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house-of-slayterr · 1 year ago

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Oh my gosh, ok. Ummmm let’s start with some of the good ones…

Cade Sullivan:

The last thing Cade was expecting, was you. Most people barely even wanted to talk to him. People would cross the road when they saw him, or go down the other side of the hall. But there were two people who were different, his girlfriend of course, but then there was you.

You were his partner in art class and he wasn’t exactly pleased about it. Not because it was you, just because he had to work with someone so else. He invited you over after school to work on the project together when you noticed his perpetual scowl.

You wanted to try to cheer him up so you reached over to boop his nose.

Big mistake. Next thing you know your finger was caught between his teeth. He looked at you with anger and disbelief in his eyes; before he lowly chuckles letting go of you now bleeding finger, and licks his lips.

“I don’t know if you bold or just stupid. But don’t ever try something like that again if you wish to keep your hand.”

It him you have to worry about for sure, don’t get me twisted. But if Candy found out about this… you’re dead.

Demetrius “Sully” Sullivan:

Sully had invited you out with him, finding joy in your company. It wasn’t often he got to get away from the children or his store. But he cherished this time greatly. The two of you walked through the farmers market picking out produce and foods for dinner.

It was nice, serene, calming… so much so Sully got lost in thought. Thoughts he probably shouldn’t be having. But he enjoyed them non the less, the shame of thinking them minimal.

Noticing he didn’t answer your question, you look up to see the tall man spaced out. In a plot to get his attention, you settle on the quite difficult task of booping a man who’s over 7 feet tall. It was certainly a spectacle, walking around with him. You left up on your feet, successfully jumping high enough to boop him, and you smile up at him triumphantly.

Sully breaks out of his trance, first looking at you in confusion, and then he notices your smile and can’t help but smile too.

“Did you just boop me Darling? What arose such a childish action.”

You huff looking up at him, and it clicks.

“Awww, is someone jealous my attention was of them for a moment?” He teases.

You nod. He bends down to whisper something in your ear.

“Then you have my attention darling.”

Before he pulls away he gently boops your nose with a smile, before taking your hand in his as you continue shopping.

Dipper Sullivan:

Dipper didn’t interact with many people. So she wasn’t very socially aware. And she certainly never learned this type of behaviour from her father. So she was utterly surprised when you reached across the tea table booping her nose.

“Boop” you smile happily.

Her eyes light up, twinkling up at you. She scrunches her nose like a bunny rabbit, and gets up from the table coming to boop you back.

“Boop!” She says excited, then makes her favourite stuffed animal do it too.

Good luck leaving her tea party now. You’re stuck here at least the rest of the day until she gets tired and Sully can sneak you back out of the house to go home. But until then, you’re now Dippers personal obsession for the day. She will require boops everytime you visit now, or she won’t be so nice to you without them. She’ll take that as rejection.

And we all know what happens to those who hurt Dipper…

Blinky Firefly:

Blinky already knew what you were up to before you even entered the room. The clown had a strange way of sense things. Sometimes the other members of the house weren’t even sure if Blinky was fully human, with how strange they behaved.

But Blinky had a mission to get you before you could get them. They never missed out on an opportunity for mischief, games and laughter. They crawled up the door frame, hiding above you when you enter the room, watching you look around aimlessly for them.

They giggle before dropping down on-top, trapping you to the floor. They reach down and boop your nose.

“Boop! Got your nose” they giggles triumphantly.

“Damn if Blinky, why are you so good at this game?”

“A clown never reveals their secrets silly. Gotta be faster than me” they giggle as they run away waiting for you to chase them.

They will let you catch them eventually. They can’t resist the boop forever. Might have to catch Blinky sleeping if you want a fair shot. But good luck, the clown has a lot of energy.

Newton Lecter:

Newton was seated outside his adoptive father’s work office, waiting patiently for him. They look up to the door when it opens, noting your presence before Hannibal’s. You seemed oddly giddy after a therapy appointment which peaked their interest.

“See you again next week.” Hannibal says his goodbye.

“Thanks for the session Dr Lecter.”

Knowing much better than to try to boop the older man, despite the urge very much being there, you restrained yourself, before your eyes land on the boy in the lobby.

“Well hello there”

Hannibal sighs softly. “Meet my Son, Newton, Newton this is-“

Before he can introduce you, you’re already bounding over to the younger boy. You boop their nose with a grin.

“Boop, you’re it” you say.

Hannibal watches the interaction curiously.

“It for what?”

You shrug.

“And what if I don’t want to be it?”

“Only a boop back cancels a boop.” You state as if that common fact.

“I see.”

They reach up to boop you back, smiling slightly.

“Now you’re it again.”

They’re left to think of the odd interaction as you walk away satisfied.

Lux Kirby:

Lux was out walking in the woods behind camp, mindlessly picking flowers for Beth. She’d been quite down recently and he thought this would brighten her apocalypse slightly. What they weren’t expecting was to see you running out of the woods into the clearing, with a walker after you. They drop the flowers immediately launching into action, lunging for their weapon and equipping it.

The walker almost gets close enough to bite you, but Lux throws himself at it, stabbing it multiple times before walking to reach for his bigger weapon he never leaves camp without, and they bring their mallet down exploding the walkers head, panting heavily and glaring down at it.

“You ok?” They mutter.

The only response they get from you is a small chuckle before you come over and boop them on the nose.

“Boop. Thanks for the save.”

Their eyes go crossed looking down at your finger, before they look at you confused.

“You’re strange mate- certainly hope that’s not what you were trying to do to this shit stain” he looks down at the zombie.

He drops his mallet going back for the flowers first; before coming back over to you and takes a switch blade out of his pocket, flipping on his hand before booping you back with the handle.

“Kindness won’t make you survive the apocalypse, but it will get you a free weapon and some protection.”

They give you a small smile, before grabbing their mallet and headed back to camp.

“See you around strange one”

Magnolia “Maggie” Blossom:

Maggie is minding her business in her flower shop in Gotham; when she hears the door bell chime. Being busy with a big order for some stupid Gotham socialites wedding, she barely even looks up to notice you enter. Or the mischievous look on your face as you decide on a fun way to catch her attention.

You grab a sunflower from one of the displayed and come over to the counter. As she’s about to look up to ask for just a moment, you strike, tapping the flower on her nose.

“Boop” you smile.

Maggie blushes furiously, caught off guard by the simple gesture but it a brings a smile to her face on her busy shift. She giggles softly, taking a rose from the stand she was working on and boops you back, before breaking off the stem and tucking the flower behind your ear.

“Thanks for that.” She says before getting back to work, in a significantly better mood. Maybe she won’t poison the brides flower bouquet anymore… perhaps you just saved a life.

Basil Zor El:

You bounce over on your heels, all ready too boop the least known Kryptonian because of a meme you saw. You figured it would be a fun idea, so here you were, breaking into Oswald mansion to find someone to boop.

And with your sights set on Basil you try to make your way over innocently, before reaching out last minute to boop his nose. But your plans are quickly thwarted when he catches your hand, looking at you with a raised eyebrow.

“What are you up to earthling?”

“I just wanted to boop you” you defend.

“That thing Maggie does to every stray cat she finds? Why would you want to do that to me?” He drops your wrist confused.

In his confusion you boop his nose, giggling and running away. He’ll just stare after you confused and roll his eyes.

“Humans” he says, with fake disgust.

And if I forgot any Oc’s I’ll take the blame for being a bad fictive parent 😔also sorry this took so long, I had physical therapy and then doctor phone calls to make earlier 😭

hey

my friends, my moots, my brethren

how would your OCs react to being booped?

@bluecoolr @probably-a-plant-thing @rottent33th @solmints-messyocdiary @slaasherslut @the-pinstriped-hood @devil-doll13 @damien-mlm @house-of-slayterr

#my ocs #Gotham oc #house of 1000 corpses oc #slasher oc #the walking dead oc #Hannibal oc

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after-witch · 2 years ago

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The Weather Outside is Frightful [NeedleAndDead OC Lucas x Reader]

Title: The Weather Outside is Frightful [NeedleAndDead OC Lucas x Reader]

Synopsis: It’s a lovely Christmas evening with your serial killer kidnapper, who’s gotten you a Christmas present.

Featuring @needleanddead OC Lucas.

Word count: 1392

notes: yandere, kidnapped reader, mentions of cannibalism & butchering

It was like living in a storybook, up here in the mountains. Outside the clear glass window of the cabin, the world was dark and glitteringly white. The ground had been long since coated in inches of pristine snow, and the unspoiled forest near your cabin added to the picturesque beauty of it.

Tonight, snow fell in big, fluffy flakes from the sky. It was a soft snowfall. The kind that made you want to press your head against the glass and dream. An animal, small and fast, darted into the snow and paused, sniffing the air. The nearly full moon lit up the scene just enough to make it visible.

It was a picture-perfect Christmas evening.

Like a fairytale.

Only you were not some lonely princess, trapped in a tower. Or a smart plucky peasant girl with the wits to save her cursed siblings.

You were an ordinary person without the wits to escape or the royal title to demand rescuing.

Only the man sitting beside you was not the handsome prince in disguise or the trustworthy, stalwart woodcutter with a heart of gold.

He was a serial killer with a penchant for butchering people like they were cattle, processing their meat, and eating it for supper.

Only the cabin was not your home, but your prison. One that you weren’t allowed to leave without strict permission, which was not often given, and only with stipulations.

Only the dinner in your overfull belly wasn’t a Dickensian Christmas roast, but the seasoned, cooked flesh of some stranger. Well. You hoped it was a stranger. Once, just once, you’d asked Lucas flat out what he did with your friends. The ones he killed before he took some twisted form of pity on you and brought you home.

His eyes had turned a little remote, his expression just a little distant, and he smiled softly at you. “Why would you ask a silly thing like that, darlin’?”

You never asked again. That didn’t stop you from examining your dinners now and then, looking for signs. Scar tissue from a surgery. A tattoo. You didn’t know what you would do if you ever recognized anything, but it was something to hold onto. Desperately, stupidly.

“I hope you like it.”

You flinched, reacting instinctively to being jerked out of your thoughts. You blinked and blinked, and remembered what you were doing before you got lost in the beautiful snow and bittersweet sentiments.

Lucas had gingerly set a wrapped gift on the coffee table in front of you before resuming his place at your side. From the sound of it, it was something heavy. It was wrapped in old newspapers, and topped with a wilted bow. The bow had probably been used before, you guessed. So many things in the cabin had.

Your set your mouth as firmly as you could. You often did, when Lucas surprised you with things. Because sometimes they upset you and he (and yourself, quite often) didn’t know why. If you were upset, it was a gamble. Would he coo and wipe away your tears with a callused thumb? Or would he get irritated that you were being ungrateful, not playing the part?

It was best to be prepared, in case some gift would trigger a memory or emotion that would be unpalatable to his expectations.

So your mouth was set and your hands went slow as you carefully peeled off the newspaper, revealing a nondescript box underneath.

You glanced over at Lucas.

Normally, when he gifted you things for behaving well, he had a little smile on his face. A “you’re going to love this” sort of smile. But here, he simply watched, eyes darting around a little. He looked nervous. You felt your heart thump. Why did he look nervous?

You had to get on with it, whatever the answer. Carefully, your fingers caught the edge of the box and you lifted it.

The gasp that left your lips was involuntary.

It was a typewriter.

With paper and ink ribbons and everything. It was a little beat up, with a few of the letters clearly worn down. But it looked solid. One of those old machines that could last for decades, in comparison to the new ones that broke down or barely worked at all.

A while back, on this very same sofa, you’d admitted to Lucas that you missed writing stories on the computer. You tried to write them by hand but your hands got tired. He’d mumbled something about not understanding those things, and you dropped it.

“Where did you get it?” You asked suddenly, voice soft. You hoped he didn’t hear the trepidation and anxiety that formed a sudden, hard ball in your stomach.

Was it… from storage? The closet in the spare room, or one of the sheds? He sometimes brought out gifts from there, and while you didn’t hate something new to keep you distracted, all of these things had an undeniable morbid string attached to them.

“Secondhand shop in town,” Lucas said. If he heard anything in your question but curiosity, he didn’t let it show. “Got it the week before all this snow came. Good timin’, huh?” He paused. “So… do y’like it?” You glanced over, and you saw something terribly vulnerable in his expression. Just for a moment. Just long enough for it a confusing, sympathetic sting to blossom in your chest.

“I…”

Your throat felt tight. You swallowed once and twice, but it stayed, that terrible lump.

Tears pricked at your eyes.

It was… new. Not new-new, but something new to the cabin. Something without someone else’s fingerprints on it, without their ghost over your shoulder, asking what you’re doing with their sewing machine, their oil paints, their books…

But this? This was yours.

“I love it,” you whispered, fingertips ghosting over the keys.

You turned towards him, chin wobbling, eyes shiny with the beginnings of tears.

“Thank you, Lucas.”

And you meant it completely.

He grinned, and wiped at the beginnings of your tears with his thumbs.

“Ain’t you the sweetest thing? Ain’t you just the sweetest?”

The praise made your cheeks hot, and you stared down at the typewriter again, eyes ghosting over every little detail.

“I’m sorry,” you mumbled. “I didn’t get you anything like this.”

There were unfinished projects in the spare room, your attempts at a homemade gift, but you weren’t able to force yourself to finish any of them. You’d settled for making a card with the various bits-and-bobs in the drawers filled with mismatched craft supplies.

It was unimpressive, but earlier tonight, he’d acted like you’d given him something extravagant and special. The card was now proudly displayed on the fireplace mantel.

“What d’you mean? I loved the card. And,” he continued, knuckles lightly dragging down your cheek, his eyes taking in every inch of your face, “I already got you. You’re the best gift I could ask for, you know that?”

His arms wrapped around you easily, pulling you towards his body. The strength in his grip made you remember how deftly he lifted that axe, how easily he brought it down again and again into your friend’s bodies. And then you shut your eyes and forced that image away, replacing it with the typewriter, with the snow, with the crackling fire.

This was fine. For now, this was fine.

Maybe tomorrow, you would wonder if you were the first person who’s survived until Christmas with him. Or if others had watched this same snow delicately fall outside the cabin window, had waited patiently while Lucas stoked the fire or added marshmallows to a mug of homemade hot chocolate.

You would carefully consider if you were special, if he loved you so much more than the others, and that’s why you were still alive. Or if this was just a lovely little scene which had replayed countless times in this very room. And maybe you wouldn’t make it to next Christmas, after all. Someone else would take your place, and think these same thoughts, and their fingers would ghost over the typewriter keys and wonder how you died.

Yes, maybe tomorrow, you would wonder all that.

Tonight, though, you merely curled up harder against Lucas and let your body relax against his firm grip. You glanced down at your gift and thought about what you might want to write. Thought about filling your days with the clacking of the keys, the old-fashioned ringing of the bell.

Snow falling… warm fire… belly full. It wasn’t so bad, if you pushed away the details. If you ignored the horror of it all.

On evenings like this one, it was easier to do. At least for a little while.

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere ocs #other's ocs #afterwitch writes #ohhh sweet cannibal cabin man <33 #originally this was going to be heavier on the cannibalism but #then I wrote one passage in particular and went HM oh no #gonna make this just a sad lil bittersweet thing

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hiccanna-tidbits · 3 years ago

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Jackunzel Month

Day 18 - The Little Mermaid

***

Y’all thought I was done with Jackunzel Month??? PSYCHE

I apologize for being horrendously late!!! For some reason this one-shot was really hard to write??? I think it’s partially because the first Jackunzel fic I ever wrote was in a mermaid AU, so I was really trying to make this its own distinct thing while still trying to incorporate some of the things I liked about that story. I got pretty nostalgic writing this regardless ;_____;

Starring Jack as a random poor fisherman’s kid instead of a prince because fuck that, Jack ain’t no prince, he’s poor af! He’s really Just Some Guy who happens to be pretty funny, and the idea of a very pretty young mermaid very readily preferring that over some larger-than-life prince who’s also Moneybags McGee is both endlessly amusing and extremely heartwarming to me.

Also, I strongly believe that these two’s teasing and banter would only be enhanced by one of them being half fish X3

Random aside, but I watched some scenes from The Little Mermaid for inspo, and like...Ariel x Eric is actually way cuter than I remember??? Like lowkey I hated TLM as a kid (mainly because I was a not-like-the-other-girls pick-me type who made a point of despising anything even remotely feminine lmao) and like...Ariel still isn’t my fave, and I can’t help but make fun of the whole “daddy I love this man I’ve spoken to 0 times!!!” bit. But lowkey when Ariel and Eric DO start interacting, their chemistry is...actually pretty solid???

Not that Eric’s whole “I’m going to marry this girl because she sings nice!!!” bit is any less ridiculous XD Honestly I think these two ditzy idiots are kinda perfect for each other that way XD

Pic credits available upon request!

Fic preview under the cut!!! Go read the rest on my ff.net account, Infrared-Ultraviolet!

***

Rapunzel lay sprawled on a surf-beaten boulder, pink tail swishing behind her as she watched the distant figures on the beach.

She was nestled in a cove of pointy rocks, hidden and far enough away that no one running around on the sandy beach was likely to spot her. Rapunzel was no stranger to the perils of the human world, after all.

Looming above the pale golden shoreline and the human fishing village just past was a great castle, stark-white stone towers and rust-colored roof spires stabbing into the sky. Rumors flew around the merkingdom about the viciousness of the people in that castle, going out in lavish boats and dragging in enormous nets filled with every type of sea life under the sun—fish, crabs, lobsters, shrimp, seals, dolphins. Those merfolk brave enough to go near the palace claimed they heard the screams of animals drifting from the windows, and sometimes felt drops of scalding oil fall from above and sear into their scales. Whatever way the humans killed and ate creatures of the sea was likely not kind. One particularly gossipy young merboy had even claimed they once were roasting a merperson over a spit in their courtyard, although Rapunzel doubted that.

The human prince was said to hold sea creatures prisoner, a tank full of tropical fish taking up his entire wall. Rapunzel had heard many a haunting bedtime tale from her father that if she didn’t behave, she’d end up trapped in the prince’s collection. She’d heard of him and other well-off humans holding great shows and performances, where they came to gawk and point at sea animals and harass them for entertainment. Some of the crueler humans would hit dolphins and seals with rods until they did tricks.

Although Rapunzel couldn’t help but feel a sort of morbid fascination with the castle, it wasn’t the reason she snuck out to watch the humans.

A brown-haired boy raced down the beach, dressed in a threadbare beige shirt and a tattered brown vest and pair of trousers. A little girl with matching dark hair ran just in front of him, laughing. He caught up to her and pinched her playfully in the side, and she screamed in delight.

Anna didn’t understand Rapunzel’s taste. She’d always said if a human had to catch the blonde’s eye, she’d think it would be one of the snappily-dressed ones who rode by in fancy carriages, or one of the dignified ones who marched down the more lavish piers wearing powdered wigs and petticoats.

But no, the one she had her heart set on was a fisherman’s son, dressed practically in rags and always sweaty from running and bouncing everywhere he went.

She’d seen him a number of times. When he wasn’t out on his father’s fishing boat, he was dashing around the beach or the docks, trying to make his sister laugh. She sometimes spotted him on top of the soaring seaside cliffs just past the rocky shore. He would sit or stand there alone for what seemed like hours, gazing off into the distance with a strange expression.

Rapunzel wondered if it might be a sort of yearning, but she didn’t want to read too much into it.

Other than those mysterious moments on the cliffs, he always radiated joy. Every time she saw him, he was beaming or laughing or putting on some silly performance for the younger kids. His happiness was so infectious that every time she spotted him, and consequently stayed to “observe” him for probably much longer than was appropriate, she went home feeling giddy and cheerful.

She wanted to know him.

Merida thought Rapunzel’s taste was absurd. It was beyond her, how Rapunzel could risk getting into the most massive trouble either of them had ever known and getting captured and imprisoned by the cruelest of the land creatures, all for some fisherman’s son. It was easy for Merida to say—she had always been enchanted by the sea maidens that surrounded them. Rapunzel saw her head turn every time one swam by, eyes darting over flashing tangerine or violet or emerald-hued scales and looking approvingly at elaborate hairstyles held in place by shells. Merida was baffled by what a dry and shriveled-up land creature could ever have to offer.

Nonetheless, Rapunzel found herself coming back to the rocky cove whenever she had a spare afternoon.

She kept telling herself Today’s the day. Today’s the day I’m going to work up the guts to talk to him.

It never actually was the day, but that was neither here nor there.

On the distant beach, the little brown-haired girl and several other children her age were playing in the sand, building rickety castles with buckets. The fisherman’s son stood watching them for a while before leaning down and murmuring something in the little brunette girl’s ear. She nodded with a big beam, and the boy turned and began making his way down the shoreline.

Toward Rapunzel.

She glanced across the cove, at a flat boulder right on the edge of the beach.

She could go there if she wanted. She could wait for the boy to come to her, and if any of the kids in the distance looked up and saw her, a quick escape into the surrounding water would be easy. No one else was around to run and tell the castle staff that a new mermaid was ready and available for kidnapping.

Before Rapunzel knew it, her fins were carrying her over to the rock by the beach, and she was pulling herself onto it. If she really wanted to talk to Fisher Boy, it was probably now or never.

Before she could second-guess herself, the approaching boy looked up and locked eyes with her. He nearly fell over.

“Whoa, what the—are you really—”

“Uh…hi.” Rapunzel gave him her most winning beam.

The boy blinked a few times, taking a couple of tentative steps forward. His eyes drifted to her tail, gawking at it.

He opened his mouth, as if to let out a cry of alarm. Rapunzel quickly put up her hands to stop him. “Please don’t freak out!”

His mouth snapped shut. “I am definitely not freaking out. I just also definitely did not expect to start talking to a supernatural entity on my walk down the beach today.”

Rapunzel tipped her head to one side. “Am I a supernatural entity?”

“Considering until today, I didn’t think girls with fishtails existed outside of sailor’s tall tales floating around seafood market stalls…I’d say so, yeah.”

Rapunzel glanced down at the gleaming anemone-pink scales covering her lower half, and her eyes flicked back to the boy. “Well, you can walk around on land. That seems pretty supernatural to me.”

He took a step closer, taking another long look at her lower half. Rapunzel blushed.

“Wow. I knew that pollock tasted a little funny this morning, but this is on another level.”

She shook her head rapidly. “No, no, I’m real! I promise! Come and see!”

He gingerly walked over to her, and she was suddenly wreathed in the musky scent of carp, sand, sweat, ocean-kissed wood, and old rope. She found herself longing to melt into it, wanting it to surround her after a long, tiring day.

It wasn’t the sort of smell Merida would enjoy. She’d far prefer coconut and sea grape and banana and saltwater and plumeria.

To Rapunzel, though, it felt just right.

The boy hovered a hand over her scales. “Can I touch?”

Rapunzel nodded eagerly.

His fingers felt soft as they brushed over her, sending excited shivers up into her torso.

“If this is a dream, it’s the most real-feeling one I’ve had in a while,” he admitted. “Never thought those crazy deckhands at the docks were actually onto something. Seeing half-fish people splashing around underneath your boat does sound pretty far-fetched until you see it for yourself.”

He let out a wry laugh, and Rapunzel smiled at the ground. His laugh really sounded so much better up close.

The boy slid his hand off and looked up at her, and she realized his eyes were as brown as his hair. “It’s just…I’m out to sea all the time, and I’ve never seen a mermaid,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “Where are you and all your friends hiding?”

Rapunzel frowned. “We hear bad things about a lot of the humans. The ones in the castle, especially. They run us over with their giant ships and fry us in oil for feasts and collect us like rare artifacts so they can gawk at us all day. It’s safer to make ourselves scarce.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know what goes on in there. They all seem like a bunch of entitled snobs, anyways. I don’t blame you for not wanting anything to do with those jerks.” He shrugged nonchalantly before abruptly breaking into a wide smirk. “But I have to ask, then…if humans are bad news, why are you talking to me?”

“I’ve been watching you!” Rapunzel told him, beaming. “I see you on the beach and out on your fishing boat and up on the cliffs, and you just seem so nice and funny and handsome and interesting and thoughtful and smart and it looks like you take such good care of your little sister and—”

He raised an eyebrow at her, and Rapunzel’s hand shot to her mouth as she realized what all had slipped out.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!” she whimpered. “That probably came across so creepy. Gosh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that! I meant I’ve seen you around while I was doing my daily swims, nothing else, and I really wanted to meet you, and I didn’t—I wasn’t following you or anything, I promise. I just noticed you and you piqued my interest and I wanted to meet you. If that’s okay.”

She started to play with a long strand of blonde hair, looking at the human boy pleadingly.

Had she said too much? Too many stupid things? Was he going to run?

“Well.” He grinned, spreading his arms a little as if showing himself off. “Now you’ve met me. I’m Jack Overland.”

“Um…Rapunzel Corona.”

She bit her lip, not sure what to make of this human. He didn’t seem bothered by her stalking habits—albeit stalking habits only bred out of the warnings of her peers to never interact directly with the land folk.

Jack Overland nodded approvingly. “That’s a suitably fancy name.”

He trotted over and sat down on the rock next to her, crossing his legs. He rested a sharp, boyish chin on cupped hands, regarding her curiously.

“So you’re not going to like…lure me into the water and eat my heart out, are you?”

Rapunzel wrinkled her nose. “No! Why would I do that?”

“What about drowning me?” He tipped his head slightly to one side. “Or stabbing me with pointy shells? Any plans of that?”

She glared at him. “No! I think you’re nice! I would never!”

He broke into another smirk and let out a chuckle. “Listen, Crazy Old Larry’s always in the tavern rambling on and on about ‘siren songs leading ye cursed seafarers to certain doom.’ Granted, he’s usually six drinks in when I see him, and I think the cod he eats for breakfast has seen better days, but I still had to check.”

She couldn’t help but giggle at the absurdly dramatic voice he did for Crazy Old Larry.

“Lucky for you, I don’t have much interest in stabbings or human hearts,” she said. She laid back on the rock, grinning up at him as several locks of her long blonde hair slipped into the water behind her. “Hearts are way too chewy and sinewy for my taste, and too much blood squirting out everywhere makes the water smell awful. As for drowning…I mean, human bodies floating around is a great way to pollute everything.”

“Phew.” He smiled down at her, and her heart felt like it was crashing into her ribs harder than waves at high tide. “That’s a relief. I guess I’m safe.”

“Gotta say, though.” He shrugged. “Every possible human to break your taboo and talk to, and you choose the smelly, broke fisherman’s kid. I don’t get it.”

She grinned. “Well, you haven’t grabbed me and dragged me off to make your dinner with yet. Or tried to pull my scales out to make jewelry. So I say you’re doing pretty well.”

Jack fixed her with an impish look, and his hands started gliding toward her tail with fingers poised to yank. She lifted her tail and smacked him so hard he nearly fell into the water, and he burst out laughing.

“I think that thing’s strong enough to send me flying halfway across the cove,” he said. “Honestly I don’t know why your kind is so worried about humans. I’m pretty sure you could just pummel them into rocks if they pissed you off too much.”

“Maybe,” she teased. “Or maybe you’re just skin and bone.”

“Oh, you did not!” He swatted her arm, and she cackled.

A shrill voice rang out across the beach, and Rapunzel looked up to see the little brown-haired girl from earlier bounding toward them.

Jack sighed. “You’d better go. My sister Emma’s got the biggest mouth in town, and I don’t trust her not to tell everyone she knows about you.”

“Okay.” Rapunzel felt a slight pang of disappointment as she let herself slip into the water. She peeked up her head above the waves and gave him a small smile. “Well, it was nice to finally meet you.”

He met her eyes, gaze suddenly sad. “Will I see you again?”

She beamed at him. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Rapunzel vanished into the waves just as Emma finished her trek down the beach.

***

And so, after that day, Jack and Rapunzel started to meet. Secretly, atop flat ocean stones hidden by forests of jabbing, pointed rocks and towering sea cliffs, but as often as they could nonetheless.

Rapunzel wondered at first if it was foolish, going to see one of the folk who could drag her away from the sea forever if he committed to it. It didn’t take long for her to gather that such an undertaking was far more work than someone like Jack was willing to put in. He had no interest in building up the muscle mass needed to carry a struggling mermaid into town and pawn her off for a handsome profit. Hauling ropes and fishnets around could only make you so strong, and carrying a being as big as you were, especially an unwilling one, was another matter entirely.

Aside from that, he seemed a kindhearted and easygoing sort, despite his occasionally rude sense of humor. He was always talking about his sister Emma, and how he would do anything for her. With a father constantly out to sea and a mother with seemingly never-ending seamstress work, Jack had practically raised Emma himself. She was the light of his life, and he didn’t know what he’d do if anything ever happened to her.

Jack was more than happy to bring her various artifacts from the human world. Dishware, cooking pans, corkscrews, burned firewood (the concept of using mildly-chaotic concentrated heat to make food crispier and tastier was truly fascinating to Rapunzel), maps of the world, pieces of rope, wooden sticks that were rounded at one end and had strings that made beautiful music if you pulled them. Pieces of old net, although he warned her to be careful with them as they were pretty “tangly.” Candlesticks that somehow managed to capture the very fire she found so strange and fascinating, even if it was only tiny bits of it. Ticking numbered devices that could apparently track the passage of time one 24th of a day at a time. Branching bones that had once been attached to the head of some great land beast, one that lived deep in sprawling clusters of trees. Glittery silver sheets that were somehow even more reflective than water itself.

Anything he was willing to part with she snuck down to the merkingdom, sliding it under her bed behind the conch and turtle shells she had collected over the years. Sometimes when she lay down to sleep at night, she held one of the assortment of objects close. It was a way to feel like she could keep the cove—and Jack—with her, even when they were far away.

One time, after the sun had gone down, he showed up with a metal-and-glass box with a soft ball of light inside, and said it was called a “lantern.” She loved them more than anything else in the world. She loved everything he showed her.

He brought her land food, too—more than she could have imagined existed. Mackerel seared over fire, delicious like nothing she had ever tasted. Boiled crab drenched in melted butter and herbs. Milk and cream and cheese and butter on bread. A roast, exotic meat called “chicken” made from a strange land bird. Raspberries and roast chestnuts and apples and hazelnuts and pears and other wild things Jack scrounged up in the woods outside of town. Once he even managed to steal her a piece of lavender cake from a castle courtyard party, disguising himself as a servant long enough to grab the elegant pastry and run.

In return, she brought him whatever treasures she could from the sea. Seashells in baby blue and candy pink, pieces of coral, sea stars, shiny abalone shells, glittering shed scales, the most elegant pearls she could find. It never felt like enough to thank him for all that he’d showed her, but it was the best she could do.

She couldn’t say how long they spent together, splashing around and building sandcastles and chasing each other through the cove and talking about how different the world was above and below the water. It never felt like long enough. Jack would have to go and make sure Emma wasn’t getting into too much trouble unattended, or Rapunzel would have to go before her parents got suspicious.

As the months went by, Rapunzel’s wariness dissolved. Any initial fears she had of him hauling her home like giant fishing trophy were gone, replaced by the warm comfort left after spending time with someone she’d known her whole life.

At least, it felt like she had known him her whole life.

She even found herself telling Jack about her strangest quality. Her magical golden hair, unusual even for mermaids, was the envy of the kingdom. Her mother had eaten a soup made from an enchanted undersea flower, said to have sprouted all the way from the center of the earth itself. The healing powers of the flower had passed into Rapunzel, and now she could cure any disease and close any wound with a quick song.

Ironically, Rapunzel had the exact opposite of whatever “siren call of death” Jack had been warned about.

Nonetheless, Jack wasn’t enamored with her powers. He wasn’t always asking her to sing for him so he could see the golden glow, or wrapping her hair around cuts and bruises and nagging her to make them vanish. To him, it was just another part of the ethereal world of merfolk—not any more or less amazing than her having a tail or being able to breathe underwater.

It was refreshing, really, being seen as something other than a quick bottle of medicine. Her parents praised her endlessly for her abilities, and how much good she did with them, but it still always made her feel…other. Like most who saw her were more interested in staring in awe at the sunshine trail of hair that flowed behind her than actually knowing her.

Jack wasn’t like that. Just a couple magic songs and a couple bouts of glowing hair, and he got back to unraveling the rest of her being.

She remembered the first time he’d crept up behind her in the water and hugged her waist, nearly giving her the scare of her life. He burst out laughing, but he didn’t let go.

She found she didn’t want him to.

He murmured in her ear asking if she could take him swimming, his voice a pleading whine. It was nigh impossible to say no.

And so they took to him lying on her back with his arms locked around her waist, and she’d zoom up and down the coastline while he whooped and cheered. They stayed beneath the cliffs, keeping to places so rocky and treacherous that no human or merfolk would dare venture there, but Rapunzel found she never worried about getting hurt.

Jack brought something brave out of her.

It was more tiring than swimming alone, but Rapunzel found herself looking forward to streaking through the water with him. She liked the tight feel of his arms around her.

Rapunzel grew to love the cove, the sprawling view of the cliffs and the beach. She lamented that she could never remember the beauty of it exactly as it was, no matter how often she came. She wished there was a way to keep it with her all the time, not just in her fickle memory. She mentioned this to Jack at one point, not missing the way his eyes lit up conspiratorially as she said it.

The next day, Jack brought a thick wooden stick on three legs, a thin white board, several long twigs with fur on the end, and a little tray filled with gooey, colored smudges. He said humans used something called “painting” to capture things they saw and keep them with them.

Rapunzel painted the cove. The picture was rough, and crude, and looked more like a collection of oddly-shaped blobs than anything, but it was hers. They let it dry before hiding it away among some of the craggier rocks, making sure it was far out of sight. Jack promised to check up on it every so often, when Rapunzel couldn’t come out to see him.

Then one day, Rapunzel came home to find her parents floating above the front lawn and glaring at her, all the contents of the underside of her bed spread across the eelgrass.

Her treasures were smashed to pieces in front of her. Her father told her neither humans nor their dangerous devices could be trusted, and no part of the world on land had a place in their kingdom. He wanted her to forget the human world completely—and if that meant destroying every last remnant she could possibly hold onto, then so be it.

Humans were perilous and cruel creatures, Frederick told her. The only true guarantee he had of keeping her completely safe from them was to make sure she never went near one again.

In short, she was forbidden from ever seeing Jack again. One of her parents always seemed to have a watchful, critical eye on her, as if daring her to try to return to the cove. She waited and waited for an opportunity to sneak away, but it never seemed to come.

She didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye.

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weirdthinkingdragon · 4 years ago

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Permanent Guest

Animal shapeshifter au. Warnings of blood, injuries, animal harm, animal death, drugging. A slow start.

I’m going to be honest, I don’t even really know what this story is.

The back of my house has a rather large forest area. There’s no other house near mine for a decent ways. Walking at dusk is the best with the sun coming through the trees. My only annoyance is the hunters that like to be around my home.

I’ve tried getting them to stay away, but there’s nothing that could be done since they’re right outside my borders, so it’s fully legal. The far-off gunshots get unsettling sometimes and even spook my cat. I’ve gotten a few deep scratches from them being startled at the sound.

I’m going through my familiar path again. I’ve done this same path so many times it would be possible to walk with my eyes closed. Obviously, that would be a stupid idea though with all the wild animals around.

Far off in the distance, I heard frequent shuffling, like something was desperately trying to get away from something else but can’t. My mind immediately went to the idea that it could be a poor animal caught in some type of trap by the hunters. Walking up towards the noise, the familiar sight of a fox was seen. It has its paw stuck in something. As I got closer, it didn’t take long for the fox to notice my presence. They backed away and ducked down with their ears back. What I saw made me want to hurt those damn hunters. It was a steel-jaw trap. Its paw was bleeding pretty badly. They have been struggling for a while already. I was in a state of panic about what to do. I could just open the trap, but judging by the injury, they’re going to need some help since it’s a deep wound. They’ll most likely run if I just open it though.

That’s just the chance that will have to be taken. I walk over and it drops down as far as it could to the ground. I instinctively put my hands up and get really close. The trap and the fox were within arm’s reach if I bent down. “It’s alright, I’m not going to hurt you. I want to help before someone that will hurt you does come,” At this point I’m wondering why I’m trying to talk to it. There’s no way it can understand me. I’ve never seen such a blond-colored fox either before. That’s rather odd. The fox seems to perk up a little bit, but still cautious. “Now, I’m going to open the trap, but please don’t run.”

I push the springs on the side of the trap to make it open. The fox quickly pulls its paw out and takes a few steps back without using the injured front paw. They locked eyes with me, but it wasn’t kept long as I looked back at the trap. “Why are they using an illegal item? These things are so inhumane…” I mumble. A lightbulb goes off in my head. This can possibly be used to make them stop hunting around my home!

Another sudden thought popped into my head though. If I take the trap, they can possibly frame me for having them and trying to get the hunters to stay away from my home. Am I thinking too far into it? Probably. Should I take my chances? Better not. One of the fox’s ears flicked backwards as they looked further from the way I came from. It immediately went towards that direction, but looked back towards me, almost like it wants me to follow. Is that really a smart decision? I stood there, unsure whether to follow or just go back home. It kept waiting for me to come with.

“My house is the other way, come with me and I’ll try to patch you up.” It didn’t come closer. “What could possibly be taking your attention that way?” I question, which is once again ridiculous since it can’t answer. I heave a sigh and start to follow.

Not too far ahead was another trap, but there was something else stuck in it. A… cat?... To be fair, the cat is really big, even for a Maine Coon. But what in the world is a cat doing so far in the woods?

The fox went right up to the cat, making the cat look at it, then at me. The cat has a glare that was far from just unsettling. Unlike the fox, both of its front paws were stuck in the trap. I did the same thing with the trap from before. It immediately tried to take off, but fell. I pick it up and start walking towards my house. He quickly tried to be let free by repeatedly biting and scratching my arms, and even trying to go for my face. It was a struggle, and him being such a large cat really doesn’t help. He kept hissing, growling, clawing, writhing, biting, everything to get me to drop him. I was getting multiple wounds from his struggles.

“Can you stop struggling!? I’m trying to help, damn it! You’re lucky I’m just as stubborn to not leave you out here to die.” I hissed. Almost like he could understand, he quickly lowers his struggles. Looking to my right side, the fox was still following closely, keeping their injured paw from touching the ground.

My arms started getting tired when we finally reached my home. I enter and place the still bleeding cat on the toilet seat in my bathroom. I grab a towel and get it wet with warm water. He still wouldn’t stop locking his glare on me as I wipe his arms. The fox let out a little bark at the cat, making him stop glaring.

“So that’s why you made me follow? You were worried about your friend?” I smack my forehead. “Why do I keep talking like this? They obviously can’t understand me,” I get an old shirt and cut it to wrap around the wounds. “Hopefully that’s not too tight.” I then sit on the floor in front of the fox. He’s a lot more friendly and open to me than the cat is, and even put his paw forward for me. It didn’t take long to clean him with another clean rag and wrap his wound as well. Luckily, I was able to get to them before permanent damage was done. Well, it might still scar though. I then pour peroxide on my cuts and bandage the few that were deeper than the others.

I bring them to my couch in the living room. They keep staring at me as the silence stays. After a minute, I let out a frustrated groan. “Ugh, what now? I could get in so much trouble keeping a wild fox,” I look at the cat. “You’d be fine, but it’s easy to tell you don’t want to be near me. How did you even get here anyways? The only people around are hunters, and they’ve shot my cats before, so you definitely don’t belong to them,” they just keep looking at me. I sigh in frustration again. “You two will just have to stay inside for a few days. After that, you’re both on your own. Judging that you’re close, at least you’ll be together.”

Looking out my window, the sun is down now. “I’ll give two days max until a hunter will be pounding on my door.” I decided to make dinner for myself and my “guests”. They oddly preferred the meat cooked. My orange tabby, Nacho, didn’t care at all and ate both whenever I gave it to them.

After that, I sat on the couch with the now three animals. Nacho in my lap, and the other two cuddling up in a way that’s adorable. They’re incredibly well-behaved for wild animals. They have to belong to someone or something. I rub one of my wrapped cuts from the cat while watching the comedy show that’s on. It’s going to be sore for a while. Fur suddenly rubs against the wrapped wound. It’s a rather deep one the cat got onto my forearm. I look over to see the black cat looking at me, almost in an apologetic way. I gently rub his head for a second. Surprisingly, he lets me. “It’s alright. You were in a panic. Just… try not to do it again, alright?” I asked in a joking manner.

I went to bed not long after. In the morning, the sun went right onto my face. I get up to check on the two sooner than later. What I saw in the living room made me freeze and nearly scream. My hands quickly cover my mouth before a noise comes out and wakes them. Who exactly? The two naked men on my couch. Waking them wouldn’t go well for anyone, especially startling them awake. There was no sight of the fox and cat. The cloth I used on their wounds are on the floor next to the men. What really caught my attention looking at the two men was the wounds on their arms in similar places the cat and fox did.

My mind is flabbergasted as it made the connection the only way this could be is if these two ARE the fox and cat, but that couldn’t be possible! The odd ears on their heads and tails that match the animals as well say otherwise.

I have to force myself to not to look at their lower places. Luckily, it’s easier with the blond laying on the black-haired one. The blond wakes up as I start to walk backwards out of the room. He turns and we lock eyes, both freezing in our spots.

The awkward silence between our stares was deafening. “You two have some explaining to do when he wakes.” I whisper.

“No need to wait.” Replied the black-haired male as his eyes opened to look at me. The blond goes to sit up.

“Waitwaitwaitwait! Don’t get up! I- I need to get you guys towels or something!” They look at me confused. Don’t tell me they’re used to being naked... I get towels and come back to them sitting up straight on the couch. I toss the towels at them with the feeling of heat rapidly growing on my face. They at least did cover their laps with the towels.

“So, first question, where are you two from?”

“We live just a few miles away actually! As to what we were doing around here? We were testin’ our animal forms!”

I nodded. “That explains why you’re around here, but why didn’t you guys transform back to unlatch the traps yourselves?”

“We can’t change to our other form when we’re under emotional distress. It’s the same way we’re not as fully logical either. Our animal form has more of our instincts that control than our regular mind.” The blond elbows the other.

He glares at the blond before looking back at me. “Sorry again for injuring you.”

I shrug. “Eh, once again, it wasn’t really your fault. Anyways, what will you guys do now?” I ask.

“After you went to bed last night, we decided we’ll stay a few days if you’re beautiful self is fine with it. We were actually going to show ya our human side today, but uh… guess we must have changed back in our sleep!” he lets out a little laugh.

“What would staying at my home do? I’m sure I could just drive you back to your home or something.”

“We want to repay ya for saving our behinds from being killed!”

“He wants to. Unfortunately for the both of us, it’s impossible to change his mind.” He crosses his arms as he looks at the blond.

“C’mon, Sho! Ya don’t have to be such a downer about it!”

Sho?... Is that his name? “Oh! And could I get your guys’ names?”

“Of course! Mine is Hizashi! His name is Shouta! What’s yours, our beautiful savior!?”

I look at him weirdly. “Savior? You can quit with that now, I get it. My name is Y/N.”

Hizashi shakes his head with a big smile. “Nope, not gonna stop! And what a great name for such a beautiful person!”

“I’d like to get back to our home sooner than later. Zashi, how about we share our numbers and have them drive us home for now?” Hizashi’s reply was a somehow bigger smile and frantic nod. Before we could do anything else, there was an aggressive pounding on my door. I already have a good idea to whom it might be, and I start to worry. Hizashi looks at me with worry himself.

“Wrap the towels around yourselves and try to hide your animal details,” I walk over to the door to open it. In the corner of my eye the two of them try to wrap the towel around them, but Hizashi has trouble with his extra large and fluffy tail. Shouta was able to manage hiding it within the towel. Looking back at the door, it was the most problematic hunter around my home. Of COURSE it would be him. Oh why fate did it have to be his traps!?

He’s definitely not happy either. Right after opening the door, he forces his way into my house. This isn’t the first time he’s done this. I quickly go over and sit next to Hizashi, almost accidentally sitting on his tail in the process. His ears are still up, but it almost looks like they’re ears on a headband, so hopefully Dabi doesn’t notice. Shouta’s ears pretty much just look like he has an odd hair style. He looks at the two guys with me, then back at me with a hint of disgust, but mostly anger and annoyance.

“I don’t appreciate you setting the damn animals in my traps free. Those fuckers have been coming around my home and killing my chickens.” Oh, gee! That’s SO bad. Seriously, I feel bad for the chickens, but I don’t feel a smidge bad for the man, especially now after he stooped to such a low to such inhumane traps.

“And you’re using illegal traps because?...” I pressure him for answers.

“Because I don’t care, and I want the pests to suffer.” I could feel Hizashi’s tail bristle with anger behind me. I was pretty angry with him myself. “You’re lucky I don’t call security about your illegal act.”

“Does it look like I care? They won’t believe you anyways. Same goes for your “friends”. They know you don’t like me around your property, and it would be easy to pin the blame on you for owning them.”

“You’re a horrible person! Your way of hunting is one I can never dig!” Hizashi pretty much growls.

“Did I ever ask for your opinion? I don’t think I did, nor do I care,” He looks at me with a harsh glare. “Don’t think of messing with my traps again,” He turns around and goes to leave. “Also, you better watch your back. You’ve messed with the wrong hunter.” He finishes and leaves.

The three of us look at each other.

“O...kay… that just happened.”

“We’re staying for a few days,” Shouta suddenly proclaims. Hizashi and I look at him incredulously. His brows furrow. “That man doesn’t seem like he was kidding. It might be better for you to not be alone with him around.”

He has a point, but Dabi hasn’t caused anything to harm me before. Then again, I haven’t touched his traps before. I don’t really want to keep two strange men- er- whatever they are, in my place for long.

“I’ll be fine. His threat was most likely empty. He can’t do anything drastic anyways.”

“I don’t know, he seemed pretty serious.” Hizashi was with Shouta on this, I can tell.

“If you’re so worried about it, I’ll get both your numbers and call if something happens.” They look at each other for a minute, then back to me.

“How about this, we stay for just a day, then you drop us off at our home, and you spend the night a few days after, just to make sure?”

I wasn’t too keen on going to their house from barely knowing them. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t really feel comfortable going to a stranger’s- two strangers’ house, you know?”

Hizashi nods in understanding. “Hmm... Oh! How about you come over for dinner in a week or something then? THAT could be our thanks for saving us?”

That doesn’t really do anything if they’re still going to stay for a day... Screw it. “That will work I guess,” Hizashi gets a big smile on his face again and lunges towards me in a hug.

His towel fell in the process of him standing up. A naked man is hugging me. Back up dude! This is beyond weird. “But could we go to your place to get clothes or something? I’m rather uncomfortable with you guys naked in my house.” Hizashi stops hugging me to look down. “Oops!” He grabs the towel. There’s a light tinge of red that spread across his face. “Sorry about that!” Sorry doesn’t excuse the sheer awkwardness I’m feeling now.

“That seems doable if it makes you that uncomfortable.” Shouta replies.

“Come on then.” I say, and go to grab my keys. Hizashi sits up front with me while Shouta sits in the center in the back. It didn’t take long to get to their house, which was a rather massive log cabin. “How did you guys manage to get such a house!? More importantly, how did I not know this was so close to mine!?”

Hizashi laughs as we get up to the entrance of it. “Impressed?”

“Honestly? Yeah.”

“Well, it just so happens to be easy with owning two flourishing businesses with the help of a few great friends!”

I blink owlishly at them. “How in the world are you smart enough for businesses but get stuck in-”

“Let’s not talk about that. We’re still pretty new to the countryside, ya dig? I’m much more of a city kitty, but Sho wanted to try the country. We stay together so I decided it wouldn’t hurt to try! Let me tell ya though, these bugs here are a nightmare!”

Shouta crouches down and grabs a key that was under a cat statue. The cat was sitting straight with its tail curled around its front paws, and was a light grayish color. The fur of it was long, wavy, and beautifully intricate. Definitely a better spot than many other home’s hidden key spots since there are a ton of other animal statues in the yard, and it's not the closest to the door.

He unlocked the door and the three of us entered. Their house is really tidy, and rather plain. Not many pictures in the living room. The floor is a light gray carpet and it has black furniture. A large corner couch with a loveseat next to it a bit farther up, closer to the flat screen. It didn’t take long for the two to come back fully clothed.

“So, what should we do?” I ask.

“You could show us that area you found us. The area is rather nice.” Shouta replies. I’m a bit perplexed at their decision. “You sure? You both could have died.” I reminded them.

“Oh, trust us, we’re definitely NEVER being in animal form around here again.” Hizashi informs.

We walked my path. There were no traps this time. I got to learn a lot about the two of them. They’re not so bad. “When do you guys need to be back for your companies? Shouldn’t you both be in touch in case something happens?” I question.

“This is our vacation time! Just to be on the safe side though we told them to call if it’s an extreme emergency, like if the building went on fire.” I nodded.

We get back to my place, and I pet my cat while sitting on the couch. Shouta looks in wonder. “Is something wrong?” I ask him.

“He’s wondering what you’re doing to your cat. You did the same thing to him, and he liked it.” Shouta glares at Hizashi for calling him out.

“Do you mean to pet? You’ve never done or seen something be pet?” I question.

“Pet? That’s what it’s called? But that’s what the animals are called, aren’t they?.” Once again, I'm flabbergasted by what they do know and what they don’t know.

“How do you guys not know this?” I question. Hizashi shrugs. “Eh, with our “odd traits” as you guys call them, it got pretty hard to stay in school and hold down a job. We didn’t really have internet for a while, so we couldn’t look this up. Some people dipped from our looks as soon as they came for an interview, but others stayed and work pretty well!”

“Well, I’m glad you guys are doing great on your own!”

Hizashi nods in agreement.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The week went by rather quickly after that night. They got rather touchy fast. I tend to think it might be their animal side so I don’t question it. Dabi hasn’t done anything. There haven’t even been any new traps. At least from what I could see. Thinking about it, that does seem a little suspicious though.

I was walking on my path again and got a call from Hizashi. It’s still surprising how well reception is around here. “What’s up you two?”

“Yo, Y/N! We’re already missin’ ya greatly! We were wondering if you could come over for dinner and movies tonight!” Already? It’s only been a few days since we last saw each other. I might as well get it over with now. I’m kind of torn whether to just leave them alone after or keep hanging out with them.

I stop walking, and go to reply. “That sounds g-”

“Chink” Something slams onto my leg, making me stop mid-sentence and hiss out in pain. Immediately Hizashi was worried. “Y/N!? What was that sound!? Are you okay!?”

It was one of those damn traps. So much for not seeing any. I look around my leg and check to make sure nothing is too damaged. I know to stay calm and not move my leg to prevent punctures. It’s not numb either, but it’s going to leave one hell of a bruise. “Yeah, just got caught in a trap.” I reply, and start to try opening it. This one is in much worse shape than the others were with Hizashi and Shouta. Mostly with the rust around it. I’m glad it got me instead of them, or they would have had to of been brought to the vet. That wouldn’t have gone well.

“WHAT!!?” He shrieks once what I said processed through his mind, catching the attention of Shouta when he asks something incoherent in the background. “Shit… Hate to bother you guys, but do you have a crowbar or something similar by chance? This one is rather rusted and I can’t get it open. It didn’t puncture thankfully though, so no worries there.”

There was really rapid shuffling over the phone. “C’mon Sho, we gotta save our babe! We’ll be right there!” Our... Babe...? He hung up.

It would be stupid to keep moving my leg. The only thing that could be done is stand still and wait. To pass the time, I look around trying to find if there might be another one. I think I can see one a ways to the left of me.

The wait hardly took any time at all with two familiar men barreling from the bushes in front of me, almost crashing into me in the process. “Calm down you two! It’s not that serious!” They’re breathing heavily as they look at me. Shouta’s holding the crowbar tight enough for his hands to shake. I grab Hizashi’s shoulders and make him look at me again. He calms down incredibly quickly. It might help since he notices I’m not bleeding. The same thing for Shouta. I lean down and forcefully push down the springs again. “Put it between the jaws by my leg and pry it open.”

Shouta does, and it cries in protest to be opened. He’s able to open it just enough for me to slide my foot out. They both wrap an arm around my back like my leg was broken and I needed help standing. It wasn’t nearly that bad. “You guys are seriously overreacting.” I comment. They keep looking at my leg. “It’s just to be on the safe side. Let us help you now.” Shouta says.

“I can’t believe he hurt you.” Hizashi says angrily. I try to dissuade them from doing anything drastic. “No, it’s my fault for not being more cautious.”

“Don’t be trying to justify his actions. He WILL face consequences for this.” Shouta growls. Hizashi gets happy suddenly. “Hey! We can walk you to our place for the night! We already just put the food in the oven!” That slightly seems to calm Shouta as he nods in confirmation.

I laugh at his optimism. “Sure sounds like a plan! What movies are you guys thinking?” I ask as we walk. Taking one step forward with the leg that was caught, I’m actually thankful they’re helping me since the bruising pain nearly made me fall. They hold me slightly tighter.

“What’s your favorite movie? Hopefully we have it.” Hizashi says. I look at him with a smirk. “What, trying to impress me or something?”

He replies with a smirk back. “That’s for you to decide~” I roll my eyes at him. Shouta grew a small smile as I purposefully leaned more of my weight on Hizashi. “SUCH a charmer.”

“You know it babe!”

Footsteps of someone else came stomping towards us. They picked up on it quickly with Hizashi’s ears twitching. “I thought I told you not to mess with my traps.” Came the all too familiar voice of Dabi. I’ve never heard him so angry before. I tug on the two to turn me around. They did. But weren’t happy about it if anything their frowns go by. I felt their tails wrap around my lower back. “Oh, I’m SO sorry for accidentally stepping into one of your damn traps! You know I always take this route!”

“I’ve been here longer than you. You should know your damn place.” I was angry now. “MY place!? Who’s the one using illegal traps? Who’s the one nearly trespassing on someone’s property? Who’s the one hunting animals when it’s not even the season!? Who’s the one who keeps killing my animals? No wonder the previous person moved out! They didn’t want to deal with you, you sad excuse for a hunter! You give hunters a bad name!”

“Tch, that’s fine by me. They’re just animals. Be lucky I’m not one to hunt stupid people. Same with your damn freak bodyguards. Did you have to kiss their asses just for them to want to be around you?” He looks at Hizashi’s still twitching ears. “And what’s with keeping that disgusting bullshit? Are you wanting to be hunted or something?”

He was about to continue with more than likely another insult, but Hizashi straight up decks him in the face. Miraculously, it didn’t knock him out. He went to try to hit Hizashi back, but Shouta stepped in instead and Hizashi wrapped his other arm around me for more balance. The two share a quick look. Shouta dodges a hit that Dabi tries to throw. Shouta sees something that makes him grow a giant smile, it feels like a rather sadistic smile. I can swear he sees the trap.

Hizashi puts his tail around me again and turns me around back towards the direction of their house. There was sounds of a struggle behind me, but Hizashi wouldn’t let me turn around to look. “Don’t worry too much about Sho, he’ll be fine! He’s just showin’ that dude a hard time.”

“If you say so…” I reply, unsure from the face he had earlier. There was the faint familiar sound of a trap closing as we were a ways away. It didn’t take long for Shouta to catch up. “He can handle the suffering animals have gone through. He can open it himself if he’s desperate enough.” I was horrified. Yeah, he kinda deserves it, but he doesn’t have anything to pry it open if he can’t do it himself.

“Don’t think too much about it! It’s just a little payback. Like ya said, he shouldn't have those in the first place!”

“True, but-”

“Don’t think about it.” Shouta cuts in, bringing his arm around me again. In my distracted state, I didn’t notice their log cabin until it was up close. We enter the house which has the smell of one of my favorite foods wafting through it. They set me down on the loveseat.

I pull my pant leg up to show a massive bruise already forming where my leg was caught. “That’s going to need a lot of ice.” I joke. Neither of them laugh. They go to leave the room, probably to the kitchen. I go to stand up. “I can’t just sit idle in the living room, at least let me come into the kitchen with you two.”

Shouta glares and comes close to me. “No. We’ll get you ice and the food we made.”

That’s rather odd. “Why shouldn’t we just eat in the kitchen?” They stayed quiet as they share a glance. I didn’t get even an inch farther from the couch before Shouta grabs both my shoulders and pushes me to sit on the couch. “Sit.” His harsh tone scares me into complying. I’m feeling more and more like something is wrong with these two.

Hizashi immediately picks up on my expression. “Aw, don’t worry about him! He’s just worried, ya know? We were stuck in those darn things and Sho doesn’t want you to push yourself.” My eyes go to the giant scabs on their arms. Well, the one of Hizashi’s and both of Shouta’s, I guess that’s a pretty traumatizing thing. The scratches and bite marks still healing on me are proof too. He still doesn’t like looking at them.

They go to the kitchen, and come back rather quick with three plates and an ice pack. It’s one of those really nice ones that can wrap with Velcro. Hizashi wraps it around my leg as Shouta passes me my food. Hizashi then grabs a big CD case and gives it to me. Flipping through it, it has many of my favorite movies. I smile at them. “Man, you two got good taste.”

Hizashi lets out a mock gasp of joy. “We have acceptance of the magnificent audience!”

I look at Shouta questioningly. “Is he always like this?” He nods. Hizashi pouts. “Yo, I’m still right here ya know!”

I pretend not to notice, but the giant smile on my face gives it away. “Hm? Did you hear something?” Shouta replies by making his eyes look the other way. Hizashi leans on me. “Y/N!!! Don’t ignore meeee!” I reach over and aggressively rub the top of his head. It nearly makes my plate fall to the floor. Shouta catches it in a rather rushed manner. Guess it would be a pretty annoying mess to clean up. “Oops… Sorry, guess I got carried away…”

They almost seem to have relieved facial expressions from it not dropping. “At least you’re havin’ fun! That’s what it’s all about! Now, let’s pop your favorite movie in!” I hand him the CD of my choice. He plops down on my right as it plays. Shouta does the same on my left. The ads before the movie can play start.

Within the first bite, something seems off. I just… am I getting sick or something? I don’t remember it tasting like this. “Did you guys put something in this? It tastes different.”

“Sorry about that! It does taste a little funny, huh? It was a new spice I wanted to try adding for more flavor. Safe to say I’m not doing that again!”

It didn’t take us long to finish and focus more on the movie. Shouta lays down with his head on my left leg. “Pet me.” I hesitate. It’s rather weird to be petting a human. Or… Something so similar to a human. Hizashi lays on my right leg.

“C’mon, don’t make us beg for it now! We want you to!” I did start petting their heads. Still weird though. Okay, maybe after tonight, I really should cut contact with them. I don’t think I can do the commitment of petting them like this often.

… Why am I suddenly feeling so tired? My hands get a bit more sluggish as the drowsiness gets worse. It’s getting hard to keep my eyes open. Looking around, I notice a few boxes that were attempted to be hidden by Shouta’s side of the couch. “You guys are getting ready to leave already?” I question, voice slightly slurring.

Shouta sighs, “Yeah, something came up. We’re leaving tomorrow.” I was slightly saddened, yet greatly relieved by the news. “Well, I’m definitely going to miss you guys.”

“Sorry little love song, but you’re coming with us!”

“Zashi!”

“What? We might as well tell them.”

… What? Panic settles in rapidly. Shouta grabs my hand petting his head and nuzzles it.

“Fine. If that’s what we’re doing, I’ll also say that man is no more. I made the trap set off on his neck.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He didn’t deserve tha-

“Before you think he didn’t deserve death, did you know he left poison out for your cat? Did you wonder where it was for the past day?” Disbelief and sadness wash over me. Too many things spiraling in my mind at once. “We tried to bring them to the vet and tell you later we took them since they were outside, but it was too late. The poison got into their system,” He nuzzled my hand again. “We will be your pets, just like you’ll be our permanent guest.” My body was already too tired to struggle. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted them. Stupid me not listening to my instinct.

“It will be so fun when you wake up! You’ll be at our real home, and we can always be around each other!” He kisses my hand. “Doesn’t that sound great, our beloved guest?~

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Definitely not my proudest work. I’m tired of working on this for 4 weeks and it still doesn’t feel right.

#yandere erasermic #half animal erasermic #yandere present mic #yandere x reader #yandere mha x reader #yandere aizawa x reader #yandere yamada x reader #yandere shouta aizawa #yandere hizashi yamada

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 5 years ago

Text

HASO, “World War V.”

I realize the title would be a lot more clever if V wasn’t also the roman numeral for 5, but whatever.

I know this one is a bit over the top but in the immortal words of one of my favorite authors “err on the side of awesome.” and I will not apologize.

But I am interested, at the end, comment what two songs you would use in this scenario. I am intrigued. I will tell you the songs I imagined at the end of the story :)

“So, your plan is to…. Intentionally wake the dead?”

“Wake the, very long hibernated, and then blast them with hard rock music while we mow them down with machine guns? And…. remind me YOU are the GA armada Admiral? And this is your tactical genius.”

Admiral Adam Vir adjusted the chestplate of his space suit, “Well say anything in that sort of voice and it will sound stupid, but hear me out. It is much easier to take something out all at once than it is to go hunting them down one by one and having to worry about missing something. We bring in the helicopters, and the vibration of the rotors will disturb the ground causing the infected vrul to rise. Now knowing the Vrul, and knowing that complicated beats affect their ability to navigate, move and completely wipe out their fine motor control. Furthermore, they seem attracted to vibrations in the air and through the ground which means we will be able to confuse them even more and keep them away from the city. Barring that, the Vrul have their force fields up, which are more than a match for light machine gun fire and will even keep out the strange pollen.. There is no better time to deal with this.”

He tucked his helmet under one arm, “I trust that makes sense to everyone?’ he turned around to the docking bay where over fifty men and women stood in neat rows of polished flight suits, helmets tucked under their arms. As he spoke, their heels snapped together with a loud crackle, and their hands rose into a salute.

Behind them double the amount of marines raised their hands into the air and chanted with loud voices that rose into the air with a roar.

Admiral Vir turned to the commander of the 113th graduating class of Earth’s UNSC Airborne Helicopter division, which he had brought in on special loan. These men and women were yet to fly any real tactical missions though they had all logged thousands of hours of flight already in their careers. Many of them had never left earth until this moment, and their first mission was going to be on the face on an alien planet.

He smiled, “if you knew as much as I did about aliens, Major, you might understand why we are doing something that seems so ludicrous, but sometimes when dealing with extraterrestrials, this is what we have to do.”

He turned to where a line of fifty pod shaped objects were being loaded one by one onto a rolling rail leading towards the airlock. Beside it half a dozen small fluffy shapes were busy overseeing the attachment of fifty identical Sonic cannons to the front bottom of each. There was a break in their work as one of the small creatures came waddling across the deck.

Admiral Vir Knelt down setting his hand on the floor and allowing Lord Avex to step onto his hand and then onto his shoulder as he stood back up.

The rest of the crowd watched in wide eyed awe, though they were, luckily, well trained enough not to do or say anything stupid despite their large eyes and quivering lips, which suggested they wanted nothing better than to cuddle the stuffed-animal esque alien that rested on his shoulder, “The cannons are in place, Admiral, and I have examined each of the pods, and the yare ready to be deployed.”

“Thank you Lord Avex, your work is much appreciated.”

It was just then that Sunny walked across the deck to join them. She was wearing her space suit as well and carried her helmet under one arm. The new recruits staired on in shock as she walked over to stand next to him, “The machine guns have been mounted and are ready to go Admiral, A few of our number have volunteered to go with the marines as extra support. Behind her at least a dozen other Drev raised their fists into the air and chanted their excitement not all that different from the line of marines on the far end of the hanger.

Admiral Vir nodded turning back towards the group of young pilots, not much younger than himself, and stepped up onto the nearest crate.

“On behave of the Galactic Assembly and the Vrul council, I thank all the men and women here for agreeing to accompany us on this mission today. You will be the first airborne unit in history to participate in an operation off Earth as their first assignment. You are thousands of lightyears away from home, orbiting an alien planet thousands of years older than our own, and today your mission is not one of destruction, but of liberation. For thousands of years the Vrul have been trapped inside their walls, until time and tradition made them forget about the dangers lurking outside.” he turned his eyes to look over every last man and women that stood before him, “What we are about to face is like nothing humanity has ever faced before, below the soil of this planet lies a plague dormant for thousands of years, a horde like locusts ready to rise up and infect the city. Now we have our protections, we have our suits, and the Vrul have their shielded city, but it is our job to start riding the planet of it’s plague.” He smiled, “Plus it always helps to have door mounted machine guns and a little rock ‘n roll.”

There was a sharp cheer from the men and women before him who raised their fists into the air. Behind them the marines joined in, and so did the Drev, who, he was pleased to say, had taken to rock like they had guitar solos for breakfast.

Still grinning, he reached up, pulled on his helmet, “Right, let’s get this done.”

He pointed to Sunny, Ramirez, Maverick and a few others, “With me in the elad chopper. The rest of you split off and gear up.”

His words were obeyed almost immediately as he stepped over to what had once looked like a pod, but was now clearly a very specialized sort of chopper.

As he slid into the pilot’s seat, and the others strapped in behind, he heard, “I thought you were a fighter pilot, not a helicopter pilot.” They pulled on their helmets.

Adam adjusted his harnesses, “I can fly anything from space ships to paper plans, you can bet your ass if it leaves the ground, I know how to fly it.”

Maverick buckled herself into the door gunner position, “Yeah, but if it has wheels, you better bet he’s probably gonna back it over your mailbox.”

“Put a sock in it Maverick, that is hardly my fault. I never really got the opportunity to practice.”

The door at the back shut and locked tight.

All around them other doors were being locked into place, and once all of the pilots had indicated they were ready to go, Admiral Vir gave the signal, and he felt the ship change course. He adjusted his comms set and called up to the bridge where Simon would be piloting them into position.

“How are we looking, Somon.”

“Almost in position Admiral.”

“Now remember to pull back into low orbit once you let us drop, or else the gravity well is going to pull you in, and it is going to be a bitch to get her back out.” “Yes sir, I know sir.”

“Good.”

He turned his eyes forward as a red light burst into life above their heads. Everyone evacuated the airlock as the fifty pods were brought by rail towards the doors. Behind him he could hear the others chanting something, though his heart was hammering so hard he could hardly hear what they were saying.

Funny thing is he bet he felt like every one of those new pilots getting ready for their first mission. He didn’t know if it was just him, but it felt like this every single time, and he wouldn’t trade it for the world. He ignored the tingling sensation in his bladder as the light blinked green before the airlock door, and the ramp slid open.

All went silent, and below him he watched as the light of the vrul homeworld washed over the deck before him pouring like golden honey.

The sight was breathtaking, steeling the air from his lungs as he looked down.

“Damn.”

It would just never get old.would it.

“Prepare for drop, in three, two, one, drop.”

The latch on the back of the rail released, and suddenly they were falling away from the ship. Adam was pressed back in his seat as they accelerated downwards towards the open atmosphere.

Lights blinked on the console ahead of him and the tracking screen picked up his target.

They were approaching, and they were approaching fast.

They were entering the atmosphere now, and he felt it as their pod began to rock and rattled around him and fire began to lick up on the southside of his pod. It was almost deafening as they roared into the atmosphere. He turned on his comms watching as other pods roared into the atmosphere back and behind him. He could see them on his radar as they roared downward.

He had to wonder what it must be like for them.

Their first mission, and they were doing a high altitude drop onto an alien planet.

He almost envied them their excitement. Because he had done stuff like this before, and he was still grinning like an idiot.

Light rose up around them as the sky behind them turned blue. Clouds passed below them in great swaths, and he reached down to the controls ready to deploy.

He set of a general count for the rest of the pilots.

Three

Two

One.

He pulled the release, and the engine roared to life. There was a sudden firing as the engine spurted downward, lifting them airborne for a second and slowing their descent. His innards dropped as G force allowed his stomach to crawl into his feet. Then the rotors deployed like a fan. There was a sharp chunk and then a whirr as they began to fall again, and then the rotors caught, and began to spin. The rear rotor did the same sliding into position. Both caught with a roar, and he whooped with adrenaline.

He toggled his radio.

“Alright, ready the door gun.”

Behind him the doors were slid open, causing a rush of air to blast into the open carriage as Maverick rolled the gun into position and locked it at the door with a loud snap. On the other side Maverick was doing the same. Beside him. Sunny took control of the extra rear mounted guns set in place especially for this mission.

Adam had the guns already built into the chopper, as well as missiles if he felt like it.

Beside him and below him, he watched as the fifty other choppers deployed like his. Some of them were a bit wobbly, but everything he saw seemed to go well.

“Alright everyone take it in low, and on my mark deploy the cannons.”

He angled them lower roaring towards his target.

Below them, the Vrul city was a glassy blue purple bubble against the orange, brown landscape.

He took point, and the other choppers fell into flight beside him, clustered in ten open groups of five helicopters each, and together they rolled in low over the landscape, not twenty feet above the ground in some cases, though those were only the pilots who were comfortable getting that close. From here he could see the thudding of their rotors causing the dirt to shake and the strange trees to quiver.

The wildlife began to roll out in different directions, racing across the ground and away from the roaring choppers as if they knew what was coming, He scanned the ground, with Maverick and Ramriez leaning on the machine guns behind him.

“See anything yet?”

“Not yet.”

He opened his comms to everyone else, “Alright everyone, deploy sonic cannons in three, two, one go.”

The first line of lyrics, and the first drumline rolled from the directional cannons, blasting the ground with a focused beam of sound like a laser for noise.

He whooped bobbing his head to the music, the sound so powerful he was able to hear it over the roaring of the rotors.

He sure hoped the Vrul had taken his advise and hidden in inside bunkers for this.

They roared over the landscape turning in a huge clockwise circle over the landscape.

“Report if you see anything.” he ordered.

At first, it didn’t seem like anything was going to happen, and he worried that his idea, which had seemed so cool and tactical to begin with , was nothing but a waste of resources. How embarrassing was that going to be to explain to the UNSC.

Yes, I borrowed the entire 113th graduating class to go on a joyride around the Vrul capital city, yes here is my rank and gun, I will now go live on the moon in exile never to show my face again.

“Sir! I have something.”

“Go.”

“Just south of the city, sir. I have movement coming from the trees in thermal.”

“Same here sir.”

He was at the point of the circle, so he wasn’t likely to see it, made sense.

“Alright , let’s give it a pass. I want as many of those bugs out of the ground before we start shooting.”

They roared over the ground with the sound of the base rattling the stone below them. As he watched, one of the strange animals he had seen running, tipped over as the cannon passed over it and fell to the ground twitching. Apparently pattern tolerance was not something that many things on this planet had.

“Sorry guy, but things are going to be better when we are done.”

Rocks jumped and rattled as they took a wide turn around the city.

He could see the shield pulsing against the sonic waves that were bouncing off the ground and back into the air.

The blades of the helicopters cut through the air so fast it was like a light grey translucent wall against the sky.

They had almost made a full rotation.

“Holy shit.” for a second he wondered who had spoken until he realised that it was himself.

They were everywhere, swarming like ants over the landscape, turning the ground black in some places as they crawled over each other in confused circles. As the music got closer, their purposeful movement turned into awkward confusion.

“Stagger!.”

The formations staggered, falling behind each other so that everyone was always covering one segment.

“Ready to deploy the sonic attack on my mark, in three, two, one, mark.”

It was a guitar solo this time, one that he had listened to thousands of times, and one that he couldn't have resisted using to kill zombie Vrul.

Th drumline cut in as the third obvious pattern in the song, and as it roared over the wave of Zombified Vrul, there was an immediate reaction as they all began staggering and falling to the ground, behind him he felt as the guns opened fire on either side with a sharp burrrr as the rotating barrels started spitting hot lead at 1,000 rounds per minute.

He laughed with something like maniacal glee as the powerful rounds poured into the infected creatures ripping them apart sometimes four at a time sending a wave of yellow pollen up into the air, to be kicked up by helicopter blades as they passed over. His circle kept him closest to the wall, so he was able to catch the majority of them before they could even attempt to make it to the city.

He toggled his own guns, and stitched a line of bullets over a completely black mass, which erupted into a burst of yellow. His circle took him around to where the Vrul had managed to make it to the wall of the city, and had begun climbing each other like they planned to create a ladder using bodies to the top of the wall. He gunned them down with great prejudice. As they moved along the wall, more and more of the creatures had piled themselves higher and higher, but that is not a trend that they allowed to last long. One of the piles managed to make itself three quarters of the way up the wall before their sonic attack hit them, causing the tower to collapse as both glorious drum lines and bullets roared into them.

He carved a circle through the sky coming over their first line of attack, where dark bodies were doing the best to crawl over their fallen brethren and pools of yellowed pollen having fallen to the ground. Ahead of him he could see a cloud of yellow where the following helicopter was stitching tis way over the landscape with great prejudice.

Behind him, he thought he heard Maverick cackle like a swamp witch as she loaded another belt of ammunition.

Yeah sure people back home were cool, but they would never be this cool, flying over an alien landscape, killing alien zombies while listening to a little ACDC, They could dream but nothing would ever be more awesome.

He couldn’t wait to tell his siblings.

His sister would be so jealous.

She had always been a fan of the zombie genre.

“Admiral, Admiral I think some of them are starting to fly.” Came the nervous comment over the com.

“Alright, remember the drill, just keep calm, and go higher if you can, then when you have enough clustered below you, drop one of the canisters.”

There was an acknowledgement over the comms.

With that announcement still running through his head, he got ready to drop one of his own canisters.

He was in view of the last helicopter as it rose into the air pursued by hundreds of little black dots that would erupt into yellow spores as they were hit by machine gun fire, and then something dropped from the bottom of the chopper, and then exploded just above the rising infected.

Thousands of tiny organic needles rained down on the vrul, cutting straight through their helium sacks, and sending them crashing downwards, into their companions, and finally to the ground where they erupted on impact, killing even more of their companions.

Up ahead, a wall of black rose before him, but he was faster.

They rose into the air and he roared over the wall, dropping one two and then three canisters in quick succession causing a wave of them to drop to the ground. The following helicopters followed his lead. He was having to rise higher and higher into the air, but still he was managing to keep ahead of them, they were slow and he was fast, but that didn’t stop a few of them from getting in front of him.

There was a jolt as his rotors hit one of them, and he gritted his teeth, it was fine, one or two was fine as long as he didn’t allow them to gum it up.

He pulled back and up and continued to drop more and more of the caisters.

One or two of them floated high enough to make it close to his sonic cannon, but they were blown back and the pressure caused their helium sacks to rupture.

***

The Vrul council stood on the wall overlooking the outside of the city as a wall of the Vrul infected rose into the sky obscuring everything in a wave of dark bodies. Human helicopters roared in a wide circle around the city, and everywhere they went yellow spores erupted into the air. All of them wore safety masks as a precaution, but that didn’t stop the fear that rose up in them as they stepped back arms held out in shock. Dr. Krill stared on in fascination and awe. He wasn’t wearing hearing protection like the others, he could handle human music to a certain degree, and it was pretty muffled through the shielding.

He watched in shock and awe as one of the helicopters cut too low, and rolled right into a dense thicket of the floating bodies. There was a horrific eruption of yellow as the rotors caught hundreds of the creatures, and then the helicopter itself began to spin out of control crashing and rupturing Vrul as it roared towards the ground.

The emergency systems deployed firing one last time to slow the chopper’s crash. The sudden burst of flame ruptured a line of the Vrul infected before it finally plowed into the ground sending up a wave of yellow spores.

“Sweet Nebulon.” one of the council muttered.

Two more helicopters went down, and it looked as if there weren't going to be enough bullets.

What had they done!”

***

“Everyone, On me, increase sonic cannons! Now!” he had seen the three choppers go down, and he had seen all three of their safety measures deploy, but he couldn’t be sure if any of them had survived. “Avoid the crash sites. Everyone on me!”

The entire fleet of remaining choppers clustered together turning up the volume on their sonic cannons, and the combined force was so powerful that some of the bodies began to rupture even without gunfire though it still tore downwards.

They took two more passes before he saw his ammunition running low. That was fine. The Vrul bodies were no longer coming in waves and it would be harder to hit them from above, now that they weren’t just coming in a wave.

He aimed for one of the crash sites.

“I want a group of us to set down. Only choppers with Drev on them!”

There was agreement as ten choppers split off to the three crash sites.

Adam roared down from the sky, and set down on a smoking heap of yellow coated bodies.

He cut the engine , and reach back to pull his spear from where it was attached to the floor of the chopper. It wasn’t a Drev spear and it wasn’t a human spear but something in between, with the reverse spike on the end like they had done with the NeoSpartans.

He turned in his seat just in time to see the two marines push their machine guns out of position and one of the infected Vrul to come charing at Ramirez.

A spear appeared in his hand in that moment, and he ran it through the face.

Sunny was behind him a second later, and together they were out the door, three of them armed with spears, maverick armed with her assault rifle, and together they made their way towards the downed chopper.

Making it there just in time to see as a pile of clustered Vrul was ruptured from within, and a very angry Drev came roaring out.

He recognized from the height who it was.

“Kanan!” he heard Sunny yell.

They ran over to help, sweeping through the cluster of Vrul zombies before they began fanning out across the open plane.

He turned up the speakers on the outside of his suit and allowed it to blare music as he raced towards anything that still looked to be moving. A few of them were still floating into the sky, but the remaining helicopters were taking care of those, and Maverick from the ground on occasion.

He ran one through the face, turned and clubbed the other in the head like he was swinging for a home run.

His blad sliced straight through the neck of one as he staggered over the uneven ground.

To the side of him, sunny was cutting through them with impunity like a god of war, touching them though they never touched her, the yellowed gore spattering her suit.

As more and more of the Vrul were cut out of the sky, more and more choppers landed, and men and women filed out, running in open lines, using whatever the could to dispatch the remaining bodies.

He saw one of the new pilots grab a Vrul by the neck, and twist it like he was breaking the neck of a chicken, surprised when the entire head came off. He kind of hoped the Vrul council did not see that.

By the end of the battle. Four of their choppers had been downed. Two humans were dead, both of them in the crashes, and at least four more critically injured.

He felt bad about it.

But he couldn’t have predicted that.

At least none of the pilots had died.

Two of his marines had though, tossed from the choppers as they were falling from the sky. It made him sick to think about their families, the ones that he would have to send letters to, but he tried not to think about that for now.

Thousand upon thousands of the vrul zombies were dead, and even as he thought this dozens more were being dispatched by hand by humans who were no more than walking radios at this point, having chosen their own theme songs to fight zombies.

Some of thor picks were quite surprising, though he couldn’t blame them for their humor or their irony.

They still had a long way to go, but at least he knew how it could be done.

Vrul past, hopefully, would never come back to haunt them.

The two songs I imagine Adam picked for this was

First: Raise Hell - Dorothy

Second: Thunderstruck - ACDC

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animeyanderelover · 4 years ago

Note

Hi could I request a prompt with Gon aged up of course with a relentless violent s/o who sometimes gives him a run for his money literally ! I think it be paired best with this yandere prompt 9 “Do you want me to break your legs or lock you in a cage to prevent you from running away?”

That’s a rather dark prompt which doesn’t seem to fit a sunshine like him. But on the other hand every Yandere has a dark side. Gon is aged up in here.

Warnings: Yandere themes, unhealthy mindset, unhealthy relationship, delusions, mentioning of violence, mentioning of abuse, violence, biting, scratching, aggressive behavior, threatening

Prompt 9: “Do you want me to break your legs or lock you in a cage to prevent you from running away?”

There were two kind of people in this world. The ones that were able to get everything that they wanted to and the ones that had to fight to survive. You were the latter, born in a poor family who had barely enough money to take care of the minimum of everything. You had been taught that if you wanted to reach something in this world, you needed to fight. Fight for food, for money, for your life. That was what your parents had taught you from a very young age on. They had hit and kicked it into you, wanting you to be able to stand strong against whatever the future would hold against you. And so you had grown with a somewhat distorted view on this world. You believed solely that only the strong ones would survive and the ones at the bottom had to scratch and claw and bite their way through this life to survive. But what happens if someone from the top of the food chain starts chasing you down? What tells the law of the weaker you in this case? It’s either giving up and letting yourself get stripped from your freedom or it’s to keep fighting. And you had been born as a fighter, you had always been one, were one and would always be one. No matter how much you had to struggle. You would survive. You would take your freedom back.

You remembered that someone had called you once after you had beaten the living shit out of them that you were some sort of savage animal. Many would have taken that as an insult. But not you. Because he was right in some way. There were similarities between you and a savage animal. You both fought to survive, you both were loners and you both were hard to tame. And if someone would try to take you and lock you away you would fight back, you would hiss and bite and scratch and whatever was necessary to save your life. But there were certain situations where this wasn’t enough. Not when you were the prey and he was the predator. You couldn’t escape him, no matter how much and how hard you tried. He always found you in the matter of only a few weeks, no matter how careful you were. You were talking about someone who was on the top of the food chain, the strongest of the strongest. Gon, your so called “lover”. Never in your life you had met someone like him. You had often been faced with people who were stronger than you, resulting in you running away and getting really aggressive if you were cornered. Like an animal. But you had never seen someone like him. Never had you witnessed such brute strength, never had you seen such a dark look in so bright eyes. Never had you ever felt so much fear in your life. And the more you feared, the more violent you got. You were scared, scared of this devil in disguise.

“You’ve gotten better since the last time. Killua and me had a much more harder time to track you down than the last time. We needed to spent a lot more money as well. I’m always impressed by how fast of a learner you are. You’re adapting always so fast in new situations which is why I don’t quite understand why you won’t adapt to this one.” He sounded as cheerful as ever, completely ignoring that you were hanging all tied up over his shoulder, swinging with every step he took lightly back and forth. You felt beyond enraged, being taken from your ability to move even the slightest bit. The ropes were tight and you felt like your blood circulation would be caught off if this would continue. This didn’t mean that you didn’t try, trying to get violently out of his grip which seemed quite impossible given how incredibly tight his grip was, only getting stronger and stronger the more you moved that at one point you were sure it would leave a bruise. You angrily screamed, being muffled by the gag, staring with a glare filled with hatred at him. “Wow! Easy there (y/n). If you continue to behave like this I might hurt you on accident.” When saying this his grip tightened so incredibly that you needed to whine a bit, a painful throbbing signaling that your hip couldn’t take much more.

“Don’t worry though. We’re almost home again! Then I can free you from these ropes and the gag. I’m sure they must be very tight. Sorry for that, but Killua and me just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t try anything stupid during the flight back here.” That was right. You were trapped like a caterpillar in a cocoon for nearly twelve hours now, being all tied up the moment Gon had found and catched you again. The only times you had been freed a bit was when Gon had tried to feed you and give you something to drink. The bite mark was still visible on his arm, dried blood sticking around it. That wasn’t the only one though. If someone looked closely they would be able to see much more than just this on his arms. His whole biceps was littered with bite and scratch marks, permanent scars and reminders of how vicious you really were. You had escaped quite often before, always finding ways to sneak out and follow the call of freedom. But Gon and that damn snow-haired friend of his always found you, but, to your huge satisfaction, they always needed with each new attempt of yours longer to find you. You slowly started to outsmart them, a good thing. But this time something was different, you could sense it very well around him.

It was the air around him. It felt much more heavier, sending warning chills up your spin and making all the alarms in your body ring. Gon also acted differently, it was subtle, but you were a natural sharp observer. His normally sweet tone seemed more strained than usual and his eyes somewhat looking clouded with a dark emotion. And you were smart. You had to be in order to always find a way out of dangerous situations. Had you perhaps finally crossed his limits? You would have lied if you would have said that you hadn’t had a much more easier time to escape due to his purehearted behavior. But you knew that everyone had a snapping point, even the calmest of persons would eventually snap. And the sweetest and calmest ones had most of the times the scariest reaction when finally losing it. And the whole atmosphere around Gon screamed dangerous, making you struggle frantically in order to crawl away from him. You had the feeling that you couldn’t breathe when near him. You needed to get away from him! But there was no way to do so unless you broke your hip which wasn’t an option for you. You would be an even easier prey so vulnerable like this.

But sadly it was already too late. You realized that the moment the house he had kept you those past few months came into your view again. You hated it, being locked up against your free will there just so Gon could prove his love to you. Ridiculous! Pathetic! What was he even hoping for?! You were someone who had learned that being alone was the best option. You could only fight for yourself when you hadn’t been born with anything else. That was the harsh reality from this world, but this guy had never seen how hard childhood could be. How it was to be a burden for your own parents and being kicked out of the house every day and being told to only come back if you had either money or food. But this guy was caught up in his own stupid delusions, believing he could help you with your life. But your life had been just fine before he had entered it! You felt dread and frustration swirling up in your stomach when you heard him unlocking the door and stepping in. In the place you despised more than anything else. Because it was the place that always stood for that he would never let you escape him. The place was almost mocking for you, reminding you always that he was stronger than you. But you were catching up. Hopefully.

“Here we are! Safe and soundly home again!” You hissed angrily through the gag at him, wanting to just claw at his face to wipe that stupid grin out of his face. It annoyed you, but it also looked very scary when put together with the look in his eyes. You were carried upstairs, Gon placing you carefully down the bed before locking the door to the floor up before opening one of the drawers and pulling something out. Handcuffs. You growled warningly. “I apologize for this, but I want to make sure that you don’t attack me as soon as I free you again.” He glanced shortly at all the scars and the bite mark on his arms. You hated it that you weren’t able to defend yourself right now, your ankle being cuffed to the bed before Gon carefully began untying you, ripping away the ropes and finally the gag. The moment he had done that he quickly grabbed both of your arms, slamming them against the headboard of the bed with ease and cuffing them to the bed as well. “Bastard!! Free me from those things so I can take your goddamn eyes out!!” You angrily pulled at all the handcuffs, shaking and hissing angrily to be free again. That was until you felt it. The extreme intensity of the air suddenly lifting itself, giving you the feeling that you could be crushed at any moment. For a short moment you stopped moving, instead staring with a terrified look at Gon who was standing right next to you and was staring at you.

“You know (y/n)”, he started and bent down to be closer to you,”I really try to be patient with you and to help you. But I feel like you just don’t want to accept my help.” You felt terrified, looking directly into his eyes that showed you something that could only be described as darkness. The fact that he was still keeping his smile was even more terrifying. “You always run away from me and use me for my kindness. And that hurt me. I tried to give you a new chance whenever I catched you and brought you back. But you never seemed to learn anything. You’re just too stuck in your own rules and past to let me help you. That’s why I came to the conclusion that I should probably be a bit more strict on you in order for you to learn. But I’ll still take good care of you, don’t worry. One day you have to start loving me as well.” By now you pulled so tightly against the handcuffs that you had the feeling that you could cut your limbs in half if you just added enough pressure on it. YOU HAD TO GET OUT OF HERE!! “I really didn’t want to have to do this.”, you heard him mumbling before moving his face closer and closer to you until his nose touched yours and you stared into his orbs. You remembered that there had always been light in them, but now they seemed empty. “Do you want me to break your legs or lock you in a cage to prevent you from running again?”

And all of a sudden you stopped struggling, instead staring with big and horrified eyes at him. What...What was he exactly?! You felt the sweat trickling down your forehead. Did he expect you to answer this? “If you can’t choose I’ll choose one of you.” So that was how it felt like. That’s how a small and weak animal felt moments before they were being eaten by it’s predator. “It seems like you aren’t able to make a decision now. Then I’ll choose for you. I go with...”

#yandere hunter x hunter #yandere hxh #yandere gon #yandere gon freecss

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beerecordings · 4 years ago

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The whole question of how sadism relates to intelligence is interesting because it's not unheard of for animals to behave in a way we might view as sadist, like when cats toy with their prey before finishing the kill or killing prey and leaving it uneaten. But it's sort of like, does the cat know that it's causing pain to another being? After all, cats play with their toys the same way, and they probably know their toys aren't alive. Does it like doing that stuff because it's fun to catch things/mess with them or it it getting enjoyment from suffering? Obviously a cat is less intelligent than a siren and is less able to communicate abstract ideas like that, though, so I guess the question would be how Chase could definitively prove or know for sure that Anti's behavior is rooted in an impulse to cause pain for fun and not some other impulse. Really interesting to think about!

totallyyyy totally totally and I think that would be Chase's exact question because he is clever n contemplative like u. he doesn't get to observe a ton of Anti's behavior directly because usually if he finds that Anti has something trapped he tries to help, like when Anti got his hands on Henrik (Chase's favorite because he's the cleverest and has cute babies shhh don't tell the others) and Chase lead Jackie to find and help him. and Henrik had definitely been tortured. Anti had him blocked in somewhere and was barely letting him surface for air, like he was testing how long Henrik could hold his breath for. he had bit and scratched at Henrik and left a lot of scars on him, avoiding his neck where a siren usually goes in for a kill. Anti was laughing and purring, but was that real enjoyment or just mimicry? did he really enjoy having Henrik trapped and in pain or was he just interested in the colors and movement of prey caught in his claws? cats toy with things because that's how they practice and learn to kill, but Anti never play-bit at Henrik's neck or tried to hypnotize him after he had caught him. he just watched him struggle. it creeps Chase out. he loves JJ like one of his merrow but he definitely understands why sirens get a bad rap. it's not just that they used to eat humans, they can be really creepy, talking like they understand what they're telling you and looking so beautiful or sweet it's a little unnerving. Anti is way too pretty for his own good and was definitely a very dangerous little siren even before he became addicted to the gasoline, but back then that was how he ate, and when he was full he did not play games like this and would never have harmed another siren like JJ.

in the end Chase just feels bad for him. it's not Anti's fault he was exposed to the oil. he needs to be cleaned up and to be kept away from the oil for long enough to let him recover. sometimes, when Anti is feeling really unwell and he comes back to himself a little, he goes looking for other sirens and singing a call for help, crying for JJ and the rest of his old clan. but everyone can smell the oil stink on him and most animals run away. sometimes Chase goes to watch him, just to see if he can help at all, and Anti just lies on the ocean floor, panting and mimicking things at Chase. Chase should be really angry at Anti, but he's just scared that the creature will have to die alone like this one day. sirens are supposed to have friends around them when they're hurt. so Chase always comes when Anti is crying, just so he at least won't be alone.

#merrow au

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acti-veg · 5 years ago

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Animals as Entertainment

Food and clothing are perhaps the most obvious ways in which we exploit animals, but they are certainly not the only instances. Vegans oppose not only eating animals or wearing their skin, but any exploitation of animals for human gain, including occasions where we use animals as entertainment.

Perhaps the widest known and generally opposed animal entertainment industry is circuses. Animals used in circuses range from common birds, bears, foxes and snakes, to more exotic animals like lions, tigers and elephants. Most of these are sourced from private breeders, though some are purchased from zoos as ‘surplus animals.’ During performances, animals are often required to perform dangerous stunts, such as elephants balancing on balls, tigers jumping through fire, bears riding bicycles and large cats being ridden by handlers. These unnatural behaviours require intensive training, often involving the use of cruel practices such as whipping, hooks, electrocution and food deprivation.

Even when not performing, studies demonstrate that circus life causes significant harm to animals. The head researcher of one study noted:

“It’s no one single factor, whether it’s lack of space and exercise, or lack of social contact, all factors combined show it’s a poor quality of life compared with the wild.” This study suggested that on average, animals spend 1-9% of their time training, and the rest of the time they are confined to cages, wagons or small enclosures. Many circus animals display repetitive stress behaviours due to confinement and boredom.

Several undercover investigations have revealed that abuse is widespread among handlers, one Asian elephant was filmed being struck with a metal pitchfork and kicked in the face, while held down by heavy metal chains. Animals who are too old or disobedient to be useful to circuses are sometimes properly retired, but they are often sold to zoos, roadside attractions, game farms, research laboratories or to private buyers. Many meet uncertain fates, disappearing from records and public consciousness completely.

While the public is turning away from events like circuses, there are other industries in which a great deal more work must be done, one of these being in aquariums and marine parks, with larger organisations like SeaWorld still attracting over 22,000 visitors per year. Marine parks remain the most divisive of the aquatic industries, and with documentaries like Blackfish (2013) the public are becoming increasingly aware of the poor treatment, diet, enclosures and the stress endured by large marine animals, especially orcas. Boredom and depression are often the result of the tiny, artificial enclosures, with many dolphins and whales exhibiting repetitive stress behaviours such as swaying, chewing walls, pacing and head bobbing. These behaviours clearly convey that animals are not happy in marine parks, and poor life expectancy reveals that even their physical needs are not being adequately met in captivity. John Hargrove, formerly the most senior trainer at SeaWorld, said:

“I saw the psychological and physical trauma that results from captivity. A massive corporate entity is exploiting the hell out of the whales and the trainers.”

Even when marine animals are not performing tricks for the public, as is usually the case in public aquariums, the situation for animals is far from ideal. Due to the lack of success of aquarium breeding programs and poor life expectancy of captive species, many aquariums rely on wild caught animals. Many popular species, such as royal or regal blue tang, have been over-collected and are endangered in the wild. Some fish in the wild would range hundreds of miles and aquariums, regardless of how large they are, are ill-equipped to provide appropriate environments for captive fish who require so much space and stimulation. Though there is a serious lack of research in this area, it is hard to imagine that fish remain content and stimulated in such confined, artificial environments, exposed to electric lights and the noise of an almost constant stream of visitors.

Similar to aquariums, zoos have also spent the past few decades trying to distance themselves from the animal entertainment image of the past, and rebrand as conservation and education organisations. While conditions for animals have certainly improved, zoos are unable to provide anything even resembling an animal’s natural environment. While many zoos do contribute towards conservation efforts with their captive breeding programmes, the issue is that these programmes usually only conserve species for display in zoos, since most animals will never be reintroduced to the wild. Studies have also challenged the efficacy of captive breeding programmes, concluding that unless animals are protected in the wild, captive breeding will not make enough of a difference.

While zoos are keen to tout their conservation credentials, critics point out that relatively little of their efforts go towards that aim. David Hancocks, a former zoo director with 30 years of experience, estimates that less than 3% of the budgets of the 212 accredited zoos of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association goes towards conservation efforts. Similarly, Benjamin Beck, former associate of biological programmes at the National Zoo in Washington D.C, found that in the last century, only 16 out of 145 reintroduction programmes ever actually restored any animal populations to the wild.

At their hearts, most zoos remain animal entertainment industries. While they claim to educate the public on animal behaviour, captive animals demonstrate such vastly different behaviours than their wild counterparts that this seems ultimately fruitless. Like large marine animals in aquariums, many zoo animals exhibit repetitive stress behaviours and depression. This being the case, what can we possibly learn about wild animals by observing the behaviour of their unhappy, stressed and atypically behaved captive counterparts?

Animal entertainment industries capitalise on our deepest need to feel connected to animals and nature, but this comes at a great cost to the animals themselves. To view an animal in a zoo is to look at them on your terms entirely, in an artificial environment that will never adequately imitate their homes. They are trapped, helpless and unable to escape our glare. Authentic experiences come from animals who interact with us because they want to, because they have chosen to appear before us, not because we have paid for it. These animals do not exist for our consumption, they are not commodities and they are not amusements. We do not have the right to place these animals in cages for our own benefit.

-An extract from my free eBook: The Green Road - A Practical Guide to Veganism

#vegan #zoos #aquariums #animals as entertainment #circuses #original

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hornsandthings · 5 years ago

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headcanons: jasper with a newly-turned s/o

you had never asked for this. perhaps you’d thought about it – fleeting fantasies about being forever young and matching jasper’s sharp, fanged grin – but you’d never really considered it. although he was so obviously otherworldly, so clearly something more than a mere man, jasper sometimes made it so easy to forget that; forget that he was a blood-drinker, a night-feeder, a dead man walking. so you’d seldom ever thought about those things, about the whole reality of it. now, however, having been divorced from humanity yourself, you too were a creature – a vampire – who had to learn how to live this life of thirst.

jasper thought he would be ready for everything a newborn could bring: the aggression, the power, the hunger. and at first, you behaved quite predictably, governed by nothing more than the urge to drink. you did it almost incoherently, downing every bag of blood jasper brought to you. as he watched your mindless consumption, he was relieved by your growing strength; the memory of your fading pulse was still too fresh for him. once, you had been characterised by fragility, but now you were damn near invulnerable. in fact, jasper was looking forward to be able to tighten his grip, to hold you without handling you like glass.

he quickly realised, however, that you were turning out to be different than most newborns, and troublingly so. perhaps it was because of how quick your transformation had been, or maybe it was the nature of it – an effort to save your life, born from love – but your humanity resurfaced, clinging to you with incredible determination.

the most obvious example was the first time warm blood had wetted your lips. it was fresh, and thin, and hot – the blood of a squirrel, its neck savagely cracked just like how jasper showed you. he had taken you out hunting after the heavy rains passed, showing you how to scent, how to track. at first, you had been thirsty for it, eager, but as soon as you heard the sudden silence after that grotesque snap, all the lust leeched out of you. jasper had caught the way you winced after draining that animal, turning away from him when you wiped your mouth. you stood hunched, hand clasped around your neck, and jasper went rigid as he felt your emotions roil and then you were coughing up red, coughing up the blood, disgusted and sick and revolted.

jasper, in all his years, had neverseen something like that. when you looked at him, so small and scared despite the incredible newborn ferocity lurking beneath your skin, he was compelledto close the distance, to hold your dirty, bloody hands despite your protestations, to wipe away the remnants of the feed from your chin as your tears rolled down your face. “shhh, darlin’,” he had cooed, cupping your face, “it’s alright. it’s alright. i’ll hunt for you, sweetheart. i’m so sorry.” such sweet nothings continued to be whispered into your ear, his thumbs gently stroking your cheeks. he remembered pressing a kiss to your temple, trying to calm his rising anxiety lest it start to affect you, but he was worried, and truth be told, rather scared too. maybe you survived the transformation, willed by nature itself, but would you allow yourself to make it past your newborn year? he clutched you tighter at that thought, clenching his jaw. he didn’t want to lose you, not again.

this strange morality also showed in the confused, insecure way you started to handle yourself. after days of what had been essentially binge-drinking, your head had cleared and you were finally able to see things as they were. looking in the mirror, you knew there was an ugly truth hiding behind that veneer of smooth skin and maroon eyes. the reflection was unfamiliar; this body was unfamiliar. it was aware of so many things. when an insect flapped its tiny wings, you felt it; when a new flower bloomed, you could pinpoint its odour amongst a handful of others; when a storm was on the horizon, you tasted it. and now, when jasper shuffled into the room behind you, you heard it.

“darlin’,” he murmured. his voice had always been soft and low, almost a susurration. but now it was so with purpose, because he was not blind to how you would flinch at loud noises, recoil from every touch. everything was amplified for you. it hurts, you would sometimes say, echoing the final coherent words that fell from your lips in your past life, and jasper would be hit by such overwhelming guilt that he could barely swallow it.

he hated himself for a lot of things, but doing this to you – the clear revulsion at your new nature – it ate at him. you might have been bearing the brunt of the enhanced sensations, but jasper carried the weight of your projected emotions. the fear, the disgust, the thirst – he felt it all, and it was like hewas a newborn again, or perhaps even back in maria’s army, feral and immoral and surrounded by them. he felt all this, but also your enduring love, and sometimes this made it worse. he knew that the transformation locked whatever beliefs one held in place, and jasper couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d somehow tricked you into a trap. on that fateful night, he hadn’t meant to be selfish – he’d only wanted to save you. it would only be a long time afterwards that he’d confess this to you, all shame and regret. i would have loved you forever, anyway, you had said, wiping away his tears. i would’ve found a way back to you, even without the bite.

so he couldn’t quite tighten his grip yet, it seemed; jasper still had to be patient with you, lest he overwhelm you. back in that room, jasper hooked a finger through one of your belt loops, gently pulling you closer until you could hide away in him, head buried against his chest and hands clutching his back. with his strong arms around you, chin atop your head, it forced you to narrow your focus to jasper only: his weight (familiar), his touch (calloused fingers), his smell (blood and pine).

“i’m sorry,” you whimpered, ashamed and embarrassed and hungry. you hated what you’ve become, but it didn’t translate to jasper. you still loved him, oh so very much; he was incredibly patient with you, using his ability to calm you at nights so that you could pretend to sleep, doing the hunting for you, staying by your side despite that one time you almost broke his arm. but sometimes, this new life was too much, just too much. being awake all the time, feeling everything all the time, hearing every little thing – there was no break from it. there was this, but also the thirst – oh, the unspeakable thirst. your throat burned with it, making you feel like a vassal from hell itself.

“no, i’m sorry,” he said, running a hand through your hair. you couldn’t see it, but his brows furrowed as his face hardened. “i took so many choices away from you.”

you shook your head at his words, at his melancholy tone. you couldn’t quite remember what happened before you transformed, but what’s done is done. what mattered now – to you, at least – was that you find some normality again, and all of that lay with jasper. “i think i understand you a little bit better now,” you said, remembering the long, strange road that had led to your relationship. his winces when you neared, the tremble to his hand if you reached for it, the careful image of a vampire he crafted for you, never drinking blood in your presence. that eternal, preternatural sadness that sometimes haunted his golden eyes. you had sometimes thought him a little apathetic, but this was also a façade – you now knew that vampires felt everything, tenfold.

overstimulation continued to plague you, almost as damning as the thirst itself. but jasper was always there, willing to just lay with you, comfort you, hold you. eventually, he started to take you to a big lake when everything was just too overwhelming, where you could bask underwater without having to be assaulted by every sensation in some kind of cacophony.

one day, you were laying on the shore, water lapping around you. it was a dim, cloudy day, casting everything in cool, muted tones. while you were slowly coming to terms with this new, strange life of yours, you still needed a break from it – and it was in this, perhaps, that you could realise why jasper had decided to date you when you were still human. right now, he lifted himself up to his elbow beside you, his gaze bright and observant. a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.

you couldn’t help it – you started to grin yourself. “what?” you asked, but jasper didn’t reply, tucking a stray strand of wet hair behind your ear. to him, you were so beautiful like this, carefree in the water with your clothes clinging to your skin. the ground was soft beneath, and the water cold, but your smile – sharp, fanged – warmed him. he’d been fearing that it would become a rare sight.

“your eyes, darlin’,” he murmured, leaning over you. “they’re turnin’ golden.” you scrunched your nose, making him hum before pressing a sweet kiss to your mouth. perhaps it sounded silly to you, but to jasper it meant that you were pulling through, as brave as you were. his darling. his heart. his love. “you’re gonna make it, sweetheart. we’re going to be alright.”

jasper’s smile was soft as he regarded you, your hand curling over his wrist as he cupped your cheek. there was so much to contend with still, concealed guilt and hurts that both of you possessed, but he was right. it had been a baptism of fire, but you were going to live this second life with jasper by your side, and you were going to be okay.

#jasper hale x reader #jasper hale imagine #jasper whitlock x reader #jasper hale x you #twilight fanfiction #twilight imagine #i def think vampires have to contend with sensory overload at the beginning #lmao idk how to title this

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csnews · 5 years ago

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'I've never seen or heard of attacks': scientists baffled by orcas harassing boats

Susan Smillie - September 13, 2020

Reports of orcas striking sailing boats in the Straits of Gibraltar have left sailors and scientists confused. Just what is causing such unusually aggressive behaviour?

When nine killer whales surrounded the 46ft boat that Victoria Morris was crewing in Spain on the afternoon of 29 July, she was elated. The biology graduate taught sailing in New Zealand and is used to friendly orca encounters. But the atmosphere quickly changed when they started ramming the hull, spinning the boat 180 degrees, disabling the autohelm and engine. The 23-year-old watched broken bits of the rudder float off, leaving the four-person crew without steering, drifting into the Gibraltar Straits shipping lane between Cape Trafalgar and the small town of Barbate.

The pod rammed the boat for more than an hour, during which time the crew were too busy getting the sails in, readying the life raft and radioing a mayday – “Orca attack!” – to feel fear. The moment fear kicked in, Morris says, was when she went below deck to prepare a grab bag – the stuff you take when abandoning ship. “The noise was really scary. They were ramming the keel, there was this horrible echo, I thought they could capsize the boat. And this deafening noise as they communicated, whistling to each other. It was so loud that we had to shout.” It felt, she says, “totally orchestrated”.

The crew waited a tense hour and a half for rescue – perhaps understandably, the coastguard took time to comprehend (“You are saying you are under attack from orca?”). To say this is unusual is to massively understate it. By the time help arrived, the orcas were gone. The boat was towed to Barbate, where it was lifted to reveal the rudder missing its bottom third and outer layer, and teeth marks along the underside.

Rocío Espada works with the marine biology laboratory at the University of Seville and has observed this migratory population of orca in the Gibraltar Straits for years. She was astonished. “For killer whales to take out a piece of a fibreglass rudder is crazy,” she says. “I’ve seen these orcas grow from babies, I know their life stories, I’ve never seen or heard of attacks.”

Highly intelligent, social mammals, orcas are the largest of the dolphin family, and behave in a similar way. It is normal, she says, that orcas will follow close to the propeller. Even holding the rudder is not unheard of: “Sometimes they will bite the rudder, get dragged behind as a game.” But never with enough force to break it. This ramming, Espada says, indicates stress. The Straits is full of nets and long lines; perhaps a calf got caught.

But Morris’s was only one of several encounters between late July and August. Six days earlier, Alfonso Gomez-Jordana Martin, a 31-year-old from Alicante, was crewing a delivery boat near Barbate for the same company, Reliance Yacht Management. They were proceeding under engine when a pod of four orcas brought their 40ft Beneteau to a halt. He filmed them – it looks more like excitement and curiosity than aggression – but even this bumping damaged the rudder. And the force increased, he says, over 50 minutes. “Once we were stopped, they came in faster: 10-15 knots, from a distance of about 25m,” he remembers. “The impact tipped the boat sideways.”

The skipper’s report to the port authority said the force “nearly dislocated the helmsman’s shoulder and spun the whole yacht through 120 degrees”.

At 11.30pm the previous night, 22 July, Beverly Harris, a retired nurse from Derbyshire, and her partner, Kevin Large, were motor-sailing their 50ft boat, Kailani, just off Barbate at eight knots, when they came to a sudden standstill. It was flat calm, pitch black. They thought they’d hit a net. “I scrambled for a torch and was like, ‘Bloody hell, they’re orcas,’” says Harris. The couple checked their position and found the boat pointing the opposite way. They tried to correct several times, but the orcas kept spinning them back. “I had this weird sensation,” Harris says, “like they were trying to lift the boat.” It lasted about 20 minutes, but felt longer. “We thought, ‘We’ve sailed across the Atlantic, surely we’re not going to sink now!’” Their rudder was damaged but got them to La Línea. It was a long night. “Kevin said I should get some sleep. I said, ‘Are you joking? I’m having a gin and tonic,’” recalls Harris.

While enjoying her drink, Harris could have spared a thought for Nick Giles, having a sleepless night alone after an almost identical encounter off Barbate just two and a half hours earlier. He was motor-sailing, and playing music when he heard a sudden bang “like a sledgehammer”. The wheel was “turning with incredible force” as the vessel spun 180 degrees, dislodging the autohelm and steering cables. “The boat lifted up half a foot and I was pushed by a second whale from behind,” he says. While resetting the cables, the orca hit again, “nearly chopping off my fingers in the mechanism”. He was pushed around without steering for about 15 minutes before they left him.

Catastrophic encounters between whales and boats are not unknown – the best-known events all took place in the Pacific. In 1972 the Robertson family from Staffordshire were shipwrecked off the Galapagos Islands after an orca strike (their book, Survive the Savage Sea became a classic). The following year, also on the way to those islands, Maurice and Maralyn Bailey’s 31ft boat was holed by a sperm whale. In 1989 William and Simone Butler lost their boat as a huge pod of pilot whales rammed them. In these and all other known cases, the mammals ignored the humans who took to life rafts; it was the boats that attracted their ire. More usually in encounters, the whale is left dead or injured. The International Whaling Commission records these strikes – more collisions are occurring with private boats as technological advances increase performance speeds.

The encounters described around Barbate were certainly frightening for the crew, who understandably felt targeted, but it’s unlikely they were meant as aggressive attacks. At least two other boats had harmless encounters. On 20 July Martin Chambers, a yacht master for Allabroad Sailing Academy, was unconcerned when they were joined by a pod near Barbate. One individual “had hold of the rudder and stopped us moving the boat”, he says. “That’s the first time I’ve seen them do that.” It seems the encounters increased in intensity, but it’s also worth considering that different boat constructions can suffer different outcomes – rudders on some modern boats can be quite fragile.

“These are very strange events,” says Ezequiel Andréu Cazalla, a cetacean researcher who talked to Morris. “But I don’t think they’re attacks.” Orca specialists around the world are equally surprised, agreeing the behaviour is “highly unusual”, but are cautious, given that the accounts are not from trained researchers. Most agree that something is stressing the orcas. And when it comes to sources of stress, there are plenty to choose from.

“The lack of tuna has led these orca to the very edge with only 30 adults left”

The Gibraltar orcas are endangered – there are fewer than 50 individuals left, with a continuing decline projected – adults and juveniles are sustaining injuries, suffering food scarcity and pollution. Their calves rarely survive. The Gibraltar Straits is, Cazalla points out, “the worst place for orcas to live”. This narrow stretch of water is a major shipping route. And the presence of orcas attracts more marine traffic – highly profitable whale-watching. Theoretically, it is regulated, but some operators flout rules about speed and distance to chase the animals. Constant harassment by boats affects the orcas’ ability to hunt. Which brings us to the biggest stress of all: fishing.

The orcas return to this noisy, polluted stretch of water for one reason – to feed. They specialise in hunting bluefin tuna, also highly prized by humans. The near collapse of bluefin tuna between 2005 and 2010 “has led this orca population to the very edge, with about 30 adults left”, says Pauline Gauffier, who has studied them.

The Straits is an important migratory route for the tuna. It has been economically crucial to this region for thousands of years – the Romans produced coins in Cadiz depicting the once bountiful fish. Local fisheries still use an ancient technique – almadraba, a complex system of trap nets. Each spring, the bluefin arrive to spawn in the Med; many find their way into the nets instead. In July and August, as the tuna leave for the Atlantic, the fishermen switch to drop lines – baited with fish and lowered with rocks. These artisanal techniques are far less harmful than trawling, purse seining or driftnets – and than the reckless sport-fishing boats speeding at 10 knots, trailing long lines.

“They target the orca, because they think there must be tuna under the pods,” says Jörn Selling, a marine biologist for Firmm whale watching and research foundation with 17 years’ experience in the Straits. “They go right through the pods, their hooks cutting the dorsal fins”.

In the past, the orca chased the bluefin to exhaustion, but with fewer and smaller fish available, and the pressures from human activity, some have adapted. As a result, there now exists what biologists call “depradation” – a complex balance between the orca, tuna, and humans – and what the fishermen call “stealing”.

Since 1999, two of the Straits’ five pods have learned to take tuna from the drop lines, leaving the fishermen pulling up the tuna head alone. It’s infuriating for the fishermen, but for the orca, this is high risk. Several have sustained serious injuries. “We see marks caused by fishing lines,” says Selling. “We hear about young orca getting hooked.” There are two females with severed flippers – “Lucia”, Selling says “lost her baby together with her flipper, due to the interaction with tuna fishermen”. Gauffier points out that “there is little the fishermen can do to avoid line or hook injuries” when orca interact; and it’s not known what caused the injuries. But many conservationists suspect some fishermen retaliate violently.

“The fishermen hate the killer whales,” says Selling. The orca are protected, but “unobserved, the fishermen do what they want. They see them as competitors.”

Stories persist of fishermen stunning orca with electric prods, throwing lit petrol cans, cutting dorsal fins. Cazalla has seen two orca with recent injuries (Morris thinks there was an injured individual at her boat). “One has a significant scar – you can see white tissue so it’s deep.” This, he thinks, is unlikely to be from a propeller, which would cause multiple scars.

Selling points out that the orca interact with the almadraba as well as drop-line fishing, and talks of a male which worked out how to navigate the labyrinth of submarine nets to take tuna in Barbate years ago. This orca was later observed with serious injury to its dorsal fin. It hasn’t been seen since.

But the orca have endured harassment for decades. What explains the new behaviour? Was there reduced noise during the Covid lockdown? Selling says yes. “No big game fishing, no whale watching or sailing boats, no fast ferries, fewer merchant ships.” He’s intrigued by the idea that the orca had two months with reduced noise – “Something most of them probably never experienced before” – and considers the possibility they felt angry as the noise restarted (Gauffier thinks this unlikely, but notes that the Barbate pod still actively chases tuna, “for which they need a quieter environment”).

There is one very unscientific phrase I hear repeatedly from several researchers: “Pissed off”. Some speculate that the multitude of stresses these highly sentient cetaceans have endured – years of grieving lost calves, injuries, competition for fish, coupled with a pause and reintroduction of human activity, could have affected their behaviour. There is a great deal we don’t yet know about orca, which, like us, have evolved complex cultures and different languages around the world. A couple of years ago Ken Balcomb from the Center for Whale Research talked about endangered orca being dependent on scarce chinook salmon in the Pacific Northwest. “I’ve seen them look at boats hauling fish. I think they know that humans are somehow related to the scarcity of food. And I think they know that the scarcity of food is causing them physical distress, and also causing them to lose babies.”

Sounds like anthropomorphising? Lori Marino, neuroscientist and president of the Whale Sanctuary Project found in orca brains an astounding capacity for intelligence. “If we are talking about whether killer whales have the wherewithal and the cognitive capacity to intentionally strike out at someone, or to be angry, or to really know what they are doing, I would have to say the answer is yes. They are likely defending a territory or resources.”

Meanwhile, Nick Irving from Reliance is wondering if he should send clients’ boats out after the last three sustained damage: “Is it reckless?” Neither of us say it, but we’re both thinking he doesn’t want to be the mayor in Jaws – the obvious, if lazy stereotype that comes to mind. Word is starting to get out, frustrating Espada. Friends call, asking about the “attacks”, if it’s safe to swim. “Are you mad?” she asks. “Of course it’s safe!” As shark conservationists know all too well, it’s difficult to protect endangered animals with a bad image.

This tiny population’s presence is of huge importance, and if human activity is affecting their behaviour, human activity must be regulated. Gauffier has presented the Spanish Environment Agency with a conservation plan proposing that in the Barbate area, “activities producing underwater noise should be reduced to a minimum”. This is the very least that should happen. Each sailor I spoke to was concerned that their activities had stressed the orca. Victoria Morris, who has been searching for a specialist subject when she returns to study marine biology in autumn has found her topic. The Gibraltar orca has one more ally – which is good because these majestic, beleaguered mammals need all the help they can get.

#news #wild #cetacean #orca #killer whale #gibraltar #whale #dolphin

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hermitcraftheadcanons · 5 years ago

Text

Zombie Apocalypse AU Masterpost

"There are a few groups that aren't aware of each other's existence. (Architechs, NHO, Convex, ect.) The NHO are made up of all men from millitaries across the globe. Cleo isn't a zombie either, she is a zombie whisperer. She can communicate slightly with zombies and they aren't usually negotiable."

(Paraphrased,) from @creator0fchaos' Zombie Apocalypse AU entry for The Follower Input AU.

Headcanons to start us off:

-Convex were two men from a small buisness. Jellie is also around but she's injured and is mostly carried around by Scar.

-Etho got bit pretty early on and everyone in the NHO knows they're gonna have to do something about it but they're putting it off. Etho seems fine.

-Bdubs is slowly going completely feral. (Possible reference to season 5's jungle feral?) DocM joked he had rabies and the two got into a fight.

-Iskall lost his eye after Mumbo accidentally slashed him with a knife while trying to protect Grian from a hoarde. Iskall ended up getting lumped in with the Architech group because Mumbo feels super guilty about it.

-Xisuma and Keralis came into contact with the NHO for a bit. Keralis and Bdubs nearly became friends but Beef and Doc scared em away. Angst.

-The zombies fear False.

-XB originally planned to just stay in his house and not go out. He was prepared, okay? He had tinned food to last him at least a decade, zombie proof armour and god knows what else supplies. His friend, Hypnotizd, is fleeing to there because he knows XB knows what he's doing.

-Wels wears armour because it's the best he had. Same with Biffa and Xisuma. In this AU, they probably wouldn't be wearing armour if not given the circumstances.

-Jevin has turned this into a game to kill as many zombies as possible.

-Impulse, Tango and Zedaph are all just having a good time trying to survive in the woods. Their main goal is to open a tin of beans Zed has but they don't have a tin opener.

-Rendog found a tin of dog food while scavenging. He was hungry and ate it. He now has an addiction to tinned dog food.

-Wels wears medieval armour in the zombie au because at one point he was trapped in a museum by a horde and like, the armour was technically there. On display. No one was using it.

-Etho wears the mask as kind of a mental reminder not to bite his friends.

-Joe and Stress are hanging with Cleo and even if the small group isn’t the best equipped or prepared, they have thrived thanks to Cleo’s ability to whisper to zombies. It might not stop the zombies but it buys the group time to escape.

–Zombie!Etho is hiding the fact that he’s turning, if not already turned into a zombie, from the rest of the NHO because he loves being with his friends. The problem is that it’s getting harder every day to control himself and he’s constantly fighting between telling the rest of them about it, and having them put him out of his misery to keep them safe, or just keep hiding it, afraid that one day it’ll be too late he won’t be able to control himself and bite them all.

-Someone gets like a really bad case of the flu, this is problem because usually survivors have to stay in the move consistently to survive and that’s hard when someone is really sick, it also bad because all pharmacies have been raided and there’s no medicine.

-Grian originally came from Sam and Taurtis's group but due to Sam's insanity, Grian pulls away and went surviving on his own. That when Mumbo came to photo and knowing that he won't survive the zombie wasteland alone, Grian took it as his task to convince Mumbo make a partnership with him.

-Joe was playing D&D when the outbreak started, and Cleo was in his group. They treat it as a game sometimes, though they toned it down a bit when Stress joined because she was still grieving Iskall. Stress makes them stay around where she lost Iskall, but Joe and Cleo don't mind because she has a base set up there.

-For no fault of his own, the nHo crumbles while doc is in control. They had been losing members for a while but when beef, Bdubs, etho, and doc part ways it’s the draw the broke the camels back, so doc is the only one left of the nho, the rest of them, having either left or died. Doc blames himself for everything going so wrong.

-For the zombie AU because nobody's representing my boy X: Xisuma is known as a master at evading the zombies (he can fight them well if needed but he is best at avoiding incidents altogether). He claims to wear the mask for practical reasons, but what the others don't know is that it hides how terrified he is. He hides his fear because he doesn't want people to lose confidence in him, but getting turned and losing control of his mind is his worst nightmare.

-TFC’s gone for a bunker theme for s6+s7, so maybe, he finds a nHo member, and just drags them down into his bunker, probably chewing them out for walking around alone?

-For the zombie au is ethos mask like a medical one, or was he in a kakashi cosplay for some reason and kept it because all the pockets were practical and then started wearing the mask because he got infected.

-After Stress and Iskall reunite, Joe and Cleo join the Architechs. False joins them after seeing Cleo whisper to the zombies and realizing that the group severely lacks fighters. I need the hermits to (at least mostly) get together!

-TFC is obviously a disaster prepper who has a fully furnished bunker that can house a lot of people. He has been broadcasting this to other survivors using a radio. Unfortunately, he lives in the middle of nowhere and it is a trek to get there, but the Vault (as he calls it) is self-sustaining. (I know this is obvious, but nobody has done anything with TFC yet, and that's a shame)

-Even though he’s scared about not being alert enough to protect his team, Xisuma hides his sickness, which is easy with the helmet, because he’s the leader and he can’t be weak. Due to the pain of the flu and the heat of fever staying trapped inside his helmeted eventually falls to his knees and breaks down.

-Mumbo is wearing a suit because he was on his way to a job interview when the outbreak started, he just never bothered to change clothes.

-Etho used to love making up little tunes, and that hasn't changed since he was bitten. Nevertheless, the others in his group haven't heard him make music since. He blames a lack of instruments because of being on the run from zombies. The morning after he left, though, they find an old recorder where his sleeping bag was, and once they hit play they're greeted with songs in a familiar style, backed by improvised instruments.

Even without saying anything they *know* what had happened, and the recorder is taken along on their journey to a safe haven. Sometimes, when the feeling of missing their friend gets too much, they put on the music in the evening and just allow themselves to cry.

-Well, i was thinking maybe stress was a loner, but like, not completely alone, she was with someone else, probably Cleo or Iskall, but they got bit, she felt too bad to kill them so she wanders around with a zombie friend on a madeup leash, sorry if it sounds sad but i like angst and it seemed like a good headcanon -🐿️

-TFC is the one to get to Beef and break down the wall he had built up after a while of wandering alone after breaking off from the nHo. He finds Beef fighting a group of zombies and after observing how violently Beef was hacking down the zombies, TFC did not see a hardened fighter, but a broken man and went to talk with him.

-Alternate timeline idea when grian was still traveling with Sam and tortoise. Sam end up doing something that results in grian and tortoise getting bitten, because of that Sam leaves them. Now grian is not a normal zombie he doesn’t crave human flesh but rabbit flesh because he’s so hell-bent on getting revenge for what Sam did to him and tortoise, tortoise ends up tagging along. Cleo ends up finding them and discover their not normal zombies and inviting them to stay with her group.

-For the zombie apocalypse AU, RE: Cleo and Joe's DND game - imagine them going into a fight and just screaming "ROLL INITIATIVE!"

-Ok but imagine if like that one anon said, grian was already a zombie but like, one that only wants animals. I imagine they could probably get him to behave normally and imagine the mumbo turning angst but grian is already a zombie and just helps him not loose himself.

-For the Zombie Au, instead of killing Mumbo before he turns, the group locks him in a room and leave him there in hopes that they can bring him back once theres a cure. Whether or not, Mumbo wants to be saved is up to you. If Cleo's still in the group then you could have her "talk" to Zombie Mumbo for bonus angst.

-After finding out that Etho's still out there, Beef becomes more determined than ever to help find a cure. In the bunker he often ends up buzzing around Scar and Cub, desperate for something to do to help. It can get a bit awkward but they understand he's just desperate to see his friend again and are usually able to provide small tasks to help him keep his mind busy (with something other than worrying for Etho) while they continue working toward a cure.

(All those above in red are from our community's lovely Anons!)

-Vintagebeef was the first to notice something was off about Etho. He asked Etho about it but Etho assured him he was fine. Beef asked, 'what if you spread it to the other people in group?' Etho claimed that 'if it was contagious without physical contact, everyone would have caught it by now.'

-Speaking of Vintage Beef, he feels the most lonely and hopeless out of all the NHO members. Etho is probably gonna die from being a zombie soon. Bdubs and Doc are always at each other's throats and Beef fears one of them may accidentally kill the other. He's terrified that he may be the only one left.

-Hypnotizd is the most likely to be bit next. Dude’s running to XB’s house basically defenseless until he gets there, we have no clue how far he has to travel.

(-@tomcatacaphe.)

-You could very easily bring s5 nho angst into this au... Etho leaves to protect his friends from himself, Beef leaves because he can't bare to see his friends fight so much, Bdubs and Doc get in a fight and Bdubs storms off, and Doc is left to try and lead the nho by himself (since you said it's a kind of paramilitary thing here). Ouch.

-Knowing Mumbo's love for bunkers and the dragon bro bunker from s6, the architechs have probably settled somewhere underground to have a somewhat normal life. And, given the combined tech prowess of Iskall and Mumbo, they could easily rig up defence systems to help.

-in regards to that ask about X getting ill, maybe that's where Keralis joins him! He's totally the type to stay with you when sick! :D

-Continuing from that anon, if I may. So far we have Griam, Mumbo, Iskall, Stress, Joe, Cleo, and False all living together... The chaos xD ! You could even bring in hermit challenges as smth they make to, y'know, lighten the mood :D

(-@rebloging-extravaganza.)

-OOF I never thought about Taurtis wandering alone but that's sad. Iskall was also originally with Stress. They are wandering together until a snow storm separates them. Iskall finds Mumbo and Grian and then Mumbo thought he was a zombie cause this man just came out of nowhere. Grian and Mumbo took him in. When Iskall came back to the place where him and Stress gets separated, they saw each other again. What's the first thing he did? He hugged the hell outta her.

-Stress was tired cause the next thing she knew after the storm is that she’s alone. So, she thought for the worst, she thought Iskall was dead. She made a small shelter in the place, tamed a lot of dogs and even made a gravestone for Iskall.

When Stress saw him, her first thought was to get the weapon from the sheath and attack but Iskall started talking. The next thing she knew was she is crying and hugging him tight.

(-@penumbra-rui.)

-After Beef leaves the nHo, he becomes quite a loner. He gets a nickname from other groups even though they don’t know who he is: the Butcher. He gets the name because when groups are being seized down by dozens of zombies, Beef comes in and kills the zombies - every single one - with only his token bloodied apron left behind, waving on a stick. He has hundreds of those aprons and is never seen killing the zombies by the besieged groups.

-When Impulse runs away, he runs into BDubs while in a run down brick building with part of it having been blown up in what looks like a plane bomb. The building seems to have been a local demolition business known simply as ‘Boomers.’

-Before the apocalypse began, Scar was an upper level agent of the FBI tasked with protecting top level cancer researchers across the United States. One of those top cancer researchers was patient 0 and was the original discoverer of the zombie infection (patient 0 was not a Hermit). However, Scar believes it’s his fault for not having intervened when he could have. It’s now his mission to find a way to fix it. He comes across business mogul Cub, who may have the funds to help.

-https://hermitcraftheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/618407386827423744/hypno-has-been-living-with-xb-for-the-last-two XB and Hypno meet: A post too long to copy paste here.

(-@creator0fchaos.)

-After Tango explodes the beans Impulse claims he’s leaving. Z and T think he just kidding but when they wake up the next morning Inpulse is gone. Now Zed and Tango are on a mission to find impulse while also terrified that he’s been bit.

-Continuation of the impulse leaves thing, tango and Zed find and save him just in time. They all reunite and are happy. The problem is that Zed was bit in the process, for now he’s binding it, because tango and impulse were so happy to be reunited and zed didn’t want to ruin it.

-Zed never ends up telling his friends that he was bit, the figure out themselves a few days after it happens. At first they’re mad that zed hid it from them, telling him how he could have turned and hurt them. But a minute late they break down in tears realizing what the bit means for them all. They will discuss what to do in the morning but for now they will grieve.

-Even more of the zit story: In the morning they decide to keep zed around until he really starts turning, they will then kill him so he’s not a zombie, zed protests this wanting them to kill him now, fearing for the other’s safety, but he’s actually really happy to have a bit longer with his friends. Impulse feels guilty because this never would have happened if he hadn’t left, tango also feels guilty because if he never exploded the beans, then impulse wouldn’t have left and zed would be fine.

(-@lookitsspacekween.)

-Xisuma is known as a master at evading the zombies (he can fight them well if needed but he is best at avoiding incidents altogether). He claims to wear the mask for practical reasons, but what the others don't know is that it hides how terrified he is. He hides his fear because he doesn't want people to lose confidence in him, but getting turned and losing control of his mind is his worst nightmare.

-Xisuma could be that person who gets the flu from an earlier submission! It would really scare him because of not being as alert or functional to avoid the zombies. I feel like he doesn't have a set group of people he stays with, so someone would probably find him holed up somewhere with a bad fever and decide to stay with him.

-If Mumbo ever gets bitten his zombie form is his cursed skin from after he sold his bits, it NEEDS to be lol.

-I came here to post immune!Rendog only to find that someone already did! Anyway, Ren is immune, which is good because the man gets bitten A LOT (the diggity dawg is not the best fighter). I feel like he gets lost and comes across the NHO base, and Doc won't let him in at first because he's covered in bites. He probably puts him in a containment cell out of typical Doc paranoia but eventually figures it out.

-Doc tried his hardest to be distant with Ren (because he thought he was going to turn/die soon and didn't want to get attached) but Ren just asks questions and talks 24/7 until Doc gives in and talks to him out of loneliness. Doc probably keeps him in containment for a really long time, first for fear of him turning and then because he's afraid Ren will leave (like everyone else left him.)

-Ren is very calm and cheery through the whole containment thing because he FULLY believes this is all a dream. Like, okay, this German robot man says I'm going to die in a week? Cool! Have to remember to write this one down when I wake up. Doc cannot convince him otherwise and it frustrates him to no end (when he does realize it's real though he's going to have a full breakdown.)

-Mumbo focuses in way too hard when he's working and blocks out everything else. If he gets bitten it will be because he was too absorbed in a redstone project and forgot to check his surroundings.

-When Mumbo gets bitten, Grian makes it his duty to comfort him and keep him calm until the end. Iskall, however, is overcome by guilt. He had been out for supplies when it happened; usually it was his job to watch Mumbo's back while he worked, alternating between fighting zombies and giving jokingly snarky commentary on Mumbo's redstone. He definitely blames himself and won't let the others out of his sight afterward.

-A break from angst! Zombie whisperer!Cleo's talents work by communicating with the infection in the zombies' bodies. Immune!Rendog has the infection, it just doesn't affect him in a dangerous way. Therefore, Cleo is now a Ren whisperer. Hilarity ensues.

-Once Xisuma starts feeling a bit better, he organizes his group to dig underground tunnels for people to travel with less chance of zombie attack (construction Keralis is a big help!) The leadership comes naturally to him, and the hard work is a good way of building up his strength again. Working late into the night on the tunnels is also the perfect excuse not to sleep....

-(post-cure). It takes several weeks, but Doc finally manages to find Etho. When he receives the cure his first words are "Thank you" and "I'm so sorry" (like a true Canadian). While his mind is returned to him, some parts of his body are too decayed to be salvaged, but that's no obstacle for Doc. He builds custom cybernetics and eagerly welcomes his old friend back to the land of the living.

(-@shadeswiftdraws.)

-Mumbo, being really good with redstone, obviously has anti-zombie weapons he made himself. One day he goes out scavenging to find Grian fighting zombies armed with only a large hunting knife, a sledgehammer (probably from whatever build he was working on at the time of the outbreak), and his tiny gremlin speed and agility. (-@my-cat-is-a-bastard.)

-One of the Hermits (up to you which one) is somehow immune to the zombie virus. The catch: they don't know until they get bit. Them and the rest of their group is scared and prepares to kill them when the transformation is complete, but it never happens. The scientist of their group does a couple of tests and discovers their immunity!

-I was thinking about it for a bit, and I doesn’t seem like there’s been much done with Ren... (besides eating dog food lol)

-Happy ending time 'cause I can't stand seeing them all turn! Once Doc realizes Ren is immune, they venture out trying to find another group to create a cure. After gathering some/most of the other Hermits, they come across Scar, and they work on and create a cure/vaccine. The rest of the Hermits take it, and maybe they're even able to cure Etho and the other zombified Hermits! (Sorry if this is too cheesy/happy; I just want everything to be okay, y'know?)

-All everyone speaks of are the physical changes, but one must set the record straight: No matter how horrifying the outward changes are, the mental and emotional ones are far worse. Your friend’s behavior will take a turn for the worse. They’ll become more aggressive, more impulsive, less cautious. They’ll start fights for a laugh, they’ll yell and thrash and scream at the mildest inconvenience, their mind will devolve and fade away. By the time you must say your goodbyes, they will no longer be the friend you knew. They will be childish, angry, insane, and horrible in every way. Even if they fight the illness and outer changes, their behavior will still be impacted and subject to change.

Be wary of this if you choose to let your friend live, and prepare not only your body, but your mind, for the worst.

-Patient Zero could be GenerikB.

(-@12u3ie.)

-I feel like team ZIT keeps putting off taking care of Impulse. Like Etho, Impulse just keeps fighting the changes. They all expect him to wither away, fall down and die one day, isn't that how it always goes?, but that's not how the infection works. They don't get sicker and weaker, in fact most of the people who die from one bite actually die from gangrene and/or septic shock. (Human mouths are GROSS.) But our boys don't know this. They've taken good care of his bite, even if it felt pointless at first, and avoided infection, and as a result he's physically completely healed now. So they end up never NEEDING to kill Impulse, but at what cost? He's constantly anxious about losing control. He can barely even sleep, what if it makes him sleepwalk and he bites his friends then? Tango and Zedaph see him changing still. They see his skin getting pale and dull, his eyes growing hollow, even see he's losing a lot of weight, but they put it up to his sleeplessness, to how they have to remind him, almost force him to eat real food. What sort of life does Impulse really have now? Is it really better to just end it? (What if he and Etho meet?)

Sorry, I've just seen the way this subversion of the Zombie Bite = Zombie Dead trope is going with Etho, and I HAD to get bitten!Impulse in on it as well. Now I can't stop thinking about exactly how this virus works, so I'm gonna hit post before I get WAY too into it and make a text wall.

-https://hermitcraftheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/618456845293633536/the-first-thing-you-notice-is-the-bite-it-stings How the virus works. (Tw gore, worms.)

(-@basaltdragon.)

-Bdubs definitely slept through the beginning of the apocalypse and had no idea what was going on for a while. He just kept doing his normal thing until someone told him what was happening. (-@miss-oleum.)

-I saw a post that mentioned Taurtis in the zombie apocalypse au, so I think this idea would be cool? I think from context clues Etho and Beef are kinda traveling together, but what if they run into Pause! Pause is super stoked to finally be around people in this mess (Team Canada, no less!!) but the dread kicks in when he notices the look in Etho's eyes, and how much paler he is than usual. Maybe he even notices the signs before Beef (who prolly def. noticed but is in severe denial about it). (-@853dragons.)

-https://hermitcraftheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/618477192694939648/you-know-what-im-just-going-to-add-my-2-cents-on

-To the surprise (and delight) of everyone in the Bunker, Beef is a deasent Redstoner. He's still a bit rusty at it tho. But he Knows how to work around those dust if he put his mind it. And after the... Insident with Mumbo, they need all the help they can get with the Redstone. And the first time he fix a redstone contraption on his own he said to his spectators (any Hermit of your choice), "What? You thought I was all Beef but no Brains?"

(-@tearosepedall.)

And now, Writing!

-It's the hunger that's the worst. Gnawing and ever-present, no matter what he eats, he can't escape the emptiness that's settled into his stomach. Etho stares dully down at the can someone - probably Beef - had pushed into his hands, before spearing a handful of syrupy fruit and swallowing it. It does little to satiate the hunger crawling through his every being. And why would it? It's not fruit he's hungry for anymore. (Anon.)

-Fear curls around him like an unwanted friend, a fiend of mist and smoke that blankets his nerves and quickens his heart. He stares dully at the scene before him, at the massacre his group had just barely avoided, as an awful storm of what-ifs swirl through his mind. His hands shake. "X?" Someone asks, "Are you okay?" Xisuma sucks in a deep breath, curls his hands into fists, and turns towards Keralis. "I'm fine," he lies. (Anon.)

-"Hello there. If you are listening to this, we are gone and long forgotten. This base of ours is yours to use now. I'm sure there'll still be some supplies and cans of food left-" "Not if I eat them first!" "Gr- Grian! I'm recording!" "I know that, you spoon." Grian took a few steps forward and stuck his face up to the camera lens. "Hi there!" "Grian! This is serious work." "C'mon, we're always serious! What's wrong with a little bit of fun during the zombie apocalypse?" (12u3ie.)

-(Biffa's POV) I met Xisuma a couple weeks ago. He saved my life, and I joined his crew. We're good friends now, and I hope he trusts me. It just seems like there's something off about him, but not in a zombie way. The way he hesitates before saying he's fine, how his eyes widen for just a moment before battle... the way he mumbles in his sleep about an evil counterpart... (12u3ie.)

-Hands corral him, pushing him forward. Mumbo twists and writhes, trying to escape from the iron grip pulling him forward. Where his tongue still capable of forming complex sounds, he would be protesting vehemently. Nowadays, words are harder to come by, too clunky and heavy for his tongue to try. As it is, he can barely even manage the word no. 'I don't want this!' He screams, but only Cleo spares him a glance. Her eyes shine, wet with tears and pity that turns his stomach.

"We'll find a cure," Someone else promises. From a haze of shattered memories, a face forms. It takes another moment for him to remember a name. Grian. His voice is flat, toneless, but edged with iron and a promise. With one final pull, he's dragged into the windowless room, lined with lockers and benches. Mumbo's breath rattles heavily in his chest, as the iron door swings shut behind him. "I'm so sorry." Whispers seep through the thin walls. "I can't believe he bit Ren." (Anon.)

More to be added!

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smarchit · 5 years ago

Text

Poetry for an Heiress, Chapter 4

Summary: When a duchess and her children are abandoned far from home, they must rely on the kindness of one stranger to guide them home.

Word Count: 4.3k

Warnings: None (For this chapter)

Three weeks or so after your arrival, as promised, you allowed Ezra to take the boys fishing if they were all well behaved. Aside from a week or so prior when Aiden had tormented Marie with a fat little grub, they had been absolute angels. They helped you whenever you asked, and helped Ezra sometimes even before he would ask.

"Tomorrow, perhaps," Ezra said one evening after dinner. He rested his hand in his lap and looked across the table at the children. "I think tomorrow is a marvelous day for fishing."

Henry and Aiden gasped excitedly and looked at one another before they turned to Ezra.

"Really!" Aiden cried, bouncing on his feet. "Do you mean it? We can go fishing!"

"Of course," Ezra said, his expression serious. "I did make a promise to you, did I not? And your mother did say if you were exceptionally well-behaved, you could go."

Two eager faces turned to you, as if for confirmation of this monumental declaration.

"We shall all go," you said with a smile. "We can pack a picnic lunch and books to read for tomorrow."

Marie gasped and clapped her hands as the boys let out triumphant cries and hugged you tightly.

"Easy, easy," Ezra warned gently. "Don't squeeze the life out of your poor mother. Come on, let's get these dishes cleaned and you boys can help me get things ready."

Marie climbed down from her chair and gathered up her plate and cup before placing both in the wash tub. She turned to you as you collected Ezra's silverware in your hands. "Mama," she said, trying to be as polite as she could be. "Can I go help Henry and Aiden and Mr. Ezra?"

"For a bit," you said, placing the dishes in the basin. "It's almost bedtime for little bugs."

Marie pouted and folded her arms over her chest. "I'm not sleepy, mama. Please? Can I please go help?"

You smiled and crouched down to her height. You gently took her hands in your own and kissed her palms. She looked so much like you, according to your mother. You were hard to convince, for you always saw your husband's eyes staring back at you with curiosity. It had always been hard to look at your children, to see him when he was no longer there.

Now, it felt like you were healing. There was no longer an ache in your heart when you thought of him. Going into his study, exactly the way he had left it, no longer caused you to break down. Looking at your children didn't fill you with an overwhelming sense of grief.

Your children had never known their father. Not enough to remember him, anyway. Marie never even lived in the same world as he did.

Was it time for you to finally move on? It would have been what he wanted for you - happiness. A life.

"My darling," you said, stroking your thumb along her rounded cheek. "I think that is a splendid idea."

"Perfectly splendid," Marie repeated with a smile. She wrapped her arms around your neck and kissed your cheek. After a moment she skipped off to join the boys outside.

For a moment, you stood by the small kitchen window and watched Marie run to where her brothers and Ezra were huddled together in the yard. Ezra was so patient with them. He never raised his voice or got frustrated. It was like he was meant for this.

And, oh, the children loved him. They didn't even need to tell you. You just knew. You could see it in their eyes. They did tell you though, quite often, as a matter of fact. Almost every day they told you how they wanted to stay on Muir forever and explore like Mr. Ezra.

Outside, Ezra picked up Marie and rested her on his hip, his arm wrapped around her as she clung to him. She squealed with laughter as he motioned with a jerk of the head for the boys to follow him to the barn.

"You'll want to be very quiet so as not to disturb the fish," Ezra explained, keeping his voice hushed for emphasis. He looked at the twins with their homemade fishing poles and grinned.

You were watching from the shore, safe and dry on the picnic blanket you'd dug out early that morning. Marie was beside you as she read her picture book, sounding the words out loud as best she could.

Warm sunlight filtered through the trees and a cool breeze lifted the lace sleeves of your dress from your shoulders. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day, just as Ezra had predicted.

"Careful now, son," Ezra warned, reaching towards Aiden. "You go whipping that pole around and you're liken to catch your brother in the seat of his pants with the fishing hook."

You saw that mischievous glint in Aiden's eyes and he grinned. You just raised a brow and stared at him until he caught your eye. He looked away suddenly, the gleam disappearing as quickly as it arrived.

"Mama," Marie mumbled, tapping on your arm. "What's this word?" She pointed to a word in her book and looked up at you expectantly.

"Sound it out," you encouraged, looking at the book. You helped her follow along with your finger as she sounded the word out.

"A... art-eye-kick?" she stammered, uncertain and shaky in tone.

"Not bad," you said with a smile. "It's 'arctic,' you said. "Try it again."

"Arr-tic," she repeated, sliding her finger under the word. "Better?"

You chuckled. "Better. There's three sounds, not two. But you did a wonderful job, little bug."

Marie beamed and then looked down at her book again. "What about this word?"

"Penguin," you hummed, sparing a glance down at the word and accompanying illustration.

"What's that?"

"An animal that was around a very long time ago," you explained. "Some of them are probably still around a very long way from here."

"It's got funny hair, mama," she said with a giggle as she, pointed to the picture. "Like Mr. Ezra's!"

You laughed softly and ruffled her hair a bit as you glanced up at Ezra. He was watching you both out of the corner of his eye, a warm smile on his face. "Mr. Ezra doesn't look like a penguin!"

"I am inclined to agree with you," Ezra called to you as he recast his net. "Though one can't argue with her solid logic, Princess."

You smiled and leaned back on your elbows to enjoy the sunlight. The morning dew was still cool enough to wet your skin as you dug your bare toes into the soft grass.

Henry and Aiden had figured out the basics of casting a line fairly easily, it seemed, and soon they were wading towards the slightly deeper water to cast their lines, despite your better judgement. With the two of them with their poles and Ezra with a small net, they were sure to catch something for dinner.

You pulled your book out of the picnic basket and opened it up to where you had left off from the previous night. The gentle sound of the water made for a pleasant background noise to accompany your reading and it was easy to lose yourself in the story. It was a scandalous romance, your book. An eager young woman keeping a secret romance with a stone-hearted mercenary - wholly obscene and tender all at once. It was a story you would have stuffed under the mattress as a girl to keep your grandmother from finding out about it. You found yourself imagining it were you in that scenario. It had always happened when you read books like that. It used to be your husband as the object of the heroine's affections, but now, someone else was slowly taking the place of the brooding mercenary.

As if he were sensing your thoughts, Ezra called for your attention, his hand gripping the net tightly as he stood knee deep in the water.

"Princess, I believe we have our first catch of the day!" Ezra exclaimed as he tugged the net out of the water. Trapped in the net was a shiny little fish, about the length of Ezra's forearm. It shone pink and green, sparkling in the sun as it flapped in its confines.

"You mean you didn't catch anything bigger?" Aiden asked as he recast his line. "That's so small!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, you'll have to forgive me, sir, I forgot you were a fishing expert," Ezra chided, walking towards the bank. He dropped the net to the ground and watched the fish as it flopped around for a bit.

You laughed and closed your book before standing. The grass gave way to gravel and mud as you approached the bank where Ezra stood over his catch.

"What do you think?" Ezra asked, nodding down at his net.

"Oh yes," you replied. "Maybe a few dozen more of these and we can make something with it."

"Your words cut like a knife, Princess," he teased, putting his hand over his heart. "Bring that box over here, would you? I want to keep this little one fresh. One catch is better than none."

You brought the box over to him and pried open the lid. The smell coming out of it was horrific, but you didn't comment as Ezra tossed the fish inside.

"Are you boys alright for a moment by yourselves?" Ezra asked. "I want to have a word with your mother."

"Yes, Mr. Ezra," Henry replied. He recast his line and tried his best to keep still, just as he was told so as not to disturb any fish.

You looked at Ezra, confused by his request to speak in private. He led you by a gentle hand at your elbow over to a small cluster of trees, still well within view of the children, but far enough that you wouldn't be disturbed or overheard.

"What is this about, Ezra?" you asked, worry evident in your voice. "What's wrong?"

Ezra lifted his hand and shook his head. "No, no, nothing is wrong," he said quickly. He bit his lip and sighed for a moment before continuing. "It's just that... do you remember how I told you about that supply freighter that comes through about once a month or so? Well, it turns out that we won't be getting that freighter for quite some time. I found out from Jacinta down at the store yesterday morning. She's been---"

Ezra's words faded into a drone in the background, drowned out by a roar in your ears. You felt your heart sink to your stomach and you reached out to steady yourself against the tree. The air felt like it had been pushed from your lungs and you stared blankly at Ezra as you tried to comprehend what he had just told you.

He reached out to steady you, his hand firmly on your waist to keep you upright. "Woah, Princess. Stay with me now. It's gonna be alright, understand? I have a plan for how you and your flock are going to get home. It might take some time, but I can get you there."

"How?" you asked. Your voice cracked and Ezra winced at how afraid you sounded. You looked over at your children, carefree and happy, and then back at Ezra, who was watching you with a worried expression. "How are you going to get us home?"

"I haven't fully fleshed out all those fine details yet, Princess, but I am making a promise to you right here, right now, that you will safely get back home." Ezra rubbed a soothing circle with his thumb on your hip and you reached down to put your hand over his. Thinking you were going to push his hand away, he began to pull back, but you grabbed his hand and held it tight. He looked a little surprised, but then smiled softly. "I won't abandon you, I promise. I will do whatever it takes."

You took a deep, shaky breath and then nodded. "Alright. I trust you. What shall I do to help you?"

Ezra chuckled. "You're asking what you can do to help me, help you? That can get confusing if we aren't careful, so for now, let's just say the only thing I want you to do is not tell your flock. We don't want them to be worried too."

You brushed your fingers against Ezra's hand and sighed. He was right, you figured. If you told them, then there would be no chance in trying to calm the children down. Might as well not say anything in the first place.

Ezra smiled and then chuckled as he looked at you. "I would fly you home myself, Princess. It's just a little more complicated than that. But what's life without tests?"

"There's purpose to those tests," you replied. "Often there's rewards that come with them."

Ezra smiled, his eyes flicking across your face. He pulled his hand from your hip, your own fingers dragging against his.

You looked over at the boys as they stood like little sentries in the shallows and motioned for Ezra to walk with you back to the picnic blanket. He held out his arm for you to take and you looped your arm through his as you wandered back. His touch comforted the frantic racing of your heart.

Marie was sound asleep, her book open to a page on people who used to live in houses made of ice, her thumb pulled between her lips. It was something she never fully kicked from infancy, one that your grandmother had often scolded you for as a mother and tried to force your daughter from continuing the habit. You didn't mind it though. If it was the only negative habit she ever developed, she would be far better off than half the population of the galaxy. You never thought it a glaring issue and therefore never corrected it. It infuriated your grandmother.

Both you and Ezra took a seat on the blanket on either side of Marie. He stretched his legs out and sighed happily as he looked around.

"You really did pick out a perfect spot for picnicking, Princess," he hummed contentedly. He looked down at Marie and chuckled softly. "Your little one here seems to be enjoying it too."

You sat in comfortable silence for a moment, enjoying the birdsong and the sound of the water.

"May I ask you a question, Ezra?" you inquired, looking over at him. When he nodded, you continued. "A while ago you mentioned med vacs come maybe once a month if you're lucky. What do you do if someone is in danger?"

"Field medicine, typically," he replied, watching the boys recast their lines. "Though sometimes your standard bullet is more merciful than any doctor. But when on a job, one must choose the best option given the situation."

"Is that what happened," you asked, gesturing at his missing arm. "That is, of course if you don't mind my asking? Forgive me if I don't believe the story that you told the children a few days ago. It's been eating away at my curiosity."

Ezra grinned and raised the stump of his arm, inspecting the neatly pinned shirt sleeve. "Not at all. This was the result of a rather unfortunate incident out on the Green - one of Bakhroma's moons, see? Had a run in with another prospector whose eyes were bigger than his brain. So I shot him and his daughter shot me in retaliation, thinking I was out to harm her."

You nodded and scooted a bit closer, waiting to hear more. This was the first time Ezra was sharing something with you about his past. Despite the fact that he rarely stopped talking, he often fell silent when you inquired about him.

"We traveled together for a while, her and I, all the while my arm was festering in the dust. The Green kills, see? It gets inside and rots you from the inside out. Eats away at you. After a few agonizing cycles, I had no choice. It was life or limb. So the girl did the only thing that she could do, and I commend her for her steady hands and even steadier nerve."

"I'm sorry," you murmured. "I can't even imagine what that was like."

Ezra simply shrugged. He had a distant look in his eyes, as if he were trying to distance himself from the whole story. "She saved my life, such as it is, but in doing so, she created a whole new ordeal. See, no one wants to hire a one-armed harvester. Major liability, apparently. So here I am."

"And what about the girl?"

Ezra chuckled and hummed as he reminisced. "Cee is much better off than when I first met her. Went back to Central for school. She drops by every now and then - makes sure I'm not getting into any trouble."

He leaned back on his elbow and looked out across the creek to where the boys were fishing and smiled in spite of the story he just regaled you with.

"What is it?" you asked softly, not wanting to break his thought.

He shook his head and smiled slightly. "Nothing. It's nothing."

Not once had you ever heard Ezra not want to continue talking. It stunned you and you almost wondered if you'd done something to offend him. Perhaps asking him about what happened brought up too many bad memories for him to handle.

But Ezra turned back to you then and rested his hand on the blanket between you, picking idly at a loose string. "What are you gonna do when you get home? Back to your old life?"

You hadn't expected him to ask that question, and quite frankly, you didn't really have an answer.

"I'm not sure," you said, drawing your knees to your chest. "I suppose I'll go back to my duties as duchess. The children will go back to their lessons and I will simply pick up where I left off, I suppose..." You trailed off, suddenly realizing how boring it all seemed compared to the last few weeks on the farm. Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes and you turned your head and brushed them away, not wanting him to see.

"Do you want that?" he asked softly.

"O-of course I do," you stammered, your hand still raised to try and hide your tears. You found yourself caught off guard by his question. "Why wouldn't I? The children, they--"

"Hey now," Ezra soothed, reaching for your hand. "It's alright. I didn't mean to upset you. I understand you need to go back. I do."

You looked at him and sighed. There had been a weight on your chest for some time that you couldn't place the source of. Perhaps it was years of expectations and unreasonable standards you had been held to since you were Marie's age. Perhaps it was the constant pressure for you to raise your children like your husband hadn't died, that he was only away for a while. Whatever that weight was, it vanished as soon as Ezra squeezed your hand.

"You don't need to let anyone tell you what to do," he said, turning on the blanket to look at you. "Or where to go, how to raise your own children, anything like that. You are free to make your own choices, Princess."

"How is it you always know just what to say?" you murmured, your voice thick with held back tears. "I am finding that to be true, though. These last few weeks have shown that to me. I am trying to be a good mother to my children."

"You are," he said softly. Ezra smiled and brushed his thumb against your knuckles. He looked down at your hands and then up at your face. It looked like he wanted to say something else, but he was interrupted by a triumphant cheer from the river. You both looked over at the boys, who were rushing back towards the bank, one fish dangling from Aiden's hook.

"Mama! Mama!" he cried excitedly as he dashed towards you. "Look, mama! I caught a fish!"

Both you and Ezra stood up to meet him as he rushed over to show you his catch. The fish was a little longer than the one Ezra had caught, still with those shiny pink and green scales.

"Oh, that's wonderful, darling!" you said, bending down to admire the fish. "He's beautiful, isn't he? We will have a feast, won't we?"

Aiden grinned and held the fish aloft for you and Ezra to look at. He looked incredibly pleased with himself.

"You mean you didn't catch anything bigger?" Ezra teased, parroting Aiden's earlier exclamation. He flashed you a wink and then laughed at the flabbergasted expression on Aiden's face. "I'm just pulling your leg, son, don't worry. You did an excellent job. Go ahead and throw it in this here cooler so we can take it home later."

Aiden carefully removed the hook like Ezra had taught him and placed it gently in the cooler beside Ezra's. He grabbed his fishing pole and looked up at you expectantly. "I'm gonna go see if I can catch more!"

"Be careful, my darling," you called after him. "Don't slip!"

As the day wore on, the cooler slowly filled with fish. Most were a standard size, according to Ezra, and some were smaller, about the size of your hand. Both were exceptional in taste as far as river fish went, or so Ezra claimed. You figured you could make just about anything palatable with the dried herbs from the garden.

Late in the afternoon, long after lunch had been eaten and the children had exhausted themselves from playing in the river, it was getting ready to go back to the farm. You had to stop yourself from calling it home when collecting the children. No need to get their hopes up, you figured. Later tonight after the children were put to bed, you and Ezra would need to have a long conversation about getting you all home.

Henry patiently helped you fold up the picnic blanket and gently placed back into the basket for you. He even made sure everything had been picked up from the surrounding area so you wouldn't have to. Earlier, he had caught a few fish himself, but quickly abandoned his fishing for exploring the surrounding area.

"Maybe I could find a lost civilization!" he had said before running off. He returned a while later, his pockets stuffed with rocks and flowers. Clutched in his fist were several puffy white flowers and he handed them to you with a dramatic sweeping bow that had made you laugh. You made sure to promise him that you would be careful with them until you reached the house.

You picked up the picnic basket and gently took hold of Marie's hand as you guided her to walk in front of you towards the little path you'd traveled earlier that morning. It wasn't a far walk from the farm, but you still didn't want to risk her getting lost.

Ezra dragged the cooler behind you two, the boys hanging back with him. They loved talking to Ezra as they walked - he often pointed out animal burrows or old gem deposits from back when Muir was a mining planet. There was a little rope bridge that was suspended over a rather high gully as the river wound its way through the forest.

"Go on, little bug," you urged, nudging Marie to cross. She whined and hesitated for a moment before she crossed, the bridge shaking and swaying as she ran. You looked back to make sure Ezra and the boys were behind you before you crossed, not wanting to leave them too far behind.

As you spotted them coming around the small turn in the path, you began to cross the bridge yourself. The wood creaked and groaned under your weight as you neared the halfway point.

You stepped forward, wanting to get off the bridge as quickly as you could. The wood suddenly splintered and cracked and fell apart under you.

For an instant, you were weightless, suspended in midair. You saw Marie's horrified expression as she watched you from the far side. Then you were falling, falling... falling. You couldn't even scream, your breath caught in your throat and unable to escape.

You heard the children scream in terror as you plunged into the river. Above their cries, you heard Ezra shouting your name. Not your title, not your nickname. Your name. He sounded terrified, unable to do anything but watch you fall into the water. You couldn't swim, you'd never learned how. You didn't know how this was going to end.

You hit the water with a violent crash and as you fell deeper into the water, you frantically thrashed your arms and legs, hoping you would be able to propel yourself to the surface. After an eternity, you touched down on the muddy river bottom. You felt something grab your leg and you quickly tried to pull it free. A sharp pain shot up from your ankle and you thrashed in the grip of whatever held you there. The water was cold and murky, hindering any attempts to try and free yourself. The icy water filled your lungs as you screamed for help, the bubbles the only indication of any sound leaving you.

As darkness closed in on you, your only thoughts were of who was going to look after your children? Would your mother ever find out what happened? Will Ezra be alright?

Ezra...

********

TAGLIST: If you want to be added, please let me know! @phoenixhalliwell @the-feckless-wonder @lestrange2703 @huliabitch @miscellaneous-mando @gallowsjoker

#prospect #ezra x reader #ezra x you #no use of y/n #my writing #pedro pascal #poetry for an heiress

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taeken-my-heart · 5 years ago

Text

Moirai Chapter 13

Summary: On your 18th birthday a name appears on your wrist. The name of your soulmate. It’s a momentous day that everyone looks forward to, but you’ve always brushed aside; refusing to believe in a fickle mistress called destiny. But what happens when on the morning of your 18th birthday you wake to find the name of your mortal enemy? Jeon Jungkook.

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader Genre: Soulmates au/ Enemies to lovers au. Angst, fluff, bickering, romance, eventual smut.

Word Count: 5651

Chapter notes: This has got some nice bits...but it’s also got some pretty good angst at the end. It will all be OK <3

+++++++++

“So, I was thinking,” Jimin began, leaning against the door frame as you finished your mascara, peering up at his reflection. “There’s this farmers market going on, on 5th and Waller, and I’ve heard really good things about this Greek gyro stand there. Let’s go try some.”

“You hate trying new food.” You frowned, peering over your shoulder at him and he huffed, coming to stand behind you, hands kneading into your shoulders.

“Not all the time,” he whined, “Come on. We both have the evening off, I thought it might be fun to go do this together. Tomorrow is the last night and you work so let’s go now.”

“Fine.” You replied, standing and dusting off your jeans. “But food is on you.”

“Yes ma’am!” He saluted, kissing your cheek and grabbing your hand. “Don’t even bother getting your purse, I’ll take care of everything.”

The market was within walking distance of your apartment so the two of you made your way leisurely towards 5th and Waller, chatting absentmindedly as the early evening breeze swept through your hair.

The evening was pleasant, the sun drooping low on the horizon. The hair at the nape of your neck was warm with perspiration and you tugged at the bottom of your shirt to fan yourself. The market came into view, colorful tented booths lining the street. The first stand caught your eye and you navigated Jimin towards it, arm linked through his.

“Wow, look at this dress! It’s super cute. What do you think?” You held the sunflower yellow up against your body and Jimin looked you up and down, nodding.

“You look like spring vomited all over you.”

“That’s my favorite look.” You hummed, turning to the vender and inquiring after the price. After Jimin had paid (because he’d foolishly insisted that he’d take care of everything) you took the bag you were handed and linked your arm back through his.

“Y/N?” Someone inquired from behind you and both you and Jimin turned around. Your heart sank into the pit of your stomach, eyes landing on the dark mop of hair you’d never imagined you’d see outside of work. Now, of course, you realized that was foolish. You lived in the same city, naturally it was a possibility.

“What are you doing here?” You asked, sharper than you’d meant.

“I live in this neighborhood,” Jungkook said, eyebrow raised at you. He glanced at your arm, thread through the arm of your boyfriend, before turning his gaze toward him. “You must be Jimin.”

“Ah, yes, I see my reputation precedes me. You are?”

“I’m Dr.-”

“Kim!” You said loudly and both Jimin and Jungkook turned to blink owlishly at you. “This is Dr. Kim.”

Jungkook looked back at Jimin, smiling tightly before extending his hand. “Taehyung Kim. Nice to meet you.”

“Oh, Taehyung!” Jimin grinned, “Y/N tells me you’re a really gifted pathologist.”

“Ah, she shouldn’t have.” Jungkook crooned, switching his gaze to you and you smiled, tense.

Laughing, you squeezed Jimin’s forearm nervously. “He really is great, but honey, we’ve really gotta get going or we’ll miss the gyros. I’m sure Taehyung has somewhere to be too.”

“Actually, I was heading to the gyro stand myself.” Jungkook smiled, “I’ve heard really good things about the quality of their meat.”

“Well then, please, join us. I would love to hear how Y/N behaves at work.”

You were dying, Jimin dragging you along by his side as the three of you resumed your walk further into the market. “So, remind me what you do for work,” Jungkook said, “I know Y/N has told me before, but I’m afraid I have forgotten.”

“I’m a divorce attorney at Swanson and Heath.”

“Ah, must be a difficult business.”

“No more difficult than being a doctor, I imagine. Though I’m not often faced with life or death.”

Jungkook nodded, dodging a lady yelling at her little boy off to the side of the stands, hair tousled and looking like he’d been rolling in the dirt. “They’re difficult in different ways, that’s for sure. Do you see many soulmates in your office?”

You tried not to squeeze Jimin’s bicep in your stress. You glanced over at Jungkook who looked the picture of curious innocence and tried not to glare.

“I can’t say we see a lot, but we have seen a couple in the five years that I’ve been there. It’s not unheard of, but it is pretty rare.”

“Guess there’s something to be said for the soulmate attachment.” Jungkook said; nonchalant.

Jimin shrugged, your arm raising with the motion. “I guess if you buy into that type of thing.”

Jungkook looked between the two of you, smile quirking at the corner of his lips. “I’m a big believer in soulmates; always have been. I think, like every relationship, it takes some work, but I’m willing to put in the work.”

You frowned, following Jimin around the corner and you could see the gyro stand come into view, line long, but likely worth it.

“Have you met your soulmate yet?” Jimin asked, just as the three of you stepped into the line and stopped. You looked at Jungkook, eyes wide as you tried to communicate to him how brutally you would strangle him if he outed you.

Jungkook smiled sadly, shaking his head. “Ah, life hasn’t given us the opportunity to really connect yet. I’m hopeful for the future.”

“Well I’m rooting for you.”

“I appreciate that.” Jungkook grinned and you just wanted to shrivel up and disappear. If only Jimin knew what he was rooting for.

“So, how’d you hear about this market?” Jimin asked.

“I actually only live about a block away so I’ve been seeing the posters around for the last week and it got me interested. I’m pretty new to the area,” at your sharp, panicked expression, he backtracked, “this neighborhood, I mean, and so I thought it would be a good idea.”

“Ah, did you move recently?”

Jungkook nodded, “into this neighborhood, yeah. It’s been a pretty positive move so far. Much nicer apartment than my last.”

You could see the line Jungkook was toeing, trying not to outright lie about everything and you felt a little bad. You were the one who’d called him by the name of another colleague, but you weren’t ready to tell Jimin yet. You just knew he wouldn’t be happy.

“So, have you been seeing anyone? While you wait for your soulmate?” Jimin asked, cheeks pinched at the thought. He really did hate the idea of soulmates and everything they represented, but he was too nice a guy to mock other people’s dreams and ambitions. At least not to their face.

“No,” Jungkook shook his head, “not really. I dated casually in college but nothing every really stuck and eventually I just realized that I already had someone special that I was willing to work for.” He tapped his wrist, looking up at you and your eyes locked, heart beating anxiously against your rib cage.

In a dark corner somewhere inside you, where you’d locked that same dream away, it leapt eagerly, beating against the doors of its prison. You had wanted that too…maybe you still did.

The line moved forward and you switched your gaze away from the heat of his intensity, watching as a couple walked past you with their recently purchased gyro. Your mouth watered a little.

“So, you’re a romantic?” Jimin asked and before you could stop yourself, you were scoffing.

“Yeah, when he was a kid, he used to think he’d hear a bell when he met his soulmate. It’s from an anime or something.”

Both Jimin and Jungkook looked at you in surprise. “Did you know Taehyung as a kid?” Jimin asked, “I thought you said you met at the hospital.”

Internally kicking yourself, you tried your best to smile. “That’s just something he’s told me before. These kinds of conversations come up sometimes.”

“I guess.” Jimin nodded and you could see Jungkook’s struggle not to laugh.

“Yeah, I was a bit of a nerd as a kid.” He chuckled, “Never really grew out of the romantic side, although I was kind of an idiot for a few years. You know how teenagers are.”

Jimin laughed, nodding. “Yeah, there was a week straight in elementary school where we learned about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and I was convinced that, that was my calling, literally dressed up as a knight every day for a month.”

You burst out laughing, griping his arm tight. “No way! You never told me that.”

“Yeah,” he chuckled, “not exactly my proudest moment. Didn’t really think that was the story to try and woo you with.”

“Fair enough.” You grinned.

It was your turn in line so you and Jimin both stepped forward, glancing over the menu quickly before making your selections and paying. You stepped off to the side, laying your head against Jimin’s shoulder and waiting for your food to be ready.

Jungkook came to stand beside the two of you once again, striking up conversation with Jimin as you linked your fingers with the later, playing with the knuckles on his hand to distract yourself. This was a very weird situation; to be trapped in the center of a conversation between your boyfriend and you’re your soulmate. You were really grateful that so far Jungkook hadn’t said anything.

After spending the next hour weaving your way through booths and chatting in your small group, Jimin expressed his interest in returning home. Tomorrow was officially the weekend and after a really early morning and long day at the office he was about ready to collapse.

“Well it was really nice to meet you, Jimin.” Jungkook smiled, extending his hand for a handshake.

“Likewise, Taehyung.”

As Jimin and you began to move away from him, you glanced over your shoulder at Jungkook who waved you a small goodbye. “Hold on.” You said softly to Jimin and he stopped with a nod.

You walked over to Jungkook pausing as you scanned his face carefully. “Thank you, Jungkook.” You whispered. “I’m sorry you had to lie; I just haven’t felt ready to tell him yet that…well that you’re back in my life. I promise I’ll tell him later. I just don’t want him to leave me. I love him.”

Jungkook nodded, his face a careful mask over his emotions and you waved softly, backing away. After walking back to Jimin and moving towards home again you glanced back one more time to find Jungkook still standing there, watching as you rounded the corner.

Saturdays were one of your least favorite shifts to work (aside from the full moon because that crap was real) for all the obvious reasons, but also you were typically working 12-hour shifts and today was no different. It was 6 hours in and you were already tired.

Jungkook’s welcome party had started an hour ago and even though you’d had opportunities, you hadn’t been brave enough to go in yet. You’d seen his parents through the doorway and had been tempted to go say hello…but then what? Stand there awkwardly while you all thought the same thing? Standing next to your soulmate but not doing anything about it. No thanks.

The intensity of the shame was too much to bear.

You were stood by the nursing desk, trying to kill some extra time by flipping through the charts of one of your patients when Lizzy caught you.

“There you are!” She called and you stood up straight, smiling over your shoulder at her. “What are you doing out there? There’s free food in the break room, you know. They have French fries, Y/N, French fries!”

You chuckled rolling your eyes and leaning your elbows against the counter as you turned to face her. “Careful now, you just might start a stampede with your volume.”

“Come on, let’s go eat.” Lizzy said, threading her arm through yours and you balked at the idea, attempting to pull your arm away but she clung tight.

“I can’t, I’m busy.” You lied and Lizzy’s face darkened.

“Really? Busy reading Mrs. Chapelman’s chart for the 6th time in an hour? I’ve been watching you, Y/N.”

You huffed a sigh, tugging at your arm again and this time Lizzy relinquished her hold. “Well that’s not creepy.” You muttered, “I’m just not really feeling hungry.”

“Then come socialize.”

“Or social.”

Lizzy crossed her arms over her chest. “Seriously, what is going on with you? You barely know Dr. Jeon, why are you acting like this? It’s kind of childish.”

You frowned over at your friend, fingers tapping at the desk behind you. “You don’t even know what happened between us or anything so that’s pretty rich.”

“Yeah, because you won’t tell me anything!” Lizzy fumed, “it hasn’t been from lack of trying on my part. He’s a really nice guy so I really don’t get this grudge you seem to have against him.”

“If I go in there, can we stop talking about Jungkook?” You sighed with a rolled of your eyes. Lizzy examined you carefully and you fought the urge to fidget under her gaze.

“First name basis, huh?”

“Oh my gosh, Lizzy!” You laughed. “Seriously. I’ll go in if we stop talking about him.”

“Fine,” she sniffed, grabbing your wrist, “but at some point, you’re going to have to tell me what’s going on. I’ve been pretty patient, but you know I’m a nosy s.o.b and you haven’t been sharing your gossip.”

Just as the two of you stepped into the room Lizzy’s pager beeped and she looked down at it, groaning. “I’ve gotta go, but you need to at least go say hi!” She insisted, pointing her finger at you.

She stomped her way out the door and you tried to carefully follow after before anyone else could see you, but it was too late. Jungkook’s eyes skimmed the room, landing on you and he grinned, calling your name and waving his hand over his head. His parents stood beside him, dressed in simple but classy dress clothes and you made your way towards them, Mrs. Jeon holding her arms open for you.

“Y/N!” She cooed, pulling you into her embrace, “how are you? It’s been so long since we’ve seen you!”

You hugged Mr. and Mrs. Jeon before taking the drink Jungkook handed you and smiling at his parents. “Wow, it really has been so long. Like 9 years, right? Can you believe it?”

“You should come visit your parents more often.” Mrs. Jeon scolded and you nodded, embarrassed.

“You’re right, I haven’t been out that way in too long. Just seems like there’s always an emergency that needs attending to here.”

You all chuckled and Mr. Jeon wrapped his arm around your shoulders again, squeezing. “How have you been? What have you been doing?”

“I’ve been good; just working mostly. Trying to find that work life balance.”

“Are you excited for your sister’s wedding? It’s coming up really soon, just over two months, right?”

“That’s right!” You smiled, one hand sliding into the pocket of your scrubs and you took a sip of your drink. It was fruity and light; maybe passionfruit. “Two months and one week officially. Ella called me this morning to threaten my life if I don’t wear the shoes she’s ordered for me.”

Jungkook laughed and you smiled up at him. “That sounds like something she’d say.”

“Well then you’d better wear the shoes.” Mrs. Jeon chuckled, taking a bite of her food. “You should get some, by the way,” she said, pointing down at her plate, “They did not skimp on taste.”

Jungkook motioned for you to walk passed him and you bowed your head in thanks, moving towards the table with him right behind you. “How was the rest of your night last night?” He asked, dropping a couple drumsticks on his plate and scanning the rest of the table for what he wanted next.

You grabbed a plate yourself, heading straight for the fried rice, allowing the grumbling in your stomach to make decisions for you. “It was good; very casual. We ordered in some dessert, binge watched a few episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and then went to bed early.”

“On a Friday night?” He chuckled and you turned to him, smiling.

“Well Jimin stayed up a little later than me working on one of his cases, but I have a 12 hour shift today so I wanted to be well rested.”

“Fair enough. Glad I have today off.”

“Don’t rub it in.” You complained and he grinned. You stood by the table as you ate; time was limited so you wanted to shove as much in as you could while you could.

“Is Jimin coming as your plus one to the wedding?” Jungkook asked, chewing on one of the drumsticks on his plate and you looked up at him, nodding.

“Yeah, that’s the plan. Unless something crazy comes up at work, of course, but that’s doubtful.”

“I bet your family is really excited to see you. Has it really been 9 years since you’ve been back home?”

“Well, no,” you shook your head, “just 9 years since I’ve happened to see your parents. I’ve definitely been back home but it’s always been when they were out of town or schedules just didn’t match up.”

“Yeah, they’re out of town a lot,” he agreed, grabbing a roll from the pile on the table, “That’s my dream for retirement.”

“To travel?” You asked, looking up at him and he nodded.

“Yeah, everywhere I can get to. I wanna see the whole world. What about you? Are you interested in travel?”

Jungkook’s parents were talking to Dr. Kim a few feet away and you watched them for a moment in thought. You wondered what they thought about all of this. Jungkook’s job, how far he’s come, this hospital, the fact that you worked here…just you in general. You’d never felt like your relationship with them suffered, but you knew, even if they didn’t say it, that they wanted you and Jungkook to be together.

Sometimes…when you weren’t paying attention to how your thoughts strayed, you wished that it could be that simple. That old wounds would heal and maybe some how things would work out. Life never worked how you thought it would, though.

“I mean, yeah, definitely.” You nodded, turning back to look at Jungkook. His hair was pushed back and away from his face and you could see that he had a mild undercut. You wondered if that was new. “Who doesn’t want to see the world? If only money allowed.”

“I’m a big believer in the fact that it’s not money that holds us back, more like lack of time and the will to make the sacrifices needed to save. One time, in college, my parents told me that they were going to go visit family in Korea in the spring. I only had about 5 months to save so I literally stopped spending money on things that weren’t necessary and saved a ton. It just took a lot of dedication.”

“Doesn’t that take some fun out of life, though? What if I want to go to lunch?” You grinned and he smiled back.

“Depends where your priorities lie, I suppose. I was willing to put off a few every day activities for 2 weeks of adventure. It was pretty worth it in my books.”

You sighed, taking a large sip of your drink and Jungkook watched your throat bob as he waited to hear what was on your mind. “Do you ever take a break from being obnoxiously good at all things?” You teased and he grinned, shrugging.

“There’s no rest for the brilliant.”

You chuckled, rolling your eyes and smacking his arm. “You’re so full of yourself.” Just then your pager beeped and you frowned, throwing away your empty plate. “Duty calls. I’m gonna go say goodbye to your parents.”

Jungkook nodded and you made you way over to bid your goodbyes before heading back out into the hallway and over to the labor ward. They were a little short tonight and needed someone to administer an epidural.

You had a cesarean section in an hour anyway so it was probably better to stay close to the area. Someone calling your name made you pause and you turned to find Jungkook jogging towards you. “Hey, sorry, I know you’re busy. My parents are leaving back home tomorrow night and they were wondering if you had any free time tomorrow, they want to take you out to eat.”

“Just me and your parents?” You asked, eyebrow raised and he chuckled, running his fingers through his hair and looking down at the ground.

“Well, no, I’d be there too.”

You scratched at your pant leg in thought, “Well, I’m working tomorrow night and into Monday morning so I could really only do something in the morning or early afternoon.”

“What about brunch? Would you be available for that?” He suggested, eyebrows raised.

“Sure, I think I can swing brunch,” You shrugged, “I’ve really gotta run, though.”

“Well how can I get a hold of you to tell you the details?” He asked as you began to move away and you stopped.

You looked around before grabbing a marker from the nurse’s desk next to you and reaching for his hand, scribbling your number down in his palm. “There,” you looked up at him, lips quirking up. “Problem solved.”

You placed the marker back in its place before nodding and turning around, walking around the corner and away from the man who had now made a habit of making your heart race.

When your shift was over you made your way wearily to your car, chucking your bag into the passenger seat and turning the key in the ignition; the car whirring to life noisily. It was only 7:15 but you’d been working for 12 hours straight and right now, you thought your feet might actually fall off.

The drive home was quiet. No music to disturb, rush hour long over. The quiet was nice; peaceful after a day of emotional turmoil and emergency surgeries. You enjoyed your drives home; like a reset of your emotional state, allowing you to breathe and feel human again. At least until the next shift.

Sometimes working in medicine, you did feel like a robot. It could become all too easy to switch off your emotions, especially in the cases when someone died in your care. Having to tell families that someone they’d trusted you with was gone…it was honestly the worst part of your job. All the monitoring and work in surgery was daunting, yes, but it usually paid off with a healthy person at the end.

But sometimes it didn’t.

Those moments made you bleed red, like somehow you’d died instead, lost a piece of your soul with the person you couldn’t protect. You’d seen many really good doctors just switch off; self-preservation, as it were. You understood it; that need to protect your own heart. It was tempting, sometimes, to want to switch off and just become robotic. Get the job done and don’t lose any of yourself in the process.

That’s not how it worked, though. In a choice like that, you always lost more of yourself when you chose to stop feeling. Choosing to embrace the emotion, you liked to believe it made you a more empathetic person. You wanted to grieve with those who were grieving; show them that they weren’t alone.

It was draining, though.

After parking your car and switching off the engine, you slid your bag back over your shoulder and made your way towards the elevator. You locked your car from over your shoulder.

The hallway was relatively quiet this evening, which was nice. Usually you could hear your neighbors trying to corral their two young children into their nighttime routine. Whatever it was, the kids hated it and you got to hear about it every night. You smiled at the thought, slipping your key into the lock of your front door and making your way into the apartment.

The house was quiet but the lights were on. “Jimin?” You called, making your way towards the living room.

He sat on the couch, eyes trained down on the floor and something about his silence was earie. Something felt…off.

“So, something really interesting happened today.” Jimin said, lips pursed as he picked at the fluff of one of your couch cushions. From the look on his face, it seemed like that something wasn’t a good thing.

“Oh?” You said, fingers griping tightly at the strap of your satchel “What happened?”

“I met a man today, at the store, we got chatting and we figured out that you both work together. His name was Taehyung Kim. You know what’s particularly interesting?” You heart plummeted as he looked up at you, face ridged from his emotion. “He looked nothing like the Taehyung Kim I met.”

There was silence for what felt like forever, a sharp stillness as Jimin watched you carefully, gauging your reaction.

“Who did I meet last night, Y/N?” He asked and you couldn’t help the tears as they welled in your eyes. “Who was that?”

He stood and your arm went limp, your bag sliding from your shoulder and onto the floor. “It was Jungkook.” You whispered.

“Who?” Jimin asked, voice sharp and you felt a tear slip over and onto your cheek.

“Jungkook.”

“How long has he been back?” The stone in his voice was terrifying.

“It’s been three weeks.” You mumbled, mouth wet with emotion.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jimin snapped, pacing across the room angrily, “for weeks you’ve been working with him and you never said a word!”

“I’m sorry!” You cried, “I really didn’t want to worry you. There’s nothing going on between us, I swear, we’re just coworkers. You know how the soulmates thing works, he and I are always going to have our lives revolve around each other.”

“Do you want to be with him?” He asked tersely.

“No!” You insisted, coming to stand in front of him, gripping his forearms.

“Does he want to be with you?” He asked softly.

You paused, not really sure of the answer. While he hadn’t exactly expressed his interest in words directly to you, his actions seemed to indicate that, that might be something on his mind. Your silence was all Jimin needed.

“Great.” Jimin replied sourly, “I guess this is it then, right? Gonna leave me for your soulmate?”

“No!” You balked, pulling him to you as he tried to turn away, “Jimin, you know I don’t believe in the soulmate thing. Just because his name is on my wrist doesn’t mean he suddenly adds value to my life; he never has. I don’t want to be with him, I want to be with you. I love you.”

Jimin frowned and your heart stuttered slightly in your chest; he almost looked…guilty. “I’ve gotta get some air.” He muttered, turning and storming from the apartment before you could stop him.

It had been three hours since Jimin had left, insisting he needed air. You were beginning to think he’d gone to a friend’s house when suddenly the keys in the lock roused your attention. You watched from your spot at the kitchen table as Jimin walked in, dropping his keys and his jacket on the console table and running his hands along his jeans before shoving them in fists into his pockets.

“Are you ok?” You asked softly, clutching tighter to your mug. Jimin took a deep breath, walking slowly into the kitchen but pausing in the doorway. Something wasn’t right.

“We need to talk.” He said, leaning against the door jam and your heart seized in your chest. You motioned for him to take the seat beside you and he moved slowly, sliding down onto the chair and folding his hands in front of him on the table. “I haven’t been 100% honest with you.” He said, gaze trained on the divots of the oak table you were both sitting at. Your stomach rolled uncomfortably but you waited for him to continue. “I tried to fight it for a while, tried to practice what I preach…but I’ve reached a point where I realize I just can’t anymore.”

“Tried to fight what?” You whispered. You were terrified. You’d heard this story before and it didn’t end well for you.

“I met Molly.” Jimin mumbled sadly, glancing up at you and you could feel your heart shatter. 8 years together, a lifetime of future plans already made suddenly evaporated.

“Ok.” You murmured hoarsely. You could feel the tears already pricking at your eyes. It wasn’t fair, what had you ever done to deserve this sort of heart break? Each guy you’d dated who’d insisted he didn’t believe in soulmates always seemed to change their tune once they’d met them. It was never ending disappointment.

“You remember that crazy couple that’s been going through my firm to get a divorce? Always screaming and asking for emergency meetings? Turns out the wife’s maiden name is Fisher.”

Molly Fisher. It was burned into your mind along with the skin of Jimin’s wrist, a constant reminder that he was never really yours to begin with…just like the name on your own wrist was a reminder that in the end, you weren’t really any bodies. It hurt so badly. You weren’t equipped to handle this sort of pain; how could you just pretend the last 8 years hadn’t happened? How could you watch the love of your life leave you for no other reason than the fact that the universe deemed it so?

"I thought you didn't believe in soulmates?" You mumbled. Your mouth felt heavy with emotion and tears were streaming down your cheeks.

"I didn't." Jimin sighed, "Until I met mine. I don't know how Jungkook did it, knowing you for so long and just giving you up. I've only known Molly three weeks and I can't imagine trying to breath without her."

You couldn't help the sob that escaped you and Jimin's bottom lip quivered at the sound. "I'm so sorry." He choked.

You nodded soundlessly, trying to regain your composure. “I know you are.”

“I never meant for this to happen!” Jimin cried, reaching out and taking your hand in his own. “I love you; you know I love you...but I can’t deny that it’s different. The way I feel about you and the way I feel about her are…” he paused at the trembling of your bottom lip and he looked down at your hands, sniffing, “it’s just something I can’t really ignore anymore.”

“I understand.” You said, standing and wiping at your tear stained cheeks, sniffing noisily as you tried to stop the wave of emotion that was overcoming you. “You should probably go, though, I don’t think your soulmate would like you being here with me.” You walked towards the living room, heart seizing as you heard Jimin cry louder.

“What do you want me to do?” He sobbed, standing and coming to hover at the kitchen door, “what am I supposed to do in this situation? Just tell me and I’ll do it!” He looked half out of his mind and in that moment, though your heart was still bleeding in the center of your chest, you felt immense pity for this man that you loved. He was torn between two horrifyingly difficult choices. Stay with the woman he was in love with and deny the pull to his soulmate, or give you up and follow his destiny with a woman he already loved so much more than he could express? You could already see that intense love on his face, the one they always talked about. No matter what he did, someone was going to get hurt.

And it looked like it was going to be you.

“You should go to her.” You mumbled, “I can’t keep you…I have to believe that I love you enough to let you go.”

“Don’t say that.” Jimin frowned, “I don’t want you to let me go.”

“But you want to be with Molly.” You said it as though it were a question, though you knew it was also fact. Jimin’s frown deepened because he couldn’t deny it. “You can’t have us both, Jimin, it’s greedy and not fair. I’m not willing to share you so you have to choose.”

Jimin stared at you in silence and you nodded, pursing your lips. “I’m going to stay with a friend tonight. You can get your stuff together and do whatever. We’ll sort out the lease on this apartment later. Right now, I just really need to go.”

“Y/N!” He called as you yanked open the door. You turned to look at him over your shoulder and he sighed, eyes bloodshot with tears. “What am I supposed to do without you?”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” You whispered, “Goodbye, Jimin.”

The evening was surprisingly cool for the time of year; though the summer had come and gone, the days were still warm and sticky. You wished you’d brought your jacket but there was no way you were going back to the apartment now. You needed time to breathe and Jimin needed time to pack.

You felt like your heart was splintering all over again at the thought of him. You needed comfort. Food, you needed food. Your favorite diner was just around the corner and you picked up your steps, making your way through the door with a jingle of the bell and you smiled meekly at the hostess as she greeted you.

“Table for one?” She smiled and you nodded, following after her. She led you to your favorite table, pushed back against the wall and with a view out into the city. Leaving you with the menu and a promise to bring you a cup of hot chocolate pronto, you sighed, pushing your nose deep into the menu and scanning for something that would help you feel less miserable.

Maybe pancakes.

The sound of someone sliding into the vinyl seat across from you roused your attention and you looked up to find Jungkook, doe eyes wide and smiling as he surveyed you. He held in his hand a coffee mug and you eyed it wearily.

“Coffee at 10:30pm on a Saturday?” You asked and his smile deepened.

“Decaf.” When you said nothing he continued, “So what brings you here so late?”

“Jungkook,” you sighed, setting your menu down heavily, “do you need something?”

“I just thought you could use some company.” He replied and you frowned.

“Well, no offense, but I’ve had a pretty terrible night and you are kind of the last person I’d seek comfort from.”

You felt bad, Jungkook actually looked a little hurt and you closed your eyes, rubbing at them in frustration. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I’ve just had a really bad night.”

“Is it anything I can help with?” He asked carefully and you sighed again, staring down at the menu.

“Not really.” You shrugged.

“Where’s Jimin tonight?” Jungkook asked. You knew he meant well, was trying to distract you from your thoughts…if only he’d known how poor that conversation starter was.

“At home packing, I presume.” You muttered weakly.

“Packing?” You could hear Jungkook’s discomfort.

“It would be weird to continue to live with one another after breaking up.” You said, feigning a casual air you most certainly did not feel.

“I’m so sorry.” Jungkook mumbled, and really, he did look very sorry, which was more comforting than it should have been.

“That’s what happens when you meet your soulmate, I guess…well, sometimes.” You tried not to look at him, but you could see him shifting uncomfortably in his seat, fingers tapping against his porcelain mug. It was silent for a while before the waitress came, delivering Jungkook’s food and your drink before promising to be back with your food soon.

“Want a fry?” Jungkook asked, pushing his plate towards you and you smiled.

“Sure.” You took a fry from his plate, chewing on the end of it and watching as he took a bite of his burger.

“Look,” he said after he’d swallowed his mouthful and chased it down with a sip of his coffee, “I know we’re not exactly…close, or what not, but if you need a place to stay, I’ve got a spare room, you’re more than welcome to stay the night.”

“That’s very generous of you,” you smiled, “but I’m OK. I’ll just call a friend and ask to spend the night. Beside aren’t your parents with you?”

“No, they wanted to stay in a hotel.” He said, “Are you sure, though? I really won’t bother you. My place isn’t too far away and the guest room has its own bathroom.”

“Thank you, Jungkook, really. I just think, considering our history, it’s probably not the best idea.”

“Can we put history aside for one night?” He asked softly, “I just want to help you.”

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’ll get through this.”

“I know you will.” He replied confidently, “you’re strong, stronger than anyone I know. You’re passionate, intelligent, and kind. It’s not a question of whether you’ll get through it but whether you’ll let people who genuinely care about you help you.”

“And you would consider yourself one of those people?” You questioned, thanking the waitress as she dropped off your pancakes.

“Look, Y/N, I was 18 years old when I made that choice. I was scared and made a rash decision but it doesn’t mean that I never cared. I’ve done a poor job of showing it, but I’ve cared about you my entire life. Please let me help you.”

You chewed on your pancakes slowly as you considered him. Maybe you were being unfair, still holding this grudge against him. The both of you had been just barely 18 and there had been a lot of sudden changes. You weren’t ready to think of him in the context of falling in love, and you probably never would be…but perhaps you could be friends.

Sighing you nodded, “OK. Just for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be back in my apartment, though.”

“Yes, of course!” He beamed and you couldn’t help but smile back.

“Here it is.” Jungkook said softly, flicking on the lights at the front entrance and ushering you through. It was simply furnished, with clean lines and warm tones. It was similar in size to your own apartment, but with a more open plan style. “Let me show you the guest room.”

He led you down a separate hallway, pushing open the door on your right. “It’s nothing, fancy,” he mumbled, rubbing at the back of his neck, “but there’s blankets and pillows, an en suite, and the mattress is pretty comfortable.”

Simple grey’s and browns showcased the room perfectly and you smiled. “It’s great,” you said softly, “thank you.”

“I suppose you don’t have a tooth brush or pajamas, huh?” At the shake of your head he raised one finger, walking quickly back out of the room and you listened to the shuffling sounds at the end of the hallway. “Here,” he said, returning with a towel, a new tooth brush, and a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. “The clothes are washed and clean; I hope they fit. Let me know if you need anything else.”

You smiled, taking the small pile from him and nodding, “thanks, Jungkook.”

After he’d left the room you closed the door, changing into the pajamas provided and going to brush your teeth and wash your face. The shirt was a little too baggy and the shorts sagged on your hips, but you were happy to have clothes to sleep in; you didn’t really fancy sleeping in your jeans or even worse, your underwear. Not with Jungkook around, anyway.

After you’d finished preparing for bed you decided you wanted a glass of water to help you settle down. Stepping back into the hallway you padded slowly towards the kitchen in search of a cup. You hoped Jungkook had retreated to his room but those hopes were quickly dashed as you found him sitting at the kitchen Island, medical book opened across the countertop and laptop attached at the fingers.

He looked up at you in surprise before sitting up straight. “Oh, I’m sorry, did you need me to turn off the lights? I didn’t realize they reached all the way to the bedroom.” He made a move to stand but you motioned for him to sit and he slowly complied.

“No, you’re fine, I actually just wanted a glass of water before bed.”

“Oh, of course. Here, let me get that for you.” He said, pushing off the stool he’d been sat on.

“It’s really not necessary,” you insisted as he rounded the counter, “you’ve already been very kind to me, you can just point me to the cups.”

“Nonsense.” He smiled, pulling a glass from a cupboard above your head and moving to the fridge to get some water. “You’re my guest, let me take care of you. Go ahead and sit down.”

You moved reluctantly to the bar stool next to his, taking a seat and waiting for him to return with your drink. “Thank you.” You said, softly, as he slid the cup into your hands. “So, what are you working on?” You asked, setting your cup down on the counter after a careful sip.

“Just brushing up.” He smiled. “There’s a lot to remember and it’s all kind of overwhelming sometimes.”

You nodded, staring down into your mug. “Yeah, I remember being really intimidated when I first started. Sometimes I still feel a little overwhelmed if it’s a complicated case or something. We walk a fine line between life and death and it’s hard not knowing if you’re being delicate enough.”

“That’s exactly it! That’s why I wanted to be a surgeon, though. Knowing that I can do something to make people’s lives better. Some of the people who end up on that table are going to be having the worst moment of their life and I have the power to make a positive impact. It makes my heart race just thinking about it.”

“Sounds like you chose the right profession.” You smiled, looking over at him and he blushed, bowing his head down into his chest.

“I hope I can make a good doctor.”

“Jungkook…you’re already a good doctor. The fact that you care so much, means something. It’s not easy to look into the faces of the families whose loved ones have died on our tables. There’s going to be times when you just want to give up, but as long as you keep trying and caring the way you do right now, you’ll be successful.”

He smiled, bashful, staring down at the keys on his laptop, fingers tapping gently in thought. “Thanks Y/N, that’s mean a lot…especially coming from you.” He looked up at you and you felt like your heart might seize right in your chest. “You know, since you’re such a good doctor.” He stuttered and you nodded, taking a gulp of water from your cup and standing.

“Thank you, I appreciate that. I should probably get to bed now, it’s…” You sighed, “It’s been a long day.”

Jungkook nodded and you lifted your glass at him in a salute before turning around and walking back into the guest bedroom.

++++

Wow, thank you so much for reading! I'm sorry this one was sad, but it was necessary. After all, this is a Jungkook story, is it not? ;)

Let me know what you think <3

Chapter 12

Chapter 14

#btsbookclub #jungkook scenario #jungkook smut #jungkook angst #jungkook fluff

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