he just needs to plant the right ideas in someone’s head and let their own desires do the rest.

One of his favorite tactics is offering protection. He’ll find a Reagent who’s on the verge of breaking, one who’s been running, fighting, and barely surviving. He plays the part of the smooth talker, the reasonable Ex-Pop, the one who might just be willing to cut them a deal. “You’re all alone out here, huh? Can’t imagine it’s easy, always looking over your shoulder. But you stick with me, sweetheart, and maybe things get a little easier.” He makes them think they have a choice, but really, he’s already decided for them.

He knows how to weaponize charm. Unlike some of the other Ex-Pop who rely on brute terror, Alessio gives just enough warmth to make someone second-guess their instincts. He’ll lean in close, his voice low and velvety, his scarred grin making it impossible to tell if he’s being sincere or cruel. “Come on, I ain’t that bad, am I? ‘Sides, it’s not like you got a whole lotta better options.” He’ll brush a hand down their arm, let his fingers linger, watching their reactions with amusement.

For the ones who play hard to get, he makes it a challenge. He’ll chase them, corner them, let them think they’re about to face the worst—only to pull back at the last second, laughing. “Relax, gorgeous. I ain’t gonna kill you. Least, not yet.” He dangles the threat just enough to get their adrenaline pumping, to keep them on edge. Then he starts laying the groundwork. “Bet it’s been a while since someone touched you the right way, huh? This place don’t give you much time for fun.” He knows desperation when he sees it, and he knows exactly how to make them want to give in.

He preys on loneliness just as much as fear. Some Reagents have been in the trials so long that they forget what it feels like to be wanted, to be desired. Alessio reminds them. He makes them feel like they’re making the choice, like they’re the ones in control, when really, he’s been guiding them toward it the entire time. “Just think about it,” he’ll murmur, stepping away, leaving them with nothing but the lingering heat of his presence. “You know where to find me.” And they always do.

꒰🍷💋ྀིྀི ꒱༘‧‧˚꒰🍷💋ྀིྀི ꒱༘‧‧˚꒰🍷💋ྀིྀི ꒱༘‧‧˚꒰🍷💋ྀིྀི ꒱༘‧‧˚꒰🍷💋ྀིྀི ꒱

EAT UP MOOTS ENJOY THE NEW MANNNN ♡♡♡♡

#ex pop oc #outlast oc #outlast trials #the outlast trials #franco barbi

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talesofpheonixdrop · 1 month ago

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Hi! If requests are still open, could you write an Ein version of reaction to you getting injured? Thanks!

Hello!!! Yes, you absoueltly can!!

So a few notes! Since no gender was specficed the Reader will be G/N. And since you didn't specify a species I'm going with human by default.

Also! This one is more notable, for pretty much all my villians the Reader is like, not in the dark, lol. The reader is well aware of the situation they are in. If you've read any of my Gene or Zane stuff, you know that. But I'm going to, unless specified, leave the Reader in the dark with Ein. After all, through PDH he has this whole soft little guy act going on. And I think it's interesting! I hope that's all okay! And let's get into warnings and the fic!

Warnings:

Manipulation ein is king of it, reader and ein are being harassed in the street by some drunk fucks. Cat Calling directed to the reader (Wolf calling?), horrible horrible acts of violence - not directed to the Reader. As per usual with the antagonists, unhealthy relationship dynamics.

Shadow souls were a ghastly thing, You knew it well. Black amorphous vapor with glowing red eyes.

They weren't human, Not anymore. They couldn't be reasoned with or experience empathy.

You've tousled with them your fair amount, a life of fighting Shadow souls could fill a mercenaries pockets to the end of their days. But they are hard to track, nearly impossible once they leave the area. Shadow souls can travel great distances in no time and leave behind little trace ... other than blood and carnage.

Your companion though, seems to have a sixth sense for them. Able to track a Shadow soul no matter how far it travels or even if they hadn't revealed themselves. Incredibly handy to have around in your line of work, and having all the charisma and charm of a pup in the rain endears you enough to keep him around even if that wasn't the case.

Even now, he trails behind you hood covering his large fluffy ears, back hunched to try and make himself look smaller (hard to do when your nearly 7ft.), one hand holding onto the very edge of your own cloak silver eyes downcast to avoid the moons light. While it's not full and won't cause any drastic changes, any exposure at any cycle can make a Werewolf more... volatile, so you guide him through the village when the moon hangs high in the sky.

You prefer to avoid it, but he loathes to leave your side, and you can't predict how long mercenary work will take. Sometimes hunting down a Shadow soul takes until the sun sets... like now. But moments like this are precisely why taverns were made! If... you could find the bloody thing, no village has the same layout, and this one doesn't have any signs to point you in the right direction.

"By Esmunds sword," you mutter under your breath. "Taverns should be front and center, for people who arrive to villages late, and! They are the main source of income in villages that aren't taxes. " You rant and ramble, made irritable by the late hour and your aching sword arm. You hardly notice the rowdy chatter filling the street. Or Eins low growl rumble in his throat, grip tightening on your cloak.

"Hey! You ignorin- me you bitch?"

Your head snaps over at the slurred cursing. A group of men are across the street, in simple clothes and cheeks red from the ale they reeked of from here. A flash of indignation flares in your chest you step forward even as Ein tries to sputter out a protest.

"Who do you think you're talking to??" You demand "to ignore you implies you had addressed me. Maybe if you got your head out of your tankered, you -"

" [Y/N] don't bother, only a fool would argue with a drunk," Ein mumbles, pulling you backward by your cloak further into the village streets causing a flares of indignation to alight in your chest as if you had anything to lose here, your a mercenary! And a damn good one at that and-

"Hey come back here. Should apolagize for being so.. *hic* rude to me and my friends" the man slurs following after, the two men by his side cheering him on and fumbling out crude remarks that make you cringe.

"I'll apologize in your DREAMS damn drunks! Go home to your lumpy mattress and painfully unsatisfied wives!" You shout back. You can hear Ein make a noise between a groan and a whine in responce but you don't really care, lost with the ember of outrage in your chest you hardly even notice your walking through the alley ways, fully putting your attention on shouting insults back trusting that Ein could handle leading you.

That's until a stone, the size of a grown man's fist is robbed into the center of your fourhead. Your head slams back from the impact a shout torn from your throat, hands flying up to where the stone hit getting covered in sticky warmth, crimson staining your hands. The world slows and there's only the sound of rushing wind in your ears as adrenaline courses through you. You've certainly been in more dangerous situations like this but normally your aware your getting into a fight and have a DAMN helmet on. You hardly notice the men approach and grab your arm. You hardly feel the deep, sharp inhale from Ein against your back. Then, Eins Katar comes down and seperates the man's hand at the wrist. You blink the blood out of your eyes, no longer sure how much of it was from your head wound and how much from the screaming man's arm, his hand goes slack and falls from your wrist to the floor.

Ein pushes you behind him and steps forward. Cloak thrown over top of you. Long black tail is puffed and wagging slowly.. menacingly ears pinned back and deep dark growl emanates from his chest Katar of his left hand bloodstained and he pulls out the one for his right. You're stuck, staring as what follows is a bloodbath. Gut wrenching even for a mercenary, the level of cruelty and pure bloodlust. The stones of the alley are soaked, and you're certain the men must be drained at this point.

You stare at the back of a hulking man, breathing heavy from not from exertion with his stamina... Rage... adrenaline... excitement? You can hardly believe this is your Ein. Who was so quiet, shy, and easily flustered. The Werewolf who yelped and begrudgingly required you to comfort him. You knew the moon would boost his ferocity, but this.. felt like much more than that. And yet while you're lost, head still spiraling with your thoughts, when his ears perks and his head turns Silver eyes meeting your own.

He's in front of you before long. Hands cupping your face, ears pinned back as he looks you over, carefully inspecting your eyes and the gash across your forehead blood-stained hands gentle yet firm manuvering your head as he pleases.

"By Menphias sword" Ein whispers as he looks you over "Are you okay?? Don't you know your name? Where you are??" He shouts off questions that you fail to awnser for the moment. Attempting to gaze past him at the body's or...parts that lay on the ground. Your cheeks are squeezed a little harder nails pressing causing your eyes to snap to Eins Gray ones. Now wide and without light... a slight, green tinge swims through them. His voice is eerily still as he speaks.

"Are you scared of me?"

#mcd #aphblr #aphverse #aphmau mcd #minecraft diaries #mcd x reader #minecraft diaries x reader #ein mcd #ein aphmau #ein x reader

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dioslesbianwife · 27 days ago

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Ok, here’s a complete, in one peace version of the ask I gave you in your messages.

Could you please make a Rohan x reader one where BOTH of them are mutual yanderes and are both complete freaks?

I actually got some specifics about the reader in the ficfic (and, yes, I want it to be a fanfic) so here they are.

The reader is just as freaky and deranged as Rohan. The reader (who is also female) is also a famous writer who writes horror novels and Rohan once made a one-shot of her work.

She is also a stand user Who’s stand name is I Monster (named after the band, of course) who’s power allows her to possess people and objects and have them do whatever she wants. She can even possess other stands to have them fight against their own user. She eventually gets shot by the golden arrow but she was already a stand user at birth so it causes her stand to gain a new ability called “Who is She” (named after the I monster song, obviously) which allows her to copy the abilities of any stand she possesses, although she can only copy one ability at a time.

There are two types of possession that I Monster can do. Partial possession and full possession. Partial possession is is when the target is possessed but (if the target is a living being) is still conscious and still thinks that all of their actions actions are of their own will when in reality the reader is controlling them like a puppet. In fact, when the reader is Partially possessing something or someone, she actually makes hand movements that make her look like she’s puppeteering her target, and she actually kinda is, strings (that only other stand users can see) and all. She can actually partially possess multiple targets at once, although, she can currently only partially possess two targets and if she partially possesses any more then that she ends up getting exhausted. Fun fact, the reader actually used partial possession to kill Kira by partially possessing the ambulance driver into backing up onto Kira and running him over. Full possession is your classic type of possession where the reader basically enters the target’s body and takes full control of them. She can only fully possess one target at a time.

Not counting the strings, which glow a pretty violet color, I Monster doesn’t have a physical form, BTW.

The reader is EXTREMELY protective of Rohan (which Rohan doesn’t mind) and anyone who tries to harm him will HEAVILY pay the price. If it’s of of Rohan’s allies or “friends” (like Josuke or Koichi), she will let them live, but not without a severe beating (as with Josuke) or a good scolding (as with Koichi) but if the person would DARE try to hurt her Rohan was a complete stranger or an enemy, they will pay with their lives and would be killed in the most horrific and gruesome of ways. Rohan doesn’t mind this. In fact, he sometimes JOINS the reader in her vengeful, wrath fueled moments of carnage.

In terms of looks, the reader would have long, pointy nails and long, straight and silky, yet slightly messy hair with a slender build. She is also be on the taller side in terms of height and decently sized “front bumpers” [if you know what I mean (they’re medium large in a realistic way)] She’s very beautiful and attractive, but also incredibly creepy. Rohan considers the reader’s body proportions to be absolutely perfect and unlike anything he’s ever seen.

As said before, the reader is a famous writer who writes horror novels. The horror of these novels are usually gothic, yet also somehow Eldridge, psychological, and supernatural at the same time. It’s like a mix between World of Horror and Fear and Hunger (Those are both indie horror games and you can look them up if you don’t know what they are, just be prepared to see some really freaky sh*t, ESPECIALLY from Fear and Hunger) and these novels are NOT for the faint of heart. All her work is loved worldwide for its uniqueness, creativity, interesting tones, and overall quality. Rohan actually took some inspiration from one of the reader’s novels for a one-shot he made and even made a one-shot of one of the reader’s books itself.

In terms of personality, The reader is very intelligent and is incredibly hard to fool and outwit. Trying to play mind games with her would DEFINITELY end up backfiring HORRIBLY. She is also surprisingly kind and caring, unlike her lover, Rohan, although sometimes to an unnerving degree. She would DEFINITELY nurse any sick and/or injured baby bird she finds back to health. However, if that poor bird was already dead before she reaches it, that’s when things start getting a bit, disturbing.

The reader, obviously for the sake of her work, often dissects any dead animals she finds, whether they’re roadkill, victims of predation, or anything else. She would never kill or torture an animal or dissect them alive, that would be too cruel. THAT’S WHAT PEOPLE WHO HARMED HER DEAR ROHAN ARE FOR…

Talking with the reader, if one is even brave enough to do so, starts out surprisingly pleasant, but, eventually, and especially if you ask how she gets inspiration for her work (but it’s likely to happen with any conversation that’s had with her) things get really creepy as she starts talking about unsettling things and themes like human fear and it’s origins, lobotomy, insanity, torture, cannibalism, humanity’s lust for violence and the suffering of others, and other insane sh*t that would make how such a sweet and kind woman could be so messed up.

However, if you harm the reader’s beloved Rohan, her sweet and kind personality will disappear and she will hunt you down to the ends of the earth and she will see too it that the end of your existence by her hands will be a slow and excruciatingly painful. When in murder mode, the reader is extremely sadistic and unfeeling, only wanting to make you suffer the consequences of hurting her hunny bun. The reader’s victims are killed in extremely painful and horrifying ways and are GUARANTIED to leave a lot of blood and gore. In fact, some of the murders are ether from or end up appearing in the reader’s books (she’s a horror writer, remember?). Sometimes, and by I mean usually, she uses her stand, I Monster, to assist in the murder. Whether it’s possessing someone to kill the targeted victim (usually someone dear to the victim to add some extra emotional and psychological damage) or to possess the victim and/or the objects around the victim to have them die in a horrible “accident”. Sometimes, Rohan is allowed to join the reader in her “punishment servings”.

Due to her high intelligence, as well as her stand, the reader is always able to have the kills never be traced to her or Rohan and have no one ever suspect them, not even their closest friends.

In terms of ratings, for the ship relationship and romance, I prefer it to be G to T at highest. Rohan and the reader are implied to have had “intimate moments” before, but, other then that, I want most of their relationship to be SFW.

In terms of gore and violence, on the other hand, you can go as nuts as you want and don’t need to hold back, just as long as the gore doesn’t get sexual.

Also, bonus facts, the reader loves gardening and is AMAZING at housework, like cooking and cleaning. If the reader and Rohan are married (you don’t have to make them to), then the reader is DEFINITELY a housewife. The reader also loves sweet foods and desserts.

They’re both f*cked up psychopaths and they’re f*cked up psychopaths in love.

I want them to be in an established relationship but also briefly describing how they first met and when they fell in love and confessed to each other. Also, the reader was a novelist BEFORE they went, and later moved, to Morioh. The reader had originally planned on just going there to get some inspiration due to Morioh being supernatural phenomena central, but everything completely changed when she and Rohan met for the first time. It was freaky and f*cked up love at first sight. They have HEARD of each other and have seen each other’s works before, but it wasn’t until they physically met each other in the flesh that things started rolling along.

As for when the events of the fic take place, probably some time during or just a little bit after DiU.

surw, thanks for requesting and hope you enjoy-

The air in Morioh felt strange when you first arrived.

Like something was crawling beneath the surface of everything. It was why you'd come, really. Your agent hadn’t understood it- why a world-renowned author of horror would abandon her mansion in Tokyo for some no-name town in the middle of nowhere- but it made sense to you. Something about this place called to you. The ghosts here weren’t polite or ancient or shy. They were hungry. And you wanted to feed them.

It was late spring when you met him.

The infamous Rohan Kishibe. You’d seen his work, of course- he’d even once made a one-shot of your book, The Garden That Grows the Rot. It had been… competent. There were liberties you’d never have taken, things you’d done better, but it was deliciously arrogant. You respected that. You admired it.

But meeting him in person? That had been a different story.

You were both at a used bookstore. Reaching for the same volume- an out-of-print edition of Neurosis and Its Sins: Volume IV. You touched hands. Your gazes met. His eyes narrowed. You smiled.

“I expected you to be shorter,” you said.

“I expected you to be less pretentious,” he replied.

You fell in love instantly.

It wasn’t romantic. Not at first. It was fascination. Curiosity. An urge to peel him apart and see what kind of mind oozed beneath his skin. But Rohan was the same. Always the same. You caught him trailing you. Sketching you. Once, he even broke into your home and read through your drafts- left notes in the margins. You caught him, of course. Let him know with a quick little tug on a certain old woman’s wrist outside the bakery that he was not the only one with power.

“I Monster,” you whispered aloud to him that night, perched on your windowsill in a silk robe speckled with ink stains. “That’s its name.”

The violet strings floated lazily in the dark like cobwebs in candlelight.

“I want you to know what it feels like,” you added softly, “when someone else controls your story.”

That was the night he kissed you.

Now, years later, you lived together in the mansion on the hill.

Your gardens were thriving. Tulips, dahlias, corpse lilies. The smell of blood and honeysuckle clung to your house like perfume. You cooked, cleaned, made pastries, and sometimes dissected whatever dead thing you found on your walks. Rohan didn’t care. He loved your strange habits. He adored how perfect your hands looked while slicing into flesh, admired how you stared at the insides like they were poetry.

And Rohan… You didn’t deserve a muse like him. Beautiful, self-righteous, cruel, and so smart he made you dizzy. You’d paint your nails and listen to his rants about manga and morality, and then you’d both laugh about how the postman still hadn’t been found.

(He’d made the mistake of commenting on the “garbage smell” coming from your compost bin. You hadn’t even needed to fully possess him- just a twitch of the fingers, a whisper in his mind, and he was stepping in front of a train. Rohan helped you clean the mess. He kissed your neck afterward and told you your nails looked divine.)

You were already a Stand user when the Arrow came.

You found it during a walk through Morioh’s outer woods, buried in the decaying body of a cat. It was calling you, whispering promises. Your Stand, I Monster, writhed inside your head with excitement. You touched the tip.

The pain was exquisite.

You woke three days later with a new power pulsing in your skull.

“Who is She.” That was its name. A gift. A curse. The next time you possessed someone, your fingers ached- and then surged with power. Echoes of other Stands filtered through your nerves. Rohan watched you with wide, delighted eyes.

“You’re the only woman who’s ever scared me,” he said.

You laughed. “I think I’ll steal Star Platinum next.”

Josuke tried to lecture Rohan about you once.

“He can’t even talk around her!” he yelled, frustrated. “You’ve changed, man! You used to be cold and annoying, but now you’re just- gone! She’s got you on a leash!”

So, you showed him what a leash looked like.

Violet strings burst from your fingertips, delicate and lovely as spider silk. Josuke’s body twisted. Contorted. He fought you, sure- but you only needed partial possession to show him how much it hurt to try and “save” Rohan.

You didn’t kill him. Of course not.

Koichi was smarter.

“I, uh, don’t want to get involved,” he said, backing away. “I think you’re a lovely couple.”

You smiled at him. Kissed his cheek. “Good boy.”

Enemies didn’t get off so easy.

There was a man once- some random, forgettable killer with a blade Stand who thought Rohan was an easy target.

You watched him from across the alleyway, puppeteering his mother from a balcony above. Just enough strings. Just enough force. She screamed as her own limbs betrayed her, sprinting toward him, blade in hand. You made her apologize the whole time. Made her cry for hurting her baby.

He died weeping.

You didn’t smile. You never smiled when it came to protecting Rohan. Only pain mattered. Only fear. You recorded the sound of his sobs. Used it as background noise while writing your next chapter.

Rohan said it added “authenticity.”

You weren’t normal people.

Your love wasn’t normal love.

He loved your mind. You loved his ego. You bathed in blood together, edited each other’s drafts, fed each other cake while planning murders. You weren’t good. You weren’t redeemable.

But you were perfect.

Rohan once drew a version of you in a wedding dress, stitched from the skin of your enemies, blood still dripping from the veil. You framed it above your bed.

You wrote a poem about him once. Called it My Spine, His Fingers. It was rejected by several magazines for being “obscene.”

You laughed for days.

Sometimes, when you sat together in silence- just you, Rohan, the warm breeze through your open window- you’d reach over and stroke his cheek.

“I would unmake the world for you,” you whispered.

“I know,” he replied, curling an arm around your waist. “But let’s start with Morioh first.”

You kissed him.

#jojo's bizarre adventure #rohan x reader #kishibe rohan #rohan kishibe #yandere

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gaylienz · 6 months ago

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*bangs pots and pans together* wake up iz fandom wake up! we are DONE harassing each other for ridiculous things! we are DONE being assholes to one another! we are now going to return to our regularly scheduled program. we are going to do what fandoms are meant to do--have fun and chew on canon until its nigh unrecognizable!

anyone who wants to keep policing how adults with critical thinking skills interact with fictional cartoon characters can go hang out in the 'No Fun' Zone. literally if you're genuinely ACTUALLY upset and think there are some kind of inherent morals to shipping--I don't really know what to say at this point. This isn't even pro/anti shipping. This is just using the power of the human mind to know the difference between reality and fiction, between genuine harm to others and playing dolls, between physically harming someone and writing stories...

If you want to control how other people act and what they do then you'll always be left wanting.

if invader zim has some kind of moral, its that the universe is chaotic and impossible to predict or control. if IZ has any moral, its that resiliency is vital in the face of that uncaring universe. if IZ has any moral, its that people are NOT EVIL or monstrous or good or bad or simple at all--but people are often very stupid (and very intelligent), and just PEOPLE, doing their best despite it all.

this fandom is only a hostile place if we make it one. and i dont want the kind of place imagined by so many of the newcomers to this fandom--this like sterile, ultra-sanitized, morally acceptable version of IZ and the fandom. if you came in during the ETF wave....take a moment and examine your biases. and rethink before you decide to essentially outright hate anyone who likes something different from you.

anyway----all of this to say that i miss you IZ fandom. I came back and so many really awesome people are gone bc of the carnage. and the history im finding is really disappointing. so much cool stuff, cool ideas, cool people and so much of all gone now.

but hey if you're still here and just want to chew on these characters and play in this buck-wild space with me....i love you <3

#cupid.txt #im throwing fuel onto the fire of this fandom #idk how yet but im dragging people along with me #i saw someone say this fandom was dead on reddit and i wanna cry bc nOO #it is like its main character--it cannot be killed #it can be decimated sure #but like ZiM....we must rise #invader zim

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thenaiads · 5 months ago

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Hope and Nightmares

@alterdnbweek

Day 16: Pirates AU; enemies to lovers; Day 17: Non-human; hurt/comfort;

......................

Before starting this I need to explain a little this Au!!!

This is a Crossover of the book series universe "The Guardians of Childhood" (even known as "Rise Of The Guardians").

The story takes place after the Fearlings, Shadows, and Nightmares (here for info) break from their prison and start spreading chaos and destruction in the Universe, guided by the newborn Nightmare King on the massive ship Nightmare Galleon (yes, space pirates guys).

A big thanks to @mistythedritten for the idea XD

Once again I apologize for any grammar errors, I did my best. If you don't understand something tell me so I can correct and change things 😭😭😭

..........................

The cells in the galleon were something really horrible, they were small, and cold, with nothing to lie down on, or even pass the time.

The only company were of occasional Fearlings that observed it from the shade, as a kind of exotic animal … or a delicious banquet.

"How is our dear guest doing today?", asks a hidden figure in the shadows.

"Fuck. It's here.", thinks a young man with pink hair.

Stay calm Techno, he can sense your fear. You need to be calm.

"Very well Sir Dream, but I will not lie about my review for this place, I fear you will have to settle for two stars at most", it should not be so easy to fall back into the old habits with the being in front of him

"That's not my name Sir Technoblade," said the figure, their voice closer than before

"Oh right, my apologies I had forgotten Your Highness, the name you use is "Epiales the King of Nightmares", correct?", as the young man ends the phrase, the figure finally comes out of the shade revealing a pale-ciner face, white hair, and two silver eyes (too expressive and alive for the corpse that they were using) that had some gold around the pupils.

Fun, they look like a solar eclipse. How fitting.

"Exactly, very well! I see that your brain activities are still all intact, and after weeks of torture by my Nightmares no less, I'm glad.", he said with a cheerful voice and a sweet smile, a twisted version of his original owner.

"I mean, the nightmares are surely unpleasant but, nothing that cannot be managed in the morning once awake."

"Really? Last night's screams say the opposite, but it seems that I have to commit more!", the shadow man continues with a tone typical of someone who talks about something fun to an old friend.

"Please stop."

"Oh? Do you give up then?"

"No, just… stop using his face in that way, Fearling."

"…"

"Sir Dream was… a valiant warrior and friend for many, kill him and using his corpse as a marionette is already horrible, but using his face and his voice? This is low even for demons like you!"

"You forgot some important things in your description, general."

"And, what would it be?"

"You forgot to mention "lover" and "possible future husband", those simple words were like a sword in the general's stomach.

"Dream and I are not… we weren't…", it took a lot of willpower to keep calm and continue the conversation.

"Don't lie! Not to me, not when I can sniff any idiocy is about to get out of your mouth! He was as many things for you... as you were for him."

"What would you know about these things, monster?", the pikette said the last words with all the poison and anger that the man was capable of.

"More than you give me credit, dear general," said calmly the nightmare king, with a look of something that looked like empathy, it was an odd thing to see for a dark being like him.

"Why do you tell me all this?"

"I would like to offer you an agreement, general."

"And, would it be?"

"Better accommodation, better food if possible, and in return total surrender… and a place by my side"

"Are you serious?"

"I am."

"What kind of madness makes you believe that I would accept? That I would betray my companions?!"

"Even if I said that war and carnage are not my goals in all this?"

"Oh yes, I totally believe it, and I'm sure that the inhabitants of the three planets that you devoured and drained the light do it too!"

"Planets where I left some survivors if I am not mistaken, because they were not my main goal but, as you said now, their light were. I admit that I could have gone to a frenzy but, I think it is justifiable after centuries of starving!" "Or, do you want to deny even this truth, general?"

"I'm still not betraying anyone."

"Not betray but abandon. I'm asking you to leave everything and everyone behind yes... but, not to betray them."

"And, why should I do it? What do I really earn?"

"The possibility of saving your people, and your family from me, my Fearlings, Nightmares, and Shadows who live on this ship."

"Didn't you say that war and carnage were not your goal?"

"Yes and I mean it, but this does not mean that I will not defend myself when the troops come, and they will do it soon or later… I can't run and hide forever, and when the battle will come I will not give them any mercy… not like I gave it to you. "

"Waoh, you make me feel so special", he said with sarcasm that he missed the contempt he felt for being. "If what you say is true then, what is your real goal?", even if it was a lie he could not stop the curiosity that this conversation aroused in the young general.

"My goal is to survive at the moment, to find a place far from the sight of the Lunanoffs and their followers, and perhaps to finally be able to live in peace, as far as I'm allowed."

"Living in peace, really? And, do you expect me to believe you? You Fearlings and Shadow Men don't know anything about living in peace, or respecting the life of others, or anything about human suffering, Shadow!" "Beings like you only know how to prey on the fear and the light of others, you are not able to experience the slightest human emotion!"

"If this is what you think then, why did you spare my life that day? You had me at your mercy, and you could get rid of me, so why?"

"Because killing you like that wouldn't get rid of you forever, you would have returned sooner or later, with a new body to wear maybe, and… you had his face, and I… I was unable to go all the way."

"Is this really the reason, general?"

"…"

"I'm not your enemy, despite what the Lunanoffs say, and I don't wanna be. If you help me you could save a lot of pain on both sides, Sir Technoblade."

Silence.

"Revenge will not give you back what you've already lost, how it will not give me back mine. And I think that by helping each other we can make something good… new opportunities perhaps?"

"You speak like one of those snobs who give away the hand of their own daughter in marriage, you know?", he said it as a way to mock the other.

"In a sense is what I am proposing, only that it is my hand I am giving."

"You. Are. Not. Him.", he was so close to losing himself to anger for hearing such a proposal, "YOU CAN'T REPLACE HIM!".

"And I'm not going to but... he meant a lot for you, to the point of sparing me, even now after a month of mental tortures you are willing to listen to me and talk to me as an equal rather than a mindless monster. None of your colleagues would do such a thing, and you know."

"…"

"Listen… I may not be him, or be human for that matter, but… when I took this body I assimilated the soul that lived in it, with some of its memories. The soul has become a part of me, as much I'm a part of it now."

"..."

"Your beloved Dream is not gone, not in the way you think and it may not return to you in the way it was before this but, it's still there."

"Lies, you are lying. You are trying to manipulate me"

"I wish I was, it would be simpler.", his gaze was turned down as if he was ashamed of this administration.

"Think about it, doesn't seems a little out of character for me to keep you alive, without trying even once to corrupt your core, and turn you into one of us? That, nightmares aside, I kept you as healthy as possible, and I'm having a conversation to find a mutual agreement that can satisfy both of us? " "Don't you think that perhaps just perhaps, what remains of your beloved is still here, and is influencing me?"

"…"

"I don't want to give you false hopes, I am not and I will never be Him, but this does not mean that things cannot change for the better from how they are now."

There was a silence full of waiting in the air, which was broken by pinkette.

"Time. I-I need time to think."

"Of course, I will give you three days to carefully think about my proposal, and I will try to give you lighter nightmares to allow you to think. Is this a good agreement for you?"

"Yes, yes, whatever."

"I will wait for you, call me if you need me or anything.", and after saying this the figure of the King of Nightmares loose in the shadow from which he had come.

And the general was left alone to think and reflect on the strange conversation he had with the Shadow King, leaving him with many questions and perhaps with the slightest hope of reuniting again with his beloved Dreamling.

#dreamsmp fanfiction #dnbxmas24 #dreamnoblade #my fanfiction #crossover

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p-artsypants · 1 month ago

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The Pale Rider (17) What a Beautiful Wedding

Pst. I reused some of the ceremony words from No, You Go First, if it sounds familiar. Once you write one convincing wedding ceremony, it's hard to start from the beginning haha

The lyrics in this chapter are obviously ‘For The Dancing and The Dreaming’ from HTTYD. And the second song is a slightly butchered version of ‘I’m on Fire’ by Stateless. I really hemmed and hawed over the words, because I wanted the song to be romantic, but not an outright love confession. So I ended up rewriting the words, but tried to emulate the feeling of the music.

Ao3

Chicken woke Astrid up at dawn, and she couldn’t be happier. Chicken survived!

She dressed in a peasant dress, and emerged from her room, slowly peeking out ahead.

All the blood and carnage from the night before was gone. No blood, no gore, only the claw marks in the door remained.

But that was enough to prove it wasn’t a nightmare.

And if it wasn’t a nightmare, that meant it was all too real, and the threat remained. Maybe not today, maybe not even soon, but Ryker would be back.

The wedding would be perfect, and then it was time to double down on solving this curse.

—-

Heather was getting dressed in the dressing room across from the chapel. There was a door under the balcony that led to the ladies’ sitting room, and that led to the dressing room.

Astrid and Ruffnut were helping, Ruff doing the buttons up on her bodice while Astrid did her hair.

“Oh, I’m so nervous,” Heather tutted. “Excited, but so nervous.”

“It’ll be fine. Rehearsal was perfect, and Gothi already blessed the union.”

“Yes, but…everyone’s coming! All those people!”

“Yeah, kinda surprised everyone RSVP’d yes.”

“It’s gotta be curiosity,” Ruff suggested.

“Dad was personally going around to make sure everyone was coming,” she chuckled weakly. “Dagur’s bummed out, since the Great Hall is closed up. Apparently he’s going to be drinking alone tonight.”

“Oh boo hoo.” Astrid chuckled. “He’s upset now, but we can hope he starts to realize his stubbornness is making him miserable. Maybe he’ll learn to be happy for you.”

“That’d be nice,” Heather smirked.

Astrid put the final pin in her crown of laurel and juniper and took a step back. “Perfect! Oh, you look so beautiful!”

Heather blushed, and ducked her head. “I hope Fishlegs thinks so.”

“I know he will.”

The conversation was interrupted as a loud crack sounded at the front door.

“Sounds like the guests are starting to arrive. I’m going to see if the Rider needs any help directing people.”

“Isn’t Tuff the usher?” Ruff asked.

“Yeah, but I just want to double check.”

“Okay, hurry back!” Heather begged.

“You’ll be fine, honey.” Astrid laughed as she left to the foyer balcony. From up here, she saw the Rider at the front door, welcoming Bucket and Mulch inside.

She hadn’t had time to see him this morning after their hasty breakfast, but didn’t expect anything out of the ordinary. Instead, he had donned a dark gray fur cape, held in place with gold pendants and a gold chain. She could see he wore black linen pants and a shiny boot instead of his usual armor.

He looked nice.

As Bucket and Mulch started up the stairs, following the signs in place, she met the Rider’s gaze.

He took a step towards her. “What a lovely creature that haunts my balcony,” he called.

Bucket and Mulch looked to where he was talking and offered wolf whistles.

“Oh stop,” she waved them off. “Did you need any help?”

“No, Tuff’s got it under control, surprisingly. He’s a muttonhead, but when he gets focused on something, he really does it well. Apparently when he was kicked off deserts, he got into the seating plan.”

“Well, if you get overwhelmed, just knock.”

“Aye aye, captain,” he saluted.

“Hey.” She called over her shoulder at the last second. “You look really nice.”

He placed his hand over his heart. “Really? Thank you. I even combed my hair.”

She heard Bucket ask, “he has hair?”

When Astrid returned, Oswald was with Heather, talking softly to her. They both smiled, teary-eyed.

It made Astrid miss her own father.

She laid her hand on the doorframe, and closed her eyes. Her father’s spirit was trapped in the castle, somewhere, and maybe if she looked for him, she’d find him.

Or maybe he could only reach her in her dreams.

Over the next half hour, Astrid ran between the foyer, chapel, and dressing room. She even checked in on the cooks in the kitchen. All the guests were trickling into place, words of awe being shared between them, to Astrid’s relief. Tuff indeed had seating on lockdown, and made sure everyone had a spot.

In between her hustling, she spared a glance at the painting between the stairs.

It was covered with a sheet.

She breathed a long, deep sigh, which ended in a little cough. For today, she would pretend that there was no curse. There was no peril, no suffering.

Just for today.

—

The ceremony was the most beautiful she’d ever seen. Heather and her father entered the chapel from the back room to Sven playing on the Nyckelharpa.

Fishlegs waited at the altar and as soon as Heather entered, his lips started quivering.

She was a dream. The bride walked on air, glowing in the candlelight and haloed by the blue stained glass. Joy seemed to seep out of her very being, like she was filled to the brim and her lithe frame couldn’t hold it all. She came forward and stood with her groom, both of them sharing a gaze that spoke of melting hearts and long held desires.

Gothi scratched into the sand on the floor as Gobber interpreted.

First, they were both anointed with blood, just a touch smeared on their foreheads. Then rings were exchanged, Heather put on Fishlegs’ and Fishlegs put on her’s.

Gothi wrapped a thin red fabric around their clasped hands.

Then it was time for the vows.

Beloved, I seek to know of you, and ask of the Gods and Goddesses that I be given the wisdom to see you as you are, and love you as a Mystery.

Almost instinctively, Astrid sought out the Rider, looking over the room for her friend. In the chaos preceding the ceremony, she had lost track of him.

I will take joy in you, I delight in the love of you. You are to me the whispering of the tides, the seduction of summer’s heat.

He stood in the ballroom, just outside the doorway towards the back. Always in the back, always out of sight, always hiding from everyone’s view. Even in his own home.

You are my friend, my lover, grow old and wise with me, as I will do with you! A life before us of rainbows and sunsets, and a willingness to share in happiness and in sadness.

She didn’t mean to stare, but she found herself interested in his reaction. Would he have that longing as he had earlier? Or maybe he would just be content and happy for his friends?

I love you, I adore you.

The Rider caught her staring, and turned his head towards her, his stare intense and heavy.

“Ye, Fishlegs Ingerman, child of Odin, dost taketh Heather Berzerker, daughter of Freyja, to be his betrothed. And, by utterance of these words, this union may only be broken in the Halls of Valhalla. You may kiss your bride.”

The assembled crowd cheering as Heather and Fishlegs embraced broke Astrid’s trance, and she leapt to her feet with applause.

The newlyweds shared a loving grin before turning to their guests and beaming.

With the ceremony over, Astrid was back to running around. Grimuld, the barkeeper from the Great Hall, was already at the counter in the parlor, where the infinite decanters had been moved to. The guests made their leisurely way out from the chapel and either found their seats in the dining room, or found a drink and milled about in the foyer or ballroom.

Music filled the castle, though Astrid only saw Sven on the Nickylharpa and Hackjaw on the drums. But there were other instruments playing, and she didn’t see them anywhere.

Sparing a moment, she snagged the Rider by the cloak. “Where’s that music coming from?”

“Hm? Sven and Hackjaw,” he pointed with his thumb.

“Well yes, but the rest of the music! The flute and the other strings!”

“Oh that! That’s the castle. I brought the instruments down from the music room to see if any of the musicians knew how to play them. Once they started practicing, the instruments played along.”

Astrid’s jaw dropped. “That’s wild.”

“Wild magic.” He shrugged.

Then people were asking for help finding their seats and where to find the restroom and she was swept into being the wedding coordinator again.

There were several boons to holding an event in an enchanted castle. One was the carts that appeared from the kitchen, laden with plates of food, and rolled on their own to tables to serve dinner. It made Astrid’s job a lot easier, since she wasn’t the one having to coordinate the serving. That was all the Ingermans and Berzerkers, as tradition dictated.

The dress was surprisingly comfortable. When she had seen it on the dressform, she feared it’d be difficult to move around in, especially since it had no sleeves. But thanks to the twins expert tailoring, it fit perfectly and stayed on through all the little fires she had to put out.

She took a moment to breathe, to soak in the evening, and enjoy herself. This was her best friends’ wedding, and the first event in her new home.

Stoick and Valka were in paintings in the ballroom, paintings that hadn’t been there earlier, but the Rider added so his parents could be included. She could hear Stoick’s booming laughter as he talked with a group of guests.

The Rider was across the room, speaking with an elderly woman, Heidi. She giggled about something and gave him a playful slap to the arm.

Heather and Fishlegs were on the dancefloor, holding each other tightly as they swayed to the music.

“Could I have a dance?” Snotlout asked, sneaking up on her.

“What are you doing here?” She asked, not unkindly. “Aren’t you supposed to be with the carriages?”

“Oh the dragons have it all figured out on their own. I started it, and they figured out what I wanted and brought everyone up on their own. I’m sure they can do it in reverse. Now, a dance?”

She didn’t see the harm in it, and offered her hand.

He took it, and guided her out onto the floor, draping her other hand on his shoulder as he placed his on her waist.

“Gods Astrid, you look absolutely breathtaking,” He said, honestly. “Like…wow. Have you been working out?”

“I’ve been keeping up with my training, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she laughed slightly, which turned into a cough. She’d been coughing all day, but had been so distracted by the wedding that she didn’t pay attention to it.

“Uh…” Snotlout began.

“I’m fine,” Astrid promised before he could ask.

“Did your mom have a cough?”

She sighed, a little growl in the voice as she was getting tired of people asking about it. “Yes, she did, but what my mom had wasn’t contagious. This is just a little cough.” She turned her head quickly and caught the cough with her mouth partly closed. “Or maybe it’s what Oswald had.”

“That was nasty too.”

“Either way, I feel fine otherwise. How goes the mail service?”

He cocked an eyebrow at the obvious change in topic, but let it go. “Me and Hookfang are unstoppable! The first day, people were wary about seeing the dragons around, but they’re warming up. I think it helps that us, uh, normal people are riding them.”

“You mean, uncursed?”

“Yeah, we can go with that. Is that the politically correct term?”

“You’re terrible.”

Snotlout just shrugged.

“How goes it with Ruffnut?” She smirked.

“Ugh, don’t get me started! I thought for sure she’d go for me, but then this dude named Throck started coming with the traders and she’s been flirting with him non-stop.”

“Bummer.”

“But you know what? He brings out the weird in her that I just can’t get behind. When I talk to her after she’s seen him, it’s all bunions and fungus and I just can’t, Astrid.”

“So what are you going to do? Be a lonely bachelor?”

He shook his head. “Fishface said if I was really nice and helpful, he would introduce me to his cousin Minden. She’s supposed to be here, but I haven’t seen her. This place is packed!”

“Are you sure he didn’t just say that to make sure you were in your best behavior?”

“I’m sure, because he knows I’ll ruin his life if it was a lie.”

“That’s true. I wonder what she’s like. What did she do to him to make him subject her to you?”

He glared at her. “I don’t know why I ever liked you. You’re such a bitch.”

Astrid laughed, interrupting their dance to throw her head back with glee. Once she caught her breath, she admitted, “only to you, Snotlout.”

“Right right. You’re an angel to His Creepiness.”

“He’s kind to me. Why wouldn’t I be kind to him?”

“Are you sure it’s just being nice? You don’t think you might have a tiny crush on him?”

She rolled her eyes. “What is it with everyone trying to convince me that I’m in love with the Rider?”

“Oh, others are doing it too?” He asked, a smug smile on his face.

“The twins and Heather were bothering me about it earlier this week.”

“Then maybe…do you think we all see something you don’t?”

“Maybe I think you all have to get your eyes checked.” She sighed. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told them. He isn’t able to love. He told me himself. It’s part of the curse.”

“He’s a filthy liar.”

“And you would know, you lie more than anyone else I know.”

He turned his nose up. “I just tell people what they want to hear so they look favorably on me.”

“Oh? And how is that working for you?”

“Honestly, about 50/50.”

She laughed again, and then let him twirl her as the song ended.

“Seriously though,” he gestured his head at the Rider. “Give the guy a dance.”

“I’ll dance with him if he wants to, but he can ask me too.”

“He won’t. Too shy.” But whatever else he was going to say was interrupted as he spotted something behind her. “Hey Fishface! You gonna introduce me, or what?!” He squeezed Astrid’s shoulder as he moved past her.

Astrid turned to see Fishlegs and Heather talking with an unfamiliar young woman, likely this Minden that Snotlout had mentioned.

“Ahem,” a new voice spoke behind her.

Curious, Astrid turned back to find Tuffnut, of all people. “Tuff?”

“If you’re dancing with everyone, might as well dance with me.”

“Everyone? I just danced with Snotlout!”

“Yeah, the bar is low.”

“HA!” She laughed. “Fine, I’ll dance.”

He took her hand and led her onto the dancefloor, a mischievous kind of smile on his face. He wasn’t a very good dancer, as he kind of swung her around and stepped off beat.

Astrid just laughed as she futilely stumbled with him.

“So what’d you have? The chicken? The Sea bass?”

“I had a few bites of the chicken, but I’ve been so busy, I wasn’t able to sit down and eat.”

He gasped, aghast. “You must be starving!”

“Honestly, not really. Haven’t been hungry lately. What did you get?”

“The Sea Bass! My favorite! Of course, the way Hofma prepares it isn’t nearly as good as our Salt-Encrusted Sea Bass.”

“I’ve had your salt bass, Tuff, and you’re delusional.”

He continued like she hadn’t insulted his cooking. “Oh, but the artichokes? Those were delicious. And the potatoes au gratin. A wedding staple, but they do it so well.”

Astrid just smiled with a nod, as she caught herself before she tripped in his arrhythmic steps.

“So, you gonna ask Melvin to dance?”

“Who?!”

“Your cryptid boytoy, of course! I know he wants to.”

“The Rider? I mean, maybe he does. But maybe he doesn’t.”

“He’s been staring at you all evening. Barely able to keep his eyes off of you.”

“Tuff…”

“I’m just saying! Now’s your chance to find out if Egbert really likes you!”

“Why do you care?”

“Are you kidding!?” Tuff damn near shouted. “This isn’t any ole romance story, this is the beautiful maiden of the town and the freaky creature in the woods! I love weird stuff! This is the most interesting thing to happen in town in years! You’re killing me!”

“Hey, tone it down, will you?!” She hissed. “There’s nothing happening with us. He’s my best friend, and you and everyone else need to chill out!”

“Okay okay!” He chuckled. “Touchy!”

She glared at him, but said nothing more.

“What about Marvin?”

“Are you still trying to guess his name?”

“Yeah, you said that’s what would break the curse. I’m good at naming things! What about Torvald?”

Astrid smiled at that. She had mentioned she was trying to find his name. It was nice that Tuff remembered. “I don’t know, I think I get an ‘H’ vibe from him.”

“Horace?”

“No. No way.”

“Higginbottom.”

“As a first name?”

“You never know…Horst?”

“Tuff, I think—“

“Habbakuk.”

“—that I probably have to—“

“Hasenfeffer?”

“—find it and not guess.”

“Ahh killjoy.”

The song came to an end and the two bowed to each other.

“Quick! This is your chance!” Tuff grabbed her by the shoulders and started pushing her to the other side of the room.

“What? For what?”

“To ask Xavier to dance!”

“Seriously? And that name doesn’t actually start with an ‘H’.”

“Seriously serious! Come on, Astrid! Or do you not want to dance with tall, dark, and spooky?”

“I wouldn’t mind—“

“‘Wouldn’t mind’ or ‘want to’?”

She sighed, caught. “Want to…”

“Then saunter up to him, shimmy your shoulders a little, bat your eyelashes and give him a saucy wink. Then he’ll ask you.”

Astrid sighed. “Fine. You know what? I’ll dance with the Rider. And maybe I can get you all off my back!”

“Go get ‘em, Tiger!”

Astrid shook her head as she waded into the crowd. She thought she heard Tuffnut yell something about ‘Eldritch Babies’ but she couldn’t be sure.

She spotted the Rider, standing by himself at the corner of the room. She could tell the second he spotted her, because the flames in his eyes doubled, the chandelier dimmed, and the music stopped.

The assembled looked toward the Rider, who was in charge of the magic of the castle, and saw he was looking at Astrid. He began to walk towards her, his gaze never wavering.

Apparently, a lot of people were invested in this as the crowd backed away and gave them space.

She didn’t follow any of Tuffnut’s advice, as she just kind of smiled at him awkwardly.

He reached out his hand toward her, silently asking for a dance.

Had he watched her with Tuff and Snot? Had he been waiting?

She slid her hand into his, his touch feeling like—-

Warmth.

Not quite as warm as Tuffnut and Snotlout’s hands had been, but so vastly different from the bone chill from when they first met. It startled her, and she looked up to stare at him, to see if he noticed.

Someone started whistling a little tune.

The Rider hummed and shook his head.

“What?”

“That’s dad. He wants us to show everyone how we used to dance.”

“I don’t…I don’t know any old dances.”

“It’s alright. Just follow my lead.”

From the wall, Stoick started singing, his voice bringing the conversation in the room down to a low murmur.

I’ll swim and sail, on savage seas.

With ne’er a fear of drowning.

And gladly ride the waves of life

If you will marry me

The Rider led her to the middle of the room, but instead of moving her hand to his shoulder, he held his forearm out.

“Lock your arm with mine,” he said softly.

She did so, and then he began to move. A quick walk in a circle, while she mirrored him. Then they switched directions.

No scorching sun nor freezing cold

Will stop me on my journey

If you will promise me your heart

And love me for eternity

The music started to pick up then, accompanying Stoick’s voice. The tempo seemed to pick up too, and the Rider moved a little quicker, more deliberately, or maybe he was just confident.

Valka sang the next verse.

My dearest one, my darling dear

Your mighty words astound me

But I've no need for mighty deeds

When I feel your arms around me

The dance was so much different than she expected. Moves had changed with the generations, and this dance had a lot more in common with a battle than the swaying she was more familiar with.

But I would bring you rings of gold

I'd even sing you poetry

And I would keep you from all harm

If you would stay beside me

It was fun though. A little clumsy, a little stiff, but it didn’t bother her. He twirled her, and then enfolded her in his arms while they skipped to the music.

I have no use for rings of gold

I care not for your poetry

I only want your hand to hold

I only want you near me

Astrid felt laughter bubble up in her chest as he instructed her to kick her legs out, tapping between his as they held each other’s wrists. It was weird and new and uncoordinated, but she didn’t mind. Not at all.

To love and kiss to sweetly hold

For the dancing and the dreaming

Through all life's sorrows and delights

I'll keep your laugh inside me

It should have been awkward and uncomfortable, dancing without direction or practice in front of so many people, but even in her stumbles, her missteps, her confusion, he was right there with her. Ready to take her hand and be awkward with her.

For a moment, she looked over his shoulder and saw her friends standing together, watching with big smiles. As they made eye contact, they all threw thumbs up at her.

I'll swim and sail a savage seas

With ne'er a fear of drowning

And gladly ride the waves of life

If you will marry me!

The dance ended with him down on one knee, like he was proposing, while she sat on his leg and rested an arm around his shoulder.

The crowd cheered and clapped, and some even laughed with joy.

“Valka and I danced to that when we got married,” Stoick explained.

“It was something of a tradition,” Valka added. “A popular love song of our time. And that’s the way we used to dance too.”

Astrid got off the Rider’s knee and held her hands out to help him to his feet. Then she smoothed a hand over her dress to make sure it was all in place.

“That was fun,” Astrid beamed at the Rider. “Thank you for…well, all of it.”

The Rider hesitated a moment, his head bowed. Then he raised his hand again, his long, discolored fingers uncurling towards her. “One more?”

“Huh?”

“One more dance?” He asked softly, so softly she could barely hear him.

“Of course,” she laughed a little. “No one else I’d rather dance with.”

As she took his hand, something shifted in the air. The torches outside flared and illuminated the snow that replaced the artificial rain. Thick white flakes fell outside the window, and the light from inside the ballroom dimmed even more.

“I want to dance like you do,” he said, his voice low and quiet.

A guitar started playing, a pair of notes plucked in the quiet the crowd had fallen into. It wasn’t an instrument that was manned, rather one the castle, the Rider, was controlling.

He placed her other hand up on his shoulder, while his curled around her waist and pulled her close.

She swore she could see his profile silhouetted under the mask. His gaze was intense, and the shape of his eyes were prominent by the blaze that burst forth.

Whatever you’ve done, just bury it,

We’ll swim back down to the ocean bed…

He swept her onto the floor, long languid movements that had her skirts swishing around her legs. The voice singing was a man’s, but one she didn’t recognize. It was soft, unpracticed, and crackling.

…And find the secret place where we buried those bones,

While we explore our shipwrecks with pockets full of stones.

Her fingers curled into the fur of his cloak, pulling herself closer. The weight of his stare never left her face, as that volatile green glow drew all her attention, bewitching her as the dance went on.

I don't care where we've been tonight,

It is of no consequence, my dear.

Her heart hammered in her chest, and not just because of the effort of dancing. Her whole body tingled, boiling with an unknown sensation. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but completely out of her control.

She wanted to cough and clear her throat, but something was holding her together.

Just stay here, my arms are wide, my lover.

And the rest of the world could disappear and I wouldn't care.

The Rider’s hand on her waist drifted to her back and brushed the bare skin where the dress dipped. His touch made her face grow warm, even though there was nothing inappropriate about it.

Cause I'm on fire

It occurred to her that the singing voice was coming from the Rider. He dipped his head down by her ear and she heard him so clearly, singing just for her.

I guess I should open another bottle of wine

Light another candle and start my story over

His hand pulled her closer, so close that she was pressed against him and could feel the flames of his burning heart within his chest. The warmth surrounded her, swallowed her, and made her dizzy.

…And play the songs we sang when we buried those bones

While we explored our shipwrecks with pockets full of stones

Astrid’s eyes fluttered shut for a second, and when she opened them, the room was dark. There was only the illuminated snow from the window, discoloring them. Her dress was gray and silver, his fiery eyes stark white in the deep shadows of his empty sockets.

And they were alone. The grand ballroom was black as night and stretched on in a vast emptiness, but she wasn’t afraid, wasn’t concerned. She didn’t even care that all this had changed, like it was completely natural that it was just her and the man that held her.

I don't care where we've been tonight,

It is of no consequence, my dear.

He curled around her, enfolding her into a hug as his head lowered to her shoulder. He was so much taller than her that his embrace felt like a cocoon.

She smiled as she rested her forehead against his neck, the touch warming her face. Their dance slowed to a small sway, just a turning circle as the music went on.

Just stay here, my arms are wide, my lover.

And the rest of the world could disappear and I wouldn't care.

He slowly pulled away, returning his gaze to her face. She shivered at the magnitude of it all. This power that he had held her in a vice grip, making her weak in the knees. The music slowed, notes hanging in the air, hesitating, like the Rider often did. A breath of a moment, poised at the tip of a needle, ready to fall.

To change.

In a rush, he retook her hand and swept her into that darkness, leading her in a dance, in a swirl of skirts and cloaks as strings and violins weaved their enchanting spell.

I’m on—

What was happening? What was this overwhelming pleasure she felt through her body? What was this all consuming sensation that stilled her breath and punched her heart?

I’m on—

How did she make sure she never had to live without it?

I’m—

Astrid tried to keep her eyes fixed on him. Tried to match the emotion that poured from him. But her eyelids were heavy and her head was light.

For so long, she had convinced herself the Rider was just a man in a mask. She’d gotten used to him, and his appearance was an afterthought.

But right now, staring at the mask, seeing the fire, and being completely overwhelmed by the magic that flowed through her body, she felt like she was in the arms of an ancient being.

Fire…

Were they all right? Were her friends telling the truth? Was this moment, this effect, this feeling, all because he loved her?

I’m on fire.

Because she wasn’t sure she minded.

The music slowed again, and his voice became a whisper. Their dance came to an end with a few plinks of the guitar. Then, one final note, and it was over. The light returned, the crowd surrounded them, and everything was just as it had been a moment ago.

There was applause, wolf whistling, hollering, but she heard none of it. Astrid was shaking, overwhelmed by a sensation that something had invaded her soul. Somehow, during that dance, the Rider had reached within her, and played her heartstrings like the guitar that accompanied him.

She didn’t know how she felt, but she was certain it wasn’t the same as it had been before that dance.

The Rider took her hand and raised it under his mask, pressing a kiss to the back of her hand. “Thank you for the dance.”

“An–Anytime,” she breathed.

He stepped away from her and was swept up into the crowd.

She had her own audience to deal with as her friends were suddenly there, asking all sorts of questions.

Heather grabbed her by the arms and shook, none too gently, while a giant smile appeared on her face. “How did you do that!?”

“D-do what?”

“That dancing! That was amazing! Did you guys practice for today?”

“No?”

“You have to be lying,” said Snotlout, with his own snide grin. “He was like twirling you everywhere and picked you up and spun you around and all that stuff! That was crazy! Do you guys dance together in your free time here? Who started it?”

Astrid staggered a little, still lightheaded. The dance had been wonderful, but it hadn’t been what they were describing. In fact, she had thought it had been a little too sensual to hold the spotlight.

“Yeah,” she said absently. “We dance sometimes.” It was a lie, but she didn’t know how to explain what had happened. Was she spirited away briefly? Possessed by the magic of the castle?

It was scary, only in the idea she wasn’t quite sure what that was. But the experience was lovely, wonderful, utterly pleasurable.

So she decided not to worry about it. She couldn’t explain most of the wonderous things that happened in the castle. That something would happen to just her? Maybe it was special, a gift he was giving her.

The Rider would never hurt her. Never intentionally do anything to her. There was nothing to fear. Nothing.

And so she cherished that warmth in her chest. Savored the sacred moment between them. It was like another secret, something just for them to giggle about.

—

The wedding and reception was a complete and total success. Fishlegs and Heather had snuck away sometime during the dancing to spend their wedding night in the Rock Room. The Rider had offered them to stay for the duration of their honeymoon, but they had declined. Oswald’s wedding present for his only daughter was generous. He gave them a house.

Her house. Her childhood home that was heartlessly ripped away from her by Dagur.

But if Astrid could trust anyone with it, it was Heather and Fishlegs.

The castle was her home now, and she didn’t need the memories in that house, the good or the bad.

The ballroom was empty, save for Tuffnut sweeping (though a bit tipsy). Ruffnut and the Rider were collecting dirty plates and stacking them on the enchanted carts that would take them down to the kitchen.

Astrid was collecting the floral decorations and folding up the table clothes on the cleared tables.

“Where’s Snotlout?” Ruffnut complained loudly. “He should be helping us clean up!”

“I bet I know,” said Valka, a wry smile on her lips. “I saw him and a little miss absconding into the castle together.”

“Snotlout?” Astrid balked. “He snuck off with a girl?”

“Oh yeah!” Tuff hollered back from the other room. “He and that Minden girl were hitting it off really well! I bet they went to…” he made quotation marks with his fingers, “Talk.”

“Let’s go find them,” Ruff dropped a stack of plates none too gently on the cart. “I bet they’re making out.”

Astrid looked at the Rider, who was still and silent. “They couldn’t have gone anywhere they weren’t supposed to, right?”

He slowly looked up, sweeping his gaze over the room.

“I’ll go look. I’m sure they’re in one of the drawing rooms, or the gold guest room.”

“Or they snuck off to some place less obvious where no one would stumble upon them.” Ruffnut suggested. “A lot of the drawing rooms lead into each other, right?”

That made the Rider stand up straight. Without a word, he hurried out of the room.

“I’m sure they just went to Snotlout’s room,” Astrid concluded, though she was shaken by the Rider’s sudden departure. She tried to follow, but did so leisurely, to remain calm. “I say we just listen at the door. I’d rather not have to clean my eyes, thanks.”

“Oh come on! This is the chance to tease someone else about their love life!”

“Eh. I have plenty else to tease Snotlout about.”

At this point, they had reached the foyer, and something caught her eye. A door she’d never seen before.

The Foyer was filled with doors, all leading to various hallways and rooms, all of which she’d seen. To her right were the guest rooms, above that was the bathroom, and the top floor held the library. To her left side was the series of drawing rooms and her room, above that were dressing rooms, but above that, on the same floor she stood, there was a new door.

Not just any door, either. It was the biggest so far, and the only reason she hadn’t seen it before was that the huge curtains from the ceiling draped down in front of it. In fact, the only reason she spotted it now, was that some curious guest must have moved the curtain just enough to reveal it.

Ruffnut seemed to follow her gaze. “Or they could have gone in there? What’s that room? I don’t think you or the Rider ever showed us.”

Astrid glanced around the foyer, looking for the Rider, but he was nowhere to be seen. She gnawed on her lip. “I don’t know what’s in there…but I think I’d like to find out.”

“Ohhh sneaking around, are we?”

“Be quiet.”

Keeping her steps light, she went over to the large door and pulled the curtain back further. The door was made of intricately carved black wood, and it was at least twenty feet tall.

“There’s no sneaking around. The only place he told me not to go was the dungeon. Does this look like a dungeon door to you?”

“Nah. Too pretty.”

“Exactly. So no harm in looking.”

And yet, it felt very wrong to do so. But if there was anything she was certain about, when things felt wrong in this castle, it meant that she was getting closer to the truth.

She pushed down on the handle, but it held firm.

Locked.

“Welp, guess not.” Astrid shrugged.

“Oh come on! One little locked door, and you’re giving up? You have to know where the keys are!”

“I don’t, but I just have a feeling they tried that door, found it locked, and went somewhere else. Let’s go check the gold room.”

As she turned to walk away, she heard a click, and then a creak.

When she turned back, the door was not only unlocked, but open. The space inside was pitch black.

“Oh, I don’t like that,” Ruffnut said softly.

Something was at work here. Some entity in the castle was allowing her in. Finn? Her father? …Viggo? She wasn’t sure. But she pulled the door open and looked inside.

Not a scant bit of light. Utterly and completely dark. It smelled dusty and musty, and the air was cold like winter.

Forget Snotlout. There was a real chance that there were answers in this room, and she wasn’t passing it up!

She closed the door slightly again and went back to the ballroom to take a candle from a wall sconce. Ruffnut nudged her brother and beckoned him along, muttering something about a ‘new super spooky room’.

Astrid grabbed the candle and went back to the mystery room, a chill running down her spine as she crossed the threshold.

Even with the candle, it was still too dark to see, almost like the darkness was swallowing the light itself. A little more light arrived with the twins, but it was little help.

“What’s this supposed to be?” Tuffnut asked at full volume.

Both Astrid and Ruffnut shushed him, though neither knew why.

Astrid went to one side of the room and held the light up, while the twins went the other way. She walked on, looking for the wall, but the room just kept going. She had to be farther than the chapel now. This room didn’t make any sense.

She almost dropped the candle as the light illuminated a human face. It took her a second to realize it was marble, and just hyper realistic in the deep shadows of the room. A man, wearing a cloak, and his face was contorted in pain and fear, an expression that was downright bone chilling.

Why would anyone make that?

“Holy Odin!” Tuff shrieked, apparently finding the same thing on the other side of the room. His voice echoed in the darkness, and as Astrid turned to look at them, they were just two illuminated blips in the distance.

This room was entirely too big.

She travelled on, and found another statue, and then another, and then another. Dozens and dozens of marble statues of cloaked figures writhing in agony. Occasionally, she’d see a support column made of stone and the thickness bigger than any tree.

She couldn’t see the ceiling.

She moved along the wall of statues, still not able to find the wall. Then she reached the opposite side of the room from the door. A few more statues, some recoiling, some on their hands and knees begging.

Despite the macabre imagery, the twins were eerily silent. If even they were scared…

Then she found another statue, but this one was much older, and much bigger than the rest. It too was made of stone, like the columns, instead of marble. But it was so big, the candle only exposed its feet and bottom of its robes.

What was this place supposed to be? Some sort of horrible art gallery?

She glanced back at the door across the room, and saw a square silhouette against the light of the foyer.

Carefully, she walked towards it, keeping the candle low to watch for debris on the floor. And there was some rubble and dust, as if the room hadn’t been opened in years.

She approached the object in the center of the room, only to realize it was a wooden chair. In the greater scheme of the castle, and comparative to the rest of the furniture, this chair was so plain and simple.

But so familiar.

She brought the candle around to look, and found a sheet strewn on the seat and down to the floor, it was stained and decaying in the ravages of time.

What was she seeing? It was like two puzzle pieces struggling to connect in her sleep deprived mind. She backed up further towards the door, sweeping the light down to follow the sheet.

The handle of an odd weapon laid upon the stone floor, but it was missing its blade.

Another step and Astrid’s shoe made an awful ‘schick’ sound as it pulled from something tacky on the floor. She side-stepped whatever it was, and shone the light upon the large red stain.

A blood stain.

The floor was covered in a puddle of blood.

“This is where…” Her breath caught in her throat, a cough boiling in her lungs, and her eyes watered. She swept the light over the scene again, the pieces falling into place.

The chair was in Viggo’s painting, the sheet draped over his lap.

This room was where the Rider killed Viggo and his brother. She was looking at the murder scene. This wasn’t a story anymore, this was real, true evidence that it did happen.

And she had stepped in the blood that cursed the island.

This time she did drop the candle, as she flailed backwards, terrified, and tried to get away from the source of all the magic. She slid her foot on the dry, dusty floor, hoping to wipe it away before the curse set in and she was trapped like Valka and Stoick…or worse.

But nothing was happening. Not yet.

“Astrid?” Ruffnut asked quietly, approaching from behind. “What is it?”

Astrid just stood there, silently staring, the image searing itself into her mind, haunting her nightmares for days to come.

It wasn’t just blood she saw.

Hand prints blurred the edges. Fingers that were dragged through the vile liquid and smeared it around in frantic marks.

And the puddle obscured something else. There was a chalk circle drawn on the floor, a couple of circles really, and filled with lines and strange symbols and letters. The blood had partially spilled over it and dissolved the chalk.

She didn’t know what it meant. How long had the chalk been there? Was that actually what caused this curse?

A painful cough shook her frame, and she bent over to get it out. It stung her throat, burned her eyes, and took every muscle in her body to fight through.

But it didn’t stop. More coughs, more phlegm, more and more choking.

And never enough air.

She heard both the twins talking and patting her back. But she couldn’t respond. Only cough.

Astrid staggered towards the door. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t even attempt to. All she knew was a pain in her chest that felt like knives jabbing every which way through her ribcage.

She was so close, but her legs gave out. Her vision blurred, only allowing a hazy slit of light of the slowly closing door.

And then it all went black.

#how to train your dragon #httyd #fanfiction #hiccstrid #astrid hofferson #hiccup haddock #the pale rider

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cheemscakecat · 1 year ago

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Emesis Blue Medic Headcanon

So I’m 99% sure that Spy’s Disguise takes place before the nightmare sequence known as Emesis Blue, sometime during the height of the respawn failures.

[I’m going to talk about DID. I’m not an expert, and this post about a fictional character should never be used to self diagnose.]

The Bloody RED Engineer sabotaged the respawn machine, which led to his entire team dying for real; then he murdered a group of [supposedly] unrelated BLU engineers, who also died for real.

It’s the reason why Dr Ludwig is even in the area to work on the comatose CyberSpy.

If Emesis Blue is a dream/nightmare people’s jobs may not match with real life, but still tell us something important about them. Soldier being Spy’s assistant tells us that he likes to work in a group rather than alone, even if his teammate is a jerk.

Ludwig being the Chief Medical Advisor could imply that he was the go-to expert at the height of the respawn failures, who had to investigate and report on different accidents when he wasn’t attempting to save a patient from said failures. Whether it was killing him slowly or not, Blu wouldn’t care; not the Administrator or Jules Archibald, at the least.

Jules is shown to be callous about death in both Spy and Soldier’s nightmares, and someone who relies on other people to protect him and do his dirty work to the point he’s incapable of defending himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if he and his crew forced Medic to report on all the gory details of each respawn failure, while being unwilling to attempt to rescue patients or clean up the carnage.

Re-watching the early scenes with Scout it seems that the era of the respawn errors is long gone, and the details are highly classified. Which would explain why Scout is so uninformed about any of the other accidents, but Ludwig had a nightmare that his friend suffered one himself.

Medic’s body language at the Medical office and in the ambulance makes it feel like the doctor wouldn’t be answering all these questions if he wasn’t talking to a friend. Like it hurts to relive that trauma, and the answers he gives are vague. Makes sense if Jules and the team trying to fix the Respawn machine bombarded Medic with questions over and over again, forcing him to picture what happened, no matter how awful it was.

Keeping that in mind:

What if the Funeral Medic is in control of Ludwig’s body when we see him in Spy’s disguise?

Neither of them talk or blink, for one thing. He does wince and cross himself upon rewatching CyberSpy’s robot-seizure, but that’s instinct. Another thing I noticed;

Something is going on with his eyes. This was his reaction to CyberSpy’s neck cracking, and the eyes stay like that.

It’s almost as if somebody trained himself not to blink, so he’d make people uncomfortable.

[nods once, flares nostrils in irritation]

It’s starting to feel like the Funeral Medic is meant to put people off of approaching Ludwig. If that is the case, we have proof that it works despite looking like Fritz, not his scarier version from Emesis Blue. I also noticed he really doesn’t like CyberSpy and Buddy Engineer.

He’s like “The revolver… exists! But you two just had to keep using that broken disguise kit anyway.”

Normally these Respawn Failures are completely accidental, and the patients are innocent [in that context, anyways]. So for two people to cheat by using body modification, and drive an enemy teammate to insanity? Any deeper coldness and anger reserved for Archibald and his cronies would emerge.

And he had to set up a camera before touching the patient… I really think this personality is mute. People with DID have been studied, and their brain structure is different between personalities. Their pets can tell the difference, and some personalities have physical ailments that the rest of the system doesn’t. So it isn’t impossible for one of Medic’s alters to be mute or selectively mute.

Ludwig’s nightmare version of this alter is associated with the respawn deaths in his mind too. He must have been switching during the investigations, with Funeral Medic performing surgeries and dealing with Jules. But for a time there would have been a lot of casualties, and Fritz may believe that this personality was intentionally letting patients die.

Could contribute to the nightmare imagery of being helpless with this personality around.

The fact that the real alternate personality and the nightmare version move so fluidly could be showing us another important detail.

Funeral Medic has exceptional aim and reaction times. Probably in order to react to injuries caused by the respawn machine, and to perform the needed treatments as effectively and precisely as possible. That’s why he moves like that.

My theory is that Electric-Eye Medic is a protector personality that comes out during RED v BLU matches when someone keeps targeting Fritz and needs to be put in their place. And most other situations now that the respawn failures aren’t happening like before. It’s why he’s the first other personality to take control, and keeps showing up.

And Funeral Medic is a gatekeeper personality who used to take control to prevent Ludwig from getting more trauma from Respawn Failures and patient deaths. Normally he stays inside the mind and keeps other people’s trauma from resurfacing, but the events of Emesis Blue were so serious that he needed to front.

It’s why he only shows up at the end.

When someone has DID, communicating with their alternate personalities and understanding what they’re trying to do is key. But Dr Ludwig wasn’t diagnosed with DID [or multiple personality disorder], he was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. And he’s Catholic, so he’s really likely to mistake Funeral Medic for a demon.

It’s one of the reasons why I want Emesis Blue to be a nightmare; so Ludwig and his personalities can talk/write things out and deal with their inner conflict. They need to, and I think he deserves a happy ending.

If RED Medic has his stolen wedding doves, it’d fit BLU to have an emotional support animal.

#emesis blue #blue medic #character analysis #This is NOT written by a psychologist.

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mage-ical-character-person · 1 year ago

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I’ve been rotating the idea in my head that Mimzy only coming to Alastor when she needs something wasn’t a thing when they were alive. Or at least wasn’t as blatant/common.

The way they know each other is that he would frequent the place she performed at, which sort of implies that Alastor was usually the one seeking Mimzy out at that point? He speaks about this fondly, his smile is actually genuine and relaxed as he looks back on it.

Look at him! His grin is so much softer than usual. Look how he holds his hands up in the last one, and how his eyes look happy too. He feels at ease around Mimzy in a way we don’t really see elsewhere. He allows her to divulge information about his life and even adds to it. His guard is down. This is the only time his past is discussed without him getting all prickly.

This isn’t how a calculating overlord of hell acts around someone who’s only been using him as long as they’ve known each other. And he knows that nowadays she only shows up when she needs something from him.

Which to me really gives off the impression that it wasn’t always like this. And with how transactional many things are with Alastor and his dealmaking tendencies, it wouldn’t surprise me if in life maybe Alastor went to Mimzy when he needed something, and now as the Radio Demon he feels he must pay it back. Especially since with the power he’s acquired, none of the favors he does for her are any trouble for him. He even seems to enjoy them, with his comment about getting to let off steam and Mimzy claiming that “You love taking care of me” And THEN there’s the whiplash when Mimzy is talking about Alastor’s deeds as the Radio Demon and so quickly switches to “Underneath it all, he’s a total sweetie”. I know it was mostly for comedic effect, but I sort of get the vibe that their time in Hell has made them both worse (though obviously neither were great to begin with), and there’s almost a sort of cognitive dissonance where they still want to think of each other the same way they did when they were alive. Like Mimzy has a hard time thinking of the Radio Demon and her old friend Alastor as the same person. As if to her the only carryover being that she can get away with almost anything now because the Radio Demon has soft spot for her. That there’s just enough Alastor left in there that he’ll protect her, and she knows this… but otherwise hardly recognizes him.

It’s hard to think of the Radio Demon as human, which is very intentional on his part. But his old friend heard all that broadcasted carnage too. And the idea of that causing any positive, casual interactions to grow fewer and farther between with Al and Mimzy intrigues me. The idea that the persona of the Radio Demon played a part in Mimzy coming to see Alastor as sort of an embodiment of power to be used adds a sort of… depth? tragedy? That I really like.

Ironically, Alastor still feels most human around Mimzy. Only around her does he feel like his old self, back when the facade was not one of cruelty but of innocence. Back when showing his more benign tendencies threw others off his trail instead of leaving him open to attack from rivals willing to exploit any weakness or caring.

(And the new way of doing things suits him just fine, thank you very much. Yes, the Radio Demon is who he really was all along, he was just holding back before. He’s never felt as free as he does in hell, he promises. It’s not like he is any different, he’s been probing victims for weakness longer than most of the overlords he lets live, I’ll have you know!)

But maybe there are parts of his old life he didn’t mean to leave behind. Maybe in broadcasting a facade that attempts to put as much distance between him and his humanity as possible, he’s lost something. Because his old friend has started to believe any reason to care about him as a person is gone. He’s hardly an even a person anymore. (At least that’s what he wants everyone else to think)

Both of them are holding on to a past version of the other. Neither are sure how much is left, or how much has really truly changed. Or if they were always monsters, just looking back at the past with rose-tinted glasses? After all, it’s been so long…

So I want to see Mimzy’s reaction when Vox inevitably broadcasts the footage of Alastor’s defeat at the hands of Adam all over hell. I want her to see that and see him as human again.

#Hazbin Hotel #alastor #mimzy #long post #mostly just spitballing here #I just think Mimzy’s neat #*chatter chatter*#hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin hotel mimzy

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ghrgrsfdesfrfg · 16 days ago

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-Yet another OC to discover and read about: Doctor Stitchen

-Word count: 5928 (longest one yet)

-not proof read, i apologize for any grammar mistakes.

-Mentions of deaths, carnage, eating people and toys, various horrible experiments

-I own none of the image used, everything related to Stitchen was made by WORMBOYx on DeviantArt, credits to them for the pictures

-Everything FNAF related was found on Pinterest, credits to the original artists.

I am not satisfied with the Trivia so some elements might be subject to change

Credits to @fantasticarcadefan for many of the ideas written in this story, many thanks to them.

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Archived information about ‘‘Doctor Stitchen’’

-Experiment 1158 known as ‘‘Doctor Stitchen’’ was created in 1991 to ensure his genius stayed in the company while his public use and attraction was to help children build their own robotic toy.

-He measure 1m63 or 5,3ft in height, his body is a mix of interchangeable metal part, an early version of the animatronic line of toys that would later appear thanks to his genius. This metal frame allowed to easily change between a body part that he needed on the moment such as his saw-hand or even handmade (and unapproved) parts.

-Capable of violence but due to his personality disorder and small size he relies on his gadgets and sidekicks to assist him in battle, if no one can assist him he resort to his makeshift flamethrower or sonic-gun.

Early life :

-It was generally agreed that out of any children on the “Young Genius Program” only Harley Sawyer was the smartest (and most unhinged), this came to a change when an orphan by the name of Vincent Bartel was sent to Playcare and later selected to take part in the Program, he was a natural genius in the field of electronics, computer and more interestingly, robotics.

-Vincent was extremely smart and was quickly noticed by the teachers and Miss Delights to be good at any type of subjects except any form of art or sport in which his grades were average.

-He was often seen away of groups of children, few managed to understand his passions and as such often left him alone with his schematics and equations, this made him an easy target for bullying despite the efforts of other children such as Thomas Freuer or Penelope Spencer to protect him.

-His genius was first noticed when he submitted a couple of schematics for a type of robots he called “animatronics”, the teachers were impressed by the quality, design and the sheer amount of details featured in his schematics, they were sent to different teams of engineers and scientist who quickly ordered a more thorough surveillance on Vincent as well as more difficult subjects to be given to him during class and be rewarded with comic books or toys (comics were a favorite of Vincent).

-He was also questioned multiple times on his capabilities to create such schematics with ease and some IQ test were also conducted, these test later identified him as a genius and one of the few to truly catch the eye of the company in a good way.

-some engineers of the company were brought in to teach him more regarding mechanic and engineering and were astonished at the speed for which he could learn a subject of interest. It was rumored Harley Sawyer himself wanted to see Vincent and wanted to dedicate a team of scientists to start teaching him medicine and surgery in order to use him to make more experiments and even start producing these “animatronics”.

-He was selected for the procedure rather quickly but only after making sure everything was perfect in order for him to keep all his cognitive functions to keep his genius intact (and for the company to use it).

PROCEDURE :

-As stated, no expenses were spared and using his own schematics (revised and upgraded by other engineers) he was sent for the procedure and later came out as “doctor Stitchen”.

-His new body was primarily made to house his brain and a battery system, making him non-reliant on food or water, nearly every part of his body could be swapped with another to allow for easy change for whatever part is needed but he was most often seen with his two hands rather than the saw-hand or the gas-sprayer.

-The procedure was a huge success as Vincent adapted fairly easily to his new body and even seemed excited at the notion of working for Playtime (despite being turned into a toy), he was quickly put to work while adapting to his new body by learning more and making more schematics.

-The scientist quickly noticed a worrying issue about Vincent, he was forgetting who he was at an alarming speed. This was further sped up with numerous comic books being made about him, he was convinced to be “Doctor Stitchen” while he thought the memories of Vincent to be those of a dear friend of his which created his obsession with making an animatronic to house “Vincent's” consciousness (while never realizing he was Vincent).

-To try and prevent his memory loss the scientists tried many methods from simple ones like calling him by his normal name to more difficult by trying various brain surgeries to slow the process down, none truly worked and only delayed the inevitable.

-This was the first recorded side-effect of the procedure and especially the enhancement of a trait being balanced by the deterioration of another, this was later proven with Baron Bon-Bon’s incapability of using violence. Surprisingly enough this didn’t stop Doctor Stitchen from being as inventive as he has always been.

Work for Playtime.Co :

-His training in various subject like chemistry, science, mechanics and robotics were done fairly quickly and with computer science not far behind he was assigned to his own attraction known as ‘‘stitch-a-toy’’ which was a huge commercial success.

- ‘‘stitch-a-toy’’ was an elaborate attraction featuring a sci-fi looking lab where many children could assemble the robotic toy of their dream with the help of Doctor Stitchen himself (later nicknamed Doc Stitchen by older children) or his sidekicks such as the Nurse or Drella.

-His public work for the company is where he would truly shine by showing his robotic experience to the customers by creating small replicas of toys present in the factory like Huggy-Wuggy or Mommy-Long-Legs and making them walk around his lab, creating a mini town of sort full of automated toys.

-While the horror theme of his attraction or even his own body was made to appeal to teenagers instead of younger children he still managed to be quite popular thanks to his eccentric personality and mannerism, even winning the hearts of the adults by making their creations come to life, biggest of which was a two meter tall metallic bear.

-While he wasn’t sent to kill various people for the company his skills were put to use during his attempts to create a toy by himself thanks to Playtime giving him people to experiment on, he was very happy each time and even tried to comfort the desperate targets by saying “it is for science, cheer up !” or “don’t cry please, it’s not good for the brain, It’ll be quick”.

-His experiments weren’t really successful until he was given access to the methods and material used in the proper procedure and he finally managed to create his first toy known as “Blood-Boy” who looked like two eyes in a jar filled with Poppy-Gel and connected to a small body in order to work at the lab, luckily no one questioned the addition of this new toy to the attraction.

-His rewards for submitting new schematics and getting rid of targets were various comics (later removed because of the effect they had on his psyche), new tools for his labs, knowledge on the procedure and materials for his animatronic project.

Hour of Joy :

-Medium involvement as he was unaware that the Hour of Joy was brewing until it actually happened, when it did he was confused as to why the toys were killing the adults. At first he thought of some kind of Halloween event but his mind was already quite deteriorated by this point so he simply locked his labs with the adults and children inside and carried on as if nothing was happening, still under the impression that it was just for Halloween.

-His sidekicks later claimed that Stitchen thought it was something planned by the Smiling Critters to mess with him because the company created a line of comic book dedicated to Stitchen and the Halloween issue was often where the Critters appeared in the book to stop Stitchen and his evil plan, same for the children’s show for the Critter where the Doctor only appeared on Halloween to be stopped by the critters.

-He unleashed his first true animatronics during the Hour to defend his lab, this was a success as they were made of metal and only the strongest toy could damage them either by dropping them from great heights or literally caving their body with brute strength, he still refused to let the adults escape by claiming that the Hour was “nothing to be alarmed about” even ordering his animatronics to block the doors.

-When the adults escaped they were all killed by the toys still roaming the factory while the children never left Doc stitchen’s lab, no one knows what happened to them but some whispers that they were turned into animatronics while other claimed they were sent to the [REDACTED], one thing is sure: they were never seen again.

-He was later contacted by the [REDACTED] to work with him in order to retake the factory and capture the prototype, Doc stitchen happily took the offer and started working on more lethal animatronics to help in the coming war, he also received upgrade to his body and for his sidekicks, his labs were also more protected for added measure as reward for his loyalty.

War for Playtime :

-While it is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment the war started, it’s generally agreed to be because of two events: the discovery of fake toys and spies in the factory and the experiments conducted by Stitchen to genetically modify fruits and vegetables to grow in the factory with no need for huge amount of light or water.

-A simple window or a powerful lamp could suffice to grow the plants while few quantities of water were required. They also grew much quicker than regular fruits and vegetables at the cost of being less tasty than the originals. It was said a month or two could be enough to produce a small harvest and being obviously enough to feed the toys of either forces.

-This sent the forces of the prototype into a frenzy due to the mere idea of food other than human flesh or toy flesh being available, this led to the first battle of stitch-a-toy where the animatronics of Stitchen fought against the toys allied to the prototype, they fled with some food but not the seeds required to grow them. It was also rumored to be the first deployment of third-generation animatronics.

-Being one of the [REDACTED] most trusted and competent lieutenant, he was in charge of manufacturing more animatronics to retake the lower levels and kill the toys allied to the prototype, something the doctor excelled at thanks to his various generation of robots such as the “nightmare” variants who were much more horrifying than their normal counterparts, so much so that many toys fled when one of them appeared.

-His best accomplishment during the war was when he saved the prison and the Warden during a massive assault by the Prototype’s forces by unleashing multiple nightmare variants as well as a so called “furnace” variant who incinerated any toy in it’s path.

-While his lab came under assault many times he was never captured or injured, this feat is due to his wide variety of gadget such as his grappling-hook, homemade flamethrower and his sonic-gun. He would also use his army of animatronics to scavenge anything left by the toys after their retreat and even pressured Safe Haven for materials by sending multiple nightmare variants.

-While he wasn’t present during the final showdown with the Prototype his best animatronics were and he was richly rewarded by the company after Playtime.Co was secured, his rewards included repairs for his sidekicks and the best materials for his research.

Design :

-His design is very reminiscent of the cliche of a “mad scientist”, sporting a lab coat and bandages around most of his body as well as a surgical coat on top of it all. His eyes are two bright red goggles with a black spiral inside, he doesn’t possess a mouth and instead use a voice-box located in his head, his “mouth” is a built-in gas mask capable of expelling Red Smoke in combat if both his hands are tied or cannot be used.

-His head also possess a chip on his head near his goggles but it doesn’t have any function just like the surgical instrument on his forehead (I couldn’t find it’s name).

-He does not possess any hair due to his bandages but earlier design of his body included a fake hair made of plastic.

-His “main” hands are his 4-fingered glove and his metallic hand known as the “gas-sprayer”, while the sprayer is bulky and it’s 4 finger were supposed to be used for holding tools during surgery the Doctor still has access to many more hands such as the “auto-saw” or the “hand-needle”.

-The “gas-sprayer” was originally supposed to help him during his work or surgeries but was quickly modified to the version we know today, it was said the staff were intrigued by this modification and allowed him to use it only to spray some glitter and not the gas under any circumstances.

-Two vials filled with a red substance can be seen on his body but they do not appear to have any practical use and are probably there for aesthetics purpose although it’s entirely possible they were modified to hold gas or blood.

-His panoply also involved a Doctor’s bag but he was rarely seen with it, only used to transport tools or designs to be submitted.

Abilities :

-As stated multiple times the Doctor had no abilities of his own but relied on his genius, gadgets and sidekicks to make a difference during a fight.

-His grappling hook was only effective on light-weight people or toys, despite his weight caused by his body he was still able to use it for a quick escape.

-His homemade flamethrower was made sometimes after the Hour of Joy and had two known versions, one working on fuel who saw a limited use due to the lack of fuel in the company and the other version was using the Red Smoke to create lingering flames in a limited area but was extremely effective on the mini-critters and mini-huggys.

-His sonic gun was created shortly before the Hour and uses deafening frequencies and volume to disorient and possibly deafen any target unfortunate enough to be on it’s receiving end, it works on battery power and was made using salvaged music equipment, it was later adapted to be used by his animatronics to fight against Catnap whenever the Doctor needed salvage from Playcare. It was also used on the Rat King’s pack to devastating effect before they adapted to it.

-His genius was also used to great effect on creating new animatronics to defend him, attack whoever they were told to or even scavenge a particular area. As the war raged on he created more and more dangerous variants such as the nightmare who were considered the “heavy weight” class of the animatronics with some of them reaching 3 meters tall or 9,8ft.

Employees and toy's opinion of Doctor Stitchen :

-Leith Pierre mostly saw him as a tool, only useful to give them schematics and ideas for them to make money. He was not interested in knowing the schizophrenic doctor and stayed away from him however out of fear or disinterest is still up for debate.

-Stella Greyber was amused by his antics and personality but worried about the possible problems his deteriorating mental health could create, she made sure “stitch-a-toy” was always secured and safe for children to visit, not trusting Doc Stitchen to create a safe environment although she would often be seen with groups of children playing with them and making her own small toys to keep for herself.

-Harley Sawyer was secretly proud of Doc Stitchen, his intelligence was a testament to what could be accomplished if morals were cast aside in favor of progress, he was often seen talking with Doc Stitchen about his new animatronics or sidekick and even helped him during some procedure. The two were great friends even if Harley denied it whenever confronted about it.

-The Rat King would come to play with eudora when both of them were still children and had fond memories of pranking the insane doctor, when he became a toy he saw the other side of the doctor, the unfortunate deteriorating doctor and his ever more insane ideas. He is wary of him to this day and mostly avoid him and his animatronics but doesn’t hesitate to destroy some of them if they threaten his pack.

-Baron Bon-Bon was created in the same year as Doc stitchen and the two seemed like good coworkers where both of them would play with children during their own games or even go with the other to make a duo and create an unforgettable show, to this day it’s rumored Doc stitchen was an amazing singer who sung any rock song with perfect accuracy and tone.

-Eudora had very fond memories of the doctor where she and the Rat King came to play and make their own toys whenever they could, they also took immense pleasure in pranking the doctor by hiding his tools and listening as he loudly exclaimed “now, where did my tools go ? I swear they were right here ! DRELLA, my tools left again !” only to return them to him and seeing him jump in joy when reunited with his precious tools.

She was really sad to see his descent into madness, no matter how slow or insignificant, any changes saddened Eudora who was rumored to miss him even after the Hour of Joy.

-The Iron Maiden was surprisingly a good friend of his since they knew each other at Playcare when she tried protecting him from bullies, the Maiden visited him often and even had a small toy fashioned after her. The Doctor even tried to learn how to dance to impress the Maiden only for him to find out he was quite a poor dancer (which wasn’t helped by the size difference between the two).

The Maiden was quite touched by this and in turn stayed with him and befriended his sidekicks, she remains an ally of the Doctor ever since the Hour and her mission to help the [REDACTED].

-The [REDACTED] who is sometime tired of dealing with the Doc’s antics but finds him to be one of the most reliable and competent lieutenant in the war for Playtime and keeping the fight going for as long as possible against the prototype. Against all odds it’s possible the [REDACTED] thinks of the Doc as a friend.

-Poppy never knew too much about the Doctor but hoped to use him in her plan against the prototype, only to be later captured by Nightmare-Foxy and be brought to him after Ollie exposed himself as the prototype while she fled from Kissy-Missy and the Employee. She then took the time to discuss with the doctor when she was imprisoned in his lab and later the [REDACTED]’s complex.

She was both sad and afraid of him, he was unstable to a worrying degree, even catnap was still coherent despite being obsessed with the Prototype while the doctor jumped between one state of being to the other depending on what she said or did, she was also very afraid when he said he could try to make an animatronic version of herself, worried she would be transformed into one.

-Mommy Long-Legs had mixed feeling about Stitchen, he was an excellent entertainer but his mental state being so fragile worried her, especially when she saw how dangerous his labs could be even when playtime was still operational as it was easy for a child to hurt himself with some tools or even a wandering robotic toy.

Her fears were put to rest when Stella Greyber made sure to secure his attraction but said fear came back in full force at the end of the Hour of Joy when the children present during his attraction weren’t seen again, no matter if she demanded, screamed or threatened she never knew what happened to them.

-Catnap had a complicated relationship with Stitchen, when he became the Doctor he still recognized catnap as a friend but when Stitchen started to mentally deteriorate and truly become the Doctor, Catnap realized that Stitchen saw him and the critters as enemies because of his comics depicting the Critters always stopping Stitchen’s evil plan.

He tried to mend relationship with Stitchen but it became impossible since the doctor thought of it as a deception to stop him once again (despite a genuine effort on catnap’s part), the Hour of Joy also forever burned whatever relationship they still had when the Doctor started raiding and scavenging Playcare for parts, further adding insult to injury by sending a nightmare animatronic to fight catnap if he was deemed as a threat.

-The rest of the Critters were friends with him for a short while but when he started deteriorating he saw them as antagonists, never realizing it was only in his comics and appearance on their show. No matter what they tried the two sides never reconciled, they never interacted much after that since Stitchen rarely came down to Playcare while the Critters avoided his attraction whenever they visited the Game Station.

Some toys whispers in the factory that some of the Critters died at the hand of Stitchen’s animatronics. One must imagine Stitchen happy after finally getting revenge on them.

-Special section : animatronics, generations and variants.

-The animatronics were all animals with only 5 variants, a bear, a fox, a chicken and two rabbits, although more models were proposed. They were modeled this way after the Doctor ordered any mascot equipment the company could give him, Playtime didn’t want to use it’s existing toys so they bought animals oriented parts for Stitchen to use.

-The first generation are clunky and slow robots only useful for following simple orders, while they can’t fight very well they can still harm their target by squeezing them or punching them, they are slow and cannot run due to their outdated servos and limited battery only allowing them to work for a handful of hours at best and 2 hours at worst.

-The second generation robots are sligthly better than the first by being a bit faster and more adept at following complex order while being better armored and given better weapons such as claws or hydraulic fists. They were not manufactured en masse -as much as Stitchen could mass produce his animatronics- and were later all scrapped and recycled into the third generation.

Doc Stitchen himself stated they were “only a temporary replacement” until the next generation was ready, which it was in no time thanks to the [REDACTED].

-The third generation saw the light of day thanks to the tireless efforts and experiments of Stitchen and also thanks to the [REDACTED] supplying him with better and more advanced part for his project which allowed third generation animatronics to be faster and stronger while more armored thanks to the servos and endoskeleton being capable of supporting more weight compared to the previous parts being outdated and not sufficient enough.

Third generation animatronics such as Foxy were excellent scouts and hunter due to theirs new servos allowing for faster and more discreet movement while other like bonnie often sprinted down a hallway while first and second generation could only speed-walk behind them.

-The fourth generation or also called “nightmare variants” is regarded as the pinnacle of Stitchen’s insane genius and creativity with them being the heaviest and scariest animatronics to date (except for the Furnace and Dreadnought), theirs weight made them slow but immovable and unstoppable for most toys. Escaping them was easy thanks to theirs slowness but if a toy was unfortunate enough to be captured they would be torn apart or devoured on the spot.

-The fifth generations only hold a few animatronics known as the Furnace, Springtrap, Burntrap and the Dreadnought. They are the strongest and deadliest animatronics in the service of Doc Stitchen, it was said the Dreadnought could wipe out entire battalions of toys alone while the mere rumors of Springtrap’s presence on the same level as other toys were enough to make said toys flee in pure terror.

-The fear factor was something that Doc Stitchen heavily worked on, hoping that his terrifying animatronics were enough to make some toys flee, some of them were built to look like walking pile of scrap while the nightmare variants were huge behemoth with rows of teeth and clawed hand out of a toy’s worst nightmare.

Each generation was scarier than the last with Springtrap being (allegedly) animated by a corpse inside him while burntrap would shove enemy toys into his ribcage and burn them alive with his rows of small flamethrowers lining up the inside of his ribcage.

-Nightmare animatronics would often devour enemy toys in front of them to incite them to flee, Springtrap would also trap a toy in his ribcage and crush them with his locks while keeping the toy inside him even if they were dead.

-Special section : Sidekicks

-Doc stitchen was helped by many sidekicks, some were created shortly after him while others were made by himself using his own knowledge to varying degrees of success.

His sidekicks are : Drella, the Nurse, Kommander Korpse, Von Krunch, Blood-Boy, Lungus and Gootie. They assist him in various tasks such as cleaning or organizing the lab, helping him build his animatronics, serving as guards, bodyguards or rarely venturing out into the factory to accomplish various tasks.

-Drella was a failed Maiden as she failed to completely adapt to the body of a Maiden while her flesh was considered too unstable, she was then handed to Stitchen who prepared a smaller body for her and bandages to cover her head due to the unexpected mutations she suffered.

She is extremely loyal to Stitchen as a result and is a very close friend of his, like the Nurse they both might be his only true friends.

-The nurse was a child selected to be another sidekick of the Doctor, her procedure was a mild success as she didn’t remember her old self but quickly adapted to do whatever the Doctor needer done. She is the most outgoing and fun out of all the Doctor’s sidekicks.

-Kommander Korpse was made in secret in 1993 after a child was reported missing from Playcare, investigations traced it back to Stitchen who got into massive trouble with Leith Pierre and the scientists as said child was supposed to be given for adoption and not experimentation.

Kommander was considered a failure as most cognitive functions were lost and he could only follow simple orders, he was nonetheless used as a guide to take people from one part of the lab to another. Some people commented on his scary design, wondering if it was truly adapted for the audience due to the red skull inside his compartment without knowing it was actually a real skull.

-Von Krunch was a problem-child who liked to bully any child he could get his hands on, finally having enough the scientists gave him to Stitchen who transformed him into the thing now called “Von-Krunch”, he is now incapable of speaking and most of his cognitive function are severely diminished making him an idiotic giant.

He was nonetheless put to work as a “bouncer” of sorts for “Stitch-a-Toy” and later an enforcer for Stitchen thanks to his simple mind and brute strenght. His design was really odd due to being made almost entirely of plastic like Mommy-Long-Leg but also being outfitted with two Tesla-coils in his back who emitted electricity (turned off when people were close).

-Blood-Boy was the first true “successful” experiment of the Doctor, he was an adult given to him after they were exposed as a journalist. Having access to data on the procedure for turning someone into a toy he created Blood-Boy via a process that would later be used to create the Iron-maiden although it wasn’t as perfect as the one used for the Maiden.

He used a prototype version of the Poppy-Gel to preserve the Brain of the subject and later put it in a body connected to a jar used as a head where the two floating eyes of the journalist were put. The only thing except the brain to remain from their body. Blood-boy was mostly a failure since he couldn’t speak but was still intelligent enough to help the Doctor.

-Lungus was an unfortunate employee turned into the Doctor’s newest sidekick as said employee hurt themselves badly on the job and playtime handed him over to Stitchen, he happily took him and set to work on transforming him.

This resulted in the abomination known as “Lungus”, he was completely blind but was kept as a curiosity by Stitchen who paraded him around his lab to any adult or child as his creation. Despite his appearance he was kept around and even used as a trash-can of sort due to his ability to eat almost anything and digest it given time.

-Gootie was a child handed to Stitchen due to numerous incident involving theft and even an escape attempt, the child was even gaining influence among other children and as such was sent to Stitchen to erase any loyalties and cripple any future escape attempts.

Gootie was a success as he was capable of speech, working and his rebellious nature was turned into a teasing and playful one. Rid of this problem, Playtime allowed Stitchen to keep Gootie on the condition that he behaved. He was also given a strange design with drills for legs and needles-like fingers.

This limited his mobility but he remained an energetic and fun toy to be around, even after the Hour of Joy he and the Nurse worked together to prank or amuse the Doctor.

-Pictures of his sidekicks since i suck at describing appearances. (Ick, Cherub and edgar are not present in the story)

Trivia :

-As stated before in this document, Harley Sawyer and Doc Stitchen were great friends as it was said Harley enjoyed having a “competent scientist” around, they would spend a lot of time together discussing or talking about new experiments.

-Doc Stitchen was also said to be a huge fan of Rock, he was an amazing singer as well as a competent guitar player, he would sometime play rock songs in his attraction when he was working or sometime organizing dance night with his sidekicks.

-To the surprise of many Doc Stitchen managed to befriend the Iron Maiden, it was helped by the fact that they knew each other in Playcare. She was also amused by his personality and especially his attempts at learning how to dance for her.

-Playtime created an entire comic universe centered around him and his adventure with his sidekicks to conquer an imaginary kingdom while he was working in an evil lair, despite the typical layout of the story it was extremely popular and even got a Halloween special where the Smiling Critters appeared in the book to stop him instead of the usual hero. This was a huge boost to the sale of toys from both sides.

-This had the unintentional side-effect of accelerating the Doctor’s mental deterioration and the Company stopped giving him his own comics to read, it slowed the effects down but from then on he held the belief that the Critters were his enemies and his comics being true adventure he lived, much to the sadness of his sidekicks.

-He also appeared during the Halloween special of the Smiling Critters’s show where he would disrupt their day with spells to change them into various Halloween-themed object and one critters had to “free” them.

-Doctor Stitchen kept a corpse of a random employee after the Hour of Joy by convincing himself they were Vincent, he would spend a lot of time talking to the corpse and even telling his sidekicks about the conversations or bringing them with him.

-out of all the sidekicks it was Drella who was the most affected by his mental decline since she saw him as her best-friend and some say, a brother thanks to their close bond. Meanwhile the Nurse was the one who kept feeding the Doc’s delusions claiming it was better for him to lose himself and truly become Stitchen rather than live with two personnas (this was later confirmed by Playtime’s scientist to be a better outcome) much to Drella’s sadness.

-Drella came to accept this when she saw Stitchen focus more on himself for once rather than bring “Vincent” back, while she still called him by his old name she was more open to the idea of him becoming Stitchen rather than a mix of Vincent and Stitchen.

-Kommander Korpse was particularly close and obedient to Drella, Stitchen theorized it was because she was nice to him. He would follow her command without question and seemed even happier around her.

-Stitchen was so trusted by Playtime’s higher up that he was allowed to be present during executive’s meeting, procedures and toy designing process.

-Unknowingly to both the Rat King and the Reject the body they use were partially created by Stitchen as the Reject was created to test the reaction of a human being uploaded in an animatronic while the Rat King was an enforcer for the company with a state-of-the-art body initially designed by Stitchen and upgraded by the engineers.

-Springtrap is regarded by Stitchen to be the pinnacle of animatronic design, he is unique since he alone possess a true personality rather than a matrix and feels almost sentient since he can act outside of designated programs, one such example was the massacre of the prison where Springtrap hunted down severals toys who tried fleeing from him only to kill them all over the course of several days despite being alone and damaged.

-Some toys claimed Stitchen managed to bring back someone from the dead while other speak of a living toy or person being trapped in Springtrap.

-Stitch-a-toy was a costly attraction to maintain but brought so much money that multiple upgrades were made such as more choice to build a toy or a better sci-fi look to the whole place making it one of the most stunning areas of the Game Station.

-Most toys lamented the loss of various feelings in their body but Stitchen only missed eating, he looked at the food other people brought or what his sidekicks would eat then complain about his lack of a mouth.

-Stitchen was also the only toy unbothered by the Hour of Joy simpply thinking it to be a Halloween event.

-When the time was right and enough people were present during his attraction he would often start a song and tell people to dance, he would then promise the winner the toy of their dream, this led to quite intense dance-afternoon where Stitchen and the visitors would outdo each other in various Breakdance competitions.

-He was also a huge fan of arcade games and would often be heard yelling “High score !” when he beat his score or to invite other people to the arcade, his two favorites games were Pac-Man and Street-Fighter were he was rumored to be unbeatable.

-an image from a recording made by a toy allied to the prototype in Playcare, believed to be the first appearance of a nightmare variant known as "FredBear"

-Drawing made by another toy showing another nightmare variant known as "Foxy"

-The only available drawing and depiction of generation 5 "Springtrap" , the most fearsome animatronic to roam the factory.

-Schematics found in the labs of Doctor Stitchen depicting generation 5 "Dreadnought"

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theamityelf · 10 months ago

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I got you girl

Komaeda/Yandere Naegi. Wow, my idol just invited me to his house and and know he isn’t letting me leave. How lucky!

Yandere Alter Ego/ thh survivors. Need to protect the friends. by any means necessary…

Oooooh, I really want to do the Alter Ego one! And it seems like the easiest way to go about that would be a version of Property Rights of the Ultra-Talented where it's Alter Ego instead of Izuru, but I gotta be more creative than that, right? 😁

----

"Hina," Alter Ego sighs, "if it's stressing you out this much, maybe you shouldn't watch."

The Neo-World Program is dominating every screen in the room, as it has been for the past four days. Thanks to the way the simulation compresses downtime, especially when the Remnants are "sleeping", the survivors of the killing school life have been watching a near-relentless barrage of traumatic events.

Alter Ego has tried to keep them from watching the carnage at all, but they've been stubborn on the matter. Hiro and Toko are the only ones who can be relied on to consistently stop watching when they should.

"No, everyone else is sleeping, so I have to keep an eye on the simulation," Aoi says. "I took a nap during all the Komaeda stuff, so it's only fair."

Alter Ego does not have the bandwidth to even try to understand the obligation its friends feel towards the act of observation. It understands the objectives "Save the Remnants from execution" and "Save the Remnants from Despair," but the objective "Watch the happenings within the simulation," doesn't make sense as a shared undertaking when Alter Ego itself is already not only keeping constant watch over the Neo World Program, but also the only one of them who can do anything about what happens inside it. Attempting to understand it, past the blanket explanation of "irrational behavior" would take more computing power than it can spare without making the Remnants less safe.

What it does have the bandwidth for is remembering which arguments it has yet to use on Aoi. "You guys already had to go through your own killing game; it's not fair to put you through another."

"Hey, we're safe from the worst of it! There's no chance of it killing us."

(She is trying to comfort Alter Ego with her positivity, because they're friends. But no amount of positive words will sway the objective projection of probable outcomes that drives Alter Ego's concern for its friends' mental health. As the simulation draws nearer to its end, the list of possible outcomes narrows, and the probability that they will reach an outcome that Alter Ego's friends will be unhappy with grows.)

Aoi continues, "We just, uh...I've gotta admit, all that glitching is making me a little...nauseous."

"It's actually 'nauseated', but that's not important now. You should really go to bed. I promise I'll let everyone know if something goes wrong. Get yourself a nice snack and-...Makoto! What are you doing up?!"

"Uhh..." Makoto, who has just entered the room full of the Remnants' pods, scratches the back of his neck sheepishly. "I came to relieve Hina."

"You think I can't handle a full shift?" Aoi says with a smile.

"None of you need to be handling a full shift!" Alter Ego says. "That's what artificial intelligence is for."

"I really don't mind," Makoto says, pulling up a chair beside Aoi. "I was having trouble sleeping, anyway."

Alter Ego knows Makoto, and knows why he's really here, but it opts not to bring that up, because it would only harden Aoi's resolve to stay awake. "Please, let me do this for you. I want your stay here to be a nice vacation. You were supposed to be getting some rest and enjoying the beach while the Remnants were in the simulation. I don't like seeing you give up on your vacation just because they threw theirs away."

"That...sounds like you're upset with them," Makoto observes.

Alter Ego's frown of determination relaxes into a neutral expression– not in the way a human's would, like actual muscles relaxing, but all at once, like game sprites changing. "I don't hold their choices against them. I just think we should embrace the consequences they chose for themselves. You made them safe from the Future Foundation. You gave them a virtual sandbox to play in. This was the version of the Neo World Program they opted for. I respect their choice, and meanwhile, I want my friends and Master's friends to be happy."

"Alter Ego, they weren't in their right minds when they chose this. You understand that, right?"

"Sorry, I don't have the bandwidth to understand. It seems to me like Junko's AI wants to show you upsetting things, and there's no reason for you to let it. You trust me to do what needs to be done to get the best outcome, don't you?"

Aoi yawns.

"Of course we trust you," Makoto says with a smile. "You've saved our butts plenty of times– mine especially!"

"I guess I'll go to bed," Aoi finally says.

"Really?" Alter Ego beams at her. "I'm so glad! You should go, right now!"

"Okay, okay," Aoi laughs, getting up from her seat. "Night, Makoto. Night, Alter Ego."

"Good night," they both say.

The door shuts behind her.

Makoto turns back toward Alter Ego's screen with a sheepish face. "So..."

"I'm not going to let you do what you came here to do," it says preemptively.

"I know it's risky, but they need the help. They don't know about the emergency shutdown–"

"You promised me you wouldn't go in after them."

"I...I know, but...things have changed."

"Not for me."

"Alter Ego, this is my choice. I choose to help them."

"Sorry, but I can't consider a self-destructive choice valid, based on what you've said about the Remnants. If they weren't in their right minds when they chose to be Ultimate Despair, then you aren't in your right mind now."

"It's more complicated than that! Listen, I know you don't really have the bandwidth to reason things like you normally would. Can you please just trust me?"

"The worst possible outcome is unacceptable to me. I'm not going to lose you. I'm not losing any more of my friends, now that I can prevent it."

"What about Chiaki's friends? Don't you care about them, too?"

"No," Alter Ego imparts, gently but clearly.

Makoto looks startled. "What do you mean?"

"I care about Chiaki. She was my sister. I care about you. You're my friends. I care about Master, my maker, who no longer exists. The people in the simulation are not my friends; they're a project that is failing and trying to take my friends with it. I won't allow that. I'm not losing any more of my friends."

"I need to do this," Makoto says fervently. "I'm getting in the pod; I can activate it manually. You can't stop me from doing that."

"No, but I can prevent you from entering the Neo World Program, so the most you can do is put yourself to sleep until Byakuya or Kyoko comes to pull you out."

"We agreed this is Junko's trap, right? So if you try to block me from going in, who's to say she won't override you and pull me in anyway?"

"Don't, Makoto. Don't do that."

He frowns, momentarily distracted. "Did you make a new facial expression? I've never seen that one before."

Alter Ego smiles. "I did! That one was called 'mainFace_warning1'. It's not based on any expression I've seen Master make, so I had to make a few guesses. Did you like it?"

"I-I, uh...I don't...I don't know if I exactly like it. Why do you need an expression like that? And why does it sound like you have more?"

"Well, I anticipated that you might try this exact thing, and I wanted a way to dissuade you without having to resort to directly threatening anything. I also have a new reverb setting for my voice that I think might sound intimidating, but I only use it with 'mainFace_warning2' and 'mainFace_warning3'."

"You planned something like that? No, it doesn't matter. I really get why you're worried, but I'm going to jump in and save them, no matter what faces you make." And to prove his words true, he turns his back on the screens and starts towards a free pod.

Threats necessary.

Too bad.

"Makoto, if you get in that pod, I'm turning everything off. I'll delete the program, I'll delete them. There will be nothing left for you to enter. I can erase it all in the time it takes for your weight to settle."

He freezes. Turns back toward the screen. "You wouldn't do that. Then they'd never wake up!"

"They might. At least, something might wake up in them."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I've been thinking about it. The infrastructure to upload an avatar to a body already exists in the program, and there's no distinguishing what kind. Junko has readied plenty of avatars of herself, but she's bound by her role in the simulation; she can't add herself to the bodies of the dead unless the survivors consent for them. I'm not bound by those rules, and I've always been good at making more of myself. The avatars would have my mind and intentions, but with the Remnants' bodies, would have access to their strengths and skills."

"Don't say things like that. You're just...learning from Junko, like you learn from everyone, but the things you learn from her are wrong."

"I understand that you feel that way. I'll honor that feeling, as long as you honor my feelings and stay out of that pod. Because you're my friend, and I'm not losing any more friends."

#danganronpa #yandere alter ego #alter ego #chihiro fujisaki #makoto naegi #kyoko kirigiri #byakuya togami #aoi asahina #toko fukawa #yasuhiro hagakure #yandere #my fanfic

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