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pred1059 · 2 years ago

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Runaway Wind Chapter Thirty Six

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In Castle Oblivion Naminé never even dared to believe that she could find real love. Even the facade conjured up from fabricated memories would one day fall apart. But despite the lectures to “Get over it” and carry on with the plan, some part of her ached for someone that cared about her for who she was. Not an illusion or fabrication, just her.

Of course, such an end to her loneliness was nothing compared to her wish for freedom. When Ventus had saved her from the castle, seeing the outside world had pushed the thought of romance away. In the weeks since, taking a stand against the Organization and Maleficent were far more of a priority than flights of fancy.

But now Yuffie’s comments had put a pin on the thought she once entertained. Tossing out the idea of flying and calling it a date for fun seemed to be something Yuffie did more on a lark than any serious comment. Today, she seemed to enjoy calling it that, even as Ventus and Naminé tried to correct her. Even as she called everyone to whatever she had found, she called them ‘lovebirds’ as though it was second nature. But if that was it, then perhaps she could just ignore it as teasing, or just an honest mistake. Besides, how could a Nobody even fall in love?

Yet Naminé couldn’t just say that she saw Ven as simply a friend, and it wasn’t simply because he rescued her. The way he wanted to help everyone as much as he could. Even despite his own pain he tried to try and find some way forward. To try and grasp some kind of happiness once again. Even if it was as simple as some time spent with his friends.

And perhaps it was the way he looked at her with fondness. How warm his hand felt in hers. How the two of them had found some strength to stand against the Organization.

Was this how Kairi felt with Sora? A chance encounter which slowly led to a fond friend becoming something precious beyond words?

Of course, she really shouldn’t jump to conclusions. For one thing, after the discussion this morning, getting into such feelings so soon might be suspicious. And although she abhorred the idea of manipulating Ventus into such a relationship, there was no real way anyone else at Hollow Bastion really could know for sure. Not to mention, Ven hardly seemed sure himself of what relationship they both had if his fit of stammering was anything to go by.

And of course, finding answers about Terra and Aqua was a bigger problem right now.

Fortunately, as they entered the massive room Yuffie had found, Naminé suspected they were very close. As they stood on a walkway overlooking a colossal room of tubes and machines, Yuffie spread her arms wide. “Take a look at this place!” She said as she opened the door to the observation deck. “All these machines have to be for something big!”

Leon walked past her into the room and muttered, “We’ll see if that something big has anything to do with Ventus’ friends.”

Ventus had recovered from his momentary blushing fit, and looked over the expanse. “What are all the jars for?”

Leon scowled as he looked over the machinery through the window. “Before Hollow Bastion fell to darkness, Ansem began extracting hearts from people to experiment with them and create heartless.”

If the amount of jars were anything to go by, he had a lot of research material. A fact that made Ventus pale, and Naminé had to admit the implication chilled her stomach as well. Though briefly sobered, Yuffie tried to smile as she patted the keyboard in front of a black screen. “Well, this thing has to have a ton of info on what happened.” There was no time to dwell on past injustices, especially when a chance to right some of them was before them. “Let’s see if we can run a search.” She began to type away at the keys, the screen coming to life with a green glow as words appeared with each keystroke.

>search

But on hitting the enter key, a blaring voice was heard as more words appeared on the screen.

ACCESS DENIED. DO NOT INQUIRE FURTHER.

Leon raised an eyebrow at the machine’s refusal. “It’s locking something that basic?” Yuffie huffed and resumed typing again. “How about just help?”

>help

NO. I DON’T THINK I WILL HELP YOU.

Ventus raised his eyebrows at the more blunt reply. “He sounds pretty grouchy.”

Naminé crossed her arms and sighed. “It’s a computer program. I’m not sure it can even be grouchy in the first place.” Even if it was designed well enough to mimic people, programs could only go so far in being personable. Just as she continued to have that nagging doubt that she could only go so far in being human.

Would the semblance of a heart she could find be good enough for him?

I AM MORE THAN A SIMPLE PROGRAM, USER

However, the unprompted comment from the machine brought her ponderin to a halt. It left Leon and Yuffie frozen with open jaws. Ventus just stepped forward, baffled at the outburst. “You can hear us? Who are you?”

I AM THE MASTER CONTROL PROGRAM. I OVERSEE THIS SYSTEM AND AS SUCH PREVENT UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS.

Leon rubbed his temple with one of his hands as he turned away from the screen. “Meaning us.”

Ventus walked towards the machine as he rubbed his chin. “You said he’s locking functions.” With a grin, he called his keyblade to his hand with a grin and held it up high. “Well, keyblades can undo any lock!” He wound back his arm, keyblade held high…

THAT ISN’T GOING TO DO YOU ANY GOOD. MY ADMINISTRATOR GUARDED ME AGAINST INTRUSION BY THE KEYBLADE.

Only to pause at the Master Control Program’s words. Naminé nodded grimly as she pieced together who could have done it. “Ansem. He was the only one who knew about keyblades in this world.”

“Well let’s see how much he knew!” Ventus twirled his weapon in a bit of flourish, pointed it at the screen and shouted aloud, “Search!”

Everyone watched the screen for any change.

And a second later, they saw a new answer.

ACCESS DENIED. AS I SAID.

One just as dismissive as before. Everyone groaned at the refusal, though Naminé put a hand on his shoulder with a smile, “It was a nice thought Ventus.”

YOU ARE VENTUS?

The question from the computer caused Ventus to blink before pointing to himself. “Er, yeah?”

PRIORITY TARGET CONFIRMED. COMMENCING IMMEDIATE DETAINMENT UNTIL RETRIEVAL.

Yuffie slammed her hands to the keyboard. “What?! Detainment?!”

BEGINNING EXPEDITED TRANSFER

Ventus took a step back from the computer as Leon put a hand to his gunblade. “How are you even going to keep us in one place?”

I THINK YOU’LL FIND THE GAME GRID IS MORE THAN SUFFICIENT

Yuffie scoffed at the Master Control Program’s boast. “Games? You want games—”

A flash of light interrupted her, and everyone saw the machinery in the back of the room glowing. “VEN! MOVE!” Naminé tried to push Ventus out of the way of whatever was coming. But she was an instant too slow. As soon as she touched his jacket, the machine fired a laser which struck all four of them.

She wasn’t sure exactly what was happening to Yuffie and Leon, but she saw what happened to Ven and felt it happen to her. Being broken up piece by piece.

Bit by bit.

Byte by byte.

The next thing she knew, she felt herself falling into the neon light.

“Okay, that’s weird.” Larxene wondered aloud as she raised an eyebrow at the now dead street lights. Every single one had powered down in unison, and the machinery repairing the main castle came to a stop. She jumped atop one of the wires, balancing on it with ease. Carefully, she leaned down and gripped the wire, trying to sense the current through the insulation. Faint as it was, there was still a trickle being pulled from whatever backup remained. Her eyes followed the electricity, all the way to the fort at the end of town. “What sort of science project are these bozos up to?”

She began to run along the wire, an electric spring in her step. But just as soon as she started, a smell on the wind caught her attention. A familiar scent of roses and rotting corpses, and she saw petals in the breeze. Immediately, she turned away from the fort to follow it. Because if she was seeing it, that only meant real trouble for her true agenda.

Sure enough, she spied a dark cloak down an alleyway fitting a familiar Body. Though someone else in the black cloak was there, it hardly mattered. Marluxia being here meant they needed to move now. Hopping down, she saw him pull down his hood. “Good to see you got my message.” His guest did the same, revealing Lexaeus had decided to join.

“if you’re here, then I assume that Castle Oblivion is either under control or out of control.” Larxene pointed a finger to Lexaeus and groaned, “And if this musclebound dolt has left his post, I’ll bank on the latter.”

“Zexion ousted me from my position as the head of Castle Oblivion. He redesigned the plan for Sora to revolve around his illusions as well as Vexen’s replicas.”

“Sounds reasonable so far. But I’m guessing that plan didn’t work.” “Hm. Either way, I’m surprised Book Boy had the guts to try and lead.”

“He did so with Xemnas’ backing.”

“What is more concerning is his behavior. I have known him for long enough to tell that his leadership went far beyond how he usually behaves. His illusionary power has also improved by leaps and bounds.”

Definitely not good. Zexion was forceful in any kind of science or intelligent work. But when it came to actually running a whole operation, he hardly had the expertise nor the constitution to manage members of the Organization. Still it was better to keep quiet about the concerns for now, so Larxene faked a small yawn and asked, “Why should we care?”

Lexeaus clenched his fists at his sides. “Because it leads credence to a scientific theory that I have dreaded being real.”

Larxene stifled a laugh as she walked towards Lexaeus with her hands on her hips. “A beefhead like you has scientific theories?”

Lexaeus snapped as he stomped forward, “As I was a prior research assistant to Ansem, yes I did. And it concerns everyone in the organization.” Larxene stepped back with her hands before her, though she maintained her smirk. Marluxia simply watched as Lexaeus placed his hand on his chest as he explained, “We nobodies are empty. Shells of what once was that persists on will alone.”

Marluxia nodded and moved to join Larxene’s side. “As we know. Your point?”

Lexaeus gripped his chest, grimacing as he continued, “If we are empty, then what can be put inside of us? Light, Darkness, Memories, Hearts?”

“The organization’s goal is to get our hearts back.” Marluxia recited the mission statement Xemnas had given again and again for Organization XIII. Granted, she and Marluxia were perfectly fine as they were. Hence their intended rebellion.

Lexaus looked them in the eye sternly and waved his hand to his side. “And what if we were given someone else's heart? Would we care about the difference?”

And that was the moment the pin dropped for her. Just as it did for Marluxia gauging from his wide eyed expression.

From what she could tell, all hearts were practically the same. Floating motes of shaped light, one just as worthless as the other. If they had no way to tell which was which. But if the giver knew, then they could make any Nobody into whoever they wanted to. And the Nobody would hardly be able to stop as everything they were was just overwritten.

What was this inside her?

Why did her stomach suddenly turn to burning lead even as the weather was cold? What was this like? She tried to recall if there was anything like this before she was a nobody. She hated trying to remember those days, but she couldn’t bear not knowing what this was!

There had to be something.

Anything!

And through the fog of time, one half remembered sensation surfaced.

Larxene was sick. And she couldn’t stand it.

She hissed at Lexaeus, “Why didn’t you tell anyone this theory till right now!?”

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Xemnas discouraged me years ago, saying only the mission was important. Without evidence I conceded the point.”

Marluxia swallowed a lump in his throat and asked, “Any plan on looking further into this?”

Turning towards the end of town, Lexaeus pointed to the structure in the distance. “We should look through the fort. It is where we conducted most of our research into the heart.”

Larxene hopped from wall to wall, reaching the rooftop. As she saw the entry to the fort, she saw a rather recognizable figure make his way up the steps. “Looks like Erxart’s got the same idea.” If the mystery rookie of the Organization was looking for answers there, this might end up working out for the three of them after all.

Ventus felt the ground at his back once he had come to. The metal ceiling was replaced with a strange sky, neon lights flickering up above. Looking around, there were buildings trimmed with glowing lines and circuits. He tried to push himself up from the ground, though it seemed a little difficult. A glance at his hand showed that it was clad in some kind of thin body armor he had never seen before, though it vaguely resembled his own clothes. Though the colors and even his skin seemed like a black and white photograph, with the exception of the blue circuits on his body.

And then he looked at his body, or rather, who was on it.

Even as he saw the color was gone from her face, she was still recognizable. as Naminé came to atop him, she groaned as she got her bearings. “Where are…Eep!” Only to squeak as she realized who she was lying on. She hurriedly pushed herself off Ventus and dusted herself off. “Sorry, didn’t mean to land—!”

“It’s okay! You were just trying to protect me.” Ventus chuckled as he got off the ground and nervously smiled at her, before nodding and mumbling, “Thanks for that.”

Though as he oriented himself, he realized that Naminé’s outfit had been similarly replaced with a bodysuit and light armor with circuitry. However, she seemed to have a small helmet over her head. As he slowly began to run his hand through his hair, he stopped once he felt a helmet of his own.

As Leon got to his feet alongside Yuffie he groaned,“Thank her once we figure out if we’re even safe.” The two of them also had been just as changed by whatever took them here, black and white bodies, neon circuitry on new clothes, and a helmet.

The four of them looked around the strange platform they were on, walkways leading out to other buildings trimmed with neon. Ventus took a step forward as he saw the vast, sprawling, alien landscape. “Is this what it’s like inside a computer?”

“Definitely a lot more interesting than the stuff Cid plays with,” Yuffie pondered as she crossed her arms and turned to the three of them. “Either way, this is pretty big for a prison.”

At Yuffie’s words, strange flashes of light appeared around them. Naminé sighed as she pulled out her sword and cards. “Spoke too soon.”

The digital light dispersed to reveal more strange creatures, but the symbol on their chest was unmistakable. “Heartless,” Ventus muttered as he called Lost Memories to his hand “Are they the welcoming committee?”

As everyone else pulled out their weapons against the heartless horde, there was one final flash of data. Except when it dispersed, it revealed a man in white armor with red circuits and a hood. He looked over the four of them and spoke sternly. “I am Commander Sark. You are to be seized by the authority of the Master Control Program. Resistance will result in de-resolution.” Ventus tightened his grip on his keyblade as Sark’s eyes fell on him. “The MCP has briefed me regarding you, Ventus. User or not, you are coming with me.”

Ventus held his keyblade up high and shouted, “You’re not taking me anywhere! Thunder!” In a flash, bolts of lightning struck the heartless gathering around them. Sark moved back from the electrical barrage, pulling a disk from his back. Once he was out of range, he wound back and sent the disk flying towards them.

“Flame!”

Only for one of Naminé’s spells to intercept it, sending the disk back towards Sark. With another card, she summoned a figment who began to strike at the gathered heartless along with Yuffie, Leon, and Ventus.

Sark scowled as the digital monsters began to fall. “So this is what a User can do. No matter.” He raised his hand and more flashes of data appeared, replenishing the lost troops. “Our forces far outnumber anything you are capable of.”

As Yuffie sent a Fuuma shuriken bouncing among the heartless, she backed up towards Naminé. “Maybe we should use Leviathan?”

The suggestion caused Naminé to pause, giving a heartless the chance to come close to her. Fortunately, a swing of her sword knocked it back as she shouted, “I don’t think we want to find out what happens to us if we create a lot of water in a computer!”

Squall slashed through a group of heartless, that were just as soon replaced and growled, “Well, we’ve got to make an opening somehow!”

“Get down!”

The voice was unfamiliar, but everyone but the heartless ducked on reflex. And no sooner had they done so, then a blue and white disk went sailing over their heads and towards Sark. He tried to hold up his disk to defend, but was a little too slow. It collided with him and knocked him to the ground. As he struggled to get to his feet, Sark growled, “Tron!? Now you show yourself?”

The blue disk was flying back over Ventus’ head towards another man in white and blue with a helmet.“For Users? Of course.” Tron then tossed his disk towards Sark again, but in a flash of data he vanished before the disk could hit.

With his departure, the heartless were at a loss, unsure how to proceed. And unfortunately for them, Ventus and his friends had gotten fairly good at taking down the heartless. Between Leon’s charged gunblade, Yuffie’s shuriken, and Ventus and Naminé’s keyblades, the monsters were taken down with ease.

With that taken care of, Tron jogged towards them. “We need to move quickly. If Sark gets back, he’ll be calling all the heartless he can on us.” Reaching to his side, three sticks materialized in Tron’s hand with a small spark. He took one, and held out the other two to the four of them. “I’ve only got three of these, so you’ll need to partner up.”

Leon took one of the rods, while Ventus held onto the other. “And what are these, exactly?”

Tron held the stick in front of him with both hands, and as he leaned forward, a sleek closed motorcycle appeared around him.

“Nice!” Yuffie cheered as she gripped onto Leon from behind. He simply sighed with a smile as he held out the staff as Tron did to create his own cycle.

Ventus put the stick in his pouch before holding out his keyblade. “I’ve got my own ride.” With a toss, he transformed the sword into its glider form. He hopped on and turned to Naminé, and began to hold his hand out to her and call out for her to come aboard.

Only for any words to die in his mouth as he realized how close they would be if she rode with them. His mind tried to calm him down, to make him realize they had done it before without any issues. Asking what was so different between her riding and going with any other friend. And his heart answered simply that she was more than a friend, leaving his brain at a bit of a loss.

Fortunately, the feeling of Naminé’s hand in his helped him to focus again. He saw her give a small smile as she quietly asked, “Shall we go?”

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Ventus nodded as she pulled her aboard. “Y-Yeah, let’s head out.”

“Willing to wager your thoughts?”

Roxas didn’t react to Luxord’s words, he just continued to walk while muttering, “Just thinking about how complicated things have been getting lately.” And if the bizarre architecture of Wonderland was the least of Roxas’ concerns, that was saying something. Ever since that day in the Dwarf Woodlands, Roxas’ simple life had been thrown off the rails. What’s worse, he wasn’t even sure where he wanted to go in the first place.

The only thing he knew for sure was that his friends mattered. And now he might be seeing them a lot less.

But despite the hurricane of questions in his mind, Luxord simply continued to chat as he kept pace ahead of Roxas and began to twirl a card in his hands. “Complicated Indeed. Play by play, this game has grown in complexity as more players have taken seats.” He stopped and turned on his heel to face Roxas with a relaxed smirk. “Tell me, besides yourself which one would you bet on?”

Roxas might not understand everything that had been happening, but he did know who he could trust for sure. “Erxart. He’s pretty strong, and there’s a lot I don’t know about him.” Axel was a close second with his skill in spying on the traitors. But after a week of training and seeing what Erxart knew about the keyblade, Roxas was confident there was nobody stronger.

Luxord raised an eyebrow as he glanced at the card in his hand. “Truly? He is an interesting factor to be sure, but I confess it is Naminé that intrigues me.” With a flip of his fingers, he revealed the card to be a two. “At first glance a pawn, fortunate just to be close to the table.” As Luxord mused he flicked his wrist, the card moved from hand to hand. But as it stopped, Roxas saw the card was now a queen. “Yet she has had quite a string of luck, and taken advantage of that potential.”

Roxas raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “Are you just saying that because she uses cards like you?”

Luxord chuckled and put away his card. “Not exactly like me, but I admit it is refreshing to see another who plays the game in such a way.” He turned back and began to walk through the mushroom forest. “Now enough idle chatter, we have our mission. Given the hearts we must procure, I believe we should split up.”

Roxas sighed, he didn’t like the suggestion. But given how hard it was to come by heartless in these woods, it was the best option to get today’s work done. Still, there was one major problem. “What are the odds that the unversed show up?”

Luxord looked back with a raised eyebrow. “A fair question, would you care to wager?”

Roxas sighed at the nonchalance. “Nah, I get a feeling I’d lose.” Again, Luxord cared more about his games than anything else.

The man simply continued on his way as he called back. “Prudence can be wise. But if you don’t play the game at all, nothing is gained.”

Roxas groaned as he continued on his own path. That was easy for Luxord to say, he knew what the game was half the time. Almost everyone else in the Organization seemed to know much more than he did. Even Axel had his little secrets. The only one who was straightforward with him was Erxart, but he was as new as Roxas was. Whatever the higher ups in the organization knew was being kept from both of them.

The sound of shadow gathering interrupted Roxas’ thoughts. Looks like it was time for him to get to work. It wasn’t a big group, some soldiers and a large body, but every heart counted. By now the soldiers barely even registered as a challenge for Roxas. A flurry of slashes and fire spells dispatched them with ease, a Firestorm built up as the last one vanished. With that, he turned to the larger heartless and used his improved speed and strength to dash around the heartless’ defenses before it could react. Flame infused strikes scorched the mass of shadows to nothing.

As Roxas felt the burning energy within still smoldering without a target in sight, he pondered aloud. “ Where am I going to find more heartless?”

But then from the bushes there was a chittering. The same chittering that he heard the other day when a new enemy attacked him from nowhere.

The unversed had arrived.

As the strange shadows flitted out from the underbrush, Roxas caught one with a scorching slash of his blade. The attack barely seemed to deter the other smaller unversed as they came to a stop before him. Feeling the power within reach its limits, Roxas unleashed the flame in a burst around him, disintegrating the creatures into specs of darkness.

Roxas grumbled at the sight. If these things were going to be attacking him, the least they could do is drop some hearts, right?

“Well, at least you’re as good as Ventus was.”

Roxas stepped back as he heard a voice sneering at him from above. Looking up towards the mushroom tops, he saw a boy in a red and black bodysuit about his size sitting on them. The boy looked down on him with a helmet that completely hid his face, one knee up as he leered at him, “Too bad Ventus was pretty pathetic.”

Roxas pointed his keyblade at the stranger. “One problem with that. You don’t know a thing about me.”

#My fanfiction #KH Fanfiction #Kingdom Hearts #fanfiction #fanfic #what if #runaway wind

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mushroom-winners-proof · 3 years ago

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nomura if you HAD to change a character’s eye color to green then ventus was RIGHT there i dont know what behemoth compelled you to change riku’s from cyan

#snap chats #have i complained enough about riku’s kh3 design no i dont think i have #yall had to take his crystal blue eyes away from him too oh my god #talked to me best mate the other day and she was all ‘bruh his eyes are one of the most striking things about him ??’ LIKE GIRL I KNOW #ventus meanwhile could have totally had green eyes and should have #its a nice differentiator from roxas and it fits with his whole wind theme #plus you could easily say roxas’s blue eyes come from sora yk #this post was just an excuse to say i like ventus with green eyes and i wanna try drawin terra with brown eyes at some point

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skyflyinginaction · 2 years ago

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Character Design Talks: Ventus

Alright, time for my 3rd favorite character of the KH series: Ventus, aka Ven. The main reason why Ven is one of my favorite characters is mainly that he looked like Roxas. I was initial attracted to him due to his strong resemblance, but as I played the game I came to love him even more as a character I remember a long time ago before BBS came out I watched the earlier game trailers on the computer just to see him.

Like most of the KH characters his character design is centered around connections this is seen best in his outfit. The most interesting thing about Ven’s character design is that he looked like a fusion of both Roxas and Sora's appearance.

Personality-wise Ven's appearance is centered on Roxas but retains elements of Sora's design in his design. Like Roxas, Ven has a lot of details that correlate to both his character and his role in the story by adding kh chi in the complication. The reason why Ven and Roxas look alike is that even the heart entered Sora’s body, Ven’s presence influenced Roxas’ appearance Kh bbs ultimania clarified the connection. Ven is created to have an important connection to Sora and Roxas.

Name:

Let's start with Ven’s name. Like most characters named by Tetsuya Nomura, he is named based on an element, Ventus means “Wind” in Latin this goes with his inquisitive, cheerful, and outgoing personality resembling a windy breeze. His name shares the sky theme with Sora, which means sky in Japanese, highlighting his connection to him and his outgoing personality which is similar to Sora’s.

Design:

As I stated before in this post, Ven’s outfit highlights his connection to Sora and Roxas because he is created to have an important connection to them. There is a prominent X in Ven’s clothing which is used to activate his armor.

His armor is gold and green, green is the wind referencing Ven’s sky theme and gold signifies light and Ven’s alliance to it. The X has a lot of symbolism that references Ven's role in the story.

X is pronounced chi or key Inspired by the Latin letter x which is one of the keywords in bbs, The Key aspect in X infers how Ven was used by Xehanort to create the x blade by making him fight Ven and Vanitas so they can complete the keyblade. The x of the greek alphabet is produced key has the meaning of death in it, The x his and the rest of the bbs trios grievous fate in bbs X means death; this means that it means death to his heart if not saved by Sora if hadn't taken refuge inside Sora. The emblem at the center of Ven’s chest is the emblem of their master, who references him being one of the apprentices of Master Ericus.

Okay let's talk about Ven’s outfit,

There was something I realized when I was writing this post: if I looked closely, his clothes are a fusion of Roxas's twilight town clothes and Sora’s KH2 outfit.

Ven’s clothes in his design are similar to Roxas's having the same jacket and wristband. The color in his pants is similar to what Roxas wore if you look at both of their designs together. Ven’s pants are taken from Sora’s pants with the ball out part resembling Sora’s chap style shorts in KH2. Another fusion is seen in the jacket he wears is a fusion of Roxas’ jacket and Sora’s KH2 jacket, being a black and white jacket. his outfit carries both sora and Roxas's clothes in his design; this is a clever reference to his connection between the two he has in the story. Another thing that caught my eyes is that his jacket is black and white with white on the right side and black on the left side. The two colors could signify light and darkness since the white signifies Ven’s being of light and the black being Vanitas, his part that was split by Xehanort his negative emotions. The light half of his jacket references how he is someone who is meant to be the other half of the x blade and connection to Vanitas who is created as the dark half.

Or the black in his jacket references his role in kh chi and how he was possessed by darkness to slay Strelitzia. But all this is my interpretation of it

Despite harboring the same character design as Roxas, Ven has elements that make him stand out as his character. This is the last KH meta I am going to do since Kingdom Hearts as a series has always been convoluted even though I got confused when I was writing KH metas. So I could be wrong when I was discussing if you think so feel free to add and correct. I am happy to have someone help.

#kingdom hearts #Ventus #Character Design #character design talks #kingdom hearts meta #my meta

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witchywomanrunningupthathill · 3 years ago

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Read Me

Pairing: Regulus Black x female!OC

Word count: 1.5k

Warnings: violence, angst, very brief mention of vomit

Note: I’ve always had this headcanon that after joining the Death Eaters, Regulus had someone to teach/practice with legilimency and occlumency. So here’s my spin on that with a return of Miss Iris! Let me know what you think!

Streams of garnet and emerald dart past one another. Faint cheers from the packed stands—Go, go, Gryffindor! Slytherin, Slytherin for the win! Sirius Black comes into view, guarding one of the circular goalposts. He’s yelling to a chaser.

Evan Rosier flyin past one of the snakes, who throws him a bludger. Rosier catches the ball and sends it hurtling towards Sirius. The bludger strikes Sirius’ side with a thwack, knocking him off balance. The Gryffindor recovers, eyes darting around to see who threw that damned ball, but Evan directs a Ventus his way, sending a strong stream of wind at his right side and throwing the boy off his Nimbus 1500 into the very thin air below. Across the pitch, Regulus Black and his fellow Slytherin teammates watch as a wizard falls through the air toward the very hard ground. He sees the unguarded goalpost opposite him. Regulus’ face drops, Siri. He takes off toward his older brother. So what if he saved the bloodtraitor, he’d face Evan’s wrath later—

“Salazar!” Iris jumps, shaken from her vision. Her cat, Jed, steps over the witch’s bent leg and casually lays down between her and Regulus on the quilted leather sofa.

“It’s Regulus, actually,” the wizard remarks.

Iris scoffs.

Moonlight shines down into the Black Lake, making the Slytherin common room appear more like the sea than the emerald-green dungeon that it is. A faint rumble of thunder startles a merperson that had stopped momentarily, watching the witch and wizard go at their mind games.

“Alright, let’s try this again. We’ve got an audience now and everything…” Iris looks down at Jed. Regulus smiles at the cat warmly, passing his fingertips through her bluish-grey fur as he scratches the top of her head. His jade eyes meet the waiting girl. “Relax,” Iris tells the wizard. Regulus rolls back his shoulders closes his eyes as he takes a deep breath. As soon as he reopens them, Iris is back inside his head. She butts up against a set of memories, trying to read them, read him, but is only met with further resistance from the boy opposite her. She tries again. Nothing. Onto the next memory. Another block.

This continues for a few moments until a dark, inscrutable scene comes into view for Iris. The vision sharpens, revealing central London. It’s late. There’s no one on the streets save Evan Rosier, Barty Crouch, Jr. and Rabastan Lestrange circled together, wands already at work.

Oh wait. She’d recognize that tall, lanky build and head of long, raven hair anywhere. Regulus stood about a pace back from the three Death Eaters. In front of him, at the middle of the circle lies a muggle couple, crying and screaming as the red sparks of the Cruciatus curse run from the dark wizards’ wands to them. Breaking bones. Burning flesh. Twisting, snapping veins.

“That’s the last time you’ll speak to me like that! Muggles…” Evan says, disgusted. Evan looks over to Regulus. “You’re missing out on all the fun, Reg.” Regulus stays silent, joining the three in the circle. He watches as Evan casts an “Imperio,” on the man, forcing him to undress himself. The bleeding, sobbing, sweating man now stands bare before them. Evan places his hand on Regulus’ shoulder. “Go on.” Evan licks his lips. “They deserve it.”

Regulus’s cold demeanor slips slightly, but he recovers quickly, not even raising his wand before shouting “Crucio!” The Muggle man screams in agony as the spell’s red sparks wrap around him like barbed wire, lifting him off of the ground. His eyes roll back as he falls to the ground in convulsions. The screaming woman looks on as her partner gurgles and thrashes and howls. The terrorized Muggle woman looks back at the four wizards whose eyes are bereft of all but crazed contempt. “Please!” She chokes out.

“Might as well finish him off,” Barty chides. They all watch Rabastan raises his wand as the “Avada…” leaves his mouth.

The scenes blurs and fades to white. Iris almost stops, but swiftly shoves aside her thoughts. Stay focused. Regulus’ mind is like a library. The Bodleian to be exact. Shelves, tall shelves and endless stacks of memories. Most of them appearing like a book with a blank cover and empty pages. Damn, he’s gotten good at this. Iris goes to a new stack located way back in his library, the Restricted Section. Just let it flow. Iris strains, eyes burning into the wizard seated across from her. She shuts her eyes, eyebrows furrowing.

“Stop straining,” Regulus instructs.

“Don’t, Black…I was born doing this.”

“Then prove it.”

Iris reopens her eyes, still trying to breach the mental wall. She can’t read it. In fact, it hurts quite a bit. Regulus doesn’t let up. A sharp, biting pain wraps around her skull with every attempt to break through his wards. Iris pulls backwards with a gasp.

“Agh, Merlin!” Jed leaps out of the witch’s lap. Iris rubs her forehead, trying to soothe the pain. “Okay, I’m done for the day. Congrats, Reg, I think that you’ve got to be one of the best Occlumens I’ve ever met.” Regulus smirks. “Oh, don’t be all smug now!” She hits his arm.

“Hey! Enough with the abuse, woman. You’ve already gone through my mind, quite literally. Or tried to…”

“You’ve outsmarted the mistress, it seems.”

Regulus chuckles.

“We can’t all be natural Legilimens, love.”

She doesn’t say anything. Instead, she just studies him. She’s back in the library.

“Stop reading my mind.”

“You put your guard down when you laugh.”

“I don’t believe trying not to laugh will be much of an issue in front of him.

Iris lets out an amused humph.

“Why the hell are we joking about this?” Regulus straightens. The couple sit in silence for a moment before Iris turns to the wizard.

“Will you tell me?”

“Why we’re joking?”

“Reg.”

“How am I supposed to keep it off-limits if I tell you?”

“Oh, don’t play dumb with me! You wouldn’t have let me see Sirius falling during that match—”

“Pushed. He was pushed!”

Iris looks at him impatiently.

“What about Evan and Barty and Lestrange torturing and killing those Muggles? And you!” Her voice breaks.

“No! No. Rabastan killed them.”

“Like it matters! Who fired off one of the many Crucios that night?”

“You’re not innocent in all this either!”

“Has he made you kill anyone yet?”

It’s Regulus’ turn to frown, he doesn’t even attempt to meet her gaze.

“Torturing that couple was, what? Last week?”

“Enough!” he shouts.

“Why them, huh? What are you locking all the way back in your head?”

“They’re not worth it,” he mumbles almost inaudibly.

“What?”

“They’re not worth it, Iris!”

She shudders slightly. Thunder reverberates above them.

“Not Barty. Not Evan. And most certainly not bloody Lestrange!” His voice booms off of the stone walls. “You don’t know what it’s like...having this mark…this stamp of evil.” Regulus pulls up the sleeve of his jumper, revealing the serpent’s head of the dark mark. The raven ink wisps into the surrounding pale skin of his arm. “You don’t know what it’s like. Being right next to him. ‘A promising young man,’ that’s what he called me last.” Regulus’ expression darkens. He swallows. “Every time I step into that godsforsaken manor I want to vomit. The darkness and the…malevolence. It-it’s in the air.” His eyes glisten. “Sometimes I feel like I can’t fucking breathe. It’s like being paralyzed…when he stares at me—gazes into my soul. He crushes you, Iris! He will ruin you!”

Regulus is inches from the witch, shaking her by her shoulders. Tears roll down his flushed face. He’s trembling. Iris’s eyes dampen. Regulus gets up from his spot on the sofa, wandering over to one of the common room’s towering windows. Ripples of light bounce off the lake water onto his sullen face. He watches a trio of fish swim by and imagines being underwater, just like them. Enveloped in silence. Safe.

Iris sits still for a moment, shaken, before following him. At the window, she stands to his left, looking at the boy lost in the lake.

“Look, Regulus…” He doesn’t shift his gaze. Iris sighs.

“I’m sorry. I…um…you’re right. I don’t know exactly what this is all like.” She pauses, wondering if she should continue.

“But we started this for a reason—”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“You and me. One and two. You read me and I read you.” Regulus’ eyes slowly move away from the window.

“Even You Know Who can’t change that.” Iris reaches for his hand and brings it to her lips.

“I just want to keep you safe.” He frowns again.

“I know.”

“No, Iris…there’s just so much more.”

“I’m a big girl. And a pretty damn powerful witch.” The beginnings of a grin grace his face for a moment. He shakes his head, mind wandering to the locket hidden away in his dorm.

“Shall we give it another go?” Regulus is lost in his head. The little prince burdened with inglorious purpose. Iris waves her hand in front of his face. “Reggie? Regulus!” He snaps out of his trance, focusing on the witch in front of him.

“Once more and then we’ll give it a rest?” Iris searches his face. Regulus nods. There is no rest in sight, darling. Not if the Dark Lord can help it.

#regulus black x ofc #regulus black fanfiction #regulus black x oc #regulus x oc #regulus black x reader #regulus x reader #hp #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter #legilimency #occlumency #regulus angst #regulus black angst #iz writes

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n-simp · 11 months ago

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OKAY IS A LOT SO BEAR W/ ME

This is his base design, made on picrew and edited on Ibis paint, I got lazy with the one showing off his scales and longer hair and forgot the scars and tattoo.

His name is Ventus, he was made for a rp I'm doing with the intent of romancing Kai and Nya and ignoring some of the ninjago timeline because ninjago isn't specific upon some things- He's supposed to be the child of Morro and a Venomari Serpentine. But is also supposed to be a similar age to the ninja.

Okay, I got some of his backstory.

Ventus is a ninja of wind however because of an automatic disliking to Wu due to his dead fathers past which his mother had told him about, and blaming Wu for never being able to meet his father, he trained with whoever was available in cheap and expensive dojo's to try an learn martial arts and was never able to fully control his powers.

He was not a good kid and ended up going to many boarding schools and wreaking havoc in towns he lived in, at some point getting himself involved with some terrible people which resulted in his X scar across his face and the scars along his neck, along with the tattoo branding.

Ventus has been training his ability with wind using both martial arts and practicing with a bow in order to not only prove that he can be better than the green ninja to avenge his fathers dreams of becoming the green ninja but also in hopes to either kill Wu or the Green ninja to act out his revenge.

Eventually when he finds out who the green ninja is he has to choose between his friendship with Lloyd and his revenge.

He still chooses revenge and sides with Morro up until the very end when Morro is redeeming himself. Though Ventus likely would of backed out sooner he believes he needed to support his father and his choices despite betraying his friends and the implication of having to kill one of them.

When Morro is redeemed and dies for a second time Ventus has a hard to accepting it but he gives up on the revenge knowing it's not what his father would want for him to keep holding onto and genuinely just feels horrible altogether.

Mother is deceased after the attack of the great devourer and his only family is the small group of friends he made while in boarding schools and the ninja themselves.

His mother wasn't very kind and always showed some form of shame over having Ventus, there was constant disappointment from her which only made Ventus during his villain arc even more hellbent on revenge to make her proud by being like his father Morro.

During his villain arc Ventus takes a strong resemblance to Morro, from hair length to the colours he wears. He hides his snake traits which would be found snake scales along the shoulders up to his collar bone, some down his neck and his chest, nothing below the waist.

Though during the Serpentine arc when he gets a hold of the Venomari general staff he ends up growing out his tail unexpectedly.

During his redemption arc he ends up growing his hair out way longer to symbolize he's growing out of his revenge and growing to be his own person instead of trying to be this great ninja exactly like his father. He keeps that green streak dyed in order to honour his father and he also doesn't hide his scales anymore on purpose to honour his mother.

Although those were the people who drove him on the wrong path of pointless revenge, he acknowledges that both made him into the person he was and he should be proud to be their kid, despite there mistakes he knows he can now grow from them instead of repeating them.

-----

He's a half venomari half human hybrid and he has the ability to use the Venomari venom, however at first he's not able to control it very well which results in various issues such as not being able to do something as simple as sharing a drink with a friend since if he did accidentally infect someone with the venom he has no idea how the anti venom is used/made. However being half Venomari has its quirks such as being immune to low level drugs due to the venom giving him resistance.

----

His abilities are heavily inspired by Venti from genshin impact because the weapon that Ventus uses is a bow. He's able to focus his element into the arrows he shoots with terrific accuracy and is skilled in ranged combat.

In saying that he doesn't do very well in hand to hand combat due to lack of proper training and finds it difficult to defeat opponents that are too close.

Abilities;

- Control of wind (Not very well, usually controlled using a bow)

- Incredible aim, although he sucks in close combat he has a high advantage when it comes to ranged combat, from learning from hunting and self learning. Basically a robin Hood skilled level.

- Venomari venom, either by spitting or biting he can affect anyone with a venom that can induce a high state and cause the person to hallucinate.

- Resistance to drugs and possible low level poisons (?) Due to his snake heritage.

- Can handle high temperatures and prefers them due to snake bloodline and being cold blooded, in turn, does horrible in cold weather areas and might possibly be life threatening with high chances of getting hypothermia.

- Tail growth when holding serpentine staff, slow progression. Progress speeds up due to holding specifically the Venomari Staff. (Grows to about floor length)

-----

Appearance (Snake traits wise);

❥ Snake fangs, Kanines are usually sharp In a normal state but in a more prominate snake like state can extend, this is a rare occurrence, usually done in battle as a last resort in hand to hand combat when he intends to bite his opponent or spray them with venom.

❥ Pupils can turn into snake slits, usually a force of habit from being angry or disliking someone greatly, not an entirely uncommon sight since he doesn't even realise he does it.

❥ Snake scales across collar bone with a green tint, on the back of his hands a little, slightly across his shoulders and down his back and slightly on his chest and stomach, none on legs and feet and keeps them well hidden.

I made a thing using a base I grabbed from Pinterest ^^ it's of my Lego ninjago oc. I just wanted to practice the hair!

Original base and WIP underline

I can only see a tag on the base that says @ajgkwl_109 but I don't know if that's for Tumblr, Twitter, ect or what the language is or what it reads :( I just nicked this off Pinterest when I saw it come up.

#tsu's rants #oc info #ninjago oc #ninjago

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illegiblewords · 2 years ago

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ILLEGIBLE’S TOTALLY SUBJECTIVE FAVORITE EORZEA COLLECTION DESIGNS | SEASON II: HEALERS

I compiled a list of designs in the past to share some favorite Final Fantasy XIV glamours from the Eorzea Collection website. With the Endwalker expansion released, there are quite a few new options available and people have developed even more incredible looks. So I decided it was worth doing a follow-up. I’ll probably do this every expansion or so. As before, this list comes with a disclaimer that it’s personal opinion and purely in the interest of going ‘LOOK HOW COOL THIS IS’ at people! Anyone could theoretically do the same, I’m not an authority.

This post focuses on healers.

Season I Healers

WHITE MAGE

FEMALE

- Spirit of the Fox by Erzulie One

- [Haku] A Queen at war by Hakuren Amnell

- [Haku] Scorched Exaltation by Hakuren Amnell

- Avaritia by Leisha Aysheen

- Purgatory by Kyary Yukino

- [Haku] Healing Byakko by Hakuren Amnell

- Immaculate by Erzulie One

- Paglthan Priestess by Erzulie One

- [Haku] Waterfalls by Hakuren Amnell

- Forest Mage by Erzulie One

MALE

- Yyggdrasil’s Branch by Lucian Silversong

- Blue-white Mage by Red Boar

- Eons by Jarvis Brakkenwork

- Garlean Emissary to the Sultana by Leon Aquitain

- Forgiven Injustice by Lemi’to Elonan

- Classical spin by Tobi Toebeans

- All Hail the Blood Lily by Amarina Alinar

- Orenji-Iro by Amaris Palazzo

- Sundown in Kugane by Miyuki Yue

- Gentle By Nature by Ryu Patredis

SCHOLAR

FEMALE

- Aiya by Plu Patredis

- Sepia by Kyary Yukino

- Expedient Academic by Vivi Tsuchinoko

- Chronokinesis by Kyary Yukino

- Early Morning Studies by Mana Potion

- High Class by Shiyo Hayashi

- Steampunk Experiment : Lucretia by Lohia Aihol

- Snow Princess by Vivi Tsuchinoko

- Wind-up Scholar by Kuromi Nui

- Small Step by Plu Patredis

MALE

-The Professional by Rem Diamond

- Sharlayan Admiral by Khurt Wagner

- Willow by Teddy Ursa

- Entremet: Pavlova by Baby Seagull

- Thavnairian Scholar by Red Boar

- No title by Glynne Silence

- Divine Light by Olli Cannoli

- Fledgeling Scholar by Iseul Gil

- Frozen Winter by Volux Galain

- Omega Healer by Solanir Stardust

ASTROLOGIAN

FEMALE

- Eclipse by Kyary Yukino

- Gray Derby - Inspired by Shirayuki Maru by Norta Marmannwyn

- Nilo by Leisha Aysheen

- Lady of The Sabbath by Ormr Kishna

- Sylva by Plu Patredis

- Eye of Horus by Ko Kiri

- Darbar Astrologian by A'mira Chalcedony

- Midnight Spark by Ihon Nuzhysa

- Aladdina by Leisha Aysheen

- Thavnairian Traveller by Leisha Aysheen

MALE

- Scarlet Soothsayer by Mint Condition

- No title by Glynne Silence

- Mis-fortune teller of the mid-east by Karuu Ru

- Midnight Gold by Corus Maderna

- Celestial Sightseer by Myrin Lockhart

- Golden Fortune by Khaidai Dalamiq

- Warden of the Heavens by Felidae Aelfwig

- Glynne - Sanctified Staccato by Glynne Silence

- No title by Glynne Silence

- Ascian Starweaver by Fae’ryn Yuvone

SAGE

FEMALE

- Sage Moonward by Erzulie One

- Elegance by Erzulie One

- Mandate of Heaven by Valkariel Dawnbringer

- No Title by Glynne Silence

- Sage Prototype by Vederah Kilmister

- Sharlayan Stylish Sage by Ysera Ymir

- Air Vice-Marshal by Rukia Aeron

- Imperatrix by Shiyo Hayashi

- Sharlayan Envoy by Selerity Faire

- No Title by Glynne Silence

MALE

- The Sage Prince by Lind Lecuyer

- Impulsion by Tigo’a Mhaalse

- No Title by Glynne Silence

- Dalmascan Sage by Redoul Myrtifolia

- Marsh Green Healer by Ventus Borealis

- Eastern Navy Officer by Nonokari Ririkari

-The Vague Researcher by Vento L’istrione

- Bozjan Soldier by Braum Osbern

- Captain -o- Lala by Dashy Umbra

- Winter Wanderer by Rubel Salamar

#eorzea collection #final fantasy xiv #final fantasy 14 #ffxiv #ff14 #ffxiv glamour #hyur #elezen #viera #hrothgar #lalafell #roegadyn #au ra #miqo'te #gpose

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dualdeixis · 3 years ago

Note

please talk about the doing the dishes comic pleaseplease i am begging you i am on myknees please your brain is so massive plea

THANK YOU HAHA that's very sweet of you to say <3

i tried to make a symmetry with the color palettes used throughout the pages! the borders go around the color wheel: starting in orange and culminating in black, and then going backwards to orange again (roughly, as i did change the hues a bit the second time around to keep them visually distinct and appropriate to the tone i was trying to convey). then the last three pages are yellow, green, and red specifically because those are the colors i associate most with them (i love playing with the fact that green + red = yellow in additive color!). which also means i picked all new colors for Everything in Every page lol but the use of color (and the lack of it) has always been very important to the way i convey things in my art so i enjoyed being precise about it. there are certain constants throughout, though; like the color i used for "black" (lineart, vanitas's speech bubbles) usually sits around dark blue, and the color i used for "white" (their shirts, ven's speech bubbles) mostly sticks around pale warm colors.

and the seventh page being the only one to use pure black and white was very intentional of course. also the poses there are inspired by christian iconography of saint michael stomping on satan.

this comic ended up being a lot about hands for some reason. maybe something about how touch is the first frontier for connection (see further below for notes on corporeality and hugs) and also a little bit of me bringing back ven's original left-handed design and my headcanon that xehanort forced vanitas to become right-handed.

ven's "i'm with you" is a reference to sora saying the same in kh3 about roxas. and the backstory for ven's nickname and the "pure light and pure darkness don't exist" line are from the bbs novel.

vanitas is washing and ven drying because of the water = darkness symbolism in canon and ventus = wind.

but also fuck canon. in this house we ignore ux’s retcon of vanitas’s origins.

similarly when i mentioned in the other essay that i saw vanitas calling ven "brother" as an approximation of their complex relationship: in canon it seems he only calls ven that because he wants to claim total distance from ven’s identity, as re:mind hints and ux reveals that he technically is a separate being from ven/didn't originate from within him. but once again fuck canon <3 i'm repurposing vanitas calling ven his brother, as well as ven saying "we’re not brothers we’re the same," for my own lore which is "we don’t know wtf is going on and we’re trying to figure it out over time." in my lore they’re comparable to alters in a system; "we’re brothers" + "we’re the same" are Both equally true and untrue statements.

anddd i didn't address ven's "we're the same" line in that essay because i forgot it was added in re:mind, so when i tried to search up that cutscene for reference and saw the original version without that line, i was like "well i guess i made that up in my brain" aksjdkddf. so really, my more detailed thought on it is that vanitas calls ven his brother as his own sorta-metaphorical-sorta-not approximation of their relationship -> ven is resistant to that label at first because he doesn't understand it or their relationship yet -> he accepts/uses it for the first time in my previous comic, trying to affirm vanitas’s existence using vanitas’s choice of words (while having his own internal nuances and interpretation of their brotherhood as informed by his brotherhood with terra) -> vanitas is like holy shit we’re brothers (discomfort) (relief) (???).

calling back to my first fanart of these two, in my lore vanitas ALSO does, on some level, want to be protected and wants that loving brotherhood rather than an adversarial one. it's not solely ven who wants that. but it's just one of the many many conflicting feelings he has about ven so it's difficult for him to parse and admit. he is working on it tho i'm proud of him :)

wait this also reminds me of how re:mind added "HEY GUYS. FEELING A LITTLE LEFT OUT HERE!!" KASJDKFDL best vanitas characterization decision kh3 ever made

vanitas finds hugs very nice and comforting but only with ven (at least until he chills out a little and feels comfy hugging other people, maybe) which is inspired by a really good fic i read in the summer and still think about frequently. the “supernatural dysphoria” it’s tagged with is written SO well imo, it includes the idea that vanitas feels calmer when in physical contact with ven because that’s his original body which he was forcibly removed from and desperately wants back. i LOVE that. and i think ven would like hugs too because of course vanitas is the other half of his heart who he’s missed dearly. a hug between them is like coming home after a really long time away and someone moved all the furniture around but it’s still home and it feels good to be there again at last :)

canonically vanitas was always able to vicariously feel ven’s emotions to an extent; i headcanon that an aftereffect of their fusion is ven starting to feel vanitas's emotions as well, now that the connection between them has been forged anew. he has less practice with it though, so it's easier when he's in direct contact with vanitas or one of the unversed, which he showcases with the hareraiser.

the specific choices for unversed are intentional too :) i went with red hot chili = anger, blue sea salt = bitterness, hareraiser = panic, and thornbite... is like the emotional reaction to physical pain. i think it would be very easy for vanitas to conflate physical with emotional pain, especially considering he doesn't technically have a physical body and is Made Up Of emotions.

alsooo i think i phrased it a little ambiguously but vanitas doesn't think that the unversed are "the bad things" that ven is talking about!! he's saying that the unversed are like him in that they "hadn't been given a chance to see all the good things in life." i think about nomura's reasoning for their name ("those that are not [well]-versed in life/their own existences") Every Day. it's about the fact that they were all made to believe that suffering is all there is and that they are fundamentally monstrous but that is not true and there is hope and a future for them... i need to lay down now.

only ven is allowed to call him nita for now but it's still nonbinary transmasc nita nmonday. end post <3

#long post #correspondence

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daxieoclock · 2 years ago

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Top 5 KH keyblades

ty for the ask! almost all of these are gonna be from Days djhbfgjhb cause that game had the best keyblades

Honorable mention goes to Oathkeeper and Oblivion. Neither of these two are that amazing on their own, they're probably the best of KH1s blades but neither are my favorite in the series, but together? Holy shit, together they're AMAZING. It's like they're made to be used together. Roxas getting to dual wield these bad boys just about broke my g-ddamn mind as a kid, and I was always so sour about the fact that we only got access to that moveset for one boss fight. And back then, we didn't even have the fight against Dual-Wield Roxas, cause it was a Final Mix addition and was still exclusive to Japan.

#1. Myosotis Horizon. This one doesn't have an actual canon name, but it's Xion's final form keyblade in Days. The name itself was something I came up with, and i got david my friend @maverickflare on the name train as well hehehe. As for why I like it, besides that Xion is still my fav character of all time, it's just...elegant. It's got a simple and beautiful design, the color scheme is absolutely gorgeous, and it includes the Nobody symbol in a really subtle way that doesn't distract from the core design. Just...fucking awesome.

#2. Missing Ache. Another of my previous tumblr URLs, Missing Ache is a Days blade that managed to make it into KHuX, and as much as I hate that game for its greediness, absolute horseshit nonsense story and awful awful paper-thin art style...having a mechanic to evolve Keyblades into stronger and cooler-looking forms? That was a fucking genius idea and I hope it comes back in a future game that doesn't suck.

And Missing Ache is one of the best examples, going from gorgeous and simple to an Ultima-contender with tons of ornamentation and really pretty colors. Blue and green were a phenomenal additions to the gold and black color scheme, and I love the way the evolved guards feel like they're opening up and spreading their wings. It's so good. Character development in a keyblade.

#3. Two Become One. Just...look at this fucking thing. It's the Roxas keyblade, and I fucking LOVE it. It's got such a cool base design, with...I don't even know how to describe that guard, it just looks awesome. Ridged and spiked ring. It's rad. And then the blade??? What the fuck even is that!?!? I don't know and I don't care, it's fucking awesome. It's got the cool black and silver dealio, Roxas's chess-board pattern as the handle, and his necklace as the keychain. It's amazing.

4. Aubade. Another Days blade, and this one is probably my favorite take on an end-game weapon in the series. As much as I enjoy the different Ultima Weapons in theory, in practice their designs have always felt way way way too busy for my liking.

5. Lost Memory. This one is probably the worst-utelized blade in the series, and I'm still so grumpy about it. For those who don't know, in Birth By Sleep, each of the main 3 characters (Terra, Aqua and Ventus) start with a unique keyblade, and then near the end of the story receive a "true" or upgraded version of that keyblade. Terra's Earthshaker becomes Ends of the Earth. Aqua's Rainfell becomes Stormfall. And Ventus's Wayward Wind becomes Lost Memory.

EXCEPT IT FUCKIN DOESN'T. While Aqua ends up losing her keyblade near the end of BBS, and carries Eraqus's Masters Defender into the Realm of Darkness, Stormfall is treated as her canonical keyblade, being seen both next to her armor and wielded by her during KH2FM's added cutscenes and secret ending. Ends of the Earth is even more definitive, as it's wielded not only by Terra's Lingering Will during 2FM's secret ending, but also by said will AND by Terra himself during KH3. But Ventus? STILL has Wayward Wind the entire way through BBS, the secret ending of 2FM, and his appearance in KH3. He never actually uses this upgraded keyblade, which is hot nonsense because it looks AWESOME.

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mrxcreepypasta1991 · 2 years ago

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For: @toxic-and-the-gang

New Muse!

Meet Lord X's Twin Brother!

Vlad Ventus Zephyros

Full Name:

• Professor Vlad Ventus Zephyros

Alias:

• Professor Vlad

• Professor Ventus

• Uncle Vlad

• The Ventus Master

• The Ally of the Ventus Bakugan

Relationships:

• Lord X (Twin Brother)

• Exetior (Long Lost Brother, Arch-Demon)

• The Ventus Master

• King Szeskaabsuk (Brother under the Sea)

• Majin Sonic (Infinite "Fun" Brother)

• Devoid (Majin's Brother)

• Batman Sonic (Majin's Big Brother)

• Xenophanes (Nephew)

• Xenoblaze (Niece)

• Cinos (Nephew)

• Yma (Niece)

• Sonic.ERR aka: Error (Little Nephew)

• Twisted Amy (Baby Niece)

• Sanic.EXE (Nephew)

• Sunky.MPEG (Little Nephew)

• Sunky (Adopted Nephew)

• EXE (Nephew)

• Fatal Error (Big Nephew)

• SL4SH (Nephew)

• Griatos and Demogri (Nephews)

• OnMyWay.EXE (Big Nephew)

• Hog and Scorched (Split personality Nephew)

• Sonica.EXE (Big Niece)

• Educator (Lord X's Siblings's Teacher)

• Sonic.EYX (Powerful Friend)

• Fleetway Super Sonic (He's not related to Lord X's family but he's actu Chaotic Neutral)

• Satanos (Powerful Enemy of Everything, including Lord X's family, Satanos is "NOT" related to Lord X's family at all.)

• Apollyon (Son of Satanos, The Antichrist)

• Xalnder (Least favorite Nephew, Follower of Satanos, Horseman of the Apocalypse)

• Sally.EXE (2nd Follower of Santanos, Horsewoman of the Apocalypse)

• Amy.EXE (3rd Follower of Santanos, 2nd Horsewoman of the Apocalypse, but except she is not evil, she's a Mutual nervous friend)

• Sonikko.EXE (4th follower of Santanos, 3rd Horsewoman of the Apocalypse, Ememy)

• Skyress (Ally, Friend)

• Harpus (Ally, Friend)

• Other Ventus Bakugan (Allies)

• Other Attribute Bakugan (Allies)

• Naga (Enemy)

• Masquerade (Enemy)

• Hal-G (Enemy)

Species: Hedgehog

Subspecies: Ventus Mobian

Age: Immortal

Gender: Male

Eye Color: Green

Fur Color: Sky Blue

Affilation:

• Vestroia Laboratory (Scientist)

• Vestoria University (Professor)

Occupation:

• Mobian Professor of Vestoria

• Mastermind of Ventus Bakugan Abilities

• The Ventus Prophet of the Prophecy

Symbol: Ventus

Bio: Vlad Ventus Zephyros is a mobian who is a Ventus Mobian Professor of Vestroia University & Scientist of Vestroia Labs. He is an intellegent twin brother of Lord X. He's also the only one who knows alot about the Ventus Bakugan and Vestroia itself. He's also the prophet of his very own prophecy against his demonic enemies ever since Xalnder choose to be in the dark side of Satanos's Satanic Cult. According to the Prophecy, Once the final days come, the horrific nightmarish visions and warnings invade everyone's dreams, and the reckoning begins, Satanos and his antichrist son Apollyon will unleash Hell on Earth, a major apocalyptic event that will purge everyone during war, His four horsemen, Xalnder (War), Sally.EXE (Conquest), Amy.EXE (Famine), and Sonikko.EXE (Death) will ride to start the Apocalypse itself, the skies will turn blood red, even the water, the satanic logo will glow in the sky, the moon will turn blood red, and hellfire will fall out of the sky as all hope is lost for everyone as some are dragged into hell, and others fight to survive. But there are many ways to end Satanos' Apocalypse & Save the world, two Bakugans, Skyress and Tigrerra can end Satanos' reign of terror alongside with Harpus, even the five angels, Angelica, Angela (Daughter of Angelica), Belathal, Jonathan Afton and Jesslin Woods will attack Apollyon and his four horsemen of the Apocalypse. The Apocalyptic war will soon end once Satanos is defeated and his punishment will end up falling into "The Lake of Fire" itself as his very own permanent death penalty to never return.

About Ventus:

• Ventus (Japanese version: Zephyros) is the Attribute of Wind (or Faction of Nature)

• The Ventus Legendary Solider was Orberus. The current soldiers are Skyress, Ingram, Hawktor, Taylean, and Jaakor.

• The Planet of Ventus is swift and silent yet within its borders lurks a vicious cycle that overwhelms intruders and punishes them for trespassing. The Ventus Bakugan are fast and powerful like Hurricane winds. Once their enemies are caught in the eye of the storm, they are defenseless against the Ventus' wrath.

Gameplay: Ventus-attributed Bakugan have average G-Power, Ventus attributed Bakugan draw their power from the cunning tactics, They think before they play. They choose their Ability Cards wisely, as the biggest boost is not always the best. They lure their opponent in by giving them the upper hand and just when their opponent is getting cocky, Ventus brawlers spring their trap and come out victorious! With Ventus attributed abilities such as Blow Away, Ventus Bakugan can turn the tides in any battle.

Gallery:

The Ventus Pendant

About: The Ventus Pendant is a necklace that has all the power to lead and command any Ventus Bakugan, including Skyress and Harpus as the leader who wears this pendant, the Ventus Bakugan will listen and follow.

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vengeverse · 3 years ago

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★~ VenquaWeek2022 ★ Day 1: Flowers ★ Read on Ao3! ~★

Aqua and Ventus touched down in the center of Radiant Garden’s central square, hopping off their Keyblade Gliders before returning their weapons to their natural forms. Brushing the windswept hair from her eyes, Aqua took a moment to look around.

The Radiant Garden reconstruction project was almost complete. Aqua had been initially aghast at hearing of the destruction that’d befallen this beautiful city while she’d been trapped in the Realm of Darkness, but she was glad they’d been able to rebuild.

Despite a few remaining construction cranes and bits of broken stone wall, the city was as lovely as ever. Gorgeous fountains shot water in jets fifty feet tall, and the air was heavily perfumed with the fragrant scent of thousands of flowers— patches of yellow, red, and pink petals covering each corner of the courtyard.

It was no wonder this was her favorite world.

“Come on, Aqua!” Ven beckoned, barely masking his excitement as he headed for the small bridge leading towards a slightly winding staircase.

She followed him through the intricate white gate and up a long flight of steps to the towering castle in the city’s center.

Ansem the Wise and his researchers believed they finally had a definite clue as to Sora’s whereabouts, and Aqua and Ven wished to hear the details in-person. According to Ansem’s hypothesis, Sora was trapped in another world, one beyond the Realms of Darkness and Light; Sora’s friends had gone to investigate. In the meantime, there was nothing she nor Ventus could do for now but await Riku and Kairi’s return.

“Why don’t we visit the gardens?” Aqua offered as they reemerged from the castle twenty minutes later and made their way back down the terracotta steps. As long as they were in Radiant Garden, they might as well have a look around the beautiful city.

Making their way along a curving side path, they passed through a couple more white gates and emerged onto the upper level of the gardens for which the city had been named. On either side of the wide, herringbone brick road were stretches of vibrant green grass and rows of flowers, twittering birds flitting between small conifers and blooming bushes, and thick patches of vines growing down the surrounding stone walls.

If Radiant Garden was Aqua’s favorite world, then this was her favorite place in it.

As they strolled together through the magnificent garden, Ventus suddenly came to a stop, frowning at a large metal door. Aqua paused; she knew the door led to Radiant Garden’s main reactor, the energy source of the city. It was also the place she, Ventus, and Terra had fought Vanitas’s most powerful Unversed.

“What’s wrong, Ven?” Aqua asked gently. He seemed oddly glum, despite the promising news they’d just received.

“Nothing,” he answered quickly, looking away to fidget with a loose string on the hem of his jacket.

Aqua tilted her head. “Hey, Riku and Kairi will be back before you know it; then we’ll hear what they’ve found out about Sora.”

“It’s not that…” Ventus sighed, releasing his jacket only to clench his fist by his side. “It’s just— the last time we were here, in the reactor room…” He glanced at the metal door again, and Aqua understood.

They hadn’t only fought an Unversed in there; it was also the place she, Ven and Terra had had their first major argument, one so bad it’d caused them to split up. It’d put a terrible strain on their friendship, at the time.

“I still feel horrible for what I said back then,” he continued guiltily, his eyes downcast. “I called you awful, Aqua… I shouldn’t have.”

“Oh Ven, you don’t need to apologize; that was years ago!”

Ven shook his head. “I wanna make it up to you,” he said earnestly. “Please?”

“Alright,” Aqua nodded. She could tell this meant a lot to him.

Ventus knelt in the grass and began gently plucking some flowers from the garden rows. “Don’t worry, I just need a few!” he said before Aqua could protest. “They’ll grow back.”

Once he’d gathered what he needed, Ven sat with his legs crossed next to the small pile of freshly-picked flowers. He took two and, concentrating hard, carefully intertwined their stems. Aqua sat across from him, watching curiously as he added a third flower, and then a fourth.

“Ven, where’d you learn how to do this?” she inquired, as whatever he was making began to take shape.

“I’ve been practicing,” he shrugged in explanation, a faint blush dusting his cheeks as he held up his finished creation. The flowers had been interwoven into a colorful ring. “It’s a flower crown, see?”

“Oh, it’s lovely,” Aqua breathed, reaching out to caress the delicate petals.

“It’d look even better on you,” Ven grinned sheepishly.

Aqua bowed her head slightly, feeling quite warm at his words as he rested the vibrant wreath upon her head. She stood and went to a nearby fountain to peer down at her reflection between the lily pads.

“I feel like a princess,” Aqua giggled, bringing a hand to her mouth as she twirled back around to see Ven standing there with a bright smile.

“I guess that makes me your prince,” he chuckled.

Aqua blinked, her cheeks flushing bright pink as something light and warm fluttered in her chest. Drawing in a calming breath, she placed a hand over her bosom and spoke her next words with all of her heart, “Thank you, Ven.”

★~ The End ~★

Chronological order: Embrace, Sleep, Loss, Flowers, Ocean, Anniversary, and Fairytale.

@venquaweek

#venquaweek #venqua #ventus #aqua #kingdom hearts #kh #birth by sleep #bbs #fanfic #fanfiction #fanart #my art

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pred1059 · 2 years ago

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Runaway Wind Chapter Twenty Two

<- Previous Chapter | Current Chapter | Next Chapter ->

Erxart had kept the information from Axel and Larxene in mind regarding the other keyblade wielders. After all, the Organization had a directive to ensure the Keyblade wielders do not come to harm, so it would behoove him to know who they were, as well as their companions.

Yuffie Kisaragi, young ninja mercenary. Axel and Larxene did not seem to mind her too much, but you could never be too careful with someone dedicated to the art of stealth. As evidenced by her holding still her kunai at the ready.

The girl in white, blue, and green, Naminé. The girl who had escaped from Castle Oblivion and found power so close to the keyblade. For someone Larxene had described as “Helpless”, she seemed quite capable, staring him down with a blade and cards in hand.

Which left Ventus.

The one who seemed to be the spitting image of Roxas.

The one who called him by that same name as Aqua did in his dream.

The boy took a step back towards his companions, eyes wide and shaking his head,“N..not your name?” A moment later he blurted out, “What do you mean it’s not your name?!”

He had to admit, seeing someone so close to Roxas this distraught…

It hurt.

But Erxart knew who his friends were, so he did his best to stay calm and shake his head, “I mean you’ve got the wrong person. My name is Erxart.”

Naminé moved to the keyblade wielder. With a frown she asked warily, “Ven, are you really sure this is Terra?”

That same name from a dream…

No. Focus. He couldn’t get distracted again.

Yuffie shrugged with a nervous smile, “I mean, it’s been how long since you saw each other? He probably got a haircut at l—”

“No...no! There can’t be a mistake!” Ventus desperately pleaded as he walked towards him, a hand on his chest. “Terra, It’s me, Ven!”

No, it wasn’t just him mishearing. He was using that same name. “Ven...“ Erxart furrowed his brow. His head began to ache. Like it was trying desperately to piece together...something! He winced as the pain began to grow

Ventus reached into his pocket and pulled out a small charm as he continued, “Don’t you remember our promise?” Erxart tried to focus on the object, a star of silver and green, “Together with Aqua?”

And as he looked at it. There was an echo of a memory...down in the depths…

“Won’t be needing this anymore.”

Bloody hands.

Pieces everywhere.

A black keyblade

“Now, to make two from one…”

PAIN.

“Well, isn’t this a reunion and a half!” Larxene’s voice interrupted the vivid flashes of whatever Erxart had been distracted by. Though surprise seemed to be Larxene’s strong suit. Case in point, her suddenly leaning on his shoulder as she continued,“Honestly, if Xemnas was here, it’d be really interesting!”

Though of the two, the comment got Erxart’s attention most as he spun and looked at her, “What? What does he have to do with any of this?” If there was any member of the Organization that had set Erxart on edge, it was Xemnas. Superior or not, he just didn’t want to interact with them more than he had to.

Letting him go, Larxene tapped a finger to her cheek as she continued, “I mean...he does have your face Erxart. Just a bit different with the silver hair, yellow eyes.”

No...it couldn’t be. It had to be a coincidence. He knew he had nightmares of a man going around with his face. Other than dreams and suspicion he had no real reason to distrust the nobody. He had been nothing but cordial in his management over the organization.

But no matter how much he tried to drown it out, some part of him didn’t want to trust a word Xemnas said.

Did Ventus know? Was that why his face grew pale? Why he began to shake and mutter?

“Hey, do you hear something?”

Yuffie’s observation was almost welcome. He needed to get back to the mission, though Larxene hardly seemed to be as welcoming, “Hear what? Listen if you’re trying to distract us…”

Naminé shook her head, “No...I hear it too.” Immediately the group quieted, though Larxene seemed almost annoyed at first. But soon a voice could be heard.

“...magic mirror,”

“Yeah, someone else is around for the mirror.” Ventus’ face became serious as he summoned his keyblade again. It was faint, but clear.

“...farthest space,”

“Sounds like it’s coming from this way?” The three began to head towards the window at Yuffie’s suggestion. Erxart took a step to follow, but Larxene held him back.

Smirking at his questioning look she explained, “Let the heroes do their thing. If that’s Maleficent down there, why not let them do all the hard work?”

“Through...and darkness...summon thee.”

The voice rose to a crescendo, and it was unmistakable from outside the window as Ventus pointed her out. “There!”

“Speak! Let me see thy face!”

It was the voice of the witch that used him like a puppet to take hearts. And there was no way he was going to let her walk away with anything today. “I want to fight because I want to make things right.” Larxene seemed baffled at his words and let go of his shoulder. Seeing his chance Erxart charged forward, keyblade in hand.

There was no way he could hesitate any more.

Ven couldn’t wait, he had to think of something! Terra showing up had thrown him off, and now Maleficent had managed to snag the mirror while everyone was distracted. A dark portal? Her magic? The how didn’t matter, but what did was that down below the tower was the magic mirror they were searching for. As Maleficent finished the incantation the object spoke, “What wouldst thou know, mistress of all evil?”

“No! Don’t tell her anything!” Ven began to try and bash away some of the bars, hoping that one of them might have come loose in the fight. He had to do everything to stop—

“Stand aside!”

That was the only warning he got from Terra. Looking behind, he saw his friend cloaked in darkness itself, with a keyblade so mangled and corrupted…

“What do you mean about Terra being a different person?”

“Exactly what I said idiot. The Terra you know will be gone forever.”

All of a sudden, Vanitas’ words didn’t sound so stupid anymore.

“Ven, Move!”

Naminé’s hand pulled him away from the window. Just in time to see Terra, wreathed in shadow, crashing through the window. To the courtyard below.

He could only stare and listen to the sound of the beginning fight outside. Did...did he really not know anything? Was he wrong about Terra? Their friendship?

Larxene hardly seemed to care as she laughed, “Well. I better make sure our friend doesn’t get too hurt.”

With that taunt, she vanished into a dark portal. Ven could only call out after her, “Wait! Stop!” But she was gone before he knew it. He dropped to his knees, numb from everything. Just when he thought he knew what he needed to do he was lost again. “Terra...I...I couldn’t…” He couldn’t save him. He couldn’t keep his promise.

But then a hand on his shoulder brought him to his senses. “Ven, we’ll figure something out.” Naminé smiled and helped him to his feet. Oddly enough, just listening to her helped to soothe him

By now sounds of a fight had already begun to fill the courtyard. Yuffie turned to jump out the window, “Listen, we can talk later, but right now we’ve got to go stop—”

“You.”

Then everyone stopped and turned at the sound of Ven’s voice. A much colder version of Ven’s voice. In the doorway stood his doppelganger in the organization, eyes focused on his counterpart. Raising a keyblade toward Ventus, the boy in black demanded, “Who are you?”

Summoning his weapon as Naminé and Yuffie readied up beside him, “I’m just Ventus. Who are you?” Not much point in giving his nickname to someone he had a feeling he wouldn’t be friends with.

“My name is Roxas,” he advanced, keyblade still in hand. Still staring daggers at Ventus as he growled out, “Why do you have my face?”

“Now that’s a real good question I’d love to hear the answer to,” Axel’s voice preceded him striding into the room. As the trio backed up to the wall, the members of the Organization advanced. Axel demanding, “Well? We’re waiting, Ven.”

“I don’t know! The only guess I have…” Ventus tried to calm his nerves. Keep Axel from getting to him with a friendship that had come apart. At the very least, he had to make sure the worst hadn’t come to pass. So he asked, “Have you ever heard of a man called Xehanort?”

Roxas raised an eyebrow as he heard the name, “Xehanort? First time I’ve heard of that.” As Axel similarly shook his head, Ven let out a breath. At least Terra and Aqua were able to stop him. But then another question came, “What are you after?”

And at that point, Ventus had enough of having the conversation controlled by his enemies. Vanitas and Xehanort did it time and time again when he confronted them. Right now, he felt like he’d given enough information. He stood his ground as the two Organization members advanced, “Why should we tell you?!

Axel just waved a hand casually, “Tell us, don’t tell us, doesn’t matter, really.” In a flash of flame, his weapons appeared as he smirked, “We’re just here for Maleficent.”

Yuffie scoffed at the answer, gripping the large shuriken on her back, “Yeah right. We’re the ones trying to stop Maleficent.”

But at that, Roxas stopped.“Wait…” His brow furrowed in confusion as he lowered his weapon. “If you’re just here to stop her then why are we being so secretive?” He stepped forward and offered a hand, “Shouldn’t we work together?”

Ventus looked at Roxas’ hand. A chance to not have another enemy? To maybe find a way to bring Lea back from what he’d become?

But he couldn’t.

Not after what the Organization did. What they wanted to do.

“No…”

Of course, if he was going to be beaten to that answer, Naminé had the most right to do so.

Axel chuckled, and scratched the back of his head, “You know...when someone’s offering help—.”

Her sword was shaking as she held it in her hand, “No! The Organization tortured me to make me work for them! I’ll never work for them again!”

“Not to mention they wanted to mess up a friend of mine just to make him a weapon!” Yuffie now her fuuma shuriken ready to lob at the two Organization members, “So yeah!”

“There’s no way we’re working together! Not after what they did to my friends!” Ventus took a step forward with his keyblade toward a retreating Roxas.

But then he stopped, as he realized the expression on Roxas’ face wasn’t just shock, it was horror. He shook his head at the accusations, “No...The...the Organization wouldn’t do something like that! Right Axel?!” He turned to his friend, only to find him strangely silent, “...Axel?”

And even stranger, Axel had no smirk, no quip. Just desperate attempts to explain, “I mean...Sometimes we needed to do a bit of dirty work. An icky job here or there. Not all the time but…”

But as Axel went on, Roxas retreated further away from him.

If someone only did evil because that was all they were taught, or they didn’t know better...

Shouldn’t they have the chance to change?

So Ven slowly offered his free hand, “Roxas, Come with us. You don’t need to stay with the Organization.”

“Roxas, don’t listen to them!” Axel moved between Roxas and the three. Flames gathered around his weapon as he spoke, “We’re Nobodies, remember? There’s no place for us in these worlds!”

Naminé shook her head, “I’ve met people outside the organization and told them what I am. They’re more understanding than you think.” Her eyes were on Roxas as she pleaded, “I believe there might be a place for Nobodies in the world.”

Roxas was silent, lips tight as he heard everything. But eventually, he shook his head, “I can’t.”

Yuffie was flabbergasted, sputtering out “Why not?! You clearly aren’t happy with what these guys are doing!”

Roxas frowned, as he looked down to the ground, shaking his head,“My friends...I can’t leave my friends. Erxart or Axel.”

For a moment, the flames stopped as Axel looked back in surprise, “...Roxas. You still…?”

But before anyone could speak further, a column of shadows erupted from outside the window. For a moment, everyone was silent as a loud cackling filled the air. Ventus realized he had gotten so caught up in talking to Roxas, he’d forgotten about Maleficent.

A few moments after the shadows vanished, he saw something hurtling toward the tower from the ground. “Look out!” Just in time, everyone managed to avoid the body of Erxart as he tumbled in through the hole in the tower.Then the tower shook, the sound of rock being crushed audible. And as the shaking grew worse, the massive claw of a black beast gripped the bottom of the hole in the tower. Just as soon, a dragon’s head with green eyes, mouth filled with vermillion flames barged through the castle wall. And the creature bellowed with Maleficent’s voice, “IF YOU KEEP ME FROM THE BLADE I SEEK, THEN YOU WILL BE CRUSHED BY THE MISTRESS OF ALL EVIL!”

#My fanfiction #KH Fanfiction #Kingdom Hearts #fanfiction #fanfic #what if #runaway wind #ventus #naminé #yuffie #kh yuffie #terra #kh terra #erxart #larxene #axel #kh axel

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romeoandmesittinginatree · 3 years ago

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Awhile ago, there was a post about how Voldemort was magic. He could just, like. Drop the baby out the window. Babies are like really fragile. And why was he so impatient? Just Google it, man. I’m super there’s a YouTube video somewhere, no? “How To Kill A Baby: A DIY Step-By-Step Guide”

In the internal words of the gorgeous Hermione Granger, “Honestly.”

And the same goes for this scene. Draco has already shown his ingenuity when it comes to coming up with plans. First, he figured out how to get poison into the castle - and it worked, to a degree. I agree with Dumbledore on the opinion that these attempts were rather… half-arsed, shall we say?

Anyway, Draco was also able to somehow get a cursed necklace close enough to Hogwarts that it could harm - but somehow not kill? I thought this was supposed to be some, I dunno. Super dark, super dangerous dark object. Especially given the teacher’s reactions- a student. Katie Bell, I think it was, yes?

And then, of course, there was the Cabinet.

So even though Draco had shown the ability to think ingeniously - nobody had thought of those things before, no Death Eater, nobody - he somehow couldn’t even summon up the ability to cast a gust of wind…? Fascinating. Like my guy just one ‘Ventus’ or whatever that spell is, and Dumbledore - who let us all remember was old and frail and dying already, He could barely stay standing up straight, if I’m remembering correctly, yes?

Anyway, and bye bye Dumbledore. Down he falls. Literally killed by a gust of wind - sort of.

So why on god’s green fucking earth, did this fucker not do that? Like, dude. Aren’t you the smart one?

Honestly.

@phoebedelia Thoughts on this most probably train-wreck?

#Draco Malfoy #Harry Potter #draco malfoy headcanon #I guess #Draco Malfoy analysis #late night thoughts #I’m so tired #sorry if this is a train wreck #what do people think about this?#harry potter analysis

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voidgearr · 3 years ago

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*rings the doorbell on ur blog* Omg more bbs headcanons Pretty please !

OH YOU BET YOUR SWEET BIPPY !!! These r very miscellaneous HAHA also these include implications of my Neurodivergency headcanons (theres a chart i posted if you scroll down on my blog)

VENTUS:

- Does NOT like weather extremes. Snow? sure! He’ll go sledding (or snowboarding w his key-armor?) and have fun, but a blizzard? You will find him next to the fireplace with his Chirithy under all the blankets in the house. same goes for summer and like. heatwaves

- Ventus is for sure one of those people who learn the weirdest hobbies and then drop it a week later “Hey Aqua, look what I made!” “Where did you learn to make ceramics?” “Felt like learning, so I did!” (This is how he learned to breakdance)

- The second he goes to the outside world, more specifically worlds and towns like Traverse and Twilight Town, he is booking it straight to the shopping district. He gets all kinds of outfits and stuff! He’s experimenting with his style, but refuses to take off his jacket thing (the black and white jakcet thing). I also think he would wear flowy Skirts and Dresses!!

- I think Roxas gets told he has to change how he looks because “it’s confusing” and he’s rightfully bothered by it, so when Ventus catches wind of how he feels, he immediately goes out and gets hair dye. Ven dyes his own hair, probably the tips a light minty green or something (aka his favorite color). I also like the idea that after some time of being out of Sora’s heart for so long, one or both of his eyes are green :D

AQUA:

- She really likes dance! Not just ballet, she looks up dance videos on her Gummiphone and tries to copy their movements. She’s pretty graceful, and sometimes

- Aqua starts carrying around a little bag that is borderlining a mary poppins bag after KH3. It’s filled with bandaids, potions, ethers, everything you can think of. She also carries everyone’s favorite snacks on her, as well as water. There’s so much in her bag wtf

- She often visits where she, Ven, and Terra placed Master Eraqus’ keyblade and their wayfinders. Usually she just goes there for some peace and quiet, to meditate, anything calming. Though sometimes she’ll go there to “chat” with Master Eraqus, usually it’s small talk or she’s asking for advice or smthn like that. Every so often Ventus or Terra join her.

TERRA:

- He bakes!!! For some reason Terra is a seriously good cook, and anytime the Light Gang get together they get very excited for Terra’s food. His only downfall is that he has a hard time going against his recipes, and has to have all his measurements and cooking/baking times exact.

- Post KH3 Terra has to dye his whole head of hair, or it’s a few silver strands in his front pieces that he chooses not to color (Side effects of being Norted). If he does dye it entirely, it’s a secret for a good while until either someone walks in on him doing it, or he’s panicking in the bathroom because the store didn’t have his usual color so now it’s pretty obvious and everyone’s gonna know. Once everyone finds out it’s clear sailing, no one’s bothered by it, and Ven gets excited and pleads Terra to let him help out.

- Terra usually gets roped into Ventus’ hobby of the week, and will also run up to Aqua to show off his latest talent. He made a fairly sturdy shelf once, and it is where he and Ven display the new things they make (along with other trinkets). He probably learned he can cook well from Ventus deciding to learn how to make food (Ven did not do too well)

VANITAS:

(yeah i had to do him. I love him. also this is very “im giving him the redemption arc he deserves”)

- He claims he doesn’t need to eat, or that he can’t (depends on who’s asking), but he can. His food palate is very...all over the place– sweets like gummies and chocolate bars, all the way to really spicy foods. Do not catch him up at like...3AM he is probably in the kitchen making the worst food combination ever.

- Once he meets with Ventus after KH3, he is oddly clingy. Not in a “I need you so we can complete they keyblade” way, more of a “if I lose you I will feel empty and not be whole anymore.” If you were to visit the Land of Departure, you would see Vanitas trailing behind Ven all the time. He probably tries copying him as well (in mannerisms or in appearance), once again because he just wants to be whole again. Also it’s completely platonic, and I think I might headcanon both Ven and Van as AroAce :P

- Vanitas is forcefully taken on shopping trips with Ventus. He usually just carries the bags and gives opinions on Ven’s outfits. The only way he can tell Vani likes it is if he hesitates or the insult isn’t as mean. Van doesn’t buy anything (rather he steals little things), but after some wearing down he gets platform boots. His usual shoes r already platforms, but he needs more leverage (hes small bro). Maybe he gets a skirt or dress, i dunno.

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kaibacorpintern · 4 years ago

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hi i forgot the ship name but would u write something thats seto and ryou? (platonic or romantic) where they play a ttrpg together or somethin idk

“or somethin idk” give me an inch, i have run a mile. a mile of 4.7k words.

platonic euroshipping. post-canon. ryou applies for a game writer position at kaibacorp and makes it to the final stage. contains: dragons, swords, some very sexy things about solidvision and the virtual world, kaiba covered in blood and having a great time, me the writer having a great time, hopefully you the reader having a great time, and ryou, not covered in blood, having a very, very, very anxious time

tw for some fantasy violence

++++++

Ryou inhaled, taking a deep breath of: the fresh, sweet smell of grass, the coolness of river water, something dry and grey in the wind, slightly rotten - smoke? And sulfur. The grasses were filled with the restless susurrus of the wind, each blade quivering with anticipation. Above him, a hawk tilted in lazy, wide circles, tracking the hidden paths of its prey. He stood on a dusty path halfway up the long slope of a steep hillside, the farmlands of the valley behind him peeled back to reveal the burned, blackened devastation beneath. The village from this distance looked like the charcoal remains of a bonfire, the air still shimmering with heat.

The sun itself was hot, making him sweat in the thick, coarse silk of his mage’s robe, every purple thread saturated with light and heat. Mopping sweat from his brow, Ryou opened his options menu, the holographic display falling open, in the guise of an illuminated manuscript, and hovering at waist-height in thin air, perfectly tilted for reading. The parchment was old and yellowed, almost velvet to the touch, the edges frayed with age, and he couldn’t resist the urge to smell it, leaning in cautiously to take an experimental whiff. Strong notes of dust, old ink, age; an undertone of knowledge, of the forbidden kind.

He selected Player Appearance and the page turned, with weight and heft, to reveal another. Kaiba didn’t miss a beat. Ryou had no doubt if he knelt down to drink from the stream that flowed down the slope, folding in clear ribbons past the rocks, the water would run cold over his fingers until they pruned. And the magic effects?

He swallowed. It was not just the sun that was making him sweat.

He’d just changed into something more practical - a short-sleeved green tunic, a pair of white breeches, leather boots that had just a bit of bite to the fit, like the player had to wear them in - when a chime pealed out from six feet away, as though someone had rung an invisible bell. The air tore apart, in odd, geometric anguish, like a broken mirror twisting into itself -

and there was Kaiba, standing in the knee-high grass in his customary black turtleneck and tight pants, frowning with his arms crossed.

“Hello,” Ryou said. “It’s so nice to see you again. Your technology is... this is amazing. The attention to detail is incredible. The player screen, with the parchment - it even smells like - ”

“What is this? Medieval?” Kaiba said, glancing around at his clothes, the distant village, taking no notice of his praise; Ryou bit his tongue in self-rebuke. As if buttering him up with compliments was going to help.

“Western Europe. From the mid-11th century to the 12th. The age of knights and chivalry,” he said, deciding that maybe his best strategy was to simply be straightforward.

“I’m familiar with basic history, thank you. How... classic,” Kaiba said, in a tone that screamed disinterest, and Ryou’s heart began to plummet - already starting from behind? No, no, no, he reminded himself, straightening the slouch out of his shoulders. Yuugi had warned him about this. Kaiba was fantastically tough to impress, in general, and the Virtual World was his world, a realm he'd built with sweat and tears, and stolen back with blood. So he hand-picked every writer that wrote for Virtual World games, refusing to squander a single pixel on conventional nonsense and uninspired cliché.

The last step - before he brought the axe down - was a short, playable demo, as proof of concept, written by the applicant and executed by the Virtual World team.

Ryou had come this far in the application process. Trust that, Yuugi said. And trust yourself.

Kaiba was looking at him, eyebrows arched with expectant curiosity.

“Er,” Ryou said. “Let’s get started, then. You’ll need to change.”

He pulled up the menu, revelling in the hovering parchment once more, and changed Kaiba’s appearance, like - like magic, the lines of Kaiba’s silhouette rippling like a sine wave from the bottom up, his modern-day clothing becoming a knee-length tunic of chainmail under a belted dark blue surcoat. Kaiba held still throughout the entire transformation, in smug admiration of the effect, his arms held out in a ballet dancer’s pose as chainmail draped down his shoulders to his wrists.

In his right hand appeared, with a sharp, diamond flash of light, a long arming sword, the edge nicked with age and bloodspill. The hilt was black, with a sapphire gleaming in the pommel. A plain shield dropped onto his left forearm.

He gave the sword an experimental spin, testing the heft with practiced ease, and slid it back into the leather scabbard on his belt.

“A knight, the charred, smoking remains of a village… I’m assuming I’m on a quest to kill a dragon?” he said, pushing back the hood of the chainmail so that it draped off his shoulders, and nodding up the slope to where the grasses tattered into rocky shale.

“Yes, you can assume that,” Ryou said politely.

On cue, a child no more than twelve years old staggered up the dusty path from the village, her small torso heaving with breath, sweat and tears running in clean streaks down her soot-stained face.

“Sir Knight,” she choked out. Flashing a look at Ryou that said cheap blow, but unable to deny his own fraternal instinct, Kaiba dropped to one knee and caught her, his hands swallowing her thin, shuddering shoulders. Playing along, at least.

“Calm down,” he said, steadying her. Ryou imagined his anxiety as a small, hard rock, packing in the twist of every fraying nerve, and leaned all his weight onto one foot, grinding the rock into the dirt with his heel. "What is it?”

“They sent me to warn you, about the dragon,” she panted. “They said only the Chosen One can truly defeat the dragon, and bring peace back to the land. Many have tried. All suffered the same terrible fate - a fate worse than death.”

“I see,” Kaiba said. “And who is the Chosen One?”

The girl glanced at Ryou over Kaiba’s shoulder, her eyes glinting with fear.

“No - no one knows,” she said. “But all the oracles say they’re coming… a knight with a pure and worthy heart. Sir Knight, don’t go. Come back to the village. It’s safe there. What do you gain from this? Our humble lands aren’t worth the danger!”

“I think they are,” Kaiba said, thumbing soot off her face, and frowning as her cheek pixelated, briefly, and resumed a skin-like texture. "Open master commands, user ID 000002510. Initiate master log. Begin recording: skin-to-skin contact glitch reappeared during writer play-test, candidate Bakura, R. Begin patch work immediately. End recording. Disperse to Virtual World team, flag Sawada, project manager. Close master commands. Did you know, one of the most compelling unsolved problems in physics is the lack of a theory that realizes both general relativity and quantum mechanics?”

The girl gave him a wary look, wide-eyed with faint alarm. Ryou sucked in a breath, grinding the anxiety rock down, down, down.

“You - you speak in tongues, Sir Knight," she said. "Are you also an oracle? Has your future-sight failed you? Don’t you see that only death lives on the mountain?”

Kaiba snorted and stood up, turning to Ryou. “A solid response to non-standard player input. Doesn’t ignore modern concepts, but re-contextualizes them in the setting of this world via a framework of prophecy, and redirects the player to the plot.”

“Um... thank you?” Ryou said. “I wanted this world to feel like it has a future, too, not just a history. I wanted to place it on a timeline, like it - ”

Kaiba’s attention swung back to the girl, still standing there with her eyes darting between them, full of bafflement.

“Return to the village, girl. Tell them my future-sight never fails me.”

The girl retreated backwards, warily, twisted on her heel, and fled down the path.

"If I go down to the village, what'll I find?" Kaiba said.

"More information about the Chosen One, and an outlaw who tries to recruit you to her band of thieves, with the option to join them for a stealth-based quest.”

"Hm. You have the imagination and the decency to offer me something other than blatant bait, which I don't always bite. The cliché of the Chosen One is boring as hell, it’s both over-done and deterministic, but I think... yes. Yes, I'll bite. Let's go see your dragon."

In the wake of this... compliment?, Ryou could only offer him a small, tentative smile, his heart clenching tight around Yuugi's advice.

Kaiba started up the path.

“Er, Kaiba - you might want to check your inventory before you encounter the dragon."

Kaiba’s hand padded around his waist until he found the small satchel that sat on his hip. Another parchment unfurled in the air before him, listing its contents:

Two full healing spells;

Two glamour spells, for changing the guise of a person or object;

Two transformation spells, for changing a person or an object into an animal;

Two scrying spells, for locating people or objects;

Two ignis spells, for commanding fire;

Two aqua spells, for commanding water; and

Two ventus spells, for commanding wind.

Ryou watched him as he read. He'd carved a small, thick groove into the dirt below his foot. Surely, that was enough for Kaiba to get creative?

Kaiba only closed the parchment with a brisk flick of his hand. Then he started up the mountain, Ryou following nervously behind.

***

The mountain path was rougher than Ryou expected, a tightly-coiled spring of switchbacks, leading to the curved lip of a high pass. After several minutes of trudging the dust in silence, he was panting for breath, his feet aching and blistering in their boots, and deeply regretting adding this little detail to the story. Next time, he was just going to put the dragon on a rolling, grassy plain, and he’d make it like an American autumn corn maze, because it still needed to be a challenge, and when the players got to the center they’d find the dragon’s decaying, rotting corpse and realize they’d been stuck inside the maze for five hundred years and everyone they loved was dead, and if they wanted to go back to their own time they’d have to find out how to resurrect the dragon, but only at a terrible cost, a sacrifice of some kind... Not his best off-the-cuff work, but there were usable concepts in there, somewhere. If there was a next time.

Despite being laden down with the chainmail, each tiny link flashing like fish scales in the airy slanting of the afternoon sun, Kaiba seemed unaffected by the demands of the hike, propelling himself forward with long, energetic strides. How?

Ryou thought about asking for a break. Or drinking water from the stream. Or changing his boots for something comfier, but he didn't have anything else in his outfit inventory except the mage robes, and the slippers might be even worse… he stopped, hands on his hips, gathering his breath.

From here the valley sprawled below them, a wide, velvety plain, its edges rising and scalloped by mountains. The village fit in the circle of his thumb and forefinger, a smoking black thumbprint. The team had done a fantastic job: the stream ran down the mountain, flattened into a river, and ran south, lazy and serpentine, a green-blue ribbon cutting through the yellow plains, just like he’d outlined in his initial description of the world….

Wait.

This was all virtual.

There was no such thing as air, here, or rivers or sunshine or grasses.

His real, physical body was half-asleep in a Virtual World testing pod on the 17th floor of the Kaiba Corp Tower, and his body here was just a series of algorithms, and if he didn’t want to sweat, he didn’t have to fucking sweat! Thank God!

Up ahead, Kaiba noted the absence of his footfalls and turned around, one hand resting easily on his sword hilt. From his position on the path, he looked down at Ryou from several feet up, which doubled the intimidation of his already formidable bearing.

“I’m fine,” Ryou said. “Just... admiring the view.”

“Are you having your Matrix moment? That’s what my programmers call it,” Kaiba said.

Ryou laughed. “I think so. I was tired but I don't feel it at all, anymore. Like all the fatigue's just melted away and I could run a marathon.”

“Is that something you enjoy?”

“Oh, no. I hate sports.”

Kaiba snorted.

“So, tell me. Why do you want this job?” he said. “At my company? Writing stories with my technology?”

“Er - ” Blindsided by the swerve in topics, Ryou tripped over his thoughts. Surely he must’ve read his application? Maybe he didn’t have the time. Stick to straightforward. “I’m sure you remember my performance in Battle City?”

“Yes, I remember,” Kaiba said, which was honestly more than Ryou expected of him.

“Well, I don’t play much Duel Monsters anymore,” he said, “but I still.. every once in a while, I turn my Duel Disk on and play a few cards, just to see my monsters come out, see them breathe… you know I run a Zombie deck, full of demons and dead things, but SolidVision makes them feel so - so alive. You took these fantasy monsters that exist only in our heads and put them in our world.”

“Virtual World game writers don’t work on SolidVision products,” Kaiba countered.

“Right, I know that. To me, Virtual World and SolidVision are the inverse of each other, or opposites that contain each other, like, like yin and yang - with SolidVision, the unreal enters the real, and becomes real. In the Virtual World, the real - ” Ryou motioned to himself - “enters the unreal, and becomes unreal. We like to put walls between imagination and reality, you know, taxes are real and unicorns aren’t, but with SolidVision and Virtual World, there is no wall. That’s the world I want to write stories for.”

“Hm,” Kaiba said, the corner of his mouth curving up in a smile. “Interesting take.”

And he waited, saying nothing more, until Ryou realized he was waiting for him; and trotted lightly up the path to join him.

***

By the time they reached the top of the mountain pass, the air had turned a clear, dusky gold. The mountains cast long, black shadows across the valley, like dark teeth, chewing up the farmlands. The mountain pass was saddle-shaped, one side sloping down into the valley they’d just come from, the other flattening into a smaller, higher bowl, cupping a pale blue-green lake between its rocky palms.

Kaiba scrambled onto the nearest large rock, his head swinging as he scanned the lake valley. Ryou wrapped one arm around his waist and bit his thumb. They had found a deep, penetrating quiet, the kind of wilderness quiet that was devoid of texture of any kind; no bugs or burbling streams or bird song. It was not even like holding your breath, waiting, because that implied a coming moment of exhale, a sigh of relief. This was a perfect stillness.

And hidden somewhere inside it was a dragon.

Ryou bit harder, until he remembered the pain was fake and did nothing, and he had to come up with something else to temper his anxiety, which was definitely, definitely real.

Kaiba's gonna flip his shit when he sees your dragon, Yuugi said, from the back of Ryou's mind, Ryou's demo manuscript in hand. In a good way or a bad way? Is it too derivative? What does it matter that he'll flip his shit for my dragon when he flips his shit for ANY dragon? He's a slut for dragons. Oh my god, you can't say that! Yuugi, please, help - nope. You got this. You know what you're doing.

Even the metallic shing of Kaiba’s sword coming out of its sheath seemed small, in an unnatural way, a pointless, petty defiance.

A shadow fell across the lake valley.

Both of them looked up -

and an enormous dragon hurtled out of the sky, landing with thundering force on all four clawed feet, flattening trees and boulders beneath its reptilian bulk. Ryou staggered backwards and fell, in an awkward, clumsy crab pose; Kaiba threw his shield over his face and dug in, undaunted.

"HAVE YOU COME TO KILL ME?" the dragon boomed. “MISERABLE WRETCH?”

Kaiba lowered his shield, just enough for his first full look at the dragon. From his spot, crumpled on the ground, Ryou saw, in the shadow below the shield, another slender smile. The dragon’s hide was a dark, luxurious blue-black, mottled like snakeskin but textured with the heavy crags and knobs of crocodiles. It lowered its head on its long, arching neck, gracefully bearing the weight of two massive, curving horns, and stared down at them with fathomless acid-green eyes.

Even Ryou, who had designed it, sat enthralled: every movement it made - the eager flick of its tail, the claws, curling into the dirt, glinting under a layer of blood and grime, the shuddering of its leathery wings as they folded into its long body - hinted at indomitable power. It was a true creature of legend, a titan from the youngest days of the world, demanding both reverence and terror.

“I have!” Kaiba replied blithely, despite announcing it in a ringing voice.

“ONLY THE CHOSEN ONE CAN DEFEAT ME,” the dragon said. “YOU ARE NOT WORTHY OF SUCH A FEAT. I SEE YOUR HEART, BLACKGUARD KNIGHT. I CAN TASTE THE BLOOD YOU’VE SPILLED WITH YOUR SWORD, BRIGHT AND PUNGENT. I CAN HEAR THE CRIES OF ALL THE LIVES YOU’VE LET EBB INTO THE DIRT AT YOUR FEET!”

“I’m here to avenge the village!” Kaiba shouted.

“YOU COME UP HERE TO DEFEND SOME PATHETIC SCRAPS OF BRICK AND WOOD, THINKING YOU CAN KILL ME, AND CALL THAT HONOR? REDEMPTION? YOU CALL THAT COURAGE? ITS TRUE NAME IS VANITY! EMPTY AND FALSE! IT WILL STRIKE YOU DOWN BEFORE I DO!” the dragon boomed again. “LEAVE. I WAS ONCE NAIVE AND VAIN LIKE YOU. COME BACK WHEN YOU ARE MORE THAN A MERE WORM, OR ELSE SUFFER MY FATE!”

Ryou had clambered to his feet and bolted for the safety of a low ridge, which gave him a perfect view of Kaiba, head held high and proud as he gazed unflinching at the dragon, several hundred times his size. He’d written those words in his notebook on the metro, leaning his head against the cool midnight glass, pausing every other line to ferret out another piece of sour candy from his bag. Then he’d missed his stop. That trundling, light-washed world of a train car seemed impossibly distant now - a rapidly fading dream, to be remembered only in flashes and silence. To hear the words come out of the smoking jaws of this dragon, each syllable flowing in a delicious, indulgent baritone from its shining teeth, filled him with a breathless exhilaration, his heart hammering in his throat - this was real!

“Only one of us is suffering fate today!” Kaiba shouted back, a laugh in his voice, and then threw a glance at Ryou. “‘Suffer my fate?’ Is that a typo?”

“VERY WELL. COME KILL ME! THERE IS PEACE IN DEATH, AND ONLY ONE OF US CAN CLAIM IT!”

“I - watch out!” Ryou yelled, as the dragon lunged forward, its jaws snapping shut on the empty air where Kaiba had been standing half a second before. Kaiba threw himself out of the way, a nimble tuck and roll, and scrabbled across the shale towards higher ground. Behind him, the dragon swung its massive head, nostrils red and flaring, mouth curled up in a savage draconic grin, glinting with the promise of violence.

No sooner had Kaiba flung himself behind a scattering of boulders, shield raised, than it unleashed a jet of fire so hot and scorching the boulders glowed red, their rough faces melting in sheets. Ryou felt the heat wash across his face, from several dozen yards away.

The fire died out. The dragon snorted in satisfaction, horse-like, a loud, wet huff of smoke. The boulders sizzled as they cooled into their new, bizarrely dripping forms.

Kaiba emerged from behind a boulder, sweating and singed, his face streaked with ash and his eyes shining. He tossed the warped, melted wreckage of his shield aside, where it bounced and clattered against the rocks.

“SO YOU STILL LIVE? A MISTAKE. WHAT COMES NEXT WILL HURT WORSE!”

“For you!” Kaiba hurled back, and threw his hand into the air, a gesture Ryou had seen countless times on a duel field - a lightning rod, a summoning. “VENTUS!”

The wind picked up, in a giddy, howling whirl, bringing with it a cloud of dust that descended gritty and blinding and pale across the valley. Kaiba and the dragon vanished from sight inside it. Mentally Ryou subtracted one spell from Kaiba’s satchel.

“THIS WON’T HELP Y - ” Cut off by a wet chop and an ear-splitting draconic scream, a raw, awful sound, torn out of an unwilling throat. Just below it, a glorious, cascading laugh. “WRETCH! WORM!”

The dust settled, revealing glistening, dark-green blood splattered across the rocks, and a single severed claw, its flesh still twitching. The dragon seethed, its wounded foot curled in agony. Kaiba was clear across the other side of the pass, by the dragon’s tail, grinning open-mouthed as he panted for breath. His chainmail and surcoat dripped with dragon blood; his hair was thick with it.

“COME GET YOUR PEACE, DRAGON!” he bellowed, and the dragon slung its head around, tail coiling in an ominous whip.

Again Kaiba lifted his hand, shouted “VENTUS - !”

And a second dust cloud barreled into the valley, as the dragon roared back, “THAT WON’T WORK AGAIN!”

It whipped its tail through the dust cloud, a scythe-like sweep - smacking something hard into the rocks with a thick, fleshy crunch of bone that made Ryou’s insides clench tight with terrified sympathy.

The dragon whirled around, clearing the dust with several storm-gathering wingbeats.

This was not real. This was just pixels, neatly arranged and running in rivers of algorithms - just a clever series of ones and zeroes - and yet Ryou gasped, the dragon laughing, at the sight of Kaiba lying in a crumpled, motionless heap in the rocks. He hadn’t considered Kaiba might actually fail to kill the dragon - all thoughts of jobs and game-writing abandoned - unreality aside, the mind had a way of making it real - what the fuck happened if Kaiba died?

“IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE, WORM?” the dragon said, nudging Kaiba’s limp body with its claws, rolling him over. His head lolled, his body twisted into a horrifying, broken-boned slouch. How on earth was Ryou going to explain this to Yuugi? Hell. “I TOLD YOU, YOU'RE NOT W - ”

Ryou almost didn’t see it - a hawk in a dive, arrow-straight, from the top of the sky, diving through a blinding flash of light several stories up - and out of the light came Kaiba, alive and whole, plummeting towards the dragon’s head, gripping his sword with both hands - plunging it straight through the top of the dragon’s skull.

He left the sword hilt-deep in dragon flesh as he pitched forward with the force of impact, rolling over the dragon’s brow, flailing to catch himself - on the massive horn. Clinging, victorious, as the great dragon swayed, its green eyes filming, and finally slumped, in agonized slow motion, to the earth, body first, head last, with a thundering, bone-rattling crash.

It released one last, rattling breath, the trees shuddering in the fetid breeze.

The valley descended into stillness once more.

Ryou sat down on his low escarpment with a limp thump, burying his face in both hands. This was just a Virtual World, where at one point everything would power down and they’d wake up safe and sound in the squishy, air-conditioned comfort of a pod, and he had, after all, planned on Kaiba killing the dragon, but Kaiba’s sheer nerve seemed beyond that. Yuugi was right. The guy was, maybe, a little nuts. Completely off his rocker.

“Ryou,” Kaiba said, above him, and Ryou lifted his head. Kaiba rested the sword jauntily across his shoulder, the rest of him filthy with dragon blood and human blood and dirt. “I have to say, I enjoyed your dragon. A shame it had to die.”

“Your strategy... You used a glamour spell? On a... rock? To make it look like your dead body,” Ryou said. “And then a transformation spell.”

“Correct. Is that all for your demo?” Kaiba said, cocking an eyebrow, both bloody and disdainful, and Ryou swallowed. “I was hoping for more of a cha - ”

His words stopped hard in his throat, a harsh, hacking sound. His free hand flew to his neck, mouth dropping open in pain and confusion, eyes widening. He coughed - or tried to, achieving nothing more than a thin, ugly retching, his face going white - and Ryou watched, in fascinated horror, as his gamble began to play out. There was nothing he could do to help; he’d written it that way.

The sword clattered to the stones, green blood dripping off the shining edge, as Kaiba staggered sideways, gasping for breath, both hands on his neck - what was the algorithm doing to him? Ryou had only written ‘a suffocating, squirming pain, concentrated in the lungs,’ and resolved to think more carefully about what types of pain he might inflict on the player characters, if the gamble paid off... But how interesting to know even the creator of the Virtual World himself suspended his disbelief - his knowledge of the truth - sometimes, and indulged in pain...

He collapsed to his knees, stretching one hand out, fisting it around Ryou’s collar and dragging him closer -

“What - ” he choked out, eyes glaring into Ryou’s, in baffled, furious agony - terrified - they rolled backwards, the blue sliding away to white, as he slumped over himself.

His hand went slack and fell. What life remained slipped away in a low, shaking sigh.

Ryou took him by the shoulders and gently lay him down, passing a hand over his eyes to close them. Dead, but not really.

“Just hold on a moment,” he said. The body had been vacated. The soul - the player - was awakening elsewhere.

He waited a few moments, absorbing the stillness, the detail on the leaves of the pine trees; the way the lake water shimmered in golden flecks with late afternoon light. It was maybe his last few seconds to enjoy the world he’d written, rendered in full splendor by the magic of technology, and he’d banished his anxiety from both his mind and body, to live out its exile in the real world. It didn’t belong here.

The great dragon body began to stir, drowsily, waking up from a deep, deep sleep. The deepest sleep.

Ryou stood up and slid down the escarpment to the dragon, pebbles and dust avalanching around his feet. The stab wound in its skull was knitting back together; the severed claw was crawling back to its slow-bleeding joint. There was an agonized hiss, forced through the dragon’s tightly-clenched teeth, and a vibrating groan, deep in its chest, as it gathered itself out of death.

Its eyes opened, in wary slits - not the bright, acid green, but a stunning, oceanic blue.

“OW. FUCK,” it growled, in Kaiba’s voice, magnified and twice as resonant. “OPEN MASTER COMMANDS, USER ID 000002510. SUSPEND ALL PAIN ALGORITHMS. CLOSE MASTER COMMANDS.”

He rolled upright, flexing his wings with experimental care. He arched his neck, looking down at Ryou.

“YOU TURNED ME INTO A DRAGON.”

“Yes,” Ryou said cautiously.

“NO ONE HAS EVER TURNED ME INTO A DRAGON BEFORE,” Kaiba said. ”SO I WASN’T WORTHY? IS THIS WHAT IT MEANS TO SUFFER THE DRAGON’S FATE? EVERYONE WHO KILLS THE DRAGON BECOMES THE DRAGON, AND ONLY THE CHOSEN ONE BREAKS THE CYCLE. IS THAT HOW IT GOES?”

“That’s how it goes.”

“HOW DO I FIND THE CHOSEN ONE?”

“You choose them,” Ryou said. “You decide what makes them worthy.”

"SO ANYONE CAN BE THE CHOSEN ONE? ANYONE CAN BREAK MY CURSE?"

"That's right."

Kaiba pondered that for a moment, flexing his claws idly in the dirt, the massive slabs of muscle in his shoulders shifting as he tested the strength and fit of his new draconic body. His gaze drifted out over the lower valley, eyes clouding briefly with memories of another story, another game, another man; one who had always seemed real and unreal, all at once, no matter what world he lived in. Ryou had heard it all from Yuugi.

Then Kaiba looked at him and started to laugh, a sound that echoed and rebounded across the small lake valley, the water shivering as each delighted peal of laughter rolled across. Ryou blushed as it buffeted him from all sides.

“IS THAT SO,” Kaiba said, with dry relish. “YOU’RE HIRED.”

#sibbinthegivengibbon #fanfiction #euroshipping #(platonic)#oh my goddddddd this was a blast to write i just enjoyed myself the entire time #thanks for the prompt!!#its 1 AM i'm going the FUCK to sleep

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