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[iambriannelson]

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[sinnersweets]

DogDay x Reader part 3

<----part 2, part 4--->

A/N: It’s been a week since your first day 

Everytime I came in for my shift I always needed to change into my uniform which was starting to get tiring. I wasn’t allowed to take the shirt, nametag, or headband home. I promised the team member that I would bring everything back, but they said they needed to wash it every time with the vanilla scent that DogDay has. I huffed in disappointment and took the clothes and went to go change.  

--------------- 

I was told that at the start of the week all the helpers need to give their assigned Smiling Critter a bath that way their scent can be strong again. Also, we needed to arrive two hours before Playcare opened to everyone. Guessing it took a while to wash everyone. Then a thought came into my head. DogDay is a dog, and dogs typically hated getting wet. Oh boy, today would not be easy for me.  

--------------- 

The Playcare looked scary when the lights were off. The only lights present was from the Bron lamps. I walked over to the counselors building and somehow while looking at the ground, I tripped over a wire. “Ah-!” I hit the ground and laid on the floor for ten seconds before rising to my elbows and looking at the wire. While I looked back at the wire, I noticed that it started to move. As I got a closer look, I saw that this wire was fluffy, and purple. “Huh?” Then suddenly whatever I tripped on wrapped around my ankle and quickly pulled me into the air. I didn’t dare make a sound while I was being hoisted up knowing that the kids were all asleep. My morning was going great. 

I was brought up to the statues and finally saw what the heck grabbed me. CatNap. This was the first time I’ve seen him up close and he was by far the scariest one out of the group. Since I was hanging upside down, I had to hold my shirt down with my hands. “Hey there CatNap...could you um, put me down please?” Where the hell was Sarah?! She’s supposed to be keeping an eye on him as his helper. CatNap just stared at me. DogDay did tell me that CatNap doesn’t really talk, but him not talking was making this much creepier. 

“Psst, CatNap, Angel, what are you doing?!” I looked at the floor and spotted DogDay just below me. “CatNap she’s my helper not a doctor. She’s a friend!” DogDay whispered but also yelled out. “Friend....” That’s all CatNap said before releasing his tail from me. I fell and landed into DogDays arms. “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven Angel?” He laughed at the joke that he made. I look towards him with a concerned look on my face. “He pulled me into the air and then dropped me...and you...”  

It then registered what DogDay had just said to me, and I smiled and laughed, all the anger that I felt left. “I can’t believe you just said that. That was cheesy.” I wiped a tear away from laughing. “I wanted to see a smile on your face Angel, especially since what was happening with you and CatNap.” “Yeah, what was that all about anyway?” His face then looked nervous for a moment before he answered. “He’s not a fan of adults. He rarely tolerates his helper. He didn’t mean any harm, really.” I looked back up to the statues, but CatNap was no longer there. “Hm. Well next time I see him I want an apology.” DogDay chuckled and nodded his head. “Oh, I like your earrings, Angel.” I totally forgot that I went out yesterday and bought me a pair of sun earrings. I liked getting earrings to match my outfit. It was earlier than I liked to be awake at, so it slipped my mind that I wore them. “Thank you, there new.” 

--------------- 

DogDay led me to a hidden door that blended in perfectly against the walls. This was where they got washed up. Each Smiling Critter had their own room with everything they needed to be cleaned properly. The whole time we were walking towards DogDays room he was cheerful but as soon as we entered the room, and I closed the door he started shaking. “Hey, hey it’s okay. Taking baths are fun!” I grabbed onto his paw to try to calm him down. DogDay then stopped shaking and looked at me and smiled. “Normally I would give myself a bath but now that I have you Angel, this should be less scary.” I nodded my head and went to put on an apron to not get myself wet. “Alright, let's get started! First, I will need to take off your pendant, don’t want that getting dirty now.” DogDay lowered himself so that I could reach behind his neck and undo the knot from his pendant.  

Since it was just us, I decided to ask him a question that I had for him. “So, I’ve been meaning to ask you this, but you said you went through a lot of applicants before landing on me. What made me stand out?” I could feel DogDay stiffen when I asked this. I was still untying his pendant when he spoke. “Everyone else's application seemed so boring, plus the pictures that they sent in I could tell that they would not be good to work down here at Playcare. But yours Angels, your picture was just full of-” I accidentally cut him off as his pendant was quite heavy and made me yelp in surprise. “Jeez this is heavy!”  

DogDay saw me struggling to pick it up and took it from me and set it down on the table. “Woops, should’ve worn you, sorry Angel.” “That’s really heavy, guess the kids weren’t lying when they said you were strong.” I nudge DogDay playfully. His ears perked up and he wagged his tail. Cute. “Okay now the not so fun part.” I pointed over to where DogDay needed to be at to get washed. He swallowed hard but then walked on all fours over to the area. I saw that there was a step stool for me, so I grabbed it and placed it near him. “I’ll try to be really quick, okay?” He nodded and closed his eyes. I turned on the hose and started to wet DogDay. 

--------------- 

It took around three minutes to fully wet DogDay, yeesh. Now I had to put the vanilla scented soap on him. To pull his mind away from his bath I decided to playfully tease him about calling me pretty. “By the way, I never got to thank you for calling me pretty.” “Huh?!” His ears perked up again. “Oh- right, I forgot that Damian shouted that out...Well you are pretty Angel.” I scrubbed his ears and smiled. “Thank you.” It took me thirty minutes to cover DogDay with soap. This was tiring, but I’ll improve over time. “Okay almost done, just gotta rinse you off and then dry you and then comb your fur and that’s it!” As I said it aloud, I realized that those tasks would also take a while.  

I rinsed off DogDay and turned off the hose. I walked over to a cubby and took off my apron while also grabbing a blow dryer. As I was plugging in the blow dryer I looked over and noticed that he had a look in his eyes. “Angel, I gotta shake this water off.” Oh no. “Nonono don’t shake, please don’t shake.” “It’s dripping down my body...” “Don’t shake!” “I gotta shake!” “No no shaking-” Too late. DogDay shook all the water off of him. DogDay sighed as he no longer felt as wet as he did before. “Whew I feel so much better.” DogDay turned to look at me and he then saw the aftermath of what he did.  

There I stood, all drenched in water. “So sorry Angel...” Even though I was drenched in chilly water I wasn’t angry at all. I started to laugh aloud. “Haha! I should’ve known that was gonna happen.” DogDay smiled and wagged his tail. “I really tried to not shake Angel.” “It’s okay, ahem, now let’s dry ourselves off.”  

I got dried as best as I could but knew I was going to need to change out of these wet clothes before getting sick. I brushed out DogDays fur and added in some more vanilla scent to him. DogDay then grabbed his pendant and I decided to buff it out so that it’ll shine. I looked at the pendant and saw my reflection. “There, all beautiful now.” “Yes, you are Angel...I-I mean yes, it’s beautiful now haha...” I booped him on the nose with my finger and smiled at him. “Thank you, you are looking pretty handsome now after that bath.” His ears perked up and his tail was wagging back and forth fast. Seeing DogDay like this made me happy, and warm inside...maybe I was already getting sick.  

A/N: Thank you for reading!

[moonsaver]

Hmm.. what if sunday only opens up to those close to robin?

As the spokesperson for The Family, he's under a great deal of pressure and oversees a multitude of things, so naturally he's a bit sly, and doesn't keep anyone close. His sister is his only "companion"/friend who he keeps by, and as per the quest she left when she got older, so sunday would have become more and more lonelier.

So.. imagine being one of the backstage helpers for Robin's shows, maybe helping out as a staff member at penacony in preparation for the Charmony festival, or really just about any other show Robin attends, being tagged along with a few more people as her reliable team. You get close to the superstar by a few conversations, jokes, and a bit of comforting from time to time. Eventually having to travel back to Penacony in time for the Charmony festival, and Sunday seeing you help out his sister so much, being a mutual friend of hers, instead of a worshipping fan.

Naturally she tags you along to certain tasks that sunday assigns, passing a look to her asking if she wanted you to really go with her. Over time, you start tagging along with them both to handle other general matters, and all 3 of you bond. Sunday feels genuinely lighthearted for once, joking around and sharing a laugh, with his sister and you. And he realizes just how much he will miss it, how lonely it will be without his sister. So, although Robin usually relies on Sunday to take care of things that trouble her, for once,Sunday passes an off-comment about how much he'll "miss company". If to cheer him and support him back just a bit, she offers to convince you to stay back, once she has to leave Penacony.

And you get a permanent "vacation" in Penacony. Isnt it exciting? Sunday will personally oversee your day to day affairs, and includes you in meetings, some quite sensitive in their information. He says if you leave, it'll be troublesome to ensure it doesn't.. leak. For the forseeable future, you're positively trapped under his care. Don't worry – he treats his employees well. At least, he'll treat you well. Just tag along to this meetings, sit beside him, and help him with picking out an outfit, perhaps help him understand dreams by telling him some of your own. Don't mind the hand that rests on your shoulder, creeping down your arm, rubbing your elbow gently. It's just a friendly gesture. You've been so sweet to Robin, he's quite pleased you're her friend. Why don't you listen to her and stay here, instead? She'll visit, and you will never feel lonely. Just.. don't bother trying to leave. The room is locked, anyway.

How about both of you test out the new dreamscape he's been carefully crafting? There's no need to go into separate beds, just share one, it'll be more efficient. Hold his hand, he'll help you adjust to the experience, of course.

[waaayoutofline]

MRS.CLAUS AND HER HELPER

PROMPTS: “This is just pointless” and “Fine, I’ll just do it myself then.”

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x F!Reader

Tags: Grumpy x Sunshine, fluff, awkward Nat, resident sunshine reader, christmas fun! (yes, I’m aware is actually eastern but idc).

Summary —> Natasha has feelings for you. Feelings that make her feel grumpy whenever you are near. Unfortunately, she has no opportunity to avoid you as she is assigned to a holidays mission with you.

WORD COUNT: 2927

“Miss Y/L/N, you are being requested in the conference room,” Friday announced through the speakers, causing you to halt in your tracks, the dummy of practice finally getting a break. Wiping the sweat off your forehead, you stretched your limbs before grabbing a towel. It’s only been three days since you returned from your last mission, so it catches you off guard to be called in already.

After quickly hitting the showers, you head to the lift, pressing the button while humming. But just as the mechanical doors are about to shut, a hand slips in between. “Hey, sorr-…Oh, it’s you,” a rather dry voice comments.

A smile spreads across your lips in a matter of seconds, your eyes following the figure of Natasha Romanoff slipping almost in resignation. “Good morning, Nat!” you greet her cheerfully.

“Morning,” she grumbles. “Where are you going?”

“Conference room,” her eyes widened, enough for you to connect the dots. “Oh, you too? That’s great! Perhaps they assigned us a new mission.”

Natasha, usually a morning person, grumbled. “Oh, yeah… joy,” she says, her tone lacking enthusiasm.

You might think that the red-headed spy isn’t too fond of you. Most would believe she really didn’t like you. She’s always scoffing, complaining, and even whining when forced to be in the same space as you.

But quite the contrary. She is fond of you. That’s the problem.

These fuzzy feelings did nothing but anger her. She has always been in control. She’s supposed to be. She’s a trained assassin, cold and ruthless. And yet, there’s something about you that makes her nerves betray her.

It’s her secret. Well, she is convinced that it’s a secret. The truth is that the whole team is aware. They know how Natasha Romanoff has a soft spot for the resident sunshine. Tony even has a pool going around for when she is going to actually do something about it.

Not that either two of you are aware of this fact.

You seem to be clueless. Unaware of the way Natasha’s ears turn pink whenever you smile at her. Of how her heart aches when you do as little as laugh, the sound so clear and joyful. Of the way she silently but deadly threatens anyone who dares to even tease you. Once, the team, except Wanda and Natasha, devoured your stash of sweets, not aware that they belonged to you. Unfortunately, that day you were particularly sensitive and a few tears slipped away before you could mutter, “It’s fine, don’t worry.”

And unfortunately for the boys, Natasha’s darkened eyes watched silently as the tears caressed your cheeks. The following events that happened are not to be mentioned. Just know that the next day, they all bought bags and bags of your favorite goods, besides apologizing like crazy. Confused, you accepted everything with a “Thanks?”

You aren’t aware of any of that.

She just disconnects as you happily chat away, talking about how excited you were about the incoming Christmas festivities. Plans about decorating the whole tower and baking cookies and brownies and watching Christmas movies with the team and….The ding sound in the air as Natasha practically throws herself out of the lift. You giggle softly, “Where’s the fire at, Nat?” You tease, walking calmly in different ways to her wide, fast-paced steps. Natasha curses to herself, cheeks blazing. It should be illegal to be this cute at such hours.

“I just don’t want to be late,” she snaps. You shrug, not affected by her harshness. That’s another thing that baffled her. Usually, she intimidates even the senior agents with her direct personality and ironic comments and yet, you never seem to be hesitant or scared at all to approach her. It’s like you are immune to it.

Is she losing her touch? She feels like she is losing her touch.

Her hands go to the handle, opening it before doing a painfully awkward gesture for you to go in first. You smile in gratitude when passing next to her, the familiar scent of vanilla making her hold her breath.

“Y/L/N, Romanoff,” Nick greets, dramatically turning around. You say a cheery hello, Natasha just nods. Let’s get this over with. “I know you both just been on a mission, but we need your assistance on this.”

Natasha feels her stomach drop. Taking a seat, the director gives you both two copies of a report. Skimming through it, Natasha’s eyes widen. “Oh no, absolutely not.”

“I knew she was going to say that,” Tony chimes in.

“Don’t give her more reason to not do it, Tony,” Steve sighs.

“Are we sure it’s them?” You ask dubiously, eyes still on the paper. Fury nods.

“Yes. We have had surveillance on them for the last month, all points that they have they must have their next exchange somewhere in this mall. They are using the upcoming festivities to go more unnoticed.”

Natasha sighs. “So what, are we supposed to go and possibly catch them in broad daylight?” Fury shakes his head.

“Not exactly. We need you two to go undercover, keep a low profile and watch out for more suspicious activity. A few boxes of cargo isn’t enough to take the entire operation down. While we know they maybe are dealers on the area we don’t exactly know if it’s a full on operation. ”

The Russian’s eyebrows furrow. “Why not send an agent then? Have them confirm.”

“This is too delicate. A couple of rookies are less likely to draw attention. I need your eyes, subtlety, and Y/N’s enhanced hearing,” Fury explained.

Natasha sighed in frustration, pushing the folder away. “So, you want us to go into a mall full of late Christmas shoppers and look for suspicious drug trade that you’re not even sure is happening there?” she summarized.

Fury nodded. “Aren’t you perceptive, Agent Romanoff.”

Natasha opened her mouth to protest further, but Fury beat her to it. “Now, how do you two feel about Santa?”

***

“Oh no, absolutely not,” Natasha huffs indignantly. The sounds of the rushing people are muffled by the door, the lights already making Natasha dizzy. You turn your head to look at her over the shoulder.

”Oh. Do you want to be the elf, then? I don’t mind-“ She cuts you off with a grunt.

”No, I don’t want to be anything. This is absolutely ridiculous. Just wait until we return to the tower, Fury is going to hear it.” A laugh escapes you at the scowl on her face. She sends you the mean look, but you don’t even flinch.

“It’s not that bad. Think of it as a Christmas spirit operation.” You try to cheer up, not really finding the zipper of the disguise. A scoff.

“We’ve been following this narcotic clan for months now, all leading us into dead ends. Perhaps we should start to consider the fact that they aren’t even in America anymore. This is just pointless.”

You shrugged your shoulders, putting the green suit on your shoulder and going to the changing room. “Fine, I’ll just do it myself then.” The spy’s arms, which were crossed, almost get out of their place as she grabs your arm. Gentle enough to not hurt, but firm enough to stop you.

You look up at her and she feels like she is about to faint. “What- no. What if they are here—…”

“You just said they may not even be here, so there’s nothing to worry about.” The reassurance doesn’t seem to calm her, but you keep walking away. Your legs are barely out of the storage room when she calls you to stop.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, fine! Fine. Just…” She stops you, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Let’s get this over with.” You clap in excitement and face lighting like a christmas tree, spinning happily. A satisfied grin on your face that she doesn’t get to see. “Great! See you in five minutes, Mrs. Claus!” You sing as you finally exit. Natasha almost hits her head on the wall at how easily she just gave in.

She has definitely lost her touch.

***

“Mommy, why is Mrs. Claus looking so grumpy?” a little kid asks her mom as they pass by, the woman giving you two a disapproving look. You nudge Natasha’s side with your elbow.

“Yeah, Mrs. Claus… light it up a little, will you?” You mutter with a tight smile. “And also, don’t sit like that.” Natasha huffs, but changes position on the tall, red velvet-covered chair.

“Shut it, elf, or I’ll have you sent to the North Pole in no time,” she answers snarkily, but you were too distracted relocating the wall of fake gift boxes to have a better view.

Still, you look at her with an eyebrow raised. “What was that?”

A gulp. “Nothing.”

For as sweet as you were, you did know how to throw a mean glare. Was Natasha into it? Absolutely not.

“That’s what I thought.” The cheers of children echo, Natasha’s face paling as they all line up. Before she can say something about it, you put a hand on her shoulder. “Now, smile bright and be nice to the kids.”

”Bet you wouldn’t be so happy about having small people sit on your lap.” Faking a pout, you bend slightly to look her in the eyes.

”Aw, does that mean I won’t have a turn later?” You tease. And suddenly, all the remarks that the redhead had disappeared into thin air, never to be found again. You giggle. “Careful, your face is matching with your disguise.”

She is still sputtering indignantly by the time you redirect your attention to the crowd, a big bright grin on your face. The fact that she finds you cute even in the ridiculous elf suit you’re wearing speaks volumes.

“Merry Christmas everyone!” You greet happily, dramatically doing a reverence. “See, Santa has got a bit too many sweets before going to sleep situation.” Everyone cheers sadly. “But lucky for us, someone came all the way here all the way form the North Pole to save the day, give a big applause everyone for…Mrs.Claus!” Everyone claps excitedly as Natasha does a big, strained smile and salutes everyone to the public. The children (and even the parents) cheer loudly.

“Marry christmas. Who is ready to sit on my lap?” Natasha asks in exaggerated happiness, flushing some more when you give her a sneaky wink. What did she do to deserve this?

***

Ten or so children go by, all asking for their gifts. You want to think that everything is going well so far, no sign of any undercover trafficking, and everyone seems to be having a great time. Even Natasha.

“What do you want, kiddo?” The little boy grins toothlessly.

“I want a pink pony with fire breath and Pegasus wings!” The redhead hesitates.

“Well, those are rare… Anything else that you want?” The kid stops and thinks for a bit.

“Mmm, oh yeah! I want for mom and dad to bring their adult friends home instead of hiding them from each other. That way we can have a party!” Natasha’s eyes widened, choking on air. Your hand flies to your mouth in surprise as Natasha looks at you in panic. You send her a look that screams “You better fix this.”

“A pink flying, fire-breathing pony it is then!”

Besides that one, of course.

As fewer and fewer kids are in the waiting line, you feel yourself relax. If anything were to happen, at least there won’t be people who will get hurt. Natasha stretches lightly on the chair. When looking at the next kid, a little smile appears on her face. “Would you look at that? You look exactly like a smaller version of someone I know,” she mentions as she pulls the kid onto her lap.

The girl smiles, and you get an idea of who she reminded her of. “Really? From the North Pole? Is she magical?” Natasha makes an exaggerated thinking face while you scoff lightly.

“Well, she is a little bit of a troublemaker at times…” Natasha says dramatically, making the girl laugh. “But yeah… you could very well say she is magical.” Her voice is soft, sincere. You can’t help but blush a little.

***

“Ugh, I’m sweating. Why is this thing so hot?” Natasha complained as you two walked side by side, finally being able to catch a break. You nodded absentmindedly, your eyes wandering until you suddenly froze. Still wrestling with the disguise, Natasha didn’t notice. “I’m suffocating. This can’t be legal…”

“Natasha,” a couple of men scurried into a door next to the bathroom stalls. You recognized the characteristic tattoo of a crossed couple of spears on their necks until they both disappeared.

“It has way too many zippers and—” You hit her with your elbow, startling her.

“Stop it! Give me some room to complain, woman. I’ve already accepted plenty of your side eyes this morning.”

Rolling your eyes, you pulled her along by her hand. Her eyes stuck where you two were touching. “What are you…” As you opened the door, you followed down the hallway, being careful not to be spotted. Shushing her and slightly pulling her against the wall to cover with the shadows, you pointed to the now visible men, who were around the corner in a small operation room. There were gift-themed boxes scattered everywhere, alongside bags of bright purple powder. Still, for anyone, it could be said this was a normal management room.

“Pretty sure there aren’t any Barbie houses in those boxes,” Natasha muttered. You nodded, counting the number of guys. “So that’s how they do it. They benefit from the holidays to smuggle the drugs…” She trailed off.

“…and because there is so much activity and shipment movement it goes easily under the radar.” You finished happily, looking up at her with a grin, only to notice that she was already watching you. Her eyes locked on your hand, which still rests softly on her upper chest, the space between the two of you being almost nonexistent. In your excitement, you didn’t notice how close you were.

For a second, you didn’t say anything. No happy comments or quick remarks. She didn’t say anything either, no sarcastic retort or reproach. The only sounds were your breaths and the faint pulse of a frantic heart.

Even if it felt like it was frozen, there was this notion that one of the two was moving slightly closer. If not both of you. But as it turns out, time didn’t actually freeze, and it didn’t take much for someone to spot you.

“Hey, what are yo-… Oh shit.” Someone exclaimed, making both of you jump away from each other. You caught the movement of Natasha reaching for the taser that (you didn’t approve of) was strapped on her back. However, a quick analysis of the man’s face told you enough to make her stop. She looked at you in confusion before reading the spark in your eyes. A nod.

“Oh, sorry, we thought this was an empty closet…” You giggled, dramatically grabbing Natasha’s arm and putting your face on Natasha’s shoulder, nuzzling her neck. You felt her tense before her arms wrapped around your waist, tugging you closer. You were pretty sure that extra beat wasn’t because of the adrenaline.

“This place is restricted to the public,” he muttered, flustered.

“Sure. How about we try the changing room, sweetheart?” Natasha muttered, loud (and suggestive) enough for the man’s awkwardness to grow tenfold and leave.

“What was that, man?”

“Nothing, just Mrs. Claus and her helper making out.”

It wasn’t long until you both returned to the first level of the mall. “Alright, this should be enough distance…” Natasha mutters, looking for any more tattooed men. Suddenly, an unusually soft, warm sensation process on her mind, looking down she can still see both your hands enterwined. You are looking to, but don't make any attempt to “fix” the situation.

“C’mon, let’s go inform Fury to bring in the team.” Immediately after that, you are pulling her along, Natasha’s face now fully complementing the same shade of her Mrs.Claus dress. If it was because of embarrassment or another feeling entirely she will not tell.

One thing she can say for sure. Perhaps this whole “christmassy operation” wasn’t bad after all.

***

—extra

(A FEW MOMENTS LATER, IN THE TOWER…)

”Great job, agents. I appreciate your work.” Fury hangs the calls, turning to the rest of the team. “Apparently, they found out actual activity of the smuggling. Have plenty of high ranked operators and shipment cargo.”

“Why the surprise?” Bruce questions, while Tony laughs.

”Shit, they actually did?” Everyone looks at him confused. “What? You guys don’t know?”

The room fills with puzzled looks as Steve exhales audibly in his chair. “This operation was merely a facade to orchestrate a charming little rendezvous between Natasha and Y/N. It’s rather remarkable they stumbled upon anything, considering the slim odds,” he elucidates nonchalantly.

”And Fury greenlit this?”

“I did. I’ve grown weary of witnessing Agent Romanoff’s infatuation with Y/N—it’s proving distracting. Even the junior agents are indulging in speculation about their eventual…get together. Sooner rather than later, I say,” Fury explains, shrugging indifferently.

“You did what?!” Natasha growled, practically kicking the door down.

Most people have never seen a single emotion on the director's face. But the ones who were there that day would forever remember the flash of fright that flashed in Nick Fury's good eye.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 4: Read Between The Lines]

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes, Jace is here unfortunately.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams” by Green Day.

Word count: 5.6k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

It is your first week of basic training at Great Lakes on the north side of Chicago, and as you lie in the top bunk of your assigned bed you wonder what the hell you’ve done. You enlisted right out of high school, eighteen, no driver’s license, no work history, never been more than fifty miles outside of Soft Shell, Kentucky. The drill sergeants are always yelling and you’re bad at push-ups; you can’t understand the recruits from big cities like Los Angeles, Miami, Las Vegas, Detroit, Houston, and they don’t seem to get you either, and aren’t interested enough to try. Sometimes you wish you hadn’t signed that five-year contract, but where would you be if you weren’t here? Home is not words but textures, colors, fumes that still burn in your sinuses: cigarette ash on rose pink carpets, red embers glowing in the wood stove, Hamburger Helper and Mountain Dew, coffee creamer in Hungry Jack potatoes, laughter and heavy footsteps and slamming doors, scratch-off games, dogs barking, collecting coins from couch cushions for gas money, scrubbing clothes in the bathtub when the washer quits, Mama taking gulps from her favorite cup—plastic, Virginia Beach, filled with equal parts Hawaiian Punch and vodka—when she thinks no one is looking, blue shows flickering on the television, Family Feud, Maury, Good Morning America, WWE SmackDown. For as long as you can remember you’ve known you couldn’t stay. Now you’re getting out, but nothing in life is free.

You are at Class A Technical School in Gulfport, Mississippi, and even though it’s hotter than some noxious, volcanic hellscape—Mercury, Venus, Io—you are beginning to like it. You taste the salt of sweat when you lick your lips, sugar in the sweet tea they serve in the chow hall. There’s a magic in building something where there was only empty space before, in patching roofs and painting walls. Here being quiet and watchful is exactly what they want from you: head down, hammer striking nails, measurements and angles and long hours under the sun with no complaints. You’re not just running away anymore. You are creating something new.

You are sitting beneath swaying palm trees and a full moon on Diego Garcia, draining cans of Guinness with Rio, and he’s telling you things he shouldn’t, too personal, too honest: Sophie wants to try for a baby next time he’s home on leave, and part of him wants that too but he’s terrified. As thunder rumbles in the distance and raindrops begin to patter on the waves of the Indian Ocean, you tell Rio you think he’d be a good father. He wonders how you figure that, and you say because he’s not like any of the men from home. He gives you one of his crooked smiles—a flash of teeth, knowing dark eyes—and doesn’t ask what you mean.

But of course, when you swim up from the inky currents of sleep you are in none of these places. You are curled up on the floor of a bowling alley in Shenandoah, Ohio, cheap worn black carpet peppered with stars and swirls in neon green, pink, blue. You stretch out with a yawn. Someone has left a Lemon Tea Snapple within reach; you twist it open and guzzle it, hoping to extinguish the pounding in your skull, a rhythmic thudding of warm maroon, half Captain Morgan and half misery. The music isn’t helping. From the green Toshiba CD player, a man is singing in Spanish. Aegon and Rio are sitting at the nearest table and playing Uno.

Aegon says as he ponders his cards: “You know Enrique Iglesias, right Rio?”

“You are so racist.” Rio puts down a wild. “And the new color is red. Racist.”

“So what’s he saying?”

“Aegon, buddy, I told you, I was born here. My grandparents came over in the 60s. I don’t speak Spanish.”

“You can’t understand any of it?” Aegon is skeptical. He plays a skip, a reverse, and a seven. “My dad never taught me a word of Greek but I can recognize plenty of phrases. Vlákas means idiot. Spatáli chórou is a waste of space.”

Rio sighs, relenting. He puts down a two. “The song is called Súbeme La Radio, Turn Up The Radio For Me. Bring me the alcohol that numbs the pain… I don’t care about anything anymore…You’ve left me in the shadows…”

“Damn, now I’m sad. Draw four, bitch.”

“When the night comes and you don’t answer, I swear to you I’ll stay waiting at your door…” Rio studies his cards. “What’s the new color?”

“Green.”

“Yes!” Rio slams down a skip. “Fleeing from the past in every dawn, I can’t find any way to erase our history…”

Everyone else is awake already. As muted late-morning daylight streams in through the small tinted windows, Aemond is weaving between tables, pointedly checking on each person. He glances at you, says nothing, turns around and walks the other way.

“That’s tough,” Rio says sympathetically, popping open the tab on a can of Chef Boyardee and shoveling ravioli into his mouth with a plastic fork.

Aegon gives you a smirk. “You want to fake date now?”

“I’ll think about it.” No you won’t.

Helaena appears, a prairie girl vision in a modest blue sundress and with her hair tied back with a matching scarf. She reaches into her burlap messenger bag and offers you a choice between a ranch-flavored tuna pouch or a silvery pack of Pop-Tarts. “Strawberry,” she tells you.

“I’ll take the Pop-Tarts.”

Helaena gives them to you and then shakes a bottle of Advil. You’re so groggy it takes you a few seconds to figure out what she wants, then you obediently hold out a hand. Helaena lays two tablets in the center of your palm and moves on, soundlessly like a rabbit or a spider.

You wash the pills down with Snapple. As you nibble half-heartedly on a Pop-Tart—trying not to look at Aemond, multicolored sprinkles falling down onto the carpet—your eyes drift to the tattoo on the underside of Aegon’s forearm. It’s not over ‘til you’re underground. You’ve spotted it before. Only now do you remember where you recognize the lyric from. “Is that Green Day?”

“Yeah,” Aegon says, enthused that you noticed. “Letterbomb.”

“I love that whole album.”

“Me too. I could sing it front to back if you asked me to.”

“I’m not asking.”

Aegon cackles and resumes his Uno game with Rio. Baela is wearing denim shorts and a crop top, slathering her belly with Palmer’s cocoa butter from Walmart as she chats with Rhaena and eats Teddy Grahams. Daeron is waxing the string of his compound bow. Jace is gnawing on a Twizzler as he scrutinizes Aegon’s map, annotated with Xs and circles and arrows in sparkling gel pen green.

“I’m going to be a thousand years old by the time we get there,” Jace mutters.

Aegon hits the table with his fist. The discard pile collapses and cascades, an avalanche of Uno cards. Rio, undisturbed, continues contemplating his next move. “You know what, Jace? The cities are full of zombies, the interstates are blocked by fifty-car pileups, if we bump into anyone else who’s still alive they’re just as likely to rob and murder us as want to be friends, and on top of all that I’m trying to do you the favor of preventing you from getting so irradiated you turn into Spider-Man. If you have a better route in mind, I’d love to hear it.”

“Spider-Man…? You’re such a dumbass, what are you talking about?!”

Luke says from where he stands by a window: “Aemond, someone’s outside.”

“What?” Aemond stares at him. “Zombies?”

“No. People.”

Aemond bolts to the doors, the rest of you close behind him. Rhaena turns off the CD player. You, Rio, and Aegon squeeze together to peer out of one of the windows. There are men—three of them, no, four, all appearing to be in their forties—passing by on the main road through town. They are armed with what are either AR-15s or M16s, you can’t tell which.

Rio whistles. “If you get shot by one of those, the exit wound will be the size of an orange.” Everyone looks at him. This was not an encouraging thing to say.

You elaborate: “Thirty-round magazines. Semiautomatic, assuming they’re AR-15s for civilian use. I guess they could have gotten ahold of M16s somehow. Those have a fully automatic setting.”

“So regardless, we’re out-gunned,” Jace says.

“If they know how to use them. Some men think guns are wall decorations, like deer heads or fish.”

Aegon recoils. “Fish?! What the fuck. I’m glad the colonies left.”

“Maybe they’ll keep walking,” Daeron says hopefully. One of the men stops and points at the bowling alley, saying something to his companions. They laugh and begin crossing the small parking lot. They are less than two minutes from the door. “Oh, great…”

“There’s an emergency exit in the back,” Baela says.

Aegon snorts. “Yeah, that we stacked about twenty boxes of bowling pins in front of to zombie-proof.”

“We won’t be able to get out before they hear us,” Aemond says. Then he abruptly orders: “Grab your guns, let’s go. Helaena, Baela, Rhaena, you’re staying here.” Aemond’s remaining eye—briefly, reluctantly—skates over you as Rio, Aegon, Jace, Luke, and Daeron scatter to obey him. “You too.”

“But I’m the best shot.”

“I don’t want them to know we have women with us.”

“I’m of more use to you outside.”

Aemond rips his Glock out of its holster, pointing it at the floor. His frustration is palpable, an electric shock, heat that refracts light rays until they become mirages on the horizon. “You’re going to stay here, and if a stranger comes through those doors you’re going to kill them. Okay?”

His urgency stuns you; his eye is blue-white summer storm lightning. “Okay.”

“Now get back.”

You soar to the nearest table, duck under it, reach for your Beretta M9 and double-check the clip, fully loaded. You click off the safety.

“Aemond, wait, let me go first,” Aegon is saying by the door. “I’m better at de-escalation, I’m less…uh…intimidating.”

“Less socially incompetent, you mean,” Jace quips.

“I’ll lead,” Aemond insists. “Aegon can talk. Rio, you’re up front with me.”

Rio pumps his Remington 12 gauge. “I’d be delighted.”

Jace is amused. “I’ve been demoted, huh?”

“He’s bigger,” Aemond replies simply, then opens the door and vanishes through a blinding curtain of daylight. The others follow closely; Daeron, the last one out—his compound bow in hand, the strap of his Marlin .22 slung over his shoulder—shuts the door behind him.

Very faintly, you can hear Aegon: “Hey, guys! What’s happening? How’s the apocalypse treating you…?”

Baela, Rhaena, and Helaena are under the table with you. They deserve to have options. You tell them: “If you want to go hide behind the lanes or try to get out the back door, now’s your chance.”

Helaena shakes her head, clutching your t-shirt: black, Star Wars, pawed off a shelf at the Walmart. “I want to stay with you.”

“Same,” Baela says determinedly, gripping her Ruger. She barely knows how to use it, but she’ll try. Rhaena is shaking, her eyes filling up her face, small fragile bones like a bird’s.

You can’t hear voices from outside anymore, but there are no gunshots either. You keep your M9 aimed at the doors, your breathing slow and deep, your heart rate low. Your hands are steady. Your eyes hunt for the slightest movement, for the momentary shadow of someone passing by a window. Against your will, your thoughts wander to Aemond. I hope Aegon is on his left side. Aemond can’t see there.

“Rhaena, get your gun out,” Baela says sharply. “Come on. Turn the safety off. What if you were alone right now? What if we weren’t here to protect you?”

Rhaena nods, fumbling to free her revolver from its holster. “I’m sorry…I’m trying…”

Now there is a stranger’s voice, gruff and deep. He must be just beyond the door, the farthest one to the right. There is a creak of hinges, a sliver of sunlight. “That’s just too damn bad, fellas. You got a nice little hideout here, and you’re gonna have to share it—”

The door opens. Two unfamiliar faces, too shellshocked to raise their rifles in time. You close an eye, line up your sights, fire twice, and that’s all it takes: one headshot, one in the throat, blood like a fountain, spurting scarlet ruin, thuds against the carpet strewn with neon stars, gurgling and spasms as their brains send out those final electrical impulses: danger, catastrophe, apocalypse. Rhaena is screaming. Helaena is covering her ears with both hands.

You run to the doorway; there are more booms of gunfire out in the parking lot. You cross into the late-morning light to see the other two men on the pavement: one with an arrow through the eye, the other with a gaping, hemorrhaging hole where his heart once was. Rio is admiring his work, holding his shotgun aloft. He scoops a handful of Cheddar Whales out of his shorts pocket and shovels them into his mouth.

“Goddamn, I love Remington Arms Company.”

“Oh, that was awesome,” Aegon says, wan and panting, hands on his waist. “Yeah, that was…that was…” He bends over and vomits Snapple and Cool Ranch Doritos onto the asphalt.

“Everyone okay in there?” Rio asks you.

“Yeah.” Behind you, Baela, Rhaena, and Helaena are stepping through the doorway. Your thoughts are whirling sickly: I killed someone. I killed someone. “They wouldn’t leave?”

“We told them the bowling alley was ours,” Aemond says, not looking at you. “We asked them very politely to keep moving. They chose to try to intimidate us into letting them stay. They weren’t good people, and these are the consequences.”

You click on the safety and re-holster your M9. You’re wearing Rio’s on your other hip. They seem to weigh so much more than they did ten minutes ago. I’m not supposed to be a killer. I’m a builder.

“Aegon, are you okay?” Daeron asks, a palm on his brother’s back.

Aegon retches again. “Shut up. You can’t even buy fireworks.”

“Zombies.” Luke is peering through his binoculars. “Not many, just two. Way up the road.”

“There will be more.” Baela’s cradling her belly; you don’t even think she’s aware of it. “They heard the gunshots, the sound carries for miles.”

“We’re leaving,” Aemond says. “Right now. Everyone get your things.”

As backpacks are hastily zipped and Daeron and Aegon stand guard in the parking lot, you kneel down beside the men you murdered and check their rifles. They are M16s, either stolen or illegally purchased: there’s a little switch by the trigger to choose between semi-automatic or the so-called machine gun mode.

“They barely had any bullets left,” you tell Rio. Just like us when we were trapped on that transmission tower.

“Yeah, same story for the other two guys. Four bullets in one magazine, a half dozen in the other. But it only takes once. We don’t have any ammo that will work with M16s, do we?”

“No, we definitely don’t.”

“Fantastic. Well, we’ll throw them in a Walmart cart and take them with us just in case.”

You’re staring down at the man you shot through the head. His eternal resting place is a puddle of blood and brains in a bowling alley in rural Ohio; surely no one deserves that. “He was a real person,” you say, dazed. “Not a zombie. Just a person.”

“Hey.” Rio grabs your shoulders and spins you towards him. From where he is helping Luke gather up the remaining food, Aemond’s head snaps up to watch. “You hurt him before he could hurt us. You did the right thing.”

“Sure.”

“I killed a dude too. I blew his heart right out of his chest. You think I’m going to hell for that?”

“No,” you admit, smiling. “And if you’d be there with me, I guess I wouldn’t mind so much.”

Rio grins, wide and toothy. “Well alright then. Let’s finish packing.”

The ten of you depart from Shenandoah, Ohio heading northwest on Route 603 just like Aegon marked on his map, Jace chauffeuring Baela in one shopping cart, Rio pushing another loaded high with food and M16s.

“It looks like rain,” Helaena says.

Everyone else peers up into a clear, cerulean sky, wondering what she means.

~~~~~~~~~~

You’re a few miles north of Shiloh when the storm rolls in, cold rain and furious wind, daylight that vanishes behind dark churning thunderheads, jagged scars of lightning in an opaque sky. The road is only two lanes, surrounded by fields of wildflowers and ravaged crops and untilled earth; it would look like the patchwork of a quilt if you were gazing down from an airplane, but of course the FAA grounded all flights over a month ago when the world went mad: Revelations, Ragnarök, the fabric of the universe unweaving as death burned through families, cities, nations like a fever, like plague.

“Maybe we should cut across one of these fields,” Jace says, pointing. He is soaked with rain; it drips from his curls, runs into his eyes. Baela is in her cart again; each time she tries to get out and walk, she’s gasping and can’t keep up within half an hour. You’ve all taken turns pushing her, much to Baela’s dismay. She’d be humiliated if she wasn’t too exhausted to keep her eyes open.

“Here, let me do it,” you offer, and Jace gratefully relinquishes the cart. Baela gives you a frail wave of appreciation.

“We stay on the road,” Aemond insists, flinching as rain pelts his scarred face. “Farmhouses have driveways and mailboxes, we’ll pass one eventually. If we lose the road, we might not be able to find it again. We’ll end up wandering around in circles in the woods.”

“Just like the Blair Witch Project,” Aegon says glumly, his Sperry Bahama sneakers audibly soggy.

“There!” Luke announces, spotting something with his binoculars. “Up ahead on the left. Past the bridge.”

You can’t see what Luke does until there is an especially brilliant flash of lightning: a farmhouse, old but seemingly not derelict, and with a number of accompanying buildings, guest houses and stables and barns and towering silos.

“Home sweet home!” Rio says. “And I don’t care if I have to kill a hundred of those undead bastards to get in, it’s mine.”

“Well, hopefully not a hundred,” you reply, in better spirits now that a sanctuary has been found. Aemond keeps glancing back at you as you push Baela’s cart. If he wants to say something, he’s doing a good job of resisting the temptation. “We don’t have that much ammo.”

There is a concrete bridge over a river, probably unremarkable and only five or ten feet deep normally but now torrential with rain. Water rushes by beneath, a muddy incline on each side as the earth rises back up to meet the road. A reflective green sign proclaims that you are only two miles from Plymouth, which Aegon plans to skirt along the edges of. It’s a decent-sized town; he thinks you might be able to find a car to steal there, something with gas in the tank and keys on a hook just inside the house.

“I call the master bedroom,” Jace says craftily, rubbing his palms together. You’re near the center of the bridge now, another ten yards to go. “Nice big bed, warm cozy blankets, and I was up for half of last night keeping watch so tonight I am off duty, I am a free man, it’s going to just be me and my girl and eight glorious uninterrupted hours of sleep—”

Rhaena shrieks, and then you hear it over the noise of the storm, pounding rain and rumbling thunder: moans, growls, hisses like snakes. Not one zombie. A lot more than one. They’re crawling up from under the bridge, from the filthy quagmire at both ends. There was a hoard of them waiting, aimless, dormant, almost hibernating. But now they are awake. They are grasping for you with bony, dirt-covered claws. They are snapping with jaws that leak blood and pus and bile as their organs curdle to a putrid soup.

“Get off the bridge!” Aemond is shouting. He has his Glock in his right hand, a baseball bat in his left. He’ll shoot until he’s out of bullets, and then, and then…

Rio helps you get Baela out of the cart, then opens fire. His Remington doesn’t just pierce skulls, it vaporizes them. When he’s out of shells—there are more in his backpack, but no time to reload—he yanks the M16s out of the other Walmart cart and empties each of them, mowing down zombies as the rest of you scramble across the bridge. All around you are explosions of gunshots, thunder, lightning, zombie skulls crushed by bullets and blunt force trauma. Baela is firing her Ruger as you half-drag her, one arm hooked beneath hers and around her back. When the last M16 is empty, Rio starts clubbing zombies with the butt of it. You’ve all reached the north side of the bridge, except…

“Fuck off, you freaks!” Jace is screaming. They’ve backed him up against the guardrail, a swarm of ten or more. His Remington shotgun is out of ammo; he’s swinging it wildly, but he doesn’t even have enough room to maneuver. There are still more zombies emerging from under the bridge. You can hear them snarling and groaning. You swipe an M9 off your belt and put a bullet in the brain of a zombie as its fingers close around your ankle, then you start picking off the ones mobbing Jace. You aren’t fast enough. As they lean in to bite him, teeth gnashing at the delicious throbbing heat of his jugular, Jace throws himself over the barrier and into the surging water below.

“No!” Baela cries. She careens off the road and into the field, running parallel to the river as swiftly as she can. You are helping her, steadying her, firing at any zombies you have a clear line of sight on. The others are here too: slipping in the muck of the flooding earth, shouting for Jace. He surfaces through the frothing current, flails pitifully, disappears beneath the water again. You glimpse a white hand, a shadow of his dark hair, a kicking shoe. There are more zombies on the opposite side of the river, trailing after Jace, lurching and slobbering viscous, gory saliva. They cannot swim, but they can follow him until he washes ashore.

Jace bursts up through the waves, gasping. “Help! Aemond…Aemond, for the love of God, help me…” He blubbers and then is dragged under. Aemond and Luke are continuing frantically after him. Baela is hysterical, sobbing, trembling with adrenaline. Aegon is yowling as he swings at zombies with his bloodied golf club. Helaena is darting around almost invisibly, always cowering behind Daeron or Aegon or Rio.

You glance north towards the farmhouse, growing not closer but farther away. We can’t leave shelter. We can’t leave the road. You lock eyes with Rio. He’s thinking the same thing.

“Aemond, we have to go,” Rio says, but in the midst of the rain and the turmoil it barely registers.

“Jace, we’re coming to get you!” Aemond swears. The ground is increasingly sodden, deep, difficult to trudge through. Jace resurfaces, coughing and sputtering.

“Jace!” Aegon wails. He caves in the skull of a zombie who was once a registered nurse as Helaena crouches behind him. “Jace, I’m sorry! I’m gonna miss you, man!”

Jace splashes in the rising river, his arms flailing helplessly. He is being swept away far faster than any of you can move on foot. “Aegon, you dumb bitch!” Jace manages, then slips beneath the water and doesn’t reappear.

“Where is he?!” Baela is saying. “Aemond, where…?”

You are trying to soothe her, to bring her back to reality. She was always so pragmatic before; you have to wake her up. “Baela, listen, we can’t stay here, he would want you and the baby to be safe—”

“Aemond! Aemond, we have to go!” Rio catches him, wrenches him around, roars into his face as driving rain pummels them both: “We have to go, or we’re going to die here too!”

It hits Aemond all at once; he understands, horror and agony in his sole blue eye. “We have to go,” he agrees. And then louder, to everyone: “Get to the farmhouse!”

Baela collapses into the mud, howling, tears flooding down her face. “No, he’s still alive, he’s still alive, we can’t leave him!”

You and Rhaena are trying to haul Baela to her feet. Now Aemond is here, pulling you away from her—his fingers tight and urgent around your wrist—as he and Luke take your place. “Go,” he commands. “You run. Don’t wait for us. Rio?”

“I got her,” Rio replies, grabbing your free hand with an iron grip. Gales of wind rip at you; every millimeter of your skin is soaked with rain. As you flee across the fields towards the farmhouse, dozens of zombies pursue you. More are still staggering along the banks of the river, swept up in the hoards chasing Jace and the promise of his waterlogged corpse when it reaches its final destination. Daeron has run out of arrows and is shooting with his .22, which is very much not his preference. Aegon trips, getting covered in mud as he rolls, and Rio stops to help him. While he is distracted, you look back at Aemond. He, Luke, and Baela are moving quickly, but not quickly enough. A drove of zombies is closing in on them. You have a spare few seconds at last. You yank your backpack off, grab a box of ammo inside, and reload your M9.

“Chips?!” Rio calls over his shoulder.

“I’m fine.”

He knows you well enough to listen. The world goes quiet as your finger settles on the trigger. There’s a rhythm one slips into, an impassionate lethal efficiency. It’s easier to keep going than to stop and have to find it again. You fire over and over, dropping eight zombies. You sheath your M9 and whip Rio’s out of your other holster, the sights finding grotesque decaying faces illuminated by lightning. You pull the trigger: blood, bones, brains, corpses jerking and convulsing as they fall harmlessly to the mud. Aemond is here; when did he get here?

“I told you to run!” he’s shouting through the storm, furious. He’s shoving you towards the farmhouse. You resist him.

“Let me kill as many as I can—”

“Go! Now!” Aemond orders over the clashing thunder, and then sprints with you all the way to the front porch to make sure you listen. Everyone else is already there. Helaena has fetched a spare key from under the doormat and is turning it in the lock.

Daeron observes her anxiously. “We don’t know if it’s safe in there, Helaena.”

“Not in,” she says, insistent. “Through.” Through this building, and maybe through the next one too. The average zombie is not terribly clever. If they lose sight of you, without the benefit of the momentum of a hoard they are lost. Helaena opens the door. The living rush inside, and she locks it behind you. As you are bursting out the back door, you can hear zombies pounding their rotting palms against the front one. You soar through a stable full of dead horses and donkeys, leaving the doors open; this should keep the zombies distracted if they make it this far. Then you race to the farthest guest house. Luke, swiveling with his binoculars, spies no zombies approaching as you steal inside. There is no spare key this time; Rio punches out a first-floor window for you to climb through. Once everyone is inside, he and Aegon move a bookshelf to cover the opening.

You all stand in the living room, gasping and shivering, dripping rain down onto the rug and the hardwood floor. The air is dusty but clean of any trace of vile, swampy decay. Outside, thunder booms and lightning flashes bright enough to illuminate the lightless house. The sky is so dark it might as well be nightfall. Baela sinks to her knees, clamping both hands over her mouth so she won’t sob loudly enough for a zombie to hear. Rhaena and Luke are beside her, both weeping quiet rivulets of tears, trying to comfort her in whispers. Helaena is rummaging around searching for candles; she has already taken a lighter out of her soaked burlap messenger bag.

“Daeron, bro, come over here,” Aegon chokes out. He embraces Daeron, clutches him tightly and desperately, doesn’t let go. Rio is reloading his Remington 12 gauge.

Jace is dead. Jace is dead.

Aemond says to you, his voice low but seething: “What the fuck was that?”

You blink the raindrops out of your eyes as you stare at him, bewildered. “You needed help.”

“I told you to run.”

“I’m an asset, I have skills that can keep you alive, why am I here if I’m not going to be useful—?”

“You’re not in the fucking Navy anymore!” he hisses. “When I tell you to run, you run, you don’t stop, you don’t look back, because I can’t worry about you and take care of everyone else.”

“Nobody asked you to worry about me.”

“But I do.”

“Aemond,” Aegon pleads, waving him over. Aegon’s plump sunburned cheeks are glistening with rain and tears. “Man, it doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters now. Please come here.”

“I’m going to clear the house,” Aemond says instead.

Rio raises an eyebrow at you—this is one fucked up guy, Chips—and then pumps his shotgun. “Me too.” He sweeps with Aemond through the main floor and then vanishes up the staircase.

Helaena is lightning candles she found in the kitchen and arranging them around the living room. Daeron starts gathering food from the pantry. Rhaena and Baela are murmuring to each other softly, mournfully. It doesn’t feel like something you should intrude on. Luke is peeking out of a window with his binoculars, vigilant for threats. Aegon sniffles, wanders over to you with large, sad, shimmering eyes, pats your shoulder awkwardly.

“Hey, Chocolate Chip. You doing okay?”

“No,” you answer honestly.

“Yeah. Me either.” Then he flops down on the hideous burnt orange couch and lies there motionless until Daeron brings him a can of Dr. Pepper. Aegon pops the tab, slurps up foam, and then begins singing to himself very quietly, a song so old you can remember your grandfather saying it was one of his favorites as a boy: A Tombstone Every Mile.

When Rio comes back downstairs—heavy footsteps, he can’t help that—you meet him at the bottom of the steps. “The house is good,” Rio says. “And Aemond’s in the big bedroom on the right if you’d like to go up there and talk to him.”

“I don’t think he wants to see me right now.”

“I could not disagree more,” Rio says with a miserable, exhausted smile. Then he goes to the couch to check on Aegon.

You pick up one of the flickering candles, white and scentless, and ascend the staircase. You find Aemond in the master bedroom, the same accommodations that Jace laid claim to when he was still alive. He is sitting at the edge of the bed and staring at the wall, at nothing. Tentatively, you sit down beside him, placing the candle on the nightstand.

“Aemond…what happened to Jace…it wasn’t your fault.”

“Criston said I was in charge, that’s the very last thing he told me. They might be the last words I ever hear from him, and I just…” His voice breaks; he wipes the rain and tears from his face with open palms. “I really wanted to get everyone home.”

“I’m so sorry about what I said at the bowling alley,” you confess, like it’s a dire secret. “I don’t want to fight with you, Aemond, I…I want to help you. I can see what you’ve done for everyone here, me and Rio included, and I believe in you. I want to be a part of this.”

He nods, an acceptance of peace, but he still doesn’t look at you.

“Can we start over? I’ll never bring it up again, okay? I wasn’t trying to guilt you or upset you or anything. I should have just dropped it. I overreacted. And I understand why being with someone like me maybe wouldn’t be…super appealing.”

“It’s not about that.”

“Then what’s it about?”

Aemond wrings his hands, shakes his head, at last turns to you, golden candlelight reflected in his eye, his scar cloaked in shadows. His words are hushed, clandestine, soft powerless surrender. “I’m already so afraid of losing you.”

He cares, he hopes, he wants me too? “I’m here right now, Aemond. I don’t know what else I can say. I’d promise you more if I could.”

He reaches out to touch you, to ghost his thumb across your cheekbone, wet with rain. Then he kisses you, so gently you cannot help but imagine the wispy borders of calm white summer clouds, the rustle of leaves as wind blows down the Appalachian Mountains. You don’t have to ask him what he’s thinking, what it feels like. You can read it in the startled, firelit wonder on his face.

You taste like the beginning of something, here at the end of the world.

[tr1nd2de]

Old enough

I just saw a post from Wonderjanga (C.C. And Great Grandpa Wayne), and it improved my head cannon about Billy telling the league, that he remembers everything he went through in those 84 years of the time bubble.

I wasn't going to post this but I changed my mind. In my Head Cannon, Billy is already older, like 16 or 17 years old. He has been in the league for a few years since he was a kid.

Ever since Captain Marvel (or Billy Batson) joined the league, he's hardly ever asked for a reunion so it would obviously be a proven thing to deal with. Bruce was worried about this, for a few weeks now Billy has been acting strangely, missing some meetings and not responding to the communicators or the messages we send him.

So him calling a meeting was important, especially because he said it was urgent. The league members were quick to arrive, even Flash who is usually late arrived early, Billy didn't say much he just looked down trying to understand something... something was wrong Bruce could feel it.

Billy: Thank you for coming, I would like to say that the problem is not the end of the world, at least not our world but mine. I recently discovered why Fawcett has so many mental hospitals.

Superman: What do you mean by that Billy?

Billy: Do you remember the Justice Squad?

Wonder Woman: Yes, I fought alongside them in the second war, its members were Bullet Man and Woman, Golden Arrow, Mr. Scarlet and his helper Pinky, Mega Spy and Ibis the Invincible.

Green Arrow: From what we know, they returned to the United States for an urgent government mission. We have no further information about them to this day. Some myths say they were killed, others say they deserted and disappeared from the map. I prefer to believe the latter.

Billy: I found out what happened to them. When they returned for an urgent mission, they were assigned to deal with a being called King Kull. Just like Vandal Savage he is also a caveman, high intelligence and physical condition. In prehistoric times, King Kull was the ruler of a race of proto-humans known as the Undermen (also called the Beastmen), a brutish but technologically advanced race who ruled over humanity until they were finally overthrown in a revolt. Kull survived into the 20th century trapped in a state of suspended animation. When he woke up he decided that humans should suffer the same as he suffered, so he built a Suspendium bomb.

Batman: What would Suspendium be?

Billy: Suspendium was an artificial compound developed by Dr Silvana.

Flash: Since when has Silvana been alive?

Billy more than me and you

J'onn: Where are you going with this Billy?

Billy:Well... I-I knew Fawcett wasn't a "normal" place, not because of the abundant magic that pours into the city from the Rock of Eternity, but because of everything, the culture that hasn't advanced, the fashion sense that hasn't changed, and so on. I kept this in my head and went looking for answers, not only out of curiosity but because of memories that didn't make sense. Memories that I no longer remembered, I lived them.

Black Canary : Are you okay Billy?

Billy: yes, as far as possible.

Billy: I followed the clues that my memories gave me, and I arrived at an old building, the facade of Sivana, one of the Solar Centers, there was a passage to the basement and there I discovered where the old heroes of the Second World War ended up. They were trapped in a state of suspended animation, all of them, I came to the conclusion that the effect of the Suspendium had worn off after all these years. Apparently the Justice Squadron was unable to get Kull to detonate the bomb, everyone on Fawcett was affected, the heroes and Kull were trapped in a state of suspended animation that has not yet passed.

(Hal) Green lantern: Holy shit...

Billy: Yeah, holy shit. Well that was my report for the month, I would like to take a really long vacation, recommended by my psychiatrist.

Black canary: Psychiatrist!?!?!

Billy: Yeah, I'm seeing a-a psychiatrist, after discovering that my life was a loop of suffering and pain, finally my mind gave out and I developed a dissociative personality disorder, I-I- this is the first time I've come to consciousness. I-I-I have a few already, one of them is an 8 year old child called Hedwing, the other my supposed evil twin, all I fight are the sins, he was born from them I don't know his name yet...

Black Canary gets up and goes to Billy and hugs him."Oh Billy you don't deserve this"

Batman takes off his hood and stands up, hugging Billy. "I can't do much for you, but I will do what I can to help you, money won't be a problem."

wiping away the tears. "T-thanks, but that's not the whole problem, m-my Captain form also had new personalities."

After coming back from the shock Superman says: My God, I didn't know that was possible...

Not either, but the personalities that came are called Lord Shazam and a goth who says he has no name. says Billy leaving the hug: Lord Shazam prefers not to leave the Rock and Goth likes to explore the world.

So you mean that all that discussion about you being a child was a complete waste of time? Flash says trying to break the ice.

running his hand through his hair and leaning back in his chair (Hal) Green Lantern says: Nice try Barry, but how old are you Billy? Because the second war was about 85 years ago.

Well... coincidence or not, the Suspendium bomb exploded 84 years ago, in 1940 when I was 10 years old and had already been at war for 1 year. says Billy sitting in his chair.

Living for a long time has its consequences, Billy, but you are not alone, not today or tomorrow, because you have us and me, we will help you, little brother. Diana says, smiling at Billy.

Thanks but still, it's not something I like since well... I was childhood friends with Thomas Wanye. Billy looks at Bruce.

My father? Were you my father's childhood friend?.

Oh yes, how could I forget, Tommy was wild but fun, we got a good scolding from our parents, good times, I think that if the bomb hadn't exploded I would be a friend of the family, and possibly the one who would have been adopted would have been you. Smiling from ear to ear, Billy says looking at Bruce.

I don't know if it was good but that's it, have a good day, or night or afternoon, aah be well.

The End.

[siconetribal]

Beyond the Bookshelves (9)

Pairing: Loki x Reader

Warnings: Frustration, Impatience, Time taking forever, Loki still not getting anyone's title right

Summary: You’re a Resource Management Specialist at S.H.I.E.L.D. normally referred to as “The Librarian”. You’ve been assigned the nightmarish task of digitizing all the physical resources currently owned by the agency, with a few new computers and one extra helper.

A/N:

Please comment/like/reblog. If you’d like to be tagged moving forward, please let me know! (If I missed any tags, please let me know, I’ll add you right away!) I’d also greatly appreciate it if rebloggers remember to add the tags (or some at least).

The lovely banners used in this fic are from @cafekitsune.

If you’re new to the story, please check out the master post for the rest of the chapters.

Two more days?! The plastic and metal rectangular deceive creaked from the intensity of the grip, moments away from breaking. “What does she mean, ‘just two more days’,” he sneered the words, launching the device into the leather cushion as he stood up from his couch. It bounced up and plummeted to the carpeted floor with a muffled thud that was masked by the rapid steps of the pacing god. “It is not ‘just’ two more days, she has failed to respond to me multiple times, and she dares to say it’s a mere two extra days? I’ve been going mad in this overly decorated prison tower with nothing new to read! Had she looked at my earlier texts, she could have easily changed the order while on site at those other facilities!” He curled his lips inwards and pressed down on them, coming to an abrupt halt as he clenched his fist and took a few deep breaths, running a hand through his hair. This was unacceptable. He was a prince, and she was supposed to answer to him. Regardless of professional ranking, he outranked her socially. She was a mere Midgardian, and he was one of the great Asgardians, whom her kind revered as gods once upon a time. He knew the Librarian was aware of this, she was well-informed and managed the resources of this organization. And yet, here she was able to cripple him, bend his knee and ask that she return his clearance to enter the library. “She will pay. I will make sure of it.” He hissed the words through gritted teeth.

The spoke words worked like a charm, dispelling his anger as a calm fell over him. His frigid body temperature quickly warmed, and the frost that was beginning to coat the surrounding furniture and floor quickly evaporated. He walked around the sleek coffee table and picked up the abused phone. Tapping the screen to life, he reread her message again. However, this time he focused his attention on her other words. There, in black text, were the words ‘I trust you’. How could she trust him? He was the unforgivable, irredeemable villain who terrorized the world and nearly lay waste to the entirety of the city he was currently in. The very city where she worked and most likely lived in with loved ones and kin. He was the monster that needed to be caged and monitored, never to be trusted. And yet, here she was giving it away to just anyone? He scoffed and rolled his eyes at the naïveté.

No one in their right mind would give me their trust wholeheartedly. This has to be one of those sayings these Midgardians have. What were they called? Me-mes? He relaxed back into the couch, lips scrunched to one side and eyebrows furrowed. “She has to be out of her mind, there is no other plausible option.” The hushed words seemed to echo in the silence of his suite. Painful and sharp, there was no other explanation. “Why else would she wait for an apology from a prince?” He rubbed at his chest to ease the uncomfortable ache that swirled above his heart. “At least she is fine.” The words lingered on the tip of his tongue, but were never spoken. He had too much on his mind at the moment to care about yet another oddity that linked to this queer young woman, it would be something to worry about another time.

Y/N sneezed for what had to be the tenth time within the last hour. She knew planes could be a bit chilly, but she was well bundled up and currently comfortable. Pressing the inside of one of her wrists to her forehead, she tried to assess her temperature.

“I don’t feel warm, but it must be fatigue getting the better of me. I’ve been running all over the freaking globe getting all this set up.” She gently massaged her forehead, closing her eyes to ease any potential sensory overload of her exhausted body. The only solace she had was that everything was set into place and the other locations could begin scanning all the documents they have into the database. She would start the scanning process in the main branch as well. She knew traveling to and fro from the various bases was a waste of valuable resources and, most importantly, precious time. With only two translators, who were not even always readily available; it was better to have them read through scanned files when she could nab them, instead of letting them look at the physical text in person. “This is the most efficient way to do this. They’ll read and translate it, I’ll transcribe and upload it.” Easier said than done, Y/LN, easier said than done. She rolled her wrists and flexed her fingers with grim foreboding, the ghosts of cramps future coming to haunt her like the ghost of Christmas future did Scrooge.

“I’d joke about retiring early after this, but I don’t think this task will end soon enough for it to be considered ‘early’ anymore. What did I do to deserve this punishment anyway? At least Scrooge as a miserly jerk, what karmic deity did I piss off in a past life?” Rubbing the back of her neck, she reclined the seat and shut her eyes, sneezing one more time before falling into a deep slumber.

Two hellish days sluggishly ticked by as Loki impatiently awaited the return of the little nuisance known as the Librarian. The fact that he knew she would be back seemed to make the wait all the more insufferable. Each time he looked at the clock, it was as if the hands were frozen in place. A part of him even wondered if Stark somehow caught wind of her reply and purposely adjusted every clock that he happened to look to show that no time had passed at all. The younger prince knew it was not plausible because Stark had gone on his mission with Thor and some others. They left days prior to her response. He was in this infernal hell because fate was cruel. The only thing keeping him sane were his own meetings and training sessions. Only then did time seem to move properly, instead of slower than molasses.

Great, I’m thinking in such weird terms because of all the time I’ve been forced to spend with the Lieutenant Chatterbox. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. Never mind that, today is the day. He glanced at his phone’s lock screen. There was a notification with the date that read: Return of the diabolical librarian. As soon as the clock struck eight, Loki left his quarters and made his way to the sanctuary he was unlawfully denied access to. He could have left early and been at the door just as it was to be opened, but he decided to have some leniency and give her a fair ten or so minutes to prepare. He was a magnanimous ruler, he would hear her out before deciding whether she left with malicious intent or not.

Standing before the wooden double doors, Loki hesitated for a moment. He gripped his key card that hung from a badge reel on his suit jacket. He eyed the speaker system above his head, knowing full well that the same grating computer voice will spew the same words that have been haunting him for weeks now. This time, he had a response, though. He would tell it that the Librarian has asked for him to come speak with her, and it would verify with her before allowing him entry. If not, he would use his magic to transport himself to the main desk and calmly request that she upheld her word of removing the hold. Pressing the card to the scanner, he watched the red light turn green and heard the chime of it being registered. A click from the speaker above signaled it had been activated. His jaw tightened as he took another deep breath, anticipating the rejection.

Tags: @vbecker10 @huntress-artemiss @softestqueeen @thegodofnotknowing @princess-ofthe-pages @firedrakegirl @rcailleachcola @cabingrlandrandomcrap @lotrefcp @lwtannie @jainaeatsstars @msdjsg7 @tom-hlover @kneelingformyloki @gruftiela @gigglingtiggerv2 @kats72 @mischief2sarawr @evalynanne @wolfsmom1

[merakiui]

Horny gripping at the thought of apocalypse twst boys.

Apocalypse!Riddle who’s first child has been born and you’ve never seen the Riddle Rosehearts so tender before. He’s helping to feed them at night, change their diapers, and tells you how great you’re doing as a mother. And while Trey babysits, he’s pushing you to the bed and thrusting into you slowly, making sure to hit all your sweet spots while working on impregnating you again.

Apocalypse!Trey who’s fallen for one of the kitchen helpers. <3 You’re a common houseworker in the Heartslabyul compound who’s assigned to help Trey make food. Because you’re so obedient you’ve even got privileges to use a knife, rolling pin, and other kitchen tools. Trey loves how soft and submissive you are for him. He often leans closer to you than the other servants while talking, and hand-feeds you little pastries he made just for you while you blush. So one day, when he’s walking around he hears that you’re going to be on the upcoming bride selection. He ‘gently suggests’ to Riddle that he’s had his eye on you for a while. Would he mind saving you in the back for him?

Apocalypse!Cater who’s the only son in a family of sisters, who all have their own husbands and families. His parents are nagging him to get married soon so out of frustration one day he picks a random girl off the list and fucks her so good in the Heartslabyul headquarters <3 it was just gonna be a one off thing to make his parents mad but you’re so cute and he got attached~ Hope you don’t mind him cumming inside to keep you tethered to him. No other man will want you if you’re knocked up with Cay-kun’s baby!

Apocalypse!Deuce who never had a father. His mother struggled so hard to raise him in this world and give him the tools he needed to rise through the ranks. He worked as a guard for the compound that houses women last year and fell head over heels for you, a gentle little thing that helped patch him up after he got in a fight with another amateur soldier named Ace .This year he’s finally made the honor guard and is given the chance to take a wife. Deuce immediately goes to the list and tries to find your name, only to see it crossed off with the label Husband: Ace Trappola next to it.

Apocalypse!Ace, who’s been waiting for this all his life! His older brother and father have told him all about how he should pick a girl he’s gonna love for the rest of his life, but Ace has different plans. He wants to get back at Deuce for some prank he pulled a while ago, so when he sees Deuce’s beloved on the list, he signs up right away as a joke. He’s planning to erase his name after a few days and let Deuce put his on there instead. Only, when he actually begins to spend time with you, he gets more attached than he anticipated.

Apocalypse!Kalim who could have any bride he wants, and so many women want him too. He’s probably the kindest husband candidate out there, besides maybe Silver. Plus he’s a compound leader and super wealthy. Unbeknownst to the outside world, he already has his sights set on you, the girl who dressed as a boy to outsmart the system and avoid the selection. You were his right-hand guard for a while , until you were discovered and arrested. But instead of throwing you to the wolves, Kalim declares he’s fallen in love! You’re still his best friend <3 just now, you’ll be his wife too and have lots of his babies whether you want to or not. You’ve been married for five years and you already have seven babies, please stop this man…

Apocalypse!Epel who’s been mistaken for a girl so many times it’s not even funny. He’s taken to walking around shirtless sometimes so that no one tries to arrest him for wandering around without an escort as a girl. Now that he’s become Vil’s apprentice though, everyone knows how tough and manly he is! He’s been making lots of progress in training and Vil tells him he has a surprise waiting for him. Epel walks in the room to find you, his childhood crush, tied up in Vil’s bed, his long fingers massaging that tender, squishy spot inside you and making you shake like a leaf with pleasure. Vil tells Epel to come on in and close the door. Vil’s gone ahead and chosen a bride for him. He had Rook track you down from Epel’s home village. He’s already worked you open for him, so now he’ll show Epel how to take care of you properly. Then he’ll sit back and watch years of Epel’s pent up feelings for you come rushing out. It just so happens that Epel wants many children and that you’re ovulating that week. Ah, young love is so beautiful.

Apocalypse!Silver who’s been Malleus’ guard for a while. You’re a maid who works behind the scenes at the castle, seen but never heard, getting your duties done and bowing before leaving the room to wander quiet parts of the castle where you will not disturb the master. Silver, being the sleeper he is, often goes to find quiet spots in the castle to take a nap, and by chance encounter, meets you. He’s so chivalrous and gentle to you, unlike the other royal guard, Sebek. You two talk for a long, long time, and he feels his heart tugging him towards you. A few months of regular meetings later, and marriage season rolls around. Lilia has been watching his lovestruck son with the maid in the garden, and he just knows that you’re Silver’s true love! A conversation with Malleus results in an order issued to have you brought to Silver’s quarters, in a lacy lingerie set that resembles a wedding dress. You’re deposited on his bed, trembling, while he stands above you, eyes blown wide with lust. “She’s all yours,” Lilia says, patting his son on the shoulder and walking out of the room, closing the door behind him. He hopes Silver remembers the conversation they had about grandchildren earlier. He’s getting on in years and wouldn’t mind having a few little ones running around. But now, he has to go find Sebek and explain why the girl he had his eye on was taken off the list and put on a separate one for a private client.

- Heartslabyul anon

OTL OTL OTL OTL OTL OTL AAAAAAAAAAAA

Heartslabyul anon, all of these scenarios are so good omg!!!!! Especially that rivalry between Ace and Deuce. >:) ooooo Deuce is going to have Ace's head Riddle-style for stealing his bride!!! And Cater choosing you on a whim, only to get terribly attached!!! >v< that's really so Cater, isn't it? He never expects himself to actually fall for you, but he does and oh isn't he just so obsessed? You're totally perfect for Cay Cay! He'll treat you so well.

AND TREY!!!! OTL he really would be so humble and bashful about it when he mentions you to Riddle, but since Trey's such a trusted friend and righthand man Riddle can do him a solid. <3 aaaaaa and Silver with his sweet maid darling!!! <3 he just loves you so much; he's absolutely cumming inside as much as he can that night because it's hard to resist the temptation of knocking his beloved up and fulfilling Lilia's wish of providing him with grandchildren. AND THE FACT THAT SEBEK WAS EYEING YOU????? WOOOOOOO OTL poor Sebek's so huffy. >:( how unfair that the one human he can tolerate ends up becoming that Silver's bride instead!!! Silver and Sebek rivalry is also so good to think about...

[starlightwayfinder]

I got the sudden urge to share about an AU, and I actually think it’s one I’ve never talked about here before?

Anyway, it’s just for fun, but a while ago I decided to make a Pixie Hollow AU. I liked the first couple Tinker Bell movies a lot as a kid, so it’s fun for me to revisit that world now. (The AU takes place in Pixie Hollow/Neverland, but the characters themselves are all from KH. Most of them would be KHUX-style keykids, but they’re not exclusively from any one point on the KH timeline)

As far as world building goes, it’s mostly the same as the movie. The fairies are born from dandelion seeds + children’s laughter (perfect, right?) and end up in Pixie Hollow. There, they choose their talent and work to prepare for the change of the seasons. There’s a minister who oversees each season, in addition to a ruler over all of the fairies. (I think in the later movies they made it so the winter fairies are separate from the rest, but I’m choosing to ignore that since… it wasn’t really a thing back when I was watching them.)

They do still have Keys, but they’re lost keys that become magical when they appear in Neverland. They can all open any lock, but additional abilities will depend on the wielder’s talent.

So now to the fun part—assigning talents! 

First, the seasons: 

Ava is the Minister of Spring, Gula is Minister of Summer, Invi is Minister of Winter, and Aced is Minister of Autumn. Similar to his role in Back Cover, Ira is the king in charge of overseeing them. (And yes, Aced would still prefer to have Ira’s role as leader!) 

I made concept designs for them when I first came up with the AU, but now I’d probably change the masks to make them simpler. Dust-keepers:

Sora

Skuld

Player

Vor

The Dust-keepers store/distribute rations of pixie dust. It’s a somewhat mundane job, but all of the other talents depend on them to keep things running. Sora of course is happy to have a role supporting his friends, and Player and Skuld are known for being dependable helpers as well. Vor is the most unsatisfied with her talent, and will often get in trouble for flying off to do fun things with the others. 

Garden talents:

Kairi

Lauriam

Strelitzia 

Sigrun

These four are chosen for fairly obvious reasons, haha. They help to plant and grow flowers on the ‘mainland’. Lauriam and Strelitzia are still siblings, in the sense that they’re seeds from the same dandelion that were enchanted by the laughter of two human siblings. 

Water talents:

Aqua

Hermod

Xion

Roxas

Water talents are in charge of rain, morning dew, ponds, etc. Xion spends her free time with Roxas looking for seashells around mermaid lagoon.

Frost talents:

Xehanort

Urd

Baldr

Heimdall

Frost talents are in charge of making snowflakes and ice. They’re great at what they do, but have a bit of a rivalry with the garden fairies after an incident of freezing their flowers... Baldr and Hoder are ‘siblings’ like Lauriam and Strelitzia. Hoder chose her talent first, and Baldr almost picked the same to stay with her. However, he ultimately felt more called to be a Frost talent.

Light talents:

Eraqus

Hoder

Vidar

Elrena *

Odin 

Light talents are in charge of storing light, making rainbows, guiding sunbeams, and looking after fireflies. They’re also the ones who melt snow when it’s time for spring to arrive—so there’s a bit of irony in Eraqus and Xehanort’s friendship. Hoder probably would’ve preferred her brother becoming a light fairy, but they still spend plenty of time together outside of their roles. Elrena is something of an odd one out, as she creates lightning and works with the water fairies to make storms. Odin is primarily a ‘supervisor’ figure for them.

*edit—apparently Storm talents are a thing, so Elrena is one of those now 🌩️

Fast-flying talents:

Ventus

Vanitas

Vali

Vala 

The Fast-flying talents use wind to transport seeds and pollen. They make deliveries and send messages thanks to their incredible speed. They also guide newcomers to Pixie Hollow. 

Vala and Vali are close friends, but Vanitas and Ventus don’t get along well. Vanitas is competitive, while Ven is much more easygoing. Sora was a fairy Ven guided, so he got to see him choose his talent.

Tinker talents:

Ephemer

Brain

Naminé

Remus

Tinkers are in charge of everything that needs to be made or designed. Ephemer and Brain are always working together on a new gadget to help the other talents. Naminé is more of an artist, so she’s interested in finding and restoring lost things. She often helps people to remember something they’ve forgotten by returning their lost item. (I put Remus here even though we don’t know much about him, because he seems to have an interest in ‘lost things’ as well.)

Scout talents:

Riku

Terra

Helgi

Bragi

Last but not least—the scouts! They’re in charge of keeping an eye out for hawks, pirates, and any other potential threats. It’s the most dangerous talent by far, but they’re determined to protect their friends. (Bragi in this AU is not ‘Luxu’, he’s just himself!)

Starlight. Where are the animal talent fairies?

So, they exist, but they’re mostly just the generic keykids I mentioned before. I’m honestly not sure who out of the main characters would fit as an animal talent…

Regarding other characters: I’ve limited the fairies to just the Keyblade wielders, excluding Lea. The others exist in the AU, but they’re either mainland humans or pirates, haha. Roxas and Xion would eventually befriend the (human) Lea and Isa, but that’s a story for another time.

[verfound]

FIC: "When Did You Get THAT?" (MLB; Lukanette; LBSC Lukanette Month 2024)

@lovebugs-and-snakecharmers is doing a Lukanette Month for September 2024, and we all just kinda tossed some prompts in the disco to compile a list?  We ended up with 71 prompts, so I decided I’d roll some dice to pick a prompt, do a twenty minute (ish, bc we all know sometimes they run away from me) sprint, and try to get some short fics out this month?

Also HUGE shoutout to @goldenlaurelleaveswrites , who is the Juleka Whisperer and absolutely saved this fic when my Get-the-Prompt-Donitis had Juleka sounding like a dyed Alya. You're the best, babes 🖤

Read on Ao3

Prompt 52: Piercing

Luka was…distracted.

Which really wasn’t saying much, because Juleka would argue he was usually distracted when a certain someone was around, but today was…worse than usual.

Because today was hot.

And had been set aside for a seasonal Mop Up Day – one of the few times a year the Captain actually tolerated the word clean on her ship.  And Marinette had come over with the best of intentions, not realizing it was a Mop Up Day until it was too late.  All Luka had told her, when she had first asked if it was all right to come over that day, was that they’d be busy all day and wouldn’t be able to have anyone over.  He had also had the best of intentions, wanting to keep her from getting caught up in the chaos that was the Captain cleaning.  He had also known that, because it was Marinette, she would totally offer to help, and while that was appreciated he had still wanted to save her from the Captain cleaning.  So imagine his shock when she showed up bright and early – at least for them – with a box of pastries and some harried excuses about how I know you said not to come over but if you’re busy you’ll need sustenance and pastries are always a great pick-me-up, right?

It was just…Marinette being Marinette.  Being the awesome girl she was.  But it had, unfortunately, also completely blown his plans to save her from cleaning, because she was a helper.  A doer.  And the next thing he knew, she was hauling boxes and mopping decks with the rest of them.

And he wasn’t complaining, because he would never complain about getting more time with Marinette, but…it wasn’t really fair.  For her, totally, because it wasn’t even her home.  Sure, she spent enough time there and often joked that it was like a second home, but the Liberty still wasn’t her actual home.  She shouldn’t be responsible for cleaning it up.

It also wasn’t fair to…well.  Him.  Because it was hot, and she had dressed appropriately for a late summer day, and sure he had seen her in shorts and swimsuits before but that never made it any easier when there was just so much Marinette on display.

…he was still a guy.  A guy who was still stupid in love with her, even if he was pretty sure it was no longer mutual.  A guy who was still stupid in love with her and had eyes.

Somewhere out there, up there, whatever (…probably hiding in her purse, or back in her bedroom but still somehow just knowing), the universe (or a tiny snake-shaped god) was laughing at him.  Uproariously.

He was probably playing his pain on fucking loop.

So now Marinette was sticking around for the mop up, and while she wasn’t stuck with the more manual tasks Luka had been assigned – like how he was currently on the roof of the greenhouse, replacing some panes that had broken in the last bad storm – she was still…there.  Distracting.  Because, if you asked Juleka, Marinette was always distracting.  At least for him.

She…really had a point.

Because he was always so aware of her, even when she wasn’t directly engaging him.  He was drawn to her, as he had always been, like a magnet.  Every time he heard her voice somewhere below.  Every time Juleka said something stupid that made her laugh.  Every time he looked up and saw the flex of her arms as she lifted something someone so tiny shouldn’t have been able to, or saw the curve of her ass on full display as she bent to pick something up off the deck.  The way her white tank top was starting to stick to her skin with her sweat.  The glimmer in her eyes when she called up to him and tossed a water bottle his way – “So you don’t overheat!”

…the little glimpse of something, something small and shiny, that he couldn’t be sure he was actually seeing every time that tank rode up just a little too high, which was happening more and more as the day wore on.

He couldn’t be seeing that right.  It had to be his imagination, or a hallucination, or…something.

Because there was no way he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.

There was no way Marinette would have gone through with it.

There was no way in hell Tom would have let her.

And there was definitely no way she would have done it without telling him!

…right?

Not that…not that she needed to.  But they were friends – really good, really close friends – and they told each other stuff.  He had told her before he’d gotten his first tattoo.  And sure, that was partly because he’d been hoping she would design it, but…he had still told her.  She was actually the first person he had told, when it was still just an inkling of an idea instead of actual ink.

So wouldn’t she tell him if she was planning on…on…

She turned back towards Juleka, lifting an arm to wipe some sweat from her brow, and there.  Her shirt lifted just enough that her navel was in plain sight.  And she wasn’t moving.  And he could clearly see, glinting in the sun…

Juleka noticed it, too.

“Woah, Mari,” she said, her eyes widening.  Her hand reached out almost automatically before she seemed to catch herself, and Marinette frowned as she noticed Juleka was staring at her…she squeaked and went to tug her shirt down, but Juleka put a hand on her arm and made her pause.  “Can I…is that what I think it is?”

“It…ah…” Marinette stammered, but then she was looking towards the deck as she nodded, lifting her shirt up just a bit more to reveal…holy shit.  Juleka gave her a Look, and she rolled her eyes and sighed as she lifted her shirt even higher.  Luka swallowed, his throat suddenly too dry.  There was a tiny, pink flower – a cherry blossom, he was sure, because what else could it be with her, made of glittering pink crystals – nestled perfectly in her belly button.  A smaller white stone poked through her skin just above it.  It was…it was…

…hot, a tiny, strangled voice somewhere in the back of his mind offered, most unhelpfully.

“When did you get that?” Juleka asked, her eyes widening even more.

“Not that long ago,” she said.  She started to lower her shirt again, but Juleka shook her head as she reached out to stop her.  She looked up at her with a grin, one Luka had seen too many times over the course of his short life and now had Marinette looking away anxiously, clearly uncomfortable with her scrutiny.  There was a blush on her face.  “It’s…it’s still new.”

“Not that new,” Juleka said, and Luka watched in something akin to amazement – or maybe just…bafflement – as she reached out to poke her fucking stomach.  She seemed to remember herself just shy of actually touching Marinette, but Marinette – who was too familiar with such oversteps from other people who had called themselves friend over the years – flinched away all the same.  It was enough to make his fists clench against the roof, and the next thing he knew he was making his way down to the deck and over towards them.  He didn’t care if Juleka was his sister: she knew better, and even if she had opened up more over her time in lycée – mostly thanks to friends like Rose and Marinette – she knew shit like that wasn’t ok.  He noticed she did pull back as his boots touched the deck, her hand moving to rub at her elbow as she looked at Marinette’s stomach.   “…sorry.  But it can’t be that new, Marinette.  It’s not even swollen anymore.”

“Juleka…” she sighed, and Luka felt himself swallowing again when she glanced over at him.  Her face turned several shades darker as she saw he was no longer on the roof, and that almost gave him pause.  “Cut it…come on.  It’s not a big deal.”

Juleka followed her gaze, and her grin turned positively wicked when she saw him, and that was around when Luka realized they were both fu…doomed.  His swallow was more of a gulp that time as Juleka coughed and nodded towards him.

“…have you told Luka yet?” she asked, her voice just loud enough for him to hear as he walked towards them.  There was a moment – an almost painful moment, as his boot landed heavy on the deck behind Marinette and her entire body seemed to tense before she spun around, her eyes wide and her face several shades darker than it had been moments before.  And she looked up at him, her eyes wide and kind of terrified and so, so blue, but…she was still holding her shirt up.

It would have fallen, if she hadn’t still had her hands twisted in the hem so tight he was surprised it hadn’t ripped.  If she hadn’t frozen upon seeing him right there, in front of her, with his eyes glued to the piercing like some creep.

“Did you know, brother dear?” Juleka asked, her voice entirely too innocent as she smirked at him from over Marinette’s shoulder.  He swallowed, and her grin grew.  “Me neither.  But I must say: it looks hot.  Don’t you think?”

“I think I liked it better when you were too shy to speak…” Marinette grumbled, her eyes dropping to their feet.  Luka was pretty sure he was supposed to be yelling at Juleka – or corralling Marinette below, away from the ‘good-natured’ teasing and to the safety of his bunk, where she would be more comfortable.

…because they were friends, and she was comfortable with him, and this conversation was clearly making her so very…not comfortable.

“Come on, Jules,” she sighed, her eyes still on her feet.  “It’s not a big deal.  It’s just a belly button ring.”

“Lay off, Jules,” he said, finally tearing his eyes away from the piercing to glare at his sister.  “You’ve had your fun.”

“Oh, I’m just getting started, brother dear.  You, Marinette Dupain-Cheng, are pierced,” Juleka snickered, grinning at her.  She nodded towards Luka.  “You officially have more holes than that idiot.”

“Juleka!” they both snapped at her, but she just laughed – outright cackled, like the little witch she was – before looping an arm around Marinette’s shoulders.

“Seriously.  Did you lose a bet or something?  I wouldn’t have pegged you as a belly button ring girl,” she quipped.  Her grin was almost feral, and Luka honestly wasn’t sure if the blush on Marinette’s face was from embarrassment or frustration.  Probably both.  He was starting to feel frustrated himself.  “Probably some more on your ears.  Maybe a nose ring.  But your navel?”

“Juleka –” he started, but Marinette huffed as she tried to shrug her off.  Juleka took her arm back, her expression wavering for a moment, and he was relieved to see that.  Good.  Maybe she was finally getting the picture.

“Shut up, Juleka.  It wasn’t like that,” she said, her hands still twisting just enough in her shirt to keep the piercing revealed.  He was trying his level best to ignore it.  “I just…thought it was cute.  And Rose agreed, and she thought –”

That was enough to catch her attention.

“Wait, Rose?” she asked, her eyes widening as she looked up at her.  And that…that look on her face possibly made up for how much he wanted to throttle her, putting Marinette on the spot like that.  Like she wasn’t finding her game very amusing anymore.  That dawning look of horror and realization as she connected some dots in her head.  “Son of a –!”

“No, Juleka, wait –!” Marinette called as she spun away from her, but it was too late.  Juleka had the look about her of a woman possessed, and Luka knew nothing they said or did would deter her from her goal.  “You weren’t supposed to know yet!”

“I need a break!  Tell Ma I’ll be back soon – text me what you want!” Juleka called, and then she was gone.  Marinette blinked before turning back to him.

“Did…did she actually say where she was going?” she asked, her fingers still twisting anxiously in the hem of her shirt.  “I’m assuming she’s going to see Rose, I mean, but…”

“She’ll have to bring something back if she’s going to convince Ma she’s not just shirking her duties,” he said, shrugging.  “Might as well take advantage of it.  I dare say she deserves it.”

Marinette groaned and dropped her face in her hands – finally dropping her shirt in the process.  Luka couldn’t stop the way his eyes flicked down, or the way he reflexively swallowed when he still saw a glimmer of pink along the strip of still-exposed skin.

“Rose is going to kill me,” she said.  “It was supposed to be a surprise.  She didn’t want Juleka to know until it had fully healed – hers got…why am I telling you this???”

She had squeaked out the last question, and she was peeking out over her fingertips at him.  He shook his head, chuckling slightly as he smiled at her.  It didn’t feel as easy as his smiles for her usually did, which was…weird.  He hadn’t felt this off-kilter around her in…well.

That wasn’t fair.

He usually felt off-kilter around her.

He was just…usually better at hiding it.  At least he liked to think he was.

“Because we’re friends?  And we talk?” he hazarded.  He reached out, laying his hand on her arm and rubbing…it was supposed to be soothing.  Comforting.  He hoped it was, for her.  His skin felt like a livewire where they touched.  That damn piercing was still taunting him, begging him to reach out and…  “I’m a little surprised you hadn’t told me yet, honestly.”

“Because it was supposed to be a surprise,” she huffed, rolling her eyes.  “It…I mean…I didn’t…”

“I’m sorry she kept on you like that,” he sighed, squeezing her arm before removing his hand.  He shoved them in his pockets, where he was thankful to find a spare pick he quickly started flipping between his fingers.  Anything to fidget with.  Anything to keep him from…  “She knows how much that sucks.  She shouldn’t have embarrassed you like that.

“I’m not embarrassed,” she was quick to say.  He lifted an eyebrow, and she pushed out a breath as she rolled her eyes.  “I’m not.  I just…she just…I was going to tell you, Luka.  I was.”

“I know,” he said, because they told each other stuff like that.  He had no doubt she would have told him.  When she was ready.

“Do…” she glanced back down, her teeth worrying her lower lip in a way that was just as distracting as the damn piercing.  “…do you like it?”

…he would have told her he liked XY, with the way she was looking up at him like that.  He was amazed she even had to ask.

Like it?

Did he like it?

He didn’t like it.

He loved it.

He was…actually having some very inappropriate thoughts about just how much he loved it.  Thoughts he probably shouldn’t be having, considering…

“Yeah,” he finally said, swallowing thickly as he nodded.  Her smile turned a bit easier, and he reached out to flick a finger against her shirt.  When she didn’t flinch away, he lifted it just a little.  Just enough to fully reveal the little flower glinting up at him.  His eyes flicked up to her, his smile growing as his finger brushed the warm skin stretched out in stark contrast to the cool silver of the piercing.  It had to be his imagination, but he would have sworn she shivered at the touch.  “It’s pretty cool, Marinette.”

The smile she gave him at that was one of his favorite things, and he found himself smiling back as she ducked her head, a pretty blush on her cheeks.

“C-cool,” she stammered, reaching up to tuck some hair behind her ear.  Her other hand reached out, her fingertips brushing against his until she had pulled his hand towards her, and his breath caught as she threaded her fingers through his.  As she held his hand and smiled up at him like…he twisted their hands, pressing their palms together and  brushing his thumb against hers.  Her smile turned easier, and she took a step closer.  One more step, just one, and she’d…  “Cool.”

[iambriannelson]

70 Unique Expository Essay Topics and Ideas blog by Great Assignment Helper

Dive into the realm of academic brilliance as Great Assignment Helper presents "70 Unique Expository Essay Topics and Ideas." Uncover thought-provoking subjects that spark creativity and captivate your audience.

[yuri-is-online]

Omw to make the MC of TDB a Pokemon Trainer-

Oh wait I have exams

Anyway, Kaito gets a Vanillite-

More pokemon au stuff, I had the same thought process when you sent this ask. But oho, wait, I no longer have exams~

Kaito with Vanillite is such a big brained choice, he seems to have some sort of connection to sweets, so ice cream pokemon is a perfect choice. I'm not great at assigning pokemon choices I don't think :/ (ignore the post I made earlier) But a few I can think of are:

Tohma with a Pangoro he keeps out of sight in favor of a Klefki. He's in charge of keeping the vaults for Darkwick, so the little guy is a perfect helper for him. It's cute enough to be acceptable for Frostheim and sneaky enough for... extracurricular missions.

Leo would want something that would go viral, always make for good content, and be someone he could trust to not just be out for himself. He also feels like a cat person so I can see him with a Glameow.

Jiro has a Chansey and not by choice. Yuri has her following him around and fussing over him constantly, no bad trainer this will make your stitches pop! Stop working so hard! She's the nicest member of Mortkranken's staff and everyone loves her, but she only cares about Jiro.

Lyca feels like the sort who wouldn't have been allowed a pokemon but is desperate to prove himself worthy of one, also no he DOES NOT want a dog pokemon, he's not a puppy he is HUMAN!!!! He wants a good pokemon any normal human would have, which is why he is very defensive of this guy "ditto" he just found-

idk which pokemon Yuri has but he gets into 10 paragraph long arguments about why it's the best one and all other suck and are totally inferior. Can it be Bidoof? It's sort of like a hamster... and we do experiments on those? Idk I just want to see him get into an argument with smogon tier list slave Jin for not understanding why Bidoof is the best and his Strauss is the perfect example of Bidoof- *i am shot and removed from the lab*

[slinket]

Smutmas Day 8

Prompt: Touch me and you lose

NSFW

MC wanted the world to be fair, as much as it could be, which is why she was alway so upset with Professor Sharp and his treatment of Ominis.  It was ok to have high expectations despite the disability, but it was not ok to have those expectations if you as a teacher are unwilling to adapt your teaching to better help the student.

Ominis couldn't see the ingredients or read the labels.  Nothing was written in braille.  While Ominis was able to identify some things by their smell or feel, it was often dangerous to sniff or touch several ingredients, which left him at a huge disadvantage.  Ominis couldn’t compare to a regular sighted student because he wasn’t being given a way to learn that ‘overrode’ his inability to see.  

He should have been assigned something like an interpreter.  This person would not be able to help Ominis in any way, just level the playing field.  The assigned person could be expected to read labels, just the names, no information about what the item did (unless other students were also given that information.)  This helper would be able to make a statement regarding the color of the potion - ‘the potion has become purple’ - Ominis would still be expected to know what the purple color meant, but he had to know first that it had become purple.  

Basically, Ominis was being screwed out of his education, and possible future opportunities because his Professor refused to accommodate him.  It really pissed MC off.  She knew Ominis didn’t like talking about his disability, or even admitting that his blindness did cause him some problems.  MC thought he should talk about it more though.  There was nothing wrong with him intellectually due to the blindness, and it was unfair that some of his grades may have reflected as though he was ‘slow.’  No, she wasn’t going to stand for it anymore.  He worked his ass off, was a great friend and person, and she would do what she needed to do to make sure he was treated fairly.  

MC gave a few impassioned speeches to Ominis’s professors, several of them agreeing with her, and would look into adapting the material so he had better access.  The one person who refused to bend though, was Sharp.  Potions was already a hard subject for Ominis, but it being so reliant on sight really made it nearly impossible for him to compete academically.

She scheduled another appointment to speak with Sharp again, this time making it late at night.  It was time to put her plan into action.  She arrived a bit early for the appointment, wearing her tightest clothing under her robe.  If she couldn’t Sharp to agree to treat Ominis better, she would blackmail him into it.

When Sharp arrived, he found her sitting on his desk awaiting him.  Rather than unsettle her, he sat down in the chair the student would usually take.  He looked up at her, forcing a smile.

“Another meeting, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Oh Professor Sharp, I am here to speak to you about Ominis again.”

“MC, I already told you, I will not be allowing any advantages in this classroom.”

“It wouldn’t be an advantage - you would be making things fair and possible for him.”

“My answer is still no.”

MC furrowed her lips.  She shifted on the desk, removing her robe, and showing off her tight clothing.  Watching Sharp follow her movements with his eyes, she brought her feet up onto the desk, and spread her legs apart.  Sharp’s eyes dipped down quickly to see her exposed pussy.  MC saw his eyes go wide, and he looked up at her before turning away.

“Oh, you can look, Professor Sharp.  I want you to look.  I am here, specifically for you to look.”  MC slid her hand over to her leg, running her finger over her thigh before tracing it down to her lower lips.  

Sharp turned back to look at her, his eyes falling directly at her open legs.  He swallowed hard.  “Why are you doing this?”

“See, Ominis is my best friend, and I would do anything to make sure he is treated fairly.  I love him dearly.  If I can use my body to help him live a better life, I will do so willingly.”

She took two fingers and ran them up and down her pussy lips.  She then opened her lips apart with the fingers, allowing Sharp to see inside of her.  The glistening skin, pink and warm, her opening being visibly small, letting him know how tight she would be, should he ever be lucky enough to get inside.

“I am going to let you watch while I touch myself.  You are welcome to pleasure yourself as well, but touch me and you lose.  In response to this gift, you will start treating Ominis and his education in the way that I demand.  If you don’t, I will go straight to the headmaster and tell him all about how you took advantage of me.”  She dipped a finger inside of herself, pumping it in and out slowly, listening to Sharp’s breathing change.  

“We both know that while you may have some misgivings about this - Black won’t, so if I offer him the same deal - fire you and he can watch me - he will take the win.  So, I suggest you just enjoy yourself.”  

Sharp nodded, his eyes never leaving her pussy.  He reached down to his pants, pulling his already pulsing cock out, and wrapping his hand around the base.

“Oh, look at that, how large you are Professor.  You see my tight little hole?”  She pulled her finger out, letting him look inside of her once again, “I think that as long as you uphold your part of the deal, I may let you slip that monster inside of me.  You would stretch me so well, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I would shove myself completely inside of you, I would tear you apart, and you would love it.”  His hand started pumping, and at each upstroke Sharp would run a finger across the head, pulling his dripping pre cum down over his shaft.

They continued this way for a bit, MC playing with herself, even allowing Sharp to guide her motions.  He really loved watching her play with her clit, running her finger over it in circles and then watching her core clench over nothing, like it was begging him to fill it.

He kept his hands to himself, never touching her, just stroking himself, thrusting into his hand as he brought himself closer to explosion.

“Professor - You’re going to start treating my Ominis better now, yes?”  MC asked him once again, knowing that he was reaching his height of pleasure.

“He will be given anything that will help him in passing.”

“Ohh, good boy.  Come here.  You still can’t put your hands on me, but I want you to press the tip of your cock right here.”  She pushed her finger into her core.  “Don’t push inside, but I will allow you to cum right on my hole.”

Sharp was standing in front of her within seconds, his cock pressed right up against her, making sure his slit was covered so his seed would flow into her.  MC rubbed her clit again, Sharp now able to feel the liquid heat spill onto him, and finally was able to feel her core pulse, grasping onto the little bit of his cock that it could.  That moment was all he needed, his body shattered as he started to cum, shooting inside of her before it would pool and start seeping out.  When he pulled away, he watched as his seed puddled at her opening, some of it slowly dripping down the remainder of her slit, pooling once again at her ass.

The next time MC and Ominis had Potions, he found that the bottles holding ingredients had braille on them.  Ominis was also surprised that Sharp was allowing MC to tell him when his potion had shifted color.  As class was ending, Ominis leaned over to his friend, kissing her cheek as she grabbed his hand.

“I don’t know what you did, but I know this change is because of you, thank you, my darling.” His whisper flowed through her ears, bringing joy to her face.  

She returned the kiss, while looking at Sharp.  “Anything for you, Ominis.”

[misspieckfinger]

FFVII as School Kids:

Cloud: Really good at sports, average grades. Has a couple friends he really likes & sticks to them.

Zack: Class clown, he means well but drives the teacher nuts with the ADHD. Always talking, always excited, tries his best but not great at following instructions.

Tifa: Future prom queen, class president, gets good grades, etc. Knows everybody, liked by everybody, basically a tiny adult. Teacher’s aid.

Yuffie: Same as Zack who she is no longer allowed to sit next to, she’s there to play sports & have fun & sees the school part of school as this annoying suggestion rather than an actual obligation.

Aerith: The class space cadet. Surprisingly smart but it’s clear if nobody were literally forcing her to be there she’d be outside staring at the sky & talking to grass or something. Perks up during art & sing along.

Vincent: The class artiste. Has depressing books, wears black every day & probably plays piano or something. He spends his time with Cloud & Tifa.

Barrett: Class helper, Barrett’s another student athlete. His grades can slip from time to time but interestingly he’s also always helping everybody else get their assignments done.

Sephiroth: The teacher’s pet. Talking during the lecture, Sephiroth is tattling. Teacher forgot to collect the assignment? He’s reminding them. Teacher got a question wrong? “Actually miss the answer is 47, not 50”.

He used to get picked on it for it but when his peers figured out he wouldn’t be stopped they started bribing him instead. He’s best friends with Barrett in this scenario. He stopped telling on Aerith after he accidentally reduced her to tears for pointing out she forgot her (finished) homework for the third day in a row.

Cid: The kid who is busy doing life & has that one specialized interest he’s really good at. Whenever they have to build a diorama or class project his is always absolutely amazing. Could probably put together a functional vehicle by himself.

[spatialwave]

For your Limoreau asks request..

If for some reason Marie and Jordan aren't able to join the seven or be assigned as heroes to a city (Vought might non longer even exist in this scenario) what do you see them doing for the rest of their lives? What jobs? what goals? where would they live? etc.

great questions!

honestly, i think the two of them would actually enjoy their lives a lot with the simplicity of things. they’d both be devastated, of course, because being in the seven was both of their dreams. though, since we’re talking within the same TL as the show, i’m certain they’ve started realizing that vought… isn’t worth it.

marie, to me, is a helper! she is the type of person to support and build a community, putting her energy and passion into those who need support the most. i am a firm believer that she would build a beautiful centre that overthrows the red river institute, a place for orphaned/abandoned super children to grow and thrive. she would be the executive director of the place, not quite running the operations but overseeing the advancement of its activities, bringing in funding for the centre and making sure that the children there are happy & doing well.

i would hope that jordan would be involved in the same area of work, possibly working at the centre as well. they would be such a gentle and caring teacher, showing the kids how to use their powers and control them. supporting them if they don’t want to use them, providing them with options on how to use them beneficially to help themselves and those around them without necessarily being involved in ‘crimefighting’.

maybe this work would extend further, into a whole new area of super development. maybe another university somewhere in the future that has zero ties with vought. less to do with making these kids famous and more to do with how they can help change the world.

both jordan and marie would understand that their happiness comes from helping others meet their goals. supporting others to find the happiness and contentment they both have. though, being with each other helps build into their satisfaction more than anything else.

when they’re well into their adult years they would live their lives somewhere in upstate new york, near the treatment centre which would be built close to the city, but far enough to provide the children with open space to surround themselves with the beauty of nature.

they would travel a lot and bring in new experiences with each other. start a family. adopt pets. fill their home with plants and flowers that they need to care for.

marie would teach jordan how to love unconditionally & they would live their lives happily ever after. nothing bad would EVER happen to them again!!!