#ever wanted to learn what a vivisection is

[brekitten]

The Therapist

There's a new therapist at school.

Normally this wouldn't really bother Peter at all, since he's never gone to see a shrink in his life and doesn't ever plan on it, but there's something... off about this woman.

She seems unassuming enough at first glance. Red hair, green eyes, bright red lipstick. But there is something in her eyes, something that Peter can only describe as a predator looking at its next prey, when she looks around the school at all of the teenagers milling about. Heck, even the way she walks makes her seem as if she is a predator stalking her prey.

It could always be some kind of power move, Peter reasons. He's met people like that before, who try to intimidate everyone around them into thinking that they are superior, that they are the apex predator and anyone who dares to cross them would pay for it dearly.

But his Spidey Sense went crazy around her.

He tries to brush it off as paranoia. He'd pulled an all-nighter last night in the lab with Tony because neither of them had been able to sleep, and he hadn't been sleeping well even before that. (Funny, how it had all started the night after he first bumped into the new therapist in the halls.) So his Spidey Sense is probably out of wack because he's tired. Simple as that.

But it seems like everyone in the school is depressed. Even Ned, who can't even muster up the energy and enthusiasm to talk about Legos or Star Wars or even the weather. It worries Peter.

Because it all started when that therapist came to the school.

He can't ignore it forever, he knows that. There is only so long his Spidey Sense can tell him that she is danger danger danger before he finally listens. He has to do something to help everyone.

So he researches.

And he falls into the rabbit hole of ghosts and ectoplasm and secret government organizations and the little, unassuming town of Amity Park, Illinois.

He doesn't sleep that night.

When he comes to school the next morning, Dr. Penelope Spectra looks him dead in the eyes, and smiles.

[animal-123-crazy]

Okay listen when one of the biggest plot pieces revolves around nuclear burger sauce…. Yeah its silly

But yknow the entire Freakshow arc still unsettles me a bit. ALSO SPECTRA??? Im pretty sure my innate fear of psychologists stems from THAT. Spectra freaked me out man

[deadsetobsessions]

“Tim. Timmy. Ancients, kid, what are you doing?!”

Danny Phantom smacked away the instinctual terror of seeing an eight year old dangling out of a third story window.

“I gotta go take pictures of Batman and Robin! They’re out tonight!”

Danny thought that his barely healed vivisection wound might bust open from the sheer stress.

“Setting aside how you even know the patrol schedule of honest to god vigilantes, why’d you choose the window? The house is literally empty, just walk out the front door, for Ancient’s sake.”

Tim paused, a motion Danny was overwhelmingly thankful for, and blinked sheepishly.

“Um… for the aesthetic?”

Danny allowed the silence to settle between them before dropping his head into his waiting hands. Tim panicked.

“You- you can’t stop me!”

And yeah, Danny really can’t. In the months he’s been mooching off of the Drakes (not that they’ll notice), Danny’s learned that Tim Drake is nothing but relentless in the pursuit of whatever he sets his mind on. Whether thet might be putting hot chocolate in his cereal (which Danny doesn’t actually mind) or, apparently, stalking a pair of vigilantes.

He wanted to hack into the library cameras? Danny had to hover just to make sure the kid didn’t get caught after arguing for an hour about it.

He walked out of that argument with a loss, yes, but he also let Tim know that Danny cared about him. Danny also walked out of that argument with a new hatred for Janet and Jack Drake and his mind (just as diabolical as Tim’s) whirring with plans to haunt them.

Tim is never ever introducing his new little brother to Tucker. Ever.

“Okay. I don’t want to see you take unnecessary risks, but I’m also aware that I can’t really stop you. So. I’ll go with you.”

Maybe this is like… Tim’s obsession? When he put it that way, Danny lost the fight to prevent this tiny kid from what clearly is the only joy in his poor life.

“But…!” Tim’s eyes darted to Danny’s chest, the vivisection scars still fresh in his mind.

“They’re healed.” Danny pulled his dumbass little brother off the window sill, core settling as Tim follows willingly. “I’ll make us invisible and fly with you behind Batman and Robin so you can get even better shots. You can’t make any noise, though. That camera got a shutter sound, right?”

“Yeah!” Tim’s face brightened and Danny melted. He shoved a bottle of the (incredibly stinky but helpful in a pinch) ecto contaminated tap water into a backpack, along with some snacks and a blanket for when Tim gets cold. Danny’ll be fine, he’s got a Space Core. The cold his kind of his thing.

“Cool. We’ll stay out of earshot. If things starts to get too dicey, we’re heading home, okay?”

“Okay!” The look Tim shot him is full of trust and adoration and it makes Danny’s human heart squeeze painfully. “C’mon! I don’t want to be late!”

“We need to talk about your stalking tendencies later,” Danny said fondly.

“I’m not stalking them! I’m observing them!”

“Uh-huh,” Danny drawled, picking Tim up and making them intangible and invisible. “They’re not a bird observatory and also, even the birds in the observatory knows they’re being watched. Batman and Robin clearly doesn’t.”

Danny felt more than saw Tim’s pout.

He laughs as they fly just below the Gotham-brand of toxic smog. He waves to the City’s Spirit as Tim cranes his head around to catch sight of Batman and Robin.

“There!”

Danny obliged. With Danny’s flight, Tim got much better- much closer- photos than he would have originally.

Danny hung back as the pair of vigilantes swooped down to take care of a mugging.

“Wanna mess with them?” He grinned down at his little brother, canines glinting.

Tim looked up at him, admiration and mischievousness in his gaze. “Yes.”

Gotham parted her clouds in response to their glee.

——

Dick Grayson, AKA Robin, finally understood why criminals are so creeped out by him.

Other than the whole flippy child kicking grown people’s asses and winning thing, obviously (that, and Batman loomed menacingly behind him everytime a criminal even looked at Robin wrong).

Batman had picked up on it first, but the for entirety of their patrol, they kept hearing eerie little giggles and laughter. Haunting them. Never distracting. But persistent. And so creepy. He got goosebumps.

“B, I wanna go home.”

“Hm.” That’s a resounding yes if Dick’s ever heard one.

Maybe Alfred can chase away the giggles and chuckles.

Robin shudders and follows the Bat home.

——

Danny lowered the temperature as he held Tim up near Batman’s cowl so his brother could giggle menacingly. He knew for a fact that any recording device would get completely cram led by the sheer output of ambient ectoplasm he’s emitting. Plus, it freaked Robin out and raised the hairs on the back of the vigilantes’ heads. He tones it down when he noticed Tim rubbing his hands together.

He let out a quiet laugh, enjoying the flight with his brother in his arm and the light of the stars (thanks, Gotham) at his back.

——

Danny: oh, this kid’s got an Obsession, gotta let him do it safely, he’s a liminal from all that tap water

Danny: *forgets Tim isn’t a ghost nor is he from Amity and is therefore extremely breakable*

——

Danny and Tim: doing crime is a good bonding activity

Batman and Robin, who wants to say no it isn’t but they’re literally a pair of illegal vigilantes:

——

Dick as Robin: *cackles*

Tim, learning habits from stalking them: *giggles*

Gotham Criminals: *fear*

[amaramizuki666]

Shared sensation part.3

Danny couldnt feel his link anymore, his bond had completely dissolved when he died. Now even if him and his soulmate reconnected they could never revive their bond.

Danny still only felt numbness, well exept when he got electrocuted, hit with ghost hunting tech, or hurt with ecto plasma. Yeah not the best to feeling to only feel pain, but sometimes danny felt the pain was the only thing that kept him grounded.

It's been 3 years since he became phantom and 2 years since he became ghost king. And danny has learned a lot about being a ghost. Like 1) ghosts where suposed to still have their soulmate in death. The reson Danny aparntly didnt keep his bond was because he was rejected, at least that is what frostbite told him.

2) ghosts are very protective of their soul bonds and danny is no exception to this. He feels his core screaming for its other half every second of every day. Somedays the only thing keeping him going is his protection and space obsession. But still somedays it felt like he was going to go insane.

At one point he tried to order clockwork to tell him where his soulmate was so he could find him and try and convince him they could still be togeather even without the ties of their soul bond. He wanted to tell his soulmate he would do anything for them, he would protect him if he stayed with him no matter the cost.

"Danny?" Sam questions looking at him with concern "you good?". Danny blinked and nodded, they where currently in Danny's lair in the zone because after his parents found out about him being phantom they didnt take it well and let's say the GIW got involved.

"I'm fine sam, I just feel empty" danny says leaning back into his throne. "I understand danny, when the GIW blocked mine and tucker's bond it felt like my world was ripped away, it felt like my soul was in a void, I dont know how you are still sane" sam says sitting in her own throne to his right.

As a members of phantoms council she, tucker, jazz, even wes had their own thrones beside danny. "I'm not sure if I sould call myself sane, my morals have become very sewed to human standards" danny sighed. "Well you got rejected by your soulmate, died, got cloned by a frootloop, and got vivisected by your parents plus some. I'd say it's only fair your morals are fucked" sam states.

Danny chuckled "how is elle?" Sam inquired "oh shes good, in Rome right now" danny says happy to share what is going on with his daughter. Elle was made from his DNA, his ectoplasm, she is his daughter and one of the only reasons he hasn't gone off the deep end yet.

Danny held the goblet of ecto dejecto to his lips when he felt it. Cold and smooth metal in his hand. Danny froze "danny what's wrong?" Sam asked concerned. "Its cold" danny mumbled "what-" "sam I can feel the cold, the texter of the goblet, how-" danny questioned.

He stated at the goblet in his hand in amazement. Danny felt his core whirl in utter joy. "How?" Danny asked no one in particular.

Danny felt it. His bond was back strong and fresh, but that wasnt physicly possable. It goes aginst everything. His soulmate rejected him, he died whith the rejection, it is impossible for their bond to reform. So how is his bond back.

You know what. Danny doesn't care how. He has his other half again. And by the ancients he refuses to loose them again. "Sam tell the others I'm taking momentary leave. You and tucker will be in charge while I'm gone" danny orders and she nods without questions.

Danny rose from his throne. He will fine his soulmate. And nothing was going to stop him.

part. 2

Part 4

[subbyp]

I have this idea for an AU wherein Sanji’s physical Germa modifications kick in during his time starving on the rock, and when he’s like 14 Judge finds out and decides to take him back by force, because if the physical modifications took then surely the mental ones will too and if not there’s always psychological conditioning like what he did to Reiju, right? So Germa rocks up to the Baratie, burns it to the waterline, slaughters the crew (almost) to a man, and drags Sanji back. they don’t realize that Zeff survives, and they probably wouldn’t care if they did. (more fool them)

the mental modifications never kick in, but Sanji learns to act like they do, developing this false persona as a vicious shallow hedonist. he also leans hardcore on his growing resemblance to Sora to get Judge to indulge his whims (no, there’s nothing actually sexual about it, but it is deeply uncomfortable and it’s supposed to be). this is because he’s waiting for a very specific kind of opportunity…..

five years later, the Straw Hat Pirates are in Loguetown, getting ready to scale Reverse Mountain when Luffy fucks up the storefront of a shabby little seafood shack off the main square where Roger was once executed and is enlisted into chore boy duty. he gets to talking about dreams and piracy and sailing with the owner.

“do you have any dreams?” he says, failing to mop the floor.

“I used to have a few,” says the owner.

“not anymore?” says Luffy.

“none of your business,” says the owner.

“you should be my cook!” says Luffy.

“not a chance in hell,” says the owner.

then the shit goes down that leads to Luffy being put up on the block and almost executed. when the Straw Hats flee to the Merry they find the owner standing there waiting for them with a book under his arm.

he explains that he can’t be their cook—he’s too old and too broken, he’s had enough of the Grand Line, and besides staying in Loguetown is the best shot he has at achieving his dream (“I knew you had a dream!” yells Luffy. everyone ignores this), but he’s got a cookbook and nutrition guide he’s been working on and the Straw Hats can have the first draft so they don’t totally die of scurvy and shit if they swear to do him one favor—to, if they ever, out there on the sea, meet a nineteen-year-old kid called Sanji, tell him that Red-Leg Zeff is alive.

“yeah! of course!” says Luffy. “if you tell me what your dream is.”

“to see him walk free,” says Zeff.

—

Zeff’s cookbook keeps the Straw Hats properly nourished. but they barely make it to Sabaody in canon, and here they have one less combatant, so Kuma decides to split the team at Thriller Bark, and instead of sending Zoro to Kuraigana, he sends his unconscious just-bore-Luffy’s-pain ass right onto the Germa 66 flagship.

Judge wants to vivisect Zoro to figure out how a regular human non-DF-user could be so freakshow strong and then turn his head in for the bounty, but Sanji recognizes him as one of the Straw Hats (and thus, one of the liberators of Alabasta) and improvs on the spot that he wants him as a swordsmanship coach (“after all, sir, you want me to improve my swordsmanship”) and, he heavily implies, bed-warmer. thus Zoro wakes up in a Germa 66 infirmary, wounds bandaged, swords gone, and explosive collar on his neck, as the third-born Prince of Germa demands to be allowed to see his new toy alone. (“yes, I’ll be careful with him. I don’t want to break him when I’ve just got him!”)

zoro, having deduced what sanji is alluding to, is about ready to kill him with his bare hands on the spot, but as soon as they’re alone in the room together sanji starts immediately and profusely apologizing for being such a creep. he says he’s not into men (“especially not unwilling ones”) but it was the only way he could think of to get them even occasional privacy, and btw he is probably going to have to claim that he’s doing some unsavory stuff or else Judge might possibly have Zoro killed, but he’ll never lay a hand on Zoro without his consent besides what is strictly necessary to fake it around the Vinsmokes—

at this point Zoro starts to wonder what the hell he’s going on about. Sanji explains the whole thing and says that he’s planning on somehow getting Zoro back to the Straw Hats as soon as he can, and in the meantime he’ll make sure Zoro gets food and medical care and that nobody sells off his swords or anything, but he needs Zoro to do something for him in return:

“I’m going to feed you every bit of knowledge I have about Germa 66, and when you leave here, you need to give that information to someone who can destroy us until not even memories remain.”

[dailyadventureprompts]

The Daily Adventure Prompts Masterpost

After several years of running this blog, it’s become more and more evident that I need some central reference where people can access all my different DM advice posts, important tags, and ongoing series. Sharing my ideas with people and helping to improve the art and craft of being a dungeonmaster was always the point of DAP after all, and its of no help to anyone if the answers to important questions are buried under a hundred or more pages of my rambling.

To that end, I present this post as an ever expanding catalogue of my thoughts. Something that you can page through at your leisure in hopes some of my hardwon lessons will be of use to you.  

DM Advice: The go-to tag for all my rambling on how to improve your d&d game, with some highlights presented here,

My Process

Getting Organized

Basics of Campaign writing

Railroading & Rollercoasters

The “more than you can chew” universal d&d story structure

Ghosts on the Horizon: not getting bogged down with overplanning

Mapmaking 101

Writer’s Block

Better Random Encounters

Better Loredumps and Exposition

Writing Adventures to Make your party care about your world

Series of Interest

The DM Starterpack: Focused on first timers or those who want to re-learn d&d from the ground up this series of posts is intended to give you an idea how to come up with a campaign concept, write a first adventure, run a session zero, and slowly pivot into running a larger campaign.

Tableskills: While a lot of my work focuses on how you can write better stories, these posts talk about being a better storyteller focusing in on the performance art of DMing.

Mechanics: On the flipside, sometimes you need to put on your game designer hat and focus in on ways to make the underlying engine of the game run more smoothly to better facilitate fun and storytelling.

How to Run...: there are certain types of adventure that need more thought put into them then the average monsterhunt or dungeon delve, and so I wrote a series of articles to not only help you write/design them but to pull them off at your table.

Wilderness Exploration

Heists

Naval Combat

Infiltrating a fancy party

Mystery

Airship Adventures

Political Intrigue

Mythology style epic labours

The Loot Overhaul: A series of posts where I focus in on different aspects of d&d’s treasure and item

An overhaul to player wealth & The Economy

Better Loot & Treasure Hoard generation

A case for magic item shops & Item focused treasure hauls

Shopping trips & Group Inventory Management

Making Identifying & Attuning to Items interesting

Crafting Overhaul pt 1: Weapons & Armour

Crafting Overhaul pt 2: Magic & Consumables

Monsters Reimagined: My ongoing delve into d&d’s bad monster lore and how it can be improved. Sometimes it’s because a cool monster is just underwritten, sometimes its because how they’re used in the narrative just doesn’t make sense, sometimes its because there’s decades or even centuries old pro-genocide talking points that we need to unpack.

Footnotes on Foes: For those topics that don’t warrant a full “monsters reimagined” but I still want to give my take on. Fun stuff in there, especially with lesser known monsters that could use a revamp.  

Heavy Topics: Where I deepdrive on the nuance of particular topics, ranging from uncomfortable touchstones in history that are important to my writing to sensitive subjects that you’ll want to discuss with others around your table.

Bad Opinions: Sometimes a take so awful lands in my inbox that I need to hold it up infront of my audience and perform a vivisection. Its part media study, part bloodsport.

Dungeon Design: An attempt to do what the creators of the game have put off for decades (despite being half of the title) and actually provide a coherent framework for step by step dungeon design. After nearly twenty years of banging my head against a wall, it finally seems to have worked.

Planescape: Where I try to add cool new (or revamped) destinations to the tapestry of d&d’s multiverse.

Special mention to “Why I don’t use the Great Wheel Cosmology” as it underscores a lot of my overall problems with d&d’s cosmic lore and its weird moralistic claims.

Deities: A collection of new/overhauled gods focusing on making them represent ideals that people would actually believe in as an embodiment of ideals and narrative themes.

How to use the divine in your game: a story first view of how to use faith, religion, and gods in your campaigns aiming for things more subtle and thematic.

Outer Gods: For when you want to get lovecraftian

Religion is the tag I use to talk about the concept of both faith as a theme in writing, as well as how the organized religion serves as a worldbuilding tool

Adventures by Type: not a comprehensive list

Press Start: Opening adventures for those who want a solid start for future campaigns or adventures

Campaigns: For those who’d like a larger story framework to play with

Adventure Compendium: If you’d like a lot of ideas on the same theme

Dungeon: Need I say More?

Monsterhunt: Facing off against a powerful enemy that has some tricks

Villain: In both Quantity and Quality

Player Home: Every party needs a place to rest their head

Ally: They’re here to help, usually

Patron: Benefactors of the shady and non shady verity

Mystery: Put your Sleuthing Hat on

Thief: Time to steal something

Faction: Larger groups the party can join

Adventures by Environment

Lowland

Swamp

Field

Desert

Wasteland

Highland

Cave

Mountain

Forest

Seaside

Ruin

Settlement

Village

Town

City

[ghostinthegallery]

Re-reading Twice Dead King, the character I was most struck by on a second viewing was Mentep. Now there’s a tragic figure. Simultaneously a mentor, an ally, an antagonist, someone so terribly understandable who I want to smack upside the head for being a lying liar who lies.

Ultimately, Mentep is a penitent. He has committed terrible acts (that we only get scant details of) and he wants to redeem himself. Thanks to his tampering with his own memories, he doesn't fully know what he is repenting for, which puts him in a bind. However, he knows that he played a role in creating the flayer curse/longing sickness, so he goes to a planet where a high concentration of them have gathered and works on his cure. He's respected, he's able to do his work with only occasional interruptions from the local angsty youth. Things are good-ish (until the armada shows up.)

Mentep and Oltyx have a weird relationship. Despite being his normal asshole-teenager self, Oltyx does respect Mentep more than most. Trusts Mentep enough to let the guy perform experimental brain surgery on him. Twice. And Mentep is able to be much more candid with Oltyx in return. He's one of the few consistently calling Oltyx out for his bullshit. On the surface, it is a standard mentor relationship, but what got me on a second reading is that there is hardly a single conversation Mentep has with Oltyx where he isn’t lying to and/or manipulating him.

It starts early with Yenekh. Mentep knows Yenekh has been suffering from the curse, he hasn’t told Oltyx, and when he finally has to tell him, he conveniently does so right before distracting everyone with the “oh btw, we’re all gonna die to a giant human armada” news. This is done with the best of intentions. Mentep wants to protect Yenekh (and Oltyx, in his way), so he delivers the news this way to get the bad news out of the way and then both of them on the same side. But it is the start of a pattern.

Which we get again when Mentep fails to mention a that Antikef is a flayer den ruled by a “We have Illuminor Szeras at home” Vizier, and boy does that end badly for Oltyx (see the last 60% of Ruin). Naturally, Mentep has a good explanation:

But it is another lie, one that costs Oltyx dearly (put a pin in this, I am coming back to it.)

There's some little fibs and ommissions along the way as they go to Carnotite, but it all builds up to The Big Lie. The one that sends Oltyx spiraling and gets Mentep killed. Because you know what really helps with paranoia? Finding out your mentor and your best friend have been hiding a secret blood pit in your basement! Again, it makes sense why Mentep is lying about this! He has every reason to believe Oltyx would have rejected the flayed ones he and Yenekh were sheltering (he in fact does exactly this), and Mentep's entire goal is to cure the curse to atone for his role in its creation. However...

I think Oltyx is correct to call Mentep out here (Oltyx is wrong about most things, but not this). Somewhere a long the way he became a means to an end for Mentep. Mentep was focused on The Curse and not the person in front of him who was cursed. He used Oltyx's friendship with Yenekh, his need to save his kingdom, his trust, his fears, all in service of admirable goals, but he was using Oltyx. Is it any wonder this is where it ended?

The lies were Mentep's undoing from the start. Remember the lie about Antikef? The one that led to all the events of Ruin? Yes, Oltyx and Djoseras did talk and avoid a civil war, but Oltyx also went through hell. He saw his home turned into an abbattoir, his father reduced to barely more than an animal. Oltyx was literally vivisected and almost consumed by his own dysphoria. And then committed regicide after leaving his brother behind to die. Antikef is where Oltyx truly learned that compassion was weakness and saw how horrific the flayer curse could become. So how was he ever going to accept the flayed ones as Mentep wanted him to? Oltyx experienced the comically perfect combination of traumas to ensure that would never happen, thanks in part to Mentep's manipulations.

I cannot stress enough that Mentep's individual lies all made sense at the time. May have even been the best option, at the time. But the consequences piled up, and even as he is dying he still refuses to give Oltyx even a scrap of the truth. That is the core of his tragedy for me. Well, that and this:

He bases all of his manipulations on his understanding of people's psyche's, which are usually accurate, but it also traps them. It gives them no room to grow or surprise him or for outside factors to come in and intervene. Contrast this with Zultanekh, who is upfront to a fault. He gives Oltyx advice and resources, but what Oltyx does with those things is up to him. Even when he is screwing up royally, he's allowed to make those mistakes. Mentep causes ones of Oltyx's darkest hours (the secret blood pit), while Zultanekh lifts him out of another (the Blood Angel's attack). In the end, Zultanekh is the one who sees Oltyx's true growth and witnesses the birth of his kingdom. A birth that comes not from curing the curse but embracing it.

There was never a sickness to be fixed, which means Mentep never would have achieved his redemption because he was focused on the wrong things. Which does make his death and rebirth as Xott a bit of a reflection of Oltyx. He was too burdened in his first life, but in his second he (or at least a version of him) was able to witness the people he hurt reaching a place of peace.

[felixcloud6288]

Higurashi: Festival Accompanying Chapter 9

Hey look! The protagonists are coming back to the story!

I was curious about Satoko's last name and relation to Teppei. Turns out Hojo is just the latest in a long line of last names she's been given due to her mother frequently divorcing and remarrying. Meanwhile, Teppei isn't a blood relative. He's her step-uncle.

I think this drawing is Satoko's mother in a wedding dress. She probably has come to hate seeing her in that dress because it means the cycle of marriage and divorce has started over.

First thing's first, we're given a recap about Rika and her Queen Carrier status in the village. I don't think we ever learn how the research came up with that idea or how they determined Rika is the queen. Also, if it does exist, how does transferal between generations happen? Was Rika's mom the former queen and that queen had an offspring that infected Rika at birth and then abdicated its status?

Of course, the more likely reason for the village's behavior around Rika is that she actually is Oyashiro-sama incarnate.

A year later, Irie is still guilty about what he did and Takano is still as unbothered as ever. The only reason I think Irie hasn't reported Takano's behavior to Tomitake and Tokyo is because he'll likely be tried for killing someone during the research. Takano probably wouldn't be so open about discussing vivisections if inspector Tomitake were around.

Irie wanted to be a doctor to help people. And he specifically went into neurosciences to help people with mental illnesses. He started in the field of psychosurgery but was kicked out of academia due to the grave ethical concerns surrounding its methodology. This is his great second chance, but he killed someone for it.

He seems to look at Satoshi as another chance to prove to himself that he can be a doctor who can save someone. Irie is powerless to cure the festering wounds from the Dam War, and he is powerless to fix the Hojo's family circumstances, but he can at least give Satoshi some relief from everything and provide him some relief.

Massacre is the only time I recall where the village treating the Hojos as pariahs was ever really brought up or shown. I recall a scene in the anime where Satoko dropped her groceries and no one offered to help until Rika did, but there's never really anything that comes across as even passive-aggressive behavior from the villagers.

The introductory scene with Satoshi is the first time I think I've ever seen any villagers being openly hostile to a Hojo. The Dam War is still fresh in everyone's minds, so tempers are still high. In a few years, that anger will turn into sadness, shame, and fear.

Since this chapter is from Irie's perspective, I was afraid the first time he met Satoko would be accompanied by a shojo filter and the sound of an angelic chorus. But thankfully, he isn't being a creep...yet.

I just love seeing Satoshi smile. It genuinely makes me upset that all of Irie's efforts to improve his life are going to end up lost because of the aftermath of his parents' deaths.

The more these cases progress, the more and more Takano shows how unhinged she is. When she approached Irie about Satoko's condition, she started by giving him a serious status report. And then she got giddy at the idea that they now had another specimen to dissect.

She's not even trying to give a justification this time. She's not suggesting this will advance their research, nor that Satoko has done anything to deserve this. Takano's only reason is Satoko will die anyway so they might as well get some data before then.

Some quick thoughts on how Hinamizawa Syndrome works, particularly the throat scratching thing. One detail brought up a few times is the pathogen cannot be found in a dead body. They were only able to find the pathogen by dissecting the 1979 murder ringleader while he was alive. So even though this is an internal parasite, it has some way to quickly escape the body after its host dies.

Maybe the throat scratching thing is a method the pathogen uses to perform an emergency escape. It treats high stress as a sign the host is about to be killed, and it responds by amplifying the stress levels and inflaming the lymph nodes in the throat to make the host scratch at it. By combining the increased blood pressure from the host's stress response and them ripping their throat out, the pathogen can make a fast escape through the blood vessels and out of the host body.

But I have no idea what happens next. So much of this brain parasite stuff is fantastical to the point it feels more like some weird curse magic. The whole "It vanishes when the host dies" thing is such a bizarre thing and Irie actually having to dissect a person's brain to find the pathogen means it does not travel through the body at all. Otherwise, they likely would have found it from blood samples.

Y'know what you should do Irie? Get on the phone with Tomitake and report Takano's behavior to the board at "Tokyo".

NIPA BEAM!!!

back

[landfilloftrash]

Blood in the Water (part 1 )

***

The blood pounded through her head like a gong. It raced like an exhausted hound, hurt like a bell rung far too many times; it was painful to think or consider anything outside of her radius of boiling rage and desire to destroy.

Calypso yielded. And the image of Abaddon yielding in their fight in her Church, and in that wasteland, that place that could become their world, with the same wide-eyed grimace— a tired, bloodied countenance was such a clear resemblance in her mind that her grip quite nearly faltered on her weapon. It was clearly the same for the vulture himself as he paused in his own attack like someone had frozen time, and then lowered his own weapons of choice and backed-off slowly. 

The silence was so incredibly loud.

But in that silence, they all turned to look towards her.

She did not want to be merciful. It wanted to be kind. She wanted this woman to face retribution for the severity of what she did to its friends. It didn’t want to kill her. She wanted her to learn from this experience of foul deeds and turn a new leaf for the better.

Enososin looked at the bleeding and dying face of a Goddess, brought low by Hades and her crew, and chose the best mercy it could provide; Not personally removing Calypso̸̜͒’s head from her shoulders like Eno’s heart screamed for.

The Blood Cleric was not in the right headspace to condemn anyone; so it bowed towards the crew, and let them choose Calypso’s fate. That was truly as much mercy she could personally provide right now without breaking friend and foes’ eardrums in the process. 

She would face the consequences of whatever choice that would be made. 

But not right now. 

Not like this.

Instead, she marched into the still pouring, but lessening, rain— the dark of the night deepened by the lack of stars burning high over head— with her head held high; determinedly as she made her way to the treeline, and once underneath the trees’ cover of the slowly stopping rain, she removed the hat that sparked the timber of her ember’d heart into a raging inferno—

And just like that, the forest fire was once more banked into a simple campfire; it was manageable again.

She stood there, almost blankly staring into the stormy seas, lightly holding the hat near its chest. Calming, ever so slowly; a tempest could be brewed in a moment, but the settling of the seas— that powerful force— took a mite longer with its size. Ever so briefly though, she felt a feeling of flowing relief at the mere sight of the Red Dragon in her disguised form as the Ad Astra on the seas in the cove. It was about to start moving towards Her, before reality truly hit her.

The cleric should be far more invested in what happened to that woman right now, instead of listlessly standing outside trying to assemble coherent thoughts. She should be amongst them advocating for Calyp̵͇̓̿͜s̴̞͛o̸̜͒’s yielding and, in turn, her right to be spared. Because C̵̥̾̆͜ȁ̴̢̫̋l̶̳̥̚͝ÿ̴̫͖́p̵͇̓̿͜s̴̞͛o̸̜͒  was being judged by her cohorts right now; it was being decided whether or not they were going to kill a Goddess, for brainwashing Kallstrom and Ulysses, for making them fight and hurt each other to get their mental states back to rights, and then turning one of the crew into her dinner.

God.

Oh, God.

She barely refrained from bursting into frazzled tears at the mere thought.

Even for that small amount of time for her, maybe six to ten minutes in total— not nearly as long as it felt in that stretch of time that made every second tick by like hours— Abaddon was dead a mere fifteen feet in front of her. 

No, not even just dead, because that was far too kind a word– vivisected– gutted open like a damned fish— cooked like a common meat, and presented perversely on a plate by a lying Goddess with too damn little to do other than torment whomever it was on her island.

Claim her too soft, too much of a bleeding heart, claim it too trusting, too naïve, too stubborn, claim her anything of the sort— but she had made a promise to him. A promise, to Abaddon, someone it truly wished to be able to call a friend, to protect him from whatever would come his way and hurt him. 

And she had been staring at his body cooked to eat.

She wanted to start screaming. Scream until its throat bled and scream some more. She wanted to fall to her knees in relief and praise God and every god that would listen to a blood clerics' prayers. It wanted to start sobbing until her eyes fell out of her skull. Instead she leaned heavily against the tree next to her.

Her head hurt.

After a couple more seconds of letting her mind fray, she drew the barest scraps of will that she had to assemble coherent thoughts once more– which finally got her moving enough to put her hat once more into its robes before once more hugging herself in a self soothing way.

She was barely even scratched— that beam of magical energy directed at it doing more to rile her rather than truly hurt— but gods. She felt like it had been through a rigorous bout with the entirety of her former class against her; mental energies scattered like mice at the sound of a prowling housecat, and her physical body trembling with energy itching to be used in a destructive manner.

It purposefully closed her eyes and clutched at her crucifix settled on her breastbone beneath its layers.

‘Thank God,’ was a simple refrain, and it was repeated on loop in her head. ‘Thank God, thank God, thank God.’

As she reopened her eyes she breathed out slowly. Everything was ok. It was ok. Everyone was alive. No need to have any sort of breakdown. It was alright.

“Hgh,” it complained to the open sea and sky.

Before much could be done or said to either of the mirrors; A flash of something different entered her periphery as she stood there, and caught its attention— turning its head questioningly in apprehension. 

A tall, paleish-dark, robed, prosthetic limbed bearded vulture of an Aarakocran had exited the cave looking vaguely thoughtful, and she felt her chest tighten in relief.

Abaddon.

All thoughts were tossed out into the sea as she hiked up her robe a smidgen, and sprinted over at full tilt— tackling him full force into as gentle a hug as she could manage with all that was happening, using her wings to catch them both to stop them from crashing into the earth.

Thank God. “AGHK,” she heard squawked out from within its grip, “MY ʙᴏɴᴇs. ᵀᴴᴱʸ’ᴿᴱ ᴿᴱᶠᴼᴿᴹᴵᴺᴳ.”

Oh shit. It let go like she had been burnt and raised its hands in apology, backing up ever so slightly to give the poor man some room, “Sorry! Sorry!”

Good job Eno, just– absolutely destroy the man’s rib cage. And spine. Perhaps the scapula for good measure?? Not like he needs them anyways, by the heavens. She sighed in amused resignation as she continued her tiny internal tirade. Not everyone can withstand the full force of that sort of affection like your father can, their bones will crack; you have to remember that.

He exhaled and rubbed at his chest, eyeing her with incredulous amusement. “Good lord, woman.”

Enososin gently waved its hands in a slight jazz hands movement as she continued to display her apologies for a couple more seconds, despite its smile at the fact he didn’t seem to hold it against it.

Letting its hands fall to her side was a mistake however, seeing as it felt the extreme need to fidget with something, and her robe and cloak were the only things within grabbing range; she was very aware that the movement made it look like a scolded school child, so it simply bore the rising urge with a sense of discomfort as she waited for the other man to set the tone for the conversation.

“I am going to go rest, somewhere;” Abaddon continued after a moment, peering around the island’s beach and off into the trees. “I highly doubt there are any more possessive goddesses on this island?”

If there was, Enososin was simply going to deign this island cursed for any who decide to step foot on these sands. That was simply too much for one island. Save some for the rest of your fellow landmasses. 

But that wasn’t the reason her voice was stuck in its throat for a second longer than it had.

Taking a brief second longer to viciously pull her voice back from the depths, it gestured amicably towards the Red Dragon, resting in the bay. “I would recommend getting on board, at the very least.”

Abaddon took a moment, head shifting ever so slightly as he peered at the ship with consideration. “In honesty,” he clacked, with an amused eye flick back towards her, “despite the current… dislike, I have for this place, being on land is quite nice.” She chuckled in acknowledgment and nodded in agreement. As much as it was discontented with the island, and missed the now comforting onomatopoeic boards that spoke to Her crew in the only way She could, it was very nice to have firm ground that reminded her that it was not all tossing waves under her claws. “That is– That is honestly fair.”

“Besides,” he waved off, “your ship does not enjoy my presence.”

A small chitter in disagreement. “I don’t think she enjoys���.” 

She paused ever so briefly as it tactfully tried not to say, ‘people of factions that have probably frequently gone against Her and tried to destroy Her on many occasions. Especially considering Her reaction to the naval officers and the decorations Kallstrom strung up.’ 

“...Many presences.” She finished succinctly.

“Me and Kallstrom.”

She hissed out another quiet laugh. “To not to put too fine a point on it, in regards to our current company but… regardless…”

The silence settled once more like a soft blanket within the night. It was broken again by Abaddon reaching over and patting her on the shoulder and letting it lay there for a moment. “Get some rest.”

The cheek of this man. She grumbled softly. “You first.”

“No– I’m ol– I’m the eldest,” he gestured with his removed hand, pointing like he was giving a lecture, “I have to keep watch.” Closing her eyes for a brief moment to refrain from either giving him an absolutely incredulous look or start giggling uncontrollably, Enososin had to truly gape at the gall of the man to use the ‘I’m the eldest’ card. Of all things. Saying that while there was a vampire, and a sentient ship with the soul of a dragon was such a bold-faced statement that she couldn’t help it. The sheer cheek involved in the statement nearly had her in a giggling fit by itself.

“You went through more than us today,” she asserted as it reopened its eyes with a more serious set to her face, feathers fluttering slightly as she shook off the remnants of the hysteria threatening to overflow, “I think you need rest first.”

“All I did was die,” he protested, “I got plenty of rest.”

Her voice was a little shaky as she gave him a slightly incredulous look. Surely, he saw the dichotomy of those two statements, at least from its point of view? “My point exactly.” 

“It wasn’t that bad actually,” he started, and then backtracked with a small shake of his head. “I mean. The whole being murdered part wasn’t all that great,” he joked, a couple of raised blinks and tilt of the head belying the severity of it. 

(“That was.. The most pain I’ve felt in a long time..”)

“But, the underworld was nicer than I expected. Everyone expects eternal flaming damnation but no, it was…” he paused, the introspection back in full force, “cold… dark… And.. spacious. Like a cavern, but without..” He squinted in deliberation. “Echo? ..Hard to describe.” “Without the acoustics,” she quietly joked.

“Yes,” he mused, a small look of amusement stealing across his face before he continued quite seriously. “I remember facing judgment, and then I was going to go somewhere… I can’t remember where… Right as they were about to pass their final decision, I got pulled back.”

“Mm,” she hummed, tapping her claws on her beak gently in thought— connecting the two timelines together in her mind. That made sense. He was gone for far longer than the others, and with how much time had passed between the initial claim, and… and their refinding of him, it would track that a judgment would have been able to be called.

It wasn’t going to ask. He said he didn’t remember, then he didn't remember. Besides, this sounded more like a court hearing to decide where the soul went rather than the actual true afterlife; a familiar system, at the very least.

But she couldn’t deny that she was curious as to what judgment had been about to be made.

He sighed again, once more looking quietly thoughtful. And maybe even a bit wry as he hummed, “I suppose I owe Hades a thank you.”

Oh yes, that did remind her; someone should tell him. “That– yes, him and Soleil, actually.” The silence that fell was brief, but it was thick in the disbelief that was directed at her in a singular look. “You’re telling me that she, the one who has threatened me from day fucking one, was the one who wanted me back?” She nodded; minutely but earnestly. 

“I came back– inside..” its eyes flicked upwards towards the heavens, having spotted them pop back into existence earlier, but not having the wherewithal to truly see them. They were also fine; back where they belonged. “When the stars went out, all at once.”

The man blinked down at her in surprise and turned his own gaze to the stars for a moment, as if expecting them to nod in agreement– and with how stars were, it wouldn’t doubt the contrariness of them to do just that, for some inexplicable reason. 

“Hhuh…” he breathed, head tilting in curiosity, clearly working something through. “How strange.”

Eno patiently waited a few moments for him to collect his thoughts before prompting. “How so?” she hoo’d at him in interest.

“Well,” he began, another look of amusement crossing his face and tone, but a touch more grim within the gallows of it, “I wonder if she did it for you or for me.”

. . . Ah. 

(Soleil’s eyes on her as it excused itself from the cave, mind a jumble of horror and sorrow; refusing to let the Goddess see that.)

It had not thought.. 

Truly, the thought had never really crossed its mind that it might’ve been for her. In its own mind, it was a bit difficult to think of anyone trying to do that for her— the revivification of an entire person, someone the others clearly didn’t put full trust into. Something she completely understood, but didn’t choose to subscribe to. 

But… 

It was out of her mouth before her brain had a moment to catch up to it all.

“Can it not be both?” Another silence. Even shorter than the last but no less thick with the refusal to suspend disbelief at her quietly prodding tone. “It is almost never both. Don’t tell me you’re that naïve.”

She let out a bit of a strangled laugh at the question, but let it taper off gently. It was either that or cry, to be honest, and laughter was far easier in her experiences. Ohh, how many times was she going to hear that in her life? It had encountered the phrase at least twice today, and it was not interested in counting the times it had been quietly hurt by the refusal of her fellows to see the world as something to make kinder. 

“I’m not–” she chuckled into the break, shaking her head a bit ruefully, “‘that naïve’, as you say, but I am that hopeful.” It tucked its hands into her robes and gripped at its arms, digging her claws through feathers, hiding the gesture within the fabric as she continued softly. “I think there’s… I think there’s enough of a difference between the two, that I can make that assertion.”

That being said, Enososin let her head wander, because she would be lying if it didn't say that the thought hadn’t crossed her own mind. The cleric was aware that it did possess naïvete, but that often tied in well with encountering new situations; it learned as it went, and it did actually learn the stakes of it all rather quickly, even if it was blindsiding. Being naïve was about not having that wisdom, knowledge, or experience; walking into things blind. Some people kept themselves that way. Hope, on the other hand, was the opposite face, but the same coin; it was having that knowledge and experience to know something was horrible, and walking in anyways. Hope was a damnable thing, something with teeth and claws that snarled and refused being kicked down for long. 

It was a dandelion growing from between bricks in a wall.

“..Why aren’t you the captain?”

She burst out in a startled trill of laughter– it felt far more genuine this time, easing her chest as it bubbled out. It was such a hard left from the conversation at hand, but she could see the etchings of the directions his thoughts took as she giggled a bit. “Uhm,” she chirped intelligently, “As much as I would, maybe? Take the wheel— especially if asked of me, I — would rather not step on anyone’s toes in regards to… specifically taking authority.”

Her eyes instinctively flickered to the cave behind Abaddon with apprehension. She didn’t believe that either of the Naval Admirals would do anything to harm her if she decided to take up the actual mantle, but it was far easier in the long run for her to advise and caution from beside someone than taking charge and inciting possible reasons for severe discontent. 

Eno would honestly prefer if they all had an equal say in what they as a crew were to do, and not just rely on a singular person to command. Rubbed her the wrong way. Which was exactly why she could never be a part of any military.

“I am a priest. Not a–” she gestured a bit insouciantly, “not a naval captain.”

“Neither is Ulysses,” the cultist countered, “yet he still drives the ship well all the same.”

“I do remember him mentioning he was an actual captain at one point,” she gently mused conversely.

Abaddon shook his head. “Becoming a captain is of no ceremony, truly, it doesn’t matter what..” he paused momentarily and considered, before gesturing flippantly, “It doesn’t matter what faction you lie under. What matters is that you can.. lead folk. And despite Gaura’s efforts, you’re the one keeping us all alive and in line.”

My ability to keep the peace between people truly not so different from one another didn’t stop you from being killed, dearheart.

There was a momentary flash of something on his face, too fast for her to truly register or recognize, before he continued resolutely. “Do you see what it is you are holding on your back?”

With a couple surprised blinks at the turn in questioning, she instinctively turned her head to look behind her back, despite knowing exactly what was attached to the place in between her wings.

What she knew to warm her hands like a cup of sunshine, and gleamed in the night with its swirls and designs, was a hammer that belonged to a man she trusted more than life itself.

“That is the hammer of Saint Rollo,” he asserted, “That thing has killed hundreds of my fellows. And even more vampires.”

Papa…

The fact that she didn’t have to censor its own thoughts about the fact that man was absolutely her Father did funny things to the small child that lived in her heart. Presently, she hoped he was safe; sound. Cared for. She’d also pray for happiness, but even she knew when it was pressing its luck in certain departments, so she’d settle for being content at the very least. But even all of that didn’t set aside the ever-present worry for him that had only ever gotten stronger as it got older. 

Especially as of late. 

But firstly, it had faith, and it knew that its father could damn well handle himself if put into any sort of tight spot. Letting its hand slide through its tucked wings and gently gripping the hammer in assurance had a small inaudible chime zip through her before settling once more into a soft little hum. For a weapon, it certainly had a warm tone in her hold, making her eyes crinkle a little in delight; contrary usage of terms always did. 

It might also be the hysteria from the entire day speaking, but she thought it rather funny that upon being presented with a bloodied fact about the actions of the Father, her first thoughts turned to hoping her papa was safe and well. 

“That weapon has never belonged to someone on the sideline,” Abaddon continued, pulling her from its fondness, “It never belonged to someone who isn’t capable of wielding it. And in order to be capable you have to be responsible.” “You are both of those things.”

“..I damn well try to be.” She exhaled quietly. 

Being responsible wasn’t the hard part; it was balancing responsibility with her morals that truly made her stumble. After all, what would she do if she was eventually forced to deal with someone unwilling to talk, and dead set on hurting those she swore in its heart to protect? Someone that even on death’s door would be willing to get themselves killed to take the world down with them? 

Those sorts of questions had often dogged her tail feathers, simply by being a question that she might have to deal with as a blood cleric, but now their fangs were far sharper in the light of recent events.

She never had been as fond of wolves as much as her fellows.

Abaddon’s next words echoed her quietness. “..You do well.”

It decided that arguing that point was rather moot, since he seemed convinced of it in his words. Or at least acted like it. Either way, it knew when to concede as she lost an argument. “..Next time..” it muttered, shaking its head before looking him in the eye, pointedly. “Go with a buddy, would you?”

“I was simply scouting for food,” he complained, tilting his head at her. “Buddy system.” “Buddy system is a great way to have betrayal.” He countered wryly.

“It is also a good way for someone to report back,” she emphasized with a pointed clack, “whether you are hurt or incapacitated.”

He made a small noise of discontented disagreement, but nothing aloud. 

She just continued looking at him.

And then he huffed. “Fine. Maybe. We’ll see.”

A smile stole her eyes as it breathed out in a chirr. “I very much appreciate it.”

It sighed out another breath to try and exercise the remaining anxieties out of its system. But they remained, stubborn as herself, and it gave in to the urge to ask one more pertinent question lingering on her tongue. “Other than that… you are.. Alright?”

There was a considering pause. The conversation had been full of them, but this one felt heavier to her. He reached and felt at the new, bright streak of feathers on his chest. “...I don’t know,” he confessed, “But… my heart doesn’t ache.”

“Oh,” she quietly hoo’d in surprise. Eno remembered him mentioning that the arm he wore was connected to his heart in a way to be able to use magic. It was quite fascinating, to be honest. To learn that it had been putting undue stress on the organ shouldn’t have been the surprise it was, to be honest, but it still blind sided her; just a smidgen. “That is a bonus then.”

A bonus from an entire resurrection of body and soul could not provide everything, however. “But.. if you.. Do need anything..” she looked up from the white streak, “Don’t wait until it gets worse. Ok?”

“If I were to do that.. If I were to wait…” he looked away. 

“Things would go wrong.”

The dread that statement brought her did nothing to ease the need to toss a medkit at him. Miss Mara, the insane amount of mother henning you have instilled into me. Stamping on the pressing desire to wrap the entire crew in multiple shielded layerings, she tilted her head in acknowledgement as it worked around the need to mother hen as best it could. “Then we’ll keep an eye on it.”

He groaned– the sass that had been missing for most of the conversation returning with blazing force, rolling both eyes and head as he snapped; “Stop fussing over me!”

“I’m allowed to fuss!” she laughed, nearly indignantly at the presumption she wouldn’t.

“Go!” he pointed before gesturing dramatically to the cave, “To your crew! I am fine. I promise.”

Enososin could only outwardly roll her head in mimicry of rolling her eyes in response to his drama, but internally she conceded the fact that it had been quite pushy, he was a grown adult who had been dealing with it for most of his life, and it would be for the best to back off. 

It was simply a matter of trust. 

“Alright,” she sighed, verbally giving ground with an amused dip of her head.

Before it completely walked off, it gently grabbed one of Abaddon’s hands and squeezed gently— passing him as she did, so it was only a brief press—but before she was able to drop it and give the man his space, he gave it a squeeze back. She could only smile to the ground as she headed back to the cave.

He hadn’t needed to do that. That had been kind.

As she once more approached the cavern she caught the tail ends of Kallstrom describing some sort of bomb– she couldn’t quite tell from the ricochetting echo, messing with each other— and instead ran into Ulysses at the entrance.

Straight into an extremely disgruntled Ulysses, nonetheless. “Kallstrom is making lewd remarks about the bullet in my gut.”

The what. “The what?”

“Oh—!” He seemed genuinely surprised at her startled question as he backed up back into the cave with her; “Were you not told that he shot me?”

She turned her head towards an unphased Kallstrom— or more accurately, a very well masked Navy Admiral. “You shot him??”

“Uhm,” without giving the tiefling much time to respond for himself, Ulysses seemed very intent on clearing up the situation, “Well, yes he did, back when I got fried to a crisp.”

“Ok wait–” She sputtered. Fried to a crisp. Right. Yes. Before their.. It wasn’t even fair to call it a fight, but their ‘fight’ with the Goddess, she had healed the group of a series of injuries. Including but not limited to a rather severe pattern of burns upon a few of them. “Yes I saw that— I saw that part— I didn’t— It did not process that you got shot in the gut??”

“I also had not processed that I had been shot in the gut,” he commisserated, while the rest of the cave was seized by a fit of giggling.

What. “How do you not process you getting shot in the gut?”

“Well,” he gestured, to himself and his singed clothing, “I was more processing that I got turned into a human marshmallow.”

“It was also given by a good shot,” chimed the very smug tiefling. Suddenly everyone’s voices started clamoring for attention; All noises were quickly becoming overlapping as the cave echoed and caused several different versions of conversations around it to enter its ear.

“Oookay,” she soothed, smoothing her clothes for a brief moment and peered at Ulysses critically; “Is it—?” She looked around his back at his shirt and vest. No hole.

That’s a problem. It tried not to say as much. “Okay.” Ulysses seemed to catch the tone of her voice pretty well, however, because he quickly fell into a ramble; “I was not sure if your magic would just automatically remove the bullet–?”

“That’s not how that works,” she cut off with slight distress.

Kallstrom spun with a victorious light in his eyes towards Ulysses; teeth bared in a semblance of a grin. “I FUCKING TOLD YOU!”

“I don’t know??” Ulysses cried, both to her, the laughing admiral, and the distressed party members, “I don’t know about healing magic, Eno, I’m not the cleric!”

Janglin made a silly show of mimicking Ulysses with one of his many voices. “I don’t know how this magic stuff works!?”

“That’s– It’s fine, I’m just–?” Honestly she couldn’t fault him, but even she felt like this would be more of an unspoken knowledge? Magic wasn’t a cure-all, after all. Nonetheless, she went for reassurance. “Ok; here’s the quick rundown on how healing magic works. It heals the wounds– whatever it may be— but it does not remove-? If you have a projectile in there it does not remove that; I know this because I have personal experience with this!”

Getting pieces of glass lodged in one’s sides, feet, and hands and then using the little healing magic you and the frightened peers know so no one would notice ended up with crying in pain for the next couple of weeks. Not healthy in the slightest.

“So you healed the wound around the bullet?”

“Yes! You have a bullet in your gut now.” Her voice got higher pitched as she considered her options. “Do you want me to remove that??”

“Don’t worry,” Kallstrom chimed in showmanly, tail swishing in clear amusement, “you’re undead!; you can’t get lead poisoning!”

“This is true?” she hedged, but at the sight of Ulysses ears flattening she quickly continued with her questioning, “But? Would you– for the sake— do you want that out?”

“Kallstrom,” he lamented, distress mounting, “I would rather not have a bullet in my gut?! I feel like that would cause problems later on down the line?”

“Thinkin’ ‘bout the long term here guys!” Janglin chimed with an unrecognizable nervous man’s voice as a series of feminine giggles were attempted to be stifled. 

“I have plenty of bullets in me!” Kallstrom protested. As if that was literally any better.

Dear God in Heaven. “Do you want those out???”

“Well,” Ulysses continued, locked into banter with the admiral, “that is because you are a freak, Kallstrom.”

“No, I've been shot about–?” His head tilted ever so slightly sideways as he looked to the ceiling in remembrance for a brief second; “Sixteen times! I’m fine.”

“I don’t think I’ve been shot before and I don’t think I’m about to start now.” Soleil hummed, her eyebrows raised ever so slightly at the back and forth between the two men.

“Would you like to?” came the weirdly earnest, but quiet question from Kallstrom as voices bounced off each other.

“No thank you.” Soleil replied, voice nor face showing an ounce of perturbation. Eno didn’t know if that was because the woman found him quite interesting (obviously, otherwise he wouldn’t still be standing here) or was very good at masking it. Probably a bit of both.

But with all of that came a very quiet realization as she muttered to itself. “Oh. Is part of his insanity lead poisoning?”

“That could possibly be it, that would explain it.” Ulysses muttered back as she heard Soleil stifle a snorted laugh. “Would explain a lot, actually,” Janglin nodded. This cave’s acoustics were a lot more powerful than she realized. 

“I assure you I have no such thing as lead poisoning,” Kallstrom confirmed the power of the echo with a wave of his hand. Then he pointed in consideration to his last comment. “Now. Addiction to opium; That one we cannot rule out.”

“Either way,” Ulysses shook his head over a chorus of aborted laughter, “I think you need help in some way shape or form.”

“Tell that to my therapist,”  Kallstrom snorted derisively.

“You have a therapist???”

“One,” it chimed, trying to drag the conversation back to the original topic as another uncontained combination of a snort and a laugh came from Janglin, “do either of you want the bullets out of your guts? Two—” “Yes I would like the bullet out of my gut!!” Ulysses crowed, spinning on heel to once more face her.

“Ok–!” it laughed at the immediate response. Gods, it was always the silly ones.

“Are you sure?” Kallstrom asked, sidling closer; the sharpness of his grin belying the concerned tone, “It’s a permanent memento!” “I would not like to have any metal balls inside of me.”

There was a brief, extraordinarily poignant silence as Kallstrom’s mouth started twitching violently. “Heh hheh. Heh, heheh, hrhehhaeheh.” 

“No— no,” Ulysses denied to the sound of Kallstrom’s continued laughing, that in less than a moment had descended into mad cackles, joined by a familiar bloodhunter’s chortles, “you’ve been around Pepper for far too long.”

“The five days we’ve been together have not been long enough for that,” she chirruped in amusement. 'More than likely the Navy, or he simply had that sense of humor', it thought.

“That’s what she said! That’s what she said!” Janglin cawed in delighted laughter.

“I was like this long before Pepper, boy,” Kallstrom grinned derisively. He tilted his head and struck a slightly contrapposto pose as he crossed his arms in amusement; “I grew up in the Navy! You think I’m not a damn sailor~?”

“No wonder you’re so fruity,” Pepper teased, chuckling behind their hand with a twinkle of mischief in their eyes.

Kallstrom looked over towards Pepper, looking vaguely amused as he was resigned about what he was about to say next. “I’ve seen a man thirst over an octopus,” he deadpanned.

“That. Was not something we needed to know.” Ulysses’ ears tilted downwards as his face morphed into one of disgusted appallment.

A brief moment of consideration. “Not the worst thing to thirst over.” 

“Pepper!”

“No, definitely not the worst choice in the sea, to be honest,” it nodded in agreement.  “Eno!!” She heard Kallstrom mutter to himself as everyone began to agree with the man’s choice of sea-lust; “I think he got married to that octopus.”

Soleil chimed in helpfully; “They are very good conversationalists!” 

“Oh, good heavens.”

“I think he died a year later.”

“Well, at least he died doing something he loved,” Pepper muttered with an amused eyebrow raised back.

“I’m going back to the ship.”

Ulysses, upon this solid declaration, turned upon booted heel and started to speed walk straight out of the cave. There was a brief murmur of conversation as they all collectively watched him march directly into the ocean, ignoring any sort of attempt at floating or trying to swim, and disappearing without a bubble beneath the waves.

“I don’t think that’s going to help with the bullet problem he has,” Soleil mused, her fins twitching. 

“It wasn’t that serious,” Pepper agreed with mirth. 

“I assure you all! He’ll be fine,” Kallstrom waved off. “Vampires are notoriously hardy. Despite poignant weaknesses.”

‘Thank you, Sunshine, for shedding some light on that’, it teased within, and light-heartedly sighed outward. 

“I do think he’s got the correct idea though,” Pepper gestured. “It is rather late. And it has been… quite a day.”

“A day! A day! A hurting day!” came an amalgamation of voices from their resident sun parakeet Kenku— who upon her closer inspection, looked rather rough despite staying near the back in the brief bashing.

“Oh dear,” she murmured, and let the dregs of magic still held in her chest spread out of her hands as she began to heal the group with special attention to the man’s bleeding leg. “Do remind me to teach you a healing spell or two, won’t you Janglin?”

He beamed up at her with a nod and quick push and pull of his accordion. At least someone was absolutely unbothered by the events of today.

“I am rather tired,” Soleil mumbled, sounding a cross between simply exhausted and done with the shenanigans of today. 

“Well, then at the risk of sounding quite demanding;” it sighed, unfolding herself from its crouched position by Janglin, “may we please leave this damnable cave.”

Kallstrom eyed her from beside Janglin and nodded; sauntering out with an eye out on the waves— paving the way for the meandering lot of them to tiredly pad along to.

Letting herself get pulled along to the gravitational pull of the crew, it let itself turn off a few brain functions. Ough. It rubbed its face a bit tiredly. Her head still bothered it. But was it the emotions of today or was it something else?

Realizing they were coming to a stop, she pulled her attention back to the conversation at hand, and realized she’d missed a couple things.

“..think you can just get me to go in there with you, you are incredibly incorrect,” Kallstrom hissed.

“A shame,” Soleil shrugged with aplomb, part way into the water and clearly no threat taken from his fiery tone, “I hadn’t realized you were too scared to be beaten by a pirate.”

His eye very visibly twitched. Ah. She meant to provoke him into a race, by the way he was suddenly shucking off his coat and weapons; things that would drag him down. Well, it would be entertaining to see.

“Well,” he bared his teeth in another mimicry of a smile, “I would never turn down the opportunity to knock you pirates down a peg leg or two.”

“Would you like me to give those back to you on the ship?” Eno questioned, gesturing at the man’s affects as he began to approach the water.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the man absentmindedly agreed; he was lost in the challenge already. “Don’t lose them.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” it mused and backed off as the sea rushed to meet boot and feather alike.

“Squire!” Kallstrom barked, marching calf deep into the sea foam to stand alongside Soleil, “Give us our mark.”

Janglin looked around–  realized he was the squire, and then looked back up towards her, feathers flattened in confusion.

“He means for you to give them the countdown and then ‘go’,” she whispered, causing Pepper’s hand to fly to their mouth in an attempt to smother a laugh.

Janglin nodded with slight hesitancy and began counting. “One, two, three, four, five..”

Oh dear. Both Soleil and Kallstrom turned their heads towards Janglin in anticipation. Eno couldn’t refrain a small chuckle and quickly bent back down towards Janglin as he continued counting. “Janglin, I think he meant for you to say ‘go’ after three. Say it after ten instead.” 

Janglin’s eyes widened in understanding and he nodded in determination– for what reason, she didn’t know, but she let the fired up Kenku take the lead; “..nine, ten; GO!”

And both tiefling and sea elf dove into the froth of the water with breakneck speed.

“Go Sol!” Pepper cheered.

For the first 30 yards there was a clear lead— Sol only very briefly holding that until Kallstrom had gotten his momentum; the next 50 were absolutely astounding as Kallstrom fiercely kept up with Soleil’s natural grace in the sea.

What happened next was equally if not more astonishing as the tiefling began to speed up. How? Well, Kallstrom let out something that was simultaneously a war cry and a scream she could only guess at classifying, before fire burst from his feet and hair— propelling him forward those last few dozen feet ahead of Soleil like a cannonball launched from a ship— and then slammed into the side of the ship with an audible thud, even to normal ears, if Pepper’s startled lean back was anything to go by.

He then started clambering up the side of the ship like the sirens had only a day prior with a clearly bewildered and fascinated Soleil swimming closely on his heels.

With its hand over her mouth Enososin continued to be and more baffled by this odd tiefling. The heavy pull at the corners of its mouth told her that she’d like to continue seeing the insanity in action, though.

“That!” she laughed, “Was not something tieflings normally do.”

Pepper just looked up at her briefly with a wild look in their eye. “Absolutely not.”

“Think we should join them now?”

“Well,” Pepper shrugged, gesturing in disbelief at Kallstrom flopped up on the ship, “we have our winner! I don’t see why not!”

The owlin laughed and then realized something as it turned its head down to Janglin. “Do you need assistance, by the by, Janglin?”

“Oh!” Pepper realized, turning to the Kenku, “That’s right. Eno’s got a hold on those weapons right now. But I could carry you if you need a wing or four.”

Janglin looked between them both and signed a <<Thank you>> and then shook his head. With a cry of a word, the cloak he wore shifted into wings and lifted himself up into the air with a playfully twist. “Ah!” Eno mused, clipping the weapons to herself as to not drop them; “He’s got it covered then.”

“Should’ve guessed,” Pepper grinned, spreading their own wings and flapping up to hover beneath the Kenku, “Bards always have something up their sleeve.”

“Indeed,” she hummed, unfurling her wings with a small pop in her back muscles, “Now, I apologize to cut and run, but I have some weapons to return.”

With an easy push with her wings, she quickly zipped across the short oceanic distance between the beach and the ship, leaving the mothkin and Kenku trailing after her draft, and paused by a tired looking Soleil; still in the water.

“Would you like a hand up, my dear?”

Soleil looked up at her with a glassy sheen to her eyes and reached up with grabby hands; “Yes, please.”

Enososin could only chuckle in fondness a little bit. Going up to gain some momentum, she tilted herself downwards as she came back for Sol. Grabbing Soleil’s forearms, she tugged her full force out of the water with a small, ‘alley-oop!’’ before catching her in the air, arms wrapped securely around her, and held her as she flew a bit upwards and onto the deck of the ship. 

After setting Soleil down with a gentle slide, she peered at the rapidly drying Admiral and back at the incredibly amused Soleil. Nothing about the woman’s sleepy expression had changed, but her tail was swishing in wide, slow sweeps; restrained.

“Good race,” Soleil congratulated, brushing herself off, “Didn’t think you’d win, to be honest.” “Never..” he panted, “Challenge.. A Naval man… to something… he will not lose.”

“I’m honestly surprised you beat me,” Soleil hummed in place of simply ignoring his exhaustion, her tail swishing tiredly. “Even tired I usually can outswim a landlubber. Good job.”

“Landlubbing indeed,” he laughed out, “I have a preference of the sea to land.”

“No,” Soleil drew out, “I couldn’t tell.”

A short bark of laughter emerged from the slightly slumped man, and then the tiefling pushed himself off his knees with a swish of his own tail as he brought himself back to military-perfect attention; slicking his hair back into a vaguely tamed form of what it normally was. After she was sure he wouldn’t take her approaching as a sneak attack, it drifted over to him, unclipping the weapon belts off of her to return to Kallstrom. His eyes glinted as he snatched him back, and then a brief nod to her. 

‘Well, at least he wasn’t shooting her head off about it’, she chuffed a laugh at the thought and gave a small bow back.

Pepper landed on the deck with Janglin a brief couple seconds later, both bemused and checking on a water-logged Ulysses who loudly questioned the events that had just taken place. 

Letting herself drift slightly away from the main group, chattering and gently bantering— if definitely not quietly— and it was simply pleased to watch over them. The twisting knot of anxiety being lessened by the hundreds of thousands of stars above, once again twinkling merrily in the ink of the shifting sky; lighting up her world as one of the crew said something particularly egregious.

Tonight, Eno wouldn’t be able to go through the pantheons as it normally would in prayers, so she simply dipped her head and held her crucifix tenderly as it murmured small thanks for the time she’d been incapacitated and made it back onboard The Red Dragon.

There was another that she had enough energy to remember and sent a gentle thought in that direction as she reached into her pocket instead. ‘Thank you, Hades.’ She mentally whispered.

Prologue; One - Two - Three - Four

High Seas; It Begins - Something's Wrong- Blood in the Water pt. 1 (here!)

[no-nic]

rin week 2024 unused ideas

🐚💜🌠

day 2: stars [fic/poem] dreams of being close to the stars in a society that doesn't even have airplanes, let alone space exploration scrapped, may be reworked into an unrelated (still rin-core) poem.

day 4: amnesia [fic] character exploration. amnesiac rin trying to find anything about her past personality, getting very different answers from people vs factual evidence. indie horror game vibes scrapped.

day 5&6 fusion: rival & bodyswap [art & fic] rin is inner sakura. rin can "swap in" sometimes. lowered headband, blood smears on her cheeks (pieces of first draft just to get it out of my head)

Something clicks for Sakura when she passes a tightly huddled group of parents at the playground. “That’s the demon boy.” “I’ve heard. The demon is in him.” “Same thing honestly.” “Psst, you know we can’t talk about that.” They pointedly don’t look towards the blond boy. He is about her age, blond and whiskered. He is standing near the edge of the playground, longingly staring at the other kids who are playing ninja. Sakura doesn’t stop walking. There is a demon in him. She needs to be alone. But she is never alone. There is an ever present ball of rage in the back of her mind. There is a demon in her. Sakura is six years old and ready to attend the academy. It just feels right. She is going to be a shinobi, so her parents don’t find it alarming that she spends hours in the library studying everything. Ever since she’s learned to read she’s been looking and looking. She hasn’t told anyone. She can’t. The presence has a few emotions it emanates: rage, desperation, loneliness, jealousy, some more rage, and fear of discovery.

work in progress, may be built into a bigger story.

day 6: truth potion [fic] things she wouldn't say even in her internal monologue!

The kidnapped girl sits quietly. She is smiling and looking vacantly forward. The jutsu should be working already. “Tell me about your friends.” The girl is smiling. “What friends?” “That Uchiha boy and Hatake. Tell me about them.” “I daydream about vivisecting them. Every day. I only fear they will die before I get to them. They are so weird. Sensei likes them more than me, which is fine, because I don’t like him either. I pretend to have a crush on Kakashi but if I had to choose I would marry Obito. I like his eyes. I want to eat them sometimes…” The man puts her to sleep with a genjutsu. He glares at his comrades. “I told you that the kinjutsu they sold us was complete rubbish. ‘Truth jutsu’ my ass! She’s just making fun of us!”

abandoned, another prompt chosen (body-swap).

day 7: [no prompt] [mini zine] inspired by the databook entries that describe rin as "kind, intellectual, devoted", i'm Just Asking Questions. reads like a conspiracy rag it's on a4 paper, 8 tiny pages in total, and i kinda want to make it printable? like i don't know if anyone would even care, but it's just one page, and if was drawn digitally, thin black lines on white (or whatever color paper you stuff in there), easy to print & fold pdf...?

cut off text:

when was she kind? when she threw herself forward or just stood in the way of an unstopable force with a thousand birds already celebrating her corpse

work in progress, haunts me & needs to be perfect.

well that's all folks! 🌟 and remember:

every week can be rin week if you like rin! 💜🔪

(onwards to rock lee week 2024)

[veliseraptor]

that unknown orchard | Trigun: Stampede

1595 words, pre-canon nai pov, uhh some vivisection related body horror but the show did it first, new fandom ma i'm scared

thanks to @portraitoftheoddity for being a terrible influence and also giving this a quick beta read

--

Vash is…

Nai doesn’t have the right word for it, exactly. Rem says kind, Rem says sensitive, but Nai thinks maybe a better description is vulnerable. He’s so exposed, so raw, his heart on his sleeve. Right now it’s just them and Rem and a few other people they don’t see very much, but when everybody else wakes up Nai isn’t sure that’s a good thing. He’s not sure everybody should see Vash like that. There’s no guarantee that they’d treat him as gently as they should.

He’s not sure he wants anybody to see Vash like that. Sometimes Nai thinks it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the other humans never woke up and it was just him and Vash and Rem. Vash is excited about it, excited to meet all the humans sleeping in pods, but Nai’s not sure it’s actually something to be excited about.

Maybe Vash hasn’t noticed, but Nai hears it in Rem’s instructions: be careful. It’s not safe. Why would she tell them to pretend to be humans if there wasn’t some sort of danger because they’re not? He doesn’t know what the danger is but it’s there, Nai can feel it. Vash doesn’t.

So that’s what worries him about Vash. It’s what he thinks about while watching him sleep, the bond between them a warm and thrumming pulse more reassuring than his own heartbeat. Nai tried to talk to him about it once – do you ever wonder why Rem says we have to pretend? – but Vash brushed him off. Either he actually doesn’t see it or just doesn’t want to and Nai doesn’t know how to change that.

Maybe it’s fine for now. If Vash can’t or won’t protect himself then Nai will just have to do it for him. If Vash is fragile then Nai has to be strong, like walls around a city, or ribs around a heart. When the rest of the humans wake up he’ll do what he has to so that Vash will be safe. Whatever that means.

Whatever it takes.

**

Vash flutters nervously (are you sure we should be here, we’re going to get in trouble) but he doesn’t leave, because he’s just as curious as Nai is, and he knows, same as Nai does, that there’s something here to find. There’s something Rem is keeping from them and that means it’s either bad or interesting; either way Nai wants to know. 

Nai’s struggling to get through the security when Vash puts in the access code. Nai would kind of like to know where he learned it but isn’t going to ask right now, not when he doesn’t know how much time they have left. He does make a note of it though, just in case he needs it sometime later and Vash isn’t there. 

Everything after that happens very fast.

At first he doesn’t understand. Or, he does understand but it doesn’t make sense, won’t make sense; how can the picture of the girl – the Plant – have anything to do with these bits and pieces floating in tubes? 

He can feel it coming in that brief moment like the worst most terrifying monster of any story he’s ever heard and there’s nothing he can do to stop it, nothing he can do to unknow what he’s about to understand. But as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die.

That’s her. There, that’s what’s left of her. There was another Plant like you and this is what they did to her.

Nai’s not sure who starts screaming first, if it’s him or Vash or both of them at the same time, only that the room’s full of it and it’s like he can hear her screaming, too, with them, he’s hot and cold at the same time and the only thing he can think is get away, we have to get away, we have to go, but he can’t leave without Vash and his body won’t move right, helpless, frozen, he wants to look away but he can’t look away, keeps going back to the eye, her eye, green rather than blue, their sister he never got to know because they took her away, why, why–

The door slides open and for a terrifying moment Nai is certain they’re going to die. It’s only Rem and that should make it safe but when she scoops them into her arms Nai tenses.

She pulls their heads to her shoulders like that will wipe away what they saw. Vash is bawling; Nai is still paralyzed. Floating, suspended, like one of the other normal Plants. Like their sister here. 

Rem is saying something. Nai thinks it’s meant to be reassuring, you weren’t supposed to see this or this isn’t going to happen to you, but it sounds like gibberish. He’s still seeing it, seeing her, every time he blinks, so he tries not to blink. He’s sick and woozy, his ears ringing like somebody’s still screaming. He can hear Vash saying his name but he sounds very far away and what’s closer is the voice in his head that says that could be him. That could be you.

He wants to be somewhere else but there’s nowhere else to go. Just this ship and the vastness of space outside.

**

When he can think again, he’s in the room he shares with Vash. He doesn’t really remember getting there and isn’t sure how long it's been. He still feels weird, weak, tired. Scared.

“Nai?” 

He turns to look at Vash and the relief on his brother’s face cracks some of the ice that’s formed around him. “You’re back!”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” Nai says. He feels like someone else than he was. A clear sharp line between before and after, something fundamentally changed, and it seems strange that everything else looks the same. 

“You weren’t answering me or Rem,” Vash says.

“Oh,” Nai says. 

“It’s going to be okay,” Vash says, like he has any way of knowing that. “Rem said…she says she’s sorry, she said it was a mistake, and she would never let anything like – like that happen to us.”

What Nai thinks immediately is and you believe her? Rem has always been good to them. Maybe he should believe her too. 

Nobody ever said there’d been another one like them. 

Nai wonders if there were others, too. And where they are now.

*

Vash is quick to accept Rem’s reassurances but Nai wonders why she says she’s sorry if she didn’t have something to do with it. She obviously knew. She knew all along; every time she told them she loved them she knew what was in that room and said nothing. 

Nai can’t stop thinking about her, the other one like them. Tesla. He wonders what she was like, what her Gate was, whether she would resonate with him the way that Vash did. 

What her Gate is? Alive, her file said. Nai can’t stop thinking about that, either. Alive. What does it feel like to live in pieces? Does it still hurt? Is she scared? 

Why did the humans do that to her?

Are they going to do it to us?

He wakes up from a nightmare where he’s looking at Vash’s eye in a tank where its swiveling around wildly, and Nai knows that Vash is looking for him (what’s left of Vash because they took him apart like a machine to be disassembled), and three things occur to him with the cold clarity of truth.

One: humans use Plants for what they can provide. What they can do for them, make, produce. That’s what Plants are for, he knows. That’s why all the other Plants are here on the ship, because humans take what they give and Plants don’t ask for anything back. Plants don’t need food or water or rest.  

Two: Vash isn’t like Nai. Vash needs to eat and drink and sleep and he hasn’t shown his Gate yet. Vash consumes resources. Vash isn’t useful.

Three: Vash’s file wasn’t in the same place as Nai’s. It was with Tesla’s. 

Nai doesn’t usually feel cold but he feels cold now. Shivery and sick. He thinks of the dream, Vash’s eye searching for him. Nai is supposed to keep him safe. 

There are two of them, and so many humans all around.

Nai doesn’t know how to keep Vash safe.

Right now – right now maybe he can do it, if he’s vigilant, if he’s careful. But when the others wake up, when all those people these ships are carrying around wake up, then what? They’ll be outnumbered and if they come for Vash, Nai can’t fight them all. 

They’ll take Vash and they’ll cut him up into pieces. They won’t kill his brother. It’ll be worse. He won’t be able to stop it. And who’s to say they’ll stop there, maybe they’ll come for Nai, too, maybe they’ll decide he’s more useful when he can’t ask questions or argue or say no. 

He can’t. He can’t he can’t he can’t. It’s not going to happen. He’s not going to let it happen. 

Drawing his knees to his chest, Nai tries to think of how he can stop it. The beginnings of an idea are already starting to take shape in his mind. 

Vash – kind, sensitive, vulnerable Vash – won’t like it. But he doesn’t have to. 

Someone needs to do the hard things. Nai can, and Nai will.

Whatever it takes.

[franceblr]

super halfbaked sasodei hc, modern edition

despite their frequent arguments and bickering, sasori and deidara are an extremely stable couple. like, ride or die type of committed; they’re thoroughly enamoured and obsessive and totally dependant on each other and not the best communicators but even with their many differences, they understand each other on a molecular level and couldn’t imagine dating anyone else. it’s them or nothing. they may be toxic and neither knows what they’re doing, but they’re dead set on making things work and learn along the way through trial and error. deidara is entirely devoted to sasori, body and soul; to sasori, deidara is everything he saw in others and wanted for himself, but never dared to even dream of.

though both sasori and deidara are resolved on staying together no matter what, they did discuss hard limits in their relationship; boundaries that if crossed, they’d never be able to recover from. one both of them agreed on is cheating. with their pasts and the way they are, neither of them would be able to cope with the other cheating, and would take it really really badly. another hard limit for deidara is substance addiction; he’s familiar with its effects, and he’s absolutely positive he cannot have that in his life, ever again (though this is more like a fair warning prompted by his personal trauma, than something sasori is likely to fall into). for sasori, dishonesty is an immediate deal breaker. under no circumstances is deidara allowed to lie to him, ever: no white lies, no omission of information: sasori asks, and deidara has to answer.

entire honesty on deidara’s behalf came with a lot of work: he’s by nature evasive and not one to trust easily, so in the earlier days of their relationship, it was a lot of deidara tiptoeing around answers and sasori seeing right through his bullshit. eventually, deidara learnt that he owes sasori the truth under all circumstances, even if he has to force it out through tears. it’s non negotiable.

quite the feat considering deidara is a compulsive liar. or a rehabilitated one at least. lying is what gets him the most attention, doesn’t matter if it’s positive or negative. deidara HAS to be seen and heard. it’s not that he enjoys deceiving others either, it’s more a thing he learnt to pick up quick as a child, in order to survive in an unstable environment created by abuse, addiction, neglect and fostercare. deidara has perfectly mastered the art of keeping a chill and laid back façade, of always being friendly and upbeat and yet never letting anyone in too close to see if there’s anything deeper than that. not that sasori ever fell for it: there’s something so twisted and damaged and somber and guarded about deidara, that sasori can see it bleed through even when he’s all sunny smiles and quick jokes. even when he thinks nobody is looking. once the layers were peeled back, for sasori it was like looking in a mirror: sasori sees the darkness, the hurt, the resilience, the maturity that comes too soon, the shame, the anger, the compulsive and the desperate, and instead of being turned off by it, he wants to observe and touch and devour deidara whole with all of his fucked up quirks and habits. feels the animalistic urge to put deidara on a table and vivisect him and analyze every fiber of his being, learn and consume all there is to deidara so intimately, it hurts and makes him want to hurt. he wants to squeeze out the life out of deidara, brutalize him and put him back together. wants to know and own him inside and out.

one thing they both had to learn and get accustomed to was trusting the other, and giving up control. both sasori and deidara are by default weary, hyper independent, and over all not well versed in emotional vulnerability. it took a lot of experimenting, frequent check ins, and reassurance to make things work. sasori is paranoid to the point of the pathological, and deidara would rather eat a shoe than show a single weakness. slowly, the Talks became less dreadful, they started picking up on each other’s patterns, thought processes and non verbal signals, and communication got much easier. the hurt lessened, the ever crushing weight of loneliness lessened, the guard came down and sasori and deidara went head first from hyper independent to codependent. deidara makes always sure to keep all of his promises to sasori, never betraying his trust or casting doubt over his love and devotion for him.

they’re both in it for the long run. and still, despite them both being ready to take it to the next step, it took months of persuasion and time to get deidara to move in with sasori; sasori still pretends he’s not aware deidara keeps an escape bag packed with clothes that still got the tags on, passport, cash and his most important documents stowed away and ready, in case he ever has to get out and fast. deidara keeps it underneath the driver seat of his car, and sasori found it accidentally while fixing an issue with deidara’s car on his request. at first sasori was terribly hurt and betrayed. but he eventually understood that his partner’s reluctance to move in with him and fear that he’ll be thrown out every moment now, has to do more with deidara’s continuous home insecurity throughout his childhood and teenage years, than with any sort of plan of leaving sasori.

they both need SO much reassurance. jesus. deidara has the insufferable tendency to treat sasori like he’s made of glass: he makes sure to caress him and repeat disgustingly sweet, gentle, comforting words to him until they’re engraved in his frontal lobe, like he’s stupid, or a baby. sasori hates that it works. sasori hates how he feels the tension melt right off of his shoulders and jaw, how he feels his brows unfurrow and his traitorous body always nestles deeper against deidara. how he feels the ache, the doubt and the worry slowly uncoil from the deadly grasp they have on his throat, his ribcage, his stomach. can barely stand the way his heart breaks in two whenever deidara’s upset. hates hates hates the way he seems to always know what to say and where to touch him, to placate deidara’s inner turmoil and restless mind.

[abysmal-black]

@pxison

This has only ever been a hypothetical in his training. Sanji never expected one of his siblings to actually go M.I.A during a mission let alone his eldest twin.

 Ichiji was always meticulous about information on a job and sticking to his plan, the few times Sanji had the misfortune of being partnered with him it was more stressful than it needed to be. All of his brothers were annoying but working alongside Ichiji made work feel more like work somehow. 

It’s when Judge adds that if Ichiji can’t be recovered fully to destroy all Germa technology with a thermite bomb does Sanji sit up straighter. Their father goes on to say this mission is incredibly important and as difficult as it is to not have a body to bury, Ichiji is the pinnacle of Germa ingenuity. Knows at this point the old man is trying to soften the duty as best he can while still distancing himself from the dirty work, he wouldn’t be there after all. Judge wouldn’t have to set the explosives and watch Ichiji disintegrate into black ash and pungent flames. That’s only if he wasn’t ‘salavagable’ as their father said. 

At the time two days ago those words hadn’t stood out to him, Sanji was often put on recon and salvage jobs when assassinations dried up but the knot in the pit of his stomach told him it wasn’t right. Shouldn’t Judge have moved mountains to return his heir? A show of force had always been their style, anyone dumb enough to dishonor the Vinsmoke name was only left alive to share stories of the desolation their armies left … and yet. 

The knot in his stomach doesn’t affect the infiltration, Sanji taking it slow and steady, never lingering or pushing his luck with opportunities. The lab his brother was held in ran like clockwork and Sanji took his time learning the ten hour routine scientist ran on, mentally cataloging their positions at any given time and securing egress before locating the cell that held his target. Maybe he was avoiding learning Ichiji’s fate, the bomb heavy and flat in the pouch on his back. Ichiji was the strong one, stoic and unmovable. Something like this was expected to happen to Niji or Yonji  but Ichiji was different. He understood his place in the world and eventual ascension to the throne and what it meant. Sanji didn’t want to see his brother as anything but that, annoying as he could be.

When their escape is foolproof Sanji begins the countdown to a night shift change; it was the only time in the facility with enough moving parts he could move about without hesitation and creep to his brother’s cell with a pilfered I.D card and opens his door silently. 

The knot in his stomach finally begins to churn, Ichiji just beyond a drawn curtain. What he managed to find that remained of his red raidsuit can had already been dissected, parts stripped and laid bare but a discreetly placed bomb would destroy its components and provide cover for their escape.  Sanji takes a tight throat inhale as he approaches and slips behind the curtain, distink balls on the bottom of his boots canceling any sound of his movement. 

“Ichiji.” Eyes dart between the E.K.G machines steady peaks and valleys of a strong heartbeat and his twin strapped to a surgical bed. From the chart he’d glanced at during recon Ichiji was scheduled for vivisection early tomorrow morning. Scientists had been running endurance and stimulation tests on his exoskeleton  during the last shift change, the blood and fluid samples they’d already taken waiting to meet the same fate as his dismantled raidsuit. “Ichiji, I need you to say something.” Lips lean into the man’s ear. “We only have a seven minute window to get you out of here.”

[ryttu3k]

And some more Dark Urge asks! Set 2, set 3; first set of answered questions here. Content warning for the usual Dark Urge stuff, plus misgendering/deadnaming, discussion of vivisection, and pregnancy.

Set 2

1. Did your Durge interact with others of their assigned race? How did it go, did anyone notice something was off? Did they try to blend in?

So on paper, Tavias is a wood half-elf with draconic ancestry (the scales and horns are pretty obvious). Baldur's Gate is predominantly human, but there are enough elves and half-elves that people like. Know more or less what to expect from them, and he absolutely seems 'off' by half-elf standards. Prior to learning his background, he assumed it was just the dragon part coming out (draconic bloodline sorcerers are rare, but exist, even if not many people have met one); after, he would use it for an excuse if he was trying to blend in, and would sometimes just… smile if he was deliberately trying to be Ominous.

But yeah, the whole 'created from Bhaal's flesh' thing means he didn't have anyone who was the same 'race' as him other than Bhaal himself. Even his fellow Bhaalspawn, Sarevok and Orin, were still 'other' to him - Sarevok was half human, Orin was part human, part changeling (via Helena's mother). He had half-elven racial traits, darkvision and Fey ancestry and a natural affinity for stealth and swift feet. He had the pointed ears. (In fairness: Orin also had darkvision and Fey ancestry, and she could give herself pointed ears if she wanted to, and often did!) There really wasn't anyone exactly like him, and that was both a source of frustration and also pride.

2. The Urge itself was Bhaal's greatest gift, a testament to their lineage. But did they despise or delight in these violent urges, did it maybe even scare them?

Sort of… fearful reverence? Prior to Bhaal's proper return in 1482, the Urge was much more controllable - it was more or less Tavias' bloodlust combined with a tendency for dissociation, and he could use assorted techniques to fight against it. After Bhaal's return, it became much stronger, to the point of outright possession by Bhaal (it was possession by Bhaal that led to Tavias killing Alfira; the only reason he could fight it when it came to Isobel and later Astarion is because Bhaal was still testing him, trying to push him into doing it himself). Tavias, for his part, was only rarely possessed outright, and only when he was feeling mentally weak or fatigued and Bhaal wanted to step in personally. For the most part, it'd be Bhaal's voice/encouragement/persuasion, and Tavias would just… let it happen.

3. Bhaal can control his chosen and force the Slayer or actions upon them; did he ever force your Durge to do something against their will or would they obediently follow?

For the most part, he was pretty obedient. More than anything else, he wanted to be loved and accepted, especially by Bhaal, and so would do all sorts of horrendous things to win his approval. If Father wanted it, his son would obey! The only dealbreaker was getting pregnant, which… wasn't so much a pressure with Orin alive as well, although she didn't necessarily want children either (and would have been emotionally destroyed if she knew just who was planning on impregnating her). Still, Bhaal very much did want more Bhaalspawn, and he was prepared to put the pressure on if it became necessary.

4. Durge has an inherent skill for anything medicine; what was their greatest skill? Sewing, caring for wounds, brewing potions or concocting poisons?

Definitely not wound care, haha. It was mostly an encyclopaedic knowledge of anatomy - how bodies are put together. Most of it was learned, uh, hands on. There was a fair bit of both dissection (sometimes combined 'dissection' and 'dinner preparation' :|) and vivisection (had to know what all the assorted parts did, and it helped when, um, everything was still functioning). That included on himself, too - the only reason he didn't give himself a hysterectomy was because he knew Bhaal would be angry. He absolutely would have been capable of doing so, it was just his own fear that meant he didn't, and just stuck with doubling up on contraceptives (using both the Block the Seed spell and Ye Olde Faerunian Condom or the like) and hoping nothing happened.

5. The Deathstalker Cloak is part of their inheritance, but did they really use it or did it bide its time wasting away in a wardrobe?

He did use it, yeah. It's useful! Granted, half the time it would be something like… kill random cultist. Turn invisible. Use invisibility to pull a prank on Orin, but in a proper battle or Situation, it definitely had its purposes.

6. Durge's adoptive family lived in a house in the lower city. Does that house still stand? Did they claim ownership of it, or did they try to get rid of it? Why?

I put them in the Outer City (we just get 'poor part of the city', IIRC?), but no, the house no longer stands. The area was rundown to begin with - after an entire family was murdered there (all save their eleven-year-old foster child, who went missing, presumed dead), it stayed empty for a long time, and eventually the whole block was pulled down for redevelopment. The area is still poor, but there are new houses and new families there.

7. Bane once sacrificed all of Bhaal's assassins, a mistake that caused a great rift between them. Did Durge ever plan to get revenge for it?

Ooh, I don't know about this lore bit. Someone let me know and I can work something out? :D

8. Being the head of a temple comes with lots of tedious work, did they truly manage all of it or did they try to outsource the best they could?

lmao definitely not. Sceleritas did all Tavias' personal scheduling, for one thing - part butler, part PA. There was an actual accountant to do the numbers, I want to say. Tavias did end up having to do a distressing amount of paperwork (I presume his last thought as Orin's dagger entered his brain was, "Ha ha, you have to do the paperwork now~"), but Sceleritas picked up a lot of slack.

9. The Feast of the Moon is a Bhaalian ritual where priests told the stories of particularly interesting or unique kills. Was one of your Durge's deeds ever discussed, or perhaps even turned into a beloved and often retold story?

Oh absolutely. The spree of 1477 gets told a lot. It tends to get a bit exaggerated - Tavias is made out to be more childlike as opposed to already sixteen, body count is increased, it becomes a lot more ~artsy~, stuff like that - but definitely told.

10. Speaking off, Day's Farewell was another ritual everyone of the clergy had to attend as evening dawned over Faerûn. But was it really everyone that came to the gathering, or did a particular Bhaalist sneak out at times or outright refuse attendance? Did they maybe even appear early, eagerly awaiting another service?

Damn, on a daily basis? Yeah, Tavias would have attended most/all (unless on a specific mission), but I feel he'd just… zone out for a lot of it XD;; After a while, it just gets a bit tedious, y'know?

Set 3

1. Name one specific song that fits the vibe for a vivisection partaken in by your Durge. What would it be?

……..I desperately want to name something other than Stuck In The Middle With You but I literally can't think of anything else XD;;

2. Speaking of vivisections; Sceleritas famously messed one up once. How did you Durge react go that? Did it have lasting consequences for the little imp?

Probably annoyance/exasperation. He doesn't ask for much, Sceleritas! It's not that fuckin' hard, Sceleritas! Mild, because he really does care for Sceleritas more than anyone else at that point, but really, dude.

3. The Netherstone, how did they wear it? Did they even wear it?

Kind of a brooch thing at his shoulder. He had his robes drape across his chest, and the Netherstone was embedded in a gold surrounded and used as, basically, a robe clasp.

4. Why the red Netherstone and not the purple one? After all, a proper Bhaalist priest should wear purple robes, so they should have that colour and not Gortash, right? What was the reason behind the switch? Bestie Bracelets? Secret promises? Just plain defiance?

Red matched his Aesthetic(tm) better. Tavias was all black, gold, and red. He couldn't have purple, it would clash. But really, he just gravitated towards the red, didn't really overthink it too much.

5. What was their class, and what was their favourite way to use its perks? Did they maybe even dabble in multiple ones?

Draconic bloodline sorcerer, and probably… 'setting shit on fire'. Lots of. Lots of fire. Uh, he definitely tended to burn places down after doing a kill. …Also came in handy as a makeshift barbeque. ("I much prefer roasted dwarf.") He was entirely adept with other spells, tragically you can't get by with just Fireball, although he definitely had a preference and skill for Evocation spells. (BG3 only goes up to level 12, but pre-brain damage, he was around level 14, and so had access to level 7 spells. Like Fire Storm.) RIP everyone.

6. How did they actually learn their craft/class? Were they born with it, or did they study under someone? Did they have a natural talent?

Born with it, and underwent a lot of training to keep it under control (including when he was being fostered), and, later to use it to cause Massive Damage (at the Temple). It was pretty much one of the main tracks of his education - general education, Bhaalist religious/cult education, combat education, and sorcerous education.

7. The Slayer, Bhaal's gift, how did they earn it? Was it before or after becoming his Chosen? Did they even recieve it?

Basically at the same time as being named Chosen. Theoretically, it was to reward him for the 1477 spree, but he only received it in 1482 when Bhaal returned, which was the same time as him being confirmed as Chosen (Bhaal had spoken through him before to say this was his wish when Tavias was quite young, about twelve, but this was the first time he said it in-person). Definitely made use of it over the next ten years.

8. Durge didn't grow up in the Temple, but Orin did. Did this fact ever have any consequences for either of them? Did it affect their relationship?

There was this weird sort of like… mutual envy. Tavias envied Orin for being able to be so comfortable with everything. She knew the Temple like the back of her hand, it had always been her playground. She knew everyone. She knew all the rituals and rites. She knew all its secrets. Tavias arrived at age eleven and immediately felt like an outsider, and so felt he had to work twice as hard just to get used to the Temple. It wouldn't do for the heir to get lost in the corridors, right?

Conversely, Orin had always found the place a bit claustrophobic. She was taken on excursions to the city, but always strictly supervised - there was no chance for mischief or, well, play. Granted, her methods of 'play' would have been… more on the lethal side, but she still envied Tavias and the way he moved so comfortably through the city streets.

9. Bhaalists are surprisingly skilled with a wide range of weapons. Which one was your Durge's favourite? Did they use it often or did they use something else for their 'regular' schedule?

Shortswords, scimitars, rapiers, and daggers, same as Orin. Longswords and the like could be on the… obvious side, so the siblings were mostly trained with more easily concealed ones (Crimson Mischief always had been Orin's, but Bloodthirst was originally Tavias'. Actually, after it all, he ended up being a little jealous Orin had thought to put the Netherstone in it; it was such an obviously fitting place!). His favourite was using daggers, preferably two - Bloodthirst always, and the other he'd switch out as needed. He had used Stillmaker a bunch when utilising poison, for instance. (During the course of the game, he stole Abdirak's ritual dagger and used it for the entire adventure. He was quite inspired by the idea of pain that didn't cause harm!)

10. Their name; did they ever have one? Who chose it for them, or did it maybe change sometime down the line? Did they perhaps even have multiple alias?

Honestly he legit doesn't know. He knows his original foster parents called him 'Tavia'. When he went to the next ones, they told them his name was Tavia as well. Did that first set come up with it, or did whatever Bhaalists dropped him off leave a note saying, "Hey, this girl's name is Tavia"? Either way, when he started working out he was a boy, he changed it to the more masc-reading Tavias, and when he woke up, that name was the only thing in his head. It's just another mystery to him, along with how he has draconic sorcerer abilities and the appearance of a half-elf when he was made from Bhaal. Let's just not think about it too much!

For aliases, he would most often use his title as the Dragon of Bhaal amongst those he didn't think he needed to know his actual name.

11. After a successful sacrifice, all cult members are encouraged to take their victim's possessions. What's the one thing Durge claimed like that way that they're most proud of? What did they leave behind on purpose?

Jewellery. Shinies. He goddamn loves shinies, especially ones he can put on his horns. Definitely a dragon thing XD

12. Speaking of claiming the possessions of sacrifices, did they ever snatch any real estate in the upper city? Why or why not, and if they did, what did they do with it?

Technically the cult has some, just not Tavias specifically. They're mostly safehouse-esque places, and a few (very hidden) shrines. He would have signed off on some, but otherwise, not a ton of involvement. There's also just some old-fashioned property assets they rent out for income. Running a cult takes money!

13. Cazador's little dungeon is located in close proximity to the Temple. Were they ever some sort of run-ins or disputes between neighbours?

Cazador is just sort of… there. Oh, the Bhaalists 100% know that a) he's a vampire and b) that he's grabbing a hell of a lot of people off the streets, but hey, so long as he's killing them, it's all Bhaal-approved activity! …They don't actually realise that his victims aren't dying, and if they did, there might have been… issues. Like come on man those are perfectly good murder victims, y'know? And if their souls are being pledged to Mephistopheles, that's no use for Bhaal! So in short, they just more or less ignored Cazador and his activities under the assumption he was killing a lot of people, and didn't learn otherwise until it was too late.

Cazador, for his part, had no idea about the Temple. He definitely knew there was a Bhaalist presence in the city, he had been right there for the Bhaalspawn Crisis over a century earlier, but he didn't realise the Temple was that close. I suspect he would have tried to make some sort of deal with them if he had known, which may or may not have gone down well.

14. What did Durge think about living in the Undercity Ruins? Did they miss the surface sometimes, or did they enjoy the unique Underdark-esque decor? Did the great chasms ever lead to some sort of 'accident'?

Oh god Tavias hated being stuck in the Ruins. He might be Daddy's Special Boy, but he's also a lover of sunshine (it's a gold dragon thing. How does that dragon thing work? We just don't know but it's 100% there), and he definitely wilted like a sad flower in the constant underground gloom. Went up to the surface as much as he could via the many secret passages and just… basked like a lizard. He knew it was necessary for security, but he was definitely happiest when he was on a mission and could roam the city streets. As for 'accidents'… yeah, look. They used as much of the bodies as possible (trophies, dinner, decor…) but sometimes you just got to get rid of the remnants, and giant chasms help with that, you know? And if you happen to hold someone over a chasm to let them know just where their bits will end up, well, so be it :)

15. They had an adoptive family once. What did it look like, though? What were their parents like? Did they have siblings? Was it a big, close-knit family or maybe just the mom that stepped up?

It was a few successive foster families, and… it was awkward, y'know? They never felt like his family. He was visibly different, he was, uh, emotionally different. He just never actually... belonged to anyone, and the foster families he stayed with just sort of blended into each other.

After he lost his temper and killed the latest ones when he was eleven, and Sceleritas came for him, he understood, then. He would make sure he belonged with his real family.

[amateur-selfshipper]

I have three different “routes”/versions of Wendy for the Carnival AU and they’re finally bursting out of my chest after being in containment for so long!

“Canon”! Wendy: Wendy is an AI with their own level just like the rest of the cast. Wendy and Jax’s relationship goes back to the early days of sentience, before they started losing their minds. Unlike the other characters, Wendy refused to leave Jax all alone. Just like in canon, cartoon violence is something of a love language between these two. Jax and Wendy are “Crazy in Love” (sorry I had to ;D) and fully adore one another. Wendy’s like “Free my man he did all of that stuff but he’s my specialest boy ever”. Jax can be in the middle of a vivisection and it’s like a switch has flipped when Wendy comes in: “Hi Baby. What can I do for ya? How’s my Pretty Little Clown? <333”

Player! Wendy: Enemies-to-Lovers. Wendy is a player who gets sucked into the game like Caine and Able. Wendy and Jax start out as enemies, with Jax trying to kill any player who enters and Wendy going “No thanks I choose life”. As time passes with Wendy stuck in the game, they begin to explore the levels more outside of their main games and get to know the bosses better. Despite everything, Wendy actually starts to sympathize with Jax the more they learn about him; he’s trapped in a world where he constantly lives with the possibility of being violently reset and has spent years being isolated instead of anyone trying to help him. Wendy starts leaving things like food and puzzles and art supplies whenever they replay his level. Jax is frustrated, thinking that Wendy’s just trying to win his favor so he won’t kill them. “Newsflash asshole: If that was the goal, I wouldn’t be coming back in the first place.” I imagine they even have a Beauty and the Beast moment like where they’re arguing while Wendy patches Jax up after he’s just saved them. They begin to form a weird truce, where they banter while Jax tries (but makes sure he doesn’t actually succeed) to kill Wendy while they try to win his level. Their banter takes on a flirty tone and they’re both left with the awkward realization that “Oh shit they’re actually pretty cute I think I’ve just found my type”. Jax claims Wendy as ‘his’ human and officially moves them in with him. They start to really fall in love. Jax becomes pretty clingy with Wendy, both out of possessiveness and wanting to protect them from the other dangers of the deteriorated Carnival. Wendy doesn’t mind- far from it, actually- but sometimes worries that Jax likes having them as his more than he likes them. But they manage to make it work, with Wendy not fearing Jax and Jax respecting Wendy’s personhood. Pomni and Caine are VERY concerned for Wendy when they first find them in Jax’s level and assume that it’s an abusive situation Wendy needs to be rescued from. They realize that Jax genuinely loves and respects Wendy as his partner either when Wendy asks Jax to spare them and he listens OR when Wendy simply helps the pair themself and stands up for them all when Jax catches them; they realize that Wendy is fine when 1) they argue with Jax on Caine + Pomni’s behalf without any trace of fear, and 2) Jax, despite being royally pissed off, actually listens to Wendy and debates with them as an equal before relenting and letting Caine and Pomni go. 

Beta Tester! Wendy: Wendy worked at the company as one of the beta testers for the game and actually saw the characters become sentient. Jax was always Wendy’s favorite level, and they became good friends after Jax gained sentience. As their friendship grew, they began to fall in love and even built a romance together. When Jax first started lashing out at players, he actually begged Wendy to stay away, scared of hurting them too. But Wendy was determined to figure out what was wrong and help him. Even though Jax never hurt Wendy, it became clear that it was too dangerous for him to be alone with other players. Wendy desperately tries to stay with Jax but is eventually fired when they start digging a little too deep. When Wendy finally finds their way back, things are like they are in the present, and they’re actually scared that Jax won’t even recognize them. But through a mix of what memories haven’t been fucked up and his old tapes, Jax remembers Wendy, and they have a tearful reunion. Jax is even more possessive of Wendy, terrified of losing them again.

One constant across all of these AUs is that Wendy is the only person who can convince Jax to spare other players and dissuade him from violence.

[dhovgaard]

excerpt from exodus

This character is a psychopath that murdered someone else to get on the ship to new Eden.

Jack Moore had slit Brian Faith's throat and slipped his body into the estuary loaded down with an anchor from an old boat and whatever other odds and ends he could attach to the rusty old chain that he wrapped the body with. Faith was not his first victim. He had learned his murderous ways from his crazy uncle Ray. His Uncle liked to string up prostitutes in an abandon boat house and vivisect them for sport.

If Jack's mother knew what her brother did when he was bored she never let on. That and the fact that Jack came home after the baseball game to which his uncle Ray had given him tickets to find his mother slit open like a wild buck her entrails and ovaries decorating the kitchen table and walls.

He should have been shocked by it but he wasn't he began to laugh and after they put his demented uncle Ray on death row he spent his free time butchering small animals eventually working his way up to old men and women. He would sneak into their homes and push them down the stairs. Sometimes he would knock them unconscious and then hang them leaving typed suicide notes on their computers. Then one night a prostitute offered him her wares and he cut her breasts off and stuffed them down her throat. Then he went to her home and killed her children. For several years, he traveled across the country working here and there for cash and killing at will before moving on. No one had ever put it together. Even after Bundy and Keyes cops still didn't talk to each other when they had cases that were clearly committed by psychopathic individuals.

In all that time, he had avoided capture because he just seemed to know when it was time to go, slipping away before the authorities even started looking for him. He attributed this to God's love.

His mother had been a deeply religious woman. She forced him to go to church from the moment he was born. At first, he hated it but then, the words began to speak to him. He began to see that god was not love at all but hate. The events from the Old Testament were to him proof that God despised the peace-loving members of his flock and rewarded only those that killed in his name.

His Uncle Ray reinforced these beliefs when he told him that God wanted the whores he murdered punished not, for their wickedness but, for their weakness. They were weak because they had all the power but let others use them. Their pimps and Johns saw them as nothing more than a commodity to be exploited to satisfy both their lust and their greed.

Ray told him that his victims were no longer human. “They were just meat and God was just fine with the slaughter of meat.”

Just like before there was a little skip in his heart beat as might be caused by a lover’s cool fingers sliding up your back on an unbearably hot night. He knew that his empire would never be. It was gone smashed all to hell by the good intentions of fools.

Didn't they know that humans were just a bunch of mentally disturbed chimpanzees that given the right circumstances they would gut each other for no other reason than that they could. If not for the self-imposed choke collar of laws that by design only applied to those without the guts or power to ignore them.

He was free had always been free. He laughed at his mother's death not because she was a fool or because murder bred its own kind of humor but at the shocked look on her face. Didn't she know this was coming.

The God she had put all her faith in and pinned all her hopes on had not acted to save her but instead made it that much easier for her brother to cut her up like so much chum because God loved death.

He loved all kinds of death the meaner and more brutal the better. He preferred swords, spears and axes over guns because there was more blood, more pain. Bullets killed to quickly much better to rind the flesh to make your victims pray to God in the only way that had meaning to such a sordidly demented deity and that was through pain, sorrow and anguish.

It was why Jewish woman rent their garments when someone died to put on a show for the almighty to roil and bawl in pain and brutality that was the only thing God ever wanted of us and if he couldn't build an empire to those beliefs then he would escape to fight another day. He would bring true heaven down on this planet even if he or they died as a result. 

To that end, he had a secondary plan. Up in the hills he had stocked a cave with provisions and weapons. If what he thought was coming was coming, he would stop there to gather supplies and then move deeper into the jungle to avoid capture. It wasn't the kingdom he had promised himself, but he would still be alive and maybe if God was with him, he could show these fools what true paradise looked like.