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thesolferino · 4 years ago

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True Calling

⤷ dream x f!reader.

⤷ word count: 3.9k

⤷ requested: yes, by this lovely anon!

— summary: dream meets his favorite singer on an among us livestream.

“Dude, what could go wrong? Just do it.”

“What could go wrong?! Literally so many things, you ass.”

Dream heard Sapnap sigh through the mic right into his headphones, the dim grey of his Discord background doing barely anything to illuminate his features as he stared at his open messages blankly.

“First of all, don’t.. speak to me like that, I am doing you a favour by sitting here and listening to you panic about stupid shit. Second of all, nothing big could go wrong. What, you’re a little awkward in the beginning, maybe, and that’s it.” Dream adjusted his headphones a little bit, Sapnap’s rant flowing into his ears but dissipating somewhere halfway to his brain, because, yes, things could go wrong and he can’t be proven otherwise.

“Did you forget that I’m a public figure? And that my fans are insane? I say one wrong thing and it’ll be memed and haunt me in my dreams. Did you forget that SHE’s a public figure? And that this is live? God…” he retorts back, listening to Sapnap helplessly sigh once again in response. He anxiously switches from his Discord to Twitter, then to YouTube, to Twitch and then back to Discord, frantically clicking around. In reality, he knows Sapnap is right, and it’s anxiety whispering into his ear that he’s gonna somehow fuck up, but maybe it’s simply easier to stay and argue with him into the night instead of actually responding to that message.

The stream is still going. Quackity’s voice speaks over Sapnap’s quiet breathing. “Damn, he’s still not responding. Um, let me try Tubbo, maybe?”

Before he knows it, the opportunity to join the stream is slipping out of his fingers, and Dream isn’t sure if he’s happy about that or not. On one hand, he gets to meet one of his favorite artists whose album he’s played way too many times to count, and on the other, the chances of him embarrassing himself in front of that same artist and a hundred thousand other people are extremely high, and he’s not sure if he likes the odds of that.

“Man, I don’t know. You won’t listen to me, anyway. Don’t join if you don’t want to.” Dream hears the annoyed tinge in Sapnap’s voice, and that’s what pours the last bit of courage into his veins because the best way to do anything in life is to follow Sapnap’s advice after you’ve already irritated him to the point of defeat, and he murmurs a quick “bye” and hangs up before the other can even respond, typing a rapid “Sure, send me the VC link” back to Quackity.

He hears a delighted exhale coming from his Twitch tab just as Quackity forwards him the link. “Okay, nevermind, we’ve got Dream! He’ll join in a second.”

With that, he swiftly closes the Twitch tab and with an encouraging sip of water, he finally joins the Discord voice chat with the rest of the players. Your Discord image sticks out like a sore thumb to him despite being a super basic, Googleable picture of you that he’s probably seen a million times by now, and upon seeing it, reality slaps him right over the face and he realises that, oh shit, he actually joined.

“Hey everyone.” Dream speaks into the mic and a mix of excited voices greets him at the same time as he loads up the game. Your icon is missing the green halo. He stares at it, as if you’ll magically speak up if he stares long and hard enough. That, apparently, works.

Pokimane’s “Dream, hi!” seems to set something off in your brain, and you speak again.

“Oh, Dream?” the green halo appears, and Dream resists the urge to say something stupid or bite his hand or anything of the sort when you say his name. “Aren’t you the guy who listens to my music all the time?” you giggle.

Quackity laughs loudly in his usual fashion, and Dream feels his hands go cold as the Among Us loading page pops up. “Wh-huh?”

“Yeah, you-you listen to my music a lot! Your fans always tag me under that… ‘Dream’s Spotify’ Twitter account, I remember you.” Dream swears his heart is about to jump out of his chest and start bouncing around on the floor because his ribs are way too restrictive for that type of movement, but he tries his best to play it cool and laughs lightheartedly.

“I do! I’m, like, your biggest fan.” he grins, as if you can see him, and you laugh in return.

“Yeah, man, you pay my rent. Thanks.” you say and a couple of people laugh while Dream inputs the code and his character finally pops up, immediately running around like the rest of the group. He runs around your purple character and hears you chuckle as you run around him too, but not for long, because the game starts and everyone mutes themselves. He audibly sighs, because he can afford to, considering he’s not streaming and nobody can hear the amount of courage this whole thing is taking him.

A notification pops up on his screen - the Dream Team group chat seems to be talking. Must’ve already found some way to make fun of me, he thinks to himself as he huffs out a large breath and runs through cafeteria and weapons to do his tasks in navigation. Corpse is hot on his tail the whole time, and not to say he’s an untrustworthy guy, but Dream isn’t really looking forward to getting killed before even speaking to you properly, so he runs around, trying to find somebody to stick with so Corpse doesn’t shove a knife in his back while he’s doing a task.

Thankfully, Karl emerges somewhere from the direction of storage right into communications where Dream was going, too. Just as Dream starts finishing download and Corpse and Karl line up behind him, his screen flashes bright red and white and the bold letters “Dead body reported” pop up. Everyone unmutes themselves and his eyes bore into your character, immediately.

“Alright, the body was in top left of the… uh, upper engine. I need everyone’s positions.” Rae immediately spoke.

“I was in electrical, I-I went through cafeteria to the upper engine with Poki, there was nobody there, we did our tasks, went down to lower engine, then Poki left with Toast, and I went to electrical and the body was reported.” Sykkuno said, and Pokimane confirmed with a hum of agreement.

“Dream?” Rae asked, and he spoke up.

“I never even went that way, I went through weapons to nav, and then to communications, and then the body was found. Corpse can vouch for me because he was following me the entire time and I kinda thought he was gonna kill me. And Karl saw me in communications, us three were all together when you… reported the body.” He rambled, trying to defend himself.

“Yeah, it’s true, he was with me the whole time.” Corpse supported.

“Karl, which way did you get to communications?” Toast asked.

“Uh, through storage.” Karl replied quickly.

“That’s funny, ‘cause I was in security, and I could swear I saw you walk past.” Toast said, and a couple of “ooh”s echo through the call.

“That makes no sense because even if I did go that way, I wouldn’t have time to get to communications and start doing my task with Dream and Corpse if I killed Ethan! And Rae, you-you saw me do my task in storage!” Karl loudly defended himself.

“...that… that’s true, yeah.” she said.

“If you ask me, Toast, you’re being real sus for lying about that.” Karl threw it back at Toast, who protested.

“Listen, I didn’t say you killed anybody, I just said I saw someone run past!” he claimed.

“Bretman and Y/N are being real quiet, though.” Corpse points out, and the green halo around your icon lights up once again.

“Oh shit, I didn’t realise I was muted. Sorry, guys.” you laughed. “Um, I was with… Quackity, in… what’s that shit on the right called?”

“O2.” Quackity quickly jumped in.

“Right, O2. I went to… top left, first, and I did my tasks there, and then to weapons and then to O2, and then the body was reported.”

“You were in top left?” Rae repeated.

“Yeah.”

“And was there anyone with you?”

“Um… no? I was alone, and then I saw Quackity in top right, and then we went to, uh, O2 together.” you said and Corpse sighed loudly.

“That means she could’ve had the time to kill Ethan and run.” Toast points out.

“Hey! I didn’t kill anyone! I don’t even know how this game works…” you whined into the mic and Quackity laughed.

“Yeah, I dunno Y/N, you were dancing real suspiciously around me…” he said, causing you to defend yourself louder.

“Why would I kill anyone?! I don’t even know how to do that, I’m a nice person!”

“I don’t think she did it, guys.” Dream pipes up, tugging at the wire of his headphones absentmindedly.

“Shut up, you simp.” Quackity fires back instantly, making everyone in the call laugh, including Dream.

“Damn right, I’m a Y/N simp. She can do no wrong. I mean, look at that innocent face! She did nothing, I’m-I’m sure.” He argued, making you cover your mouth and giggle.

“Their face is literally the same as everyone’s! We’re all astronauts!” Rae protested, but Dream kept shaking his head.

“No, hers is more innocent.” he said. “Toast, why are you so set on accusing everyone, anyway?”

“Oh, you’re so not attacking Toast right now-”

“Guys, I think we should skip.” Sykkuno pipes up to calm the conversation, and everyone agrees, even though most of them mumble “sus” under their breath as soon as they mute their mics.

Dream’s tiny green astronaut stomps his way over to the left side immediately, changing paths this time and making his way into the Upper Engine, trying to finish his tasks in time and possibly find someone to accompany him so he at least doesn’t have to argue over his alibi. He had four tasks left, two of them in Upper Engine, so after that he was free to roam around wherever his heart desired. Just as he started doing one of them, he watched your purple character step in and run circles around him, earning you a quiet laugh that he didn’t know he uttered until he heard himself do it and silently scolded himself for getting that flustered at something so simple.

The two of you did your tasks together before going down to reactor. Just as Dream started doing one of his tasks, a dead body was reported again and he unmuted himself as Toast immediately started borderline yelling into his headphones.

“Bretman just killed Sykkuno RIGHT in front of me. I literally watched him do it. He killed Sykkuno in COLD BLOOD.” he confidently claimed and Dream, quite uninterested, grabbed his bottle of water and lightly sipped on it, wiping beads of sweat resting right above his eyebrows with his forearm, blindly looking around the darkness, trying to get his eyes to adjust looking away from the computer screen. His eyes searched for the window - it was open, just enough to let a fresh breeze inside, but it never seemed to do that, letting humid air in with open arms like a welcome guest. Florida is fucking hell, he thinks, gulping down some more water.

“No, I didn’t! I seriously did not, he’s the one who killed him and is trying to frame me now. I swear to God, Toast…” Bretman shouted into his worn mic, trying to argue back.

“Yeah, to be honest, Bretman, you were silent the whole time when Ethan died.” Rae reasoned, earning quite a lot of “ooh”s and causing little “voted” signs to appear next to Poki, Toast and Karl’s names as Bretman tried his best to fight back.

“I didn’t know I was muted the whole time! You know I’m bad at this! Why would I... you know what, nevermind! Vote me! Vote me! You’ll see when Toast kills you all, I don’t care anymore. I literally saw-”

Dream slumps further into his chair, sure that the foam would have a dent of his body shape imprinted even when he’s long gone from it, and unlocks his phone with a quiet sigh. He opens Discord, and wishes he hadn’t, because Sapnap and George are always on the front lines and ready to make fun of him at any chance possible. He types back a stupid joke, calling them losers, but before he can press send, a Twitter notification pops up on his phone that almost makes his painfully sweaty hands lose grip of the phone.

“this is so boring” your message reads, from your official Twitter account. Dream blinks a few times, and looks up from his phone to observe his murky, empty room, eyes flashing from the window to the ripped chocolate bar wrapper that somehow made its way onto the floor to a cup of coffee from this afternoon. Did the humid air finally get to him? Hallucinations?

He clicks on the notification - it proves to not be a product of his imagination, after all. Three dots dance around on his screen cheerfully, but they suddenly stop. His ears tune in. Bretman is still defending his honor. Something else must’ve interrupted you. His shaky hands barely hit the right letters.

He takes a handful of screenshots amidst his euphoria, and forwards them to the group chat with no caption besides an emoji sticking its tongue out - he wants to tell them to suck his dick, or something along those lines, but your message remains a priority as he rushes back to the Twitter app to reply.

“Right” he manages to write without a typo. “They’re annoying”

Three dots immediately return to his screen like a happy memory, and he almost can’t believe you’re texting back so fast. George would probably humble him by saying it’s because you have nothing better to do, but what George doesn’t know can’t hurt him, Dream supposes, and clicks on your profile instinctively as he adjusts his headphones on one ear. By the time you finish typing your message, the group decided to vote out Bretman, who ended up not being an imposter.

The three dots disappear as quick as they came, and so does the anticipation that bubbled up in Dream’s throat as he sourly leaves to finish the rest of his tasks. The rest of the game stays as boring as it started, save for the giggles and hushed laughter that came from you at every few jokes he made - of which he made quite a lot, in a desperate attempt to make you laugh, at least a little bit. Of course, Quackity was there every step of the way to accidentally mention how Dream sounded a lot more hype and alive during this game than he does ever, but you win some, you lose some, eh?

In the next game you actually decided to set up proximity chat, so of course Dream followed you around everywhere, hot on your tail at all times - what else is he supposed to do, when the chance presented itself, really?

“Are you imposter?” His character obnoxiously ran circles around you as you did your wires task slowly and unsurely since this stream was your first time playing.

“No, but I wouldn’t tell you even if I was, dummy.” You replied, running around his own character briefly before running up to do the rest of your tasks, watching the green astronaut follow you close behind.

“Why not?” Dream questioned, eyes following all your movements since he didn’t have anything better to do considering he finished all his tasks.

“Do you not know how this game works?”

“Yeah, but you’d tell me, right? I wouldn’t… rat you out.” He heard a sigh coming through his headphones in response, and his grin widened just a little, watching your character walk away from him.

“I know you wouldn’t.” you replied. “I’ll tell you if I’m imposter, I guess.”

“You wouldn’t kill me, would you?” Dream spoke into his mic, reaching to fix it and realising the way his hand trembled a little, fully aware he was walking the line between flirty and obnoxious more than usual. He lowered his gaze just to see his keyboard reflect the light of the computer back to him - the sweat from his palms seemed to seep onto the keyboard. He refused to think about the mocking things his best friends would say if they found out how nervous he was just to talk to you.

“No, of course not! I wouldn’t be able to kill you.” You chirped just as a dead body was discovered and the two of you were torn from the conversation.

In the next one, his screen flashed an ominous black and red with the word “Impostor” and your purple character stood proudly next to his green one, and he snickered to himself, adjusting his headphones one more time (the more he did it, the more he was convinced it was one of those anxious habits of his).

Shifting in his chair, he started moving and couldn’t believe his eyes when he realised the two of you managed to lock yourselves in a room with Corpse and Sykkuno, accomplishing a double kill in barely the first two minutes of the game. The two of you vented while Dream muttered curses under his breath, breaking out in a sweat wondering if you’re going to get caught or not as you casually hummed to a random tune while faking tasks, hitting the notes in such an effortless way that it made Dream relax and get even more nervous at the same time. It didn’t take too long before the body was found, and you seemed to adapt to the game very quickly, as Dream just sat back most of the time and watched you stretch out a whole essay on why you and Dream could NOT have been imposters.

“Why would they stick together the whole time? Couldn’t they get at least someone else to vouch for them?” Toast complained.

“Girl, Dream wants some… alone time with Y/N, obviously.” Bretman said, despite being the one most sus of you in the first place, forcing laughter out of the whole lobby, Dream’s sticking out the most as his mood constantly swayed from finding the whole thing funny to being worried sick if you actually find him weird.

“Exactly! And we’re gonna have our alone time if we want to, thank you very much.”

Well, Dream thinks, taking a stressed gulp of water from his bottle, at least we cleared that one up.

“I don’t think that sounded the way you wanted it to, Y/N.” Karl pipes up, making Quackity burst into another fit of loud laughter, and you immediately protested.

“It sounded exactly the way I wanted it to! Now, vote Rae or else.”

When the meeting was over, he ran after you through cafeteria, grin splitting out on his face before he even spoke.

“You’re pretty…” his silence extended as he watched your character stare at his. “...pretty smart.”

You snorted. “Right. You’re pretty…” you extended your silence in return, mocking him. “...too.”

His heart jumps. “You forgot a word there.” he says as you stomp out to storage.

“I said what I said, Dreamy.”

He swears this can’t be healthy for his blood pressure. In the corner of his eye, Discord notifications pop up like crazy. The boys must be watching your stream. His heart swells with both pride and dread, knowing he’s about to be called something along the lines of pretty Dreamy for the next two months.

“How do you know I’m pretty? You’ve never even seen my face.” Dream replies as heat creeps up like a spirit rising from soil, from the back of his neck, seeping into his ears and cheeks somewhat equally. His eyes dart to the window again. Of course it’s the stupid Florida weather that has him burning up, flustered. Maybe he should open another window.

“Is this an invitation to see it?” you say, a teasing tone clinging off your voice and he can practically hear you smiling.

“No, I’m just saying! If you want to see it, though, that… that can be arranged.” he bites his lip as a physical attempt of holding back the smile that breaks out as he waits for your response, chest puffing in both nervousness and odd confidence.

“Can it? I mean, I don’t need to see it, I just know already, you have those… pretty boy vibes. But I wouldn’t…” you chuckle. “...be opposed to seeing it, for sure. Don’t count on me not to leak the pictures, though. I want the clout.”

“What do you MEAN you want the clout, you’re Y/N! You don’t need clout from a Minecraft YouTuber!” He argues back, a small wheeze escaping him mid sentence as you giggle and run around, with him following your every move.

“You keep my fucking lights on, man! Whenever your Spotify Twitter account thingy tweets that you’re listening to my stuff, the streams go up! I need your clout.” you say as you run into admin and snap Toast’s neck and run back out casually, as if nothing happened.

“Yeah, that’s how me listening to your songs on repeat works.” he says and you let out some sort of irritated groan.

“Shut up, smartass.” Just as you say that, somebody seems to find the body and you’re pulled into a meeting, where Rae susses both of you immediately.

“No, because both of you are always together! And someone always spots you walking by the place where the bodies are found! At some point that can’t be a coincidence, right?” she accuses, practically yelling into the mic.

“Of course they’re always together, check- check fuckin’ Twitter! They’re trending on like three different spots already!” Quackity jumps in, loud as always, and the lobby gives off mixed reactions.

“What? We are?” Dream asks, and Quackity confirms with a “yeah, man! Check!” and so he complies, quickly pulling out his phone to check the trending tabs. Sure enough, among the politics and sports, “DREAM Y/N”, “PRETTY BOY” and “DREAM FACE” are crammed, sat at 7th, 14th and 18th place, respectfully. A satisfied grin breaks out on his face. At least they see it, too.

“This has to be the first time Dream has trended for something heterosexual.” Karl points out, earning loud laughter from Quackity and Bretman, less loud on your part.

“Exactly! We’re a power couple! Stay mad!” You shouted, with Dream supporting you in the background, although still shyly adjusting his headphones every few seconds, unable to comprehend that oh, this is actually happening.

Both of you get voted out during the next few minutes, but that really means nothing to Dream - they actually do him quite a favor, because the two of you get to excuse yourselves and he sees those three familiar dots dance on his screen again as he leans back into his chair with a dopey grin, playing with the strings of his sweatpants, waiting for your next and next and next message.

He opens Discord on his computer to type one last message into the groupchat before turning it off for the night:

Dream (03:14): maybe Minecraft wasn’t my calling after all

Dream (03:14): can’t believe I just met my soulmate on Among Us

#dream x reader #dreamwastaken x reader #dream imagine #dreamwastaken imagine #dream fanfic #dreamwastaken fanfic #dream fluff #dream x you #dreamwastaken x you #dream x y/n #dreamwastaken x y/n #mcyt imagine #mcyt fanfic #mcyt x reader

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miscellaneous-bnha · 4 years ago

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A little “Christmas Magic”

Kirishima x Fem!Reader x Denki

This is my piece for @lemonlordleah-shinzawa-kitten’s Citrus Dome “Snowed In” Collab.

Link to the Collab: https://tomurasprincess.tumblr.com/post/637531853698547712/citrus-dome-server-snowed-in-collab

Warning: slightly Scumbag Kiri/Denki, dubious consent (at the start), Possessive/FeralDenki, Smug Kiri, some exhibitionism, lowkey yandere Denki if you squint, dumbification, a little tongue pulling, light cum play

Also, I write Denki as someone who pretends to be stupid but is actually extremely intelligent.

ALL CHARACTERS ARE AGED UP

Being childhood friends with Denki had it’s perks; knowing how intelligent your best friend is compared to how stupid he likes to act is one of them, so you knew that it was no accident he kept you distracted long enough for the blizzard to roll in.

Effectively trapping you in his home with his roommate Kirishima.

“Aww come on! It’s not that terrible! We’ve got good heating, enough food n’ snacks. The world’s BEST portable charger,” he points to himself dramatically, “And, if you do get bored of me, Kirishima’s here too.”

“You say that like you were planning on excluding me from your plans.” Kirishima looks at his roommate unimpressed. You stifle a giggle.

“Even if he was, I wouldn’t let him.” You nudge the redhead with your shoulder, making him snort a laugh.

“Fair enough.”

“So you agree it’s not that bad?” Denki bats his eyes at you, causing you to push his face away with a scoff.

“Alright alright. It could be worse.” He grins.

“I’m glad you agree!”

The three of you spend the night talking about the latest games the three of you have been following. They had both just convinced you to download a multiplayer rpg when the power suddenly went out, leaving you all in the dark.

“Oof, unlucky. I guess even state of the art homes still get black outs.” You mutter.

“More likely than you think. Here, why not get closer before the temperature starts to drop.” Kiri offers.

“Sure, why not. I’ll be thankful for it later anyhow.” You sandwich yourself between Denki and Kiri laying on your back as the three of you bundled together.

“Everyone’s phones charged up?” Denki peeks at your phone, still going strong at 95%

“Yeah, it should be good for a while longer. Anyone up for some music?”

For the next 3 hours, you continue to talk until you find yourself growing sleepy. Comfortably warm, you can’t help the way your eyes slip close.

————

When you wake up again, you can still hear the wind whipping around outside. You grab your phone only to be met with the no battery signal. Both boys on either side of you completely knocked out.

You tsk at your own stupidity. ‘I should have turned it off when I realized I was getting sleepy.’ You thought to yourself, leaning over Denki to use his phone to check the time.

The numbers 9:27am stared back at you. Just as you move to settle back into your spot, Denki’s arms suddenly wrap around you.

“Mm… five more minutes…” the angle at which he grabbed you made it so you were lying on top of him, your legs straddling his hips.

“Uhm… Denks…” you try to shake him gently.

“Noooo… jus’ five mmm….” he starts to snore softly again, and you’re left stuck on him.

You sigh, accepting your fate. With your phone dead, you decide whether or not you should stick the charger into his mouth and plug your phone in or if you should just go back to sleep. Unfortunately, with how restless you felt, sleeping wasn’t an option, and you’d feel pretty guilty for disturbing him from what must be a good dream.

A really good dream.

Your face erupts into flames when you realize there’s something hard poking at you. The blush darkens when he groans and his hips jerk up to grind against you.

You would be lying if you said you weren’t ever attracted to your childhood friend; blonde hair, golden eyes, killer smile. You saw how popular he was back then, and you can see it in his hero ratings now. Even aside from his looks, his goofy, lovable, secretly intelligent nature made it impossible not to fall for him all those years ago.

But you also knew he tended to be a flirt, which made it hard to tell if he was genuine. Especially since his advances were never directed at you.

Wishful thinking made it easy to believe that he didn’t flirt with you because “he didn’t want to think the one person he cares the most about to think he was playing with them”, but reason told you otherwise.

You’ve met some of his exes, and none of them were like you.

So, in the friendzone you stayed. ‘Better than nothing’, you reason, and— much to your own surprise— you’re satisfied with that.

You shake your head and squirm. “Denki…! Wake up you idiot!” He snorts when you headbutt his chest, head sitting up as he let you go to rub at the spot you hit.

“Awww… I was having a good dream…”

“I’m sure you were!” You spit, embarrassed.

You make an attempt to hide it. “Also, I need a favor, my phone died while we were sleeping.”

“Ah, yeah. I tried turning your music off, but I guess that didn’t work.” You hum, but nod.

“Thanks for trying. Mind charging it for me?”

He taps a finger to his chin, pretending to think about it before he grins. “Sure, but it’ll cost ya.” You snort.

“Ha ha. What do I owe?”

“A kiss.” You roll your eyes. Even as a kid, Denki always liked to say stuff like that.

You lean down and press a kiss to his cheek.

“There, your kiss. Now can you charge my phone?” You have to bite your tongue to hold back a yelp when you’re suddenly flipped over on your back, Denki hovering over you.

“You can do better than that!” He grins when you snort.

“Oh really now?” You plant another, wetter, kiss to his cheek with a smack. “And is that good enough for you?”

“Nope.”

“Oh come on!” You whisper-yell, fake exasperated, “I give! What more could you possibly want??”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes!”

He pauses, eyes watching you for a moment before suddenly his lips are on yours. One hand cupping your jaw, thumb circling the underside of your chin, the other bracing himself over you.

You don’t expect it, nor do you expect the way he deepens the kiss so effortlessly even while you’re still floundering for steady ground. He almost seems to be intent on trying to keep you stumbling.

You gasp and pant when he parts from your lips with a wet smack; head foggy with confusion, you don’t have any time before his lips are back on yours, smothering you into another blissful, naïve cloud.

You whine when the hand cupping your jaw trails down slowly, fingers intertwining with yours and giving a gentle squeeze, bringing it above your head to pin it there.

“W-Wait!” You gasp, trying to come back down to reality, still not believing what’s happening.

“No.” He nips the side of your neck, making you groan softly, “Waited long enough.”

“Wh- what do you mean??” You don’t get your answer. Instead, he presses more hot kisses to your lips, each accompanied with a soft smack.

“Denki—!” You hiss through your teeth when he bites down on your neck again, harder this time. He covers your mouth with one hand, hushing softly.

“Waited too long for this. Should’ve just said something a long time ago.” His breath is hot against your ear, making you squirm when his teeth nibble on the lobe. “Should’ve told you how I feel ages ago.”

You can’t help the excited thumping of your heart, especially if his words mean what you hope they do. You gasp when you feel his hard on grind against you, sound stolen from you when Denki presses another deep kiss to your lips.

“Fuck, need you. Need you so fucking bad.” He borderline growls as his free hand disappears below the blanket covering the both of you. You’re just about to let the haze overcome you when you suddenly hear Kirishima snort from next to you, making your blood freeze.

“Denki..! Kirishima’s right there—!” He groans burying his face in your neck.

“Fuck..! I know! ‘S fine!” He flips you both again so that you’re on top, tugging at the pair of sweatpants you borrowed and your panties.

“We can’t!” He bucks his hips into yours, making you inhale sharply. He tugs you down so your chest is pressed to his. You can feel the way his heart is pounding through your thin shirts.

“For fuck’s sake, please, baby girl. I can’t. I can’t wait anymore.” He groans into your ear, hands pinning your hips to his, moving you to grind against him.

“But Kirishima—!”

“Kirishima—” He growls his roommate’s name with disdain, making you shudder with fear and arousal, “— won’t know if you stay quiet.” He hisses when he finally manages to slide the sweatpants off of you, bare cock nudging against your panty-clad pussy.

“Please. I need you so fucking bad it hurts. I will combust if I can’t fuck you right fucking now.” You shiver when you feel his fingers pull the crotch of your underwear to the side, fingers sliding through your slick and circling your clit.

“Okay, okay okay okay— wait!” You bite your lip when he shoves his leaking cock into you, growling into your shoulder.

“Fuck, fuck fuckfuckfuckfuck…” he groaned, hips fucking up into you with soft ‘paps’

“Den—ki!” You whine, grinding down on his cock as much as he would let you.

“That’s it, baby…. jus’ keep sayin’ m’ name.”

“Or maybe mine.”

The shock of hearing Kirishima’s voice right by your ear has you clamping down on Denki’s cock, sending you over the edge when he thrusts roughly into you.

“Kiri—“ Denki slaps a hand over your mouth, cutting you off.

“Seriously?” Denki growls, pissed. He doesn’t pull out though, opting to fuck into you still,

“Aww, come on. I’m not the one breaking promises around here, Denki. Don’t get a little salty because I wanted to join in on the fun.” You shudder and moan, overstimulated.

It’s hard to focus on the conversation as yet another orgasm builds. You can barely focus on the fact that you just got caught fucking your childhood friend by his roommate, at least until two hands grab you by your shoulders and pull you against a firm chest.

“Kirishima! Wh—” You whine when one arm wraps around your neck, not squeezing, but keeping you pinned to his chest, the other pinching and pulling at your nipple,

“Kaminari here can’t keep a promise, so I’m just having some fun touching you.” He laughs, seemingly unbothered. Then he whispers into your ear,

“But don’t worry; I’ll give it to you later.” You squeeze and clench around Denki’s cock at the sound of that.

Kirishima’s hand trails down your body, leading a trail of goosebumps until his fingers pinch and tug at your clit. He activates his quirk, the rough sensation of his hardened fingers add to your pleasure until you’re creaming on Denki’s cock all over again. You whine, trying to pull away from the stimulation, but Kiri just holds you there, letting Denki rut up into you until he’s cumming, hissing through his teeth until he can’t bring himself to pull out anymore.

You’re vaguely aware of the fact that he isn’t wearing a condom, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t have time to as you feel yourself falling asleep again.

————

When you wake up, you’re cuddled in Kirishima’s arms. He gives you a bright, toothy smile when he notices your eyes opening.

“Well good morning, sleeping beauty! Well, good afternoon now.” You groan, feeling a little sore.

“What time is it?”

“About 2pm. You didn’t actually sleep that long.” You grunt.

“Where’s Denki?”

“Grabbing some snacks together. Your phone finished charging, by the way.

He presses the device into your hands and you stare at it owlishly until your brain catches up with your body.

“Ah, thanks.”

“Sure thing.”

You set it off to the side, sitting up and stretching. Your face twists when you feel something leaking out of you.

“Ugh.. I should go and get cleaned up… well, as much as I can anyway.” You throw the blanket to the side, but you don’t have the opportunity to stand before Kirishima’s hands are on your hips.

“About what I said earlier…” he murmurs softly. It takes you a moment, but you blush when you finally remember.

“Wh-what about it?”

“Do you mind?” He squeezes his hands gently.

You chew your lip. Everything considered, he’d watched and helped Denki fuck you, and you certainly were curious…

“... alright, why not?” Kirishima grins before patting his lap, pushing his shorts and boxers down. Your eyes widen when his cock stands,

“Have you been hard this whole time??” As smug as he’d been acting earlier, he seemed to get a little shy at your question

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“You were!” He sputters, but pulls you into his lap.

“Look, of course I’m going to be hard.” He teases the sharp points of his teeth against your neck,

“Thinking about all those noises you made, the way you looked on his cock…” he growls playfully, biting down on your shoulder until you whine softly.

“Shit... just hurry up then!” You grumble, giving his cock a couple of good strokes.

He flips you around so your back is against his chest again, slowly sinking you down on his cock as you both groan.

“Christ... I see why he wasn’t keen on sharing.” Kiri raises you by the hips, slamming you back down on his cock with a hiss,

“So fucking tight baby girl…” he groans as you whine, falling back against his chest. Your body shakes with his laughter.

“Awww… already stupid from my cock stuffing your tight little hole?” He groans, but you can feel the way he grins against your neck,

“That’s alright, baby. I’ll take care of ya.”

Your whines and moans do eventually attract Denki, pulling him away from his task. He scowls at Kirishima, who only continues to lazily bounce you on his cock.

“You could have at least waited until I came back.”

“And miss a chance at fucking her cute little pussy? I don’t think so.” You whine when Kiri forces your hips to still, instead rotating your hips so his cock grinds deep inside.

You feel Denki grip your jaw with one hand, the fingers on his other hand slipping inside your mouth. You yelp when you feel him pinch your tongue, tugging it out and forcing you to tilt your head up to look at him.

“You’ve always had such a pretty little mouth too…” Denki says more to himself than to you, letting go of your tongue in favor of tugging his cock out of his sweatpants.

“Mind if I use it?”

He taps the tip of it against your tongue, groaning a soft “good girl” when you suck on it, only for you to choke when he pushes more of his length into your mouth.

“Hey, take it easy man.” Kiri starts to bounce you on his cock again, making you moan with each drop of your hips. Denki grunts, cupping your cheeks with his hands,

“She’ll be alright, won’t you baby?” You whine softly, too busy focusing on the rising heat in your core.

“Either way, I don’t think she’s coherent enough to even notice if my balls smack against her chin.” Denki says as he snaps his hips forward again, making you gag.

“Well… don’t make her sick.”

“She’ll be fine.”

You moan and gag with every drop and rise of your hips respectfully. In some ways, Denki was right when he said you’d hardly notice him shoving his cock down your throat; come later, it’ll be sore as hell, but for now, it added to the curling pleasure that only seemed to build the more roughly they treated you.

You feel Kirishima reach forward to pinch a nipple, making you gag out a yelp around Denki’s cock. Both of them hiss in unison.

“Shit, I think she liked that.” Kirishima gives it another painful tug, causing you to whine and your cunny to flutter.

“Fuck.. keep doing that.” Denki groans out, forgetting completely about your comfort for a moment when he shoves his dick all the way down your throat, making you choke when Kirishima buries himself balls deep.

You feel like your head is floating aimlessly by the time they start to lose control. Between Kiri’s thick, heavy cock splitting you open and Denki fucking your face, your eyes roll back as you cum hard, whining and moaning through your choked noises.

“Fuuuuuck, that’s it baby! Just tighten up like that!” Kirishima growls as he abandons your nipple, opting to rub your clit instead to keep you cumming.

Denki hisses and pulls his cock out of your mouth, instead leaving the tip on your tongue as he strokes himself to completion.

Both men are loud when they cum, and you can only whine when you feel your body turn to gelatin again.

You grimace when Denki pushes his cum around on your tongue, only removing his finger when he’s satisfied with the look of it. “Swallow for me, yeah?” He pets your cheek when you comply, smiling in satisfaction.

You can feel Kirishima’s cum leak out of you the second he pulls out. He lets out a low whistle, lightly patting your ass. “What a sight to behold.”

You flop back against Kirishima’s chest, groaning softly. “Now can I get cleaned up?”

“Of course. Just give us a sec, yeah?”

“Or you could just stay like this for-“

“No thank you, Denki.”

“Party pooper.”

#bnha collab #citrus dome collab #snowed in collab #Denki x reader x Kirishima #Denki x reader #Kirishima x reader #read the warnings please!#will add more tags later

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srchprtys-kinhelp · 3 years ago

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pinned post i guess?

hi, my name's jamie (or srchprty if you'd like), and i am currently the only mod. (EDIT FROM MOD 2-D: This isn't true anymore but I'm too lazy to make any heavy edits to this 😅) this blog is still sort of under construction so not everything is perfect yet but we're getting there. dni if you like brendon urie please interact if you like brendon roscoe. have a nice day. more info under the cut

also PSA!!!! just because this blog tends to go inactive for long stretches of time doesn't mean we're not still here! both mods are just incredibly forgetful and busy with work/school and keep forgetting this blog exists until we get requests lol. please still feel free to send stuff in [not just requests, send whatever if you just wanna chat!]

the sort of requests we'll take

edits - icons, wallpapers, lockscreens, headers, you name it- if it's a type of photo we'll shove you in it. as a photo, not literally. we sadly do not have the technology to put your brain inside a photo yet

moodboards - if you've been on tumblr long enough to know what a kinhelp blog is, you know what this means. i'm not very good but i'll try my best.

canon calls - if you happen to be looking for some canonmates, shoot us an ask with who you are and who you're looking for, as well as some details about your canon if you'd like. we'll throw it out there for you. can't promise results though

stimboards - see above

memeboards - concept lightly stolen from @/shittykinaesthetics. send in a character and we'll give you as many memes as we can find/as tumblr's image limit will allow that we think give off the same vibes as them

divination - i have an excessive amount of tarot cards and a magic 8 ball named vriska, ready to answer any questions you may have about your timelines or who you kin. you can ask for a certain deck for complicated questions (typically they will be fielded to the cats, but i also have vampire, homestuck, and halloween decks), but for yes/no questions you're getting vriska. i'm sorry. i don't have a pendulum. she's the best you're getting

kin playlists - send in a character, a genre, and/or a theme and i'll give you roughly 10 songs for them. so a playlist. i guess. there will be a lot of iDKHOW and/or the brobecks, but what did you expect coming to the srchprty kinnie for music recs. youtube, spotify, and direct download links included :]

kin positivity - life getting you down? your favorite band doing some confusing shit? the company that owns them sending creepy ass robots after you? no? just me? whatever your circumstances, if you want a few kin-related kind words, send in an ask and i'll try to give you some comfort. (these are only open for sources on the "please request" list!)

sources/things you can request/not request:

please request: any band lore/concept albums (particularly iDKHOW, twenty øne piløts, elsewhere, intellectual property, & danger days, but any are welcome and encouraged!), homestuck, the heart rate of a mouse, minecraft/mcyt roleplays/cubitos, style savvy, the youngblood chronicles, invader zim, slime rancher, heathers, rockafire explosion, scene/emo related stuff, vocaloid(/project sekai) (you're welcome to request things not on this list but we'll probably get to these quicker :p)

please don't request: south park, hetalia, attack on titan, countryhumans, factkin, minimalist aesthetics, agere/ddlg, hospital-related stuff, any superhero movie that is part of a "cinematic universe", harry potter

(both of these lists are liable to be updated at any point. if one of your requests gets put on the don't request list after you send it- no hard feelings, we probably just forgot 😅)

#kin help #new blog #fictionkin #✨📼𝘍𝘖𝘓𝘓𝘖𝘞 𝘈𝘓𝘖𝘕𝘎 -- mod jamie's posts #✨📼𝘕𝘖𝘞‚ 𝘓𝘌𝘛'𝘚 𝘉𝘌𝘎𝘐𝘕 -- misc. posts

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bucksblr · 4 years ago

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#showyourprocess

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES — When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

Thank you so much for tagging me @lan-xichens, I’ll try my best to explain how I made this set from start to finish hehe ♡ and also a big thank you to @suibianjie @highwarlockkareena @nyx4 @aheartfullofjolllly and you as well Kris for putting this all together! Content creators get a lot less recognition than they deserve for all the time they put into their content, so getting everyone to see the (sometimes excessive) process we all go through to put our content in our blog, I hope it creates a positive change!! 💖

1. Planning

The set in question was actually requested by someone so they could celebrate their friend’s birthday! At first I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to be able to finish it on time (college is very hectic right now) but I was able to finish it three days before the deadline which was may 1st! ^-^

The first thing I did was decide what characters I wanted to use in the set, I first reached out to the person who requested the set if there were certain characters they wanted me to use but they said they didn’t know enough to really give me any directives outside of the quote. I decided, since the quote is applicable to the entirety of the show, that I would try to put in as many characters as possible.

Thus, of course, came the hunting for scenes. Those of you in the net discord surely know I came into the content help channel a few times to ask for certain scenes here and there, and eventually I had to download an additional 10 episodes to the back then 20 or so episodes I had in my CQL episodes folder.

As you can see I have 30 random episodes of CQL downloaded (slowly but surely getting to the point where I have all 50 episodes downloaded) and I think I ended up using scenes out of at least 20 of those episodes.

I planned out beforehand what characters I would use per gif. I knew obviously I would start out with Wangxian, them being the main characters of the show, and then would work my way down the list. The second gif consists of Nie Huaisang, Nie Mingjue, Jin Zixuan, Jiang Yanli, Wen Qing, and Wen Ning. They’re all family pairings, two being siblings and one being a married couple. The next gifset consists of the Yi City characters, then the fourth gif consists of the juniors, and the final gif has Jin Guangyao, Mianmian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Xichen in it.

I have to admit though that when I had made the first four gifs I’d forgotten who I would put in the last gif and the when I thought about it the first time around I could only think of Lan Qiren and the very cursed Yaoyang ship 😭 it was only at dinner time that same day that I remembered I hadn’t put Jiang Cheng in my gifset yet and that’s when I thought of the other characters as well.

I had already made my first two gifs when I went to check Hanyi’s blog for layout inspo and eventually I decided I wanted to try a triangle-ish layout, which I doodled below. I eventually ended up changing the layout of the last gif in the final design. It was also the first time I would work with a triangle-ish layout so I was a bit nervous as I was scared it wasn’t going to work out...

2. Creating

I use Avisynth 2.5 and Adobe Photoshop 2021 (the paid version, unfortunately, I need it for school except I didn’t need it this year but I wanted it so I paid for it with my own money ouch) to make my gifsets! I always start out with trimming down all the scenes I’m going to use into three to five second videos and putting them through Avisynth. This time around I did it separately for each gif I made, simply because I needed so many scenes. I would include a screenshot of my “gif vids” and “temp” folders but I’ve already deleted all the videos, which is what I usually do immediately after a set is posted.

I’ll try my best explaining this gif by gif since each one had a different layout!

2.1 Wangxian

I think I had up to five different designs of this gif 😭 it started out with the gif on the left originally being more centered and the quote right smack in the center but somehow it felt a bit too... empty? I changed up the design and pulled the gif over to the right and put the two closeups on the left, the exact opposite of the gif I eventually ended up with. I switched things around one more time and saved the gif as you can see it right now, except I didn’t include the lines yet. It was only as I finished up my fourth gif that I decided this gif needed lines as well so I added them ^-^

2.2 Nie Huaisang, Nie Mingjue, Jin Zixuan, Jiang Yanli, Wen Qing, and Wen Ning

I got the inspiration for the font layout on this gif from this Wenzhou post! I hadn’t tried it before and when I did for this gif I was very happy with the way it turned out :D I wanted to portray that life is a pile of good and bad things, as the quote says, in CQL by mirroring these happy scenes side by side with the sad scenes

2.3 Yi CIty

My first time working with the triangle layout!! Putting in the lines and making sure they would line up with the second gif took me the longest of all actually 😭 I think once I got the line on the left in I just copy pasted it and flipped it horizontally so I didn’t have to fiddle around with angling it anymore :’) my original idea was to get a happy Song Lan scene and a sad A-Qing scene, but when I stumbled upon this A-Qing scene in ep38 I just had to put it in there because her smile is so precious 🥺 Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen in the center are also supposed to be mirrored, with Xue Yang embodying the “bad things” and Xiao Xingchen the “good things” ! I also think the Yi City characters fit this part of the quote very well!!

2.4 The Juniors

Ah yes, the junior quartet!! :D I had this planned out from the very beginning, that I would include happy versus sad juniors in the “vice versa” part of the quote, and I think it worked out quite well! My first idea was to put the “vice versa” completely in the special font and have it typed out over the gifs like I did with the “vice” but as I typed out the “versa” I realized it had one letter too much to be able to do that 😭😭 it took me a while to come up with how I would position the “but” and “versa” and after some moving around I decided to just place them the way I did in the final gif! For the font, I duplicated the “vice” and added a stroke to the duplicate, then I changed the fill setting to 0% so I could slightly drag the duplicate away from the original layer to create the effect that’s in the gif — also, finding a scene in which Jin Ling smiles is really difficult.... he barely even smiles in the scene I ended up using :(

2.5 Jin Guangyao, Mianmian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Xichen

The final gif!! I feel like this might come a little across as “I promise I didn’t forget these characters” because they’re a very odd quadruplet to put together, but they were the most important characters left to put in the set! I was thinking of putting Nie Mingjue in here together with Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen, but I did feel he fit more with his brother up in the second gif. Mei @mylastbraincql cheered me on making this gif for which I was very grateful :D <3 the layout came to be after I googled “how to evenly split a rectangle in four” because I didn’t want a repeat layout in the set (*/∇＼*)

2.6 Coloring

For the coloring I pretty much did all of the tweaking on the first gif and then copy pasted all of it onto the second, third, fourth, and fifth gif. This is usually the way I go about my coloring, I will always edit certain gifs if necessary but I don’t think I had to change the coloring much on any of these gifs? Maybe I added in a curve layer here and there, but nothing major! This is really one of my preferred coloring styles, even though I try to step outside of my comfort zones with other sets ^-^

3. Posting

I will always upload sets into my drafts and edit the caption in there as well, clicking on “preview post” a couple times to check everything looks good on my blog as well, before I post a set. However, this time, since there was a deadline and I finished before the deadline, I put this set in the queue so it would automatically post on the 1st of may! Knowing myself, I would’ve forgotten to do so </3

Whew that was... a lot 😭 did it make any sense? Probably not, but it was fun to ramble （ ´∀｀）

I’ll tag

@blinkplnk with this set !

@wuxien with this set !

@wendashanren with this set !

@wanyinxichen with this set !

@yibobibo with this set !

@mylastbraincql with this set !

@sugarbabywenkexing with this set !

@yiling-recesses with this set !

@jiancheng with this set !

Please feel totally free to ignore this if you’ve already been tagged and don’t want to do it again!! <3

#showyourprocess #tag game #this got so long i'm sorry ;-;#very curious to see everyone else's processes!!#thank you for the tag kris <3

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let-me-write-shit · 4 years ago

Note

Are you still accepting requests?! If so, could you do something like Jeff and Glenne are getting married and obviously H is the best man. Jeff doesn’t want to go to his dance class alone so he brings Harry along and he falls for the teacher 🥺

A/N: So sorry this took so long. This request threw me for a loop at first, I’m not gonna lie. It ended it being a lot longer than I thought, but I hope I did it justice. Let me know what you think! :) (keep an eye out for links of the song and outfit)

Word Count: 5,237

Requests are OPEN! If you have a request for a blurb, oneshot, imagine, whatever, Send me a message HERE!!!

To add yourself to my Taglist, click HERE

CLICK HERE TO READ OTHER COMPLETED STORIES

Friendly reminder to please like and/or reblog. It helps more than you think :)

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

Practice Makes Perfect

“Is this really necessary? You’ve already got two left feet, I highly doubt a few dance lessons are going to help you now,” Harry teased, holding the door open for his friend as they entered the top-rated dance studio, making their way to the elevator.

Jeff scoffed, slightly embarrassed, “Come on, man. My wedding is in a month, I’ve got time to learn. Do you know how many people are going to be there? I don’t want to look like an idiot in front of everyone.”

“A little late for that, no?” Harry laughed, entering the elevator and pressing the button to get to the fourth floor, “They’re your friends and family members, all of whom know you’re a right prick at dancing. It won’t be a shock to anyone.”

“Yeah, well, tell that to Glenne. She insisted. And as my best man, you’re obligated to come,” the elevator doors opened and they made their way towards the set of double doors that would lead to their dancing studio, ready to meet their instructor as Jeff muttered, “Could have forced you to wear a wig to get the full effect. Still could, so stop complaining.”

“Why have I always got to be the girl?” Harry sarcastically whined just as he opened the doors to be caught off-guard by one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.

Y/N was sat on the floor, one leg out, and stretching her hands down towards her toes as her phone lay screen-up and opened up to her Spotify account, scrolling through the list of music. At the sound of Harry’s remark upon their arrival, she looked up at them, an eyebrow raised and an amused smirk drew across her face.

“Well, you’ve got the easy job out of the two of you,” their instructor stood up and made her way over to them, eyeing Harry, “All you’ve got to do is stand there and look pretty while your friend, here, does all the work.”

“See?” Jeff turned to Harry with a smirk, “Won’t be any different than the way you handle your relationships in the bedroom.”

“Shut up,” Harry backhanded Jeff’s arm, blush creeping up on his cheeks as their instructor giggled.

“I’m Y/N, nice to meet you both,” she introduced herself, holding out her hand to shake, “So, obviously you’re Harry, and you’re Jeff. Congratulations on the wedding,” she smiled brightly at Jeff.

Harry’s heart had stopped beating the second he saw her and when she shook his hand it was like a surge of electricity coursed through him and jumpstarted it again, only this time it was beating too fast. He completely blanked, not hearing a single word that was said between Jeff and Y/N, too enraptured by her smile and the way she pulled her hair into a ponytail.

After a moment of chit-chat, Y/N urged them to follow her, her phone in hand, and explained, “So, I’ve been working with Glenne separately on the choreography; love that you aren’t doing your first dance until the day of the wedding, by the way. Very brave,” she turned, smiling kindly at Jeff before continuing towards the center of the dance floor, “And we came up with something beautiful, but easy for you because she mentioned you aren’t much of a dancer,”

“Definitely not much of a dancer,” Jeff nodded in agreement.

Harry snorted, “He’s got the rhythm of a toddler.”

Y/N laughed, smiling brightly, “That’s alright! That’s what I’m here for. I won’t make you look silly. Now she did mention she wanted a couple of lifts, so we did add a few lifts in there. Okay, first thing’s first, I want to show you a few of the basic steps. This dance is pretty simple and it’ll be Glenne doing most of the work. The important thing to remember is to keep your limbs loose and just go with the flow. Don’t worry about your feet. If you hyper-focus on your feet you’ll trip. Just keep your head up and always look at your partner.”

“Got it,” they nodded.

They immediately got to work as she explained the steps, “So you and Glenne will walk in together hand in hand when the music starts. Look at each other, smile, ignore everyone watching you,” Y/N said. She was super professional in how she spoke to them but somehow made them feel comforted and calm. There wasn’t too much pressure on Jeff to get it all down in the first go. “Once in the center of the floor, you’ll turn to each other and this is where our first steps come in. We’ll be doing the waltz. We’ll work on the footwork first, then move on to the turns and posture.”

She showed them the basic steps. Left foot forward, right step out, and together. Right foot back, left foot out, and together, etc, repeat. It took them a bit to get that down, especially Jeff, but they got there. Y/N was extremely patient, keeping it lighthearted and making sure to reassure them. Thirty minutes in and they began to work on their turns, which was even more difficult, but they were having fun. Harry liked a challenge and had always wanted to learn how to dance. After another thirty to forty minutes they had finally gotten it down.

“Now, with this dance, a rise and fall make your turns look elegant and beautiful, so when you turn, make sure you aren’t just stepping forward, stiff-legged. I want you to glide forward with your weight on your heel and gradually rise to your toes. Keep your back straight. You should look like a stuck-up snob with a stick up their ass.”

The two men laughed and they carried on. Pretty soon they were able to carry on with the actual choreography. She explained each move, how many steps, and how many beats to carry the step. They’d learn the steps to a certain point, stop, restart, and do it again a few more times to make sure they had it down before learning the next step.

The more they understood the dance, the more exciting it got. The lifts were Harry’s favorite part, and when he got to try it with her, he jumped around excitedly, proud of himself for getting it right. Y/N would laugh and cheer along with them, making jokes that helped them memorize the steps and having them practice parts of the dance with each other.

Three hours in and they still had work to do, they needed to work on some of their footwork and hadn’t even danced along to the music yet, but they were getting there. But, their session for the day was over and they would be seeing her again next week They had two more lessons with Y/N before the wedding.

Harry began practicing both Glenne’s choreography and Jeff’s at home in his free time, during phone meetings, while cooking, and even once while he showered, though he slipped and got a nasty bruise on his hip so he decided not to do that again. By the time their next lesson rolled around, Harry felt confident in his footwork, that he eagerly joined Jeff to the dance studio, greeted by Y/N with her bright smile and twinkling eyes once again.

“Hellooooo,” Y/N sang as they walked through the doors, making her way over to them from where she stood by the speakers, “How are you both?”

“We’ve been practicing all week,” Harry informed her with a grin.

Y/N giggled, “I’m glad. Should we get started and see what you’ve got? The two of you can dance together. Harry, you can be Glenne,” she stood to the side as both friends got together.

“Hello, my hunky monkey,” Harry teased in a high-pitched voice as Jeff wrapped an arm around Harry’s back, “Goodness, you’re so strong.”

“Shut up!” Jeff groaned with a smile, making both Harry and Y/N laugh.

Y/N counted down and the boys began to dance as she clapped to the beat and shouted out directions. Jeff struggled a bit to keep up, so Harry led, confident in his turns and steps, although they avoided lifts and dips with each other so they didn’t hurt the other, saving them for when they danced with Y/N who was much better practiced. He was sure to keep his back straight, chest out, and arms up. Y/N would cheer and yelp whenever they did a particularly good job and jumped up and down as they finished, clapping proudly.

“That was wonderful, you guys. Really, great job. Harry, you were an excellent Glenne fill-in, thank you. Jeff, the only things I want to critique you on is your posture and your rise and falls. You were still slouched a bit, and the timing of your rise and falls were a bit off which made you mix up your footwork a bit. Also, try not to look down at your feet too much and keep eye contact with your partner.”

“Yeah, sorry, I just didn’t want to look at Harry’s revolting face,” Jeff joked.

Harry smirked, “It’s only because he’s afraid he’ll fall in love with me and want to marry me instead.”

“I’m sure,” Y/N laughed, “So, I think we’re ready to add music to it, what do you think?”

They both agreed.

“So I downloaded your first dance song. Would you like to try the full dance with me from start to finish? Do you feel comfortable enough for the lifts and dips?”

“Is it possible to see you do it first?” Jeff asked, hands on his hips, “I just feel like I keep messing up the first dip and last lift and if I could see his footwork, I might get it.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. Harry, are you up for that? You feel confident enough to do his steps?”

“Of course. I’m a pro,” Harry joked, making her smile.

Really, his nerves began to kick in. He hadn’t done the whole dance from start to finish with all of the dance moves yet, and Y/N had warned them yesterday that sometimes adding the music in could mess with them at first. He worried that he’d get his timing off or drop her. He didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of her. But seeing her confidence and faith in him made him feel at ease. She handed her phone to Jeff and instructed him to play the music on her signal.

“Alright, we’re going to do this for real,” Y/N explained, “You’re Jeff, I’m Glenne, we just got married, we’re happy, we’re madly in love, this is our first dance as husband and wife. We need all of our friends and family to see the passion, okay?”

Harry nodded, gulping as they stood off on the side of the dance floor, “Passion. Got it.”

Y/N smiled sweetly, voice softer, “It’s okay, it’s just us. You won’t have to do this in front of a crowd. Just remember what I said. Keep your eyes on me. I’ll lead.”

He nodded once more and Y/N stretched out her hand for him, which he took in his. She signaled Jeff to start the music. Fire on Fire by Sam Smith began to play, and at the sound of his voice, they began to make their way to the center of the floor. He spun her to face him, keeping their one pair of hands together while Y/N’s other hand went on his shoulder and his on her waist as they began to waltz. Their eyes stayed locked onto each other’s and his nerves began to ease as they danced, twirled, and swayed.

Her touch was so soft, yet he felt comfortable and unfaltering, following her every step and movement, never feeling an ounce of doubt. And as they looked into each other’s eyes, everything seemed to fade. He could see the falter in her smile, and she in his. The chemistry they felt as they danced was overwhelming. And when the beat dropped, everything disappeared. It was time for their first lift, and the worry he felt earlier had completely disappeared. Dancing with her, it came naturally. There was no hesitation.

With her hand around his neck, she wrapped his right arm around her waist and lifted, spinning her around in circles. She smiled, letting her head fall back and giggling as he spun her perfectly, and he laughed at how carefree she looked. Setting her down, they continued to dance and the intimate part of their dance came. With her guiding his hand around her neck, they closed the space between them and pressing their foreheads on each other, looking up into his eyes.

It only lasted a second in real-time, but for Harry, it lasted an eternity. Butterflies fluttered around his stomach, some escaping to his chest as their noses touched. The urge to kiss her was almost too strong to contain. And on their second, with her back against his chest and her hands in his, he spun her again. She let her head fall back onto his shoulder and he took in her sweet scent, his cheek pressed against her ear. And finally, the ending of their dance. The final dip. He outstretched his leg and gently brought her down, her head falling back as he brought his head down to her, letting his lips gently brush against her neck before slowly bringing her back up and letting her lean into him, one hand still around his neck while the other rested on his chest, their foreheads touching again as they deeply looked into each other’s eyes.

There was a moment. And he knew that she felt it, too. The sexual tension could have been cut with a knife. And his point was proven when Jeff began to clap and whistle, making them jump and pull apart, shaken.

Flustered, Y/N hesitantly smiled at Jeff and met him halfway to take her phone and review the dance with him. For the next thirty minutes, she avoided eye contact with Harry. No matter what he said or did to get her attention, she refused to look at him, focusing on Jeff and helping him with the dance. But the more Harry tried, the more she relaxed. She started giggling more at his jokes, bantered more, smiled more. And by the end of the session after a bit of back and forth flirting, Y/N gave both Harry and Jeff a hug goodbye.

“Great job, you two. Keep practicing. Next week is our last time together. I think you’ve got it!” Y/N beamed, packing her things into a duffel bag.

“Thanks so much, Y/N. See you next week!” Jeff called back, pulling Harry towards the door.

With one last look behind him, he grinned and waved goodbye. As they waited for the elevator, Harry couldn’t stop smiling. He hadn’t seen it coming, but these lessons had turned into the highlight of his weeks lately and Y/N was just incredible. Jeff was talking about god-knows-what beside him. He vaguely heard the words ‘final fitting’ and ‘bow-tie’, but honestly, his mind was elsewhere, contemplating on whether or not he should make an excuse to go back in there and talk to her.

“Earth to Harry,” Jeff yanked on his arm.

When he came-to he noticed Jeff standing in the elevator, doors beginning to close and Jeff holding it open for him.

“Oh, shit. Sorry,” Harry jumped in and let the doors close.

“You alright?” Jeff asked, pressing the button for the ground floor.

With a tight-lipped grin, Harry nodded, “Yeah, all good.”

The week dragged and Harry became impatient. He found himself constantly checking in on Jeff to make sure he was practicing and wanting to meet up so they could practice together. He used the excuse that he was ‘maintaining his best-man duties and making sure Jeff didn’t make a fool of himself’, but it was mostly for him. He wanted to make sure he danced well enough to impress Y/N.

He couldn’t get her off his mind and was so eager for the next lesson, that when Jeff told Harry he didn’t think he needed Harry to come to the next session, his heart sank.

“I think I’ve got it,” Jeff explained, “I might call Y/N and let her know that it’ll be a short session. Practice with her once or twice and see what she says.”

“It’s already paid for, you mine as well go. I just want to be there to make sure you’ve really got it down. It’s one more session, what’s the harm? You’ve got your schedule cleared out, anyway.”

Jeff raised an eyebrow, “You were kicking and screaming before the first session, and now you’re begging me to go? Why?”

“No reason,” Harry replied, a little too quickly, and when he saw the smirk form on his best friend’s face, he tried his best to save face. “Jeff, you’re shit at dancing, man. Glenne’s been working hard on this dance, I just think you ought to, too.”

After a suspicious stare, Jeff gave in and agreed.

When their last session arrived, Harry made sure to dress up a little bit more than his usual basketball shorts and a graphic tee, wearing a pantsuit and button-up. Jeff didn’t think anything of it at first, knowing that’s just how Harry dressed sometimes. But mid-way through the lessons, he started to get suspicious. He knew his friend well enough to know that the desperately pathetic dad-jokes and the constant blushing and laughing was Harry’s way of flirting, and he started to put two-and-two together.

“If you’re not careful, it’ll be you who’s taking dance lessons for your wedding next,” Jeff whispered in his ears while Y/N went to turn the music off.

“Shut it,” Harry snapped, giving his friend a push.

“Ask for her number.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Harry blushed. Because he was nervous, that’s why.

Y/N clapped her hands together once, making her way back over to them with a smile, “I am so proud of you boys. You did such a great job, honestly. You’ve nailed it, Jeff. Your first dance is going to be beautiful!”

“Thanks to you,” Jeff admitted, thankful.

“Oh, no. You did all the hard work. I just watched,” she smiled sweetly, leaning in to give him a hug, “Congratulations, again. You and Glenne are wonderful. Next week will be gorgeous, I’m sure. Let me know how it goes. I can’t wait to see the pictures.”

“Thanks, again,” Jeff patted her back.

She turned to Harry, smiling wider, “And thanks for accompanying him. You’re a great best-man. Or great fill-in-bride. Whatever you want to call it. It was lovely to meet you.”

“You, as well,” Harry managed, giving her a warm hug.

Quickly, he tried to think of something else to say. But when they pulled apart, nothing came to mind. They looked at each other for a second too long, and Y/N, unsure what to do, began to avert her eyes, looking over towards Jeff and backing away towards her bag, “Well, have a great rest of your day. Hopefully, I’ll see you around.”

Jeff looked between the two of them before he jumped into action, “Uh, Y/N? You have any plans for lunch? We’re meeting Glenne downtown at Sips Bistro if you’d like to join us.”

Harry looked over at Jeff, sighing with relief and smiling, grateful to have a wingman, before turning his attention to Y/N, smiling wider. Y/N grinned, nodding, “Oh, yeah, I’d love to, thanks. How about I meet you there? I just have to pack my things and finish up here.”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

Glenne was already at the restaurant when they arrived, and the second Jeff slipped in the booth next to her, kissing his fiance’s cheek, and he started, “Harry has a crush on Y/N.”

“Do you, really?” Glenne gasped, shooting her attention to Harry, “Awe! I mean she is beautiful, isn’t she? And so nice!”

“I invited her to lunch. She’ll be here any minute,” Jeff said.

“Oh, no way! She can sit next to Harry. Do you think she likes him back?”

“Probably. You should have seen all the blushing and giggling going on. You would have thought they were a bunch of pre-teen girls.”

“Alright, alright,” Harry groaned, putting his hands up.

“Harry, you have to ask her out!” Glenne suggested.

He noticed the front doors open and Y/N walk through, craning her neck above the heads of other patrons before locking eyes with Harry and smiling, making her way over. He felt his throat catch before hurriedly whispering at Glenne, “I barely know her and she’s walking over, so please don’t embarrass me.”

“Hello!” Y/N sang, noticing the empty seat beside Harry and sliding in beside him.

“Y/N, I’m so glad you could come! How is Jeff doing with the dance?”

“So good, honestly!” Y/N began, explaining the last three sessions and poking a bit of fun at the boys.

The first half of lunch was spent casually chatting. It was comfortable. Almost like it would be hanging out with any group of close friends. Y/N just seemed to fit in. But by the second half of lunch, Glenne and Jeff started getting down to the nitty-gritty, really getting to know Y/N.

“I can’t believe you’ve been dancing since you were three. No wonder you’re so good at this,” Glenne amazed, looking between her and Harry before smiling and turning to her fiance, “Wow, can you believe we’re across the table from two ultra-talented people? Makes me feel so untalented.”

“Stop,” Y/N blushed.

Harry snorted, “I don’t know how true that is for you. But, Jeff, on the other hand,” he trailed, making them all laugh and Jeff to take a few digs at Harry.

Glenne rerouted the conversation back to Y/N, asking, “And you’re single, right?”

Y/N nodded, “Yep. A bit hard to meet a guy when your job is mainly teaching women and old couples. Otherwise, they’re engaged men trying to learn how to dance for their wedding.”

“I bet that doesn’t stop a few of them from hitting on you, though, right?” Jeff asked, earning a slap on the arm from Glenne.

Y/N chuckled, “Yeah, sometimes. But that’s when I tell them to either keep it professional or cancel their lessons.”

Harry grinned to himself, taking a sip from his drink. She was no-nonsense but so sweet at the same time. He turned back towards her as Glenne asked, “So no dating for you, then?”

Y/N shrugged, “I’ve been on a few, but no luck yet. Dating is hard nowadays and my schedule is all over the place.”

Harry nodded in agreement, “Tell me about it.”

“Well, I’m sure you understand,” Y/N laughed.

Jeff and Glenne kept a close eye as the conversation continued, watching the two of them flirt and blush more than they had seen anyone do in years. The attraction between the two was nearly enough to make anyone sick. Their food was long-since gone, they had paid almost forty minutes ago, and the sun began to set. Pretty soon it’d be dinner.

“We should probably get going,” Glenne frowned, looking between Harry and Y/N who both sadly nodded in agreement. When Glenne realized Harry was too nervous to say anything, she took matters into her own hands, “Y/N, if you have no plans next Saturday, I’d love for you to come to our wedding.”

“Oh, uh, are you sure?” Y/N asked.

“Yes, of course, there’s always room for one more. Besides, Harry still has a plus-one that he hasn’t used. You can be his date.”

Both Harry and Y/N’s eyes widened, blushing as they looked at each other and when he saw eff’s urging eyes he stuttered, “...if that’s okay with you, of course.”

Y/N happily nodded, laughing a bit, “Yeah, that’d be great. I have a class to teach that afternoon, but I can be there by the reception.”

“Perfect. Harry, do you mind texting her the details?”

Harry looked at Glenne, incredulously, as she sent a wink over at him. These two were such a perfect pair and A+ wingmen. He couldn’t be more grateful to have them in his life.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Then you can see your dancing masterpiece unfold,” Glenne smiled at Y/N.

“Masterpiece, disaster, either way.” Jeff joked.

“It’ll be perfect,” reassured Y/N as they slipped out of the booth.

Glenne and Jeff began making their way to the front of the booth while Harry and Y/N held back for a moment to exchange information.

“I’ll text you all of the info later tonight,” Harry assured her.

Y/N nodded with a smile, biting her lip just a little, “Can’t wait.”

He couldn’t get home fast enough. Harry found himself writing, deleting, re-writing, and editing his first texts to Y/N. After several drafts, he finally texted her a simple, ‘Hey! It’s Harry. It was so lovely to see you today! Thanks, again, for the lessons. Looking forward to seeing you at the wedding.’ Followed by the details of the event and ending it with ‘-H. x’

He waited, staring at his phone and impatiently tapping his foot on the ground. Within minutes, he received a response and nearly dropped his phone before reading, ‘Hi, Harry! It was my pleasure. Thanks for being a wonderful student! Hope your hip doesn’t give you too much trouble from that tragic fall disaster. Note to self: don’t dance in a slippery shower.’

Harry chuckled to himself and began typing away. All week they texted, getting to know each other more. The conversations got deeper the more they talked and he found himself completely enamored by her. Something about her struck him differently and she hadn’t left his mind once. There were several times he wanted to bite the bullet and ask her on a date, but he was too busy helping Jeff and Glenne with the final details of their wedding that there just simply wasn’t any time.

When the day of the wedding finally arrived, it was hectic from the beginning. There was no rush or anything, but the nerves were thick in the air. Jeff had begun to overthink things, forget where he put his vows, and start to panic about their first dance, which he forced Harry to help him practice before the ceremony and was thankfully recorded not only by another groomsman but also the wedding videographer.

His worried seemed to be for nothing, though, because the second he saw Glenne walking down the aisle, his shoulders eased and he smiled. Harry always got emotional at weddings and may have teared up a few times, but he just felt lucky to be standing beside him, watching two of his best friends get married.

After the ceremony, the wedding party went off to take some pictures, and when they had finished, the DJ introduced each other them one-by-one as they found their seats. Harry kept an eye out, scanning the hundreds of people that had come, in search of Y/N, and even checking his phone to see if he had gotten a text from her. Nothing so far.

The or d'oeuvres were still being served along with some drinks, people scattered around the dance floor as the newlywed couple made their rounds when the announcement of the first dance was made and Jeff and Glenne made their way to the side of the dancefloor. Harry was at the back of the crowd, glass in hand, standing by the exit to the patio that was vacant as everyone gathered around the edge of the dancefloor.

He could see the reception doors open from the corner of his eyes and turned to see Y/N slip in wearing a navy, off the shoulder frill midi dress, her hair down in beautiful waves, and her makeup light and glowy. She looked around in search of a familiar face and he smiled, stepping back even more and waving. Once she caught sight of him, a smile stretched across her face and she started making her way over to him as the music of Fire on Fire by Sam Smith began to play and the newlywed couple made their way, hand-in-hand to the dancefloor.

“Hi,” Y/N grinned as she reached him, standing on her tippy toes to try and see Jeff and Glenne.

“You look beautiful,” Harry complimented.

She blushed, pushing her hair back and off her shoulders, “Thanks, you look pretty good yourself.”

Quickly, he looked over at the empty patio and then back towards Y/N, building up the courage to ask, “Want to dance?”

She looked passed him at the patio, understood what he meant, and blushed once more, taking his outstretched hand, following him out and behind a few beautifully landscaped hedges so that they were out of sight, but could still perfectly hear the music.

They picked up the choreography where the music was, just before the beat dropped, and spun together, touching soft and light. He quickly realized she was letting him lead and she allowed herself to sink into him as they did their first lift of the dance. It made him feel more confident and in control, also filling him with a sense of honor that she trusted him enough to loosen her reins and let him lead even though she was the professional dancer. She believed in him.

As he set her down and they began to glide together, he felt his stomach and chest fill up with those butterflies again. And when the first intimate moment of the dance came and they brought their foreheads and noses pressed together, they weren’t smiling like they had in their last lesson. Their expressions were serious this time. The passion wasn’t an ‘act’, it was real. It was abundant. It was fierce. They broke briefly before going into their second lift, her back to his chest, and he was sure she could feel his heart beating ferociously out of his chest until he set her down and twisted her to face him into their last and final dip of the dance, dipping low, letting her hand fall to the ground as the other wrapped around his neck, his nose grazing her neck. He slowly and gracefully pulled her back up, their foreheads and noses touch, staring into each other’s eyes as the song began to end.

They could hear the eruption of guests inside clapping, cheering, and whistling for the bride and groom, but they stayed in that position for a minute longer, unable to move. The urge was too strong. There was a tingle where their foreheads met, spreading down to his lips. Their breathing was too heavy from trying to hold back, and he gave in, pressing his lips to hers. He could feel her sink into him, snaking her hand up from his chest to his neck and deepening it, parting her lips slightly. All went dark and black. And when he finally pulled apart, they both smiled.

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

Taglist:

@odetostep, @thurhomish

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fieryanmitsu · 4 years ago

Text

The Future | A3! | "Once More, With Feeling!" Fanzine

"Once More, With Feeling!" is an A3! fanzine that focuses on events that occur in Act 1 of the main story of the game and which revolves around the theme of "growth".

The zine has over 40 contributors and is packed to the brim with amazing art and stories, so if you want to check it out, the free version of the zine can still be downloaded here!

This was technically published months ago for the "Once More, With Feeling!" fanzine, but I didn't have a chance to upload it to Tumblr until now! Oops!

I wanted to make sure I posted this today in commemoration of the "A Two-Faced Teacher" event coming out on the EN server, since this event was one of the inspirations for my fic! This story does take place pre-Act 2/in the Act 1 continuum, though there are nods to the "A Two-Faced Teacher" event, which you'll catch if you had read the event story.

THE FUTURE

THEME: Growth

CHARACTERS: Banri Settsu, Juza Hyodo, Taichi Nanao, Sakuya Sakuma

My fanfic masterpost: Here

AO3: Link in my Blog Menu

“Hey, Settsu—so have you thought more about your career plan?”

Banri’s eyebrow twitched as Azumi—Hanasaki High’s guidance counsellor—spoke to him through the door. He couldn’t believe this was seriously happening right now.

“You know, with your grades, it would be a shame if you didn’t go to university. The sky’s the limit for you. It’s always harder to get back into the swing of things if you take a year off,” Azumi rambled.

Banri groaned and covered his face with his hands in exasperation. This situation could not be more awkward. At his wit’s end, the brown-haired boy lifted a leg and kicked the stall door in front of him.

“Look, Teach—I’m tryin’ to take a shit!! Can we talk ‘bout this later?!”

“Language, Settsu,” Azumi chided, not missing a beat. “Anyway, you ran away the last time I tried talking to you, so what else was I supposed to do?”

“I dunno—not stalk me?! Ugh, whatever! I’ll hand it in—just freakin’ get out already!!”

“All right, all right. You’d better keep your word, though, Settsu!”

Banri flushed the toilet and exited the stall. Maybe that memory came back to him just now because it was the same stall he had used that time. Or maybe it was because of the conversation that he’d had with Yuki at the Night Walk the other day—about Yuki’s goals for the future and Banri’s lack thereof.

The future, huh?

For as long as Banri could remember, he’d never cared about the future. What was the point of imagining what was to come when he could barely bother with the present—the boring, super ultra easy present? Even when he had set goals for himself, he always accomplished them effortlessly, no matter how high the bar. Get an A+ on that exam? He aced it with a perfect score. Win that award? The gap between him and the runner-up was miles apart. Master that new skill he’d never tried before in his life? He did it with his eyes closed.

Each success left him hollow. Where was the sense of satisfaction when everything always went according to plan? So, he stopped planning. Stopped expecting. Instead, he just went with the flow and chased after every cheap thrill he could find, because there was no future he could even envision striving for.

But, things were different now—the present was anything but boring. Whether it was taking on a crazy gaming challenge with Itaru, or trying a new curry dish for dinner (how could so many types of curry even exist, anyway?), or pushing his body to the limit during Autumn Troupe practice, every day with the Mankai Company was new and exciting.

Then, there was the stage. Every time he stepped foot under the spotlight, his heart pounded. There was no better adrenaline rush than performing in front of a live audience. The spectators might not laugh at a joke, and they’d have to throw in an adlib; someone could flub a line, and they’d have to find a way to save the scene; even a slightly different intonation or body movement could push the play in a totally new direction. Banri revelled in that feeling of having all the tools in his hands while knowing that a wrench could be thrown in at any moment—sometimes literally.

Before he knew it, he had fallen in love with theatre and being a part of Mankai Company. He had every intention to keep acting and he knew that the logical next step was to study performing arts, especially since he could bring his newfound skills back to benefit the troupe. Yet, despite his feelings, he still found himself hesitating. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he just couldn’t bring himself to commit.

Wiping his hands dry on his handkerchief, Banri made his way over to his shoe locker, grabbing his outdoor shoes and school bag before leisurely making his way home. Still mulling over his thoughts, he eventually turned onto Veludo Way and immediately spotted two familiar figures bowing to a small audience.

“Thank you! Thank you very much!” Taichi exclaimed, waving his hands enthusiastically.

“Come check out Mankai Company—we’ll have a new show on soon,” Juza added as he straightened from his bow.

“What are you two doing?” Banri asked as he walked up to them through the dispersing crowd.

“Banny!” Taichi greeted as he looked up from counting the yen in his pencil case turned tip box. “We were trying to pick up some tips because we were short a few hundred yen!”

“A few hundred yen for what?” the taller boy asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Gettin’ some egg tarts,” Juza responded, taking the yen from Taichi and jabbing his thumb over his shoulder at a small storefront with the flaky treats on display.

“Sweets? Figures.”

“They’re for Tsumugi!” Taichi piped up. “He’s been helping Juza study for his entrance exam even though he registered last minute! So the second Juza saw those egg tarts, he wanted to pick some up as a thank you gift!”

“Entrance exam?” Banri asked incredulously. He couldn’t possibly mean the university entrance exam?

“I’m applyin’ for university theatre programs,” Juza responded, meeting Banri’s gaze defiantly.

“Seriously? You’re studying to get into university? Don’t make me laugh! You sure you even have the brains for that?”

“Shut up, Settsu,” Juza growled, shooting him a glare. “I’m serious ‘bout acting. It’s what I wanna do. You might be better at acting than me right now, but I’m gonna study hard and learn lots. Then, I’m gonna leave you in my dust.” Without another word, Juza turned around and trotted over to the pastry shop.

Banri was thunderstruck. Even Juza, of all people, had set their eyes on the future. He couldn’t believe it. Wasn’t he better than Juza in every way? If a sugar-addicted gorilla could do it—why couldn’t he ? What was stopping him from confidently declaring his goals for the future? Why did he tell Yuki he was still thinking about it?

Was it because he was… scared? After all, it had been so long since he’d allowed himself to look forward, to plan for the future—so was he scared of being disappointed again? Afraid of losing that sense of excitement for something he finally felt passionate about? The realization shook him.

“We’re home!” the three boys hollered as they stepped through the dorm entrance.

“Welcome home!” Sakuya greeted, popping out of the lounge upon hearing the door open. The other boy must have just gotten home as well, as he still wore his school uniform. Seeing Sakuya’s blazer—the same as his—Banri suddenly realized that the other boy was graduating this year as well. The Spring Troupe leader was so small and innocent that Banri sometimes forgot that they were in the same grade.

“Hey, Sakuya—can I ask you somethin’?” Banri said as Juza and Taichi shuffled past them to head to their rooms.

“Sure, what is it?” Sakuya asked, cocking his head to one side.

“What are you plannin’ to do after graduation?”

“Ummm...” Sakuya’s eyes flickered away from Banri’s for a moment as he rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll be joining the workforce.”

“Seriously? I woulda thought you’d go to university to study performing arts or somethin’.”

“Well, if I’m being honest, I thought about going to university for a theatre program—like the one that Tsumugi and Tasuku went to—but tuition would be kind of tough right now,” Sakuya replied with a sheepish smile. “My relatives have already paid to put me through a top-tier private high school, so I can’t ask them to help me out any more than they already have.”

“Ah. Right… My bad.” Banri wanted to kick himself—how could he forget that Sakuya was an orphan. He hadn’t even thought about tuition, since he knew his parents would cover it without any questions.

“Oh no, don’t feel sorry! I mean—it’s not like it’s a bad thing!” Sakuya continued. “Izumi, Tsumugi, and Tasuku already told me that they’d help me find work with other troupes on Veludo Way. So, I’ll be getting lots of hands-on experience instead. And I know that Hisoka and Misumi have found interesting part-time jobs that help with their acting as well! So, even if I won’t have formal training, I’m confident that I’ll find other ways to improve my acting!”

“Huh. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve got it all figured out,” Banri murmured. He was always impressed by the other leader’s can-do attitude.

“Well, I don’t know about that! I just love acting and I never want to stop—so I’m doing what I can with what I’ve got!” Sakuya responded with a bright smile. “But, I’m sure you’ll get into whichever theatre program you want and then you can show me what you learn—we can even trade tips! Oh, actually, which university did you apply for? Veludo Arts? Or maybe Yosei?”

“Huh? How’d you know that I would be applyin’ for a theatre program?” Banri asked, astonished at the other boy’s assumption.

Sakuya’s laugh tinkled out like bells. “Well, it’s so obvious—you love acting too, after all! And you’re definitely smart enough to get into any university you want!”

For the second time that day, Banri was rendered speechless.

“Sakuya! Could you lend me a hand with this?” Omi called from the kitchen.

“Oh! Be right there!” Sakuya shouted back into the lounge. “Sorry—I’ll talk to you later, Banri!”

“Later,” Banri replied dazedly as Sakuya retreated into the other room.

As soon as the other boy disappeared, a frown crossed Banri’s face. It had been a while since he’d felt so lame. Sakuya was so passionate and devoted to theatre, but he couldn’t even pursue his ideal path. Instead, he had to find another way to reach his goal, to fight to continue chasing his dream. Even Juza, who had rocks for brains, was cracking his head open to do something he was terrible at in order to walk forward towards the future.

And here he was—with all the smarts and the privilege to do exactly what they both wanted—with his feet frozen to the ground.

What the hell am I hesitatin’ for, dammit?! Screw this overthinkin’ bullshit! I know what I want—I want to act.

With the resolve to finally rip his feet free and charge forward, Banri pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened his LIME app. Scrolling down until he found Kazunari’s contact, he began typing out a message.

“Nice coffee they have here, huh?”

Banri couldn’t believe that this old man followed him all the way to the cafe.

“Is that even coffee anymore?” Banri retorted, wrinkling his nose in disgust as he watched Azumi pour in a second container of milk into his drink. It might as well be coffee-flavoured milk at this point.

“My stomach isn’t as strong as it used to be. If I drink coffee straight, it gives me the runs,” Azumi replied with a chuckle.

“Ugh! Nasty! Keep that to yourself, old man!”

“By the way, it’s been a week since you told me you’d hand in your career plan, but I still don’t have it.”

“Look, there just isn’t anythin’ I wanna do,” the boy answered with a sigh.

“Well, even more reason for you to consider higher education, then,” Azumi stated, sipping his abomination of a drink with a contented sigh. “For someone who doesn’t know what they want, I think university will help broaden your horizons.”

“I guess.”

“How about this? For now, I’ll just put down on your career plan that you’re pursuing post-secondary education and sign you up for the standard entrance exam,” Azumi suggested. “In the meantime, think things over. Once you figure out what you really want to do, come find me.”

“Fine. But, I’m warnin’ ya, Teach—don’t get your hopes up.”

Taking a deep breath, Banri knocked on the door to the faculty office. A moment later, one of the younger teachers opened the door.

“Is Mr. Azumi here?” Banri asked, trying to keep his voice as casual as possible.

“Mr. Azumi—Settsu’s here to see you,” the young teacher called over his shoulder before stepping away from the door.

“Ehhhh?! Settsu is here to see me?!” Azumi yelled exaggeratedly from his desk in the corner.

Banri couldn’t help clicking his tongue. For a second, he considered turning around and leaving, but the piece of paper in his hand burned against his fingers.

“How can I help you, Settsu?” Azumi asked, now standing in front of Banri with an obnoxious grin on his face.

“Here.” Banri held out the piece of paper to him, purposely looking at a spot behind Azumi’s head. He didn’t want to see whatever smug smirk the teacher would make once he saw what was on the page.

“Is this what I think it is?” Azumi gasped in surprise, his eyes quickly skimming the document.

“It’s not too late, right? To change my mind?” Banri replied, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“Hmm… the registration period might be over... but, I know a guy—I can twist his arm into letting me squeeze in your registration,” Azumi replied. “Wait... you’ve only got your first-choice university down. Do you have a back-up?”

“Tch—who do you think I am?” Banri scoffed, rolling his eyes. There was no way he wouldn't get into his top choice. After all, there wasn’t anything he couldn’t do.

This was actually my first time writing Banri, so I'm hoping I was able to capture his character (and attitude!!) properly! Initially, while reading Act 1, I was very annoyed with Banri and wanted to give him a good smack. However, as the story progressed (especially in Act 2) and I watched him grow as a character, I ended up adopting him into my circle of A3! children. I can honestly say that he has one of my favourite stories of personal growth throughout the main storyline, and this fic was inspired by one of my favourite parts of his backstory: that he ended up genuinely pursuing acting despite how he started off at Mankai Company. The little hints that were dropped about how he made this decision really inspired me to come up with my own take on how he got to this decision!

Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed! Feel free to leave a comment if you have any thoughts and reblogs are always appreciated!

-Anmitsu

#a3!#act! addict! actors!#a3! act! addict! actors!#a3! game #banri settsu #settsu banri #a3! banri #sakuya sakuma #juza hyodo #taichi nanao #a3! omwf fanzine #a3! fanzine #anmitsu writes

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snowdice · 4 years ago

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Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 18]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. See this post for more details and feel free to send me asks to keep me going! It’s been a lot of fun so far! I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. I’ll be constantly looking for ideas of times and places for Janus to have missions, so feel free to send in any you can think of at any point!

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. Chapters 3-8 and what I have of Chapter 9 are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted). It’s short, and not really for serious listening, but I had fun with it.

I have homework due tomorrow, so let’s go.

Arc I: Finding Cinderella

Chapter 4

Janus was frozen in surprise for a few long moments after Pat disappeared. Which had been, admittedly, his mistake, because, while their window had technically been until 11:17pm and it was only 11:10, the loud crack that whatever Pat had been using for time travel made, garnered the attention of someone else.

“Uh oh,” Remus said, likely hearing footsteps. “Hide.”

That snapped Janus into action, but instead of hiding immediately like a sensible human being, he chose to go for the only link to the man who’d just stolen time travel tech and waltzed away, the mask.

Which was why he ended up getting arrested.

Remy tsked the moment they were all alone in the police car having come to ‘transfer Lee to another facility.’ Remus was already waiting in the front seat, and flashed Janus a smug smile. If Janus wasn’t still handcuffed, he’d slap him.

“Well,” Remy said. “At least you didn’t shoot anybody like I asked. I was joking by the way. I didn’t really want to pick you up from a 1920s police station period.”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Mmm, nah, ‘cause Remus managed to not get arrested this time, so you defiantly screwed something up.”

“Oh, he defiantly wanted to screw something all right,” Remus said joyfully.

“Remus,” Janus hissed.

“What?” he asked. “I’m not the horny one for once. Well, no, that’s a lie, but it didn’t affect the job this time.”

Janus groaned and leaned his head back against the seat.

Remy pulled into a seemingly random garage around 20 minutes later. “Alright,” he said. “Here we are.” He got out of the car and then helped Janus out before uncuffing him. “Here’s your ‘watch,’” Remy handed him the timepiece that had been confiscated when he’d been arrested.

Janus put it on and activated it. “Shit,” he said.

“What?” Remus asked.

“An appointment with cultural outreach has already been downloaded to my calendar for once we get out of decon.”

“Oof. Going to baby jail,” Remy laughed. Remus was cackling.

“This,” Janus said, “was not a cultural faux pas. I did nothing that indicated that I was not from this time. I am not some rookie.”

“Don’t forget cell phones don’t exist in the 1920s,” Remus sang.

“The real question is whether or not my foot exists in your…” Remus disappeared before he could finish, a smirk on his face. Janus growled. “By Remy,” he gritted out. He selected the decontamination chamber from his queue, ignoring the appointment that came after it for now.

He knew exactly where Remus would be standing when he landed, which was why he stepped forward on reentry to ram into him.

He yelped in surprise. “Sorry,” Janus said pleasantly. “I must have also forgotten landing procedures.

Remus laughed good naturally. “Aw, come on Jay,” he said, bumping Janus back, albeit much gentler than Janus had been. “It’s not a big deal. You just go talk with some crusty old college professor who is far too interested in spoons and then everything’s fine.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” he growled. “They’re treating me like I’m an idiot who accidently invented disco in the 1920s when I was conned by some free agent time traveler.”

“‘Conned,’ Remus said. Is that what they’re calling it now?”

“I know where and when you live Remus,” Janus said.

Remus gave him a dopey smile as the decontamination cycle finished and the door unlocked. Janus’s wrist buzzed telling him that the coordinates to the cultural outreach office were now unlocked. Instead of pulling them up, Janus walked to the door.

“Um,” Remus said, following him. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to your appointment?” Janus just kept walking towards their office. “Uh… Jan?”

“It’s absolutely ridiculous that I have to go to cultural outreach,” Janus said. “In fact, no one can make me. If they want me to go have a discussion about the definition of ‘bushwa,’ they’re going to have to have me dragged there.”

“Mmm, I feel like The Boss won’t be too happy about that, and I have a feeling she’d be 100% down to dragging you there herself.”

“Well, then, let her,” Janus said, stalking through the door to his office. “I’m not going to…”

“Ah, Agent Picani,” the woman standing next to his desk, clearly waiting for him, said when he came through the door. “Dr. Picani was informed that there were complications with your last mission and wishes to have a conversation with you and asks that you meet him in his office at the AMO.”

“Oh, um,” Janus said, stumbling a bit before plastering on a regretful half smile. “Unfortunately, I actually have an appointment right now at Cultural Outreach. It’s mandatory and very important, and I have to go now. So, I’ll have to take a raincheck on that.”

“But-” she started, frowning.

“Remus, work on the report!” Janus said quickly as he waved his hand to bring up his timepiece display and jammed his finger at the glowing appointment card in his queue. A few moments later, Janus was at Cultural Outreach.

Cultural Outreach was not part of the TPI, though it often worked very closely with them. It was a collaboration between the government and multiple universities to help government workers, politicians, and other citizens understand and bridge cultural gaps. It had existed before time travel was invented but had expanded to also teach people who needed to time travel how to behave in unfamiliar times and cultures.

After it had to be expanded to provide for the TPI, it had been moved to Silver Mountains University. The building had once just been a museum, but it had been thoroughly renovated and there had been add-ons for office space and some classrooms. It was still a museum, however, its purpose had expanded greatly and there were many areas that were off limits to the general public.

One of these areas was the fourth floor, where Janus’s timepiece had dumped him. This was the floor that was almost exclusively for TPI agents and staff of Cultural Outreach who worked with them.

He immediately turned away from the reception area, hoping that he could escape and go sit on the university’s quad or something of the like for the next hour or so in hopes the woman his brother sent to fetch him would give up and go back to the AMO. Yet, the receptionist apparently saw him.

“Janus Picani?” he asked.

Janus grimaced and turned back towards him. “Yes,” he said.

“Is something wrong?” he asked. “You’re 5 minutes late for your appointment and seem disoriented.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Is your timepiece malfunctioning?”

“No.”

“Uh… okay. Well, if you sign in here, I can take you to your appointment.”

“…Fine.”

He begrudgingly stepped forward and touched the screen he’d gestured to sign with his fingerprint, and then let the man lead him down the hall.

The door they stopped at was propped open slightly, but he still paused and knocked. “Professor Eran? Your 2:30 is here.”

Janus had just a moment upon hearing the name to think that maybe there was actually some sort of intelligent design of the universe and whatever being of ultimate power had crafted it was a dick.

The door opened and Virgil Eran’s eyes immediately narrowed on him. “Janus.”

“Virgil.”

“I see you’re still late for everything.”

“I see you’re still a bastard.”

Janus saw the receptionist slowly back away in the direction they’d come.

“Why don’t you come in?” Virgil said faux pleasantly.

Janus did, because he really didn’t have much of a choice at this point unless he wanted to jump out of a window… or push someone out of a window.

Virgil turned back into his office and took a seat behind his desk. Janus unhappily followed him in and sat across from him.

He took his time pulling up whatever the TPI sent him and reading it over. “So, I see you failed your recovery mission and were arrested in 1923.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Janus said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

Virgil gave him that same suspicious look he used to give Janus whenever Janus claimed to have not eaten his hot pockets out of the freezer in the middle of the night. He’d only been lying 80% of the time. Virgil had a tendency to forget what he’d eaten in a half-conscious state at 3 o’clock in the morning.

“I shouldn’t,” Janus snapped defensively. “Nothing went wrong with anyone from the time period. An illegal time traveler screwed up the mission details.”

“Well, it is still protocol to make sure nothing slipped when agents go off script. You weren’t prepared to be in a jail cell, and it is possible that you screwed something up.”

“I didn’t screw anything up,” Janus growled.

“Alright,” Virgil said pulling up a document on his desk. “The mission started on July 27th, 1923 at 9:58pm, correct?”

“Oh, god, we’re not really going to fill out a time sheet. I don’t have time for that today.”

“It is protocol and best that the information is documented when it is still fresh in your mind. Besides, your schedule has been cleared for the rest of the workday.” The bastard was enjoying this. He knew how much Janus hated this stuff.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Janus said, “it was the damned illicit time traveler.”

“And I will be the judge of that,” Virgil said. Janus should have just bit the bullet and had coffee with his brother. “If you truly did nothing wrong, your supervisor will see that when I send this to her.”

Yet, despite the fact that Virgil clearly relished in his suffering, he was charitable enough to do most of the actual filling out of the forms. He’d read out the questions and write down what Janus said instead of making him do it himself. Janus really only had to do a quick quality check and sign it at the end.

He still was an asshole about the details, but really he’d been like that about stupid thing like the settings for the dish washer and how the pantry was organized during their college days before they’d had their falling out, so Janus wasn’t particularly surprised. When they were finally done, Virgil sent it off to get filed by the TPI.

Then, they were left staring at each other with nothing between them but almost a decade of radio silence and a whole lot of awkwardness.

“I should go,” Janus finally said, standing up.

Virgil tilted his head slightly to the side and gave him a half smile. “Don’t lock the door behind you,” he said. “Not that I’d expect you too.”

Janus took it for the clear attempt at a joke it was intended to be and puffed out a breath of amusement with a head shake. “No risk of that,” he said. Then, he turned and walked out of the office.

Chapter 5

Janus stepped back into the reception area and booted up his time piece. Instinct said to go back to the office despite the fact that it was late enough that most people had gone home, but he hesitated. Surely Emile had given up by now, but considering he’d sent someone to ambush him in his office, Janus wasn’t sure if he should trust that. He could just go home, but he already knew his mind was racing too much to sleep tonight so he’d probably just end up staring at the lake for the next 6 hours. So, he decided on the only other legitimate option he had. He pulled up Remus’s home coordinates and selected.

The home that Remus had chosen (after his long line of rejected requests) managed to somehow make no and absolute sense simultaneously to anyone who knew him. It was a small farm in the United States just west of the Mississippi in 1842 in what would be ratified as the state of Iowa in a few years. When asked why he would choose that time and place, Remus always responded with “I thought it was funny,” whatever that meant.

Unlike most time agents who simply used the identities assigned to them by the AMO as a cover, Remus actually lived his part time.

Janus was… fairly certain he was cheating a bit to get everything done, but he maintained his small farm all on his own, growing most of his own food. The neighbors he had lived very far away, but he still spoke with them far more than Janus did his own.

Janus appeared inside the small home, his eyes already shut. “Are you hear and dressed?” Janus called. Something bumped lightly into his legs.

“I’m in the kitchen!”

Janus peaked his eyes open and squatted to pet the cat at his feet. “That doesn’t answer my question!” he called back to Remus.

“It’s a surprise!” Remus said.

“Remus.” Diesel Fuel the cat flopped to her side on the ground as Janus continued to pet her ears. He heard Remus’s footsteps, and saw cloth covering his legs, so risked looking up. He was currently not only dressed, but wearing an apron that Janus was fairly sure was not time appropriate judging by the fabric and cat pawprint design. He had a bit of flour on his hands, and it may have been a bit too white for the time and place, but Janus couldn’t be completely sure.

“What’re you doing here?” Remus asked.

“My day has been an endless series of frustrations,” Janus said. “So, I have come to see the only tolerable being in the history of the universe.”

Remus snorted. “Since I know that isn’t me, I’ll assume you’re talking about the cat.”

“I still don’t understand why you tolerate this creature,” Janus addressed Diesel Fuel. She blinked slowly up at him. “To be fair, he was assigned as my partner. I didn’t have much of a choice in it. You could go always run away and become feral in the woods if you’d like.”

“So could you, technically,” Remus pointed out.

“I’m thinking about it after today.”

“Would you like some bread?” Remus asked. “That’s all I’ve been making this afternoon. Some fresh should be coming out of the oven in a few minutes.”

“Do you have anything stronger made out of wheat?”

“Ew, no, but I do have vodka.”

“Vodka works.”

“Want me to mix it with something?”

“No.”

“One of those night then,” Remus said, easily. “Let me finish up the bread, so I don’t burn the kitchen down. You can go get the alcohol from the cellar while you wait if you want, or you can just flop down on the couch.”

He was going to just flop down on the couch.

He did just that as Remus disappeared back into his kitchen. The cat hopped onto his stomach, proceeding to purr loudly and kneed at chest. Janus petted the cat and listened to the noise of Remus moving around in the other room, letting his mind drift. His mind drifted to Virgil for a bit and he steadfastly did not allow it to drift to his brother. Yet, the thing that most was on his mind was the strange man who had flirted and charmed Janus all night before mercilessly screwing him over. ‘Pat’ he’d said his name was, but surely that was not his real name.

Janus sighed and scratched the cat’s ear. “He certainly wasn’t an amateur,” Janus mused to the cat. “With that amount of precision to get in before we did, he must have someone not on the ground feeding him information. Perhaps more than one.” He was part of a group of time traveling thieves perhaps or something worse. “I didn’t get a good look at his face since he was wearing a mask,” Janus said, “but I spent a lot of time with him, and I’m sure Remy swiped the mask from the police since it had been on me when I was arrested. It’s a good lead.”

He continued to pet Diesel Fuel. Eventually, Remus came back in, noticed Janus hadn’t bothered to get the alcohol and went outside to the cellar. “I’m going to find him,” Janus told Diesel Fuel. “I’ll stop whatever it is he’s doing, and I’ll bring him in.” Diesel Fuel mewed her support, and Janus patted her on top of the head.

Remus came back in with the bottle of vodka and handed it to him without a word. He sat down on the couch near Janus’s feet and patted his lap so Diesel Fuel would come over to him and allow Janus to sit up.

The bastard waited until he was approximately 3 shots in (he didn’t have a shot glass and was just taking drinks from the bottle) to ask the questions Janus really didn’t want to answer. “Are you mad at Emile?” Remus asked.

Janus groaned, trying to wash out the bitter taste of shame and grief with the sharp sting of vodka. It didn’t work. “No,” he said to Remus.

“Then why have you been avoiding him?”

“Shit, I’m here because I didn’t want to think about it. Can’t we just not.”

“Don’t want to think about what?

“It’s none of your business, Remus.”

He could feel Remus frowning at him, but Janus stared resolutely ahead. At least, he did until a foot poked his face. He slapped it away, but it did the job of getting Janus to look at Remus.

“It is my business,” Remus said, foot still in the air. “I’m your partner and your friend.”

“If I’m your friend, you’ll drop it.”

“So, you’re not mad at Emile,” Remus continued, contemplatively. “Did you do something to him, then?” Janus bit his lip and looked away. “What?” Remus asked. Janus didn’t respond. “Look, I’m sure he’ll forgive you for whatever it is. He’s a good guy. Just talk to him about it.”

“I can’t,” Janus said.

“Whatever it is, it’s probably been long enough that he forgives you. You literally just have to have a conversation, say you’re sorry, and everything will be A-OK.”

“I can’t,” Janus repeated.

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t know about it.”

Remus paused. “So, as far as he knows, you just cut contact with him all of a sudden for no reason and have been avoiding him ever since?”

Janus looked at his shoes. “Yeah.”

“That…” Remus said, “is not fucking fair Janus.”

“I know.”

“Then why the hell are you doing that to him? He’s like… soft and feeling-y. He’s probably really upset.”

“I know, Remus.”

“Tell him. Whatever it is.”

“I can’t.”

“Look,” Remus said. “You tell him and he either forgives you or he doesn’t. If he does, everything’s fine. If he doesn’t… well, it’s not like it would be any different from you two never being in the same room the last few years. Either way, you can’t just do this to him. He’ll probably forgive you. He’s your brother. Brothers don’t… brothers would forgive each other.”

Janus laughed softly and met Remus’s eyes. “That’s the problem,” he said. “He’d definitely forgive me.” He turned away and opened the vodka bottle again. “Now, if you’ll shut up for a few minutes, I’m going to drink until I black out.”

Chapter 6

“Really, Khalid,” Janus said, storming into his boss’s office. “A yellow?” It had been about a week since the 1920s incident, and his incident report had finally been cleared. Sure, it wasn’t a red or a black and he wasn’t facing any reprimand, but it should have been a green.

She looked up at him, clearly unconcerned. “There was an incident,” she said. “You handled it well, but there was one. Therefore, yellow.”

“It wasn’t a time travel incident! It was a rouge time traveler.”

“Janus, you helped me make these rules,” she said impatiently.

“Which is why I know this is bullshit,” he snapped.

She rolled her eyes. “If it was anyone else, you would agree with me. While you didn’t go against protocol and had no time related incidents, the fact of the matter is, you were still distracted by this ‘rouge time traveler,’ didn’t complete your mission, and were arrested.”

“He was good,” Janus said. “You can’t fault me for that. He also could be dangerous and you’re busy handing out yellows instead of working to track him down.”

She raised an eyebrow. “We are working on tracking him down,” she said. “We have done an analysis on the mask and found fibers dating to the 2010s and some DNA. Though it isn’t exactly a high priority.”

“We have no idea who he is or what he’s planning to do. Why is that not a high priority thing?”

“At the moment?” she asked. “Because we have reports of a time bomb being activated.”

“What?” Janus asked sitting up. “When?”

“New Years Eve going into the year 3,000 in Brazil,” she said. “Which you’d know about if you’d bothered to check your integration port this morning before storming into my office.”

“It’s my mission?” Janus asked.

“The incident investigation is over and your active again despite the dreaded yellow,” she said, clearly making fun of him a bit. “So, yes, and it’s a high priority mission, so I’ll be running it.”

“Who all is going?” he asked.

“Other than the two of us, Remus, Lena, and Fred,” she told him. “We leave in three hours, so, you might want to run off to Rhi before Fred gets to her and ties her up for an hour on details.”

Janus nodded and got to his feet. He turned back at the door. “I still don’t deserve the yellow,” he hissed.

She waved him off. “I’ll see you in a few hours, Picani.”

He ground his teeth a bit about the dismissal of his worries, but his resentment was slightly soothed by the fact that she’d assigned him to go on such a high priority mission and with only senior agents.

He took the advice and grabbed Remus from the office, noting Lena hadn’t been able to wrangle Fred yet as she was still at her desk, and they both headed off to see Rhi.

A few hours later, they were all in decontamination together, decked out in truly god-awful costumes. The turn of the third millennia had been a wild event, and the best way to fit in was to look like you’d grabbed something from every century in recorded human history, dyed it in neon paint, and rolled around in a vat of glitter.

Remus had opted to stick his head in a vat of glow in the dark green paint that costuming had offered them, and it wasn’t even going to be slightly disruptive to their covertness.

In fact, costuming had frowned when Janus had insisted he not get his hair dyed and instead wore a bowler hat. They had required him to have flowers made out of glitter on it.

There were five people waiting for them when they landed 6 hours before the turn of the millennia. Three were touchdown agents, including Remy, and two were on location tech support. Usually it would be overkill to have that many people there just for support even with five agents in the field, but today the TPI needed to be cautious because they were planning on instituting a time lock.

Time bombs were dangerous things that would ripple through time if not contained. Even if it did end up going off (killing everyone in its reach), the time lock would serve to prevent most damage outside of the city and, more importantly, the year it was planted.

Janus had only been in two time locks before, and he was one of the most senior agents in the TPI, outranked only by the founder: Lia Khalid. Time locks were designed to keep all time linear in a certain fixed time and geographical area as well as prevent any time travel in and out. Once it was engaged, all forms of time travel would not work for the duration, bar the pin device. Khalid was already switching out her regular timepiece with the slightly bigger one that was designed to support the time lock.

There was a failsafe back at the TPI that could be engaged in an emergency, which was why tech support was here, but other than that, the only thing that could break the time lock was that timepiece, and it would break the moment the time lock ended.

As soon as it was on Khalid’s wrist, she looked up at them all. “Our information says the time bomb was planted in the costume of one of the ‘Millennium Birds’ who are the organizers of the different events,” she said. Janus had seen a photo of the identical costumes in the mission details. They were all robe like garments with giant fans of feathers coming from the neck that coalesced in a peak a foot above their head to hold a fake bird egg. At least they’d be easy to find. “There are 25 of them throughout the city. We need to find each of them. So, we don’t double count, you’ll need to subtly,” her eyes touched on Remus, “scan each one you find for the bomb and tag them with a tracker if it’s not on them. You can view the already tagged ones, as well as the rest of us on your timepiece even once the time lock is engaged. When you find the bomb, call it in.”

They all nodded, and Khalid looked over at one of the techies. She nodded at her and then the techie flipped a couple of switches. “Three, two, one,” the techie said. There was a slight shift in the air that most people would disregard, but Janus as a seasoned time traveler could feel the change even before his wrist buzzed. He glanced at his timepiece to see it had a big red ‘X’ across its display. He tapped it and was still able to bring up the map of the city with 10 green dots on it all clustered together in their current location.

After that, he tested the scanner on his timepiece that he would use to search for the bomb, just to make sure the time lock hadn’t messed anything up with his equipment. He glanced up to see everyone else was doing the same.

“Keep in contact,” Khalid said before everyone split up. Janus and Remus started by going North while Fredrick and Darlene were to go South. Khalid was a floater who would tag any Birds she saw but was mostly there for backup and orders.

Janus and Remus stepped into the chaos of New Years Eve before the turn of the third millennia. The streets were already swamped with people and it would only be getting worse the later it go.

“Where should we start?” Remus asked.

“Let’s go all the way North to the games area,” Janus said. “We can work our way back here.”

“Okay!” Remus said. “I wonder if they have those fun little genetically modified goldfish as prizes. I’ve always wanted to eat one and see if I end up getting whatever design was on the fish on my body.”

Janus gave him a disgusted look.

“What?! People eat fish all the time!”

Janus shook his head. “We’re not playing the games anyway. We have work to do. Important work.”

“Boo,” Remus replied. Janus chose to ignore him as he spotted one of the Millenia Birds letting people into the gaming area.

They walked over towards the entrance. Janus got in range first and moved to subtly scan the Millenia Bird, Remus doing the same the next moment. After a second, Janus’s timepiece buzzed and lit up red, meaning the bomb was within range. “Well, that was easy,” he said. “It was on the first one we found.”

“Uh…” Remus said. “Jan.” When Janus looked, he was holding up his wrist to show his green lit time piece.

“What?” Janus asked. He quickly moved to rescan the Millenia Bird, and his timepiece came up green as well. Which, meant the bomb was not in range, even though the Millenia Bird had not moved. “But…” He and Remus’s eyes met, and they quickly both started turning in a circle to look at the crowd around him. No one looked like they’d just stolen a time bomb off the Millennial Bird, but then Janus’s eyes caught on a man. He blended in perfectly to his surroundings. He was wearing the disgusting garb of the times, a large light blue piece that bubbled near his hips, and had most of his skin covered in rainbow neon paints. Yet, something about him, the curl of his hair or the way he moved, drew Janus’s eyes to him. He recognized the man immediately even in a completely different dressing style. Yet, what cinched it was the moment Janus’s eyes met his and they seemed to sparkle slightly in the afternoon sun. The next moment, the person Janus knew as Pat, turned to disappear into the crowd.

Chapter 7

“Him,” was the only thing Janus said before taking off after the figure who had just disappeared into the game area.

“What?” Remus’s voice followed after him. “Janus! What?!”

Janus did not pause, just continuing to run after Pat, hopping over two barricades as a shortcut. Janus cursed when he lost sight of the man for just a moment near the prize table filled with colorful goldfish, but he was able to spot him once again walking into one of the tents. Janus blasted into the tent. It was a game where they raced rats, and when Janus entered, Pat was cooing at one of them.

“Who’s a tiny little squishy precious baby?” he was asking one of them, wiggling his pointer finger at it.

“You,” Janus growled stepping up to him.

He turned and tilted his head at Janus with a frown. “Um, me?” he asked, pointing to his chest, all sorts of innocent, but Janus could see a spot of hidden amusement in his eyes.

“Where is it?”

His eyebrows drew together, but it was an act. It was clearly an act! “Where is what?”

“The…” he glanced around them at the people surrounding them. “Thing you just took.”

“I didn’t take anything,” Pat said with a frown.

“Oh, no,” Janus said. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fooling me twice is not an option.”

“I’m sorry sir,” Pat said. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bull. Shit.”

Just then, Remus jogged into the tent. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s him,” Janus said pointing. “He took it. He has it.”

“I… don’t know what you’re talking about,” Patton said. He looked over to Remus with a confused frown.

Remus looked at Janus. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Janus said. “It’s him. It has to be him. He’s the mask guy.”

Remus squinted at Pat. “He is?”

“Whoever you think I am, I’m not. I haven’t worn a mask all night. I just did the face paint,” he pointed to his cheeks.

Remus raised his wrist and his timepiece lit up green. He looked at Janus.

“I lost sight of him for five seconds. He must have stashed it somewhere,” Janus said. He turned on Pat. “Where did you put it?”

“…Are you,” Pat asked, his eyes going back and forth between Janus and Remus, “… the police?”

“We are, actually,” Khalid said as she stepped into the tent. Remus must have called her. She inserted herself between Janus and Pat. “Agent Khalid,” she said, offering a hand with a smile. Pat looked at it in surprise and then smiled back hesitantly as he took it. “Apologizes, one of the big game prizes was stolen by someone matching your description. Would you mind coming down to security for questioning? Just to clear it up.”

“Oh,” Patton said, hesitant. Janus expected him to refuse outright, but then he said. “Uh, sure.”

“Thank you very much, Mr…”

“Jonas,” Pat told her earnestly. “Do I need to be handcuffed?”

“No,” Khalid said. Janus frowned at her, but she ignored him. “It’s just a talk for now.” She gestured to the tent entrance. “Come with us.”

He did without argument, and Remus and Janus followed behind the both of them. Khalid did not lead them back to the base, but to a little spot that said “security” near the center of the event. Remy was already there waiting for them at a desk.

“Remy, would you please take Mr. Jonas to go sit down?” she asked.

“Sure, boss,” Remy said, standing up. He led Pat away.

Khalid turned to Janus and Remus once they were out of earshot. “What is going on?”

“It’s the mask man,” Janus said, “the one from 1923, and my scanner said the time bomb was on the Millenia Bird outside the games entrance, but then it was gone the next second, and I saw him, and then he ran away.”

“So, does he have it on him?”

“No. I lost sight of him, and he must have stored it somewhere, but I know he took it.”

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“He’s the man from 1923?” she asked.

“Yes! Remus, that’s him, right? You recognize him.”

“Well,” Remus said thoughtfully. “He was in a mask, and it was dark in the room with the necklace. Other than that, I only really saw his back, and he was wearing pants. Mr. Jonas is wearing a dress, so I can’t really tell if their asses match.”

“Okay, but I was with him for hours. I swear it’s him, and I swear he took it,” Janus just about shouted.

“We’ll question him,” Khalid placated, “and Fred and Lena will keep looking in the meantime.”

“He knows where it is,” Janus insisted. “I swear.”

“Okay,” Khalid said, before leaving to follow where Remy and Pat had gone. She stopped Janus with a hand on his shoulder. “I think Remus and I will do the interrogation.” He opened his mouth to argue. “You know the most about him, so observe from the sidelines and see if he makes any mistakes that indicate you’re right.”

“That’s just to placate me and you know it.”

“Observation’s over there,” she said pointing.

He got a thumbs up from Remus as he walked by, and Janus glared at his back before walking off to the indicated location.

He watched as Remus and Khalid entered the room, and Remy left it. Remy joined him in the observation room after leaving and leaned against the wall.

Pat was sitting at a table and watched Remus and Khalid with that same rubbish placid confusion that he had before. “So,” Khalid said, “Mr. Jonas.”

“You can call me Nick,” Pat interrupted.

“Lia,” Khalid replied. He smiled at her happily. “So, are you enjoying your day?” she asked.

“I am!” he replied. “It’s a big day. You only get to see the turn of a millennia once in your life.”

“Ah, yes,” Khalid said. “Doing anything special for it?”

“Um, not really,” he said. “Other than the party. I’m going to meet up with my roommates after dinner. Kevin doesn’t like this sort of thing, and Joe couldn’t come.”

“Your roommates,” Khalid said, considering him. “Do you live around here?”

“Uh huh,” Pat replied.

“Do you have any ID?”

“I do, want me to get it?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

Pat unzipped one of the bubbles on his waist and handed her a chip. “Remus, would you mind going out and getting the ID scanner?” she asked, even though her timepiece would be able to read it.

“Ah, shit,” Remy said. “Props. What do those things even look like?”

As Remy scrambled to find something that would pass for an ID reader so “Nick” didn’t get suspicious of Khalid using her timepiece, Janus watched the two alone in the room like a hawk.

“I see you’re wearing a dress inspired by the 2770s,” Khalid noted, as Remus came to stand next to him.

“Yeah!” Pat replied. “Joe made it for me. He’s really good at fashion design!”

“Can I see?” she asked.

With a happy smile, he reached over the table to let her get a look of the sleeves. Janus saw her subtly scan the fabric, probably to make sure it was from the 2990s and not actually from the 2770s. Considering she didn’t mention it, Janus assumed it checked out.

Remy came back with some sort of device then and handed it to Remus who saluted and wandered back into the interrogation room. Khalid pretended to scan the ID in her hand. She handed it back to him without comment. “So, you said you live with your roommates: Joe and Kevin?” she asked.

“Yep!” he replied. “We’re practically like brothers.”

“Would you mind calling them?”

“Erm,” he titled his head like he was confused by the question. “Well, like I said, Joe is a bit busy, but I could definitely call Kevin.

“Here,” Khalid said, “use my phone.”

“I have my own,” he said with a frown.

“Humor me,” she requested.

“Uh, okay,” Pat agreed. He took the offered 2999 phone and dialed a number on it. Khalid reached over to put it on speaker.

“Hello?” a voice asked after a few seconds.

“Um, hey Kevin, it’s Nick.”

There was a sigh on the other end. “Hello Nick, is something wrong? Why are you calling me from someone else’s phone?”

“I’m fine, I think.” He looked up at Khalid. “Why am I calling him exactly?”

“Hello, I’m Officer Khalid,” Khalid said. “I just wanted to confirm that you are Nick Jonas’s roommate, and he does live in Manaus.”

“Yes, we live together with our other roommate,” the man replied flippantly. “Officer? Is something wrong?”

“I believe there was just a case of mistaken identity,” Khalid said.

“Bullshit there was!” Janus hissed, though she could not hear him.

“No need to worry,” Khalid continued.

“I’m good Kevin,” Pat said.

“Are you absolutely sure?” Kevin asked.

“Don’t be Paranoid, Kevin. I’ll see you Tonight for the New Years Celebration. You know I Live to Party.”

“I am hanging up now,” Kevin said.

“No! Comeback.” The line went dead. Pat handed the device back to Khalid.

She took it and smiled at him. “Give us just a couple of minutes,” she requested. He nodded easily, and she and Remus exited the interrogation room. “I… think we’re done here,” Khalid said.

“No, he’s lying,” Janus insisted, and got a dubious look in return. “I know he is! Remus!”

“The alibi is pretty solid…” Remus said, “and he doesn’t have the bomb on him.”

“Oh, come on,” Janus said. “You can’t say there is nothing fishy going on here.”

Khalid and Remus shared a look. “Janus,” Khalid said. “I respect your intuition. It is usually very good, but you have been a bit intense about the man from the 1920s, and I think that may be blinding you a bit...”

“I am not imagining this!” Janus said. “That’s him and he took it.”

“You only met him once while he was wearing a mask,” Khalid pointed out with a frown, “and you didn’t see him take the bomb, did you?”

“No, but he looked at me and I knew,” Janus argued. They both gave him a skeptical look. “Oh, come on!”

“You know that’s a little weak, Jan,” Remus said.

“Let me talk to him,” Janus requested. “Just give me five minutes to talk with him.”

Khalid raised one eyebrow. “Fine,” she agreed. “You have five minutes, but after that, you have to let it go. We can’t waste any more time.”

Chapter 8

Pat looked up as Janus stepped into the interrogation room. “Hi,” he said with an innocent smile that could cut steal.

Janus didn’t say a word as he took a seat; he just watched him intently. He leaned slightly over the table and steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “So, your name is Nick this time?” Janus asked.

“Nicholas Jonas,” he said. “Always has been.”

“Stop it,” Janus said.

“Stop what?”

“Cut the crap. I know.”

Pat leaned forward, mirroring Janus as he leaned closer, interlocking his fingers and laying his chin on top of his knuckles. “What did you say your name was again?” he asked, pleasantly.

“Janus,” Janus replied.

“No, I’m Jonas,” he said, pointing to his chest.

“Not Jonas,” Janus spat. “Janus.”

“Um,” Pat said, eyes alight with amusement. The bastard. “Those are the same words.”

“No, they’re not. It’s Janus. J-A-N-U.-S.”

“Well, that’s confusing,” Pat said with a frown, but his nose was crinkling. “It’s close to my name. You should go by a nickname instead.”

“What?” Janus said. “No.”

Pat hummed. “How about Love Bug?”

“What! No!” Janus sputtered, almost flipping the table, as Pat winked at him.

“BB Good?”

“What does that even mean?!”

“Mandy.”

“No!”

“Okay, okay, how about Macy Misa.”

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Janus stared at him for a moment. “Fine. Whatever. What was I even talking about?”

“Hmm. I Believe we were talking about my name and how you think it’s not my name.”

“Right,” Janus said. “So, Nick. That was your roommate, Kevin on the phone, right? He seemed a bit unhappy with you. Any reason?”

“Nah, we’re Cool” said Pat. “That’s Just the Way We Roll.”

“Not because you’re messing up a mission right now?”

Pat’s eyes crinkled together. “A mission?” he parroted. “I’m not messing up a mission.”

“Oh, really?” Janus growled. “Because you’ve been captured by the TPI, and I know who you are and what you’ve been doing.”

“I have no idea what the TPI is,” he claimed.

“Yes, you do!” Janus said, standing up. “You obviously do! Or you wouldn’t be playing this game!”

“Game?” Pat asked. “Macy I ask you what you’re talking about.”

“This is all just a game to you isn’t it!” Janus said, slamming his hands down on the table in front of them.

“Whoa,” Pat said, putting his hands up. “Calm down. Your face is getting all red. You must be Burnin’ Up.”

“I’m not sure what, but something about what you just said pisses me off.”

“And that is five minutes,” Khalid said, bursting into the room. He felt a tug on the back of his shirt and glared back at Remus who was putting his own body between Janus and Pat.

“There was no way that was five minutes,” Janus growled.

“It was five minutes,” Khalid gritted out. “Remus, get him out of here.”

“Come on Jay,” Remus said, dragging him back towards the door.

“Remus, I swear to god.”

“Just chill, Janus,” Remus said, slamming the door closed behind them.

Janus shrugged him off. “You chill!” he snapped. “He’s playing you all for the fool.”

“Wow, Macy,” Remy drawled like an asshole. “I’ve never seen you so fired up.”

“Oh, my gosh. No one is going to believe me, and he’s going to get away with this.”

“You’re not really helping your case, babe,” Remy said.

Remus grabbed him by the shoulders again. “Here, let’s go get some water.”

“I don’t want water,” he said even as he let Remus lead him to another room to get a glass of water.

“Look,” Remus said. “I know the Mask Guy thing really sucked, but you have to look at the facts.

“I am looking at the facts,” Janus insisted, “and the facts are, he’s fucking with me.”

“You don’t know what mask guy looks like,” Remus said. “You didn’t see Nick take the time bomb, he has an ID from this time period and a roommate in this time he called on the phone, and he legitimately seems to not know what any of us are talking about.”

“Did you even listen to our conversation?” Janus asked. “He was screwing with me the entire time!”

“Janus…” Remus said.

“What?” Janus said, narrowing his eyes at Remus’s tone.

“I know you recently had a bad experience, but not everyone who flirts with you is doing it out of evil.”

Janus’s mouth hung open for a few seconds. “That’s what you got out of our conversation?”

“He called you Love Bug.”

Janus felt his face heat a bit at the reminder. “That’s not… I. I’m stealing your cat and then never speaking to you again.”

Remus laughed. “Ah,” he said. “Young lust.”

Janus elbowed him roughly in the side. “No!”

“Yes!” he crooned, pleased.

“You are the worst partner,” Janus hissed. “When I’m right you owe me 10 loafs of your fresh bread.”

“Branching out from poptarts?” Remus asked.

Janus shook his head. He still wasn’t happy about the state of things, but he could feel himself cooling down a bit.

Khalid came out of the integration room after a few minutes, leaving Pat with Remy. “What was that?” she asked him.

“He got under my skin,” Janus said.

“We’ll talk about it later,” she said. “For now, we’re letting him go and then going back to looking for the bomb like we’re meant to be.”

“Fine,” Janus relented. “Just do me the favor of tagging him before he leaves. Just that. I beg of you.”

“Sure,” she agreed. “If it will calm you down.”

He nodded.

“Then, let’s go,” she said. When they met back up with Remy and Pat, he saw Khalid make the subtle gesture that would tag Pat like they would have for the Millennium Birds. Pat sent him what could pass as a sweet smile if Janus didn’t know better. Then, they walked him outside, leaving Remy on clean-up duty for the make-shift security office.

“So, I’m free to go?” Pat asked. His bemused expression edged far too much on the side of amused verses confused for Janus’s taste.

“You are,” Khalid said. “Have fun at the festivities.”

His hands went flapping about. “Oh, you too!” he said. “Well, I guess you’re working, but you can have fun anyway, I’m sure.”

“We’ll do our best,” she said.

He gave her a blinding smile and reached forward to shake her hand enthusiastically. Janus rolled his eyes and looked up at the heavens. “It was nice to meet you!” he said, “and you too, Remus!” He turned to meet Janus’s eyes. “Macy Misa.”

Janus pressed his lips together.

Then, Pat turned and walked away.

“Well, now that we’re done with that,” Khalid said, turning to them. “We have only a few more hours before midnight and we really need to find the time bomb.

“Oh,” Pat called. He’d paused a few yards away and turned back to them. “Thanks for letting me go so easily by the way,” he said, “and just in the Nick,” he winked, “of time too.” Janus narrowed his eyes at him. He smiled back. “Wrist check,” he said holding up his arm to show off the timepiece there. Khalid immediately looked down at her own wrist just to see that the one timepiece that could move through the time lock was no longer there. Pat made a gesture and disappeared.

All three of them stared at the spot he’d been for a long moment.

Janus was the one to speak first. “I want. The yellow. To be erased. From my record.”

Chapter 9

Khalid immediately called everyone back to base.

“What happened?” asked Fred when he and Lena arrived. The tech people were already scrambling to get through to the TPI and get the time lock broken from the outside.

“Remus, Remy, and Khalid got played by Pat or whatever his name is. It certainly isn’t Nick. He was just setting up a joke,” Janus told him.

“Stop being smug,” Remy said. “It’s not a good look for you.”

“Pat is…?” Lena asked.

“They guy who fucked me over in 1923,” Janus said, “and is currently in the middle of fucking us all over because he stole the pin timepiece, and by extrapolation, probably the time bomb too.”

“It will be fine,” said Khalid, “because what he doesn’t know is that timepiece has a tracker on it. Wherever and whenever he went, we’ll have his coordinates.”

“Speaking of,” one of the techies said. “It’s about to break. You might want to hold onto something.” Janus grabbed for a support beam next to him as the techie put a device on the ground in the center of the base. It blinked once, twice, and on the third blink the ground rumbled. There were sounds of panicked yelps outside. The fail safe for the time lock was not nearly as gentle as ending it correctly.

Everything settled after a few moments, and they all straightened themselves out. Janus’s timepiece buzzed to indicate it was now functioning normally. Khalid had returned her usual timepiece to her wrist and now used it to open a display they could all see. “The pin timepiece’s closest time/space coordinates are…” she trailed off. “Right outside?” She frowned. “That’s strange. Why would he still be here?” She turned to march outside, following the coordinates to a trash can. She pulled the pin timepiece out and stared at it. “Fuck,” she said.

“What just happened?” Remy asked.

“He ticked us,” Janus said. “Again.”

“He was stuck in the time lock,” Khalid said. “That’s why he got our attention. He couldn’t leave with the time bomb unless he had the pin timepiece or we broke the time lock. Apparently, he’s smart enough to know that if he took the pin timepiece away from here, we’d probably be able to find him, but he knew we’d break the lock as soon as the pin went missing. So, he must have stashed his own timepiece and went back in time within the time lock to grab it while we were distracted with the past version of him. As soon as the time lock went down, I imagine he left.”

“Probably with the time bomb,” Janus said.

“Probably with the time bomb,” she confirmed.

And everyone knew the only thing worse than a time bomb was a time bomb you didn’t know the location of.

They evacuated after that, of course, and time locked the location once they were out just in case they were wrong, but midnight 3000 struck without thousands of people dying in Brazil, so the time bomb had defiantly been removed from then.

The, they initiated a time travel lockdown for all nonessentials, not willing to let random history students get caught up in an explosion if Pat decided to set the thing off somewhere.

Then, it was a matter of figuring out everything they could about ‘Pat.’ First, they checked the tracker data as Khalid had tagged him with one of the Millennium Bird trackers. It wouldn’t work outside of the zone they’d set up that day, but the record would show his behavior during the time lock after he’d escaped with the pin timepiece.

There had been many little green dots on the map that day as Fred and Lena had actually been doing the job they’d set out to do, but most of those were running around in the south. There had been one green dot, however, that appeared suddenly in the game area about 10 minutes before the time bomb had been stolen.

They could see Janus’s yellow dot almost brush his when he’d been chasing the earlier Pat down, around when he’d lost him briefly. The earlier Pat must have all but handed it off to his future self.

“He doubled back,” Remus commented when they watched the recorded data. It was a ballsy move and one that most people balked at, because there were inherent dangers any time you interacted with yourself from a different point in the timestream. It was ripe for paradoxes. It made everyone at the agency even more worried, because if he was willing to risk that, then what else was he willing to do?

Because of the lockdown of all nonessential time travel, people working for the TPI were not allowed to go home for the night. They were allowed to pick up anyone or anything dependent on them for care like kids and pets if there wasn’t someone in their home time to care for them, but other than that, they were unfortunately all sleeping in their offices for the foreseeable future.

“You are the only tolerable one,” Janus told the cat who upon being let loose in the office by Remus, immediately jumped on Janus’s lap.

“I have literally done nothing to you,” Lena said, but then added. “Yet.”

“You exist. In my space.”

“Can’t we just all get along?” asked Fred. “It’s only been an hour past when we’d usually go home. I went and grabbed milk and I have my giant thing of different flavored hot chocolate under my desk. We can try them all and vote on which is better.”

“Fuck your hot chocolate, Fred,” Janus growled, having been one of the three who had chipped in to buy it for him on his last birthday.

“Don’t go after Fred, jackass,” Lena spat.

“He’s just testy because his boyfriend escaped,” Remus contributed.

Janus’s lips turned down into a frown and he cupped Diesel Fuel’s face. “We agree we’re eating him first, right?” he asked her.

She purred her agreement.

“I’d have it no other way,” Remus replied.

“There is plenty of food,” Fred said, sounding stressed. “In fact, I was thinking we should all chip in on ordering take-out soon. “What does everyone like on pizza?”

“This is not a slumber party, Fred,” Janus pointed out.

“Shut it,” Lena snapped and turned to Fred. “I’m fine with almost everything, except…”

“Bananas and tuna salad!” Remus interrupted.

“…whatever Remus is about to say.”

Janus rolled his eyes as that started a debate about whether or not fruit and/or fish belonged on pizza. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, which was when there was a knock on the door.

He froze when he heard the familiar voice. “Hello, hello,” said Emile, cheerfully. Janus looked up to see Emile standing at the open office door. Shit. Apparently, the man had decided to give up on sending lackeys to come fetch him and had decided to track him down himself when Janus couldn’t even escape without breaking a time lockdown. They met eyes briefly and Janus could see irritation if not anger in his eyes despite his otherwise cheerful expression and tone.

“Janus,” he said when he’d gotten their attention. “I’d like to have dinner with you.” The word choice told Janus everything he needed to know. Usually Emile was careful with how he said things to make sure people knew they had a choice. Typically he’d say something like, “I was wondering if you’d have time to have dinner with me tonight,” or “I’m about to go get food, would you like to come?” Today, there was no choice in the statement.

Janus still dried to dodge anyway. “Uh,” he said. “We were actually about to order pizza.”

“Go ahead,” said Fred kindly. Janus wanted to strangle him. “We can order pizza with olives if you’re not here.”

“I…” said Janus. “Guess, I’ll be going with you.”

“Great!” Emile said. “Let’s go.”

“Oh,” Janus said. “Uh, now?”

“Now,” Emile said a bit of uncharacteristic steel to his tone.

Well, Janus was screwed. He swallowed his nervousness and got to his feet, taking Diesel Fuel with him. He turned to hand her off to Remus with a plea in his eye, but he just got an eyebrow raise in return. Traitor.

Then, he followed Emile out of the office door. “What would you like to eat?” asked Emile.

“Uh,” Janus said. “I don’t know. You asked me to eat, don’t you have any ideas?”

“I don’t actually,” Emile replied. Right.

“…Noddle Bar?” Janus threw out the nearest restaurant he knew.

“The one noodle restaurant? Sure,” Emile answered simply. They walked side by side out of the front doors of the TPI building. Janus actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken these stairs. He usually used his timepiece to get in and out.

The noodle bar was only moderately busy at this time. They were quickly able to find a table near the back and Emile pulled his menu up in front of him. Emile hummed as he flipped through the different displays. “What are you having?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Janus said, only then pulling up the menu himself, but still not quite looking at it.

“What about the fortune noodles,” Emile suggested.

Janus shook his head. “I don’t like those,” he said.

Emile glanced at him through the menu displays. “You used to.” Fortune noodles were a bit cheekily named. They didn’t actually indicate anything about your future. They were just supposed to taste like what you wanted from your future. A grad student might experience a feeling like they’d just aced a paper. A child that they got to stay up an hour later that night. Janus had liked the experience when he was younger, but in recent years, he’d begun to taste the underlying chemicals in the dish until that’s all he could.

“Well,” Emile said lightly, eyes on his menu. “That makes me even more worried for your mental health than I already was because of the almost three years of you avoiding talking to me.”

“No small talk, huh?” Janus asked.

“Forgive me,” Emile said, eyes now focused on Janus, and tone much darker. “How has your life been since I last saw your face 5 months ago during a business meeting and you refused to look me in the eye? Anything interesting happen? Shave your head and let it all regrow? Develop an allergy to peanuts? Join a convent and take an oath of silence that you only just broke today?”

“No,” said Janus quietly into the table.

“Great,” Emile said clipped. “Small talk over. Order your food.” Janus reached up blindly to select the first thing that came up on the food and drink menu as Emile punched something into his own and both menu displays disappeared, meaning there was nothing between their faces anymore. “You know, I was willing to give you a year,” Emile said. “I was willing to let you deal with it on your own because I thought eventually, you’d come talk to me about it, but apparently I was mistaken. The next year, I thought maybe you thought I didn’t want to talk to you, so I subtly made myself available, and you never took me up on the offer. I thought maybe I was just not being clear, and I should make my desire to talk to you more explicit, but as you have been routinely, clearly avoiding me at every single turn, I’ve decided I’ve had enough. So, let’s lay it all on the table. Is it me or do you need help?”

Janus closed his eyes. “It’s not you.”

“Then you need help,” Emile concluded.

Janus shook his head.

“Yes,” Emile snapped. “Whatever this is has gone on far too long.”

Janus stood up and slammed his hand down on the table. “And it’s going to keep going on!” he said. The food popped up at that moment. It appeared Janus had ordered lasagna and bubble tea, and Emile had ordered something with spaghetti and a fizzy drink.

“So, you’re just planning to go on being miserable then?” Emile asked, and Janus wasn’t sure if it was worse or better that he didn’t sound angry anymore.

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Janus slapped his hand down on the “To Go” button and his dinner was insta-wrapped by the table. “Yes,” he said.

“What exactly do you think you’re paying penance for, Janus?” Emile asked.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Janus said, paying for both of their meals with his fingerprint.

“That’s a cop out and you know it,” Emile said. “All you’d have to do is talk to me. Or even just talk to someone else. Please.”

“Just…” Janus said, grabbing his bag of food to avoid looking at him. “Just, leave me be.” He walked out of the noodle shop without another word.

Chapter 10

“And I thought Remus was going to be the most disgusting roommate in this equation,” Lena grumbled. Janus and Lena were apparently the earlier risers in the group as Fred was still curled up around a pillow and Remus was sprawled out under his desk.

Janus flipped her off.

“Protein infused Poptarts and caffeinated orange juice for breakfast?” she asked. “Just eat an energy bar and have a cup of coffee like a normal person.”

He took another pointed bite of his Poptart.

“You’re a horrible roommate. This is why they gave us different partners.”

“Yeah, well you snore, asshole,” Janus said after finishing off his meal.

“I’d tell you to go eat shit, but you already did that once this morning.”

A pillow flew across the room and somehow managed to hit the both of them. “S’op fighting,” Fred mumbled. “It’s sleep time.”

“It’s morning Fred,” Lena said.

“No,” Fred mumbled.

Janus ignored them, turning back to his integration port to continue to keep plugging in phrases of interest, but he kept getting nothing.

“What are you doing?” Lena asked after a few moments of him huffing at his screen reader.

“Trying to do anything that may change our current living arrangements.”

She puffed out an amused breath. “Can I help?”

“Can you see any connection between these words and phrases?” he asked, pulling away his screen reader and tapping at the words he’d typed out.

“Paranoid, tonight, I live to party, comeback, love Bug, BB good, Mandy, Macy Misa, I believe, cool, that’s just the way we roll, burnin’ up,” she said. “What are these?”

“They’re things Pat said when we interrogated that struck me funny,” Janus explained. “I feel like he was saying something more than what he said.”

“Hmm,” she said. “PTI for the first three?”

“Maybe,” Janus agreed, “but what about the rest of it? I feel like I’m missing something.”

15080

“Millennia,” Remus mumbled from under his desk. Janus hadn’t been aware he was awake. “He said something something about it being the only time he could see the change of the millennia.” He turned his head to look at Janus. “Considering he’s a time traveler, that’s definitely a weird thing to say.”

“Millennia,” Janus contemplated. “A different turn of the millennia. Oh no.”

“What?” Lena asked.

Janus sighed, and rubbed his temple. “I know someone who studied the 1700-2200s.”

“Isn’t that good?”

“No,” Janus groaned, “because now I have to go talk to him.” He stood with a sigh and then paused. “How do I even get to Silver Mountains University without my timepiece?”

#study break stories #not writing

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lydia-bell · 4 years ago

Text

The Twelfth Time’s the Charm

Happy TBTP Holidays, @mysugarglidersrox! I wrote you a bit of AU Stragan fluff (mostly). I hope you enjoy it!

[Edit: now with AO3 link!]

The Twelfth Time’s the Charm

Alex finally made it to the front of the line for signings. She'd let everyone else go ahead of her because she wanted to have a bit of fun without worrying that she was holding anyone else up. Handing the hardcover to the author, she said "I'm really looking forward to reading this. The chapter you read was pretty compelling."

"Thank you," he said, giving a small nod of acknowledgement. He was even prettier up close, those bright blue eyes catching and holding her attention.

"So, to whom shall I make this out?"

"Alex Reagan." She waited to see if he would make the connection.

"Is that spelled with..." his voice trailed off. He looked up at her, his brow slightly furrowed. "Alex Reagan. Have we met?"

"No, we never did quite manage it," she replied lightly. Maybe if I'd called a twelfth time."

He actually looked abashed. It was a good look on him. "Of course. The reporter." Then his eyes narrowed a bit and he said, "I hope you aren't still trying to get me to agree to an interview."

"Nope. We wrapped on that story months ago. I just thought it would be fun."

He relaxed then and started to sign her book. "Is 'Reagan' spelled with or without an 'a'?"

"With. It used to be pronounced like the president but I guess my dad's family decided they didn't want the association. It was easier to change the pronunciation than the spelling."

He laughed, signed the book, and handed it back to her.

"I hope you didn't take it personally when I didn't call back, Ms. Reagan. But at the time, I was very much focused on finishing this book, and in any event I'm afraid I've never enjoyed talking with the press."

"It's OK, lots of people don't."

"I presume you were able to find someone else to talk to."

"Oh, sure. Though the whole 'paranormal investigator' well ran a little dry after that. Maybe if you'd returned my calls, we could have done a whole series on it," she teased.

"I'm sure I'm not that fascinating," he demurred.

"Oh, I don't know."

He chuckled. "You have a way with flattery, Ms. Reagan."

"Alex."

"Alex. I haven't had dinner yet. Would you be interested in joining me?"

"I think I'd like that a lot, yeah."

***

Strand—he'd said to call him Richard but she was struggling a bit to adjust—wanted some good, fresh seafood because "it's not the same in Chicago." That was fine with Alex, so they found an oyster bar a couple of blocks from the bookstore. Once they'd placed their orders, and thus run out of obvious small-talk fodder, she wasn’t sure what to say next. She was feeling oddly nervous, like this was a date with stakes instead of a spur-of-the-moment meal with a (granted, hot) former prospective interview subject.

She decided to ease into the conversation by asking about something she knew he would want to talk about.

"So, what inspired you to write your book?"

"I'm trying to do my part to encourage rational thinking in the world, against the tide of all of the forces that seem to be pushing in the opposite direction."

It was really unreasonable, Alex reflected, to be attracted to someone who talked like that all the time. But here she was. "Sure, but I meant more like, why this particular book, and why you?"

"Let's just say that I have experience with," he paused, "family members who have turned to the occult in times of crisis. It didn't provide the answers they were looking for, and it probably prevented them from doing something more useful."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."

"Thank you."

They both fell quiet for a moment as the waiter brought their food. When he'd gone, Richard continued as if he'd never stopped.

"The impulse to turn to paranormal explanations is understandable in some ways. Especially for people who have suffered trauma, or who lack a proper understanding of science and statistics. Other people have a psychological need to feel that they're special, that they have secret knowledge of some hidden aspect of the world. Some people are just looking for a break from the mundane. Of course there are other outlets that for these impulses—things like conspiracy theories or radical political movements, for instance. Either way, if people aren't careful about how they get their needs met, they can become targets. They can delude themselves. I want to prevent that, as much as I can."

"Wow," Alex said. "I guess that's...I don't know, deeper than I expected it to be?" Off his raised eyebrow she added, "That may have come out wrong. I guess I just expected something more along the lines of the videos I've seen you in."

"Ah, yes. Less human nature, more ripping apart the claims of charlatans."

"Something like that, yeah."

"Well," he admitted, "there's some of that too."

Alex laughed.

"Speaking of charlatans," Richard continued, "I certainly hope you found someone to represent the rational point of view on your show."

"We couldn't really find another person with your particular profile, but we did talk to a couple of skeptics. And a woman named Arianna Asadi called me..."

Richard groaned softly.

Alex laughed. "What? She said she heard I'd been calling around to paranormal researchers, and she wanted to make sure I didn't get the wrong idea. She warned me off of them!"

Richard huffed. "Ms. Asadi is an odd case. She purports to be a serious researcher. She even offers very well-founded debunkings of the ghost hunters and so-called psychics who prey on people looking for answers and meaning. And then she publishes books about 'historical hauntings'. I believe she's actually sincere, but it's all very frustrating."

"Well, she thinks highly of you."

"And what makes you say that?"

"That she said she admires your body of work." He actually blushed a little. Alex grinned and continued. "Anyway, you're right about the debunking. She asked who I'd talked to so far, and when I told her, she immediately listed off all these tricks they do to make it seem like lights are going out on their own and things like that. It was amazing, she basically described everything that happened with Emily Dumont and the old psych hospital. I think Dumont must do the same stuff a lot."

"Oh, I assure you, she does."

"See, it could have been you, explaining all this to our listeners," she teased.

"It could. But to be honest, knowing that you'd been talking to people like Dumont and Abruzzi, I wasn't sure what kind of show you were making or whether I wanted to be part of it. And anyway, I needed to focus on my book. I'm trying to reach as wide an audience as possible."

"Well, that episode was only downloaded 100,000 times, so I can see how that might not be a big enough audience."

His eyes widened. "I apologize. To be honest, I have no idea how many people listen to shows like yours. I'm not really familiar with the podcasting medium."

"I'd noticed."

"I shouldn't have assumed."

It was fun having him a bit on on defensive, a bit flustered. "It wasn't very intellectually rigorous of you."

"It wasn't," he agreed.

"It did help that we got a big boost from the mothership—from Pacific Northwest Stories," she admitted. "But yeah, the show's doing pretty well, and we have enough sponsors these days to keep us in plane tickets and free socks, so I have no complaints. Well. I might want to do something a little more substantial at some point. But this is fun."

"So if you were to do something a little more substantial, as you say, what would it be?"

"I don't know. Maybe people who are working on climate change mitigation. Like, we still have to think about reducing emissions, but there are lots of people who've just basically decided that's not going to work or it's not going to be enough and are figuring out how they're going to live in the new climate. It's kind of depressing? But also kind of hopeful. There's a lot of people doing that work around Seattle. A lot of Indigenous people, in particular. I don't think it would be hard to at least get a mini-series out of it."

"That's a big departure from interviewing Emily Dumont."

She laughed. "It is! Don't get me wrong, I definitely think there's room for both kinds of stories in the world. All kinds of stories. But I just feel like I want to branch out a little."

"Well, I hope you get a chance to do that show sometime soon," he said. "It sounds like a subject worthy of your talents."

OK, wow. And he'd said she had a way with flattery. "Thanks. So, um. What about you, what's next for you?" she asked.

"I had to basically put the functions of the Strand Institute on hiatus while I finished the book, so I'll work on getting that running again," he said. "Also, as it happens, I'll probably be back in Seattle a few times in the next few months."

"Oh?"

"Yes, my father lived here before his death. No condolences necessary," he said, pre-empting her, "it was almost 20 years ago now. But there are still some aspects of his estate that need to be dealt with, including the sale of his house."

"Oh, well. I can show you around, if you'd like. When you come back."

"I would like that very much."

The waiter came with the check. Alex started to say something about paying her share but Richard said "Please, allow me. I did invite you to dinner, after all." She had to admit to herself, as she watched the waiter show Richard how to settle the bill on his iPad, it was something of a relief; the prices had been frankly terrifying on a journalist's salary.

As they were walking back to her parking spot, they passed a quiet-looking bar. Richard stopped in front of it.

"Would you like to get a drink?" he asked.

Yes. She took a deep breath. "It sounds nice, but, I don't think that's a good idea. I had that beer with dinner, and it was a while ago so I should be OK, but I have to drive."

"Of course." He hesitated for a moment. "Although, if you don't want to drive home...you don't have to."

"Ah." It wasn't a complete surprise, but—OK, yes, maybe she was stereotyping because of his age and his manner, but he hadn't struck her as a sex-on-the-first-date kind of guy.

She must have come across as pretty unenthusiastic, because he added, "That's not why I paid for dinner."

"I know." And she did. He wasn't really smooth enough to be a manipulator...unless, of course, he was such a good manipulator that he was only faking the bluntness and questionable social graces in order to lure her into a false sense of security.

It didn't seem likely.

Did she want to have sex with him? (Well, yeah.) Did she even like him? Everybody had said he was kind of a prick, and they weren't wrong. But he wasn't just that, either. Maybe it was his obvious passion for his work, or maybe it was just that she'd seldom known anyone quite so confidently, exasperatingly himself—even if that self might be, well, a little stuffy and self-important. He wasn't even a little bit charming but he was somehow still endearing. (He'd also been very respectful to the waitstaff, and that was always a good sign.)

She was pretty sure she liked him. He was a challenge, no doubt—but Alex was never deterred by a challenge. But she had a stupidly early morning tomorrow and also, God, she hadn't worn her pretty underwear or shaved or anything, and it was silly, yes, but she liked to make a good first impression.

And then she imagined saying that out loud and how ridiculous he would find it. "The male libido," she imagined him saying sternly, "isn't deterred by those things. Women are far more concerned about their body hair than men are."

God help her, the thought made her giggle. She suppressed it, though—it didn't seem polite to start laughing right after someone asked you to sleep with them. "I'm very, very tempted," she said. "But it's late, and I have an 8am meeting for some ungodly reason."

"I understand."

"But," she continued, poking him gently in the chest, "I'm going to hold you to that promise to look me up the next time you're in Seattle."

He smiled, probably the warmest smile she'd seen on him all night. He really was very attractive, damn it. "Good."

In a couple of minutes they were back at her car. Neither one of them seemed to be sure what to do next, so she unlocked it, but didn't make a move to get in.

"Do you want me to drive you back to your hotel?"

"What? Oh. No, thank you. I'll be fine." He seemed very distracted all of a sudden, like he was looking past her, or just a bit over her head. She turned around, but there was nothing there. Just deep shadows.

"Everything OK?"

"Of course. I just thought I saw something."

"OK. Well. Good night?"

"Good night." A bit hesitantly, he bent toward her.

He was so tall, she had to almost get on tiptoes to kiss him. It started out light, but they both lingered and it quickly became intense. Not sloppy, do-me-right-here-right-now intense, more like... like there was a lot of feeling under that buttoned-down exterior. They stepped further into each other's space; he was so much bigger than her that his embrace was like being wrapped up in a cloak, and it could have been intimidating but it wasn't, it was warm, it was hot. He ran one hand through her hair and gently cupped the back of her head to pull her closer. Fuck, it was good.

To hell with 8am meetings, she thought. To hell with next time. She deserved some fun.

She pulled away, not far, but far enough to look him in the eye and say, "I think...I think I'd like to take you up on your offer after all."

His hand was still in her hair. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

They got into the car to drive back to his hotel. She fumbled her keys a bit, making them both chuckle in that high-strung way of people who know something's about to happen. As they pulled away, she noticed that Richard was looking back at that same spot.

It was weird—all she could see were shadows.

#the black tapes holiday fic exchange #the black tapes #the black tapes podcast #TBTP

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importantlovecolor · 4 years ago

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Zoids Saga Fuzors

Go to the Zoids Research Facility, and take the Core Active Ion Small from the left Chest, and the Hellcat Data from the right Chest. Go to the Item and Weapon Shop, and take the Emergency Retreat.

Zoids Saga

Zoids Saga Fuzors

Watch Zoids Fuzors

Zoids Saga Fuzors for Nintendo Gameboy Advance/GBA is a RPG game published by Tomy.

Game Boy Advance Zoids Saga: Fuzors. Tags: Zoids View.

Zoids Saga III: Fuzors (sometimes just 'Zoids Saga III' or 'Zoids Saga: Fuzors'), is set in the Zoids: Fuzors fictional world, and follows the actions of 'Will'. A good portion of the storyline parallels the Zoids: Fuzors anime. Similar to Zoids Saga there is one city (Blue City) which the player returns to after each segment of the story.

Zoids Saga

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Zoids Saga Fuzors Info:

Release Date: February 23, 2005 Genre : RPG Publisher: Tomy Region : USA Languages: English Platform : Gameboy Advance Rom Type: .GBA

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Zoids Saga Fuzors

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Alternative Titles

English: Zoids Fuzors

Information

Type:TV

Status: Finished Airing

Premiered:Fall 2004

Producers:Tokyo Kids

Studios: None found, add some

Genres:AdventureAdventure, MechaMecha, Sci-FiSci-Fi, ShounenShounen

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

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26 of 26 episodes seen

slax(All reviews)

21 people found this review helpful

Overall1Story1Animation1Sound1Character1Enjoyment1

Ok, I'm a big Zoids fan, and as such, this review focuses on the differences between the styles of this and the preceding series, rather than an more general overview (I won't use Genesis as an example since that is of a vastly different style). Unfortunately, it is very negative. Firstly, let me start with the Story: Fuzors basically has no story whatsoever for the vast majority of the series. In the final few episodes, a backstory gets fleshed out and some continuity established, but as this only happens very late-on, it feels more like a justification for why the series occurred in the way it did, rather than an actual plot that naturally developed. Furthermore, the story it does eventually manage to establish is rushed, this, along with the generally poor translations, makes it difficult to draw any praise from the story. Now, this brings me to draw parallels with Zoids Zero, which also had a very skimpy plot at best. However, the biggest difference with the two series is that Zero is built around battles and comedy, and as such tries to give the viewer fluid fights and funny lines rather than a deep plot. Fuzors does not, and as such has no excuse for the lack of story. To continue with the story theme, I'll next discuss the Characters: While Zoids shows are not renowned for their characters, the development of the cast is not handled well in Fuzors at all. For instance, in the first episode, the character 'Amy' walks in to Mach Storm's headquarters and appears to anger some of the main characters. What the show doesn't tell you is that Amy is actually a member of Mach Storm herself. This fact makes it very confusing (to say the least) when she shows up unannounced in later episodes. This is probably the best way of describing the problem with the characters in Fuzors, it simply assumes you know who/what everyone/thing is -rather than actually take the time introduce them. This is especially true for the Zoids themselves. Many of the Zoids, such as Arosaurers and Gorhecks are totally new Zoids that fans of the previous series would not know anything about -and yet they appear on screen without any kind of introduction at all. To make matters worse, old Zoids that fans would be familiar with from other series are changed abruptly and without reason. For example, the Blade Liger is depicted in the other series as a very rare (if not unique) Zoid. In the first episode of Fuzors, three of them are shown. Another prominent example is the Fuzors variant of Gunsniper, which are all customised to be the same as Leena's heavily modified (and thus unique) Zoid featured in Zero. No explanation for either of these is ever given. This kind of 'thrust the viewer into the show' serves to confuse new watchers and disenfranchise fans, and is a great detriment to the series. Toward the end of the series, some of the cast's backstory is explained, however this is done in a very rushed manner and fails to justify the terrible job done in the first three-quarters of the series. Next up is the artwork. Well, the most important aspect of a Zoids show is the Zoids themselves, so I'll start with them. The models are all done in 3D, but the style is different to the previous series. The models themselves are very detailed, and try to stick closely to the real toy range, with small things like feathers and antennae being included. While such attention to detail may sound good, this is actually a detriment, as it severs to clutter the screen with needless 'wriggly bits' that only serve to distract the viewer. Furthermore, the models are all done in a very bland color scheme, with everything appearing 'cloudy' and dull when compared to the crisp, bright, colors of the previous series. Compounding this is the fact that most of these included features are simply never used. For example, the Liger Zero Phoenix never fires the bomb or guns that it has on it's back, instead RD usually uses his claws to attack from a distance, which is a big departure from the realism the highly detailed models try to emulate. While this might be excusable if everything in the series were done in the same style of graphics, this is simply not the case. Bullets and explosions are done in conventional anime style and as such stick out like a sore thumb. They just do not blend at all with the Zoids they are fired from or hit. But the most noticeable feature of the animation is the movement of the Zoids. The Zoids move in a very awkward and robotic fashion. All of the Zoids featured are extremely rigid and inflexible, thus their movements seem entirely unnatural and unrealistic. This is especially prevalent when the Zoids 'fall over', wherein they appear to do a backflip on the spot rather than actually collapse or stagger. This is easily the biggest complaint I have with the series, especially when comparing with the extraordinarily fluid animations of Zero. The backgrounds are bland and uninteresting, with very little stand-out features, and as such, the only positive thing I have to say about Fuzor's artwork is the character's design. However, considering that the characters are very unimportant (as they are usually obscured from view inside Zoids) this is largely a moot point. Finally, is the sound. Almost all weapons have high-pitched sounds, regardless of what they are actually shooting. As any mech fan could well appreciate, it sounds a bit ridiculous when super-heavy artillery makes a 'pew' sound. Furthermore, RD's voice actor has a very high-pitched voice, as do most of the supporting cast (such as Sigma and Sweet). As the viewer's ears are bombarded constantly by all these high-pitched sounds, it honestly gets annoying. Other: Well, there is no section for this, but the quality of translation is very poor. The names of Zoids are often mispronounced or downright wrong. Overall: Quite simply Fuzors is a very poorly made anime when taken from the viewpoint of a Zoids fan. The animation is awkward, robotic and dull, the sound effects are annoying and inappropriate, the translations are poor and the story only picks up toward the end of the series, but this simply come along far too late to salvage the series.

26 of 26 episodes seen

sylvanelite(All reviews)

11 people found this review helpful

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This might sound like a harsh thing to say, but this is one of the worst series I've ever seen. The plot is terrible, and the voice actors are outstandingly bad. The fights are poorly strung together and are terrible to look at. This series was cancelled from US airways for good reason. Although it does get better in the latter half, it's not enough to recover from the terrible first half.

26 of 26 episodes seen

Daniel_mugen25(All reviews)

7 people found this review helpful

Overall7Story7Animation7Sound6Character6Enjoyment7

Zoids fuzors, just like Zoids new century, have teams who uses Zoids to battle each other for entertainment purposes in my opinion. It has been a good series especially when their Zoids combine with each other. Unfortunately, the story is a bit cliche. Teams battling each other for no explained reason(I might have missed it in the series though). I have only watched the English dub so far and the voice actors are good. Animation is a bit different from previous Zoids series but then impressive when they combine. All in all, it was a good series.

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quicksilversquared · 5 years ago

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Cookies and Croissants (chapter 1 of 3)

As a superhero, saving the world is standard fare. It's practically expected. But saving one's civilian friend from her best friend's off-target assumptions?

Somehow, that's almost harder.

links in the reblog

Ladybug could only wonder at how in the world she had ended up in this situation, standing on the rooftops of Paris surrounded by a strange combination of surveillance equipment and bakery leftovers, and watching Rena Rouge fangirl in front of a cringing Chat Noir with all of the queasy fascination of someone watching a car crash in slow motion- she didn't want to see it, but she couldn't look away.

How she had gotten here... well, that was something that had been several months in the making, and on a path that had taken more than a few unlikely turns. Maybe not all of them had been well thought-out, but she wouldn't have changed them for anything.

And it had all started with her dad. Her dad, his need to feed everyone who was hungry ... and maybe a bit of a lingering fixation on Marinette's 'confession' to Chat Noir.

If you feed a cat, you'll never get them to leave.

As Marinette had found out several months prior, that applied to cat-themed superheroes, too.

After an evening akuma attack that ended in front of the bakery, Mr. Dupain had offered the exhausted superheroes bakery leftovers. Ladybug had accepted a couple cookies- all the better for not having to sneak them for Tikki later- but Chat Noir had been entranced by the options. Eating everything would have made him sick, though- there was a lot of chocolate and sugar and butter, even for a teenaged boy- and so he had dithered, indecisive.

And then Mr. Dupain had suggested that maybe Chat Noir could come around a couple times a week in the evening and sample from the leftover bakery wares and perhaps even hang out with the family. Ladybug had thought that her partner would gently turn down that second part- after all, every minute they spent in their superhero forms meant another minute taken away from their civilian lives, another minute where they could be found missing, another minute of unexplained absence.

But Chat Noir seemed delighted by the invitation. Twice a week, he showed up and hung out for pastries and Mecha Strike or a movie. That inched up to three times a week after a month and a half, and Marinette started doing her homework with him, too. She had to be careful not to slip up- after all, he was her partner and so she knew more about him than a normal civilian would- but once she got used to it (and once she made sure that the Miracle Box was very thoroughly hidden), everything went smoothly.

Well. Mostly.

Three akuma attacks in oddly close succession that ended up affecting the bakery put both Marinette and Tikki- and the rest of the kwamis under her guard- on high alert. The next time that Chat Noir came over, he seemed twitchy, too, and confessed after ten minutes that he was getting concerned that somehow, Hawkmoth had heard about him coming to the bakery. Maybe it was just a coincidence, of course- after all, the bakery was located in the area of Paris that got hit with the most attacks- but it was just putting them all on edge.

So one evening, they set aside their video games and sat down as a family to come up with a plan that would let the superheroes find Hawkmoth and end the threat for once and for all.

It was simple, really, and in all honesty, the police force should have come up with it ages ago. All they needed was a grid of cameras set up across the city, allowing them to track where the akumas were coming from. Then they could figure out where the lair was, figure out who Hawkmoth was, and finish everything for once and for all. It would be a lot of work, though, and not something that the two main superheroes could feasibly pull off on their own, at least not without sacrificing a lot of sleep.

So they had tapped Carapace and Rena Rouge to help them, since the two of them had the most experience out of their array of superheroes. They were setting themselves up to a long night even with the two extra members of their team, but with every extra person they added to the mission, the possibility of someone talking and Hawkmoth finding out about it and adjusting his strategy rose.

...in retrospect, perhaps it hadn't been the smartest move to tap Rena Rouge if the goal was the information not leaking at all, but they couldn't call in Carapace and not Rena, since Nino would no doubt mention the outing to Alya and she might be sore about not being included. Hopefully Alya could appreciate the importance of the information not getting out at all until Hawkmoth was defeated.

In all honesty, Ladybug admitted to herself as she glanced around at her assembled team and the bags and bags of cameras they had to set up, she probably shouldn't be using her old backup teammates at all. After all, Hawkmoth knew their identities now, and even if this wasn't a battle- even if they were doing their best to not be spotted- having them out and about could result in their families getting targeted. It was fully possible that Hawkmoth hadn't immediately and completely exploited his knowledge of Chloe's identity to go after her family just because they were so famous and well-connected. Alya and Nino's families didn't have that protection.

But Ladybug and Chat Noir had needed more helpers, and she didn't want to put new people on patrol on their own. So they had to stick with their identity-compromised team for now, and just hope against hope that Hawkmoth wouldn't spot them and wouldn't attack Nino and Alya's families.

"Okay, so I made a grid of the part of the city Chat Noir and I decided should be covered," Ladybug told the others, handing out both set-up instructions for the cameras and the maps she had made. It had taken a bit of work to find and download a maps program that she liked and then figure out how it worked to get the grid placed over it, but it had been worth it. "This covers Hawkmoth's usual akumatization range, and shows which direction I thought the cameras should point. This will be the initial set-up, and then once we get a couple weeks of footage, that should be enough to shrink the grid down a bit and hone in on Hawkmoth's lair."

Rena Rouge accepted the paper and glanced over it with a groan. "This is so spread out! We're going to be going all night, and I'm gonna be exhausted. And I have my sisters to babysit tomorrow, too," she added to Carapace with another small groan. "They'll run me over, I know. But I'm happy to help!" she added quickly. "It's just going to be a long night."

Carapace nodded. "Yeah. Getting all of the cameras set up, and making sure that they all work- that's, like, what? Ten, twenty minutes per camera, probably, if you count in travel time between spots, which- well, I'm no math whiz, but with all of the cameras we have..."

"I would have spread things out over a couple nights, but I thought it would be best if we could get this off of the ground right away," Ladybug told them, glancing towards her partner. Her partner, who was digging behind the chimney for something. Ladybug continued regardless. They didn't exactly have much time to waste. "We'll split up in teams and work our way around the city. Hopefully after the first couple cameras, we'll have things down to a science."

Chat Noir nodded, popping out from behind the chimney with a bag in hand. "Yeah! And to help the night go faster, I brought pastries!"

…for some reason, Ladybug was starting to feel the faintest tendril of dread curling in her gut.

"Oh, sweet!" Carapace was up at once, a grin on his face. "Butter and sugar, the best late-night companions! I can buy next time. I know pastries can get expensive really fast."

"Oh, it's no problem," Chat Noir assured him with a grin. "I got these for free, actually, because I have this, uh, friend, and I told her dad that we were doing a stakeout all night, and so he gave me the leftovers from their shop." His smile turned smaller, entirely fond. "She- they're fantastic, really."

In the split second of silence that followed, Ladybug's brain picked up on Chat Noir's wording, that smile, pieced together exactly what conclusion Rena Rouge would draw from that, and strongly considered turning around and banging her head against the nearby chimney because really, what had she done to deserve this?

"She's actually your girlfriend, isn't she?" Rena Rouge demanded, a wide grin spreading across her face. She pointed at Chat Noir. "I can tell from your expression! She totally is!"

"No!" Chat Noir protested, but Ladybug could see the red seeping out from under his mask even in the dim moonlight and she muffled a sigh. Alya wasn't going to let this go, she just knew it. Her friend had convinced herself that the pastries were from Chat Noir's secret girlfriend, based on the world's flimsiest evidence, and now that he had blushed, she wasn't going to be convinced otherwise. "No, we're- we're just friends!"

"Denial!" Rena Rouge sang, trying to snatch the bag out of his fingers. "How very classic. Just 'fess up, you've got a girlfriend and you're trying to hide it!"

"I don't- I don't even understand how you even came to that conclusion!" Chat Noir protested, holding the bag up higher reflexively. "No, she's just a friend that I made in the mask, and we realized that it would be dangerous for me to keep visiting with Hawkmoth still at large after her house got targeted a few times. That's all!"

"You know, you're protesting waaaay too much," Rena Rouge said smugly, leaning right up into Chat Noir's space. "And don't think that I didn't notice that blush, Mr. Just-Friends, and- got it!"

Chat Noir yelped, scrabbling after Rena Rouge as she danced away with the bag. "No, wait-"

"It's from the Tom and Sabine bakery- wait!" Rena stopped dead in her tracks, jabbing a finger into the air. "That means- that means that Chat Noir's mystery girlfriend is Marinette! Oh, that girl has been holding out on me! She didn't tell me a thing! Oh my god I cannot believe this I've been trying to set her up with Adrien for forever and she's been dating you and- I can't believe that she didn't say anything! I'm going to end her-"

Ladybug wondered if it would be possible for her to move to, say, Antarctica. She was going to kill Alya. Could she not have spilled that particular secret to Chat Noir? Sure, maybe Marinette wasn't exactly the most subtle person in the world about her crush, but she had taken down most of her Adrien-focused posters after he had seemed to be more interested in Kagami, so it was possible that he hadn't figured it out on his own.

Also, it was so not cool that Alya was telling someone else about Marinette's crush when she had promised not to.

Next to her, Chat Noir had blanched, wincing as Rena Rouge ranted on. He knew as well as she did who was behind Rena Rouge's mask now, after Chloe's little expedition to the dark side, so he knew exactly what his little flub had gotten Marinette into.

Well. Time for some damage control, it seemed.

"And how are you going to explain knowing about anything in the first place in order to interrogate her?" Ladybug asked Rena Rouge, crossing her arms as she leaned back against the nearby chimney. "Because as I see it, there's no way to explain that away. If there's anything going on in the first place, which Chat Noir has already said there's not."

"Well, maybe her parents-" Rena Rouge started, ignoring the last bit of Ladybug's comment, but Carapace shook his head.

"Her parents would never tell anyone if she asked them not to, you know that," Carapace told her. "Admit it, there's no way to ask her about it unless you want her to figure out that you're Rena, because I just know that this dude is going to tell her that he told us." He jutted a finger at Chat Noir, who was still spluttering.

"Well now he will, because you said that!"

"I'm still not dating her!" Chat Noir insisted, properly red now. "I'm not, she is seriously just a friend-"

Rena Rouge just wagged a finger at him. "Deny all you want, but I saw the clues there and you can't fool me! I'm a reporter, remember? I catch clues that other people don't, even if you're trying to hide them!"

Ladybug hastily stopped herself from choking on her laughter. Right, Alya was totally super-observant. That was why she hadn't picked up on everything that was wrong with Lila and her stories yet. Or caught on to the fact that her best friend was Ladybug.

"No, seriously-"

"Okay, let's divide up the pastries then, one bag for each pair," Ladybug said loudly over Chat Noir. As much as she really didn't want Alya thinking that she- well, Marinette- was dating Chat Noir, arguing with Alya wasn't going to get them anywhere. It would probably make Alya even more convinced, actually, if Marinette's experience with trying to convince Alya that Lila was a big fat liar was anything to go by. Ignoring her entirely in favor of not reacting to her comments was far more likely to get results. "Rena, hand over the bag, please."

Smirking widely, Rena Rouge did just that. Chat Noir pulled a second bag out from inside of the larger one- apparently he had come prepared, smart kitty- and handed it over, then retreated to Ladybug's side with the larger bag.

"Okay, so I've color-coded which spots each team will take," Ladybug told her teammates, gesturing to the map in her hand. "One person installs, the other keeps watch. I know we want to go fast, but we can't take any risks. No drawing attention to yourself, either- keep hidden, no pictures. We can't have Hawkmoth catch on and adjust his location."

Rena Rouge saluted, cheeky smile in place. "Got it, boss!"

Ladybug sent her a Look. Carapace sighed and stepped in. "Right, we'll be careful. No tricks or showing off, I promise."

"Thank you."

"Marinette is absolutely going to kill me," Chat Noir groaned as Rena Rouge and Carapace dashed off with their bag. "Rena's her best friend, and when she thinks she has a scoop she never lets go. Never."

Ladybug winced, nodding. She could just see it now, her best friend leaning over into her space whenever the teachers weren't looking, dropping heavy-handed hints about dates and dating in a not-so-subtle attempt to get Marinette to slip up and admit that she was dating someone, since Alya wouldn't be able to accuse her of keeping her 'relationship' with Chat Noir secret without admitting to how she got the idea in her head in the first place. After that hypothetical slip, Alya would be relentless as she tried to get Marinette to then tell her who the secret boyfriend was, at which point she could then interrogate Marinette about what Chat Noir was like outside of battle, if she knew his secret identity, if Alya could interview him.

Even though Marinette wasn't dating Chat Noir, it was still going to be absolutely infuriating to have to deal with. She would have to do some damage control on her end, too, letting her parents know about Alya's assumption and making sure that her dad knew that he was not, under any circumstances, to make any jokes or say anything that would egg Alya along. How she would explain the whole situation and how she knew about it without giving away any secret identities, she didn't know, but if nothing else her time as a superhero had made her better at coming up with excuses.

Well. Sometimes she was better. Sometimes panic took over her common sense and she ended up blurting the first thing that came to mind, the rest of her brain already focused on something else.

"I don't even understand how she got girlfriend out of that," Chat Noir complained as he scooped up their share of the camera bags so that they could head for their first point. "Like, all I was doing was talking about how I got pastries from a friend's family and how nice it was for them to give us their leftovers, and the next thing I know, Rena's off with her theory."

"It was the way you said 'friend'," Ladybug informed him. "She was reading too far into your hesitation, and then you were smiling at the thought of your friend, and you mentioned the friend was a she."

Chat Noir whined. "But that's nothing, though! Doesn't everyone smile when they think about their friends? Unless they're fighting, I suppose, but the rest of the time?"

Ladybug shrugged the best she could as they swung through the air. "I didn't say that it had to make sense, just that that's how she was thinking."

"I thought that Alya wanted to be an investigative reporter, not a tabloid reporter," Chat Noir grumbled. "That kind of thinking seems more in line with the latter, not the former."

Ladybug hastily hid another grin. A lot of Alya's questions could fit better into tabloid thinking, honestly, and even more of her posts on the Ladyblog. Otherwise, there would be a whole lot fewer speculative posts about Ladybug and Chat Noir as civilians and a lot more posts looking into whatever clues they might have about Hawkmoth's identity. Still, they were still young, and so it was perhaps a little unfair to judge too much. "Don't let her hear you say that. She will end you."

"Oh, I know she will." They landed in tandem, Chat Noir starting to set up their first camera while Ladybug kept watch. The rooftop was quiet, just like she had hoped- their grid had gotten disrupted by the Grand Paris, because the chance of someone seeing them was way too high unless they waited until crazy late- and it wasn't too hard to find a spot to attach the camera, something that would have a good vantage point without being overly easy to spot in case a security guard came up.

Hopefully Rena Rouge and Carapace would take all of that into consideration. It was entirely possible that Rena would be too distracted by her 'scoop' to really give as much thought as usual to what she was doing.

"I did have a thought about the whole picking new holders thing," Chat Noir told her as he set up the camera, his fingers flying, and Ladybug jolted out of her thoughts to give him her full attention. "Hawkmoth knows who our current people are because they transformed into their normal outfits when they were under Miracle Queen's spell. But what if they just mixed up their transformations? It would have to be big changes, because otherwise that could tip them off, and maybe they would have to change hair color or something, too, but…"

"It could work," Ladybug agreed at once, happy with both the change of subject and the suggestion. She really liked that idea, actually. There were only so many people that she knew and thought could be good fighters, and about the last thing that she wanted to do right now was pick out and train in completely new superheroes, especially with Mayura showing up to fights more and more often. "New transformations, new names. We might want to re-introduce the 'new' superheroes gradually, though, or Hawkmoth could get suspicious. After all, it should be hard to find and screen new superheroes that we can trust, so having a bunch of 'new' holders all at once could be really unrealistic."

"Like keep some of the old ones for a bit, then have then 'swap out' for the 'new' ones," Chat Noir filled in. He grinned at her. "Nice thought."

"But definitely no more Chloe," Ladybug finished. Then she made a face. "And no Lila, either. I heard that Alya was talking about how good of a holder Lila might be, and…"

Chat Noir's face screwed up in disgust. "Oh god no."

"We might have to do a team briefing at some point and say no helping Lila at all, because she fakes injuries all the time to get help and take our attention away from the fight," Ladybug offered after a pause. She watched Chat Noir tweak one last wire, then check the camera before giving her a thumbs-up. They gathered up their bags, then made a beeline for the next spot before picking up the conversation right where they left off. "It'll sound bad, probably, but I don't want to risk Lila trying to steal a newbie's Miraculous."

Chat Noir looked startled. "You think she would?- actually, no, don't answer that, she would totally jump at the chance to get magic powers," he corrected himself before Ladybug could say anything. "And I don't want her anywhere near magic powers. She already gets akumatized enough, and the thought of her always having access to superpowers..."

Both of them shuddered.

"Well, with any luck, we'll take Hawkmoth down soon and Lila won't have access to any powers," Ladybug said after another minute. Chat Noir was finishing up with this camera, doing one more test to make sure it was running before they moved again. "Her or any other bully in the city."

Chat Noir grinned. "Yeah. I honestly can't wait."

A week and a half later, Ladybug and Chat Noir got word from the police chief that the cameras had picked up enough butterflies to tighten their camera grid, which meant another late-night stakeout. Once again, Mr. Dupain and Mrs. Cheng insisted on sending bakery leftovers with Chat Noir, and he accepted the bag and went on his way with a wince.

This really wasn't going to do anything to convince Rena Rouge that he wasn't dating Marinette.

"I owe Marinette so many apologies already for this past week," Chat Noir told Ladybug when they met up. Behind her, he could see Rena Rouge and Carapace, plus Ryuko, a new Snake, and Chiron, who had joined them in a battle earlier that week. Clearly Ladybug had realized that there would be more work involved during this patrol, since they first had to gather up all of the cameras in order to be able to set them up in the slightly tighter grid. "Alya's been dropping hints nonstop to try to get her to admit that she's been secretly dating me. And now I have treats again, and she's going to take that as confirmation that I am dating Marinette and her parents are just trying to spoil her boyfriend, because that's just how her parents are."

Ladybug nodded, glancing over her shoulder. "Yeah, honestly? That's the least of your concerns. Alya spotted you running over to Marinette's house one evening with a giant blanket under your arm, so now she thinks that you were staying over."

Chat Noir spluttered, feeling himself turning even redder. How had Alya seen that?! "No! No, no, we were having movie night and I love curling up in a huge pile of blankets, so I brought one of my own and then one as a gift because I like taking naps over there in a huge blanket pile and I just wanted to expand Marinette's collection, I wasn't-"

Ladybug was giggling.

"Stop laughing," Chat Noir whined. "I swear, you're just as bad as Mari is. She'll offer up her blankets and pillows so that I can have a 'cat-nap in the sun', as if I'm an actual cat and not just a cat-themed superhero, and then offer me catnip tea-"

"But do you take the blankets and the naps and the tea?"

Chat Noir sighed. Something told him that Ladybug somehow already knew the answer. "...yes."

"Ah-hah, Chat Noir! Guess what I saw this week?"

Chat Noir cast a save-me look at Ladybug, then threw in some kitten eyes for good measure. His partner was unmoved.

...that was probably for good reason, honestly. He had gotten himself into this whole thing with his stomach- after all, while he tended to go to the Dupain-Cheng bakery mostly for the company now, since they gave him far more attention than his own father, he had started coming over largely because of the promise of leftover bakery treats- and now he had to get himself out.

Rena Rouge was oozing smugness as she sauntered towards him, the rest of the group watching as she did. "I saw someone visiting his girlfriend late in the evening. And that someone was carrying blankets with him- did you have a sleepover?"

"No!" Chat Noir denied at once, because that wasn't what had gone on, not at all, and seriously, how had Alya even seen that? "We were having movie night and I wanted to be comfortable!"

….from the way Rena lit up, that hadn't been the right thing to say.

"Oooh, he admits to having a date night!" Rena Rouge exclaimed, clearly delighted. "That's so cute!"

"No, it was a family movie night that I got invited to join and her parents were there!" Chat Noir protested, but he could already feel the conversation spiraling out of his control. Alya- Rena- was only going to hear what she wanted to hear, that much was obvious.

Also, the chortling kind of gave away the fact that his protests meant nothing to her.

"Oh, I know how that goes," Rena Rouge told him wisely, and Chat Noir only just managed to avoid her familiar elbow to his ribs. "The parents were there to keep things from getting too spicy!"

"No!" Chat Noir insisted, even though it was completely futile. He understood now what Marinette had muttered earlier in the week, about how Alya had a bulldozer personality. She just didn't stop.

"Your blush says otherwise!" Rena Rouge crowed, and Chat Noir cursed his burning cheeks. "Hah, I knew it-"

"He's blushing because you're insinuating that he's getting intimate with someone he's told you he's just friends with," Ladybug cut in with a long-suffering sigh, and Chat Noir almost melted with relief. If Rena had kept talking, he wasn't sure how he would be able to look Marinette in the eye when he went in for his regular visit tomorrow, or even at school on Monday. "And if you keep pestering him about it when he's already told you that there isn't a relationship beyond a friendship there, then maybe I'll tap someone else to help out in your place."

Rena went very, very still at that, and then took one careful step back away from Chat Noir. Behind her, Carapace's eyes were huge, and the other three superheroes had paused in their conversation to look over, too.

….well. Clearly all of them would think twice now about crossing Ladybug.

"Now, let's not waste any more time talking, since I know some people here can't sleep in tomorrow morning and we don't want to stay out forever," Ladybug continued, her flat tone vanishing in an instant and immediately getting replaced by something far more cheery. The difference was jarring, and Chat Noir couldn't blame all of the temporary heroes for taking a wary step back. "I've already given out maps of which teams have to collect which cameras and where you'll put them. A couple cameras will stay in place, but they have to be checked to make sure that they aren't running low on battery or anything."

Everyone nodded.

"And I have pastries," Chat Noir offered, because he really couldn't eat all of them on his own. "I just need to sort them so that we have three bags instead of two, because I didn't know that we would have more people."

"I'll help!" the Snake offered, pushing jet-black hair out of his face. Luka had apparently gone for non-colored hair and a completely different hairstyle with his new transformation, and it was a little unsettling. "Uh, do we need a third bag too, or…?"

With Cobra's help, it took no time at all for them to divvy up the treats, and then Rena Rouge and Carapace were off like a shot. The others lingered, and Ladybug raised an eyebrow at them. "Do you have a question?"

"Yeah, uh- what was that earlier?" Cobra asked, clearly nervous about asking. "If you don't mind us asking."

"Rena Rouge was making a mountain out of a molehill and wouldn't drop the topic," Ladybug told them with a sigh. "If she tries telling you anything about Chat Noir having a girlfriend, it's not true. She just took some stuff out of context and won't listen to anything we say to the contrary."

Ryuko let out a sigh. "I know people like that in my normal life. Exhausting, aren't they?"

"It can be frustrating," Ladybug agreed. "Hopefully she'll learn to be better soon, though, and I think I got her to drop it for now. So let's get going, team! Those cameras won't move themselves!"

As their group scattered, Chat Noir could only hope that Ladybug was right.

#Miraculous Ladybug #My writing #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #cookies and croissants

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