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rubykgrant · 3 years ago

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Donut doesn’t watch it because he thinks this MUST have been an accident… why would Church send him anything? It wasn’t like they were BFFs. He hadn't gotten very close to Alpha (not much opportunity for buddy-buddy time in Blood Gulch), and even though he had interacted a lot with Epsilon, Donut didn't really know him intimately. Sure, it was a nice gesture getting that first message, Church saying good-bye to everybody, letting them know he hadn’t been randomly deleted or whatever. It was something he had done on purpose, because it was the only thing he could do… it wasn’t their fault it happened. They didn’t need to feel bad about it. Church probably knew even before things got serious that he’d need to do this. It wasn’t their fault. They didn’t need to feel bad.

Donut feels bad. Why did stuff like this always happen? Why did they have to keep fighting people all the time? Why did they keep getting hurt? This was the problem with bad communication; if other people would just learn to talk about their feelings, then most of these issues would get resolved ahead of time. Was it too much to ask for a little heads-up? Donut can't be the only dude around who appreciated good head. Church could have told them he wasn’t going to make it through the battle…

Well, maybe not ALL of them. Yeah, that was exactly why this second message was a mistake. Why tell one of the Red guys something extra? Even if Donut was on the lighter side of red… Tucker or Caboose would be more likely to get another message. Carolina for sure, maybe Wash. What would Church even say? What else was there TO say? Sure, Donut could think of a few things the guy probably needed to talk about… like his anger problems, his pessimistic outlook, the fact that he had an on-going cycle of abandonment issues.

They could have had some LONG conversations about that. Donut didn’t think Church was willing to get that open and honest, though. Maybe he could have tried harder to talk to Church before… they hadn’t ever had much one-on-one interaction, and they were usually busy running around, trying not to die, but he could have tried. Being the unofficial therapist wasn't really in his job description ("Shoot the Blues!" was pretty much the number-one description for every job on Red Team), and Donut wasn't obligated to figure out how to help everybody, but in hindsight?

Donut was good at talking and opening up to people, even if they weren’t. It was a gift. Most people didn’t appreciate this gift, but that was EXACTLY why it was important to have a friend like Donut… at least, he thought so. He thought he was pretty good at talking, most of the time. Even if people kinda ignored him… or groaned, and rolled their eyes (he could tell when they were eye-rolling, even with the helmets on). It wasn’t HIS fault they were all a bunch of sticks-in-the-mud. It wasn’t his fault nobody paid enough attention to him, it wasn’t his fault they didn’t listen, it wasn’t his fault… he doesn’t need to feel bad (because he's not a jerk, not really, except for sometimes, but that doesn't mean he's horrible or anything, he's not that bad, not really).

Donut feels bad. He feels a little bitter, too. It really WASN’T his responsibility to be the emotional filter for everybody else. He shouldn’t be feeling guilty at ALL. He had enough drama to deal with on the Red Team, he didn’t need a big blue cherry on top to worry about. If Church had wanted to confide in anybody, he could have! If he wanted to talk to somebody, he had his two blue-bros right there, plus Carolina (even though she was kinda scary), and even Wash (sort of… he was at least willing to have a pleasant conversation with people). What was Donut supposed to do? Just worm his way in over there with the Blues, force a conversation to happen, because he can tell they need help sharing their feelings? Well, nobody asked!

Now, here was this little digital icon in his helmet, telling him he had another message�� from the dude who was usually so ticked-off he spoke mostly in swears and condescending insults. Hmm. It had to be a mistake. It was probably just… something like outtakes or a blooper-reel; Church trying out different things he wanted to say before he figured out what to put in that first message. No WAY Church got all sentimental like that on the first try. Then, when he… when he did whatever it was that… made him stop existing… this other video was left behind, data with nowhere to be, and Donut was most likely the last one who got sent the real video, so this one just came a long for the ride.

Still… Donut is a little curious. He’s good at keeping secrets… but he’s also a bit of a gossip, to be honest. If this is left-over material from stuff Church kept out of the video they all saw… it could be pretty funny. Is it OK for it to be funny? How long do you have to wait after something bad happens for it to be funny? Would he just be the a-hole, laughing at a dead guy, if he tried to make it funny? Wait… what if it isn’t funny at all? What if it is something mean, or something even MORE sad?

Maybe that’s why it wasn’t part of the video everybody saw… this isn’t fair. Well, that would be good, right? It would be Church finally expressing himself, getting it all off his chest, and Donut… Donut would be the last person to hear it. He’d hear it, but he wouldn’t be able to say anything back. He wouldn’t be able to say anything about it at all, unless he told everybody. So. he'd be the one potentially making the others feel bad, all over again. Donut likes to talk to people, and he’s pretty good at it, but…

Donut feels bad. He doesn’t want to feel bad about it, but he does (he might be a jerk and an a-hole, but he's not THAT bad, not really). He didn’t ask for this, he didn’t need a guilt-trip from somebody who wasn’t even around anymore. Especially when… he maybe could have helped BEFORE this all happened (if people LISTENED TO HIM, which they don't), but now Church was gone, and Donut feels bad, but he doesn’t WANT to feel bad, and he doesn't want to make the others feel bad, so he doesn’t mention this to anybody else… he doesn’t want what happened to be his fault. He doesn’t talk about it (is not saying anything the same mistake all over again?), and he doesn’t play the second message (it can’t be his fault, it wasn’t fair, please just him forget about this).

#red vs blue #rvb fic #franklin delano donut

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abitofafatass · 4 years ago

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Updated: Red vs Blue Injury masterlist, as of Season 18 (Zero)

Only three people got updated on this masterlist because this is the Reds and Blues and their Freelancer parents’ post. As per usual, please message me if I missed something

Red Team

Sarge

Sniper round to the head

Got pinned to Red Base by the remote control Warthog

Doc drove into him twice

Fell down in the Caves below Blood Gulch

knocked out with a railgun, suffers “bruised ribs and a broken hip”

drove off a cliff repeatedly in his attempt to fight gravity

PSAs

-Burned alive in Fire Safety

Donut

Grenade to the face

tripped over the Spleen Ball

got his hand stuck in the warthog’s machinery

Sister’s ship landed on him and he fell down into the caves

nearly died of dehydration in the dessert

Shot in the chest by Washington and nearly bleeds out

Had a grenade explode behind him and knock him unconscious

Was “ripped apart and put back together” after being zapped by the time machine

Became an unwitting Shisno

PSAs

-Had fingers blown off by fireworks

Simmons

Ow, the back of my head!”

“Ow, the front of my face!”Became a cyborg

Shot himself in the foot

Shot by Sarge right before leaving for Rat’s Nest

Sets off a mine in the minefield in the dessert (but doesnt say how he was injured)

Electrocuted himself (Epsilon!Simmons only)

Beaten up by aliens (Epsilon!Simmons only)

PSAs

-Burned alive in Fire Safety

-Beat up by Tucker and Grif

Where There’s a Wall miniseries

-crashed a pelican into the Wall

Grif (who has a full wiki page dedicated to his injuries, btw)

Run over by a tank

Shot by sniper round while hiding on the top of the canyon

Is shot at the beginning of all of Red Team’s emergency plans

nearly died because of an allergic reaction to cleaning solutions

was set on fire

Was blasted off the top of Valhalla (”I think my knee caps are shattered”)

has had AT LEAST 11 (eleven) punches and kicks from TEX directed at his groin

smashed face first into a wall thanks to the malfunctioning speed unit

nearly overheated thanks to that same speed unit

Shot by the tank when Sarge was remodeling Red Base

Got shot by Sarge while running drills

Beat up by the Fed and New soldiers because he didnt do drills (Thanks Wash)

beaten up by aliens (Epsilon!Grif only)

Mental health declines after the Reds and Blues leave him completely alone. This includes

-being so lonely he goes full Castaway and makes the BGC out of volleyballs

-possible hallucinations

-hyperactive talking and new speech tics

fell on his face when he attempted to swing in for a rescue

Deathmatch: Carolina v Meta

-Hit with his own Grifshot by one of those deathmatch guys

-shot by caboose with the tank during deathmatch debate

-knocked out with his own grifshot during deathmatch debate

-shot in the back during the deathmatch

Imaginary

-killed and his dead body used to gum up the giant windmill

-killed at the end of season 6

PSAs

-Got burned alive in Fire Safety

-Grifball kills

Where There’s a Wall miniseries

-was in the Warthog when it was being launched at the wall in order to break through it

-hit by Simmons’ pelican while on the wall

Blue Team

Church

Was tortured and fragmented

Self-destructed in Washington’s head (Epsilon)

team killed via tank

had a bomb literally go off in his stomach

Improper use of the Man-Canon at Valhalla sent him skidding across the damn map

Was killed by an EMP (Alpha)

Shot in the foot by Tex (Epsilon)

Red team shot him in the foot so he could talk to them (Inside the Epsilon unit only)

Blew up when the rocket he was attached to hit the ceiling (inside the Epsilon unit only)

Fragmented himself (Epsilon)

PSAs

-Had a hole drilled into his ass by those NASA probes

-blown up by a nuke

Tucker

Crunchbite beat the hell out of him

An alien parasitic baby literally clawed himself out of his stomach

he was shot in the back by O’Malley or Church that one time in season two with a rocket launcher

rock landed on his head and laid him the fuck out

Stabbed in the gut by Felix

Stabbed in the gut by Phase

PSAs

-Was run over by the warthog by Carolina, Kimball, and Doc Grey

Caboose

Church shot his toe off

He had three AI in his head and then had them violently removed = brain damage

Massive blood loss when Junior bit his arm and drank his blood

Got shot in the shoulder running from Tex (”Last time I got shot, I got a purple heart…”)

Delta was torn from his head = MORE BRAIN DAMAGE

The time he stepped on a mine and got blown sky high

landing on the ground after being blasted sky high

Caboose’s helmet was offline for almost two hours leaving him without air (no air for extended amounts of time kills brain cells)

drank gasoline

Fell off a cliff and landed on his head (the part that was most used to being hit)

PSAs

-Got burned alive in Fire Safety

-Jumped off the side of the canyon

-had Asian Bird Flu

-Church tears out his heart and sticks in back in every Valentines day (may be metaphorical)

-Fell out of the sky that one time he “went into the campaign”

Tex

Got blown up by Donut’s grenade

Shot in the ass by Tucker’s sniper rifle

killed by the EMP (Beta)

Stabbed in the helmet by the Meta and sucked into the Epsilon unit (E-Beta)

Epsilon “forgot” her and let her memory go (E-Beta)

Doc

Tea bagged by the Flag Zealots

Attacked by Crunchbite and knocked out

punched into a wall

blasted out of the wall

blown up in Tex’s mine trap

Long term exposure with Omega gave him Dissociative Identity Disorder

Became an unwitting Shisno

Kaikaina “Sister” Grif

Was apparently under the ice for several hours and came out of it with no lasting effects

nearly strangled to death by Lopez

“Jilled it so hard I got a friction burn”

Washington

Epsilon committed suicide in his head

Shot in the back by South

Shot while at the Freelancer HQ

Run over by Grif with a Warthog

Blown up by Sarge and the fusion coils

Blown up in Tex’s mine trap

Beat up by the Meta

Hit with Locus’ rail gun and knocked unconscious

Sliced his palm open in the Purge fight

Spent eight days in armour lock with no food or water

shot through the neck

-caused Cerebral Hypoxia, meaning his brain was without oxygen for several minutes

-brain damage with severe memory lapses and amnesia

-He now has some sort of cybernetic enhancement to cope with these issues

Unclear what sort of torture Zero had him put through but it did leave him unconscious and in a coma again for a while

Carolina

possible broken ribs after using the speed unit during the Sarcophagus heist

Eta and Iota potentially caused brain damage in the fight against Tex

Tex punched her so hard she was knocked unconscious

coma

The Meta ripped Eta and Iota out of her head = brain damage and damage at implant site

tossed off a cliff right after having AI ripped out of her head

Stabbed in the leg by Felix

twisted or broken ankle in the first fight against Sharkface

fell off the cliff and through a bunch of tree branches in that same fight

Fell out of the monorail in the second fight against Sharkface. There were no lasting injuries visible, but she was definitely holding her ribs

slash across the back (shoulder to hip) with an energy sword

Spent eight days in armour lock with no food or water

broken arm

Uncertain what injuries she did get, but she was kind of embedded in a wall after Zero’s blast

fell from about 10 feet up after that blast. She was clearly limping and needed support after that

Deathmatch vs Meta

-slash across front (shoulder to hip) with bruteshot

#masterlist #rvb18 #rvb18 spoilers #red vs blue #ok to reblog #i should just make this a google doc at some point but alas

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the-mercurial-star-o-vesper · 4 years ago

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ITS EYE AGAINST I

... And me against You. Hello random people of the internet, and the select RvB audience I’m intending to talk to. Time for millions to ignore my existence, while a select few look at my fancy garbage. Now, with no sense of decorum, or tact... I present to you. That Red vs Blue seasons 15 through 17 are continuity breaking and noncanon. To be honest, I’m not overly fond of the over all plotlines and more than a few handfuls of episodes were just... dull. And that’s saying something for a series I’ve been attached to for the last decade. That isn’t to say there weren’t parts I didn’t like. There were plenty of things that were just fantastic and launched perfectly. But let’s get to the whys and hows. Let’s set out the point system: First point. The Blues and Reds, our blue visor assmonkeys... were unnecessarily stupid. They were a copypasta team, with a poor excuse to be there, that not only doesn’t fit what is already established but breaks continuity by being there. If we were to take the rest of the 15-17 series, it’d be easier to make them into alternative universe counter parts or what-ifs, from different timelines caused by the series later use of Time travel. Rather than this blessed mess. They spit in the face of Agent Florida’s workhistory. And while you can see where the idea came from, the execution and establishment was lacking. The very fact that it includes Doc already tells you that we’re not with Agent Kansas anymore, and that it utterly destroyed Doc’s history prior to coming to Blood Gulch. Second Point. The Time Travel. [frustrated exhausted ugh-ing] The best I can say is that the series analysis of Time Travel was fantastic. It acknowledged that the inclusion of Time Travel is meant to break continuity and reshape it. The difference here, is that it only broke continuity. In fact it shattered it so badly that we’d have to ask the Homestuck Fandom to pick the remaining pieces back up, and classpect it for good measure. The fact that Human History was so severely fusterclucked by our Teams already shows you how much respect Continuity got in these last seasons, as well as how much respect to Canon. And then there were the “Gods”. Just... Introducing someone for the funny designs and the fantastic graphic and digital movements is nice, but it doesn’t do anything. See every pitfall CGI and 3D ran into for the last few decades. See, RvB is meant to run along side Halo without destroying one another in an “Upstoppable Force meets Immovable Object” sort of way. And if nothing else, its already established that RvB also has ties to Marathon too (which, while muddled up, still works). And while plenty of the shenanigans were fantastic (Loved that Cyclops scene), the reason they got there was Weak, and it just utterly detonates itself like Church and his stomach bomb... Surrounded by people you hate, and being hunted down by the world’s worst player at a knock-knock jokes. The Third Point I despise Jax. ... I kid, that isn’t the third point. But I still don’t like the Jax. His growth into a terrible director was funny, but it doesn’t really save him or his purpose in the series. I digress. Its what I dub the “Super Hero Ex Machina”. In a “Super Hero Ex Machina” situation, reality crashes in, breaks both Narrative flow and rules, for drama. And example is with Spiderman and his web shooting. In his narrative, he can save someone easily from falling with his web shot. But if the Drama Machina Maker is introduced, then the reality of the situation crashes down as the force of the fall would completely shatter the victim’s skeleton if Spiderman caught them. As this is not already established as happening before, its only there to cause drama and not meant for any serious development or character arc. Or if a show adheres to keeping the status quo at all costs. Things that would realistically and permanently mess up the status quo are solved in 1 or 2 episodes. But if Reality crashes because Plot said so, it breaks the established rules of the Narrative (and pacing). Especially if said plotpoint could have already been solved in prior episodes easily. And that’s what they pulled on Agent Washington and his throat injury. Washington is an established survivor. He has survived some pretty messed up stuff, both mentally and physically, and he’s come so far as a character. To a point where he’s almost unrecognizable from when he was first established as the “Noir Detective Soldier Mercenary Man who plays by corrupt rules but still shines that hurting heart of gold once in a while”. Some of the stuff he’s had to survive, and potentially had to survive would’ve killed normal people. Even his writers had to take a step back and say, “No he can’t survive getting cut in half by a car”. RvB is good about changing status quo, and keeping to a rule of “actions have consequences” in order to both forward character and story. So it isn’t like they’re above permanently messing someone up (... Church.) But there are Rules on how its Handled. Story will establish and evolve said rules over time, this is true, but its a “more things change, more they stay the same” situation. And Washington’s injury... breaks that. For easy reason; For one thing, we already have a Freelancer with throat injuries, and he got them in a far worse scenario. Agent Maine was bloody machine gunned in the throat, then tossed off a freeway stories up from a ground we never even saw. And all he got was a messed up voice. There isn’t a good reason to give Wash that injury, realistic as it may be, besides playing it for Drama. And while such a circumstance should be given both the realism and seriousness it deserves, this only works if, you know, don’t play it to make a person or people suffer for Drama. Does this forward Character? No. No it doesn’t. The seasons retreat everyone’s character arcs. What little it does show is how far everyone has come... By making them take 20 steps back, and 5 steps forward. An ultimately useless gesture that neither show cases the human condition of “repeat until you finally get the lesson” or “sometimes shit happens”. Does it move the story? Only for drama. Which is a very weak reason. Even worse, as the series has already established that it can think deeply and use drama as a tool and not a plot point. If not for character or story, is it meant to be a metaphor? Metaphor for what. RvB doesn’t do metaphors. If not metaphor, is it supposed to be informative of the condition itself? RvB has bloody PSAs. No. A story is decent enough if it can mix those questions up without one consuming the other. But there wasn’t a point to do it. Just to see Wash or Carolina or the guys to suffer? To show that sometimes people get injuries they don’t bounce back from? Are you Kidding? We just permanently lost Church, and they set out to find the possibility of his existence again! That right there already Tells you that sometimes folks don’t Bounce Back. There was an entire Arc for Caboose, fer the gods’ sake, talking about it. CABOOSE. What the flyin Fu-- Ahem. There was already a ruling about Actions have Consequences. It was apart of the status quo that went as far back as the Blood Gulch Chronicles. Its filed under “The More things change, the more they stay the same”, and even throughout the Reconstruction series, there were plenty of characters pulling permanently changing stunts that affected them through the rest of their lives, or caused their death for it. [deep breath, lets it out] So. Inspite of my many problems with S15-17, there are things I adored about it. - Donut and Caboose’s arcs. Fantastically done. Caboose getting to the understanding he got in S14 about losing friends was heart breaking and beautiful. Donut’s may seem like retread and flanderization, but that is actually easily explained. When you’re under sufficient stress, your coping mechanisms will boost out from 10 to 100, and just because you’re now fully aware of it doesn’t mean you have the power or development yet to stop. It was a fantastic look into his character. - Sister. They made her into more than just a gimick and Grif’s Sister, which was a problem I had with her in Blood Gulch. Good patch up there. - The Background info and the details in Background Info with our main characters. Ye Gods, we got some backstory! The humor works, the seriousness works, its a beautiful set of puzzle pieces that fit snuggly into both canon and continuity. - Chrovos. Inspite of the time travel plot pitfalls, I actually really liked Chrovos. Wish they did more with them (Him? Her? I don’t remember if they established their pronouns). Did not like Jenkins, inspite of him being created out of a cut character. The Gods didn’t work very much either, and would’ve been better suited as characters that weren’t “gods”. It doesn’t help that they just... had inconsistant rules. - The Freelancers. I love the introduction to the Freelancers and all their nice armor designs. Too bad they’re all feckin’ dead. - Temple. I actually really liked Temple and the idea behind him. However, instead of the malakey we got, and the Time Travel Nonsense that could be theorized afterwards. It would’ve worked better if he had been the leader of a Cult of Personality or sorts, purposely and badly mimicking the hype of the RvB teams’ fame and gathering surviving former stim troopers. The terrorist thing could work, and so could the Church plot. Everything else was stupid. Remove the Time Travel, this isn’t Homestuck Hour. Thanks for you for your continued reading. ... oh Right, I forgot. As awesome as it was to see Locus again, the uselessness of Wash’s throat injury and how he was reintroduced makes him more into a Deus ex Machina (and not that Halo 3 Machinima from way back). Its like fitting a circle peg into a square hole... But getting it stuck halfway and ruining the children’s puzzle toy. ADDENDUM (edited) I hate Hate HATED how Vic parodied Church’s epilogue speech, and I just about wish Church would come back just to beat the shiznet out of him for it.

#rvb #Red vs Blue #Analysis #The Shizno #rvb season 15 #rvb season 16 #rvb season 17

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stareiiez · 5 years ago

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Mephistophelian Summer

Chapter 1.

𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕕 ℂ𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕥: 𝟚.𝟡𝕜

𝔸/ℕ: Hello, Hello! <3 Tonight at 1:11 am I bring you the first chapter of my horror au! There’s no horror going on right now, it’s just setting up the basis for the reason why and where the horror of this fic takes place.

Warnings: Cursing and Foul words, that’s about it!

𝑀𝑒𝑝𝘩𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑝𝘩𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑛: adj: showing the cunning or ingenuity or wickedness typical of a devil; also see: devilish; diabolic; diabolical; mephistophelean; evil.

The ticking of the bell that hit 11:30 am, it seemed the clock's noise rang in Tucker's mind louder than the students' chatter and laughter that rang in his classroom. His head was propped up on both of the palms of his hands as his dark brown eyes narrowed in on the white clock's face. It seemed like the large and small hand of the clock seemed to move slower than normal, just because it was prolonging the students of Vallahala High. Summer would begin right when the clock would strike noon, and the early release would grant sweet sweet freedom for the next three months of blissful vacation. Tucker couldn't help but grin at the plan that was forming in his head-on just how he would spend his summertime. Unlike most of his peers would get summer jobs to save up money, Tucker would be wasting his time with his group of friends doing everything and going anywhere he wanted without a care in his world.

A smooth grin spread over his lips as his eyes got a little hazy from his daydreams. It wasn't until his summer daydreams were ruined by the vibrating phone in his jeans back pocket. The bright cellphone screen lit up with multiple messages from the group chat him and his friends had created a few years back. In this chat, conversations ranged from absolute chaotic mindnumbing interactions to the dissecting every little thing about their lives and beyond their home planet. Usually, Grif would insinuate these conversations when he would smoke two or three joints and spam the group chat with his otherworldly conversations.

His phone screen lit up from already ten or more messages from the said group chat. Without care, Tucker settled back into his seat and unlocked his phone. The teacher didn't care, it was the last day of school and they too might be counting down the minutes for summer vacation. Until next week when they would go back to teaching some poor sorry sap of students that didn't manage to pass both fall and spring semester with the best grades in the world. Thank god his future goal major wasn't education.

Fellow Delinquiants, and Dick and Carolina.

11:37 am Dickhead 1: So what's this about some big summer plans?

11:37 am David: Summer plans? I was applying for that summer job you know-

11:39 am Stoner McGee: Work? During freedom? You make me tired.

11: 39 am David: Well... Carolina is getting a summer job with me too-

11:40 am Tucker: BOOOOO you both suck ass

11: 40 am Tucker: Listen assholes, there's no work this summer; because we are going camping.

11:41 am Redhead: We are doing what?

11:43 am Tucker: Relax, I'll let you all in on my plan when we get out of this hellhole.

11:46 am Dick: The outdoors seems fun!

11:48 am Sis: Camping? Are you on crack Tucker?

11:49 am Donut: If we're camping I vote on bringing food!

Well, at least some people were on board with the idea. Before he could read any more group text messages Tucker slipped his phone back into his pocket and sighed contently. This summer was going to be the best thing to happen to him in a while. Ever since he concluded that he was for sure graduating next year, and a few of his friends had already planned their future that didn't seem to involve him, it was starting to sound shitty. Call him a pussy, or bully him but he had abandonment issues. He hated being alone or being left behind, that's why most of his time was at least spent with at least his group of friends or at least one of his friends. He needed to feel secure and safe, and by god did they make him feel like he had a second family. This summer was the last summer he could spend normally without the stress of college looming over his shoulder, or friends coming and going. He wanted to have fun and take charge of the rest of his youth before it was forever locked away in the state of some four-year hell of education so he can get a job.

Once the clock finally hit 12, Tucker had sprung up from his seat like something struck him. His backpack was slung over his right shoulder and he all but ran out of the classroom along with the other excited students. Papers were flung in the air, and screams and chatter filled the air. Notebooks were flung, textbooks were thrown in the trash and homework filled binders were torn apart. The papers scattered and fluttered through the air in a victorious motion. Tucker jogged through the halls, his body weaving through bodies and moving fluidly with the masses of people who were making their escape through the school's front doors.

The large wooden doors were flung open and the ruckus filled the open air, classmates ran all over. Some made their ways to their cars, some stuck around to say goodbye to their friends, or others sprinted into the aligned school buses that awaited to take them home for the last time in the school year. The bright sunny, noon air shined upon Tucker as he inhaled his first noseful of fresh air. 'Ah freedom, so that's what it smells like.'

A content sigh slipped past his lips while he leaned back against the school statue of its mascot. One large puma that has it's back arched and teeth bare. They just changed to the Pumas after some big back and forth argument in the school district of Blood Gulch High should accept and appreciate their mascot if it was a warthog. The school cringed as well as the student body when they first found out that their school teams were about to be known as the Blood Gulch Warthogs. They wanted to be feared and at least have some kind of ring to it, so the school board decided on naming Blood Gulch, The Blood Gulch Pumas. It was pretty stupid to argue over some type of animal that resembles their school if it was up to Tucker. This highschool reminded him of chihuahuas. All talk and not enough bite.

"Hey man." A male voice spoke up before Tucker could bask in his summer freedom for a little longer. The male tilted his head to greet the new presence, and couldn't help but grin.

David 'Washington.' stood before him. All dark brown hair, with the blonde dye that was accenting the tips of his spiky hair. The blonde dyed tips were part of a half tipsy dare at the beginning of the junior year and Carolina had managed to do a decent job in dying his hair correctly. Wash, at first nearly died at the sight of his new hair. Then slowly for a week he slowly accepted the blonde accenting the dark brown of his natural hair color. Even his parents thought it looked nice and even joked that he should go full blonde, something that Wash had somewhat considered but never went through with it yet. He casually slipped the second strap of his backpack over his left shoulder, and his large palms grasped the two straps contently.

"Where's the rest of the guys?" Tucker asked once he reciprocated his greeting to one of his best friends.

"Carolina is dragging Church here since I'm sure Allison is trying to shove her tongue down his throat by now. Grif is going to drive his little sister home and then meet up with us with Simmons, Donut, and Frank."

"Why exclude Sis? She's always the life of the party." Tucker frowned.

A small scoff as a shy grin slipped over David's lips, "Please? Her? She's that and a whole ass hurricane."

"Exactly why she's invited with us to these summer plans of mine." Tucker grinned, a little more cooly than needed.

"Right, what kind of plans are we-"

"Hey! I said I'm going goddamnit!" Another voice cut in, this one pitched up higher in distress as a few grunts left his lips.

Both males tore their attention away from each other to watch a fiery redheaded girl grab a dark-haired male by the back of his shirt towards the two. The dark-haired male's arms were flailing about as he fought to keep up with the long-legged strides that the redheaded female took to meet the two boys.

"I can walk on my own, you know?! You're embarrassing me." The male hissed as the female finally unhanded him, her long pale arms crossed over her chest as her nose lifted slightly in the air with a huff.

"Really? Seems like you couldn't walk straight after you seemed to be having your soul sucked out of you by the blonde bitch." The girl growled back, anger set in her bright green eyes.

"Told you," Wash whispered to Tucker, making the other snort with amusement. It was cut short when the green-eyed gaze was sliced over to the two instead, silencing any ore commentary about her little brother.

"Just because you're only 30 minutes older than me, does not mean you can just drag me anywhere." The dark-haired male huffed more, he stood up straight and fixed the black-framed glasses on his nose. His duller green eyes were narrowed in a glare at his sibling.

"Church always glad to see you," Tucker commented, his eyes swept over the pasty-skinned male. A shit-eating smile took over his features as he caught the smear of dark red covering his entire mouth and one place on his neck. 'My man.' Tucker thought slimly.

"Hey, Leonard you got a little.." Wash spoke up, his finger pointing to his mouth. A small blush adorned his freckle splattered cheekbones and nose, his eyes quickly averting when realization dawned on the other's face.

The smear of the lipstick only colored the redhead's face in a little more irritation than necessary. The tension hung over the four heads, and with Carolina nearly on verge of bringing all hell loose to her little brother and his girlfriend. Wash cleared his throat and shot Tucker a look, one that had Tucker shoving his hand in his back pocket and fishing his car keys out

“Let's get some lunch fuckers." He said, returning Wash's look, and lead the three to his car.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Slim's Pickens, a dinner that has better food than its cursed name, had the best food in probably the whole town. The radio station lulled in the background of the diner. Chatter, silverware clinking against plates was comforting in a way, this one diner had the aura of 'Welcome Home.' and that was one of the reasons why it was the group's favorite spot to hang out at. Tucker had his feet propped up on the chair next to him as he scrolled on his phone, his eyes scouring through a few text messages he sent to Grif. He had been pestering and frankly pissing off his friend, to get the rest of his friend group to the diner. He was too impatient to lay down his big summer plan. With a groan, Tucker shut his phone screen off and tossed his head back over the chair's back.

"What is it with you today? You're so jumpy and you practically shoved us into your car." Wash commented, his gaze was on Tucker for a while now. He was watching the impatience grow more and more on Tucker's features, and it only made him snort in amusement.

"You nearly hit seven cars on your way here, and nearly ran through two red lights," Carolina added, her head was propped up on her hand and a single eyebrow rose in judgment.

"You will know when the other idiots are here." Tucker huffed, his eyes roamed over to Carolina. The once pissed off look on her face from her little brother was far gone, thanks to her practically forcing him to clean off the marks and lipstick stains Tex had left on his face.

"Well if you're going to play the waiting game, I am going to order something to eat." Carolina hummed, before picking up the menu and leaned over the table to David. Their chatter over what sounded better to eat, or certain prices.

20 minutes later, a clean Church, and plates of fries and other items of food that was placed before the four; Grif, Sister, Simmons, Donut, and Frank Dufrense had joined them. Finally.

"Alright, asshole tell me why you nearly made me get in a car crash from all your stupid texts," Grif said as he plopped down in the chair in front of Tucker. He didn't hesitate to steal a curly fry from Wash's plate and shove it in his mouth. His dark eyebrow rose as he chewed.

Tucker frowned before answering. "I already figured out what we are going to do this summer."

"If you're bringing up that camping trip-"

"Yes I am bringing it up, come on! It'll be so fucking great. Us, a private lake, privacy, alcohol. All the works!"

"Woo! Par-tay! Let's get it!" Sis cheered, her hands flinging up in the air as an excited grin split across her lips. Her eyes sparkled at the thought of getting shit-faced and puking her guts out in the crystal clear lake; then go skinny dipping in the waters at the dead of night.

"Oh no, the hell you aren't! No parties! You're three years younger and so underage." Grif bit out, his gaze fixed on his sibling that was sitting at the far end of the table right in front of Carolina. His voice ruining the enthusiastic expression on Sister's face.

"You're not my mom! Don't tell me what to do!"

"I'll kick your ass like our mom, I'll break my lazy rule of not doing shit just for you."

"Where exactly are we going to go do this if we agree?" Simmons pipped up from beside Grif.

"A place I always camped at with my Dad during the summer. It's called Tahoe Wood but I call it paradise."

"Tahoe Wood? You mean as in that endless fucking woods that most people get lost in Tahoe Wood?" Church commented, his voice sounding not too pleased in the slightest.

"You have me as a guide, come on I know that place like the back of my hand." Tucker scoffed.

"I am just brimming with confidence that nothing shitty will happen to us."

"Hey! Fuck you man!"

"Tucker, how long are we going to stay there?" Frank "Doc" cut in before Tucker or Church could further curse each other out in the diner.

It's happened at least once or twice, and each time the two were escorted outside by the waiters and left outside to cool off. They were allowed back inside once they at least said sorry to each other. They were treated like little kids for being in high school, but it came from a place of fondness. The employees all came to know the friend group well since they used the diner to hang out and eat almost once or twice every week.

"One week tops, think of it as a 'fuck you school' getaway." Tucker shrugged, his eyes watched as Grif stole a few more fries from Wash's plate. How the dyed blonde male didn't scold the other from stealing his food away more than once was a shock. "When are you and Carolina getting those summer jobs?" Tucker asked Wash.

"Sometime in the second week of June." Wash glanced at Carolina for confirmation.

"Since it is the last week of May, let's do this shit! Come on! Start the summer with a fucking bang!" Tucker pleaded, the palms of his hands smacking the table in the emphasis of his words. Plates clanged and silverware rattled from the vibrations, the noise drew several eyes of customers that were contently eating to glance over at the group.

"If we agree to this stupid trip will you shut up?" Church hissed, his eyes darting to the customers in the diner then back to Tucker. His pale green eyes were sharp and slightly cold as a wave of annoyance washed over his features.

Only when Church was pissed, annoyed, or just slightly miffed he looked like Carolina. He was the spitting image of their father, just like Carolina was a spitting image of their mother. Except Carolina had dyed her naturally blonde hair a fire engine red when she turned 16 and kept it red from since then on.

"Yes," Tucker said, rather smugly.

"Then yes! Now shut up."

"Hey! You don't speak for the rest of us. Camping sounds boring, and tiring work." Grif complained.

"Grif, shut up! I'm not going to hear Tucker complain for another hour about this trip. You go, or my sister is kicking your ass to Tahoe Wood and back!" Church hissed under his breath.

Well at least Tucker was satisfied, he would simply grin to himself as Grif bickered with Church. The two were bent over Carolina and Simmons that were sitting next to them. Donut and "Doc" were frankly content on conversating and adding in friendly banter to the swelling argument between the two males. It didn't help that both Grif and Church would yell at Donut or Doc to 'shut up and butt the fuck out' before going back to their argument.

This is going to be the best vacation ever.

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calliecat93 · 5 years ago

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Since I can't go to RTX and they aren’t streaming it this year but I wanted to do a masterpost of something RvB related, I decided to write a wrap-up of this interview with Jason Weight on The SHizno RvB Podcast. Please go check it out because there was now ay that I could fit everything in here and there’s so much good stuff in it. SO please go and check it out! But anyways, here we go:

Joe had told Jason about the plan for a Donut and Wash season back at RTX, which Jason at first wasn't on board with. But once he began writing it, he got into it and became very attached to Donut.

When rewatching the show to prep for S17, one scene that took note of was in the caves when Grif was making the Reds not look at Kai when naked… except for Donut since he just paid attention to the Blue’s base. It felt like he had depth in those kinds of moments and it got him to like him. He was very happy to see more people join Team Donut after the season. He feels like only the surface has been scratched for him.

He confirmed that Donut’s innuendo in the finale was intentional (even putting ‘tongue and cheek’ in the character notes) and any made after will likely be intentional by him.

When they talked about Donut and Tucker’s development, Jason joked that Simmons would be next to receive development. So it seems that Jason is at least aware of our desire for a Simmons season XD

The Everwhen was devised essentially as another method of time travel different from the previous methods seen before since doing it the same way again would have been boring.

The timeline after the paradox in the Writers Room was called Schrodinger’s Ass.

The version of time travel we got was the third version. Jason spent a month on Verison One, but Burnie had rejected it. Then he, Joe, and Miles devised a second version, but near the end they threw it out and the third version that included The Everwhen was made.

How it worked in previous versions was that Chrovos has made the alternate Blood Gulch as a containment unit type of thing to contain the Reds and Blues as she went backwards in time, giving them a limited amount of time before she reached the beginning of time and… honestly, IDK how to type the whole thing out. But to put it simply, it was very convoluted and thus The Everwhen was made. The first version was also rejected due to being too similar to S9.

Jason is on Red Team! His explanation? “Red Team is an actual team.”

He really liked the direction that Joe took Wash, especially since him now having a disability gives him a new unique perspective that, even if he doesn’t get to write in the future, he looks forward to seeing the direction that Wash is taken. He also believes that if they focus on Wahs’s rehabilitation, Caboose should have a major role in it. HIRE HIM RT, DANG IT!

Simmons original nightmare was the same scenario and the same joke… except that the one int he UFO was his dad. The higher-ups rejected this since it could come off as, well… incestuous/pedophilic. Which while I think the ‘dad’ bit would have made more sense… yeah, I… can’t blame them for that one. Jason DOES say that in his mind, Simmons feels that he’s in his father's shadow and the scene was supposed to be in a Freudian reference to those feelings.

Genkins was originally not as intimidating int he script. Much of it came from the direction, especially in Episode 10 after he got skewered by the golf club. Same with Wash and Carolina’s scene in Episode 9. He greatly loved seeing the direction that Austin and Josh took with the scenes.

Miles had toyed with having a scene set directly after S13 (he says 10 but I think he meant 13), but Jason felt that it was best to leave that area alone since it had ended on such a perfect note and talked him out of it. Jason also toyed with having the guys see Epsilon’s final message ala Princess Leia hologram and Tucker picking them up/explaining Episolon’s nature. But it was too talky nor did it really affect anything, so they instead went with Tucker re-living Crash site Bravo which was done by Miles.

If RvB ended up a Seinfeld-esque comedy, Grif and Simmons would live together with Grif trying to get Simmons out of his shell. Sarge is essentially Dan DeVito. Tucker would live alone and use his sword to open up beer bottles. Donut would live in a gym due to, in his mind, him having severe allergies and is why he wears the Power Armor all the time. Carolina and Wash would live together and have a dog, and they both suck at dating due to judging the other’s dates (which Jason feels their relationship is brother and sister). Caboose owns the building they all live in. Lopez is maintenance. I want this show now.

Jason reads all the comments after all the episodes, including on Tumblr (I’m going to be so much more paranoid over my reviews now...) and one post he really liked was the idea of an RvB Road Trip since he used to be a roadie.

Jason doesn’t know how the whole Shisno thing came about since it was Joe’s idea. He does say that it used to be spelt ‘shizno’ until they found out how it’s officially been spelt as ‘shisno’. Whoops. They DID consider involving Wyoming’ time distortion unit in the story, but with all the other time shenanigans they felt it would make it too complicated.

Koen Wooten, a 3D Producer at RT, joked about putting time travel into every show from now on. Miles and Jason were unamused XD

He had a lot of fun with things like writing The Labryinth and Kai messing with Tucker

The hardest part was balancing out the time travel and figuring out what to look into and what not to.

Jason is very used to being a director due to his own show, Starship GOldfish, and his scripts for himself are MUCH longer and detailed than they end up being in the final draft. For, he had a specific way that he wanted to have Chrovos done, so he was Skype’d in to direct Lee Eddy. Speaking of, he pushed for her after seeing her do Gwen from Camp Camp live at RTX 17 and he really wanted to have her in the show in some form.

For RvB Movie Nights, Jason thinks that Grif would like Caddyshack, thinks that Carolina is terrified of horror films like Paranormal Activity (which makes Wash confused) and ends up panic stabbing the TV, Simmons and Donut both do documentaries, Lopez liked Mr. Bean… then after going back to the beginning of time, he hates that kind of media and just watches an aquarium screen, and Kai likes Alien.

For Halloween, Jason would want to dress as the Fishman from S3 of Camp Camp.

When questioned about the show potentially hitting serial escalation after the Cosmic Powers stuff, Jason talks about how they feel that they have now sealed off from that and can move more laterally again. But he does also feel that there are larger threats out there that affect you more personally, such as everyone trying to kill you which he thinks could be much stronger than fighting some ultra-powerful God. But we’ll have to see where things go from this point.

He believes that moving forward, Doc can be more important since he now is a nice guy with the danger of O’Malley in him.

He also has seen that fans feel that the Reds and Blues need a rest, which he agrees with. One idea he likes that he did in PSA’s was do some Grif and Sarge bonding since he feels there’s plenty left unexplored there, Caboose helping Wahs rehabilitate, giving Simmons an arc, and Donut exploring the universe to do some world building. He and Joe liked the idea of maybe doing a mini-series, especially since Halo 6 won’t be out for quite a while and doing one can explore some new options. He also brings up ideas for the future like Locus on trial, Wash’s rehabilitation, and Tucker seeking out Junior to bond with him more after what happened in The Labryinth. I mentioned that RT needs to hire Jason ASAP, right?! RIGHT?!

He also feels that there would, ideally, eventually need to be a new villain… and suggests himself cause of him being British. HA! He also really loves villains and if he got to keep being the writer, he would absolutely voice the villain like Miles did as Felix. Although he does bring up the ‘self-insert’ critique but thinks it would be okay since as the villain it would be okay to hate him!

At the end of the interview, Jason talks about how collaborative the entire process had been and how Miles greatly helped him with the writing as well as Josh and Austin’s direction, who he hopes will still be on it. He says to thank them.

Well, that was fun! I will say, Jason hit all of the right buttons for me and I do legit hope that he can come back. But even if he can’t, this was so great and having his contribution was amazing. Thank you again for everything Jason~

#rvb

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elementalwriter67 · 6 years ago

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Time to get Back in Action

Pairing: Grif x Reader, Reds and Blues x Reader

Word Count: 5520

A/N: I’ve been watching a lot of Red Vs Blue lately and Grif somehow became one of my favorite characters so I figured I write something for him. Takes place during season 15.

Summary: The reader has been working with the reds and blues ever since they were back at Blood Gulch and needless to say it’s been a long, frustrating, and fucking weird journey but you wouldn’t have it any other way. So when the opportunity to have a break after freeing an entire planet from the control of the Chairman and his mercenaries for hire, along with stopping an entire civil war, you and a certain orange soldier immediately jumped on the opportunity. And things were going great it was a whole year full of rest and relaxation and you couldn’t have been happier or more bored, which is why when Dylan showed up with a message saying Church was alive you eagerly agreed with the others on going to find him well almost everyone.

“Grif! Grif! Are you over here?!” You shouted as you walked down the beach towards your friends usual resting spot on the beach. Your answer was an annoyed groan and the man’s head popping up from behind a rock a sight that caused you to stop and raise an eyebrow at him.

“What do you want?!” Grif shouted back dragging himself up into a better sitting position so that you could at least see his armored shoulders.

“Nothin I just wanted to see what you were doing.” You stated as you hopped on top of the rock sitting down cross-legged and leaning forward so that your elbows were resting on your knees and you were looking down at Grif. He squinted up at you the sun blinding him slightly but mainly being blocked out by your head.

“(Y/N) we’re on vacation for the first time in our lives and that means two things one that Sarge can’t boss me around and two that we don’t have to do any work so what the hell did you think I was doing?” Grif responded and you smiled down at him.

“Do you really want me to answer that? Because there’s a number of things you could have been doing especially behind this rock.” You pointed out and it took Grif a second to process what you’d said and when he did a bright red blush spread across his cheeks that made you giggle.

“Oh, my gods! You just as bad as Tucker!” Grif shouted reaching up to smack at you and you giggled easily dodging the hand he attempted to smack you with, a smile on his face.

“Hey! I’m just calling it as I see it and right now all I see is you behind a rock by yourself, what exactly did you expect me to think?” You asked him mimicking his words from earlier which caused him to roll his eyes but the smile never left his face.

“Alright smartass I get it, now are you going to stay on that rock or are you going to come down here and join me?” Grif asked and you smiled as you stood up and hoped down from the rock landing next to him barely disturbing the sand as you landed and then plopped down next to him. Kicking your feet up you crossed your hands behind your head and stared up at the sky a comfortable silence falling over the two of you as you just laid there in the warm sand. The silence lasted for a couple of minutes before Grif finally spoke up.

“So what was the real reason that you were looking for me anyway?” Grif asked and you were silent for a couple of seconds before sighing as you sat up loosely wrapping your arms around your knees as you looked out at the ocean.

“In all honesty, I’m just bored.” You told him and Grif’s brow furrowed in confusion as he looked at you.

“You’re bored so you came to find me? I’m sure the others are doing something far more exciting than laying here in the sand.” Grif commented and you sighed again looking up at the sky in mild frustration.

“I’m sure they are too but I don’t know, knowing that I still feel bored. Don’t get me wrong I went to check out what they were doing but I still felt bored just standing there watching them hell I didn’t even think participating sounded fun!” You paused sighing as you ran your fingers through your hair before continuing. “I don’t know maybe I’m broken or something.” You said with a shrug, wrapping your arms around your knees. Grif was silent for a couple of seconds watching you as you stared out at the ocean stretching out in front of you for miles before finally sitting up crossing his legs, he didn’t look at you though instead he started out ahead.

“I wouldn’t say that you’re broken (Y/N) everyone gets bored every now and again, I’m sure the feeling will pass eventually,” Grif said you frowned as you looked at the ocean. You were silent for a moment trying to think of what to say because if you were being honest this boredom had been going on for a while now and no matter what you did you just couldn’t shake the feeling of boredom. Even with the other Reds and Blues doing their usual antics didn’t interest you and you were starting to worry that maybe what you needed was to go on another adventure with the guys. The reason that scared you so much was that you didn’t really want to go on an adventure you wanted to be here, you wanted to stay on this moon, you wanted to stay right here on this beach with Grif and not take orders from Sarge or Washington.

“What if it doesn’t?” You asked him as you wrapped your arms around your legs as you rested your head on top of your knees. You jerked at the sudden weight on your shoulders, looking towards Grif to see that he had wrapped an arm around your shoulders.

“Relax you’ll be fine, just give it a couple of weeks.” He said giving you a reassuring smile as he pulled you into his side your armor thumping metallically against his and you smiled laying your head on his shoulder.

“Thanks, Grif.” You said still smiling as you watched the water lap lazily at the shore. A comfortable silence fell over the two of you just sat there on the beach listening to the distant screaming of the guys as they did whatever insane stunt they were doing right now though by the sounds of it seemed like Caboose was the one causing the most trouble. You chuckled slightly when you heard Wash’s cry of either terror or anger echoing all the way down to the beach, Grif laughing right along with you. The moment was broken by a small shiny light appearing in the distance, you squinted at the light standing up from Grif’s hold shielding your eyes and trying to get a better look at whatever was in the distance.

“What the hell is that?” You asked causing Grif to look towards the sky with you.

“What are you looking at?” Grif asked and you pointed towards the light which was steadily getting bigger the closer it got.

“That, what the hell is that?” You stated and Grif stood up shielding his eyes with his own hand as he looked where you were pointing. His eyes widened when he saw the shiny dot you had been talking about and the two of you stood there in utter confusion watching as the dot got bigger until the two of you could finally make out what it was.

“Oh my god, that’s a spaceship. Why is a spaceship coming towards us? Why the fuck is there a spaceship?!” Grif shouted in near hysterics.

“Doesn’t matter come on we better get back up there with the others before that ship touches down.” You said as you grabbed a hold of Grif’s hand and began dragging him towards the natural steps leading back up to the bases you guys were staying in.

“Alright! Alright, I’m coming!” Grif shouted as he pulled his hand free shoving his helmet back on and following you up the cliff.

As it would turn out that spaceship hadn’t been carrying anyone intent on hurting the reds and blues, for fucking once, but it had been carrying an entirely different load of problems. Said problems came in the form of a Reporter and her cameraman and the news that they had brought with them, news that meant a number of things and you had mixed feelings about all of it. The news that they had brought with them was the news of another group of reds and blues out there pretending to be you guys and causing a shit load of trouble for the UNSC. Then there was the bombshell to end all bombshells. Along with the news you guys were all now wanted criminals it also turned out that Church was alive, again, and he needed your guys to help and it was that information where your mixed feelings really came in to play. On one hand, you wanted to go save Church, you knew you guys should go save Church and dare you to think if you were also excited about the idea of going on another adventure. On the other hand, though you didn’t want to, you didn’t want to go save Church, you didn’t want to deal with his problems again, you didn’t want to risk your life for an AI that barely managed to tolerate any of you. Despite all of that though you found yourself agreeing to go along with everyone, to help them save Church which is also why you were currently standing outside in between Lopez and Simmons only half paying attention to what Sarge was saying.

“That’s a good point, Lopez, where is Grif?” At the mention of Grif’s name, you were snapped out of your thoughts blinking a couple of times and looking around, your brow furrowed in confusion when you didn’t see him.

“Yeah, I haven’t seen him since the meeting. (Y/N) have you seen him?” Simmons asked looking over at you and you shook your head.

“No, I haven’t seen him since the meeting either.” You responded. Your gut twisted uncomfortably as a heavy feeling settled in your gut and you surrounded the area, it was like Grif to wander off but it was unlike you not to see where he went.

“I know what’s happening! He’s been captured by the Whites! This. Means. War.” Sarge stated completely serious and you sighed looking down at the ground, now you were incredibly glad you hadn’t really been paying attention to what Sarge had been saying.

“Sarge I really don’t think Grif was captured by the Whites.” You told him but he ignored you turning around to face where the blues were standing talking to Dylan and Jax.

“Nonsense (Y/L/N)! Of course, those Whites would capture Grif those conniving devils! Follow me, men!” Sarge shouted as he ran down the hill towards the blues and Dylan and Jax. You and Simmons both sighed heavily while Lopez muttered something in Spanish that neither of you could understand before you and Simmons ran after Sarge.

“Back off, missy! We know you have Grif! Give him back or I start shootin’!” Sarge shouted as he raised his shotgun and pointed it at Dylan and once again you sighed heavily reaching up and hitting your palm against your helmet.

“Sarge for the last time she doesn’t have Grif!” You shouted at him but your words went unheard by Sarge once again and you dropped your head back looking up at the sky as you shook your head listening to the others confirm what you’d already told him. You cared about Sarge you really did but sometimes… ok, a lot of times you were left wondering how the man hadn’t gotten himself killed yet with his stupidity, then again with the track record all of you had even if he did get killed he’d probably come back to life.

“Great. Just great. Now we’ve gotta find Grif, we don’t have time for this!” Tucker complained and your head snapped up to level a glare at him.

“If this was one of your teammates I’m sure you wouldn’t be complaining about having to look for him.” You grumbled just barely loud enough for Simmons to hear and you could feel him send a look your way but you ignored it as you attempt to make Tucker spontaneously combust.

“I agree, let’s pack up and prepare to move out, I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Washington said, at the last bit he looked over at you from where you were standing next to Simmons and you muttered a couple things under your breath but stopped staring at Tucker. He was right Grif would probably turn up in the end, he always did, but that didn’t mean you felt any better about not knowing where he was.

“Right.” You agreed with him and Wash nodded.

“I’ll go check the pantry,” Simmons said as he turned to walk towards the bases with everyone else and you nodded.

“I’ll check the beach.” You told him turning and walking in the opposite direction, it wouldn’t hurt to look for him a little bit before packing after all.

~Elsewhere~

“And you’re sure you saw him go in?” Dylan asked Jax as she looked away from the cave entrance and towards her cameraman who nodded his head.

“Yeah! He was acting just like Gollum, he was all mutter and crawly…” Jax trailed off when Dylan looked back at the cave a quick moment of silence fell over the two of them as Dylan thought of what to do.

“Ok, you stay here I’m going to go in and see if I can talk the cat out of the tree,” Dylan said already walking towards the cave.

“Wait! You don’t want me to come with you and film?” Jax asked and Dylan shook her head.

“No, I doubt he’ll even talk to me but I know for a fact there’s no way he’s going to talk to the two of us besides I don’t think this is a moment he’d want to be filmed anyways. So you just stay here I’ll handle this.” Dylan said turning back around and walking into the cave entrance. For a couple of feet, Dylan walked in silence following the surprisingly narrow tunnel to a slightly larger area and it wasn’t until she noticed an orange figure sitting on the floor with their head against the wall a few feet away that she finally said anything.

“Grif?... Grif?” Dylan asked her voice calm and soft like she was trying not to scare away a timid animal as she slowly walked up to Grif who didn’t look away from the ceiling to look at her.

“Go away,” Grif stated his voice heavy and his tone fed up but serious at the same time. Dylan took a deep breath as she mentally prepared herself to talk to Grif like she would any other person she was interviewing. Calm, cool, and collected with a hint of concern and caring in her voice she would need all of that if she hoped to figure out what was wrong with Grif and why he wasn’t with the others.

“I just want to talk,” Dylan said her tone calm and confident as she stopped a reasonable distance in front of him.

“Yeah well, I don’t want to talk to you! Or to anyone for that matter! So make like a tree and fuck off!” Grif shouted as he lowered his head to look at Dylan. Dylan could feel the glare he was giving her even through the helmet he was wearing. This was going to be trickery than she thought it would have been.

“I… see you’re upset,” Dylan stated hesitating for a second before continuing making sure to choose her words carefully. “Can I ask you why you’re upset?” She finished and Grif’s glare did not lighten if anything it only worsened as he stood up, picking his gun up from where he’d laid it beside him.

“You! You are why I’m upset! You show up here unannounced and you drop a fucking bomb on us! And then everyone goes springing into action! We are supposed to be done! We are supposed to be retired! I don’t wanna go on another adventure! I don’t wanna listen to Sarge! I don’t wanna get shot at! I don’t want to shoot at other people! I want to relax! I want to chill!!!! I want to sit down and chill and not have to worry about dying every fucking second but thanks to you I can’t do that now can I?!” Grif shouted his words filled with a mix of frustration and anger. Dylan blinked him a couple of times as she calmed her own emotions, she was now extremely glad she’d left Jax outside she’d been yelled at and blamed for things before so she could handle this, this she was used to, but she highly doubted Jax was.

“So what? You just want to leave Church to his fate?” She asked and that seemed to be the wrong thing to ask him because he all but lost it at that.

“FUCK CHURCH! I spent half my life dealing with his shit! His ex-girlfriend! His daddy issues! His resurrections! His bullshit! Why can’t he just stay dead?” Grif’s anger had tapered off towards the end of that and all that was left was hurt mixed with what seemed like desperation. A moment of silence followed suit as Dylan thought of what to say and Grif waited to see what the reporter would do, hoping that she would just end up walking away and leaving him alone.

“You know I’ve spent a lot of time looking at logs, reading transcripts, and talking to eyewitnesses and you want to know what they all say? They all say the same thing about you that you’re the lazy one, the one who doesn’t care…” Dylan paused for second thinking ahead a couple of words.

“Nailed it,” Grif stated when she paused and Dylan scowled at him before continuing.

“And you know what? I think they’re wrong because your actions tell a completely different story. They tell a story of someone who always answers the call, who cares about his friends, who always help them when they need it and is willing to fight for them just the same. But more importantly, they tell the story of someone who’s willing to fight for the greater good. I mean I saw you giving Sarge CPR in the Blood Gulch logs! You saved his life! And you expect me to believe that you actually want Church to stay dead? Admit it Grif you care about your friends just like your sister said.” Dylan finished and there was a beat of silence as the two of them stared at each other and for a moment. Just a moment Dylan had hope that she had changed his mind.

“YOU DON’T KNOW THE FIRST THING ABOUT ME, LADY!!! I HATE EVERYBODY! I HATE SIMMONS!! I HATE SARGE!! I HATE DONUT!! BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL, I HATE FUCKING CHURCH!!! SO GO AHEAD AND PRINT THAT IN YOUR FUCKING PAPER!!!” Grif exploded. Anger radiated off of him in waves as he stormed past her.

“What about Private (Y/L/N)?! Do you hate her too?!” Dylan shouted after him as she spun around to face him desperate to get him to stop and actually think about what she had said. Grif stopped mid-stride not bothering to turn around and instead staring straight ahead.

“What did you say?” He asked his tone was almost unreadable now and Dylan gulped fear gripping her fast but she’d crossed worse lines than this and there was no going back now.

“I said what about Private (Y/L/N)? I told you Grif I’ve watched the logs from Blood Gulch you expect me to believe that you really hate her?” Dylan asked and she couldn’t fully tell but she was pretty sure that Grif had tensed up as he continued to refuse to look back at her.

“Yeah well don’t believe everything you see on the internet.” Grif’s tone was still unreadable as he stalked out of the cave leaving Dylan there to wallow in her failure for a couple of seconds before she sighed and walked out of the cave. Jax was still standing there waiting for her when she got out.

“So how’d it go?” Jax asked and she rolled her eyes like he didn’t already know from how Grif had stormed out of the cave.

“Not good. I just hope I didn’t mess anything up for these guys now come on we better be getting back.” Dylan said and she honestly did mean it. For the first time in a long time, she was actually worried that she may have fucked everything up beyond repair.

~Back with the Others~

You were standing in front of two spaceships with the others that unease in your stomach growing worse and worse the closer it got to all of you leaving, of course, it didn’t help that Grif still wasn’t here. Simmons hadn’t found him in the pantry and you hadn’t managed to find him on the beach, you had even checked his room and a few other places before you forced to actually pack for this mission and you still hadn’t found him and now you were just getting more nervous and more and more worried about what had happened to him.

“Alright everyone listen up! We’re going to be splitting up! Attacking this situation from both flanks will generally be easier. Carolina and I will be paying a few visits to some fellow Freelancer alumni to see if we can learn anything meanwhile the rest of you with the help of the press will locate the source of Church’s message. Now enough words, wheels up in 10 and remember-Oh!” Wash cut himself off as he looked to his right all of you doing the same. Immediately the feeling in your stomach and the tension in your body disappeared when you saw Grif walking towards you all.

“Well look who’s finally decided to grace us with his presence!” Wash finished and you rolled your eyes. Wash may have been teasing him but you could tell that he was just as glad as you were that Grif has shown up.

“Great! Everyone’s here we can all leave now.” Tucker said with some relief in his voice but mainly urgency. He was already starting to move to the ship all of you would be taking.

“And where have you been, soldier?!” Sarge shouted moving so that he was standing next to Wash and you moved so that you could actually see Grif who stopped a couple of feet away from the group rather than joining the rest of you. Your brows furrowed at that, usually Grif would come to stand right next to you or at the very least he would go to stand next to Simmons he never kept his distance like this.

“Thinking.” He said after a moment of hesitation and the others all made noises of either disbelief or laughter.

“Oh yeah? About what?” Tucker asked with a scuff.

“About food probably,” Simmons responded and you glared at the both of them, you may have been wearing a helmet but they caught the fact that you were glaring at them and stopped laughing before they could even begin. The two of them looked away from you and refused to look back until you had looked away.

“No. Actually, I was thinking that I quit.” Grif stated and you were frozen as you stared at him blinking a couple of times there was no way that he had just said that, you must have heard him wrong.

“What? Quit what?” Simmons asked and Grif looked at him.

“The military. You. All of you, take your pick, either way, I’m not going, I’m staying.” Grif’s voice was firm and clear as he looked around at all of you his gaze lingering for a couple of seconds on you before moving quickly to someone else.

“What?” You breathed out shock had taken a hold of your body and you found that you couldn’t really move, your brain was moving a mile a second trying to process what it was that was happening.

“You can’t quit! That’s not allowed!” Tucker shouted, your question getting drowned out by his statement.

“Yes, I can. I can do whatever the fuck I want, I’m not in the military anymore you guys don’t get to tell me what to do anymore especially you Sarge.” Grif stated and there was a certain amount of joy to his tone that only seemed to fuel the shock and confused chaos that was your mind as you continued to stare at him.

“But… But what about Church?” Caboose asked his voice tiny and hurt as he looked at Grif.

“Oh my god, can’t you all just let it go already? Church has died and come back more times than I can care to count and it’s starting to get fucking old.” Grif said looking mainly at Caboose when he said it and Caboose looked down at the ground.

“What the fuck dude? Seriously?! You’ve always been selfish but this really takes the fucking cake!” Tucker shouted and Grif turned his attention to him as he was silent for a beat.

“I don’t like you,” Grif stated his voice calm and almost emotionless as he stared directly at Tucker before looking at the rest of you. “Any of you.” He added on. At that, your brain stopped completely everything you had been thinking disappearing instantly and instead being replaced with the words the Grif had just said.

“Listen, guys, we’ve known each other for a long time and I just figured that you should all hear it from me first. I’m done.” Grif said as he turned around and walked off.

You just stood there staring at his retreating figure as your brain continued to replay what Grif had just said, as your brain repeated those three little words that had managed to completely destroy you in a matter of seconds. Your heart was thumping wildly in your chest and you couldn’t move, you couldn’t feel anything other than the tightness in your chest and you couldn’t hear anything as you just stood there watching Grif walk away shock and hurt rendering you immobile. Shaking your head you forced yourself to think of something else, you had to do something, you had to get to the bottom of this you couldn’t just let him walk away. You couldn’t. You wouldn’t.

“Pssh, who needs him?! Good riddance is what I say!” Tucker shouted after him and that finally snapped you back into action as you started moving forward.

“Tucker!” Wash yelled at him as he hit Tucker watching as you moved forward.

“(Y/N)?” Wash asked his voice gentle as he watched you but you ignored him, walking in the direction that Grif had left in.

“Where the hell are you going?” Tucker asked you.

“I’m going to talk to him.” You responded not bothering to turn around as you kept walking.

“What?! What about Church?!” Tucker shouted after you his voice filled with frustration and disbelief.

“Church waited this long to get a message to us, one more fucking minute isn’t going to hurt him.” You responded your voice making it clear that you weren’t about to be swayed on this topic.

“Which is exactly-” “Enough Tucker. Let her go talk to him.” Sarge interrupted him and Tucker looked at Sarge in shock, that was the first time he was pretty sure that Sarge had ever addressed him by name let alone in such a fatherly tone of voice. Grumbling a couple of things under his breath Tucker turned and walked away from all of them heading to the reporter's spaceships.

“We’ll be waiting for you!” Simmons shouted after you as he turned around and walked away with the others. You ignored them all as you jogged a little to catch up with Grif. You found him standing in the same spot that you had found him this morning. You stopped where you were staring at him for a couple of seconds as you tried to calm your rapidly beating heart before walking up to him.

“Grif I-” “Go away (Y/N).” Grif interrupted you before you could say anything else his voice almost emotionless as he stared out at the sea and you stopped walking towards him.

“Grif please I just want to talk to you.” You were having a hard time keeping the pleading out of your voice and keeping your emotions under control as you shifted.

“Yeah well I don’t want to talk to you besides don’t you have a spaceship to board and a dead guy to go save?” he asked and this time there was a bit of hurt to his tone which only seemed to only make the tightness in your chest worse.

“I don’t care about that right now, all I care about right now is you and figuring out what the hell is going on with you right now?” You said and finally, Grif turned to look at you.

“Oh don’t pretend like you actually care.” His words practically slapped you in the face as he glared at you from underneath his helmet.

“I-wha… what? Grif what are you talking about? Of course, I care about you, how can you say that?” The tightness in your chest had gotten worse and now there was an almost nauseous feeling in your stomach as you stared at him your eyes full of hurt.

“Cut the bullshit (Y/L/N)!” Grif shouted suddenly and you flinched taking a step back from him. Having him call you by your last name hurt more than him saying that he didn’t like you ever could.

“Grif, please-” “No! You know I honestly thought that you would get it, that you out of everybody would understand what it was like to be on vacation what it was like to constantly help people who couldn’t care less about you and whether or not you lived or died. I honestly thought that we were on the same page when it came to finally have a vacation.” Grif ranted and you shook your head your eyes stinging with tears of frustration and hurt as you took a step towards him.

“I do Grif, I understand that I really do and we are on the same page we’ve always been on the same page.” You pleaded with him desperate to get him to see that you weren’t the enemy here, that you weren’t trying to hurt him. Desperately trying to figure out what was going on.

“Stop lying to me (Y/L/N)! Do you honestly think that I didn’t see the way your eyes lit up when Tucker and Caboose demanded that we go find and save Church?! How you looked the most excited and interested than you had in weeks?! How you all but tackled Tucker and Caboose in your rush to agree with them?! I may be lazy (Y/L/N) but I’m not fucking stupid! In the end, you’re just like them, all you care about is going on adventures, risking your life for a guy who’s been dead for pretty much a year at this point! We were never on the same page you were just pretending to like me, to enjoy spending time with me while we were on this vacation just so you’d have something to do.” Grif said and you could hear the hurt in his voice. You shook your head again taking a step towards him as a single tear slipped down your cheek before you could stop it. It hurt that Grif was saying this, that he was using your last name, but what hurt the most was the fact that you knew he was right, not about the using him thing but about the fact that this was the most excited you’d been in weeks. That you had practically jumped on the opportunity to get off this moon. It hurt that he was right about that and that you were all but defenseless to stop it.

“Grif please if you would just… if you would just let me explain.” You pleaded with him but he turned away from you.

“Don’t bother.” His voice had gone back to that emotionlessness before and you hated it. Hated how it didn’t seem like he was feeling anything. Hated how he could say those words like the years of the two of you being together and, the years of trusting and of being there for each other hadn’t even fucking mattered to him.

“Grif, please-” “GO (Y/L/N)!” Grif shouted easily drowning out your weak voice. You flinched again opening your mouth to say something before closing it and turning around.

“I’m sorry.” You whispered before walking away. Tears were falling steadily down your face and your shoulders shook slightly with silent sobs that you were desperately trying to get under control before walking on to the spaceship. You were grateful when no one said anything to you as you walked onto the spaceship and even more thankful when no one questioned you about what happened with Grif instead you moved to the nearest empty seat and remained silent as the spaceship took off. Leaving Grif and the remnants of your heart with it in the process.

#dexter grif x reader #dexter grif imagine #grif x reader #red vs blue x reader #red vs blue imagine #rvb x reader #rvb imagine #x reader #reader insert #geneder neutral reader #grif x you #tucker x reader #sarge x reader

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phantomwarrior12 · 6 years ago

Text

Believable (Part 9)

Prompt: Duality by Set It Off

Word Count: 2,510

Warnings: Angst, canon-style swearing, a smidge of PTSD

Summary: Forgiveness is the hardest thing to give--it’s even harder to earn after committing genocide.

A/N: Hey folks!

Ah, I finally found the inspiration to finish this next chapter. It was a little difficult, but I found the right way for Isaac to approach the Reds and Blues: reluctantly.

As always, leave a like/comment and let me know your thoughts!

Enjoy!

~ Phantom

Saudade Masterlist

Shenanigans (Part 10)

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

I have a confession that you will not believe That you could not perceive this freak

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

"Don't move."

"Lower your weapon, Carolina." Sam steps between the barrel of the former Freelancer's gun and Isaac's tense frame.

"I thought he was dead." Washington tightens his grip on his magnum.

"We blew him off a fucking cliff! He should be splattered!" Tucker adds, keeping himself between the mercenary duo and Caboose.

"If you'll lower your weapons--"

"Alright. That's enough," Isaac heaves a sigh and steps around Sam, sporting more bravado than he truly has, "If you want to shoot me, shoot me--"

"Felix!

"--after you hear what I have to say."

The siblings exchange a short, reluctant look before lowering their weapons, "Talk fast."

"You're all probably wondering how the hell I'm still alive and what the actual fuck I'm doing here. Well, it's an outrageous tale, but in short, armor lock saves lives and my partner wants to patch things up. No, I'm not going to shoot any you because I have zero interest in dealing with that level of bullshit after all this time. Only reason I'm here is because Sam insists we reconcile or some shit."

Isaac folds his arms across his chest, "You don't bug me, I leave all of you alone. Sound fair?"

Wash glances towards Carolina, "What do you think, boss?"

Carolina stares him down and for a split second, Isaac thinks she's going to shoot him. It's only after the barrel of her battle rifle lowers that he allows the breath he's been holding to slip out.

"You're on thin ice, Felix. If you so much as a look at my men the wrong way, Locus won't be able to save you. Do I make myself clear?"

He doesn't like how close she's standing, but somehow he manages to play it off with a wry smile and a quick nod, "Crystal."

"Good. I'll be keeping my eye on you, so don't get any ideas."

He nods, relaxing a little when she starts back towards Blue Base. His eyes drift to Tucker and Washington, both of whom are slowly corralling Caboose away.

There's a pang of guilt in the pit of his stomach when Tucker levels a meaningful look on him, a warning to steer clear of him and all of Blue Team.

Isaac doesn't blame him, he'd do the exact same thing if it came to Sam and their positions were reversed.

"That went better than anticipated."

"What'd you anticipate?" Isaac turns to face his partner, curious.

"I anticipated getting shot." Sam returns coolly, starting past Isaac and towards the smaller base the Reds and Blues had built for him.

It isn't until they're inside that Isaac speaks again, "Nice place you got. Sparsely furnished with--" he stares incredulously at the cot in the corner, the weapons on a shelf and something that vaguely resembles a bathroom in the back of the building, "--weapons."

He tries a smile, but Sam notices the prominent grimace. He's trying, Sam knows that. This isn't going to be an easy process, but they can try--they have to try.

"I'll talk to the others about acquiring another cot."

"No, it's okay. I'll just," distasteful glance at the floor, "sleep on the floor. Besides, they're not going to want to help me out--not after everything that's happened. I don't blame them, Sam, not anymore."

His voice almost cracks and Sam frowns, setting his pack off to the side and moving to stand beside his brother, "What are you talking about?"

"The things we did on Chorus, the last time I faced them. God, Sam, I tried to kill them. I was so blinded by rage that I didn't try to think about it as a mercenary or even as soldier--I thought about it as a monster. Vengeance, pride, retribution. It was stupid."

"It's in the past, Gates. There's nothing you can do to change it. The only way forward now is to accept and push through--make amends, try to reconcile with what's left of your humanity."

Isaac gives a slight nod, "That what you did?"

"It's what I'm doing."

Isaac snorts but offers a smile, "where do we start?"

"With the Reds and Blues."

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

"I don't think I'll ever understand how you haven't killed these people yet. I mean, God! They're so fucking stupid!"

"Calm down, Felix."

"I'm trying!" Isaac flings the pillow across the room and heaves a sigh, "how are they this stupid?"

Sam shrugs and returns to cleaning his weapon, the same weapon he's cleaned every morning for the past six months.

The former mercenary runs like clockwork; a morning run around the complex, an improvised weightlifting regiment before he showers and begins the process of cleaning his equipment.

He provides structure, a routine to give him some semblance of normal in this fresh hell that Isaac has struggled with adjusting to--a hell he hadn't known even existed until he arrived six months ago.

He'd begun to join Sam on his runs two weeks in, a bonding exercise that dredged up memories from their time in basic training. Eventually, three months later, the Freelancers joined in, opening gateways to conversation--paths that would ease his transition as a member of their crew.

Carolina didn't shoot him threatening glares in passing, Washington allowed Caboose near the former mercenary--something Isaac dearly wishes Wash wouldn't do.

He's sure the big, blue man-child isn't so bad once you get to know him, but heaven knows he never wants to get to know him.

The Reds have slowly warmed up to him, going as far as to quite forcibly include him in their debates and shitty plans. In short, Isaac actively avoids them whenever possible, especially when Grif decides to become philosophical.

The only remaining member of the Blood Gulch Crew, the only man who continues to hate him with every fiber of his being is Tucker.

He's tried, dear God, he's tried to break the wall around Tucker's exterior, but to no avail. The teal trooper is stubborn, bull-headed in more ways than one. Isaac might even dare to suggest that he can respect Tucker's resolve--his unwillingness to accept Isaac, to accept everything he's done and forgive him.

Perhaps he's right. Perhaps Isaac isn't worthy of forgiveness, but he promised Sam he'd try.

So, he heaves a sigh and starts out of their barracks, grumbling about stupidity and how he wished he could have escaped these rainbow colored morons.

It isn't long before he reaches Blue base, it isn't long until Wash directs him to Tucker's room and suddenly he's staring at the cold steel. A quiet inhale before he squares his shoulders and knocks on the door, forcing the annoyance and reluctance from his features.

"No, Caboose! I do not want to go play with--" the door slides open and Tucker's features contort in disgust, "the fuck do you want?"

Isaac clears his throat, "You have second to talk?"

"For you? Absolutely not." Tucker moves back inside his room, tension and silent fury radiating.

"Tucker--wait." Isaac reaches out, he's not sure why but it's a desperate plea. Tucker's eyes flicker between his hand and his gaze, thoroughly unimpressed and uninclined to humor him.

"Please," the lean mercenary manages, "just hear me out."

"You murdered thousands of people, why the hell would I listen to anything you have to say?"

It's a brief moment of hesitation, a fleeting moment of uncertainty before Isaac finds the words, "You're right."

"What?"

"I said you're right. I've done some pretty fucked up shit in my life and I'll be the first to admit that Chorus was one of the worst."

"One of the worst?"

"I fought in a war, Tucker, there were missions I regret more than anything in the world. Kimball no doubt mentioned that--

"--she mentioned it." Tucker folds his arms across his chest, perching himself against the desk just inside the room.

"She mention the battles Sam and I were in?"

"She did, but if you're gonna use that as an excuse--"

"--it's not an excuse, not even close. It's an explanation."

Teal flickers over the lean mercenary, skeptical and cautious all at once. "And you expect me to listen to it?"

"I'm hoping you'll listen to it."

For a brief moment, Isaac's certain the simulation trooper will tell him where to shove it and close the door in his face. For a brief moment, all time stops and he's never been this nervous in his life. For a brief moment, he wishes Sam was standing beside him, an anchor he clings to far more than he likes to admit.

"Fine." Tucker beckons him inside, "you have five minutes. I promised Wash that much."

Isaac snorts, "Seems we both made promises we're reluctantly keeping."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Never mind," Isaac waves the question off, casting a quick glance around the room before tired brown settles on Tucker's impatient expression.

"So? You gonna bare your soul or what?"

Some piece, some fragment of the soldier he'd once been begs him to leave, to keep the horrors tucked away in the box buried beneath booze and snark.

He brushes aside the hesitation, doing his damndest to square his shoulders and grasp at the fleeting confidence crumbling beneath ghosts and nightmares re-enacted behind glossed hazel.

"Right," Isaac mumbles, "bare my soul." Hands clap together, wringing together uncomfortably, "not an easy topic, but hey, let's try it."

Tucker seems unimpressed, but straightens a little from the desk, "Four minutes."

Something inside curses, but Isaac forces annoyance aside in favor of humoring his partner, "You signed up for the war, got dumped into Freelancer's little program where all you had to do was sit in a canyon and play pretend. Sam--Locus and I weren't so lucky."

He clears his throat, arms folding defensively across his chest, "We grew up together and were fortunate enough to be assigned to the same squadron. There were a lot of battles we shouldn't have walked away from, but we did."

Eyes turn downcast as words slip and slide past his tongue, hell shifting to the forefront of his mind.

"The battle Kimball told you about, the one where Locus and I were the sole survivors? It's not something you can forget."

Tucker tilts his head, slowly unfolding his arms, "What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Then why bring it up?"

"To set up the explanation--" Brown flickers upwards, searing sparks dancing dangerously in the dimly lit room.

"Dude, you can't just reference some epic war story and not tell me about it!"

"It's not a great story to tell, Tucker."

"If you want me to understand where you're coming from, you're gonna have to give me some sort of picture to go off of! All I've seen is the douche bag mercenary who killed a bunch of people!"

"God, you're such a dick." Isaac heaves a sigh, scowling at the triumphant smirk etched into Tucker's features.

"Just tell the story."

"All right, all right. We were en route to an outpost the UNSC had established as a staging area."

Reluctance ebbs away as Isaac's gaze drops from the cocky trooper to the floor somewhere between the two of them. The snark falters, leaving only the ghosts of his past to haunt his every thought. His voice is hollow, quieter than Tucker's ever heard him speak in the six months he's been there.

"We didn't see them until it was too late and by then, our squadron was surrounded. Locus and I stayed together, cleared a path wherever we could, but it wasn't enough."

Trembling fingers dig into flesh, warding off the flames behind his eyes, gazing absently at the cement floor, "One by one, we watched our squadron fall. There was an explosion, knocked us apart. I landed far enough away that when the Covenant came through--they took Locus instead."

Isaac purposefully leaves Mason's name out of it, he can't bring himself to utter it.

"After the smoke settled, another squad came through, searching the remains for survivors. I came to, they told me I was all that was left. I had seen Locus's capture, I watched them drag him away. Every muscle screamed for me to stand and go after him," Isaac's hands curl into fists, knuckles digging relentlessly into aching tendons.

"I couldn't stand. I couldn't move. I couldn't save him."

"What'd you do?" Tucker asks, gone is his scowl and malice, leaving only curiosity and an entranced gaze.

"I did what any sane friend would do: I disobeyed orders and charged into their camp with an assault rifle and a half-assed plan." Isaac manages a snort, a slight smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

"Guess you really are one of us. We wing all our plans too." Tucker smirks, almost proud of the mercenary.

"Yeah, well, long story short, I rescued Locus and we were discharged from the military shortly thereafter. What I'm trying to say is that I've always done what it takes to survive, whether it's killing aliens or attempting to exterminate a bunch of unsuspecting civilians. I recognize that what I did was horrible and unforgivable and, in a way, it makes me almost like the Covenant--"

"--no, it makes you exactly like the Covenant."

"Fine. In any case, I want to try to make things right. I want to do what Locus is doing, and, unfortunately for me, that means making peace with all of you."

Tucker snorts, "So, you're essentially trying to save your soul by apologizing to us?"

Isaac's shoulders slump, "It's a first...tiny step in a decent direction."

"You're gonna need more than a tiny step, Felix."

"I'm well aware of that, Tucker. Are we good?"

Tucker eyes him quietly for a moment, seemingly mulling over the question before he pushes off the desk and holds out a hand, "I guess. I have one condition, though."

"What?"

"No more murdering innocent people."

"What qualifies as innocent?"

"Felix--"

"--kidding. I agree to your terms." Isaac accepts his hand with a quiet smile.

"Good. Now, the first order of business is to subject you to Caboose's official welcoming seminar."

"No."

"Oh, yes. If you're gonna join our team, you have to experience the same level of hell the rest of us have."

Tucker guides him out of the room and towards the commons area.

"Can't I just stay in my mini base and be on my own team with Locus?"

"Nope! Your buddy joined Red Team, so you get to join Blue Team."

"You already have two Freelancers, that doesn't seem like a fair fight."

"Blue Team rules this canyon, get over it." Tucker's grin widens when he spots Caboose playing with Freckles, "hey, Caboose! Come give Felix the Blue Team welcome seminar!"

"Yes! Welcome to Blue Team, Mr. Felix!"

"Tucker--"

"--have fun."

The teal soldier leaves Isaac alone with the tallest member of Blue Team tearing across the room to come greet him.

"Goddammit."

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

Part 10

Tagging:

RVB Forever: @mamma-dragon @loveliestoflunchboxes

RVB Mercs: @antsyserpentine

Bonus: @miles-superus-117

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anneapocalypse · 6 years ago

Text

[RvB 16.10] Tucker and the Post-Protagonist Problem

So I want to talk about Tucker’s characterization in seasons 15 and 16 (henceforth “Joe’s Tucker” for brevity’s sake), and how it relates to Tucker’s characterization prior.

I uh, realize this is a divisive issue, and you might not agree with my take on this and that’s fine—I am not here trying to ruin something for you that you like, or to force you to like something that you don’t. How characterization lands for us is subjective in a lot of ways. I just want to talk about where it lands for me, and I have some thoughts both positive and critical about characterization both past and present. And as I have a lot of ground to cover, this is going to be a long one.

A lot of the takes I’ve seen center around the idea that Tucker’s season 16 characterization—in fact, much of the tone and style of season 16 generally—is a return to the tone and style of the Blood Gulch Chronicles. I have seen this raised both as a positive and as a negative.

So let’s talk about Blood Gulch.

Tucker’s Character Arc

Let’s talk about how Blood Gulch sets Tucker on the path he will follow for the next decade.

Tucker’s hypersexualization, as the first and one of very few canonically black characters on this show, is not a problem that started with Joe. It’s a problem that’s been there, has always been there, and it’s kind of too late to retroactively fix it at this point.

You can’t go back and unwrite Tucker’s personality. What you can do is make Tucker a more complex character by developing other aspects of his personality, and that, I would argue, has been going on as far back as season 3, when he finds the sword and embarks on the Great Journey. Is Tucker’s arc in Blood Gulch goofy and weird? Yeah, absolutely, but he does have one.

Blood Gulch is a story about failure and yet Tucker is the exception that proves the rule—he ends up being the only person in Blood Gulch who actually succeeds. Church fails to protect Tex, Tex fails to kill Omega and fails to complete her final mission, York fails to help Tex complete her mission and then dies, Wyoming fails his mission and also dies, O’Malley fails to take over the universe, Doc fails at being a medic on every conceivable level, Caboose (if season 6 is any indication) fails to make Church his best friend, Simmons fails to gain Sarge’s respect, Sarge fails to kill even a single dirty Blue, Donut’s teammates more or less shut him down every time he speaks, Sister isn’t really there long enough to have a goal, Grif… well, to say that Grif fails would imply that he is trying to accomplish something in the first place, so we’ll let that one go. (I guess if you really wanted to, you could say Andy succeeds at exploding, so… that’s a freebie, you can have that one.)

But Tucker succeeds in multiple ways. He finds a special object and goes on a quest and gives birth to Alien Jesus. (Despite the apparent failure of the Great Journey, its true purpose ends up being fulfilled.) I think Tucker is in fact the only Blood Gulch character to actually defeat an enemy, when he permakills Wyoming!

And Tucker continues to grow in the Recollections arc. The ambassador gig might’ve started out simply as an explanation for his absence in season 6, and his desert predicament a way to bring him back to the story while moving the rest of the characters to a new map. But it also had the effect of adding a whole lot to Tucker’s character: new responsibilities, his relationship with his son, his ability to think on his feet and hold his own against a whole team of enemies trying to kill him. Fulfilling the Great Prophecy was not something Tucker chose. But in Recollections we see an increasingly proactive Tucker.

I want to stress two things here: first, that all of these things happen long before Chorus, and second, that none of this undermines Tucker’s established personality in any way. He’s still a lighthearted character who likes to crack jokes and make innuendos and flirt with girls, and generally doesn’t take his situation too seriously, including his “dumb job.” But that attitude also doesn’t undermine his capability, nor does it stop him from coming out on top.

In present-day season 10, while Carolina drags the Reds and Blues around the map, she gets pushback from pretty much all of them—for very good reasons. But it’s Tucker and Epsilon who take the lead in trying to get more information from Carolina—eavesdropping, prodding her for the details of her mission directly, and finally sending Epsilon to go undercover and try to figure her out. I don’t think it’s by chance that at the end, when the Reds and Blues finally turn on Carolina, it’s Tucker she pulls a gun on, rather than Grif or even Sarge. Tucker’s not the first or the only one to stand up to her, but his persistence combined with his capability does make him the most obvious threat to her control.

Tucker’s character progression has been a strong, consistent arc from Blood Gulch to Recollections to present-day season 10 to the Chorus Trilogy. The person Tucker becomes on Chorus is the culmination of a ten-year character arc, and the change Tucker undergoes on Chorus is not that he becomes capable. He was always capable. Wash sees that in him in season 11, and says so very clearly.

“You're a capable soldier, Tucker. At least compared to your usual acquaintances. You just need to try.”

Tucker grows into his capability on Chorus because his environment drastically changes. He is thrown into a real war with real stakes. He must rise to the challenges before him because to fail means to see real people die—his old friends, his new acquaintances, and the de facto team leader he has begun to regard with a grudging respect. This is important: Tucker’s arc on Chorus and specifically his arc in season 12 is about coming to recognize the stakes of the conflict—understanding that a wrong decision in this context will get people killed. He learns this the hard way, but the lesson sinks in fast, and Felix takes full advantage of that to goad and manipulate Tucker. Even after successfully reuniting with Wash and the others captured by the Feds, Tucker continues to struggle with insecurities brought to the surface by his experiences with the New Republic.

(I say “brought to the surface,” not “created,” because Tucker’s insecurities also do not materialize fully formed for the first time on Chorus, but we’ll come back to that later.)

I am not saying that Tucker’s rise to protagonist status was always planned, but I am saying that Miles chose him for a reason. Tucker’s capability in the Chorus arc is not an eleventh-hour add-on to his character. It’s always been there. Always.

“Dude, I'm kind of a badass all the time. You guys just happened to notice it then.”

Joe’s Tucker

You know what else has been there the whole time? Tucker’s insecurity.

This is an aspect of Tucker’s characterization this season that I like: the desire for approval. I think that’s consistent characterization; I think that’s been there since Blood Gulch and it was definitely there on Chorus, both in Tucker’s conflicts with Epsilon and in his growing respect for Wash.

I’ve written before about how I think a lot of the tension between Epsilon and Tucker comes from the fact that Epsilon doesn’t respect Tucker and regularly insults and demeans him--which frankly reflects far more poorly on Epsilon than it does on Tucker, but that’s another post. Wash, on the other hand, challenges Tucker because he sees him as capable, and Tucker responds, not only by growing into his own capability, but by coming to trust Wash in turn (“Wash will know what to do”) and coming to him for advice when he’s feeling down about decisions he’s made.

“Sis and Tuc’s Sexcellent Adventures” more serves to highlight Tucker’s inexperience back in Blood Gulch than it reflects on present Tucker, and that really doesn’t bother me. I am absolutely down for fumbling and inexperienced Blood Gulch Tucker versus the fucking character assassination season 14 attempted on him--yeah, let’s not get into that. Point is, nothing about Tucker’s adventures with Kaikaina early in this season has bothered me. Given the choice to see Tucker as insecure and posturing versus actively sexually irresponsible or predatory, I will take the former every time.

However. I can’t bring that up without also bringing up the “You’ve been served” gag from season 15. The implications of the Tower of Procreation are a messy can of worms that I really don’t want to get into here, so let’s assume for the sake of the argument that Joe at least intended that to be a basically consensual situation. Making Tucker suddenly an absentee/irresponsible father still feels like kind of a kick in the teeth, invoking some hardly-benign racial stereotypes and kind of spitting on Tucker’s established love for Junior--a child who was, by the way, conceived in a completely non-consensual manner of which Tucker was the victim, and whom Tucker nevertheless loved and accepted as his own once Junior was born.

Tucker was arguably the best father in Red vs. Blue, so uh. Undermining that piece of characterization 15 years in? That sucks. I don’t know how else to say it. It’s not as bad as “Fifty Shades of Red” trying to make him a statutory rapist, but it’s not great.

But let’s talk about some of the other beats Tucker hits in these recent seasons.

I laid out most of my thoughts on season 15 in my big fat RvB15 post so I’m going to try not retread too much of that here. I’ve said there and elsewhere that I think “Previously On” and “Reacts” are among the strongest episodes of season 15. Joe’s character writing really shines there across the board. Setting aside the Temple of Procreation business, Tucker hits several familiar beats in these episodes, most notably his insistence that Epsilon is Church (Tucker never really seems to draw a hard distinction between Epsilon and Alpha and I’ve argued before that this contributes to some of their tension on Chorus) and his looking up to Wash.

These episodes also introduce a new beat for Tucker that returns in “Nightmare on Planet Evil” and pays off late in the season, and that’s Tucker’s protectiveness of Caboose. Tucker and Caboose have had a tense relationship more or less from day one, each of them clearly seeing the other as competition for Church’s attention (though Caboose certainly takes that to an extreme, and his bias against Tucker probably also contributes to the way Epsilon treats him). It actually makes a lot of sense that following Church’s death, their shared grief might bring them together, and a real friendship might develop at last. Tucker helping Caboose to understand that Church is really gone is good development for both characters and it’s planted and paid off very effectively throughout the season.

Tucker’s relationship with Carolina likewise gets some good development throughout season 15, from Carolina joining the band on the moon (and singing so good), to Tucker helping her to her feet in the end sequence.

There are some moments of weirdness in Tucker’s dialogue (“me and Carolina and the Blues” comes to mind), but overall, when it comes to his relationships, Tucker hits some strong beats in season 15, both carrying forward established relationships and building on them.

And I think in a lot of ways, this remains true in season 16. Tucker and Kaikaina’s adventures have mostly surprised me in a good way. I like what they’ve added to canon both past and present. I love the serious moment the two of them share--ironically, a serious moment about how they both wish shit could be a little less serious, certainly an understandabl sentiment for both of them. It’s an important moment of continuity for Tucker after the mishaps of season 15, and it’s a nice further window into Kai’s entrepreneurial ventures.

The cyclops episode is absolutely goofy, but it’s goofy in a way that gives us some classic Tucker--both his capability and his sense of humor. That he defeats the cyclops by punching it in the ball, in a wacky action sequence complete with some well-placed innuendo, I’d say brings together those aspects of Tucker pretty damn well. If I had to pick an episode that embodies that whole callback to the Blood Gulch spirit, and Tucker in Blood Gulch specifically, I’d probably pick that one.

The thing to note about this episode is that its absurdity in no way undermines Tucker’s capability or the more complex understanding of the world he has grown into over time. I have no major complaints with this episode.

Let me say it again for those in the back row: the Blood Gulch tone is not itself a problem and does not, in and of itself, undermine anyone’s character growth.

However.

(You knew there was a however.)

There are a few specific instances where I think Tucker’s characterization weakens in these recent seasons--in ways that have nothing to do with tone.

Again, I don’t want to rehash too much discussion of season 15, but I know I was not the only one a bit discontented with Tucker’s role in the plot. Like I said, I think Tucker has plenty of great moments in 15. His role in the story, however, seems mostly to be to step aside to let the plot happen, and then to act as ineffectively as possible to make sure things are allowed to escalate. I wrote about this in my season 15 essay as well, how not allowing the Reds and Blues to be suspicious also weakens Temple as villain because it seems like sheer dumb luck rather than his own cleverness that no one catches onto him, how weird it is for Tucker to trust a stranger given his past experiences, etc. Most of this comes down to narrative issues, I think, and making Dylan the protagonist; it affects Tucker most noticeably but it’s not limited to him.

It’s Tucker going full LEEROY JENKINS that really feels like kind of an insult to his established characterization. It’s not just Chorus Tucker who is good at coming up with tactics on the fly and figuring a way out of a tight spot. He does that at the temple in Recollections. He figures out how to defeat a time-distorting Wyoming in Blood Gulch.

And as I’ve said before, you can come up with reasons why Tucker is off his game in season 15. Grief and the possibility of Church being alive is probably right at the top of that list.

But I do want to raise again the most important lesson Tucker learned on Chorus, and that’s the difficulty of making tough calls in a high-stakes situation. I don’t think Tucker making a bad call in the fight against the Blues and Reds would even be a problem if we saw Tucker consciously struggling to make that call, instead of just running out half-cocked. Instead, he acts impulsively and someone gets gravely hurt because of it, and then Tucker feels bad about it.

That’s not new character development, that’s Tucker’s season 12 arc, again. Kind of like how a villain from the past with a grudge against Carolina for the loss of someone they loved isn’t a new concept, it’s just Carolina’s season 13 arc, again. You can make it make sense in universe, but it still feels derivative. Callbacks to the tone, humor, and style of earlier seasons is fine. Cannibalizing past seasons for plot, and retreading character arcs instead of moving them forward, is not a good look.

It looks like you just didn’t know what to do with these characters, so you did something that had already been done.

And I can respect, in light of some of that criticism of season 16, that Joe is really trying to do something with The Shisno Paradox that hasn’t been done. Regardless of how this season ends, and how this new arc ends up landing for me as a whole, I can and will respect that.

Which brings us at last… to Camelto, and my take on why this episode in particular rubs me the wrong way when it comes to Tucker.

No one could call this scenario derivative of past seasons--and upon further consideration, I don’t even think I’d call it regressive--because this Tucker doesn’t really resemble Blood Gulch Tucker or any other Tucker. I mean, sure, the hypersexualization is there, as is the insecurity. But there’s a big difference between posturing and threatening to murder people who insult your sexual prowess.

And you can say I’m taking the King Arthur shenanigans too seriously, but I do find something kind of jarring about Tucker casually sending a whole army to their deaths when he’s had a major character arc based around taking the stakes of war and human lives seriously. Yeah, in a meta context, the time travel shenanigans are meant to be funny, and they’re mostly closed loops so it doesn’t really feel like anyone is actively killing anyone who wasn’t historically going to die anyway. But from an in-universe perspective, it’s kind of uncomfortably callous. (You know, the kind of callous disregard for human life that was played dead fucking straight last season when it was Carolina doing it anyway moving on.)

So, setting aside the attitude toward death, for me the whole tone of this episode with Tucker tips just over the line from “posturing and it’s funny” into “aggressively desperate to reaffirm his sexual prowess and it’s kind of pathetic and uncomfortable.” And that is not the feeling I’m used to getting from Tucker. It starts to feel a little bit mean-spirited, and coupled with the earlier episode about Tucker’s sexual missteps (which, on its own, I enjoyed), I start to feel like we’re more just dumping on Tucker, rather than giving him character development. It’s uncomfortable for me in the same way the back half of season 10 gleefully punishing and humiliating Carolina was uncomfortable for me.

And I did not feel that way last season. I felt like Tucker was kind of getting pushed around by the dictates of The Plot, and thus wasn’t allowed to be his best or most interesting self. But I didn’t feel like we were deliberately devoting entire episodes to making him look stupid.

And that’s what this feels like to me.

Taken as a whole, Joe’s Tucker has been… kind of all over the place. I can’t really characterize it one way, because it’s been a lot of things. At points I think it’s quite good, and at other points I’ve found it frustrating--in different ways.

We’re still mid-season, so I’m not ready to pass final judgment yet--this episode could end up being an outlier and if so I won’t lose sleep over it. I think I’ll forgive a lot if we just get a bit of Tucker being capable in a plot-relevant way--it doesn’t have to be a major way. He’s not the protagonist of this season, Grif is, and now that they’ve teamed up I think, and hope, that we’ll have a chance to see Tucker play a stronger supporting role.

The Post-Protagonist Problem

Lest I come down too hard on Joe, I want to point out that this fumble is not unique to either Joe or Tucker.

In what I’m going to call the “Post-Protagonist Problem,” Church, Wash, and Carolina all suffer from similar problems once their main arcs are over.

Alpha’s arc wraps up pretty effectively in season 6, but Epsilon has his own arc spanning seasons 8-10. Your mileage may vary but I find Epsilon utterly obnoxious in season 12, and I think there’s a reason for this beyond how needlessly mean he is to Tucker: he is still trying to be the main character two seasons after his main arc has ended, and thus he ends up actively fighting Tucker for the protagonist spot, and bogarting every scene he’s in.

Wash really has two main arcs that kind of fuse into one: his Recollections arc, bracketed by Freelancer and present-day season 10. You could argue that season 11 is really the culmination of Wash’s main arc, because it’s there that he truly settles into his place on Blue Team, ultimately sacrificing himself for them, even though he doesn’t die. From season 12 on, Wash doesn’t really have an arc—his interactions with Locus serve Locus’s development far more than they serve his own, and his role in the conclusion of the Chorus storyline is pretty secondary. In season 15, Wash has no active role in the plot except to get shot, and season 16—well, the verdict is still out, but his role so far has been fairly passive. (And the continuity of Wash’s characterization is fairly contentious in itself, but that’s another post. Oh boy, is that another post. We’ll get to you, Wash. We’ll get to you.)

Carolina’s main arc wraps up in season 10, she is hastily escorted offscreen for a season and half, and when she does return, it’s mostly to carry Epsilon around and say and do very little otherwise—she even gets nerfed immediately upon return. The only reason we got a Carolina mini-arc in season 13 is because fans expressed disappointment at her sidelining in 12, and Miles took note. It is also worth noting that:

Carolina’s season 13 arc has nothing to do with Chorus, does very little to advance the main plot, and does nothing to develop Carolina’s relationships with the main cast and in fact actively removes her from them for large chunks of the season.

Carolina’s role in season 15’s plot, though not an arc for her, is pretty much a retread of her season 13 arc with a different villain.

What this all adds up to is I think that Red vs. Blue in general, not just Joe Nicolosi, has trouble figuring out what to do with a character once their run as a protagonist has ended—and that’s kind of a shame, because it’s not like most of us wants these characters to go away. At least, I don’t.

There’s nothing wrong with a character taking a secondary role once their main arc is complete. But that secondary role shouldn’t discard established character development. A character’s shouldn’t have to regress simply because they’re not driving the plot. There are ways to offer follow-up to previous character development without placing a character back in the protagonist spot.

I’d argue that some of Wash’s strongest character beats post-season 10 are the ones that develop his mentor relationship to Tucker. I think both Carolina and Wash would benefit from developing their connection with each other post-Freelancer. It doesn’t have to be front and center or take up a lot of a screentime, it’s just a way to maintain emotional continuity for both characters in the background of the plot (and it can still be relevant to the plot--imagine if Carolina and Wash’s season 15 talk on the beach were about Epsilon instead of York).

Likewise, there are plenty of ways to explore both Tucker’s fun-loving flirt personality and his insecurities without feeling either regressive or mean-spirited.

I think you can have fun with a former protagonist as a secondary character while still offering up some emotional continuity through relationship development while letting plot development mostly take a backseat. I think Joe was almost there with Tucker and Kaikaina’s subplot this season--like, really close. Tucker can be silly. He can be insecure. Just don’t outright disregard the lessons he’s already learned so he can be made to learn them all over again. And do let him show his confidence and capability now and then.

#lavernius tucker #rvb16 #rvb first spoilers #avian dentistry #red vs blue

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autisticblueteam · 6 years ago

Text

Trying (Caboose & Carolina)

[AO3] [Ko-Fi in Bio]

Rating: Teen

Word Count: 2199

Summary: Carolina doesn’t know what to do. Caboose reminds her that all she has to do is try her best and that, no matter what, she belongs where she is.

Notes: After Episode 13 of the new season and Caboose’s little line at the end, I got some dialogue stuck in my head that evolved into this fic. As always, both my Caboose and Carolina are written as autistic.

Carolina made it half-way down the hall before nerves locked every muscle into place and stopped her dead in her tracks.

There was silence up ahead and the chatter of the Reds and Blues behind her. Both sides surrounded her like an unpleasant, stifling pressure. Walking in either direction suddenly felt like an impossibility.

So she didn’t. She just stood there, in the centre of the hallway, stiff and hesitant.

Her lip was bleeding again, metallic taste on her tongue. Her teeth continued to worry at it, only making it worse.

It wasn’t long before salt mixed in with the iron. Wet streaks stained her cheeks, the tears gravitating into the dip of her lips. Her breath in was shaky, her breath out strained. If she hadn’t been wearing gloves, her nails would have carved crescents into her palms.

What was she going to do?

Volume levels spiked behind her and she flinched. An animated discussion she felt pulled towards at the same time as it rooted her to the spot. No one had come after her. She’d said she was going to try talk to Wash, they were respecting their privacy, but…

Another shaky breath in and she squared her shoulders, stood tall and tried to compose herself.

But no matter what she did, she couldn’t make herself move.

She didn’t know what to do.

The tears were welling up again and she couldn’t stop them. Her lips were wet with tears and blood and her tongue was marred with the taste of both and she could feel the visceral discomfort in her chest as the world started to feel distant and this had been building for a year, a year and she’d never felt such a desperate need to be back on the MOI where she could clamber into maintenance tunnels and hide away until this passed and— and—

Tearing off her helmet she swiped at her face with the back of her wrist. She couldn’t do this, not now. She couldn’t meltdown in the hallway of some— some alien AI’s temple or whatever this place was. She couldn’t let herself break with the guys only a room away.

Even if she so desperately needed to.

“Oh! You are still in the hallway!”

Carolina spun on her heel, hand reflexively going for the gun on her back—

Only to be greeted by the sight of bright cobalt armour and a friendly face with curls that hadn’t quite stopped bouncing when he stopped moving.

Caboose.

“Caboose, I— I didn’t hear you coming,” she said, hyperaware of the tear trails on her cheeks and the blood on her lip. Wiping at them self-consciously, she swallowed a lump in her throat and felt it join the tightness in her chest.

“Yes, I am very sneaky. Even when I am not sneaking,” Caboose said with a sincere nod. Then, his head tilting an almost comical distance to the side, “Why, um, why are you in the hallway?”

Carolina flinched, but… if there was one thing she truly appreciated about Caboose, it was how straight-forward and sincere he always was. Even in situations where any other person would have allowed the awkwardness in the air to stop them, where maybe the best thing to do would have been to talk.

“I… don’t know, Caboose,” she said, squeezing her thumb inside of her fist. “I don’t think I can go any further.”

“Oh. Is your leg hurting again?” he said, voice taking on a deeper, more grave tone. “Do you need me to carry you?”

“No, no, it’s— my leg is fine, Caboose.” Taking a deep breath in, she glanced towards the ends of the hallway. No sign of anyone else. The voices were as loud as ever. “I don’t know that Wash wants to see me right now. That’s all.”

“Oh, come— come on Carolina! Washington is, like, your best friend and best friends always want to see each other! Like me and Church!” he said, hands moving animatedly with his words. “Remember how— how when you and Church were together all the time and he would tell you to tell me that he wanted to see me but he was very busy?”

“I— yes, Caboose, I remember.” Epsilon was another wound that was still far too open to heal, but she knew that it was the same for Caboose. Getting to say goodbye was closure, but it wasn’t a fix-all. He was still gone. “This is… more complicated.”

Caboose scoffed at the suggestion. “Friendship is not complicated, Carolina. Sometimes, ah, sometimes your friend is sad and that isn’t good but when they are sad! You go and talk to them! And you can make everything better! Even when they are scared because they have a fuzzy brain now or when they are a pretty lady who is pretty scary but always saves you from the bad guys.”

A counterpoint danced on the tip of her tongue, only to fall still when she finished processing what he said. The tightness wrapped around her lungs uncoiling ever so slightly, she stared at Caboose for a long, silent moment.

“…is that why you came, Caboose?” she said, when the words came unstuck from the back of her throat. “To… make me feel better?”

“Yes,” he said with another sincere nod, bouncing once on the balls of his feet. “You and Wash. See, um, I am very used to having a fuzzy brain and! It’s scary to be told that your brain was not breathing for a long time! So, yes, um, you said you were going to Wash and so I thought! Perfect! I can do, um, two nerds with one—”

“Birds, Caboose.”

“—bird!” Not quite what she was getting at, but it made a smile tug at the corner of her lips. Even if it was for only a second. “But you are in the hallway and not with Washington so yes. That is why.”

Caboose had come after them to make them feel better.

To make her feel better.

“Thank— Thank you,” she said, the words falling off her tongue like a ten tonne weight. “Thank you.”

When he opened his arms, she remembered a time two years ago now. When Epsilon’s messages had been shared and the weight of what had happened hit. When she had retreated to the depths of the crashed ship, where she could meltdown and grieve in piece. Where she had found Caboose in much the same state as she was and where she joined him, accepted his open arms and sat with him and mourned the loss of someone dear to both of them.

So she nodded. Caboose hugged her and for a moment, the bone-crushing, oddly comforting pressure made everything feel a little better.

“I think that— that Washington is just very scared,” Caboose said, voice now slightly muffled as he held her tight. Her arms wrapped up around his back, her head dropped against his shoulder. “I was very scared when they told me that my brain had not been breathing, too. They told me that I had to go somewhere else and I did not want to do that and I got very scared.”

She didn’t know exactly what had happened to Caboose. Tucker had told her about what had happened with the AI and the damage that had caused, but there was something else. Something from before Blood Gulch, from before the Project got their hands on him.

But it sounded like, out of everyone, he understood more about what Wash was going through than anyone.

“I yelled a lot.” He didn’t sound proud of it. “Because I was very scared. And I didn’t want to leave.”

“You’re… saying that Wash is lashing out because he’s scared,” Carolina said. It was always good to emphasise that you’d understood Caboose’s point. Sometimes he didn’t know, so sometimes he kept explaining until he was sure.

Words were always difficult.

“Yes,” he said. “I think that— that Washington just needs a little help, now. Sometimes— sometimes I need help and! I am still here! I still do good! And— and if Washington is alone then he will not have that help and that… that would be bad, I think.”

Carolina didn’t know what to say to that. He wasn’t wrong, Wash needed the support of the team now more than ever and god only knows if they’d be able to get him home anyway, but if he got hurt…

Would she ever be able to forgive herself?

“I just— I didn’t want to hurt him,” she said, finally. Caboose waited patiently for her response, never once loosening his tight grip. “I didn’t know how I was supposed to help him deal with this. I don’t know how. But I want to help him.”

“You are a good friend, Carolina. I think— I think you have tried your very best. And that is what matters,” Caboose said. Carolina’s heart started pounding and despite her best efforts, tears welled in her eyes. “I think that— that maybe, because you are such a good friend, you haven’t let anyone help you. And that has made you very sad too.”

Her breath caught in her throat.

A year. A year of watching Wash struggle. A year of watching Wash make progress, only for a major lapse to set him back again. A year of watching the one person who truly understood what their lives had been like for over a decade lose chunks of memory. A year of never knowing if asking if he needed help would get a yes or get her snapped at.

A year of spending so much time worrying about Wash both because she cared and because it was easier than confronting the trauma of that goddamned room.

Carolina choked on a sob.

Tears started spilling down her cheeks as Caboose wrapped his arms as tight around her as he could without hurting her. Her whole body shook with sobs as months of built up distress rose to the surface all at once, no longer held back. Everything that she’d been bottling up for the past year.

Through it all, Caboose held her close. He didn’t say anything, but he was warm and stable and his fingers laced into her hair. With her face buried in his shoulder her sobs were muffled and distant. Her tears pooled in the texture of his kevlar undersuit. Her fingers curled around his armour, holding on tight to ground herself.

He was there for her.

He’d come to make her feel better.

She didn’t know how much time passed before the tears started to dry up and she lifted her head away from his shoulder. Her head pounded in that all too familiar way, the migraine that always followed a meltdown. Her eyes were strained and red. Her voice took a moment to catch up with her.

“Th-Thank you Caboose,” she said, coughing when her voice came out rough and strained. “For— for coming after me.”

“That is what friends do for each other,” Caboose said. Squeezing her tight one more time, he slowly let go and stood back. Carolina smiled, despite it all, but before she could respond there was a yell from the end of the hallway.

“Hey! What’re you standing in the hall for, Caboose? I thought you were going to check on Wash and Carolina!” Tucker called, hands cupped around his mouth. Caboose turned around so that he was no longer blocking Carolina from sight and Tucker’s hands dropped. “Oh. Okay, close enough I guess. Hey, Lina! You okay?”

Behind him she could see a couple of other concerned faces. The previous discussions had quieted all together.

For a moment, she considered lying and saying she was fine. Until she saw Caboose’s reassuring smile and looked back at the others to see them gathering in the doorway.

This was her family. No matter what else happened, these people were her family.

“Better than I was,” she said, her voice still strained. Tear stained cheeks, scabbing lip and bags under her eyes all visible. She was a mess and she looked it, but she didn’t see judgement on their faces. Only concern. “If someone wants to fill me in on whatever you were just discussing, maybe… maybe one of you could go and check on Wash?”

“I’ll go,” Tucker said, without hesitation. Their eyes met for the briefest of moments before Carolina had to look away and she saw something there, something he no doubt saw reflected in her.

She wasn’t the only one harbouring guilt.

Tucker went to Wash and she joined the others. With her helmet tucked against her hip she listened to their discussions on what they all thought, what they were going to do.

Caboose never left her side. A constant, reassuring presence. An affirmation that they cared.

That no matter what, she was part of the team.

Her and Wash’s friendship had been through tougher times than this. Caboose’s idea of how friendships worked may have been a little simplified, but that didn’t devalue his point.

They could work through this. Together.

Somehow.

#rvb16 #agent carolina #michael j caboose #rvb #red vs blue #rvb fic #my fanfiction #autistic fics by me #rvb16x13 #rvb first spoilers #rvb spoilers

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rubykgrant · 4 years ago

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(Tucker)

The first video plays for them all, automatically.

He’d set it to some kind of timer, they aren’t sure how he figured out how long to make it last… had he actually calculated the exact right amount of time it would take for them to win the fight? Even with all the unknowns and variables? It doesn’t seem possible, but it also seems to be what happened.

There was just enough of a pause when the battle was over for them to barely catch their breath, and start to feel cautiously optimistic. They did it, they won. In fact, that is exactly what he tells them.

It doesn’t feel like a victory.

The first message plays for them all automatically. They don’t have a choice but to listen to it. Carolina and Wash hear it together, Doc hears it alone, and the rest of them hear it as a group. When he’s done talking, and what just happened starts to sink in, they each notice they have another message waiting for them… from him. Individual messages, sent to them all. These need to be opened and played voluntarily.

None of them play these videos. None of them talk about it, either. Because of this, they don’t even realize he sent a message to ALL of them. They wonder, why did I get another message? If they listened, they would have their answers… but none of them do, and none of them talk about it. Perhaps if they did, things would have happened differently. They would have seen that he had, in fact, said good-bye to everybody. They would have understood how they each felt about this situation a little better. They would have made different choices later. Instead, they don’t talk about it, and they don’t listen to the messages…

Tucker doesn’t listen because he’s some kind of twisted up combination of furious and devastated inside. He can’t even articulate how this has made him feel… is there a word for this? For realizing that the dude who tried and failed to boss you around for years was actually your best friend? When had that happened? Church hadn’t been his best friend in Blood Gulch, he was just the only other person around, the one Tucker saw every single day, and talked to all the time. If anybody else had been there instead, it would have been the same situation… what else was there to do in that canyon? Just talk, and joke, call each other stupid, tell each other to shut up.

Church wasn’t his best friend when they finally got out of there… was he? Maybe, but it was hard to tell. Sure, by the time Tucker had been dealing with literally getting buried alive under the sand, he had missed Church. Missed him more than anybody else. Not just from the group of jerks they always had to deal with, either. Tucker had found himself wanting to talk to Church more than people he’d known before getting stuck in this armor. So yeah, OK, that’s probably what you’d call a “best friend”. Tucker hadn’t really thought about it at the time… or how much he just wanted Church to stick around for more than 5 minutes. Was it too much to ask for the guy to quite dying? Just knock it off already, Church! Tucker hadn’t died even ONCE this whole time, it wasn’t that hard.

Whenever Church had become Tucker’s best friend (he still wasn’t sure how it had actually happened), that was also when it started to hurt more and more when they couldn’t hang out together. When it finally seemed like they could chill and talk again, Church was just… gone. Ditched Tucker and everybody else to go and have adventures with Carolina. Was there a word for how that had felt? Rejected? Jealous? Something like that. Whatever, it sucked... and Tucker realized, at some point when he wasn’t paying attention, Church had turned into his best friend. Not fair.

Well, just like usual, Church came back. Tucker was going to make sure he STAYED this time. They’d do what they needed to do; beat the bad guys, save a whole freaking planet, and they’d have a party where Tucker could finally talk to his best friend… maybe even tell Church that. It wouldn’t be too overly emotionally to say “You’re my best friend, and I missed you. Please don’t go away again” after surviving a near-death situation, right? Just honest, just the truth. Even if it was too mushy, Tucker would just have to get drunk enough to not care.

Was there a word for how it had felt, in the middle of that fight? For a few minutes there, Tucker’s own brain had been moving at bullet-speed, he’d seen the plans of attack Church had calculated for him, all of it practically planned step-by-step, and everything around them was moving slow… “them”. Yeah, it had been THEM. A sensation, a vibe, that they were working together. Tucker hadn’t been nervous or afraid. He felt confident, but with a calm sort of clarity underneath that he wasn’t being arrogant. He had this edge of anger, but it wasn’t the kind that made you lose control, it was righteous fury. He also felt certain that this was going to be alright, he wasn’t alone, Church was right here with him, so was everybody else, Tucker was going to protect them, they’d protect him, it would work out perfectly. Was there a word for ALL that?

Then it was over, and Church was gone. Tucker only knew this because of the message. He’d been ready to open his mouth and say something to Church… but then he was cut off, interrupted. When the message played automatically, Tucker had felt something build up in his chest, and he held it back. A shout, to argue with Church one last time. A sob, because Church couldn’t do this to him again. Tucker kept it in, choked it down. Tucker had felt… smaller. Vulnerable, despite being in the armor. He also felt strangely on edge. The battle was done, there was no more danger, but he was tense and jumpy. Ready to take a swing at anybody or anything. Or just go find somewhere to hide. Maybe those two things had been fueling each other, flight and fight responses happening all at once. Was there a word for any of this?

Tucker threw the armor away. Wash and Carolina are glad to see it go; it reminds them too much of Maine, and everything that had happened to him… Tucker wants it gone because his best friend died while he was wearing it. Tucker hadn’t even felt him leave, really. He’d been so high on adrenaline and the rush of being alive. He just assumed Church was still there, in the armor, in his head… but Church was gone. Tucker was alone. Furious. Devastated. No word for it.

So, with no words to properly describe how he feels, Tucker doesn’t talk about it with anybody. He does have a big victory party though, one so loud that he wouldn’t be able talk about anything, and he gets drunk enough to not care for a little while. He distracts himself and everybody else from this rotten feeling for as long as possible. He also doesn’t play the second message.

#writing #my writing #red vs blue #rvb #lavernius tucker #leonard church #epsilon church #rvb chorus

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abitofafatass · 6 years ago

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UPDATED: Red vs Blue Injury masterlist, as of Season 16

Our idiot space marines managed to mostly avoid physical injury this season, go them! Included Kai on here because she’s rejoined the main cast. As per usual, if I missed something, please tell me and it’ll be included on the next masterlist

Red Team

Sarge

Sniper round to the head

Got pinned to Red Base by the remote control Warthog

Doc drove into him twice

Fell down in the Caves below Blood Gulch

knocked out with a railgun, suffers “bruised ribs and a broken hip”

drove off a cliff repeatedly in his attempt to fight gravity

PSAs

Burned alive in Fire Safety

Donut

Grenade to the face

tripped over the Spleen Ball

got his hand stuck in the warthog’s machinery

Sister’s ship landed on him and he fell down into the caves

nearly died of dehydration in the dessert

Shot in the chest by Washington and nearly bleeds out

Had a grenade explode behind him and knock him unconscious

Was “ripped apart and put back together” after being zapped by the time machine

Became an unwitting Shisno

PSAs

Had fingers blown off by fireworks

Simmons

Ow, the back of my head!”

“Ow, the front of my face!”

Became a cyborg

Shot himself in the foot

Shot by Sarge right before leaving for Rat’s Nest

Sets off a mine in the minefield in the dessert (but doesnt say how he was injured)

Electrocuted himself (Epsilon!Simmons only)

Beaten up by aliens (Epsilon!Simmons only)

PSAs

Burned alive in Fire Safety

Beat up by Tucker and Grif

Where There’s a Wall miniseries

crashed a pelican into the Wall

Grif (who has a full wiki page dedicated to his injuries, btw)

Run over by a tank

Shot by sniper round while hiding on the top of the canyon

Is shot at the beginning of all of Red Team’s emergency plans

nearly died because of an allergic reaction to cleaning solutions

was set on fire

Was blasted off the top of Valhalla (”I think my knee caps are shattered”)

has had AT LEAST 11 (eleven) punches and kicks from TEX directed at his groin

smashed face first into a wall thanks to the malfunctioning speed unit

nearly overheated thanks to that same speed unit

Got shot by Sarge while running drills

Beat up by the Fed and New soldiers because he didnt do drills (Thanks Wash)

Beaten up by aliens (Epsilon!Grif only)

Mental health declines after the Reds and Blues leave him completely alone. This includes

being so lonely he goes full Castaway and makes the BGC out of volleyballs

possible hallucinations

hyperactive talking and new speech tics

fell on his face when he attempted to swing in for a rescue

Deathmatch: Carolina v Meta

Hit with his own Grifshot by one of those deathmatch guys

shot by caboose with the tank during deathmatch debate

knocked out with his own grifshot during deathmatch debate

shot in the back during the deathmatch

Imaginary

killed and his dead body used to gum up the giant windmill

killed at the end of season 6

PSAs

Got burned alive in Fire Safety

Grifball kills

Where There’s a Wall miniseries

was in the Warthog when it was being launched at the wall in order to break through it

hit by Simmons’ pelican while on the wall

Blue Team

Church

Was tortured and fragmented

Self-destructed in Washington’s head (Epsilon)

team killed via tank

had a bomb literally go off in his stomach

Improper use of the Man-Canon at Valhalla sent him skidding across the damn map

Was killed by an EMP (Alpha)

Shot in the foot by Tex (Epsilon)

Red team shot him in the foot so he could talk to them (Inside the Epsilon unit only)

Blew up when the rocket he was attached to hit the ceiling (inside the Epsilon unit only)

Fragmented himself (Epsilon)

PSAs

Had a hole drilled into his ass by those NASA probes

Tucker

Crunchbite beat the hell out of him

An alien parasitic baby literally clawed himself out of his stomach

he was shot in the back by O’Malley or Church that one time in season two with a rocket launcher

rock landed on his head and laid him the fuck out

Stabbed in the gut by Felix

PSAs

Was run over by the warthog by Carolina, Kimball, and Doc Grey

Caboose

Church shot his toe off

He had three AI in his head and then had them violently removed = brain damage

Massive blood loss when Junior bit his arm and drank his blood

Got shot in the shoulder running from Tex (”Last time I got shot, I got a purple heart...”)

Delta was torn from his head = MORE BRAIN DAMAGE

The time he stepped on a mine and got blown sky high

landing on the ground after being blasted sky high

Caboose’s helmet was offline for almost two hours leaving him without air (no air for extended amounts of time kills brain cells)

drank gasoline

Fell off a cliff and landed on his head (the part that was most used to being hit)

PSAs

Got burned alive in Fire Safety

Jumped off the side of the canyon

had Asian Bird Flu

Church tears out his heart and sticks in back in every Valentines day (may be metaphorical)

Fell out of the sky that one time he “went into the campaign”

Tex

Got blown up by Donut’s grenade

Shot in the ass by Tucker’s sniper rifle

killed by the EMP (Beta)

Stabbed in the helmet by the Meta and sucked into the Epsilon unit (E-Beta)

Epsilon “forgot” her and let her memory go (E-Beta)

Doc

Tea bagged by the Flag Zealots

Attacked by Crunchbite and knocked out

punched into a wall

blasted out of the wall

blown up in Tex’s mine trap

Long term exposure with Omega gave him Dissociative Identity Disorder

Became an unwitting Shisno

It's unclear whether or not O’Malley is the main personality at this point or not

Kaikaina “Sister” Grif

Was apparently under the ice for several hours and came out of it with no lasting effects

nearly strangled to death by Lopez

“Jilled it so hard I got a friction burn”

Washington

Epsilon committed suicide in his head

Shot in the back by South

Shot while at the Freelancer HQ

Run over by Grif with a Warthog

Blown up by Sarge and the fusion coils

Blown up in Tex’s mine trap

Beat up by the Meta

Hit with Locus’ rail gun and knocked unconscious

Spent eight days in armour lock with no food or water

shot through the neck

caused Cerebral Hypoxia, meaning his brain was without oxygen for several minutes

brain damage with severe memory lapses and amnesia

Carolina

possible broken ribs after using the speed unit during the Sarcophagus heist

Eta and Iota potentially caused brain damage in the fight against Tex

Tex punched her so hard she was knocked unconscious

coma

The Meta ripped Eta and Iota out of her head = brain damage and damage at implant site

tossed off a cliff right after having AI ripped out of her head

Stabbed in the leg by Felix

twisted or broken ankle in the first fight against Sharkface

fell off the cliff and through a bunch of tree branches in that same fight

Fell out of the monorail in the second fight against Sharkface. There were no lasting injuries visible, but she was definitely holding her ribs

slash across the back (shoulder to hip) with an energy sword

Spent eight days in armour lock with no food or water

Deathmatch vs Meta

slash across front (shoulder to hip) with bruteshot

#red vs blue #rvb #long post #masterlist #rvb16 #rvb16 spoilers #i was thinking about it so i figured I'd put it out before the season was fully available for everyone #otherwise I absolutely would have forgotten all about it #It honestly feels like more should have happened to the gang this time around but eh

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callie-the-snarky-geek-blog · 6 years ago

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RvB16 Episode 15 (Season Finale) Review: Paradox

(Old Blog Repost)

Fifteen weeks ago, RvB16 began and all that we know going in was that it involved pizza quests, Donut the God, and time travel. Over these many weeks we’ve had sex adventures throughout time, the return of O’Malley, an in-universe Red vs Blue movie, the adventured of Grif and a sentient lens flare, Gus the Cyclops, Alien Gods who are actually AI, and buckets full of feels. Well, after all of that and so much more, it has all come down to this. Hoping to save Wash from his brain damage, the remaining Reds and Blues venture back to save him, but we discover that doing this will spark the end of time itself. So the question that remains is: what the FUCK are we in for?!

I got to see this yesterday as Rooster Teeth livestreamed it early. It… it… well I’ll be discussing it down below. Before I get to it though, I want to say thank you to Joe, Miles, Kyle, Josh, the animator team, David Levy and Trocadero, the voice cast, and everyone involved in this season if Red vs Blue. It has been an incredibly fun ride form start to finish and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. A lot of work went into this and I can’t even imagine how exhausting it all had to have been. But I.think that I speak for many of us when I say that we greatly appreciate every second that was put into everything, and again thank you for one Hell of a season.

Alright, well… lets do this everyone. Be afraid. Very afraid.

Overview

We begin with the Reds and Blues already back in the past inside the underwater base, going over the plan. They have 18 minutes before Wash gets shot and they are going to do their damnest to be careful and NOT cause anymore serious damage to the timeline. As they go over their plan, they get caught by a random Blue, provoking both Carolina and Tucker to beat him up. While Carolina does get seen on the security camera, the gang continues to stick to the plan. But their plan may have another potential snag as DOnut returns to Chrovos, The Hammer in hand.

As the guys move forward, they end up at a locked door and are forced to go around. Before they can however they’re forced to hide due to Locus, Carolina, and a delirious Wash about to pass by. Before he hides though, Grif smells something that alarms him. Once Carolina gets a delirious Wash to continue on his way, the guys get ready to resume before Grif calls their attention to the scent. He recognizes it as a Sammie Raphaello’s pizza. Why is this important? Well remember that by this point the restaurant had been destroyed, pizza got wiped out existence, and the Blues and Reds only ever had fish. All of these factors cause Grif to realize that another time traveler is there and he decides to go after whoever it is while the others focus on the mission. Simmons is reluctant, but Grif says that they don’t have time to debate and runs off. Simmons can only watch him go (anyone else have Season 15 flashbacks?) as he and the others press on.

The Reds and Blues make it to what they assumed was an empty hangar, but lo and behold it’s covered in guards. They have only two choices, go ahead and fight them off or chance waiting for them to leave and end up running into their past selves. Fortunately they get a little help when Simmons form a few minutes into the future contacts them. In the meantime, Chrovos tries to have Donut give him The Hammer, and as he talks about the guys being mean to him again, it looks like that Donut is indeed about to do as told. Back at the base, Grif follows the pizza scent and finds the mystery time traveler: Genkins. Grif aims his gun at him, even fighting off being tempted by the pizza, but Genkins says that he’s not here to fight and simply brought the pizza over as an apology. it better be for killing Huggins (even if I still refuse to believe it) you sick fuck!

Back with the others, future Simmons gives the guys advice: to use what they learned and that they’re going to do great. Carolina is confused, but Simmons tells her to let them handle things from here. Back with Grif, he pieces together that Genkins was responsible for Kalirama attacking them at Sammie Raphaello’s and was the one who wiped pizza out of existence. Genkins confirms this, trying to again tempt Grif with the pizza but he simply says that he doesn’t care and presses him to explain why he set them up. Genkins answer? Simple, he’s bored. That’s right guys, Genkins is Chaotic Evil. The Reds and Blues meanwhile fight off the guards. Highlights include Sarge luring two into a portal and onto Iris where they’re faced with the Female Gus Cyclops, Tucker dropping horses on them via the portal gun, and Simmons telling Caboose that the guards stole his penny to anger him enough to clobber them with the golf club. I’m so proud of my boys! So proud! They press on, but not before Simmons contacts his past self to set everything into motion.

Back with Donut, he hesitates and asks about Chrovos why he saved him. He says that he simply took pity on someone in trouble, again asking for The Hammer. He also explains that once freed, he’ll gain power that’ll allow him to kill the Cosmic Powers but promises to still spare the Reds and Blues. Donut points out how his friends are jerks to him more often than not… but that they are still his friends and that Chrovos was both responsible for what happened to him and has only been using him He decides to instead use The Hammer to reinforce the prison, but he’s stopped by O’Malley. They struggle and with Donut continuing to refuse to listen to him anymore, Chrovos orders O’Malley to kill him. It leads to one HELL of a fight scene across time. Due to it being a fight, I won’t go into details but guys it is AMAZING. The animation and choreography are perfect. It goes from on top of airliners, to Blood Gulch, to the moon, to a wrestling rink, and finally to a city. O’Malley tries to act as Doc to make Donut back down, but Donut doesn’t buy it. So how does Donut defeat O’Malley? Well during the Blood Gulch portion, he threw a grenade at him and seemed to miss. In the city however, he opens a portal and the grenade flies out, landing before O’Malley and blasting him away. Donut takes The Hammer and teleports away to take care of Chrovos.

All throughout this, Genkins reveals to Grif his motives. He’s grown tired of their current universe, finding that it has gotten boring as of late. So wanting to spice things up, he agreed to help Chrovos when offered power and wishes to become an actual God to change up the universe as he sees fit. Oh God, is Genkins one of those RvB fans who keeps sayin that the show has gone stale and wants to change everything?! Grif says that by now, the others are already in position to save Wash… to which Genkins responses positively. It causes Grif to realize that Genkins isn’t there to stop them, but to ensure that they succeed. If Wash doesn’t get shot, neither he nor Locus will leave and they’ll be able to take down Temple before he turns the time machine on. If it isn’t turned on, then Donut never gets zapped by Chrovos and therefore none of the events that caused the time travel to begin with will commence. Therefore creating a paradox, one that will have enough power to shatter the already weakened timeline.

Grif runs to reach the others and at the same time, Donut makes it to Chrovos and lifts The Hammer to trap him once more. But unfortunately… it’s too little too late. Grif arrives just as Carolina shoots down the soldier that hit Wash, causing time to freeze. Everything soon fades to white, the Reds and Blues realizing far too late what they have done. They all too begin to fade away, Tucker trying to talk to Sister one final time as Sarge tells them all, especially Grif and Simmons, that it has been an honor. Soon, everyone is gone and the screen cuts to black.

As a new Trocadero track begins to play (I believe that David Levy said that the title was Rush in the livesteam chat, love it by the way!) we soon get a panning shot of some grassy-like area before we see our new location: Blood Gulch. From what I’ve seen more Halo-savvy people say, they are now using the Halo 2 Anniversary engine. So why are we in Blood Gulch? Hell if I know, but we see Sarge calling Grif and Simmons, Grif asking if it’s because they wont he war. Sound familiar? Like that being the same dialogue from Episode 2 of the very first season familiar?! Yeah… from how it looks, time has reset and has sent the Reds and Blues back to the very beginning of their journey, their memories wiped.

It’s not long before we see that things aren’t quite the same however. When we cut to the Blues, we see Tucker with a cobalt-clad soldier… but the second he talks, it is very clearly not Church. For one he’s in a good mood and sees rather optimistic, so definitely not Church. He even offers to let Tucker hold the sniper rifle, to which Tucker days that he doesn’t like them. Yeah, things are NOT right Anyways, Not-Church (there’s speculation if this is Jimmy, Temple, or even Genkins currently) mentions that they’re getting ‘new recruits’ (unassumingly Caboose and maybe Sister) and maybe even a tank. Back with the Reds, we see Grif and Simmons on top of the base as we did back in the beginning so long ago. Grif starts to ask the “do you ever wonder why we’re here?” line… but stops due to the sense of deja vu, asking Simmons about it. When Simmons starts to comment about it being one of life’s great mysteries, he too pauses at the feeling. But they simply go back to standing and doing nothing, the camera panning down and giving us one more glimpse of the Red Base before cutting to the credits.

My friends, Season 16 has oficially ended. Ad ther eis only one proper way to express how I feel about it...

Review

HOLY

SHIT

I was in shock when I watched this the first time. This was my fifth time watching it and I am STILL in shock. This finale was incredibly well done. I think that we all knew, or at least thought about, that Wash was probably going to be saved and that in doing so, a paradox would happen. But even knowing it, I wasn’t ready for it. There’s a lot of questions. What happened to the timeline? What happened to Donut? Why is everyone back at Blood Gulch? Does Freelancer still exist since Church isn’t there? Who is Not-Church? Will the guys regain their memories? Joe left SO MANY things open, and we’re going to have to wait a year to find out the answers. Boy is hiatus time going to be fun…

I’m going to have a section devoted to speculation for the next season, but before we do lets discuss the finale. We’re going to do the Reds and Blues first, then Donut’s scenes, then Grif confronting Genkins, and finally a bit about the ending. SO beginning with the Reds and Blues, it was SO GOOD to see them working as one unit. It really shows us how far they have come since the Blood Gulch days. Everyone has their focus on the task ahead, Carolina remains calm and properly leads the team, Simmons essentially assumes second-in-command (a HUGE step for him) and handles it like a champ, being the one to put the plan to fight the guards into motion and unassumingly coordinates everyone’s efforts. While succeeding ended up a bad thin,t he fact that they DID succeed so flawlessly really shows how effective they all have become and how in-sync they truly are. I wasn’t kidding when I said that I was proud of them despite what ended up happening. It still shows how much they’ve progressed, and for that I am very happy.

Donut though is very much the MVP of this episode. Despite having every reason to not give a shit about the others, and even he point sit out, ultimately he realizes on his own that he’s being used and that his friends are still his friends. Before this season, Donut was easily my least favorite Blood Gulch Crew member and my least favorite Red. The past few episodes made me feel bad for him for the first time, and this one turned EVERYTHING around. Joe did such a good job at giving Donut a personality beyond just being a walking fountain of innuendos. He is smart. He is more than capable of holding his own. He can be hurt and does recognize how the guys treat him, simply wanting them to be nice to him. These are all things that a LOT of people have wanted to see out of the character for years, and Joe seemed to have listened and decided to do so. I’m really glad that he did. Donut feels like a much more layered character, keeping the comedic elements but having those traits that the audience can relate to and ultimately made him sympathetic and his actions understandable without overdoing it or making him look bad.

And int he end, Donut decided to be the better person and to stand up to Chrovos. Which led to the oh so AMAZING fight scene. It was done SO WELL. Like the animators experience with doing the fights over in RWBY really shines here. The usage of the portals was very clever and all the settings were used to both Donut and O’Malley’s advantage. They all felt unique and both parties were evenly matched. But Donut won by using his experience with the gun and cleverness with the portals, resulting in by far his best grenade throw since originally grenaded Tex. O’Malley was certainly no slouch though, even trying to revert back to Doc to try and throw Donut off. It failed, but that was still a clever move. It is one of the best fights in the series in my opinion and was well done by everyone involved. You can tell that Matt and Dan gave it their all with the performances (Matt sounded like he was having a LOT of fun doing O’Malley for that long again), and they did an excellent job.

Onto Grif now. I have made it no secret that Grif is my favorite character and imo the best done character in this season. That continued to shine through here. First, him being obsessed with food and his desire for pizza actually proved useful when eh deducted just through he scent that something wasn’t right. Like he pieced everything together all by himself, and even moreso when he discovered Genkins. And while going alone wasn’t the best option,t he fact that he was willing to do so to give the others time to carry out the mission shows just how far he’s come. Especially when he only gets tempted by the pizza for like three seconds before forcing himself to focus and outright telling Genkins that he doesn’t care. Yes, the one thing that Grif wanted all season? He doesn't are about it anymore. He cares about helping his friends and getting the job done. Despite their falling out, Huggins influence on him really shined through and shows us just how capable that Grif is when he actually does try. He’s smart, brave, and unwilling to back down no matter tempts him or what gets in his way. I could not be more proud of him.

Genkins plan was definitely brilliant. He set forth the events like destroying Sammie’s by telling Kalirama where the guys were and wiping pizza out of history to provoke Grif and Doc to try and remake it, provoking the events that resurfaced O’Malley and everything following. As he said, time traveling and changing history will weaken time, leaving it more than vulnerable to being shattered by a paradox. It was all clearly planned to happen, just as Jax said back in Episode 9. And because of how eccentric he is, the Cosmic Powers didn’t suspect anything even when Genkins outright said that he was the traitor back in Episode 5. He is absolutely Chaotic Evil, and for all intents and purposes he won. He distracted Grif long enough for the others to carry out the plan (which makes it interesting that he called away Grif specifically to ensure that happened since if he didn’t show up at all, chances are it still would have happened) and now time is screwed. If Chrovos keeps his word, Genkins can shape the universe into who knows what.

So yeah… that ending. I just remember everything fading to white and being in total shock. Chat was losing their collective minds throughout all of it, that I DO remember, I didn’t know how to process it, and I still don’t. As nice as it is to see Blood Gulch again, there’s that feeling that it’s just… wrong. Especially when we see the Blues and realize that Church isn’t there and that Tucker isn’t acting right. And when we got to :Do you ever wonder hwy we’re here”… I was gone. Every time that I’ve watched that part, I have cried. It is the one time that I didn’t want to hear it and just further emphasized how wrong things feel. It was an evil move by Joe, and he NAILED IT. I’ve never felt so weirdly satisfied but broken inside. Not even RWBY Volume 3 did that, and that broke me for days. SO yeah… the emotional blows all very much connected and waiting for April is going to be HARD. IDK if even RWBY V6 is going to help make the wait anymore bearable. But I’m positive that the wait will be worth it.

RvB17 Speculations

With this being the finale, and one Hell of a finale, I have a LOT of thoughts about what might happen next. So as we saw, things have been reset back to Blood Gulch. Going off the ‘deja vu’ bit, the guys memories are likely being suppressed and I assume that they’ll be triggered more and more next season. I guess in a weird way, it’s like in Season 9 with the Epsilon Unit int hat the’re going to relive Blood Gulch, but the events won’t be quite the same. This time it’s not because of Epsilon going through memories to meet Tex again though, plus this time no one remembers anything. It also raises the question about how the characters will behave. Likely the Reds are back to their old personalities (Sarge is murderous over the Blues and Simmons is an insecure kissass) but what about Caboose? With Church gone, the events that made him how we know him now won’t happen. Will he be like he was in Season 1 again? What about characters like Sister, Carolina, and Wash? And Donut? He was still in Chrovos’ domain, so will his memory be intact? Or since the Reds don’t mention a rookie, will he be there at all?

There’s a lot of questions, and we have a lot of time to think them over. So here is where I stand so far. There’s been a LOT of talk about who Non-Church is… but currently I’m going to say it’s Genkins. If only because the inflections int he voice sound very much like Genkins voice actor, plus it would mean that for now Genkins needs to keep the Reds and Blues in check while Chrovos does whatever he’s going to do. As for how the guys will remember… it’s hard to say. Enough similar-looking events may happen that it triggers their memories, or maybe Genkins will restore them to spice things up. It’s also possible that if Donut is at Blood Gulch, having been at Chrovos domain he may still have his memory and has to try and get everyone else to remember. If not, if I had to guess who’s gong to remember first… it’s probably gonna be Grif. I think that Joe built it up enough that we can assume that Grif is our main protagonist, plus he’s the only one who knows the true details over what happened. There’s also still that time loop theory due to Grif’s deja vu in Episode 14.

Which brings me to my next theory. I don’t think that the timeline necessarily reset. I think that Chrovos got free and placed the Reds and Blues in an alternate timeline, suppressing their memories since they would be the only ones who could interfere with him. This also means that Wash isn’t there since we last saw him in Chorus, so he’s back in the regular timeline. I think that the timeline is currently frozen outside maybe the Cosmic Powers, who Chrovos is going to try to kill as the timeline slowly shatters apart. Of we go with my theory of Grif eventually regaining his memory, he’ll figure out that Not-Church is Genkins (or even have a confrontation happen when memory-less that make sit impossible for him to ignore the deja vu so Genkins, wanting to see his reaction, grants him back his memory), confront him, and Genkins will shoot him into a Black Hole the same way that he did Huggins, which will lead to them reuniting and reconciling to fix everything. I don’t knwo how they’d escape, but it would lead them back to the broken timeline and Grif has to go through it to prevent the paradox from happening. Which will lead Chrovos to sending his forces, which if the Shisno thing still stand may include the Reds and Blues, to stop him. Bonus if Donut escapes and goes to help, and if the Cosmic Powers are alive they’ll likely also get involved if they see that Huggins survived.

But this is very much a long-shot and going off what we’ve seen so far and how the paradoxes work. I had a theory that all the scenarios may happen, which it looks possible. Chrovos creating an alternate timeline confirms that theory and if time hasn’t been fully destroyed yet, it creates a buffer period with the explanation that the process is still on-going. If all of them go back, it doesn’t change too much of the theory, it just means more people. Likely the mroe I watch the finale and speculate, the more that this will change. But for now, that’s all I’ve got. Will I be proven right? Probably not, but we won’t know until at least April so.. we’ve got time! Unlike the Reds and Blues, haha… and I made myself sad.

Final Thoughts

The finale was insane in all of the good ways. It had a great fight sequence, great character moments, and one mindscrew of an ending that I don’t think that anyone will ever forget. If I had to guess, we’ll probably start next season kind of like in Season 9, with some similar event splaying out and as they do, the guys memories will potentially be triggered. All we can do is wait for April to come and find out. But all in all, it was a great finale and I loved every second of it.

With that, I want to take this time to say thank you to everyone who has read these reviews. This is only the second season of RvB that I watched regularly and the first one that I reviewed as it was coming out. I had a lot of fun doing it and I’m glad that people really liked my silly ramblings! There will be one final review for the season coming up, an overall review of everything I liked and disliked about it, that should hopefully be out this time next week. After that, that’ll be a wrap for RvB16. If any of you guys are RWBY fans, I’ll be reviewing Volume 6 in the same format when it starts this Fall and I may also be doing Gen;Lock if I like it. I’m also going to be doing reviews of the other RvB seasons during the hiatus, so I’ll have plenty of RvB-related material until next season rolls around. Again, thank you all for reading and I will be back again to do RvB17 next year. So I hope to see all of you then!

#rvb #rvb16 #rvb reviews #old blog repost

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randomly-random-jen · 6 years ago

Text

Attention to Detail (6/6)

A Red vs Blue fanfic

Chapter 6

People started running. Tourists and medics, security and sicko gawkers all rushing for a better view of the aftermath. Church moved, too—elbowing and forcing his way between couples and families.

“Look at me, Church! Up here!” The words bounced around his head followed by those memories that would always haunt him.

“Daddy, look at my dress. It floats. Daddy, you’re not looking.”

He finds her after the longest most terrifying fifteen minutes of any of his lives because, for all of his faults and all the pain he’s caused, Dr. Leonard Church loves his daughter. Church feels it deep in his bones. He screams her name—not just the Director, but Alpha and Epsilon and every other goddamn voice in his head. They all scream the same thing. “Sarah! Sarah, where are you?”

But the name that came out of Church’s mouth was something else. “Caboose! Caboose!” They made it to the fence surrounding the ride. Medics were everywhere, sirens wailing closer and closer. Security pushed onlookers back. Church was stuck.

“That’s my friend,” he shouted at the nearest guard who only shrugged. If he had a gun, he’d blow the guy’s head off. Well, maybe Church wouldn’t, but Wash or Carolina could take the shot.

Tucker and Wash, Carolina and the Reds suddenly surrounded him, each in various stages of shock. Even Wash, after everything he’d seen and done, appeared lost and overwhelmed. From the haunted look in his eyes, Church knew heard Epsilons ghosts—his ghosts—screaming inside his head, too.

“They won’t let us through,” Church said. Hands shaking, he barely even noticed Carolina reaching over to stop them—her touch gentle. Almost understanding. Did she remember?

“What do we do?” asked Tucker, sounding calm but worried.

Doc suddenly pushed to the front of the group. “Let me go. I’m a medic—they’ll let me through.”

And they did.

Church watched Doc slip past security, but his patience was used up. “Fuck this.” He reached out for the familiar feel of Doc’s mind. O’Malley had made a cozy nest there that glowed like a fucking Christmas tree to Church. He stayed only long enough to find another body nearby.

“Whoa,” Doc mumbled, staggering into the woman next to him.

She righted him. “Sorry,” Church said, his voice sounding weird. He’d never jumped into a female body before. “I needed a point of reference.”

“I understand.” He didn’t sound so sure, though. Church hated to do that to him. Omega was a bastard that really did a number on the mild-mannered medic. Even the few seconds in his brain showed that—it was almost as big a mess as Church’s, and apparently O’Malley left a piece of himself behind.

Doc muttered curses to himself when a group of bystanders blocked his path. Before Church could do anything, Doc twitched, turning into someone else. “Get out of my way, you imbeciles. Move. I’m a medic. Scat. Scamper. Yes, you in the ugly sweater get out of my way.”

Church didn’t know if he should laugh or feel guilty. At the moment, he was just grateful Omega turned out to be good for something. He clung to Doc, traveling in his wake as people parted like the Red Sea.

“Hey,” a guard yelled, stopping them. “You can’t be over here!”

“Out of my way, fool, or I’ll rip your skull out and beat you to death with it.”

“What?” The guard looked more confused than afraid. They really needed to get some new material.

“I’m a medic,” Doc said in his usual, squeaky voice. “The guy- the man that fell-” His voice cracked, but he pulled himself together. “He’s a friend of mine. His name’s Caboose, and I really, really-” O’Malley returned with an evil twist of his lips. “-need to get to him. Now bloody move out of my way.”

The guard backed away, leaving a space for them to pass. “Yes, yes, finally, you idiot. Move. Move. This is my assistant, let her through. Move!”

People scattered. Doc grabbed Church’s wrist and dragged him through. “Yes, thank you, good man,” O’Malley said to a guard that waved them over, followed by Doc’s hollered, “and have a nice day!”

Doc shook himself out. “God, I hate when that happens.”

“Sorry,” Church mumbled. “Omega was always the hothead of the family. But I’m kind of glad right now. Thank you for getting us through.”

Doc blinked at him. “He’s my friend, too, Church.”

They both stumbled to a stop a few feet from a body covered in a sheet.

“No.”

Church wasn’t sure which one of them said it or if it even mattered. They both sighed in relief as the sheet suddenly lifted and fell. Church hurried over, dropping to his knees next to Caboose’s head. He was still. Too still for Caboose who always fidgeted. But he was breathing.

“Caboose?” Doc said. “Caboose, can you hear me?”

“No, mama, I don’t wanna shuck the corn today.”

“Caboose,” Church said in his way-too-feminine voice. “Caboose, open your eyes.”

Doc concentrated on his scanner, mumbling to himself.

“Come on, Caboose. I’ve gone through too much shit to lose you now. I mean, I might get too used to not dying every goddamn month if you aren’t there to blow me up or shoot me in the head, but-” He couldn’t help the quiver in his voice.

Caboose’s lips moved. Church bent closer, and his friend’s mouth—corner caked in blood—turned up into a grin. “Tucker did it,” he rasped, and fuck it, Church was crying again. “Church, is that you?” Caboose asked, a little louder.

“Yeah, buddy, it��s me.”

Caboose’s smile widened. “Church! You’re a girl!”

Church laughed in relief, the terror slowly bleeding away. “You’re going to be okay, buddy. Just hang on. Doc is here—he’s going to fix you up and then we’re gonna go home.”

“To Blood Gulch?”

“To wherever the fuck you wanna go, Caboose.”

Caboose blinked up at Church. “I want to be wherever you are, Church.”

Doc paused to wipe his eyes and steady himself. Church watched his own tears fall, soaking Caboose’s hair. He focused on that one thing because he wouldn’t, couldn’t look at the man’s broken body.

Church had lived a lot of lives, and of all of his experiences, this ranked as the second most terrifying. The first ended a lot better.

“Sarah! Sarah, where are you?” His throat is raw from yelling, and his lashes are tangled with tears, blurring the world around him. “Shit, shit, shit. Where is she? Sarah?”

A wrinkled hand lands on his shoulder. “Are you looking for a little girl ‘bout yea high,” the old woman asks with a reassuring smile. “Red hair and blue dress?”

“Oh, god, yes. Have you seen her?”

The woman pats his arm. “She’s over there, spinnin’ for the ducks. Happy as a clam.”

He barely remembers to shout a thank you over his shoulder as he runs. He tops the hill, and sure enough, she’s down by the pond chattering to the ducks. The breath he’s been holding for the last five minutes whooshes out in a gush.

Of course, she would come here. This was their spot. Every time Allison came home, they raced to the pond to feed the ducks. All Sarah ever wanted to do was practice running so one of those times she’d finally be faster than Mommy.

“Sarah!”

“Daddy!” She waves high, oblivious to his distress. “Look at my dress, Daddy! Look how it floats!”

Church blinked away fresh tears. He tried not to think about how they celebrated Sarah’s sixth birthday the next week. Or how she never got to race her mother to that pond again.

He pushed and shoved and crammed those memories into the closet with Tex and Wash and everything else he didn’t have the capacity to deal with at the moment. He’d sort them and his ghosts out another day. If there was one thing Church knew how to do, it was compartmentalize.

Caboose’s breathing shallowed out, and for an agonizing moment, the terror seized him again. But the sheet continued to rise and fall. Church swore the man was invincible.

“I think he’s going to be okay,” Doc said softly. “It won’t be pretty or easy, but he’ll make it.”

Church sighed. “Hear that, Caboose? Doc thinks you’re gonna be just fine.”

“But, Church,” Caboose murmured. “Doc is a horrible doctor. You said so.”

Doc shook his head as Church chuckled. “It’s okay, Caboose. I think he’s learned a few things since then.”

Caboose laughed, too, but it quickly turned to coughs.

“Try not to move, buddy. They’re bringing a helicopter to take you to the hospital. How cool is that?”

“Neat.” Caboose forced one eye open to look at Church. “Will you be there, Church? So I’m not scared?”

Caboose knew how to throw an emotional sucker punch to the gut. “Of course. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” And damn it, he meant it more than anything he’d ever sworn to before. He’d fucked up too many lives in the past. It was time to start doing something right. “Now you need to promise me you’ll do everything the doctors say and rest and not move around. Okay? I need you to get better and come home soon. Who else is going to take care of Mr. Bubbles and Fishy McSwimsalot?”

Caboose’s eye fluttered shut, but the smile stayed. “I love you, Church. You’re my best friend.”

“I love you, too, buddy. Now rest and get better.”

They missed all the signs—things that meant nothing to the average person, but for the Reds and Blues spelled disaster on the horizon. Nothing good ever came from not wearing armor or stealing bodies or getting drunk. Next time, they’d pay better attention to the details.

chapter 5

#fanfic #red vs blue fanfic #story: attention to detail #epsilon!church #doc dufresne #michael j caboose #angst #happy ending #sort of

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