#first step to reviving this dead blog: A NEW NAME

[creativeashproductions]

Constellations // Wally Clark

IN WHICH: reader is a secret ghost at Split River High School attached to the roof where Wally stumbles onto for solitude. With the new arrival of Maddie Nears a year later a secret comes out.

Warnings: Swearing, talk of a undisclosed medical condition, divorce, angst, and fluff

Words: 2.4k

A/N: Of course it’s a ghost show that revives this blog of writing. Am I surprised? No. Is Julie? Definitely not.

Masterlist

You’d have never anticipated the sound of Luke Bryan’s Country Girl being an okay soundtrack to watching the stars. But you’d also never expected discovering the afterlife so soon. Occasionally, you would hear a mixture of the living and the dead on the ground or through an open window, but you typically stayed on the roof.

It had been the hangout spot for the volleyball team when you were alive. The championship game had been the last time a living foot, other than maintenance, had stepped on this roof.

Most of the team had graduated, and the broken doors that couldn’t hold up against the wind were changed. So now it was only you. Reliving the excitement and stupid teenage decisions. And avoiding Mr. Martin and his afterlife support group because he was unsettling, to say the least.

 “This spot taken?” Your head lolled to the side, finding a fellow dead jock standing above you.

Wally Clark had discovered you on the fifteenth anniversary of his father’s not coming to the Homecoming game. He’d wanted a quiet place and one where Janet wouldn’t follow.

2022 Day After Homecoming Game

The door slammed from the stairwell slammed open, and the muffled sound of sniffling could be heard. Then, the shuffling of sneakers came to an abrupt stop.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Your eyes left the book in your hands to the tall teen towering over you. One of the longer-term ghosts residing at Split River High School.

 “I-I didn’t know anyone used the roof. Are you new?” 

“Nope. Been residing in the afterlife awhile now.” You responded, leaning against the roof’s edge, “Proceed for whatever you were here for.”

Whatever emotional breakdown he was about to have ceased in favour of plopping right down beside you. His head shifting more in your peripheral. He froze when your fingers stopped moving in page-turning.

“Oh, sorry.” He leaned away sheepishly, “Am I annoying you?”

Your brows furrowed, “I’ve read the book a few times. So what brings you to my humble death place.”

“You died up here? Wouldn’t we have heard about-?”

“I didn’t die up here.” You interrupted him to shift to face him fully, “You’re the guy the stadium is named after, right?”

“Wally Clark.” The ghost said, holding his hand out. You exchanged your name in response. Wally slowly repeated your name as if savouring it.

“So seriously, are you okay? You were crying-“

“I died on the football field in 1984. Last night was the first time my dad wasn’t there.” Wally breathed, tilting his head to stare at the sky, “It really hits home that time is going by, and I’m standing still.”

You nudged his knee with your own, “I’m sorry about that. You’re welcome to hang out here to get away.”

“That’d be nice. I feel like all the ghosts expect me to be the outgoing, always happy guy.”

“How was the dance?” You asked as Wally settled on the ground beside you. The ends of his white bowtie hung loosely, and his suit jacket draped across his lap.

“It’s alright. Could have been better.” He spoke, dropping his arm around your shoulders to tug you into his side, “Simon persuaded the DJ to play a couple real hits. One day I’m gonna convince you to go with me.”

Your lips twitched. It was a pastime of Wally’s trying to get you to join in with everyone, especially with the whole drama with the new girl. Thankfully he understood and respected your decision to keep away.

You hadn’t spent years in secret from the support group for no reason. Instead, you existed peacefully in their obliviousness on the roof.

“Nah, I much prefer spending time up here.” You grinned, pressing a kiss to his cheek, “Maddie settling in?”

“She’s adjusting as well as she can. Rhonda’s warming up to her. The whole thing she had with Simon is nuts still.”

Maddie Nears, aka the newbie, had shown up suddenly in the afterlife with no memory of her death. Or the events leading up. The pool of suspects is deep, and the desperation to be found alive is strong. 

As he relayed the new development, you tried to think of anything but what you had done today. How do you tell your dead boyfriend something that makes Maddie and Simon’s communication seems like child’s play?

“-What about your day?” Wally questioned, moving so you’re leaning your back against his chest. 

You sighed happily when his arms came to wrap around your shoulders and press his lips to your head. 

“I snuck down to the lost and found for a new book. Mina left a couple things for me too.” 

The friendship you had with the ghost of the stagehand mind boggled Wally. Mina hadn’t left the theatre since the stage light fell on her in the late ’80s. She was eccentric, to say the least, but the only ghost other than Wally that knew about you.

“How? She always screams at us.” Wally chuckled, “Maddie’s the first that cracked through.”

“I got her a script for a production she loves and let her direct me on her birthday.” You hummed, crossing your ankles. Your eyes flinched open in perfect sync with Wally’s tensing up.

“How did you get a script-“Wally trailed off, staring at the stars twinkling under the night sky, “Whoa, wait.”

Wally’s mind flickered to the conversation with Maddie after talking with Mina.

“There’s another ghost. Mina mentioned something about me not being the first ghost outlier. That me talking to Simon isn’t earth shattering.”

Wally’s eyes swept from Ursa Major to your e/c eyes, refusing to lock with his dark brown.

“Can you talk to the living?” Wally demanded, shifting away. The space he created cracks your heart more.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Maddie’s the only one. I can just…sorta leave the school grounds?” You trailed off with a wince. The betrayal is a wicked shattering force to your bubble with the former football player.

“…you can leave the school? And not be slammed back to where you died?!” Wally’s fists went straight into his dark strands. The hair being tugged under his stress.

“Because I didn’t technically die here. I had a health condition and was declared clinically dead a few times. So, wherever my heart stopped, and I escaped, that death destination is a place where I could go. It hurts.”

Wally scoffed, blinking, “We spent the last year, and you kept that a secret. You never told me anything about how you died or this huge thing for over a year. I’ve told you everything.”

Your lips parted to respond, but the door was already slamming behind Wally on his descent back into the building. His long legs eating up half the stairwell by the time you’d opened the door.

“Wally! Wally, wait!” You shouted, sprinting down the stairs, “I swear I was going to tell you!”

The expression on his face was enough to freeze you on the last step, “Don’t you have another place to haunt.”

Your mouth dropped open, watching him disappear in the sea of living students still on school grounds. Your eyes find the blue irises of Maddie Nears. Surprise lighting up in her gaze. Your expression twisted before turning on your heel to flee the area.

The last thing you wanted was to talk with the girl you were assigned to show around on her first day. Stupid school tradition pairing a senior with a freshman.

“Hey!”

Maddie popped around the corner to a dead end where you were nowhere to be found. Instead, you’d slipped into a space where you popped up in a different area of Split River with a sheer scream at the pain.

The fight with Wally kept you from returning to the school grounds. You didn’t know a particular ghost was spending hours on the roof anxiously waiting for you. Instead, you were watching your half-sister playing with her Barbie doll in the backyard of your childhood home.

Your arms tugged your legs to your chest. You rarely visited your family home since you watched the paramedics had arrived at 3am four years ago to remove your corpse from the house. 

“Ava!” 

Your head watched the little girl with piggy tails perk up, hearing your shared father’s voice. Your eyes take in the person you miss most in the world. It always hurt seeing the dimness your death had caused in his eyes.

The streaks of grey in his hair and beard showed the grief of losing you had caused. The guilt he barely masked from your sister. 

“Daddy!” Ava beamed, diving into his arms, “Are we taking Sissy flowers?”

Your lip quivered, hearing the adoration coating each word Ava spoke with that lisp. Speech therapy and growing up making the lisp less pronounced. Ava had barely been two when you died. 

The product of your father finding love again with a wonderful person who loved you and happily stepped into a parent role. You’d lucked out with getting a really great step-parent and a half-sister but a shitty hand for health.

“Absolutely. Do you think Sissy would like daisies this time?” Your grin grew, listening to Ava burst into excitement. 

You watched as the car disappeared around the corner before entering the house. Your room barely had any dust from Riley’s insistence on keeping it clean. Sometimes Ava would toddle in with a toy and curl in your bed to sleep.

Your clothing is still hung in the closet, your computer on your desk and all your pictures on the corkboard. Your phone was already safely tucked in your pocket with the charging cord in your backpack from the first visit back to the house.

The last time you visited your home was Ava’s birthday a few months ago. Long enough, the air freshener in your room had changed to the scent you loved during springtime. So it was time to rotate out a few items of clothing you wore. 

Your eyes lingered on the picture of your volleyball team wearing matching homemade t-shirts. A year after you died, they got together for a volleyball charity event in your name. Last you heard, two of them had become nurses, and one was on the career path to research your condition.

The following photo was of your mom holding you in her arms with a beaming grin matching yours. You hoped the move to Hawaii brought that smile back. You hoped Matthew was everything she deserved. You hoped she learnt how to live life again. 

“I miss you.” You murmured, pressing your fingers against her smiling face. 

The tears obscured your vision and the pacing form of your boyfriend when you opened the rooftop door. Your breathing gasping when his arms wrapped tight around your body.

“I am so sorry.” Wally mumbled in the crook of your neck, “Where were you? I’ve been up here for the last three days.”

“I went home.” You whispered, pressing your forehead to his chest, “I-I don’t leave often. It hurts when I leave a place I died, like the universe or some bullshit forgets this isn’t the only place I died. So it’s like I’m gonna be spit out back in my death place here before I’m in my destination.”

You barely noticed when Wally tugged you to sit in the same spot he first met and talked to you. The roof’s gravel gives the feeling of digging in your jeans; you gave up trying to explain the metaphysical world a year after your death. Instead, Wally listened as you opened up the pieces of yourself you had kept to yourself.

“I was born healthy and lived healthily for a few years before I started getting sick. It broke my parents’ hearts. By the time I was sixteen, I had spent half my life in hospitals and doctors’ offices. Promises of working treatments and possibly experimental trials.” Your gaze stared off into the distance, “It was just noise by the time I graduated. I knew my body had a couple more miles before it would give out.”

“How are you….”

“I collapsed in the gym. I was clinically dead for a minute, but it was enough for this school to be a death destination. The mall once, the hospital twice, and the talk of transplants came around. Finally, I died in my backyard. It was late, and I was alone outside.”

You vividly remembered screaming beside your corpse. Sobbing when you heard your dad break down, cradling you in his arms. Him calling you your childhood nickname and the one you heard in home videos of ‘baby girl’.

“That’s why you love the roof so much. You died watching the stars.” Wally whispered, tilting his head to kiss your temple. His fingers toying with the sweater with the volleyball team logo.

“I did.” You chuckled, “I have a little sister named Ava. She’s five now. She has minimal memories of me, but her favourite thing is bringing flowers to my grave. This past visit was daisies. My dad remarried when I was in middle school, and my mom a couple years before I died.”

“Your parents still live in Split River?”

“My dad and Riley live in my childhood home with Ava. I think they’re talking about maybe having another baby. My mom took my death the worst. Her older brother died in 1995 with his band members. My mom moved to Hawaii with her husband. Split River had too many memories for her. So when Matt was offered a job there, they left.”

“Ava.” Wally hummed, “I like that name.”

“Maddie knew me.” You offered after laying with Wally for a while in comfortable silence. His fingers draw shapes on your bare back under the sweater. His fingers briefly halted before moving again, “When you were alive, did Split River do this thing where a senior was paired with a freshman?”

“Oh yeah. I got paired up with this insanely smart guy. He went on to found this hugely popular website like that Facebook you showed me.”

“Myspace? You got paired with one of the founders?” You spoke, blinking at his grin, “Well, when I was a senior, I got paired with Maddie. Before her dad died, he worked with mine. So, I knew her at work BBQs.”

“Speaking about Maddie…do you want to re-meet her and meet my friends?”

Your eyes narrowed, “This is dues for keeping the secret.”

“Oh, 100%. Secret stays between us, but yeah, you’re definitely meeting my friends. You should check out the support group, Mr. M isn't too bad.”

Tag List:

@websterssrss

[blacklegsanjiii]

warlord!sanji started off so fluffy T_T now it is making me cry. oh well suffering is as tasty as laughter :)

to continue the angst- i recently read a fic where sanji got abducted by germa and essentially turned into the winter soldier, brainwashing style, and it broke me, so ofc im going to spread the pain! judge fucks up big time by deciding to finally get some use out of his failure and arranges to have his remains, in the aftermath of a successful execution, to be brought back, revived, and altered into his mindwiped weapon. strawhats+warlords find out months later, when reiju, unable to disobey but desperate to save her brother, arranges things to get sanji a mission that happens to have him run across both of his families. they dont recognize him at first, just on guard by the raid suit.

but mihawk has haki. mihawk can recognize his son, even after everything thats been done to him.

they call after him--he doesnt recognize them, doesnt even recognize his own name, he flees after only a moment of hesitation, and. well. germa is going to burn.

ofc they get sanji back with the power of familial love and perhaps vegapunk threatened into finding a cure but before that there is bound to be a lot of angst as both crew and warlords struggle with a dehumanized sanji, trying not to hurt him when he is ordered to kill them. hahaha i feel very evil right now :')

gosh this got long but this is what your au has done to me you ought to be very proud <3

So if you're the same anon I showed my friend who got me into OP your last ask and they were like "this was supposed to be a happy blog, what the fuck?" And I explained we all like sticking Sanji in a blender to see what happens. I'm also horrible at names so you may pick one! It's long.

Gods okay, so the execution is successful and the warlords are waging war and the Strawhats and Jinbei are going about their new normal. Maybe they all get wrapped up in one of Luffy's plots like usual when Mihawk looks around and Boa questions him and he says he thought he felt Sanji with his haki. He shrugs it off because Sanji is dead and they're all grieving still so it just has to be that. It has to be that, it has to be. But then they see the black suit with a big yellow 3 on it and the '66' for Germa on it and there is no mistaking that haki, that is Sanji, but he has black hair, his blue eyes behind the dark glasses are empty.

Boa steps forward and reaches a hand out but the Sanji disappears and so does his haki signature. Mihawk yells but nothing happens. Sanji is gone. Doflamingo strings around but his haki is nothing compared to Mihawk's or Jinbei's and he's gone. Such begins the search for Sanji. They search for weeks before they find him again.

When they do he's alone again and it's just the four warlords. The Strawhats continuing their journey without them. Sanji looks at them and Doflamingo strings him up before he can get away. Boa rushes forward to hold Sanji's face in her hands and try to calm their son down who is struggling against the strings making him a puppet. She coos and strokes his hair as the others rush forward and join in trying to calm him down which only makes him more agitated and they eventually knock him out and get him on a ship and sail off. Fuck Germa that's their kid and they will not lose him again.

They get him to an island Crocodile has procured somehow and set up operations there to start getting Sanji over whatever...this is. They also call the Strawhats to let them know they have Sanji and where they are. Boa tosses the Germa suit into the ocean and Mihawk gets him in some of his clothes which are too large for Sanji still. Crocodile sets up some tents and Doflamingo helps by setting a makeshift kitchen because he's pretty sure that's how they're going to get the kid back.

Crocodile accidentally brings up killing as he talks on the denden to baroque and is suddenly attacked by his son who was sitting with him staring into space. Croc is trying not to hurt the kid, he's not but fuck man hitting his son in the face with his hook did nothing. The others come to help and get Sanji calmed down. It happens again when Boa simply asks what she should bring back and what Sanji would like to wear. Sanji's hands around her throat are shocking because Sanji doesn't use his hands and Mihawk wraps his arms tightly around Sanji and wrestles him to the ground. The one thing they weren't expecting was the total meltdown of screaming and clawing at his own face when Doflamingo wrapped Sanji in a scarf and it covered his mouth and nose before Doffy could adjust it.

Mihawk who simply doesn't talk a lot pulls out a stack of children's books and reads to Sanji. As do the others and Doffy is very uncomfortable because that's not what he was doing with Sanji. Sanji would be running and swimming and fighting baby 5 and dodging all her weapons. Would practice his haki and learn the foulest of language. None of them knew how to be soft until Sanji and so having to go back to a softness that has been almost forgotten is strange and rough.

Months later and lots of fights and bruises and broken bones and cuts, Sanji's skin is no longer metal, his hair is almost all blond again and he is talking again. No where near as foul as he once was but he is talking. He's cooking with all his present parents so they deem him well enough to finish with his crew. So they take him to his crew where he is weary around them.

Luffy is so excited to see Sanji, as is the crew but it's Luffy. He is, was?, Sanji's boyfriend. He loves Sanji and Jinbei is also excited and Boa is explaining to everyone they think they got all of the trigger words and he's mostly back to normal. What they've been doing. Luffy just rubber bands to Sanji and kisses his cheek and just starts talking about how the crew and he missed him. Sanji is blinking at him as Zoro and Robin step forward to intervene if need be, but it's fine.

They leave with nods and handshakes to Jinbei and a hug from Boa to Jinbei and Luffy. Another few months later the other warlords get a picture of Sanji, back to normal, smiling and holding Luffy who is planting a big kiss to Sanji's cheek. Zoro is using the opportunity to steal sake in the background of the photo but his face is stupidly fond of the two idiots in the foreground.

[ryuzatodraws-backup]

Masterpost

Gerard Deities

Anon idk if this is what you want lol but I decided to make a huge masterpost as a reference.I may or may not remember what I wrote in my last post in my last blog tho. So this post will be updated if I have extras.

These will be the Gerard looks that I interpreted based on how I insert them into my own Ghost universe. These looks are based on Gerard’s costume while he’s on tour during MCR Return.

(Disclaimer : I expand them individually as a character of their own and not as Gerard Way himself. You can see I didn’t use his name in these characters except for the Jean de Arc look; which the character interacting with him didn’t call him by name. If you have an idea on what I should call him, let me know!)

Lets start with our beloved, The Secretary

Origin : Uknown.

First discovered when The Director steps into office one day and notices how his secretary is bleeding and well…appears to be dead but working at the same time as if nothing was wrong. The Director concluded that something happened to them that renders their current secretary’s body to be inhabited by something out of this world.

Their purpose? to type and database everything that is happening in the clergy in the present and also in the future. The Secretary is almost like a storyteller in a way that is capable of dictating or prophesizing what the future will turn out to be.

They’re one of the powerful deities for their ability to predict the future.

The Nurse

First appearance: when The Secretary brought in The Director’s dead body to be revived. ( see the series https://archiveofourown.org/series/3731701 )

Origin : they have been here since Primo’s time. Responsible in the Papas death.  Seems to be enjoying their job at the clergy somehow.

Gerard de Arc ( possible name, The Knight)

First Appearance: 200 years after the so call Apocalypse caused by Copia, found Copia in the ruins of the clergy and tried to kill him (series on going, will be reposted and linked properly)

He’s on a quest for years, to collect 1000 souls so he can ascend to Heaven; joining his Brothers and Sisters. His final task is to kill the Anti Christ – which is Copia himself.

 Other Deities ( might make an appearance , might not…depends)

The Showman

I got this idea thanks to Raynon , you can read their fic to it here https://archiveofourown.org/works/51685087

The Showman looooves everything glitter and gold. He would often spawn himself together with a mysterious casino in towns, especially big cities. Rumors has it that nobody has ever won anything from their place and that people would often go missing, but hey at least the music and drinks are great.

The Rat King / The Trash Man (or trash Papa as some called him)

These two goes hand in hand. You’ll find one nearby after all. The Rat King communicates with all the rats, the epitome of the Plague itself, able to turn into a hoard of rats . The Trash man , bringer of disease and chaos.

The Cheerleader

A sweetheart honestly. Sweet summer child. They love to hang around with Copia the most ( it’s the console games). Theyre a good deity to pray for good vibes and protection. Will probably kill your enemies with a flame thrower.

The Teacher

This one works in the clergy as well, in charge of teaching the new ghouls about everything on planet earth. Patron of Knowledge really.

The Saint

Another good patron for protection , if you need help harming your enemies He will do the job. He’s more aggressive and male leaning in figure. Capable of bringing natural disasters and chaos on earth.

The Tourist

Almost like a trickster, or the norse god Loki. He mostly would play tricks and pretends to be other deities , taking over an empty shrine or a dead god’s altar. Likes to hang out with The Showman.

The Vampire

Man is a vampire.

The Cat

Goes hand in hand with The Cheerleader sometimes but a lot more independent.

The Ghost

Non malevolent entity. He’s just there as well.

The General.

Patron of War , I imagine Corrupt Papa Copia would go to war with him, hand to hand. Victory will always be in your hand

Hierachy

From the Top, the most powerful Deities and the lowest.

There are a few more others that I couldn’t figure out, like the blue dress, the skeleton, the black swan (Bauhaus?), the clown and theres one with the white suit, bandaged bloodied head that I forgot the name. There are other interpretations on the outfits from others that are more in tune with the MCR fandom than me lol (I saw a few posts about the explanation here and on reddit. And oh in this latest zine that you can get it here https://mcrswarmzine.tumblr.com/ ) if anything just DM me if you need like a specific answer to this…ramble I made here.

[abybweisse]

Happy New Year! Do you think UT will capture O!Ciel and try his “soul swap”?

Happy New Year! 🥳

Soul transplant

I really do. The more I think about it, the more inevitable it seems to me. I think he might even succeed. But only briefly.

I’ll mention this again in a reblog I’m about to post regarding Undertaker’s parallels… and how he’s somewhat likely to end up dying/being destroyed. But I will remind everyone here of the four main things that lead me to this idea of a “soul transplant” between the twins. They are not in any particular order, since I’ve been pondering the possibility ever since Mother3 theory began in 2015, but later chapters have given it more support, so now it’s a full-fledged theory of its own, just sort of happily nestled into M3 theory.

Origins and support

1. The Bizarre Dolls have a defect. In ch149, that’s how Othello describes it, and he believes that Undertaker will make further improvements until he completely blurs the line between life and death.

But Othello doesn’t make any guesses how Undertaker will make those “improvements”. Just that he needs to “fix a defect” in the circulation of blood, since right now they rely on regular blood transfusions. What if transfusions aren’t enough, and they need transplants? Like with the renal patients we saw in Bath, the Bizarre Dolls might need kidney transplants to fix their circulation defect… but would it truly perfect them? I think they are missing that very “spark” of life that the souls provide.

2. Transplants have to be compatible. The assignment at Heathfield Manor gives us a huge clue about the next step in Undertaker’s research. Apparently, Undertaker had promised Baron Heathfield he could revive his dead wife by placing someone else’s soul into her body, with the stipulation that the replacement soul must be “the same shape”. Ch155 gives us this:

As an aside, I really do think Jane is probably merely human. A well trained human guard… hired by an eccentric noble… who beds his maids and rambles on about the shapes of souls… what a creeper… but the job pays well and comes with other benefits. So, she sticks around… until the work is no longer worth the pay. And it turns out that Heathfield had even been telling his “bride candidates” their souls might be a match.

Now, we don’t get any proof from Jane or Baron Chris Heathfield that this was really about collecting souls for experimentation with transplants. In fact, all we know for certain is that there was a blood collection facility down in the basement. Does Undertaker even have access to Heathfield’s wife’s body? Who knows, and it probably doesn’t matter. Undertaker was deceiving Heathfield to get a blood supply, just like he was deceiving Stoker for the supply of bodies.

3. There is already an old parallel to experimenting with transplants between twins. I’ve mentioned this a few times in Mother3 theory posts, since one of the earliest things I ever saw about a connection between Black Butler and Mother3 was on some defunct forum… where someone compared Dr. Andonuts to a Nazi named Josef Mengele, aka the “Angel of Death”. Here’re a couple old posts I found just by searching my own blog for “josef”, but there are more; I’m not sure why they didn’t come up. Silly algorithms, probably. They would also be under the #mother3 tag… somewhere.

Dr. Josef Mengele was known as the “Angel of Death” because he was a medical researcher for the Nazis, he got most of his subjects from concentration camps, and his subjects generally didn’t last long. Something particularly notable about him and his research was the fact he had become somewhat obsessed with twins. He was always very happy to find a pair of twins arriving at a camp. He would take them aside and treat them quite kindly… at first… to gain their trust, if possible. He was a really nasty piece of work. He did all sorts of experiments, but there are two major experiments he particularly liked to do with twins: blood transfusions and transplants. And not just organs, either. He was also know to amputate limbs of twins and switch the limbs. Even though not much was known back then about blood types and organ compatibility, Mengele knew that these surgical procedures had a higher success rate with identical twins.

4. S1 and s2 of the anime touch on similar ideas. As annoying as it is to me, I have to examine the anime series for Easter eggs, and we can find slight parallels to this in both s1 and s2. In s1, it’s a matter of Angela Blanc, since she’s the one trying to mess with “Ciel’s” cinematic records. She also admits to sewing Vincent’s and Rachel’s bodies together. Looks like she did the same thing (but as Ash?) to Victoria and Albert’s body. No twins involved here, but it’s this idea of combining two individuals who “belong together”. Then s2 has Claude, on two occasions, using rings to store souls. “Ciel’s” own soul gets shoved back into him, after his body had been carried around in a trunk for a while. Then Claude somehow shoves Jim/Alois’ soul into “Ciel”, even though there’s still a soul there. All the same, he uses special techniques to force “Ciel” to accept this extra soul, which Claude says is very similar, considering the traumas they went through. Then, you have Hannah making a double contract with Jim/Alois and “Ciel”. By the time Sebastian finally has his young master restored to him, the kid is a demon. There’s no explanation for how Hannah achieved this, but I suspect it has something to do with all the stuff that happened to him, including all the manipulation of his soul, then she just tweaked his soul somehow, making him a demon. But anyone’s guess is as good as mine on that one. Because: anime team writers 😑.

So, there were elements of this idea in my Mother3 theory even before we got to Heathfield Manor, thanks to that old forum I skimmed through in 2015, as well as the early anime series. In fact, that old forum thread got my Mother3 theory started. Early on, I did see the parallels between Dr. Andonuts and Undertaker, thanks to the former’s Fascinating Chimera and the latter’s Bizarre Dolls. And I could see the parallel between Dr. Andonuts and Dr. Josef Mengele, since some of the huge vats in Dr. Andonuts’s main lab contain twins (not in the same vat, but they are in different vats in the same room). Then I completed the triangle with a parallel between Undertaker and Mengele, since reapers are also called “Angels of Death”, plus he had twins at his disposal. This idea was seriously reinforced when it became apparent that Lord Vega might actually be a set of identical twins, considering their speech patterns… and how Nina only has four sets of measurements, not five.

What might happen

There are two major scenarios where I see this happening:

Either it was already part of Undertaker’s plan

Or it’s something that becomes “necessary”

If it was already part of the plan, then it would be like Undertaker really doesn’t care too much which is which, and he would see this combination as the ideal — a single “Ciel” Phantomhive with real Ciel’s strength and other attributes plus our earl’s soul. That’s what I call the Ultimate Doll, as if it’s indestructible (but not truly indestructible, just like the Ultimate Chimera… which Dr. Andonuts couldn’t control). He might even think he can keep this Phantomhive around forever. 🤷🏻‍♀️ But, if this (plus who knows what else) fixes the defect in the bizarre doll, it would be a force to be reckoned with. Strength, agility, speed, intelligence, endurance, no asthma, etc. It might also break the demon contract, since our earl’s contract seal is on his right eye. If his soul is now in the body that already gave up its soul, and there’s no contract seal on this body….

If it’s a last moment “necessity”, it could be that something happens to either our earl or real Ciel… and there’s begging/pleading (or an offer!) on one side or the other to perform the procedure. Say, if our earl is severely injured before the contract has been fulfilled, and the last resort to keep him alive is to transplant his soul into a donor body, which would be real Ciel’s body. Sebastian could ask for it or Undertaker could offer it. That’s what always makes me think of this image from Artworks 2.

However, here’s where I see Undertaker only being successful for a short time: the twins are mirrored. This could include their internal organs. This could even include their souls. Somewhere, in an older post, I explain that mirrored souls would have the same shape but in reverse, so Undertaker would have to flip it around to place it inside. Theoretically! I once described it like a jigsaw puzzle with a different design on each side, one of those double-sided ones. Flip it over, and it’s completely different. That could cause a major complication, like body and soul rejecting each other. Or they fit together… but the resulting combination causes a personality change.

Either “Ciel” would wish to be torn apart again, or “Ciel” would have to be destroyed to stop him from doing something terrible? Of course, it could simply end in “Ciel” renewing the contract, as a way to end the suffering. Besides, the demon keeps reminding his young master that he will stick around and remain loyal until lies become truth. Our earl calls himself “Ciel”, but it becomes the truth… if his soul gets placed inside the body of real Ciel. Who knows? This might be the last requirement of the deal, and neither one realizes it. 🤷🏻‍♀️

You know what would be funny? If I’m completely overthinking all this soul stuff… and real Ciel just needs his younger twin to donate a kidney. 😏 😆

[ravennm84]

Serafina II

Part 1     Part 3

The 2nd installment of the “Marinette’s Haunted Doll” series. I was seriously shocked by how much response I got from part one, so I hope this lives up to your expectations. Blood, gore, and death are coming, along with some mental freak-outs. You have been warned. 

Part II

Despite wanting to stay with Marinette to comfort the girl after the tearful apologies by Mylene and Ivan, Serafina couldn’t return until her work was finished. There was still much to do and people to punish. 

She arrived early with Mylene, which allowed her to observe the others that entered the classroom. Kim had returned to school that day in a wheelchair. The cast on his leg went up to his waist and the one on his arm went up to his bicep. His face and exposed skin were covered in bruises and his right eye looked like it had blood in it. 

“How are you feeling, dude?” Nino asked him as he entered alongside Adrien.

“Really sore,” the boy admitted. “Doctors had to reset my leg at the knee and said that my arm was a three piece offset fracture, so they had to use screws to put it back in place. Other than that; had a concussion, a lot of bruises, and a couple cuts; but no internal bleeding or ruptured organs. They said after a few months and some physical therapy, I should be as good as new.”

Nino gave him a solemn nod. “Glad to hear you’re going to be okay, dude.”

Kim’s expression dropped a bit. “I heard about Alya, I’m really sorry, man.”

The boy lowered his head while Adrien patted his back. “I really… I can’t believe she’s gone because of some freak accident. It makes no sense!” Nino jumped to his feet and started pacing as more students filed in. “I mean, she wasn’t supposed to die like that! Getting caught up in an akuma battle, childhood disease, there would be a reason for that! But that was just pointless!”

Mme. Bustier did attempt to calm him down, but her kind words fell on deaf ears before he grabbed his bag and left the room. No one could blame him, and only Adrien followed to make sure he would be alright, and to make sure he wasn’t akumatized.

Lila came in not long after with a curious bag in her hands. Serafina watched the liar as she looked around the room. She had a feeling that the liar would try something after her last attempt to frame Marinette had failed. When the girl tried speaking to Mylene, the doll was proud to see the girl refuse to acknowledge her as she continued to speak with Rose and Juleka. When it was clear that she was being ignored, she tried speaking to Ivan, only for him to give her a harsh glare that had her shuffling backwards. With Max and Alix still at the hospital and Adrien not in the room, that left her with Sabrina. The redhead had been sitting alone at the front of the room since Chloe had transferred schools after the Miracle Queen incident.

“Hi Sabrina, how are you doing?”

The girl smiled up at the italian, glad to still have a friend. “I’m doing okay, at least a lot better than a lot of our class. I heard Max lost sight in his one eye from the chemicals and Alix might have to have cosmetic surgery to get her face back to normal. At least Kim might be back to normal in a few months after going through physical therapy. But Alya…”

Lila faked her tears at the mention of her lost follower. She was really more annoyed than sad, Alya was easily manipulated, went along with everything she said, and Lila had been able to use her blog to build up her popularity. And the girl had been a decent attack dog, just point her at someone and off she went. Now that she was dead, maybe she could turn Sabrina into her new lead follower, she was already partially trained and it wasn’t like the blonde bitch was around anymore.

“I know, it’s so terrible. She was my first friend when I moved here, it’ll be so hard without her,” she faked a few more tears. And just like that, Sabrina took her hand in comfort and said a bunch of soothing words while she continued to fake cry. 

After a moment, Lila placed the bag she’d been holding on the desk and pushed it away from her, making sure the action caught Sabrina’s attention. “What’s that?”

Lila fake sobbed even harder, hiding her face in her hands. “Ma-Marinette, she-she said it was m-my fault that Alya’s dead. She practically threw that bag at me and said to use it,” she said before breaking down in more fake sobs.

Carefully opening the bag, she gasped when she saw it was full of razor blades and a couple of kitchen knives. Sure, she knew that Marinette didn’t get along with Lila, but to actually give this to her and tell her to ‘use it’? How could she be so cruel?

Serafina scowled as the red head hugged the liar and promised her that she would take care of it. Her anger erupted as Sabrina stood from her desk with the bag in hand, and began walking towards Mme. Bustier’s desk. The girl didn't take two steps before tripping over nothing and falling onto her side. Luckily, she did not land on the bag. Unluckily, she gripped it too tight and the impact forced the knives and razors through the bag and deep into her hands.

The girl screamed and cried as blood rushed out of the wounds and down into her sleeves. She begged Lila to help her, but the italian backed away from the girl in shock. Mme. Bustier gripped her head between her hands and began saying “not again, not again” before running out of the room. The only ones that helped her were Juleka, Rose and Ivan; the smaller girl sprinting off to alert the nurse and the principal, while Juleka and Ivan got Sabrina to her feet. Ivan kept the girl upright and moving out the door while Juleka held the girl’s hands above the level of her heart to keep her from bleeding too much.

Those left in the classroom were in shock as they stared at either the door or at the blood staining the floor. No one said anything for a long time, not even Lila. She hadn’t thought anyone would get hurt. She just thought she would get Marinette suspended and everyone would be on her side again. Adrien returned before the others, completely shocked when he saw the blood and Kim explained to him what had happened. The blonde sent a scathing look at Lila but said nothing.

It was a while later before Rose, Ivan, and Juleka returned to class, along with M. Rupere. He informed them that their classes were cancelled for today. “After everything that has occurred this week, I’ve decided that all of you will be meeting with the counselor today. He will decide if more sessions are necessary and for who, but his door and mine are open if you need to talk. M. Deveraux will come to speak with you one at a time. Kim Le Chien, he had requested to speak with you first. Mlle. Rossi,” he looked sternly at the girl, “would you please follow me, we need to talk about the incident with Sabrina Raincomprix.”

Serafina smiled as the liar trudged out of the room after the man. She was satisfied with Sabrina’s punishment and doubted if Mme. Bustier would last another day before having a total mental breakdown. She also knew that Lila would be in even more trouble after M. Rupere looked into the girl a bit more. But just to make sure, Serafina touched her on the way out. To most people, that would do nothing; but to someone like Lila, it would cause her to become more and more unhinged until she did something drastic. Very soon, Lila would be out of the picture and those deserving of punishment will have paid their debts.

~oOo~

It was more difficult sneaking home with Adrien than she had expected, especially with the tiny god of Chaos and Destruction in his bag. Plagg was his name, and he was very defensive of his kitten and had threatened to cataclysm her. Serafina told him that she would not purposefully harm his ‘kitten’, but there was something she had to take care of at the Agreste Mansion. The doll had long suspected that Gabriel Agreste is Hawkmoth and she was going to find out tonight if it was true. Plagg was reluctant to agree since it would hurt Adrien; but if it was true, they had to put an end to it.

After arriving at the mansion, Plagg easily convinced the boy to sneak out and check on Nino. After he left, Serafina sensed something on Adrien’s desk. Being an enchanted/haunted object, she could sense other objects like herself… such as Miraculous jewels. And right there on the desk was a pin shaped like a peacock, one of the jewels that had been missing and used by Mayura. If there had been any doubts before about who had been terrorizing Marinette, they were gone. 

Tucking the pin into her small outfit, she began to search the building, starting with Gabriel’s office. She had expected the man to be present, but he was missing. And given that Hawkmoth was a very active user, she had no doubt that he kept his jewel on him at all times. So, she waited.

It was about an hour later that Gabriel Agrest entered the room, and not from the door Serafina had expected. The man had a secret entry in the floor in front of a portrait of a woman. He was muttering on knowing better than to use Bubbler again, but that the negative emotions had been too strong to ignore. She also saw the purple kwami hovering over his shoulder, but the creature stopped when it sensed her. Gabriel strode out of the room, barely noticing that Nooroo had stayed behind and flew over to the doll hiding behind the desk.

“What are you doing here? If the Master finds you, he will destroy you.” The kwami said with worry.

The doll conveyed that she knew that his master was Hawkmoth, just as her human was Ladybug. She was here to protect her and return the butterfly and peacock miraculous to their rightful place. Also knowing that Gabriel had become too corrupted for his miraculous.

“I’ve tried to tell him that the wish would be dangerous,” Nooroo told her with downcast eyes. “He wants to make a wish to revive his wife, but he doesn’t realize that the cost would be to put Adrien, someone he loves equally as much as Emilie, into the same state of death. She isn’t even truly alive anymore, her body only lives because of the machine she is in.”

An idea spawned in Serafina’s thoughts and she barely kept herself from smiling. She asked Nooroo to help her activate the secret passage so she could get to his wife, but the little kwami shook his head. “Even if I could get you down there, the motion sensors would trip and he would attack you.”

Smiling this time, Serafina promised the little god that Gabriel would not attack her. That she would make sure that Adrien would be safe and the two kwami’s would go to their rightful place. All he had to do was help her open the door. Although reluctant and slightly scared, the little god opened the door, hoping that the nightmare would finally end. 

Down in the lair, the doll saw the mechanical coffin placed in the center of the room and went to it. The motion sensors caught her quickly, but she had been planning on moving fast anyway. Opening the coffin, she settled herself into the woman’s arms. Nooroo had been right, Serafina could sense that the woman’s soul had departed from her body a while ago and it was only the machine that was keeping her body alive. With no other soul to contend with, this would make what she was about to do next all the easier.

Nathalie had called to alert him the moment the alarms went off in the lair while she and Simone were out on an errand. He was moving faster than he could remember with Nooroo following close behind. Gabriel transformed on the way down, prepared to attack whoever had stumbled in, but his breath caught in his throat halfway down when he got a good view of the room. 

The coffin was empty.

Rushing forward, he began frantically searching the room for his wife, calling her name. He turned to rush back upstairs and froze. Standing behind him, looking dazed, was his wife. Her eyes were unfocused and her arms were hugging her middle, but it was her. Dropping his transformation, Gabriel cautiously approached her and she flinched back from him. It took a few minutes and a lot of gentle coaxing before he was able to wrap an arm around her shoulders and lead her to the elevator. When they got to his office, he watched her carefully as she began walking around the room. He wanted her to sit down and rest, but he was still in shock that she was awake and standing in front of him.

Eventually, her green eyes met his. “Where’s Adrien?”

“I… I don’t know, he should be up in his room.”

Emilie’s head tilted slightly, her eyes searching his. “What have you done? Did you make the wish?”

“No, my love. I was going to when I got the jewels, but Ladybug and Chat Noir evaded me.”

Tears grew in her eyes as she continued to stare at him. “You tried to make the wish? Knowing that it would have cost our son’s life?” 

Gabriel froze. He hadn’t known that wishing Emilie to come back would cost Adrien’s… but Nooroo had tried to tell him. He remembered the kwami trying to tell him about the cost and he had forced him to not speak. “I’m sorry, Emilie. I didn’t-”

“You knew,” she interrupted, her voice lacking any emotion as she continued to stare at him. “You knew from the beginning that what you were doing was wrong, evil. You chose to ignore what it would cost.”

“Emilie, my love, please don’t say such things,” Gabriel begged as he rushed forward to wrap his arms around her. “All I have wanted since the day I lost you, was to hold you in my arms again and hear your voice. I was lost without you and was willing to go to the ends of the earth to bring you back. Is that so wrong?”

He had just barely met her eyes when he felt the twin pains in his arms. Jumping back, he looked down to see both wrists had been cut deeply with a pair of his fabric cutting scissors. Blood was draining from the wounds at an alarming rate. His hands were shaking and he was already feeling light headed as he grabbed a handful for fabric from his work table in an attempt to slow the blood. He wanted to call out for help, but they were alone. 

His eyes grew hazed as he looked to Emilie, surprised that she was staring at him with such contempt. “I know what you’ve been doing while I was in that coffin. Tormenting the city and people I love, isolating our son and treating him like a burden. If you had ever succeeded in getting the Cat and Ladybug miraculous, it would have destroyed Paris. But you didn’t care. As you said, all you cared about was hearing my voice and holding me in your arms. Congratulations, your wish came true, and you will be the one to pay the price. Not Adrien.”

His legs gave out from under him as the fabrics dripped from the excess blood. He couldn’t understand how this had happened, Emilie would have never done something like this… but was this really her? With his vision fading, he took a hard look at his wife, only now noticing the dullness of her eyes, the greying pallor of her skin, and the fact that she only seemed to breathe when she spoke… “Who are you?”

Her head tilted again, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly. “Serafina. Quite astute of you to figure that out in your state. Your wife’s soul passed on a long time ago, all you have been doing is preserving a corpse. And I was telling the truth; even if you had made the wish, it would have cost Adrien his life.” Her hand shot forward, removing the butterfly miraculous before he could stop her. “Your actions have hurt someone close to me and I could no longer stand back and allow it to happen.”

She stood, walking to his desk to pull out a piece of paper and writing something down before neatly folding it and leaving it on his desk.

“Wh… What…”

“You just wrote a letter to Adrien; admitting what happened to his mother, that you were Hawkmoth, and the reason why you did what you did.” She said calmly before looking back at him. “Whether he tells the rest of the world is up to him. As for the miraculous, I will give him a chance at redemption. Though if he should fail, you may be seeing him sooner rather than later. Either way, they will soon be back where they belong, with the guardian. And you, good sir, have just committed suicide after bringing your wife’s body upstairs, so you would be able to hold her in your arms as you died.”

Unable to sit upright anymore, Gabriel barely felt his body collapse to the floor. He was hardly aware of Emilie lifting one of his arms to tuck her body to his side. The last thing he was aware of was something that he swore would haunt him in the afterlife; a porcelain doll emerging from the folds of her clothes and standing beside them. It stood there on its own, watching him until he could no longer keep his eyes open and he took his final breath.

Taglist (even longer):

@themagicmistic​ @andromeda612​ @ramos123​ @t1dwarrior-of-earth​ @justanotherweirdo277​ @irisfox​ @thestrangestofthemall​ @plz-excuse-my-inner-ravenclaw​ @certainmuffinbagelcalzone​ @the-fandom-girl @wisecolorthing @mewwitch​ @luxurioushellgirl97​ @seraphichana @fantasiame​ @whydoexamsexist​ @wispyrainbow​ @legodetectivemalsblog​ @kindasoundslikealien​ @shadowangelreborn​ @kazedancer @unmaskedagain​ @7-sage-7​ @irontimetravelflower​ @ghostmaster83​ @izang​ @ulmban​ @plushbookworm​ @corabeth11​ @darkened-flame​ @caffeinetheory​ @iamablinkmarvelarmy​ @raiderofthelostbooks​ @cheshire5210 @chocolateherringtacofan​ @city-of-all-tunas​ @aadnrsstar​ @kitten12113​ @interobanginyourmom​ @pandacatxd​ @nerd-nowandforever​ @jesussavedevenme​ @zoiechance​ @the-smallest-kittenz @wonderbat91939​ @maskedpainter​ @tazer6787​ @that-girl-sakea @seesea22​ @with-forward-motion​ @ola-is-dead​ @thecrazyfantrollshasmoved @bayball​ @2confused-2doanything​ @queen-in-a-flower-crown​ @sabrina1414 @ceres-zephyr​ @if-you-give-a-chat-a-cookie​ @zalladane​ @tails-and-scales​ @rumbelle18​ @sam-spectra​ @collegefae​ @pale-lady-dreamer​ @animegirlweeb​ @evaraux @consumeconstantly​ @iz-bell-saiah​ @puspa-san​ @wishing-to-be-a-fictional-chara​ @sassakitty​ @miraculous-ninja​ @fandom-trapped-03​ @idontfuking​ @sillyfishrubberducky​ @anonymousreviewer-t​ @i-am-fallen-angel​ @zotinha456​ @throneoffirebreathingbitchqueen​ @chocolatecatstheron​ @crypticsabbat @startouchedqueen1318 @para-dox-normal​ @marinettepotterandplagg​ @incredulous-reader​ @professionalfangirl1738​ @fangirlnerd001​ @redscarlet95​ @sixtyeightdays​ @iamtotalfandomtrash​ @tazanna-blythe​ @animehime94​ @mysticsoulgirl​ @miraculouspenta​ @local-witch-of-mn​ @roseinbloom02​ @senpaiweird​ @iggy-of-fans​ @tropestropestropes​ @sleep-deprived-aroace​ @comteqfr @neromerp13​ @prudencerika​ @galaxylightmoon @c-s-stars @spartanxhunterx @shadowhex99 @abrx2002 @lunartaravlar @theymakeupfairies @myazael @wannajointhecrabcult @some-weird-multifandom-girl @marvel--unsolved @kuroko26 @mcheang @nach0ava @syrencall @mexicantttt @insomniac-nerd-posts-things @enchanted-nerd @actual-disaster-human @mashmallow619 @clumsy-owl-4178 @hollowwisteria @kanamexzeroyaoifangirl @fandom-trapped-03 @lunataravlar @lady-phoenix-of-tardis @tishwinchesterannabethjackson @mariposa-macaroon @starlightshield @255940g

[amintyworld]

The Return - Dream SMP 12 Years AU

A/N: Hey guys! Welcome to another introduction to a AU idea I had with a lotta fluff and angst. May write more with this AU because I have a lot of ideas for it. Hope you enjoy and as always, if you have any questions about this AU at all, my ask box is always open, I'd love to talk about this.

By the way, for the enderman text I used this translator that my friend @griffintail uses in her work as well. It was really helpful and you guys should totally check out her work on her blog, she's awesome. - Minty

Summary: 12 years after the Bench Trio, Wilbur, Sam and Sapnap kill Dream for good and burn the revive book, the masked man returns on a plan for revenge.

TW: Blood/gore, kidnapping, torture, attempted murder, murder, implied character death, running away, denial, cursing, sympathetic dream? (He's a ghost). (Tell me if I need to tag anything else!) (Also, shippers get off my lawn please and thank you.)

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Michael’s eyes narrowed as someone, a stranger he couldn’t recognize slowly approached the house. That bright green hoodie and weird mask made his instincts flare, sensing danger. He jumped down, getting out his sword as he slowly walked to greet the intruder. His Dads and Uncle Technoblade trained him well enough that a plan was already forming in his head, going over the stock he had on him in his mind, prepared for whatever the stranger was planning to do.

A golden ax hung from the masked man’s back, a smile peeking out from under that smooth porcelain-like surface that the zombie piglin couldn’t tell if it was friendly or sinister. Finally, they were about five feet apart, facing each other. Michael pulled the cloak around him slightly more as a cold wind blew through the field. “Who are you? What are you doing on Snowchester Property?”

The man just stared at him, looking at him up and down.

“Answer me, dammit!”

“Michael, right?” The masked man walked toward him casually. “I don’t believe we’ve formally met.”

“Not another step!” Michael shouted, pointing his enchanted netherite sword threateningly at the stranger, who looked almost amused at this action, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “How do you know my name?!”

“Oh, your parents didn’t tell you? We’re family.”

“...family?”

“Not by blood, of course. I’m more like... a friend. A family friend. Your parents and I were very close back in the day, I just came by for a visit.”

“A visit…? If you’re so close with my parents how come you haven’t visited before?”

“You know how adventuring can be - it takes up a lot of time, you know.” The masked man smiled and made Michael’s gut churn uncomfortably. “I’ve heard so much about you, Michael.” The stranger kept walking towards the teenager, his hands up casually. “It’s been so long, we should really spend some time and catch up-”

“NO! No. Stay… stay right there. Don’t… don’t you dare fucking move, you got that?!” The man stopped around three feet away from him now. “Now you either tell me your name or I’m putting this blade through your teeth.”

The man sighed. “Pity. I was really hoping to get to talk with you peacefully, Michael. You seem like a nice kid.”

“What?”

Quickly and flawlessly, the masked intruder pulled out his ax and Michael quickly readied his sword, ready for a fight. What he didn’t expect was for the intruder to get some air and run up the wall of the mansion, landing down the blow with a lot more force than the zombie piglin expected, and he dug his hooves into the snow, somehow keeping himself from getting knocked over completely. Using all of his strength he pushed the intruder off, scrambling for a strength potion as the man tackled him to the ground. “Nuh-uh, that’s cheating.” Michael was quick to grab his sword and defend, moving to strike against his neck. The masked man moved to dodge, the black string of his mask getting nicked by Michael’s blade, making it begin to fall to start to reveal blonde hair and cold green eyes that were somewhat familiar to Michael, though he couldn’t figure out from where. As he hesitated, the man’s eyes flared with anger. Within seconds he’d pulled Michael’s arm against his back toward his shoulder blade, making the piglin feel like his arm was going to snap. He grunted in pain, reaching to grab his sword that got knocked into the snow when he felt the press of an ax against his neck, enough pressure to feel the sharpness of the blade. The zombie piglin could hear his heartbeat in his ears, swallowing his fear.

“I’m Dream, though I think you already know who I am.” Dream huffed against the piglin’s desperate struggle, the familiar adrenaline rushing through his veins from a victory. Of course, Michael knew the stories - his Dads and Uncle Tommy defeated that psychopath 12 years ago. They killed him, how the fuck was he alive?! The blade pressed harder against Michael’s neck as it began to draw a bit of blood. “Stop struggling.” Dream relished how much he’d missed all this, how much he’d missed being in control. “You and I are gonna have a little chat.”

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Ranboo hauled his basket of carrots and potatoes beside him as he reached down to grab some of the new harvests. A snowstorm was coming in soon, and they needed to stock up for the coming colder months. Their farms grew so big that a few of them set up shop in front of the old decommissioned prison, Pandora’s Box. Twelve years ago Ranboo, Tubbo, and Tommy had faced that prison head-on, fighting their old allies turned foes, death at nearly every turn they took. They succeeded with a little help, burying the body a little outside of the prison walls and never looking back. The three of them faced many more trials after that, growing close as years passed and the server became peaceful as it used to be back in the beginning. The children grew up, their parents giving them the world and more, protecting them from harm, and making sure they had better than their parents ever did. Now, throwing another bright orange carrot in his basket, Ranboo couldn’t help but smile across the way at his husband, teetering up the ladder in a straw sun hat, gathering honey from their bee farm. He’d gifted the ladder a few years prior - “A little short help for my shortie”. Tubbo threatened a villain arc at the note, making everyone around the table laugh as Ranboo walked over to embrace him, his chin resting on Tubbo’s head gently as the shorter had crossed his arms with a huff. Ranboo’s heart warmed at the fond memory.

He felt happy.

FoolishG whispered to you: Ranboo he’s back.

You whisper to FoolishG: What do you mean?

You whisper to FoolishG: Who?

FoolishG whispered to you: He’s going after you first.

FoolishG whispered to you: Is Michael with you?

You whisper to FoolishG: No.

You whisper to FoolishG: You didn’t answer my question, Foolish.

FoolishG whispered to you: Michael’s in danger, you need to get to him now.

FoolishG whispered to you: Dream’s alive, Ranboo.

You whisper to FoolishG: If this is some kind of joke this isn’t funny.

You whisper to FoolishG: This isn’t funny

You whisper to FoolishG: You know how he messed with me, stop it

You whisper to FoolishG: Don’t joke about that, Foolish.

You whisper to FoolishG: Foolish answer me

You whisper to FoolishG: Foolish?

Ranboo dropped his messenger in fear as the reality of the situation began to set in, his breaths beginning to panic. No, no no no no… they killed him. They killed him, they got rid of him for good. He’s supposed to be dead, he’s supposed to be gone-!

“Ranboo?” Tubbo looked over at him with concern as he packed up the jars of honey from their bee farm. Ranboo’s silence did not help his unease. “Ranboo, what’s wrong?”

FoolishG whispered to you: Hurry, Ranboo. I don’t know how long he’ll last.

Tubbo was kneeling in front of him now, grounding him with his hands on his husband’s shoulders. “Breathe. Breathe, Ranboo. Deep breaths, you’ve got it…”

As Ranboo tried in vain to even his breaths, he held Tubbo’s hand in fear. “Dream’s back... He’s...he… he’s alive and he has Michael.”

“What?” Tubbo’s eyebrows furrowed. “But… but we burned the revive book. We killed him, I saw his body-!”

“Michael… fuck, he has Michael…” Ranboo cursed on his breath. “This is all my fault, I should’ve known-!”

“No. None of that. You can’t blame yourself for this.” Tubbo dismissed, getting up and holding his hand out toward the enderman. “We’ve killed him before, we’ll just kill him again, right? We’ll save Michael and put a stop to this for good.” As Tubbo helped Ranboo back to his feet, he moved under a tree to place the purple glowing black box that greeted the two like an old friend. An enderchest. They hadn’t needed to use it for so long. They hadn’t needed what was inside. Tubbo pulled out a familiar enchanted sword that used to plague Ranboo’s dreams. His sword. The goat hybrid took off his straw hat and with one last glance placed it inside the enderchest, his eyes focused and thinking. He felt the new weight of the sword in his hand, getting used to the weapon again. “It’ll work this time. It has to.”

“It will.” Ranboo echoed.

Will it?

Tubbo’s eyebrows furrowed in thought, looking somber, numb. When they finally killed Dream they thought it would be the last time, the last war to fight. All three of them strived and hoped for peace, for all of it to be over, to get their own happy endings. He moved to the side, pulling out his communicator from his pocket. “Grab your stuff. I’ve got to warn Tommy.”

As Ranboo grabbed his own enchanted sword and his old armor from the chest, he couldn’t help but wonder, a single thought that nagged him and wouldn’t seem to leave his mind, making his stomach sink to the floor in dread…

...What if they never killed him in the first place?

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

Phil closed his eyes as he sat in his chair, feeling something wrong, off in the air, something he couldn’t quite place. The room around him is silent but Phil can feel the world yelling for him, screaming for him. It’s trying to tell him something. Phil’s been alive for a long time. He’s seen the earth burst with new life, and slaughtered bodies fall to the floor, smelling nothing but the cold press of death. He’s seen it, heard it, felt it so many times it was a familiar, somewhat comforting feeling for him. It was calming, it was constant, it was natural.

So why did it…?

Phil’s eyes opened slowly, looking out the window in thought as Technoblade walked in from the snowstorm outside, a chill running through the cabin. The piglin dropped his bag of loot on the floor and began to shoulder off his snow gear to hang by the fire to dry. As Techno walked past him, moving in front of the fire to undo his braids, damp from the snow.

“Techno, something’s happening.”

“Heh?” The piglin’s ears perked up from the break in the somewhat comfortable silence they usually shared. “What… what do you mean?”

“Something’s wrong. It feels… unnatural.” Phil said, closing his eyes briefly again to focus on the feeling. “Did you see anything off while you were out?”

“Not really, the snow’s coming down so hard you can barely see a thing out there.” The piglin shrugged, the concern on his friend’s face only making a pit form in his stomach he tried to ignore. “...what’s wrong?”

“Something’s moving… breathing… it shouldn’t be.”

“Zombies, maybe?” Techno suggested. “I did see a few while I was out.”

“Maybe.” Phil agreed. “Part of me feels like something’s off, something dangerous. Like when you… you were almost…” Phil sighed. “I guess I’m just worrying over nothing again.”

“I wouldn’t say nothing - you have good instincts, Phil.”

“Battle instincts. Instincts I don’t need anymore. And here I thought you’d have a harder time adjusting to all this.” Phil scoffed.

“A lot’s been changing. With everything that happened, I don’t blame you for being a little tense, Phil. I am too.” Technoblade admitted. “Just to be safe, we can double-check when the storm passes, that way we won’t get any interference with the communicators.”

“I’d like that.” Phil smiled, moving to sit next to his friend by the fireplace. “Thanks, Techno.”

Technoblade scoffed, his mouth breaking into a smile. “Hey, don’t mention it.” The piglin ran his hands through his hair, going through a few knots before grabbing a brush. Taking a deep breath to calm the knots in his stomach, Phil moved to set the kettle on the furnace, grabbing a match to light it.

Miles away from the icy tundra, Foolish walked through the Temple of the Undying, a small teenager in their arms. He was silent as he marched, tears going down his cheeks full of emotion the god held back. His arm gently cradled the child’s head close to his chest. His heart weighed heavy with guilt, words and memories echoing in his mind of failure, of how he failed his son.

Foolish could feel presences, he could feel others watching from the shadows and corners. Every single statue and totem memorial against the wall seemed to have their gazes fixed on him as if waiting for what the god would do next. For once, Foolish didn’t know what to do.

He hadn’t even told anyone the news yet. How could he? His son was dead and it was all his fault. All because he wasn’t careful. Dream was back, he was standing there next to his son and for once he couldn’t control his anger, his panic. He tried to strike him down, but…

He still remembered every detail, how Dream had just… smiled. He wasn’t afraid. He was staring down a god, and he wasn’t afraid. Somehow, he was always one step ahead.

Lightening still sparked and clung to Foolish Jr.’s body. Foolish couldn’t help but think about how much pain he must’ve been in, how much pain he must’ve put him through. He fell to his knees in the center of the temple, gently laying his son on the floor, the beacon lighting him in a bright glow. His hands shaking, Foolish brushed a bit of hair out of Junior’s eyes, bowing his head toward the ground.

“I’m sorry…” His soft whispers echoed through the temple. “I’m so so sorry, Ra forgive me for what I’ve done…” Tears dripped down to the floor. “My little totemling…” Foolish’s eyes snapped toward the walls as the totem statue’s eyes began to softly glow, bathing the two in green light. The totem god’s eyes still wet with tears as he looked into the green eyes, a silent question on his mind. Whispers filled his ears that he couldn’t quite decipher. Suddenly, he felt it.

A pinprick in the middle of his chest, expanding throughout his body, the pain pulsing like a heartbeat. His breath hitched as drowsiness overtook him, making him feel dizzy. An essence was being slowly pulled from his body, glowing like some kind of enchantment on a weapon. Sweat built on Foolish’s brow as he struggled to keep his breaths even. Then… a stinging slice across his middle left him in a silent scream. His hand slowly reached up toward his chest, his eyes widening when he found it covered in crimson. The pain was overwhelming - it felt as if his body was torn apart and stitched back together in a matter of seconds. He scrambled to grab a health potion, downing it all and wincing at the terrible aftertaste but thankfully finally getting some relief. His eyes focused on the essence as it hung up into the air above the two, and slowly was lowered, expanding around Foolish Junior’s body.

As the green light faded, Foolish heard faint chanting, looking around for where it was coming from, trying desperately to piece together what was happening. Before Foolish had time to figure out exactly what the chanting was saying, the body shooting upwards from the ground, gasping for breath quickly grabbed his attention.

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

Michael didn’t know how long it was. How many hours had passed since he’d been tied to the chair? He didn’t even know if it was night or day. He sat in the middle of his parent’s bedroom, feet and hands tied expertly - he was completely and utterly trapped. With every time he struggled and strained against the bonds they cut against his skin and irritated it enough to make them bleed, almost training the piglin to try to stay as still as possible, to avoid any pain.

Dream stalked around the bedroom like a thief, searching through the closet and drawers for something or other. He’d pick up a potion, a diamond, even an ingot or two, holding them up toward the light as if to inspect them before dropping them in his bag. His gaze fell upon a picture of the family from their beach vacation a few years ago - Ranboo fell asleep with a seagull perched on his stomach. Michael remembered how much he and his father had tried to hold back their laughter enough for a selfie, only for Ranboo to wake up and scare the seagull away halfway through taking the picture. They looked so happy together.

Dream seemed unfazed by the photo, almost studying it in a sense. The gaze seemed oddly calculated, making the teen feel uneasy.

“Michael you’re a good kid, you know.” Michael’s glare bore into Dream’s mask as sticky drips of crimson spilled over his hands. “You always want to do the right thing, want to protect everyone. You shouldn’t have to be the one to fight your parent’s battles, should you?”

Michael remained silent.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Michael. I really don’t. Despite what your parents might have told you, I’m not a monster. It brings me no satisfaction to bring you pain. After all, you’ve done nothing to me.”

“So?”

“So I’m giving you some free advice - take the easy way out, for both of us. All you need to do is tell me where that armor is hidden, and I’ll let you go.”

“Bullshit.” Michael spat. “I know that’s not what you want, my parents told me more than that you’re just some scary monster. You’re a power hungry lunatic.”

A smile spread across Dream’s face at Michael’s words. “A lunatic, huh?”

“You manipulated Uncle Wilbur, you tortured Uncle Tommy… you betrayed my father all because you want power! You want control over people, freeing me would have you lose the only shred of control you have left on this server, so why would you?”

“You’re a smart kid, you know that?” Dream said casually, rolling up his sleeves. “So smart…” He reached into his bag, grabbing a pair of shears that looked worn. There were initials on the leather cover that Michael couldn’t strain his eyes to see. Dream uncovered the shears, walking over toward the piglin and resting an arm on the teenager’s right side, trapping him.

Something churned in the piglin’s stomach. “What… what are you…?”

“Tell me, smart kid, do you know what it feels like to die? To feel nothing but neverending agony? To choke on your own blood as you beg for relief and warmth only to find yourself becoming colder and colder, not being able to move or even scream?”

Michael couldn’t help the fear that traveled up his spine. “I…I-”

“I wonder… would you like to find out?” The sharp end of the scissors was quickly set near the bottom of the piglin’s neck. It freaked Michael out - how calm Dream was about it all, how serious he sounded. Was he really going to kill him? The question sent his mind racing, adrenaline pumping through his veins as he felt like a trapped sheep in a wolf’s grasp. He wanted to run but he couldn’t.

“I...I just-”

“Do you know what canon lives are, Michael?” Dream asked smoothly, as if he was telling the teenager about the terrible weather. The words seemed familiar to the piglin but for some reason he was so stressed it was hard to remember anything specific. His parents never really talked about it much and usually tried to avoid the topic.

Michael thickly swallowed, acutely aware of the sharp blade against his skin. “No… no I don’t think-”

Of all the things he expected to happen in his situation, he certainly didn’t expect for the masked man to go into a small laughing fit over his answer. Michael struggled to find what exactly was funny, and a small pit of rage began to boil in his stomach, temporarily distracting the zombie piglin from the fear that the green blob seemed to pull out of him. So what if he didn’t know what those are?! Why does he care?! “Oh, I knew they couldn’t have told you everything…”

“What… what do you mean?”

“You see Michael, when someone dies they use up a canon life and respawn, until… well… they can’t anymore. Everyone has three, but a few have been used up over the years, at least when I was around.” Michael could see the beginnings of a smirk poke out from underneath Dream’s mask. “You’ve never respawned, have you?! All three lives, no deaths… oh, this could be fun…”

What… what the fuck was he suggesting?!

“Your choice - Tell me where the armor is now, or I’m going to kill you.”

The zombie piglin nervously looked around for any kind of out, something to stall. He couldn’t give up the location - Dad told him explicitly that he couldn’t reveal the location to anyone, no matter the circumstances.

Tubbo held Michael’s hands firmly in his own. “It’s evil, Michael. It used to belong to a very bad person, and he hurt a lot of people. We have to contain that evil here, for everyone’s sake. If this got into the wrong hands…” His father trailed off, not bothering to finish.

“I promise, Dad. I won’t let you down.”

Tubbo looked up at his son proudly, moving to cup his cheek with his hand fondly. “I know you won’t. You’re old enough and you’ve trained enough, you’ve earned my trust.”

He couldn’t let his father down, but…

“Five… four… three…” Dream huffed, getting impatient.

“You… you can’t just-!”

“Wrong answer.”

Michael’s memory was fuzzy after that - maybe it was because of the pain, or maybe it because he didn’t want to remember. He remembered… he remembered how his body trembled as Dream swiftly stabbed him in the chest with the shears, he remembered the tears going down his face as Dream tried to wedge the weapon deeper in the wound. And the pain… the pain was indescribable. Of course Michael had gotten hurt before - but arrows and zombie bites and broken bones could never compare to this, not by a long shot. Words left his lips so freely that he forgot exactly what he said, but when Dream twisted the scissors he whimpered.

He was mad at himself for crying and losing himself in front of his tormentor - he was giving him exactly what he wanted! Why did he just cry so easily?! Why was he being so… so weak?! He didn’t know exactly how or when the chair he was tied to flipped over, but he did remember shouting that seemed distant. He hit his head when he fell, adding to the throbbing dizziness in his skull. The pain hurt so much he wanted it to stop, please just let it stop...

He hadn’t even noticed the masked green blob left the room until a pair of dark purple eyes stared at him from the doorway. He felt himself tremble as the figure moved closer, and Michael squeezed his eyes shut, not willing to watch whatever that thing wanted to do to him next. After a tense moment of silence the piglin felt arms wrapped around him, pulling him close and his body relaxed into the touch, the familiar hum radiating throughout the stranger’s chest that always helped calm him. A hand reached up to scratch at his ears fondly, and Michael worked up the courage to open his eyes.

Two purple glowing eyes looked down at him, smiling and purring. The hair, the clothes… “Dad…?” Michael weakly croaked. The purple-eyed Ranboo smiled at him as he fondly patted his head. A loud noise erupted from his mouth, making Michael tense up in fear.

“⏚⏃⏚⊬.”

Upon seeing Michael’s distress, purple-eyed Ranboo quickly went back to sending calming purrs, holding his son’s head in his hands. Michael was so confused - what was that noise? More importantly, was his Dad okay? Ranboo’s hands drifted above the zombie piglin’s chest wound, a slight noise of discomfort coming from the back of his throat. He grit his teeth through the pain as he struggled to speak. “Dad, look, you… you gotta listen - Dream’s here, he’s gonna be back any second…”

The Ranboo-not-Ranboo’s head whipped toward the doorway at a loud crash, his grip increasing on the teenager slightly. Had his Dad even heard him? More strange noise erupted from his mouth, only increasing Michael’s concern. What was going on?

“⎅⏃⋏☌⟒⍀.”

Before Michael could ask what exactly that meant, with a ‘vwoop’ the purple-eyed Ranboo disappeared. Though Michael missed the warm comfort for his pulsing pain, part of him was glad. That means his Dad must’ve heard him, he was gonna warn the others and Dream wouldn’t hurt him, that was all that mattered. The other part felt like he was six years old again trapped in his own personal nightmare, begging for his father to come back and save him and hold him and tell him everything was going to be alright. Static began to fill his ears as a slow deep sleepiness began to take over. Tears pricked at the edges of Michael’s eyes, the pulsing, burning pain becoming too much.

Just let me rest...

The door slammed open. A scream echoed.

“MICHAEL!”

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

Foolish had never seen his son so scared in his entire life. He shot up, grasping for some kind of lifeline, and Foolish didn’t hesitate to pull him close. “Dad…”

“Shh, it’s okay little totemling. Dad’s right here.” His heart felt full as he hugged his son tightly, afraid that if he let go it would all just be a dream. His son, his son was alive and breathing, his son was right here in his arms, he was okay, it was all okay-! Wet tears slipped down his face before he had the time to notice them. The totem god’s gaze shifted up towards the totem statue. The statue glared down at him, expressionless, as if nothing else needed to be said.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

“There was… there were shadows everywhere,” Junior sobbed. “It was cold and so, so scary and I didn’t know where you were, and-!”

“I’m right here, Foolish. I’m right here. It…” Foolish hesitated. How could he explain this to him? How could he tell his son that he failed him? How could he face his son and tell him the truth, that his own father had killed him? Maybe some things were better left unsaid, some truths untold. Foolish couldn’t tell you whether he avoided it to spare his son’s emotions or his own, simply that he found that he just couldn’t. “It was all just a bad dream, don’t worry. I was just waiting for you to respawn.”

Maybe he was a coward. Maybe he’d tell him the truth later, but he couldn’t face it right now. He just couldn’t. Either way, what did it matter? He got a second chance, and this time he wasn’t going to mess up. Not again.

“Wait, where’s Dream?”

Foolish couldn’t help but tense hearing those words. “...What?”

“Where’s Dream? He just came back, I can’t leave him. He’s probably somewhere scared and alone, he probably thinks I died! I’m his only friend, I gotta-!” Junior shifted, moving to get out of his father’s grip.

“Foolish. Foolish, no.” The totem god said firmly. “Dream’s dangerous. He’s done horrible things, he’s hurt so many people back when he was alive, and I won’t have you be next.” Not again.

“But… but it’s been so long, maybe he’s changed! Maybe…”

“Foolish.”

“When Wilbur came back he changed, he became a good guy again! Dream’s been dead longer than him, he’s my friend he can’t… he’s not…”

“Dream used you against me when you stepped in front to protect him. Maybe his ghost was different, but… but he’s not a ghost anymore.”

Junior pulled away from his father’s embrace. “No, no that’s not true! You were the first one to attack him, he was just standing there, Dad! He just came back, he hadn’t done anything wrong, you assumed he did. You attacked for no reason.”

“Foolish you don’t understand, the things Dream’s done-”

“He’s been dead for 12 years, Dad! 12 years, and you don’t think he’s changed?! I thought you always believed in second chances, that everyone deserves a chance to do the right thing.” Junior stated. “You didn’t even give him a chance.”

“He’s killed countless people in cold blood-”

“Haven’t you?!”

Foolish’s face fell as he looked over his hands. Static filled his ears as his mind remembered every single detail, and for a moment he swore he could feel the warm, thick blood coating his hands. No, no no no… not now… He quickly clenched his hands tightly into fists, closing his eyes, trying to block it out before it flooded back, before…

He felt arms around his neck, a warm embrace. “It’s okay, it’s okay… I’m so sorry, I’m sorry-!”

As the feeling slowly faded, he opened his eyes, finding his son’s face red and puffy from crying. He mustered a small smile, both their anger long forgotten. “Hey, hey it’s okay… I told you I’m not going anywhere, right?”

“You were… you were turning into the… I’m so sorry…” Junior’s voice was soft and quiet.

“You don’t need to be, it’s not your fault…” Foolish reassured. “You’re right. You’re right, I’ve… I’ve done horrible things too. I just don’t want him to hurt you. I want to protect you, you know that right?”

“I know.”

Junior yawned, and Foolish smiled warmly.

“Come, my little totemling. You look tired.” Foolish said, scooping up the young teenager in his arms and walking toward his son’s room. Junior tiredly smiled.

“I love you, Dad.”

Foolish leaned down and gave his son a small forehead kiss. “I love you too, Foolish. No matter what.”

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

“Shit, shit shit shit shit…” Tubbo mumbled, his hands shaking as he rushed over to his son, noticing the large gash in his chest. He fumbled for his bag, desperately trying to find a potion of harming.

Regen, healing, strength, swiftness…

“Fuck.” Tubbo cursed under his breath, throwing aside his satchel and rushing over toward the drawers, pulling them open, throwing things to the ground in reckless abandon. What happened to the potions?! They always had extra, then extra for the extra! He and Ranboo were always prepared, they knew how hard harming potions were to make, so where was it?!

A loud crash ripped through the halls as Enderwalk Ranboo crashed through the wooden wall of the room, wooden splinters flying everywhere. Enderwalk huffed as he staggered trying to get to his feet, letting out a loud hiss as Dream walked through the new hole in the wall, his sword out, red staining his green hoodie. He looked over the scene, catching his breath.

“Oh, you guys wanted to pull one over on me, huh?! Throw the enderman freak on me, grab Michael and leave?”

Tubbo moved to be closer to Michael, pulling out his own sword protectively as Enderwalk moved in front of both, ignoring his own slashes and blood dripping to the floor. Enderwalk Ranboo screeched, almost daring the masked man to come toward his family. Tubbo’s gaze was focused on Dream, looking him over. “Yeah, something like that. Great plan, isn’t it?”

“Actually,” Dream let out a small cough, smirking. “Actually it’s pretty stupid.”

“I’d disagree, since we have Michael, and from the looks of it, you don’t have your precious armor.”

“Oh Tubbo, all these years and you’ve learned nothing… I always have other plans.”

Tubbo’s eyes narrowed. “What do you-?”

“Looking for this?” Dream smiled, holding up a glimmering potion of harming. Enderwalk was ready to pounce, looking over at Tubbo who stood up, sword raised. “Nuh-uh-uh. Try to take it from me and I’ll smash it on the floor. All of them.” Dream moved to open the flap of his bag slightly to reveal more potions of harming. Tubbo’s face fell - all the extras, everything…

Enderwalk looked back at Tubbo, head tilted in confusion as Tubbo signaled for him to stand down. Tubbo took a deep breath - he hated this. He hated that once again, he hadn’t thought everything through, he hated that once again he failed, and most of all he hated that fact that as of this moment, his son’s life was in that green psycho's hands. Enderwalk turned to hold Michael close once again, nuzzling him and getting worried and sad when he didn’t respond. “What do you want for it?”

“You know what I want.” Dream said coldly. “I’d hurry if I were you, or it’ll be Michael’s first cannon life.”

Tubbo promised himself he wouldn’t ever subject his son to that kind of pain, that he’d protect him no matter what. He let out a defeated sigh. “Second portrait on the left in the entryway. It’s behind the painting.” Tubbo held out his hand. “Now give me the potion.”

“Tubbo, Tubbo, Tubbo… never change. Once an idiot, always an idiot, isn’t it?” Dream tossed the potion bottle over, which Tubbo quickly caught as the masked man turned and walked out of the room. Tubbo quickly rushed over toward his son, putting the potion bottle to his lips. They didn’t have much time.

Of course, it wouldn’t heal much, but it certainly was better than nothing. He looked over toward Enderwalk, gears turning in his head trying to make sure he spoke clearly enough to be understood. “⟒⋏⎅⟒⍀, ☌⟒⏁ ⏚⏃⋏⎅⏃☌⟒⌇.”

Enderwalk nodded, rushing over toward the drawers, grabbing some bandages and handing them over to Tubbo, who set down the empty potion bottle. Enderwalk looked down at Michael as Tubbo worked, focused. “⏚⏃⏚⊬ ⏃⌇⌰⟒⟒⌿. ⏚⏃⏚⊬ ⍜☍⏃⊬?”

“⌿⏃⟟⋏ ⊑⎍⍀⏁ ⏁⍜⍜ ⋔⎍☊⊑. ⌿⍜⏁⟟⍜⋏ ⊑⟒⌰⌿⟒⎅.”

Enderwalk reached to scratch and pat behind Michael’s ears. Tubbo tightened the bandages as Michael stirred. “...Dad…?”

“Michael, thank gods you’re alright!” Tubbo moved to hug his son, Enderwalk joining in, purring happily at the reunion.

“What… what happened? Where’s Dream?”

No time. “Busy. Michael, can you move..?”

Michael shifted to sit, feeling sore, tired. Small pulses of pain still wracked his body that he ignored. He moved his leg slightly, testing the waters. “I… I think so…?”

“Good. Okay.” Tubbo got up, holding out his hand and helping his son stand on shaky hooves. “I need you to run. Run toward Uncle Tommy’s.”

“Wait, what? N-no, I’m not leaving you!”

“This isn’t a choice, Michael. You have to go. Now. Before he comes back.”

“But-”

Tubbo’s hands gently squeezed his son’s. “No matter what you hear or what happens, don’t stop. Don’t stop until you’re at Uncle Tommy’s and you’re safe, okay?”

“But what about you and Dad? What about Dream?”

“Don’t worry, we’ve held our own this long. We’ll meet you at Uncle Tommy’s soon, but you have to get there and get safe, okay? Don’t look back, just get there. You can do that for me, right?” Tubbo’s forehead gently bonked Michael’s. “Remember the time we got caught in the forest just as the sun was coming down?”

“Yeah. I was so scared I couldn’t move. It was my first time out at night.”

“Remember, I took your hand like this…” Tubbo slowly rubbed circles into the back of Michael’s palm. “And told you that you didn’t have to be scared, that I was gonna be right there with you. All the scary monsters, you didn’t need to be afraid because as long as you kept running, nothing could get you.”

“Dad, I don’t know if I-”

“Yes you can. I know you can, Michael. Run as fast as your hooves can carry you, I know you can do it. I know you can be brave.” Tubbo encouraged. “Get there, your father and I will be right behind you. I promise.”

“I love you, Dad.”

“I love you too, Michael.”

“⏚⏃⏚⊬ ⍜☍⏃⊬! ⍙⊑⊬ ⏚⏃⏚⊬ ⌇⏃⎅?”

Enderwalk nuzzled with Michael as a few tears spilled down the piglin’s cheeks, and he laughed, smiling. “I love you too, Dad!”

Quickly, giving his parents one last look, Michael dashed into the hallway, heading toward the balcony and jumping down into the courtyard, adrenaline pumping through his veins as he ran through the trees toward the icy tundra. Tubbo wiped away his tears as he looked over toward his purple-eyed husband.

“⏚⏃⏚⊬...?”

Tubbo cupped Enderwalk’s cheek as the enderman snuggled into the embrace. “⋔⟟☊⊑⏃⟒⌰ ⋏⍜⏁ ⌇⏃⎎⟒ ⊑⟒⍀⟒. ☌⍜⟟⋏☌ ⏁⍜ ⌇⏃⎎⟒ ⌿⌰⏃☊⟒.”

Enderwalk looked into Tubbo’s eyes and nodded in understanding. He moved to hold Tubbo’s face in his hands as Tubbo stilled, confused for a moment before Enderwalk pulled him down to the floor in a tight hug. Surprised at first, Tubbo returned the gesture. A loud crash erupted from below the two, followed by loud angry yells that sent shivers up Enderwalk’s spine and made him tense up.

“WHERE IS IT?!”

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

“The flowers are really pretty today.” Ghostie smiled as he kneeled down in the daisy flower field, callused and rough hands moving to gently caress a flower.

“Yeah, spring’s coming.” Junior smiled, sitting down next to his friend.

“Spring…?”

“You… wait a minute, you’ve never seen spring before?!”

The ghost considered his friend's words for a moment, searching his own memory. “No, I… I don’t think I remember spring.” He smiled excitedly, a childlike curiosity in his eyes. “What’s it like?”

Junior settled down next to his friend, moving to pluck a flower. “Well, it’s warm, like… like hot chocolate, and flowers come back… it’s like the entire world comes alive again.” As Junior spoke, Ghostie pushed his green hood back and looked up towards the bright blue sky, noticing a small butterfly float past. His heart felt light, it was perfectly warm and bright, and something about everything around him made a smile appear on his face. “It’s perfect.”

“Oh, by the way, I’ve got something for you.” Foolish Junior smiled, reaching into his bag and pulling out a small piece of different colors of braided thread - a lime green and two different shades of blue with a small white shell at the bottom. He held it out to Ghostie. “Now we’re officially best friends!”

“What is it…?” Ghostie asked, staring down at the foreign object laid in his palm.

“It’s a friendship bracelet!” Junior beamed, pulling out a similar yellow with the same two shades of blue. When his ghost friend didn’t respond or understand when he pointed it out, just staring up at him confused, he moved to explain. “You wear it on your wrist to show that we’re friends. See? It matches mine.” The twelve year old held up his own bracelet to show his ghost friend.

“Were… were we not friends before…?”

“Of course we were, Ghostie!” Foolish Junior exclaimed. “You’re my best ghost friend in the world, after all.” He reassured his friend. “I just wanted to make it for you because I thought you’d like it. Tubbo was telling me this story the other day about these special compasses, and… and I wanted to make sure that even if we’re not always together, we’ll still have a part of each other, you know?”

“It’s pretty. Like the flowers.” Ghostie smiled. “I love it.”

“Here, let me show you how to put it on…”

Foolish Junior heard talking just beyond his room as he packed, hearing his Uncle Eret downstairs. For a second, his mind wandered to what they could possibly be talking about. After all, it was just a simple respawn. He wasn’t that hurt, Ghostie got brought back… everything was perfect! Everything was supposed to be absolutely perfect.

So why wasn’t it? The whispers and hushed tones, the way his father looked at him, clung to him in a vice grip… it wasn’t right. He wasn’t right. He knew his father wasn’t right about Ghostie, or… or was he Dream now…? Dream. It didn’t sound right, it didn’t fit him as well as ‘Ghostie’ did. The name felt so foreign on his tongue. But, if that’s what his friend wanted…

The teenager stilled as his gaze settled on the abandoned green and blue friendship bracelet left on his nightstand. He remembered how Ghostie held it with the utmost care when he handed it to him to take - “Make sure to give it back once the ritual’s all done. I don’t wanna get it dirty.” Junior remembered so clearly how Ghostie looked at him when he wasn’t transparent anymore.he called out for him with a smile, and his best friend simply turned around without saying a single word, looking around the forest.

After a moment of hesitation, he slid on Ghostie’s bracelet next to his own. He’ll give it back, he’ll reunite with Ghostie and introduce him to everyone and they’d understand. Then, they’d finally get to go swimming together like they always wanted to. They’d be together again.

All he had to do was find him.

You whisper to Dream: Meet me by the flower field tonight once the sun goes down. Be safe. We’ve gotta talk.

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

As his husband held his head in agony, Tubbo was quick to steady him, resting his head against his shoulder. He gently held him, adapting as he shifted every now and then. Worried thoughts filled Tubbo's head as he couldn’t help but think of the worst - it had after all been years since Ranboo had forced himself to go into that state. He was the one who pushed him, all for his plan, his 'big' plan. Eventually, Tubbo found the voice to speak. “You there, Boo?”

“I... forgot how dizzying it is…” Ranboo let out a pained chuckle against his husband’s shoulder. “How’d I do?”

“Amazing,” Tubbo smiled, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead. A few tears slid down his cheeks as he softly laughed. “Absolutely amazing.”

“Michael okay?”

“Dream roughed him up a little badly,” Tubbo sniffed, moving his hand up to wipe away his tears. “I patched him up, gave him a potion and sent him on his way toward Tommy’s.”

“That’s good.” Ranboo moved to sit up fully, holding Tubbo’s hand in his to comfort him. His smile never left his face. “So, what’s the plan now?”

“Well, Dream always told us what would happen if we crossed him.” Tubbo looked up at Ranboo. “Do you wanna come with me and find out?”

The enderman smirked playfully. “Aw, don’t tell me you tricked the poor thing…?”

“I do learn from the best.” Tubbo smiled. The door slammed open once more to reveal a very angry and pissed off Dream. Slowly, he walked over toward the couple, a golden axe drawn.

“Tubbo.” He growled.

"Dream." Tubbo smiled. "Did you find the armor?" A pair of netherite boots fell to the floor with a 'clang', the noise like thunder in the silent tense room.

“Where’s the rest of it?!”

“What, don't you like the boots?”

Dream pounced, tackling Tubbo to the ground and slowly pushing the axe blade up toward Tubbo’s neck. “Start talking you little shit.”

“Did you honestly think we’d hide all your precious armor and weapons in one spot?! Do you think after twelve years we’d still be that stupid?!” With Tubbo’s words, Dream looked like he was slapped, anger only building and rising the more he thought it over, the more he realized his mistake.

A mistake. He didn't make mistakes.

“We’ve buried them and hid the locations all around the SMP, just in case someone like you ever showed up again and tried to take us down.” Tubbo explained. “Good luck on finding the others, going through everyone on the SMP, digging through all that dirt… not to mention that as we speak Michael’s running to warn the others about you.” Tubbo’s eyes narrowed. “You’re trapped.”

He didn't make mistakes. He didn't get trapped. He was always smarter, always faster, always in control. Why wasn't he in control?!

“Checkmate, Dream.” Tubbo spat.

The words sparked a flame within Dream’s stomach, igniting his anger and destructive spirit. Choked breathing filled the room as Dream wrapped his hands around Tubbo’s throat and squeezed. How dare he… HOW DARE HE TRICK HIM?! He saw red as he slammed Tubbo’s head back down against the wooden floor, staining it crimson. Ranboo yelled and screamed in the background until Tubbo was still as a stone, unconscious.

“Get away from him!” Ranboo yelled, grabbing his sword and moving to strike. A quick slash of Dream’s yellow axe sent him to the floor as well. Struggling to keep awake, Ranboo crawled, each movement feeling like fire as it combined with his older injuries, his blood dripping to the floor. Dream watched Ranboo a moment, relishing in his struggle, the blood bringing him a deep satisfaction. Slowly, ever so slowly, he begins to walk over toward the enderman, his golden axe dripping with blood.

“I’ll admit, I didn’t expect you guys to be so sharp after all these years… but you’re still making the same mistakes.” Dream said with an oddly calm and cold tone. “You three always underestimate me. You underestimated me then, and you’re still doing it now to make yourselves feel better, to feel like you’ve won. But you haven’t.” Dream kneeled down in front of the enderman, grabbing a fistful of his hair and pulling his face to look at his. “I’m going to win eventually. After all, I waited a hundred and forty-four years to get out of that hell hole you three put me in. If you think a small slip up is all it takes to stop me and the plans I have…" The last thing that rang in Ranboo's head before he passed out was Dream's crazed laughter.

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

General Writing Taglist (Tell me if you'd like to be added or removed):

@bonesposts

(Also, I believe @yellowhearthero wanted some protective enderboo, so here you go! :D)

[writeforfandoms]

Shake, Rattle and Roll 5

We’re on to chapter 5 folks! Next chapter will be the last chapter, then the epilogue.

Masterlist

Summary: More obstacles come between you and the end of this night. Then there were two more murders.

Warnings: Murder (non descriptive), swearing, the usual. 

Tags: @fandom-blackhole @pedrocentric @sarahjkl82-blog @giizhkens-cedar

--

You wanted to bang your head against a wall. Or revive Damon to murder him again. Really, at this point, you weren’t too picky. 

“The cook didn’t have the keys.” You stated it plainly, just to make sure you understood correctly.

“Unfortunately that does seem to be the situation,” Ezra agreed. He sounded mildly put off. Mildly. 

You blew out a breath slowly, letting your cheeks puff out with the force of it. Okay. That’s okay, there were other doors in the house. Now that the four were in the library, you might be able to chance the front door. 

“The front door is similarly locked,” Ezra started, interrupting your thoughts. “I believe the girl implied the back door would be locked, as well.”

“Well this is a pickle,” you muttered, rocking your weight back and forth on your feet. “Okay. We need the keys to get out of here.” You met Ezra’s gaze and realized you were both thinking the same thing: Damon. 

“Searching for the keys will not bother me, dove, if you care to continue keeping watch,” he offered.

You hesitated and then nodded slowly. “Remind Cee not to look,” you muttered, half-imploring. 

“I will.” Ezra met and held your gaze for a few long moments before he dipped his head and turned away. You refocused your attention on the hallway, listening for any sign of the prospectors. A shout gave you some indication that they had discovered the empty library. The big question now was where would they go next? Continue searching room by room, or outside? Neither was a great option for you three, honestly. 

A hissed curse from Ezra drew your attention, and you shifted enough to look back at him. “What now?”

“No keys,” he growled, sounding frustrated. His hands were both clenched as he glowered down at the floor.

“What the fuck.” You kept your voice low but couldn’t keep the note of disbelief out of it. “Okay. Time for a new plan.” You hurried back to Cee. “Where else might the keys be?”

Cee shot you a bewildered look. “The study, maybe?” 

“Right.” You turned her carefully away from the bodies and guided her to the doorway. The other prospectors were still in the library, although you doubted they’d stay for long. “Study’s on this side of the library, if we book it I think we can make it.”

“It is a bold choice,” Ezra offered from behind you. 

“It’s our only choice.” You sighed. “Ready?”

The three of you booked it down the hall and into the study. Ezra shut the door exceedingly gently behind you all and flipped the lock, for all the good that would do. The three of you set to searching for the keys, quietly. Just in case anyone decided to check the study. 

“Found them,” Cee told you quietly, holding up the keys. An actual old-fashioned key ring with physical keys. You hadn’t seen one like that possibly ever. 

“Good job, kid,” you murmured to her, giving her a smile. “Now we need to figure out the best exit route.”

Ezra hummed as he joined your little conference. “The front is the clearest and closest exit,” he summed up. “The kitchen door is less visible, but requires us to cross the hallway again. The back door has much the same problem - we would have to cross their path without being seen.”

“Guess we need to know where they are, first,” you said, briefly tipping your head back to look at the ceiling. You were so sick of this, so ready to just go home. There was a reason you’d gotten out of the prospecting game. 

“I can go,” Cee offered.

“No,” was your immediate response.

“Not a chance, little bird,” came Ezra’s protest, a second after yours. 

“Cee, darling, the goal is to get you out of here alive,” you pointed out. “So no, you’re not going. I’ll go.” You stepped away from the two, towards the door. “Just wait here until I get back.”

Without waiting for a response, you unlocked the door and pulled it open slowly, peering out. Nobody in the hall. Good. You crept cautiously towards the library, peeking around the doorway just enough to peer inside. Nobody in there, either. Well, that was… not great. The longer you were out in the hallway, the worse your odds got. Your skin was already crawling with nerves. 

A noise in the kitchen got your attention, and you crept that way, keeping low and walking as silently as you could. You paused in the hall outside the kitchen, listening. 

“Found it,” Mikken grunted from inside. 

“Show us,” Felicia demanded. 

You carefully looked around the doorframe to see what they were talking about, just in time to see Inumon pull her thrower and shoot the two blondes. They both fell, dead before they hit the floor. 

“Two down,” Mikken rumbled with satisfaction, holding up a piece of paper for Inumon to see. “Three to go.” 

You didn’t wait to see more. You just made for the study again as fast as you could, heart pounding. You knew what Mikken meant now, and it was really not good for you. 

“We’ve got a problem,” you told the other two immediately after slipping into the study.

“More?” Ezra asked, lips quirking wryly. 

“Inumon killed the two blondes,” you told them. “And it looks like Mikken found the map. They’re coming after us next. Pretty sure they don’t want anybody alive to point fingers or go after them.” 

Ezra blew out a breath. “That is indeed a slight problem,” he agreed. 

“Slight?” you shot back, incredulous. 

“But we have the keys,” Cee said, looking between the two of you. “We can go.” 

“We can, but there is no guarantee they will not come after us,” Ezra told her gently. 

You hushed them both when you heard movement in the hallway, and all three of you sneaked over to the door to listen.

“Why are we moving this one?” Inumon asked, sounding grumpy. 

“Might as well keep the entryway tidy,” Mikken grunted. There was some shuffling, another grunt, and then more shuffling. You and Ezra exchanged baffled looks. Cee cracked the door open enough to see, and you craned your neck to see over her head.

Inumon and Mikken were carrying the body of the woman Fero had killed. They were headed for the kitchen.

Well. Keep the entryway tidy, indeed. 

They weren’t going to take long at that, and you all needed an exit strategy, stat. Preferably before the murderous prospectors started doing a room-by-room search. 

“If we can lure them upstairs I think we can outrun them,” you whispered. 

“A mighty fine idea, except for two small points of contention,” Ezra whispered back. “The first being how to lure them upstairs in the first place, and the second being the small fact that they know our names and faces, dove.”

“So we’re back to your plan?” you hissed. “Kill them?”

“Before they kill us, preferably,” Ezra confirmed. He still sounded quite placid about all of this. Not that your hands were exactly clean, either, but you still had feelings about plotting murder. 

“You should separate them,” Cee offered.

You and Ezra both stilled. It wasn’t a bad idea, really. One on one would be easier to take them, probably. You knew Inumon was armed, and it was highly likely Mikken was as well. And while you were still not crazy about the idea of killing them, well… They were out to kill you. And Cee. There was no way you were letting them kill Cee. 

“I don’t know that they’ll separate now,” you spoke slowly, thinking out loud more than anything. “They’re close to their goal, it makes sense for them to search together.”

“Unless they are so consumed by the sight of their goal that they become sloppy,” Ezra murmured, eyes flicking rapidly between you and Cee. 

“What do you have in mind?” you asked, watching him. He was definitely plotting something, and you’d rather like some heads up before he pulled anything. 

Ezra hesitated a moment. “If we can get them to believe that we have split up, they will do the same,” he said. “They will believe us to be easier targets singly than together.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” you murmured. “Okay. I can go throw something up the stairs, you can circle back around to the library?”

“And duck through the hidden corridor to make my timely escape,” Ezra agreed. “Cee, are there any other such hidden treasures in this house?”

“Yes, actually.” Cee walked over to the fireplace and pushed hard. Part of the wall folded inwards, showing another corridor.

“Where does this one go?” you asked, peering down it. Nope, too dark, can’t see.

“To the greenhouse.” 

“There’s a greenhouse?” You couldn’t help but be momentarily distracted. No, greenhouse later, distracting the murderers first. Wait. No. Greenhouse first. Your lips pulled in a grin. “I’ll go to the greenhouse. Cee, stick with Ezra. I’ll go make a nice big noisy distraction.” You grinned, bouncing a little on your toes. Was this nuts? Yeah, a bit. But your adrenaline was going, and this was a great idea. Absolutely fantastic. 

Except for the part where you could possibly get killed, but hey, that was the theme of the night. 

You stepped into the hidden passage, walking carefully along it. When you got to the other end, it took you a moment to find the level to pull, and then you very carefully peered around. There was no movement in the greenhouse. No lights either. That made all this slightly more difficult. 

It only took stubbing your toe to find a suitable object. A big empty vase was sitting on a pedestal (the one that attacked your foot), and you hefted it carefully. Yup. That would do, one way or another. Turning to the nearest wall, you eyed the glass. It looked like glass. If it was anything more sturdy, well, the vase shattering on the floor would do nicely as well. 

Giving the vase one more heft, you threw it as hard as you could at the glass, which shattered with a magnificently loud noise on impact. And then you ran for the passageway, shoving the door closed behind you again, you heart hammering in your ears.

[thereaderstea]

Hello tor-mon!

I just saw your response and honestly you flatter me too much, you re-read it ten times? This is the highest form of praise!

Secondly, I was wondering what things you personally like to see in the horror/yandere genre? I have been trying to come up with ideas for my next fic and am a little stumped. So, I figured who better to ask than my favorite reviewer in the whole world?

What is a fic you always wanted to read in this genre? AUs you don't see too often? Something you just really want to see! I'd love to hear your thoughts 💜💜💜

Merry meet, deliciae! Of course! Your writing is the perfect material to reread! I reread your fics all the time, and your writing never loses its effect! True beauty!

First, I’m honored 🥺 And second, I’ve got you, deliciae! A lot of these ideas are supernatural/paranormal/magical because that’s my usual realm and I am wholly unoriginal and empty-headed when it comes to the Normal world 😅

Yandere AUs

Among Us au: I believe this is a potent au filled with lots of possibilities, especially with the addition of the Town of Us roles (Imposter Lovers immediately screamed yandere at me). The two possibilities that stuck out to me was 1) the classic yandere is the imposter and mc is a crewmate (and mayhap the crew think the mc is sus 🤭), and 2) the mc is the imposter with a yandere crewmate (i.e. the yandere!crewmate simps for the mc). 

Battle Royale au: I remember you mentioning a long while back about starting your blog in part because of chinkbihh’s Quarter Quell but wasn’t sure what else to bring to the table? I have a singular idea and some alternate settings that employ a similar taste of the Hunger Games (because I, too, love chinkbihh’s yandere Hunger Games idea):

Hunger Games: game designer and hunger games survivor. The yandere is on the game’s designing team and the mc is a survivor in the games. The yandere does all they can to ensure the mc’s safety and victory in the games, and well, the mc may escape the games unscathed but they can’t escape the yandere’s clutches. 

S.O.S.: This is a game on Steam. You’re on La Cuna island, where you have to fight monsters, avoid becoming infected by the monsters, yoink a crystal on the island before other players do, call in the helicopter, and secure your spot home. There are thirty-two players, only three seats home, and you definitely didn’t sign up for this fight to the death 😅

Dead by Daylight: This is a game on Steam. There’s one killer and four survivors (but who says it has to be those numbers?). The survivors have to fix the generators to open the gates and escape, and the killer is having fun chasing the survivors, messing with them using their special abilities, taking them down, throwing them on hooks, and sacrificing them to the Entity. It’s ten times more terrifying to play with friends, and while I love the teaming up, I love a shameless, no-regrets betrayal between good friends more 🙂 (sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice)

Witch au: I believe there are a few aspects of the witch-y world that could be brewed with yandere, namely:

love potions

curses, hexes: anyone who tries to get between the mc and the yandere is cursed

a case of an accidental summoning of a djinn, demon, or some other being who becomes rather fond (and possessive) of the witch (or vice versa!)

empathy (specifically feeling others’ emotions): this could create some good internal conflict. If the mc is an empath, then what if they feel the yandere’s ‘love’; would the mc also become a yandere? 

fortune telling/scrying/clairvoyance or claircognizance/psychometry: you’ve actually hinted at this concept in Solar Eclipse and it’s such an intriguing concept, so here’s another version

dream walking/lucid dreaming/astral projecting: I read a book where the mc dreams of a town and her duty is to protect the town from the djinn. She loses her brother and so when the djinn approaches her in her dreams she makes a deal with a djinn to get him back (sort of like Persephone :D), but she didn’t think it was a real deal until she woke up. The interesting part was that she was chained to the djinn, and the djinn could use those chains to summon her to him, even across dimensions.

Tuatha Dé Danann/Sidhe/Fae au: besides the Unseelie being cool candidates for yanderes (glamour, master manipulators, and typically violent? perfect grounds to make a yandere), there are aspects of Fae folklore that I love and think would be pretty cool in yandere:

names: names hold power and if you tell a Faerie your name (specifically your full, true name), they hold power over you. the Fae are tricky, so it can be easy to literally hand your name over to them. 

faerie rings: if you step in a faerie ring, you’re trapped until the Faerie who created the ring comes to collect their trappings. But faerie rings are also rumored to be portals into the Fae realm

selkie: in folklore, men would convince a selkie to marry them and hide their seal skin as a means to trap the selkie with them. if the selkie ever finds her seal skin, she’ll dip on the man and return to the ocean.

Slaugh Sidhe, or the Wild Host/Wild Hunt: the Slaugh Sidhe are hosts of restless, unforgiven dead, sometimes rumored to be Fallen Angels. I believe the Headless Horseman is in the Hunt as well. They roam the Earth on Samhain and hunt during the night; they prey on humans and will steal their souls. You can also inadvertently call the Slaugh to you by saying their name during nightfall or feeling hopeless (they prey on sadness, broken hearts, and the depressed). 

each-uisce, or each-uisge: a shapeshifting water-horse; it typically takes the form of a man on land and a horse in water. Though if in the form of a horse on land, a human mounts them, and they smell water, the uisce will drag the human down into the water and eat them

zombie apocalypse au: I haven’t seen too many yanderes in the zombie apocalypse, but it sounds pretty cool (way I see it, the yandere is prepared to keep mc alive and the mc gets to kick some zombie booty! win-win!)

Yandere Situations

Storyteller: this is the perfect place to crack out fairytales! the Storyteller forces the character to live out retellings of fairytales (best if used with people the character knows). 

Shapeshifter: the yandere!shapeshifter shifts into a new person every time their relationship with the mc goes wrong. Doesn’t matter how many times it takes, the shapeshifter can become as many people as they have to be to end up with the mc :)

Resurrection: the mc kills the yandere plenty of times, but the yandere resurrects themselves every time. In the time it takes for the yandere to resurrect themselves, the mc runs/escapes, trying to get as far as they can away from the yandere. The yandere is rather amused with the game of cat and mouse; how far will the mc get this time?

Necromancy: the yandere is a necromancer and perhaps didn’t get to save the mc in time (or killed the mc themselves) and so they reanimated the mc. Maybe the mc loses a little bit of their soul with every revival, maybe they don’t, but one thing’s for sure: death isn’t an escape :)

Phasmophobia: this is another game on Steam. you are on a team a paranormal investigators, and you’re trying to document what type of ghost is haunting a location. This time may be your biggest break yet, but your latest ghost is a huge puzzle and also rather keen on keeping you...

Yandere Pairings/Characters

human and angel (bonus if there are clipped wings ☺)

witch and familiar

serial killer and grim reaper

forgotten deity and lone follower

thief and detective

time traveler and immortal

~*~

I hope this helps spark something even if you don’t use any of them, and lmk if I should clarify something or if you need more assistance! I’m happy to help ☺

Blessed be, deliciae! and may writer’s block not plague you!

your lil monster delight, tor-mon 🖤

[thebudgetgarden]

The Budget Garden 2: Tachikaze “Goodstuff” (V-Premium)

Hello Cardfighters, So, I haven’t even completed a total of 3 posts before I got my very first request ! A person from my Vanguard playgroup overheard me mention this blog in passing to one of my friends, and so asked me if he could see my approach to a very cheap and strong Tachikaze deck. This, for those who are not in the know, is already a challenge, as Tachikaze is based on certain interactions with it’s own units, and on much more rare occassions, very strong, individual cards. So, I thought I would discuss one of the very first decks I build by myself, Tachikaze Goodstuff, an Accel deck that aims to hit hard and hit fast. 

Let’s begin with the grade 3 units, as understanding our win conditions is the key to success with learning and handling Tachikaze properly. 

We shall begin first with a list of our main grade 3 units, which in this case are varying rations of 4 different units, these being:

Light Battle Dragon, Gigannoblazer

Sundering Dragon, Terror Therizeeno

Fiery Light Dragon, Opticalcerato

Savage Mercenary 

[CONT](VC):During your turn, if three or more new equip gauges were put for your units this turn, all of your front row units get [Power]+5000. [ACT](VC)1/Turn:COST [Counter Blast (1) & Soul Blast (1)], draw two cards, and call two cards from your hand to (RC). Put up to one card from the top of your deck face down as an equip gauge for each of those units. (Put without looking at the front of those cards）

[AUTO](VC/RC):When it attacks a vanguard, COST [retire another rear-guard], draw a card, if a unit with equip gauge was retired for this cost, choose one of your opponent's rear-guards, and retire it.

[AUTO](VC/RC):When placed, or when it attacks a vanguard, you may put the top card of your deck face down as an equip gauge for one of your rear-guards.

[CONT]:You cannot normal ride this card. [CONT](RC):If you have no units with equip gauge in the same column as this unit, this unit cannot attack. So, wow, right off the bat, there is a lot to unpack, so let us take it step by step, first by explaining the notion of what “goodstuff” means. “Goodstuff”, used in the context of card games, is a strategy or type of playstyle that doesn’t adhere to the usual norms of having a normal win condition and trying to fullfill that condition every game. It practically means that we are a Jack-of-all-trades, but a master of none.  Taking a look at our grade 3 line-up, this notion becomes all the more noticeable, as we dont really follow a coherent gameplan, rather we decide to play as many tools as possible in order to have the best chance of winning. Reading through these cards, we can already gleam at least three characteristics that set Tachikaze apart from all of the other clans in the game, with those key-words being: Equip gauge, which means placing the top card of your deck under one of your units as a “marker” or “indicator” that can be used in conjunction with various effects Retire, meaning getting rid of one of ours or one of our opponent’s rear-guard units. Excuse me for making such a long-winded introduction to what someone would innitially think is a fairly simple and easy to play deck, but understanding these concepts, as easy as they are for some, is an integral part of understanding the clan as a whole. That is very obvious with our main boss unit, Gigannoblazer. Gigannoblazer encapsulates the essence of Tachikaze perfectly. Not only does he possess a very strong advantage skill that helps facilitate very aggressive plays, but he also allows the Cardfighter that is using him to give a healthy 5k boost in the front row, allowing for magic numbers and choke-points to be hit in a much easier fashion. This is highlighted further by Terror Therizeeno, a strong back-up ride target, as well as a potent rear-guard unit. His skill might seem odd initially, but there is a lot of synergistic potential with his retiring skill, as he allows for dead columns that have already performed their attack to provide some value for you, both in forms of a draw and retiring a pesky unit your opponent may have.  Opticerato is also fairly basic and simple. He’s a good call target that also functions well with the rest of the deck while attacking. A very simple and strong card, running a few copies wouldn’t hurt any Tachikaze deck. Savage Mercenary is an odd one. With a whopping 27k power, higher than any grade 3 in the game, you would think that his restrictive skill would stop him from being a gread addition, however, that is simply not the case. With a stupidly easy condition to fulfill, Mercenary becomes a very strong unit that cannot be blocked easily. Having a few copies in your deck as a simple and strong finisher is a must, as this card can easily steal wins from our opponents. All of these cards, while very strong, are also incredibly cost effective. If you were to buy a play-set of each card, meaning 4 copies of each individual grade 3, it would hardly set you back about 6 euros, which is a laughably low cost for such high impact units. 

Moving on to the Grade 2 Units, we find ourselves in a very odd and unique predicament.

The grade 2 line-up for Tachikaze is, for a lack of a better term, completely pre-determined. This is not, however, a bad thing. It just means that the choices that we do have are both so powerful and inexpensive that they would usually find their home in the full competitive versions of these decks. The downside, though, is that the creative aspect gets a tiny bit stiffled, which is a small price to pay for such power-houses.

The grade 2 line-up is split amongst 4 very high impact units, those being:

Clearout Dragon, Sweeperacrocanto

Ravenous Dragon, Megarex

Turbo Smilodon

Regiment Dragon, Regiodon

[AUTO](RC)1/Turn:When it attacks a vanguard, put the top card of your deck face down as an equip gauge for this unit. [CONT](RC):This unit gets [Power]+5000 for each of this unit's equip gauges, and if it has three or more equip gauges, it cannot be chosen by your opponent's card's abilities.

[AUTO](VC/RC):When it attacks a vanguard, COST [retire another rear-guard], and draw a card. If this unit is on (RC), COST [Counter Blast (1)], put the top card of your deck face down as an equip gauge for this unit, and it gets [Power]+5000 until end of that battle for each gauge equipped to this unit.

[AUTO](VC/RC):When placed, or when it attacks a vanguard, you may put the top card of your deck face down as an equip gauge for one of your rear-guards.

[AUTO](VC/RC):When it attacks, you may put the top card of your deck face down as an equip gauge for one of your rear-guards. [AUTO]:When retired from (RC) by your card's ability, call up to one card from this unit's equip gauge to (RC). You may put the top card of your deck face down as an equip gauge for that unit. This ability may only be used by a card with the same card name once a turn. There is a lot to unpack here. Simply put, both Sweeper and Megarex are insane cards, maybe unfair in the general landscape of budget deck-building. Sweeper gives himself an equip gauge on attack, and he gets 5k power and a removal dodge ability… on BOTH players’ turns. Meaning that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, on the first turn that sweeper is played, he is going to be a 19k-24k attacker that keeps his high numbers and is resistant to pretty much all forms of removal, apart from some unique cases. There was a point that this card was so good people were considering it as a possible candidate for a BAN. Couple that with its laughably low price point, at 50 cents each, and it’s no wonder why people still use this card in every possible build of Tachikaze, no exceptions. Megarex is a completely different beast entirely. His power-up skill is a bit more restrictive, but it follows the exact same path as sweeper, simply less efficient, while also being more susceptible to removal. He more than makes up for it, however, with his retire and draw skill, which is completely free and works perfectly with the rest of the clan. Another thing to note is that he is insanely cheap, an entire playset of him going for about 1 euro and 20 cents. There is not a lot to be said about Turbo Smilodon, he’s a grade 2 version of Opticalcerato, a card we briefly discussed in the grade 3 section. Smilodon is, also, quite an expensive card. In the time of me writing this, we still dont know what the reprint price for him is from the new Revival Collection set, so for now he is sitting at a comfortable 1 euro and 50 cents per copy. If he’s not readily available, then running the grade 3 Optic is suggested as a replacement. Regiodon is also quite simple. A lot of skills in Tachikaze require the retiring of a rear-guard to be activated, and Regiodon is an excellent card, working as not only fodder for the rest of the team, but also as a multi-attack engine, if placed on an Accel marker. A lot of utility as well as a little bit of extra oomph for your combo turn.

The grade 2 line-up was a million times better than anticipated, but with that, it is now time to move along to the grade 1 line-up. The grade 1 line-up, to a certain extend, has also been solved, however a bit more of a creative spin can be put in it if any Cardfighter feels like experimenting.

There are several key budget units to consider right off the bat, those units being: 

Fierce Claw Dragon, Laceraterex

Full Speed Dragon, Bluesprint

Angry Roar Dragon, Roarbaryo 

Sonic Noa 

[AUTO](RC):When placed from hand, put the top card of your deck face down as an equip gauge for this unit. [AUTO]:When it is retired from (RC), COST [Soul Blast (1)], and return up to one gauge equipped to this unit to your hand.

[AUTO](VC/RC):When it attacks, you may put one card from the top of your deck face down as an equip gauge for one of your rear-guards. [AUTO]:When retired from (RC) by your card's ability, call up to one of this unit's equip gauges to (RC). You may put one card from the top of your deck face down as an equip gauge for that unit. This ability may only be used by a card with the same card name once a turn.

[AUTO](RC):When placed, COST [Soul Blast (1)], put the top card of your deck face down as an equip gauge for one of your other rear-guards, and that unit gets [Power]+5000 until end of turn for each of its equip gauges.

[AUTO](RC):When it boosts a rear-guard, put the top card of your deck face down as an

equip gauge

for the boosted unit.

[AUTO](VC/RC):When its attack or the attack that it boosted hits a vanguard, COST [retire one other rear-guard], and draw a card.

The grade 1 line-up, just like the grade 2 line-up, is also quite excellent. We have more and more cards that fulfill our win-condition and allow us to have options no matter what the current board-state is. 

An overwhelming amount of utility and value comes from both Bluesprint and Laceraterex, 2 cards that don’t only gauge themselves but also allow us to get even more value from our retires, both from a card-advantage, in the case of Laceraterex, and a potent multi-attack engine, in the case of Bluesprint. 

Roarbaryo, however, is just pure damage output. With the cost of just one soul he can make a unit not only get an equip gauge for future usage, but also gives a boost that can range from just 5k, to 25k in the case of Sweeper. Overall a very simple and strong card. The 3 cards discussed above will not set you back more than 2 euros for a playset of all of them.

Sonic noa is a special case. He is a bit pricier and harder to come by compared to the previous cards that we discussed, but his effect more than makes up for it. Sonic Noa is our decks’ WHOLE game-plan, condenced into one card. Equip gauges, self-retire, card draw, he does it all and he does it very well. A playset of him will set you back about 2 euros but he’s getting reprinted in the next revival collection, so picking him up won’t be a difficult task in the coming weeks.

Example decklist 

This particular list is not only very cheap and strong, but it’s also an excellent investment for future Tachikaze builds, if you wish to stick with this particular clan.

GRADE 3

4x Gigannoblazer

2x Terror Therizeeno

2x Opticalcerato

1x Savage Mercenary

GRADE 2

4x Sweeper

3x Megarex

3x Turbo Smilodon

2x Regiodon

GRADE 1

4x Roarbaryo

4x Sonic Noa

2x Bluesprint

2x Laceraterex 

GRADE 0

x1 Starting Vanguard 

x4 Draw Perfect Guards

x4 Heals

x8 Front Triggers

(Please keep in mind that these lists are made with the Budget Constraints first, as well as what is the most optimal ratio of cards depeding on their availability in Greece. All of these prices and lists are subject to change, but keeping the price low is the number 1 priority.) 

Final Price: ~19 Euros

Closing thoughts and Special thanks

While this particular Budget profile wasn’t as long as the Previous one, I feel like I did a good enough job at showcasing one of the least appreciated clans out there, and I hope I assisted you in finding a new and interesting deck or playstyle. As a massive tachikaze fan (one of my top 5 favorite clans), this deck was a joy to playtest and write about.Special thanks to my friend Dimitri, who without him this Budget Profile wouldn’t have existed, as well as a special thanks to my close friends for reading through the previous post, even though they don’t know a single thing about Vanguard.That’s all for now, Cardfighters ! If you have read this far, thank you so much for your time and attention. Have a wonderful rest of your day ! Bloom aka thebudgetgarden (if you have any questions, feel free to contact my discord account: Bloom#8890) 

[dhrdrabbles]

Four portraits of Astoria were placed across the manor.

Each was beautiful in its own regard – the tall, slender woman being surrounded by peach blossoms, sunflowers, chrysanthemums, and winterberries, respectively. Draco Malfoy had commissioned each portrait of his late wife symbolising a season after she had passed far too young, leaving her grieving husband and distraught son. Draco had wanted to make sure that she would be remembered in every corner of the haunting, old mansion and be a part of their family around the year without seeming eerily misplaced. He had also hoped for a symbolism of eternity – an endless circle of the four seasons, although this notion now struck him as a bit melodramatic.

Astoria had been Draco’s ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak youth. She was caring, smart, empathetic, and funny. Astoria’s heart was open for anyone and she treated all people and creatures equally respectful. Astoria would listen patiently and give thorough advice even at a young age. Astoria was missed by her family and friends alike, none of which could believe they had lost her so early in life. Her portraits seemed so much more alive, so much more present than other portraits of deceased persons.

So when Hermione Granger, née Granger but ex-Weasley (not by name but by statute), mother of two brilliant children, former minister for magic (the youngest on record even by the time she stepped down on her own accord), acclaimed author, and Draco Malfoy’s new partner in life, first passed one (the spring version) of the portraits she had heard so much about before she first visited the manor (aside from that fateful night over twenty years prior, let’s not discuss it, thank you very much), she was irritated to find that Astoria’s beautiful face (and Hermione was positive that this was not an embellished version of the late Malfoy (junior-)matriarch, this had been her actual face) in a bored but irritable expression.

Hermione passed her quickly then, thinking about mentioning the mood to Draco but quickly deciding otherwise. Astoria had been perfect on every account and Hermione, distinguished former minister of magic and all, had felt quite small every time Draco spoke of his late wife. It was difficult not to believe that Astoria’s grimace had been due to Hermione’s presence in the manor.

Such thoughts plagued Hermione ‘the original overthinker’ Granger until she and Draco had an ‘official’ meeting with Astoria (her summery version) where Draco’s late wife proved to be everything he had made her to be. She was interested in Hermione’s career, but more so her well-being, she was witty and snorted at the right names when Hermione told stories straight out of the Wizengamot. Even her snort was charming. Glancing at Draco during their conversation, Hermione spotted a wistful look in his eyes and she had to admit then that even without knowing her much, she missed Astoria herself.

Hermione was all the more surprised – and irritated, if she was being honest with herself – when she walked past chrysanthemum-Astoria sometime later only to find the other woman rather irritable and tight-lipped again. In this moment, Hermione did not know how to react (or act – situation far from clear: Astoria had barely returned her own greeting) and so she stomped on, inwardly fuming. Was she mad at Astoria for putting on an act when Draco was around? Was Draco part of this scheme and did he care how this made her feel at all?

She was able hold back during dinner and focused instead on Draco’s recital of his new publication on the side effects of pepper-up potion. However, later, she couldn’t get herself to respond to his hands or mouth, made a half-hearted excuse and so they went to bed rather irritated on both sides. Hermione had a hard time feeling bad, even when Draco’s last words before finally falling asleep were “I don’t care if we have sex once a day or once a month, I’d just wish you’d be honest with me”.

When sleep wouldn’t come, Hermione finally made a decision. She slipped out from under the heavy blanket, made sure Draco was still fully covered and tip-toed out of the room.

Astoria looked ethereal in her white dress, sitting on a stone bench, surrounded by masses of snow and framed by little red specks – winterberries. This time, she full acknowledged Hermione but did not speak once again.

I must not be jealous of a dead woman, Hermione had told herself all over all evening and yet here she was, feeling both jealous and nervous in front of a painting.

“Good evening, Astoria.”

“Hello, Hermione. What brings you here?”

Astoria’s tone was levelled and Hermione was even more jealous that the woman in front of her seemed so capable of perfect containment when necessary. During her time in office, she had frequently been criticised for being too emotional. (Too emotional – hah. Hermione usually had gotten angry, linking this label to her femininity and lecturing an overwhelmed Ron about the relationship between emotions and gender. He had trouble understanding. Draco had been with her from the first second – he was now avidly reading de Beauvoir).

“I uhm–“, Hermione began, scolding herself for thinking about jealousy when walking to the portrait instead of coming up with a sensitive question.

“Do you want to know how to please Draco best? I have a few–“

“What? No!”

Hermione had been shouting and now listened carefully for Draco down the hallway, cursing herself mentally for being so clumsy. Nothing happened. Relieved, she looked back up at Astoria who now seemed rather amused.

“I … I’m sorry, this might come across as incredibly rude, but”, Hermione took a deep breath, “are you, by any chance, really unhappy that Draco is with me?”

Astoria’s eyes widened in shock. “What?”

“It’s just…”, again, Hermione had to breathe awkwardly before continuing, “I couldn’t help but notice that you were so lovely when we spoke with Draco, but every time I’m walking past you by myself, you seem … sulking?”

Hermione rolled her eyes inwardly at her own unelaborate phrasing. But before she could correct herself, Astoria had jumped up from her bench (did it look Ancient Greek?) and took a step towards Hermione.

“Hermione, what? I’m so sorry I came across this rude!”

What?

This was surely not what Hermione had expected.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry, truly. I should not have jumped to conclusions.”

Come again?

Hermione’s face must have mirrored her confusion because Astoria now awkwardly shuffled strands of long, dark, straight hair out of her face hectically.

“It’s just that –”

Astoria now seemed lost for words as she helplessly flapped her arms and looked around.

“You see”, she began cautiously, “I was never the biggest fan of flowers.”

Hermione’s eyes widened.

“Of course, they’re beautiful et cetera, but I had a ridiculous hay fever that could barely be treated with potions and my green thumb was non-existent. My relationship to flowers is rocky at best. You’re right, I’m sulking. I know Draco loved me dearly and he wanted the best for me, Scorpius, and himself after I passed. Of course, he wanted to have me portrayed as memorable as possible. But all this”, again, she helplessly moved her arms and Hermione now realised that she meant all four versions of herself, all the flowery beauty, the references to goddesses and eternal beauty and wisdom, “that is not the essence of who I was.”

Hermione had felt foolish already, but Astoria’s final statement was too much. “I’m a family person. I would have pictured myself with them, I guess. And I love Draco. I always will and this is why I will never complain to him. When he told me you were with him now, I was unbelievably happy for him. You do him justice, Hermione. You understand him – maybe even better than I ever did. And I let my guard down because I felt this was possible around you. You seemed to be the person I could trust with my exasperation. I just never mentioned it to you, which was very stupid on my part.”

Astoria now shook her head. Hermione was stunned.

“Flower girl, can you believe it?”

Astoria’s bone-dry tone drove Hermione over the edge. She started giggling. Astoria’s initial silence turned into a hearty laugh after a few moments as well and – to Hermione’s surprise and delight – Astoria let out tiny snorts.

“In all honesty though”, Hermione said when they had calmed down, holding her ribs from laughter. “I do see it. The melodrama and all.”

They kept laughing.

“Feel free to sulk”, Hermione added after a few seconds, luring a few snorts from Astoria.

Draco rolled his eyes and closed the door to his bedroom, going back to bed before Hermione realised his feet were cold when she eventually came back. He should have known these two women were a lethal combination.

*

Authors notes:

Hi again!

This one was a lot of fun to write, despite containing very little Draco. It’s been a headcanon of mine for a while that he would glorify Astoria after her death (in a universe where their marriage took place and all, that is) and that Astoria herself would feel some kind of way about it, bonding over it with Hermione. Hope you guys enjoyed it!

Also, the initial premise of this blog was once that I would also happilypublish drabbles written by other authors and that I would take prompts. Just so you know. :)

Finally: HELLO to all my new followers! This almost vacant account (revived after six years!) grew by ca. 25% after only one post last week (and this post also became the most successful one to date). Thank you all so much and what a pleasure to have you. I also have a multifandom-blog where I usually am which you can find under @ahoidraco if you’re interested. 

Until next time!

[herald-divine-hell]

Woven Memories

Am I starting a new multichapter fanfic with Amayian? Yes, yes I am. Am I including most of my other OCs like Alexandra or Esaira? I will indeed try. Will this fanfiction story actually ever be finished or even liked by the Dragon Age fandom? Most likely not! But we are all slaves to the unbridled power of Inquisitor/Leliana on blog, so take that as you will. 

Artwork is done by @mortt-artsy​!

Prologue - A Land of Silver and Crimson

Year: 9:14 Dragon

The horse stomped the earth with impatient hooves, shifting from one to the other with kicks sending dirt and dust flying. Esmarian could see a heavy gray, billowing mist comb over the vale, before descending like a rippling cloak at its feet. Hints of sunlight came as thin, cold wisps, and the sky was gray and thickly-strung with clouds. He could only see a few paces in front of him, the mist rolling and folding in on itself like steel. 

Drawing his reins near to his chest and tilting a little toward the right with his weight, he sent Dasor off into a trot back to Vasenarg. The path was hard underhoof, sturdy enough that Esmarian did not fear Dasor losing his step. It curved and twisted before rushing like a river into a shadowy forest where the mist still marched on, low enough to hide the earth beneath Dasor’s feet.

Long limbs of trees rustled with the soft breeze from the north. Singing lowly in his ears, Esmarian could only hear the wind in the air, cold and slick with a moisture that warned of rain. He trotted along the path in silence. Leaves crunched beneath Dasor’s hooves, moaning and groaning with each trample. It brought forth an eerily melody that he longed to be rid of. Another rain-cursed night, no doubt. 

He knew the path back to Vasenarg well. He had often wandered the forest when he had just been a boy of six, with his elder brothers. That had been before the war with Starkhaven, when Ostwick had allied themselves with Kirkwall - before when Lord Amayian of Vasenarg had three boys instead of two. Then, the forest had been washed with golden light and filled with vibrant greens. The earth had been soft enough that if one lost their footing climbing the child would be wrapped and left unharmed. 

But it had been a cold and hard winter in the thirteenth year of the Dragon Age. Not enough wheat and barely had been grown, and more than enough snow had fallen from the heavens in horrible white tears. Most had melted, burned away by the spring sun’s warmth. Yet, rains returned and mists formed and the world seemed tired once more. Not even a bird’s chirp cried out in the gloominess. Only grays and blacks colored the world that Esmarian knew - had since the day he held Abalian’s body in his arms. Rhyis had only saw the ale before trotting away with his cold, dead excuses. There were many things he could forgive his brother for, but not that. 

That had been over nineteen years ago, when their father still lorded over House Trevelyan as its patriarch; when Rhyis had only just been named the Storm of Starkhaven. 

The forests thinned and then spread into a gloomy field of rolling hills marked with gray-green grass. Esmarian could hear the crashing of the Waking Sea’s waves against the jagged black shore. He tugged at the reins before resting it and his hands upon the leather saddle. He knew that he had faced westward, staring into the unknown toward Ostwick’s ally, Kirkwall. The mist lifted, though dim and unfailingly hid most of the world in its arms, and Esmarian could see Vasenarg, a mountain of carved and chiseled marble ice peeking from the white-gray shroud. A little northward, and he would have seen Ostwick. 

Once, his family had resided in the ancient city, but it had been nearly ages since any Trevelyan claimed the ancestral meadhall of Osthabern as their seat. Vasenarg had been built away from the city, but near enough to claim a large portion of its trade routes for House Trevelyan’s own - the ones that ran from Kirkwall and Starkhaven, at least. Esmarian was on one such path, though it was ancient and rarely used any longer, not since Ostwick had expanded southward and built a port at the feet of the Waking Sea. 

Sending Dasor into a canter, Esmarian rode over the ancient, near-forgotten path. The wind came open and free, whirling from the sky to slashed and pushed the heaving mist back and fro like children fighting over a toy. The breeze was soft, grazing across his touch with gentle fingers. He needed this, more than he expected. There was something sweet in the wind, a clearness in the air. Something he could not have in the buzzing halls of Vasenarg, less so in the streets of Ostwick. 

The wind swayed the grass, like rippling sheets of gray-flecked green. The salty air of the sea filled his senses and he inhaled softly, smiling as the breeze grew strong and swift, marching along with a whistle at its lips. The hills rose and fell in gentle slopes. A thin riverlet trinkled softly between two cradling mounds. He passed over it, water splashing and splattering, before climbing up a hill. The mist followed along as well, swathing across the meadows and valleys with its long, widening arms. 

It was a sorrowful and lonely rode to Vasenarg, as if the world was hushed to silence with the wind giving the eulogy of a bygone age, forgotten in the hearts of time and men. Rhyis hoped that summer would be a more plentiful revival—he had even visited the Grand Cleric to break fast and morning prayers—but Esmarian had doubts, stronger than he would like. And Rhyis doesn’t even have a spare. If Ashania grew ill…

Soft beats of warmth indicted midday, though he could not see the sun in the sky. Rolling clouds shrouded the world like a heavy cloak, bordering on darkness. Northward, he caught glimpses of a rigid arm of mountains blocking the horizon, tips cladded in shimmering silvery-white and stomachs darken like licking shadows. The Vimmark Mountains. It seemed to have been years past since Esmarian rode at the feet of the great mountains, towering and looming like a sharp, jagged castle. To face Ser Elthbart, if I recall correctly. Maker, had it been that long?

Shaking his head, he tugged at his reins toward the left before gently kicking Doser’s flanks, sending him off in a gallop. 

Mist swirled and churned like a veil of shimmering moonlight. It was thin enough for Esmarian to see the path at least. Enough for him to continue on his gallop with relative ease. Family belief held that Trevelyans were first given to the horse and then to their mothers after their birth. Esmarian had seen enough pregnancies to believe such rituals only occured on occasions, and typically for heirs of cadet branches. He had been disappointed when his mother had informed him that he was never given to such an honor. But he rode any horse as if they were his second - technically four - legs.

He laughed and kicked Dasor’s sides once more. The wind struck his cheeks, kissing and grazing, and he laughed harder. Esmarian never felt more alive then when he rode upon Dasor, wind in his hair and the rumbling of hooves meeting earth, bouncing him along. A song was formed, crafted, and he was the conductor.

The gatehouses glimmered faintly with the same paleness of freshly fallen snow. On silver poles stirred the rearing golden horse of House Trevelyan upon a black stable, flapping and weaving through the air. Vasenarg’s doubled-walled fortifications ran left and right, expanding like spread thick wings, and dipping with the fall of hills. Shouts and the clanging of metal rang loud as he rode into the lower bailey.   

A few dozen or so of his brother’s household guards trained with great and bastard swords. Faint glimmers of sunlight shone on the metal of their armor and blade. The mist was softer here, faint and thinned, as if Vasenarg washed out the darkness and coldness of the world when one passed through its gates. Orange-golden light burned bright on hung torches, enough to bring tears to Esmarian’s eyes. 

Wiping his face with a gloved-hand, Esmarian swung feet of the stirrup and dismounted.

“Uncle Esmi!”

Esmarian groaned as a weight slammed into his abdomen, knocking the breath out of him. “Ashania!” He managed to choke out. “Release me a bit, lass.”

The crushing of his sides were lessen and he inhaled sharply, capturing the air as if it was the smell of roasted mutton and freshly pressed bread. Glancing down, his gaze were met with large, almond-shaped purple eyes. Rhyis’ eyes, he thought with a hint of a smile. 

The heir of Vasenarg was a girl of only three years, with curls of russet-brown hair falling like a waterfall, gleaming faintly with the flickering of the torchlight. Her pale cheeks were tinted with a rosy-red, hinting to her staying out in the cool day longer than she should have. But, Esmarian could not have been mad at her. In everything but her eyes, Ashania Trevelyan was her mother’s daughter. She had the same russet-brown curls; the same rose-tinted cheeks and pale skin of House Mouguare of the Orlesian Empire. Some of the family would had claimed bastardy if she had not been born with Rhyis’ eyes. She is too Orlesian in appearance. Maker bless Rhyis with a child that had his black, wavy locks and olive-tan skin of House Trevelyan. If not, than Jacqueline should be worried. 

Ashania was still smiling, sweet and soft in the way only a child could. But, as if a bolt of lightning had struck her, she remembered her manners. She bowed low, dipping her feet and rising the edge of her dress a little high, and said, “Hello, Uncle.” 

Esmarian laughed and ruffled her curls with his hand, grinning down at her. “No need to be formal, love. I’m not Aunt Jaylia.” He winked, then bent down on his knee, wrapped his arms around her waist, and then rose her high into the air. “Where’s your father, lass?”

Her brows furrowed and her nose wrinkled. “Um, I don’t know.” She pouted, and her eyes grew glossy. Then, she gasped. “In the big room!” 

“Ah, yes, the big room.” Esmarian chuckled, shook his head, and then stode toward the great bronze doors of the keep. The big room was actually his brother’s study, and while one of the largest chambers in the castle, it was nowhere the largest. 

Two of the household guards, straight-faced and stern, stood at the entranceway of the keep. With a nod of greeting, Esmarian waited as they pushed open the ancient doors. Groaning softly, the doors fell open slowly, and Esmarian passed through with his niece in arms, the wind slapping against his cloaked-back. 

The great hall was silent, with only the soft patter of servants' feet bouncing off the walls. Light pooled and spread, scattering the shadows into hiding, and filled the warmed hall with a haze of orange and gold and crimson. He turned toward the right, gazed as darkness slipped and filled the wide hall. Smiling at Ashania, who mumbled incoherent and insensible words, he stepped through. 

His brother was not in his study, he noted as he passed through its threshold, empty-handed. Ashania had wanted to go off and play with a sleeping cat; so much so that she had nearly tried to jump out of Esmarian’s arms and onto the stone floor below, which could have resulted in an injury—one that he was not willing to sacrifice his neck for.  

He found only Lady Jacqueline, seated near a window with its curtains thrown back. Bars of pale sunlight slanted through and splattered onto the floor in lengthened fingers. “My lady,” greeted Esmarian with a slight bow.

She was facing toward the window, humming softly, a hand resting upon her protruding stomach. “Lord Esmarian.” Jacqueliene did not turn to face him. “If you’re looking for Rhyis, he’s still sleeping.”

Esmarian grinned and raised an eyebrow. “Sleeping? That might not have to do with you, Lady Jacqueliene?” 

Jacqueline Trevelyan was as beautiful as a marble statue, with her long waves of russet-brown falling down to her mid-back and her large, almond-shaped green eyes flecked with gold. Her lips were soft and small, but full. Her cheeks were rose-tinted and freckled lightly, only able to see it when she was flush, which Esmarian found rare. Only Rhyis seemed to make her flush, and even those were far and between. Jacqueline smiled and laughed beatifically. “I have no idea what you are suggesting, my dear good-brother.” Her eyes twinkled with a mischievous glint. “My love works so hard and without any rest. I thought it would be merely good for him if he actually could attain one, even if it is for a single night.” 

“How’s the child?” asked Esmarian after chuckling for a few moments, eyeing the woman’s stomach with concern. Without Rhyis there to fret over the woman, it fell upon him to do so. 

Jacqueline sighed, irritated, as far as Esmarian could tell. “One rests and another takes it place.” She raised a hand to her brow, rubbing at her temples. “The babe is fine, I assure you, Esmarian. I would have summoned the healer if there were any problems.” She eyed him, a frown tugged at the corner of her lips. “You are far too like Rhyis at times.” Scoffing, Jacqueline laughed softly and rubbed her stomach, staring at it with gentle eyes. “Maker save him if he is cursed with two Rhyises.”

Esmarian blinked. “Him?”

“Oh, a mother’s intuition.”

“How do you know it is a he?” Esmarian never trusted the idea of the so-called “mother’s intuition.” Rhyis said that Mother had been wrong about Abalian, and perhaps he was right on that.

“A dream I had, Esmarian.” Her voice was almost breathless—detached, remote, as if she was no longer truly there in mind. She returned her gaze back to the window, rubbing her stomach in fleeting circles. “A dream of a little boy with a shadowy crown and green eyes with the sun’s light in them, standing against a storm of fire and darkness, billowing, threatening to swallow the world in darkness.”   

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Z Movie 15: Resurrection F

“Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection F” premiered on April 18, 2015.    Notably, it had a U.S. theatrical release only a few months later, in August.   Movie 14 got a U.S. theatrical release, but it took a lot longer, and fans didn’t really have any reason to expect that much.   In 2013, we were just waiting for Funimation to release it on home video.     But I think it says a lot about how successful Movie 14 was.    Not only did the sequel get made only a couple of years later, but the big shots in Japan who run all this stuff finally realized that there’s an international audience just as eager to pay for this stuff.   I want to say the Broly movie got released in the U.S. even faster, but I’d have to look it up.     And from what I understand, the Broly movie did even bigger business than Movies 14 and 15, so I think it’s safe to say that if they keep making more of these, we can count on a speedy localization.

Do we have Fox to thank for this?   I mean, would any of this Dragon Ball revival have happened if “Dragon Ball Evolution” hadn’t bombed so badly?    I mean, let’s say they did a good job and made DBE really kick ass, like the Thor movies.   By now they probably would have made a nice little trilogy, starring a mostly whitewashed cast.   Maybe the third one would be looked down upon, or they’d try to do a reboot like with the X-Men franchise, and people would write pointless thinkpiece articles asking stupid questions about “Dragon Ball fatigue”.    Teenage Justin Chatwick stans would be blogging things like “OMG Did you know there was a Dragon Ball Evolution cartoon?!?!?”   Maybe those live action movies would be better than Dragon Ball Super, but they’d probably also mark the end of the franchise.   At least with things as they are, there’s no telling how much more Dragon Ball content we might be getting in the 20′s.

Gee, Toei, how come your mom lets you have two logos at the start of the movie?

I just found this out last night, but Res F has the distinction of being the first movie where Toriyama wrote the actual screenplay, as opposed to just coming up with the plot and story, as in Movie 14.  I’m a fan of Toriyama’s work, obviously, but I’m don’t subscribe to the idea that anything he does is pure gold and everyone else who contributes to this franchise is ruining it somehow.   There are GT apologists who would try to argue that GT was more legitimate because Toriyama had some vague influence on the production, and he drew SSJ4 Goku once, so that means it’s magically awesome.  It just doesn’t work.    Movie 14 is better than Movie 15, and I don’t think that’s because one screenplay was better than the other, but the point is that you can’t just add more Toriyama labor and guarantee a superior product.

So there’s three big problems I have with this movie, and when I rewatched it this morning, my opinion hasn’t budged since 2015.  

First, the sole premise of this movie is that Frieza comes back to menace the good guys again.  That’s a bad move, period.   I find Frieza overrated to begin with, and they’ve already done handful of Frieza comebacks before this movie was ever conceived.    Even if it was a good idea, it’s so obvious that it’s barely worth doing.   When the DBS: Broly movie was first announced, I was worried that they were making the same mistake again, but then it turned out they had a bold twist on the character to justify the effort.   And that’s what it takes.   If you do something obvious and predictable, if you repeat an idea you’ve already used before, then you’d better have some sort of big twist to make it fresh.   Movie 15 does not have this.    It does an admirable job in spite of that flaw, but it’s a pretty serious flaw. 

Second, the visuals are bland and unimpressive.    The point of this movie is that Goku and Frieza are going to have a rematch of their epic showdown on Namek.    I just went back in my archives and pulled up a still from the Frieza Saga, and it looks ten times cooler than anything in the movie.   They were fighting on an exploding planet, surrounded by red skies, lightning, molten lava, and tornadoes.     Movie 15 boasts the same guys, supposedly more powerful than ever, but they fight like they’re in a video game, and the background is just this dismal cloudy sky.   They had 23 years to figure out how to raise the stakes, and all they could come up with was making Frieza yellow and Goku blue.  

Third, everyone acts like an idiot in this movie.  Like I said, we’ve done this dance before, but everyone just repeats the same mistakes and forgets that characters can do things that they’ve done in the past.   Sometimes I can’t tell whether it’s an honest flub, or a deliberate callback to classic DBZ.   All I know is that I remember how it went the first time, and you’d think the characters would too, since they lived it.   

Now, in spite of those issues, this film does a pretty decent job working with what it has.    It’s not nearly as bad as Movies 10 and 11, which commit these same three sins and puts the main characters on the sidelines.   But it’s a step down from Movie 14, and around the same time, Dragon Ball Super was starting up on Japanese TV, and that show was just adapting the movies for the first 32 episodes, so I was pretty displeased with the state of the franchise in 2015.

All right, let’s get started.    The movie opens in hell, which is pretty interesting, because up until now we’ve only ever seen Toei’s version of DBZ Hell.   There’s a lot of inconsistencies, like whether or not you get to keep your physical body, and whether or not hell is even that bad a place to be.   Since Toriyama wrote this thing, I have to assume this is his official version of DBZ’s Hell.    Conveniently, we find that it’s got plenty of layers to it, including a scary looking realm full of bats, an ocean full of Pokemon fish, and underneath all of that we have an idyllic meadow with pink trees.   

This is where Frieza’s being kept, and he just has to hang from the tree in some sort of testicle-looking thing.  There’s angels and fairies and a stuffed animal marching band, and it’s pretty cute, but I can see where you’d get sick of it after a while.

And Frieza’s been here for a while.    This movie is set in the year Age 779, and Frieza was killed by Future Trunks in Age 764, so he’s on Year Fifteen of his infinity-year sentence.   Has he been stuck in this particular torment for the entire time?   Who knows?   I don’t know much about Japanese afterlife mythology, but my understanding is that it’s like an even more complex version of Dante’s Inferno, where there’s all these different ordeals you have to suffer through for extraordinarily long periods of time.    Maybe they let him out part of the time so he can get beat up by Pikkon and watch Goku beat Majin Buu.  

One touch I appreciate is that he’s still in his Mecha-Frieza form.   Does it make sense for him to retain his cybernetic parts when Trunks chopped him up into so many pieces?    I don’t know, but Mecha-Frieza is my favorite Frieza, so I like the nod to that moment.  

Meanwhile, Frieza’s private army somehow still exists after all these years.  This movie calls it the “Frieza Force”, which I’m not too wild about, but I’ll run with it.   I think it’s kind of stupid to keep calling it that so long after Frieza’s death, but maybe it’s a bluff to anyone who doesn’t know Frieza’s dead.    At this point, all they have left is the name.   One of Frieza’s administrators, Sorbet, has taken charge of the whole thing, and I guess he��s done a fairly impressive job if he’s kept it going this long, but all he’s really accomplished is to oversee the slow dissolution of Frieza’s holdings.  

Funimation made a lot out of the idea of Frieza as an emperor, suggesting he was a head of state and the planets he conquered were part of a vast interstellar nation.   I think in the dub there was a comment about how the Frieza Force used to control like 70% of the known universe, but none of that’s in the Japanese version.   The original premise of Frieza is that he just has a bunch of guys fighting his battles for him, and he buys and sells planets to finance all the wine and spaceships he goes through.   I rather prefer that sort of aimlessness about his organization.    If he were like a Roman Caesar, you could at least balance out his brutality with the semblance of authority he brings to his conquests.    A Pax Friezae, if you will.  But he’s not Diocletian, he’s a trust fund baby who just happens to be nigh invulnerable.   He never cared what happened to anyone else, or how things would run after he was gone.   

Anyway, Sorbet just doesn’t have the manpower to hold their territory, and all he can do is pull his soldiers out when uprisings get too intense.    His only recourse is to wish Frieza back to life with the Dragon Balls, except he can’t find the Namekians’ new homeworld.    There’s Dragon Balls on Earth, except that’s where all the Super Saiyans live, so it’s dangerous.   But today, he’s decided there’s no other way.    To be on the safe side, he leads an away team with just himself and his aid, Tagoma.   That way there’s less chance of them being noticed by the ki-sensitive fighters on the planet.  

Sigh... this is why I hate the fucking Frieza Force right here.  It’s the same old spaceships, same old uniforms, same old plans.  Their shuttlecraft just looks like their regular ship, only smaller.    Frieza’s been dead for fifteen years, and after all this time, their biggest idea is to try to bring back LOWARD FUREEEZA SAWMA.  If that was such a hot idea, then why did he get killed in the first place?

What annoys me is that there’s probably an interesting explanation for Sorbet’s strategy.   You’d think he would be happier with Frieza gone.   He runs this whole outfit, and even if their domain is smaller than it was under Frieza, it belongs to him, so he’s richer and more powerful than he’s ever been.   But maybe he just can’t appreciate that, and he liked it better when he was a middle-manager for a big shot like Frieza.   But that never gets explored in the movie.   Sorbet just acts like he’s wishing back Frieza because he’s supposed to.  

Anyway, it would be risky to try to go through Bulma to get the Dragon Balls, but Emperor Pilaf has a Dragon Radar of his own, so they strongarm him instead.   I wonder where he got that thing.   General Copper from the Red Ribbon Army had one that was never seen again, so maybe they stole it from him?  

Meanwhile, here’s baby Pan.    I thought Pan’s appearance in these later movies conflicted with the final three episodes of DBZ, but maybe not.   The dub said she was three, but the subs said she was four.   And those last three episodes took place in Age 784, while this movie shows her being newly born in Age 779, just five years earlier.    So Pan could still be four years old when she fought Wild Tiger, and her birthday just hadn’t come along yet.   

Anyway, Piccolo’s keeping an eye on her while her parents are shopping.   

Then the sky gets dark, and Gohan and Piccolo know that someone’s wishing on the Dragon Balls, but they don’t know who or why.   Oh, by the way, there’s a big statue of Mr. Satan here, and that’s his only appearance in this movie.  

So Sorbet makes his big wish to have a resurrection... of F.   Which stands for “Frieza.”

Just like the title of this cartoon!

But Shenron explains that it would be kind of dumb to do that.   This was the thing I never understood when this movie was first announced.    During the Frieza Saga, Shenron was used to wish back everyone killed by Frieza and his men, and Kami said that this would only work for those who had died within the past year.     The implication being that Shenron can’t revive people who have been dead for a really long time. 

But Toriyama seems to have taken that into account here.   Shenron explains that he can revive Frieza, even after fifteen years, but he can’t restore all the damage to his body.

This leads to a quick flashback of Trunks killing him way back when.   I’m glad they included this, since it’s worth explaining just how Frieza died in the first place.  Trunks chopped him into pieces, then blasted the pieces.    Apparently, after all this time, Shenron can only undo the blasting and the dying, but not the chopping.  

However, the medical technology used by the Frieza Force has advanced somewhat since the Namek Saga, so Tagoma believes they could finish the job of putting Frieza back together.   Sorbet decides it’s worth a shot, so we’re off to the races.

So Shenron plats along, and a bunch of Frieza chunks fall to the ground.    I like the sound effects they make when they land.   

Creepily, the pieces try to gather together again.   I don’t know if this is Shenron’s power trying and failing to complete the resurrection, of if this is some function of Mecha-Frieza’s cybernetics.     Either way, it doesn’t work.

But the pieces are all still alive, which is siiiick.    Frieza’s eye even opens and looks at them, suggesting that he’s somehow still conscious in this state.    See, this movie still has some cool stuff in it.

Then Shenron asks Sorbet what he wants for his second wish, and Sorbet had no idea that he would get more than one.    He considers wishing back King Cold, but before he can decide...

... Shu wishes for cash, and gets it.    Sorbet’s angry about this, but he has to hurry up and return to the ship before the Z-Fighters find him.    The funny thing is that Shenron leaves after this second wish is granted, but in the Dragon Ball Super version, he grants a third wish, and Mai uses that one too.   This is why I’ve spent the last 16 years confused over whether Buu-era Shenron grants two wishes or three.   Apparently, the deal is that it’s three, unless you use one to wish a lot of people back to life at the same time.    Then it’s two.    So did Toriyama goof, or was the wish to bring back Frieza hard enough that it counts as two wishes?    It doesn’t matter much, since Movies 10, 13, and 14 all played fast and loose with Shenron as well.

So now they have to load all the Frieza chunks into a big garbage can and haul them back to their ship.  

They almost forget a piece, but Pilaf saves it for them.   I wonder what would have happened if they left that eye behind?

So then they heal the pieces in their medical machine.  I don’t know how this was supposed to work, but I assume they needed someone to stitch the pieces together, then they loaded him in the tank for a while, and then they had to take him out again, dress him up in his uniform, and put him back in to cure a while longer.   Also, they have Japanese punk band Maximum the Hormone playing on the stereo the whole time they do this.

“F” is a pretty good song, and I’m glad they put it in this movie, but I’d probably like it more if I liked Frieza more.    The story goes that Akira Toriyama heard this song, probably because the band wrote it as a tribute to his character, and the song inspired him to create the story in this movie.   

Anyway, Frieza breaks out of the tank and splashes green crap everywhere because he’s such a drama queen.   

Sorbet explains everything that’s happened, and Frieza seems mostly bemused by it all.   He’s displeased that he had to wait in hell for so long, but at least he’s out.    Sorbet mentions that they plan to wish back King Cold next, but Frieza tells them not to bother, since he apparently doesn’t like his dad that much.   This should be the tip to these idiots that this scheme will get them all killed.   

Frieza kills a guy just to see how his skills are holding up, and he declares his intent to take revenge on the two Super Saiyans who defeated him.   Remember, he still owes Goku for beating him up on Namek, but Trunks killed him before he could get to that point.    And that’s my main problem with all of this.   We already did a Frieza comeback, and it was Mecha-Frieza invading Earth in the Trunks Saga.    He miraculously survived Namek, his soldiers spent months putting him back together, and then the very first thing he wanted to do was go to Earth and kill Super Saiyans.   Does any of this sound familiar? 

Besides that episode, we had several other stories that repeated the same theme.    Movies 5 and 6 were basically the same idea, but with Frieza’s brother as a stand-in for Frieza himself.    Episode 195 of the anime had Frieza come back as part of a revolut in hell.    Movie 12 had Frieza come back, only to get killed again by Gohan.     Dragon Ball GT had Frieza come back and fight Goku.     I think Toriyama’s attitude is that he didn’t write those stories, so they don’t count, but it doesn’t change the fact that the audience still saw all of those.    By the time this movie came along, “Frieza comes back for revenge” had been done several times.   

Tagoma points out that maybe we shouldn’t rush back to Earth and get wiped out in a hopeless battle.   Again.     He suggests that it might be wiser to focus on rebuilding the Frieza Force, but Frieza kills him for his impudence, along with several other flunkies who just happened to be nearby.

At least Frieza has a reason for wanting to start with revenge.  As far as he’s concerned, the Frieza Force can’t rebuild to its former glory, not if they have to hide from the Super Saiyans the whole time.    Sorbet points out that Goku’s even stronger than he was before, citing his defeat of Majin Buu.   Amazingly, Frieza’s heard of Majin Buu, since his father once told him that he should never mess with Buu or Beerus.  

But this doesn’t worry Frieza much.  He figured Goku would become stronger, and he thinks he can as well.   Frieza was born with this unnaturally incredible power that he has, so he’s never needed to train or improve his strength.   But now, he thinks that if he does train, he can surpass Goku after about four months.   This is basically the Dragon Ball equivalent of “Why doesn’t Bluto eat some spinach and beat the hell out of Popeye?”

Here’s what blows my mind.   In the subs, Frieza estimates that he’ll reach a power level of 1.3 million.   I’m amazed that they’d even cite a power level this late in the franchise, let alone a number that low.   Frieza claimed to be at one million in his second form, so I think everyone agrees that we passed 1,300,000 a long time ago.     Hell, there aren’t any scouters able to measure that high anyway.    

Seriously, is this official canon?  It has to be right?   Toriyama wrote that line himself.   Is he saying eveyone from Second-form Frieza to Golden Frieza ranges from 1 million to 1.3 million?  So like, Perfect Cell would be 1.1 million, I guess, and Majin Buu’s 1.2?    That’s wild.   I kind of like it.  

What I don’t like is that it’s a little convenient that Frieza can catch up to Goku so easily.   It took Gokue fifteen years to reach the level he’s at in this movie, and Frieza manages to tie him in just four months?   If it was that easy, why didn’t he just do pushups for a week before he came to Earth the last time?   He could have wiped out Trunks in an instant.

Moving on, a few months later, Jaco the Intergalactic Patrolman arrives on Earth to warn Bulma that Frieza is coming to Earth with a thousand soldiers.   

I won’t get into Jaco’s whole deal, because I still haven’t read his manga yet, but baiscally he was friends with Bulma’s older sister back in the day, and Tights told him that Bulma knows the Super Saiyan who beat Frieza.     The problem is that Goku and Vegeta aren’t on Earth right now, because they’re training with Whis on Beerus’ world.   Bulma can contact Whis by holding up delicious food and calling out to him, but she doesn’t know if he’s listening.   Also, Jaco waited until an hour before Frieza’s arrival to say anything, so now Bulma has to scramble to alert the others.  

Here’s some bank robbers.    I like this bit, because in the dub, they say “We’re as rich as rich guys!”

There’s just one problem...

Krillin’s a cop.

Then Bulma calls him and tells him the bad news.    I feel like somewhere in the dub, Krillin observed that Majin Buu and Gohan could at least buy them some time, but then it turned out Buu was asleep the whole time, which was why he didn’t show up in this movie.    I must be thinking of the DBS version.     This is why I’m not big on Buu as a good guy, by the way.    They have this insanely powerful good guy on their team, and then they never do anything with him.   He slept through this crisis and the Tournament of Power, and I didn’t see him in the Broly movie either.  

Anyway, Frieza killed Krillin the last time they met, but Krillin’s got big brass balls, so the first thing he does is suit up to fight his punk ass.  18 offers to go in his place, but he wants her to protect their kid while he’s gone.  

Also, he asks her to shave his head, so he’ll look even cooler for this.

To be honest, I liked Krillin’s hairstyle in this movie, but yeah, bald Krillin is the way to go.   

As he flies off into the face of certain doom, his big brass balls clanking as he goes, 18 thinks about how cool he is.   Get you a lady who admires you half as much as 18 admires Krillin.

As Frieza returns to Earth, he goes over some details with Sorbet.    In particular, no one could find the Super Saiyan who actually killed Frieza, and Sorbet speculates that he may have moved to some other planet or died while Frieza was in hell.    Of course we know that Future Trunks returned to his own timeline, but Frieza doesn’t and never will.   This loose end doesn’t seem to bother him much, and I don’t think that makes sense.    Yes, from a dramatic standpoint, he ought to be more concerned about avenging his loss to Goku, but Trunks was the one to kill him, and I feel like Frieza doesn’t spend nearly enough time in this movie thinking about his own mortality.  

Sorbet points out that even if Frieza kills Goku, he could just be wished back to life like Frieza was, right?  But Frieza plans to destroy the Earth along with Goku, thereby eliminating the Dragon Balls and Earth’s hell.  For some reason, Frieza seems to think that Earth has it’s own particular version of hell, and the only reason he ended up in that meadow of fairies is because he happened to die on that planet.    So I guess he thinks that if he blows up the Earth, that hell will cease to exist as well?   How does he know that?   

Is that why he’s not worried about dying again?  Does he think if he dies someplace else, he’ll end up in a more favorable afterlife?   What happens if you die in outer space?    What sort of hell is Tagoma in right now?

At any rate, Frieza thinks he has all the angles worked out, and he checks to make sure Sorbet is prepared for his “emergency plan” in case things don’t work out.   This is as close as we ever get to any sort of character development for Frieza here.    The last time he went to Earth, he didn’t have a plan B, and now he does.   

Meanwhile, Goku is training with Vegeta and Whis, just as Bulma said.    Recall that Whis is even stronger than Beerus, who dominated the boys in the last movie.    So Whis can fight them both at once without any trouble at all.

But their training wakes up Beerus, so they have to explain how they pay Whis for his lessons with tasty food from Earth.   Beerus is annoyed that Whis would eat this stuff without him but he’s awake now, so he can have some of the pizza they brought over.    

Meanwhile, Frieza’s ship lands on Earth, and a bunch of his goons come out.   

Then he blows up North City, which he calls his way of saying hello.  

So it’s up to the Z-Fighters to hold the line until Goku and Vegeta check Whis’s voice mail.   Unfortunately, they’re kind of light on guys.   We have Piccolo, Tien, and Krillin, and Gohan’s here, but he hasn’t kept up with his training.   That’s why he wore a tracksuit to this party, because he couldn’t find his gi after all this time.  Tien told Chiaotzu and Yamcha to stay out of it, since this fight would be too much for them.    Okay, but why?   Frieza will blow up the Earth if he wins, so what difference does it make if they stay out of this?    At least if they show up they can help.   

On the other hand, Krillin brought Master Roshi along,   He can’t even fly!   Somehow, everyone involved in making this show decided that Roshi is cooler than Yamcha, which is stone cold, 100% false.   Master Roshi belongs in jail, and it doesn’t even need to be a fancy jail with a roof because he can’t fly out anyway.

Then Bulma shows up with Jaco to tell the others that she couldn’t raise Goku and Vegeta.   Also, she wants Jaco to help, even though he only planned to pass along the message and GTFO.     Bulma trash-talks Frieza, because she figures they still have the upper hand.   After all, Gohan’s strong enough to kill Frieza, right?   But Gohan explains to her that Frieza’s much stronger than he was 15 years ago, so none of them stand a chance this time around.

She asks Frieza to wait for Goku, so he agrees to hold off for ten more seconds, and then he sics his army on the Z-Fighters.   I bet she wishes she had told Goten and Trunks about this rumble.  

People talk about this part as the highlight of the movie, and it’s definitely one of the better parts.   It’s certainly fresher,since we normally don’t see six or seven guys battling a whole army like this.   Also, I like the approach of limiting the cast to a manageable number.   I think it’s tactically unwise to leave Yamcha, Gotenks, Buu, and Chiaotzu out of this battle, but leaving them out of the movie is worth it, if it gives Tien a chance to shine for a moment.    I’m not saying I like Tien better than the others, but we’re in a situation now where they can’t all share the spotlight, so if we have to pick one, let’s make that decision and run with it, and hope Yamcha gets a turn in a later film.

The problem I have with a fight like this is that they have all these extras floating around in the background of almost every scene, so it’s like Piccolo will do some cool spot with five or six bad guys, while fifty more just sort of stand there and watch.    The only explanation I can come up with is that the Z-Fighters are moving so fast that most of the bad guys simply cannot react fast enough to keep up.

For example, you have this scene, where Gohan zips through a whole bunch of guys and takes them all out while they look like they’re standing still.    Also, it’s pointed out several times that the Frieza Force isn’t nearly as strong or as well-disciplined as they used to be.    Hell, the next movie makes a plot point out of how hard it is for them to recruit good fighters.

Even Jaco makes these guys look like geeks, and he’s a comic relief guy.   

But he’s clever, like when he tricks the bad guys into getting eaten by a giant fish.   How did he know this thing lived on Earth? 

At this point, Sisami enters the battle, and he’s at least strong enough to give Piccolo a hard time.

Also, his shorts are a size too small, but his slutty uniform is his only distinguishing feature, really.

But Gohan steps in and turns Super Saiyan to take him out.   Not sure that was a smart play, since they’re trying to buy time for Goku to arrive.    A drawn out battle with Piccolo might have been just the thing they needed.   But I suspect this scene was intended to introduce the Super Saiyan concept to the audience.

To wit, Sorbet is horrified by how easily his best warrior went down, but Frieza isn’t surprised at all, since he’s the only one on his side who’s seen Super Saiyans in action.    He didn’t know Gohan could turn into one, but it’s the same diff.

This blue guy tries to apologize to Frieza for their defeat, but Frieza blows them all up.   I’m just pointing him out because this guy was voiced by Team Four Star’s Scott Frrerichs, which still blows my mind to this day.  Also, for some reason, I thought he played Sisima--Shisami, Sashimi... the red horny guy. 

Everyone agrees that they stand no chance against Frieza as he is now, and Frieza takes out Gohan first just to emphasize the point.   I guess this is his meta-revenge for Movie 12.

Piccolo has to use a ki technique to restart Gohan’s heart, and a senzu bean helas him after that, but they only have one left, so that won’t last them much longer.

Finally, Whis checks his messages and Goku and Vegeta hear about Frieza.    Whis can take them back to Earth, but it’s a 35-minute trip, so it’s up to Goku’s Instant Transmission.   

All right, let’s get on with this.    Frieza insists that he’s learned from their last fight, and he starts out with his “final” form, except it’s not his final form anymore, because he has a new one, so right off we see that he really hasn’t learned anything.     He wants Goku to turn Super Saiyan, but Goku doesn’t need to, and they fight like this for a while.  Does this really make sense.    Frieza came here for revenge, so why is he bothering to play-fight like this?   

Eventually Vegeta gets so bored with this part of the battle that he jumps in and starts attacking Goku.   Frieza mistakes this for a show of loyalty to him, but in fact Vegeta’s just sick of Goku milking his turn.  

They agree to put all their cards on the table, so Goku reveals his strongest form, which he calls a combination of classic Super Saiyan and the Super Saiyan God form he used in the last movie.    This eventually came to be known as “Super Saiyan Blue”, because duh, but for marketing purposes it’s still officially called “Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan” or “SSGSS” for short.   I have no idea who thought that was a good name for this.   

So Frieza shows Goku his new form, which is just his “final” form with a different color scheme.   He says he “settled” on this color, implying that he could have made it look different if he wanted to.     I like that idea, because it goes along with my contention that the Xenoverse games should let you customize transforms along with your character.   If you want your guy to turn into a Super Saiyan Purple, you should be able to, or if you want your Frieza Race guy to have a Crimson form instead of Golden, you should get to have that too.

On the other hand, this is fucking stupid.     It’s the same fight from 1990, except the characters are different colors.   This is the sort of thing critics make fun of DBZ for, and Toriyama did it unironically.   I mean, I get it, Super Saiyan 3 is just SSJ1 with longer hair and no eyebrows, but it’s the way the character is used in the story that sells the form as being more powerful.    

The problem here is that both guys have new forms at the same time and they’re supposed to be stronger than almost every other character we’ve seen before.  And yet this fight doesn’t look all that different from what they were doing a few minutes ago, before they transformed.   

On top of that, we have these really shitty CGI animations that look like they were taken out of a PS3 game.   I mean that literally, because when I watched this movie, I noticed it right away, because the way the characters move looks exactly like they do in the games I play all the time.  I didn’t mind it so much on the first viewing, but now that I’m looking at screencaps of it, it just looks really awkward and bad.    It’s fine in the games, because it’s interactive, and I can control what’s happening.    But in a movie, it doesn’t work at all, because Goku has this blank expression on his face the whole time.   Also, there’s no physics on the tails of his belt.    He’s rushing Frieza here but they’re just hanging at his hip like he’s standing still.

Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?   These shots aren’t even that long, and they don’t look that complicated, so I don’t understand why they didn’t just go ahead and use traditional animation.    I mean, the Frieza soldiers from earlier were rendered this way too, and I get that, because there were literally a thousand of them, and they wanted to have hordes of them milling about in the background.   but this is the main hero and villain in the forefront of the action.    If the entire movie looked like this, I wouldn’t have a problem with it at all, really.     It’s a “contract with the audience” thing.   If the whole movie is CGI or 2D animation, we can accept the visuals we’re given,  but once you start switching media unexpectedly, it becomes very jarring.

Then Beerus and Whis finally arrive to collect the dessert Bulma offered them.    Wait, he said it would take 35 minutes to get here.  Have Goku and Frieza been fighting for 35 minutes?

I get the joke here, that you’ve got this interplanetary grudge match playing out nearby, and these two dorks are more interested in eating ice cream, but it sort of undermines what little tension there was to this story.   When Res F was first announced, lots of fans joked that Frieza would find himself completely outmatched by the Z-Fighters.    Goten could kill him by himself.   But Toriyama introduced Golden Frieza to get around that, which means at this point, Frieza has leapfrogged Cell and Majin Buu to become the strongest villain again, to the point where he might rival Beerus if he put his mind to it.   Frieza’s a big deal again, except there doesn’t seem to be much concern over it.    Everyone seems confident that Goku can handle it, and if he can’t then Vegeta can, and if things really got out of hand, Whis could kill everyone in one hit. 

At one point, Frieza finally notices Beerus and asks him if he’s going to interfere in the battle, but Beerus insists that he’s just here for dessert, and he’s totally neutral in this.  

And Frieza seems to think he’s winning, but then Goku informs him that this Golden Frieza form has a weakness.    Frieza was so thrilled to have the new form that he rushed to Earth as soon as he discovered it, but he hasn’t learned to regulate his power at this level, so he’s going to tire out in a few minutes.   Goku should know, because he ran into the same problem with Super Saiyan 3 a few years back, and the same thing happened to Frieza when he fought at 100% of his full power because FRIEZA HASN’T LEARNED A DAMN THING SINCE THE LAST TIME THEY FOUGHT.    This movie is just so dumb.   The fact that Goku has to explain this to him again is absurd. 

Frieza thinks Goku’s bluffing, but this time the CGI battle shifts into Goku’s favor, and Frieza can’t hit the block button fast enough or break Goku’s combos.   

Then they fight underwater, which is just as murky and grey as the sky, only there’s bubbles down here.

Finally, we reach the point where Frieza’s punches don’t even work, and Goku pokes him in the tittly and punches him.

So Goku tells him to get out of here, just like he did on Namek, and Frieza throws a fit, just like he did on Namek.   This fight is the worst.  I mean, it’s not Gohan vs. Dabura levels of bad, but at least Gohan and Dabura did original stuff while they were shitting the bed.

Then Frieza signals Sorbet while he’s crying, and Sorbet shoots Goku with a ray gun to take him out of the fight.  

And this is dumb too, because it’s the same mistake Goku made on Namek, twice.   Only this time, Frieza actually got the drop on him, which is dumb because he’s basically doing the same thing Piccolo did to Goku at the 23rd World Tournamnet.   Whis even warned Goku about this overconfidence earlier in the movie.  I mean, it was forteshadowing, which ought to be okay, except when everything else in this movie is a retread of Frieza’s other appearances, foreshadowing is kind of a bad move. 

But Goku’s not the only dumbass in this movie.    Frieza decides not to kill Goku while he has the chance, and instead invites Vegeta to do it for him.   He even offers to make Vegeta his second-in-command, although his entire Frieza Force is dead except for Sorbet.   Geets declines, which isn’t exactly a shock, since he’s hated Frieza for destroying Planet Vegeta.   You know, the thing that happened forty-odd years ago that Frieza probably should considered before asking Vegeta to rejoin his team?

Instead, Vegeta tells Krillin to give Goku a senzu bean, and when Frieza tries to stop him, Vegeta deflects his attack so that it kills Sorbet instead.  

In return, Vegeta demands to take over the fight, now that we’ve come to his favorite part, the “Frieza-murdering” part.   Frieza mocks him for thinking he stands a chance, but Vegeta turns Super Saiyan Blue himself, and now Frieza realizes he’s totally screwed.    I guess he figured Goku would be this strong, but he never imagined he’d have to fight Vegeta at the same level at the same time.  

This is my favorite part of the movie, where Vegeta informs him that he learned to go Super Saiyan shortly after Frieza’s death.   Then again, why didn’t Frieza know about any of this?    Sorbet had been spying on the Earth for years, and he seemed to know just about everything else about what was going on.   Why didn’t he tell Frieza that Vegeta was living on Earth and that he was about as strong as Goku?   “Hey, look, I know you think you can handle Goku with this Golden form, but just understand that you’ll probably be fighting Vegeta at the same time, and he’ll be about the same level.”

For that matter, why did Frieza invade without checking to make sure Goku was on the planet first?  

So it looks like everything’s coming up Vegeta in this movie, although this part of the fight is anticlimactic, becuase Goku had already softned Frieza up for him. 

But then it turns out that Vegeta swallowed a bottle of idiot pills too, because when Frieza’s Golden Form wears off, he gets desperate and blows up the Earth to escape.  You know, just like he did on Namek.  At least I can sort of excuse Vegeta for this, because he wasn’t there the last time Frieza pulled this trick, except that Vegeta should have seen it coming, because he pulled the same stunt himself when he first came to Earth.

So yeah, the Earth explodes, again, which just makes the Dragon Ball Wiki that much harder to read, because they count both explosions as dates of death for every character.    Goten died in Age 774 and Age 779 and whenever else he would have died naturally.  

But all the main characters who were watching he fight are okay, because they were standing next to Beerus and Whis, who made a force field to protect them.    Vegeta’s dead, though, because he suffocated when the planet blew.   On the other hand, Frieza would have survived, because he doesn’t need air.    On top of that, he took out the Dragon Balls, so there’s no way to undo this with a wish.   

Then Whis reminds Goku that he has the power to rewind time by three minutes.   Yeah, I forgot about this.  Earlier, when Beerus woke up from his nap, Whis mentions how Beerus has a nasty habit of destroying things accidentally, so Whis has the power to rewind time and undo it if Beerus does anything especially stupid.  

So now Goku has a chance to kill Frieza properly, which he should have just done in the first place.   

KILLER QUEEN DAISAN NO BAKUDEN BITES THE DUST

So Frieza’s dead again... until they bring him back for the Tournament of Power, because for some reason fans want him to keep coming back for more of this crap.

Vegeta is understandably upset, because he thinks Goku just jumped in for no reason, but he calms down once he finds out Frieza was about to blow up the planet.

Bulma promises a big feast for Whis and Beerus for helping them, but she adds that it’ll have to wait for them to wish back everyone who died when Frieza destroyed North City.   Well, that’ll take six months, because the Dragon Balls haven’t reset since the last wish, right?

Then Goku proposes that he can Vegeta actually practice working together, in case they need to really join forces next time.   Vegeta’s like “nuts to that” and Goku’s like “same here”, so at least they have that much common ground.  

The end credits are accompanied by “Z no Chikai” or “Oath of Z”, by Momoiro Clover Z.    This song rules, and it’s really much better than Movie 15 deserves.   

In the post credits sequence, Frieza finds himself right back where he started, and the angels and fairies welcome him back to hell.    Looks like Tagoma had the right idea after all, huh?

And I guess that about sums it up.   I feel like this movie wasted an opportunity to do something truly interesting with Frieza.     You have a guy who was invincible, then he got killed and spent 15 years in hell, only to get wished back to life by his desperate troops.    This could have been a chance for him to ponder his own mortality and the futility of power and revenge.   What good does it really do to kill Goku when they both know what awaits them on the other side?   What difference does it make to escape the afterlife when you know you’ll just have to go back eventually?    You could try to have Frieza answer those questions and have him become a much more desperate and complex villain.   Instead, Toriyama just went right back to what he had already written in the Trunks Saga.  

Sadly, this looks like the final entry under the Dragon Ball Z brand.    Now that Dragon Ball Super is a thing, it looks like any new Dragon Ball stories, like the new Broly movie, will be produced under the DBS branding.    I kind of wish DBZ could have closed out on a better note than this.   

On the other hand, that Broly movie was a lot better, and even if it was officially titled “Dragon Ball Super: Broly”, I find that it’s hard for the Z to drop out of the public lexicon.   When I went to see it in January, the theater had it listed as “Dragon Ball Z: Super Broly.”  Old habits die hard, I guess.    Maybe one of these years, we’ll see the end of the Z, but not yet.  

[moquall]

Dissidia Final Fantasy : SECRETUM～秘密～ (Part 2 / 2)

Please read Part 1 first before you read this.

P.S : This part will cover Act 4 till Epilogue also my thoughts for this live reading so it will be longer. For those who have read Part 1 i accidentally delete, please read my new Part 1 because i add Act 3 there. just click “dissidia secretum” tag in my blog. (inserting an url here sometimes will hide this post from search result ==“) and sorry it took so long to post this.

Summary from part 1 :

Under Materia’s order, Cloud, Squall and Tidus went to investigate a mysterious light that fell into dissidia world but what they found is a man with no memories. Together with this man, they continue their journey but it turned out to be something unexpected. 

——————————————————-

ACT 4

Cloud and Sephiroth are in the Floating Continent, surrounded by a thick fog. He keep attacking Sephiroth to buy him some time because Sephiroth will chase Squall and John if he isn’t willing to fight

Cloud : He is not our enemy ! Sephiroth : You were deceived. (Sephiroth keep attacking Cloud) I won’t let you escape. Cloud : That’s my line ! Don’t think you can catch me easily ! Sephiroth : Alright. Nothing change if we move place.

Cloud escaped into Cornelia Plains and hide on the tree like John did before. He is surprised Sephiroth didn’t realize at all but just when Cloud attack him, Sephiroth dodge it.

Cloud : What’s your purpose ? Why are you after John ? Sephiroth : Didn’t you heard it from the goddess ? That man is hiding a powerful resources. Cloud : John is hiding it ? Sephiroth : You sure don’t know anything, huh ? That train crashed here because it’s after the man’s power. Just like me. Cloud : Then it’s obvious. Whoever John is, I will not hand him over to you Sephiroth : Oh.. Cloud : We are a team ! It’s time ! finish him !

"The wind suddenly blew and it was a coincidence. But Sephiroth responded to my instruction as i was determined because i have a friend."

Sephiroth : You insolent ! Cloud : I am not alone afterall. You’re the one who proved it ! Sephiroth : Foolish ! Cloud : Let’s go ! Sephiroth !!

——————————————————-

ACT 5

Meanwhile, Tidus is inside Phantom Train. He is surprised it’s different then the one he knew (The Sending) and it makes him trembling. He tried to call “the old man he know” and something that looked like a pyreflies transform into the man with sunglasses and appear in front of him. Tidus asked Auron if he board this train but answered he heard that the phantom train derailed and he saw Tidus when he tried to send his thoughts. (Okay i don't know the right translation for this one. I'll explain later)

seriously, didn’t expect to see Auron as ‘cameo’ in this live reading and Ishikawa-san wear sunglasses  *badass*

Tidus think Phantom Train carries the dead like The Sending in Spira. Auron asked him to persuade the souls for not leaving the train because the souls boarded this train is in unstable state. If they held a grudge and leave the train , they will turns into a monster. Why the souls wanted to leave the train so badly because normally, the dead boarded the phantom train must accept their death but this time, one of the souls escaped carrying a the treasure that will revive the dead and the souls think if they have it, they will be revived.

Tidus realized John is probably the one Auron mentioned since he lost his memories and is looking for summon but doesn’t know if John really has the treasure. Auron added no one knows if the treasure is really exist and even if they have it, doesn’t mean it will grant their wish to be revived. The commotion is getting worse so Auron told him they can’t ignored this.

Tidus : If they wait here, The Phantom Train will depart, right ? Auron : Right. but it’ll take some time. Tidus : Okay. I’ll do it. Auron : Speak as you like. They hear your voice. I’ll stop them if someone trying to talk with you. Tidus : O...Okay.

“Listen to me ! Please don’t be panic ! We don’t know if the treasure is really exist or not but if you force yourself searching for it, turn into a monster and start rampaging, It means the end for you. Maybe it’s fine if you turn into monster only in this world but what will happen to you if you return to your own world as it is ? It sounds selfish if you said it’s better if you leave yourself here but you want your living family and friends to do whatever they want and keep smiling but because of your fault, it’ll hurt them more. Leave the one who escaped this train to me . Everyone.. Let’s finish your story for once ! I don’t know anything about the Phantom Train but there was a similar ritual like this in the world I knew. I am a little scared but I think it’s important. If they end it, I don’t know when but I’m sure someday you’ll meet them again in the real world . I’ll prove it to you soon so just wait and see !"

After his speech, Auron gave an applause and praise him for his wonderful speech. Tidus decided to go back to his friend and bring John here before he turn into monster while Auron stayed at the train to make sure nothing bad happened. Tidus ran and leave the train while seeing him off, Auron laughed “I got a great story to share.“

——————————————————-

ACT 6

It started with John’s monologue

“All of sudden, the voices of lament resounded in my head. it was painful and feels like my head is going to explode. But that voices were a part of my memories. A long time ago, I couldn’t protect the woman I love. She lost her memories due to an accident and I was rejected because I made her parents sad. But a year after I left, the village was attacked by enemy country and killed her. It seems she regain her memories and call my name before she died. I don’t care what people say but I shouldn’t leave her that time. I want to meet and talk with her once again. With that determination, I keep continue searching for a legendary treasure that will bring the dead back to life. The treasure was hidden in a cave which is under enemy country’s control. I keep walking through trackless path, avoid myself from the monster, I don’t know how many times I was about to die. I clunged into the rock that seemed to collapse and climb it. At last.. I finally found a glowing stone. That’s right, It’s not over ! I found what I’m looking for. And now, It’s time to wake up from this weird dream !”

Meanwhile, after running away from Sephiroth, Squall is walking while carrying unconscious John on his back. It reminds him with “that time”

“I’m tired. He is heavy.. It’s just like that time. I carried her and walking, keep walking, worried.

Rinoa, Wait for me..”

Squall didn’t realize John is awake until he heard his laugh.

John : hehehe.. Squall : HAH ?! John : Hehe.. Sorry for letting you carry an unpretty guy, Squall. Squall : When did you wake up ? John : Who knows～. Joking aside, Sorry for troubling you. I’m Okay. (John get off from Squall) Squall : ...Let’s go back. John : Yeah..

——————————————————-

ACT 7

Cloud : Ukh.. It’s not over Sephiroth : It’s enough.. Cloud : What ? Sephiroth : The treasure has arrived.. (John and Squall return to aid Cloud) John : Sorry to kept you waiting ! Cloud : John ! Squall ! Squall : I’ll back you up ! John : Me too ! Cloud : No, you can’t, John !! John : Eh ? Woahh !! (Sephiroth attack John) Sephiroth : Useless effort... Squall : Do not underestimate us !! Cloud : John, step back ! John : So you wanted the legendary treasure, huh ? Sephiroth : Oh.. John : I see.. Sephiroth : Give it to me.  (Squall and Cloud keep attacking Sephiroth) That’s too bad. Tidus : TAKE THIS ! (Tidus attacked Sephiroth but he dodge it) I made it !! John, you have the treasure, right ? John : Maybe yes ? Tidus : Are you sure ? You sure you have it ?  Woaahh !! (Sephiroth suddenly attack Tidus)   Squall : Stay focus !!! John : Okay. Leave the rest to me. Cloud : What’s happened with you ? John : All i must do is give this man the treasure, right ? Tidus : John.. John : Come on, niisan. Sephiroth : It’s over.. Tidus : Watch out ! John : FLAME OF REBIRTH, PHOENIX !!

John summoned the immortal bird, Phoenix. The summonstone on John’s chest shined brightly and Sephiroth saw the summonstone was damaged, and left the scene, completely gave up the summon. And Tidus's monologue start.

"The Summon, Phoenix's summonstone. It was the treasure's true form. The fire bird flying while scattering its warm light. It's the first time i saw this but i feel relieved. Phoenix flew toward the Phantom Train and the train, now bathed in flames and sparkling, flew to the sky while carrying a lot of souls. for them to be reincarnate someday”

Cloud asked when did John found the summonstone and John answered he had the stone but completely forgot about it which prove he regained his memories. Tidus realize John should board the train before he turn into monster but since the phoenix save him, he was revived. They see the summonstone filled with cracks. Squall assumed they can’t use it and Tidus thought Materia will complain. Cloud suggest to report and tell Materia the truth and the four returned to Materia’s tower.

——————————————————-

ACT 8 (EPILOGUE)

John : Thank you, I owe you a lot. Squall : Yeah, you caused a lot of trouble. John : (chuckle) What a cocky. Cloud : Thanks for your help. It will be tough if you didn’t summon Phoenix. John : No problem. But I will be dead for sure, if you didn’t help me that time. Tidus : Well.. It’s fun going on a journey with you, John. John : Yup ! Well, see y- Squall : Wait ! At least tell us your name. John : Haha.. Sorry. I got used with the name “John” so I think it’s okay if you keep call me with that name. Tidus : Right ? Since you got your memories back, we haven’t heard your real name. By the way, you are a thief, aren’t you ? John : T-H-I-E-F ? call me Treasure Hunter” . My name is Locke. LOCKE COLE !

-----------------------END----------------------- 

there are something I haven’t mentioned yet and I think it’s important.

In case, you missed. The gods didn’t summon Locke. He escaped the Phantom Train while the train was in the rift and he fell to World B. Since he is in this train, I think he died after he got the magicite in Phoenix Cave and before reunite with others in FFVI. Phoenix revived him but i dont know why he lost his memories. Squall, Tidus and Cloud found him. That’s where Locke’s journey in dissidia NT started.

Kujiraoka said on June 2018’s livestream that Secretum happened after the last battle.

It was mentioned on the script which is included in premium edition also famitsu interview with Kujiraoka, that the man in black cloak is actually SEPHIROTH’S CLONE. Kinda makes sense since I wondered how did Sephiroth ended up in Phantom Train. Also the tone Morikawa-san use when he act as Sephiroth's copy is different than the usual Sephiroth.

There is a small chance Phoenix appear as summon in NT since the summonstone filled with cracks. This is also Kujiraoka’s answer from the interview.

IMO I don’t think Auron will come to NT which is SaaaaaaD because first, he was in the phantom train and the train leave World B after that. Second, Auron has same Japanese VA with Squall (also Cait Sith from VII and Qator from Type-0) so even if he comes to NT, maybe not in next season pass. (if the datamine "leak" is true). Not sure about that though.

And some things I don’t really understand :

How Sephiroth know about Phoenix, and what Sephiroth is going to do with it.(At first i thought just like Materia with the weather trio, he knew it from Spiritus but i doubt it since most of Spiritus's warriors are like "i don't care with this war. I have my own ambition.")

It’s about Sephiroth’s copy. Why his copy is in the Phantom Train ? Did Sephiroth control it ? or what ?

Okay actually I don’t really understand how Auron ended  up in Phantom Train. Here is the dialogue.

Tidus : アンタも、こ���列車に乗ってたの���？(You board this train too ?) Auron : いや、魔列車が脱線したと聞いてな、厄介事かと思念を飛ばしたら、お前の姿が見えたということだ。(No, I heard the Phantom Train derailed. I thought something bad happened and I saw you when i tried to send my thoughts. Tidus : 魔列車ね…(Phantom Train, huh…)

According to my Japanese friend, 思念を飛ばす is something like telepathy. Like, communicating with someone but we only hear their voice and we can't see their real form. The sfx when Auron greet Tidus sounds like he is transforming from pyreflies to his physical form. I understand this idiom but doesn't know how to translate this one to English. anyone here have an idea for the right translation ?

Also for Squall’s “Whatever” , He is actually said 「別に/Betsu ni」. It’s one of his catchphrase along with 「悪かったな../Warukatta na」in the Japanese version of FFVIII. Even though the translation of “Betsu ni” doesn’t always mean “Whatever” in English, I decided to translated it all to “Whatever”.

-------------------THOUGHTS-------------------

In this live reading, I got to see a different side from the characters. I was surprised to see Squall yelled “Johhhhnnnnnnnn!!!” when Locke asked him for nickname also being such a “jerk” to protect his friend. Cloud stopped the quarrel between Squall and Tidus also Squall and Locke is something I never see before. Even though we all know Cloud and Squall are both the 'silent' type, Squall interact a lot with Tidus and Locke but Cloud is the calm, helpful also “the neutral one” in this live reading and he care and trust his friend. Maybe people will think it’s kind of OOC and tbh that's what I thought at first but I think it as “different or new side” we didn’t get to see after the ending of their game.

I personally love seeing how they interact with each other, especially the four and it kinda remind me a little with Braska (Cloud), Auron (Squall) and Jecht (Tidus and Locke). I don’t say they have same personality, It’s just their interaction and role here reminds me with ossan trio from FFX.

But I'm dissapointed because Cloud, doesn't interact much like Squall and Tidus. His spotlight is during his battle with Sephiroth even though I have had enough seeing this two fight ==" . (sorry to FFVII fans especially Cloud or Sephiroth’s fans :p ). And even though secretum story is about Locke, Auron came as 'guest' was a big surprise. Kudos for Ishikawa-san to play as two character at the same time.

Didn't expect it's too long. Good story with favorite casts, favorite seiyuu, some things that will bring your memories back to series related and what i love is they used the original tracks for the BGM in most of the scene like Vivi's theme during Tidus and Locke's scene in Alexandria, Blue Fields during Squall's monologue, Forever Rachel during Locke's monologue in Act 6, etc. The aftertalk is full of laugh. The casts teased Producer Hazama (who was the host for this event) a lot. Nomura also came and as usual, as the voice from heaven (XD). They even talk a bit about Kingdom Hearts.

I’m glad to see Locke, Rinoa and Yuna scene in Dissidia NT have some reference to secretum, at least in the Japanese version. 

It’s the first Final Fantasy live reading and I hope they hold another in the future. Even Ishikawa-san wished Square Enix will hold another dissidia live reading but with all casts and PLEASE COUNT ME IN FOR FULL CASTS OF DISSIDIA LIVE READING.

Let me know your thoughts about this live reading.

[forever-more-never-again]

Game Over (A Natasha Request)

Requested: Anonymous

Word Count:1321

Pairing: Natasha X Reader

Warnings: Swearing, Character Death (It’s not Sad!)

Request: Hi! I love your blog! Can I request a Nat x reader? All I could really come up with was that the reader could be a new recruit and have a mutation that gives them a gamer's mind and a gamer's body (heals from incredibly severe injuries in a few hours or overnight). Thanks!

Masterlist

You never thought that you would be here, standing in the Avengers tower, being introduced to Captain America.

“Hi, Kid. Look, you wanna be an Avenger, you’re going to have to stop staring like a lovestruck teenager.”

You could tell he was joking around, his blue eyes alight with mischief, but you still flushed like a schoolkid and scuffed your foot in embarrassment.

“Sorry. Cap.”

He cleared his throat and stood up straight, “Let’s go to the training room, [Y/n]. So you can meet the rest of the team and we can see what you can do. I trust Tony, but I need to know you can handle yourself.”

You nodded, trying not to appear too eager. Tony had found you in England during one of his business trips.

You had been an Orphan, scrounging for food in alleyways and when Thugs had tried to attack you, you had taken them down before Tony, who had been walking past, could interfere.

One thing led to another, and you went back to New York with him and he talked to Steve Rogers about making you an Avenger.

“Hey guys. Got a new recruit here. [Y/n], this is everyone. Natasha, Clint, Bucky, Sam, Tony, Bruce, and Wanda and Vision.”

You smiled to everyone, but your eyes kept going back to the first woman. Natasha. Her bright red hair and striking green eyes seemed to brand her in your brain. She was gorgeous.

“I found [Y/n] in England. They are something truly unique. Bruce and I have been in talks about what their DNA could mean for the world of Medicine.”

Tony walked up and put a hand on your shoulder, radiating pride. You whimpered quietly, you had a major fear of needles and hospitals. Which was why your mutation was something you were happy to have, because it meant that you didn't have to go to one.

Natasha noticed your discomfort and spoke up, “Do they have a say before you use them for your experiments?”

Tony frowned, “Yes. We talked all the way from England. But were not here for that reason. [Y/n]. Want to tell them your codename?” He was like a kid in a candy store, practically vibrating with expectation.

You laughed, looking out over the various confused and eager faces before you.

“My name is [Y/n], but I decided my codename will be….Player One.”

Everyone looked between each other before staring at you, bewildered.

Clint was the first to cough and break, “Uhhh….that’s neat...but not really...a fit name. Here. My name is Hawkeye.”

Wanda stepped forward, her hands red, “Scarlet Witch.”

Sam’s wings stretched behind him, “Falcon.”

Bucky stretched his metal arm, “Winter Soldier.”

Natasha giggled, “Black Widow. But guys, I think they have a reason for that name...right, [Y/n]? What exactly is your mutation? Tony left us in the dark this time.”

You smiled and winked at the assassin, catching the slight curve of her ruby lips.

“You are correct. Let’s see…” You looked over the faces of the superheroes before you. Finally landing on Vision, the android. “You sir. Please step forward.”

You motioned for him to stand across from you. He floated over and stood before you, face expressionless.

“What does one expect me to?” He asked.

You grinned, excited for the chance to show what you could do, “I need you to try and kill me.”

Gasps rose from everyone except Vision, Steve and Tony.

Natasha managed to catch your gaze, “[Y/n], what are you doing?”

You shrugged, looking back at the android who was tilting his head at you, “Showing you guys what I can do. Come on bot boy. Let me have it.”

And suddenly, you were jumping and barrel rolling over his back as he shot out a yellow beam from his forehead.

Everyone else slowly backed up until a ring was formed around the pair of you.

You laughed as you engaged in hand to hand combat, blocking before landing a punch on Vision’s chin.

He grimaced, “I do not see how harming you will show what you are capable of, [Y/n].”

You growled, playfulness gone, “I am Player One!” You screamed, launching yourself at the Android.

He stared, shocked, and you caught the horror in Natasha’s eyes, she was standing behind Vision.

The light flashed and pierced your heart. You dropped to your knees, Smiling up at the group of scared people who converged on you.

“Quick! Get medic!”

“Tony! Do something!”

You coughed, blood speckling your lips. Natasha dropped to her knees across from you, tears in her eyes.

“Stupid!What were you trying to prove!?”

You giggled, hands coming up to rest on her cheeks, “This is all going the way I want it to. Just wait. And watch out. Cause it’s…” Your voice grew weak as your life force faded, “Game Over.” You ended your cryptic remark with a wink as your body gave one last dying gasp and you fell on your side, eyes open and lifeless.

Natasha stood and whirled on a smug, grinning Tony, “What the fuck is wrong with you!? They just died and your standing there like the cat who caught the canary! They were just a kid Tony! And now what? Dead in our own building by one of our own!”

Natasha whirled to face Vision who was staring at the body, as Wanda rubbed hands on his shoulder, trying to comfort him.

“Natasha. I do believe you would want to witness this.”

Natasha followed Vision’s line of sight and gasped. Your body was slowly disintegrating into nothing.

“What is going on?” She whispered.

No one answered as they all held a collective breath as the last of your body disappeared into thin air.

“Ready? Player One!”

Your voice spoke out, loud as you dropped from the air onto your feet in battle ready stance.

“What…”

“The…”

“[Y/n]!” Natasha ran over, enveloping you in a hug.

You laughed, relaxing and returning the tight grip she had on you.

“Told you guys My name made sense.”

Clint doubled over, laughter and hysteria in his voice, “You...you are a video game character!”

Tony shared a look with you, as you spotted him over the top of Natasha’s shoulder, “[Y/n] has the mutation of regeneration. From minor wounds disappearing over a matter of seconds, to a full revival like you guys were just witness to. They truly are one of a kind.”

Vision nodded, “Now your remarks from earlier about the properties of their DNA make sense. If you can isolate the gene that causes the regeneration, you could cure cancer and many other diseases.”

As everyone slowly regripped reality and talked with Tony and Bruce about your DNA. You were still dealing with Natasha’s death grip on you.

You patted her back, “Natasha...you can let go.”

She sprang from you, a rosy blush rising on her cheeks, “Sorry. I don’t usually lose my cool. But that was horrifying [Y/n]. I really, truly hope I never have to go through that again, for your sake as well.”

You laughed, rubbing the back of your neck, “It’s nothing really. I’ve learned to mute the pain of death because I know that it only lasts a minute and…” You trailed off as you saw Natasha’s look of pain in her eyes.

You gently cupped her face, “But hey. I’ll try to stay safe. Maybe I could train with you? I have a feeling you and I are going to be great partners in life.”

Natasha finally laughed, and your heart soared at the smile on her face.

She ducked under your arm and knocked you to the ground. Leaning over you, her face framed by the gym lights, she held out a hand to help you up.

“I agree...Player One….Maybe I will be your Player Two.”

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@jadepc

[roses-and-oceans]

Once Upon a Dream ~ Chpt. 4

I just want to say a big thank you to everyone that has been reblogging my gf’s post about kofi donations. It means so much to us and we’re absolutely blown away by your kindness,words can’t express my gratitude for you all and I really hope that at least these can be some sort of repayment. expect another chpt soon <3

**

After being revived with a few slaps, you came to.

“'I need you'. He needs me!” You jolted up, nearly knocking the glasses off Ignis' nose.

Gladio grabbed your arms to keep hold of you, “Slow down, you're not going anywhere!”

“This isn't good,” Prompto squeaked.

Gladiolus looked up and saw the dark storm clouds over head from the window. They thundered loud and terrifyingly close.

“We need to get out of here. Now.”

You got up and grabbed your woolen, knit blanket. Ignis immediately took it and wrapped it around you, “Steady on.” Gladiolus and Prompto ran next to you. Gladiolus scooped you up like it was nothing. The howling winds outside nearly knocked the party off their feet on the first step but it seemed the storm just stayed over your home. From town, you were able to see the thunderstorm engulf the little area of your home.

When Gladiolus finally set you down, your knees were wobbling. You limped over to a chair and Ignis brought you a cup of tea a few minutes later. Even with the warmth of the blanket and tea, you still shivered. Prompto saw this and asked, “Can I sit with you?”

You looked up at him and nodded. He pulled up a chair right next to you and opened his arms wide. You immediately curl up next to him and he's warm, he's so warm and you feel safe. But you feel guilty. The prince...

You curled up into him and inhaled the scent of his shirt; he always smelled of bread and yeast, like its been baked into him all these years.

“Prompto, he needs you.” you said in a small voice after a few minutes of silence.

He looked down at you, his eyebrows furrowed, “Wha-? Who are you talking about?”

“My prince.”

He paled.

“What?”

“He needs you, he needs me, too. I'm supposed to help you, we need to go find him.”

“Y/N, Noct isn't-.”

“I need to show you something.”

You stood up, stooped over and you threw the blanket off you. You thought of your prince, laying on his bed, bleeding and decorated. There was a glowing light and in your hand appeared a sword. The same sword he held onto. It even had a few browned thorns around it.

Prompto got up so quickly, he knocked over his chair. He looked at you, mouth agape. Ignis and Gladiolus came out from the kitchen and froze.

There was a sudden uproar of noise between the three boys. You couldn't make out any words and you walked past them, sword still in hand. You stood in the meadow near the kitchen door and looked out past the clouds still hovering over your home, thunder and lightning striking. And you looked over to the east.

Your name was called from inside the bakery and Ignis came out, bumping into the door frame, “Y/N?”

He was breathing heavily and stuck his hand out, “Give me the sword. A weapon like that is dangerous for someone who isn't-.”

“Ignis, what's going on?”

Prompto and Gladiolus came from inside too. Prompto looked even more upset than how you left him.

Gladiolus said in a tense voice, “How did you access the King's Magic? How did you get that sword?!”

Ignis held his hand up to Gladiolus, and took a deep breath, “I'm not quite sure. Y/N, can you tell me about these dreams that you've been having?”

You sighed.

You told them. You told them of the grand rooms and tower. You told them about the area surrounding it, the sea of thorns. And then Ignis sat you down on the grass, and told you about his home.

These men were guards of the kingdom, brothers-in-arm with Prince Noctis of the Kingdom of Insomnia. And then the kingdom's grand fall.

As they told you about the exploits of “Noct” they so called him, years seemed to melt into their faces, a heavy burden carried for a fallen brother, sworn to protect his people. An evil being from the depths of Hell killed many people; from nobles to the poor, he had no mercy. They killed allies from neighboring kingdoms. He destroyed Insomnia. His curse lingers in the depths of the castle in the center of a field of thorns, poison and lethal.

You were listening intently but couldn't take your eyes off your feet. Your brain was overloaded with information; the kingdom you dreamed about was real and they knew about it. They've known this dead kingdom, lived with carrying on without their prince. There was no hope-.

“No hope?” Prompto choked out. “No hope? Iggy, c'mon.”

“Prompto, please-.”

You looked up and gasped. They all seemed to grow older and scars marred their faces. You almost cried when you looked at Ignis. He told you about how he sacrificed his vision for trying to save Noct, how after years of hard work, he was able to manage living without sight. Gladiolus' face looked far too tired and his scars were etched like worry lines intersecting above his eye. Prompto looked so tired, it looked like he was about to drop.

Every time you described something, the men would help finish for you. It was so bizarre, listening to them paint exactly how the sunshine painted the autumn days, how beautiful the castle was.

They even described Noct's room at the top.

You shook your head, bringing yourself back to earth, unable to comprehend what they changed the topic to something else.

A champion.

“A 'champion'?,” you asked sheepishly. You tried to keep yourself connected to this conversation. You we'ren't going to faint again, you were not-

“-not going to ignore this completely but we have to think rationally!”

“Y/N is the 'champion' Noctis asked for. Now he needs our help-.”

“HE'S BEEN DEAD FOR TEN YEARS!”

“HE NEEDS OUR HELP!”

You put your hands up, all four kingsmen stopped and looked at you.

“What do I need to do?

Prompto hugged you and whispered, “Thank you, thank you.”

He looked up at Gladiolus, “You haven't said a word, big guy.”

Gladiolus looked at him, sighed, “This doesn't feel good. Nothing feels good.”

Ignis shook his head, “I know I'm very adamant at the idea...”

He cleared his throat; his voice was so low you could barely catch it wavering, “But I can't bear the idea of Noct in anymore pain. I will assist.”

Prompto looked like he could have started crying. He gave you a watery smile and it made you tear up too. The blond man then brought his hand up too eyesight and appeared to have started concentrating. A flash of light summoned a pistol to a his hand and he moaned with longing.

“Oh, I've missed this!”

You smiled at them all, summoning weapons; that's what they called it. You rubbed your head and asked them, “What's this about a champion, then?”

“Champion of the Light,” Ignis began, “It was a term used in children stories. It was just a myth after all, the power of the Caelums were the real magic...”

Ignis was rubbing his glasses but stopped when he realized that everyone was staring at him. He sighed.

“But, in texts, the Champion of Light was the first person to vanquish the Darkness, guide the new world into ever lasting peace after eons of darkness. That was rumored to the be the first Caelum to ascend the throne. And throughout the centuries, the darkness would come back again and the soul of the Champion would return as well.”

“Doesn't the Champion die?” you pondered.

“Well, yes. Think of it as reincarnation. Throughout the millennia, there have been different reported cases of Champions, vanquishing the darkness, slaying the scourge of evil and peace and prosperity being celebrated. I think every few centuries or so, the story would morph and so such is the consequence of children's story.”

**

“There was once a kingdom that celebrated the stars and night sky. The ruling family, seemed to have been made of stars themselves. This kingdom celebrated their hard-earned harvests, their long lasting peace, their life. Though they love the night, they are full of light.

“But one day, during one of their celebrations, the darkness that had been swirling about had lingered too long and wanted to feast upon the light. The darkness was not allowed near the light, for fear of tainting the precious light...

“And so, the selfish, starlit kingdom took the light for themselves.

“The darkness wanted it. The darkness wanted to swallow the light and smother it. Devour it.

“And so I did.”

His voice was velvet.

tagging: @fortheloveofeos @gladiolus-mamacitia @angelic-guardienne @leeyahlee-nai @inconsistencys @furubatsu @hextme @ladychocoberry @mandakatt @casxia @sonsoflucis @allimenthia @gladiosamicitias @whimsyofthewind @jinxed-lynxs-blog

[mediocrethoughts]

Wasted Time

Written: October 16, 2020

I started playing Dragon Raja, an MMORPG game that really has amazing graphics, on the first day of its release, February 27, 2020. I made some friends there, and also caused my real life stuff to have complications for a while.

About approximately a couple of months playing the game, the club I was in (usually called guilds on PC MMORPGs) was getting boring, and I wanted to quit already. However, even if it’s only been a few months, we (me and my partner) have already invested quite a lot of money in getting some items there. And I thought, maybe if I can find another reason to play the game then we’ll stay for a while. And this thought made me create my own club, Crystal.

Crystal grew so fast, even surpassing some clubs that have been there ever since the first day of the release. We made lots of friends there, and it was fun... until it got too boring for my partner that he decided to really quit the game. Of course, I didn’t want to let go of his account just like that, so I played it on behalf of him; which means I played two accounts. This situation got me all burnt out, plus the fact that he was my greatest support in running Crystal, and so I decided to step down from being Crystal’s leader. I passed leadership to a friend. During this time, the stagnancy of the growth of the club was clear. We weren’t really growing anymore ever since my partner stopped playing, and I can’t be bothered to work on the growth of the club with my hands full from playing two characters. My personality has also reverted back to my original personality, an introvert, so I wasn’t really interacting with anybody unless I needed to during that time.

Fast forward, this stagnancy became worse and evolved into a decline of growth. Some people started leaving, however the biggest turning point was a conversation that happened within the group chat of our Officers. One of the officers voiced out that she wanted to try the biggest club in the Server, and after that declaration, everything just went down... like a domino. The core members of the club started leaving as well, with the reason that they wanted a new environment, and Crystal definitely wasn’t giving any exciting atmosphere in playing the game anymore. It was always the same people talking, no new exciting stuff to offer, and the stagnant if not declining growth.

The person whom we passed leadership to also expressed that he wanted to try the club that his special someone was in. And so I was left with two choices: to get back the Leadership and try to revive the club, or merge our club into another club. The first choice wasn’t really a good one for me, since during my reign as the leader, all it did was stress me out and give me break downs due to the fact that it was hard for me to interact with people without the back up of my partner, and also the timezone that the game was in. It was in North American time, so I always had to put alarms for events... and my sleeping time definitely was very short during those days. And so, I decided to put a poll in our Discord server whether they would agree to merge with the club Requiem, and most agreed, however, there were two or more people that had something to say about the club. When I sent the poll to the server, I wasn’t really the most decisive person. I was torn in between reviving the club or merging. It was a club that we all grew, after all. It was hard for me to just let go of it. During one of my most indecisive days, I logged in to the game, and found that the friends I had left in the club were talking about transferring over to WE, and I felt a little betrayed over that. Nevertheless, the fact that there were people that didn’t want to be in Requiem also made me agree with their choice of club. And so, that day, I was the only active one in the club that was left.

Just to not make them feel guilty that they left me in the club, I promised them that I will follow them to WE... which I did after a few days. I didn’t want to give up fully on Crystal, so I decided to just pass leadership to my alt (a dummy account). True enough, I tried WE, however, since I was already the introvert Angel, it was hard for me to feel like I fit in. Even with an active club chat, I still felt lonely because I didn’t know these people, and the people that I did know (ex-Crystal members) weren’t really exactly close friends of mine. After a few weeks in WE, I decided to go back to Crystal. Nobody talked in the club chat, but at least the loneliness I felt wasn’t because I feel left out. Besides, in Crystal, I didn’t have to talk to anyone I wasn’t comfortable with, which was plus points for the introverted me. At least here in my dead club, Crystal, I didn’t have to chat or talk to anyone, I just had to play the game, and talk with a friend of mine (ex-Deputy of Crystal) who carries me around to events every now and then. I stayed in Crystal for two weeks, without anybody to talk to but that friend (even if he’s already in another club). It was lonely, but I knew it was my fault for choosing to be an introvert in a game better enjoyed with friends.

After two weeks in Crystal, I was overwhelmed by a strong urge to quit. However, since I mentioned on my last blog the reasons why I haven’t quit yet, I let myself get convinced by a friend from the V club. I asked my friend if he wanted to join me in V, since one of his close friends is there as well. And so we transferred.

I gave leadership back to my alt. Even if Crystal can be considered a dead club, there were still players there that go online every other day, however, they don’t talk. Some of the names were familiar which means they’ve been in Crystal for a while, and so I didn’t want to completely erase Crystal from the server. This was the reason as to why I wanted to keep Crystal on my alt.

The day when Amber and me went to my parents’ house, I forgot to login to my alt. This game has this system where it auto merges inactive clubs to active clubs, and the leaders have a choice to agree or decline this request. If the leader doesn’t give a response after 24 hours, this means that the merge will push through. So when I forgot to login my alt for a day, this was when the merge request appeared... and I missed it. I just found out about my club, Crystal, getting sucked into WE (the club I tried out) when they mentioned me in our Discord server. This means that there is no more Crystal in the whole server. All of our hard work in building that club gone to waste.

My mind didn’t really absorb that fact right away, but after a few days, the feeling of sadness consumed me. When I told myself that I’d write about my DR story, I was pretty emotional. My first draft for this blog was disorganized and nonsensical, so I decided to rewrite it again, and this is how it came up.

Oh well. That’s the story of how I wasted my time on a game... again.

Sincerely, Angel