#for me with that book since I wasn’t actively theorizing or anything so I don’t think I went into it with much expectation and I liked it | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ohthewhomanity · 4 years ago

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Okay so I was listening to @amorespatospodcast talk about “The First Adventure,” and they were talking about how interesting it is that Beakley was the director of SHUSH when it dissolved, and how double-interesting it is that Beakley recommended Bradford to Scrooge when she knew that there was a mole in the agency, and they also mentioned the feather from “The Split Sword of Swanstantine” a few times…

…and this theory popped into my head, and it’s so darn wacky, I don’t really expect this to be true at all, but still… what if…?

Ducktales spoilers below the cut… haha just kidding… unless…?

On the podcast, Anna and Fabi theorized that the feather that Heron nabbed in “Swanstantine” is Scrooge’s feather, and that it could be used to clone Scrooge and create a “rightful heir of McDuck” that would allow FOWL to find the Papyrus. I like the sound of this, especially since we know that super-fast cloning IS possible in Ducktales, what with all the Gyro clones. Bradford has shown that with the help of agents like Gandra Dee, he is able to use/hijack Gyro and Fenton’s technology. FOWL wouldn’t have to wait years and years to grow an heir; they can just do it with the tech they stole. All they needed was a DNA sample: Scrooge’s feather.

But why do they need the feather now? Why didn’t they take one years ago, in all those decades of Bradford running Scrooge’s business? Bradford has clearly been calmly and quietly planning his moves for years. Why wait until Scrooge is onto him to put this plan in motion?

My answer: he didn’t wait. FOWL did take a DNA sample from Scrooge years ago. This is the second time that Bradford has tried to create a “rightful heir of McDuck.” And the first time? He succeeded!

Beakley was working with Bradford in the time of “First Adventure.” Absolutely she was. She’s the best spy in the world and she doesn’t trust anyone, so there’s nothing that Bradford could’ve said to her to make her trust him, unless she knew what he was all about. And Beakley, at some point while she was an agent of SHUSH, figured out what Bradford and FOWL were up to, and was swayed to Bradford’s side.

Beakley is not an agent of chaos. She does not encourage Scrooge to go on reckless adventures. She was happy to be his housekeeper while he was depressed for ten years, and she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about him seeking out Atlantis in the pilot. If I remember right, she says she has more than enough adventure in her life raising Webby, and while she encourages Scrooge to talk to his grandnephews, since she values family, she doesn’t tell Scrooge to take them on an adventure. In fact, Scrooge makes a point of telling the kids to not tell Beakley that they’re going, as though he knows she wouldn’t approve.

When Beakley joins the adventure gang in “Last Crash of the Sunchaser,” she is appalled to learn that Scrooge regularly puts the kids – particularly Webby – in danger. I can 100% imagine strict, meticulous, rule-abiding Beakley hearing Bradford’s pitch about controlling the world to stop terrible, chaotic things from happening anymore, and thinking, “Huh, sure, I’m on board with order!”

“But what about ‘The Case Files of Agent 22?’” you ask. “Beakley was working with Scrooge against FOWL then!”

Well, it all depends on exactly when Beakley caught onto Bradford and he gave her his pitch. It could be that the flashbacks we see in “Case Files” are before this, and Beakley is completely above-board at this point. It’s also possible that Beakley is already working with Bradford.

Think about how protocol-oriented she is in this episode. She wants to do things by the book. She hates that Scrooge is going off the rails and changing the plan. She learns to like and respect him over the course of the episode, but the way she reacts to Scrooge’s loose-cannon nature reminds me a lot of how Bradford reacts to Heron in “First Adventure.” Scrooge also encourages Beakley to lighten up in a similar way to how Heron encourages Bradford to embrace his inner villain. Order versus chaos. Control versus adventure.

Maybe Heron had gone off the rails and started acting super extra villain-ish, creating a secret island laboratory and trying to use the Gummi Berries herself instead of just collecting/destroying them like Bradford would have wanted, and so Bradford asked Beakley to reign her in, and she did so in a way that aligned with SHUSH’s agenda, too. After all, she’s a spy; she could easily have ulterior motives for her actions. Along the way, she befriends Scrooge. And if Scrooge trusts and likes Beakley, this helps FOWL. It means that when Bradford finally decides to take a more active role in taking over the world, Beakley can tell Scrooge to let Bradford control his business.

So. We’ve got Bradford trying to take over the world, and we’ve got Beakley – the director of SHUSH – secretly working with him. And now Bradford has access to Scrooge’s finances and technologies. And, Bradford still wants the Papyrus. Maybe he’s going to just keep it. Maybe he just wants to make sure that the McDuck family doesn’t get it. Maybe he’s going to use it to get what he wants – total control of a completely orderly, boring world. The important thing is, to find the Papyrus, Bradford needs a McDuck heir.

Hence the cloning. Bradford gets close enough to Scrooge to get a feather, or some more significant DNA sample. But that’s not all he needs. Anna and Fabi pointed out that a clone wouldn’t necessarily be an “heir.” It would just be a copy. Bradford would need someone else’s DNA to combine with it.

Now, whose DNA would Bradford use? Who would he want to take a sample from? Who does Bradford have on hand who knows what he’s planning and isn’t a total villainous loose cannon?

Answer: Beakley.

It takes a long time. They don’t have Gyro to mooch off of; he’s in Japan, and even when Scrooge does hire him, he hasn’t developed his own cloning technology yet. So when they do finally create the clone, it’s a baby. They’re going to have to wait for it to grow up and be able to find the Papyrus for them.

Meanwhile, Scrooge doesn’t notice any of this, because he’s having a grand old time roaming the world with Donald and Della, creating plenty of chaos for Bradford to hate.

And then – the Spear of Selene. Della vanishes. Donald takes the eggs and leaves. Scrooge is grief-struck.

And so, I think, is Beakley.

I think Beakley has grown attached to the clone-baby, much more than she expected to, and much more than Bradford or anyone else in FOWL has. And I think Beakley, seeing her friend so affected by the loss of his family, suddenly started thinking about how terrible she would feel if something were to happen to this baby. And with Bradford in control, with Bradford who clearly doesn’t understand the power or importance of family using this baby as a tool in his plans, something terrible is bound to happen to this baby.

So she, like Donald, took the baby and ran.

Maybe she struck a deal with Bradford. Maybe she said, “Look, Scrooge isn’t going on any adventures anymore. You don’t have to worry about him creating chaos. Just keep on controlling the world using the money of the richest duck in the world, and you’ll have what you want. As the director of SHUSH, I’ll tell everyone that FOWL was defeated, and dissolve SHUSH so no one will look into your work anymore. I’ll even go keep an eye on Scrooge, and I’ll let you know if he does start adventuring again. Just let me keep the baby.”

And Bradford said yes.

And Beakley told the baby that she was her grandmother.

And Beakley spent the next decade telling her granddaughter not to bother Scrooge. Remember that that is the reason Webby gives in “Case Files” when Scrooge asks why they haven’t gone on adventures together before – Beakley told her not to bother Scrooge. Beakley didn’t want Scrooge adventuring, and she didn’t want Webby in danger.

Fast forward to “Moonvasion.” Bradford has been content this long to quietly control the world, since Scrooge hasn’t been running around causing chaos. But now, the McDuck family has caused an alien invasion of Earth. And like Bradford says, you can’t control the world if the world is destroyed.

So he goes back to his original plan. Collect the magical artifacts that the McDucks and related villains might use to cause chaos. And, importantly, find the Papyrus, the most dangerous of them all.

But, again, he needs the rightful heir of McDuck. There’s a couple potential heirs running around to choose from, but again, there’s only one person who Scrooge McDuck trusts that Bradford has reason to think he could control.

So Bradford contacts Beakley and tells her to bring Webby to him. And we know – Frank Angones has confirmed this – that Beakley would do anything to protect Webby. To protect her physically, and also, as we learned in “Lost Harp of Mervana,” to protect Webby’s perception of Beakley as a good person. The last thing Beakley wants to do now is expose Webby to FOWL and let her discover the truth.

Beakley would do anything to protect Webby. So she agrees to help Bradford create a new clone. She’s a true double agent, actively and sincerely working with both sides. In “Escape from the Impossibin,” she is both serving as a part of the distraction to keep the family from noticing the theft of the missing mysteries until it’s too late (which puts Scrooge in a hurry, sending him out into the field in “Swanstantine,” giving Heron the chance to grab the feather), and she’s also trying to prepare Webby for the very real possibility of having to fight her own family, Beakley included.

Only the best spy in the world – which Beakley is! – could pull something like this off. The thought of losing Webby (both physically and emotionally – if Webby finds out that Beakley betrayed Scrooge, Beakley could lose Webby forever) scares and upsets Beakley enough for her to betray everyone else she cares about, and even sell out the entire world to Bradford.

TL;DR, Beakley is the mole, she initially joined FOWL because she likes order but now is working with them to protect Webby, Webby is a potential rightful heir of Scrooge McDuck, and FOWL is cloning a new heir.

…and now, after rereading this whole thing for typos, I actually kind of buy my own cracky theory. Wow.

And now I’m imagining a future callback to “Last Crash,” when Scrooge told Webby that she wasn’t family, with Beakley standing right there to hear it, which he still to this day has not apologized for. What if Beakley, desperate not to lose her granddaughter, used that painful memory to try to convince Webby that betraying Scrooge to protect her was the right thing to do?

#ducktales #webby vanderquack #scrooge mcduck #ducktales 2017 #dt 2017 #ducktales theory #bentina beakley #bradford buzzard #ducktales spoilers #ducktales season 3 #the split sword of swanstantine #the first adventure #the last crash of the sunchaser #from the confidential case files of agent 22 #moonvasion #fowl #shush #amores patos podcast #i mean if nothing else I'll make this the backstory of AYHAPII if I don't like what canon does

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dr-spencer-reids-queen · 4 years ago

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Unfinished Business: Part Two

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Word Count: ~2.7k

Warnings: canon violence, canon language, canon talk of death, methods of kill, fluff and angst

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Criminal Minds. All credit goes to their respective owners. If there is any warnings that exceed the normal death/kills from the show, I will list them. If you’ve seen the show, then it’s the same level of angst unless otherwise stated.

Feedback is gold, and it’s the only currency I take

On the plane, Max just wanted to jump into it by immediately talking about the case. He didn’t even wait until it got off the ground to start. You appreciate his enthusiasm, but he seems too eager for this. It might impair his judgement later if he thinks the Keystone Killer is within the team’s grasp. You’ll keep an eye on him, though. Hotch patched Penelope through so she can be part of this conversation since he gave her some tasks to do while they got ready for the plane.

“Philly PD confirmed that Carla Bromwell's been dead less than twelve hours. She was forty-seven,” Penelope says.

“The victims are getting older. That is unusual,” Derek frowns.

“Victimology rarely changes.”

“Her hands and feet were bound with flex-cuffs,” Penelope also adds.

“Flex-cuffs? No ropes?” you ask.

“That's what they said. They're waiting at the crime scene for you.”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Derek grins.

“If you need me,” she grins and ends the video chat.

Spencer reaches into his bag and youpeek over to see him take out your note. He opens it and immediately blushes when he understands what it means. You have to hide the smile so you don’t give anything away, and you lean over slightly. You two are sitting on the couch while the rest of the team takes the airplane seats that crowd the only table on the plane.

“What do you got there?” you whisper ever so softly.

“I found this in my bag,” he whispers back and shows you the letter.

“You must have a secret admirer.”

You lean away from him and look at Hotch who is focused on the case and what Penelope said.

“So we have older victims and a different mode of binding and killing.”

“Maybe the note just means we have a copycat on our hands,” you theorize.

“The copycat who just happens to have Amy Jennings driver's license? No! No, it's the Keystone Killer,” Max gets angry.

He gets up and heads over to the small kitchen to get more coffee, and your eyes widen at his outburst.

“How are we supposed to work with him? Gideon, he is not even an active agent,” Derek whispers to him.

“He's here because he knows this case better than any of us. We're leading the investigation, he's only consulting.”

“Anyone tell him that?” you ask and peek over at Max who just pops a pill into his mouth.

You can sense his frustrations and anger for this case, and he’s having a hard time not making it personal. This is the only killer who has taunted him and kept being a problem in his whole career, and then when he disappeared, Max just stewed in his anger. You know he wants this to be the real Keystone Killer, and you just hope that it is. You don’t want him to suffer any more than he already is.

As soon as the plane landed, Max wasted no time in going to the new crime scene. He’s too eager, and that makes him arrogant and cocky. You’re sure he is a nice guy, but his need to catch the killer is overshadowing any good parts about him. He’s obsessed, but you hope the rest of the team can keep him grounded.

The house of the most recent victim is shrouded in sadness and darkness. There isn’t an inch of happiness anywhere in the foundation, and you try your best not to become overly emotional with this. The victims need you to bring them justice because you can see more than most. You have a feeling Max Ryan isn’t a man to believe in what you can do, so you never told him about any of it. He seems too caught up in his own problems to see that he has a whole team to rely on.

“FBI? Detective Charles Santangelo, Philly PD,” the detective in charge greets you when you arrive with the whole team.

“Agents Gideon, Y/L/N, and Greenaway,” Gideon states.

“You actually think the Keystone Killer did this?” Santangelo asks.

“Yes, we do,” Max butts in.

“Agent Ryan.”

“Detective.”

“So, I guessed you'd show up sooner or later,” he chuckles.

“He's consulting with us,” Gideon says.

“CSI's done processing the body?” you wonder.

“Yeah, we'll get out of your way.”

“Thanks. This is his eighth victim,” Max informs as he steps inside the house.

You’re immediately slammed with visions of the victim going about her daily life in spurts. She is going about her life, giving you bits and pieces of who she was right before she died. To get the best results, you go up to the body to see if you can get anything off her body, or maybe see the murder happen. Carla lays on the bed with her eyes open and mouth closed. She looks so scared, but you have to stay away from them. The eyes are the worst thing about a dead person. They reveal more than they know.

“There is no bruising on the wrists, ankles or neck. Just a good size blunt force head wound,” you note.

“Yeah, probably a surprise attack,” Max states.

“Well, the puzzle said no fight.”

“I know what the puzzle said,” Max snaps.

You look between him and Gideon, but you let this one go.

“The head wound is extensive. Level of violence is escalating.”

“This bedroom is in front of the house, and a puzzle mentioned a rear window—maybe he left a print,” Elle suggests.

“No way,” Max shakes his head.

“Well, I think I'm going to check it out anyway,” she sighs.

“You do what you want to do but believe me, you're wasting your time.”

Elle just shakes her head and leaves the room, and you look at Gideon with raised eyebrows.

“Elle's good at this, Max.”

“Did I say she wasn't? I haven't had a feeling like this around a dead body in eighteen years.”

“I remember what you said to me on my first day. Don't lose your objectivity. This isn't personal.”

“Yeah, well, maybe not for you.”

“Look, Max, I know you want to catch this killer because he escaped your grasp and outsmarted you all those years ago. Don’t deny it because I know it’s true. But you have a whole team to lean on, and let me tell you that we’re pretty damn good. I don’t mean disrespect, but you got no right to talk to any of us like that. We’re your partners, not your enemies.”

You don’t want to be in a room with him anymore, so you quickly look at Gideon before you leave the room. You spot Spencer in the farthest room from where you are, so you quickly head into that room to see he is with Hotch.

“Was I like this when you met me?” you ask the men, and they just stare at you in confusion. “I mean, was I like Max? A know-it-all?”

“You could be, yes,” Hotch chuckles.

“I am so sorry.”

“Actually, I didn’t think you were a know-it-all,” Spencer smiles politely at you.

“Well, still, I apologize,” you blush.

“What do you think of Ryan?” Spencer asks Hotch.

“He hasn't changed much.”

“I think we can learn a lot from him,” Spencer beams.

“What could you possibly learn that you don't already know?”

“Hotch, repetitive thinking is the death nail for the brain. For complete brain usage diverse stimulation is the key,” you defend the genius. Spencer and Hotch look at you, but they both have very different reactions. Hotch is more surprised, and Spencer is more proud. “How do you think I got two PhDs? I know a lot more than you know.”

Hotch just shakes his head dismissively, and Spencer canvasses the room when he spots a piece of paper on the dresser. It must be another note because it’s a word search puzzle. Carla could have had a puzzle book, but you know that this isn’t it.

“Look at this,” Spencer says and grabs it with his gloved hand.

“Let's go show this to everyone,” Hotch orders. You three walk back to the bedroom where Carla, Gideon, and Max are. “Found another note.”

“Let me see that,” Max says and practically snatches it out of Hotch’s hand. He skims the words before reading them out loud. “In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.”

“He's quoting sir Francis Bacon now,” you say.

“I used this specific quote on—”

“—in your book on page 184. I read it on the plane,” Spencer interrupts him.

“And you remember the page number of the quote?”

“Don’t ask,” Derek shakes his head.

“He says to expect another gift in two days.”

“A gift?”

“He calls his victims gifts,” Gideon explains.

“Gifts for whom?” you wonder.

“For me,” Max sighs.

It’s time for another note for Spencer to read, and you have to do it now before he spots you. This time it reads, “In a room full of art, I’d still stare at you”. It’s true because it wouldn’t matter who or what is in a room, if Spencer is there, then you would only look at him. You slip it into his bag so he can find it later on.

Right now, you’re giving the profile to the police department despite them already having one. New victims means there is an opportunity for the profile to change, especially after all that time between killings.

“A lot of things have changed in twenty years including the age of the Keystone Killer's victims,” Hotch begins.

“He's older which means his victims are older. Makes sense to me,” Santangelo shrugs.

“Most unsubs have specific fantasies. This is as if they're killing the same person over and over again. This man clearly had a preference for young brunettes, and now he's switched to older women.”

“Well, what does that mean?”

“Ted Bundy only killed women that looked like his fiancee. Then, he devolved and brutally attacked a house full of sorority sisters that looked nothing like his previous victims,” Spencer babbles. “He went off script. His final victim was a twelve-year-old girl. When the police found the van that he used to kill her, the amount of blood revealed that he had lost complete control. It was that devolution that eventually led to his capture.”

“He could be devolving into a frenzy,” you add.

“So, you mean he's about to mess up?”

“Keystone Killer's devolution is only a theory. We need to be prepared for anything, and if he is in a frenzy, there's no telling how quickly he'll fall apart or how many more victims he'll take with him,” Derek says.

“So, we're going to go over anything we know—old and new—and hopefully we find him before we find another body.”

“We'll start with agent Ryan's original profile. Max, you want to present it?” Gideon asks.

“No.”

Max leaves the room, and Hotch immediately steps into his place to get the ball rolling. Gideon follows his old friend to see what exactly is crammed up his ass. You know, but he has to admit it if he wants to get any better.

“We're looking for a white male in his late 40's. The controlled crime scenes, the meticulousness, and the collection of trophies suggest a possible military background. We believe he’s been living in the same geographical area for his entire adult life.”

Max’s old profile wasn’t long to begin with, so you’re done earlier than you thought. Spencer immediately heads over to his bag, and you rush over to JJ to pretend like you never put the note in his bag to begin with.

“What’s going on?” she whispers.

“Just pretend like we’re discussing a file,” you rush to get out.

You peek over the file and see Spencer reading your note. JJ snickers when she sees this, but you shush her instantly. He looks up and around the office, but you’re quick to look back down at the file.

“You’re unbelievable,” she giggles.

“This is fun,” you whisper.

Spencer has no clue who is leaving these notes for him, but he knows it’s someone from Quantico. He got a note on his desk back in the office, and it followed him all the way over here. So, he knows it has to either be you, JJ, or Penelope. However, someone could be leaving them for someone else, then that puts him back at square one. He likes getting these notes and feeling this way when he reads them, but he really wants to know who is writing them. He doesn’t recognize the handwriting, so he can’t determine it by that. He could use a fingerprint kit to see who exactly is handling these notes, but that is a little extreme in this case. There’s something about being anonymous that gets his heart pumping because it could be literally anyone.

He wants to think more about it, but he has a case to work on. He pockets the note and heads into the conference room where the rest of the team is. There are a bunch of boards with notes and puzzles and evidence that he has to somehow go through and make sense of. You and JJ follow him into the room and get down to business.

Spencer is already at the white board with a marker in his hand while he tries to analyze the new word search, but your eyes are drawn to the way he is holding the marker. Is it weird to think that’s cute? Get it together, Y/N.

“Alright, let's focus on the differences in the crimes. What's he doing that's new?” Hotch asks the group.

“Well, his latest victim was hit in the head. That's new,” you point out.

“In the word puzzle, he said she didn't fight. So, why hit her? Scare her? Show her he's in charge?”

“Well, he never did that before, and a blow that hard wouldn't scare her but probably just knock her unconscious.”

“In order to control her?” Hotch asks.

“Why switch from ropes to flex-cuffs? The intricate knot was a part of his signature.”

“Flex-cuffs are easier. It probably saved him time.”

“No no no, there's more than that. The rope was meticulously tied, intimate, and completely unnecessary,” Gideon sighs.

“Plus, he abandoned the rope and the use of his bare hands which makes his kills less personal and less controlling,” Elle points out.

“Okay. Seriously, guys, let's just abandon all this. Let's just treat him like he's a new offender,” Derek suggests.

“He isn’t,” Gideon sighs.

“Guys, I have a name,” Spencer interrupts. “Nibrahs. That's a name? From what country?”

“That’s backwards, Spence. S. Harbin. There was a Scott Harbin particulate on Max’s original suspect list,” you say.

“It's not Scott Harbin. Harbin went to jail in 1988 for stabbing a guy while he was trying to escape during a home invasion. The guy later died. Harbin didn't even know there was anyone at home at the time he broke in,” Max shakes his head.

“How long did he get?” Derek wonders.

“Thirty years.”

“So, it makes him a little more than a half way done unless he's been paroled.”

“No. No, it's too easy. I interviewed Harbin, twice. He's a pervert. He's a small time burglar with a fetish for lingerie. I mean he's a creep, but he is not the Keystone Killer. Believe me. Our guy has not been in jail for all these years,” Max refuses to believe it.

“Alright, I'm going to call Garica. See what she can dig up on this guy,” Derek says.

“He’s not the guy!” Max screams and slams his fist against the table.

Everyone stares at him in complete shock, and he just scoffs as he leaves the room. You know he is frustrated, but he doesn’t have to take it out on everyone else.

“Jason, what are we doing here?” Hotch asks after a few moments in silence.

“What do you mean?”

“Is Max interested in catching the Keystone Killer, or just proving he’s right?” you ask for Hotch.

Gideon doesn’t say anything as he gets up and leaves to talk to Max, meanwhile, Derek is already on the phone with Penelope. He puts her on speakerphone so everyone can hear what she has to say.

“Scott Harbin was paroled three months ago.”

“Oh yeah? To Philly?” Derek asks.

“Yeah... looks like it. Hey, guess what. Bad boy missed his last appointment with his parole officer,” she chuckles.

“Well, that right there makes him a wanted man, doesn't it?”

“Uh-huh uh-huh, and I have an address on him.”

“You are amazing.”

“You have no idea,” she flirts back.

wanna be tagged? add yourself to this document! if your tag doesn’t work, find out why!

@averyhotchner @lets-be-gay-for-the-angel @fan-girl-97 @inkstainedwritergirl @estrela-rogers @abitchforjay @kwbaby24 @redsalv20 @joonie-centric @spencerreid-mgg @sixpencespencee @boygenius-reid @reidemandweep @prophecyflame @happynekochan1 @babydee17

#unfinished business #series rewrite #criminal minds series rewrite #spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid angst #spencer reid fic #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #cm #cm fanfiction #season 1 episode 15 #s1e15

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delicatelyherdreams · 5 years ago

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Pragma(tic) 14: Her World is Shaken, Not Stirred

Pairing: Persephone!Bucky Barnes x Hades!Reader

Summary: In a world where the old gods never truly died, you must learn to navigate your way through the ups and downs of immortality. And if living forever wasn’t hard enough, an ancient evil is now threatening to break free after centuries of silence. And as if that still wasn’t hard enough for you, now a pesky and infuriatingly handsome god is trying to wedge his way into your life. Gods, work, love, and conflict—what more could a goddess need? [Hades & Persephone AU]

Word Count: 4454

Warnings: Language

Pragma(tic) Masterlist

Previous 13: She Makes a Confession

In all the centuries that you’d been at the edge of Tartarus, muttering your spells and securing the cage, you’d never known it to be quiet. But, there you were, doing your routine without so much as a peep from the monster below.

Kronos was silent. He didn’t speak, didn’t laugh, didn’t even breathe loudly. It was out of character for him; usually, he would take any and all opportunities to mock you and get under your skin, but he didn’t even greet you.

You should’ve been thankful that he didn’t distract you, after all these years of struggling to keep your focus, but the silence was eerie and unnerving. But, no matter, you had a job to do and so you were going to do it.

Your voice was powerful and strong as it always was and you cast your spells with an expert tongue. With your repeated and more frequent visits, you could almost speak the enchantments in your sleep. They’d become second nature to you.

You were eager to finish with the day’s enchantments. Although strengthening the cage was an important job, you had to maintain your life outside of Tartarus. One such activity you had to keep up was the weekly brunch with your mother.

As far as you knew, she was on her way at that moment, which should’ve excited you. After all, you loved seeing your mother, especially since she hadn’t been able to make it down last week for brunch. But you were apprehensive instead. Your father was quiet which was not normal at all. Not a single word left his mouth, not even as the last syllables left your lips.

Finally done, you stared down into the pit once more. Your eyes scanned the darkness, desperately searching for something to explain the silence, but you came up with nothing.

As you reluctantly turned your back on the pit and started walking out, you couldn’t help but think to yourself, “Hey, this could be a good thing! He’s quiet, that means that we’ve just bound him tight enough that he doesn’t have any energy to speak.”

You knew that was a long shot at best and that he was probably plotting something, but you’d done all you could for the day. You’d exhausted your magic stores on his extra charms and you’d need a day to recharge before you could do it again. But whatever; you’d just go down and do it again the next day.

The walk out of the cave and through the Meadows to your home was as long as ever. You waded through the souls that milled about the Asphodel Meadows, doing your best to not disturb them as you made your way home. Murmuring polite “excuse me’s,” you turned your eyes up towards the mansion on the mountain to see if your mother had arrived yet. If she had, it was no big deal. You’d given the kitchen spirits enough warning that brunch would be ready the second she arrived. You scanned the windows and, sure enough, a woman moved behind the glass. Your lips twitched up and you quickened your pace a smidge bit. You were eager to see your mother.

It didn’t take you long to scale the mountain to your porch and saunter through the front door. You were greeted with the sweet and savory smell of ambrosia and hashbrowns. Your mouth was watering within seconds and you dived into the house towards your dining room.

Rhea was already seated in the chair to the right of the head of the table. Her thick brown hair which had the slightest trace of grey from age was tied in a loose bun on the back of her head, held back by hair ties and clips. Her body was adorned with pale lilac nursing scrubs; she must’ve just gotten off of work or was planning on going in for a shift after brunch. She was playing with a golden knife that had been set out, no food on her plate yet despite the numerous platters teeming with brunch foods and ambrosia sitting in the center of the table. She had a lazy smile on her face, she was in no rush, ready to wait as long as she needed for her eldest child to arrive.

When she heard your footsteps, she looked up from her knife and grinned warmly. “Hey, little one.”

Instantly you were put at ease, your mother’s calming aura filling you with warmth and peace. “Hey, Mom.”

She stood to embrace you, wrapping her arms around your torso in a tight hug as you approached. “I’m so sorry I had to cancel last week; the hospital was short-staffed and I couldn’t get away.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. I understand. Believe me, things have been hectic enough down here in the Underworld that I was probably going to have to cancel anyways. You just beat me to it.” You chuckled as you pulled back and took your spot at the head of the table. “How have things been? You said they were busy”

She sat down again and pulled her napkin off the table to set in her lap as she said, “Well, you know how it is. I’ve been hailed as one of the best labor and delivery nurses in the state because every case I work on, even if they have little to no chance of being successful, always goes smoothly. Hospitals all over the surrounding area are giving me offers to work with them. The hospitals I’m working with now are booking me as much as they legally can. Just this week, I’m working eight-hour shifts every day at three different hospitals.”

You had to suppress an eye roll as you began to shovel food from the platters onto your own plate, making sure to give yourself a healthy dose of hashbrowns and ambrosia. “Gee,” you started, your voice dripping with sarcasm, “I wonder why your deliveries go so well. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’re the titaness of motherhood and ease, now would it?”

She scoffed.

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing you don’t need to sleep nor eat.” You jabbed your fork into the hashbrowns in front of you and lifted it to your lips. You chewed and swallowed with some reluctance. They tasted off this morning—a little sour and bitter. You scrunched up your nose as you forced it down and took a drink of your water to deal with the aftertaste.

“No,” your mother said looking down at her food, “but it is a guilty pleasure of mine”. She was eyeing the ambrosia squares on the table and eagerly reached for them. “Food is one of the simple pleasures I enjoy in life.”

You watched as she bit into one and bobbed your head. “Yeah, I know.”

She munched on the square, waiting until she’d finished before speaking again. “Anyways, enough about me. You said that things have been hectic down here? What’s going on?”

Your tired sigh ended with an equally tired smile. “Lot’s of things, Mom, lots of things. Work is piling up, the spirits are getting rowdy, and Father is—”

“Your father?” she asked, her voice suddenly tense and rigid. Her utensils froze in place and she turned her head to face you. “What’s going on with him?”

“Nothing yet, but that’s what I’m afraid of.” You briefly told her how he’d been the most talkative person you knew for so long and then shut completely up today. You hung your head and let out an exasperated sigh. “The spirits are getting restless, almost as if something is coming. I don’t know, Mom. I just have this bad feeling in my stomach like a storm is brewing.”

Rhea clenched and unclenched her fists over and over again, pondering over your claims. Her eyes were dark and serious, more so than you’d seen them in a long time. Finally, she let out a gentle breath and said, “I’m sure it’s nothing, my dear. Just a feeling.” Her words were reassuring but her tone was still doubtful. It was almost like she was trying to convince herself as well as you that her words were true. She turned her gaze down and continued to eat.

You did the same and a stiff silence fell over the table. You weren’t sure what you could say to relieve the tension so you said nothing at all. You just ate, letting your mother soak in the information you had just given.

She seemed to be lost in her own world for a bit and you let her stay there for as long as she needed. You were just content to sit in her company. After all, you and your mother were at that point in your relationship where you didn’t have to be talking to spend quality time together. You’d spent many brunches not even saying a word, and you were okay with this one being the same.

You didn’t mind it, especially since you were going to be able to get in your daily dosage of socialization after she left.

Bucky was coming over yet again. He said over the phone that he had something to give to you but he wouldn’t discern what it was. It’d been so long since you’d gotten a present of any sorts that even the thought of getting this small one made you excited. You basically trembled with anticipation as you theorized about what he had gotten you. You would’ve liked to say you had an idea of sorts, but that would’ve been a lie; Bucky was so unpredictable sometimes that you never knew what he was going to do or what he was going to bring. One time, last week, he said he had a small gift for Cerberus. You thought he meant like a dog treat or something. He meant a giant tennis ball that was bigger than your head. Where he’d even found it, you had no idea, but Cerberus and his three heads loved the thing.

You snickered slightly at the thought of the giant dog scampering across the Asphodel Meadows as he chased after it, trampling disgruntled spirits underfoot.

“What’re you thinking about?” your mother asked, drawing you out of your thoughts.

You blinked and sat up straighter. “Oh, nothing.”

She glanced at you sideways, the corners of her mouth quirking upwards in a knowing smirk. “Come on, (y/n), I know you better than that. Tell me.”

“It’s nothing, Mom,” you said again, trying to brush the subject off.

She hummed and continued to look at you, taking a few moments of silence before asking, “Does he make you happy?”

Your eyebrows shot up, and your mouth fell open. “Huh?”

Rhea gave you a knowing smile and elaborated saying, “The boy you’re seeing; does he make you happy?”

How the fuck did she know you were seeing someone? You’d told her it was nothing!

As if reading your mind, or perhaps your boggled expression, she just chuckled and folded her hands on the table. “My dear, I know you well enough to know when something good is happening in your life and, based on the smell of cologne that lingers in the air and that dreamy look on your face, it’s not hard to figure out that it’s a boy that’s making you all lovely.” She smiled softly. “I don’t need to know anything about him, I just need to know that he makes you happy.” Her brows knit together as she looked at you, her eyes searching your face.

You paused for a bit before clearing your throat and saying, “Bucky, he… He makes me happier than I’ve been in a long time. Even with all this chaos going on, I still know that he’s there for me and I can just be myself around him. He puts up with all my queenly shit and keeps me on my toes. And he’s persistent as fu— As hell.” You lowered your gaze self-consciously. You weren’t supposed to cuss in front of your mom. “He’s kind and considerate and always looks out for me. He just wants me to be happy, and I…”

“You love him,” she finished for you, her smile only widening and growing softer.

She really had a way of knowing, didn’t she? You nodded your head, a smile pulling at your lips. “Yeah, I really do, Mom.”

“Then he has my blessing; not that you guys needed it in the first place. You’re a grown woman; you can make your own decisions by now, including who you date.” She leaned back in her chair. “But Bucky though… Bucky as in Winnifred’s kid?”

You could feel your cheeks heat up. “Yeah… That’s the one.”

She snorted. “And how did his mother take that one? I thought she hated you.”

“Oh, well, you see, she doesn’t actually know yet, I don’t think.” Your shoulders shot up and your lips pressed together in a shrug. “It’s just a technicality…”

“Uh-huh. A technicality that’s probably going to burn you in the end.” She shook her head. “I won’t be the one to spill the beans, but you’re probably going to want to tell his mother soon. She won’t take kindly to it at first, but then again there’s nothing she can really do about it. You two are consenting deities and you are older and more powerful than she is, so she can’t separate you. But just be prepared for the shit storm she’ll unleash.”

“Oh, I will be.” You dreaded the day that Winnifred found out about yours and Bucky’s relationship, but you also knew that your mother was right; she couldn't keep you apart. It was a small comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

“Good.” She inhaled sharply before pushing out her chair and rising to her feet. “Well, I had probably best be going now. Celia will have my head if I’m late for my shift.” She chuckled and pushed in her chair. “Same time next week?”

“Always.” You stood with her and let her cross the table to your side before walking her towards the front door. You turned the knob and yanked it open, startling the person behind it.

Bucky jumped back a foot, letting out a yelp of surprise. His fist had been poised to knock on the door right as you’d opened it and his eyes were wide. He clutched a small box he’d been holding close to his chest tighter as quickly distanced himself from the door.

You stared at him. Holy shit, you hadn’t even heard him come down. Shows just how much attention you paid to detail. “Bucky!” you greeted, your voice rising with the syllables. “You’re early!”

“Y-Yeah, I thought I’d surprise you.” His gaze flickered between you and your mother. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“Oh, no, I was just leaving.” Rhea smiled graciously down at him, her eyes filled with a knowing shine. She turned back to you and leaned in to kiss your cheek. “I’ll see you later, love. Don’t work too hard!”

“I won’t. Love you!” You waved at her as she walked out and descended down the mountain. When she had disappeared from your sight, you turned to Bucky with a sheepish smile. “My mother,” you murmured as an explanation. “Come on in.”

He obeyed, glancing back over his shoulder occasionally. “She seems lovely.”

“Oh, she is. She would’ve stayed to talk to you for a bit, but she has work to get to.”

“She works?”

You nodded as you led Bucky towards the living room. In the distance, you could hear spirit servants bustling about in the dining room and cleaning up the mess from brunch. “In the Mortal World, she is a labor and delivery nurse. Has been for—oh—fifteen hundred years, give or take a century or so.” You shrugged. “She started as soon as she knew my sisters and I were capable of ruling on our own and she wasn’t needed anymore. She wanted to be helpful and so she decided to put her talents to use and help deliver mortal babies. She has shifts all this week and had to get back to start them.” You turned around and fell backward onto the plush couch in the middle of the living room.

Bucky wasted no time in sitting right beside you. “Sounds like fun,” he said turning so he faced you straight on.

“She likes it.” You draped your arm over the side of the couch and pulled your legs up so you sat cross-legged. “Now, to the matter at hand: what did you bring me?” You beamed at him like a child promised a treat which, in a way, you were.

Bucky shook with silent laughter as he shuffled the small box in his hands. “Oh, nothing big.” He held it out to you. “I know you said to not make a big deal out of it or anything, but I figured that since we’re coming up on five months of being together and a year of you dealing with me, I’d do what the mortals do and get you a gift.” When he saw your mouth opening to protest, he held up a hand. “Before you jump on me about it, just know that it’s not an anniversary gift considering it’s not our anniversary yet. It’s more of a, you know, ‘thanks for putting up with me for all this time and for loving me like I love you’ sort of gift.”

You took it from him and bit your lip to hide your smile. “You really didn’t have to get me anything, Buck. Just being with you is gift enough.”

He only smiled. “Just open it.”

“Okay.” You turned your attention down to the box and pulled off the lid. You turned the box over in your hand and a single object fell into your palm.

A small five-by-seven canvas sat in your hand and two familiar faces smiled up at you: Bucky’s and your own. If you weren’t able to see the individual brush strokes on the canvas, you would’ve sworn that somehow your photograph was taken without you knowing. The image was realistic as could be, capturing even the small, hardly noticeable scars on your skin. In it, you and Bucky were sitting together, his arm wrapped around your waist and your head resting on his shoulder as you smiled at the “camera.” While your eyes were trained ahead, Bucky’s eyes were glancing at you. Somehow the artist had managed to capture the lovesick glint in his blue orbs and the blatant relaxation in your posture. It was incredible.

Your mouth fell agape. “Oh my gods…”

“Steve painted it,” Bucky mused, reaching over and pointing at your faces. “He’s an aspiring artist and when I asked him to paint something for you, he said that I was insane but did it anyway.”

You chuckled. “You are insane. This is amazing! But how did he get a reference for it? You don’t have any pictures of me.”

“Well that’s exactly why I had him paint this. We don't have any pictures of us and I wanted you to be able to have something to remember me by; just in case you get so busy that you can’t be pulled away from work. He did it by memory and I helped him on the details that were a little fuzzy.” A chuckle escaped his lips. “You really are one of a kind, Doll.”

“Well so are you.” You took the canvas and set it down on the coffee table in front of the couch. “I love it, Buck. I can’t decide if I should put it in my office or in my bedroom.” You hummed. “Maybe the bedroom. That way the first thing I see in the morning is us.”

He laughed. “Aw, Doll, you’re making me feel special.”

“Well, you are special to me. You have been since the day you stole my heart.” You leaned into him and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. It was too short for your liking, but it was nice enough. A soft sigh rattled out of your lungs as you wrapped your arms around his neck. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He smiled down at you. “How’ve you been? I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever. Everything still going alright?”

“Oh, as alright as they can, I suppose.” You tightened your arms around him. “I’m just… I’m nervous, you know? The cage is almost back to normal, but he was… He was quiet today. My father is never quiet. He talks more than anybody I know and today he was just dead silent. It was unnerving and it scares me.”

“Hey,” he said softly. His hands were on your waist and he pulled you onto his lap so he could hold you better. “Hey,” he said again, “there’s nothing to be scared of. I promise. He’s locked up tight, he’s not getting out. You said so yourself that the cage is almost back to one hundred percent, there’s no way he could get out.”

“But he weakened it before, he can do it again. And, Buck, I just don’t know what I’m going to keep doing if he can do this. I don’t know how he did it. I don’t know who helped him. I don’t know if it’ll happen again, and I…” Your heart was racing and your chest was rising and falling with labored and anxious breaths.

“Shh,” he mumbled as he pulled you in so you were flush against him. One arm stayed wrapped around your torso while the other came up to hold your head. His hand spread out over your cheek, keeping your head tucked under his chin. “It’s going to be okay. You won’t be alone throughout any of it. So, even if he does manage to weaken the cage again, you’ll always have me. I’m not going anywhere. M’kay?”

“Okay.” It made your heart happy to know he would be there, but you had to wonder. “How long?” you asked, your voice just barely above a whisper.

“How long what?” He was understandably confused, but he didn't move to look at you.

“How long will I have you?” You had to know what he was thinking, how long he was planning on staying, how long until he decided to leave.

He didn’t respond right away, undoubtedly pondering the question himself, but it wasn’t long before he was talking. “You will have me as long as the stars still burn in the sky. You will have me as long as man roams the Mortal World. You will have me as long as Olympus stands. You will have me as long as we both shall live. I don’t plan on going anywhere any time soon. I just got you and I’m never letting go.”

You didn’t try to fight the smile as it came to you. “Never?”

“Never ever.”

You hummed and nestled into him. “I like the idea of that. It makes me excited for the future.”

“The future?” He began to run his fingers through your hair. “What do you want in the future?”

“I want you, I know that for sure.” There was no doubt in your mind that you wanted Bucky to be with you. He made you feel loved in a way you’d never been loved before, cherished in a way you didn’t know was possible, and cared for in every sense of the word. You didn’t know the specifics of what you wanted, but you knew that, now that you had him, you couldn’t imagine your life without Bucky. You may not have known him for a long time, but he was already an important staple in your life.

Everything just felt right with him, and you found yourself starting to believe that the Fates really had made him for you. There was no other explanation for how fast you’d grown to trust him and had fallen for him. Normal people wouldn’t go down so easy, but you went willingly. You’d never really believed in the idea of soulmates created by the Fates, but now that you’d found yours, you understood what it meant to find your perfect match. While life could still be lived without him, you didn’t want it to be. You never wanted to let him go.

Bucky hummed and pressed a gentle kiss to your lips. “Anything else?” he asked with amusement dancing in his eyes.

“Well, obviously,” you said with a gentle scoff. “I just don’t know what else I want. But, so long as I have you, I think I’ll be happy.”

“I’ll be happy too, so long as I have you, Doll. You make me happy.”

You hummed and leaned in for another kiss, but a crack, louder than anything you had ever heard before, destroyed the silence around you. It split the air, sending a shock through your system. The tremors followed after, shaking the house violently and causing objects to clatter down from surfaces.

You scrambled off of Bucky and gripped the arm of the couch tightly. Your stomach dropped and your eyes darted to the windows. What was powerful enough to shake a mountain? When the ground steadied again, you shot to your feet and rushed to the window, looking out over your realm desperately. You didn’t know what was happening and it frightened you. You were used to being in control and in the know, but now you were blind.

Two more cracks sounded from above, but they were familiar. The ceiling of the Underworld opened up and two figures dropped down: one blonde and one redhead, your sisters. You could see them moving quickly across the Asphodel Meadows and you moved to the door to intercept them, Bucky following closely. They were mounting the top steps when you threw open the front door.

Carol’s eyes were wide with panic. “We felt tremors on Olympus. What’s going on?”

You opened your mouth to respond but you were cut off by the whooshing of wings.

Alexander Pierce fell at your feet onto his knees. He kept his head bowed as you, your sisters, and Bucky surrounded him, all your eyes filled with worry. “My queen,” he said addressing you. “I came straight from the Mortal World when I felt the tremors. Th-There’s been a breach in Tartarus.”

Immediately your head snapped towards the cave and your stomach plummeted once more. What you were looking at wasn’t so much a cave anymore. It was a gaping hole in the side of the Underworld.

Next 15: It’s Way Worse Than She Thought

#pragma(tic)#hades and persephone #hades & persephone #hades & persephone au #persephone!bucky x hades!reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes x you #bucky x y/n #bucky x reader #bucky #bucky x you #x reader #mcu #marvel #delicatelyherdreams #bucky barnes series

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serararku · 4 years ago

Text

The Writhing Prize

This was the first time Mizuna had to actively work alongside a blind woman, which brought its own host of unique challenges.

Truth be told, Dawn probably wasn’t the easiest woman to work with before she lost her sight. Even in the best of moods she was easily agitated and quick to anger, and it wouldn’t take much to get on her bad side. She could walk around the clinic without the use of her outstretched hands just after a few weeks, memorizing how many steps she needed to take to get around easily enough, but all it took was Mizuna forgetting to push in a chair or rearrange a table near the wall to upset the blonde she-devil. After the third or fourth time she stubbed her toe on the leg of furniture, Mizuna felt she had no other choice but to buy soft covers to prevent Dawn from hurting herself. It was also impossible to tell if she was sleeping or awake, and more often than not Mizuna suspected Dawn would pretend to rest so she could listen in on her conversations during her many checkups.

Every tincture, remedy, elixir, potion, cupboard and drawer had two labels each- one in Doman prepared by Mizuna, and the other in Braille by Dawn. The fear of Dawn using the wrong medicine for the job and seriously injuring or even killing a patient compelled the Auri to learn the language of the blind in order to ensure she could double-check the Braille to make sure they remained accurate. On the other hand, if Mizuna needed something fetched- and she hadn’t left it where it wasn’t supposed to be- Dawn always knew exactly where to go to find it. Losing her sight seemed to sharpen her other senses as well, giving her an uncanny sense of smell, touch, taste, and hearing; she could smell an infected wound minutes before Mizuna did, applied stitches just as good as the best of them, and could rattle off the ingredients of a potion with a simple taste of a single droplet. Mizuna also theorized Dawn could listen in on conversations going on beyond the clinic’s walls- why else would she zone out so often?

Despite Dawn’s volatile temper and spiteful nature- at least from Mizuna’s perspective, she couldn’t help but watch and study her associate as she went about her duties. It had only been a few moons since her grievous injury but she had long discarded the few habits just about everyone else would easily overlook; when she read from her braille book, she no longer tilted her head to point her glazed eyes down at the pages, because she no longer needed to. Instead Mizuna would watch her silently mouth the words as if she was reading out loud, her delicate hand brushing across the dotted parchment a dozen times before she would turn to the next page. She wouldn’t even turn her head toward the person she was speaking to- unless she was angry. Mizuna would often deliberately wear different types of shoes to see if hearing her approach would throw her off, but she always knew it was her.

“Mizuna? We need to have a talk.” dreadful words escaped the woman’s lips. Words no one ever wants to hear and inspires anxiety even in the most aloof personalities. Mizuna stiffened in her seat, her attention yanked away from a particularly raunchy romance novel she had borrowed from one of Lord Isenhart’s students.

She braced herself for the topic at play, silently praying to Azim the Dawn Father that she wasn’t going to bring up her untimely outburst in Ul’dah again. “Yes? I’m listening.”

“Mn? Well, it’s Osric.” she held up a vial full of black goo that Mizuna swore was writhing and squirming in her grasp. “I managed to extract this from him, from what I can gather it’s parasitic and while not immediately toxic, it’s not doing him any favors. I sense something sinister from this, like… like the thing that took my sight.”

The more everyone brought up that encounter up north in the Coerthas Highlands, the happier Mizuna was for missing out. “Disgusting.” She blurted out, pursing her lips and furrowing her brow at the vial. “Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s natural. But if that’s what was causing Osric so many problems, it seems you already took care of it, yes…?”

“From what I can tell, I managed to forcibly extract half of it. I have a plan for a procedure but I wanted a second opinion. Seeing as this is using him as some kind of host, I figured making him inhospitable might be enough to make it want to leave- but not only just that, we should have bait for it to want to leave on top of that.”

Mizuna slowly nodded, doing her best to keep pace with this wild conversation. “We don’t know what this thing is. It could be a parasite, or a curse. Or maybe some voidsent illness that could react poorly if we tamper with it further.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms; whatever Dawn was planning, she didn’t like it. Fumbling around in the dark is Dawn’s specialty, after all. “Let’s hear the rest of it.”

Dawn continued to explain her plan, “I managed to mix in some essence of nightshade and belladonna into a concoction that is just below lethal levels of toxicity, it should render him into a near-death state. Slowed heart rate, lowered body temperature, by all means it would appear that he was dead, even to his little guest. Then I can use some dark-aspected aether to draw it out, the same type of aether that the monstrosity had when we fought it- assuming the infectious thing came from that monster.”

“No.” Mizuna’s face hardened into a scowl. “Even if you managed to figure out Osric’s tolerance to nightshade, even if this thing behaves like you assume, and even with you casually mentioning dark aether, it’s still a far cry from a reliable plan. Nothing ever goes according to plan… and if our gamble deviates even a little bit, Osric will die. There has to be another way…”

Dawn knitted her brow, “And while we’re grasping at hopes and dreams this is the closest thing to a reliable plan. Measured and weighed. I have experience extracting this thing before. I’m glad you’re all for criticism but I’m not sure you trivializing things makes anything any better- did you have a better plan? Time is against us.”

The Raen seemed taken aback, seemingly ignoring her question entirely. “Dawn… you can control dark aether…?”

Seemed entirely annoyed by Mizuna’s question. “If I couldn’t manage the plan, do you think I would’ve proposed it?” she brought out a necklace from her shirt, a small crystal glistened. “I’m borrowing this from a friend.” With her other hand she sparked a brilliant purple hue of aether, small specks gently floating to the floor like dark snowflakes.

Mizuna once thought she understood this woman. She believed her ability to use her own life force to empower her aether was the darkest secret she kept, but this was something else entirely. Swallowing dryly, her eyes darted from the crystal in one hand, and the umbral aether in the other; her stomach twisted into a knot, and she suddenly felt lightheaded. “Alright…” She muttered out before quickly clearing her throat. “If you’re absolutely sure you can control this… then we should consult with Osric to get his consent for this procedure.” Mizuna nervously ran her hand through her hair while shifting in her seat. “What do we plan to do with this creature once we’ve successfully removed it from his body?”

“Collect it in a vial for further research. I know how it affects him in the short term, we don’t know what lasting damage it could leave. Even if the dark aspected aether doesn’t work, we have the other half and might use it to attract what’s left…. Are you okay, you’re moving around more than usual. I know this isn’t normal but desperate times call for desperate measures, Mizuna.”

“I’m just surprised, is all…” Once again she forgot about that razor-sharp hearing. “I’ve only known Black Magi and Necromancers with the ability to manipulate dark-aether. It’s… not something anyone can just pick up.” Mizuna pursed her lips and straightened in her seat. “Alright then… shall we ring him up right now? Or should we wait to do this on the morrow?”

Dawn sighed, “Or Dark Knights. Anyway, that’s why I asked for a second opinion. I know you’re skeptical but I wanted to know if you felt it was doable… I feel confident but… I’d feel better if I knew you checked the dosage and saw some sort of sense in my plan. But if you don’t… maybe it’s better that we just scrap this idea altogether…”

She scraped her nails along the scales on her wrists as she sat on her thoughts for a moment. She didn’t know how to answer this without bruising Dawn’s confidence in her plan, but lying hasn’t exactly helped their relationship in the past. Begrudgingly, she ultimately went with honesty.

“I’m terrified of dark aether.” Mizuna paused just long enough to gauge Dawn’s reaction. “I’ve never once heard or seen it used as a form of healing. It’s out of my expertise, unfortunately, so I honestly don't know what to think of this plan. But…” She leaned forward and rested her chin on her palms to keep her hands busy without making needless noise. “If you’re confident this will work, I will follow your lead. I know you have Osric’s best interests in mind, so… I’ll trust you to lead this operation. Just tell me what to do and keep me in the loop, okay?”

“The aether is a lure. Aside from that, we’ll be using typical conjury and good old fashioned medical knowledge.” she tried to assure Mizuna. “I think we should do this as soon as possible. If you think it’s manageable. If my plan doesn’t work, we’ll need to be quick on our feet and think of another method. Otherwise we’re back at square one and tearing him open again for no reason.” Mizuna’s brow cocked at that veiled insult; that foreign object she pulled from the Dragoon’s chest was dangerously close to his heart, and she still felt justified in removing it. Instead of inciting another argument, she decided to let this one slide.

After sharply inhaling, Mizuna reached up and pressed her thumb against her temple, activating her linkpearl. “This is Mizuna Kusakari, requesting two volunteers to bring Sir Osric Slater to the operation room immediately. Requesting two volunteers to bring Sir Osric Slater to the operation room. If he isn’t in the downstairs bar, he will be in his apartment, over.”

Another nap on another couch - Osric groaned as he sat up, the message waking him from one of the rare moments of quality sleep that he’d been able to have in recent weeks. With a tired sigh he pushed himself up off the couch, taking a moment to steady himself before making his way towards the clinic - still barely half awake.

“No need for an escort...I was right downstairs.” Osric declared, taking a moment to rub the sleep from his eyes. “Message said I was needed in the operation room?”

Mizuna gave him a gentle smile while she pushed her chair out and rose to her feet. “Yes… Dawn-... we have a plan to cure you once and for all, but it’s… a tad unorthodox. We wanted to explain it to you before we began, is that okay with you?”

“I… explained the gist of it to him earlier today… But I wanted to delay until I got a second opinion. Can you double check the tincture?” Dawn added. “I’m confident… like I said, but I’d rather not let my certainty risk Osric’s well-being.” Potions made with the essence of nightshade aren’t something one should underestimate; a single drop too much could be the difference between a deep slumber... and a permanent one. Mizuna had to reach way back in her memory to recall her experience with alchemy for this one. She poured just enough of the contents into her hand and rubbed it between her now stained fingers, checking both the quality and consistency of this nightshade tincture.

The man in question looked between the two women, loosely crossing his arms over his chest. “She did explain a majority of what she wanted to do - if you’re both in agreement then I’m fine with it. Mira had the right of it earlier - well, mostly right. I can tolerate the pain, but the sleep issues are going to lead to more issues down the road. If the two of you can remove this thing, I trust you both to remove it.” He gave a tired sigh. “I get the sense that either it’s addressed, or it gets significantly worse - and I’d prefer not to find out what that looks like.”

“Then we don’t have much time to sit around.” Mizuna pushed the cork back down onto Dawn’s nightshade tincture. “I’m going to prepare the operating room… it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.” And with that, the Raen woman stepped out of the lobby, and disappeared behind the thick curtain on the other side of the room.

“Well, best case scenario you wake up and we’ll have been successful; worst case, and it’s suddenly not your problem anymore.” Dawn said in a grim tone. “It’s going to start taking a toll. I’m sure it already has. Take a seat until the room is ready…”

Osric reached up and rubbed the center of his chest, exhaling sharply before sitting down as directed. Anxiety wasn’t something that he typically struggled with, but the idea of being in a ‘near-death’ state was a bit nerve wracking. He laced his hands together - primarily to stop the shaking while he tried to think of something else… anything else - but his attention was drawn to the sound of movement behind the curtain.

That unaccustomed anxiety crept in as time itself seemed to dilate - the moment prolonging and speeding up at the same time. A reassuring hand rested on Osric’s shoulder which grounded him in the moment. He wasn’t sure whether seconds or minutes had passed, as it was difficult to keep his mind away from this imminent procedure; but when he looked up at Dawn’s soft lips and sloped jawline, he found the strength he needed to steal his nerves and keep his worries in check.

“Alright, we’re ready to proceed.” Mizuna gently called out, causing Osric’s stomach to drop into his lap.

“Let’s go inside.” a wispy tone drifted from Dawn as she softly yet firmly pulled at his shirt sleeve.

“R-right.” Shaking hands ran over his face as he stood, stumbling forward as a sharp pain rocked through his chest - as if the damn thing knew what was about to happen. Another moment to breathe through the discomfort, and he was able to turn his attention back to Dawn. “After you…”

The room was dimly lit- not exactly what he expected to see in the heart of the Ashen Wolves’ clinic. Only a handful of candles sat on empty shelves and on top of vacant cupboards, with the large rectangular table beckoning him closer, pastel white as everything else. Mizuna was flicking the tip of a syringe and squeezing out any potential air bubbles when Dawn and Osric pulled aside the curtain to join her.

“Take your shirt off.” commanded the blind woman, before exchanging a few utterances with Mizuna. The Dragoon swallowed dryly but complied, gripping the bottom of his shirt with both hands to pull it over his head in one single motion. The same reassuring touch from earlier found his shoulder when he lowered himself onto the edge of the table. Dawn peered blankly in his direction while pulling his hand up by the wrist, “Here…” she handed him a vial, smiling warmly. “You’ll be sleepy, and it’ll be over before you know it. You’ll be dreaming and everything will be fine.” Osric wanted to be relieved by her kind words, but he was no fool; he may not feel any pain with this medicine coursing through his system, true, but he would definitely know what was happening. Manipulating a living person’s aether was never a comfortable endeavor. A furtive glance went to her as Osric inspected the vial. It was now or never, and he already said he trusted them. It was now a matter of following through. He was getting cold feet despite what he told them- going under and leaving everything to them was easier said than done. After removing the cork, a shaking hand guided the contents to his lips.

It tasted far worse than he expected.

“Lay down.” Mizuna moved to help Dawn rest the Dragoon’s body against the table, almost letting him slam down when she lost her grip due to his waning consciousness. The potion was quick, and effective, but so were the effects’ longevity; now the race against time began. A finger ran along the scar on his chest that she created the first time to partly remove the affliction; “Mizuna,” Dawn spoke, “Can you make an incision here over the same area, I’d rather not create another scar unless necessary…”

“Just breathe, Ric. Close your eyes and count to ten.” Mizuna reached over to hold his head steady. Osric looked up at her face, seeing the colors bleed and tear like a dripping painting, and before he knew it, his sight was gone.

Tha-thump! Tha-thump…! Tha… thump….! … tha… thump...

“Fifteen minutes until we pull him back. Let me know if we start losing him.” Mizuna ordered, flicking her wrist to unroll the sterilized surgical tools. She took a piece of antiseptic dressing and rubbed his chest clean, before tracing her fingernail along the thin scar and holding the skin down. “Okay… here we go.”

Dawn kept a hand along his neck, feeling for a faintest of pulses. His core temperature seemed to be dropping as well, just as planned. His slowing circulation would also slow and stem the loss of blood, especially if they managed to avoid nicking any arteries. Mizuna ran her knife down the scar and cut through his chest like it was the first stroke of a painting. Just as she expected, the slowed heart rate kept blood from making a huge mess; a cut this deep would have sprayed the woman’s face in almost any other situation. While she worked her magic figuratively, Dawn went at it literally; she removed her necklace and wrapped the chain of it around her hand, holding the soul crystal tightly within her palm. She drew from its deeply embedded and fathomless aether, her eyes glowing a bright blue as she examined Osric’s form; now she could see Osric- the real Osric, his silhouette shimmering and brimming with life against the backdrop of absolute darkness. Her plan was to use the stone’s aether to convert to her own life force, and then use it as fuel to see the aether around her. Beneath the myriad of dancing colors and twinkling lights she saw it- a black parasite slithering about in liquid form through his chest cavity. A burst of purple aether fought to escape her fist, exuding dark aether as she held it above his incision.

“Come on…” Dawn goaded the infestation, “Come get it…” she continued.

The infection didn’t seem to move, but instead embedded itself deeper into his chest and around his heart as if to preserve itself as best it could.

“It’s… it’s not taking the bait…” Dawn said with a tone riddled of reserved distress.

Mizuna shot Dawn a glare, and in between bated breaths she said, “Describe what it’s doing.”

“It’s… wrapping itself around his heart, as if it’s… trying to keep itself warm or… tie itself to his vital functions. Either it’s trying to preserve itself through basic biology or it’s trying to keep us from extracting it- both are dangerous implications…” she reached for another vial she kept on her person, the other half of the parasite squirming within. Her hand trembled as she stared at the object in her grasp, bright blue eyes slowly shifted to regard Mizuna. “I think I have a plan…”

“Spit it out, we’re running out of time.”

“Self-preservation… that’s what’s motivating it. I have half of it right here, and if we give it a more suitable host than it has right now…” her eyes darted back to the thing around Osric’s heart. She brought the vial up to her lips and smirked.

Mizuna hissed at the woman, her scowl twisting into a grimace. “Stop! What are you doing?!” She almost leapt across the table and grabbed Dawn’s hand. “Your aether is fading enough already- and you’re the only one who can remove it!”

Her thumbnail pressed against the cork, ready to pop the top off any second. “If you don’t have a better idea here in the next few seconds, this is the only thing I can imagine might work. My internal aether manipulation is clearly better than Osric’s, and if I bring this thing into myself, it will attract the other half out of pure survival instinct. A healthy host, making itself whole again- Do you have a better plan?”

“The greatest surgeon in the world can’t operate on themself. If this thing latches onto you, it won’t ever let go until you’re killed.”

“Then you’ll have to remove it for me. Or I live with it and control it better than Osric can, we don’t have many options here and the clock is ticking.”

Mizuna swallowed hard before speaking. “Give me the vial. I’ll be the host.”

“You have ten seconds to explain to me why that’s a better idea and why you’d be a better host.” Dawn shot at her.

The woman shot Osric a worried glance- his eyelids were flickering and his fingers were twitching; this parasite was wrapped around his heart and hindering it from beating. “Because I’m healthier. My aether is perfectly normal- which means we buy everyone more time if I take it. You will be unhindered to remove it from me, and Osric can recover enough to help us. You’ve shaved epochs from your life already- this one last sacrifice may use up what’s left.”

“... Why waste a full life when you have a fraction of one right here?... Bottoms up.” she popped off the top and drank the contents. She heaved and retched a couple times, her free hand grasping at her throat. She gasped for air but found no purchase as she struggled to swallow down the ichor. After pounding at her chest and forcibly swallowing, she found herself grounded enough to focus and do what needed to be done. She took the soul crystal in her left and used it as a rudimentary blade to carve into her other hand, creating an open wound. She brought the hand onto Osric’s laceration and watched- the infestation kept still on his heart for the longest moment before twitching and loosening its grip. It now swam across his chest to reunite with its other half.

Her associate watched helplessly from the other side of the table, her face deadpanned as she seethed. It was too late to do anything about it now, so she was forced to go along with it.

“Ugh… Hng… Nng!” she sounded out as she felt the infestation slide through her wound. The other half seemed to be aware of what had transpired and directly tied itself to Dawn’s heart as well. This answered her question as to whether there was true intelligence or purely an instinct for survival driving the infection. The two were simply halves of a whole disconnected.

Mizuna muttered in the native language of her tribe. “You stupid little girl. Blind, and deaf, and stupid.” WIth nothing left to do, and Osric officially free from his affliction, she lifted the syringe she had been preparing and jammed it into his chest. With hardly any blood flow, injecting the antidote directly into his heart was the only option she had left.

Tha… thump… tha…. thump…! Tha-thump…! Tha-thump! Tha-thump! Tha-thump!

“... Don’t you dare say a word of this to anyone…” Dawn stared at Mizuna. For a blind person, she looked piercingly straight into her eyes. The Raen woman clasped her hands over Osric’s ears, ensuring he wouldn’t catch the tail-end of her comment when he started coming to.

“If you’re so eager to kill yourself, there are better ways to go about it.” Mizuna hissed, shaking her head. “I hope you have another genius scheme up your sleeve to get rid of that thing. I won’t be helping you throw your life away next time.”

Dawn felt an irritation overcome her; hate welled in her heart from perhaps the stone or the discomfort within her chest now- regardless, her dislike for Mizuna seemed to amplify itself exponentially. “You’ll help me if I tell you to, and you’ll keep my secrets if I tell you to. Or I’ll tell everyone how you lied about your application, how you don’t have a residence, and sleep in the sewers. I can smell it on you, no matter how many times you bathe yourself, the stench still sickens me. Every. Day. How are you going to get a job if I let everyone know about the unclean healer who’s lost everything and has nothing to give or lose anymore? Nothing to live for… nothing to offer.” her voice hatefully rasped out.

"Lied?" Mizuna repeated, grimacing. "You read my application, did you? What makes you think the Isenharts don't already know? Because they didn't tell you?"

The woman slowly blinked, biting back what she really wanted to tell Dawn; two outbursts would only make this clinic unmanageable, even if their relationship was already torn to pieces. "Tell who you like, Ms. Aethwyn. If you think insults and blackmail will make me do your bidding, then you've greatly overestimated the control you have over me." Sharply she inhaled, realizing she was squeezing Osric's head between her hands. "And for the record… I still have plenty to live for… like Osric- a man who deserves better than a hateful woman like you."

Dawn’s eyes widened, her hands moved to cover her mouth. What did she just say to Mizuna? She just knew she felt so angry. But she was cruel in her words and her mild distaste for the other healer had festered inside exponentially until it burst; it wasn’t Mizuna’s fault but she couldn’t stop feeling so overwhelmed by an emotion she wasn’t used to being bombarded with. She couldn’t see Mizuna’s scornful expression but she could almost picture it. Dawn shook her head to try and regain some bearing; she wanted to apologize but she had neither the words or time. It was too late to take back any words spoken. Quickly, she uttered a small incantation under her breath to heal her hand before Osric regained control over his mental faculties.

The Dragoon groaned, eyes shifting and moving under his eyelids as the antidote did its work. Slowly it brought him back to consciousness, and his gentle stirring caused Mizuna to release her death grip on his ears. His head turned from side to side, fingers wiggling as he started to wake, eyes slowly opening.

"You're awake." Mizuna beamed, folding her trembling hands behind her back. "How are you feeling, Ric…? Better?"

“A...a bit.Still out of sorts…” He blinked, trying to focus on the two forms near the bed - his vision still foggy. He attempted to lift his arms, finding the limbs still too heavy to shift, and settling for turning his head to try to look around the darkened room. “...Where is it? The...thing? I know you pulled at least some of it out before and I’d...like to know what’s caused me such grief the last few months.”

Dawn was turned away, her hands shaking as she was trying to catch her breath. She wrung her hands and kept them close to her chest. She turned her head in Mizuna’s direction, and she didn’t know what to say- she was quickly drained of her concentration and strength, and all she could muster was a bit of a stressed, apologetic, and pleading look, with guilt and tension seasoned in nicely to top it all off. She just needed time to burn the thing inside out with holy magic, at least, in theory she thought she could. But if Mizuna caused a scene she worried it wouldn’t help anyone. Alas, she was still at a loss for words- she could make up a story like she planned but Mizuna was right there to contradict her on the spot. She also had no right to ask that of Mizuna- to go along with a story, not after the way she spoke to her- she was sensible enough to know that. She decided to choose her words carefully.

“We… have it stored, in a container for now. We might be able to get more information from it now without it hurting you anymore… and I can start working on destroying it.”

“You need to worry about recovering.” Mizuna plucked the needle and thread from her toolbag and pinched the cut on Osric’s chest closed. “I’m going to give you some medicine to help you sleep. Hmn…. perhaps a bottle of brandy would be more appropriate? You can finally rest easy now, and soon you’ll be back on your feet, Ric. Speaking of which…” The woman pierced his skin and began threading the needle again and again. “Once I know you’re fully recovered… how about I grant you permission to leave the Goblet? I’m sure you’re dying to stretch your legs.”

“Bourbon might be the better choice...but I wouldn’t turn away decent brandy.” He offered Mizuna a tired smile before his gaze shifted over to Dawn, despite the woman being turned away. “I...feel different - so I know it’s not there…” He paused, taking a moment to flex his hands, the heavy feeling finally lifting. “But I’d still sleep better having seen it - is that not a possibility?”

“You can’t see into the container. And we don’t want to let it out, unless you wanted it right back where it started. Rest.” Dawn looked over her shoulder and gave a smile. “I’ll leave you in Mizuna’s capable hands. I need to give Hadriel back something important I borrowed for the operation...” she moved fluidly from the situation. Mizuna clenched her jaw shut as she watched the woman slip out behind the curtain. Her face was still flushed green and her tail lashed back and forth behind her, but she held her tongue and her temper for Osric’s sake.

The last thing he needed was to get roped into their feuding, and she certainly didn’t want him to take a side.

“Drink.” Mizuna insisted, pressing a vial into his flexing hand. “Let’s get you to a warm bed… we’ll talk all about this ordeal in the morning.”

Osric’s gaze followed the blonde woman as she disappeared from the room before turning back to Mizuna once again. With a wince, and with significant effort, he managed to sit up before drinking from the vial as he’d been instructed to do and handing the empty container back to Mizuna. “...As you say - you two are the professionals. Which way to the beds? I feel like I could sleep for another few hours…” He trailed off, glancing back towards the curtain again. His chest felt lighter and he certainly felt better, but he could shake the nagging feeling that something still wasn’t just quite right…

His focused attention didn’t go unnoticed by Mizuna. She furtively watched him in silence from the corner of her vision, as her stomach churned and twisted. “How can he love someone who treats him so poorly? Do they have a history? Or is it something more… simple?” Thinking about it only made her headache worse, and she wasn’t eager to dwell on it for much longer. “Ric…” She started, unfolding a collapsible wheelchair and setting it near the side of the table. “I’ll take you there. Come.”

With a nod the Dragoon shifted from the bed to the wheelchair, exhaling as he relaxed against the back of the chair. “...Thank you, Mizuna.”

---

Collaborated with @dawn-aethwyn @osric-slater-ffxiv

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snowtimeisbesttime · 4 years ago

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Thoughts and questions on Hiveswap Act 2– Part 1.

**DISCLAIMER** I haven't played through the entire game yet! I got to the intermission in the whole trial thingy, and will continue tomorrow! Therefore, I Am Not Looking at anything yet, only posting. I'll probably come back and edit this once I've actually finished the game.

-Did the default names for Xefros & Dammek's lusii change?? I loaded my Act 1 save, and I'm sure they had their default names (Zoosmell and Cornibuster) there, though I'm also pretty sure i accidentally unlocked the “name the lusii” achievement on that save by clicking on the text windows without actually changing their names so... Dammek's lusus is called Toothy now i guess?

-On that note, if Xefros' lusus died I'm going to fucking scream. Even though I'm pretty sure we've barely seen him on screen since like the end of Act 1 but Regardless.

-We see Charun's cave, and it turns out they were neighbours with Zebede all this time, but they're nowhere to be seen at the train?? unless they grabbed an earlier one... Charun did get a death flag the size of the pacific ocean, when interacting with their weird sculpture with a lot of legs and arms surrounding a mouth, but Zebede's just gone without a trace? The bees are gone and there's a hole in the side of his hive, but his lusus doesn't seem to be particularly upset? And neither is Charun's, assuming that huge bug near the cave is their lusus. (Idarat the canon fantroll #3 doesn't appear at the train either, but that's probably for the same reason there aren't any jade or teal background characters: to keep the court scene neat)

-The drones are supposed to be en route to the station, supposedly to fix the ticket machines but probably to cull whoever tripped the alarm on them... i sure hope they don't follow the train or anything orz

-Mostly everyone seems to resemble their respective Friendsims, more or less:

Fozzer appears to be scratched still, yet more philosophical. Also he's not in the train either.

Folykl seems just a touch friendlier than in her friendsim (and Kuprum's still just as hyped about becoming a helmsman as before, even if he seems to know more details about it now).

Chixie's more anxious, probably because it seems she's been doing stuff as The Mask for a while now, and she's going to fuck shit up at Jeevik Week. She says she's not alone in that, and considering it's apparently confirmed that the random troll from her good end Was Dammek all this time... is she also actively in the rebellion? Also is it just me or does her sprite look somewhat scribblier than everyone else's? Even the background characters??

Elwurd's pretty much the same, and it does seem her flirting with Joey was mostly to try and get her to buy something. Also... if her fake tickets were so good, why didn't she just use them, instead of giving them to Joey and Xefros? Like, I get Marvus and Boldir Knowing Stuff, but her?

Zebruh's paying attention to Marvus instead of Chixie, which. Small mercies. He's still a dick, and we're still doing the whole “clowns are peak oppressed” thing.

Marvus seems to still be perfectly nice to the main characters, and perfectly willing to let other people die in order to help them advance (getting Zebruh to sign up for Slam or Get Culled, Daraya if you fuck up in the trial thing, Hopefully Not Any More Cases...) He is helping Tyzias out with her defensive legislaceration experiments, though, and basically everyone who isn't Joey seems to think he might flip his shit and murder someone, as clowns do. At least people don’t seem to lose their minds around him anymore.

Vikare's basically the same, but Joey immediately picks up on his Jake Vibes and instinctively dislikes him.

Diemen eats people???????? as in, actively????????? wtf?????????

Skylla seems to be pretty much the same, but she's obviously worried because Ladyy's sick!! God I fucking hope we do get to help her out before the end of the game.

Marsti's also friendlier than she was in her volume, though I remember MSPAR was particularly prone to sticking their foot in their mouth in that one.

Cirava's surprisingly more trusting than they were in their volume (and also, their eye's light green and not teal). Also, apparently they gouged their other eye out on stream?????? as in live???? besides that, good to see not All of the powerful psionics get succesfully indoctrinated.

Polypa's also rather willing to help out, though we still don't know what the heck happened to her.

Boldir's suitably mysterious, and probably also involved with the rebellion... she does call Xefros “burgundy figurehead”.

Konyyl and Azdaja are still having relationship stuffs, but in the end they clearly care the most about each other. (he still doesn't seem to give a fuck about helm stuffs so far?) The question is, who exactly were they hunting down??

The jades and the teals are basically the same as their Friendsim incarnations, as far as I've seen. The one major change to the jades (besides jade lore which i'll discuss further down) seems to be that hatched2dance is now one of the biggest reasons for their fights, and Bronya does get a crunchy bit of Backstory (the jade from her past that got culled because of the Rainbow Hemotions saga, which is also the reason she's so hard on Daraya now)

On the teals, Stelsa and Tyzias seem to have a teensy bit of quadrant vacillation going on?? Tirona seems to be more focused on becoming a history revisionist than a memeagandist now, and it would also seem that Tegiri's the one into vampires now (or at least, Tagora's better at hiding it And a lot better at not getting involved with the whole mess that is whatever the heck the jades are doing)

-Psionics can have single-colored eyes!! tbh we'd already seen this back in Tegiri's route in Friendsim but it's good to Actually See it visually.

-Also, nice to see that Xefros *can* go toe to toe with the strongest psionic we know in all of Hiveswap! (95% sure that I've seen someone theorize something like this might happen?? I personally wasn't expecting it here but anyways Xefros you're doing amazing sweetie) What's not so nice is that he's only shown this strength when Azdaja hurt Joey (as far as i've played of course)... so unless he like unlocks his potential or something so he can do Big Psychics without seeing his friends get hurt beforehand we're in for some Angst.

-Also if Marvus got his ticket from Cridea (and Chixie won hers in like a raffle or something) then why couldn't she have given Xefros and Dammek some?? like, Dammek's been to one Jeevik Week already. Fiamet also told her about Joey, but by then they were already in the train.

-Me: Xefros' microphone's going to be important in act 2! Also me: *has to give it to fucking Zebruh to get his ticket*. Oh well, that's one thing for the Second Playthrough of Achievement Getting (plus: wearing the cone horns, having Joey introduce herself to Boldir, getting through the whole ace attorney segment without game overs...)

-We get the Quadrant Explanation #1000, sans auspisticism.

-It's vaguely implied that Dammek has also read some Soldier Purrbeasts books?? He's told Xefros the whole “death creates a bond deeper than matespritship or kismessisitude” thing, apparently! So if he's not secretly into troll warrior cats then. That sentence's more than mildly worrying??

-JADEBLOOD LOREDUMP PART THE NTEENTH: Okay first of all it's implied that More cloisters exist? Which in retrospect is pretty much obvious because you can't expect only six trolls to take care of All the troll grubs in existence. Also, the reason jades can't sneak out of the caverns anymore is “because they get Drone'd”, and it seems to be implied that they Can't go out At All*, which kinda contrasts with Friendsim (where literally all the jades snuck out of the caverns at least once: Lanque, Daraya and Wanshi in their own routes, Lynera in Vol 18, and Bronya in Vols 6 & 18). One of their tasks seems to be guarding Forbidden Literature, and Xefros states that they either cull or indoctrinate the most powerful psychic grubs.

-It's also stated that all of our jades were chosen for the cloister when they were basically wrigglers, while Lynera states in Friendsim that she's only been 2,43 sweeps in the caverns. (Considering Bronya's new backstory, it seems that capability to become a rainbow drinker ISN'T the qualifying factor for getting cloistered– depending on how exactly that jade died). It comes to mind that regular, non-cloistered jades might not really know about all these logistics, as it seems that at least Bronya wants to keep them secret– and therefore I don't have to go back and re-rewrite yet another chunk of Mirrorbent orz.

-Lastly, Xefros says they will all become nuns (btw, space church was mentioned in Lanque's route!) when they reach their Ordeals, and we already knew they'd be forced to live in isolation from Friendsim, but during the ace attorney thingy Lynera says she's NOT going to leave the planet because she'll become a midwife and tend to the Mother Grub (basically what we all thought jadebloods did back when we only had the ancestor stuff on Homestuck)... but either Daraya or Lanque told her that they weren't real? So either there's more jade propaganda that we didn't know about, or...

-*The one exception to this is, coincidentally, Jeevik Week, and it's apparently because Trizza herself made it so jades could go too, 3 or 4 sweeps before Hiveswap... why's that? What's so important about Jeevik Week that Trizza would do this? Iirc Cridea and Trizza were sort of set up as opposing forces (?? words), all the way back from the first bunch of concept arts we saw of them? The first thing we learnt from Trizza was that she was the “second best at memes”, and on Cridea's first appearance, when troll twitter was still Prongle, she said that some chick was stealing her memes... and now, Cridea has exactly one follower less than Trizza, who everyone in Alternia's forced to follow... would that person be the heiress herself?

#hiveswap #hiveswap spoilers #hiveswap theories #joey claire #xefros tritoh #thoughts and questions #long post #no really this got Long #idk how much of the game this covers tbh #and i will find out Tomorrow

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merigreenleaf · 4 years ago

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Unexpected Inspiration Character Backstory: Adair’s Past

Addy had one foot in the water when a hand snatched at the back of his shirt and heaved him away from the shore. "No, dope! You won't get there in time, not the way you swim! Climb!"

Feren shoved him in the direction of the tiny island's lone tree before shimmying up it. Addy bit his lip as the water reached his feet and rose almost immediately to his calves. Feren was right, he wouldn't make it to the other shore by swimming. He touched his favorite paintbrush to make sure it was safe in his pocket-- and to feel more courageous, not that he'd admit that a paintbrush was his comfort thing. Feren would never let him live that down and would call him a baby even in the middle of a flow that was rapidly becoming a flood. He forced himself up onto the lowest branch. Even here was too high! Addy closed his eyes while his stomach churned as bad as the water below him.

"What are you doing? You have to climb higher than that!"

"I can't!" Addy didn't open his eyes. He was already so high. The flood couldn't reach him here. It wasn't like it was going to get that deep.

"Dammit, Addy! Are you too weak to climb one stupid tree?"

Addy squinted one eye open and looked up, which had to be better than looking down. It wasn't. Feren was perched about a mile above him on a larger, sturdier limb. He wasn't sure what view was worse: Feren glaring at him or seeing someone up so high. Addy closed his eyes again and hugged the trunk with both arms. Maybe if he clung tight enough the water wouldn't carry him away. Maybe it would turn out that the magic he didn't have yet was glue magic. No, he'd never been that lucky. He was dimly aware of muttered curse words above him, ones he wasn't allowed to say at home, then Feren shouted, "Grab my hand!"

The current reached Addy's dangling feet. With a whimper he hoped Feren didn't hear, he reached up. Feren grabbed his wrist and hoisted him up, then shoved him further upwards. Addy kept his eyes on the tree trunk. He was going to have nightmares for years about this stupid tree trunk. After an eternity of climbing, he was on the wide branch Feren had been sitting on. A thundering heartbeat later Feren joined him. As much as he hated the other boy, Addy couldn't say he minded when Feren's arm wrapped around him to hold him in place. He was pretty sure Feren wasn't going to push him off, anyway. Not after the effort of getting him up here. Not when Feren avoided the word "effort" as much as he did the words "selflessness" and "not being a jerk." Nothing about this day was going right. -Excerpt from an early draft of Colorweaver (book 1)

To all appearances, Adair has the most normal backstory of the dorks. He didn't grow up in a weird temple like the twins, Rosalie, or Camille-- Concordia doesn't technically even have a religion. He didn't lose his parents young like Blythe did-- if anything Adair has too many parents, which annoys him on occasion because what teenager wouldn't be eye-rolling at six parents and parental figures. He was certainly never unloved or neglected by any of his parents, like Dray-- his multitude of parents have always supported his hobbies and interests and since he always lived in Concordia, no one batted an eye when he declared that he was a boy. He's never had to struggle to make ends meet or to survive, like any of the others. He had the most normal, traditional, seemingly-unexciting childhood that you can have as a Concordian.

But that's where the normality of Adair's life stops. Weird things have a habit of happening around him. Mostly it's given him an attitude of "Oh. This is what we're doing now? Okay" because he rarely knows what's going on. He often feels like he's just along for the ride with his own life.

(His bio is below!)

To take it back, Adair grew up in a small, quiet town where not much happened. It was so small that there were only two sets of Artisan families who lived there. When his magic manifested as a kid, he was apprenticed to the set that wasn't his own. Okay, he probably would have preferred getting the heck out of a place so dull, but his master had cartography magic which is precisely the flavor of colorweaving that Adair did. Her son was a thorn in Addy's side for years, but Master Idra was welcoming, loved to travel, and was eccentric in the best ways. One of her spouses was a master chef, so their way of welcoming Adair into the family was by having him help out in the kitchen and making all sorts of yummy desserts that he liked. (There's a reason Adair does this with his own adopted kid!) Adair quickly befriended Nina, the apprentice of said spouse, and she made him all sorts of sweets, too. If not for living with Feren, his master's son, it would have been perfect. Even then, it sort of worked out because Feren went from bossy bully to bossy boyfriend, but that's a can of worms I won't get into here since I already talked about it in their relationship moodboard post. Suffice it to say that this was not a great relationship, but it does mean that Feren was there for almost all of Adair's Weird Events.

The first strange thing he could pinpoint was the timing of when his magic manifested. He was hanging out with the other local kids at a nearby lake when the dam suddenly cracked. He has honestly tried to block out most memory of this, not because of the flood, which wasn't too bad since the stone-magic inside it stopped it before it burst entirely, but because he had to climb a tree to avoid it. Heights have always been Adair's greatest fear and he was never sure what he would have done had Feren not been there to help him. Adair doesn't remember much of this, between the terror and his eyes scrunched tight, until purple light appeared behind his eyelids. When he snuck a peek at his hands and arms clinging to the tree, he saw that they were glowing. The glow wasn't really unexpected, that was just the sign that his magic was now active, but it was impeccable timing in a way that became Adair's normal. His master theorized it happened then because he was so frightened. Adair would rather not think about it at all, thanks.

Another Weird Event was a sudden cave-in when he, Feren, and Nina were poking around what should have been a safe cavern. The most recent Event was when he woke up in the middle of a carnival. That one led to him meeting the dorks, so he was cool with this once he dealt with the embarrassment of being seen in pajamas and quacking ducky slippers. At least nothing burst or collapsed that time.

That said, usually the events were small and I don't think he was much aware of them because they tend to happen while he's asleep or zoned out. It's one thing that Adair tends to have vivid dreams and occasional hallucinations when he's tired; that's par for the course with a sleep disorder. It gets weird when other people can see what he's dreaming. These are mundane enough that anyone who gets caught in one of the illusions brushes it off as maybe they just nodded off. Adair has spent so much time around Feren, though, that Feren has long suspected that something was up. Has he told Adair? Of course not, why would someone as wonderful as Feren ever think to help someone he supposedly loves? Instead, he watches and wonders and documents, and when strange things start happening around the other dorks that are similar enough to Adair, Feren notices.

But even with the strangeness in his life, Adair has plowed on happily. He finally broke up with Feren, so the past few months have been a breath of fresh air. He finished his apprenticeship and is nearing the end of his year as an amateur with his graduation project almost finished. He has the other dorks in his life and the future looks bright, minus a few hiccups and malfunctioning magic that isn't always his.

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

I apologize that the excerpt got kinda long, but I wasn’t sure where else to stop it besides that point. This is the next in the series of backstory moodboards I’m doing about the dorks. I have two for Dray here and here, and one for Rosalie & Camille here. I also just updated Adair’s bio board with a new board and new info!

This was originally supposed to be for @homesteadchronicles theme of “baking” but I’m a week late and also this post spiraled wildly out of control lol

Tagging my series tag list. Let me know if you want to be added or removed from the list and please definitely tag me in writing things you share, too! :)

@homesteadchronicles @ageekyreader @lynnafred @the-gay-hufflepuff @oceanwriter @desperatlytryingtowriteabook @muffindragon227 @theguildedtypewriter @toboldlywrite @wchwriter @dreameronthewind @shadow-maker @pen-for-sword @loopyhoopywrites @emptymanuscript @madmoonink @perringwrites @megan-cutler @elliot-orion @thatwriternamedvolk @indecentpause @writer-on-time @ravenpuffwriter @siarven @musicismymoirail @lady-redshield-writes @bluemartlet @reeseweston @worldbuildingwren @hiddswritingrefs @cay--scribbles @focusdumbass @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword @enasroterfaden @missrobinswritings @joshuaorrizonte @zofiehelen @kainablue @kalis-scribbles @inspirited-goddess

#writing #writeblr #character moodboard #character aesthetics #character backstory #oc moodboard #fantasy character #fantasy series #unexpected inspiration series #unexpected inspiration aesthetic #UI POV: Adair #I'm actually doing a moodboard monday post on a monday!#too bad it's a week late lol #for most of these boards I'm trying to find pictures to represent the dorks as kids/teens #the problem with Adair is he's still a teen so I'm just using the faceclaim I usually do lol #his backstory basically continues up until about three months ago let's be real

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jflashandclash · 4 years ago

Text

Tales From Mount Othrys

This story comes soon after the Roman ambush on Alabaster’s laboratory. After the Pax brothers and Alabaster defend the lab until reinforcements show up, the question hangs in the air: who revealed the location of Alabaster’s lab? The Spy Master is assigned to find out or, at least, find a scapegoat.

Mercedes: Interrogation Letdown

If you asked Mercedes, she would say that she didn’t drink coffee. Her hijab always smelled of the robust aroma, one that wafted memories of her mother, of her mother’s lips as they pressed Mercedes’s forehead in a morning goodbye. Another day of work. Another disposable cup of coffee. Another hour to torment her brothers as Mercedes corralled them ready for school.

There were few personal items in her Camp Othrys cabin, but two of her most valuable were a rug (for when she went to “tend to the Hecate garden” in the chapel) and a small French press.

Few were awake early enough to witness her trek from Fajr prayer to the Spy Wing. There, she dumped some coffee beans and hot water into the glass container. After capping it, she would lean over the golden lid to inhale the fumes. Normally, the French press, accompanying mug, and coffee were all cleaned and away before anyone came in.

Today, she set her coffee mug in the center of the interrogation table. Steam curled up between her and Pax. She tapped her pen against her Othrys notebook. She hoped her irritation was prominent enough to cover up her worry. Pax didn’t need to know she was worried about him. It would get into his head, inflate it, and he’d become the next astronaut to circumnavigate the world and her anger.

This silence was one of her and Pax’s many games: invite him into the spy wing, give him no clear instructions, then ignore him for thirty minutes. At the end of his twitching, squirming, and sprawling across the table, she would ask him which three suspicious activities she had done. She would ask for the exact timestamp for each.

There weren’t always three. Sometimes there were none. Sometimes there were eleven. She wanted him to question her authority, and she wanted him to use his brain, something many people found abhorrent, she knew. At least Pax could be bribed into it.

Today was not one of those exercises. However, she didn’t correct his assumption that it was. She enjoyed his rapt attention and silence.

At the top of the page, as she did in every page of this notebook, she scrawled, “To me, death is nothing but happiness, and living under tyrants nothing but living in a hell” and “The end justifies the means.”

Pax, as suspected, broke first. “Are you going to drink that?”

“No,” she said, “It’s there for the aesthetic.”

As per usual, Pax couldn’t tell if she was serious or sarcastic. That’s exactly where she liked him. His face scrunched up in his I’m Over-Thinking expression. Mercedes loved it. Pax’s unending chatter put her at ease. Ever since he went to Tartarus, his liar’s tells had become obvious. If she waited long enough, he’d rat himself out.

That’s why she left Pax’s interview for the end. He was uncomplicated and comforting after the morning’s slog.

Underneath her paper’s quotes, she wrote, Suspects.

“Did you decide it wise to tell someone about Alabaster’s super secret layer before its defenses were activated?” With others, she couldn’t be so direct. With Pax? If he thought he was at fault, he would crumble to guilt.

Instead of falling apart, he fell onto the table. The coffee mug jerked, the brown liquid sloshing against the white, ceramic sides. She forced herself not to grab for it, to maintain her composure as cool and collected.

“Oh! Mercedes! Do I have to answer more questions about this?” He peaked at her through his fingers, his amber and black eyes glistening. “Axel and I didn’t know the location until we got there! We were just told we’d be Alabaster’s pack mules for the day and we’d do less of a half-assed job that the empousas would.”

From the information she’d collected, this was correct. Mostly. Alabaster verified it: he hadn’t told the Pax brothers anything until moving day.

However, Axel, after several rounds of questioning and clearing his throat, admitted that Alabaster had given him a rough approximation about the plans and location. This either meant Alabaster was willing to lie for one of his “meat shields” or that he had forgotten that detail. Alabaster had come to their interview with a stack of papers meticulously chronicling each time he’d mentioned the lab project over the last three months. If he had forgotten, Mercedes was a Zeus fangirl.

Mercedes had checked his records and found that Alabaster had altered them. He probably thought she wouldn’t notice, but….

But Mercedes knew Alabaster. She knew all of them. It was her job. She knew that Alabaster rubbed the upper left corner of pages when he was thinking. Several pages from his records had unmarred corners. The penmanship was sloppier on those pages. (He forgot to dot an “i;” an atrocity in Alabster’s book of How to be a Hard Ass.) The margins were five millimeters wider than the other pages, something he would balk as being a behemoth waste of space. He likely rewrote those pages, omitting that he told Axel anything. And he thought he adjustments were small enough that she’d overlook them.

From Pax’s reaction, neither Axel nor Alabaster had told him.

“Pax Two, you’re—”

“I know, I know.” He sighed, slumping back into his chair. “I’m excreting salacious facial sweat onto your interrogation table.”

She forced her lips not to twitch. “Sebaceous,” she corrected and immediately regretted it. It brought her joy to envision adult Pax on a CSI crime scene, taking fingerprint samples and discussing how “salacious” or “lustful” the evidence was to the appall of all of his coworkers, all left to theorize about his sex life.

Mercedes was always pleasantly surprised by how carefully Pax listened to her and remembered what she said, even if he did mispronounce a word way out of their grade’s reading level.

“How did you detect the Romans?” she asked. Part of her wanted to be proud of him: he was her trainee, after all and he thwarted the Romans with his snooping.

“One of them shot Sphinx.” The playfulness was gone. He stared at the coffee mug’s rising steam.

Mercedes set the pencil down. Her instincts said to touch his hand or give him a hug.

Impartial, she reminded herself, tracing quotes in her notebook. I’m supposed to remain impartial. Not to think about Lou Ellen crying when she went to the lab, where Sphinx used to live. Not to notice Pax shamefully avoid his best friend’s gaze, horrified Lou Ellen might blame him for not saving Sphinx.

I’m as impartial as a campaign poster.

Mercedes often caught herself daydreaming about ending this war without any deaths. This was the problem with being a spymaster: you had friends on both sides of the war. Little divided you other than a sense of loyalty or cultish idealism. When most Romans defected from Camp Jupiter, they left everything and everyone. But, Mercedes was the spymaster. She needed contacts. She could never truly leave either camp.

No one had won this fight, though New Rome definitely lost. Alabaster no longer had his lab, half-a-decade’s worth of priceless magical artifacts, and one of his spell books. The full death toll wasn’t in on the Roman side, but they had lost a lot of people. Mercedes still needed to verify the death of their prisoner. Rumor said that he had consumed a suicide pill during Jack and Flynn’s “questioning.” Lucille and Mercedes normally did the interrogation. They kept the interrogation humane. Jack and Flynn didn’t.

Mercedes shivered. She didn’t like Flynn and Jack doing interrogations. She didn’t like that Jack’s mind was waning alongside Luke’s.

On top of that, rumors swept the Roman legion of a new monster, this creature that had awaited the legionnaires in the Mist of the Witch’s Layer. No doubt, this was a rumor started to preserve some soldier’s honor, to make the Pax brothers and Alabaster seem an insurmountable foe instead of three panicked kids. From the way Pax retold the story now, he had no idea about the impression they had made.

Pax was retelling the events—enumerating the soldiers, recalling their location, their armament, their words—when he choked. “I couldn’t kill her, Mercedes. Is that bad?” He puffed up his cheeks and popped them. His eyes were glassy. He had been talking about a soldier that he’d caught in a noose. “Good thing to know I’ll always go for the high five. I’ll never leave you hanging there.” The last words broke with a hiccupped sob.

Impartial. You’re impartial.

Mercedes gripped the handle of the mug. The warmth was fading from the ceramic. She lifted it. What was left of the heat and the scent of tangy undertones—she exhaled, shuddering. How would she get through this talk without hugging Pax?

He shouldn’t have been at this fight. He ought to have been failing out of middle school. Really, he ought to be playing with a pegasus at Camp Half-Blood. She tried not to consider how their relationship would differ if he was.

She set the mug back on the center of the table. “No. A propensity for murder isn’t a skill I value and… and the availability of a compassionate heart is a rare delicacy on this ship, despite what Luke and Kronos preach.”

Pax’s watery eyes went wide. He sniffled. His gaze shot around the room before resting back on her. “You don’t like Luke very much, do you?”

Mercedes scowled. “That is a dangerous accusation, Pax Two. I feel for him the same way I feel for my father.”

Irresponsible. Power-mad.

Luke had made her exchange her fear of one monster for another.

She did not always see eye-to-eye with Axel; she’d been to one of his cage matches and was unfond of the sensationalized violence he so easily exhumed. However, she’d never been more relieved than the day he stood between Annabeth—a bound and gagged, thirteen-year-old girl—and her would-be molester. That changed her mind about Luke forever.

This was not a conversation to have aboard the ship.

“I made you something,” the words exploded from Pax. It startled Mercedes and reminded her of the time that Pax smuggled thirty containers of pudding from the cafeteria in Matthias’ spandex boxers. The seams ripped, much like Pax had sputtered these words: clumsy and a little too excited to escape.

Trust Pax to easily dodge a conversation and to make you think about someone’s underpants.

He withdrew something from his jacket pocket. A bulge had inhabited that it since he’d returned from Tartarus, though she’d assumed it was some kind of safety blanket. Knowing Pax, it could have been a preserved piece of skin that hadn’t properly reattached to Lou Ellen’s hand.

When he unfolded the brown silk, Mercedes stopped breathing. While scrunched up and crinkled, the embroidery was still beautiful: all pink and gold thread. It swirled in an elegant floral pattern along the square’s edges. He made this?

“And—I—I made you a magnet pin to hold it together so you don’t need to be worried about piercing the material…”

When he fumbled in his pocket again, Mercedes could feel her lip trembling. Before he looked up, she shut her jaw and dabbed her cheeks with the back of her hand. By the time he had set the items on the table, she managed her expression into a neutral one. She added Practice Facial Expressions to her list of spy exercises for his training. Vitally important if he ever had the karma of training a mini-him later down the road.

“I made a different one and ruined it when I practiced pinning it. Can you show me how to put one on right? The fabric slides and goes everywhere so I can’t test it properly. You won’t tell us when your birthday is, and I’ve been wanting to make you one for awhile, and this is one of the many things I wanted to do to make it up to you...”

His voice trailed off. Although he tried to keep his eyes sheepishly on the table, they kept flicking up to check her reaction. His information cataloguing demeanor was so obvious: wide-eyed excitement, the hint of a smile curling his lip, a slight lean forward.

Mercedes couldn’t keep her hand from shaking when she reached for the fabric and magnets. He would notice the weakness; she had taught him to notice.

Both sides of the magnets were decorated, one a subtle brown that matched the hijab and another with bold gold and pink paint to match the embroidery, presumably to either blend or use as an accessory. Both were coated in a smooth gloss, likely for comfort. From what she could see, there was no trick or prank attached. Just a small, thinner section, where he must have fiddled with the fabric when talking to her.

This was one of the nicest things someone had done for her since she got to Camp Othrys.

His words echoed in her head. I wanted to make it up to you. To make up for lying and going to Tartarus.

“This is an acceptable start, Pax Two,” she said, “This does not mean you’ve dissuaded my wrath. Continue to grovel and do not expect any items in return.” If he thought she was mad, he was less likely to do something so stupid again. Mercedes almost swore. Technically, Pax was younger than her, even if by less than a year. She ought to give him something, even if it was a few pennies, for Eid al-Fitr. He better not look at that as an apology acceptance.

Pax’s conniving smile broke into a goofy grin. “Gifts are not gifts if you’re expecting something in return.” He sounded like he was quoting a childhood mantra, adding in a little jingle.

“Then they’re transaction pieces,” she agreed absently. Mercedes folded the fabric and attached the magnet to assure she didn’t lose it. She shoved the gift out of sight, under the table. If she looked at it for too long, he’d catch her smiling. She was furious that some part of her wanted to be somewhere private, so she could examine the embroidery in detail.

She began again, “The investigation—”

Pax whined and sank right back onto the table.

Mercedes waited until he quieted his whining. “Did you notice anything suspicious? Oh competent assistant of mine? Or were you too busy examining Alabaster’s assets.” She flipped her notebook to a previous page, one with two columns of names that were subdivided into tables. “This is my list of people who found out or were told. Who would you find most suspicious? Who do you think can’t keep a secret and to whom would they relieve the secret’s burden?”

She read it aloud from a second copy before he could point out that he couldn’t read:

Involved in the planning process: Alabaster, Matthias, Lou Ellen, Hecate, Prometheus.

Involved in construction: Matthias, Alabaster, a rotation of blind-folded minions under Matthias (see back)

Knew the location: Alabaster, Matthias

Found out the location: Flynn, Jack, Luke/Kronos, Phil, Pax One, Pax Two, Mercedes, Morpheus

Two days of constant interviews had taken its toll. Tension clenched her jaw, something she didn’t notice until Paxton forced her to relax. Had she had water since before Wudu? Her mouth felt dry.

Paxton began to babble, “Matthias is a great secret keeper. I still don’t know how he shaved an underwear pattern into Phil’s—”

“Pax Two.” She meant to stop him from going off on a tangent. He took it as an accusation.

“Who, me? I’m a huge security flaw.” He gave her a sly smile. “I tell you everything.”

“That’s amply evident.” Since his return from Tartarus, he felt the need to tell her each time his color switched from green to transparent.

Pax tapped the lower part of the paper. “You forgot the centaurs. They didn’t know until we got there, but they did find out.”

Mercedes applauded this observation with silence. This would indicate that she had not forgotten the centaurs, but wanted to know if he would. This type of testing was so customary to Pax that he continued unhindered.

“Oh! And that sun god—the old one? Hecate’s friend that can see everything under the sun, like Greek Santa. How come he gets the privilege of being Greek Santa but the sky god doesn’t? If I were Zeus, I would want some those powers re-sorted

“Helios,” Mercedes said. She had forgotten him. Rumors of his power (near-forgotten at the likes of Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter) were rampant in the Othrys ranks. Helios sometimes claimed his powers didn’t work because he didn’t have the sun chariot, but she would need to be sure. Mercedes sat very still. Would she need to interview another titan? One she did not want to see?

“You forgot about him.” Pax sounded cheery.

Slowly, Mercedes nodded. “I had. This is why it’s good to keep parasites around. Sometimes they keep things in their digestive systems longer than the host. Or, maybe, sometimes hosts need partners more than parasites.”

Elevating Pax’s position—that was a conversation for another day.

Mercedes felt sick. She wanted to accuse a friend of espionage as much as she wanted to volunteer them for an interactive presentation on degloving. No one had given her much to work with, but most didn’t fit the bill.

Matthias had gone in rambling circles during his interrogation. The main thing saving him? He was too clever and resourceful. Had he wanted to capture the three boys in a building that he had designed, there would have been an attack of chloroform-coated underwear automatons.

Prometheus, likewise, would not have been so sloppy. He, as he admitted, would have gassed the boys or poisoned them.

Alabaster and Lou Ellen suspected Lamia. Apparently it would be easy for such a powerful witch to locate the magical objects transported there. Mercedes had Lamia on a different suspect list.

Luke, in his ever-increasing paranoia, thought it was Alabaster who set himself up. A charming disposition to cover up Luke’s insecurities, but Mercedes knew that Alabaster had no use for subterfuge. His family made up a third of the army. If he wanted, he could have the Princess Andromeda make port in San Pedro Bay with a Welcome Legions of Rome! sign.

That left an option Pax should have pointed out but never would.

Axel.

He was close to all the right people: Luke (formerly. Mercedes blamed their falling out on a lack of shared interest. Axel didn’t have the propensity for pedophilia and domestic abuse that Luke had), Alabaster, Jack and Flynn, and, of course, Pax. By being close to Pax, he was close to Mercedes and all of Mercedes’ documents. He was one of the only souls aboard the ship not pledged to Kronos—incapable since he was full-blooded Maya.

There was no point in interviewing Flynn. Flynn could tell Mercedes that she was innocent; with her charmspeak, Mercedes would believe her. Any argument against Flynn would have to be cautiously researched, compiled, and brought to Lucille, Prometheus, and Luke in full secrecy.

For that matter, Lucille could be a good option, but there seemed no reason: she was happily courting Ethel and had taken Charlie on as her own daughter. She didn’t feel right… Although, Mercedes guessed Silena Beauregard wouldn’t feel right as a spy for Camp Half-Blood, and Silena had been cheating on Beckendorf and getting campers killed for at least two years now. Having children of Aphrodite around was always dicey. Thank god the Roman editions weren’t as powerful.

Although it was unwise to be too close to anyone with Mercedes’ job, she wouldn’t want to accuse Lucille without hard evidence. Lucille made sure no one bothered Mercedes about her hijab, just as Mercedes assured that no one bothered Lucille about her relationships with women.

Mercedes watched Pax’s gaze flicker over the symbols on the paper, pretending to read them.

She didn’t think Pax would accuse his half-brother or his surrogate mother, even if those were the most logical conclusions.

Pax set the paper down. His rounded cheeks puffed into a frown. Insecurity wrinkled the edges of his eyes as they gazed intently into hers.

Mercedes took in a deep breath. Would he?

“Mercedes,” he said, sounding grave, “I’m thinking about having my first kiss—well, my real first kiss.”

“Ya Allah, save us from the sins and hellfire,” Mercedes mumbled, exhaling. The tension eased out of her muscles as she restrained a laugh.

“I’m thinking about Alabaster, though Lou Ellen says he might not be ready yet. But, that’s like saying she shouldn’t try to make a move on my brother during our victory dance party, and she should totally make a move on my brother.”

As he spoke, Mercedes collected the list of suspicious names, tucked it into her flip notebook, and closed it. She rose, took her cup of cold coffee, and dumped it down a sink along one wall. As the brown liquid splattered against the white porcelain, she sent a mental prayer of safety for her mother, brothers, and friends back at home.

No one seemed to realize she eavesdropped on her comrades as much as she spied on her enemies. If there was one thing she knew, Alabaster was not ready for intimacy, with anyone, let alone with Pax. And Axel would certainly have a heart attack warding off Lou Ellen, who, she knew for a fact, Axel thought was too young for him.

“I want it to be perfect. Jack agrees and he’s been brainstorming with me. He said he doesn’t remember his first kiss and that makes him really sad and Flynn won’t tell me about hers. But, it has to have great atmosphere—music! And maybe outdoors—maybe with a garden—but what if something goes wrong? I’ve been practicing on my hand—You know, to make sure I’m not the worst while keeping the purity of the first kiss—and I’ve been asking for advice all around, from Lucille and Prometheus won’t tell me anything, he just laughs in his ‘I’m a titan who can predict the future’ kind of way. And what if it isn’t perfect?! Like, I want it to make Alabaster happy and make me happy and be a good story for future Pax generations like Jack wishes he had a good story for me!” Pax rose to his feet to follow her around the room.

From the frantic cadence of his tone, she knew, with relief, they were done for the day. The part of Pax’s brain capable of none-meandering thoughts had a clear timer and that alarm had gone off.

She walked back to the table, gathering her notebook and new hijab. The fabric felt so soft when she tucked both against her chest. “Too many expectations lead to inevitable disappointment. What if you’re a bad kisser?”

“What if I’m a bad kisser?” Pax’s eyes widened. He puffed up his cheeks and popped them.

“Planning isn’t in your nature. What if nothing goes according to plan?” She ushered her stunned friend towards the exit of the Spy Barracks.

Pax stumbled alongside her, eyes clearly visualizing the worst case scenario. “You’re right! What if nothing goes according to plan?!”

“What if you make a big fuss over something that won’t matter and you worry yourself needlessly?”

“What if I—hey!” Pax’s features scrunched up into a pout. He folded his arms.

Mercedes sighed. Like Alabaster, she didn’t have time for experience in this field and couldn’t offer much advice. As someone who ran spy operations, and someone with a cute, unpredictable parasite pouting in front of her, she knew things tended to fall apart in correlation with how hard you tried to keep them together. “You can’t control if something goes wrong, Ajax, and you can’t control how Alabaster will react. If things go wrong, then you’ll find someone else later, whose lip sensitivity is closer to that of your palm.” She pointed to his right hand, the one she assumed he’d been practicing on.

“But what if—”

Pax went quiet.

Mercedes had, much to her own surprise and skipped heartbeat, leaned forward. His nose was cold when it pressed against hers; his lips, warm. There was a faint hint of something citrusy, like he had drunk orange juice for breakfast. Fortunately, no reek of bacon.

Several jittery questions flashed through her brain: What constitutes as a “real” kiss? Was I supposed to close my eyes? It’s awkward if I keep them open, right? How long am I supposed to do this for?

The insecurity shook her nerves—it shouldn’t have. This was Pax. And they were just friends. Just two friends who spent 90% of their time together.

His eyes had gone wide with shock. His gasp sucked air from her before he gently exhaled.

Four seconds was plenty, plenty enough to make her face feel hot. Mercedes saw movement out of her peripheral—either he was about to push her away or pull her close. She didn’t wait to find out. She withdrew, absently fussing with her notebook and hijab like she’d finished another closing procedure. Both items had almost slipped from her grasp.

Pax looked lost. His mouth moved a few times, before remembering how to form words, “Why did you do that?” The question was quiet and uncertain. Not angry. From his hesitant tension, she got the feeling there was more he wanted to ask, but was scared.

Mercedes quirked her lips into a smirk. “Because, no one will believe you when you tell the story later.”

His mouth moved a few times more times; Mercedes resisted the urge to remind him that they were no longer kissing.

In the most delayed startle she’d seen, he jumped. “But—wha—it—Mercedes!” he cried in protest. Mercedes ushered him outside the spy barrack’s door while he was still floundering for words. “I—but—” He huffed. “I wanted to share my first kiss with someone who hadn’t had theirs!”

Mercedes paused in the doorway, widening her grin. “You just did.” And, she shut the door on his face, locking it. Mercedes pressed against the wall, flipped out her dulled mirror, and tilted it to watch him through the window.

Pax paced back and forth across the entranceway, paused, raised a hand to open the door again, threw his hands up, and dropped them. After six seconds of standing there, he touched his lips and blushed. The blush remained as he walked, unsteadily, away from the Spy Barracks.

He’d be pouty with her for another week. To keep any ideas out of his head, she’d have to pretend she didn’t know why. She unfolded the hijab to admire the embroidery. This must have taken Pax weeks to make. She pressed the silk against her face, enjoying the smooth coolness. The slickness would be a pain—she’d have to wear an undercap to keep it in place.

She thought about how hard her mother would slap her if she ever found out Mercedes had kissed a boy. At home, she would have been forbidden to see Pax or, at least, be forbidden to spend time with him without a chaperon—no, it would be fully forbidden. Pax was raised Catholic. There was no potential for—

The elation in her chest crushed when she glanced down at her notebook. This was a botched job. There was no time for any daydreaming or—had she been flirting? Luke expected a report from her by the end of the day, and she needed to give him a name in that report. If she didn’t—

Mercedes tried not to think about the hunger in Luke when he stared at Annabeth, the way he’d smacked Phil across the room, the times she’d stumbled into Jack healing his own battered face with a hushed, “Don’t tell Flynn or the boys. They won’t understand that Luke has bad days the same way that I get confused.” The way Kronos’ darkness seemed to spread through the underlings like a contagion, through how Jack and Flynn had future plans to torture-heal-torture any new captives (for Jack, as some displaced revenge against Thalia for failing his friend; for Flynn, for fun) and the increased violence and spectacle of Axel’s now labyrinthine cage fights.

And here she was, holding a gift against her face like she could have a Catholic Maya boy as a sweetheart even if she were at home. People died and were seriously injured because of her lack of oversight—how dare she. What else had she clouded from her vision?

Pax is a good suspect. He has access to all your files. But, he had no reason to alert Axel and Alabaster to the ambush. Breath choked in Mercedes’ throat. And she couldn’t do that—she couldn’t do that to Pax or herself.

She knew this—suspecting friends—came with the job. But, that had been a distant thought when she—terrified and desperate for some good to come out of the inevitable slaughter of her Cohort—realized she would make the perfect spy for Camp Othrys. Before she knew the ease of Lucille’s smile, how special Pax could make her feel, how horrifying Flynn was.

Pain spread along her forearm. She dug her nails in. Underneath were the lines of her Roman tattoo, of Mercury’s symbol and her bars of service. The marks didn’t vanish when she pledged her soul to Kronos, when she forsook any chance of joining her real family after death. Was there a chance Allah would understand? To what extent could you step into the dark to stop tyrants and false idols before you were consumed?

When she inhaled sharply, she could almost taste the scent of her centurion’s perfume, a smell as comforting as her mother’s brewing coffee. She thought about that home—Rome. About her real home in Spain. About her real name, the one she had to abandon, and the one she took upon joining the legion, now reserved for her contacts in New Rome. She could never keep a name. If she did, and something went wrong, if she couldn’t do her job right, legionnaires or titans might find her real family and kill them.

Like not finding a satisfying suspect for this report.

Life seemed complicated when she lived in Granada, helping to raise her brothers while her mother worked. It seemed more complicated when she had to abandon them to keep the monsters away. Tiny Mercedes could have never predicted life would get worse.

Allah does not burden a soul beyond what it can bear.

But, she didn’t feel that right now. She’d been so careful not to feel anything. And then Pax gave her this stupid hijab and she was dumb enough to kiss him.

Her breath felt tight; legs, weak. She had to lean against the wall for support. How many homes can you have before none of them are a “home?” How many identities can you wear before all of them lose meaning? How many times could you pledge a soul before it shatters?

There were no answers to these questions, and Mercedes still had to pick from one of her friends to throw to Luke as a scapegoat and sacrifice.

Mercedes slid to the floor, pressed her face completely into the hijab and sobbed.

Authors note:

Thank you for reading! I’m sorry for the hiatus--I aim to get back to a bimonthly schedule. Every time I edited this piece, it just didn’t feel right/good enough. I hope you enjoyed anyway! I also hope all of you are well and being gentle with yourselves! Stay tuned for one of my first (sorta?) fluff pieces, Alabaster’s Delicate Dance of Chance (hopefully during the month of October >>’‘)

#Tales from Mount Othrys #TFMO #PJO #HOO #fanfiction #It has been so long since I've done this that I don't remember my normal tags >>''#I love Mercedes but I'm terrified of doing her POV #I feel like it will never quite be right.#Though--in theory--the last chapter of TFMO is supposed to be in her POV #Something that doesn't take place right after TFMO--more a retrospect thing #we'll see if I stick to it > . <#Also--I wish all of you cute weasels at some point in your day

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meimi-haneoka · 5 years ago

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Clear Card chapter 39 - review

AT LONG LAST!

Real life really takes the will to do lengthy things away from me, even if it’s for fun.

But I love Cardcaptor Sakura so much, so I take this almost as a “duty” to pay respect to this wonderful series. I love when things are done properly and not left “hanging”, so here we go, even if a bit delayed compared to usual: (long)THOUGHTS ON CHAPTER 39 under the cut!!

I’d like to start with a small consideration before going with plot-centric rants: I have noticed the post with this chapter obtained a lot less notes than usual, but it’s a trend that has been going on for a while. I’m not really sure what could be the cause, it can range from Tumblr shadowbanning posts from the tag search if they include a link (so the posts are not visible that much anymore, despite my efforts to make a second text post), to people preferring other sources to get their chapters (and that’s fine), to the fandom moving altogether to other sites and communities, or....to the fandom’s interest slowly fading away. Since it seems we’re almost going towards the climax, I’m not sure how to react to the latter option. I think this is supposed to be the moment in which the fandom’s interest is the more active, but I could be wrong. Anyway, if that’s the case, then I guess it’s really time for CLAMP to wrap it up.

Without further ado, let’s analyze this chapter!

The color page was L O V E L Y. Oh my gosh Sakura-chan, look how grown up you appear here. More beautiful than ever. She’s even re-using a sweater from another color illustration, lol. It’s perfectly fitting with the autumn season and I loved it!

Let’s bother her a little more

Starting off from where we left in ch. 38, Sakura is blown away and Syaoran tries to have The Shadow look for her once again, but....”fooled once, not fooled twice” thinks Kaito, isn’t it? Kaito wants Sakura to do stuff on her own, so he literally “throws” her into a dark tree hole, where her shadow can’t be traced, because well....there’s none. He isn’t looking particularly amused while he does this, well, what I mean is that it’s not like he’s having sadistic fun, causing her troubles. His face is kinda apologetic when he's all “here comes the knight but thanks, no thanks”, as if he understands that Syaoran wants to save her, but he cannot really do otherwise. Sakura needs to do this alone, in order to produce a fitting card. Would you care to tell us readers what this damned card is, Kaito?

The first conversation

Kaito is in the mood for some memories. Memories of the first time he spoke with Akiho. I found it interesting that he used the verb “having a conversation with” rather than “meeting”, and the reason is also pretty easy to guess: for him, it wasn’t the first time. He saw her (although from afar) when he analyzed her through that ball, to determine whether she had magical powers or not. And their first conversation didn’t start in the best of ways: Akiho’s first reaction is to run away. But what can you expect from a little girl who was used to be considered a bother and only basing on her magical capabilities, and not as a human being. So when Kaito asks her if he bothered her, her confusion is plain visible on her face: Is he talking to me? Me, who is usually the bothering one here?

And so she’s surprised big time when he actually shows to be interested to know which book she was reading. NO ONE, I repeat, NO ONE ever did that for her. Remember what environment she grew up in. He is the first and only one wanting to even have a conversation with her (her family only made “questions”). By the way, thanks to Impatient Scans, we actually aknowledge Akiho here might be reading “Momo”, by German writer Michael Ende. That opens a whole new box of questions, starting from “IS THIS where Momo takes her name from? Who gave it to her? What is her real name? Could the story actually be giving plot hints?”

All in all, let me just say I loved this flashback. I always love when there’s a Kaito or Akiho flashback, because I’m so hungry for their background story. I know the story has to sacrifice a bit of the other characters in order to show more of them, because 30 pages are just 30 pages, after all. But it’s ok, that’s also the reason why I’m glad I warmed up to both of these 2, because every month I have more things to look forward to, and I generally am never disappointed with a chapter’s content.

There’s no turning back

As if on cue, Momo starts an inner monologue on Kaito and Akiho, and how much he changed for her.

He really didn’t care about anything, before. He couldn’t be bothered to do anything. He was a very apathetic boy, some fans have theorized he could be on the brink of depression himself without even realizing it (again, consider what a shitty environment he grew up in, a den of delinquents).

And yet.

Among all those criminals, he raised his hand. His voice loud and clear, “I’ll go”. He, the boy who found everything a bother, decided something for himself for the first time ever, and to assist someone else, no less. Momo wonders, to herself, what changed inside of you? Cause something must have changed.

This was another part I really really loved. All the memories of their travels together. You can see the different countries they’ve been to, and their body language, that implies there was still some kind of “distance” between them. Akiho seems still kinda “wary” of Kaito in these shots (and with a reason, who would trust anyone if they were raised up like she did?). But we can see them being more relaxed and at ease the more they spend time together, and it’s on this time spent together that Momo puts the focus on. It’s where Kaito should ideally start to find the answer to the big, complex question.

What made you do this?

Momo muses over how Kaito learned to do all sorts of things in order to please Akiho and to make her live in a healthy environment (remember Akiho saying that Kaito makes by hand all her meals?), finally not neglected but at the center of someone’s attentions. She makes a random example on the tea. Why someone who didn’t give sh*t about how tea tasted, went all the way down to learn how to make it in a delicious way? I love how CLAMP cleverly used the word 術 with the furigana “sube”, which means “how to do something”, but with the same kanji and the reading “jutsu” it also means “spell”. This probably to imply that some magic might have been included in this learning process, err. XD

I also loved how Momo thinks that Kaito needs to look at the truth straight in the eyes, without turning away. Could he be scared to admit the truth? Loving someone (and hear me again, love of any kind, not romantic love exclusively) comes with a little fear. For someone who never experienced it, all the more. It’s a totalizing feeling that might destabilize you. If he doesn’t wake up to this, it’s gonna be too late. That’s literally what Momo says.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE SHOCKER OF THIS MONTH! Momo and Akiho’s mom knew eachother, and Momo even received her ring and the task to look over her daughter, and Sakura as well. “My Alice, and that girl’s Alice”. I mean, I knew Akiho’s mom was going to be important, but dammit she really looks like she’s been the one moving some plot threads since long time!!! I love this.

The nightmare

And here comes the part where I start screaming “WHAT THE F*CK IS HAPPENING HERE”. Sakura finds herself in a strange land with big flowers (she’s still tiny, let’s remember that), flowers that can actually speak. At her surprised face, the flowers reply “You wished for this, didn’t you?”.

EH?

And then we get to this creepy scene of Akiho appearing out of nowhere, with her experiment outfit, calling Sakura in a dead tone. I was seriously freaking out at the panel composition. Made entirely to evoke creepiness. Apparently, we’re in Alice’s story. Yes. BUT WHICH ALICE?

The strange reality turns into a nightmare. Literally.

Everything turns dark, Sakura is having another one of her dreams. The “shaaan” and the clocks are a sign of it. MCF appears behind Akiho, who this time is in the same position she was when she was turned into a magical artifact by her clan. Sakura’s face twists in horror even before MCF opens his robe, because she knows who’s under it. The last time she saw MCF in a dream was also the last time she saw who was under it. Her heart and mind scarred irreparably forever. And there he is. Syaoran, dead in his eyes. Sakura’s shrieks “NO!!” in horror, she completely refuses to believe this is a real thing. Now, I don’t really know what’s happening here, because after this, everything breaks and she captures GUESS WHAT, the “Break” card. So it’s hard to determine if it was a real dream or only an illusion. Maybe Kaito made her go into her subconscious to find bits and pieces of what she experienced before, in order to shake her enough to produce the right card. Because, if all of this is coming from her, then it means a part of her brain does remember despite the time rewindings of Kaito. And it’s very important. She saw Akiho’s past when she was trapped inside Akiho’s book, but all of that was erased when Kaito rewound time. Well, not from her heart, however, because she hugged Akiho tightly while crying. So now what do we have here? A part of what she’s not supposed to remember. I think this vision is a twisted mix of horrifying things she saw previously, and indeed her natural reaction is to destroy in pieces what she’s seeing. Quite literally, since the two kanji for “Break” actually mean “Destruction”. Is this the card Kaito was looking for? I’m not sure. Because he said that “Rewind” went quite close to it, and I can’t make out any relation between “Break” and “Rewind”. I still have the impression the card he might want her to make has got more to do with “restoring” things to how they were before. So, if it’s instead Kaito the one who made her see those things, he might have wanted her to wish to bring everything as it was before. HE needed a strong reaction from her. But she made “Break” instead. Will it be ok for him so we can move on to the climax?

I have to admit I kinda loved the more creepy and nightmare-ish atmosphere of the last 10 pages. Sakura evidently has got something big going on, and it’s time she talks to Syaoran about this. It’s time she tells him fair and square what’s she’s seeing more and more often. It’s about him too, at this point. She can’t keep this a secret anymore, not when it’s eating her sanity and peace of mind away.

Next chapter is going to be published in the February issue, in stores on the last days of December if everything goes as usual (for New Year’s they always anticipate the release of that issue). So we have another unexpected break as I already said, and I kinda figured it when I saw CLAMP going on a trip 20 days ago. It’s ok, we can do this! If we’re approaching the climax, it make sense that they take vacation now, so afterwards they can work fully straight into the finale.

Thanks for reading this long rant, and I wait for your comments!

#Card Captor Sakura #cardcaptor sakura #CLAMP #ccs spoilers #ccsakura #clear card arc #clear card manga #chapter 39

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mariisseething · 5 years ago

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Analyzing Hero Costumes: Girls of Class 1-A

My obsession has spiraled out of control. Let me roast analyze these babes. I’m dumb. I’m tired. I’m gay. Let’s do this.

Warning: I’m a cynical, lazy-ass critic with no consistent taste. Don’t expect a fair analysis.

(This is just for fun, please don’t get mad at me for being an undereducated weeb! I went into writing this with only the knowledge I’ve obtained through watching the show and reading the manga. I don’t know everything about the costumes, and I don’t want to either)!

Ashido Mina (Pinky)

Babe, imma be frank here.

I love her, but—

that shit ugly.

Funcionality: Mina’s quirk (Acid) comes from her hands and feet. If I remember correctly, she has passages in her shoes that her...foot..acid.....can pass through, and her hands are fully exposed. So her costume is “practical”, and works with her quirk.

Design: As I said before, that shit ugly. The body suit has the worst pattern and color combination I’ve ever seen. (Like if Sully from Monster’s Inc. was turned into a cow and hated it). Her tiddies should be popping out any second now, which isn’t great. Her weird armpit vest with it’s stupid fluffy collar is quite reminiscent of Hawks’ jacket, which leads me to believe that their costumes were made by the same designer. (Many of the designers in the BNHA universe put calling-cards in their costumes). Her white mask is pointless, but at least it matches the fluff on her collar. Her boots, though they have a purpose, are ugly as sin. The pale yellow doesn’t match any other piece in the ensemble, and the Dabi-scar colored purple makes me sad. Hate that.

Total Score: 2/10

Her costume does almost nothing to enhance her quirk, and it’s hideous. The only reason it got two points was because of the shoe holes, and the possibility that it’s connected to my boy Hawks.

Seriously, this is some Seasame Street lookin-ass bullshit.

No hate on Mina, she’s lovely, but her taste is atrocious. (see: her bedroom).

Asui Tsuyu (Froppy)

Okay, okay bitch I see you.

I’m here for this.

Funcionality: Tsu’s quirk (Frog) requires a decent amount of flexibility from clothing. Spandex works for that I guess. Normally, I would automatically fail this costume for having goddamn toe “socks”, but for Tsuyu they’re nessecary. Having her individual toes chiseled out helps her grip onto shit when she’s kicking ass. It looks like her gloves are attached to her body suit, which is rad, but I’m not sure what the purpose of that waist belt-thing is. If anything, the chunky pieces of her costume would make it harder for her to swim. I also have no fucking clue what that head piece is. I once thought they were like binoculars or something, but she’s never put them on her face so...they wouldn’t fit....on her face..huh.....I’m so stupid bro.

Design: Lets start with a positive, the color scheme slaps. Everything goes together, and the dark green even matches her hair. The bodysuit has a cool structure, and I can definitely appreciate the slight turtleneck and boot-esq feature; however, the chunky wrist pieces, belt, neck/chest-thing, and head piece confuse me. I guess they’re there for fashion, gutter fashion. Shitty crap face fashion. Ugly butthole fashion. FILTH! I need to calm down holy shit—

Total Score: 6/10

The look honestly only lost points for the random ass statement pieces. Water terrains are Tsuyu’s specialty, and a clunky outfit would certainly slow her down underwater.

The toe shit, turtleneck, thigh-high “boots”, and color scheme are pretty dope though.

(Also, she only has three toes but frogs have four).

(My Hero Academia: Cancelled).

Hagakure Toru (Invisible Girl)

So, here’s the real question.

Is she naked?

Short answer: I dunno.

Funcionality: So she’s invisible, right? A good costume would emphasize that. I can only assume she wears the boots and gloves for comfort and so her allies can see where she is. If she wants to go full invisible, she just has to take them off. At one point, it was confirmed that she was topless during the sports festival, but we’ve had no further updates on her costume. A few people have theorized that her costume is made of her hair (assuming she has hair). We know that this is possible, as Mirio’s costume is made of his hair so he can remain clothed while his quirk is activated. The only issue would be making an outfit out of something you can’t see. If I were Toru, I would choose to fight nude because, I-uh...hmm, I-I can do what I want SHUT UP!

Design: There’s not much to critique here. The shade of blue on her gloves is cute, and the pink stripes don’t make much of an impact. The shoes are just about the most boring thing I’ve ever seen, like why are they beige??? What are they supposed to match? I just—ugh, beige??? What the fuck Horikoshi...smh.

Total Score: 5/10

Since we don’t know if the “hair-costume” thing is canon, I can’t rate it any higher. If that is true, it would be an 7/10. The outfit does its job, but I’m bored and beige sucks.

(Btw I don’t trust her...)

(Sketchy chick right here).

(Sketchy chick with some ugly-ass beige shoes).

Jirou Kyouka (Earphone Jack)

Aww.

She’s cute!

Look at her little face, d’awwwweeeeee!

Funcionality: The lovely Kyouka’s quirk (Earphone Jack), makes absolutely no sense to me. Like, I get that she can hear better and can eavesdrop really well, but how does she...make loud noises??? With the speakers??? Plugging earbuds into a speaker doesn’t make............noise, and the speakers aren’t part of her body. Whatever, back to the analysis. The speakers on her hands and calves amplify sound somehow, and her earlobes are exposed. It’s works.

Design: The speaker boots are basic, but acceptable. She’s got some comfy looking black pants, and a trendy salmon-colored top. Her jacket is iconic, and she’s wearing a choker. (+1,000,000 points for that). The white gloves don’t match shit, but they’re fingerless so I’ll let it slide. Her headphones almost match....meh. I don’t care. (+10 for the face paint).

Total Score: 8/10

Listen, I’d give her a 10 but this costume just isn’t....gimmicky, enough for me? She’s a superhero for fucksake! Now’s the time to dress your goddamn best! The look is practical, and seems to be her taste, I just disagree with her choices. Sue me. I’d either wanna fight in the wackiest most dangerous getup you’ve ever seen, or completely naked. Either way, I’m getting arrested. Jirou needs to get on my fucking level.

Uraraka Ochaco (Uravity)

I don’t know boys,

it seems like she might be...

round.

Fuck sharp angles!

Funcionality: Ochaco’s quirk (Zero Gravity) only requires her hands to work. More specifically, her fingertips. Uh, yeah those are some nude fingertips. *Ahem* moving on. Actually wait, since she often uses her quirk on herself it would be helpful for her to eliminate as much extra weight as possible, so I’m hoping that all of the accessories are hollow. They better be, or I’m gonna start throwing hands with Kohei Horikoshi.

Design: When Ochaco first got her hero costume she was surprised by how tight it was, even saying that it wasn’t supposed to be that tight. Bitch, how could it have been loose? I don’t...fuck it. I like the colors, I like the boots a lot actually, but who cares about that, I wanna talk about her fucking chastity belt. Who she keepin out? (Jesus Christ she’s a child, tone it down Mari). Do you think it’s comfortable to walk around with a chunk of plastic on your crotch?! I don’t know, seriously, is it? Maybe she’s trying to hide something...a hip dip perhaps?! Jk hip dips are stupid, that’s how bones work, don’t be ashamed. Her wrist...spheres... have handles on them, no comment, and whereas I usually LOVE chokers—that one is stupid and I hate it. Curvy little shit.

Total Score: 8/10

I like it overall, but some things are just too strange to overlook. (i.e. the chastity belt, wrist cuff handles, and the ugly choker). This costume doesn’t really scream Uraraka to me either. It’s a bit unoriginal to me.

I just don’t love it.

(Why are her fists clenched? Is she trying to fight? I could snap her like the twig she is and steal her girlfriend).

(Assuming she has one).

Yaoyorozu Momo (Creati)

Oohooohohohoho

hooohohoho

hoooooo mAN do I have some WORDS for this one!

Funcionality: Momo’s quirk (Creation) does require quite a bit of skin to be exposed, but I’m not sure why that skin HAS to be her boobs. She’s got thighs, a stomach, a back, an upper chest, and arms. Why do her Russian nesting dolls have to come out of her tiddies??? Okay, actually, she doesn’t make that many things with her tits. So....why’re they out? This costume definitely lets her quirk run wild, maybe too much.

Design: The red is pretty, and I can tolerate the sandy yellow. Her shoes are unimportant, so let’s just gloss over those. Now, WHAT is that thing? A makeshift, tan colored, plastic tube mini...skirt? I know she has a shelf on her ass that she carries books on, but doesn’t she have a cellphone? Google? Can’t she just remember the molecular make-up of a cannon? (Because she only makes cannons now for some reason). Have we ever even seen her reading those books? Can she read? A large portion of her midsection/chest is exposed up to another one of those weird chest pieces and a neck jacket. Maybe she should cut the neck coat off and glue it to her tiddies.

Total Score: 1/10

Listen, Horikoshi clearly understands what Momo’s costume needs, but he has no idea how to make that. This outfit IS inappropriate, no matter how you look at it. She’s a minor, and I don’t like the idea that she’s running around 75% naked. The only part of this that I like is the shade of red. That’s not good.

I really like Momo, she’s a good character, it’s unfortunate that we have to sexualize her so much. Can’t girls just be smart without also being eye candy for creepy 30 year old weebs?

——————

That’s it for this analysis. I plan on posting more stuff like this since I enjoy writing it so much! You should totally follow me so you don’t miss my future ramblings! 💖

Unless you hated it.

I wouldn’t blame you.

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turingtestr · 4 years ago

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mobile post of all my information for the anon who wanted a mobile rules / bio. i could make a google docs but i’m burnt out. please also note, i haven’t even GLANCED at my bio i wrote for elijah since 2018, so uh... i should probably do that. sorry if it’s bad.

ONE. due to the nature of my roleplaying style, there will absolutely be mature themes here and there on this blog. all and any mature themes that involve sexual topics of the nsfw variety will only be written with muses that are 18+. as for those people that are 18+ that follow me, i fully understand if you do not want to write any nsfw content, and if any threads lead to that we can fade to black. just ask me, i’m fairly easy going and more than happy to make people feel welcome. it is not a requirement to rp nsfw content with me and i will never force anyone to do that. !

TWO. this is a selective/private blog. i really only roleplay with mutuals, however you’re more than welcome to reply to any of my open starters if i specify that you can but just know i might not reply because i (1) don’t know your muse, (2) have zero muse for the reply and will get to it later, (3) have no interest in the thread, or (4) am uncomfortable with something on your blog. roleplaying is also a HOBBY for me. i work full time and sometimes i genuinely cannot reply fast. if you hassle me to reply to things, i will not want to roleplay with you and it will turn me off from roleplaying with you completely. in fact, if you harrass me to reply to threads, i will automatically unfollow you because i’m not about that life of being pushed to reply to things. if you spam my follow button to try and get my attention, that will result in a soft block on your behalf. please don’t test my patience. if you do not have your ooc name on your page i will not follow you, due to me thinking hiding your ooc alias is shady and sketchy af.

THREE. i love shipping and i love roleplaying so much. this is not a single ship blog and none of the ships i portray are at the same time (unless further discussed with muns, of course).MY PRIMARY CHLOE SHIPPING PARTNER IS @TURINGTESTEE, which means that if kamski mentions chloe in a verse, he's most likely talking about this chloe. if there are any verses that kamski is going to have one single ship, i will make sure to let people know that in the verse description section once i make it. otherwise, my muse is a free for all. if i do have mains, which will be listed, they are just the people i will reply to the most, however, i won't actually limit myself to only roleplaying with them and i hope my mains respect and are comfortable with that.

FOUR. tagging triggers is something that means a lot to me as i am not comfortable with NEEDLES OR PUPPETS on my dashboard so i blacklist needles tw and puppets tw. i know it’s weird but hey, we all have our things. please let me know if you need anything tagged- even if i don’t personally follow you. you deserve a clean and safe dashboard to roleplay in. WARNING.

FIVE.anon hate will be deleted on the spot. no exceptions. i don’t care about your petty feelings and i won’t tolerate them in the slightest. i’m not here to entertain horrible people’s opinions of myself. constructive criticisms are allowed, but at the respect of myself reblogging a meme asking for it specifically.

SIX. mutuals are allowed to ask for my wire or discord, since i use both and would love to rp on both. i also play dead by daylight on ps4, so if you’d be down to game as well, feel free to hit me up there too! overwatch on ps4 is ITSGEOFFREY so you can add me there too.

SEVEN. i very rarely will send in passwords, as i do not require it and i should not have to be tested on your blog to be allowed to roleplay with someone. usually if you have a password, i genuinely just didn’t think to look for it and i apologize if this upsets you but you probably won’t see any from me.

EIGHT. please take into consideration while dealing with kamski that he has high signs of NPD & a huge god complex.

-----

BIOGRAPHY

NAME: Elijah Dean Kamski ALIASES: Eli, Lij, Boss, Kamski GENDER: Male AFFILIATION: Cyberlife Technologies, currently retired AGE: 36

THE START

there's many days where the kamski family would have a bit of struggles, as elijah grew up. he never knew much about his father, seeing as his father passed when he was a very young boy — no more than six. he'd never grown to know too much about him, and his mother didn't overly want to share about him, so it was safe to say the woman had a reason for not telling elijah and that was that.

growing up with a single mother who had severe epilepsy, elijah tried his very hardest to make his mother's life as easy as possible. school days would be very short considering he'd go straight home from school in order to watch after his mother. some days with his mother, depending on the medication the doctors had recommended her, would be better than others. she always appreciated her son's committment to being with her and he was determined to make life easy on the two of them. using the money she got from the state, she'd try to urge her son go into extra cirricular activiies he wanted to do, however he only dismissed the ideas, claiming that he'd rather be home. he'd use the money to spend on textbooks, wanting to develop his own version of a Vagus nerve stimulation device. one that would make sure to surge with electrical pulses before his mother even remotely had to move herself to activate the device. computer engineering was his goal, and he'd stop at nothing to get through that.

as life continued on, elijah continued to shove his head into books and continuously study. he pushed through high school faster than anyone had expected, at age ELEVEN he had shown his studies to multipile colleges, showing his theories on how to better create medical devices.

THE CHANGE

the university of colbridge had been a struggle for elijah, being the youngest student there. studying medical engineering was easy, and he had decided to double major in computer engineering as well, to perhaps attempt to integrate the two. though school was difficult, the hardest part was being away from his mother. the school had refused to let him travel back and forth, saying that freshmen had to stay on campus as apart of regulations and requirements from the state. when he started college, his mother had decidded upon asking the state for a caregiver- on the off chance that something did happen. with the VNS that was already implanted in her, she was able to have a job during the day, but the caretaker was supposed to just oversee her during the nights. it settled eli's anxiety about his mother a little bit. four months into his freshman year, eli had woken up to a call from the san antonio police, letting him know that his mother had been rushed to the hospital after having a grand mal seizure and hitting her head on their marble counters. apparently the caretaker assigned to look after his mother hadn't even shown up that night. he quickly rushed home, terrified what had happened.

something, however that night had turned elijah into a bitter person. into someone against humanity. though his mother had survived the seizure, things weren't the same for either of them. after knowing his mother's caretaker had ABANDONED her, elijah had fully decided to go more into engineering to create a way for humans to be more reliable. what was more reliable than humanity? MACHINES. something that would always obey. obedient machines that had a purpose and a task and would see it through. dropping fully out of medical engineering, elijah settled for computer science and engeineering instead. the utter drive to create a better human than humans themselves was so strong that by the age sixteen, elijah had worked together with a team of classmates to create the first medical assistant androids. REVOLUTIONARY KICKSTARTER model 100, or RK for short. RK100 was born and tested on his mother, who seeemed quite uneasy, but only wanted to support her son.

ENTER CYBERLIFE

though it wasn't perfect, the ark series took off. mainly piquing interest in san diego, california. the backbones of the mega-billion dollar company that would be founded by elijah kamski and his cohorts suddenly had at least three hundred backers trying to support the small business after seeing what a success the RK100 was at being not only a companion for his mother, but also how helpful the RK was at it's job. the medical caretakers were able to do so much, and suddenly with the money that was being thrown at the group, elijah became more than enthused with power. hungry for it, almost.

making more medical related androids were being highly requested, and the team set out to create diffrent functions for androids, trying to perfect everything.

taking into consideration his mother — his finest mentor and most trusted support, and what she thought of the androids, he sought out to consult with his old AI professor, Amanda Stern, on how to make the androids a bit more lifelike. It was hard, at least for what his mother admitted, for a human to trust a machine that looked like a machine to help themselves out through life. upon her advice, eli threw himself into work, the team of cyberlife growing into a business, and then a wide scale company alongside elijah's work. no matter what, the man was the front of the company, having done the majority of the coding and research in what brought the androids to life. the company sought after targeting the cheapest land developments in the united states in order to make their headquarters and warehouses, bringing CYBERLIFE to DETROIT, MICHIGAN where it currently resides.

it takes kamski four years after founding cyberlife to come out with a brand new appearance for his androids. something human like after struggling and struggling to engineer the perfect components to theorize biological functions. this equiptment created became biocompotenents, but it still wasn't enough to make thes he was creating look HUMAN. but after all the struggles and finally figuring out a way to regulate something akin to blood into the android's system, elijah kamski in the year 2022 releases the RT REVOLUTIONARY TURING model; a personal assistant to elijah kamski that uses the alias ' CHLOE '. Cyberlife has been thurst into the spotlight and once again Elijah Kamski realizes that these advancements in the world have honestly made people envious. the public demands the rights to these androids and while he still is bitter over humanity and the lack of reliabilty that humans provide for the world, he obliges. Cyberlife goes public with their androids and the public are now able to put a price tag on androids.

THE REVOLUTION

the world that assumes elijah kamski is nothing but a greedy, power-hungry boss of a CEO for cyberlife overlooks one important fact: he still wants revenge on the world. his mother passes on at the age 43, a few years before his greatest mentor amanda stern passes. the loss of both role models awakens a vengeful force in elijah kamski. one that wants to remind the world that mortality is relevant for all. cyberlife has created over thousands of models, all for different functions and he looks upon his kingdom with hopeful eyes as well as bitterness. humanity has become less reliant. they've become lazier. androids have become the working force, for the most part, and while elijah sees that as a positive note because it is moving forward away from the laziness and unreliability of humanity — the CEO is fully aware that his androids are becoming more and more human like the more and more they develop. the deviant base code is never once touched. always overlooked by cyberlife developers who dare not touch the work of the first working android made by elijah kamski himself. while he's aware he, himself, is mortal just like the rest of humanity, seeing his creations become sentient, to rise up against the laziness and unreliable humanity that he lives among has been his goal. he just awaits the REVOLUTIONARY KICKSTARTER 200 to actually get pushed to the brink of going through his code.

now it's just a game of waiting to see who pushes who, and who comes up on top. it's always a delight to play god.

THE SIBLING ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

i'm not going to be writing a brand new biography for the gavin / elijah brothers universe, but i need to work out how they can be related with my current bio, or i might just go off of a gavin's biography. shrug emote.

#〉 your save file has become corrupted. / OUT OF CHARACTER

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elftwink · 5 years ago

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What are your feelings about wtnv condos?

WELL, since you asked:

for one i think most everything has been said about cecil calling carlos perfect prior to condos and imperfect after it. i agree w/all that, i think its beautiful and it makes me cry and also it’s so cohesive and such a good character development thing BUT like i said, it has been covered so i won’t waffle about that. but i will waffle about the way that perfection is presented in and of itself and how that presentation is tied to night vale’s larger themes. namely, this line:

“I understood that the cubes are perfect! I understood that this is how we become perfect. I understood that what I was seeing was the way to perfection. And I don’t know how I understood this. Thinking about it now, nothing about it seems good, let alone perfect.” [bolding mine]

night vale is far from the only media around that covers the idea that perfection is a myth that people spend their whole lives chasing. i think what it does that works so well is that it never portrays perfection as completely unattainable— in fact, the plot of the episode hinges on the fact that the character can access a perfect existence— but rather as alien. so far removed from a real human experience that looking at it from an outsider perspective, as cecil does after the weather is over in that line, makes it very nearly incomprehensible.

and moreover, the people who are “perfect” within the context of the episode are not, in any tangible or understandable way, “better” than they were before— which, as far as my personal media consumption goes, is a fairly novel twist. off the top of my head i can think of several stories or plot points that revolve around a protagonist being offered a perfect existence and refusing. basically any media that involves omnipotent beings will have a plotline like this or similar and stories about human beings refusing like, divinity or power or wealth or skill or whatever it might be are kind of a staple of like, every genre. HOWEVER the idea tends to be that they have something to gain from that; power or wealth or status or knowledge or something, something that might be massive and that they could never hope to achieve or accrue on their own.

the condos offer no understandable improvement. they don’t even offer the promise of improvement. the demonstrations of perfection and the examples we are given as an audience are not glorious or grandiose but foreign and terrifying, something that the characters openly admit.

“Janice Rio (from down the street) saw a city. A lost city. A dead city, nestled in a jungle – the kind of jungle that only ever existed in books written by people who have never seen a jungle. The city stood, and Janice stood, in perfect dread, its doors were open jaws. Its windows were open jaws. Its roads and avenues were gaping mouths and open jaws. That dead city teetered. It rotted in its jungle tomb, but…it was not empty. And she started to run. Run through the thick foliage of that absurd place, she shouted and ran.”

“Roger Singh (who had been able to buy a condo with the spine) saw a cave, underwater, in an ocean far to the north. And the water around him was dark – so dark! – that he wasn’t sure even which way led to the surface, to life…and which way led down only to the deep silent. He gasped, but found he had no breath…and no need to breathe. And there was this cave that smoldered with a light, a light that was charged and alive. And shadows moved against the light, cast by…what?…within the cave. And then he swam towards it, uncertain whether he was guest, or sacrifice, or invulnerable dreamer. And he heard a song from the cave, and he knew it, and it was perfect. And he sang along, but at the same time, he had never heard that song before in his life. And what was life? What made it his? It all seemed so small, part of the world that didn’t exist anymore.”

and like, to some extent, so what, right? who cares if perfection is seen as desirable vs unknowable? what difference does it make? well, i will tell you/theorize about it abstractly. i find that this framing of perfection makes it much much clearer that wtnv intends imperfection to be celebrated rather than tolerated.

the order of events is not imperfection is human -> being human is good -> imperfection is good, but rather, imperfection is good -> humans are imperfect - > being human is good. cecil says pretty much this when he says: “And those imperfections in our reality are the seams and the cracks into which our out-sized love can seep and pool. And sometimes we are annoyed, and disappointed, and that too is a part of how love works. It is not a perfect system, but… Oh, well.”

and i mean, even in and of itself that’s a deeply moving thing to say. this post could end here with me saying that night vale’s framing of imperfection as not just necessary but integral to experiencing life in a way that is worthwhile makes for an incredibly powerful story.

but condos is part of a larger story. and i’ve talked about parade day & old oak doors before, and briefly mentioned all right in that post. one of the most oft quoted night vale bits is the candle wax spiel from a memory of europe (the “time is like wax” speech). with these, and with countless other moments across the show, over and over again, wtnv is about the value of right now. of action. of effort. of choice.

what actually sets night vale perfection apart is that above all else, perfection is stagnant. the people in the condos float motionless and frozen. fading away. even when cecil says that they are able to be contacted, the action is still taken by the people left behind, imperfect: “Walking through where the condos once stood, you can hear their voices — but distantly, faintly. And if you reach out when you hear that voice, if you reach out and feel for them, you too will get a vision of some far-off place, a place that is, in its own way, in a way perhaps that can never be explained, perfect.” these people no longer do anything. they no longer live, even though they are presumably alive, in their own perfect way. the reason the condos offer no improvement is that improvement is growth, it’s movement, it’s action. improvement and perfection are antonyms. you improve for the sake of improvement, for betterment, rather than to attain perfection.

when cecil escapes from the condos, he does so through resistance, through fighting, through choosing imperfection actively. throughout the show, things happen because people try. they do. they live and they grow and they change and they discover and they fucking try. and when they don’t it’s to make a point about inaction, to show you that being static is easy and nice but that even in the face of all that, it’s important to try. and you try knowing you could fail. and you try knowing the odds are stacked, knowing that the world is chaotic and things don’t always happen for a reason. you try if it doesn’t personally affect you. you try if you have never tried before or if you couldn’t or didn’t last time.

i promise i’m almost done but i couldn’t mention all that without saying something about how community is tied up so tight with those values that you can’t tear them apart. the way in which things happen is rarely because cecil does something on his own but because the town does something, together. relationships are built on communication and effort and trying, from one-on-one to city wide. the entire show is fundamentally built on balancing your inclusion in the community of night vale with your independence and ability (& sometimes duty) to act as a single person. you can stand alone, and if you must, you should, but you shouldn’t have to. and hopefully you don’t have to.

disclaimer that i’m way behind on wtnv so i could be contradicted by more recent episodes and also this isn’t nearly long enough to really get Into It(tm) and also the wtnv has covered such a variety of topics that it’s very hard to make generalizations like this, but even so, i hope i’ve done it justice. also shoutout to cecilspeaks for all the quotes, here’s the full transcript for condos if anyone wants/needs it

anyway, on a final note, i think cecil really says it best so:

“A perfect place that you will never visit. And that is the best news of all. Listeners, I send you now back out into the night. And it’s dangerous out there, and it’s lonely, and it’s not perfect.

Goodnight, all of you here, goodnight, all of you listeners, and goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.”

#anyway. i love welcome to night vale #anonymous #answered

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tomeandflickcorner · 5 years ago

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Episode Review- The Real Ghostbusters: Slimer, Come Home

Okay, we got a Slimer centric episode. This should be interesting.

It turns out that there’s been a recent spike in poltergeist activity in the city. But the strange thing is that these particular poltergeists seem to defy the usual Modus operandi. Usually, poltergeists are attached to one place and grow weaker the further they travel from that set place. But these poltergeists seem to be able to roam freely through the city and are attacking random targets. And even though the Ghostbusters have been tracking them for the past three nights, the poltergeists continue to get the better of them. And this night is no different, as the poltergeists manage to trap the Ghostbusters inside a giant vortex before escaping through an open manhole. We also get our first glimpse of the de facto leader of the poltergeists. While the episode doesn’t directly state this ghost’s name, he is apparently called Ghash.

As the Ghostbuters return to the Firehouse, they theorize that perhaps the reason why these poltergeists aren’t growing weaker as they travel around is because Ghash is drawing energy from the smaller poltergeists. Rather like a battery absorbing power from other batteries. Or something to that effect. Either way, Winston can’t help but notice that the trip back to the Firehouse seems to be taking longer than usual. But it turns out that the other Ghostbusters were taking the long way back on purpose. Because it’s Winston’s birthday, and they were hoping to give Janine enough time to finish setting up his surprise party. When they finally make it back to the Firehouse, Peter, Ray and Egon somehow manage to beat Winston inside, as they are standing with Janine when Winston walks in. (Slight plothole, but whatever.) When the surprise party is revealed, Winston is clearly touched by the gesture. Especially when Janine wheels out his birthday cake. Which is a simply massive 3-tierd cake that must have cost them a good chunk of money to make, considering it must have been prepared by a professional bakery. I refuse to believe that the Firehouse has an oven that can handle baking a cake that size. Janine even announces it’s a Blueberry Fudge cake, which is Winston’s favorite. That seems like a rather exotic flavor for a cake, but perhaps that’s what makes it so very special.

Unfortunately, Slimer takes one look at the cake and instantly eats it all in one gulp. Because it’s Slimer, and he just can’t help himself sometimes. While Winston seems to take it in stride, this is apparently the final straw for Peter, who really lays into Slimer for this mishap. As a result, Slimer slinks off in misery, with Ray informing Peter that he might have hurt Slimer’s feelings. Although, Peter seems to wave that statement away, claiming that ghosts don’t have feelings. Which seems like a very odd thing to say, even for Peter. It would be one thing if the ghosts featured in this show were depicted as animals (because it’s a matter of debate on how complex an animal’s feelings are), but for the most part, all the ghosts we’ve seen so far clearly have some manner of human-like intelligence.

Either way, it seems as if Slimer was indeed particularly hurt by Peter’s recent reprimand. That evening, while the Ghostbusters were asleep, Slimer decided to run away, even leaving a goodbye note for them. The note is soon discovered by Janine when she returns to the Firehouse after making a trip to the doughnut shop. (While it does seem strange that there’s a doughnut shop that’s open in what is probably supposed to be the middle of the night, this is New York City. And there are probably a lot of 24 hour stores around.) She quickly alerts the Ghostbusters that Slimer has run away, accompanied by a rather decent joke of how Janine can understand Slimer’s illegible handwriting. Because she, as a secretary, can read anything. When they’re told that Slimer is gone, the Ghostbusters all promptly don rain jackets and head out into the pouring rain to find him. Except for Peter, who initially acts as if he’s completely okay with never seeing Slimer again. Although, a short time later, Peter also sneaks out to join in the search, proving that he really does care about Slimer deep down. While Janine does catch him sneaking out, she pretends to buy his excuse that he’s only going out for a walk.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Ghostbusters are continuing their search for Slimer. Egon is particularly concerned, as he remembers the poltergeists they were hunting earlier. He points out that if Ghash was indeed looking for more ghosts to provide him with more ghost energy, then he might end up targeting Slimer as well. And it would be really bad if Ghash managed to get Slimer in his grasp, since just one more recruit could make Ghash unbeatable. So obviously, time is off the essence. Especially since we see Slimer has indeed noticed Ghash’s followers convening inside a building and, out of what I guess was curiosity, decided to follow them.

Upon noticing Slimer amongst them, the group of poltergeists welcome him as a newcomer. And, in what I think was supposed to be an initiation ritual, Ghash takes it upon himself to teach Slimer how to be more frightening. This ultimately leads to a scene where Slimer, following Ghash’s instructions to scare the next human that comes around the corner, literally ‘runs’ headlong into Peter, who happened to be searching for Slimer in that exact part of town. The moment Peter spots Slimer, he radios the other Ghostbusters, informing them that he’s located their missing pet ghost.

The Ghostbusters quickly gather outside the building Peter saw Slimer entering, and Egon, upon checking his PKE meter, notices that the various frequencies of the different ghosts gathered inside the building are starting to merge into one. Which means that Ghash is starting to absorb his poltergeist followers. They hurry inside, only to find that Slimer had been forced to merge with Ghash as well. Knowing that they have to act quickly, the Ghostbusters set their proton throwers at precisely 500,000 Megahertz, which is Slimer’s unique frequency, in the hopes that they can pull Slimer back out before he can be fully absorbed by Ghash. This, of course, works. But Ghash has still merged with all the other poltergeists, which makes him even more formidable. Ghash manages to briefly capture the Ghostbusters, but Slimer intervenes by activating one of the Proton Packs lying nearby. This results in the Ghostbusters breaking free of Ghash’s hold. Once they’re free, they’re able to catch Ghash inside a Ghost Trap. But it’s not over yet, as the Ghost Trap was not designed to hold so many entities at once. So the Ghostbusters have to book it back to the Firehouse and load the trap inside the containment unit before it explodes. Naturally, they just make it in the nick of time.

In the episode’s final moments, the Ghostbusters instruct Slimer, who returned to the Firehouse along with them, to join them upstairs. There, it’s revealed that the Ghostbusters have put together a Welcome Back party for Slimer, informing him that they’re all glad he’s back and that they missed him. Even Peter admits that he missed Slimer. But only a little bit. Winston then reveals he put together a cake to celebrate. Except it’s the most unappetizing cake you could imagine. Nevertheless, Slimer consumes it in one bite like before. The moment he realizes he’s done it again, Slimer is immediately fearful, wondering if he’ll get yelled at the way he did before. Until Winston reveals that this time, they learned to anticipate Slimer’s actions and prepared a backup cake. And then, for some reason, Ray announces he taught Slmer a trick. Which, even though we don’t actually see this ‘trick,’ seems to entail Slimer barfing up the cake he just ate, as evidenced by everyone’s disgusted reactions to the so-called trick. Which makes me wonder why exactly Ray would even think to teach Slimer that.

Overall, it wasn’t bad for a Slimer centric. Though, while the show itself is very episodic in nature with no overarching storyline, this still comes across as a filler episode. Personally, I think the best moment in the episode was a short scene where Egon runs into a group of punks during his search for Slimer. This scene in particular was simply golden since a) Egon is completely oblivious to the fact that these punks are clearly looking to mug him or worse and b) the leader of the punks quickly decides to let Egon go, stating ‘my dad told me never to mess with anybody weirder than I am.’

(Click here to read more Ghostbuster reviews)

#the real ghostbusters #rgb episode review #ghostbusters franchise

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powerborntouch · 5 years ago

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“The Altered Adventure: Luck of the Guardians (Chp 2)” reaction

I’M SO PUMPED.

This post has been written on April 7. But you’ll see this after my hiatus.

Time to post about Luck of the Guardians. Now, if you don’t want spoilers, stop scrolling down and blacklist “altered adventure spoilers” or “luck of the guardians”

Again, too much telling than showing. I want to see Brayden be bullied by the guards, not be told that it happened “off screen.” How else is the audience going to feel sympathy for Brayden?

“power-hungry guardians” Narrator, what have the guardians done to you?! Who hurt you, narrator?

...Tayren and Gypsy met. ...why would you bomb that info on us like that? Now I’m just confused. Again, I would like to see this in a flashback, not told to us.

OK. We get character dialogue and behavior now. Good. Much better.

Dang...now I’m intrigued by what Divine (or Voice) is like in the novels. Nevermind, read a few pages ahead. Cyborg Dad is confirmed.

Anyways, I really like the character interactions.

I’m so confused. Who are the beings roaming around after Alpha’s death? The power-borns? The book explains later that it’s because the powerborns are the ones who are wreaking havoc after his death and the Guardians are just like *shrug* I’m glad this is answered. But this just brings up more questions.

Why do powerborns become more active after the King’s death. Did the king oppress them? Did his presence somehow “zap” the powerborns’ energy (supported by the origins of Brayden’s powers, debunked by Witch’s family having powers during Alpha’s lifetime)? And the guardians really didn’t do anything? I would like to get their side of the story.

The foreshadowing is getting a little bit too obvious now.

I think the novel just confirmed that the Package was the pack that slaughtered Tayren. So if you were a roleplay fan who theorized this, congratulations! Theory confirmed!

I have a question...why didn’t the Package kill Tayren? Did Tayren escape before they could experiment on him?

...HOLY SHIZ. THAT’S SOME PLOT CHANGE WITH ROBIN’S DEATH.

omg, these purple fireflies. WHAT DO THEY MEAN?!?

Why is Brayden suddenly not clumsy?

PURPLE FIREFLIES. WHAT ARE YOUR MOTIVES? I NEED TO KNOW.

GARRICK. NOOOO. AAAAAH, THAT’S JUST A WASTE. GIVING HIM SO MUCH CHARACTERIZATION ONLY FOR HIM TO DIE.

NOOOOOO.

Seriously, now I feel like Garrick’s life or death situation dragged on for nothing.

So, if Garrick’s characterization wasn’t for a possible redemption story, since he’s now dead, then I guess Garrick’s characterization was just to exemplify a theme. Brayden did get pretty preachy to Garrick. So one message of the novel is that “no one’s evil. Just angry and needs some kindness and serenity.”

...maybe that message is a key to a potential redemption arc for Witch...please???? pllleeee-e-e-ease?

...Who is this cloaked stranger.

BOI, IT’S ALPHA

So the protectors of the Air Kingdom are sci-fi undead ghosts...I think Air Kingdom is a bit far from modern times.

So...Stand Down City was Alpha’s home and now Voice’s home (nice choice, Voice).

Voice, man, are you a hot mess? Is this metropolis abandoned because of you? Or is this metropolis abandoned after Alpha died and you tried to rebuild it because you’re Voice? Anyways, Voice, you suck at rebuilding areas. You shouldn’t play Minecraft or SimCity. You’ll suck at those games.

And Voice, are you a necromancer now?

Voice, you’re not gonna ask Alpha who the heck he is alive?

The guardians: We like how things are now. Altered: *is a hot mess* Me: ... *laughs*

Now I can see why the Guardians suck. But they suck because they don’t know how to rule. That’s a believable reason and I can see that the Guardians are not truly evil. They’re just a hot mess. I need to stop using that word.

omg, the book just confirms that the metropolis is abandoned because of Voice. WOW VOICE. WOW. GOOD JOB VOICE. NO WONDER THE REBELLION DOESN’T LIKE GUARDIANS. GOOD THINKING VOICE. YOU REALLY ARE A HOT MESS. TM. I’M SURPRISED YOU’RE THE MOST POPULAR GUARDIAN. It makes me curious of what the other guardians do, if Voice’s reputation is the best.

I like seeing Voice’s perspective more. I like seeing how he’s just an idealistic guy who’s got the wrong direction.

OH SHIZ. ANOTHER PLOT CHANGE. HOW IS THIS GOING TO AFFECT THE DILEMMA BETWEEN VOICE AND INFERNO. AAAAAAH

BUT I LOVE THIS. I WANT MORE VILLAINOUS VOICE. I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE HIS REDEMPTION ARC AND HIS LATER INTERACTIONS WITH WITCH TOO.

AAAAAHHH.

The evil beings in Nether are called Trumperts. Trump-erts. Gizzy, you’re getting political now with writing, eh? I know that feeling, my man. I got way too personal with the stories I write too.

The city of the Nether though. *does that finger/kiss gesture* Mwah. Beautiful world-building. Voice, take notes from Inferno. This is how you manage a city/kingdom. Will, Inferno is still a terrible leader, but at least he’s functional.

Yaaaaay, Inferno backstory. I’m loving this. And I’m glad there’s a given reason why Inferno is hated.

Dang, Inferno. Take a chill pill.

Inferno’s received a lot of characterization. I’ll try to analyze him in a different post.

...Hmm. One problem I have is that Brayden is just revealed to be the king’s son. But the book just glossed that over. I think that wasn’t handled very well.

#altered adventure spoilers #altered adventure #alteredadventure #altered reactions #altered adventure book #luck of the guardians

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oveliagirlhaditright · 5 years ago

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Secrets and Lies

While Tree had been serious about making Danielle relive days—to hopefully make her a better person that way, since the government was clearly hellbent on getting someoneinto this experiment—she hadn’t wanted any harm to come to her. For better or for worse (and yes, sometimes it did feel like worse), Danielle was Tree’s friend: so she didn't want her dying like she had, even if she also came back. Dying hurt like a bitch. So as it stood, Tree wasn't willing to put anyone else through that kind of trauma. So the plan, then, was for Tree to just try and snub Danielle every day that she was in the loop, so she would hopefully come to realize that she wasn’t the center of the universe like she thought she was. And that maybe she didn't even want to be popular, if she had to be mean to get there.

But as Tree thought back on it all now—after everything had gone to hell in a handbasket, and she was having to try and help a fretting Danielle figure out who was murdering her—she could easily say why things had ended up becoming as bad as they did.

…

A Few Months Earlier Tree couldn't say for sure—because maybe after everything she’d gone through, she was just paranoid at this point—but when Danielle, looking absolutely tragic, met Tree at the lunch table’s outside on one day of the loop… she knew that things didn’t bode well. She literally fell into the bench, as she seemed to want to grab Tree’s feet, as she cried and didn’t even try to knock off some of the sweat that had taken up her body: something that the old Danielle always would have been conscious to do.

"...Danielle, what's wrong?" Tree asked, finally finding her voice but already dreading what she thought she knew the answer to be.

"Gee, I wonder what could be wrong, Tree?! Could it be that some psycho in a baby mask just fucking murdered me, but then the day rewound like you said it did for you?!” Now, if this had been the Danielle that Tree had always known in the past, she never would have felt bad by seemingly trying to put the blame on Tree with her comment.

But when she covered her own mouth with wide-eyes, and choked out an apology, Tree could tell that she was already somewhat changing for the better… which meant that everything she was saying was real. "But that doesn't make any sense!" Tree argued, furious now. “Because what kind of official American organization sanctions murder?” But as soon as the words left her mouth, Tree knew how stupid she was—with all she knew about history—for having thinking otherwise, and now she was just livid at herself and would have kicked herself if she could have.

“Tree, what are you talking abou-” But Tree couldn’t let her finish the sentence, or even look Danielle in the eye at this point.

“N-nothing, I’ll talk to you later, Danielle… and I promise you that everything will be okay.” And Tree scampered off to find Carter for help, praying that her words would be true.

…

If Tree was being honest with herself? There was a part of her that was terrified that she'dsomehow soon be the one in the loop again... as wasn't that what happened last time, unfortunately? It had started out with Ryan, but then it had just been her again. But Tree kept this thought to herself, not wanting to will it into existence by saying it aloud.

Right now—as she sat and ate at her and Carter’s favorite café to go to—Tree was working as hard as she could to help Danielle solve this mystery: even harder than she’d worked on her own, in some ways.

Partly because the government was involved this time, and while it easily could have been one of them behind this it also could have been anyone from the Gregory and Stephanie conspiracy… or someone else.

But also because this time it was Tree's... friend, Danielle, that was in danger, and Tree did want to protect her.

When something happened to you, it was easy to brush it off... but when it happened to someone you cared for, it suddenly became so much worse. Tree was looking at all of the suspects that might have something against Danielle… and she was also trying to think of ways Danielle could easily tear the mask off anyone who went after her, even if they surprised her... but that wouldn’t necessarily be easy. Tree knew that from experience. When your fight or flight instinct kicked in, sometimes common sense just didn't work. It was when Tree was having the thoughts about Babyface’s mast that Carter joined her, dropping a sweet kiss to Tree's lips—that oh, she relished in after having nearly lost him—and he then took in her homework. "...So, DARPA really rewound the day on Danielle, huh? And I know they meant it to be harmless, like you joked... and that maybe her just reliving the same day over and over again might make her a better person like we wanted... But because of our luck, a psycho in a baby mask is still trying to kill her, huh?" And it was here that Tree began crying, despite herself, as her guilt for what she may have unwittingly put Danielle through hit her full force.

Tree hadn't been kidding in the other timeline, when she'd said that she was sorry about how things had gone for her and Lori here—and that was to someone who had tried to kill her!—so she especially felt that way about Danielle. "I just don't think she deserves it," Tree explained now, as she figured in her heard from the way that Danielle had acted that this had already happened for her a few times. "...I'm happy for the person I am now because Iwent through it, I really am, but I don't think I deserved it, either. And Danielle hasn't really done anything worse than I ever did." Carter looked at Tree lovingly then, and she bet that he was amazed she could say that when Danielle had recently "stolen him away from her", among other things, but if he was thinking that, Tree didn't think it was an accomplishment at all... but then again, maybe the fact that she thought that just showed how far she’d come.

"So, who do we think the killer is this time?" Tree asked Carter rather bitterly now, as it began seeming more and more likely to her that the things that had been at play the last times were once again. "More stupid people who are mad that a cheater won’t be with them?" Carter opened and closed his mouth a few times at Tree’s words and frowned, and she thought he might have been about to tell her not to be so hard on Lori, Stephanie, and herself—since Gregory had been the real villain in all of this—but instead, he'd seemed to come up with a different idea altogether. "...Tree? Do you think the quantum reactor could somehow make sentient life? I mean, it's clearly building up energy—...and then using it, sure—when it sends people into the loops. And unintentionally or not, it's retained a status quo that a person in a baby mask should be killing people... And what if it now thinks that's needed for balance, and if someone won't fit the bill it'll create that person to? Truthfully... as cute as it was that Carter was theorizing for her, Tree had wanted to stop his tirade a few times during it. She didn't really know quantum mechanics at all, and had only memorized equations of it, but even she knew Carter's idea of science was whack and didn't truly add up.

"...As... good as that scientific reasoning is there, cowboy… call me crazy, that I still have my doubts. If thatcouldever work, I think SISSY would have to be activated a few more times, at least."

Carter laughed at Tree's attempts at humor—that the girlish part of her definitely saw as a win—and smiling and holding hands, the two of them finished French fries, burgers, and shakes together... at which point Tree was nearly in a food coma and came home and went to bed... Though she was somewhat leery of this, because she wanted to be able to help Danielle if she needed her this night, but she tried to tell herself that surely she’d hear her if she screamed... Except that Tree didn't, much to her later shame, and in the morning—though what morning?—Danielle entered Tree's room crying, as she dove into her arms (and to Danielle's credit, her crying was only sniffles), and Tree remembered nothing.

Author’s Note: So, I really do want to finish this whole story as a multi-length thing… but I may not have that much time to update now, since I’m working on my own book. But hopefully I can get back to it soon.

#long post #fanfiction #happy death day

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