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faerybones3 · 11 months ago

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Which Witch

Fíli x witch!reader

cw: canon-typical violence, non-sexual choking

word count: 3k

prologue | series masterlist

Chapter One

three years later

Nothing could be heard above the screeching coming from the hundreds of goblins surrounding you, all clambering over each other to get a good look at the group of dwarves they had just caught on their front doorstep.

You sat, hunched at an awkward angle, with your head shoved between your knees, inside a makeshift cage made out of what you guessed were human bones. The commotion with the new prisoners had piqued your interest, and you tried to get a good look at who was being brought before the goblin king, a great hulking thing with protrusions and tumors growing out of every crevice on his massive body. He sat on a throne with a muck-filled bucket underneath, and several smaller goblins lay underneath his throne as a staircase for him. Your cage sat just to the right of him.

The goblin king stepped down from his throne and demanded to know who they were and how they had come to be in his kingdom. You wondered the same thing, privately, to yourself. As you watched the scene, you reflected on your own adventures and how you yourself had been captured by goblins. You had been traveling solo through the Misty Mountains when you stopped to make camp in a small cave. Exhausted as you were, you did not inspect the cave thoroughly. The goblins had sprung out of the walls and grabbed you in the middle of the night, taking your weapons and forcing you into this cage, where you had been sitting for days now. You had no idea why you were not already dead.

You also wondered to yourself if the dwarves had been in that same cave when they were taken, and if they had made the same mistake of not checking it properly for goblins.

When no one said a word, he became enraged and demanded that they be thoroughly searched. The goblins poked and prodded and searched thoroughly enough by goblin standards, ridding the dwarves of their weapons and throwing them carelessly to the ground. One sword in particular caught the king’s attention, and when he realized what it was, he jumped back and screamed, more infuriated than ever that these dwarves would come to him with Biter, the sword that had killed many of his people. You were quite surprised as well, as that sword looked to be made by elves and you knew quite well the enmity between their people and the dwarves.

Suddenly, the Great Goblin turned to you, fury in his eyes. You shrunk back.

“You know them don’t you, witch? They sent you ahead to scout out a way in!” He screeched. “You seek to destroy my kingdom!”

You shook your head furiously and shrunk back even further into your cage in a futile attempt to escape his wrath.

“I don’t know them, I swear!” You yelled.

The Great Goblin was seeing red, too enraged, too incensed to listen to reason. He started to bang and thump on the top of the cage, the bones threatening to break and crush you. Of course you didn’t know these dwarves, and you didn’t know how he had come to that conclusion, but the goblin didn’t need a reason to display his vileness. He wanted someone to pay for these imagined crimes, and you were the first person within reach.

“I don’t . . . believe you!” he squawked, before ripping apart the bones separating you and grabbing your arm, yanking you roughly out of your tiny cage. You stared at him, eyes wide and watery, as he lifted you up by the collar of your shirt and slammed you back down again to the floor of the rock his throne lay upon.

You yelped and tried to right yourself before the Great Goblin could grab you again, but he was too big and too quick for you. He pulled you up by your arm and twisted, making you scream out in pain.

By this point, some of the dwarves were yelling for him to stop, that you were telling the truth, anything to draw his attention away from you. Of course the goblin king did not hear them and did not care that they were speaking at all. He had you again, by the throat now, and he had started to squeeze as you clawed desperately at his bulbous arms, trying unsuccessfully to get him off of you.

You felt your feet start to lift off from the ground and you began to panic, eyes bulging. You were kicking and scratching at him and trying to scream but no sound left your throat. It could not end like this. You fought to keep yourself conscious, but the giant goblin was too strong, grinning as he squeezed the life from you.

The dwarves watched the scene unfold before them in shock and terror, but what could they do against such heedless evil? Some of them tried to fight off the goblins holding them down, but it was no use. There were too many of them, and they could not help you.

Your legs were twitching and your eyes were starting to close when suddenly there came a bright light from somewhere in the large cave and you were thrown to the ground before the dwarves, gasping and choking. You faintly saw a large figure wearing a pointed hat and wielding a sword in one hand and a staff in the other, from which the light seemed to be emanating from. You tried and failed to pick yourself up off the ground.

Everything seemed muffled and deafeningly loud at the same time, and your vision was blurry at the edges. The group of dwarves behind you and all the goblins had been knocked to the ground as well. The light dissipated and the pointy man started speaking, but you could not understand what he was saying. Before you knew it, you felt a pair of strong hands lift you from behind and saw the dwarves hurry to gather up their weapons.

Fighting had broken out amongst the dwarves and the goblins, the dwarves holding their own quite well. You, however, could do nothing but watch and try to catch your breath.

The hands that had lifted you began to half lead, half drag you in the direction you realized the dwarves had started running, following after the tall man who had saved you all. You found your feet and began to push the hands away, your vision becoming slightly stronger and clearer. A young, exasperated face stared back at you when you turned around, giving you an expression telling you that if you did not move quickly, you would most certainly be left behind.

“Come on, hurry!”

“Give me a sword.”

You knew he had heard you but he did not answer, instead grabbing your hand as if he didn’t quite trust that you were well enough to walk on your own. The two of you ran after the other dwarves, closely followed by the horde of goblins when they realized that their prisoners were escaping.

The man in the pointy hat led the group over the rickety wooden bridges of goblin town, trying to get to the winding tunnels that would lead them out of this hell hole. All the dwarves had retrieved the weapons that had been stolen from them, and were fighting off the goblins in their way. You had not been so fortunate, and you felt helpless when you had to rely on the other dwarves for protection while running. You noticed that the young dwarf leading you out had twin swords and considered just taking one from him, but thought better of it.

You had not made it very far when out of nowhere, the Great Goblin rose up and blocked your path.

He looked right at you and snarled, “You thought you could escape me!”

The Great Goblin swiped at the tall man, but he dodged.

“What are you going to do now, wizard?” He growled.

The wizard was quick as he thrust his staff into the goblins eye, blinding him. He then made two quick slashes in the goblin’s gut and throat, killing him. The goblin king fell and the bridge collapsed, taking you and all the dwarves with it, down into the black depths of the cave.

With a great crash, you all somehow landed safely, albeit piled on top of each other, on the cave floor and made a run for it into the deep and dark tunnels, looking for any sign of an opening or daylight.

At last, you came upon an opening in the rock, guarded by two particularly fierce looking goblins. However, the dwarves made quick work of them and in no time, you were out into the open, breathing in the fresh air of the early evening. You did not have very long to enjoy your freedom though, as the dwarves continued to run into the trees lining the mountainside. You followed them until they finally stopped to catch their breath.

The wizard started to count each of them, saying their names aloud and counting on his fingers. When he reached 13 of them, not including you, he paused and asked where their hobbit was. You did not remember seeing a halfling in their group when they were brought before the goblin king.

The dwarves start to argue amongst themselves about where he was last seen. At the back of the group, you tried to hide yourself somewhat behind the dwarf who had helped you, the younger one with blond braids. You suspected that they had not had the time to register your presence and you were not keen on being questioned at the moment. Some of them were blaming each other and one with three distinct braids shaped like a star claimed he saw the halfling slip away. It was then that one of the dwarves, the tallest of them and the most imposing, said in a displeased tone that he believed the hobbit had left them and gone home.

“We will not be seeing our hobbit again. He is long gone.”

You sensed that there was some deeper feeling hidden by his obvious resentment for their 14th member. Considering his tone, you also made a metal note to not get on his bad side if you could help it.

At that moment however, you saw a small profile walk through the trees toward them. You assumed this was the halfling as you saw all the shocked expressions on all of the dwarves' faces, especially the tallest of them.

They began to ask him how he got past the goblins but you had stopped paying attention. You could feel something moving in the earth now. You reached down and touched the soil with your fingers, which brought all of their attention to you. They looked at you like they had completely forgotten about you. Their eyes were kind though, and some of them looked at you with worried expressions, taking in your already bruising throat and battered body. The wizard took a step towards you with silent questions in his eyes, a little too knowing for your comfort.

“We need to move,” you said, so quiet that only the two young dwarves in front of you had heard. They exchanged a look.

“And who are you?” questioned one of the dwarves in what you could only describe as a fatherly tone.

“We need to move now,” you repeated, a bit louder this time. “Do you not hear it?”

Everyone looked around at each other, confused. You looked at the wizard, and he understood.

“Wargs,” he said. “Run!”

You heard them before you saw them, a great pack of wargs, advancing down on you from the top of the mountain. You ran as fast as your legs could carry you, weaving in and out of the trees. A few wargs ran ahead and tried to attack the group, but the dwarves fought them off. Up ahead, you saw that you were coming up on a cliff.

“Up the trees, quickly!” called the wizard.

The dwarves at the front of the group started expertly climbing the trees near the edge of the cliff, but you knew the wargs would catch up before they were all up and safe. The wargs were coming up on you fast, and they needed more time.

Without thinking, you stopped suddenly, and turned on your heel, ignoring the shouts from the other dwarves. While running, you had managed to get in the middle of the group, the two younger dwarves still at the back. The blond dwarf was right in front of you and you stopped him with an outstretched arm.

“What are you doing!” He shouted.

“Give me your sword!”

“What? No, come on!”

You sighed in exasperation. “I’m trying to help you, halfwit!”

Before he had time to be offended at your remark, you grabbed his arm and yanked him so that he was pulled ahead of you. When his back was facing you, you grasped the hilt of one of his twin swords and pulled it out of its sheath. Your movements were so quick that he barely had time to register what had happened before you shoved him forward between his shoulder blades. You yelled at him to run and turned back to the fast-approaching wargs.

Fili barely realized that he was missing a sword, and was too preoccupied with climbing a huge tree alongside his brother, as they had reached the edge of a great cliff and could run no more. He was halfway up when he noticed you, still on the ground, doing something peculiar.

A flash of indignance rose up in his chest as he looked down at you with his sword in your hand.

“What does she think she’s doing?” came Kili’s voice. “She’s gonna get herself killed!”

“Wait, look,” said Fili, leaning forward in the tree. “What is she doing?”

You were mumbling in a language Fili did not understand, repeating the same words over and over again, getting louder each time. The other dwarves were a mix of panic and vexation, all looking between you on the ground and the wargs who were getting closer and closer with every breath.

Fili’s indignance turned to awe as he saw a strange kind of rippling energy emanating from your fingers, spreading out through the sword. He did not have a word for it, as he had never seen anything like it, but it was beautiful and uncanny to his eyes. As the energy went through the sword, it started to give off a faint glow. Then it was traveling down your arms and encircling your entire body, and you were surrounded in it. As you continued chanting in that foreign language, a phantom wind lifted your hair from your neck and made your buttoned tunic flutter.

You were on your guard as soon as the wargs entered the clearing. They snarled and growled as they started to circle you, effectively taking your bait. They looked at you as if you were an easy meal. As the last of the dwarves climbed into the trees, you looked back to the wargs, and you smiled.

Two more tense seconds later and one of them suddenly charged and you exploded into movement, the sword in your hand almost invisible as it slashed and sliced at the beast. You were a flurry of skilled movement and Fili could do nothing but stare as one after another of the wargs rushed at you and were taken down.

Something bright caught the young dwarf’s eye and he looked up to see Gandalf throwing flames from his staff down onto the wargs, cutting off their path to you. Some of the other dwarves caught on and began throwing loose branches and pine cones down to the wargs as well. Pine cones were not nearly as effective as flames or a sword, but they hoped to at least distract some wargs enough to give you some time to fight them off.

Things, however, turned quite sour as the last rays of sun disappeared behind the skyline, and the goblins began to worm their way out of their holes and hiding places and into the cold dark of night. A great group of them, enraged by their king’s death, charged out of the mountain tunnels and descended on you.

You were skilled enough in combat and well protected by your magic and the fire sent by the wizard, but you could not take on a hundred wargs and goblins by yourself. While the wargs stayed clear of the fire, you knew the goblins would jump through it to get to you. Just as the pack of goblins reached you, you heard yelling coming from up in the trees. You looked up, and saw a dozen of the great eagles circling from above. Some dove and swooped, clawing at the goblins and wargs.

As you turned around to run, a stray goblin, half on fire and crawling on the ground, grabbed your leg and slashed at you with his jagged knife. You stumbled to the ground and suddenly it was on top of you with its blade raised.

“You’ll pay for this, witch!” It screamed.

At that moment, a great eagle swooped and easily plucked up the goblin, carried him several hundred feet into the air and dropped him off the cliff to his death. You sucked in a long and uneven breath, stumbling to your feet and limping through the trees. At the wizards command, the dwarves had begun to drop from the trees they had climbed, to be carried away by the eagles. There were only a few of them left now and you knew you needed to hurry.

Reaching the edge, you looked down the several hundred foot drop off the mountain. You took in a shaky breath, praying to any gods listening that something would catch you, and jumped.

✦•······················•✦•······················•✦

After what seemed like hours, the great eagles deposited you and the dwarves onto a great Carrock. You slid off the eagle that had carried you and stumbled a bit on the uneven rock beneath your feet.

When the two younger dwarves arrived, the blond one walked right up to you and snatched his sword from your grip with a slightly disgruntled look on his bearded face. You were too dazed and weak to protest, all of your energy now going into keeping yourself upright and standing. You looked around at the horizon lethargically, taking a step forward. Turning around again, the blond dwarf was now looking a bit worried and tentatively reached for you, perhaps to steady you. Your brain started to go fuzzy and your vision darkened. There was a sharp pain in your abdomen that you hadn’t noticed before, probably due to the adrenaline coursing through your veins. The pain felt like it was spreading up and through your fingertips, and you noticed that the magic you had used before had all but dissipated. You barely saw the other dwarves jumping onto the rock from their eagles, but they were giving you strange looks and you wanted to tell them to stop looking at you like that.

You started to stumble and fell hard onto the rocky ground, landing on your side. You heard someone curse in a foreign language from above you and yell for someone called, ‘Oin.’ But they were so very far away, and you just wanted to sleep now. The last thing you saw before everything went dark was a golden braid with a hand carved bead woven into it, dangling from a handsome face, and your own hand, reaching out to touch him.

#the hobbit x reader #fili x reader #fili #fili and kili #thorin oakenshield #lord of the rings #tolkien #witchcraft #fiction #fanfic #fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #ao3 writer #archive of our own

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forgottenvice · 1 year ago

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Feathers in a storm

Finally my Fic for the Moshang Events Big Bang 2023 Take a read if you're so inclined

Ao3 Art

The sharp cry startled Shang Qinghua, warning him of the oncoming onslaught. He'd been trying to look inconspicuous but it didn't matter, the white crows descended upon him. He tried to ignore the incessant squawking by staying perfectly still but as more of the foul beasts joined the flock he was forced to flee.

Whoever decided that a group of crows was to be dubbed a murder must have been well acquainted with their enmity. Having to endure the amassing harassment forced Shang Qinghua to give up his perch, taking to the air with just enough of a headstart to avoid a chase.

He chose a path letting out his own screech of discontent, since the beginning of his short tenure in the north the native snow crows had taken quite personal offence to his presence.

Apparently crows didn't like ravens all that much, not that Shang Qinghua was actually a raven. He was, but he also wasn't. Sure he had the feathers, the talons, the beak, but he hadn't been born with them, nor had he particularly wanted them, but he had a mission. When that mission was complete he could shed his fowl features and move on with his life.

Though ‘complete’ was feeling farther and farther away. After three days it had become clearer that his mission would not be quite as simple as he'd been led to believe.

Go to the north, spy on the crown prince.

An easy task for any talented spy, especially one in the form of a raven. Who would notice another bird flying around the palace? He'd figured he'd be practically invisible as he watched over the man. His arrival at the palace had not been quite so easy.

Shang Qinghua was used to breezy buildings with open air walkways and large paper windows. The perfect environment for spying. The Northern palace however was not so easily infiltrated.

Instead of winding walkways there was tightly packed stone, instead of paper screens, thick glass, instead of clear views there were dozens of chimneys filling the air with smoke and steam. It was as if the place was tailor made to obscure his vision and get in his way. Something made even more difficult with his lack of thumbs and his newfound inability to open doors on his own.

And then, there was the rookery.

The castle kept the ivory coloured crows to deliver their mail. They were hardier birds more suited to the northern climate than the common pigeon. Of course that made them more aggressive than the common pigeon, and by himself Shang Qinghua was a prime target. He couldn't blame them, not completely, they were just animals, and he wasn't particularly enamoured with his current state either. But it wasn't his fault and the constant shrieking and air bombardment was rather rude.

He had spent so much time dodging crows that in the three days he'd been there he'd yet to even catch a glimpse of his target. The elusive crown prince was nowhere to be found, not even on the lips of the common gossips at the river; far from the palace rookery. The dying king was all they seemed to talk about, that and his brother. A loyal man who never seemed to leave his side as his health deteriorated. The only mention of the kingdom's heir was to remark on his conspicuous absence.

The whispers stopped there, the king's illness seemed suspicious and the ruthless prince was suspect but suspecting him without proof was treason. There were rumours the man had a secret guard and had killed servants for less in the past. To the washerwomen speculation was hardly worth dying for.

A smart stance for servants to take, but it was useless for a spy like Shang Qinghua. He'd tried to follow the kitchen staff back in an attempt to gain entry after that, but had barely dodged the cook's broom.

He circled the palace for the hundredth time, finally used to letting the wind lift and guide him around the structure. He had hoped to find an advantageous location to spend his nights, the weather was worsening day by day, so there were no windows left open for him to eavesdrop on. Plus there was his own comfort to consider.

While the chimneys and smoke stacks were warm, the constant steam irritated his lungs and eyes. He'd spent the first night in a tree beyond the palace walls, but it made him feel too removed, like he was going to miss something.

He'd eventually found a rather isolated courtyard; far from the tower of crows, with a gnarled old tree protected from the chilled wind with a comfortable perch just outside one of the palace's many windows. It wasn't a particularly useful window, but having a sightline into the darkened antechamber eased his nerves even if it was empty, as if the wing of the palace had been abandoned.

It was honestly a relief, with no one to see him he wasn't forced to pretend that he was a normal bird. What sort of things did ravens normally do? He'd never studied birds or their habits. Resting free of an audience was truly his best option. His chosen branch was even long enough for him to waddle back and forth in a manner similar to how he used to pace.

The movement helped him think, that and speaking aloud to empty air. While as a bird he couldn't exactly talk, but the chirps and chitters he let out served a similar purpose while he familiarized himself with the north and its political climate.

The prince wasn't very well liked, a tyrant in the making if the washerwoman were to be believed. He didn't seem to care for his father's illness the way his uncle did. Nobody had said it out loud but it seemed in public opinion the uncle was favoured over the actual heir to succeed the throne. While that sounded good on paper, the compassionate uncle taking the throne would cause more problems for Shang Qinghua.

He didn't want to get involved, but he didn't have nearly enough information that he could successfully report back. He'd not even caught a glimpse of the prince, if he returned with so little information he could kiss his humanity goodbye.

He'd slept fitfully, curled into a ball of feathers dreaming of a time when he had none.

The horn called loud enough to startle him from his perch, he tried to reach out and grab the branch but only had feathers where fingers should have been. He barely managed to spread both wings and break his fall. Thankfully it wasn't a particularly tall tree.

A second call sounded louder than the first and the harsh caws of the rookery greeted it.

Shang Qinghua sat in the grass, shoulders hunched wondering if he really had to check out the commotion or if he could just sleep where he'd fallen. He was still mad about waking up as a raven and didn't have any desire to get any closer to the crows.

Eventually he let out an angry caw of his own, he'd dreamt of human things, walking, writing, opening doors; truly a lovely dream, spoiled by noisy fucking crows. What were they even worked up about anyway? They had a nice warm tower to sleep in, why did they have to disturb the little comfort he'd managed to find?

Busy grumbling, the third horn blast startled him, almost as much as the first. He took to the air instinctively, eventually gaining just enough height to see the parade of hunters entering the far gate. It was a rather large retinue carrying with them all sorts of game.

He flew a bit higher before coasting downwards for a closer look, he wasn't familiar with the wildlife of the northern forests and was curious. A new group of people entering the palace meant new opportunities for him, this may have been what he was waiting for.

He pulled right as quick as he could, barely dodging the arrow as it whistled past, nicking his pinfeathers as it flew. An unflattering squawk left him as he pulled up only to see a man holding a bow and staring him down.

The man was tall, taller than most of his compatriots, holding himself with the practised ease of a hunter. Shang Qinghua would have stared longer except with the way the man slowly reached for another arrow he knew the next shot would likely not miss. It was a tactical retreat.

His wings pumped trying to get out of range as fast as possible until his thoughts caught up with his wingbeats. The hunter had been tall, well dressed with an expensive looking cloaked trimmed with fur. He had sharp features and cold eyes.

It had to be the crown prince, Mobei Jun.

He altered his trajectory, circling back behind the incoming retinue. He stayed low, landing on the far side of the stable and crept slowly up until he could peek at the incoming hunters, and most specifically, their leader.

The prince had lowered his bow once Shang Qinghua had left his line of sight, speaking to a retainer at his side. A curly haired youth, who seemed to be the only person who'd dare approach him. Most of the other hunters gave him a wide berth, even the servants who attended the caravan did so warrily, deference tempered with something else.

Fear.

"Nephew, it seems your hunt was successful." A charming voice called out and the crowd parted immediately as someone new entered the courtyard, Shang Qinghua crept closer.

The prince towered over the newcomer but his height did nothing to overwhelm the other man's presence. He walked with impunity, dressed in embroidered velvet covered in jewels only a royal could afford. Despite the difference in height and the older man's greying locks the resemblance was unmistakable.

After days of drought Shang Qinghua was caught in a downpour. He was now witness to two thirds of the royal family, Linguang Jun, brother to the king, had left his vigil at the king's side to greet his nephew.

"Our larders will be well stocked this winter." deep lines pulled his smile tight, distaste crossing his expression as he looked at the spoils that followed the prince into the palace. This greeting was his duty, nothing more. Even from a distance Shang Qinghua could see that there was no familial love between nephew and uncle, and only the latter was willing to put up the pretence.

Mobei Jun didn't even try to hide his animosity, his brows dropped and his chin tilted up as teh other man drew closer, clearly on the defensive.

"Uncle." he stepped to the side, intent to walk past, but the other man followed his movement blocking his path. The crown prince pulled back his shoulders, emphasizing his greater stature.

"I must greet my fathe--"

"The King is dead." The sharpness of the words silenced the courtyard, only the cawing of the crows filled the silence. Everyone stopped mid motion at the news.

"He died this morning, in his bed," Linguang Jun sighed dramatically before turning his sharp eyes on Mobei Jun, "Calling out for his son." The prince flinched but the words weren't for him, not really. Several sharp gasps sounded through the crowd, the message hitting its marks.

Easily manipulated fools. Shang Qinghua could see the quirk of Linguang Jun's lips, and the way he made a very public spectacle of a very private matter, drinking in the attention. At first Mobei Jun appeared stoic, but there were signs of his deteriorating composure. The way his hands curled into fists, the bunched tension in his broad shoulders. Qinghua had no doubt that there was fury coursing under the man's skin, like a raging river below a thin layer of ice.

But to anyone not paying such close attention, they would just see cold hearted stoicism.

The courtyard had become a battlefield and it was clear that Linguang Jun was winning.

The prince took a measured breath before speaking.

"I will see the body."

"The royal embalmer has already been called, there is nothing left for you to do." Shang Qinghua's eyes narrowed. Such quick action was suspicious.

"That was not your place."

"You were not here, and with no knowledge of your return I was simply doing what needed to be done,"

There was a vein throbbing on Mobei Jun's forehead, his uncle was masterfully playing the situation to his advantage. The cautious stares and fearful whispers suddenly made sense. The uncle was far from magnanimous, he was a skilled manipulator working his way towards the throne. Laying all the groundwork to destroy his nephew's reputation.

And it seemed Mobei Jun knew it too, if his clenched jaw and obvious frustration were anything to go by.

"Thank you uncle," he didn't mean the words, they were clearly nothing but a formality. The bitter dance of politics that he'd already lost. "I will make preparations for the funeral."

Without waiting for a response he simply nodded to the servant at his side and swept off into the palace alone.

From a drought to a flood, Shang Qinghua had spent three days scrounging for information about the prince and the state of the kingdom, and in a fleeting moment he'd learned more than he knew what to do with.

He still wasn't sure if it would be of any use to him, so he returned to his tree to try and organize his thoughts. Only it appeared that his lonely courtyard was no longer as empty as it had been previously.

The darkened window was now lit, the glass opened wide to let in the morning's chill. A giant figure stalked back and forth within, moving with the repressed violence of a caged animal.

It was Mobei Jun.

Shang Qinghua watched him cross the room, then turn and cross it again, finally the figure stopped pulling something out from his pocket.

Shang Qinghua couldn't quite identify the object, but the prince stared at it intently, his knuckles paling as his grip tightened. The hand enveloping the object began to shake before the tension finally snapped and the strange object went flying out the window.

Breath came to the prince in heavy pants, his anger slowly dissipating until he dropped into the chair at his writing desk. He looked small, and weary. But it only lasted a moment.

Within the span of a breath the slump left the man's shoulders and he composed himself, sedately grabbing a sheave of parchment and a writing quill.

Curious Shang Qinghua followed the trajectory of the object until he found it lying in the grass a short distance away.

Tilting his head back and forth he tried to figure out what it could possibly be, it looked like some sort of ivory, a horn? Perhaps a trophy from a recent hunt?

The colour was mesmerizing, shifting with the light between a dull tan and a brilliant blue. Whatever the object was it seemed valuable, and the prince had thrown it away in a fit of anger.

If he was being honest with himself he wanted to keep it, it was shiny and drew his eye. The way the colours changed appealed in a way that made him distinctly uncomfortable, like an impulse more than a choice. A distinctly avian one, making him feel like he'd lose a part of himself if he gave in to the idea. So instead he acted.

The horn wasn't too heavy, he managed to grip it in his beak and awkwardly fly back to the window. He landed on the sill, peering into the window wondering how he could return the horn.

The room was large but sparsely furnished. There was a four post bed displayed grandly against the wall, and a writing desk sitting in front of an empty hearth.

Shang Qinghua had intended to place the object on a random surface and leave, instead he was forced to drop it with a squawk as he dodged a flying inkwell.

"Leave!" dark eyes bored into him, weighing his soul for judgement. It seemed Mobei Jun's calm demeanour hadn't quashed his fury and he'd found a new object for his ire, and that object was Shang Qinghua.

He took to the air, manoeuvring back to his perch outside the window, trilling indignantly at the treatment.

The prince approached the window and glared at him.

"Noisy." He slammed the window closed with enough force to make Shang Qinghua jump.

Rude, Shang Qinghua puffed up his feathers squawking loudly. So the prince was having a bad day, that didn't justify bullying a poor bird like him.

Noisy? Shang Qinghua shifted his weight from talon to talon. I'll show him noisy!

He began pacing along the branch, too angry to appreciate the irony of his actions. Every so often he'd glare at the closed window catching a glimpse of the prince through the glass.

It was time to build a nest. Ao3

#Moshang #mebigbang23 #feathers in a storm #my writing #fic link #svsss

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hellowhyareyouhere · 1 month ago

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: One Piece (Anime & Manga) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Roronoa Zoro/Sanji Characters: Sanji (One Piece), Roronoa Zoro, Vinsmoke Judge, Charlotte Pudding, Charlotte Katakuri, Charlotte "Big Mom" Linlin Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Prince Sanji (One Piece), Knight Roronoa Zoro, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Arranged Marriage, Enmity ZSZ Bang, one sided Sanji/Pudding, Minor Nami/Nefertari Vivi, a dash of Katakuri/Sanji, beacuse I literally couldn't help myself, Pining Roronoa Zoro, Mutual Pining, Pining Sanji (One Piece) Summary:

The banished prince of Germa and his knight have been summoned back to Germa Castle once more. The reason? To secure an alliance with Empress Linlin Charlotte through a marriage to her daughter, Pudding. But for the marriage to work, Germa needs to present Sanji as a proper prince.

Sanji wants nothing more than to finally be free of all ties to Germa and live his own life. His solution? Fake an affair with his knight, thus proving he is not the proper prince the Charlottes are seeking. Zoro, who has been secretly in love with his prince for years, agrees to help in whatever way he can.

Can they keep up the ruse long enough to call off the wedding? Or will their feelings and other machinations get in the way?

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the-annotated-antichrist · 2 years ago

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Act III, Track 03 - Forgive me

Song links: Spotify - YT Music - Apple - Tidal

This is another track with a lot of dialogue, in which big things happen. It is also almost 10 minutes long. If you're looking for opera and drama, look no further. Let's begin...

Johanna, Agnes and Mare have infiltrated Seth's residence. In a secluded chamber, Johanna sits gazing at the holy dagger in front of her. She prepares to fulfill her mission and kill the Antichrist while her friends walk around the candle-lit room.

[Johanna:] In thy grace... [Johanna & Agnes:] ...turn to me and bless the soul of this faithful child None more divine than thee our lord [Johanna:] Lead me on to be strong - holy mission And guide my hand Amen

Seth enters the room. This in itself is significant. He could send his guards to deal with them. Three trespassing outlaws with one dagger probably wouldn't be a big problem for them. Yet Seth appears in person, alone, and does not call for back-up.

[Seth:] Now face thy foe! [Agnes:] Our lord has brought you here [Seth:] I heed no call, none but my own [Agnes:] To be boastful suits no mortal man

Seth tauntingly tempts Johanna, who is not impressed:

[Seth:] Join the night supreme I will be your guiding star I will set you free [Johanna:] Into the darkness forever you must go

Suddenly Helena comes in, urging reconciliation. As you may remember, she overheard Johanna and her friends talking about how only Johanna's dagger would be able to kill the Antichrist, so she knows why they are here.

[Helena:] Still the dawn may rise and shine [Seth:] Out of the darkness, my love I knew that you would come [Agnes:] Join with us Join with God [Helena:] It must not end, not like this If we conjoin as one

It is far too late for that of course. Seth and Johanna will not, cannot make peace. Johanna doesn't comment on her sister's appearance at all and instead likens Seth to a fallen angel again.

[Seth:] Join the night supreme I will be your guiding star I will set you free [Johanna:] Into the darkness forever you must go Fallen you are, fallen from the heavens to our world Fallen you are 'til the end of our time and beyond

As the music becomes more and more tense, Helena says:

[Helena:] Sister, O blood of mine Hand me the dagger Hand me the answer Hand me the voice of God

Reluctantly, Johanna gives Helena the dagger. At this point, I don't exactly know how lyrics and action go together. With a bang, the music comes to a complete stop and based on the scene description, I'm pretty sure it is here that Helena puts the dagger against Seth's chest. Into near-complete silence, Seth sings:

[Seth:] Come to me, to the fallen, my love

Seth calls himself "the fallen" and echoes the way Johanna (above) as well as Professor Pauli and the Pope (in Cursed be the Fallen) speak about him in the moment in which the one person whose affection he was certain of seems to take the side of his enemies. It will be interesting to see, if and when BA is staged, whether the actor who plays him says this sentence in an evil, seductive way or if he sounds like he's pleading with Helena. Thomas' rendition sounds ambiguous to me.

Helena answers sadly:

[Helena:] Deep down somewhere, in me, I knew what I had to do

The music starts again, both Seth and his enemies are calling to Helena, who still has the dagger to her husband's chest. Seth is calling for her to take his side, the women urge her to kill him.

[Seth:] Come to me, to the fallen, my love [Helena:] My love Forgive me [Johanna & Agnes:] Hear the whisper within you, sister From God and may peace come to your heart

Helena's words here are nearly inaudible, since the music and the urging of the other characters is so much louder. A tense instrumental part follows in which Helena makes her choice. With both sides pressuring her, she cannot decide between her loyalty to Seth and to Johanna. She turns the dagger around and plunges it into her own chest. All rush to her side, their enmity forgotten for the moment.

[Johanna, Mare, Agnes & Seth:] In the cloak of night, fallen you are Thou shall rise again Enter the void

The music slowly becomes calmer as Agnes speaks to the dying Helena and prays over her in her beautiful dark voice:

[Agnes:] In stillness keep eyes of gold your name Night birds take flight and sing [Johanna, Mare & Seth:] In the cloak of night, fallen you are Thou shall rise again, enter the void [Agnes & Seth:] Bless you Into moonlight And the temple you shall now meet in turmoil The soul will flow and shine

Afterwards, Seth, with a heavy heart, returns the dagger that is fated to kill him to Johanna. I don't know if he does this to imply that Helena's blood is on her hands, if he isn't thinking clearly or if he is simply too shocked and crushed to care about anything, even his own survival.

[Seth:] Give me your hand, receive this tool For it belongs to you

He picks up Helena's corpse and leaves the room with her as a choir of angels sings.

[Choir of angels:] Float, float with time And the night soon shall see you, greet you, tell you... of dawn...

With this, the song ends. I still get goosebumps from it every time I listen to it, at least if I pay attention to what is happening in it. I have some things to say about it, but I think I'll put them into the next post, when Seth mourns Helena and we have perhaps somewhat recovered from this scene...

#johanna orsini #helena orsini #seth thanos #tracks #act 3 #mare aravena #agnes azarova #symphonic metal #therion #taaposts #opera #metal #musical #musicals

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queenofbaws · 2 years ago

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Coming in REAL late with a new years request, so you can ignore this one if you want. But is there truly a better way to ring in the upcoming release of your soon to be blockbuster hit mouth of frost than with a new year's party where you 'invite' all your old 'friends' to celebrate with you?

They wouldn’t call it a joke, really, even if it was a little funny, and even if they did keep laughing to themselves as they wrote each note out by hand. It was more like…morbid curiosity.

Emphasis on morbid, of course.

None of them had quite forgotten the way the group had snapped to attention when the book came out, how years of silence and miles of distance had folded in on themselves until, for all intents and purposes, they were teenagers sniping back and forth between classes again. Bob had advised them (inasmuch as Bob Washington was capable of advising anyone) that when you struck it big, when your fifteen minutes finally hit, people came out of the woodwork to look for money or favors or sheer proximity to greatness, but that? The way they’d all reappeared overnight? Gone one second and – poof! – there the next? Well that had been something else, ladies and gents.

So. Morbid curiosity, sure. If the book had gotten that sort of reaction out of them, it was only logical to start wondering how they were feeling now that the movie was underway, the theatrical trailers already racking up hits in the millions wherever you looked. It was only logical to imagine they were pretty pissed. And, them being who they were, the next step in that logic chain was a desire to see just how far they could push that anger.

…well shit. Maybe it was kind of a joke, after all. One where morbid was still the operative term.

---

“This isn’t funny.” For all the things the years had changed, Emily’s sense of humor had apparently remained untouched. She was the picture of indignation as she sat on one side of the cable car, arms folded tightly across her chest and one leg crossed tightly over the other, everything about her wound tighttighttight. One wrong move and she was either going to come down on them all like a spring-loaded bear trap, rending flesh and tearing out chunks wherever she could, or…or…she was going to crumble to dust like a cookie left on the counter for too long.

Proving they were older now, more mature, most of them chose not to press the issue.

And, proving the truth behind the old adage ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same,’ Mike did. “Oh, is it not, Em? Is this not funny? Hang on, hold up, maybe I’m not the sharpest tool in the box anymore, but hey, could you maybe explain to me what part of us showing up here isn’t hilarious?”

“Guys,” Matt said just like that – one word, voice low, eyes lower. He’d been the one to take the longest deciding where to sit, and it was clear now he was regretting his choice. Next to Emily, next to Jess, their side of the cable car felt distinctly defensive.

All in the same place again, it was too easy for the old, forgotten things to rear their heads, amity and enmity both. There they were, the ones who’d merely survived that night all those years ago, their backs to the pane of glass showing the summit growing closer and closer…and there, across from them, watching Blackwood Pines come haltingly into view like they could intimidate it into nonexistence, were Mike and Sam. The capital-S Survivors. The ones who hadn’t run but had instead dug their heels in and killed before they could be killed.

“No, seriously, I want to know what’s not to laugh about here,” Mike pressed, tone friendly enough but posture changing to imitate Emily’s in a juvenile attempt to rile her further. He waited until he saw it had worked – and it had – to keep going. “A bunch of banged-up, emotionally stunted morons heading to a New Year’s Eve party that may or may not actually be happening in a ski lodge that burnt down seven years ago, hosted by the asshole who nearly got them all killed and said asshole’s shitty fanclub, and you can’t think of a thing to laugh about? Not one single thing, Em? Not one?” Sam set her hand on his arm and most of the fight went out of him. He sat back against the cable car’s bench, flexing his hand and massaging the space where he’d had knuckles, once. “Maybe you gotta loosen up a little, that’s all I’m saying.”

On Matt’s other side, Jess sat with her cheek pressed against cold metal. She murmured something too quietly to be heard, her hands hidden deep in the sleeves of her fur-lined jacket, her eyes distant and unfocused like she was staring through the cable car itself, watching the trees below them shrink to specks, then memories, then nothing at all.

“Hmm?”

“The monsters,” she repeated after a time, the golden afternoon light going dark as they reached the summit and slid into the station. “I said don’t forget about the monsters.”

“Ah, right, thanks Jess. And the mountain where said ski lodge burnt down seven years ago? Yeah, it’s sorta-kinda got one of those pesky cannibalistic, shark-toothed monster infestation problems.” There was a ker-chunk! that rattled the frame of the cable car as its door unlocked, and decorum be damned, Mike stood and pushed past the rest of them to be the first one out. “Ask me, the whole thing’s fucking hilarious. Who does that, right? Who just willingly walks into a trap? We should be laughing – you know they are.”

Already Emily was hot on his heels, stomping out of the car after him in a show that felt so eerily familiar to the rest of them that they had to sit for a moment longer, if only to shake off the chill of déjà vu. “It’s not funny, Michael,” she said again, giving his arm a shove most unbefitting someone of her standing (those days, anyway). “You think I want to be here? You think I didn’t have a million better, safer, parties I could’ve gone to, tonight?”

He turned, but that was mostly just to check Sam was coming – he barely met Emily’s eyes. “Uh huh. And yet here you are.”

“I’m here,” she snapped, “because apparently it’s the 1950’s again, and the only way to talk to these assholes is to be in the same room as them. They don’t answer their emails, they’ve all probably changed their phone numbers twenty times, and if I get one more passive-aggressively cheery message from their slimy PR guy spitting legal jargon at me, I’ll – ”

“You’ll…what, Em? Drink all their merlot and eat all their frilly little appetizers?” He held the door open as the others filed past, only then dropping his eyes to hers. “They wrote a book. Big whoop.”

“They wrote a book about me,” she corrected him, her mouth wrinkling into a frown when he quickly corrected her.

“A book about us. Yeah. Know what? They did. They wrote a book about us, and now they’re making a movie about us, and with the way the world’s been spinning lately, that probably means there’ll be a whole cinematic universe about us before too long. Know what else? It’s a free fucking country and the three of them are already richer than God, thanks to that shitstain’s dad, so you tell me what you’re gonna do about it.” Holding her gaze, he swept an arm out to guide her towards the others.

“Then why are you here?” Instead of leaving the station she stood there, resolute, folding her arms again. Her glove-leather creaked in the cold. “Sorry, but I find it hard to believe that you don’t have some macho motivation for showing up when you could’ve just stayed at home and gotten blasted on your couch watching ESPN highlights.”

“You know, I really missed you too.”

She ignored him. “So if you’re not here to grab them by the scruff and shake them around a little because of the movie thing, then what is it? You’ve piqued my curiosity.”

“I – ” he began, only for Sam to poke her head in, flashing them both a look that toed the line between impatience and sympathy. “I know, I know, we’re coming.” Mike gestured a second time, and when Emily still didn’t budge, he began edging his way out, the door slowly swinging shut with him until she had no choice but to grab hold of it herself. “I’m here to call their bluff,” he said simply, yanking the hood of his coat up as he stepped into the snowy clearing. He tried not to look around for too long, tried to pretend Jess wasn’t right there, tried to forget that once they’d just been a couple of kids having a snowball fight out in the middle of nowhere. If he started getting sentimental and wobbly-kneed now, there’d be no coming back from it.

“Calling their bluff,” Emily repeated, eyeing him with an almost nostalgic sort of suspicion. “On what?”

“On being here at all.” Once they were a group again, at least in the loosest sense of the word, Matt switching his weight from leg to leg as he inspected the path, Jess staring off into the distance with her fuzzy earmuffs dancing in the wind, Sam hovering between everyone like the world’s most agitated referee, Mike spread his arms wide. “You guys don’t get it, do you? There’s no party. There’s no lodge. We know that, okay? We know that. Three of us saw it burn to the fucking ground. This is just another prank, another way to twist the knife. They’re sitting back at home, laughing their asses off as they imagine how grey our faces turned when we got those stupid invites. ‘Hey friends and fans, you’re invited to the 9th annual Blackwood Winter Getaway’? For real? They think we crumpled those things up and trashed them the second we got them, and now our nights are going to be ruined. They think we’re at whatever-the-fuck other party we had, or work event, or date night, or whatever the hell, nursing champagne on a sick stomach and a tension headache because we’re thinking about this place again.”

“Mike,” Sam said, sounding an awful lot like Matt had back in the cable car. Low, slow, cautious.

“Well fuck them. Sun’s up, and I’m not scared of this place.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked a rock out of the icy crust beneath his boots. “I’m calling their stupid fucking bluff. They’re not winning this game.”

They watched as he stomped off, and once he overtook him as leader of the pack (so to speak), Matt shook his head. “I really don’t think any of this is what I’d call a game, man…”

Then you don’t know Josh. Sam took a deep breath in, held the smell of clean air and pine needles in her chest until it made her eyes water, then squared her shoulders and followed after Mike. She’d almost said it aloud but managed to tamp it down in time, simply flashing the rest of them a tight smile as they set down the familiar trail. It kept playing over in her head, though, an earworm she couldn’t shake out: If this doesn’t sound like a game to you, then you don’t know him at all.

Then again, she’d never really been an expert on the subject, herself.

---

“…this isn’t funny.” Mike that time, the slouching of his shoulders the closest thing Emily was going to get to an apology. He stood staring at what waited for them at the end of the winding path, his face flushed from the cold but quickly losing color with each passing second the lodge didn’t dissipate into a mirage.

None of the others said anything, not for a while at least; without meaning to, those old lines in the sand resurfaced once more, Sam and Emily both moving to flank Mike as they took in the sight, leaving Jess and Matt off to the side. As afternoon gave way to evening and the sun began to dip below the trees, the light shifted and sent them hurtling back through time until all that was missing was the heat of the fire on their faces and the sound of Chris and Ashley catching their breath over by the picnic table.

Surprising none of them, it was Sam who took the first step over the invisible line, forcing herself out of the then and into the now. She held her head high as she went, hoping she could trick herself into confidence and very quickly realized she could not – not as the lodge came into focus and she found she couldn’t spot a single difference between it and the original. There were no shutters out of place, no windows set at subtly skewed angles. The shape, the silhouette, the paint, the bricks and wood and glass and gutters, everything was exactly as it had been before the fire.

For one horrendous moment, silent and shared, more than one of them felt doubt flicker behind their eyes.

There had been a fire…right?

“Bluff called, huh?” As she followed Sam, Emily didn’t deign to look at Mike. She did, however, slow her step to let Jess pass her by, feigning annoyance so no one could accuse her of pity.

They climbed the stairs slowly, some out of fear of ice (reasonable), others of traps hidden just below the snow (more reasonable still), more than one worried they’d step through them and tumble to the ground, lost in some sort of trauma-spawned hallucination (possibly the most reasonable of all); when they made it to the top, finding themselves facing the front door, it was dread that fogged the air between them.

This was all becoming too much. Whatever they’d expected when the invitations had arrived, this hadn’t been it.

It was Sam who knocked first, but it was Emily who knocked loudest, shouldering her way to the front of the group when the door didn’t immediately swing open.

“What did I tell you?” Mike asked from the back, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket—still woefully too thin for the mountain air, if the way he kept swaying side to side was anything to go by. “They’re not actually here. They’re back under whatever fucking rock they chose, laughing their asses off imagining us staring at this place and shaking in our boots. None of them ever had the guts to—”

That was, of course, the moment Ashley opened the door, letting a warm gust of air out onto the landing. “Oh my gosh,” she smiled, the words made almost reverent by how slowly she spoke them, letting a whole beat pass between each one. Her hair was longer than any of them remembered, laying over one shoulder in a lazy, uneven braid. A wine-colored duster draped over her shirt and jeans, and her fingers toyed with the cuffs of its sleeves, just a little too long for her.

The nostalgia wasn’t eerie anymore, it was dizzying.

“Three, four, fi…wow. Oh wow. Hi guys! C’mon in, holy cow, you must be freezing!” Even Emily was shocked into silence as Ashley stepped back and held the door open for them, waving a hand to usher them in. “Go ahead and put your boots anywhere, no way the mat’s big enough for everyone, so don’t even worry about it. Oh! And the coat closet…” She caught herself, laughing brightly, and rolled her eyes at herself. “Who am I kidding, you guys know where everything is. Can I get anyone something to drink? We’ve got, like, everything.”

“Gross oversimplification of the actual drink sitch.” Chris came walking out from the great room, then, the years clearly having done nothing to extinguish his appreciation for graphic t-shirts and layered hoodies. Those who knew what to look for noticed the way he favored his right leg—the ones who didn’t, well, didn’t. “We’ve got everything in a broad sense, maybe…”

“Here we go.”

“I-I-I mean, look, we’ve got all the main groups covered. We got your juices, your caffeinated beverages, your alcoholic beverages, your fake-milks…no water, though. Huh. Feels like an oversight, doesn’t it?”

“Shush.” Still beaming, Ashley flicked a hand towards Chris, glancing to the others. “Ignore him. Seriously. This’ll shock you, I’m sure, but someone still thinks he’s hilarious.”

“Ouch. In front of our company, Ash? In front of our guests? You wound me.” He laughed, grinning the same doofy grin he’d had as a teenager, and only after Ashley headed deeper into the lodge did he reach for Matt’s coat. “Here, man, let me.” If he noticed the way Emily visibly flinched away from him, he didn’t let on. He simply took Matt’s coat and hooked it onto a hanger, setting it with the others in the closet.

“Chris,” Sam started, because no one else was about to.

“Mhm?”

She waited until he met her gaze. “What is this?”

“Uhhh…a…looodge?” His eyebrows contorted like she was the one being weird and he couldn’t figure out her game. “Which is a kind of house, I guess? But more like a hotel, almost? It’s…okay, imagine that a house and a hotel had a baby. That. It’s that.”

“Ha ha ha,” Mike cut in, entirely sans mirth of any recognizable sort. “She meant what are we doing here? What are you doing here?” It wouldn’t have been right to say he rounded on Chris as he said it, not exactly, but it wasn’t too far off. In the old days, that would’ve been enough to shake him, to send him stepping back with hands up defensively. He tried not to let surprise color his face, then, when Chris didn’t budge.

If anything, he only scrunched his eyebrows again, saying without words that they were the ones making this strange. “Did you…not read the invite, dude? It’s a New Year’s Eve party. We’re here to, y’know,” he let the pause stretch for a moment longer than needed, “party like we’re fucking pornstars.” Without dropping Mike’s gaze, he swept an arm out, welcoming the gang past him, out towards the great room where Ashley had gone off to.

It was Matt who led the way that time, feeling less an intrepid hero and more a sick man leading the dying; the lodge hadn’t been where the worst had happened to him, after all, and when it had finally gone up in flame, he’d been none the wiser until a grim-faced police officer had (repeatedly) grilled him on his involvement. The sight of the place didn’t fill him with the same sort of queasiness it did most of the others—he didn’t like it, didn’t appreciate how it felt so much like stepping back in time, but his knees didn’t go weak like Emily’s, and his jaw didn’t go tight like Mike’s.

“It’s crazy, right?” Ashley grinned when she caught them staring, and though she must’ve known—she had to have—she acted as if their eyes had gone wide from wonder. Awe. “It took forever to get it just right. I mean…for. Ev. Er. A lot of the art and tapestries and stuff, ugh, don’t even get me started. We were just so lucky Josh’s mom kept the contact info from the artists she’d commissioned the first time. Oh, um, obviously you’ll notice there’s one glaring difference, but…” She stood below the spot where the awful tangled-metal sculpture had hung, once upon a time, her hands on her hips and her eyes narrowed with thought. “Too many bad memories attached to that one. We figured we could do without.”

“That’s what got you, huh?” Emily’s voice was edged, brittle, threatening to snap off in the first thing that wandered too close.

Ashley turned around, her smile never wavering, but before she could say whatever it was she’d meant to, she sucked in a breath and took a step forward. “Ooh, Jess! Hang on, I wouldn’t!”

As though she’d set off a firework beside her head, Jess all but jumped up from her crouch, pale-faced and breathing hard, her hands clenched to fists at her sides. The cat she’d been kneeling to pet hissed at the sudden movement, shooting across the room like a dusty grey bullet.

“Sorry, sorry! That’s, um…well, that’s Jack,” Ashley said in that same tour-guide voice, laughing apologetically and gesturing back towards Chris. “He’s a Maine Coon…a rescue…and…kiiind of a bastard. I didn’t mean to spook you, it’s just, um, he bites. Hard. Unless you’re Chris.”

“Mhm,” he agreed, picking the huge, mangy thing up from where it had wended itself between his legs. “Then he only bites sort of hard. It’s kind of our thing.” Briefly, he held the cat up for the others to see, and one of its ragged ears twitched, its one eye a bright, sickly yellow as it took them in. “Jerk kills spiders like it’s his job, though, so we keep him around.”

“No.” There wasn’t a living being in the room that didn’t turn to Emily at the sound of her voice. She advanced on Ashley like Mike had on Chris before, and was similarly surprised (but undaunted) when she didn’t immediately cower away like a skittish chipmunk. “I’m not doing this.”

“…not doing…what, exactly?”

“This. Any of it. I don’t know what you freaks think you’re up to here, inviting us to this place and then acting like everything’s totally fucking normal, like this—like any of this—” There she spread her arms wide, gesturing to the lodge at large, “could ever be normal, but I’m not doing it! The only reason I came here was to give you psychopaths a piece of my mind, and—”

“We gonna have to split you kids up?” From somewhere below them, a door shut. Footsteps, sure and solid, grew nearer and nearer until Josh came cresting the stairs from the lower floor, the picture of slow-burning delight. Continuing the pattern Chris and Ashley had started, he looked the same as ever, his jeans artfully ripped at the knees, the sleeves of his dark shirt rolled up to the crooks of his elbows. It was only the scars that gave the years away, the ones that pocked the left side of his face in the places where the rot had sunk in too deeply.

When he grinned, though, those scars became dimples.

“Oooh, and the crowd…goes…silent,” he snickered, wiping his hands off on his jeans before leaning against the railing, getting a good eyeful of the gang. “I’ve been told I have that effect on people. But please, please! Don’t let me interrupt. I know once you get on a tear, it’s hard, nigh impossible, to work you down from it, so, by all means.” He gave a low bow, waving his arms every which way as he deferred to Emily. “Keep going! Anyone who doesn’t want to listen is more than free, by the bye, to go check out the guest cabin.”

Jess and Mike bristled as one, but one more than the other.

She’d been so quiet until that point, so docile…however, at the mere mention of the guest cabin, Jess burst to life, turning on her heel and marching out of the great room the same way they’d all come. Matt and Sam were quick to dash after her, both offering hushed reassurances, but she just shook her head and kept on shaking it, saying nothing.

Josh’s eyes slid to Ashley, then to Chris, then to no one in particular. “Man, if you guys are feeling this jumpy, I’ll warn you right now, you should steer clear of the basement at all costs.” His head bobbled back and forth for a second like he was thinking about it, the corners of his lips quirking up into a smirk at once perfectly familiar and completely alien. “Probably didn’t need me to tell you that, huh? Didn’t think any of you guys would be, y’know, champin’ at the bit to get down there, but better safe than sorry. Got some pet projects down there you’re not gonna want to stumble across.”

“Pet projects?” Mike remarked, tone not cool so much as arctic. “That what you’re calling your little serial killer nest now?”

Josh’s grin didn’t falter. Not even slightly. “Animatronic prototypes,” he enunciated carefully.

“Think…Five Nights at Freddy’s but a little less friendly,” Chris snickered, the monstrous cat in his arms butting its head up against his chin, purring (growling?) almost loudly enough to be heard over the heating. “Five Nights at Blackwood Lodge. Now there’s an idea!”

“No,” Ashley said with a smile and a sigh that suggested a long-running joke none of them were privy to. “We’ve had the jumpscare discussion. We’re not doing it.”

“We’re doing some.”

“Slow-building dread. Not surprise, not disgust��slow. Building. Dread.”

Neither of them had been able to imagine a reality where they found themselves on the same side that night, and yet even so, Mike and Emily’s eyes met as the other three joked and acted as they always had—more interested in their own bullshit than anything else. The inner language the two of them might’ve shared once had long since fizzled away to ashes, but one didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what the other was thinking.

A door slammed somewhere, and when Sam reappeared in the great room, cold clung to her as if she’d been standing out on the stoop for some time. “Jess left,” she said to all of them, or maybe none of them, or maybe just herself. She rubbed her hands together to will some sort of warmth back into her fingers.

“Alone?!”

“No. Matt too. They’re headed for the cable car, they were trying to call the bus service—”

“The sun’s going down, and they’re going to—”

“They’ll be fine,” Josh cut in, walking his fingers across Ashley’s shoulders as he passed her by, plunking down on the end of the huge L-shaped sectional in the middle of the room. “Mountain’s empty. I mean, unless any of you are planning on eating someone and starting the whole mess up again.” He laced his fingers behind his head, pointedly dropped his smirk, and narrowed his eyes. “None of you…are planning on eating anyone while you’re up here, right? I know I’m not. So, like I said. They’ll be fine.”

“Aw man,” Chris said a moment later, glancing towards the dining room. “They didn’t take their goodie bags. Bummer.”

Before any of them could react to that, Ashley clapped her hands together once. “So! Drinks? Who wants what?”

---

Time didn’t take the fight out of Emily—confusion, however, dulled it to something vague and stinging. She didn’t touch the food that was offered to her, didn’t even consider sipping at the champagne they’d popped. That would’ve been giving in, would’ve been folding, and she hadn’t come all that way to brush this shit under the rug.

Mike and Sam, however, had taken a slightly different approach. He was doing his damnedest to eat them out of house and home, by the looks of it, and she was busy, as ever, playing peacemaker.

The only thing they seemed to have in common was how little they were willing to trust the others’ intentions. They sat stiffly on one end of the couch, muscles clenched and ready for the moment where they’d have to spring to action, dodge, duck, weave, escape, flee…

Except darkness fell and nothing nefarious happened. Unless you counted Chris’s attempts at playing the piano.

And then midnight came and nothing devious transpired. Nothing worse than Josh’s nonsensical toasts, anyway.

Then the witching hour approached and there hadn’t been so much as a single prank pulled. Ashley had said there was Sprite in the fridge and it had turned out to be 7Up, but even that had seemed to be an earnest mistake.

For all intents and purposes, it seemed like…it seemed like they hadn’t planned anything, that this was just supposed to be a New Year’s Eve party and nothing more. There was no laughing at their expense, no veiled looks or sidelong smirks when they thought they weren’t looking, no collapsing floorboards or rusty old saws or animatronic monsters leaping out of the basement shrieking as loud as they could. Just food and drink and recaps of the New Year’s specials playing on the tv.

“I don’t know how you guys are, uh…doing things these days,” Josh said with a flicker of his old mischief once he’d spotted the first yawns going around, “but you know where the rooms are. Take as many as you want, one, two, three, go crazy. I promise all the old faves are still there. The trophy bass room, the antler room, the Pepto-Bismol room, the one with the ugly drapes…”

“They’re all the one with the ugly drapes,” Sam said without thinking, then pressed her lips together in a hard line as she noticed the others’ grins.

“Which one has the fewest perv cameras hidden in the walls?” Emily folded her arms across her chest, then dropped them, then pushed herself up from the couch with a huff. She hadn’t expected an actual answer, not from them, so she didn’t wait for one, instead insisting, “I’m taking Hannah’s room.”

Josh blinked once slowly, turning his head to follow her as she headed for the stairs. “Which one? Upstairs, or…?” He let it trail off, the rest of his thought, but his eyes momentarily slid down towards the darkness leading to the lower floor. To the guest room where they’d played their own prank, once upon a time. “Oh, upstairs. Okay,” he said just as easily, shrugging as she started up. “Happy New Year!”

“Happy New Year!” Chris and Ashley chimed in, him lying flat on the sectional’s cushions with his head on Josh’s lap, her swinging her legs in the air as she sat on its arm. “Yeah, but no, seriously though,” Chris continued, propping himself up on his elbows to look towards Sam and Mike. “There something going on with you two? Cuz, I-I-I don’t wanna presume or anything, but I’ll tell ya, there’s a vibe going on here, and—”

A BANG! so loud it shook the foundation of the lodge itself rang out, causing Sam and Mike both to jump out of their skin. If it hadn’t been for the way the other three startled as well, they might’ve taken it as their cue to leave, little as either of them had any interest in venturing out into the snowy darkness. It took the echoes for the noise to make sense.

Ashley rolled her eyes, not without good humor, and sighed through her nose before standing. “I’ll go make sure she has everything she needs,” she said, smoothing her duster down her sides and following Emily up the stairs to Hannah’s room. It was actually something of a shock that she hadn’t cracked the doorframe, slamming it like that. She knocked, barely tapping her knuckle against the door, and it swung inward as though Emily had been waiting.

“What?”

Her eyebrows went up as she caught a glimpse of the room beyond, already well on its way to ruin despite how little time they’d been apart. “Do you…want some help?”

Emily didn’t bother answering, instead turning and going right back to what she’d been doing before, pulling paintings and pictures from the walls, pressing her nails to the mirror and shining her phone’s flashlight into all the dark corners. “No one buys it.” She kept her voice clipped. “That goody-goody crap? Didn’t buy it then, definitely don’t buy it now, so unless you’re here to point out exactly where you boobytrapped the bed, I’m gonna need you to get the fuck out of my space.”

“The…bed,” Ashley repeated, taking a casual step into the room like proving beyond doubt that she didn’t need permission. “I mean, I can help you strip it if you want? But it’s…just a bed. The mattress came discounted with a code from a podcast, so like, I can’t promise goose-down or anything, but still.”

It wasn’t the words that did it—her tone was more than enough. Emily whirled on her, the light of her phone doing what her glare couldn’t and sending Ashley stumbling back a step. “You have some nerve, do you get that? You have some fucking nerve. You take all that awful, horrible, ugly shit that happened to us, you fold it up into a cute little story, you move in with the maniac who nearly got us all killed in the first place, and you have the audacity to make me out to be the bitch! Me! Like I deserved to be—”

Whether Ashley held her hands up to block the light from her eyes or to get Emily to stop talking was anyone’s guess. “Wait, I’m…I’m sorry, you’re tearing the room apart because I…put a mean character in my book?”

“Don’t you act like—”

“Emily…” She rubbed at her eyes then, turning her head away from the flashlight. “Look, sorry if you didn’t like the book or whatever, but—”

“Didn’t like the book,” she repeated. “Didn’t. Like. The. Book. You know what, Ashley? No, no I did not like the book. I did not like the book that you wrote about us almost dying. I did not like how you wrote said fucking book without any of our permission. And, while we’re on the subject, no, I did not like how you wrote me out to be some sort of monstrous bitch when you’re the one who was begging Mike to shoot me in the head!”

There was color in Ashley’s cheeks and on the tips of her ears, but it was a far cry from the shaking, cowering mess she’d expected. Too much time with Josh, she had to figure; not that Chris seemed to be any better.

As she watched, Ashley took a deep breath in and let it out through pursed lips. “Okay,” she said, sounding not at all as cowed as Emily would’ve liked, “well I’m sorry you weren’t a fan. And I’m sorry you didn’t like the character you seem to think I based on you.”

She couldn’t even get words out that time—the statement was so inane, so insulting, so close to the legalese loopholes their shitty PR manager Conrad was constantly feeding to her, that all she could do was bark out an indignant laugh.

“But if we’re dredging stuff up, let me ask you something: Do you remember grabbing me by my shirt, down there in cinema? Do you remember throwing me to those things? Pushing me in front of them? Shoving me back while I was trying to run away?” She took another few steps into the room until they were standing nearly nose-to-nose, and as she blinked into Emily’s eyes, there was nothing in her expression, hateful or otherwise. “I remember it. I think you probably do, too. I also think, in the grand scheme of things, making you a bitch in my book was the nicest way to make us even for that. Other ideas were bounced around.”

Emily grit her jaw to the point of discomfort.

Ashley, though…she turned the corners of her mouth up. “There are extra sheets in the linen closet,” she smiled. “Sleep tight.”

---

When they woke up the next morning, she was already gone. There was no question it’d been of her own volition, not with all the furniture overturned as it was, her coat and boots leaving noticeable gaps in the closet and mat. It’d been a miracle she’d lasted that long anyway, they figured. The fact she hadn’t stormed off with Matt and Jess the night before was nothing short of a wonder.

They sat at the kitchen island in the relative silence of the place, trying their best to pretend they didn’t remember the last time they’d done it. It wasn’t hard to do—they knew where Hannah and Beth were, this morning. They knew where everyone else was, too.

“And then there were two.” Josh yawned widely, doing nothing to cover it up. He stepped around their stools to flip the coffeepot on, then rolled his neck until something popped. “Now, how did I know it would be you two, who’d stick around?”

“You didn’t,” Chris cut in, dropping himself into an empty stool at the island and removing his glasses, rubbing a smudge away with the sleeve of the shirt he’d slept in. “You said it’d just be Sam.”

He flapped a hand like he was making a sock puppet talk. “Details.” He stepped out of the kitchen again, grabbing onto the doorjamb and leaning far as he could towards the dining room. “For the love of…Cochise, you are not gonna believe this shit…”

“She did not.”

“She did!”

“Ash is gonna pee her pants, she’s gonna laugh so hard…”

“Ash? Forget Ash, I’m about to need a new pair myself. She took her goodie bag before stomping off, holy shit…can’t leave without that swag, now can we?”

Neither Mike nor Sam said a word to any of that, both of them just sitting, just listening, just blearily blinking the sleep out of their eyes. It wasn’t until Josh came back, slouching comfortably in the stool next to Chris’s with both elbows on the table, that Sam found her voice.

“What was the point, guys?” she asked, setting her chin on her hand. It wasn’t a new question, far from it in fact, but she’d been the only one to ask it in a level tone of voice, so it stood to reason she was the only one who got an actual answer.

“Of what? Inviting you guys here for a kickass New Year’s Eve bash?” Chris chuckled, sliding his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “C’mooon…maybe we just wanted to party like it’s 1999. Er, 2014. Wait, uh, shit, whoops, I meant 2015. Hang on, I’ll get this, I meant—”

Josh nudged him with his shoulder, the two of them snickering in the same way they always had. “What was the point, huh Sammy? What…was…the…point.” He smiled at her, then at Mike, and it wasn’t a cruel one, or a jeering one, or even one they felt was meant to be mocking. It was just a smile, nothing more, nothing less. And somehow that was worse. “I’ll level with you guys, brave heroes that you are and all. Honestly, we just wanted to see if you’d show up.”

Mike’s mouth tightened. He swallowed hard. “Called your bluff, huh?”

“That you did, dreamboat. That you did.” When the coffeepot dinged, Josh pushed himself up again, grunting with effort. He started getting mugs down from the cupboard, then started laughing anew. “Funny how some shit never changes, isn’t it?”

#love-fireflysong #new year prompts #queenie writes supermassive #fuck no: the movie #i did noT INTEND FOR THIS TO BE SO LOOOOOOONG #but what can i say - i see a fuck no: the movie prompt i go a little feral akljsdfkljs there's nothing to be done about it #this is only BARELY proofread for the time being so PLEASE ignore what im sure are MANY MANY TYPOS

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wolfsneedles · 3 years ago

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My Re-read of a storm of swords and i just cant get over how interesting it as book with iconic lines and carefully crafted dialogues and some miserable important deaths of some of my fav characters. Like this book, is really the iphone of asoiaf lol. A fine wine. Arbor gold. It starts from same events left incomplete in clash of kings but only that now every person meets their consequences and disastrous results of wrong moves & mistakes end so perfectly and painfuly in conclusive way. A feast for crows obviously focuses more on king's landing events and some of the riverlands with brienne and jaime. Might say it isn't my fav book yet since im reading it too apart from some breathtaking prophecies and aemon declaring how prince that was promised could be --> dany

However, ASOS is best best book ever. So much mess and bittersweet endings.

You see catelyn, robb and riverlands arc ending in the most tragic way as result of all small excusable mistakes to the reader that piled up and finally execution of red wedding with bangs and drums, not to mention this event was so catatonic and an irreversible tragedy that almost all characters had visions and dreams of it (patchface, Ghost of high heart, theon, daenerys, jon perhaps later) knowing half of these characters never met the victims of the red wedding.

This event also meant - northern power of houses and faith of independence and somewhat retribution they deserved or wish they had is thwarted now and almost all of them die there esp strength of dustin, manderlys along with boltons betraying them and roose coming out as an iconic cold hearted brute and villain somewhat.

This book also shows how stark sisters had their paths turned after the tiring chasing and running away like arya through war torn lands and sansa finally fleeing KL to Vale with littlefinger - in a way a complete revival again of her and arya embarking on to braavos with an entirely different name now and somewhat purpose we dont know yet also ends her arc of sadness and despair she felt when chasing and running towards her lady mother and robb at the twins. kind of tragic tbh more for her how she saw or heard almost every death of a stark. near to her or family, she saw horror unfolding in front of her eyes.

You have lannisters coming off as victorious ( not really then...) since tywin and tyrion's last scene is iconic. Its like how the might of house lannister which in case tywin refers to himself is broken on a freaking privy - somewhat bittersweet ending since we know cersei and jaime are already not so in a good mental state to make up for heir of casterly rock - and then we have tyrion fleeing too again, once more, finally, to essos as we know. This ending of his arc in KL is also imp since he entered this city like tywin as hand of the king and is leaving like a prisoner. Idk seems perfect to me how he runs and tywin who came as hand of king replacing his son, now goes back in ehh coffin...glory indeed.

You have bran and rickon already parting in ACOK, BUT now the most importent part of brans journey also begins somehow. and therefore him abandoning winterfell and that side of north for further journey is too sad for me too in a lot of ways. His connection to his own home as the last stark who was residing there has ended too (prob bloodraven has more action for my boy i hope).

You have Lysa Tully in the Vale before sansa arrived there with baelish, and she also ultimately gets too much of frightening end in same castles and doors she never opened for anyone - even refusing to help her sister during war because now i wonder had the vale signed for stark side, how different circumstances would be but then tywin wanted to play rains of castamere so bad (i hate him sorry)

Jaime and Brienne still were busy in their road ventures and romantic comedy but him arriving as cripple and maimed to KL, is again of uttermost importance since he in his thoughts lose a lot of confidence in himself now not really making him a perfect candidate for so many things,,, again he has to sort out some issues with his big of bully sister and not-so-accommodating power hungry deluded father but he chose to argue and decline offer for heir of rock and also confessed his utter disregard for poor kids he have, joffrey especially. Idk im so confused what this golden lion & a trained chivalrous warrior is onto since jaime's chapter is like a realistic slap on your face & we see his POV in ASOS only and then he just goes thru huuuge turmoil lol. (not good day or year for him tbh)

Lastly we have daenerys who then vows to settle in mereen making it evident in way how she isn't obsessed with utter power and throne of her ancestors as some ppl speculate, ofc she appears in ADWD again but her freeing slaves and singing dracarys is my another fav momet of ASOS, since dany is really not a frightened confused child she was, she is getting hold of things in realistic way too, and meets barristan, gets to know abt their betrayals, basically gets Unsullied, idk a major iconic moment if u see in contrast to how everyone is losing war now in westeros and wo5k is coming to kind of an end, with balon dying, robb and joff dead, and stannis...(well he is another spiritual case) going to the wall, we see how horrifying brutal war did come to an end in ASOS in the end eventually with tywin also dying. So dany getting an army of unsullied opposed to all other armies kind of dissolving in westeros is quite a distinction. ( bonus points she is young and woman and alone and has 3 dragon )

On the Wall - jon plays and practiced swords with emmett and then struck by memory of him and robb playing & above all how he wants to be lord of winterfell. In the end Jon Snow wins the vote in a landslide victory and is named the 998th Lord Commander. His entire journey from start of ASOS was with ygritte and Wildlings and then finally giving up on mance and returning to Wall with no expectations of him being commander after having spent moments alone and with wildlings and others with him just a ranger.

Realising in the end now, how storm of swords puts people in power like jon and dany and others like boltons and freys in north & riverlands, at the same time starks and lannisters are in way battered and struck by at a time tragedies. Half of people who were away from their families unite or return back like jaime while other half return somewhere more far (arya sansa at vale and braavos with bran more far from winterfell, rickon too), most of the 5 kings are dead too. Also aftermath of war at end of ASOS and AFFC also describes perfectly the attitude and responses of smallfolk towards whoever results in being the king of no concern to them. Most of the small roads and inns were damaged and plundered with woman and children killed or raped and men usually dead too. When we see arya or jaime and brienne usually, we read their POVs, we also see the wrenching elements of war too and how main message could also be that lords play their game of thrones but peasants suffer dreadfully more, we also see how smallfolks have no trust or loyalties towards any house or liege lord. They usually refer to starks and lannister conflict as 'wolves came...or lions did this'. Major point i noticed.

not to mention again, in essos and on the wall 2 different realities and places that mid westeros, we see dany and jon and their ingrown different experiences and attitudes towards smallfolks. freeing of slaves and getting some loyalties tied to you, while living with wildlings and seeing how they rule and eat and sleep like a commoner is so important. The Wall also gives meaning to how real breathing humans are segregated from westeros and other houses as result of prejudice and inborn enmities. The slaves in chains indicate how their little lives in Yunkai is not of importance when they are...utterly children. some of them.

ASOS has major shifting thoughts and stories tbh. Its like gospel of asoiaf for me.

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bridenore · 4 years ago

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Drarry advent fic recs

It’s almost Christmas time! To celebrate in style, here are a few advent fic recs. Listed in alphabetical order as always.

Aeternus Solem by @onbeinganangel [36k]

On December 1st, Harry Potter gets sent halfway across the world to attempt to break a possibly fatal curse on an unnamed British Unspeakable — except said Unspeakable is not unnamed at all and Harry has been in love with him for over four years.

All I Want For Christmas (Is For You To Stop Talking) by @femmequixotic and @noeeon [162k]

The Niffler's Garden is the most prestigious wizarding nursery school in England and has been for the last century or more. Harry Potter's boys are both enrolled as pupils at the Garden. When he volunteers to assist with the Yule pageant, he has no idea that he'll be working closely with another parent, Draco Malfoy. Although they haven't seen each other much since their own school days, Harry faults Malfoy for not being a hands-on dad to little Scorpius. Will the intense weeks of preparation fan the fires of enmity or something else entirely?

All Must Draw Near by Saras_Girl [61k]

Harry doesn’t have time for rumours; he has a shop to run. Which is just as well, really. [advent fic 2013]

the call of sweet things by @softlystarstruck [88k]

Draco’s happy with his quiet, lonely life in Woolbury, spending his days working at Pen Pals and keeping his already tidy flat spotless. But when Harry Potter shows up with pink hair and secrets about his magic, Draco’s carefully upheld balance falls apart. He doesn’t quite know how he ends up decorating Harry’s cottage, drinking unreasonable amounts of cocoa, and laughing more than he’s laughed in years, but it’s Christmas, after all– and he finally has a chance to set things right.

Changing with the season by @harryromper [36k]

Harry’s determined the first time he hosts the extended Weasley clan for Christmas will be a success. The Grimmauld Place advent calendar has other ideas … until Draco shows up to help.

Deck the Halls by oldenuf2nb [35k]

Harry's life hasn't turned out as he expected... divorced and alone and now suffering from nighmares and erratic behavior.

Headlights in the Snow by Saras_Girl [71k]

What’s big and purple and smells like tea? Harry is about to find out. Advent fic 2016.

Helix by Saras_Girl [92k]

Seven months after the end of the war, Harry is feeling lost. Fortunately, he is about to be offered an unexpected and sparkling chance to find himself again. [2014 advent fic]

If the Fates Allow by Saras_Girl [80k]

What’s that crackling in the walls? Harry has no clue at all. He’ll eat some cake and drink some wine Because he is completely FINE.

–A story about life’s disregard for our plans. [2017 advent story]

Kaleidoscope by Saras_Girl [104k]

If Harry’s honest, the last thing he needs is a house full of Draco Malfoy, but partners are partners, and perhaps, the thing he wants the least will turn out to be absolutely everything.

Light up the Night by Saras_Girl [98k]

This year, despite his better judgement, Harry’s love life is going off with a bang. Advent fic 2019.

The Opposite of Amnesia by @burning-up-ao3 [39k]

Draco's home has layers of old, dark magic that he can't remove. He has to hire the best person to keep him and Scorpius safe. Even if that person is Harry Potter.

Season of the Spirit by Saras_Girl [95k]

It starts with a swan. What happens after that is a bit of a mystery. 2018 advent story.

Tell Me the End at the Beginning by @harryromper [36k]

St Mungo’s is the last place anyone wants to spend the festive season. Harry finds himself there anyway.

Or: Harry's an Auror suspended from duty, Malfoy's wearing the hell out of three-piece suits, Hermione is entirely over everything, and Kreacher just wants to be left alone to decorate for Christmas.

Too Cold Outside (For Angels to Fly) by @gracerene09 [62k]

The Auror Department and the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures are working to create a new division partnering human wizards and Magical Beings in order to more effectively police crime involving any and all classifications of Magical Creature. Auror Harry Potter jumps at the chance to join the pilot programme, but he starts to regret his rashness when he discovers who he's to be partnered with: Draco Malfoy.

I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did!

#my recs #drarry #drarry recs #theme rec

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fmlopla · 2 months ago

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Calling his ex-boyfriend to drive him to the airport was not Zoro’s first choice. But due to unfortunate mishaps and wrong hotel directions, it was the only way he was going to make his flight in time to compete at the national kendo championships the next day. Thankfully, by some small miracle, Sanji agrees to drive him.

But when Sanji’s car breaks down on the highway, neither of them could anticipate the adventure that would ensue when tow truck driver Luffy picks them up. Faced with fleeing the cops, driving off a bridge, sailing through a thunderstorm, and making it through dinner with a lady in a swamp, Zoro and Sanji need to work together to survive the day.

Will Zoro still make it to the competition on time?

Only if they jump out of a flying plane.

———

Had such fun working on this for @HearSomeEvil on AO3, I got to make 6 pieces!

#one piece #one piece fanart #fanart #roronoa zoro #black leg sanji #sanji #zosan #my art #vinsmoke sanji #one piece sanji #enmity big bang #enmity: Zosan big bang #one piece fanfic #one piece fanfiction #self promo

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 5 years ago

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What do you think the Animorphs would be like playing D&D? Not "the Animorphs in a D&D world", but the Animorphs actually sitting down and having a campaign of D&D. Like the classes/races they'd pick, their play styles, wacky shenanigans (because we all know it would happen).

[Credit to Cates for 100% of the character builds, and most of the lore, in this AU. In case you were wondering, I’m the Jake-style “never read the manual” chaotic-dumbass bard of our campaign; she’s the Marco-style “uses the rules exactly as much or little as needed” DM.]

It was decided almost right away that one on the team had any alignment. As DM, Marco attempted to start there, only to have Ax begin questioning whether the manual’s explanations of “good” and “evil” truly captured human ethics on a grand scale. Tobias claimed that Ax was looking at it all wrong, that the moralities were only default behavior types within the game, and that within this particular context morality didn’t matter. Cassie got very concerned about the idea of context-dependent morality, Rachel declared that the book was stupid and short-sighted for claiming that destroying things was always bad, Jake quietly asked for the fourth or fifth time if this game was actually a good idea…

“Fine!” Marco announced. “You’re all amoral characters. Happy?”

“‘Amoral’ implies that we’re immoral, doesn’t it?” Cassie asked. “Or that we exist outside the spectrum of moralities?”

“Just…” Marco rolled his eyes. “Everyone leave that spot on your character sheet blank, okay? If it ever comes up, we’ll deal with it on a case-by-case basis.”

“Yes,” Ax said, “although you never did answer my question about the implied ethical structure of this universe.”

After that, character creation went fairly smoothly. Kind of.

“Why does Dennis need a backstory, again?” Jake asked, looking down at his sheet.

“Dennis?” Marco said. “Dennis?

“You already said I wasn’t allowed to use ‘Dylan’ or ‘Brad’, so…’”

“C’mon man, this is D’nD. There are no Dennises in medieval fantasy epics.”

“Fine.” Jake crossed out and rewrote the name at the top of his character sheet. “Why does Keith need a backstory?”

“To explain his motivation.”

“You just said that the whole time we’re going to be chased around by orcs and whatnot. Isn’t not dying enough motivation?”

“You really don’t understand this game, do you?” Rachel said.

“I really don’t understand this game,” Jake agreed.

“My character��s a dragonborn rogue named Joan, and she’s the greatest gymnast of all time.” Rachel added a Dexterity marker to her sheet with a flourish.

“I thought I was a dragonborn,” Jake said. “Is that allowed?”

“Yeah, we can have as many dragonborns as you all want.” Marco shrugged. “We just can’t have multiple bards. And since you called dibs on that class, and Rachel wants to be a rogue, we’re fine.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jake said. “I just want to help out the team. Or, uh, Keith does?”

“Great.”

“So that’s my backstory, right? Being a bard?”

“Yes,” Rachel said, at the same time Marco said, “No!”

In the end, Marco declared that if neither Rachel nor Jake could come up with a proper backstory, he was making their characters cousins. Tobias, who had a better flair for the romantic, declared that said cousins were from an internationally feared family of highwaymen.

“So does that get us any extra skills, coming from a family of pirates?” Rachel asked.

“Maybe it’d explain how good your character is at gymnastics,” Jake said. “Because of riggings and all.”

“Highwaymen.” Marco looked up from where he was trying to salvage Keith’s stats from the hopeless tangle of Jake’s incorrect math. “Tobias said you guys are highwaymen, not pirates.”

“What are pirates but highwaymen of the sea?” Tobias asked, tilting his head in thought.

“Just put us down as jewel thieves.” Rachel made a note on her own sheet. “Jewel thieves of diverse methodology. Wherever jewels can be found, there we are with threats of violence to take them away.”

“By the way, why is Ax now a tiefling?” Tobias asked Marco.

“I told Marco I have no preference for my class and race,” Ax said. “And the word is most pleasant, tea-fling. Ffflllling.”

“They’re blue and have tails.” Marco smirked at Tobias. “It’s perfect!”

Rachel and Jake might’ve been vague on the idea of backstory, but Ax was quite definite.

“I am Eldrias the tiefling, fffflllling, paladin. She was raised by cows,” he announced.

“Don’t you mean raised by wolves?” Jake said. “Isn’t that a thing, raised by wolves?”

“Uh-huh,” Marco said, “since your land-pirates make perfect sense.”

“Wolves are beautiful animals, but they pale in comparison to cows,” Ax said. “Among other things, wolves’ meat is not so succulent and does not pair nearly as well with french fries.”

“Okay then,” Jake said, “raised by cows. Got it.”

Becoming a barbarian was Cassie’s idea. She spun through the manual in a rapid burst of pages, brushing gentle fingertips over the beautifully rendered illustrations, and then pressed it shut. “Barbarian,” she said. “That’s the one that can protect the team the best, right? So I’ll be a barbarian.”

Marco laughed. “All right then. Barbarian it is. Anything else in mind, for this barbarian of yours?”

Cassie tapped a finger against her lower lip, fluttering through the first several pages of the manual once again. “I could make my character a big, tall guy, right?”

“Sure.”

“But I want pointy ears.” She grinned at the rest of the table, somewhat sheepish.

“Half-elf barbarian, then?”

“Half-elf barbarian.” Cassie looked down at the sheet in front of her. “He can be named Reisgalan Von Schwartzel of the Morsgalath Half-Elves, Lord of the Plains and Wielder of…” She glanced around. “What’s that thing with the spiky ball on a stick?”

“Mace,” Rachel provided.

“Mace is that spray you use on bears and muggers,” Jake said.

“And it’s also a spiky ball on a stick.” Marco glanced at Cassie’s sheet. “You have a backstory for Reisgalan Von Whatshisface?”

“Hmmmm. Can I be widowed and have a tragically dead prince I must avenge?”

“Is it me?” Jake smiled hopefully.

“What?” Cassie frowned at him. “No. That’d be horrible.” She looked over at Marco. “Uh, can my character be a guy and also have a dead husband? Is that allowed?”

“Yeah, sure,” Marco said. “I’m the ruler of this universe, so I say it’s fine. And Tobias is the designated rules lawyer, so he’ll probably have some reason that it’s not.”

“I am not rules-lawyering!”

Marco looked at Ax’s character sheet, and then pointedly back up at Tobias. “Ax, how did you end up as not just a paladin, but a paladin that’s even more overpowered than the standard build?”

“Paladins are allowed.” Tobias shrugged. “It’s right there in the manual.”

“Ax, how you have splint armor?” Marco demanded.

“Paladins can wear Heavy armor,” Tobias sing-songed.

Marco growled.

Ax squinted at his character sheet. “Tobias says when I get to Level Three, I will take the Oath of Vengeance and take a Vow of Enmity. I will know the spells Thunderous Smite, Command, and Detect Magic.”

Marco’s face was turning an interesting shade of red.

“Oh, and Eldrias the paladin is taking Great Weapon as her Fighting Style.” Tobias wasn’t bothering to hide his smirk. “It’s all perfectly legal.”

Ax frowned at Marco. “Banging your head against the table with that level of force may have an adverse effect on your brain’s ability to function.”

“I’m not rules-lawyering for selfish gain,” Tobias said loftily, looking over Marco’s prone form. “And besides, Ax is new at this. He needs all the help he can get.”

“You find yourselves in a magical land.” Marco made a wild gesture in the air. It was probably meant to look dramatic and mysterious. “A land known as Falicornia.”

“Marco sucks at naming things,” Rachel whispered loudly.

“Rachel sucks at listening,” Marco whispered more loudly.

“You were saying?” Jake asked.

“This magical land is under threat from the dread god Cthulu! You must stop him through using the Philosopher’s Stone, which is powerful but cannot be used except by those who do not wish to use it. It contains many powerful temptations for the bearer. You must journey across the land, facing many dangers, to bring it to the only magical mirror that can destroy it before Cthulu has the chance to rise from that mirror and take over the world.”

Cassie raised her hand.

“Yes?” Marco said.

“Why does Cthulu want to take over the world?” she asked. “Does he need it for something?”

Marco sighed. “He wants to take over because he’s Cthulu. Any other questions?”

“First question: did you steal more of this plot from The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter?” Rachel said immediately. “Second question—” She turned to Ax. “Have we showed you those movies?”

“He’s reading the books first,” Tobias said.

“I’m reading the books first,” Ax agreed.

“You were saying about Cthulu,” Jake said to Marco.

“Yes. He wants to take over because he’s Cthulu,” Marco glared at Rachel. “Just because.“

“Actually,” Tobias said, “the original version of Cthulu was kind of like the Silver Surfer of Norse Mythology, and his motivation—”

“He wants to take over because he’s Cthulu.” Marco took a deep breath. “Anyway. Moving on.”

“Okay, you’re here.” Marco pointed to the G.I. Joe figure sitting in the middle of their somewhat crudely drawn map. “The goblins are…” One after another, he set four white pawns from his mom’s chess set around the G.I. Joe that represented Jake, forming a half-circle that separated him from Ax’s Smurf, Cassie’s My Little Pony miniature, and Tobias’s Precious Moments angel figurine. “Rachel is, uh…” He set the teddy bear pencil topper several inches back, between two goblin-pawns. “There. So.” Marco looked up at Jake. “You’re under attack. You’re up first in initiative order. What’re you going to do?”

Jake frowned, surveying the scene in front of him. “I have magic, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, so I’ll use magic to turn myself into a bird, and then—”

“Yeah, no.”

“Then I’ll turn my teammates into birds, and they can—”

“You cannot turn yourself into a bird, you cannot turn anyone else into a bird, no one is turning into a bird or any other animal at any point in this game.” Marco glanced over at Tobias. “No offense.”

“Oh, I totally agree,” Tobias said. “A Level One bard performing an animal shapes transmutation? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Anyway.” Marco pointed at Jake’s G.I. Joe figurine. “Assuming we’re sticking to handheld weapons, what else do you want to do?”

“I… shoot the goblin?” Jake suggested. “With my…” He flipped over his character sheet, squinting at his own handwriting. “With my board-sword.”

“Pretty sure you meant ‘broadsword,’” Rachel said. “Okay, Jake killed the goblin, now what?”

Cassie peered over Jake’s shoulder. “It could just be a sword made out of boards, you don’t know.”

“Jake only has thirteen out of sixty odds of killing the goblin on one go,” Marco said.

Tobias flipped open his own manual to the entry on goblins. “Where are you getting these numbers from?”

Marco selected two dice from the pile, handing them both to Jake. “Oh, I just figure that if the goblin’s got an armor class of seven and five HP, then Jake’s got a thirteen-in-twenty chance of scoring a hit and then a two-in-six chance of it being deadly, given his hit dice. So if you reduce twenty-six over one-twenty down it’s thirteen in sixty. Like, point-two-one-seven out of one. Simple math.” He gestured at Jake. “Roll those.”

“You and I have very different definitions of the word ‘simple.’” Jake looked up. “Uh, ten and the other one says four?”

“You grievously injured but did not kill the goblin,” Marco said graciously. “Now it’s the turn for this leftmost goblin, who is going to run and stick a sword through Rachel…” He rolled, and winced. “That’s fifteen to hit, and two damage?”

“What’s that mean for my little rogue?” Rachel waved her pencil topper at him.

“You got stabbed,” Marco said.

“Uh-huh.” Rachel picked up her pen and sheet. “Where?”

Marco shrugged. “The leg, let’s say. Uh, upper thigh?”

“Mm-hmm.” She wrote that down.

“Okay, then.” Marco glanced at his sheet. “Next in initiative order is—”

“I cast psionic blast as a Level One spell, which would cause additional damage to fiends or the undead. Are they undead goblins?” Tobias asked.

Marco rolled his eyes. “Nope.”

“Then they each suffer three points of damage and do not have the opportunity to make saving throws for the next minute and a half,” Tobias said. “That’s my first spell slot today.”

“Okay.�� Marco tipped over one of the goblin pawns. “That one’s dead. Cassie?”

“That one’s threatening Ax?” She pointed at the pawn within the same square as the Smurf figurine.

“Yep.”

She nodded. “Then I smash its head in with my mace.” She rolled. “Eight to hit, eight damage?”

“Oh yeah, you just annihilated that one.”

“Good, good, so now can I mace the one that attacked Rachel?”

“Cool your jets.” Marco held up both hands. “You don’t get to do multiple hulk-smashes in one round until several levels up from here.”

Cassie wilted a little. “Okay. But I want to run over next to that one to be ready to mace it soon.”

“All right, center goblin is going to try and swing his big old greatsword at Cassie as an attack of opportunity…” Marco rolled. “And that’s a miss. Rachel, you’re up.”

“I’m unconscious,” Rachel said.

Marco gave her a blank look. “No you’re not.”

“Yes she is,” Ax said. “You just allowed that goblin— gob-blin? Goo-blin? —to stab her.”

“I did not allow— The dice—” Marco took a deep breath. “Rachel, you only took two points of damage. Go ahead and make a turn.”

“Okay, you clearly said…” Rachel glanced at her own notes. “That the goblin stuck its sword through my upper thigh. And apparently these are pretty big swords. No way in hell that misses the artery, not if I’m only about human-sized at the time. You also said that the goblin has its sword back, which means it pulled the sword out, which means that by now I have definitely lost enough blood to be unconscious. It’s just basic logic.”

Marco opened his mouth halfway. “That’s not how damage functions in this game,” he said at last.

“No, she’s right,” Jake said. “She wouldn’t necessarily be dead from blood loss by now, but on the super-narrow chance she’s still conscious, she’s not going to have the, like, grip strength to be shooting people with arrows or anything. That’s just how getting stabbed works.”

“Actually…” Tobias looked up from where he was sorting his flash cards of wizard spells. “In combat time, each turn is six seconds. So it hasn’t been five minutes of game-time. It’s been less than three seconds.”

“So this goblin managed to stick its sword all the way through me, pull it loose, and then get back into position to make a different attack in less than a second?” Rachel said. “And I don’t need to take a second or two to react to having been stabbed?”

“Yes!” Tobias said.

“This game is not closely aligned with the timing and functions of real combat,” Ax pointed out.

Marco let out a noise somewhere between a sigh and a shriek. “No shit, Sherlock! Can we please just play by the rules?”

“I’m just saying it’s not realistic,” Rachel muttered. “You get run through the leg with a sword, you bleed to death. That’s how it goes.”

“Would you please shoot someone already?” Marco said.

“If you insist.”

At Level Two, Tobias’s gnome wizard joined the School of Divination for exactly one game. “He’s rules-lawyering things that haven’t even happened yet,” Marco cried, throwing out his hands like this was the greatest injustice ever visited upon humanity. At which point Tobias decided that discretion was the better part of valor and switched to the School of Evocation. Marco’s eye stopped twitching.

“No, no, no.” Marco leaned over to look at Jake’s roll. “You add your charisma modifier to your attack roll, and then your strength modifier to your damage roll.”

“So he adds twelve to his roll?” Cassie looked at her own sheet. “I add seventeen to my roll?”

“Modifier. Not the whole stat. Mod-if-i-er.” Marco groaned loudly. “Is Tobias the only one who even tried to read the manual?”

“C’mon, man.” Jake shrugged, grinning. “When have you ever known me to do the assigned reading?”

“I have Tobias here to summarize the manual for me,” Rachel pointed out. “Why bother?”

“I did attempt to read the manual. Man. Well. It was not the most boring human book ever written, but it was very repetitive.” Ax glanced around at all of them. “Not to say that all human books are bad, even if they are all repetitive,” he added quickly. “Take the books of Harry Potter, which are acceptable in addition to being repetitive.”

“‘Acceptable’?” Tobias shook his head. “‘Repetitive’? You, sir, are wounding my entire species — one of my species — Just don’t diss the Potter.”

“There’s no need to call me ‘sir,’ professor,” Ax intoned.

Laughing, Tobias leaned over to bump their shoulders together. “I take it back. I love you, Ax-man. Never change.”

“Anyway,” Cassie said, “we elected Tobias party leader, so he’s the only one who really needs to know how to play, right?”

“‘Elected’ is a pretty strong word for it. The way I remember it, I was like…” Marco put on a deeper voice, “‘Who wants to be party leader?’ and Jake yelled ‘NOT IT’ so loud that he probably startled pigeons in the next county over. And then Tobias was the first one to recover from the shock long enough to volunteer.”

“I didn’t yell it, I said it,” Jake mumbled. “Said it enthusiastically.”

“And you’re wrong. We did nose-goes.” Rachel tapped her own nose to demonstrate. “Tobias lost.”

Ax’s eyes widened. “So you and Cassie covering your noses was a primitive selection procedure in the manner of duck-duck-goose? I thought we were all simply being polite by hiding our hideous human orifices from one another.”

“Anyway,” Tobias said, “as party leader, I’m declaring that we can whine about noses — and bipedalism — at a later time. For now, let’s play.”

“Ah, yes.” Ax looked down at the dice, and then back up at Marco. “Who was attacking whom, again?”

Marco stared around the board, and then back at the dice. “Like I remember that now!”

It was a small miracle that they all kept showing up after that first week. Tobias and Marco were the only ones with both the skill and the enthusiasm to be any good at the game. Cassie and Rachel lacked the necessary motivation: Cassie tended to get lost in long conversations with NPCs and never advanced the plot at all, whereas Rachel was likely to start climbing the walls with impatience after half an hour of sitting still. Ax and Jake were both reasonably enthusiastic but terrible: Jake paid no attention at all to the math, and Ax paid too much. They had one set of dice between the six of them, if one was generous and called rolling a d6 twice the same as rolling a d12. (It wasn’t, but Marco’s and Ax’s attempts to explain this always made everyone else’s eyes glaze over.)

Seriously, though, Marco knew perfectly well why they kept showing up. And it had nothing to do with everyone getting on board with Tobias’s super-geeky idea. They’d tried Dungeons and Dragons, and they hadn’t actually started liking it.

It had nothing to do with the storyline. Or the dice. Or the characters. They weren’t here for swords or goblins. They didn’t drop everything to spend four hours a week in each other’s company because they liked the game.

Duh.

Of course, even their love for each other could be tested, at times, by their sheer incompetence as players.

“We’re still in the undercave?” Jake groaned, looking at the game board. “We’ve been down here for like six weeks!”

“Yeah, ‘cause we’re stuck.” Rachel glared around the table. “Because we keep trying to fight the ooze monster and then almost dying. Because we suck at this game.”

“Still say there should’ve been illithids,” Tobias muttered. “We’re in the cave of the illithids, but instead we’ve got apocalyptic ooze where there isn’t supposed to be any. That’s why we’re stuck.”

Marco sighed into his hands. “For the last time, man, we’re not having any stupid mind flayers in this game. There is a way out, I promise you, if you guys would just stop and figure it out.”

“I stab the ooze?” Cassie suggested.

“You take fourteen acid damage and permanently blunt your sword.” Marco didn’t bother to look up. “Just like last time.”

“Ugh.” Cassie wrote down her new HP. “At least I ruled out repeated stabbing as a way out?”

“Okay, okay.” Jake stared at the game board, yet again failing to take the this map not to scale memo. “We can figure this out. Is it a cave kind of like those caves under Leeran?”

Marco lifted his head, tossing his hair out of his face. “I got schlooped back to Earth before you guys got to see those, remember?”

“They were very beautiful,” Ax said, “and also full of toxic eels. So perhaps Prince Jake’s comparison is apt.”

“The real toxic eel is the friends we made along the way.” Rachel tilted her chair back, picking at her manicure. “Think we should just call it a day?”

“No, no, Jake’s right.” Cassie stared at the board. “I believe in us.”

“It was kinda cool in the Leeran caves, so sorry you missed it,” Jake said to Marco. “I was dead and missed the Battle of Trafalgar, though, so it all balances out?”

“The Battle of Trafalgar was not cool at all.” Marco rolled his eyes. “It was a battle. It was gross and loud and bloody. Is no one going to try anything else?”

“I pull out my rope and my flint, I set the rope on fire, we all die of smoke inhalation,” Rachel drawled. “There, I got us out of the cave.”

“And into the afterlife,” Ax said solemnly. “If, indeed, this game has an afterlife. It was designed by humans, so I assume… Soom. That it must.”

“Look, if we could just fight the mind flayer instead,” Tobias said, “there are clear strategies in place for how to fend off psychic attacks, and even if a few of us end up as mind-witnesses we could still use a handful of different spells—” He swung his copy of the manual around to face Marco, pointing to a spot low on the open page. “If you’ll just look at what the book says…”

Marco slammed the book shut, hard.

Tobias had to yank his hand back to avoid smashed fingers. “Watch it!” he snapped.

“Guys,” Jake said. “Let’s—”

“Rule. Zero.” Marco flattened a hand on top of the closed book. “I’m the DM here, and I get to say that there are no mind flayers and definitely no mind witnesses, because I say so. I’m the Ellimist of this little universe, and you don’t get a counter-argument.”

Rachel snorted loudly. “Bad comparison. Tobias argues with the real Ellimist all the time.”

“Only when he’s doing something stupid.” Tobias was looking at Marco, not at her. “Or breaking the rules of his own game.”

“Tobias…” Jake inhaled slowly, massaging the bridge of his nose. “It’s just a game, okay? Marco… We are kinda stuck, dude, no offense. Couldn’t we at least try to fight whatever it is Tobias wants, see if that gets us out of here?”

Marco pushed to his feet, face flushed. “I’m running this game, because you people decided I should. And I don’t give a fuck how much Bird-Boy complains, this game is not going to involve anyone getting psychically mind-controlled. It will not feature alien tadpoles that crawl inside people’s brains and take over their bodies.” He swept a hand across the board. “There will be no illithids, there will be no brain golems, there will be no controllers—”

Marco snapped his mouth shut.

There was a long silence. Tobias stared at the floor.

“Mind-witnesses,” Marco said at last. “I meant mind-witnesses.”

THUNK.

Figurines and dice scattered everywhere. The play-dough lump of ooze flattened underneath the second game board Cassie had just dropped on top of the first.

“Anyway,” she said, giving everyone an embarrassed smile. “How about we switch to Monopoly for a while?”

“I call being the little dog piece,” Rachel said, pulling the box open.

“I’m sorry,” Tobias whispered to Marco, as Ax began clattering through the pieces and asking Jake questions. “I didn’t mean…”

“Yeah.” Marco pulled the bank toward him and counting out notes. “Same here, man. Uh, y’know. Sorry I…”

“We’re cool. We’re cool?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“Does this highly successful roll mean I have first chance to stab Income Tax with my—” Ax squinted at his game piece “—car? So I’ll be attempting to inflict damage on Income Tax by running it over?”

“Many have tried that strategy,” Rachel intoned. “None have succeeded so far.”

“You know that your beloved manual lists exactly the same stats for hawks, eagles, and owls, right?” Marco asked, grinning evilly.

“What? No.” Tobias frantically flipped toward the back of the book.

“Anyway, is he right?” Cassie asked as Tobias searched. “Are we all supposed to be dead right now?”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Marco said. “Yes, the explosion would have done a lot of damage to all of you—”

“Thanks, Jake,” Rachel snarked.

Jake sighed loudly. “How was I supposed to know you had to throw the hand grenade after you pulled the pin?”

“You mean the part where Ax and Tobias were both yelling ‘toss it, toss it,’ and you were like ‘no, I’m gonna do an investigation check first’?” she said. “And then we all died?”

“Actually, I believe Cassie was raging at the time when the ceiling fell on us all,” Ax said. “Therefore, her damage would be halved.”

“Hell yeah!” Cassie laughed. “So it’s just…” She peered at Marco’s roll and winced. “Everyone else… in the entire party… who automatically failed a death check. Right, Tobias?”

“No,” Marco said loudly, “because Jake cast Teleportation Circle and got you all out of there before the ceiling fell.”

“But Tobias believes that that would be allowing too many actions on a single turn. Uurn. Earn,” Ax said. “And that Jake wouldn’t have time to set up the circle even if he did have a bonus action left.”

“For fuck’s sake, do you want to end on a total party kill?” Marco demanded.

Rachel smiled sweetly. “It’s not a TPK if Cassie’s still alive.”

Marco rolled his eyes. “Oh, in that case—”

“Oh my god, you’re right!” Tobias sounded outraged.

“Am I dead?” Rachel pouted. “Just when this stupid game was starting to grow on me.”

“No, not that.” Tobias stabbed a finger on the page. “It says right here. ‘For hawk, see: eagle.’ It fucking classifies hawks as a fucking subspecies of eagle!”

“What were you just saying about us following the manual at the expense of our lives?” Marco said smugly.

Tobias stared in betrayed horror at the page for another second. And then he tossed the entire book clear over his shoulder and out of the room. It clattered loudly in the hall.

“So as I was saying, Jake cast Teleportation Circle,” Marco said. “And teleported you all out of there.”

“So we’re… not dead?” Cassie asked.

“Given the nature of teleportation, perhaps we are both dead and not, existing in the gap between states,” Ax said. “Like when our consciousness was trapped in z-space, and yet our matter remained on Earth. Or we exist in multiple universes at once, some in which we have died and some in which we yet live.”

“Yeah, cool, Schrödinger’s party,” Rachel said. “Blah, blah. Anyway, I’m gonna punch Jake in the arm for being a dumbass. In-game and out-of-game.”

“Good luck with that.” Marco cackled his evil DM cackle. “The only universe I care about is the one where the whole lot of you give me an initiative roll. Because I didn’t say Jake teleported you to a safe location, just a different one.”

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kaasknot · 4 years ago

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spill the tea on seven pillared house 👀👀👀

this is why i love you.

god, okay. this one's my baby, my athena, my f*cking albatross. it's an OC jedi/clone fic, and i started planning for it literally five wholeass years ago, and it's taken that long just to write... *checks* 115k because this story is MASSIVE, it's just real damn huge. huge in the worldbuilding, huge in the plot, huge in the characterization.

so like, we're all in agreement that the clones are slaves, and that tcw did a really shit-awful job at acknowledging it. way back when i was a relative n00b to the clone wars fandom (sometime ca. june 2016, but likely upwards of a month earlier) i was like "i want a jedi to actually acknowledge this. i want there to be big emotional Scenes about this. i want someone to feel responsible for this sapient rights abuse!" so i invented a jedi OC, and then for added subtlety, i made him zygerrian. (god, don't get me started on the zygerria arc, there is a Rant in me. there is so much rant it started this fic.)

anyway, his name is jaicente alhurayrah, and he's really bad in a fight but really good over the negotiating table. he's 24 standard, so basically still a kid, and he's against the war because, and i quote, "war is what happens when negotiations fail, commander." he's a math nerd and he's got moon-sized identity issues re: his being zygerrian and a jedi (read: "the only way i can make up for the stain of original sin being born zygerrian is to be the best jedi i can be"). he's Very Extremely distraught at the prospect of becoming a general.

then there's maia, CC-9863, the clone commander assigned to jai. maia's fun secret hobby, when he's not off commanding an engineering... technically a brigade, but that's an explanation for another day—is organizing the clone resistance. this is one of the more recent developments for his character (for a long time i couldn't decide how much i wanted him to have broken his programming, i went back and forth on it a lot and made my drafts a godawful mess), so i don't fully know the extent of it at this time. my current tentative idea is that there's multiple cells throughout the GAR, they're connected by a network of droid allies (because fuck yeah they recognize the importance of solidarity over enmity), they don't all know who/where the others are, and their general goal is clone emancipation. the primary disagreement between these various cells (discussed back and forth on anonymous message boards on the holonet) is the methods that should be used to obtain it. i reckon maia is much more on the "hold the GAR hostage until they give us our freedom" end of things.

as you can see, this is a SPECTACULAR mix of personalities. especially since jai's fragile self-esteem is almost entirely tied to the idea that he's safe from being a filthy slaver because the jedi absolutely aren't slavers.

maia: "so THAT'S a lie."

they are also, of course, extremely, unwisely, and desperately horny for each other. there's lots of averting of eyes and clearing of throats and careful discussions of how "it wouldn't be appropriate." inevitably, they start banging. inevitably, they have relationship problems. hey, if padme can make terrible life choices based on her libido, then maia can too—and at least for maia, the story has a happier ending :p

the rest of the story is 80% milwank by volume, because holy FUCK tcw's military worldbuilding gives me hives.

and that is my monster OC fic, coming to an ao3 near you in... 2025, probably. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#i am literally seconds away from hemorrhaging intel abt this fucking story at any moment #if you want to know more i will cry with gratitude and barf up anything you ask for #askbox #trillgutterbug #wip game #seven pillared house

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hellowhyareyouhere · 14 days ago

Photo

Can they keep up the ruse long enough to call off the wedding? Or will their feelings and other machinations get in the way?

#rrading

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renaerys · 5 years ago

Text

PPG One-Shot: Shook (Brick/Blossom)

Summary: When Butch and Buttercup’s fighting goes a bit too far, Blossom takes it upon herself to intervene. Reds.

xxx

Brick woke up with pinprick pain in his temples this morning, a sure indicator that today was going to be a bad day.

His headache only progressed throughout the day, and by the end of sixth period AP European History, he was fantasizing about how good Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI had it with that guillotine. Quick, painless, and blissful freedom from the squabbling peasants who would never have let them off easy anyway.

“Dude, you’re doing it again.”

Brick could feel his brother’s big, blue eyes on the back of his head as he unloaded his books at his locker. “What.”

“The resting serial killer face.”

Brick glanced at his reflection in the small mirror he had affixed to his locker door. Tired, red eyes stared back at him, mouth in a harsh, thin line, and his trademark red cap backwards over his red hair. His bangs were getting a little long.

He slammed the locker door. “Maybe take the hint.”

Boomer, unlike most of the plebeians at Townsville High School, didn’t cower in fear at his brother’s bloody glare. He smiled and threw a letter-jacket-clad arm over Brick’s shoulders. “Lighten up, man. It’s Friday! Julie’s party is tonight, remember?”

Shit, Brick had forgotten. He vaguely remembered agreeing to go to that.

“Someone say party?” Wes Goingon, a guy so pale he looked like he’d been bleached at birth, approached them hand in hand with his girlfriend, Kim Chan.

Kim smiled brightly at Brick. “Oh yeah, Julie’s! You guys are going, right?”

Boomer dragged Brick into step with their friends, and he was too tired to resist. “For sure.”

Brick sighed. “I don’t know, I’ve got a migraine. I might sit this one out.”

“No way, you gotta come!” Wes said. “It’s not a party without you.”

Kim nudged Brick affectionately. “He’s right, but if you’re not feeling well, you should stay home. I noticed you were kind of quiet today.”

“Shh, Kim, don’t give him a way out. Everybody’s gonna be there,” Boomer said. “It’s the last party before Fall Break!”

Fall Break, yes, that was an appealing prospect. A whole week off from school to do what he wanted without having to deal with all the bullshit of high school daily life. Brick didn’t hate it as much as he’d thought he would. Even with his reputation as a Rowdyruff Boy following him, there had been some brave souls who’d given him and his brothers a chance to be normal seventeen-year-old boys, something he hadn’t had back in Citiesville before transferring. Even if many were wary of him, there were a few like Wes and Kim who were so used to sharing the halls with Supers that they barely noticed the difference.

The four of them were approaching the west exit when Brick came across the last person he wanted to see. His migraine flared at the mere sight of her and the suspicion in her gaze that was as ubiquitous as her red hair ribbon whenever they unfortunately crossed paths.

“Hey Blossom!” Kim said, bounding over.

“Hi Kim,” Blossom said, bypassing her to approach Brick, but it turned out it wasn’t him she was looking for. “Boomer, I’m glad I ran into you. Have you seen my sister anywhere?”

Brick watched her talking to his brother like he wasn’t standing right there and felt his blood pressure begin to rise. No matter how much time he spent breathing the same air as this girl, he couldn’t get past his dislike of her. They were no longer arch enemies looking to grind each other into the ground, their childhood enmity mostly behind them now that they were older and more interested in living their lives in peace. But even so, Brick had never had any desire to befriend Blossom or her Super sisters, Bubbles and Buttercup.

Still, she didn’t have to ignore him so obviously. She was always doing petty crap like that. So juvenile.

Boomer, of course, had no such qualms about mingling with Townsville’s resident heroes. Brick wasn’t sure how it had happened, but somehow Boomer had befriended Bubbles, played sports with Buttercup, and was even on amicable terms with Blossom.

“Which one?” Boomer asked, running a hand through his short, blond hair like he was thinking about how it looked in front of her.

The fuck, Brick thought.

“Bubbles. She was supposed to meet me after class, but she’s not answering her phone.”

“No, sorry. I haven’t seen her since lunch.”

Blossom tugged on her long, red ponytail, something she did whenever she was troubled by something. Brick hated that he knew this about her.

“Oh, all right. Well, if you hear from her, can you let me know?”

“Sure thing.”

Her rosy gaze finally flickered to Brick, and she matched his frown. He told himself to ignore her and her unwarranted suspicion of him—it wasn’t like they were twelve anymore and he was going to rob a convenience store, for fuck’s sake—but he also was not about to look away first.

“Brick,” she said curtly, but she might as well have told him to go jump in a lake.

“Blossom,” he said just as clipped. And, just because he knew how annoyingly hyper-alert she got when they were around each other, he let his eyes flicker briefly over her figure, today clad in casual capris and a sleeveless top.

Just his luck that one of the hottest girls in school had such a frustrating personality.

Of course, she noticed him briefly checking her out and crossed her arms. Her pretty eyes narrowed, and the air around them charged. Boomer noticed her subtly spiking energy levels and shrank back instinctively. Brick held his ground, wondering if she’d tell him off. He kind of hoped she would if only to distract him from his pounding headache.

Wes and Kim, oblivious to the electrifying tension, were still talking about Blossom’s missing sister.

Or rather, sisters plural.

“Yeah, I think I saw them leave together. They were in kind of a hurry,” Wes said.

“Really? Since when are Butch and Buttercup so chummy?” Kim asked.

At the mention of his trigger-happy brother, Brick tore his gaze from Blossom. “What about Butch?”

Blossom also forgot her rising annoyance and focused on Wes. “What are you talking about? They left together?”

Wes looked between Brick and Blossom, and it was his turn to shrink. Friends or not, being on the receiving end of both Reds’ glares at the same time was enough to make a guy quail. “Uh, yeah, like I saw them both dash out after sixth period…”

“Together?” Blossom demanded.

“Kind of?” Wes put his hands up like he was trying to placate a pair of wild animals. “More like he dragged her out? I mean, not violently or something!”

Blossom paled, and Brick rolled his eyes. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened. Butch couldn’t seem to go a full week without fighting the only person on the planet dumb enough to rise to his challenge every time. Mostly, Brick didn’t care what his brother did as long as it didn’t blow back on Boomer and him, and for the most part Butch behaved. But lately, he’d been hitting the gym twice a day and even pestering Brick for spars more often than usual. As if fighting Buttercup wasn’t enough of a challenge for him already.

“Oh, so they probably went to fight. Hey, maybe Bubbles is with them?” Boomer said.

Blossom was still white as a sheet. “They can’t fight right now. She’s in no condition.”

Brick was about to tell her to calm down, she was overreacting about every goddamned little thing as usual, but Blossom dashed off in a flash of pink before he could get a word in. Kim was knocked over with the force of it, and Boomer was forced to catch her when she bumped into Wes and they both almost went down.

“Jeez, what was that about?!” Kim griped.

“You okay?” Boomer asked.

Brick scowled deeply. What was she thinking using her powers in school? Of all people, Blossom would never. What had crawled up her ass today? He had half a mind to find out.

“Come on, Boomer,” he said.

“Wait, where are we going?”

But Brick dashed off in a blinding blaze of red in much the same fashion as Blossom before him, knocking all three of them down in his haste to catch up to her.

xxx

Buttercup heaved and spat blood. The Chemical X in her system was sluggish as it depleted so much faster than usual, and she felt Butch’s punches like a ton of bricks. He came in fast and hard again, and this time Buttercup dodged the brunt of his punch and sent him spinning away.

“C’mon, BC! Enough of this cat and mouse crap,” Butch taunted. “Fight me! Unless you’re too much of a pussy.”

“Fuck you,” Buttercup spat.

Trash talk had always been a part of their clashes, and normally it added to the fire she felt beneath her skin at the prospect of handing him his ass. But their last fight had been particularly brutal just a few days ago, and while Buttercup would never admit weakness, she was not fully recovered from it.

Should’ve listened to Blossom and taken that X supplement…

Buttercup silenced that traitorous thought. She didn’t need help. She was the toughest fighter for a reason. A little roughhousing didn’t merit all that coddling. Then again, she hadn’t expected Butch to be raring to go again so soon.

“Guys, really! I think you should just call it quits for today!” Bubbles said, hovering close but not close enough to get in between them. She was not suicidal.

Butch glanced at her askance. “Hey, no one asked you, Blondie. I don’t mind an audience, but this is between me ’n your sister, so be a good girl and mind your own fucking business.”

Buttercup seethed. “Don’t talk to her like that!”

“Oh, yeah? What’re you gonna do about it?”

The taunt was transparent, but Buttercup fell for it all the same. She always fell for it, her body screaming to meet his blow for blow even if her mind knew better. It had always been that way with Butch, supernatural. He’d been created to destroy her, and even now that they were older and grown out of that artificial good versus evil bullshit, sometimes she felt like he really was out to obliterate her. She lived for that challenge, that push to the limits of fear and fatality, knowing in her bones that no one could get her as close to the edge as Butch could.

And so, reckless in pursuit of that special high only he could give her, Buttercup rocketed toward him, her fists crackling green with power. Butch caught her fists in his, and their power exploded between them.

Buttercup was invincible for all of a half second, and then came the pain. She was blown back with such force that she went flying and landed hard in the parking lot of the Shankaplex movie theater, totaling two cars and ripping a crater open in the asphalt. Her body ached, and when she opened her eyes, she saw double.

“Buttercup!” Bubbles screamed.

But it wasn’t Bubbles who pulled her out of that crater. Butch’s rough hands had her by the collar of her shirt, and he lifted her like a rag doll. His arms smoked where Buttercup’s power had burned him, but his X was healing him fast, and pain had never bothered him anyway.

“Tsk tsk, taking a nap? Am I boring you that much?”

Buttercup could feel that he was about to throw her, and she made a grab for his wrists, only to find that her hands were bruised and cut, and her palms were slick with her own blood. Chemical X was barely healing her at all anymore. A brief flicker of panic petrified her, and Butch smelled it like a shark scenting blood in the water.

“Guess it’s time to finish you off,” he said, grinning.

But he never got the chance, because Bubbles swooped in and tackled him into a movie poster display at full power. Buttercup fell to her knees, coughing and shaking in pain, but her thoughts were only of Bubbles. That inkling of panic she’d felt before blossomed into full-on fear for her baby sister. Bubbles was no match for Butch, not when he was raring to go like this.

As if to prove her fears true, Bubbles went crashing into the asphalt next to Buttercup seconds later, having taken one of Butch’s punishing punches to the stomach dead on. Buttercup stared at her fallen sister and shook with rage.

“What the fuck, Butch! You leave her out of this!” Buttercup screamed at him.

Butch cracked his neck. A horrible gash on his face where Bubbles had injured him sealed before Buttercup’s eyes as the X in his system came to his aid.

“I’m okay,” Bubbles said, sitting up and clutching her stomach. “Just a little winded…”

“Hey, she threw the first punch. Don’t be jealous, BC. You know you’re my main squeeze.” He grinned salaciously at her.

Excruciatingly, Buttercup forced herself to get up. Her limbs were on fire. Logically, she knew she could not take Butch in her state. She had no idea how he had recovered faster than her—fucking teenage boy hormones—but he was in top form and she couldn’t hope to face him fairly like this. Fear faded to fury at her own shortcomings. They were supposed to be equals, but nothing she threw at him could bring him down today.

Still, Buttercup had never forfeited a fight, and she wasn’t about to start now.

“Buttercup, no! You can’t fight him like this! Let me—”

“Shut up, Bubbles,” Buttercup hissed. No way was she going to let Bubbles clean up her mess. Butch was and always would be her problem. She wasn’t going to let him near her sister.

Butch laughed. “That’s more like it. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, here!”

He shot off again, and Buttercup braced herself for a world of pain. If she could just tire him out enough to call it quits, that would be enough without having to forfeit, surely.

A blinding blast of pink energy intercepted Butch before he could ram Buttercup, and she was blown back into Bubble’s arms before she could eat concrete again. When she came to, she saw Blossom’s long ponytail fluttering past her waist, her bare arms sparking with raw, pink power and a deep crag in the concrete leading from her to where Butch now kneeled, smoking and breathing heavily.

Manic jade looked up at Blossom, and despite herself, Buttercup shuddered at the sight. He was good and pissed off now. “And then there were three, huh? I’m in high demand today.”

Blossom ignored him. “Buttercup, are you okay?”

Buttercup’s ire flared again. “I’m fine. What’re you doing here?”

Blossom shot her a glare over her shoulder. “Cleaning up your mess, as usual. What were you thinking fighting him in your state? You know you’re not recovered.”

Pride told Buttercup to defy her imperious sister, but shame and guilt knowing Blossom was right held her back. But it wasn’t like she’d had a choice! When Butch got it in his head that he wanted a fight, there was no stopping him. Before Buttercup got a chance to snap back at Blossom, they were interrupted again.

“What the fuck is this?” Brick landed next to Butch.

Butch rolled his eyes and got to his feet. “Nothing. This is between me and Buttercup.”

Brick’s creepy eyes scanned the ruined parking lot and the few civilians who had poked their heads out of the movie theater to gape at the Supers like fish out of water. “You, Buttercup, and the Mayor’s office when I have to make a case to the city not to fine us for all this property damage.”

An admiring whistle drew everyone’s attention to Boomer hovering a short ways away surveying the damage. “Damn, Butch. You got something against Frozen 2?”

Sure enough, the new kids’ movie advertisement poster was totally destroyed thanks to the explosive fight.

“Huh?” Butch said.

“Enough,” Blossom said. “Brick, take your brother home. He’s done enough damage for one day.”

Brick glared at her, and Buttercup braced herself for the spat she knew was coming.

“We’re not finished here,” Butch said before Brick could get into it with Blossom. “So why don’t you march that fine ass back to chess club or whatever the hell you do after school?”

Brick turned his glare on Butch, and Buttercup felt its departure like the cruel summer sun dipping behind the clouds.

Bubbles gasped. “No! Buttercup, you can’t fight him anymore! I told you this was a bad idea!”

Blossom somehow looked even more incensed. “You came here willingly? I rushed over here thinking Butch had forced you into a fight. Buttercup, what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking this has nothing to do with you,” Buttercup said petulantly.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.” Blossom growled in frustration. “Why is it always a fight with you? You know what, I don’t care. We’ll talk about this later. Bubbles, take her home.”

Bubbles moved to do that, but one look from Buttercup stayed her hand. No way, no fucking way was Buttercup going to let her big sister swoop in and embarrass her like this. Butch would never let her live it down.

“Hey! Are you deaf? I said this is between me and Buttercup. I’m not gonna tell you again, Blossom.”

Butch bared his teeth, and Buttercup felt her skin crawl. He was seriously not done yet, and a very small part of her began to feel the fear creeping back in. She was not in any condition to fight him, she knew that, but he was in no condition to stop.

“Butch,” Brick warned.

But Butch smacked his hand away. His whole body sparked with green energy, ready to snap. Despite herself, Buttercup swallowed hard.

“Fine,” Blossom said. “You want a fight? I’ll give you the fight of your life.”

Buttercup gaped open-mouthed at her sister, not sure if she’d heard right. Blossom never fought unless all other avenues were exhausted, and she certainly never fought Butch. Even Brick looked momentarily stunned at her challenge.

Butch was quicker to recover and burst out laughing. “Good one! Now seriously, get the hell outta my way.”

Blossom didn’t budge. “No.”

All traces of humor left Butch as he regarded her, and then he glanced at Brick. “Hey, I’m not gonna tell you again. I’m not here for you, so move.”

Blossom was busy removing her pearl studs and bracelet. When she held them out, Buttercup was still too stunned to do anything but accept them without protest.

“This won’t take long,” Blossom said, tightening her ponytail.

“Brick,” Boomer said warily, landing next to his brother.

Brick bristled. “Forget this. I’ll fight you, you fucking masochist.”

“No way bro,” Butch said, stepping forward. “Ladies first. She wants me, can’t you tell?”

Blossom actually laughed, stunning Buttercup for the second time in as many minutes. “Honestly, Buttercup, how do you take this boy seriously?”

Buttercup wanted to be mad, but Butch’s reaction was so sudden and so visceral that it gave her whiplash. He began to shake as his power leaked out of him and clogged the air like noxious fumes. That little, emasculating laugh got him more worked up than any number of Buttercup’s punches had today.

“Hey.” Buttercup reached for Blossom and they locked gazes. She shivered at the cold look in her sister’s eyes. It was one she had not often seen, but one she knew better than to question. The instinct to shrink back was so overwhelming that Buttercup felt her stomach turn, and it was not even directed at her.

She remembered a fight many, many years ago when Princess Morbucks had pushed Blossom too far in her pursuit of power. It was the first time Buttercup had ever seen that remorseless look in her sister’s eyes, and she would never forget it.

Butch was no longer grinning. “I’m gonna enjoy putting you in your place.”

Blossom cocked her head. She was still smiling that eerie, cold smile. “I’m waiting.”

That did it. Before anyone could blink, Butch was coming straight for her, fists blazing.

xxx

“Oh shit!” Boomer flew up to join Bubbles, Buttercup, and Brick in the air as they watched Blossom and Butch collide in a conflagration of pink and green. Butch’s punches, delivered hard and swift enough to break the sound barrier, carried like thunder. “Should we, like, do something?!”

Brick was eerily silent next to him as he followed the fight with a calculating eye. “If he hits her, she’s done for.”

“Like hell,” Buttercup spat. “She’s strong. You should know.”

“Wait, I thought you were the one who was against this?” Boomer asked.

Buttercup grimaced, but she stubbornly refused to let on how much pain she was in. Now that Boomer got a good look at her, she really looked trashed. Jesus, had Butch really done that to her?

“Doesn’t mean I don’t know my sister. She can take him.”

“Except she can’t,” Brick said, watching as Butch fired a green energy beam at Blossom that sent her careening high into the clouds. “I know her too. She’s a glass cannon.”

Blossom’s pink streak came flying in faster than Boomer had ever seen her fly, and Butch was waiting for her with a welcome punch that connected with her ribs. But Blossom swerved with his force and rammed her elbow mercilessly against the back of his neck. Her blunt force was so great that he went cashing into the woods beyond the Shankaplex, where he landed with a monstrous crack. Blossom waited for him to reemerge, a hand pressed to her side but otherwise masking her pain.

Bubbles gasped, and Buttercup shot Brick a scathing grin. “You were saying?”

Brick’s eyes were glued to Blossom. “Butch hits like a freight train. She won’t be able to absorb his punches indefinitely.”

Buttercup laughed, but in her injured state, it came out more like a wheeze. “Dude, you don’t know this Blossom.”

Brick glanced at her askance, and Boomer wondered. What did that mean?

“That tickled!” Butch shouted as he came flying back ready to go again. “Do it again!”

Blossom was silent as she waited for him to come to her. He came in hot, but this time she didn’t let his punch connect. More elegantly than Boomer thought her capable of, Blossom avoided him entirely, grabbed his hair, and kneed him in the stomach.

Boomer gasped—gasped, because holy hell—as Butch hacked up a lung and clutched his stomach. “I think she broke some ribs!” Chemical X or no, that one really had to hurt.

Blossom put some distance between Butch and herself and took a deep breath.

“Incoming!” Bubbles dashed away with Buttercup, and Boomer shoved Brick out of the path of danger just in time to avoid getting caught up in Blossom’s powerful ice breath.

Butch didn’t even try to avoid it, and soon he was covered in a layer of thick ice. Not one to be restrained, however, his eyes glowed red and his eye beams burst through the ice. Blossom avoided the laser that wasn’t really aiming at her anyway and came in from behind to catch him unawares.

Unfortunately, Butch was not bothered by the ice and burst out of it just as Blossom came in close. He managed to grab her ponytail and reel her in like a fish. The punch he landed on her jaw sent her spinning, and she hit a billboard advertising pet food right through Talking Dog’s face.

“Ha!!! Take that!” Butch dashed after her, and Boomer watched as Blossom peeled herself off the destroyed billboard and narrowly avoided a second pummeling. Butch hit the billboard and knocked the whole structure over like a falling domino. It was only Bubbles’ timely intervention that kept it from crashing on top of a Cooper’s Market.

Pink and green sped around each other as Butch chased Blossom. He fired his eye beams and his green energy beams in the hopes of hitting her at a distance, but she was quick and extremely precise in her movements in a way Boomer knew he himself was not, and Butch was even less coordinated than him. It was like watching Brick, he realized. Brick was so in control of his body, of every single minute movement he made, that it didn’t matter that he wasn’t physically as strong as Butch or as fast as Boomer. There was no surprising him or tripping him up, and Blossom was no different.

But did Butch know that?

“Stop running! I thought you were gonna give me the fight of my life, what happened? You scared?” Butch taunted as he tried to catch Blossom.

She was stony-faced as she avoided his grabs and his eye beams alike, but made no effort to return fire or respond.

“That’s risky,” Brick muttered.

“What’s risky?” Boomer asked.

“She’s trying to tire him out, hoping he’ll burn up all his X. But Butch has more reserves than you or me. His stamina’s even better than Buttercup’s.”

“That’s not what she’s doing,” Bubbles said.

Brick shot her a withering look like he couldn’t believe she dared to contradict him. “Oh, really?” he said sarcastically.

Bubbles didn’t even flinch. “Really.”

Brick scoffed and returned his attention to the fight.

“What’s the matter, Blossom! Get over here and fight me!”

Butch threw another punch that she artfully avoided. Pissed off, he shot at her with his eye beams, but Blossom swerved and struck him with the heel of her hand under the jaw. His eye beams went awry.

“Shit!” Buttercup said.

Brick was paying closer attention than Boomer, however, and intercepted the stray eye beams before they could strike anyone. His jacket sleeve smoked and sizzled where a new hole had opened up.

“Tch,” he said.

Butch shook himself out like a wet dog. He was bleeding from his mouth and his eyes were dilated, but he was still fighting fit. If he was wearing out, he was hiding it well. Boomer glanced at Bubbles.

“So what is Blossom doing?”

Bubbles looked more concerned than grim as she watched. “She’s feeling him out.”

“She’s making him mad,” Buttercup said.

Boomer winced. That didn’t sound like a good idea facing Butch. The guy was an unstoppable force when he was mad.

“But why—”

Crack!

Boomer whipped around just in time to see that Butch had finally landed another hit on Blossom and sent her flying out of control. She clutched her side as he sped after her, no longer laughing or taunting; he just wanted to finish her off now, it seemed. Beside Boomer, Brick sucked in an audible breath as he watched.

Butch wound up a punch. Blossom wasn’t moving to avoid. Boomer lost his mind.

“Watch out!” he screamed at her, unable to help himself.

Buttercup and Brick looked at Boomer like he’d grown another head. Butch caught up to Blossom, but just as his punch connected, she grabbed his wrist, spun gracefully behind him, and unleashed her eye beams at point blank range on the back of his neck.

Even Brick winced at that one.

“Fuck yeah!!” Buttercup shouted. “How’s that taste, Butch!”

Butch staggered in the air, his hands clutching his smoking neck. They came away bloody. Boomer didn’t miss the filthy look he shot Blossom.

“Forfeit,” Blossom called to him. “You can’t win.”

“Fuck you,” Butch spat. “I was going easy on you. No more.”

With a crackle of energy, Butch’s signature shield materialized around him. And then, he was after her again.

xxx

That’s it. She’s done, Brick thought to himself.

As soon as Butch brought out his shield, there was little and less to be done about it aside from waiting him out. Even Brick had trouble against him when he donned what was essentially impenetrable armor.

It was kind of a shame, really. She’d surprised him in this fight. Brick couldn’t recall her taking hits so well when they’d clashed in the past. Granted, that was years ago, but still.

He glanced at her sisters. They were still watching the fight, but they didn’t seem particularly deterred. Brick narrowed his eyes, and he considered.

Could she really…?

“Hiding behind your shield? How predictable,” Blossom taunted him, something Brick had rarely known her to do.

“I predict you’re about to eat shit!” Butch hurtled after her, but she danced ever out of reach.

His shield was truly something. It molded roughly to the shape of him, extending with his punches and folding with his blocks. It was a drain on his X reserves, but it was his best and only real defense.

Blossom couldn’t know this, though. Blossom had never fought Butch. But then, she was fast learning him with every punch, every dodge, every overreaction to her baiting.

Despite himself, Brick’s attention was fully arrested as he watched them. Even his migraine had subsided to a dull ache as he ignored it in favor of following the fight.

Blossom got in a good punch, but Butch’s shield was truly impenetrable, and all she got for her efforts was a crackle of jade sparks and a hurt fist. She immediately pulled back.

“That shield is so strong!” Bubbles said.

Buttercup grunted. Blossom didn’t try to hit Butch again, but he did his level best to strike her.

“Hey, is this what they call playing hard to get?” Butch sneered as he lobbed another punch at Blossom.

“I’m right here, Butch. Come and get me,” she taunted again.

What the hell is she playing at?

The Blossom Brick knew was not one to joke and jab, but the more she did it, the more riled up Butch got. She couldn’t possibly be trying to make him mad. That was suicidal for anyone who wasn’t Brick himself. And that shield…

“C’mon and give us a hug!” Butch sped after her, his only goal to grab her and crush her under the force of his shield. Sloppy and uncoordinated, but if he managed to grab her, that would be the end of it.

“What the—?!” Boomer sputtered.

Brick barely had time to be shocked as Blossom stopped her flight and spread her arms as if to hug Butch like he wanted. Brick was moving before he could process it, a command on the tip of his tongue, because no matter how much he despised Blossom, he couldn’t very well let his brother literally kill her.

Butch grabbed her before Brick could reach them, and Blossom flexed as she braced herself, her pink power manifesting like a second skin as Butch wrapped his meaty arms around her smaller frame with every intention of snapping her in half. Buttercup shouted something, but Brick couldn’t hear her over the racing wind in his ears as he tore after them, and then—

“F-F-Fuck!” Butch groaned.

His shield, his whole body was engulfed in preternatural ice as Blossom hugged him tight enough to break. Her arms were covered in ice that would not shatter no mater how much Butch struggled. He tried to fire off his eye beams, but she had ducked her head under his chin, safe from his fire. Impossibly, his green shield began to collapse as the ice and Blossom herself crushed him like a soda can.

They crash landed well away from the Shankaplex and any civilians just by the edge of the forest. Brick swooped down after them, the others not far behind. When he landed, he found Butch face down eating dirt and covered in chunks of ice, his shield completely dissipated, as Blossom towered over him. She had his wrists in her hands and her boot on the back of his head, grinding him further into the ground. Ice coated her arms like armor, and there was no mercy in her eyes.

“B-Blossom, babe, c’mon,” Butch said in what was meant to be a playful tone, but came out sounding like a whimper.

Blossom leaned down over him. “Call me babe again.” She drove her heel harder into the side of his head, sinking him deeper into the earth.

Butch struggled against her. He fired green energy beams from his palms, but Blossom pulled harder on his arms and sent them harmlessly awry.

“Let me be perfectly clear, Butch. You’re going to leave my sister alone for the rest of the month while you both recover.” She peered at him over her knee until his green eye swiveled to see her. “Tell me you understand.”

He grinned, and his teeth were a red ruin. “I don’t take orders from you—ah fuck!”

Blossom yanked his left arm back and dislocated it with a severe pop. She twisted the other one behind his back and hauled him up by his hair. “You do now.”

Her eyes glowed red, her hair was a windswept mess, and she had Butch—Butch, the fiercest fighter—on his fucking knees under her absolute control, and it was single-handedly the most beautiful sight Brick had ever seen in his life. It was perfect, and she was…

For a mad moment, he imagined her pinning him on his knees, her hand fisting his hair, exerting that control he had always pursued but never from her, until this moment.

“Brick, shouldn’t you…?” Boomer said.

Realizing she and Butch had an audience, Blossom looked up and locked eyes with Brick, and he shivered.

Oh hell.

“Hey, I like you on your knees,” Buttercup said, approaching Butch and Blossom. “Definitely your best angle.”

Butch spit blood and a piece of broken tooth. Nonetheless, he managed a smirk for her. “Next time, just ask.”

Blossom shoved him back into the dirt, and he promptly shut up.

Boomer sighed and floated over. “C’mon, dude. Let’s get you home.”

“I got it,” Butch complained, but he struggled to get to his feet.

“You seriously don’t. Can you even stand? Jesus.”

“Blossom!” Bubbles hugged her sister, who winced at the pressure.

“Bubbles, not so tight! I’m a little sore.” She smiled and brushed her bangs out of her eyes.

“You were amazing!”

Blossom grinned. “I know.”

“Serves you right, moron,” Buttercup said to Butch. “You’ll be pissing sitting down for a week.”

Boomer snorted as he looped Butch’s arm over his shoulder. “You got that right.”

“Ha ha, hilarious. Fuck you both,” Butch groused. His eyes flickered to Blossom, guarded.

“Brick? You coming?” Boomer asked.

Brick rubbed his mouth. He felt woozy. Bubbles shot him a curious look that he chose not to dwell on. “Take that idiot home. Make sure he doesn’t bleed all over the place.”

“Uh, right… What’re you gonna do?”

“I’m right behind you.”

His brothers flew off—or rather, Boomer flew and Butch dangled precariously from his shoulder. Finally, Brick turned his attention to Blossom.

“Blossom,” he said, his voice tight.

She looked up at him. “Brick.”

He swallowed, the image of her dominating Butch while she looked at him burned into his mind’s eye. So that was never going away… “Butch is my problem. Next time, you leave him to me.”

She regarded him, and so slowly he may have imagined it had he not been hyper-focused on her every movement, her lips curled in little smirk. “There’s not going to be a next time.”

In that moment, Brick had never felt so bewildered and so attracted to another person in his entire life. It was over all too soon as she showed him her back and spoke to her sisters. They were heading home. Like a fucking idiot, he just stood there, mind blown.

Did that really just happen?

Oh god, she was talking to him again. He blinked and tried to focus.

“What?” he said, fucking idiot that he was.

“The repairs. Look, I know you would rather chew glass than be around me, but you know the Mayor appreciates an in-person explanation and apology for this kind of damage. Are you coming, or do I have to tell him once again that you couldn’t be bothered?”

“No, I’m coming. I’ll talk to the Mayor with you.”

She peered at him like she didn’t quite recognize him. “All right… Thanks.”

xxx

That evening, after all was said and done and Boomer was showered and ready to go to Julie’s party, he gave Brick one more chance to come along instead of languor at home with a passed out Butch. The guy was out cold and would likely remain so for the next day after the beating Blossom had dealt him.

“You sure you don’t wanna come?” he asked.

Brick was lounging on the living room sofa where he had his nose in a Kurt Vonnegut novel. “No.”

“Everyone’s gonna be there, you know.”

“Great.” Ignore.

Boomer shrugged. “Wes and Kim, Mike, Robin, Bubbles, Harry, the Floyjoydson Twins.”

Brick grunted noncommittally.

Boomer adjusted his jacket and pretended not to watch Brick like a hawk. “Blossom too.”

Pause.

Brick’s gaze flickered over the top of his book to catch Boomer’s eye. “This isn’t some themed shit like that last one, is it?”

“Nope. Just friends, drinking games, the usual. But if your migraine’s still bugging you, I’d get you wanting to go to bed early—”

“I’ll go for an hour.” Brick closed his book and got up off the sofa.

“Cool. Cool cool cool…” It took every ounce of self control Boomer had in him not to smile at his brother’s expense.

Brick when to change his shirt, and Boomer pulled out his phone and texted Bubbles.

[Boomer: I think you’re right. He’s finally seen the light.]

[Bubbles: I told you! Did you see the way he was staring at her??? Shook.]

Boomer laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Brick asked as he reemerged in a button down shirt. Had he brushed his hair? Christ, he’d actually brushed his hair.

Shooketh.

Boomer grinned. “Nothing, man. Just looking forward to a fun night.”

“Whatever.”

They headed out, and Boomer trailed his brother’s red streak.

Something told him it would be a very fun night.

#Blossick #Reds #Brick #Blossom #Butch #Buttercup #Bubbles #Boomer #Greens if you squint #Powerpuff Girls #Powerpuff Girls fanfiction #PPG #PPG fic #repost #February Fic Prompts #ppg shook

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hybristoo · 5 years ago

Text

To Know Him is to Love Him [2/3]

Summary: After a failed kidnapping by the Joker, he refuses to leave the reader alone, and under rather unusual circumstances, the reader doesn’t mind.

Words: 1368

___

You never had real friends.

Your first friend was a 7-foot giant of a man. He had three scars which crossed his left eye - said it represented the devil. You were a 6-year-old, so you didn’t really know what that entailed. Somebody else told you that it was your dad who was the devil - the Devil of Gotham. It was a confusing time. Your budding brain came to the conclusion that he must be a friend of your dad’s.

You were proved wrong when your father made him disappear.

The giant’s name was Rocky and you loved him because he was always around you, hovering, and he always wore a rictus grin when you entertained him. He made you feel less lonely in the marble castle that was your home.

He would not be the last to hover by your side and play with you because they had to, however, he was the last you regarded as a friend. Ever since he disappeared, you had lived in oversized solitary confinement. A repeating realization that you had nothing but your own hands to fall on.

Perhaps this was why, when the Joker busted through your window while you were ordering Chinese a week after kidnapping you, you paused before inquiring if he wanted anything as well.

You were afflicted by solitude. An illness so pervasive it made you happy to be in the vicinity of any person. An illness so perverse all it wanted was to wrap itself around something - to feel the warmth of love. An illness so severe you turned to the infamous Joker for friendship.

As the month of November trudged on, you became increasingly used to seeing him amble about your apartment. One of the first things you learned about him was that he preferred Thai over Chinese and he liked vanilla over chocolate. You figured he came here often because he was often in the Narrows; a kingdom of crime. And who held the throne?

The Joker reminded you of a story about a jester. In the story, the Jester criticizes his King, declaring that he would do a much better job as a king. That he could do everything he did, tenfold. Although the King tries to argue, the court is swayed by the Jester’s jeering words and with a big laugh, they declare the Jester the new King. Within a fortnight, the kingdom has become a big joke.

You told the Joker this story and he just grinned.

In this way, the relationship was not endosymbiotic but rather one-sided. There were instances when you were speaking about your day and all its tribulations, intricacies and dramas and when you turned around to ask the Joker about his day, there was only in imprint in the couch where he once was. Other times, you would find him napping in the midst of your ramblings - or maybe the naps were just an excuse not to answer your questions. You had met more dishonest men.

But there were instances when he would talk back. He liked quizzing you on your past; particularly your relationship with your father and his organisation, all of which you narrowly avoided. In this sense, you couldn’t blame him for his fake naps or else you’d be a hypocrite.

When he wasn’t asking you uncomfortable questions, he liked pulling knives on you, seemingly to assess your reaction. One day, you asked him if he always busted into the homes of those he had terrorized, to which he responded: “Only the ones that entertain me.”

The Jester story reminded you of the very fine line which an “entertaining” person balanced on, and so you chose to ignore his periodic threats on your life.

As far as your whistling career goes, you were improving. You had moved into the territory of Beethoven when your neighbour banged on the wall and demanded you be quiet.

And this was the topic of your blabbering today. You told him about the types of whistling, and showed him the finger techniques, explaining when they should be used. You ranted like a siffleur to her pupils. When you looked over, you noticed that he was staring. He was paying attention.

“You know, Hummingbird,” he leaned forward in his sitting position, “It’s said whistling at night attracts bad things.” And then he whistled, a steady octave cutting through the thick silence.

He had a boyish twinkle in his eye. That got you awful excited and out of your mouth came a vomit of words. A constant stream of associative games coming together to form a dictionary of thoughts. A race to say the most syllables possible - every variation of a word that could be crammed into a sentence.

However, you were interrupted when the Joker grabbed your hand and tugged you towards him. To quote Nietzsche; if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you - and his eyes were an abyss you’d like to dive into.

“You make a lot of noise,” the Joker commented, peering into your hand, running his thumb along your knuckles. It was subtle, but there was a tightness to his grip - a suggestion of enmity. “But you don’t know what you’re saying, do you? No, you’ve-” he licked his teeth, sighing, “fallen between the cracks.” He said so like a disappointed parent might when their child first rebels. A tone of voice that held your breath hostage.

At a loss for words, you stood silently for a moment, letting him fondle your hand. There was a quirk to his eyebrows - a suggestion, a challenge. There were a number of thoughts going through your head, but now, all of a sudden, you weren’t so keen on voicing them. You were going to offer him ice cream. You were going to offer to put on a movie. You were going to do a number of things, but instead, you tugged the Joker towards yourself and pressed your lips against his.

There was a moment when you were both shocked. An awkward stillness to the kiss not unlike that of two middle schoolers replicating their parents. But then, reality - or something close to it, registered in the both of you, and dance ensued. Joker responded first, grabbing the sides of your face, squeezing his face onto yours. There wasn’t anything proper about it, it had an irrational beginning and so what follows became confusing - lost in translation.

There were little sparks going off in your head. An indication that for the first time in a month in his company, it felt like you clicked. Like you had been spewing puzzle pieces about every day and it was only now that they came together. You tucked your tongue into his, snaring him in an embrace.

Thoughts of the moral implications of your friendship often ran rampant when you had discussions with him, but right now? Right now your mind was silent, as if it, too, was too enraptured with the scene before it.

Your hands explored his body, from the firmness of his muscles to the structure of his hips - trying to discern some trivia about him that no one else could know. If he wouldn’t tell you, you needed to find out, you needed to know; who are you, ‘Joker’?

And without knowing the questions, he seemed to reply with his movements.

Indeed, the way he moved - removing his gloves, running his fingers against your ribs, it had convinced you of one primary thing: you had made a lot of noise without understanding any of it. There was so much a deaf person could hear.

When your mouth stopped listening, it was because the Joker had stopped speaking. He pulled away but held you pressed against the wall. Your eyes whined. You had smudged his makeup all over the place. He pursed his lips and his feet tapped. A smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. His face closed in on yours once more before it pulled back as if you smelled repugnantly bad.

He stalked around you, from your left to your right. “You’ve fallen between the cracks,” he continued, pointing his finger, “but who’s to say it’s not mutual, hm?”

___

Taglist

@imtherain @judyfromfinance @geronimosanna

Next Part

#i hope i didnt blueball anyone lmao #sorry; about; the weak ending #im a talentless freak of nature #thats my new quote #heehoo i dont know what i m doing heehee #joker x reader #joker x you #heath ledger #honestly it feels wrong tagging this that he deserved better #hl!joker #fanfic #joker imagine #ledger!joker #time to dip out boys B)

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thelustrousyellowdiamond · 5 years ago

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List of references and behind the scenes stuff for the latest arc

If there’s anything you’d like to know about or something I missed, please send an ask about anything that’s happened in the log if you need clarification, juicy details, etc.

- This whole storyline was supposed to be an alternate take on the events of Change Your Mind. I made it my goal to change and improve on things I didn’t like all that much. However, many of my plans for this arc were made before even Familiar aired on TV. I had always intended for Blue and Yellow to realize the truth by watching the videos that Rose made for Steven, and then for Steven to say, “Wait, you actually called me Steven!” I was rather taken aback in Familiar when Blue called Steven by his name in that episode because it didn’t seem like she was at the point of acceptance yet. I had Steven say that to Yellow instead so it wouldn’t feel too repetitive (that episode is canon to the events of the story) although I will point out that she did call him that while she was working at the Big Donut, but that was mainly to avoid suspicion.

-There’s a role reversal from Change Your Mind, with Yellow and the Crystal Gems fighting against Blue to get Steven out of the bubble, as opposed to Blue and Steven fighting against Yellow to get the Crystal Gems out of a bubble.

- My goal here was to have all of the Crystal Gems play a role in saving Steven’s life. In Change Your Mind, the only thing that they really do that’s useful is fuse with Steven. I wanted to make sure that even though they were overpowered, they could still use their wits to save his life. Connie caught Steven while he was falling, Pearl stood up to Blue Diamond, Amethyst gave Garnet the idea of using her future vision powers, and Garnet was the one who pulled the whole plan off.

-One thing I did like in the Diamond Days arc was the fusion cameos, obviously I couldn’t do fusions with Steven, so I got those out of the way earlier (I’ll explain later why I needed to have him fuse then)

-One minor bit of character development I did was to show Pearl and Sugilitie working together to save Steven, and they have an improved relationship.

-Pearl being able to resist Blue’s aura is an improvement of the scene between Blue and Lapis. I wanted Pearl to stand up to Blue by empathizing with her rather than claiming that her pain is worse than hers. That was something that irritated me. I made a callback to Three Gems and a Baby and A Single Pale Rose to compare Pearl’s situation to Blue’s, and have Pearl explain how she got through it. Her motherly relationship also shows in “YOU WILL NOT HURT MY BABY!” To me, it just seemed truly more empowering.

-Garnet is very conflicted in the scene where she contemplates kissing Blue with future vision because Ruby sees it as scandalous to their relationship with Sapphire and with their shared enmity towards Blue. While Sapphire sees it as the only way to save Steven, while Ruby would rather just beat Blue up the old fashioned way. Let’s just say for now that it’s not a settled issue between the two of them… (Also, the future vision thing was an afterthought honestly, I needed Blue to fall into a trance that would change her mind but couldn’t figure out how it would play out, and then it just clicked)

-With that, I realize many people were confused as to what was happening to Blue. All of it was an illusion, and Blue was seeing multiple futures at the same time. One was Pink with a dead unrevivable Steven, another was Pink Steven, another was Rose with a resurrected Steven, and the last was one where nothing came back from the pink diamond gem at all. It’s fun coming up with all the possible ways that could have played out that I could actually include here in some capacity.

-The scene where Pink Diamond confronts Blue in future vision is a reference to Hans confronting Elsa over Anna’s frozen heart in the movie Frozen, down to the moment where Blue drops to the ground in grief while her aura of power subsides.

-Blue regretting her actions and desiring to return Steven’s gem is meant to be similar to what Pearl went through in Three Gems and a Baby, not understanding why Rose gave up her form, but accepting it nonetheless.

-Amethyst’s line, “We’re not the Crystal Gems without him” is a callback to her line in Gem Glow about the team not being complete without Steven.

-Garnet’s line “I wasn’t strong enough,” is a line she says when poofed in Attack the Light, though the dialogue from the game came from season 1 of the show since Estelle didn’t record for that game. I’m not sure which episode it was taken from.

-The music in both videos is taken from the track “The Tear Heals” from Tangled. It was a big giveaway, so I held off until now to specify which track it was.

-The whole death and resurrection scene is a reference to all those Disney Princess movies, but most especially to Tangled and Beauty and the Beast. Fitting, since many princess references were used in Diamond Days anyway.

-For the first video, I was originally going to do a zoom out on the last frame but my editor wouldn’t let me do that so I just did a fade effect instead.

-The way Steven rises from the ground while regenerating is mainly a reference to Beauty and the Beast, as well as the reaction shots. You could see it as a lowkey reference to Lars’ resurrection though.

-The flaming effect was a reference to the way Time Lords regenerate in Doctor Who, but animating those flames would have proven difficult so I just did simple fade effects.

-The rose blooming from Steven’s chest is a reference to the scene from Tangled where the image of the golden flower appears on Eugene’s wound. It’s also a reference to how Steven’s powers work, as well as to his mother, Rose Quartz.

-Speaking of which, I had the ghost of Pink Diamond appear for several significant reasons. For one, I hated the implication that she was completely and totally “gone,” and having Steven cry over and hug a clone of himself just seemed a little weird to me. I decided to go with a more compromising route, by having her ghost linger for a few moments. But rest assured, Steven is his own person and being. I did this as a bit of an improvement on the original scene.

-One reason I had Pink come back was to resolve aspects of her story, one of which was to reconcile with her fellow Diamonds. Originally it was just going to be a moment with Pink and Blue, but I decided on including Yellow too. That moment was to represent her forgiveness of everything they’ve done to her and Steven.

-I didn’t have her turn into Rose originally, but it made more sense for her to appear in that form to the Crystal Gems, because that is how they knew her. For those who are wondering, she was trying to say, “I’m sorry” but the words are inaudible.

-I really like the fading ghosts kind of trope, and even though I had this idea before it came out, this would be comparable to Solaria reconciling with her granddaughter Meteora and by extension her daughter in the last episode of Star vs. the Forces of Evil.

-Rose’s tear was supposed to fall on Steven but physically it didn’t seem to make sense while he was falling too so I decided not to do that.

-I also decided that Steven needed to be aged up- it was pure coincidence that his teenage design was revealed while I was drawing the next comic panel. He’s still 14, so not as tall as he will be at 16, but his height is slightly taller than Amethyst and Connie.

-He has bangs, Diamond eyes, and a rotated gem to resemble Pink more, but in a very Steven-y way. His partial reformation was made to reflect his character growth (both physically and in maturity) and his acceptance of his Diamond heritage. It’s not so much that he’s trying to take on the identity of his mother (though he’ll still have issues later down the line, that’s far from over) but more so that he’s embracing his connection with the Diamond Authority, Homeworld, and wants to forge a better and brighter future with them as his family.

-Also, how on Earth could a homage to Disney Princess movies be complete without a romantic kiss? I was sorely disappointed when there was no Connverse kiss in Together Alone. There was a royal ball and everything! Such a wasted opportunity! Like that episode, Steven is self conscious while Connie is more impulsive and overcome with joy. Poor Steven was just confused, but I wanted to make it clear that he did enjoy the kiss and it did end up being consentual even though Connie swept him off his feet (literally). I wanted to add the accidental falling into the water scene because it looked cool to draw and just adorably awkward.

-The scene with Steven asking about his hair is both a reference to Doctor Who (Am I ginger?) as well as his desire to have pink hair as revealed in Storm in the Room.

-Yellow Diamond telling Steven that he looks nice the way he is has significance to her character development for two reasons. The first thing she said to him when she saw him for the first time was “Is that Rose Quartz?!? Look at this hideous new form she’s taken! Forget the trial, we should shatter her just for looking like that!” Not only is she finally acknowledging Steven as his own individual, but in her relief that he’s alive, she has come to accept Steven as he is and loves him truly, half human and all.

-One thing I didn’t like about Change Your Mind was that Steven’s mother issues were kind of swept under the rug. Yeah he accepts himself, but so what? Pink’s story isn’t done, and I don’t think he has quite reached the point of being at peace what what she has done in the past. But even then, you don’t just “get over” growing up without your biological mom, no matter how many female role models you have in your life. And I had Steven share his unique kind of grief with the Diamonds and Crystal Gems, as a reminder that the one thing they have in common is that they’re all grieving Rose/Pink and they want to move on as a family. His grief is unique because he never knew her. It’s really touching and sad, but there was a scene in An Indirect Kiss where Steven implies that he’d rather have known Rose and be saddened by her memory than to never have known her at all. The closest he can get is having his loved ones share their memories of her with him, and the Diamonds knew this whole entire chapter of Pink’s life that the Crystal Gems didn’t know. (Even Pearl was not around for that entire time as she was a replacement.) I didn’t include this because it slipped my mind, but Steven’s intention was for everyone in his family to be able to bond over those memories of Rose/Pink. After all, the Diamonds did miss 5,000 years of Pink’s life while she was with the Crystal Gems.

-Amethyst’s line “Darn it! Now you’ve got me acting all sappy!” is a reference to Rainbow Dash from a My Little Pony episode called The Last Roundup.

Anything I’ve missed or want to know about? Just tell me! And thank you for taking the time to read all of this, I’ll get right back to working on the actual story as soon as I can! (Should be less than a week)

EDIT: Oh, and one last thing! Blue Diamond's monologue was supposed to be a reference to what Pearl said in Rose's Scabbard about not being able to understand how she feels, as well as what Blue said in Reunited. There's a ton of irony in that scene!

#ask yellow diamond #behind the scenes #ooc #admin speaks #infodump

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