#god there's a tower at work that's the tallest part of the whole building and I can see the Sierras and the Cascades and the Sutter Buttes

[mystacoceti]

foreman is out of town and the general manager hardly comes out of her office you know what that means

[caffeinated-cryptid]

bishop to castle; check.

3.8k words | AO3 link | tags/warnings: suicidal behaviour, risk of falling from a height, talking someone down from a ledge, hurt/comfort, platonic roceit, positive ending.

“After weeks of moping post-POF, Janus goes into the imagination to find Roman. They end up having a much more intense conversation than he could have ever planned for.”

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

Janus hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Roman since their last argument. It was fine, probably, he justified to himself, despite how Patton had returned from their talk with pursed lips and worriedly furrowed eyebrows. He likely just needed time to process everything that had happened, and Janus wasn’t going to push that. 

(His reluctance to address the issue had nothing to do with the fact that he dreaded another confrontation. Totally not.)

After all, forcing his presence on Roman now could potentially only make things worse. So instead he would just have to wait for him to come around first-- to calm down enough to be willing to hear him out without resorting to name-calling.

Janus was plenty busy anyway, what with his new position in Thomas’ life. More than smoothing over one less-than-steller relationship with a side (which Janus was collecting like pokemon cards recently, it seemed), he elected to focus on ensuring Thomas held true to his promises of self-care, which meant working with Patton more often.

That wasn’t so terrible, at least it wasn’t as bad as the him from a year ago would have expected; the side was trying harder to welcome his contributions which he appreciated. Though inadvertantly through this new partnership, he found himself being dragged into more casual hang-outs, where they would do nothing but...chat. Sharing daily anecdotes and worries and secrets about themselves. It was strangely open and the sort of thing Janus had to adjust to, but with this new friendship he had found himself in, he did his best not to ruin it.

“I’m getting worried.” Patton admitted one day, setting down the tv remote after a finished screening of some Air Bud spinoff. How Janus had been wrangled into watching that ceaseless dog series was beyond him. “I think the others might be starting to come around to you, but Roman...”

Patton didn’t need to finish his sentence, because Janus already knew what he meant. With Virgil and Logan, he’d been making an effort to try to prove his worth as a member of the team (whether or not that was working was yet to be seen, despite Patton's generous assertions that it would all work out eventually), but he hadn’t even gotten the chance do to that with the creative side. As much as he had first assumed that time and space would do the trick, it seemed like that wasn’t the case after all.

 “I suppose a confrontation is inevitable.” He grimaced, knowing that this had been put off for long enough.

“Would you do that?” Patton asked suddenly, looking to him with relief. It made Janus realize that it sounded like he had signed up to go talk to Roman himself.

“Uh...” Janus tensed, his previous concerns surfacing again. “I don’t think I would be the best suited to have this conversation-”

“Oh- Pleeease? You two need to talk most of all! Besides, when I went, he wouldn’t even...” Patton trailed off, biting his lip with a pout. “...Could you try, at least? Maybe you could get through to him.”

“...Alright. I’ll go before lunch.” Janus agreed begrudgingly, rewarded by Patton’s grateful smile. Stupid puppy face. That would have to stop working eventually.

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

That was how Janus found himself in the lawless lands of The Imagination.

It had filled him with dread, knocking on the red and gold door and recieving no response. Even more so when he risked intruding anyway and seeing the wrecked state of the room, and then noticing the entrance to The Imagination wide open.

Unsurprisingly, that was where he found the side in question. More surprising was when he did, finding him sitting on the edge of the tallest turret of his castle, like he had decided to overlook his kingdom in the most dangerous way possible. Janus wasn’t so naive to assume that was all it was though.

Roman probably saw him approach as he ran the rest of the way to the castle, and that pushed him to go faster, dashing through the lonely walls of the old building until he was climbing up those spiralling stairs all the way to the top. When he finally made it, he stood there doubled over and completely out of breath as he adjusted to the high altitude winds that bit at his cheeks. He used the seconds he took to catch his bearings to figure out what to do-- his eyes never once leaving Roman’s back, who luckily hadn’t moved at all during his frantic dash. Perhaps his insticts had been wrong and there was nothing dangerous going on here. Every part of him screamed to stay and stop whatever this was though-- so he did.

“Roman.” He ended up saying once his breath had evened out, and nothing more. There was too much going on in his head to break whatever balance they currently had; too much to ask, too much to say, to explain, to defend, to try to understand.

Said side turned his head slightly to make eye-contact; not facing him, yet it was acknowledgement at least. “Deceit.” He said after a beat. His voice was cold, but not angry, and for some reason Janus would have prefered it if Roman were upset with him. Anything but this odd indifference that made him feel guilty for not summoning up the courage to check in sooner.

“Janus.” Janus corrected in an invitation to use his name. He intended it as a sign of goodwill, but Roman’s face twitched and he looked away again, this time his focus on the ground directly below.

“I came to talk.” Janus said in an attempt at a distraction. He was disheartened when Roman made no move to acknowledge him again, so he continued despite his uneasiness. "Would you please come down?”

“What? Scared, Deceit? I'm not doing anything. I'm not going to either, so you can go back to whoever sent you and tell them I’m fine.” Roman scoffed and the string of lies felt bitter in the fridgid air, enveloping him like an unwanted hug. If possible, Janus’ heart begun racing even quicker.

He wanted to protest and say that he had come of his own volition, but Janus knew that lying right now wouldn’t do either of them any good. “In that case, would you do it for my peace of mind?” He tried instead, and it earned him a wry smile, sent from over Roman’s shoulder.

“What ever gave you the impression I care about that?” Roman shot back, standing up only to turn on his heel to step down into the crenel next to him, then back up onto the the next merlon. He continued, going up and down and slowly circling around Janus like a predator would it's prey, but somehow he didn't feel like the one being hunted here. Actually, it was more like he was trying to convince a mouse that the cheese on a trap wasn't worth it. And being a snake himself, that simile was especially ironic.

“...That’s fair. We can talk like this, then. I wanted to apologize and hopefully make amends.”

Roman’s footing twisted haphazardly and Janus all but shot forward to steady him until he was given a deadly glare that froze him in his tracks.

“Stay back! You're not fooling me again. As far as I know, you'll just try to convince me to take a swan dive right of the side of this tower. No greater depth to plummet to than that, huh?"

“I- that's the complete opposite of what I want.” Janus stressfully replied, fighting against the urge to pull Roman off of the edge and end this whole thing himself, instead holding up his hands as a sign that he wouldn’t come closer. God, where had he gone so wrong go end up in this situation? He should have convinced Patton to come with him when he had the chance-- at least he probably would have had a better idea on how to get through to Roman when he was like this. Comparitively, Janus had no clue. He didn’t have the trustworthiness or the years of friendship.

“I believe you. You've already made it so clear just how much you care.” Roman replied sarcastically. Janus felt his hackles rising.

“I’m not lying! I didn't want any of this.” Janus gestured around. “There's so much I wish I could take back, but especially whatever I did to cause this.”

“Oh, Janus.” He felt a small dose of hope when Roman finally used his name, which was quickly dashed as he huffed out a laugh. “Always thinking you have a finger in every pie. Isn't it enough for me to come to this conclusion by myself?”

He continued bitterly, practically stomping his way around the edge of the tower now. “It's not like it was hard. Even an idiotic egomaniac prince like myself can tell when he's not wanted anymore. When the dream has died.”

Janus, despite the silver tongue he may possess, struggled for words in the face of Roman’s insecurity. He had wanted the anger because he had assumed it would be easier to prove that he wasn’t as evil as Roman was so keen to accuse him of being. He just hadn’t expected this issue to be so deeply sensitive. (Though perhaps he should have picked up on that hint when he saw the other side looking ready to jump to a temporary death). “Thats not true at all, you’re incredibly important and all of us need you. Perhaps we’re operating under new rules now, but that doesn’t mean you’re not wanted.”

But it seemed that wasn’t the best thing to say. Roman stopped in his tracks, his expression unreadable as he began shaking with fury or perhaps something else. “...If I’m ‘so important’, why does it never feel that way? Why am I the only one who has to change constantly for rules that can never stay the same? Why do I have to make sacrifices and tone down my voice?”

His controlled tone got louder and more stressed. “Why are my best efforts never good enough? Why are my doubts ignored? Why is it considered fair to disparage my work? To ignore the blood, sweat, and tears I put into everything?”

Janus stared in horror as Roman kept going, yelling over anything he could have possibly wanted to say.

“Why does it take this to be be fucking noticed?!”

Both of them paused when his rant reached a screaming crescendo and fat angry tears rolled down Roman's cheeks.

"...Forgive me if I'm having a little difficulty trusting what you say right now.” He sniffed, ducking his head away to wipe his eyes. The words were distant despite the soft way they were uttered.

Once again Janus was lost for what to say as he watched Roman compose himself. There was simply too much there to unpack, too many years of built-up stress and resentment. What in the absolute hell had these sides been doing all this time? “...I do wish to take some responsibility for that, though. Your hesitancy to trust again.” That seemed like a good place to start, if any.

Roman only snorted humourlessly at his efforts though, voice tired and unenthused. “I'm sure you would. It's a lot easier to sweep aside a broken vase rather than acknowledge its cracks when they’re forming, after all. That was the lesson you taught us, right?”

Janus winced at the callback to his first appearence to Thomas. He didn’t necessarily regret that day, but having it thrown back now made it feel like something to be ashamed of; seeing his lessons interpreted in such a way. “...Is that how you see yourself? Broken?” He asked instead, squashing down his indignation.

He only got silence in return. Janus swallowed, definitely regretting his hesitance to resolve this issue now.

“Roman, even though I doubt you’d trust my words, I promise that we're not trying to simply ‘sweep this aside’. If we're going with the vase metaphor, all of us want a chance to try to glue the pieces back together. Make right on all of the ways you’ve been wronged.” When that got no response, he tentatively asked, “Have you ever heard of Kintsugi?"

“...Broken pottery fixed with gold, I'm aware. But trying to apply that right now is sloppy, even for you. People are never so beautiful after being so thoroughly broken, nor is it that easy." Slowly, Roman sat down on the edge, and even though his legs were dangling over the wrong side, Janus' heart finally felt some semblance of rest. He took a step forward.

"I disagree. Kinstugi is rarely an straight-forward process either, and yet it achieves such splendid results with just a little patience and care. Which is to say... while it may not be the easiest thing to do, there’s undeniably beauty and strenght in survival. Trying again even when it feels impossible.”

“Of course you'd think that, Mr. Kill or be killed. You have no choice in whether you get to continue forward. But I do.”

Janus paused at that, only four paces away from Roman now. The creative side startled when he peered backwards and saw him so close, and then he glared at Janus as he stood up again, this time facing him fully. His foot slid backwards until the worn-down structure crumbled under his heel, sending rocks tumbling down below. It was a warning, Janus realized as his blood frooze in his veins.

“Don’t look so shocked. I control everything here, or did you forget?” Roman smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile or even a smug one; it only looked like he was stretching his mouth unnaturally, all pretenses of putting on a convincing performance stripped away. “If I want, I could have a Pegasus fly by and save me at the right moment. Or I could expand the moat to catch me. Or..."

Roman looked frustrated for a second when he couldn't think of anything else, even more so when Janus patiently waited for him to think of another example. In the end, he gave up.

"The point is, I call the shots about what happens to me."

"But would you? Save yourself?" Janus questioned hesitantly. He knew he was treading on thin ice, so he left it there. Roman raised an eyebrow at him and he returned it, making it clear that he wanted an answer. He recieved it with a scoff.

“Of course I would. What kind of question is that?”

Lie.

Janus winced. “Roman... You are aware of my ability to detect lies, yes?”

The creative side blinked in surprise and then looked at him with wide eyes, as if he hadn’t expected to be called out. Like it had been so natural to brush aside the question that he didn’t even realize his own feelings. Fortunately, Janus’ ability was too keen to be fooled by one’s own self-deception. He could see below the surface like that; pull people’s hidden truths from them and keep them for himself, like a keeper of forbidden knowledge (Though in moments like these, sometimes he wished he couldn’t. Ignorance truly is bliss).

“Should I ask again?” He pressed. “Are you really planning on saving yourself?”

This time Roman’s face screwed up in confliction and he directed his gaze to the floor of the tower. It was an awfully clinical way to ask, but it felt necessary to stop dancing around what was important-- this casual show of self-destruction.

Eventually, the other cracked with a tired huff of laughter. Sadly genuine this time.

“...It's certainly nice to think that I could.” Roman admitted as he rubbed his face, apparently not mad at being called out this time. “Finally being a hero again, even if it's only to myself.”

Janus paused in shock. Was he still misinterpreting that moment?

“That wasn't a lie.” Janus blurted out, taking even himself by surprise by the thoughtless exclamation. “Thomas still thinks of you as his hero. There’s no need to do things like this to prove it.”

Romans eyes went watery and he avoided his gaze.

“At this point I don't think it matters, when I haven’t been acting like it at all lately.” He whispered coarsely, uncharacteristically quiet compared to the wind. “Frankly, I'm surprised you're even trying to stop me."

Janus eyes softened and he took another tentative step forward, then another when Roman didn't react badly. “Why wouldn’t I? I’m not just Deceit, you know. Part of my job is to help you.”

“...Because you hate me? At this point you have more reasons to than not.” Roman explained warily, looking at him like Janus were seconds away from snapping and shoving him over the edge. It hurt to have that sort of mistrust placed on him, but at the same time Janus understood it. He had often been in that sort of situation before; doubting the safety of opening up to other people. That was just part of his job, to be doubtful and wary in order to protect the self. Yet to see it so openly on somebody else felt like a punch to the gut, even though he should have been used to that feeling of being distrusted by now.

“Do you think me so sensitive that a schoolyard insult would make you my archenemy? Or being called evil? That is...sort of what I’ve been going for.” He cracked a joke, gesturing to his outfit. When Roman kept staring at him he sighed. “Of course I don’t hate you, Roman.”

Roman shifted doubtfully. “That doesn’t mean you like me, either. Maybe it doesn’t mean much to you, but you should know how- how being called that hurt me.”

"...Yes.” It was Janus’ turn to be uncomfortable. “Perhaps at first I felt attacked and wanted to make you feel the same hurt, but I would never have said that had I known just how deeply it would have impacted you. I’m sorry for that.”

Roman’s expression turned incredulous, like he couldn’t believe Janus had apologized. “...You know, I wanted to make you upset. I wanted you gone.”

“I figured.” Janus nodded.

“And that doesn’t change anything? Even though I acted so...” Roman bit his lip. “So unheroic?”

Janus stifled a sigh. By now, he really hated that word with a passion. It had caused so many high standards, so many instances of self-sacrifice, so many misguided attempts at selflessness and perfection. Perhaps later they could talk about it all and lay out why it had done so much harm, but for now he decided not to push it, not when he felt so close to getting a breakthrough.

“Believe it or not, but I think that you've been plenty heroic already. This whole time you've been fighting for something you thought was valient and noble, and that means something, even if it was for a misguided cause.”

That took Roman off-guard. He moved his foot away from the edge subtley, and had Janus not been focused on his face, he would have considered it a small victory.

“...What’s the point of all of this, really? Is this some... some dastardly plot?” Roman questioned skeptically. He was looking even more cornered now that he was letting Janus’ words sink in.

“All I'm here for is to offer the helping hand you need, if you’ll accept it.” Janus said softly as he extended his hand up to him. “Really, my only plot right now is to get you off that ledge before you give me a heart attack. Please?”

Roman stared at him, desperately trying to find some sort of mistruth in his eyes before his gaze lowered to the outsretched hand. It felt like time slowed in the seconds he was making his decision and Janus held his breath, waiting...wating... until finally the other side nodded and took his hand.

With Janus’ help, Roman stepped down, looking confused and lost now that he was away from the edge. The expression pained Janus’ heart, so he opened his arms half expecting rejection, only to be taken back by how quickly Roman latched onto him. Janus wasted no time clinging back, so relieved that he actually suceeded that he didn't want to risk ever letting go, like this moment could be torn away at any second. It was no surprise when he felt the other’s chest jerk with held-back sobs until there was a wetness on his shoulder, and he didn't say anything about it. He didn't need to either, because Roman spoke up first.

“It didn’t mean anything. Really!” He exclaimed through messy tears. “I was only thinking about it!”

Lie.

“...It's okay if it was more than that.” Janus soothed, patting his back. “It's okay to feel low and in need of help.”

That made him cry harder and Janus was relieved to see the excess of emotions finally pour out. While waiting for Roman to calm down, he had to fight for his own tears to not spill over. Inevitably, the stress of the situation finally caught up when the adrenaline wore off, and he sagged into the hug, sniffling quietly and trying not to fall over on his aching legs. He really just sprinted up multiple flights of stairs, didn’t he? Belatedly, he realized that he must have lost his hat at some point during the journey because he could feel the wind tousle his hair.

It would have been funny if it weren’t for the absolute rush of emotions he had just gone through.

The two of them stood there for what would normally be considered an awkward amount of time, except the act of simply hugging on solid ground was the biggest comfort in the world, too much to ruin the moment. They waited until they got through the worst of their tears before they dared speak again. Once again, Roman went first.

“Sorry for laughing at you back then.” He said, voice reflecting the yelling and crying he'd been doing. It felt genuine. “I actually really like your name...the mythology suits you. Very dramatic.” 

Janus laughed wetly, finally a true statement. “Why, thank you. And I apologize for where I’ve wronged you.”

Finally, they straightened up. Roman took one look at him and summoned hankerchiefs for them both. Janus accepted it and wiped away his tears as gracefully as he could.

“Hopefully we can have a more in-depth discussion on this later, but for now Patton and I prepared lunch, if you’d be willing to have us.” Janus asked, hopes raised.

“...That sounds good.” Roman smiled.

Janus smiled back.

Together, the two of them descended down the steps of the tower, and the imagination was the slightest bit sunnier when they reached the outside.

[welcome-to-goldport]

Locations in Goldport

I wanted to compile a list of some important places in Goldport right now for anyone who might be interested in the worldbuilding and such. I might make this it’s own page sometime, but for now it’s just this. Here you go 💜

Lampshade Speakeasy

Bugsy Bethany & Catalina’s Speakeasy bar

There’s a lot of gambling, a lot of drinking, etc.

One of dastron’s favorite spots. They have a drink named after him

Crazy Ace Casino

Very popular among the criminals of goldport, but open to anyone.

Felix’s favorite place to set up his scams. His nickname “Crazy Ace” is unrelated.

Best place for all your gambling needs

The Old Robin

Robinson & Phil’s Bar & Grill

Very very good food! Takes a while because Phil and Robinson are the only employees (Although Audrey will occasionally work there Part-Time)

Robinson and Phil also live together here- their living space is on the second story

Bestro’s Beesechurgers

One of the many chain fast food restaraunts in Goldport

Randall and Riker work there

Their popular specialty side is fried pickles. (Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it)

Quiktime Delivery

The building for a branch of a major delivery company

Skell, Stratos, Randall, and Levi all work here.

There’s an old door inside that nobody ever opens, because there’s a rumor that it’s haunted

Fight Club

A secret meetup spot where people go to fight and make a bit of cash

excessive gambling and other things go on here

Riker and Copper are the two top fighters there

Candace’s Candy Shop

Candace’s little candy shop

It’s packed full of almost any candy you can think of

Always smells like chocolate

Sparky’s General Repair

Managed and completely run by Pietro

No other employees, just him doing everything by himself

Axe of God Insurance Co.

Maximoiff’s insurance company.

Robert works here as well

A rather tall building.

Trojan Horse Mall

An abandoned building, now inhabited solely by Free.

It was once a successful mall, but was shut down after the woman who ran it was supposedly murdered.

Free has control over every technology-based thing in the building and attempts to lure people inside by looking like a normal store.

Flashy Fashion

Duna’s designer studio/clothing shop

Most if not all of the clothes are beach/sea themed, but they’re rather pretty

Bugsy and Catalina like the clothes here and are especially fond of the “Ocean Sunset” line in particular

GPU Campus

Not the most well-kept campus.

Calvin and Circuit both graduated from here, they were roommates their first year and became best friends

Friday currently goes here.

Pyrite University Campus

a very elite, very fancy, very nice college campus with everything a student could need

on the opposite side of the city as GPU

Randall had the opportunity to go here but didn’t take it

Seeing-Eye Tower

The tallest building in Goldport.

Built directly in the dead center of the city.

Functions as the town hall where The Mayor works.

Goldport Golems Stadium

A huge, catch-all stadium for any sport.

The Goldport mascot is a cute Rock Golem. The person inside the mascot costume is actually a rock golem. They love their job.

The Beach

Watched over by a bunch of lifeguards, including Danny

Closed for swimming at night (You can still sit on the sand and walk along the shore)

At night there’s a bunch of bio-luminescent jellyfish in the ocean that light up and it’s a very pretty light show

The Boardwalk

Full of pop-up shops and the like

Anyone can put up a stand

Jade & Jayd often have a 5 cent homemade lemonade stand set up

Outskirts

More rural than urban

Lots of corn and soybean fields

Not many people, a lot of space

The Carnival

Every carnival lasts for a month, but after one moves out another immediately takes its place overnight

Standard carnival with standard carnival food and carnival games

Everyone loves it! (except Pietro)

The Park

surprisingly well-kept and green

In one spot there’s a garden of critically endangeredflowers called the Sunset Lily. Stratos keeps them in just-right temperatures as often as he can and cares for them

It’s very wide and open

The Forest

a very thick pine forest

There’s whispers of a house deep in the middle where you can go and have a single wish granted… for the price of your soul.

Lovers’ Peak

One of the only places you can see the stars in Goldport.

It’s a hard climb up a mountain, but at the top, you can see the whole city sprawl out beneath.

There’s a bunch of benches at the top with the perfect viewing angle.

People will often go there on dates.

[oppabimbab]

maybe, it wasn’t right | kim taehyung

genre: heavy angst, tiny bit of smut, break up

starring: taehyung x reader

synopsis: when you thought everything is perfect, you are destroyed by your own imaginations. when that day, you realised that it wasn’t you in his mind anymore, you were stucked between staying and leaving. somehow, you don’t want a goodbye but why does staying seem harder than anything now?

words: 4248 words

side note: many of you said that you guys got a good cry from my first fic which is let you go and i thought i wanted to give it another try in this new fic. it has almost the same settings but a little bit different. its been a while since i wrote my prev fics so here we go.

recommended songs: hold on - chord overstreet ; shine - kim ez (i listened to this when i wrote this one)

It’s been a year ever since you and him shared the first kiss that would tingle your lips every time you think about it. Who would have thought that kiss would change things between you and him? It was a year ago where he made it clear that he wanted you. Not anyone else but you.

The relationship you shared with him was beyond beautiful. It was hard to actually describe how it felt like to you but indeed—the love you shared with him was amazing. Taehyung was that person who would make you feel that type of love—without actually chanting the endless I love you’s. He didn’t know how to be romantic mess with those fancy dinner on the tallest building in the city or he barely gives you any crazy expensive diamonds on your birthday. He didn’t do that because you told him not to.

You didn’t care about anything else because he gave something more than that. A security. Taehyung will always make sure you feel secure every time he pulled you into the tightest and warmest hug he ever had. He is there, to make sure your worries will go away when he wipes those tears, streaming down your cheeks. His presence—it represents security you ever need. You had no idea you needed it until he gave it to you.

It’s even crazier every time you caught his eyes—making him to stare back at you every time he had the chance to do so—you feel safe. His eyes spoke thousand love and million adoration. You didn’t know how to put this into words but every thing about him made you secure and guarded. His warm presence, you didn’t want to let it go.

You weren’t sure what made you fell this much? Was it because of his eyes?

His eyes—God, they were beautiful as hell. They were nothing spectacular in general but why did they make you froze on your feet every time you met them? Why did you feel lost in his eyes every time he stares at you? They sparkled like a night art every time lights strike into his brown orbs.

Was it his smile?

His smile—oh, there is no way you would want to look away when that boxy smile plasters all over his lips, making your heart blooms like a Spring.

Was it that kiss?

You still remember the way his lips sealed against yours, bringing his hands on your back—securing you to be in his arms while you rubbed your small thumb on his cheeks, to bring him closer. The space was disappearing as he hated any space between you and him when he kissed you. You remembered it too well when you could feel his smile as he deepen the kiss—telling how good your lips taste like against his. Like it was made for him. Just for him.

How could that tiny moment send so much tingle under your skin?

Nothing fancy. Just two people are in love with each other—kissing, dancing like the world is fading.

The weird thing is, world seemed like it was fading away from you when he was around. There was no one but you and him. You didn’t care. If universe was fading from your vision and leaving you helpless—as long as he was with you here, you know everything will be just fine.

Nobody had any idea that you would be this deep in love—not even you. It might be cliche to say that you have never loved anyone this deep but it’s somehow true. You never knew what love was until you met him. Nobody taught you what love actually is until God sent him to you. Taehyung gave you more than just a love. He gave you the honesty and trust that nobody have given to you before. When you thought love is that cliche shit that would hurt you no matter you tried—he didn’t do that to you. No even a chance.

Taehyung found you and bring you back home. He collected those scattered trust back into whole piece. That’s kind of love you ever wanted.

“It’s crazy,” he panted—breathing heavily as he rubbed his rough hands along your bare back. The sweat made strand of hairs covering all over his forehead.

“What is it?” panting on his shoulder when you couldn’t feel your body anymore, a soft whimper escaped your lips as you tried to catch your breath after the intense fuck you had with him. Chills running under your skin when he leaned closer and kissed your shoulder softly. There was a short silence.

“I’m so in love with you. It’s crazy,” a soft deep voice filled the room.

You giggled. “Why?” you asked

“I don’t know. I’m just....in love,”

“I love you,” he added. Short sentence but it meant more than just a world. It felt deeper than just a sea. It sent million butterflies to your whole body.

“I love you too, Taehyung,” you whispered softly—inhaling his scent. This was perfect.

Everything seemed perfect to you. The world seemed like a perfect movie to you so you chose to brush off those invisible thorns. God made you blind, made you thought you had everything in your hands—you really did until you sense something that you had no idea it would break you, this much.

You no longer felt his presence even he was right there across your eyes. You no longer could feel the tingly sensation from his touch even he was there, touching you like he always did. His laugh and smile, they used to sound genuine when you were around but why the hell you barely sense any feeling in them? Where did it go?

Every time he came to your place, he no longer runs giddily at you like a little kid before pulling you into your favourite place—his embrace. He no longer leaned against the wall, eating some random chips he stole from your fridge and tells you how crazy his day was, while you were there, cooking his favourite dish.

He barely annoyed you or made you whined like a baby as he forced you to dance with him in the middle of night.

By time, the colors you have painted with him, have faded—leaving everything becomes dull. Tasteless, colourless.

The hardest part to swallow is, he was there, sleeping beside you but why did it feel like the whole room was filled with his absence? Where did he go? Fear crept into your skin because deep inside, you never wanted to know why this was happening to both of you. You never wanted to know why his eyes have lost its soul when he looked at you. You really never wanted to know what did you do wrong.

“Is everything okay with the boys?” you asked him quietly when you saw the chance even honestly, you had no idea when was the right time to do this. You stared into his eyes, hoping to find the answer you were looking for.

“Yeah. Of course. What do you mean?” he cocked his eyebrows, glancing at you for few seconds before averting his gaze from yours as he got the attention back on his laptop. Your heart clenched. It was really different.

“I thought you have been different these past few days. Did I do something wrong?” you whispered, voice became small and distant, not once breaking the eye contact. You wanted him to look back at you with the same eyes he had few months ago. He did but not with the same eyes.

“Baby....No, everything is fine. I’m sorry if you felt that way,” he ditched his stuff and came closer—towering your vulnerable self under his tall figure. For few seconds, you felt him. Again after a while. You felt his presence again after being left alone.

“I’m just tired...uhm with the works,” he added to ease the stiffness in your whole body.

“I love you, you know that right?” with desperate voice, you said. He nodded.

“Yes. I know,” he smiled, pecking your nose but you wanted more than that. His words. You wanted more.

“I love you too,” he replied. Oh, he heard you. You bloomed again.

Every thing became perfect again. It’s as almost as perfect as it was before so again, you lived in your perfect movie that seems to be filled with your delusional fantasy. When you thought you were about to break, he came to pick you. When you thought the wound was slowly grating on your skin, he put the bandage on it. He would always be that kind of person you fell in love with.

You thought everything was perfectly fine but the thoughts were crushed by your own expectation when you saw a woman rushing out from his apartment, clanking the heels on the ground as you standing there, few feet afar like a statue.

She had tears all over her eyes and cheeks, streaming down to her chin. Her cheeks flushed in pink under her skin, biting down her lower lip to refrain herself from sobbing at 12 am. When she disappeared from your sight, you still had no idea how to process this new information. You couldn’t feel your legs and body when the fact that, a woman just came out from his house. Who was she? Why did she come out from your boyfriend’s house? And why did you feel nothing but pain?

That night, you left silently with so much tears, staining your face. You wanted to know why she was there, with swollen eyes. You wanted to bang on his door and screamed for his explanation. You wanted to tell him why the fuck he did that to you but you couldn’t do that.

Ever since that, her image never left your mind. You remembered how beautiful she was. She was tall and slim. Her hair was long, looked like a silk coloured in deep brown. Her body was no where close to you and it made you furious. Her face? God, she looked ethereal. She was really beautiful but why did it make you feel small? She was his ex-girlfriend. His first love.

At nights, you would curl silently on your bed and bawled your eyes.

You started to look at yourself at the mirror and wonder why you barely had what she had. You tried to find where did you went wrong, where did this went wrong. What have you lost? What have you missed? Did she make him happier? Did she make his heart race? Did she make his eyes, sparkle in love? You stained your pillow with so much tears and painful sobbing as you stared at his name on the phone screen, calling you. The name used to make you screamed in joy but where did it went wrong?

As time went by, you realised that the relationship was barely there. No affection, no souls, no presences. Both of you knew about that but none of you ever spoke out. He came home to you just to say hi and then, he disappeared. He called just to tell you that he wouldn’t be coming because he felt tired or maybe, he just didn’t want to. Sometimes, he stopped coming at all and just like that, the spark between you and him died.

Was it coming to end? Was this the end?Every time the thought came in your mind, you stained the pillow again with endless tears of the endless nights. You didn’t want to let him go. Not yet, not forever. Every parts of you wanted him and you were very sure about that. You still craved for him and the thoughts of letting him go, feel like somebody just stabbed you on the chest. That hurts so bad. So bad. These killed you inside, to the point, you felt nothing but fear.

But, no matter how you despised the idea, somehow, you knew you needed to do that one day. And that day came faster than you ever imagined.

You saw her name on his phone. You saw a smile crept all over his face. You heard his genuine laugh, filling the space—that laugh you have lost these past few weeks. You saw the happiness in his eyes. He looked genuinely happy but not with you. You were there but he didn’t share the same happiness with you because here, you felt like million thorns under your skin and thousand tears pooling in your eyes. You didn’t know when did it started but for sure, both of you have lost this relationship.

You moaned out loud when he found the sweet spot inside your core. Gripping onto both of his arms, wrapping your legs around his waist, you filled the room with your whimper and moan every time he thrusted inside you. The bed creaked, in sync with his move. Taehyung leaned to your body and planted wet kisses along the neck.

He breathed against your skin as he quickened the pace. Your eyes rolled back at the sensation—cupping his face inside your hands. God, making love with him felt like a heaven. He felt so good, he made you feel so good every time he kissed your body—telling you how beautiful you were. He said your body was beautiful and you didn’t believe him. You didn’t until he made you.

“Baby, fuck. You always feel this good,” he growled as he looked down to your messy face. Tucking the hair from your face, he stared straight into your eyes with his darkened eyes. Your body arched when he pumped harder—moaning as both of you exchanged such deep eye contacts.

“Taehyung....,” you cried out, bouncing under him. He bit his lower lip, humming to your calls.

“Hm?” he hummed.

“So good. You...Ah! you made me feel so good,” your body bounced aggressively as his pace quickened for both of you to reach the climax. He groaned in pleasure when you clenched around him.

“Yes. Yes. Like that baby,” his breath hitched as he noticed you were building up the intense knot inside your stomach. He pumped harder and rougher. You cried—calling nothing but his name over and over again.

“I’m so close,” you squeaked.

The next second, your body jerked and flinched when you cum around him—spilling the white juices around his cock before it stained the bed sheet. Scream was echoing the room as your body still flinched before he filled his release inside you. Both of you were panting hard, catching some air to fill into your chest, with him still on top of you.

Taehyung leaned closer and kissed your jaw. He had that habit where he would nuzzle on your neck after sex and kiss them. You bring your hand to his hair and pulled him tighter. You inhaled his scent and rubbed your thumbs on his nape as he kissed your jaws. It lasted for few minutes before you caught his eyes.

That damn eyes. You stared at him and he smiled down at you. Oh, fucking handsome. Taking his face into your hands, you rubbed your small thumb on his dreamy eyes, his cute cheeks and his lips. You let out a small giggle at the small mole on his nose. He was gorgeous.

To this day, you still flinch as of you weren’t being in the reality. It made you flinch to think that you were lucky enough to have this man’s heart. Just all for you.

“That was amazing,” he whispered to you after few moment. He always said that every time you both made love. You nodded and smiled. With him, everything was amazing.

“Taehyung....” you rubbed his cheek while the other hand, played with his wavy hair that covering his eyes. His chest vibrated as he hummed, making yours feel the same.

“I love you,” you almost lost your voice when you said that. It was small and vulnerable just like your heart, you wonder if he noticed that. You saw his face changed for few seconds when you said that before a small faded smile appeared. The universe seemed to fade when you saw no one but him. It was the world where only you and him existed.

“You know that right?” you added, just like the last time.

“I know you do,” he nodded with that colourless smile. You wanted more than that so you let him finished. But, there was nothing.

“Thank you,” he added and you knew, it was real. There was no I love you from him. You have lost it. You had no idea where did it go but sure, it hurts like hell.

Staring into his eyes for few seconds before you pulled him into the deepest kiss you ever had with him. You took his face inside your hands and kissed him like there was no future—savouring his mouth against yours while holding the tears that have been pooling in your eyes. You didn’t know a kiss would hurt this much.

When you let go, both of you panted hard again. He looked down at you, confused and clueless. Probably wondering what came to you this night, something about you was different tonight. You met his eyes again. That brown orbs. Why were they so beautiful even at times like this?

“Taehyung....” you called him and without words, he stared back at you, trying to read your eyes. They felt different.

“I’ll let you go,” you weren’t sure if your voice was heard by him but swear to god, part of you was crushed into million pieces and you had no idea how would you carry it back home.

His pupil dilated—he looked at you, completely in disbelief.

“You can go to her. I’m letting you go,” you added with a broken smile while you took every image of his face into your system because for sure, you wouldn’t be able to do that tomorrow.

This was crazy because the last thing you wanted to do in your life was to let him go. It happened way too soon and your heart ached a lot.

**

“I just wanted to know where did it went wrong,” you spoke as you sat at the edge of the bed—fully dressed just like how you came to his place few hours ago. You looked down to your feet, pretty sure you had no courage to look at him again.

There was a silence.

“It was all my fault,”

“I don’t want you to blame yourself. I just want to know the reason, Taehyung,” you tilted your head and saw him again. There was inches of guilt on his face but it didn’t make you feel at ease.

“I still love her,” he voiced out while staring at you. You had goosebumps.

“I thought when I have you, her presence won’t do shit on me but it does. My heart still races every time i see her. I still want to see her even i should go and fucking stay with you. I still......fuck. I still want her even i shouldn’t,” he ran his hands through his hair—looking devastated and guilty while you were here, staring at him in disbelief and betrayals.

You tried to figure out but it seemed like somebody just had taken your soul away. Your heart—if it was a glass, you could see how scattered it was on the floor. After all these while, you were right. He still loved her. Your biggest nightmare was finally come to reality.

You looked at him—trying to get yourself together even you were second away from breaking down.

“So, our relationship was a lie? Everything.....” you stopped, catching some air.

“....everything that you did to me.....was a lie?” your voice almost broke as you couldn’t contain the pain inside your chest.

“I thought you loved me,” the voice, it faded.

“They were all true. I swear to god I have loved you but....I know I can’t love you the way I loved her no matter how hard I’m trying. She was my first love. I’m really sorry,” he took your eyes into his and you swear to god, you wanted to disappear. This was too humiliating and you wonder why God put you in this situation.

You have lost at words. Your lips parted but nothing came out from your mouth because for real, you have lost everything. The sense of humiliation, betrayals, pain. They kept confusing you.

“Why did you let me in if you still love her this much, Taehyung? Why did you make become this complicated for us?” your voice became small again. There was a huge pain in it. Pure sadness and heartbreak.

“I don’t know. This is too confusing. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that to you,” he replied.

Both of you met each other’s gazes for few moment.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t enough for you,” after few minutes of being silent, you spoke. You gathered all the courage to look at him one more time before you leave.

“No, please. It’s not your fault. You know that right?”

“No, it is.. I’m sorry if everything about me wasn’t enough. I’ve tried, Taehyung. Everything to keep you. I love you so much...” part of you broke at the last part before you continued.

“...that I wanted to give everything I had for you but today I realised that....I’m still not enough but she is. I’m really sorry if i made you to be in this relationship when you supposed to be with her. I’m sorry,”

Your eyes pooled with tears—making your vision became blurry and teary. Every thing about this was unfair. He was silent and that was it.

“You should’ve told me earlier that it wasn’t me you wanted so we wouldn’t hurt each other like this,”

Wiping the pooled tears, you stood up—taking your stuff. Your legs felt like a jelly. How the fuck were you going to go back home with this state?

“I’ll go get the rest of my things in few days. Goodnight,” you stormed out from his room—bringing your pathetic self out of his house even you wanted to cry in front of him. You wanted him to see how broken he made you feel like and how deep this wound has become.

You were crying like crazy as you drove yourself to your home and remembered the horror on Wendy’s face when she saw you, looking this miserable. She looked devastated when she saw you in this state but for real, you were more devastated than anything in this world. No one broke you as much as he did.

That night, you buried your face on the pillow and screamed your heart out. Tears kept falling down to your cheeks—staining them endlessly through the empty night. The pain, you had no idea how to put that into words because no words could describe how painful it was. They felt like burning thorns.

Your chest clenched and you could feel the pain in your heart every time you breathed. How could he do this to you? How could he give you the world, also the one who broke it? How could he pull you to him also the one who pushed you away silently?

Those things he did to you—you thought they were real. You thought when he said he loved you, they were real. You really thought those hugs and kisses he gave to you were real. You thought everything was real but they were not. Clenching on the blankets, You cried out when the painful thoughts came across your mind.

Your skin tingled every time you remember how he touched you. Those seemed real. You were blind.

But, you still wanted him even you were the one who walked away. You still craved for him even you were the one who broke up the relationship. But, what was the point of you staying when both of you were suffering? How crazy it was like when you were leaving his house even deep inside, your heart was screaming for him to stop you from leaving. The painful part—he didn’t do that.

You told yourself to never beg for someone to love you but this time, you were desperate for him. To love you.

You wanted him to love you. Love you just the way you loved him. Want you just the way you wanted him. Somehow, you knew you weren’t enough for him to do that. All these while, you weren’t enough for him from the very first start.

He didn’t love you. He loved her. That scattered you into pieces. What did she have that you don’t? Was it because you weren’t beautiful enough? Your efforts weren’t enough? Your love wasn’t enough? You have tried but none of them were enough.

You sobbed into the pillow—crying, screaming, wailing and trying to let out the pain that have been crawling inside your chest but nothing made this pain go away. It felt like a fire burning your heart into ashes and leaving you helpless.

God, what to do? What are you going to do with this broken pieces and being this deep in love with him but all you needed to do was forgetting him. You had no idea how you going to erase him from your mind when you still loved him this much.

God, this was just too unfair.

The night felt longer and colder—you wished it was just another nightmare. But, it wasn’t. Both of you have lost each other. Perhaps, it was only you who lost him.

PS: I hope none of you will ever experience this. And if you have been in one, I’m sorry, you deserve a whole universe. I have been in one and istg, it broke me a lot.

Let me know if you want a sequel. Comment or reblog! I’ll make it happen

[faithylilac]

“And then.... when all hope was lost, I stepped in and saved the bake sale!” The cloaked stranger shouted, loud enough for the whole tavern to hear. All heads turned towards him as he continues with his story, almost everyone was captivated.

The three that were not captivated on the other hand, were the members of his adventuring party. He changes the story of how he meets the party every single time he tells the story. Who’s in this party you ask? Just a bunch of weirdos that happen to find each other, they don’t share the same goal, but they sure do a lot of stuff together.

“Dax, we’re going to the Inn across the street to check in. You continue with your story.” The one with a white Bob said. The story teller continues and the party members get out of their seats and head out.

“Wait, he was in the party before me. Why am I in his stories?” Echo, the tallest one said.

“I don’t know, It’s not worth correcting anymore.” The white haired one said with a sigh

They adventurers walk into the inn, it smelled like wet dog but it was the only inn in town that wasn’t smart enough to ban them from it. “I need two rooms dog.” Echo said. It wasn’t something he would normally say, but his mind was still stuck on the smell it just came out.

“We only have one room, luckily for you and wife and son, it has three beds.” The inn keeper told him.

Faithy, the white hair one started snickering and elbowing the blue Nymph with them.

“Of course, that’ll work for my family. How much?” Echo didn't have anything better to do, so he played along with it

“Did you say family?” He asked with a stern face.

“DOM TORETTO?!?” They all said in unison.

“Family is everything, the room is your’s for tonight. From my family to yours.”

“Thank you Dom Toretto, me and my husband need to get this little whippersnapper to bed.” Faithy said, while ruffling the Nymph’s hair then quickly shoving both of her party members upstairs.

They walk into the room and it’s nothing but twin beds. They look at each other then Back at the room. Echo opens his mouth to speak, but is quickly cut off.

“You are not turning into a bug to sleep at the end of the bed again.” Carter, the Nymph said.

“I was gonna say, I’m sleeping in this form. I need to stretch my legs when I sleep every once in a while.” Echo replied. “That and I look too hot right now.”

Carter and Faithy turned to each other and nodded, Echo was very hot at the moment. “Dax can sleep on the floor then. If he cares enough he can make his own bed.” Faithy decided. She was the leader after all.... sometimes. Sometimes some else is, it kinda depends on what happens.

Back at the tavern, Dax has everyone dancing the chicken dance. How did we get here in such a short time? I don’t know, I wasn’t narrating that part. Oh but that’s not all, he’s also gotten his hands on the deed to the tavern. He drunkly told the owner that he needed the deed because he’s a god and needs it as a sacrifice. It was a weird request but the owner handed over, hoping for some sort of blessing from the mischievous god.

“I pray that this place burns to the ground!” An angry stranger burst through the front door with a torch and drop kicks it towards the bar. Dax just so happened to be giving a musical performance on said bar and was lessed than please.

“Yo dude, you got something against parties?” Dax said, jumping off of the counter.

“He’s been buying up all the taverns in town and has been slowly raising the price of Booze!” The stranger shouted. Dax looked at the tavern owner who was sweating bullets. “That’s pretty evil, but not evil enough to burn down the place.” He said with shrug.

The man had steam coming out of his ears in anger. “He’s also bribed the local government to let him up on his taxes, while raising them on us to compensate!”

Dax broke the cup that was in his hand and slowly turned towards the tavern owner. Dax picks up the torch and just shoves it into the owner hands. “You burn it down, or I burn it down. You get to choose.” He said, his 3D eyes now darkened with anger. The owners sighs and starts running around and starts lighting tables on fire.

The patrons yell in delight and grab some fire wood from the fire place to assist with the arson. Dax is very pleased with himself because he owns the deed and can press charges against the actual owner for property damage and get lots of money. Wait, what would a god do with money? Beats me, but hey it’s shiny.

Back at the inn, Faithy wakes up to yelling and a bright light coming through the shutters. She hops out of bed and opens the window to find the building across the street on fire. “FOR THE LOVE OF Gjhar feiiled!” She yanks the sheets out from under carter, tossing him into the air and he goes flying.

Carter wakes up in the middle of the street, roof tiles stuck on him and a tavern on fire. “Oh Dax had fun without us.” He said with such disappointment. “More like he got us banned from another town!” He heard Faithy yell from the window.

Faithy approaches Echo’s bed with her mace in hand and gently wakes him up by shaking him. What did you think she was gonna do? She’s not violent. Echo kicks Faithy in the face with his giant platform shoes. “Yo where’s Carter at?” He apparently didn’t notice Faithy’s bleeding lip, but that was fine. “He already went outside.”

Dax walks out of the bar and sees carter. “Isn’t it past your bed time? Also when did you start wearing roof tiles for clothes?” He asked his blue pal.

“Faithy said we should leave without a guard escort” carter replied. Faithy in fact did not say it, but was quite obvious what she was thinking. “Let me just drop this report by the guard tower and money should be sent to me within a week!” Dax said without a care. And with that, Dax started whistling while walking down the road.

Carter finished taking off his new accessories when Echo Jumps down from the sky holding Faithy. She is still in fact bleeding, but she’ll be fine; More cool main character scars. Echo then drops Faithy with no warning and dusts off his hands.

“Domestic violence is my favorite way to end the night.” Echo said sarcastically.

Then... DOM TORRETO burst from the inn with a glock. “FAMILY IS EVERYTHING! HOW DARE YOU TREAT YOUR WIFE LIKE THIS!” He points towards Echo.

“If we want to be fair, Faithy did throw me into the street.” Carter just had to butt in. All to protect the person he likes to flirt with the most. Dom Torreto then changes his aim towards the priestess.

“How dare you hurt your child! Family is everything!” He shouted in a fit of rage.

“WHOAH WHOAH WHOAH! Listen here buddy. She’s not my wife and this isn’t our kid, he’s ducking blue.” Echo shouted, pointing to Carter, who has a mischievous grin on his face. “Oh and I’m gay. dude.” Echo added, like sprinkles on top of ice cream.

Dom started tearing up, but he put the glock down. “I see.... you may leave then.... happy late pride month.” He says before disappearing back into the inn.

They all just look at each other in confusion. “When’s Dax getting back?” Faithy asked Carter. “Ehhh, I don’t know. Maybe just wait outside of town for him?” He suggested. “Awwww!!!! But I wanted to get run out of town again!!!!” Echo whined.

Carter placed his hand on Echo’s tall shoulder and looked him dead in the eye. “I’ll never run you out of my mind.” He said with a wink. “Oh you know it baby.” Echo replied. We’re they dating? I don’t know, they won’t tell me. Probably not, flirting with your friends is really funny.

But here comes Dax, being chased by maybe twenty guards. “GUYS I GOT THE MONEY!!!” He shouts, waking up the neighborhood. Weird enough, they weren’t woken up before this, they were screaming the whole time. “GAY PEOPLE! GET THEM!!!” One of the guards shout, getting the rest of his squad to notice the party as well!

“BOOK IT!” Faithy shouted and they all flee out of town and into the forest. Did they loose the guards? Why does the narrator ask so many questions ? Find out on the next episode of.... THE PARTY PARTY

Be gay, do crimes.

Thank you Dax and Carter who helped out the most this chapter <3

Masterlist

[iceshard1011]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Sanders Sides (Web Series) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil & Creativity | Roman & Deceit & Logic | Logan & Morality | Patton Characters: Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Deceit | Janus Sanders, Logic | Logan Sanders, Morality | Patton Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, The Dragon Witch (Sanders Sides) Additional Tags: Sympathetic Deceit | Janus Sanders, (forced) Shapeshifting, Arguing, panicking (but no panic attacks), Loss of Control, Minor Violence, Threats of Violence, Insecure Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Fainting, Self-Doubt, I'm Bad At Summaries, and tagging Series: Part 1 of Ruby Wings Summary:

Deceit held up his hands. "Don't... move. Don't freak out."

Roman, frankly, had no idea what he was talking about.

Then he looked down and saw the huge dragon talons.

Roman, understandably, freaked out.

posting it on tumblr as well, for anyone who’s interested. the 9k word fic (god help me) is below :)

A vein of purple lit up the dark sky. It was accompanied by a series of thunderous booms that shook the landscape. The trees of the surrounding forest were bent to breaking point, their thick trunks groaning in the howling wind. Rain pelted down onto the long grass that waved vigorously underneath the angry storm clouds.

Atop the tallest hill the dark silhouette of a huge castle ominously contrasted with the backdrop behind it as lightning once more shot up the sky. Within the cobblestone walls, the sound of rain hammering against glass panes echoed through the empty halls. On the other side of closed, oak wood doors, a muffled roaring joined the thunderclaps.

A table was upturned, candles and ink pots thrown to the marble floor. A clawed hand swept stacks of books off a desk. Lightning illuminated the perpetrator's hulking form along with the pale face of the second party in the room, watching the tirade with widened eyes.

Wings arched from the aggressor's back. "Once more," they hissed through a gravelly voice, "would you care to tell me what you were doing in my domain?"

The prince of the castle rolled his eyes. "The side of the forest that's a little darker and dense than the rest?" He scoffed. "You don't have a 'domain'. I control the entirety of the Imagination. I'm in charge of it."

The intruder turned on him. She smiled, sharpened teeth peering through thin lips. Then she laughed, throwing her head back and shrieking at the ceiling above.

"Oh," she purred, calming to prowl forward and cup his chin beneath her taloned hand. "What am I still doing here, then?" Roman frowned at her as she pulled away, smirking toothily down at him. “If you control the Imagination and everything within it, why may I ask, am I still here?"

"I can dematerialise you whenever I want," Roman said. The winged witch bit her lip to prevent another burst of laughter.

"Careful, Your Majesty," she said, "you might summon more unwanted problems."

"I can!" Roman protested, stepping forward. The witch’s gaze lazily flickered to where he was gripping the hilt of his sword at his hip. "I can easily banish you."

"Why don't you?" She turned around, her tail sweeping through the shards of a broken mini statue strewn across the floor. "If it was so easy to escape me, do you not think that I would be gone by now?"

"I—" Roman started then paused.

"I'm part of the Imagination, prince," the half-dragon said. She picked up a sheet of paper from a stool, reading off the half-hearted, dot-pointed video ideas. She sneered at it, turning her dark gaze on Creativity. "I am part of you." He blanched as she began to stalk slowly back to him, the list of awful ideas clenched in her talons. Roman's back pressed against the wall behind him. He unsheathed his sword.The dragon witch paused just short of suffocating him. She gazed down at the prince's list, her lip curled in disgust. "Unless." She tore the paper in two, and then again, and again until those nights of staying up late to jot down anything that came to mind was nothing but pathetic scraps on the floor.

"They weren't useless," Roman said, but his protest was weak and the words felt like he was forcing sandpaper out through his throat. "I still have more ideas. I'm not... scared of you." The witch raised one eyebrow, her teeth flashing as she smirked down at the struggling prince.

"I still have more ideas," he was muttering, almost to himself now. "I'm not useless. I know I matter to Thomas." He looked up to glare at her. "I'm not affected by you."

The dragon witch didn't need to say anything this time. Instead, Roman's actions spoke for themselves when in the centre of the room, a black-clothed side rose up, looking intrigued and then mildly disturbed as he took in the mess of the room.

"Oh, darling," the witch crooned, looking back at Creativity. Roman stared, horrified at Deceit who looked back with a faint crease between his eyebrows. "That bad?" He glanced back up to the dragon witch. Her face was twisted with mock sympathy. "Lying that much?" Roman looked at the ground. The witch reached forward to rest a taloned hand on his shoulder. "Maybe you need to learn how to hold your tongue."

Roman's head shot back up, panic flaring in his eyes as he jerked away from her, but she had already snapped her talons together.

A dizzy spell overcame the prince and he staggered, dropping his sword as he reached to clutch his head. Before him, the dragon witch stepped back. "Perhaps a change of perspective would help."

If she said anything else, Roman didn't hear it because he was kneeling to the ground, an unbearably painful headache throbbing through his skull. A keening groan squeezed itself from his throat as he gripped his hair, wanting to pull it from his head. The ripping, hot pain spread from his head down to his back, like swords stabbing into his spine. He thumped to his side, his legs beginning to feel like his bones were popping through his skin. An agonised scream erupted from his mouth, tearing up through his throat like shards of glass. His lungs and chest started to burn as if they’d been lit aflame. He coughed like he'd inhaled smoke and whimpered, curling in on himself.

A pair of dress shoes might have been in front of him at this point, and maybe someone was speaking, but all Roman could do was squeeze his eyes shut and shudder as his whole body reverberated with pain.

Roman wasn't sure if it all had stopped or he'd just blacked out, but when he dared open his eyes, he wasn't in the castle's room anymore. In fact — where was he?

Outside. That much was clear, given the beaming medallion of a sun in the sky, shining down onto the soaked landscape below. The only remnants of the vicious storm was the dripping leaves of trees and the dew saturating the grass. Had Roman been out for an entire night? Or had it been day the entire time, masked by the dark thunderclouds and the storm had only cleared when the dragon witch had left?

Roman was lying among scattered pieces of rock. Rubble? It looked like the same material the walls were made of. Why would the castle be crumbling?

He lifted his head, in the process finding that it felt uncomfortably heavy and unbalanced, and twisted around to stare in horror at his half destroyed castle. The west-end tower looked completely obliterated, like a giant had stomped on it.

That's where I was, Roman realised with a jolt of horror. What had happened? Did the witch do this? It was doubtful. Had she left? After Deceit had risen up—

Deceit! Was he alright? He'd been in that section of the castle as well. He'd arrived when... Roman had started lying to the witch's face. God, if he was hurt and it was all Roman's fault—

He tried to stand but found it difficult — he was too top heavy and his legs were too weak and his back felt like he was wearing a bag full of boulders—

He toppled onto his side. An undignified yelp made Roman's head twist around. A few lumps of stone rubble away, Deceit was stumbling back over rolling rocks, cursing under his breath, but— something was very wrong.

He was... tiny, for one thing. Deceit had never seemed very tall to Roman, but now he was the size of a kitten! His proportions were all still in order, it just looked like he'd shrunk.

Roman moved to stand again, wanting to help, but he still felt weirdly unwieldy and out of place. His movement, however, made Deceit look up. The scaleless side of his face paled and he stood very still as he gazed up at Roman.

"Roman," Deceit said slowly. "Are you still... uh. All... there?"

Roman frowned. What's he going on about? He opened his mouth to ask but only a low, guttural growl rumbled out. He froze. What?

Deceit held up his hands. "Don't... move. Don't freak out."

Roman, frankly, had no idea what he was talking about.

Then he looked down and saw the huge dragon talons.

Roman, understandably, freaked out.

He lunged to his feet and teetered to the side with what should have been a yelp but sounded more like a giant cat's screech. Unbalanced as he was, when those talons backed up with him, he shrieked and made to lunge for the castle. He collided with it much quicker than he had expected, given it should have been a good distance away because it was so small—

More chunks of the building tumbled to the ground, rolling down the hill. The castle was small, too! Like Deceit! Except it wasn’t small and neither was Deceit and he was just big and TALONED AND—

"Roman!" He and his thoughts screeched to a halt. He looked down to see Deceit standing from the ground, kicking away rocks. He dusted down his dirtied clothes, scowling.

"I could have sworn that I told you not to panic," Deceit hissed, glaring up at him. Roman stared back, feeling successfully ridiculed. "And what did you just do?"

Roman bared his teeth (and it felt weirdly natural). That was hardly fair. Roman didn't see Deceit cursed as a dragon! Roman would like to see that happen to him as he tried not to freak out.

"Don't growl at me," Deceit snapped, then caught himself. He took a literal step back and blew out a long breath through slightly parted lips. "Okay. Alright." He looked up at Roman, his mismatched eyes narrowed. "We can shape shift," he said after a moment. "Can you switch back to normal?"

Roman blinked, almost ashamed to admit that it had taken him a moment to realise that Deceit was trying to help. Frankly too scared to move lest he somehow crush the other side underneath a huge talon, Roman closed his eyes and concentrated. Normally, shifting wouldn't require any concentration at all; a simple thought or willful hand wave could change his appearance.

Now, however, even as he focused on his usual appearance, picturing it in his brain and willing with all his might to change, he felt no different.

When he opened his eyes, he found he didn't look any different either.

His shoulders slouched— well, he thought they did, but instead he felt his back shift weirdly. Glancing back, he eyed the ruby-coloured wings that had drooped to the ground. He looked helplessly at Deceit.

The green-scaled side crossed his arms, brow furrowing further. For a moment, Roman almost thought he was non-verbally accusing Roman of not trying hard enough before he realised Deceit was just deep in thought once again.

"I couldn't sink out before," Deceit said. Roman blinked. "Why?"

Because I don't have control of the Imagination anymore, Roman thought glumly. He moved uneasily away from the wall of the half-destroyed castle and edged carefully over to Deceit, picking his way through the scattered lumps of stone. He crouched awkwardly in front of the other side, staring at him pleadingly. Deceit's hard eyes studied the prince's scaled, elongated snout.

"Your room leads into the Imagination, correct?" Deceit asked. Roman dipped his head in the best nod he could manage. "That means the Imagination leads out into your room." Roman nodded again. "So?" Deceit prompted. Roman frowned, confused. Deceit sighed. "The exit door would be... where?"

Oh! Roman perked up. He strode forward, passing Deceit to lead the way, but an abrupt tug on his back leg forced him to a stop. He glanced back and stared at the heavyset chain clamped to his back ankle. The linked metal trailed back to the base of the castle where it was buried into the stone ground of the castle courtyard. Circling back, Roman peered down at the chain and gave it an experimental tug. It clanked heavily but didn't come loose. He pulled it again, harder this time. The ground barely shifted, much less unearthed the entirety of the chain.

Deceit appeared at his feet, looking at the chain like it had personally offended him. He shared a glance with Roman, who vigorously yanked at the chain and looked down at him like what now? when nothing new happened.

Deceit nudged a shoed toe at the solid ground. Roman, mirroring, clawed experimentally at the set stone surrounding the buried chain. His talons scrapped roughly against the rock, ringing like nails on chalk, and he immediately stopped with a shudder. Deceit, grimacing from the sound, pressed a gloved hand to the side of his head.

Roman felt uneasy at his considering look when their gazes locked once again.

"Dragons can breathe fire, can they not?" Deceit said. Roman's stomach twisted. He only looked like a dragon. That didn't mean he knew how to function like one — nor did he want to learn! He wasn't a dragon! He didn't want to be a—

"Alright," Deceit said. "We won't try melting the chain." Roman wondered if his thoughts were so transparent that even as a dragon — wasn't a dragon! — Deceit was able to read his expressions.

Deceit heaved a quiet sigh. "Where's the door to your room?"

Roman blanched. He wasn't going to leave him here, was he? Deceit's eyebrows twitched upwards, framing his unimpressed and slightly annoyed expression. Roman thought that the half-snake definitely looked as if he could read his mind.

"I'm going to get the others," said Deceit. "I have little to no idea about what to do." It looked like it physically hurt when he added reluctantly, "They can probably... help."

Roman sat down, glaring at the chain linked around his ankle. Deceit crossed his arms, waiting for him to quit his sulking.

Finally, Roman growled and moved his gaze to Deceit. He nodded to the forest beyond them. Deceit followed his gaze.

"The forest?" Roman nodded. "Where in the forest?" Roman paused before lifting a talon and tentatively nudging Deceit to turn around, then pulled back and nodded to himself, satisfied. Deceit looked between Roman and the section of the forest he was now facing with a faintly frustrated expression. "Just... keep walking in this direction?" he guessed.

Roman thought about trying to grin but reconsidered when he figured a toothy twist of a smile (or whatever these grotesque jaws could muster) would probably not be encouraging. Deceit's gloved fists clenched. He muttered something under his breath before walking the direction Roman had pointed him in. Roman watched as he started to leave, feeling antsy as he tried to sit still.

He'll come back, he told himself, watching as the trees swallowed the side. He'll bring the other sides. You won't be stuck like this.

 Janus... wasn't pissed. He was perfectly calm and composed. He wasn't baffled by the existence of the strange, half-dragon lady who had been in the middle of seemingly attacking Roman when Janus had been so overwhelmed with the sensation of lies that it had been impossible to ignore. He wasn't horrified that Thomas' Creativity was now a dragon and apparently stuck that way and chained like an animal. He certainly was not pissed that he was on his way to ask the light sides for help. The light sides, who, with their singular collective brain cell hated his guts and wouldn't listen to a single thing he'd say. He could not already hear Patton's uncomfortable laughter, or see Logan's unamused look, or feel Virgil's glare burning holes into the back of his head.

Janus wasn't a mess of mixed emotions.

Janus was handling the situation perfectly well.

Leaves crunched to his left. His head snapped around to glare at the bush that had rustled, as if daring something to lunge out at him. He— didn't quicken his pace. He wasn’t going to let this forest put him on edge. It was a lump of clustered trees; so what?

Still... He didn't like how dark the forest floor was, how the canopy far above blocked out all the sunlight. How sounds seemed to come from everywhere despite nothing behind visible. Somehow, he had a feeling the forest wasn't always like this.

He carefully stepped over a fallen log, eyeing the rotting wood. He frowned down at the mud that his foot quickly sunk into. A branch snap made him glance over his shoulder, staring into the dark trees.

He loved this.

 Roman was doing his best trying to get used to this new, awful form.

He'd shape shifted before; he knew how to adjust to bodies that weren't his own. This, however, was different. He wasn't human. He was long and four-legged and he had a pair of extra limbs sprouting from his back. What he'd give to be able to wear his white tunic and red sash and be able to properly hold his sword in perfectly normal, human-looking hands.

He'd maneuvered his horrible body around into a loose curl, resting his snout on his talons. He stared idly down at the grass beneath him.

Deceit hadn't come back yet. Roman wouldn't have blamed him if he'd found the red door to escape the Imagination and he'd left without a second thought.

He's been gone for ten minutes, Roman reminded himself in a voice that almost sounded like Logan. Be patient.

Movement in the corner of his eyes made him lift his head around to look to the forest edge. Deceit?

Among the treeline, a figure that looked like it could be a side shifted into view, parting from the dark trunks.

Roman lifted his head, warily eyeing the yellow and green armour the newcomer was wearing. Somehow, he immediately knew this wasn't any of Thomas' personality aspects. This... person felt different. Like looking at a cartoon and comparing it to the fabricated toy version. They seemed... off. Fake. Part of a simulation.

It took Roman possibly a little too long to figure that this was probably the dragon witch's doing.

He watched uneasily as the stranger moved from the forest and advanced toward him. Their outfit was honestly hideous; the shades of their jagged, messy armour clashed horrifically. Their face was twisted into an ugly scowl, scars rippling across pale skin, hatred etched into every crease. Another clue that this being was not of Roman’s fantasy world; even his conjured villains had never radiated such an unfavourable aura. Just looking at the advancing knight made Roman feel ugly and sick inside.

The thick chain clanked as Roman stood. He almost wanted to call out to the warrior, maybe to ask what they wanted, but he knew he'd get little passed a growl. God, he couldn’t wait to get his glorious voice back. He swore he'd never stop singing.

He eyed the weird wooden cylinder clutched in the knight's fist.

That doesn't look friendly, he noted.

Roman's concern steadily increased as the knight got closer and didn't show signs of stopping. He watched as the warrior reached the base of his talons and raised his gaze skyward to the dragon's snout. Roman stared back.

The knight raised the cylinder to his mouth. On instinct, Roman ducked, just as a small missile whizzed passed his right ear. He jerked away with a start. What the—

Something bounced off the scales of his neck. It didn't even hurt — it felt more like a fly bumping into him — but he studied the knight's weapon and realised with a start that it was a blowpipe. What kind of soldier brought a blowpipe to fight a dragon, Roman didn't know. He didn't exactly love the idea of one of those blow darts getting into one of his eyes, though.

The knight aimed and shot another dart, this one bouncing off the bridge of his snout.

Hastily, Roman scuttled back, glancing around at his options. Still feeling very much human and not at all feeling like the monster he currently was, Roman moved to the castle and without a second thought, clambered awkwardly atop one of the roofs. Curling himself around the intact tower, he frowned down at his attacker, mildly irked rather than feeling in any danger.

But then he looked into the fowl green eyes of the knight and his gut twisted, like it did whenever Thomas' praise would go to one of his friends rather than him, or Patton asked for Logan's help instead of his, or—

He gulped the best he could and leaned up, away from the knight, like he could pull himself from those feelings and thoughts.

But then the knight started forward once more, and Roman realised he wasn't going to be able to just idly avoid the armed stimulant.

After all, he was the dragon guarding an old castle. He knew all too well that facing the heroic knight come to slay him was part of the fantasy the witch had obviously created. (Why, he still wasn't sure.)

So, sending a mental bird to the dragon witch, he bared his teeth and glared down at the intruder, ready to tear them to pieces.

 When Deceit rose up into the mindscape commons, comically covered in leaves, sticks and possibly a few specks of mud, Logan clearly saw both Patton and Virgil attempt to cover their amusement, even if he knew Patton would deny taking enjoyment seeing Deceit in such a mess.

Logan could admit that the scaled side's predicament was incredibly out-of-character. However, he did not smile like Patton, nor cover up a snort with a coughing fit, like Virgil. He may have possibly cleared his throat of any bubbles of amusement that may have risen up, though.

"Deceit," he addressed, not making a move to stand from the couch. "I presume there is a well-meant reason that you are here?"

"Apart from coming to bother us," Virgil said. Logan doubted Deceit would have allowed the light sides to see him so disheveled unless something arguably important was out of the ordinary. Deceit didn't answer immediately, looking like he was attempting to compose himself before he spoke. He pointedly ignored Virgil's jab.

"Your prince seems to have gotten himself into a... mildly alarming predicament," he said finally, his calculating gaze scanning between the three light sides.

"What's happened?" Patton asked with round eyes.

Virgil, ever the untrusting pessimist, scoffed. "Probably nothing," he said with a roll of his eyes. "He's just trying to mess with us."

Deceit's eyebrows twitched downward an inch. Logan studied the Dark Side thoughtfully. He wasn't smirking self-satisfactorily like he usually was when he arrived, even when being caught red-handed with impersonating one of the others. His fists weren't clenched, but neither were they clasped together like normal. This Deceit was less like the recently exposed Patton impostor being introduced to Thomas for the first time, and more like the frustrated winner of the mock courtroom trial who had just found that they would still be going to the wedding despite his best efforts: annoyed, on edge and maybe a little uncertain. Deceit didn't strike Logan as the type to act inferior for the sake of a trick. Logan frowned.

"What makes you say this?" he asked slowly, ignoring the narrow-eyed look Virgil shot his way.

Deceit opened his mouth, then paused, closing it again.

"He can’t even tell us," Virgil pointed out, glaring at the scaled side.

"Because, of course, it's so easy to explain," Deceit retorted in a voice that should have sounded as smooth as ever, but Logan caught the rough, gravelly undertone that promised patience running thin.

"It’s okay, kiddo," Patton said, smiling at Anxiety.

"Roman is— in trouble," Deceit settled on. "I came to get you for his help."

"Is he okay?" Patton cried.

"Calm down, Patton," Logan said. "Panicking will not aid the situation."

"Oh, please," Virgil growled. He stood from the staircase, reached toward the television and summoned Roman.

Except there was an empty whoomph where Creativity should have risen up. Logan narrowed his eyes, watching Deceit closely. The side notorious for lying didn't look smug or superior, even when he looked over at Virgil as if to check to see if he was now believed. Thomas' anxiety was staring at the empty spot in front of the television, looking uneasy and maybe a little paler than usual.

"Deceit?" Patton was prompting, anxiously wringing his hands together. "Where's Roman?"

"In the Imagination," Deceit said. "Something's wrong with it."

"Okay, well — we'll go there and find him and help him fix it." Patton looked to Logan and Virgil. "Right?"

Virgil didn't reply; he was fiddling with the sleeves of his hoodie as he stared at the ground, his head ducked and eyes obscured by his hair.

"That seems optimal," Logan agreed. Patton bounced, momentarily distracted from the idea of Roman being in trouble due to Logan siding with him. "Virgil?" Logan coached carefully. "Are you in agreement with this?"

After a moment, Anxiety looked up, his dark eyes fixing on Deceit under a deeply furrowed brow. Deceit stared evenly back, looking uncharacteristically neutral and maybe a little gentle, like he was expecting and ready for the forthcoming rebuttal.

"Alright," said Virgil. "Let's go."

Roman tried not to feel squeamish as he knocked the bat-winged knight to the side, sending them flying to crash into the castle walls. They fell to the ground and didn't get up. Roman gulped, gingerly stepping over the bodies littering the courtyard and returned to his position, curled around the castle tower.

After killing the first knight that had attacked him, Roman had felt violently ill. He'd wondered in that moment if dragons could be sick and had quickly got his answer when he'd retreated to the back of the castle to pass up his last meal.

Roman had fought enemies in the Imagination before; he knew everything here was fake and fabricated and didn't hold any real world impact. He'd fought, captured and even killed villains and monsters in the Imagination but every time he had been himself — his normal self: just a regular-looking prince armed with his sword and maybe a plan or two. He'd never been terribly advantaged, and he’d liked that. It added to the thrill and challenge and adventure.

He'd also never been... the bad guy.

Roman highly doubted the dragon witch was thoughtful enough to create detailed backstories for these countless, strange knights she kept sending, so he wasn’t too worried about widowing or orphaning some poor conjured woman or child.

But he knew very well the situation she had cursed him into: rarely, if ever, were the castle-guarding dragons the sympathetic heroes who deserved and earned the happy endings. Even in his own worlds, that had never been a story aspect. Dragons symbolised greed and anger and evil.

The sun posted high in its blue abyss bore down on him, its warm rays heating his scales like cruel reminders. Roman shook his head as it burned onto his sensitive ear. He flickered it (and was thoroughly disturbed by the action of being able to move things like his ears) and then frowned at the small droplets of blood that splattered from the thin cut the first knight’s blow dart had inflicted. It stung, but no more than a paper cut.

His movement made him glance down at his shadow. His eyes traced the huge shape, running along the stretch of his snout, the curves of his horns, the lump of his folded wings.

Roman looked like a monster as much as he felt like one.

He closed his eyes, like ignoring the signs meant he could deny the awful truth.

The sound of clanking armour had become a sound Roman was too familiar with, so he knew he wasn’t mistaken when he heard the sound of another knight marching in his direction, ready to take on the big, bad, murderous dragon terrorising the kingdom.

He heaved a sigh and opened his eyes. He watched the knight tramp out from the treeline. This one was bigger than the others; more heavyset. Its armour was thicker, stronger. Roman could tell just by looking at it.

Looking at this knight didn’t make him feel sick or scared or upset like the other previous challengers had.

This one made him feel weak. Like his bones were brittle. Like he couldn’t hold his own weight. It made him feel strengthless. Fragile. Helpless.

This knight thought it could get to him like that? Like something as magnificent and terrifying and mighty as a dragon would be weak in front of a puny, insignificant human?

The knight made him feel weak.

And that made him angry.

Patton wasn't prone to anger. Even when upset or stressed or broken or in disagreement with the others, anger was never an emotion he indulged in. He didn't like how it roiled in his stomach and how it would boil out to scandal anyone in the vicinity.

Even so, Morality was struggling.

He didn't like this forest; how dark it was even if, according to Deceit, it was supposed to be daytime. How it felt like he was being watched from all angles. How bushes rustled and the tree trunks groaned. How the ground turned to slog at parts, like the forest had fused with a swamp.

He didn't like how unsettled Logan looked, like he felt the same way about their surroundings. It wasn't obvious, of course, but Patton noticed how he kept readjusting his tie despite not needing to worry about it being out of place. How his sharp eyes continued to subtly scan the trees, like he was searching for something.

He didn't like how distressed Virgil was. Patton knew he was anxious all the time, even if only mildly, but the signs that he was more aggravated than usual were there; the constant tugging on his sleeves, the darting of his eyes, the way he was jittery and hyper alert.

Patton supposed he was possibly glad about their Anxiety was still tame enough to be able to grumble and complain. He didn't like how most of the jabs were at Deceit, though. How he was muttering that it was Deceit's fault, or the way Deceit's patience was clearly starting to run dry, or how they were still in this forest and hadn't gotten out yet, or how they were here in the first place because Roman was in trouble but they didn't even know how because Deceit still hadn't told them anything—

"Patton?"

Morality looked up and ceased to wring his hands, realising he'd been fidgeting. Logan ducked his head to meet his eyes.

"Are you alright?"

Patton nodded, smiling. "Of course I am!" he chirped brightly. Logan held his gaze. "I'll be... even better as soon as we get out of this forest," he added, a little more honestly. Logan, sensing the truth in his voice, nodded once and straightened.

"I'm in agreement,” he said. "How much further do you estimate, Deceit?"

Ahead, Deceit glanced back. His eyebrows twitched.

"Surely not too far," Patton said.

"Do you even know where we're going?" Virgil muttered.

"It wasn't hard to find the exit door," Deceit responded sharply. "Similarly, it won't be hard to find the edge of the forest."

"If you’re not lying about that then why are we taking so long?" Virgil snapped back.

"If you would like to lead the way, it would be my absolute pleasure to appoint you as leader," Deceit hissed scathingly. "Where to, O' Great One?"

"Awe, come on, guys," Patton started.

"You're the one who's already supposedly been this direction," Virgil growled. "You should know the way."

"I do," Deceit said.

"Let's not fight—" Patton reached half-heartedly for Virgil.

"How do we know you haven't been leading us in circles?" Virgil demanded, prowling forward. "Where's the proof that we can trust you?"

"Guys—" Patton tried.

"It would be ideal if we could remained focused on the—"

"Proof?" Deceit cut Logan off, turning on Virgil. "What—"

A low rumble shook the ground as it thundered through the forest.

The following moments of silence were tense and completely void of noise. No one breathed. The distant sound of crashing, like a building collapsing made the group look ahead, like they would be able to see through the trees to the source of the noise.

"What was that?" Patton whispered, hushed.

Deceit straightened, looking at them almost smugly. "Proof," he said, turning and advancing with new purpose.

"Why are we going towards the scary noise?" Patton asked. He looked between Logan and Virgil, wondering if they were going to follow Deceit.

"You want out of the forest?" Deceit said up ahead. Hesitantly, Patton shuffled after him. "Surely a dragon and a collapsing castle would not be stationed among the dense trees of a forest."

Virgil's eyes narrowed. "Why would there be a dragon?"

"Why would the castle be collapsing?" Logan gripped the edge of his glasses, like he'd be able to activate the ability to see the answer.

Patton found it strange how Deceit first looked away, his face beginning to close off before he froze and glanced back at Logan, an almost alarmed light illuminating in his eyes. It was like he was reacting to the two different questions separately.

"I..." Deceit frowned at the ground before picking up his pace, almost rushing off.

"Hey-!" Virgil yelped, caught off guard. The three of them hurried after the liar.

Deceit pushed past a pair of bushes and sunlight broke through behind him. Patton squinted against it as he emerged — finally! — from the trees. The bright light shot into his skull, making his head ache and he realised how truly dark and gloomy it had been within the forest. As his eyes slowly adjusted and his vision cleared, he blinked at the beautiful landscape before him. The grass was so green! And the kills were so big and round! And the big, crumbling stone castle looked like old Celtic ruins and the peaceful, gorgeous scene was only wrecked by the huge, red dragon snarling and storming around the courtyard.

Wait.

Patton yelped as the dragon's lashing tail smashed into the side of the castle walls. They caved like the impact was equivalent to a wave crashing into a sand pile. Patton ducked behind Logan, peering over his shoulder.

"That's not Roman," Virgil said. Patton followed his gaze to the armed person who was insane enough to be fighting the dragon.

Virgil's right, he realised. They were too heavyset, too broad-shouldered. Even the way he moved wasn't as fast nor graceful as seeing Roman in action. Plus, Roman used a sword, not a big hammer.

Logan stepped forward, looking closely at something in the distant castle’s direction. "The... bodies," he ventured haltingly, "what are they— what's their purpose?"

"What?" Patton cried. Then he saw it, too.

The entire field beside the castle was littered with limp bodies. The grass beneath them was an awful red-brown. Patton quickly averted his gaze, unashamed to be hiding his face like a three-year-old would during a scary movie.

"If—"

"He's not there," Logan said before Virgil could even begin to choke out a weak threat for Deceit. They all looked at him. "Roman doesn't wear armour."

"He doesn't?" Patton asked.

"'Ruins his aesthetic'," Virgil muttered without bite.

"Yes." Logan sighed. “So that suggests that Roman is not here."

"He's here," Deceit said, gaze fixed on the battle ahead of them. "He's likely the biggest mobile thing in a three square mile radius."

A beat of silence.

"By the situation being complicated," Virgil said slowly, "you meant to say that Thomas' creativity is now a giant... raging... dragon."

Three pairs of eyes locked onto Deceit. The scaled side looked between them, oddly sheepishly.

"No..?" he tried.

A blur of purple smashed into Deceit, knocking him to the grass.

"What did you DO?" Virgil roared, his fists twisting into Deceit's collar.

"Virgil!" Patton yelped in alarm.

Anxiety shook the other side, none-too-gently. "TALK!"

"Virgil," Logan interjected. "I doubt Deceit has the power to morph other sides this... drastically." Virgil scowled at him, inhaling to argue. "And if he does, do you really believe that he would morph Roman, leave, then come back with us — all for some pointless mockery?"

Virgil glared down at Deceit. "What were you planning?" he demanded.

"My plan was to get your help!" Deceit snapped back.

"Guys, don't fight!" Patton cried, hurrying forward. He put his hand on Virgil's shoulder and the anxious side stilled. He slowly eased off Deceit but he didn’t let up his fierce stare.

"Ah."

The four sides whirled around. From the trees stalked a tall woman. She wasn't a side; she had to have been a part of the Imagination. "The three perfect, loyal, little light sides." Her hideous black eyes scanned them. Patton's grip on Virgil's shoulder tightened. "So." From her back, a pair of huge leathery wings unfurled, sketching out. They blocked out the sun, shadowing the huddled group and their pale faces.

"Who's getting disemboweled first?"

This knight was so stupid! It wasn't stabby, like a lot of the others, and it wasn't fast or even really scared. It stood in the same spot and just let the dragon attack it.

But he still couldn't land a hit. His swipes were knocked to the side. His tail tip was squished. His snout was bruised. He ran his tongue over the empty slot where one of his teeth had been bashed out. It was that stupid hammer! Blood trailed from his gum.

He snarled and took another snap at the insufferable knight, and this time, it did something he didn't expect: it dodged.

For a moment, the dragon was almost baffled.

Then the hammer smashed into his temple. He didn't even roar. A crumpled, broken whimper pressed past his teeth as he staggered to the side. Stars danced in his unison, blacking around the edges.

When his eyesight cleared, he was at ground level. Stupid knight.

He blinked. At the treeline were more knights. He hadn't even had a chance to eat this one!

He froze with a start. With them...

Dragon Witch!

Roman sprang up with a startled yelp.

The others! What were they doing here? That witch had better stay away from them or he'd—

The hammer came back down on his head. Apparently by 'springing up' he'd only manage to lift his head an inch off the ground.

He snorted dirt from his nose and made to get up but... he couldn't move. His body felt so heavy...

He groaned and tried to at least tilt his head. Hammer Knight was peering at him. Roman tried to bare his teeth but his lip only barely twitched. He was almost glad, anyway; it was too animalistic of a gesture. He wasn't ready to address how he'd lost himself for a time fighting this knight. He needed to be changed back, and soon.

At the trees, the Dragon Witch reached forward. She didn't move much more, but Patton clutched his head and fell to his knees with a pained cry.

No! Roman jerked against the ground, trying oh so hard to get up. Stand up! MOVE, stupid, useless legs! At the base of his head, Hammer Knight raised his weapon high above his head. Roman eyed it, feeling his irregularly large heart pounding against the Earth.

This was the part where the knight won. Where the mighty hero slayed the evil dragon and returned to his home a hero. Where he remained a hero for only a short time before attention moved on, and he was overtaken with envy and greed and fear and the pressure to remain a strong, valiant prince would slowly crush him like his skull threatening to implode—

The hammer fell just short of his head.

Roman blinked as Hammer Knight fell after it.

Just behind where the knight had previously been standing, Deceit glared at him.

"Do you think you just lie around all day?" Deceit said, sounding a little unhinged. It didn't help that he looked a little insane, too. His hat was gone, allowing the mess of his hair to display. His wide, mismatched eyes scanned constantly across Roman's snout, like he couldn't decide where to look. He looked awful, to be frank. Roman kind of wanted to tell him, but at the same time he was glad he couldn't speak.

"Stand up!" Deceit hissed. Roman frowned at him and raised his wing as far as he could to demonstrate that he couldn't move—

Except the wing shot straight up into the air. Both Roman and Deceit froze, the former from shock, the latter possibly trying to decipher what that translated to from Dragon.

"Deceit!"

At the edge of the forest, the Dragon Witch had pinned Virgil to the ground. Logan was leaning against a nearby tree trunk, looking dazed. Patton was desperately patting the grass as he searched for his missing, cracked glasses.

Roman took one look at this stupid manifestation torturing his friends, and he was on his feet.

Beside him, Deceit staggered to the side. Roman reared back, flared his wings, lashed his tail, and roared. It felt strange, he had to admit — like yelling, but so much more powerful.

But at that moment, it didn't really matter what it felt like.

The Dragon Witch had momentarily pulled from Virgil, her wide, black eyes fixed on him.

Virgil coughed and rubbed at his bruised neck with a grimace.

Roman filled with red, hot anger. How dare she? Claim to be stronger than him? Lure the others into this mess? Attack his family?

It took Roman a moment to realise it was more than just anger, and his chest was actually warm, and it was spreading through to his throat.

He was glad the Light Side had worked it out before him; they'd already scrambled well out of the way seconds before a plume of fire billowed from Roman's open jaws to engulf the shocked Dragon Witch.

Roman leaned back and puffed out his chest proudly.

A squeaked, "Woah," made him look down. At his talons, Patton gaped up at him, awed.

Crouching carefully, Roman lowered his head as much as he could in order to look Morality in the eyes. Patton chuckled unevenly, but he reached forward and settled his hands on either side of Roman's still-too-big snout.

"Well, kiddo," he said. His smile was a strange mix between uneasy and sympathetic. "You've certainly had a bit of a glow-up since we last saw you."

Roman meant for his snort to only be gentle, but the gush of air that exploded from his nose still blew Patton's hair back and made him blink, frazzled. Oops. Sorry, Padre.

Still, the self-proclaimed father of the group laughed, for real this time, and patted the side of Roman's snout good-naturedly. God, how Roman wanted to be small enough for Patton to comfortably pat his back or ruffle his hair.

"Ideally, he won't have that 'glow up' much longer." Logan stepped up beside Patton. Behind his glasses, his eyes were narrowed and studying Roman, like he was scrutinizing every scale. Roman, feeling oddly ashamed, looked at the ground.

"Anyone got any bright ideas?" Roman's heart leapt. Virgil padded over to Patton and Logan his dark eyes trained cautiously on Roman and his joy was almost immediately squashed. He really wished everyone could stop being scared of him. He looked down at his talons.

Well, he supposed dejectedly. I guess I can't blame them.

A stone bonked him on the snout. Wrinkling it to rid the strange stinging itch, he looked back up.

"Try and cheer up, Princey," Virgil said, a second pebble already in his hand as he tossed it back and forth. "We'll work out how to get you back to your fabulous self in no time." That was probably when Roman found that dragons were capable of smiles.

A sudden shriek made them look back. The Dragon Witch was standing, shaking herself. Her clothes were in tatters, and parts of her skin may have been burnt. She looked more pissed than hurt, though.

"Uh," squeaked Patton. "Light her on fire!" he called up to Roman.

"She was just swallowed with flames," Deceit pointed out, "and of course, that did so much damage."

"Sarcasm is not going to help us," Virgil snapped.

"How many more must die while you doubt yourself, Roman?" the witch called, gesturing to the field of dead knights. Roman didn't follow her gaze, but his stomach clenched tightly.

"Roman." Hesitantly, he looked down. Logan's gaze was steady. "You've mentioned a 'Dragon Witch' before," he said slowly, like he was explaining the steps to a particularly hard equation. "What is she?"

Roman squinted at him, uncomprehending. A... dragon... witch?

"No," Logan said, like he could hear his thoughts. "She's certainly not like us — but she's more than just a fabrication of the Imagination. She's strong enough not to be affected by us, by you..." His eyes narrowed. "So, what is she?"

Roman had a feeling Logan already knew, and he was just trying to coax the answer from Roman.

But why? For one, he couldn’t speak.

"And how would you beat her?" Logan prompted, ignoring the baffled looks the others were giving him. Roman was equally as bewildered, albeit for a different reason.

Beat? he thought. How long does he think I've been trying to beat that?

The witch was stalking for them, her face twisted with fury and tail lashing. He had to protect the others from her. But how? If a column of fire couldn’t get rid of her then what—?

The Dragon Witch's first fireball exploded against him.

Virgil's heart was in his throat as Roman crashed thunderously to the ground.

True panic began to settle in when he didn’t get back up.

So when he was knocked to the ground to dodge another fireball, Virgil hardly felt the breath that whooshed out of his lungs. He gripped a handful of his shirt, trying to ground himself in order to get his breathing under control.

When he could manage a full breath, he allowed himself to focus on his surroundings. Faintly, his brain registered the pair of dress shoes in front of him. Janus glanced down at him.

"Are you going to laze around, too?" he demanded. A distant cry pulled his attention forward again. He reached out and twisted his arm. Virgil followed the direction of his gesture. His eyes widened when he saw the Dragon Witch staggering away from Logan. She was covering her own mouth, looking alarmed and that much more angry.

"You can control her?" Virgil stood, a little shakily.

"Barely," Janus said through gritted teeth.

"I thought she wasn’t like us," Virgil said.

Janus' breath strained and he couldn't answer before the Dragon Witch ripped her hand from her mouth and he collapsed to his hands and knees with a gasp. Virgil crouched beside him, putting his hand on Janus' shoulder.

"I think," Janus said, swallowing as he recovered from the shock of having his Silencing bested, "that from the way Logan was talking... she's a part of Roman."

"What?" Alarm spiked through Virgil’s veins. "A part of him? How?"

Janus shook his head, unable to answer Virgil stood, watching as the witch knocked Patton to the side with a snarl.

"You're all pathetic!" she roared. The words echoed as Virgil racked his brain for a solution. Loyal, little Light Sides. They had nothing to fight her with. While you doubt yourself... With her in control of the Imagination, they couldn't summon anything or sink out — not that Virgil would even consider abandoning the others. All pathetic...

Virgil swallowed an anxious breath. Fight or flight. He darted around Janus and scooped up a sword from a fallen knight.

Before the Dragon Witch could pounce on a dazed Patton, a long silver blade sliced into one of her wings.

She didn't scream, or cry out in pain, or collapse, or really any of the things Virgil was hoping for. But her attention was drawn from Patton as she slowly turned to face Virgil. That was good enough. He pointed the sword at her challengingly and hoped that it wasn’t obvious that he had no idea how to wield it. She lunged at him, her taloned hands outstretched. Virgil ducked but the witch’s tail whipped around, smacking him in the face. As his vision blurred with involuntary tears. He felt his grip on the sword hilt disappear rather abruptly. He threw his arms up instinctively, but it was still a shock when white hot pain flared up along his forearms.

He stumbled back, losing his balance and falling with a graceless thud.

The Dragon Witch pounced after him. She curled her fist into his hair, keeping his head back as she trailed with jawline with a precariously sharp talon.

"How about I pull your teeth out, one by one?" she hissed.

No.

Virgil frowned. He hadn't thought that, had he? The witch had paused, like she'd heard it too. Virgil took this time to kick her as hard as he could in the stomach. She reared off of him with a cough. As Virgil darted to his feet, movement made him turn to watch as Roman rose to his full height, glowering down at the witch.

You will not hurt them. He stalked forward. Behind him, the giant chain links clamped to his back ankle clanked as it reached it full length. With a loud creak and then a bang, the chain snapped off his leg.

Snarling, the Dragon Witch conjured a fireball and launched it at the dragon.

Virgil's cry of fear died in this throat when Roman simply lifted his chin. The orb of flames crashed into his neck, then fizzled and dissipated. His scales weren't burnt. He hadn't even winced.

You are not as strong as us. The Dragon Witch took an anxious step backwards as Roman persisted. As me.

"You're WEAK!" the witch shrieked, flaring her wings.

A growl rumbled from Roman's throat. I am Thomas' Creativity. I am inventive and adventurous and as strong as he needs me to be. And that, he leaned down, his snout larger than her entire body, and almost smirked, makes me stronger than you.

With a screech, the witch summoned a long spear. Nonplussed, Roman straightened. Before the witch could attack, he blew out a swirling column of fire that enveloped her with a shriek.

Virgil watched warily but as the cloud of embers and smoke faded, the witch didn't move, like she'd been frozen. Then, slowly, she fell apart. Quite literally. Her body turned grey and began to crumble until she was nothing but a small clump of dust, piled atop the emerald-green grass.

The ground vibrated, and Virgil looked up just as Roman crumpled to the ground.

Too bright.

Light beamed against Roman's eyelids. He frowned against it, feeling groggy and tired.

Still, his senses were on high alert, so the moment an image of the Dragon Witch flashed through his mind, his eyes shot open. He moved to sit, but pressure on his shoulders kept him pinned. The only thing keeping him from fighting against the force was the fact that the grip was gentle and decidedly talon-less.

What made him freak out, however, was the moment he realised that he was lying flat on his back; that his shoulders were squared and no longer rounded strangely; that his skin felt weirdly soft and sensitive, and the sensation of clothes pressing against him was almost uncomfortable.

He blinked, squinting up at the bespectacled face above him.

"Good afternoon," Logan said dryly with a hint of a smile.

Roman tried for a grin. He lifted his head — for how heavy and clumsy he'd felt as a dragon, moving now should have been easier — but his head throbbed painfully and he relaxed again with a grimace. Instead of settling against itchy grass or hard rocks, the back of his head pressed against something smooth and thick, enough to cushion the ground. Roman twisted his neck to glance at it and smiled faintly.

The carefully folded caplet that was serving as a makeshift pillow was not the strangest thing that encompassed Roman, he thought, as he realised his sense of fashion had apparently rapidly depleted along with the dragon scales. He frowned down at the long purple hoodie that looked as if it had been roughly thrown on top of him.

"Forming from dragon to side was not accompanied by clothes, it seems," Logan explained. Heat dusted Roman's cheeks. He unconsciously gripped the sleeve of Virgil's hoodie a little tighter. He looked around and relaxed as, one by one, he spotted his friends. Patton moved to crouch beside Logan, smiling with tired but happy eyes. Virgil remained standing, looking out-of-character without his violet hoodie over his shoulders, but when Roman caught his gaze, he smirked, albeit weakly.

"What did I say?" he said with a shrug. "Normal in no time." Roman grinned back.

Deceit stood awkwardly off to the side. He looked strange, too, without his signature article of clothing, but he hadn’t left yet, and that was enough for Roman.

Closing his eyes and concentrating, Roman waved his hand and felt their surroundings shift. Sinking out, however, did no kindness to his aching head, so when he rose up with the others in the mindscape commons, all properly clothed once again, he made an unsteady bee-line for the couch.

He collapsed into it and ran a hand over his tired eyes, and a hand ran through his hair. He blinked lazily over at Patton.

"Someone's exhausted," Morality said with a smile. Roman hummed in response. Feeling as if he needed to double check he was back, in the mindscape, with everyone, Roman quickly scanned the room.

Logan was cleaning the mess of the floor. Roman vaguely wondered where all those leaves and twigs had come from. Virgil was crouched on the staircase, talking to a mildly surprised-looking Deceit. Anxiety's eyes were narrowed, but he wasn't showing any other signs that he was mad, like tense shoulders or clenched fists. He looked embarrassed, if anything, but Roman had no idea why.

They would have questions, Roman knew. When he woke up, they'd want to talk, and he wouldn't be able to dismiss them. He'd have to — Greek gods forbid — open up, because he'd gotten his family hurt and the least he could do for them was to offer an explanation.

But for now, they were okay, and so was he. Feeling it was safe to relax, Roman closed his eyes.

He was out like a light.

[thetravelerwrites]

Dumont (Part 2) Lemon

Rating: Explicit Relationship: Female Elf Ranger/Male Tiefling Barbarian Additional Tags: Exophilia, Tiefling, Elf, Kobold, Half Elf, Human, Rogue, Bard, Barbarian, Ranger, Mage, Wizard, D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, Sex, Third Person Perspective Words: 2242

Another commission for @ocsmutpocalypse. Dumont and the party stop in a town to rest, and Kharis makes an important decision. Please reblog and leave feedback!

The Traveler's Masterlist

Sanoh, Rupert, Norman, and Dumont traveled together down the road to the next town, hoping to find paying work, while Kharis lay on Dumont’s back, eyes closed and arms behind her head as if sunbathing. He was walking on all fours as he often liked to do, and his back was so broad that she had no worry of falling off. She seemed to enjoy this mode of travel quite a lot and did it whenever the weather allowed.  

“Why do you do that?” Sanoh asked. “You treat Dumont like a horse and it’s weird.”

“He likes it,” Kharis said, rolling on her stomach and scratching gently at the base of his spine. “Don’t you, bubba?”

“I do like it,” He replied. “It’s nice to have you close by.”

“Aww, my big boy,” Kharis said, laying her cheek on his back. “So sweet to me.”

Sanoh snorted and shook her reptilian head. Rupert smirked at her and took her hand.

They came to a crossroads that had a signpost and stopped.

“Ah, good,” Rupert said. “Dumont, can you read the post? We’re going to Vasenville. Which way should be go?”

Dumont had spent most of his life living with a guardian who couldn’t read, therefore he’d never learned how to read himself. Rupert had been spending time with Dumont and was teaching him a number of things, including reading. Dumont was a very quick study, much to Rupert’s surprise. It was easy to underestimate Dumont’s intelligence based on his size and monstrous looks. paired with the fact that he’d had little to no education before meeting the group.

Dumont’s unblinking eyes looked at the post carefully for a moment, after which he said confidently, “left.”

“Good! Very good!” Rupert said, clapping a hand on Dumont’s upper arm, which was thicker than Rupert’s entire body. “Left we go!”

Dutifully, Dumont led the way toward Valenville.

Dumont tended to get a lot of funny looks when he went to different towns. He was a tiefling, but he was born… not quite right. He was far too large for his kind, nearly twice the height and width of even the tallest and burliest of tieflings. The bone of his lower jaw was exposed, and his eyes were large and bulging with no eyelids to cover them. He brick red, had no hair on his body, and his horns took up all of his scalp with blood-red veins running along them.

He was an unsettling person to look upon if you weren’t used to him, and it had drawn the ire of some of the towns they had gone to. His traveling companions were quick to jump to his defense, and Kharis was a force to be reckoned with when she was angry, but Dumont understood better than they did. His guardian, the priest of the church where he was raised, always kept him hidden and out of sight, not for a lack of love for Dumont, but for fear of what others would do to him if they found him.

He was lucky that the first people he met after his foster father’s death were kind. It would have been easy for a less than scrupulous person to use his innocence and naivete to enslave him.

As usual, he got a lot of stares as he lumbered through town with Kharis sitting across his shoulders, a leg dangling from either side of his head and a hand on each of his horns to steady herself. She narrowed her eyes and hissed at people who gawked at Dumont, and that was usually enough to force most people to avert their gaze.

Another problem Dumont had in most towns was that the inns they stayed in often weren’t large enough to accommodate him. Many times he couldn’t even get through the front door, so he ended up having to stay in the cellar, stables, or out in the back behind the building. in those cases, Rupert and Norman would set up a tent for Dumont to curl up in.

Thankfully, the stables were empty of horses and open for free shelter for those who couldn’t pay for an inn. Dumont laid out his large leather bedroll on the straw and settle himself for the evening as the others made their way toward the tavern. Kharis promised to return with his dinner.

He missed his friends when he had to sleep away from them, but it wasn’t much different than sleeping in the bell tower of the church, so he didn’t mind it so much. Still, he was lonely.

After an hour, Kharis appeared with a large jug of mead and a platter of food, mostly de-boned meats and bread. He had no lips to chew properly, so he had to tear his food with his claws, chomp it once or twice with his large, sharp teeth, and then swallow it whole.

“Here you go,” She said, sitting with him. She looked around at the stable stall and sighed. “I’m sorry you’re reduced to sleeping in pen like an animal.”

“I don’t mind,” Dumont replied. “It’s free and plenty large enough for me, at least.”

“Well, I mind,” Kharis said venomously. “It’s demeaning. One day, I promise to take you to a place where you’ll fit through every door.”

“Is it like a church or a cathedral?” He asked.

She chuckled mirthlessly. “It might as well be, except the only god they really pray to is politics.” She looked off into the middle distance. “Maybe I shouldn’t take you there after all.”

“Would I embarrass you there?” Dumont asked. He often wondered if she found the attention he drew uncomfortable. He certainly did. After spending his entire life in the shadows, the sudden swarm of gawkers everywhere he went was disconcerting to him. He felt like the constant spotlight on him was a detriment to her journey.

“Absolutely not!” She said sharply. “If anything, they would embarrass me in front of you, the pompous twits, not the other way ‘round. And if they had a word to say about you, they’d be dealing with me.”

“Well, you are scarier than me,” Dumont said, laughing a little.

“Damn right, I am,” Kharis said, jutting her chin up.

“It would be nice to go to a place where I fit into proper buildings and things, though,” Dumont agreed.

Kharis looked him up and down, a coy smirk on her face. “I can think of a couple of places you fit very well,” She said suggestively.

Dumont often didn’t understand the context of people’s tones, like sarcasm or seduction, so when Kharis said things like this, it often confused him.

“Where is that?” He asked guilelessly, but when she began to unlace her bodice and untie her pants, and he whispered, “oh.”

“Hungry?” She asked him as she stripped down.

“For you, always,” He said.

She pulled the stall doors closed and walked to the opposite wall. “I want to ride your shoulders like I did this afternoon, only in reverse. Want to try?”

He nodded his head and came close, picking her up under her thighs and pushing her up against the wall, pinning her there and throwing her legs over his shoulders. His long, long tongue came out and pressed itself against her outer lips, massaging up one side and down another. Over the two months they had been together, she had taught him many techniques she enjoyed, and he used them to great effect. His immense strength and eagerness to please also worked greatly in his favor.

“Mmm,” She mewled, breathing heavily. Her hips moved of their own accord, and her lips swelled and heated as her arousal grew. She gripped his horns as he circled the bud with his tongue without actually touching it, stretching the pleasure and denial out as long as possible. Dumont had learned to tell when she was enjoying it and when she began to find it frustrating, and as soon as he felt that anxious tension in her body, he flicked the tip of his tongue against the pearl, making her hiss sharply.

He growled lowly, vibrating his tongue against her, the tip of it teasing her entrance as the broad part of it contracted against her clit, rubbing it up and down. Her entire pelvic area was sandwiched between his jaws. Her fingernails raked the back of his shoulders and across his neck.

“Inside,” She gasped, and Dumont obliged, thrusting his tongue into her roughly, quick and hard. She cried out, bracing against the wall hard. He held her hips fast in his grip so that she couldn’t escape and ravished her with his tongue. She was now making a lot of noise and he was a little concerned she would draw concerned passersby.

Finally, her orgasm crested and ebbed and she sighed in satisfaction, her eyes closed. He pulled her down from the wall, turned her over on her stomach, and pulled her hips toward him as be began unlacing his trousers.

“Yes,” She breathed. “Yes. Yes, please.”

Dumont lined himself up, saliva from his jaws dripping on her buttocks as he leaned over her, he pressed himself into her dripping wet entrance. She whimpered over and over as he slowly slid as far inside as he could reach before causing her pain and pulled back out again. He started slow, but quickly gained pace as time went on.

“Oh, fuck,” She said through gritted teeth.

He bent over her body and grabbed her by her waist, lifting her up so that she was flush with his body. She reached back and grabbed his horns, howling with pleasure and he slammed into her. He knew she loved the feeling of being held up by him like she weighed nothing more than a ragdoll while still being in complete control at the same time. She was always in control.

A door opened someone outside of the stall, and a voice called, “Is everyone all right in here? I heard screaming--”

“Fuck off, asshole, I’m getting laid!” Kharis shouted at the intruder, and the door shut again quickly. “Don’t stop,” She ordered Dumont. He was happy to obey.

He could feel the now familiar wall of ecstasy welling up in him, slamming into his body, reaching from his head to his toes, his body locking up, and he roared, spilling into her repeatedly. Under his hand, he could feel her belly swell slightly from the amount of his seed pushing its way inside.

As she lay under Dumont, boneless and gasping, and he rolled to the side to prevent crushing her, they heard the door open cautiously again.

“Are you sure--”

“FUCK OFF!” Kharis yelled, and the door slammed shut.

“You don’t have to snap at the poor man,” Dumont wheezed. “He genuinely thought you were being hurt. He was doing a good thing.”

“He was interrupting my play time,” Kharis said, unmoved. “He deserved to be chided.”

“I’m afraid we may have terrified him,” Dumont said. “He may never come into this stable again.”

“Good. Let him think it’s haunted.” Kharis got up, wiped herself down with a spare cloth in her pack and lay on Dumont’s chest, fully naked. “You know, I have thought about it a lot.”

“About what?” He asked, confused. “Haunted stables?”

“No!” Kharis said, slapping his chest playfully. He jumped, like he always did to make her laugh, though it didn’t hurt at all. “About bringing you to that place I told you about. I sort of left without saying anything to anyone, so I should probably check in so they don’t think I’m dead.”

“Why did you leave?” Dumont asked. “You don’t talk much about your family. Were they cruel to you?”

“No, not cruel, but we… were weren’t much of a family, really. I’m closer to you and the party than I’ve ever been to them, and I’ve known you all less than six months.” She lay her head on him and sighed. “I think we do love each other, just not the way normal families do. I don’t know if that’s a product of our station, or if we’re just not predisposed to familial bonds, or what. It’s just the way it’s always been.”

“That sounds sad,” Dumont said.

“Yeah,” She agreed. “I suppose it is a little sad. But I do miss them. I should go back, and I’d like you to come with me. The others, too. What do you think?”

“I’ll go wherever you ask,” Dumont said. “I’m with you.”

“Aww,” She hugged him, or tried to, since her arms had no chance of making the full circle around him. “You’re so sweet.” She sat up on him, straddling him, with her hands braced on his chest, looking down at him with a shrewd expression.

“What’s the matter?” He asked.

“If… if I told you I had lied about some things, would you be angry?” She asked tentatively.

“It depends,” He said, cocking his head curiously at her. “What things?”

“Well… My name isn’t Kharis, for starters.”

“Oh. What is it?”

“It’s… Enania. Enania Enjor.”

“That’s very pretty,” Dumont said.

“Thank you,” She said, laughing nervously. “But that’s not all.”

“Tell me, then,” He said. “Don’t be afraid.”

She smiled softly. “Well… I’m not a ranger. Well, I am, but I’m something else, too. Something I was before I became a ranger.”

“Which is?”

She winced. “A princess.”

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The Exophilia Creator’s Masterlist

[hans-writes-things]

Fairy Dust Chapter 8

The Pinnacle of Arcane Research, PAR for short, was a massive glass tower with a museum of magical artifacts in it's lower three floors, followed by five floors dedicated to the largest school of arcane magic on the entire continent. The rest of the 150 floor building was dedicated to research. This was the tallest building in L'waren, by a wide margin. It was a city landmark, and a symbol of power and perseverance to any of the city's races that had a history of magic.

After the fade of magic throughout the world, wizards of every race scrambled to keep hold of the power they had accrued through their art. Most wizards, being too arrogant to band together, obviously failed in their endeavors, but a few of the more clever ones formed alliances that grew into companies. One of my ancestors had been a wizard of some renown, and the company he and his had founded was still alive, still run by my sister. The Pinnacle was a joint effort, created and funded by a handful of companies of wizardly origin, built with the end goal in mind of making arcane magic a force to truly be reckoned with again.

I knew why Sam had hesitated to tell me where we were going. It was not my favorite place to visit. My name alone would get us through the door and even allowed us, on one occasion, to make appointment with the high wizard in charge of the school in connection with a previous case, but the look on her face suggested something more this time.

As we entered the building through the main doors, walking through the group of daily visitors coming to view ancient magical artifacts, I couldn't help but to be awestruck by the view. Ancient wizards had commissioned the craftsmen in building their towers and PAR had spared no expense trying to emulate history's greatest wielders of arcane magic. The entry hall was especially opulent, sporting a pair of massive, gnarled and twisting trees, made from stone, and decorated with thousands upon thousands of precious and semiprecious crystals and stones to serve as foliage. Threads of the purest gold wove through the whole construction and the boughs of the trees met over the entryway to the museum to form an arch. It wasn't the first time I looked at these, and yet they seemed even more marvellous, more magical, than the last, and they were. I knew that they would be even more amazing still the next time I would look at them. It was part of the school of the Pinnacle. The students of arcane magic would prove their dedication to their studies by spending one whole week of every school year, exhausting every ounce of strength in their bodies, by pouring their magic into the trees, helping to shape them, maintain them, even grow them. On a good year, the nearly twenty thousand students combined, would grow them a whole inch between them. On a bad year, the trees would wither a little, even lose some their foliage. Of course the result of that ritual was mainly used as a measuring stick for the top floors of the tower, the high wizards, and their decisions as to how to market their work. Still, the trees were undeniably beautiful, and undeniably magical, and they tugged at my sense of awe and wonder, no matter what else I knew of them.

The air in the entryway held a soft and constant birdsong, and within the boughs of the great trees I could see the subtle flit of movement. This year had been a good year then, a bumper crop of ready and eager young people, hungry to be part of the magic that the tower offered. Sam scoffed softly at the display and offered me an awkward smirk. "Thinking of running away and joining the mages?" She elbowed me in the thigh as she spoke. She was trying to lighten the mood, and I felt my mind starting to put a couple of things together, though I hadn't quite figured out what was off just yet. "Yeah Sam," I replied, breaking eye contact, "I've always wanted to become a gardener, don't you know?"

She walked over to the right towards the desk, guards, and elevators that lead to the upper floors of the building. I followed a few steps behind, feeling as though I was decidedly not going to enjoy this visit one bit, though I still hadn't quite figured out why, beside the usual. Behind the desk sat an elven woman with dark hair and dark skin. She seemed older than any other elf I'd ever met before. Her skin seemed thin and wrinkles creased the corners of her eyes and mouth. Her eyes were bright and sharp though, a stark contrast with the rest of her features. Her hair was tied up in a tight bun. To either side of the desk, and behind her down the hall to the elevators, stood several half orc guards.  The ceiling was not as high here as it was over the entrance to the museum section, and the muted colours of the desk, the woman's suit, and the guard uniforms, helped to make the severity of this other entrance less conspicuous when compared to the bright and welcoming gateway to magic offered between the two magical trees.

"Good morning." Sam started but was cut off before she could continue. "Detectives Xyrocelzam Daxldizk and John Winters, what can I do for you?" "We request an audience with the archmage." Sam said without hesitation. I bit my tongue and froze in place a step behind Sam. The archmage? She hadn't explained exactly what we were here for, but, the archmage? "Your errand?" The elven woman asked, and though she reacted quickly she had hesitated, just a hair. "Interplanary travel." Sam said, again, as though the phrase was normal and expected. This time the elven woman hesitated notably enough to draw a concerned glance even from one of the guards. "I beg your pardon?" "We need to speak with whoever is in charge about how something extra planar could even get here" Sam said, this time her voice a little firmer. "It can't" the elven woman started, but this time Sam cut her off, "and we would very much like to know who around here has been playing with necromancy." This time I could see one of the guards move his hand reflexively down to his weapon. "Or we could just discuss how the arcane is falling short" Sam offered and gestured in my direction "the divine are already preforming miracles again." And there it was. That's why she had been so apologetic and awkward. I sighed and slowly, with my hands held open in a gesture of surrender, reached up and removed my new sunglasses. The elven woman gasped, bringing one of her hands up to her mouth, and shot up from her seat. "My gods" she whispered. "I'll make some calls, please wait here."

I turned and sat at one of the benches to the side, keeping my eyes low to the ground. The room was too bright, not just in the amount of light, but the sheer intensity of colour. Even the shapes and angles of things seemed sharper than they should be and the room felt as though it might start spinning at any moment. "I'm sorry" Sam whispered, standing next to me, "but we need answers." I nodded, which immediately reminded me how close I was to nausea. "Count the tiles." Sam offered, and I looked down at the floor. What I had previously assumed was a smooth surface had actually been made from countless little tiles of odd shapes and sizes, all of them nearly the same colour. Nearly. I started counting and trying to get a feel for them, for what they were, for the pattern in what looked more like chaos. Slowly I found myself realizing the pattern they formed was reminiscent of a forest floor. Pebbles, single straws of grass, a carpet of old mulch and leaves, dirt. The room settled and the pain became manageable and I couldn't help but to lift my eyes and glance in the direction of the magical trees. They glowed with magic, each tree echoed a thousand times in faint reflections through the air itself. Each stone and crystal leaf throwing the image through the room. I was in an entire forest of gentle light and unearthly beauty and all I could say was "what?" "Yeah, I thought you'd like that." Sam whispered.

"The archmage will see you now." The elven woman called over. I closed my eyes, and pocketed by sunglasses before standing up. "Please follow me." The old elven woman led us past the elevators to the far wall of the hall, then placed her hand on the wall, chanted a gentle spell, and revealed a small keyhole. She entered a key she held on a bracelet and to the side of her the wall slid open to reveal a separate elevator with only two buttons. One for up, and one for down. To my surprise, we went down.

"My name" the elven woman spoke "is Far'emin Chuft. I am one of the three members of the current council of archmage in the Pinnacle of Arcane Research." "I know." said Sam. "I didn't." I muttered, feeling a little more myself, and thus a little more frustrated at the turn of things. "We aren't fond of a lot of people knowing, Detective Winters." The elven woman continued. "Wizardry is all about knowledge, about information, and protecting personal information is how we keep ourselves safe. Magic is not what it was in my mother's age, after all."

The elevator slid to a halt and opened. I squinted instinctively but quickly relaxed again. The hallway was softly lit and coloured. The hallway had simple wooden floors and walls, well worn by age, but clearly well cared for. The ceiling had softly glowing lights though I couldn't see an electrical source for them. On the other end of the hall were wooden double doors, open a slight crack, and from beyond them came a pair of voices in hushed conversation. Far'emin kept in the lead and threw the doors wide as she entered. The room was large and circular with portraits along the outer wall, faces of what I presumed were noteworthy wizards, perhaps previous archmages. The center of the room had a circular table with a large crystal set in it's center, emanating a soft glow that somehow managed to bathe the entire room in a gentle and comfortable light, even to my sensitive new eyes. Around the central table were thirteen plush chairs, only two of which were occupied.

As Far'emin entered the room she ran her hands over her face and back over her hair, letting out a soft sigh of releif, and when I glanced her way her hair had changed colour, from a deep and rich brown to a stark white, and the skin of her face and hands had darkened still, as though it had absorbed the colour from her hair, darkening to nearly coal black. I whispered "Drow" before I could catch the though in my mind, and Far'emin chuckled slightly. "How very astute." "Let me introduce my colleagues," she then said "the very honorable mister Joseph Darian Swit," she gestured towards a stout human man with almost dwarfish features. Thick black beard and a pair of round glasses completed the look. He looked up and nodded at her mention of his name. "and the lady Amana Silverlight." The high elven woman stood up from the circular table and gave a slight bow. My mind ran a few pointless circles within my head, reminding me of what little was known of the drow even before the fade, and the reputation they still had to this day, and watched as Far'emin walked over to the high elven woman and gave her a hug and a gentle kiss and just gave up on thinking I knew anything.

Sam, which until this moment had seemed unfazed by the entire encounter, stood frozen by the door with wide eyes, watching Far'emin's every move as though she expected her to simply explode, taking the room and everything in it with her. "Sam?" I asked softly. "She's a fucking dark elf!" Came a half whispered response. "Yes, yes I am." Far'emin responded with a sigh. "I know what reputation my people have, but there's much you do not know. The fade did not just affect the surface." "Come now!" Joseph suddenly spoke, his voice a deep booming one that jostled us to move, "Take a seat and let us see those eyes. Please?" Sam seemed to remember why we were here and took a steadying breath. "Alright then. Come on tall boy."

__________________

What you get here, on Tumblr, is my first draft of each chapter, as it happens to exist.  I’m considering making a patreon for working on this thing.  In the meanwhile, keep me in writing fuel via;  https://ko-fi.com/miniar

[luminescentlyricist]

∞ Regency ø

Hello! The lovely Atoren Rhopai (and the malefactor, in a cameo) actually belongs to one of my good friends Aaron. He doesn't have a Tumblr account, but you can find him on Wattpad at ClosetChronicles.

~

Cirlun was lost in her own head. She never had anyone to talk to except for Astril, and even then life began to get a little boring as the sweeps went by. She knew that she wasn't supposed to talk to any of the royal guards, as they were busy enough doing their jobs, and she had no siblings, ancestor or dancestor to speak of. The only time she socialised with any other trolls was when she went to royal meetings or visited her Advisor in the throne room. There was very little in the way of outside communication for her, so she found it in the most dangerous way she could.

Of course, Trollian was hardly a viable option for someone like her. Even though she trusted Lamiac - the small, jovial oliveblood who was an employee of Skaianet and a communications officer of sorts for the palace - there were things about the company that she didn't. In particular, one employee got on her nerves, and she didn't even know his name yet. she just knew that Lamiac was always speaking forcibly high-pitched and happier than normal when she was corresponding with him. Regardless, due to all the encryptions the palace's network had to go through, she often had to filter through Skaianet itself.

The young troll found her lips curving downwards as her thoughts reeled. It was so lonely...

Lamiac was one of the few other trolls she had felt that she could trust to some degree. Apart from her lusus, she didn't really have much social experience beyond that which she read in the palace library, and the weight of having to act like such a highbrow highblood in public all the time was utterly draining. She was positively - or as Lamiac would put it, 'pawsitively' - bouncing on the balls of her feet whenever she had escaped from her room and ran down to the catlike troll's office, which doubled as her lodgings, but was a renovated ballroom. As such, it was enormous.

Cirlun didn't even know if trolls held balls. She thought that was more of a human culture, but her mother seemed to take pieces from many different timelines and planets. Sometimes, the violetblood was called into stressful half-sweep diplomatic meetings, and she'd leave in a fleet ship, coming back with new ideas. Many of these were incredibly unorthodox, and frowned upon by society. That was why the Heiress was scared of her mother: only they saw what was going on in the dark, and she was the one who made it all happen. Even though her own maternal figure was a caste below her, Cirlun felt humbled and weak.

Her dulled fuchsia gaze flickered around for a moment, then she closed her eyes again. There was nothing for her to see. It was all the same to her.

She had been young, naive, and wished for excitement that the world had never given her on its own. However dangerous her actions were, she hadn't cared, for it had been change. Cirlun had been given everything she ever wanted, but she focused too much on what she didn't have instead of what was there. It was one of her biggest flaws, and she had acknowledged it far too late. The ex-royal knew now, surrounded in darkness, that she was flawed. Her maternal figure had only been attempting to show her the truth, and she had pushed it away in favour of idealistic views. Those that had bought her life crashing down piece by piece.

She had sought out the discs again, of course.

The lost heiress looked down at the garb she wore, the soft material tearing and stitching repeatedly in black and white. She ran her fingers down it, a soft sigh barely audible in the emptiness. Out here, colours were dissolved, even the soft, ink-like blue tones that she had once taken such pride and comfort in. Cirlun wasn't even sure why the clothing moved in such ways, and doubted that it was supposed to. Last time she checked, there had been no one around to create time loops... the fabrics were thin, she thought. That was the only explanation she could draw up in her fading psyche. Space-time held little significance where she was.

Now, everything was dark, and it was her fault. Everything had ended. Nothing seemed to want to start again. She was a Maid of Void, gifted only in creating and bringing forth darkness and confusion. Sure, she had been able to wrestle through the session, finding her own way to God Tier and mastering it. Despite that, all of her efforts seemed futile, because there was no one to share her happiness with. Companionship was what she had been searching for all of her life, and it never seemed to stay, however much she herself was willing to.

It had been hard, so, so hard. She had wandered for aeons through the broken session that was presented to her, training and training for her fated fight. Death had kept her on her toes, and now she had no ground to stand on at all. Her eyes flickered around the emptiness, searching for anything to break the monotony. Her claws raked at her palms, twitching with black energy. She remembered nothing of the fight with Gl'bgolyb at all. Just that she had been left in this endless Void, presumably of her own creation, for aeons longer than she could keep track.

There was a light.

Small at first, but it grew. Slowly, but her eyes drifted towards it. It was enough to give her hope for the world. A billion empty, nameless and insignificant sweeps of waiting were pushed behind her. The troll's hands curled into fists, the seething heat of her Void energy receding into a simmer around them. She felt it pop and crackle, fighting her suppression, but she couldn't ket it out, as she had been doing ceaselessly for too long. Maybe she had been contributing to the darkness more than she realised.

It was time for her to settle down. It had been an age, but the tension in her shoulders was finally releasing. Cirlun allowed the energy around her hands to expand, swallowing her whole body, letting the warm darkness run through her skin and consuming her. Drifting forwards, she went entirely limp, focusing only on the speck of white. Worry melted away, along with the rest of her swarming pan's thoughts. She had been forgetting an awful lot, but she was sure she would remember this for the rest of her days.

Soon, the Void faded around Cirlun, and she was nearer to the light. She had forgotten how time worked in her vast darkness, but it had evidently been too long. Instead of the light, there was a planet. Small, destined to become better, a well of potential. Unfinished, but existent in the first place. She felt drawn to it. So, she went closer. There was something more there, she was sure. It wasn't just a dwarf planet. Her head was swimming badly, but she forced herself to go closer and enter the atmosphere.

This was the Land of Glow and Spires.

Blindingly white, thrumming so harshly it threatened to burn out her vision tenfold, like the most brutal days under the Alternian sun. Wreathing herself in the black mist crackling about her body, a soft sigh parted her lips. They had been dry, cracked and bleeding for many a sweep. She looked at the tall spires, the buildings made of a towering substance too ethereal to name. It seemed like a society had been built there, but she found no one. Desolation caused her power to flare, feeding off her own loneliness.

Someone else was there, and they were watching her. But they were benevolent. Amidst the tallest structures, there was one floating above them all. It seemed almost prismatic. Although it was completely clear, motes of light in all of the colours of the rainbow joined it in the air, shifting and moving constantly. It looked like a sphere, split in half by a diagonal line. Somehow, Cirlun knew that she should go there, for the better or worse.

"))((e)(... I guess t)(is... t)(is is it."

Her voice was atonal, scratchy and quiet as if she hadn't had cause to speak in a long time, which was true. It made her double back, coughing. Her God Tier wings stirred no air behind her,  their greyed tones blurring in and out of focus. She was so tired, so unbelievably tired. Lethargy made her limbs heavy as bricks, but she had slumbered for sweeps enough. There was nothing else she could do but continue, and so she made her way up to the towers, the ones that seemed to burn themselves into her retinas.

Her eyes never seemed to still, looking around in awe of the light that greeted her every turn. She had found it. Her new start was here, even though she felt alone again. Surely there was someone else? Who had built these luminous buildings? She knew that she would meet them, however long it took to get there. It just so happened that they were resting in the sphere, though, and it split open as soon as Cirlun drew near, along the slash in the middle.

"Hello? Is αnyone there? It would be much αppreciated if you could stop hiding from me."

The voice came as a surprise to Cirlun, who froze on the spot for a few moments before clearing her throat awkwardly. She stepped forwards, letting the shield of dark smoke dissipate from where it had been sheltering her from the harsh light.

"))((ello... I come wit)( no ill intent. My name is Cirlun."

And it was true. The stranger's similarly fuchsia gaze swept over her once, as if scanning her methodically for any threat. The smile they gave seemed forced, but Cirlun relaxed slightly upon seeing it.

"I know. You hαve trαvelled α long wαy, hαven't you? I αm Atoren, αnd thαt is αll you need to know for the time being."

Atoren Rhopai was not surprised. She had known about the coming of the other for a long time, from the moment she had found the Land in seemingly barren darkness. After the Session had reset upon Gl'bgolyb's death, there had been numerous changes. One allowed a tear in the fabric of space-time, the Cataclysm, that had in turn introduced new hope. Atoren had been able to enter the session's void-space, though it was still unknown why or how she had chosen to enter the environment. The simplest explanation was the Land.

The mystical space that the two seadwellers occupied seemed to be Atoren's own Land. As far as the Heiress was concerned, it couldn't be anyone else's.

Cirlun sat in the air, her wings seeming to glitch in and out every so often. Her voice was slightly louder, but she still felt incredibly nervous about Atoren. Clearly, she had also considered the session completely barren, and was shocked to find a guide ready and waiting for her. Never had a space so light seemed so ominous and disorienting.

"Yes, I suppose I )(ave been aimlessly drifting a lot lately."

She laughed nervously, though her throat ached from that simple, joyless sound. Finally, her eyes settled on something. She was looking at the medals, shining still, on the woman's coat. It looked like a military sort of outfit, a long coat-dress with fuchsia lining and golden buttons. Most notable, however, was the fact that she wore long black gloves and boots, covering the majority of her skin.

"You know, Cirlun, I hαve no one else to converse with. This Land lαcks αny Consorts, αnd my lusus fαded long αgo. You hαve not been αble to preserve your own lusus, hαve you?"

Atoren had very little social filter, in Cirlun's opinion, but she knew she had to keep quiet about her thoughts of their misdemeanours so as to get on this stranger's good side. Besides, to complain on that subject would be to blatantly display her own hypocrisy. So she grit her teeth and smiled through her objections.

"))((mm? O)(, no, I was not able to. Usually, s)(e slept in one of my specibus bubbles, but s)(e was refusing to be trapped. It was as if s)(e knew about w)(ere I was going."

There was an edge of sorrow in Cirlun's tone, but she couldn't help but feel guilty about her sadness, so she also suppressed that as much as she could.

Atoren clapped her hands together, the sound echoing around the space and making Cirlun look directly into the other's eyes. The smile that the other had donned made Cirlun slightly fear for her life, though it was a normal reaction for anyone met with a stranger grinning at them like a shark. It was almost too jovial, given the information that Cirlun had just provided.

"Brilliαnt! You hαve no one else, then... perhαps we cαn bond over our mutuαl loneliness? Or, well..."

She pursed her lips, her claws tapping a rhythm akin to morse code out on the arm of the plush chair she sat in. Her back was straight as a rod, and she was tense. Wary of the small, traumatised troll in front of her. She leaned forward conspiratorially.

"Our mutuαl thirst for αn Empire?"

Instantly, Cirlun straightened her own posture, but it was more of a fearful thing, as if the fuchsiablood in front of her had threatened her in some way. Her eyes drifted down to her feet, and she refused to utter any reply for a few minutes. Again, time passed differently, so she really had no way to tell how long it was, but Atoren's grin dropped, and it made her fear rekindle.

"A)(... at t)(is point, it would be f∞lis)( of me to decline, I believe..."

Her throat burst with pain as she swallowed, nerves making her hands flex and curl again. She had spoken the truth, but perhaps it would have been advantageous  for her to craft some lie, however simple.

Atoren barely seemed phased by her hesitance.

"I know you αre lonely, Cirlun. There is nothing else for you here, αnd I hαve known your yeαrning in my own sweeps. You αnd I αre not αs dissimilαr as we mαy seem, however much you mαy deny it. I hαve suffered, too. Mαges are fαted to suffer for whαt they believe in, whαt they control. My words to you αre not empty. They αre simply offering you the only choice you will ever hαve."

Cirlun shifted in her place, feeling a shiver run down her spine at these words. This one knew too much. Of course she was lonely. Some of it was blatant common sense, like that, because she had floated through a Void of her own creation for so long. But something was inherently... wrong about this. It was as if there was something more behind the other's knowledge.

What had she called herself? A Mage?

It was likely some kind of auditory hallucination, having been bombarded with noise after so long in emptiness, but the ticking of a clock began in the heiress' ears. Her voice felt too small, as if she was being swallowed up by the light around her. Her hands flared with ominous black, expelling whatever things she was making herself see. Paranoia was eating at her, and she could do nothing to stop it.

"I... I )(ave no c)(oice. You are rig)(t... But )(ow will we do it? Surely we cannot rule toget)(er?"

The glaring issue went unspoken: the fact that they had nobody to rule over in the first place.

Atoren had once been told something by someone - the very same someone who Lamiac was routinely tormented by - using shifting black, white and green text. This mysterious malefactor had said that she would find her place with another, whether she liked it or not. That someone had something that would be very important to her, and make her feel as if she had fulfilled her 'Skaian duty', whatever that was.

"Cirlun, I believe you... hαve something for me, do you not?"

The woman nodded, then, to this cryptic statement. There was no denying what Atoren wanted, and what needed to be done. Before the Session, she had explored a lot, and had found something so small and insignificant that she almost threw it away. Astril has scolded her for it later on, of course, but she couldn't quite remember why.

She still had it in a small pouch sewn into her outfit, nearest to her heart so that she would never forget it. She had the feeling it was smaller than it was supposed to be, but they could figure that out later. They had all of the time in the world.

"I... I do."

She reached into the pouch, rolling the small marble-like object in her palm and waiting for Atoren to hold her hand out for it. She didn't know why it was so significant, but she didn't know a lot of things.

Cirlun gave Atoren the Matriorb.

[numba99]

Fatal Attraction Part 4

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Summary:  When a mysterious man shows up at your job, you find yourself inexplicably drawn to him - and him to you. But behind the beautiful face is the dark lifestyle of a man who has made his wealth through becoming the most powerful drug dealer in the city. Word count: 3.7k 

Song: Loft Music // The Weeknd 

Warning: this part may kinda intense? idk??  some physical fighting and some light smut

When you woke up, your bed was empty. For a split second you thought you dreamt everything from the night before, however, the noises coming from the kitchen told you it had to have been real. You crept out of bed, stepping over Mika’s clothes, which you were happy to see were still on the floor.

You found him at the stove, his back to you as he was cooking up breakfast. You slid your arms around him from behind, on your tip toes so you could rest your head on his shoulder. “Morning,” you murmured into him.

“Morning,” Mika replied, snuggling his head against yours. He stirred some eggs in a frying pan, while you just clung to him, not wanting to let go. “I have to say, your food supply is severely lacking. It’s a miracle I could get this together.”

You rolled your eyes, playfully pushing him, “Give me a break I missed my grocery shopping day this week.” You were a little preoccupied with figuring out if Mika had ghosted you or gotten himself killed, but you thought it was best not to make him feel bad by saying that.

You sat down at the tiny table you use as a kitchen table while Mika plated the eggs. You were pretty sure this table was supposed to be a beside table, but it managed to fit two plates so it didn’t really matter. Mika sat in the creaky little chair across from you and you couldn't help but smile. It was weird, seeing him here with you like this. It almost felt out of place and yet, you couldn’t imagine ever eating there alone again.

“Damn these are good,” you said as you swallowed a forkful. You thought the scrambled eggs you made were good, but these were fancy brunch restaurant level. “Successful, good looking, and you can cook? You really might be the Prince Charming I’ve been dreaming of,” you teased.

“Was your Prince Charming also a drug dealer?” Mika asked, a smile playing at his lips. 

“He wasn’t a dealer, he was the head of an empire,” you threw his words back at him. Mika laughed, continuing to poke at the food with his fork. You didn’t miss the blush that came up to his cheeks, though.

“So I’ve been thinking,” Mika began as he finished up, “If we’re gonna do this, I don’t want there to be secrets between the two of us. I want you to know what’s going on.”

You nodded, “I think that sounds really smart.” You didn’t do well with secrets in normal circumstances, but with something like this it would be a lot more difficult. Plus, it made you feel good the Mika was trusting you this much.

“I’ve got a meeting later with some people who work for me. I’d like you to come, if you’re up for it. I get it though if it’s too overwh-”

“I’d love to be there,” you cut him off. You were already kicking around outfit ideas in your head. If you were gonna be a drug lord’s First Lady, you would need to dress the part. 

“There’s one other thing,” Mika said, taking a long sip of his coffee.

“What’s that?” you asked.

“I’d like you to move in with me.” You choked on your drink, having to cover your mouth to not spray it all over the place. “Don’t act too excited,” he chuckled.

“What happened to taking things slow?” you asked when you finally caught your breath. Not that the idea of moving in with Mika totally turned your off, it just seemed like a complete 180 from last night.

“I know it sounds like a lot,” Mika replied, “I just like the idea of keeping you close to me, so I can make sure you’re safe. You could have your own room, I don’t mind giving you space for yourself.”

 It was a tempting offer, but part of you were attached to your shitty little apartment. It was one of the few things that were your own. You worked really hard for it, and it would be weird to give it up. “Can I think about it?” you asked.

“Of course,” Mika gave your hand a squeeze, “In the mean time I probably should get back to my place and change into new clothes.”

“Can I come? I mean, I probably should be scoping out the place that could be my new home,” you replied, giddy to see where he lived. You could only imagine how nice it would be with he resources he had.

“You should definitely come. And maybe bring an overnight bag? The meeting might end late... and I selfishly want you to sleep over,” Mika replied.

You leaned over the table, pressing a kiss to his lips. “I’ll be ready to go in ten minutes.” You went off to your room, digging out a duffle bag from your closet and filling it with whatever you thought you would need. It was probably a bit much for staying just one night, but you wanted to be prepared. 

“I said a night, not a week,” Mika teased, leaning against your front door.

“Says the dude who asked me to move in with him after dating for like 16 hours,” you shot back.

“Touché. You ready?” You nodded, following him out the door. His driver was waiting for the two of you already. You weren’t self conscious about getting too close to Mika anymore, curling right up to him in the backseat. He lazily ran his hand up and down your side, staring out the window.

“What are you thinking about?” you asked, looking up at him.

Mika, smiled looking down, “You.”

You made a fake gagging noise, “Way too cheesy. What are you really thinking about?”

“I was being serious,” Mika chuckled, “I’m thinking about how good you’ll look next to me tonight.” His kissed your forehead, returning his attention to the world outside the window. Even if it was cheesy, it made you blush. You never thought you would be so excited to sit in on a meeting with a bunch of drug dealers.

The car eventually stopped and you got out to find a glass high-rise towering over you. “This is where you live?” you asked incredulously. Sure, you have seen these buildings before, it was hard to ignore these giant, glittering structures that dotted the skyline, but you never really thought about the people who lived there. It seemed impossible, you couldn’t fathom someone living so luxuriously. Not to mention how insane the rent must be.

“Eh, it’s nicer on the outside,” Mika winked. He took your hand and led your inside. The lobby was like a hotel and everyone inside was either dripping in money or taking care of the people dripping in money. A far cry from the creepy old men that sit in first floor of your apartment building to stare at the young girls walking by.

In the elevator, Mika punched in a code on the keypad, which you eyed in confusion. “It’s to get up to my place,” he explained noting the look on your face, “It’s a security code so no one else can get to my floor. Most penthouses have.” Right, like it’s that casual to have a penthouse in New York City.

The elevator kept going up and up, and you wondered if it would ever stop. You guessed you were at the top floor when the ding sounded and the doors slid open.

“Holy shit,” you gasped, stepping into the apartment. Apartment didn’t even feel like the right word, it really was like mansion that happened to be on top of one of the tallest buildings in the city. Everything was sleek and sexy, much like the man standing beside you. The windows were floor to ceiling, allowing natural light to spill into the sprawling rooms making everything seem that much bigger. You walked forward, taking it all in: the luxurious furniture, the private balcony, the fucking second floor in the apartment. Who the hell in Manhattan has a place with two floors?

“This is amazing,” you breathed, looking down at the city. It felt so impossibly small from up here. “God you must of thought my place was a fucking dump.”

“Not at all,” Mika shook his head, “I’m just glad you like it here.” Mika wrapped his arms around you and kissed your cheek.

“Like it? This... this is like a dream. I can’t even believe it,” you replied. This was making the whole “I wanna stay independent in my own place” thing seemed stupid now.

“Let me show you around,” Mika said and you followed eagerly. Everything seemed more impressive than the room before. The living room had a real wood burning fireplace etched into the marble mantle. His bathroom had a shower and a separate tub, which was positioned right next to a window. That surely gave you some ideas. Up the stairs was his bedroom, which easily fit a king-sized bed. You thought his bedroom was probably bigger than your entire apartment. And his closet looked like a luxury boutique.

“Mika, this is amazing,” you said when he finally led you back down to the main floor. 

“Have I convinced you to move in with me yet?” He smirked, holding you close to him.

“You’re much closer than you were this morning,” you replied. That made him smile brightly. Mika told you to make yourself at home while he made some calls, which was very easy to do. You headed to the kitchen for a snack and now understand Mika’s comments about yours. He basically had a fully stocked food store at his disposal.

After that you wandered around the house a bit. Though Mika gave you a tour, the place was so big there was still so much to discover. Mika found you a while later, marveling again at the spacious bathroom.

“You can use that later, if you’d like,” Mika said as he watched you run your hands over the tub’s edge.

“Seems too big to be in alone,” you heard yourself say. You really need a lesson in taking things slow, you thought to yourself.

Mika laughed though, replying, “I’ve always thought that too.” Mika then let you know you'd be heading out soon, so he set you up in a guest room to get ready. You dug through your duffle bag, trying to put something together from all the clothes you stuffed in there. What does one wear to one of these kinds of things? You certainly didn’t know. 

Eventually you decided on a little black skirt and a silky top that showed off your chest perfectly. Not exactly what you’d wear to a professional business meeting, but you felt like it fit the occasion.

“Wow,” Mika said, watching you descend the stairs. He took you by the hand, spinning you around, “Maybe you shouldn’t come tonight. I need everyone focused and you are one hell of a distraction.”

“Oh please,” you rolled your eyes, pretending like his comment didn’t make you smitten.

Before Mika could reply, Chris came in. “Ready to go when you are,” he announced. Mika thanked him, lacing his fingers through yours and leading you back to the elevator. 

“So there are some things we should go over,” Mika said as you both settled in to the car, “There are going to be some people with big guns there tonight. It’s a security thing, I don’t want you to freak out.”

“Mika, I’ve walked through Penn Station, I’ve seen big guys with big guns I’ll be fine,” you replied. 

“Okay, okay,” Mika replied, “But I don’t want you to leave my side, okay? Everyone there are part of my closest circle, and trust them, but still I can never be too careful. Especially when it come to you.” 

“Is there anyone you trust completely?” you asked.

“Chris,” he responded simply.

“You hear that Chris, you’re the chosen one,” you called up to Chris, who was in his usual spot in the passenger seat.

He turned around, giving you the first smile you think you’ve ever seen from him. “Lucky me,” he replied, before turning back around. Mika told you it would take a little while to get there. Not that it was that far, but they loop around and take back ways to ensure they aren’t being followed. You hadn’t ever really been scared to be with Mika, but it suddenly dawned on you that this was real. You weren’t in some crazy movie, this was all really happening to you.

You had some time to think about how fucking crazy your life is before you finally arrived. The outside didn’t look like much. If you didn’t know any better, you would have thought it was just a run down abandoned warehouse, but you guessed that was the point.

Mika’s arm was wrapped tightly around you as walked inside. After a short walk down a dimly lit hallway, you came to a door way guarded by two of the infamous men with big guns. They let you, Mika, and Chris pass without a word. Behind the doors was a dark, windowless room with a long table populated with 4 men, as well as a couple of other armed guards standing at attention. At the head of the table was an empty chair, the biggest in the room, looking more like a throne. You knew who that was for.

“Now I know why you were late,” one of the men - a blond, who looked fairly young - smirked.

“Relax, Lias,” Mika replied as you walked you to the head of the table. Lias settled back in his seat, but his eyes were still on you. You felt self conscious, realizing as you sat beside Mika that the were all staring at you.

“Who’s this?” asked a well-dressed man, who's looks rivaled Mika’s.

“This is y/n, we’re dating,” Mika replied.

“God finally. You’ve been so uptight lately, I was hoping you’d get laid soon,” a different man piped up, making you blush.

“Mats, please,” Mika replied sternly.

“So we just bring random girls here now? How do we know she’s not working for Dimitri?” the well-dressed cut in.

“I agree with the Henrik, this doesn’t seem smart,” Lias added, “Even if she is hot.”

“Would you all shut up,” Mika snapped, “Do you really think I’m that stupid? To bring someone here I don’t trust?” All of the men shrunk in their seats, shaking their heads. “You all seem to forget who’s in charge here sometimes.”

“Sorry boss,” Mats replied, “It’s nice to meet you, y/n. Happy to have you here.”

“Thanks,” you replied awkwardly, “It’s nice to meet all of you.” The rest of them mumbled greetings back to you. 

“Can we get to business, or do you guys wanna bitch some more?” Mika asked, scanning the men that sat before him. No one contested, so they got to business. You tried to pay attention the best you could; it was a bit of an out of body experience at first. You learned the last man’s name was Jesper, and that each of them were responsible for overseeing different areas of Mika’s coke trade in the city.Right now they were discussing a huge shipment Mika had coming in, one they were sure Dimitri was going to try to sabotage if he found out the details of it.

It was hard for you to focus on this details, however, as you watched Mika at work. He always exuded a strong energy, but the way these men looked at him, followed all of his words without question, the power he had was arousing. Not to mention, he kept his hand on your inner thigh rubbing little circles over the delicate skin, which definitely not helping the stirring between your legs.

“So we all know what are roles are when the shipment comes?” Mika asked. Everyone nodded and Mika continued, “Alright, we’re good here then. You’re free to go.”

The atmosphere broke in the room after that, feeling a lot more like some friends hanging out than a much of guys planning to smuggle millions of dollars of coke into the city. It was comical how swift the shift was.

“Sorry about before,” Henrik said to you, “Can't be too cautious in our line of work, but if Mika trusts you, you’re family.” You smiled as he pulled you in for a hug.

“For the record, I never questioned you,” Mats jumped. You didn’t miss how his eyes scanned your body. Neither did Mika, apparently.

“Alright, back up,” he said, half kidding. He wrapped his arms around you, kissing your cheek as if to mark what was his, if it wasn’t already obvious. “If you guys are done drooling, there’s actually something I have for y/n.” They nodded, listening to Mika as always and heading out of the room with a final goodbye.

“What do you have?” you asked Mika when you were alone... well alone with Chris and two guards.

“It would be better to show you,” He nodded to Chris, who whispered something in one of the guards ears. Both of of them disappeared out of the room. “If it’s too much just tell me.”

“What are you- oh my god,” you felt like the air was sucked out of you as the guard returned, dragging in none other than Thomas Holmes. He was more haggard looking than when you last saw him at the trial, but you would never forget his face.

Mika put his hands on your shoulder, whispering in your ear, “I thought you deserved to have some justice of your own.” The two guards held him firmly on his knees before you. You walked forward slowly, seeing him shake with fear as you got closer. You wondered if that was the same fear he saw on your parents face the night they were killed.

And then you snapped. In a fit of rage you blacked out, pounding away at him as half screams half cries left your throat. It was like all the anger, fear, pain, everything you felt since the day your parents died was flooding out of you. You kept going until you got it all out, then backed up, practically stumbling into Mika’s arms.

He held you tightly, letting cry out the last few tears you had, before wiping them off your cheeks. “You okay baby?” he asked, to which you nodded. He hugged you again, saying to the guards, “Take him out back and finish him off. Hide his body where no one will find it.” 

“No please! Please don’t I’m sorry!” Thomas screamed as the guards began to drag him away.

“Wait!” you stopped them. The guards looked to Mika, awaiting instruction from him.

“You answer to her tonight,” Mika told them firmly. The guards wordlessly brought him back over to you.

“I don’t want him dead,” you said.

“Oh bless you, thank you, thank y-”

“Not so fast,” you cut him off, crouching down to look him in the eye, “I don’t want you dead today. My mind may change tomorrow, next month, maybe even next year. And if I do, you better believe you will end up dead. You’ll never really be safe for the rest of your life. As long as you live you’ll be looking over your shoulder, praying I haven’t changed my mind.” You saw the fear in his eyes and you weirdly liked it. It made you feel powerful, and it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve this. 

You told the guards to get him out of your face, before turning back to Mika, who was looking at you stunned. “Would it be wrong to say I thought that was hot,” Mika said.

“Only if it was wrong that I enjoyed it,” you replied. Maybe enjoyed wasn't exactly the right word. It was intensely emotional, but it also felt like such a weight off your chest. You had stored so much hatred and fear in your body because of that man for years now it was all out. You felt ten pounds lighter.

Mika smiled hungrily at you, “Lets go home, yeah?” You nodded taking his hand and heading out. The ride felt quicker, though you took just as many turns and back ways as you did when you came. Maybe it was because your mind was elsewhere, processing everything that took place in these last few hours.

Once back inside Mika’s place, you found yourself walking over to the wall of windows. It was the same view from this morning, of course, but at night with all the lights glimmering below you it was totally different. It was being in like another world.

“You sure you’re okay? I know that must have been... emotional for you,” Mika asked carefully. He slipped his arms around your from behind, kissing your cheek.

“Yeah, it felt good. Like a relief. I just can’t believe you did that for me,” you replied.

“I would do anything for you,” Mika said seriously, his hand squeezing your hips softly. His lips found your neck, peppering kisses over your skin. “I don’t think you realize the power you have.”

“Mmm, and what power is that?” you asked, tilting your head back so Mika had more room to kiss you.

“You could give me a name, any name in this city, and in 24 hours I’d have them in front of you and they’d be at your mercy,” Mika told you between kisses. His hand slipped under your skirt, rubbing you through your underwear. “See this city honey? I run this whole fucking place, and it’s all yours now too. It’s ours.” HIs hand went down the front of your underwear, making your gasp. You hadn’t expected the contact, but you were grateful for it.

“Mika,” you moaned softly. One of your hands pressed against the glass as he ran his fingers through your wetness. He alternated be long, purposeful pumps of his fingers and rubbing circles over your clit. Your free hand reached back and tangled into his hair. You’ve never had a man make you feel so good so fast, and it wasn’t long before he worked you up so much you were cumming all over his fingers. “Fuck,” you whined when you finished, your knees buckled beneath you.

Mika peppered a few more kisses on you before scooping you up. “Let’s get you to bed sweetheart,” Mika murmured, walking with you in his arms. You fell asleep before he even got you to the bedroom.

[kurogabae]

TSUBASA: TRAINWRECK CHRONICLES

And How Bee Train is Single-Handedly Propagating Cancel Culture in This the Year of Our Lord 2020

PART 1 – PART 2 – PART 3 – PART 4 -- PART 5 

[[ join me on PillowFort. i have free invite codes if you need an account ]]

So last post was all filler episodes and we're well into season two of this, and I cannot stress this enough, two season anime. The only canon arc we've had was Piffle so far and it was poorly handled and out of order. Surely, absolutely surely, we are in for a canon arc. Shara perhaps? Skip right to Le Court? We all know they'd never dare touch Tokyo. How are they going to pad out the rest of the season?

Why another filler. A bad filler. The dreaded filler that goes against pretty much all of Fai's everything.

It's "A Date With a Wizard" and Kurogane isn't the one getting the date. If you haven't watched or heard of this episode before, buckle up kids. It's a doozy. And big spoiler warnings ahead.

Fort City Bit AKA Fai Dates His Own Fucking Mom (but like an AU version so it's okay I guess???):

You read that right. Fai goes on a date with this world's version of Chii, who was an artificial being he modeled after his dead mother. I could end the rant here but oh, there is so much to this. So much. It's only one episode long but it feels like an eternity.

The premise for magic use in this world is that:

Everyone has magic and that magic is specialized

Your career path is based on your magic's specialization. Like in MLP with cutie marks. And everyone is Fine with this.

Everyone recharges their magic via the sun, which is risen by their king

The king is chosen yearly after everyone in the country has the same fucking dream one night

The whole country runs on magic, to the point that if there is no magic there is no food, no power, no anything. But that's fine, because every day they get recharged by the sun. Right? WRONG! Because the current king is being a depressed little shit and refuses to raise the sun, effectively dooming the country to a slow death. Neat.

BUT BEFORE ALL OF THAT! The episode opens with Fai having a nightmare about Ashura looming like he's auditioning for a role in Attack on Titan. Vague and menacing, which is literally all we know about Ashura because we know nothing about Fai's past. And we never will. At least not in anime-land. No one knows anything. The manga isn't pulling this fakey flashback shit, so why is the anime? I don't know, but I hate it!

Anyway, the family gets the low down from Touya and Yukito - who still do not recognize Sakura and that upsets me because of the implications that there is no Sakura in this universe. (Sidenote: Kurogane recognizes them, even though he's never met them in the anime so far so honestly, just fuck everything.) While Touya is feeding them a frankly lavish meal that he's magiced up he explained their king problems. This leads to my next issue - if you're so worried about running out of magic why are you using it so flippantly and in such an extra ass way? Can you not make normal food? Does it only exist in magic form? Maybe just summon some soup? Does all food cost the same amount of mana? THIS MAGIC SYSTEM IS BAD!

So, back to the whole the king is too sad to raise the sun which powers everyone's magic which is now beginning to run low. Another problem I have. You get a recharge on your magic everyday. They have not gotten ANY recharges for, and I'm quoting here, months. They change kings every year. So even on the low end of things we're looking at 3-4 months before anyone got concerned about the king just. Not raising the sun. Personally, I would have gotten worried after a few days, a week at most. No one wanted to go and find out like "Hey your highness, why no sun? What's got you down?"

That, however, would be logical. This is a place of magic and whimsy! Not logic. Fai is asked to use his magic to figure out what is wrong with their king. Predictably, he tells them they have a better chance of meeting god, so everyone gets thrown in jail. Because refusing to solve a country's weird problems is illegal. Not that jail has ever stopped them before. Not with Kurogane and his muscles around. And while I am always up for watching Kurogane break things I do have to wonder - why are they not just warping free? Mokona said there was no feather. No one said anything about being magically held back. And yet, they are running through the castle, endangering themselves and the children!!!

Obviously this is For Plot Reasons, and I use the words "plot" and "reasons" loosely here.

Somehow the kitties and puppies get separated and Fai and Sakura end up surrounded by guards. Does Fai finally fight? Does he open that can of whoop ass we all know he's been saving? No. He leaps into the air and takes flight like some sort of stork. And while Fai's current cocky attitude is refreshing, he's working on some sort of idiot bimbo in a horror movie logic of "to escape the building I must do upstairs". This is not a man made to last on his own.

And, like Shrek to Fiona, the stairs lead him to the highest room in the tallest tower. Fai, then, promptly loses his shit as if he's not fully aware that doubles exist across the multiverse. Like, yeah, it would be a shock and anyone would be freaked out at the sudden surprise of it all, but Fai acts like he thinks he's stepped back into Celes. Like an idiot. He's better than this.

Now, we learn more things about this messed up king situation. Not only does everyone have a dream every year electing the new monarch, but the new king gets their memory erased for the whole year so that they can "rule with a pure heart" or some shit. Which seems like a baaaad fucking way to run.... anything. At all. Ever. Might as well pick up a fresh baby and put it in charge. It's bad. And it gets worse.

Chii is sad, but she wants to hang out with Fai and it's the first time she's shown any interest in doing anything but being Sad so her babysitter spirits are all like "Oh that's neat!" And Fai takes this is his chance to just... run off for a night on the town with her? They literally vanish and leave Sakura ALONE IN THE CASTLE WITH THE SAME SPIRITS WHO JAILED THEM. In what fucking universe????

Look, they are trying so so so so so so hard to sell this FaiChii shit. Fai leaves Sakura alone in a castle where they have just busted out of jail, he has no idea where or how Kurogane and Syaoran are, he's clearly uncomfortable around Chii as she reminds him of what he's running from, and, oh yeah, she's a copy of his dead mother he created in another world in order to comfort him and his dead brother as a child. Everything is Fine. Let's go get tea.

I'm gonna rapid fire some S tier bullshit:

no one knows where Chii has taken Fai - why is there no way to track your baby-brained king?

Fai leaves with Chii happily and cheerily, again, leaving Sakura behind and alone - who is this man because it isn't Fai

the only clue they have to Fai and Chii's location is that they are no longer on castle grounds, yet somehow Syaoran knows Exactly Where to Look - because sure why not?

Chii doesn't know how to drink???? - does this happen with every king? do they have to be potty trained too? omg they really are babies this is a terribly way to run a country!!!!!!

teaching someone basic life functions is not romantic but Bee Train sure wants us to think it is

"I want to stay with Fai forever and always." - at least he panics at commitment still... and probably incest

“I should be thanking you. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this way.” - What? Uncomfortably reminded of your past and why your life is just shy of a living hell? Who are you? You are not Fai

Kurogane and Syaoran show up to save Fai and Chii, who have been surrounded by guards (I think, I can't remember exactly but I'm pretty sure they're there to take her back to the castle and her Sad Room). Fai apparently won't fight in front of Chii but whatever at this point.

It comes out that Chii is an artificial soul/being (like the Chii in Celes) and because of that she cannot leave the town or she DIES and that means the king dies and I guess they don't have a back up plan for that. Unsurprising but bad. Still, Chii begs Fai to take her away and show her the world and Fai like... hesitates? Thinks about it? Considers it?!?!? I dunno but he doesn't automatically say "Uh no, you'll die and also I have other shit to do, bye" and that's dumb for a lot of reasons.

Eventually he tells her no and convinces her to bring the sun back and be happy because she'll be able to remember him or some shit (you know, unless they take those memories too!) and  they all say goodbye. And I couldn't be more thankful.

Honestly, the real MVP here is Kurogane for not just losing his shit at all of this like I have. He's a better man than I.

Tune in next time as I continue to scream, in vain, at god.

PART 1 – PART 2 – PART 3 – PART 4 -- PART 5

[satan-chillin]

Parent-Teacher Meeting (PTM)

Summary: You’re the homeroom teacher of nine students, four of which happened to share the same family name of Winchester. You dubbed them as the Winchester Four, two pairs of siblings and paternal cousins. You were pretty interested to find out the kind of parents they have.  

Pairings: Established Destiel & SamWena/SamWitch

Characters: Reader (female), Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Castiel, Rowena MacLeod (mentioned)

Note: Non-pairing reader, children drawings inside ;) 

Also available in Ao3

You straightened your skirt for what seemed like the tenth time within five minutes. 

 Not that you could be blamed for your nerves. It was the PTM, of course, and your first since becoming a kindergarten teacher. With the children, you were exactly in your element with their energeticness and rambunctiousness. The parents, however, were the uncharted territories. 

 Your first parent for the day was a nice young woman who happened to be a single parent of two boys, Connor and Marcus. You thanked her for her time and gave your appreciation after knowing she was also juggling three part-time jobs. Her kids were often the ones to be picked up a little past the dismissal, and after finding out her situation, you offered to keep watch for them until she could pick them up. She was delighted and was grateful while you didn’t mind the suggestion one bit since you tend to extend your stay after classes. Besides, it was also a chance for you to focus on improving her sons’ reading comprehension since it was your main concern.  

 You met both the parents of Alita, the quiet girl you have in class. You often found her sitting and coloring books in one corner and would encourage her to join the others during playtime. You would smile whenever she decided to join the rest on occasion and also understood that she was someone who frequently wanted time for herself. As a compromise, you often have her sit beside you while she was doing her coloring and the others playing. Her parents were alright, you supposed. A little snobbish, maybe, and clearly wanted Alita to be a more physically active child, but you did say you were doing your best and assured them Alita was outstanding the way she was.

 Your next parents were the lovely father and mother of the twin girls Lara and Mara. They were the oldest in your class and nigh inseparable which was a given, you thought. With their age, they were the maturest thinkers of the bunch and would help out with keeping the others in line. They were treated as the eldest sisters of most of the kids, and they both get along well with everyone. You told their parents that their daughters showed promising leadership qualities at their young age and pointed out their strongest points and the ones that needed improvements: Lara still struggled with the arithmetic while Mara was having problems with symbolic concepts. Both, however, were impressive with their grasp of the English language for their age. 

 You only have nine students in your class and after counting, you realized you already met the parents of five of them so far. The parents of the other four were yet to arrive and when you reviewed your list, you confirmed the students left. 

 The Winchester Four. 

 It was unexpected, but you recognized the eagerness in wanting to meet their parents. They were two pairs of siblings and both were paternal cousins, and, frankly, the oddest of the bunch. 

 Now, it wasn’t that they were weird, per se, though they did display peculiar qualities that could have been picked up from home. Nothing alarming, mind, and if anything, it made you curious as to what kind of people were raising the children—you were already leaning on the hipster-ish type of parents and given that it was already the 21st century, you weren’t certain if that should be impressive. 

 You have different backstories in your head like maybe they were kids of uber smart parents because heck, they have rudimentary knowledge in Latin, for god’s sake, while you struggled hard with that dead language during your college years; or maybe they were the nomad kind who would uproot the whole family to move on to the next location, which could explain the expansive knowledge on the geography the kids seemed to naturally have; or maybe they were absentee parents who just let their kids do their thing, making them—

 You blinked behind the window, your musing interrupted when you spotted a black ‘67 Impala in front of the school. You might have whistled there under your breath at what appeared to be a well-kept vehicle, though what made your eyebrow rise was the three men who exited it. 

 Were they… Were they law enforcement?

 You followed the three men with your eyes, thinking they were to walk to the building next to the school when they entered the school grounds instead. You quickly arranged your table and repositioned the chairs by the desk, and by the time you were done, there was a knock on the classroom door. 

 Oh, god, they were taller up close. 

 “Hi, how can I help you, officers?” you asked, trying not to sound nervous which you (and you thought most people as well) usually were around authorities. 

 The blond man smiled charmingly. “Sorry about the confusion, ma’am. We’re not here for work, we’re actually here for the PTM.” 

 “Oh. Oh! The PTM. Right,” you muttered, fumbling. “So, uh, for which students?” 

 “Winchesters,” the three of them simultaneously said. 

 All of them together. Wow. “Ookay. Have a seat here, sirs.” 

 There were only two chairs in front, and when you moved in to push another one, the man with the trenchcoat offered to do it instead and sat on it. 

 He was also the first one to ask, “Are Jimmy and John doing alright in school?”

 Straight to the point, this guy, you thought wryly as you adjusted your glasses. “Uh, yeah. Yeah. They’re great, actually. So you’re the parent of James and John then, Mr… Sorry, I think there will be a confusion here if I call you three Mr. Winchesters.”

 “Call me Cas,” said the man in the trenchcoat. 

 “Dean here,” said the blond one with a grin. “Cas and I are for the BJ brothers.”

 “I’m Sam,” said the tallest of the three as if the other two weren’t towering enough on their own. “I’m here for my kids Marybeth and Anthony.”

 “Well, I’m Y/N, their homeroom teacher,” you formally said once you wrapped your mind that, yes, these were the parents of the Winchester Four, and, yep, they were from law enforcement or something along that line of job. “The four kids are fast learners, by the way, and they’re friendly with the other children so we don’t really have an issue there, though there are some concerns that I personally want to bring up to you.”

 You reached for a drawer and pulled out a bunch of papers with drawings during the art time. You placed them face down on the desk and had the sudden urge to laugh at their seemingly curious and nervous reaction at the papers. 

 “Oh, no, don’t tell me they started drawing something disturbing. Like the serial killers did when they were young,” Dean said worriedly, frowning and the grin gone from his face. 

 “Did they draw a dead body, Ms. Y/N?” Cas asked grimly. 

 You sighed. “Nobody drew a dead body, sirs.” You pushed the drawings away for a moment. “Actually, before that, I have to ask something first. Jimmy told me once that he and John live in a cave with their older brother and their two dads. I don’t want to make assumptions here, Mr. Dean and Cas, but is it a metaphor for your living arrangements?”

 Dean looked rather affronted to have their home be called a cave. He opened his mouth to make a protest though Cas had beaten him to it. 

 “It is a cave in a child’s perspective,” Cas said. “It is not a cave. It is a bunker,” he said, addressing you. 

 “A large bunker with soft beds and a wide kitchen. If it’s going to be a cave, it better be the friggin’ Batcave!”

 You have no idea why Dean was defensive about his bunker, but you attributed it to the typical territorialism of men, something which you would probably never understand with your flaming lesbian flag. 

 “I’m sorry about him,” Sam interrupted with a sigh. “But, yeah, I think what my nephews called the cave is the bunker where they live in. It’s been with the family for generations and we inherited it from our grandfather. My wife and I moved out of the place so it’s just my brother there, Cas, and Jack during his sem breaks.”

 “I see,” you replied, unsure what to say to that further. You pushed the glasses up your nose once more. You cleared your throat. “I’m not asking to pry on where you decide to raise them. I guess I just want to resolve the mystery of this cave or something,” you admitted, assuring them with a slight smile. “There is also another question that I want to raise out of curiosity: where did they learn Latin?”

 “I think they might have got it from Cas and, often, from my wife.” Sam appeared to be positively glowing at the question.

 You knew it. Smart parents. “Oh. Cool. I mean, I guess it’s nice to encourage them at a young age. Might be handy in the future.” There were other non-dead languages the kids could learn, but to each their own, you supposed. 

 You pulled the eight drawings across the table. “As you know, we spend most of our day in art class. It’s to encourage kids to bring out their creativity and I gotta say, Bobby John and Benny James are… creative. So are Marybeth and Anthony,” you began positively. 

 There were plenty of drawings from the kids. First month in, your students already filled up the shelves. To remedy the lack of storage, you either post some of them or send them with the student once graded so they could showcase them at home. They were usually the drawings of sceneries, home life, their favorite holidays, and of family. Some showed promise in the pen and paper artistry, and the drawings helped you in figuring out their present state at home. 

 The drawings from the Winchester Four, barring the typical imagination exclusive of children, as usual, left you baffled. 

 You laid out the first paper from Marybeth Winchester. 

“I believe this is Mrs. Winchester, yes?” you asked, eyeing Sam. “What is she doing exactly?” 

 “Cooking,” Sam said simply as if that explained it. 

 Cas leaned close to study the drawing. “I think that is Rowena levitating the pans.” You stared at him. “She said she finds it tedious to cook and make the table without magic.”

 “Magic tricks!” Sam suddenly exclaimed. “Yeah, she often, uh, shows the kids what she learns from Youtube. I helped her set up this one with invisible strings. The kids like it.” 

 Dean rolled his eyes faintly at that as if saying ‘Really?’.

 “Right,” you deadpanned when you thought that was the best you could get. You believed that if you mentioned that Anthony and Marybeth told you that their Mom was a former queen—you thought there might be an instance before that they said she was a queen of Hell before she had them—you would get a completely unbelievable answer. “Magic. Cool.”

 The next drawing was from Marybeth’s brother, Anthony, and you have to admit, this one made you double-take. “This is from Anthony, and—is that a gun?” 

You pretended not to notice Sam paling a bit. Dean looked like he was stifling a laugh behind a cough. For some reason, he found it pretty funny. 

 You heard Sam sigh defeatedly. “Okay, that one’s my fault,” he said regretfully that you almost felt bad that you were interrogating him, but, hey, your student’s welfare first and foremost. If it has to do with Anthony witnessing his Dad at fieldwork, then it was something to be discussed. “I let him spend a night watching me play.”

 “Sorry?”

 “There’s this shooting game on PS4. I modeled my character after me—on-the-job me, I mean, with uniform and all. I kinda got addicted to it briefly and… you know.” 

 “And I thought I’m the irresponsible one,” Dean commented unhelpfully.

 “So it’s not Anthony watching you at work? I mean, you guys work at the side of the law, right? I understand your job isn't easy, but you know how it can also impact the children,” you said, expressing your concern. 

 For sure, they knew how it would be before they entered the family life, and they seemed to have taken your reminder quite well judging by the solemn nods you received in return. 

 To lighten the mood a bit, you showed Sam a joint drawing by Marybeth and Anthony. This one you intended for him to take home. It seemed that something he would like pinned up on the refrigerator. 

“Anthony and Marybeth shared in the class that their Papa is strong enough to lift them both at the same time,” you told Sam. “Marybeth insisted that they include their Mom since she said that Mrs. Winchester was actually behind the camera for this picture. Anthony eventually won the argument when he pointed out that they wouldn’t be any space for the message at the bottom,” you added fondly. “They said that they would just make their Mom a different drawing.”

 Sam seemed to have melted at the image, reverently staring at the drawing when you handed it to him. Dean and Cas simply smiled at Sam’s tender expression.  

 “Actually, there’s also a drawing here made by the four of them together,” you said, searching through the papers. “Bobby John and Benny James told me it’s their older brother Jack, which Anthony and Marybeth claimed their favorite cousin.”

 Dean huffed out a laugh. “Very minimal choices there.” 

You blinked. You remembered this one when you graded it. “Mr. Jack has… quite the set of eyes when angry,” you commented. 

 You just hoped that Jack wasn’t actually high with those red, blood-shot eyes. 

 “They captured Jack’s impressive set of eyes here,” Cas said with a small smile. “Jack got his expressive eyes from Kelly, his mother.”

 You didn’t mean to, but that Harry Potter meme about Snape telling Harry he had his mother’s eyes when the movie hardly bothered with the contact lenses entered your mind, unbidden. You suppressed a grin that nobody noticed. 

 “Jack’s a good kid,” Sam said. “He doesn’t get angry with the kids no matter how stubborn they are. He spoils them whenever he can.” He pointed at the ‘Angry Jack’. “That’s actually Jack being protective of them.”

 Well, nice to know the kids were looking up to a young adult as a good role model. 

 “You can keep it. Mr. Jack might want to take it as a gift,” you told them. Cas folded the paper and kept it. 

 Only four more drawings were left, and for the next one, you picked the one that made you curious about the way it was drawn. 

 “This was from Bobby John,” you told them, showing the drawing the boy told you what happened on his last birthday. 

“Bobby John told me this was you,” you said to Cas. “Um, what happened here? If you don’t mind me asking.”

 Cas’s eyes softened imperceptibly at the memory. “This was when we visited Japan to banish an old curse and put the vengeful spirit at peace.”

 You blinked once… twice… thrice. 

 ... Did you hear that right? 

 “He’s talking about that Japanese horror movie that we watched in Tokyo,” Dean explained hastily, much to Sam’s amusement and Cas’s confusion. “It’s uh—It’s about that cursed well where some girl was dumped in and she became a ghost wanting revenge.” 

 “Oh,” you said dumbly. “And she could walk through the walls?”

 “It’s a television,” Cas answered. For a moment, Dean looked nervous when he spoke. “Her death was caught on tape. The tape was a cursed object that anyone who watched it would die after the seventh day.” 

 “Wow.” You were a horror movie nut yourself, more so of Asian horror films. You haven’t heard of this movie until now. “Was this released last year?”

 “Last year,” Sam confirmed. “It was an entry for the annual Japanese Horror Festival so it was exclusively shown that day.” 

 “That’s too bad. I would have watched it,” you muttered. You hoped they would release it on DVD with enough funding. “Okay. So if this longhaired girl here was the ghost in that movie, what was Mr. Cas doing here then?”

 “Vanquishing the vengeful ghost,” Cas said grimly. Dean nudged him subtly. “Bobby John and Benny James were scared after watching the film, which was a mistake in our part. I had to assure them that Sadako wouldn’t get them, not when I’m alive.”

 Your impression of Cas so far was that he was a man who took things too seriously and literally. You guessed they were just part of his character as the loving Papa. You found it adorable. 

 “Ah, kids,” you chuckled affectionately, moving on to the next drawing from Benny James. 

“I think I get it now why Benny James called you an angel in this one,” you said. “Complete with a set of wings and all.” 

 “That’s a pretty accurate image of my angel wings,” Cas said cryptically, clearly liking the drawing. 

 Dean squinted. “Is that me being carried by Cas?” 

 “Your son said so, yes.” 

 “I mean, he ain’t wrong,” Dean allowed. “Cas is our ride often,” he murmured. 

 You didn’t catch it, but his brother Sam did, prompting a “Yeah, I bet he’s always your ride” under his breath. 

 Dean kicked him at the back of his leg and claimed that Sam’s wife was infecting his innocence bit by bit.  

 You cleared your throat when you thought a childish brawl would break out between them. Cas merely glanced at you apologetically at their behavior. “They’re not always like that,” Cas told you. 

 You waved off the apology with a wry smile. You suddenly missed your younger brother back at your home. 

 “Oh, yeah.” You picked out the other drawing by Bobby John. “There’s another from Bobby John. I think this might be about a movie too.” You tilted your head. “It’s… interesting,” you said, for the lack of a better word. 

You heard Sam’s snort before catching the way Dean’s face fell. 

 “I think this is Rowena burning Dean that one time he called her fa—”

 “Okay, don’t listen to Cas,” Dean interrupted, covering Cas’s mouth with his palm. “That’s—That’s from a show. Okay, so that’s me and Rowena. I was watching the show with the kids, I irritated her for whatever reason, and she threatened to burn me the same way that guy in the show was burned,” he explained. He gave an uncertain chuckle at your reaction. “You know, typical in-laws stuff.”

 Yeesh. You were sure darn lucky you didn’t have any in-laws. Not yet, anyway. 

 “Pretty sure you were watching Tom and Jerry that time, Dean,” Sam cut in. 

 “And Tom got burned there,” Dean protested. “He was still alive, of course. Unlike me if Rowena went through with her threat,” he retorted, petulantly crossing his arms. At Sam’s bitch face, Dean sighed. “Look, man, I’m not demonizing Rowena. Just saying she has quite a temper. For me. Never the kids. I’m saying you could have done worse, Sam, and either way, I’d take her as my sister-in-law anytime.” 

 Sam looked like he wasn’t expecting the honest statement. He was warned by his brother not to tell her, and while Sam didn’t look like he was going to keep it a secret from his wife with that knowing grin, he nodded nonetheless. 

 There was a single drawing left, and when you saw what it was, you knew that like his brother, Dean would love the one intended for him. 

“Bobby John and Benny James both drew it,” you said, smiling at how Dean went silent in awe. “They told me that their Number One Papa is Cas and you're the Number One Dad.” 

 “Can I keep this?” 

 After the previous depictions of Dean being carried on air and being burned, you thought he deserved the drawing. “Feel free to.”

 Dean was beaming with pride. “Cas, we should frame this.”

 Sam shook his head amusedly. You weren’t fooled; you knew he would also do the same with his. 

***

The rest of the meeting was quick. The kids’ grades were impressive for their age, and it helped that they have good foundations from home as well. The three of them—yes, even Dean— commended Mrs. Winchester’s patience reserved for teaching them how to read and write and getting them to be interested in books the same way Sam also was.    

 “Hopefully, she’ll come with us next PTM,” Sam said. “I’m sure she’d like to know you.” 

 Mrs. Winchester seemed like a force to reckon with, but, frankly, you were also excited to meet her in person. 

 “Thank you, Ms. Y/N,” Cas said. You shook his hand. “You’ve given us helpful insights on how they’re doing at school. You’re a good teacher to them.”  

 “Yep. Nice to know they’ll be fine in school.” Dean mock-saluted you. “Until next PTM, ma’am.” 

 You weren’t expecting your first PTM to go smoothly as this, and you certainly didn’t expect that the parents that initially made you anxious (and interested) the most would be the most entertaining. 

 “Until next time then,” you said with a smile. 

 You gave a slight wave after you saw them out of the classroom when they stopped on their way and seemingly remembered something.  

 “You know what, before we go, we might as well give you this.” Dean reached for his jacket pocket and handed you a business card. 

It didn’t look like a precinct calling card, and at your apparent confusion, it was Sam who answered you. 

 “It’s our other job,” he said. “A family business.”

 “Hit us up, ma’am, if ever you need help.” 

 “With what exactly?” you asked. 

 “If you noticed anything strange,” Cas said. 

 “Like cold spots,” Sam added

 “Or weird smells,” Dean said. “Anything that you noticed… unnatural.” 

 “Oh.” Was that the position ‘Hunter’ was for? And what did ‘MoL’ mean? “Thanks?” 

 You remained holding the card even as they drove off in their Impala. Curiously, you pulled out your phone and searched the net for the names Sam and Dean Winchester. 

 Interestingly, the first search result that showed up in Google was a decade-old website named Ghostfacers. Once introduced to the content of the site, however, your reaction was a simple: 

 “Holy shit.”

[ducklooney]

Problems at work

As I started yesterday, I continue today and will probably only next week (commitments around college so I can't write my fanfiction story these days, sorry about that) and this story of mine will continue first with Donald and his work, and then later with something else, which will be the main theme of my first fanfiction story. For the first chapter you can see here: https://ducklooney.tumblr.com/post/188288119589/my-first-fanfiction-quack-pack-fanfiction

If you have any questions about what I am doing, feel free to ask me and please correct me for any mistakes so I can continue on where I left off:

Chapter Two

Donald leaves downtown Duckburg and gets off the bus at a bus station and hurries to his workplace, the Everett Ducklair Building, or the Ducklair Tower, which was one of the tallest buildings in Duckburg. It was where inventions designed mainly by Everett were designed, and the Channel 00 television and internet station, where Donald and Daisy worked as cameramen and reporters, was housed in the same building. He pushed among humans (and humans, and most of all anthro-animals) to get to his workplace because he was certainly too late. Somehow, he managed to get to Ducklair Tower and reported to the porter that he had arrived. It was already seven o'clock in the morning. When he answered the doorman, in the meantime, Donald swung violently through the moving door that went in a circle and suddenly found himself outside again. He soon regained consciousness and returned to the building again, answering to the doorman, and found himself with a well-known journalist and reporter who had just swung him through the sliding door, unaware that it was Donald. His name was Angus Fangus, whose origin is from New Zealand, where he is from, and he is a kiwi bird. In fact he was partly his superior boss after Everett. When Donald re-entered, he was behind Angus and suddenly with his clumsiness pushed him away, but luckily Angus did not fall. Angus then turned and said to Donald: "What are you doing ?! And how early are you?" "And, uhhhh, I don't know, Chief Everett ordered me to come at this time," Donald replies with shyness and confusion. "Everett ordered ?! Well then, since you shouldn't have come today, at least for me. And you're wearing that stupid Hawaiian shirt again. I told you not to wear it to your workplace," Angus replies angrily. "Have a day off today ?! Well I didn't, I knew. Oh well, then I'll be home." - Donald said and then whistled to the door. However, Angus then took him by the shoulders and brought him back: "Not so fast. Once you are there, go to the archive where the paperwork is heavy and digitize it through the printer, and copy copies of all our channel's documents and reports in recent years. That must be over by tomorrow. Is that clear?!" "Sure boss. Yes, sir." Donald replied sadly and went to the elevator up to the seventh floor to do the digitization, and Donald was known to be unable to handle the new technologies. As he turned to the elevator and until Angus saw, Donald climbed Angus as if he were a naughty boy, since he did not love him. He soon runs to the elevator, not to notice Angus what he is doing, and so he manages to reach the elevator and the seventh floor. Basically, he has problems when he goes by elevator and sometimes he has to go up stairs, luckily this time it didn't happen to him. And it reaches the seventh floor and enters the document room and one printer and scanner with lots of documents, filings, complaints and reports on everything and everything. Poor Donald. Still, Donald is pouring into his confidence and moving on with his work. Donald, meanwhile, thought he luckily did not see Everett, nor did he receive any charges against him, nor did he receive inconvenient criticisms or reprimands, despite being late. Then Donald thought to himself, "Um, it looks like Louie Duck is really giving me luck. Maybe I should have taken him anyway. Maybe not." Meanwhile, while Donald was thinking of something else, he accidentally scanned his hand and squeezed it and suddenly several copies of his hands came out on the computer. Donald tries to erase it, however he erases everything and suddenly the printer starts to worsen. Many copies of one report came out of the printer, and Donald tried to pick up all that paper, but to no avail. He manages to get his hand out of the scanner, but again everything goes wrong. The computer goes crazy, the printer keeps printing what it doesn't need, and Donald buys papers everywhere. And so until those machines exploded and at that time the fires began to spread in that room. Luckily, Donald finds a fire extinguisher and extinguishes the fire, but by the time the fire is extinguished it was too late. Most of the documents were burned, but luckily the computer was left whole. Somehow, the computer itself turned off and on again. Donald sat on the floor and when he saw the whole mess and the rest of the documents left over, he got sad and started crying, "Why?! Why does everything have to go wrong every day? Why do these things have to happen to me?! Why? Why? every accident must fall on me, why? Am I damned?! ", and so Donald hooks up with his unfortunate fate not believing that he will get out in the end because of this mess. He was afraid of the worst, not to get fired. He'd been fired before, but if he got it again, he worried he'd have a hard time finding a job next time. He thought that he would not deal with the crime later, like his nephews, and that they would all end up in prison. When he thought about things, he wept again and said, "Poor me! Buhuhuhuhuh..." He shed a lot of tears. Suddenly, someone knocks on the door and Donald says he's busy and can't go in and he cried again and shed tears, however this unknown guest came into the room and stood behind Donald and suddenly raised Donald to get up. 

"Don't cry, my cousin. Unhappy things happen to everyone. If I need you I can help you." At that moment, Donald stopped crying and shed tears and turned to face unknown and when he saw the video he hugged him and then asked him: "What are you doing here?! Don't you know that it is forbidden for the unemployed to enter this building then into this room?!" That unknown guest was none other than Donald's cousin, Fethry Duck, who was wearing a hoodie sweater and certainly a little red with a slightly yellowish color and matching his cousin Donald: "I don't know. I kind of went in when no one else was looking. Uh, this room is really clean." "There was a fire here that took more than half the documents, so it looks like there's nothing." - replies Donald dissatisfied. "Well, look what I found on this computer. It says that all the documents have been scanned and stored in the archive. What archive?!", Fethry asked curiously. "Probably on this computer, there are files for such things," Donald replies, but suddenly he pauses and asks Fethry, "What did you say?!" "I said I saw that it says that all the documents are stored in the archive, probably as you say on this computer," said Fethry, and suddenly Donald pushed him, "Sorry cousin, but I have to look at that. See, really, all the documents are stored in Donald. ”Donald responds abruptly and notices that all the scanned reports and documents have ended up in Recycle Bin, a program that is deleted but not permanently and where deleted files are stored. "Look really. Well, how stupid I was, I thought everything was deleted and everything had fallen into oblivion. Now, I'll put all the documents back and put them in the proper program," Donald said, smiling a little and grasping for head that he thought he was going to experience the worst. And do so and then hug Fethry and kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you Fethry! I don't know what I would do without you. "You don't have to thank me and can you please let me go," Fethry asked. Donald let him go and then told Fethry, "You're welcome. And to be honest I'm not very smart, certainly not with this technology. But I wonder how you know about this stuff? I know you're not very skilled in technology." "Hehehehe ... Years of experience have taught me that, and one person has taught me that too, so I have no problem with such things unless something goes wrong like in this case." “Great, but who is this person?” Fethry asked him. "Um ... that's not a person, it's ..." Donald replies and answers halfway, realizing that he must not reveal his mentor, called One (Uno), who was a computer duck. Otherwise, this One helped him with this scan of documents, since he has the power to enter the world of computers, since he himself is part of a programmed computer, except that Donald did not know that One helped him. After a moment, Donald continues, "It is already someone whose identity is so secret that he must not be revealed or be damned to anyone who knows the secret." Fethry got scared and said, "God forbid! Then it better be your secret Hmm ... otherwise is there any help with this business or is it?" "No, this is all the work I've done. We can go home now," Donald replies. "Great, can I keep your boys safe ?!" "No, you can't, Fethry," Donald replies angrily, but again this says, "Don't worry, we're going to have some coffee or tea now, if you like?" “Yes!” Fethry says cheerfully, and then the two of them head for the door and suddenly meet Daisy Duck. "Daisy ?! What are you doing here ?!" Donald asked awkwardly. "Hi Donald. Good luck finding you after I have to tell you I got a message from Everett about a new job." "What kind of work ?! We already have a job. Don't they move us ?!" Donald asked awkwardly. "Oh, Donald, don't be funny," Daisy smiles, "It's not what you think. We have two jobs at St Canard where we need to interview and record an important person and not just him, but some other personalities as well." "What kind of personalities and what are we going to do at St Canard?! Can't you see I'm busy?" "I see, half this room is strewn with ash, right?" Daisy asked awkwardly. "Yes, but all the documents are stored on your computer." Donald shyly replies. "All right then," Daisy smiles, "My Donald. All in all, we have to leave today and this afternoon." "This afternoon?! Wait, we have time for that." "Unfortunately, Donald doesn't have time. It's 12 o'clock." "Noon?! Then, Fethry, nothing else, I'll honor you the second time, I have to take an important trip with Daisy."-Donald said nervously, grabbing Daisy from her arms and running toward the elevator.

Fethry replies, "Ah, well then. It will be another time and I wish you a happy journey and say hello to Huey, Dewey and Louie from me." Fethry, all happy, went to the elevator, waiting for the queue to come in afterwards, and to get out and go to the door of that building and go joyfully to Fethry through downtown.

[orpheusmegafictions]

John and Seth: SIZE Matters

John and Seth: SIZE Matters, Part 1

You gotta love a town like Hollywood. There isn't anything in the world that can't be found on any street corner, major studio back-lot, dime store, or even the refrigerator of a production office of one of the most popular late night shows on television. As Roy Coffee extracted a plastic bottle from the very back of said refrigerator, he praised whatever god was listening that he had managed to procure the contents sloshing around inside the bottle. How he had managed to slip it away from a group of lab techs working in one the most highly secured special effects studio in Tinsel Town was no less than a miracle. It paid to have someone owe you a favor in this town. And now he finally had something in his possession that was going to make all of his dreams, in point of fact his kinkiest dreams come true. You see Roy like BIG men. But chasing after fat men was not as simple as all that. It was true that his choice of sexual partners had always been men of a certain body stature.

Tall, and well muscled, with large round and full bellies; that was how he enjoyed his men. But years of having a parade of encounters with such men, as enticing as they were, had left him listless and more than a little bored. Worshiping at the alter of a fat man's belly, its heft and girth and swell had been enough to satiate him for a while. Unfortunately now it was all getting a bit redundant. It had been a trick of fate almost that one night everything changed for him. While he was trying to muster the excitement enough to pleasure himself on the websites he was accustomed to, he stumbled into a completely new world of kink that had him masturbating for hours into the dawn. The link had seemed innocuous at first. A simple string of letters spelling out the common www, but that website name was what caught his attention the most. It was named Bigger and BIGGER. Curious he followed the link and subsequently discovered a whole new world that he could indulge himself in.

He had never heard the term Macrophilia before but once he saw the manipulated images that had been splashed all across the home page he was immediately hooked.  There were the glorious full bellied, well muscled, masculine men he had always so lusted after. Only now that were displayed in all there luscious fatness standing as tall as skyscrapers. The artist or artists that had rendered such images had taken pains to morph and enlarge these anonymous behemoths so that there bellies were impossibly round and swollen. They were large enough to protrude before them as they trampled an unsuspecting metropolis beneath their enormous feet. He believed that he even recognized a few of the men who's pictures were being used by the artists. He was certain he had seen a few of them on his usual round of websites. Men that had devoted their lives to gaining weight and transforming themselves from stick thin boys to swollen protuberant men were now being passed off as towering giants ready, presumably, to eat their way through a whole city.

Roy's cock had never been so hard as the night he stumbled across that site. He had spent hours stroking his cock to rendering after rendering of men standing taller than the tallest buildings, their gravity defying bellies jutting out in front of them more spherical that should be possible. A few photoshop artists had even created a series of growth sequences taking great pains to include every detail of the growing process. One depicted a man with no belly at all in the first panel discovering himself suddenly growing right where his stood. The belly rounding out, bursting buttons off his shirt as it swelled out. Seems tearing and splitting as delicious fat piled onto his body reducing his clothes to tatters. With the background stationary it was possible to make him appear to be growing taller too, inching toward the ceiling as his body grew and swelled and fattened into a hulking naked beast. The man's face a sheepish look of red-faced embarrassment as he watched his body transform, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop it. Roy had also spent hours reading fictional stories of these transformations. His imagination working overtime as he played that dozens of fantasies and scenarios out in his mind. When he finally shot his load, hot and spurting, crying out in ecstasy, one thing had become absolutely certain to him; He MUST make his fantasy a reality.

Now as he walked through a door in his home studio and onto an empty stage, he knew he could finally see his fantasy brought to life. He had been working as a production assistant to the show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver for over a year now. And if there was one man in all the world Roy wanted to see grow and fatten up into a towering behemoth, it was John. It was something he had fantasied about many many times since he had found that website months ago. There were times he would see the late night host around the studio and feel his cock stiffen at the idea of John's body suddenly begin to swell with fat and muscle, growing into a massive giant that would rip his way out of the studio in search of food he would need to maintain his new size. It hadn't been easy to pull the appropriate strings to arrange everything perfectly so his fantasy could play out. He had to ensure that no one would be in the studio except for himself, the object of his lust, and by happy accident, someone else Roy could see undergoing a Macro transformation.

Seth Rogen had been slotted to make a guest appearance on John's show for the evening taping. However, since it was currently 10:30AM, the two men wouldn't normally be at the studio. Ordinarily there would be hundreds of employees, camera men, producers, and a studio audience to interrupt Roy's plan. But, Roy had been crafty. Pulling out as many stops as he could he had arranged that the two men would meet for a preemptive discussion about the interview to be held later on live television. Neither of the men understood why arriving at an empty studio at 10:30 in the morning was necessary but Roy had made sure they were convinced to show up. Roy stood for a moment on the empty stage and looked out into the studio.

It was a very large, very expensive studio and Roy couldn't wait to watch not just one but two massively fat men utterly destroy it. He had two steaming cups of coffee and two donuts laid out in waiting for his guests of honor. With a gleeful expression, he removed the cap from the plastic bottle and poured equal amounts into both cups of coffee. There was a little formula left and so he decided it shouldn't go to waste. Removing a syringe from his jacked pocket he filled it with what remained of the liquid and injected equal amounts into each donut. He knew that John might not eat all the donut as the late night host had been trying to watch his weight. John Oliver was not the sort of man that liked being heavy, but Roy was fairly certain that Seth would eat the entire donut. Seth had been a chubby man for most of his career, save for a brief period that Roy never liked to think about. He always found it a tragedy whenever a gorgeous chubby man in Hollywood eventually relented to the shallow ideals of beauty and lost weight.

Then he turned in the direction of the production booth at the opposite end of the studio whistling happily to himself. Upon entering the booth he removed a bottle of lubricant from another jacket pocket and bottle of poppers. Still whistling a happy tune he began undressing himself. Once he had stripped himself completely naked he took a seat in a comfortable chair, propped his legs up on the sound and video equipment, and gazed out the large windows that over looked the stage. He put his hands behind his head and waited for his ultimate fantasy to commence. His cock was already beginning to stir and harden in anticipation. It only took a moment for the scenario to start playing out as the two men he was expecting walked into the studio onto the empty stage chatting away as they walked.

“It's kinda early for this isn't it?” Seth asked. He was dressed casually in a simple green t-shirt and jeans. He was known for being laid back and generally favored clothes that were comfortable. He wore green high top sneakers that matched his t-shirt. His face was scruffy and his curly mop was styled but still informal.

“Honestly I don't know what my assistant was on about.” John answered. He was dressed to the nines in a tailored suit, much like the attire he wore during the taping of his show. It was navy blue with a crisp white shirt beneath, maroon tie with matching socks and shiny brown shoes. His dark straight hair was cropped short and combed neatly as always.

Both of them had found it strange to be in an empty studio to discus anything that couldn't be finalized just a few minutes before airing but, since they were now both on the lot it seemed they might as well get on with it. John took his seat behind his desk as usual while Seth occupied a seat beside it. They simultaneously noted the coffee and donuts set out for them. Roy felt a thrill as he watched the two men picked up their respective mugs to take a large swig. He was even more elated when he witnessed John take a bite from his donut, with Seth following suit. His cock began rising to attention as his pulse quickened. He was thankful for the one way glass of the production booth ensuring his two “victims” would not see him basking in the glory of the event that was to come.

John had been talking idly while taking sips from the coffee mug when he noticed that he was feeling a little strange. He wasn't sure if it was a caffeine high, but he felt a little as if he were vibrating all over his body. Seth had set his mug down to stuff the rest of his donut into his mouth and absentminded rubbed a hand over his belly. He had also noticed that something seemed off but he was trying to shrug it off. His t-shirt and jeans were feeling a little more snug now that they had when he put them on. John set his coffee mug on his desk and stopped his conversation mid sentence to take a look down at himself. His face become puzzled when he noticed that his there was a noticeable paunch sticking out under his white shirt. That hadn't been there this morning.

“Something wrong?” Seth asked. His voice broke John out of his temporary trance. John laughed nervously and tried to ignore the feeling of tightness that was suddenly sweeping over him.

“Just need to get back into the gym, I suppose.” He answered nervously. “Feeling like I've been over doing it lately.”

Seth chuckled. “I hear ya man.” He said as he slapped his reasonably sized belly for emphasis. However when his hand connected with it there was more jiggle than he was used to. He looked down with his own puzzled expression to see that the hem of his t-shirt was ridding up a bit. Had his belly grown since this morning. Come to think of it his pants were feeling tighter than they had this morning too. He stared at his belly intensely for a moment and realized that it seemed to be growing bigger. In those few seconds, the hem of his shirt rode up further exposing almost an inch of furry belly flesh beneath it. John spoke again and broke him out of his own trance.

“Sorry, I'm just feeling a bit off at the moment, I'm not sure if it's......” He trailed off to look down at his belly again to see the small paunch had expanded larger. It was now beginning to strain the buttons of his shirt ever so slightly. What the hell was going on? He was going to say something to Seth about this latest development but when he opened his mouth, a sudden, deafening belch erupted out of him.

“Buuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhh!!!” It rumbled out of his gut like a train roaring. His eye were wide with shock at the shear force of it. His eyes shot to Seth to see his guest experiencing a similar violent eruption from his own gut.  

A concurrent powerful belch was flaring out of Seth's mouth. It joined with Johns reverberating around the empty studio before the finally came to an end. Both men looking at each other stunned into silence by the intensity of what they had just experienced. In the production booth Roy was now fully hard and fixed his gaze intently on the two men on stage. “Here we go.” He growled huskily as he pumped a few pumps from the lube bottle and began to slick up his cock.

In the seconds following the astounding belches that had emanated from John and Seth, their expressions turned to utter surprise as their bodies began changing. John felt his midsection begin to swell up. Ballooning beneath the fabric of his dress shirt. His belly rounded out, growing bigger, growing fatter. The buttons of his shirt strained as the expanding flesh beneath it surged larger and larger. Gaps in between the buttons began to form as the fabric was pulled apart. Patches of dark furry skin spilled out in those gaps pulling them apart even more. John's hands grasped the sides of his belly as his jaw dropped at what was happening to him. He felt his fingers sink into soft pudgy flesh as it continued to blow up under his touch. His pants felt tighter and tighter by the second as his thighs and ass began fattening up too. He noticed that the hem of his pant legs seemed to be creeping up as well, now riding up past his ankles. The sleeves of his suit jacket felt pulled impossibly tight across his back. And, the button at his neck felt like it was going to start choking him. “What the bloody hell!” He exclaimed in shock as tiny tears began forming along the seams of his pants and jacket.

Seth barely registered John's shock as he was too focused on what was happening to himself. After his monster belch, his own belly had begun expanding and swelling. It ballooned out and the hem of his shirt rode up further and further. More round swollen furry flesh was exposed. It rode up past his navel which was getting deeper and deeper with the added fat. His arms and thighs swelled with fat and muscle beneath causing tears in the seams of his inner thighs and armpits. The hem of his own pants ridding up past his ankles and even his shoes were feeling tight. He brought his own hands to his belly for a split second before he held them up to look at them closer, had they grown larger too. His t-shirt looked ready to split open any second as his chest expanded to a set of full man boobs, and he was certain he could feel his ass growing larger too. Though he couldn't see it himself there was an ample amount of buttcrack now visible peaking over the waistband.

John was beginning to panic and decided to stand up from his seat. He was horrified to find that the seat was still attached to him when he stood. Apparently his ass had begun to fatten up so much that it was wedged in the chair. He realized he was standing taller than he had before. He wanted desperately to understand what was happening to him but he was too distracted by the pain in his feet as he felt like his shoes had them in a vice grip. His belly was rounding out larger and larger and with a loud SNAP the belt he had been wearing burst open. At the same time the soles of his shoes separated from the uppers and his toes burst free. His growing feet made quick work of the remains of his shoes and socks. The pain in his feet was relieved but it did little to comfort him as he watched in shock and horror as the top button popped off allowing him easier breathing. It had set off a chain reaction though as the next button popped off exposing his swelling chest. His tie tore right off his growing neck. His man boobs grew larger from the fat and muscle swelling beneath them. His nipples were growing wider standing erect. “No no no, what the fuck!” He cried as three more buttons exploded off his shirt and the seat of his pants split apart. His glasses cracked in half from his growing head, they fell to the floor at his feet  making everything go hazy in his line of sight. Then there was a loud crash and John finally turned his attention to Seth.

Seth was now sitting on the floor in the remains of the chair he had been sitting in. His weight had become too much for the chair to handle. His belly was swelling larger and rounder and fatter with each second that passed. The sleeves of his t-shirt split open like the casing of over stuffed sausages. The seams of his jeans did so as well as the button blasted off them. In a split second he was left in tatters. His feet exploded out of his sneakers and socks simultaneously. They grew wider and bigger, expanding to accommodate for how tall he was also growing. The sides of the t-shirt split up the sides leaving Seth in just a pair of briefs that were digging into his flesh thighs and ass. He was in too much surprise to pick himself up yet and just stared in amazement as his belly swelled up higher and higher, feeling himself begin to grow across the stage. In the booth Roy was taking his first hit of poppers and moaning in pleasure as they hit his system. All his hairs stood on end and his pupils dilated as he watched his two fatties continue to blow up in front of his eyes. He furiously jacked his cock but made sure he didn't cum yet. He was saving that for the grand finale.

John was shooting up and up as his body continued to grow fatter, and bigger, muscle and luscious fat piled onto him faster. The button of his pants rocketed off and his swelling under belly pushed the zipper of his pants down. The seams of his pants gave up the fight and tore open under the pressure of his ballooning thighs. The suit jacket was shredded by his arms and back falling to pieces. After that it was only a few seconds before his shirt was just tatters on the floor. His own briefs were creeping into the crack of his ass as fleshy round globes began to swell up. The chair that had been stuck to his growing ass blasted apart into scrap wood to join what was left of his former clothes. He blushed a deep pink as he watched his belly expand incredibly round, completely defying gravity with its shear size. He felt the wood of the stage buckle beneath his increasing weight and it began to splinter just as his briefs flew off like a slingshot. His cock had become hard without his noticing and now it sprang up to thump against his soft underbelly sending a ripple through the quivering fat. His hands flew to his face for a moment in utter humiliation. “What the fuck is this!” He screamed mortified.

Seth's own briefs shred at the sides leaving him naked as well. He managed to pull himself to a standing position only to realize he was less than an inch from hitting the ceiling. His own cock had also become engorged, some strange by product of his growth. His large, spherical, hairy belly was bearing down on it, but Seth was still preoccupied by how they were beginning to run out of available space. “This is weird...but it's kinda cool too isn't it?” He asked as he gave his immense belly a slap. There was such a hypnotic effect as it wobbled and jiggled more than it ever had before. In the booth Roy witness that gargantuan furry belly slosh and wiggle with all of the fat that Seth had gained and he paused his stroking to take another hit from the bottle of poppers. It was a deep one because this time he intended to ride the wave as long as he could. Though he had to squeeze his member hard to prevent blowing his load as he watched the wood of the stage be completely destroyed by the combined weight of his two behemoths.  

Now they were entirely naked and growing bigger and bigger, both of them having to squat slightly to keep from bursting through the roof of the studio. John seemed to be incensed by Seth's remark. “Cool, no this blood well isn't cool!” He shouted. “I've worked hard to stay thin and now look at me! I'm turning into a giant lard ass!” His belly continued to swell larger, his legs and arms growing thicker, bigger, swelling with fat and muscle, his ass growing larger as well. Seth's growth hadn't slowed either as we was blowing up just as big. Their belly flesh collided against one another as all available space was now being taken up by their growing forms. “Hey man things could be worse.” Seth replied. “This was not what I was expecting for my day, but I can't stop growing so might as well go with it.” His hands pressed against the ceiling as he tried to keep from outgrowing the room. The growing flesh of their bodies was heading straight for the production booth like a tidal wave of fat. Roy was was pumping his cock with suck vigor he thought he might break it off but his orgasm was beginning to crest as he watched those bellies surge towards him.

“At least you're used to being fat!” John chided. “I never asked for this. I don't want to be a giant fat ass.” He was turning several sades of beet red as he felt his growing fattness compete for space with Seth's. He felt one arm and one leg crash through something into an empty space somewhere in the studio as his head began to press against the ceiling. Every part of his body was growing. It was a nightmare for him, and yet he knew that his cock was still so hard beneath his immense protuberance. He wanted it all to stop but he knew that in a matter of seconds he and Seth were going to explode right out of the studio. “Running out of room here man!” Seth exclaimed as his and John's growing bellies obscured their own heads. The tide of flesh hit the glass of the production booth and hairline cracks formed in the glass. Roy had reached his limit and finally allowed himself to crest. He shot thick hot ropes of cum all over his abdomen, and even into his own face and behind his head. He came in buckets, more than he thought was possible. As he threw his head back in ecstasy, the glass shattered and the wave of growing belly invaded the booth. A grin of complete contentment was on his face as he felt himself swept up by expanding bellies and for a moment everything went dark. He felt warm, soft, furry flesh surround him on all sides craddling him. Then a series of loud crashes and explosions before he blacked out.  

Roy wasn't awake to witness as the roof of the studio exploded. Brick, plaster and mortar was hurled through the air like so much shrapnel as two massive men outgrew the limitations of the structure. Whole chunks of the building fell to the street as they slid off the soft supple flesh of the giants that had become too large to be contained. The final push of growth needed for them to escape their temporary prison had made them into gargantuan behemoths; impossibly big, and impossibly fat. The morning sun shone down on them as they surveyed what had happened to themselves.

“You think it's stopped?” Seth asked as he idly scratched his now titanic gut.

“I fucking hope so.” John answered as he looked at the rubble of the studio. The remains of the building only came up to about mid-calf on both of them. He was still beet red with embarrassment about being so fat and so naked for all the world to see. Even with his nearsightedness he could see that cars on the street were veering away from the building, and he was certain he could hear screaming from below. All of downtown Los Angeles could probably see them standing there, guts large and round, cocks erect. He wondered how long it would take before the army was called out against them.

“This has all gone tits up!” He exclaimed exasperatedly. He heaved his gut up with both hands and watched it slosh back down again on top of his massive cock. “We can't stay like this.”

“Well, I don't think we are gonna shrink back to normal.” Seth hazarded a guess. “Seems kind permanent.” For the first time since his growth spurt he was realizing how hungry he was. There was a loud rumble coming from his gut. “Hey are you hungry?”

“Hungry!” John boomed. “How can you be hungry at a time like this?” John wanted to dismiss Seth's ridiculous statement when his own belly began rumbling. He winced and rubbed it trying to calm it down. He couldn't fathom eating anything, especially if eating made him grow and bigger or fatter.

“Well you might not want to eat, but that gut definitely does.” Seth replied poking a finger into John's mammoth belly. “And I'm starving. You can stay here but I'm gonna get some food.” With that Seth lifted up his right foot to step over the remains of the studio walls and onto the streets of Hollywood. He noticed a McDonalds just a few blocks away, within mere steps at his size. He let his belly lead the way as he trampled his way down the road. The asphalt trembled beneath his elephantine tread. Most pedestrians had already fled the vicinity as Seth moved down the street like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade float. His belly jiggled with each step, still immensely round and spherical.

John watched as Seth began to walk toward the fast food establishment. For a moment he hesitated. He didn't want to be a giant, or hulking lard ass, but he was too hungry to just keep standing there. He followed Seth's example stepping on to the street. He stumbled for a step and caused several cars parked along the street to be tossed aside onto the sidewalk. He was grateful that they were unoccupied.

He had no desire to hurt anyone or worse, kill anyone.

“Sorry, sorry.” He exclaimed, even though he knew there was no one on the street to apologize to. He followed after Seth the pavement trembling more now that both of them were treading upon it.

It was that very trembling that awoke Roy from where he had landed. His eyes fluttered open to see the clear blue sky above him. He was laying in a pile of garbage bags totally naked and covered in cum that had cooled and was now beginning to crust. He carefully stretched his limbs to ensure nothing was broken. Miraculously he was intact and completely unharmed. Not so much as a scratch on him. He had no idea how he'd managed to survive unscathed, but he laughed almost giddily as got himself to his feet. He looked down the street to see the biggest, fattest, rounded assess on earth sauntering toward a McDonalds several blocks away. A wide grin spread across his face as he watched his two colossal fatties head for the nearest food.

“That's right boys.” He chuckled. “Eat hardy.”  

-TBC

[irarelypostanything]

Slice of Life[6]

[Andy]

“There have been some increasingly controversial topics in the news,” began Andy, in the milionth meeting they were holding that week, “and I know that not everyone here is in agreement with regard to personal beliefs.  Though there is some merit to discussing these topics, I would encourage you to do so outside of work.

“So please,” he continued, “for the love of the old gods and the new, stop arguing about the last episode of Game of Thrones.”

“It was kind of bullshit though, right?” asked Jake, to murmurs of approval.  

“I haven’t watched it yet,” complained Kevin.

“Spoiler,” said Jake, “it sucked.”

“Jake, please.”

“There was a shocking twist about Tyrion being the Night King.”

“Kevin, Jake may or may not be messing with you.”

“I did think the part where Eddard rose from the dead was a little out of left field, though.”

“Amy, please proceed with your presentation.”

Amy was standing in front of their conference room’s projector.  Her long, dark brown hair was tied into a bun, and her usual Davis badminton jacket was replaced by a white button-up.

“Thanks Andy,” she said, relieved that the meeting was back under control, “as I was saying, this project is worth roughly 25.6 million dollars, collectively.  As is the usual case, the largest defense contractors are going to take the majority of business.

“But this is where things get interesting.  I’m going to have to be intentionally vague about the next portion of this, since we’re in a nonclassified setting, but we have certain...capabilities...that even some of the largest corporations don’t.  Thanks to some wise decisions we made early last year with regard to our research allocations, we are actually the first team we know of that can use...”

Her voice trailed.  “Well, that’s also classified.  But the figures aren’t.  Look at this.”  The slide changed.  “We are poised to become the government’s preferred vendor for the entire sensor, and all we have to do is give them a taste.  They expect delivery within three weeks.  For this to work, all teams have to collaborate perfectly.”

“It’s really important that we execute this now,” agreed Andy, “that means it’s really, vitally important that we not let our meetings diverge into arguments about petty bullshit.

“Kevin, we’d like a status report from you.  What’s the important software issue you said you wanted everyone to know about?”

“I know we were told not to compile on the hardware,” began Kevin, “but unfortunately, with our system, it’s unavoidable.  The time stamps are messed up, so doing basic things like compilation is surprisingly difficult.”

“Why not code it in Python?” suggested Jake.  “that way you won’t need to compile it.”

“Wow,” said Dan, with mock amazement, “switch programming languages.  Brilliant.  This is the kind of empty-headed bullshit that only a hardware engineer would come up with.”

“Right,” Jake retorted, “because messed up time stamps is a hardware issue.  Do you guys also give your system administrators mops, then give your janitors root access?”

“Switching to python actually isn’t a bad idea,” said Ryan, “but there’s a much more obvious solution to this problem.  You can-”

“Hang on,” interrupted Dan, “care to repeat that comment about root access?”

“You guys don’t understand separation of duty,” said Jake.

“You guys don’t understand fuck about fuck,” said Dan.

The next half hour went about as productively as that conversation.

[Nora]

Saturday.  It was a surprisingly clear morning, for San Francisco, and the sun was just starting to rise.  Because it was San Francisco, though, the morning was ice cold.

Nora made her way up the steep trail of Mt. Davidson.  Kevin said he knew every trail and angle at this place, and she believed him.  The park was tiny.  She reached the peak with ease.  She glanced in the direction of the sun, then turned away to look at downtown in the distance.  She could see the bay, and Castro, and a bunch of major downtown buildings until her view reached Sutro Mountain.

She pulled out her cell phone.  “This is boring,” she told Kevin through the speaker.

“Did you know it’s the tallest hill in all of San Francisco?”

“Highest of the seven hills?”

“Sure.”

“What, because of the giant cross?”

“I admit that the giant cross is cheating, but the point still stands.”

“Not sure what the big deal is, to be honest.  I’ve had a more fun time at Bernal Heights, and that place has some pretty good coffee.”

“Giant blue building.”

“What?”

“Find the spot where Balboa is, look a bit to the left, and you’ll see that giant blue building.  It’s a water tower.  We used to sneak up there, forever ago, when we were young.”

“Okay...”

“I used to love this city.  It’s not the same now.  Whenever I came back it was never the same, always a little different.  So I started to come home every month, then every other month.  The last time we spoke, it was my first time back in almost a year.”

“Well, what’s changed?”

“It’s just different.”

Nora looked at the tower, then at Kevin’s high school, then at the water again.  From a distance, it was all tiny.  Like none of it mattered.

“You used to love this city,” asked Nora, “and now you don’t because it’s changed?”

“Exactly.  You took the words right out of my mouth.”

“So you believe that the city you once loved is gone.  I believe that the city you loved never existed.”

“That’s morbid.”

“Seriously, how much of it had you really seen?”

Nora looked again at the view.  “Oh wait, technically you’ve seen quite a bit of it.”

“Technically.”

[Kevin]

Sunday.  Kevin was at a church.  Again.

After another sermon, a middle-aged person named Leo (whom he had met a couple of weeks ago) sought him out.

“Hey Kevin,” he said, “do you know a lot about social media?”

The question hit him with surprise.  Kevin had once been obsessed with social media.

“I know a little bit,” said Kevin, “why do you ask?”

“I’d like to give our church more of an online presence, but it’s all new to me.  What do you know about Facebook groups?”

“Well,” said Kevin, “not too much.  I know that you can pay to have the algorithm favor you, so you get more traffic.  I also know that you can integrate it with Google Analytics, and I believe the algorithm will favor you if you can rack likes or comments in a five-minute window.

“The whole thing is very calculated.  The emojis you use, whether you use GIFs, whether you use tags...all of these are taken into consideration when considering your post placement.”

“That’s all fine and good,” said Leo, “but you don’t sound super enthusiastic right now about Facebook.”

“Have you heard of Life Church?”

“No.”

“It’s a nice resource, it’s an online church, but it’s just a little bit too good.  It’s hard to describe.  It’s ridiculously high quality video, full Facebook integration, professional band.  You can view the likes and comments in real time.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s weird.  All of this is weird to me for some reason.  Doing that kind of thing for a church?  I prefer sites like Medium.  I can harvest so much sweet, sweet data.”

“Are you okay?  You just turned red.”

“You know, I get crazy about this a lot.  I used to be a normal guy.  A couple likes here, a couple likes there.  I started to find forums where I could get 100 likes a post, consistently, and I started to get a presence.  Click, like, share.  Click, like, share.  It’s no way to live, man.  Every second a feeling of wanting judgment, every act of communication a desperate plea to please the algorithm.

“But this one time, this one night I’ll never forget, I put up an article that went #trending.  It got 36,000 Facebook shares.  Pretty okay, sure, but then I found the real analytics.  3 million hits.  3 million people read it, all around the world.”

For a little while, Leo just stood there.  Finally, he spoke again.

“Kevin, I just want to share some videos.”

“Oh, okay.  Have you considered YouTube?”

“What’s that?”

Kevin walked back to his apartment after lunch.  Part of him wished he could be as enthusiastic about church as he was about technology, but there was still something he couldn’t get over.  It was a belief that was fundamental to him for as long as he remembered.  It was a belief that went against everything he had read in every book of the bible.

Kevin didn’t think it mattered what people believed.  All that mattered to him was what people did.

Some Christians donated to the poor, built schools, saved lives.  Some atheists donated to the poor, built schools, saved lives.  Both Christians and non-Christian people had done great things, and horrible things, but so had Muslims.  And Hindu people.  And scientologists, and probably a million other religions.  But no one thought it was okay to believe that your beliefs didn’t matter.  

Kevin wasn’t sure if he believed in everything or nothing.  He figured it was impossible to believe in nothing, because that would mean that he still believed in something.

[Dan]

Monday.  8PM.  Dan was one of the only people in.

It was a long meeting, followed by a crucial lunch meeting, followed by coding, followed by another meeting.  These past few days had been tough on everyone, but Dan sometimes wished he could just hole up, not talk to anyone, and code.

He finally had a few hours to himself.  This was when he felt most productive.

2, he thought.  2, 4, 8, 16…

Dan’s weapon of choice had always been C++.  He knew bitwidths, 56-megabyte proprietary structs, obscure abbreviations that only meant anything to him, Andy, and the Department of Defense.  He knew 18 different ways to bind to a socket.  He knew 19 different ways to accidentally bind to the socket incorrectly, which is why he was careful who he hired.

He looked at his code.  100 lines.  18 minutes.  It compiled, implemented a client/server, verified that both sides were properly using the data.  Not bad.  He added error handling, comments, varied conditions.  He updated his code like a skilled writer polishing his prose, and like a skilled writer he knew how important every individual unit was.  He knew how significant the difference was between --i and i--.  He knew the implications of using [] on a vector instead of .at()

Having accomplished his main goal, he decided to spend a few minutes making fun of other people on Github issues.

He saw one branch of code where someone failed, failed again, then tried changing all the include statements from using “” to using <>.  Dan laughed.

He saw one branch of code where someone tried to log everything as fatal.  This was surprisingly common, especially for people too dumb to figure out how to set log level.  Dan laughed.

Then Dan saw a branch made by one of his best friends.

Ex-friends.  No one ever figured it out.  Things were mysterious, but for reasons he never understood this friend’s family chose not to mention their company (or Dan) once.  But how did it happen?  This was also mysterious.  Dan compiled a list of all the things he had learned after college, and it was long, but one item stood out:

When an obituary omits cause of death, that usually means it’s suicide.

What appalled Dan wasn’t the act itself, but the sheer indifference that their company displayed.  They just didn’t care.  His cubicle was replaced by an intern’s, then another intern’s.  That’s more or less how he felt the company regarded this death.  It was a name tag change, a commented out line in payroll.  It frustrated Dan to no end, the sheer meaningless and triviality of the ordeal.  

Silently, when he was sure no one was there to hear, Dan wept.

He cried to a timer.  When five minutes passed, he got back on track with coding.

[forthemultiverse]

Young Justice Headcanons

Teenage Night Out

- Dick had been in the mood for Ice cream

- Everyone completely agreed the next few events all came back to his need for ice cream.

- “Ice Cream?”

- It had been 2am, and they had been on a stakeout mission where nothing had happened.

- “Ice Cream?” he asked again after another half hour of boredom. 

- The only reason he thought about getting ice cream was because of the gas station across the road.

- “ICe cREaM?” he wasn’t really annoying the whole team, he was just pestering Wally. 

- “Dude! Nothing good happens after 2am, especially in a nearly abandoned gas station.” Wally pointed out before eventually giving in and agreeing to go across the road with him. 

- After the pair didn’t come back quickly the rest of the team found themselves drifting across the road to join them.

- “I need sugar balls!” Artemis complained. “I have cravings.”

- “Is that you subtly trying to say you’re on your period?” Wally stupidly asked whilst pulling a face.

- “Would you rather I just yelled that Satan has possessed my bikini area to perform his monthly hate towards nice underwear?” she asked, keeping the same monotone voice the entire time.

- “What are sugar balls?” Miss Martian asked carefully. 

- “Dough, covered in sugar and cinnamon, with a pot of dipping chocolate, and they come from this pizza place back in Gotham.” 

- Artemis felt her mouth start to water as Dick explained. 

- “Like churros?” Rocket asked

- “And now I want churros and sugar balls.” Artemis groaned

- “Churros?” Superboy and Kaldur asked.

- “Oh my god, we need to get you guys experiencing non-superhero stuff.” Zatanna shook her head. 

- The team were constantly having to do things for Batman, that it was hard to remember that they were in fact teenagers, and at least three of them probably didn’t even know what a normal teenager would do in there spare time.

- “Not to be rude…but are you guys going to buy anything?” the gas station worker asked awkwardly, “Even if your not, could I, maybe, grab a picture?”

- After the picture was taken, all of the earth based teens grabbed different things from the store and paid for it quickly. Their stakeout had been boring and probably wouldn’t result in anything too important anyway. 

- They wanted to have fun.

- Next stop after the nearly abandoned gas station was a drive-thru.

- They had deliberately used the boom tubes to get quickly to Gotham before using Artemis’s car to go to the Pizza place that served sugar balls.

- “Large pizza, pineapple, Cumberland sausage, and extra cheese!” Wally yelled as Artemis started her order. “And any drink, don’t mind.”

- “Cumberland sausage and pineapple! Fix your best friend, Robin.” Zatanna yelled “Who puts pineapple on pizza? or Cumberland sausage!”

- “People with taste!” Wally countered.

- “People with no taste!” Rocket argued. “Margarita for me!” she then yelled to Artemis.

- “Just be grateful he didn’t order fish on it, he’s done that before.” Artemis laughed at her boyfriend. “But I like pineapple on pizza.”

- “No!”

- “What should we have?” Miss Martian asked through the chaos.

- Everyone started to yell their opinions on pizza but Dick just climbed over Artemis and to the intercom.

- “one Large pizza, pineapple, Cumberland sausage, and extra cheese, one large pizza, half pepperoni half Hawaiian, with cheese stuffed crust,  three medium margarita pizzas, one small pepperoni, and one small pineapple and ham. Five cola’s, one spite and two water’s, and four tubs of sugar balls,” he said smoothly.

 - Dick paid attention to his friends, he knew what pizza’s they liked and then what would be a relatively large range for the three who hadn’t had pizza before. 

- A range Wally or he could eat if the others didn’t like.

- When they got to the pickup point, there were two people working to complete their order.

 - They stopped when they saw the car stuffed with young superheroes.

- “Can we have some photo’s with you guys?”

- “As long as you remember to use the hashtag OnlyinGotham when posting them,” Artemis smirked

- Dick high fived them and yelled “Gotham Pride!”

- The third stop on their rebellious evening was a 24/7 store that had absolutely everything. 

- They ate as they drove to the store, all coming to the agreement that the sugar balls were the best thing to ever happen to planet earth.

- “We need to be quick,” Zatanna instructed. They wanted to be in and out since they had a few places to go to before going back to the cave.

- Of course, that meant that they all ended up separated across the shop and each had piles of useless junk in their shopping carts. 

- Miss Martian wanted everything new she saw, and Conner didn’t know how to say no to Megan. 

- “Marco!” Dick yelled when he realised just how long it had been.

- “Polo!” Artemis and Wally both screamed back, from opposite sides of the store

- “Marco!” Kaldur’ahm yelled so he could try and find Rocket and their cart.

- “Polo!” Five different people screamed back, including people who weren’t there with the team

- “Kid Flash, you on the other side of the aisle?” Dick asked, pretty sure he was about to chuck a rubber chicken at his best friend. 

- He may have climbed up the aisle and placed himself int he perfect position to fling things at Wally.

- “Yep!”

- “Yeet!” Dick screeched whilst pulling the rubbed back and flinging it as powerfully as he could.

- It hit Wally square in the face.

- “What the hell!” Wally looked up but Dick was gone.

- That then started a war of trolley chucking. 

- Everyone was climbing the aisles to throw strange items into other people’s trolleys.

 - It stopped when none of them could figure out who put condoms into Zatanna’s and Artemis’s trolley.

- “I just had the best idea ever.” Artemis stopped and Wally ended up walking into her.

- “What?” he asked while she pulled out one of Robin’s fifty million phones that he lent the team and started to record.

-  They were all back together at this point.

- “The Floor is Lava!”

- Kaldur had actually heard that phrase and knew what to do

- Wally had shown him a compilation on Youtube.

- Conner didn’t 

- He started screaming and prepared to punch to ground.

- Well done Conner.

- Dick was somehow upside down on the store ceiling

- Artemis had flung herself onto a pile of teddies so she could record the chaos

- Zatanna had stuck herself to the aisle and Rocket had disappeared completely.

- Miss Martian had just shot up into the sky, and Wally had thought grabbing her ankle would go well.

- He fell off and crashed into a pile of stuff

- “W- Kid Flash!” Artemis stopped the recording and rushed over to him whilst Dick just laughed. 

- “No teenage adventure would be complete without a trip to the hospital.” Rocket pointed out.

- They ended up walking around the children’s corridors of Gotham’s main hospital to surprise some of the sicker children.

- The staff and people all took selfies with them, and before they knew it, #YoungJusticeTakesGotham was trending on most social media platforms

- It also turned out that some of the people from the store had recorded all of their little jokes and posted them to Snapchat and Twitter.

- Zatanna didn’t understand how the hospital was so busy at three in the morning, then she remembered that this was Gotham and shut up.

- Once Wally was cleared by a doctor, they headed up to the top of one of the Wayne Towers.

-It was one of the tallest buildings in Gotham

- They had spent so long in the Hospital, visiting kids was worth it though, that it was nearly sunrise.

- Gotham was usually so cloudy and grey, but somehow the sky was nearly clear.

- The colours started to flood into the city for the first time in a while and they all started eating the snacks they had brought throughout the night. 

- Dick and Zatanna sat at the edge of the roof, making out whenever they were sure none of the others could see them

- Artemis and Wally were throwing food at each other as the other tried to catch it in their mouths.

- Despite the fact that Artemis had such good aim, they were both pretty useless and stuck laughing at each other.

- “I’m pretty sure Batman did a speech from the Lion King in one of my first nights as Robin.”

- “What do you mean?”

- “Everything in the shadows touch is our kingdom, not that sunny patch though, that’s Metropolis, no one likes Metropolis.”

- “The Lion King?” Kaldur asked.

- At least M’gann and Conner went to school, he literally didn’t communicate with teenagers other than the team and people he saved.

- “Disney movie marathon tomorrow!” Rocket yelled

- “High school musical marathon after that!” Zatanna improved on Rockets idea.

- “Yes!” Dick agreed.

- “Together, Together everyone!” Wally started.

- “Here and now, it’s time for celebration!” Dick continued.

- “Fake fan!” Artemis interrupted “You skipped like two lines.” 

- All of them held eye contact for a second before just launching into the chorus anyway.

- Batman materialised on the rooftop, prepared to tell them off, then he heard.

- “Wildcats everywhere, wave your hands in the air!”

- He wasn’t about to cut off them actually having fun in the usually dark Gotham.

- He would tell them off some other time.

Part Two: Teenaged Night In