#grimm codex | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jaces-senseless-fuckery · 5 years

Text

Grimm Codex: Hellynx

///A new Grimm that me and @naughty-neo came up with pretty quick one night. I hope you guys like it///

"To tell you the truth, I don't even know where to start with the Hellynx. They would almost be majestic if they weren't ruthless killing machines. They're lean but extremely powerful for their size. They're almost as powerful as an Ursai Major, and that's just the normal ones. They're like panthers, lions, and tigers all mixed into the body of a Grimm and they're absolutely deadly. I know that first hand from fighting a few with my team. Their reflexes are the best out of any Grimm I've ever encountered. I was nearly swarmed by a few when they noticed me. It's a good thing my reflexes are better." - Raine Daturas, detailing her experience with the feline Grimm after a run in with them along side her team one day.

The Hellynx are fairly large feline Grimm that prowl the forests of the world of Remnant, especially in the jungles of Menagerie. Each Hellynx stand at five feet tall on all fours and are six feet long from the snout to the tip of their tails. These Grimm are built like panthers but have more muscles lining their frame, and have red stripes nearly like a tiger's along their bodies. Their long tails are tipped with small, spiked clubs of bone and their legs from the knees down to their paws are lined with bone plating with spikes at the backs of their knees.

Another defining feature of the Hellynx are their teeth. They are all sharp but they have large fangs in the front that extend from the roof of their mouths to the bottom of their jaws, always exposed and intimidating. These Grimm have lean builds but they are very powerful. The power of these feline Grimm rival an Ursai Major and they can bring down any unwary Huntsman or Huntress if they aren't watching their backs. Along with that power comes their flexibility and agility, making these beasts even more formidable to fight. They have very sharp reflexes and can dodge out of the way of nearly any attack a person makes and strike back as quick as a Taijitu.

These are only regular Hellynxes though. Alphas pose an even larger threat to Huntsmen and Huntresses. They are two feet taller from their paws to the tops of their shoulders, and two feet longer. They have heavier and spikier clubs on their tails, their legs are fully covered in bone plating with slightly longer spikes jutting out from the backs of the knees and a couple of foot long spikes at the tops of their front shoulders, giving them an even more intimidating look than a lesser Hellynx. And that doesn't include the fangs extending three inches past their bottom jaw or their thick bone white manes of hair like a lion's that make them look even more intimidating, as if they already weren't to begin with.

One final thing these Grimm have to them is their large retractable claws. A lesser Hellynx's claws look like a normal panther's would, but an Alpha's front claws have serrations to them to keep their prey in place while they go for the kill. Great care must be taken you come across one Hellynx or gods forbid an entire pride of six, including the Alpha making seven. If you ever do, then you had better be ready for quick attacks from all sides by every single Hellynx there before they wear you down enough to make the killing blow.

The Hellynx are no laughing matter and are a high threat to any Huntsman or Huntress. If you are surrounded by an entire pride of them, then you will have to fight as hard as you can to survive because you cannot outrun them by normal means.

But, there are other ways to make it out of an encounter with them.

These ways include of course getting on your hands and knees and lowering your head submissively, and then an entirely new situation forms as the Hellynxes slowly circle around you, each one taking sniffs of the air as their cocks begin to come out of their sheaths. A lesser Hellynx's cock is ten inches long when fully erect and decently thick, and they have numerous barbs along the length of them to make mating with a person either painful or extremely pleasurable. The Alphas on the other hand have larger fifteen inch long cocks that are a bit thicker than their lesser brethren, and the barbs on their cocks are larger and they have even more of them all along their length.

When the Alpha gets a hold of you if you choose to submit to the pride, then they will really grab a good hold with their serrated front claws and have their way with you until it's completely satisfied with how much seed it deposits into your body, uncaring of how its barbed cock makes you feel. And then it and its pride will most likely leave you alone to either crawl back to the safety of a village or camp, or just laying wherever they finished with you.

Or, they will go another round or so, all until they're completely empty.

#grimm codex #hellynx #alpha hellynx

13 notes · View notes

pineapplesquash · 4 years

Text

I know I haven’t been here as much art-wise but have these gay dads

#they’re rivals #Grimm Noire #Codex

18 notes · View notes

razieltwelve · 4 years

Note

So in Final Rose/Final Effect, what the heck ARE the Grimm? Violent Entropy?

Long ago, there was a powerful and advanced race that learned how to journey not simply through their own universe but across the multiverse as well. In their travels, they encountered many other races and entities, some good and some bad. This race would, in time, become known simply as the Wayfarers due to their curious nature and desire to explore all of Creation.

It was during this time that they encountered a devastatingly powerful higher-dimensional being that was capable of altering reality on a colossal scale. This being had already carved a path of devastation through the multiverse. It had eradicated countless races and enslaved countless more to help wage its war through the endless sea of possibilities.

The Wayfarers formed an alliance with other advanced races and waged a terrible war against the creature they came to call the Grim One. Yet despite their technology, the Wayfarers and their allies were driven back universe by universe.

The Wayfarers’ scholars eventually made a startling discovery. The Grim One had once been a Living World, a planet suffused by a power that would one day be called Aura by others. The Grim One had devoured all of the life that had lived on it before using the accumulated Semblances and Aura of all those beings to propel itself through space. It then slaughtered and devoured other Living Worlds, growing stronger and stronger with each murder.

By the time it gained the ability to walk from one universe to another, the Grim One possessed the power of an unimaginable number of Living Worlds, as well as the Semblances of the creatures that had once lived upon them. With this power, the Grim One began its steady march across the multiverse.

After discovering this, the Wayfarers were determined to come up with a weapon capable of fighting the Grim One. If it was a being born of Aura, then they needed weapons designed to counter Aura-based abilities wielded by warriors that could not be corrupted by Aura. Yet Aura was an insidious and terrifying power. It could be used to influence anything with a soul and had shown the ability to influence machinery and organic constructs as well.

Working together with their allies, the Wayfarers decided to create new beings. They called them… Grimm to mock their hated foe.

Unlike other forms of life, the Grimm were neither living nor dead. They possessed no souls, yet they were not machines or simple constructs. They were immune to corruption by Aura, and they were designed to constantly evolve and adapt, growing stronger and more numerous by attacking and destroying anything associated with Aura.

For countless years, the Wayfarers and their allies fought a desperate holding action to give the Grimm time to grow strong enough and numerous enough to face the Grim One and its thralls. At last the time came. The Grimm were unleashed, and they descended on the Grim One and its force like a black tide.

It did not matter how many of them were slain, for the Grimm had the ability to reproduce by feeding off negativity and other dark emotions. In a war that spanned the multiverse, there was more than enough negativity to not only sustain them but also bolster their numbers.

For the first time, the Grim One and its forces were pushed back. Exultant, the Wayfarers and their allies poured even more resources into developing and honing their new weapons. And the Grimm more than met expectations. Universe after universe was cleansed of the Grim One’s taint. Oh, the universes were left barren and stripped of life, but life would return in time. Indeed, the Wayfarers and their allies took great pains to seed new life in these desolate ruins.

For aeons, the two factions continued to battle until at last it became clear that the Grim One would fall. Forced back to its home universe, the Grim One decided upon a final, vengeful ploy. With all of its remaining power, it lashed out at the Wayfarers and their allies. The violence of its death throes concealed its malevolent scheme.

The Grim One had infected the research facilities of its enemies. Unbeknownst to them, new forms of Grimm would begin to form, and the underlying purpose of the Grimm would change. Until then, the Grimm had targeted only the Grim One and its forces. Now, they would target anything that lived, anything that wasn’t Grimm.

The new forms of Grimm would be overseers, leaders to guide the Grimm on their new crusade. Into the Grimm, the Grim One poured countless templates and powers of its own. It could not influence the existing Grimm, but it could shape the new Grimm through its corruption of the research facilities.

By the time the Wayfarers and their allies realised what was happening it was too late. The Grimm turned on them, led by the new Grimm who seized control of their ancient brethren. Overwhelmed, the Wayfarers realised that the Grim One had never intended to beat them. Once its own defeat had become inevitable, it was content to simply have them die alongside it.

Desperately, the Wayfarers sought a solution. There had to be a way. They scattered throughout the multiverse as their fortresses and bastions fell one by one. The new Grimm took to their task with zeal, and as they fought and learned, they came to understand that eliminating the Wayfarers and other advanced races was key to their survival and victory.

As the Wayfarers and their allies were eradicated one by one, the few survivors came up with a solution. They built a colossal super weapon, one capable of attacking on a conceptual level across the entire multiverse and across all space and time.

Once, travel across the multiverse had been relatively easy. No longer. The weapon would split the multiverse into countless shards, each of them isolated from one another by tremendous forces and energies. This, they hoped, would help to contain the Grimm.

The weapon was also designed to erase the Grimm themselves throughout the multiverse, and to do so in a way that would make it impossible for them to escape it even if they fled through space and time.

Yet the Grimm had not been idle. They had devoured the dead, broken body of the Grim One, and they had peered through its memories to learn. They devised a weapon of their own, one that would collapse the multiverse into a single plane of existence as well as create a ‘fixed point’ in Creation that would ensure that no matter what happened they would always exist.

When the two factions learned of each other’s designs, it became an arms race. Yet the race ended in what was, for all intents and purposes, a tie. The two competing super weapons fired, and the multiverse was never the same.

The Wayfarers succeeded in shattering the multiverse to the point that even the Grimm were hard-pressed to travel from one universe to another. Instead, the various swarms were largely isolated from one another. However, they were not able to wipe out the Grimm. Instead, the Grimm succeeded in creating a fixed point.

There would always be Grimm. Always.

Yet the Wayfarers managed to cripple the Grimm, killing many of them and driving even more into a sort of wounded stasis.

However, the backlash of the two weapons clashing against each other was catastrophic. The Wayfarers and their allies were almost all killed when they own weapon was destroyed. The few survivors were cut off and isolated from each other, and they fell prey to the vengeful forces of the remaining Grimm.

Likewise, the Grimm’s weapon was also destroyed, and it could never be rebuilt since it had been crafted from the corpse of the Grim One.

And so the great war came to an end. The Grimm now wander the multiverse seeking to eradicate everything that isn’t Grimm. They are, above all, drawn to living things because of remnants of their original design. This is why they are especially drawn to Aura and powers like it. It is also why they don’t simply wipe out civilisations. Instead, they like to prolong the battle to draw out the full strength of their opponent, so they can subsume it for their own through evolving and learning.

Moreover, they hope to force the creation of another being similar to the Grim One, so they can rebuild their ancient weapon and finish what they started.

X X X

In the distant, distant, distant, distant future, the Children of Remnant will one day learn what happened. Even further into the future, they will stand where the Wayfarers and their allies did, and they will face the full might of the Grimm. For every universe where heroes and legends bring the light of hope and triumph over the Grimm, there are countless more where the Grimm succeeded.

The Children of Remnant will need their full strength, and they will need to gather allies of their own as well. The Grimm have grown strong as they have slaughtered their way across the multiverse. The Children of Remnant will have to be even stronger.

#final codex #final rose #fanfiction #grimm

9 notes · View notes

twh-news · 3 years

Text

How Loki Shapeshifted From Nordic Folklore to a Marvel Icon

by Sara Durn

There are more than 800 years between the stories of Viking god Loki first being written down and his arrival (in the superb Tom Hiddleston) in the Marvel cinematic universe in 2011’s Thor. The new Disney+ series Loki, set to be released on June 9, is primed to explore more antics of Thor’s trickster brother as he attempts to fix the timeline he helped break in Avengers: Endgame. Among his many talents, Loki has cheated death a few times in the MCU, but that amounts to child’s play for this god.

In Norse mythology, Loki causes just as much confusion as his Marvel iteration. Though there aren’t any stories of him outwitting death, there are plenty of myths where he shapeshifts, swaps genders, or tricks gods into killing other gods. In the Marvel universe, he’s quite prone to allegiance swapping. Let’s dig into this troublemaker’s journey.

What is Loki’s origin?

The legends surrounding the Norse god are first documented in writing around the 13th century, primarily in Iceland. There are two versions of these legends that enter the historical record around the same time—the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. The Poetic Edda is an anonymous collection of Old Norse poems that are mainly pulled from an Icelandic medieval manuscript known as the Codex Regius (some of the poems date back to 800 CE). The Prose Edda is an Old Norse textbook for composing poetry that was written by a single author, Snorri Sturluson, a colorful Icelandic historian, scholar, and lawspeaker.

“Within the myths, you can see Loki moving from being just mischievous to being absolutely evil. If you think of him as only being mischievous, he’s actually a creative force and often ends up getting the gods much of their magical possessions, like Thor’s Hammer, through his cunning.”

“Pretty much everything we know about Loki came from Snorri Sturluson,” Viking scholar Nancy Marie Brown, author of Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths, told io9. Brown says this was very appropriate given that “Snorri was quite a trickster figure himself.” While calling him the “Homer of the North,” Brown also acknowledges that Snorri spent a lifetime “double-crossing friends and family… scheming and plotting, blustering and fleeing”— a life that eventually led to his unheroic demise in a nightshirt where his (supposed) final words were “don’t strike!” In both Eddas, Loki is always portrayed as a cunning trickster. In the Prose Edda, Snorri describes Loki as “pleasing and handsome in appearance, evil in character, very capricious in behavior. He possessed to a greater degree than other [gods] the kind of learning that is called cunning.”

Besides appearances, Loki is always getting the gods into trouble and then cleverly extricating them from the mess he’s made. He fathers the Midgard Serpent destined to bring about Ragnarök, the end of the world in Norse mythology. He convinces the blind god Hodr to kill the beautiful and favored god Baldur. He kidnaps the goddess Idun to save his own hide from a furious giant. The mythological character is constantly switching sides—sometimes supporting the gods and sometimes their enemies, the giants. In the MCU, Loki is both hero and villain—in The Avengers he opened a wormhole in New York City releasing alien monsters and in Thor: Ragnarok he helped Thor save the Asgardians from Hela’s wrath.

Thorwald’s Cross, a fragmented runestone depicting Odin being consumed. Image: Public Domain

Loki might have begun as a Norse god of fire—fitting considering how fire can be both “helpful and destructive,” said Brown. Fire can both burn down your house and cook you dinner. It’s tricky that way—like Loki. As Brown puts it, “You can see his two sides there [reflected in fire].” Brown also explains that there was likely a transformation in Loki over the centuries. “Within the myths, you can see Loki moving from being just mischievous to being absolutely evil. If you think of him as only being mischievous, he’s actually a creative force and often ends up getting the gods much of their magical possessions, like Thor’s Hammer, through his cunning.” Again, it’s just like Marvel’s Loki, who sometimes helps the other gods out, like when he teamed up with Thor to escape the Grandmaster in Thor: Ragnarok.

What is Loki’s relationship with the Devil?

In the long, slow conversion of the Vikings to Christianity that took place between the 9th and 12th centuries, Loki became a parallel to the Christian Devil. The creative, positive elements of him fell away leaving only the god favored by the Father (Odin/God) before getting cast out. (It does sound a bit like Lucifer, right?) Christianity paints a world that is far more black and white, good vs. evil than the Norse pagan religion—here’s little room for a grey, ambiguous figure like Loki. As Brown puts it, “The Christian religion insists that you’re either with us or against us. Whereas in what we understand of the pagan Viking religion, there were a lot of shades of grey. There was a spectrum on which you could move back and forth. You weren’t all one thing or all the other. You weren’t all female or all male. You weren’t all good or all evil. It was more human.”

Loki always moved fluidly between those two polarities—helping Thor in one story, causing an overthrow of the gods in another. In one tale, Loki shapeshifts into a mare, becoming the mother of Odin’s great 8-legged horse, Sleipnir. In another, he fathers the wolf Fenrir. The Church couldn’t really handle all that grey area Loki liked to inhabit, and so it eventually cast him as the devil himself. “[Monks] had to sort the gods into saints and devils, and Loki by being sexually ambiguous and also morally ambiguous falls into the devil [category],” explained Brown. Though Marvel’s Loki certainly channels a bit of the devil at times, we’ve luckily yet to see him become both mother and father to world-ending, multi-legged monsters in the Marvel Universe. But, there’s still time, especially with the new Disney+ series hitting the small screen.

When was Loki’s Revival?

After the Viking conversion, the Norse myths started to fade, and Loki with them—until the 1600s, when medieval manuscripts like those containing the Prose and Poetic Edda began to be translated. “The reason [these myths] became popular was because of nationalism,” Brown told us. “In the mid to late 1800s, there was the idea that what distinguished one nation from another was its cultural heritage.” This spurred Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm and Wilhelm Carl Grimm—known to many simply as the Brothers Grimm—to go “collect the stories of the local people to prove that Germany was a nation, not a collection of states. You had the same thing happening in Ireland to prove that they were different from the English and you have the same thing happening in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.” This eventually gave rise to the Nazis appropriating Norse myths in their twisted pursuit of alleging Aryan supremacy.

Following the Civil War, the United States also looked to the Middle Ages to redefine the country’s fractured identity. As Chris Bishop, author of Medievalist Comics and the American Century, explained to io9, “[the Middle Ages] offered an aesthetic that was individualistic (think: the knight errant, Robin Hood, etc.), given to interpretations of exceptionalism (Camelot, the once and future king), venerable (where old equalled established and respectable), and (unlike Classicism) Christian.” The Middle Ages, or more accurately the remixing of the Middle Ages known in academia as “medievalisms,” appealed to many Americans obsessed with ideas of American exceptionalism and singularity in the 19th century. Eventually the U.S.’s obsession with the Middle Ages made its way into comic books starting with Prince Valiant in 1937, a comic strip created by Hal Foster set in and around the legends of King Arthur. Other medievalist comics followed eventually leading to the inclusion of Norse gods like Loki, Thor, and Odin.

First appearance of Loki in the 1949 Venus comics. Image: Wikicommons

When was Marvel Comics’ Loki introduced?

While Loki first appeared in the 1949 comic book Venus styled after (you guessed it) the devil, the modern-age Loki didn’t hit the comic book scene until co-writers and brothers Stan Lee and Larry Lieber adapted him in 1962’s Journey into Mystery #85. It’s in that issue where Loki “becomes Thor’s enemy/ally/brother/adopted brother/etc,” said Bishop. The mischievous personality of the Norse god remains largely the same in the Loki of the comic books and films and even retains the ability to swap genders at times.

In the comics, Loki is raised as Thor’s brother in Asgard—somewhere the Marvel stories diverge from the Norse mythology. It’s Loki and Odin who are sworn brothers in the Norse myths, not Loki and Thor. As Brown explains, “Loki and Odin are blood brothers, which means they are even closer than real brothers.” In the Viking world, two people who swore a blood oath to one another formed a bond that went beyond kin, and so went the Norse Loki and Odin’s relationship. As Bishop points out, the Loki/Thor dynamic of the comics and movies is a “classic, formulaic archetype.” Thor is the “big, hunky, handsome (but slightly dumb) hero” and Loki is “his slight, quirky but super-smart frenemy. Loki is the dark, misunderstood, vulnerable shadow that audiences can relate to, reach out to, care for. Thor is that dumb jock who everyone looked up to at school, but Loki was that cool, quiet kid who went on to found a tech-empire.”

Why is Loki called a Trickster?

What does remain consistent with Loki is that he always plays the trickster. He is the manifestation of psychologist Carl Jung’s archetype: The trickster disrupts the individual and/or society causing either growth or destruction. Social scientist Helena Bassil-Morozow points out that when it comes to Loki, “despite the fact that the narrative details between the medieval Loki stories and their contemporary versions vary, the main idea remains the same—the trickster mercilessly attacks those in power and nearly causes the end of the world.” Both in the Norse myths and in Marvel, the world needs saving from Loki. He acts as the catalyst for a whole lot of upheaval—upheaval that in the Norse myths causes Ragnarök.

Loki “functions as a locus of salvation (literally, a prodigal son).” Loki just might be a savior. He’s someone audiences can look at and think “if Loki can be redeemed, so too might I.”

Perhaps that’s where the two narratives differ the most. In the Norse tales, the end of the world at Ragnarök is inevitable. Odin and Thor will die. Everything will change. Vikings lived with the knowledge that their world would end. In the MCU, we don’t know how the story ends, plus Ragnarök took place already and yet the Asgardians live on. There’s still hope that Loki will prove to be good and that the other superheroes will save the world from whatever mayhem he’s caused, or so we can hope in the upcoming Disney+ series. As Bishop puts it, Loki “functions as a locus of salvation (literally, a prodigal son).” Loki just might be a savior. He’s someone audiences can look at and think “if Loki can be redeemed, so too might I,” explains Bishop.

While the Vikings’ Loki caused the end of the world, today’s Loki might just save it. Or maybe not. And, perhaps that’s the fun of the trickster—you never quite know what they’ll get up to.

#loki #norse mythology #mcu

78 notes · View notes

themusicassassin · 2 years

Text

First of all, this art ain't mine but I'm showing this for context of what I'm gonna say. This fanfiction is one of my favourite Halo stories mixed with RWBY(if you know, you know). The following 'Legend of the Lone Wolf' is inspired by Elena Richardson's logs in Doom Eternal. Enjoy reading this ig. Also of you're interested the fanfiction is on....... well, Fanfiction.net so of you wanna read this masterpiece go right ahead.

Retired Adventurer: Child.... Have you not heard of the Lone Wolf ?

Rookie Adventurer: You mean the guy that saved you once ?

Retired Adventurer: Aye.... It was the day I quit my duty for a better life. Back in my day, The Creatures of Grimm were the most vicious beings on the whole of Remnant. We watched as their hordes destroyed the best adventurers out there we could ever muster. But it was..... useless. They attacked with a deadly passion,not caring for themselves but for the bloodshed caused to humanity. We eradicated hundreds but thousands more followed. But then.... IT came. It cut through them like a scythe over field. It's brutality way surpassing the damned beasts. It was faster-more relentless. I believe it to be more than just some cloaked individual. It. Was. Death......and in it lies our salvation. For as it gains in power, they fall in numbers. The Kings and Generals may command the armies to the North and South, but IT controls who would win and and who would die. It resides in the final embers of the afterlife, hunting them from the far reaches of the frontier and beyond. I became a believer that day. I believed it was in Death that I had faith in. The Wolf was the force that drove our enemies in pure terror and those who seek to attack is should feel warned. For there is only one dominant force of nature in this world....and it carries a steel barreled sword of Vengeance,(Shotgun), an ironclad bow of Fury(DMR) and fur of the blackest of Nights(Mjolnir armour). All hail the coming of the Grim Reaper. The Lone Wolf's time....has resumed once again.

Hope it wasn't too direct or too adapted to the codex

#Halo reach

5 notes · View notes

saturno-sol · 1 year

Note

I vaugky recall what Codex is but most of it has been lost to the soup. Something about a cool wyrm lady and her grimm hubby (n their lil grimm bavy) before bad troupe ritual shit and wyrm lady goes on revenge quest.

(I also vaguley recall wyrm lady- Quezal? I think Quezal foing the funky wyrm transformation and getting legs. She does not like having legs)

Unfortunately I do not remember enough for specific questions so like... tell me anything about the blorbos!

Hi! You’re mostly correct on that!

Less revenge quest and more just making a bet with the Nightmare Heart in order to keep her baby because she’s too attached to let him go + rips hubby out of the Heart as an afterthought.

And yes Quezal does not like legs at first, can you blame her tho. She was like our equivalent of a 10 year old who is used to slithering around not walking.

And thats ok! I can give a lil tidbits for them.

Quezal’s favorite rock is sandstone because its got a nice crunchy texture to chew on.

She also hates when her pin feathers come in, and will be grumpy until someone else (usually Jaune-dar or further on Chantilly) will come and help get the harder to reach ones.

#hollow knight #codex xihuitl #hollow knight oc #yes im putting this in main tag idgaf read my story boys #thanks for the ask!#daughterofskylark

6 notes · View notes

unregistered-doodles · 3 years

Text

"She's the one," Chantilly said. "I feel it in my bones."

"You're a fucking idiot," Nightmare King Grimm said. "Have fun dying, you fucking lunatic."

At least, that's how I imagine this goes. :)

Chantilly and Quezal belong to @saturno-sol . Pretty lizard lady with anger issues go brr, Chantilly go heehoo eyes emoji.

If you like Hollow Knight and OC-centric stories, check out their story Codex Xihuitl!

#doodlydoos #doodly doos #codex xihuitl #hee hoo hoo #chantilly no that's how you die she literally had no reservations against attacking a scorpion

6 notes · View notes

aspenflower17 · 4 years

Text

Wrath is The Cat

Hey everyone! This is my first completed fan fiction. It is very long, but I want to make sure I don’t leave you guys hanging with an unfinished fic. It is for Obey Me! and I had fun writing it. Know that I have finished Lesson Twenty regular and Lesson 15 Hard, so there might be spoilers. It also talk about Fruits Basket in this fic, though I don’t think there’s any major spoilers for that (also, if you haven’t read it or watched the new anime, you should!).

I am posting this at midnight, so I apologize if there’s formatting problems or such. Please comment or DM me with anything major you see and I will attempt to fix :)

Satan / Reader

Word Count: 3960

[some angst at the end]

“Are you reading that again?” Satan asked, eyeing the newest volume of My Hero Academia Mc had.

“Technically, this is the first time I’ve read this volume, but yes, I am reading My Hero Academia.“

"Why?”

“Huh?”

“Why would you read that when you could read real literature?”

“Hold on just a minute,” Mc said, fully shutting the volume so she could face him, “What did you say?”

“Come on. You can’t tell me you find that more compelling and as well written as A Portrait of Dorian Grey.”

“I never said one was superior to the other. Just because on is good does not invalidate the other. By that mode of thinking, no one should make new literature because it would never be as good as the classics, which is, simply put, a stupid idea.”

“Well, what about the issue of the art itself. These over idealized figures that couldn’t actually look the way they do in real life. ”

“Says one of the prettiest men I’ve ever met,” Mc muttered under her breath.

“Hmmm… what was that?”

“Are you talking about uber-boobs and uber-muscles?” Mc asked, hoping he honestly hadn’t heard her.

“Among other things, yes,” Satan said, though she could feel him trying to figure out what she’d actually said.

“Not all manga and comics are like that! It’s a trope in both genres. Before I started reading them, it’s something I thought too,” Mc said, not realizing that her voice had gotten very loud and fervent. Satan sat there, looking as if he was deciding whether to continue the conversation. Mc took a deep breath, her inner fan girl needing to quiet down in order to get through to him, “Have you read any?”

“Yes… Well, I tried once. Levi begged me to read one, so I conceded. Long story short, it was not to my liking.”

“Which one?”

“I believe it was called, That Time I Accidentally Fist Fought A Monster.”

Mc pinched the bridge of her nose, a habit she’d subconsciously picked up from Satan. He smiled softly as he recognized the imitation. That was a terrible anime or manga to start someone off on. It had a pretty good story, but it had far too many silly anime tropes for someone like Satan.

“That… That is not the one I would’ve started you out on.”

“And just which one would you have started me out on?”

Mc stopped, and started to think. Most of the anime and manga she liked were romance, and she wasn’t sure if those would be a good fit for him, especially since most of them didn’t have much of a story line besides the relationship. Although, there was one she had been able to get her brother into…

“My first instinct would be Fruits Basket. I’m not sure how much you'd like it at first, but I think if you give it a real chance and read until… the third volume, probably… I think you’d really end up enjoying it.”

“What do you think I’d like about it?”

“Hmmm… You’d probably really appreciate the dynamics between Kyo and Yuki. I also think you’ll appreciate the character depth and development. There’s also a lot of plot intricacies and plot twists. I also agree with a lot of people online that it’s a good introduction to anime and manga.”

“I’ll try it then.”

“Wait… What?”

“I have a feeling you’ve had more success introducing people to new things, especially since you have specific elements you think I would enjoy. So, I will try out your suggestion.”

“Are you sure you’re okay with my impulse reaction? I probably know of one’s you’ll enjoy more,” Mc asked, suddenly feeling a little vulnerable. Fruits Basket was one of the first anime she’s found on her own, and it still stood as one of her favorites. If Satan, who’s opinion she really valued, ended up hating it…

“I find I can trust your intuition most of the time. We also have similar tastes in regards to literature.”

“Oh… Well, I do have a copy of the first volume in my room if you want.”

“You have a copy here in the Devildom?”

“Mmmhmm. I ordered the whole set off of Akuzon after I found out Levi hadn’t read it.”

“I see. In that case, sure.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back.”

Mc smiled to herself the whole way back to her room. Though she was still a bit nervous, but after hearing Satan praise her tastes in literature, she was feeling more confident, “If I can at least get him to acknowledge it’s worth, I’ll feel accomplished.”

After grabbing the first volume, she thought for a second and grabbed the second. She put them in her book bag, and started on the familiar route to his room. All the brothers had a defined smell to their room, though Satan’s had always been the easiest for her to find. The smell of books started the moment you turned down the hallway his room was on. Standing in front of his dark wood door, she took a deep breath, knocked, then entered.

Satan was not where she had left him, which was kind of odd to her. Carefully avoiding a stack of books she had knocked over on a previous occasion, she started looking around, “Satan?”

There was some shuffling, and then his voice came from above, “You’re back quicker than I thought you would be. Come on up.”

Wait… What? Up the spiral staircase? For real? Everyone knew how rare it was to be allowed up to the second story of Satan’s room. No one went up without express permission. Even Mammon stayed out after being hexed so many times he’d lost feeling on the side of his big toe. Mc had only been up there once, and that was because Satan had wanted to show off his newest rare book. She had only been allowed to sit in the single armchair he had up theorem and she couldn’t touch anything, and for good reason. Satan kept his oldest, rarest, and most important books up there. He had even put a spell on every book up there to preserve them, and, if rumor was correct, a barrier that stopped him from going up there was he was upset. Aside from the few grimories and numerous magic books he had up there were rare human finds as well, all originals or first editions. One of Shakespeare’s folios. DaVinci’s Codex of Leicester. The Babylonian Talmud as well as an exemplified copy of the Magna Carter, both copies that the rest of the world didn’t know existed. A Gutenberg Bible, though his brother’s had no idea he had it. A collection of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Even an original copy of the Kama Sutra, which Asmo had given to him as a birthday present.

Getting to the top of the stairs, Mc stopped, not wanting to get too close to any of the books. Looking around, she couldn’t repress the sigh that emerged unbidden to her lips. Soft lighting that was perfect for reading with the spines of all the ancient books facing the world. Scrolls rested in their holders on the far wall. And there was the fourth eldest, crouched near one of the shelves, hand to his mouth and a furrow in his brow, thinking hard about something. His blonde hair had an almost golden hue in the light and his green eyes sparkled.

At the sigh, he looked up and smiled, “Go ahead and have a seat.”

Mc nodded and started over towards the chair she’d sat in the one other time she’d been allowed up here, but stopped halfway. The chair she sat on last time was still there, but now there was another chair. They looked fairly similar, being big reading chairs, but the new addition was much less worn and was more feminine in design. Having found the book he was looking for, Satan walked past Mc, and sat in the larger of the two chairs, effectively showing Mc which chair to take. After sitting down, she had to take a moment. It was by far, the most comfortable chair she’s ever sat in.

“I take it you like the chair then. Good, I’m glad,” he smiled, “I made sure it was large enough that you can curl your feet up on the seat like you do when you’re reading.”

“Wait… This is for me?”

“Of course. You need your own place to sit and read when you’re up here.”

Mc was at a loss for words, the gesture speaking volumes, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Just promise you’ll keep coming over for our reading nights; that’s all I ask.”

“That’s the easiest promise in the world to keep! Of course I will!”

Satan smiled again, one of the real smiles she’d been gifted with more and more frequently, “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Now, where’s this book you were talking about?”

“Yes, hold on,” Mc turned and grabbed it from her bag, “So, these are collector’s editions, so I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to be careful, but…”

“No problem,” Satan replied, taking the book, “If you’d indulge me, I also have a story I want you to read,” and he grabbed the book he had gotten from the shelf, “Do you remember the mystery author I told you about?”

“Yeah. Isn’t his name A. Cohen?”

“That’s the one. Well, I was wondering if you’d read his books while I read yours? I know mystery isn’t necessarily your favorite genre, but -” Satan cut off, looking down at Mc’s hand on his arm.

“I’d be more than happy to,” Mc beamed.

Satan smiled, “Glad to hear it. Now, these books are hard to come by in the Devildom. Please be careful with them. I happened to find a box set of his complete works, so replacing it would be pretty hard. The first one is Blind Intrigue.”

“Got it. Not that I wouldn’t be uber careful with anything you have up here.”

Satan laughed, “Well, I appreciate that,” and he opened the manga volume.

“Oh, did anyone tell you the way to read manga?”

“You read it right to left, correct?”

“Yes, including the speech bubbles. So, you’d read a page like this,” and Mc proceeded to show the way a page should be read.

“Ah. That would have been helpful last time. Thank you.”

“No problem,” and with that, they both started reading. Mc found Blind Intrigue very intriguing, enjoying that it wasn’t just another run-of-the-mill murder mystery. As she got further into the book, she subconsciously slipped off her shoes, and curled her feet up next to her. She almost forgot about the demon next to her. A sudden shift next to her brought her back to reality.

“I finished it.”

“Ah… W… What do you think?”

“It is much better than Levi’s suggestion. I am interested in continuing the series.”

“… If you want, I did bring the second volume with me…”

“You did?”

“Mmmhmm. I was hoping you’d like it enough to want the second volume…”

“Well, you did ask that I read until the third volume, so sure.”

“Mc beamed as she grabbed for the second volume, after safely tucking the mystery novel between the chair and her legs.

“So, are you enjoying Blind Intrigue?”

“Yes! It is really good. I like that it’s an actual mystery novel, a lot like the Sherlock Holmes stories. Most mystery novels revolve around a murder, but since this one dpesn’t, I like it more.”

“Very good,” Satan said while handing her the first volume back, “So, who’s your favorite character?”

“Huh? In Blind Intrigue or Fruits Basket?”

“Fruits Basket.”

“Ah, Momiji.”

“He reminds me too much of Mammon.”

“I… Guess? Just… give him some time. He’s really great.”

“So… who’s your second favorite?”

“Well, Momiji is my favorite favorite. Kyo is my main character favorite.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I have a feeling you’ll really end up liking him.”

“Ah, well, good to know,” Satan said, as Mc handed him the second volume.

There was silence for awhile until Satan burst out laughing. Mc looked up expecting him to share, but he kept reading; a sign he really liked the story. Pretending to go back to reading, Mc snuck a glance at Satan. He had a content smile on his face, and was even further along in the book than she had thought he would be. She smiled, feeling satisfied and a little vindicated in her choice.

Mc was about halfway through Blind Intrigue when she heard Satan shift on his chair. She looked over to find him sitting with the second volume closed and eyes on her. She in turn closed his book, waiting for him to speak.

“If the rest of the series is this high of quality, I definitely want to finish it.”

Satan helped Mc transport the rest of the volumes to his room that day. Though he really loved the series, he would only read it when Mc was around. As she now had a chair upstairs, Satan suggested they read up there, and he began sharing all the amazing books he had up there with her. It was nice for Mc, especially since none of the other brothers knew she was allowed up there. Satan finished Fruits Basket fairly quickly, not quite gushing about how much he loved the characters and story, asking Mc if she had any other manga recommendations. She was more than happy to oblige. Soon, Satan was reading manga whenever Mc was in his room, but only when she was in his room.

He didn’t like manga that were all trope and no substance, but he would try anything Mc brought him since she usually brought “good manga”. One of his favorites was Jo Jo’s Bizarre Adventures. It came as a surprise to him when, one day he declared a series to be his second favorite, after Fruits Basket, and Mc told him it was a series that Levi had gotten her into.

“You know, I’m sure he’d love discussing it with you…”

“Wait. You think I should go waltzing into his room and say, ‘Hey Levi, I really enjoy The Watchman’s Spell and am all caught up on it. We should talk about it’?”

“Well, yeah, basically. I’ll be there to referee, so I can help if needed. I almost never see you two hanging out together, and I actually think you two have more in common than you realize.”

“He just gets so long winded about… whatever. He also acts childish at times.”

“I do those too.”

“You will apologize though. He will not,” Satan paused a second, and then continued quieter, “Plus, it’s different when you do it.”

“Have you ever considered that he doesn’t back down or stop because he feels like no one cares what he thinks or what his interests are?”

Satan stopped, his retort lost. Was that really why? He considered again, and then turned to Mc, “Okay, I’ll do it, but he’s not invited to our reading nights.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Levi didn’t take the news the way Mc would’ve liked.

“Wha… Mc, w-w-what are you t-talking about?”

“I’ve been showing Satan some manga and he’s liked some of them. I think you should show him some too since you know waaaaaaay more than I do. He really loved Watchman’s Spell.”

Levi seemed scared but also irritated, “You had him read Watchman’s Spell?! Why?!”

“I… I thought he’d appreciate it and when he did, I thought you’d be excited to have someone new to talk to about it…”

“I have the entire internet to talk to about it, plus you. Why would I want-” Levi broke off, scowling as he turned away, but then rounded back on Mc, “Are you doing this to make fun of me? Are you tired of me, and so you’re trying to pawn me off on someone else? What, are you using your pact to make Satan act like he’s interested in talking to me?”

“No, Levi, listen to-”

“Glad to hear it, because you’re not getting rid of me, ya normie! You’re the one that wanted to make a pact, so you’re stuck with me! We’re also best friends so you better-”

“Levi!” Mc grabbed his face with both hands, worried as she saw his tail appear. She had expected some jealousy, but nothing this bad.

Levi stopped. Having Mc this close to his face made his mind go completely blank.

“Just because I expanded Satan’s literary horizons does not change the fact we’ve already discussed our wifeoo’s. It doesn’t erase all the time we’ve spent watching and discussing TSL. All the raids we’ve gone on, owning all the noobs… Though I’m kind of a noob… The point is, Lord of Shadows, your Henry is trying to get the Lord of Masks and you to become friends, just like with the Lord of Fools.”

Levi screwed up his face, bringing up his hand to hide behind. Mc let go, feeling the tension leave the room.

After turning and composing himself a bit (Did Mc just hold my face?!?!?!?), Levi turned, lifting his eyes to Satan, who was simply watching him, “Who’s your favorite character?”

“Zeke.”

“He’s actually my second favorite.”

“Who is your favorite then?”

“Brielle.”

“Ah, that makes sense.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that she seems like the type of character you’d enjoy. She’s not bad. In fact, I enjoy the dynamic she brings to the tower.”

“Well, she became my favorite when she stopped the entire colony from starting an uprising against Charles when they thought he was keeping them from going home.”

“That was chapter 5 right?”

“Y-yes, actually!” Levi smiled, his eyes lighting up like a Christmas tree, as he started discussing the plot and fan theories with his brother. Satan responded to all his prompts or listened quietly, occasionally adding his own thoughts. He was being more patient than Mc had ever seen him be with Levi, and even seemed to be enjoying himself.

Good, Mc thought, watching the two bond, They both needed someone to get them out of their own head. At least I know I can leave these two without too many regrets.

Mc hadn’t brought up the fact her year was almost up to any of the brothers. She didn’t know if any of them had realized how close it was. She was not looking forward to leaving, but she knew she couldn’t let them just revert back to the way they had been, especially Satan. They had all come too far.

“Mc has an interesting thought on this subject actually. Mc, what are you doing over there? Come over here!”

“Coming!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Satan traced his fingers along Mc’s chair. Of course he’d gotten the chair for her so she could be more comfortable, but also to have a piece of her after she’d left. He hadn’t realized how much it would come to mean to him.

He pulled out his DDD, starting to flip through all the photos he’d snuck of her. Her, next to him. Her being so careful with his books. Her, sleeping in his bed, hair splayed across the pillow. He couldn’t count the number of times her scent had kept him from going after one of his brothers since she’d left.

He knew he was being reclusive, and she wouldn’t have liked that. But, weren’t they all being reclusive?

He sat down, head sinking into his hands, DDD put on the arm of the chair. Why did she have to leave? She had been such a breath of fresh air, so willing to discuss anything and everything with him. He had been able to open up to her, and she’d accepted him just as he was. No strings attached. For the first time in his life, he’d felt unique. Wanted. Needed. No longer alone.

He knew she’d been that way with all of them, but… It felt like she’d specifically picked him. He hadn’t been particularly interested in the human living with them, other than to see what she was doing to his brothers. She had been the one to approach him about books. She had been the one to pick his brain. She had read almost every book he’d suggested. He was special… Right?

He hadn’t noticed the tears until he opened his eyes and only saw a blurry floor, “If I’m special, why didn’t she…”

Mc had given each brother a gift when she left. When it was his turn, she’d whispered something in his ear, but she’d been crying so her words had caught. He couldn’t make out the words then, and even though he’d run them through his head more times than he could count, he couldn’t figure out what she’d said. She’d been so beautiful standing there, fresh tears ready to fall. And then… she was gone.

He had isolated himself for a week afterwards. He hadn’t been in the House of Lamentation though. Too many memories. In some small shack in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere he could release all his feelings and hurt no one.

As he was about to get up, a white blur caught his eye. Blinking, he bent over and picked it up. It was a letter. He turned it over, his heart jumping when he recognized Mc’s handwriting. He traced the letters of his name, hands shaking. He then carefully opened the letter and started reading,

My Dear Satan,

Seems you were able to hear what I said when I left. Good. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get it out.

Anyways, I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t give you your gift in front of everyone else. Not only is it too heavy, but you’re too special to me for them to be part of the gift.

I wish I could tell you everything in my heart right now, but I don’t want to cheapen anything. I will return to you so please be patient and wait until then.

If you would, please go check on Levi for me. I can tell you right now, he’s not okay right now. He gets so lost in his own head and I worry about him. I leave him in your stead until I get back.

Satan, always remember: You are important. You deserve every ounce of love you can get. You also have the right to feel whatever you are feeling. You are not your brother, and I never want you comparing yourself to him, because you are an individual. I may not always be there with you, but never forget: you may not have had control over your birth, but that is not what defines you. You are so much more than a word.

Love,

P.S. I just realized you never told me. Who is your favorite Fruits Basket character?

Satan had never moved so fast down his staircase. Why had he chosen a spiral staircase? He was so eager, he almost knocked over the book pile he was looking for. When he saw what was behind it, he sank to his knees and gathered every Fruits Basket volume in his arms.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Levi was moping around his room when there was a knock on the door. For a second he thought it was Mc, but then realized she was gone, making himself sad all over again. He shuffled over to the door, and opened it.

There stood Satan with… manga… and, puffy eyes?

“Hey, can we hang out?” Satan asked.

“Sure. I’d like that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update: I now have a part two to this story and here’s the link

#obey me #obey me!#obey me satan #obey me leviathan #obey me levi #satan x mc

56 notes · View notes

etruatcaelum · 1 year

Text

DR. ARTHUR WATTS

PHYSICAL

Beanpole. Like someone stretched him on a rack. Skin very light brown—if he went outside, he would tan pretty dark. He does not go outside if he can help it. Hair salt-and-pepper, evenly distributed except where it's going white at the temples, short but not tidy. He takes more care with the mustache. Lime-green eyes. Brutal cheekbones. Hard but narrow jaw.

STYLE

Maroon and mustard-yellow and warm neutral shades. Scroll is a custom build, black metal with brass detailing. Suit and waistcoat but the suit is untucked type of guy. He watermarks things and signs off with a fancy W. It's not really an emblem, just a unicode character he likes. His real emblem—one not known to anyone outside Salem's inner circle—is the symbol of the black queen he signs his viruses with.

ENIAC

His gun is a twenty-shot double-barrel coilfire revolver. Steel with brass filigree. The firing mechanism is electromagnetic and of Watts' own design: nearly silent, with superior velocity and effective range compared to standard-issue Atlesian rimfire pistols.

AURA

Lime green, exactly the shade of his eyes. Watts is a masterful auralerist—most in his profession are—but his expertise lies in the very subtle, precise manipulations demanded by his chosen line of work; can hold his own in a fight, but it's not his strong suit.

SEMBLANCE

He considers this to be a colossal waste of time.

HISTORY

Born in Mantle’s staunchly working-class borough of Brumstown to Janis Watts, the proprietress of Dust & Ashes—a small dust shop founded by her grandmother—and her husband, Hamish Jezzail, who was a drunk. His childhood coincided with the rise of the Alsius Meritocratic Party and a rising backlash against postwar reforms, which he experienced as something that made his parents argue with ever-greater frequency while customers dwindled and his father’s bouts of sobriety grew shorter and shorter. When he was eleven, the Brumstown Riots led to the violent murders of nine fauni by human malcontents and widespread destruction throughout the borough. In the midst of all this social and economic turbulence, Arthur grew up a shy, bookish boy with an excellent head for numbers and all the social graces of a Coldfire cat: a wild animal native to the Solitan snow fields, notorious for being so territorial that it is even known to attack grimm. This, combined with his spindly stature, made him a target for vicious bullying by his peers. He found refuge in the codex repair shop across the way from Dust & Ashes, where he discovered his first and only love: the art of codiciering, or konurgic engineering, which he took to ravenously. By the time of his twentieth birthday, he had made a name for himself as a brilliant codicier and was one of five people recruited by the Atlesian military for the purpose of developing autonomous antigrimm drones. The team also comprised Florence Rigel, Marley Ciliegia, Pietro Polendina, Eileen Goshawk: designation Power Cog (PWRCG). Save for Eileen, who grew up in the wealthier Mantelian borough of Nunatak Heights before she enrolled in Altlas’s prestigious Ginnungagap University, the rest of the team was Atlas-born: Rigel had been educated as a huntress at Atlas Academy before joining the military, and both Polendina and Ciliega were Ginnungagap alums from well-off, if not especially notable, families. Arthur, by a wide margin the poorest and least sociable of the group, never clicked with them—although he did become cordial with Eileen and Pietro. Despite their status as engineers, they were all put through basic training, and both Arthur and Pietro opted to study medicine as well; Arthur is a licensed physician specializing in battlefield field medicine. Arthur spent his mid- to late-twenties pioneering the field of konurgic cybernetics, developing the first-generation Atlesian Knight (the AK-56) and myriad cybernetic medical technologies that would revolutionize trauma medicine in the coming decades. During this time, former huntress Maria Calavera became the first patient to receive a successful cybernetic implant, replacing eyes she had lost to bandits years prior. The team was heavily involved with the (public) plan to raise Atlas, which disturbed Arthur and Eileen and drove a wedge between the pair of them and their Atlesian colleagues when they spoke out against the project. His concerns about the lack of contingency planning, nonexistent margins for error, and extravagant waste of gravity dust went wholly ignored and earned him sharp rebukes from his commanding officers.

Two months after the Atlesian Ascension, the fauni insurgency that would become known as the Faunus Rights Revolution erupted in Mistral. After half a year, once it became apparent that the rebels would not be easily put down, the cybernetics team and the first ever drone squadron were dispatched to the Kuchinashi Praefecture to assist. They were stationed in Fort Shiro, an old fortress guarding North Kuchinashi Pass which had become the primary base of operations for the counterinsurgency, for the next three years. There, he met Neath Fladdermus—an apparently human huntsman who was, in actuality, a faunus acting as a double agent for the insurgents—and the pair fell into an acrimoniously ‘friendly’ rivalry. They were not supposed to see direct combat. However, the AK-56s proved less effective under real battle conditions than anticipated, and mounting pressure from the Mistrali council to recapture Kuchinashi led the commanding officer stationed at Fort Shiro, Lieutenant-General Lagune, to make a series of hasty and tactically foolish decisions that allowed fauni guerillas to gain considerable ground. The rebels eventually delivered a siege to the fort itself, and Lagune—acting on advice from Fladdermus—attempted to ambush the main fauni encampment during the last night of the year. The rebels—most of whom could see perfectly well in the dark, and all of whom were quite awake and alert when the ambush began, thanks to Fladdermus—decimated Lagune’s forces and stormed the fort itself. In the ensuing struggle, Pietro sustained grievous injuries and Arthur was shot in the shoulder. The cybernetics team and Lagune were all captured, along with most of the surviving huntsman—save for Fladdermus, who slipped away in the chaos, and Rigel, who escaped and made their way to the nearest relay tower to call for backup. For the next fourteen months, the insurgents held Fort Shiro. Arthur and the other captives were kept in fairly poor conditions, less out of cruelty than scarcity; during this time, Arthur brokered his expertise as a codicier in exchange for what medical supplies the rebels were willing to spare, doing what he could to attend to his own and Pietro’s injuries. Finally, the Mistrali council agreed to ceasefire in exchange for the release of the Fort Shiro prisoners, and negotiations for the end of the rebellion began. Pietro and Arthur were promptly removed to Ryuki Imperial Hospital in Mistral, where Arthur underwent surgery to fix his poorly-healed shoulder and Pietro’s damaged hips and spine were replaced with cybernetic implants.

Once they recovered, they returned to Atlas to resume their work with PWRCG. The team was tasked to improve on the abysmal failure of the AK-56s; Ironwood, by then a Lieutenant-General and Headmaster of Atlas Academy, assumed full command over the team and set them a challenge: each was to make a proposal for cutting-edge military innovations that could give humankind a real advantage over the grimm. Arthur designed the prototype that would eventually become the Atlesian Paladins; Pietro submitted a proposal for something he called the Para-Effigial Non-Natal Youth, or P.E.N.N.Y. The decision to fund the P.E.N.N.Y. project over the other four proposals shocked the whole team, Pietro included, and infuriated Arthur—partly because of the snub, but even more so because he felt the idea amounted to little more than another wasteful spectacle with little substance. Fed up, he began to make plans for his departure; and, having no interest in focusing on the P.E.N.N.Y. project in the meantime, he submitted a very modest new proposal to upgrade the Atlesian security network, outlining a number of outdated standards and vulnerabilities he had identified. This was approved by the Atlesian council, and Arthur politely declined the offer of extra funding to build himself a project team. He would undertake the task alone, while the rest of the cybernetics team tackled the first stage of the P.E.N.N.Y. project. While PWRCG developed the first iterations of the aura-transfer machines, Arthur rewrote huge swaths of the Atlesian security codex virtually from scratch. The final result was more streamlined, more stable, far more secure… and had allowed him to get his hands into classified files well beyond his actual security clearance. What he found puzzled him: the work the cybernetics team had done for the Atlesian Ascension had never actually been taken online, and his probing turned up several heavily redacted records that suggested the enormous quantity of gravity dust that had been stockpiled to hold Atlas aloft had been removed, one case at a time, starting about a year after the Ascension. Stranger still were a significant number of references to a hostile entity code-named AMARANTH, of which he could uncover only a vague connection to urban legends about an ancient and fearsome shapeshifting grimm who haunted the northwestern coast of Sanus… urban legends which the highest echelons of Atlas Academy evidently believed held a kernel of truth.

The conspiracy rapidly became an all-consuming interest. Arthur scoured the news and poured over books on the folklore of northern Vale, always taking meticulous care to cover his digital tracks. He became convinced that there was something out there that shouldn’t be, and he felt a growing determination to find out what it was. Then, one unremarkable autumn night, a huntsman vanished without a trace and a ritzy hotel burned to the ground in uptown Atlas. Feeling that something did not add up, Arthur turned his scrutiny to the hotel. The establishment’s CCTV footage had been hosted off the premises by a commercial surveillance company; hacking into it was a breeze. He watched a teenage girl killing the proprietress while the collar she wore glowed with electricity. He watched the missing huntsman walk in on the scene and draw on her, instead of asking questions, and he watched the girl kill him too. Deciding then and there that enough was enough, Arthur destroyed that footage, arranged for his own ‘death’ in an accident involving the prototype Paladins, and tracked the girl down. He did not bring her with him when he left Atlas: he simply gave her enough lien to get out of the kingdom, and told her what he knew (and what he’d guessed) abut the entity called AMARANTH. Just in case she wanted to try her luck. Then he stole an airship and flew south and east until he found Evernight. He wasn’t quite sure what he expected to find: only that he hoped for something he could persuade to see the value of his skills and the necessity for Atlas to fall. In Salem, he found everything he wanted and more.

MAJOR HEADCANONS

On Watts' Semblance On Codiciering

PRINCIPAL ALLUSIONS

Sherlock Holmes –> Like if Watson fell in with Moriarty instead. Pinocchio –> Like if the Talking Cricket were a bad influence.

PORTRAYAL NOTES

He's an ass, and doesn't have a single reverent bone in his body, but Arthur is scrupulously loyal to Salem. She respects his expertise and defers to him on subjects where his knowledge surpasses her own, and he appreciates her sense of fairness. If she wants something done, he'll go above and beyond to make it happen. His injured shoulder causes him constant, low-grade pain, worse in wet or cold weather. Bad flare-ups severely limit his mobility and make him... crankier. Eileen, who has since left the Atlesian military to teach codiciering at Morning Star University in Vale, is still in contact with him; he's also kept in touch with Fladdermus, who lives in Kuchinashi and has his fingers in many pies of... diverse legality. The two of them, plus Lionheart and Summer's contact at Shade Academy, form the foundation of Salem's information network. Neither he nor Cinder will acknowledge his role in helping her escape Atlas or find her way to Salem. Whatsoever. By shared unspoken agreement, they pretend it never happened. He survives the Fall of Atlas—barely. Search parties from the free towns on the east coast of Solitas dig him and a handful of other half-frozen survivors out of the ruins, and he spends several months recuperating smoke inhalation and hypothermia in Dormir before he's well enough to catch a ferry to Argus. By then, a massive undertaking by what's left of the Atlesian military to refurbish Amity into a warship is nearing completion, and Arthur—never one to pass on a golden opportunity—steals an airship and takes himself first to Vale, to check in with Salem, and thence to Vacuo, to... prepare.

#about.

0 notes