#having an instinctive panic response was normal because well. your brain feels all your blood sucking out and thinks FUUUCK IM BLEEDING OUT | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

queenmuzz · 4 years ago

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So, anyways, I saw something @liulyam had posted for Spardaverse a while back I DON'T KNOW HOW I MISSED THEIR WONDERFUL ART FORGIVE ME! Anyways, I saw specifically THIS piece of art, and it sent the brain juices into overdrive....

So, the same thing plays out everyday. Nero gets off the school bus and runs in, backpack flying, and tells his uncle excitedly about his day at school, before racing up the stairs to tell his dad the same thing, in the same adorably animated manner. Unfortunately, Vergil doesn’t respond the same way as Dante, sitting still, not even acknowledging that the boy is talking to him. Initially, Nero doesn’t mind, understanding his recently rescued father has been through a lot, and needs time and patience to recover. But as the months pass by, Dante notices that his nephew doesn’t run up the front steps as eagerly, his descriptions of school become shorter, paler. And most worryingly of all, Nero spends less and less time with Vergil, preferring to peek his head in the man’s room, sigh, and slowly make his way to his own room, closing the door sullenly.

“What’s going on Nero?” Dante takes the plunge and asks him one day, before the boy trudges up the stairs. “You haven’t been that rambunctious ball of energy lately.”

Nero kicks the worn hardwood floor. “It’s dad… I know you told me I need to be patient,” his face scrunches up at the word, it’s a thing he’s never been able to truly do. He’s definitely a Sparda boy. “But he just keeps ignoring me. He won’t talk, won’t even look at me. It’s like I don’t even exist! Maybe...maybe he doesn’t want me to exist-”

“Hey now!” Dante needs to nip this train of thought in the bud. He knows first hand where it can lead to. Had he not found Nero nearly nine years ago, while wandering the world, drinking up every bar’s entire inventory in a vain attempt to fill a void in his chest, who knows where he would have ended up? “Your dad...well, even without the stuff he’s been through, he was never much of a talker. Always preferred to have his actions speak for him.” “But that’s the thing, Uncle Dante!” Nero blurts out, close to tears. “He DOESN’T DO ANYTHING!!! He doesn’t care!” And with that, Nero bolts up the stairs, past Vergil’s room, not even checking up on him, and slams his bedroom door with such force, Eva’s portrait wobbles on the desk and tips over. Dante sighs, sets his mom back up, and slowly makes his way up the stairs. Not to Nero’s room; Dante knows better than to provoke that tiger cub when he’s in an ornery mood. It’s time to talk to his dad.

Vergil, or what’s left of him, is sitting in an oversized chair, the only one that fits his giant frame, facing the window, the only one in the place with a view. If he’s heard the ruckus (and Dante knows he has), he makes no indication that it affects him.

“Verg,” he calls out, “I know it's been rough, I know I piled on a lot of shit on you, the whole thing about having a kid and everything these past nine years. I’m not expecting you to just snap back to normal, and start insulting me like in the good old days, but…” Dante’s not good at this sort of thing. He’d rather Royal Guard his emotional turmoil. It used to be with alcohol, but now it’s with a cheery smile. “The kid needs a sign that you’re still there, you’re still fighting. I know you are, hell, you’re the one that helped me take down that bastard Mundus on Mallet Island. But that’s the thing, Nero’s only heard things that you’ve done, not seen them. You need to show him yourself, otherwise…” Vergil makes no motion, and even Dante, stubborn as he is, knows it’s fruitless to continue much more, “you’re gonna lose him too.” And then Dante heads back downstairs, to see if he can whip up a snack to bribe his nephew to come out of his lair. Strange, he swears he hears the rustle of fabric from Vergil’s room, as if his brother had just moved.

Nero sits at Dante’s desk, working on his math homework. It’s his least favourite thing, fractions. Uncle Dante is a whiz at them, and usually would be able to help him, but he’s gone out on an ‘Really quick, won’t be more than a half hour’ errand run. It’s been nearly two hours, and the only other adult here is his dad… so Nero is practically by himself.

Suddenly, the hairs on the back of Nero’s neck prick up, and he hears scrabbling at the front door. He’s still not allowed to go out with Uncle Dante or Auntie Lady on their hunts, but he knows what a demon feels like, especially when there are a lot of them. ESPECIALLY when they’re really powerful Instinctively, he grabs a chair, and wedges it underneath the door knob, and looks around in a panic. He’s never had to deal with a demon attack by himself before. He remembers his uncle has a case of weapons that he was told to NEVER touch beside the jukebox, but Nero figures that he can say sorry to his uncle later. He smashes the lock with a billiard ball, and yanks open the lid. He’s disappointed. He thought there would be a treasure trove of swords and guns, but all there are two swords, one red and one blue. But he doesn’t have much of a choice, and the whine of protesting wood ends with a thunderous CRASH, and demons pour through. “FIND THE HERETIC GOD SLAYER!” One says, before turning in Nero’s direction. Without much warning, it shrieks as it launches at him with razor sharp obsidian claws.

Nero might be little, but his uncle has trained him well. Whipping the two blades around, they connect the monster’s waist in a pincer move, and like a pair of scissors, bisect it in a shower of blood and ash. Nero swears he hears a voice (or is it two voices?) approvingly say, “Impressive!” but doesn’t have a chance to savour his very first demon kill as another demon comes at him, knocking him over. The reddish gold blade clatters away on the floor, way out of reach, not that it matters. Nero’s pinned to the ground by a skeletal foot, as the demon lifts a blade to impale him. He squeezes his eyes shut, preparing for the end.

The final blow never comes. Instead, he hears shriek, and the pressure on his chest instantly subsides. He opens his eyes, to see it stagger back, its decapitated head clattering to the floor. Its brethren likewise are either dead or dying, their high pitched screams shattering the glass in the jukebox.

Nero’s first thought is that his Uncle has finally come home, Dante’s come to save me! But what’s odd is that there’s no sound of Dante’s beloved Ebony and Ivory. And last he checked, his uncle never was able to shoot out blue ghostly blades that now impale most of the horde. But it doesn’t matter, because his uncle is here to save the day! That is, until he yelps as he’s quickly, but not roughly picked up and held as whoever holds him spirits him out of the building, the blue blade still clutched in his hand. Nero begins to panic, but hears a voice, almost like a croak, as if the vocal cords had been in disuse for years…

Nero

And even though the voice is harsh sounding, it's one of the most comforting things Nero’s ever heard.

Of course that half hour errand run would turn out to be three hours. But when he was promised a free pizza for clearing out that demon nest on the West side, Dante couldn’t say no. Besides, he’d pick up some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on the way home as a way of apologising to Nero. The kid might be cross with him, but he’d forgive him the moment he smelled those chewy biscuits. Dante might even let him have more than half of the package.

So when he gets home to find his front door smashed open, his office trashed, and worst of all his jukebox shattered-wait no, worst of all, his nephew missing, all thoughts of pizza and cookies vanish from his mind as he rushes in, guns drawn. There’s no sign of life, but the black splatters of demonic ichor painting the walls shows that some real bad mojo went down here. The strangest thing though, is Agni, a weapon Dante was definitely sure he had under lock and key, laying there on the ground, alone.

“Alright, time to spill your guts” he yanks the blade up so that he’s at eye level with the pommel, “What the hell happened here?” Agni makes the same response as Vergil. Which means silence.

“I swear to…” he pulls out ivory, and presses the muzzle into the (more troubled than usual looking face), “You’re gonna tell me what went down, or we’re gonna see how many bullets I can jam into your ugly mug.” “You told us to remain silent.” He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, consider that rule temporarily relaxed.” “There was an attack.” Agni starts, its distorted voice unusually agitated, “The little one fought with great valour, but eventually even he was overwhelmed.” Dante’s blood goes cold. “But then a great bulk of a demon came out and slaughtered the attacking filth, and spirited the boy away, alongwith my brother.”

“Rudra’s still with Nero?” That’s odd, if they were trying to capture the kid, they’d disarm him first.

“Yes, they are not far, I think they’ve stopped moving.”

“Alright,” Dante makes his way out of the disfigured wood, “let’s go find the kid and your bro...and if he’s alright, maybe I’ll reconsider giving back your talking privileges.” “Oh, that would be wonderful, will you allow us to leave the dark box? It’s been so long since we’ve fought, we crave batt- ”

“I said IF, and I won’t guarantee anything if you keep jabbering on and on.”

Angi directs the demon hunter to a dark secluded alleyway, a few blocks from Devil May Cry. One hand on its hilt ready for attack, the other fingering the trigger of Ivory, he cautiously makes his way past the recently overturned garbage cans, to a shadow alcove, where a shadow crouches. Beside it is Rudra, glowing faintly, it’s turquoise blue light providing enough illumination for Dante to make out what has happened. There’s Nero, peacefully slumbering away, apparently unharmed, not even his shirt is torn. And holding him gently, stroking his downy white hair with a giant hand...is Vergil… And for once, even though he is still staring straight ahead, there’s a different look on his face, a sense of contentment.

Huh Dante thinks to himself as he holsters the weapons, I was right, actions DO speak louder than words.

#Devil May Cry #Nelo Dadgelo #Dante #Vergil #Nero #canon divergence #I didn't want to connect this to their post via reblog #because that should stand alone in its own perfection #my writing

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ceealaina · 5 years ago

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Title: Weird Science Collaborator Name: ceealaina Card Number: 3088 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A5 - Bodysharing Ship: IronHusbands Rating: E Major Tags: MIT Era, Bodyswap, Hand Jobs, Summary: In a series of unfortunate events, a lab incident leads to Tony and Rhodey switching bodies -- the same weekend that Tony absolutely has to go home. Now Tony has to get everything back to normal while evading his parents, Jarvis, and dealing with a super cranky Rhodey. (It would help if he was slightly less distracted by wanting to touch his new body all over.) Word Count: 5418

Tony opened his eyes and then immediately closed them again, groaning as his head pounded in response. “Oh god, what the fuck happened?” he asked.

Then he froze, because that… Wasn’t his voice.

Very, very slowly, he opened his eyes, looking across the room only to see, well, himself staring back at… Himself. Tony watched his own eyes grow wide, a very bad feeling growing in his stomach.

“Rhodey?” he asked at the same time that his own body asked, “Tones?” They stared at each other for a long time.

“Oh, shit.”

Tony was the first to speak as the fact that he and Rhodey had switched bodies started to really sink in. “Okay.” He covered his mouth with his hand, something he’d seen Rhodey do a thousand times when he was nervous, and quickly dropped it to his side again. “Okay, this is… Fine.”

“Fine?” Rhodey repeated in a high, screechy voice.

Tony glared at him. Being the youngest person at MIT was hard enough. He worked very hard to keep his voice from doing that in public, thank you very much. But Rhodey didn’t seem to notice.

“Tony, this is not fine! Nothing about this is fine!”

“Just… Stop panicking!”

“Stop panicking, he says. How am I not supposed to panic when you are inside me.”

Tony blinked at that, then choked, biting at his lower lip. He didn’t want to laugh, but he couldn’t help it. Tony snorted, the sound turning to full laughter as Rhodey glared at him, and wow, Tony was hot when he made that face. He’d have to keep that in mind.

“I cannot believe you’re laughing right now.”

“I’m sorry!” Tony protested. “It’s just… you said ‘inside me.’”

Tony gave an undignified yelp as Rhodey launched the closest piece of lab equipment he could find at him, but his body moved on instinct, ducking easily out of the way so that the screwdriver clinked harmlessly to the ground somewhere behind him.

“Wow!” Tony straightened back up, staring down at his hands. “Your reflexes are so much better than mine!”

“Tony! This isn’t a damn science experiment. I told you not to mess with that shit, and what do you do? Immediately start messing with that shit.”

Tony rolled his eyes and moved back over to the machine he’d created, only stumbling a little as his brain tried to adjust for Rhodey’s gait. “Okay, in my defense, you weren’t supposed to be here.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better. So what, you were going to transfer your subconsciousness to the computer?” He wrinkled up his nose, face scrunching into something wholly displeased and unattractive.

“Stop doing that with my face,” Tony told him, starting to adjust the settings on the machine. “It’s fine, really. I do actually know what I’m doing sometimes. It’s simple, really. All I have to do is reverse the polarity, and… Oh. Shit.”

Rhodey drew in a deep breath, obviously trying to keep his cool. “What ‘oh shit?’”

“Umm.” Tony ducked down, partly to avoid Rhodey’s gaze and partly to check if the damage was as bad as his initial assessment. It was worse. “Okay, so the circuits are totally fried. I’m gonna have to rebuild the entire thing. It’s fine!” he added hastily as he straightened back up in time to see Rhodey running his hands through his hair, adding an extra three inches to Tony’s height. “I already built it once. The second time’ll be easy. It’ll just take me a couple days. Especially with your clumsy fingers.”

“My fingers aren’t clumsy,” Rhodey grumbled automatically, but he seemed to be calming down a little, and that was something. “So what, we’re just supposed to walk around, pretending to be each other?”

“It’s two days,” Tony said again. “Monday at the latest. That’s nothing. We’ll just say we gave each other the flu, call in sick to everything we have to do. I’ll hunker down here, you can hang out at the apartment. Nobody will even have to know.”

“Uh-huh.” Rhodey folded his arms across his chest and arched an eyebrow, and Tony made a face; it was weird seeing a look that was so quintessentially Rhodey on his own features. “Think you’re forgetting something there, dumbass.”

“Yeah?” Tony was half distracted, already making lists in his head of what he’d need to do to repair the machine. “What’s that?”

“Isn’t this the weekend that you’re supposed to go visit your parents? That big fancy party your mom’s throwing?”

Tony stared up at Rhodey in horror, feeling the blood drain from his face. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes,” Rhodey confirmed. “And I don’t think the flu excuse is gonna work this time, since that’s what you told her two weeks ago. And the month before that. I’m pretty sure there’s a limit to how many times you can get the flu in one semester. In fact, I seem to remember her telling you that if you tried to bail again, she’d come up here herself and drag you home by the hair.”

Tony buried his face in his hands, panic flaring through him. “This can’t be happening!” he wailed, even though he knew Rhodey was right. There was absolutely no getting out of this. “What am I gonna do? Why did it have to be this weekend?”

“I’m sorry,” Rhodey told him dryly. “Did next week fit your schedule better for swapping bodies?” But as Tony gave him a half-hearted glare, he came around, placing his hands on Tony’s upper arms. “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” he told him, calm now in the face of Tony’s panic -- that was how they worked. God only knew what would happen if they both panicked at the same time. Explosions, probably. “Tell your parents you’re bringing a friend with you for the weekend. I can come along, and then at least we’ll have an excuse to be together. You can work on it there, and kick me if I say the wrong thing, and it’ll be fine.”

Tony gave him a skeptical look. “You just want an excuse to go up to New York so you can yell at Howard.”

“Always,” Rhodey agreed easily. “But if it makes you feel any better, I promise I’ll be on my best behaviour while I’m inside you.” He phrased it that way on purpose, grinning when Tony cracked a smile. “It’s gonna be fine.”

***

Tony was lucky that everyone was used to him bringing home projects from school. Jarvis didn’t even bat an eye when he came to pick them up and Tony loaded an enormous box full of mechanical parts into the backseat, just greeted them both warmly, took their luggage, and asked if they had any music preferences for the drive. That was one advantage to the two of them going, anyway; he’d already warned Rhodey not to let Jarvis catch him alone to make sure he was really okay, like he did every time Tony was back home. There was no way he’d be even remotely fooled if he had any one-on-one time with Rhodey.

Maria, Rhodey had reported after one very tense phone call, was thrilled that Tony was bringing Rhodey along. She’d liked him the few times she’d met him, thought he was a good influence. But Tony thought it was more likely that she was hoping a guest would keep Tony and Howard on their best behaviour. She really should have known better.

Howard hadn’t been there to greet them, or as Maria gave Rhodey a tour of the house and showed him to the guest room beside Tony’s room. He had missed the start of dinner too, striding in just a little too purposefully as Jarvis was clearing the appetizers. He hadn’t reached the point of stumbling yet, but Tony could tell he had already been into the scotch. His eyes had slid over Tony as he took his seat, and Tony resisted the urge to shudder at the obvious disdain in his expression.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Howard.” Maria looked tired already. “This is James Rhodes. Tony’s roommate at MIT?”

“Jim,” Tony corrected, like he’d heard Rhodey do a thousand times. He knew his voice didn’t sound right, but it wasn’t as though they would know the difference, and Howard had already dismissed him, eyes turning to Rhodey, who was meeting Howard’s gaze way more head on than Tony ever did. Tony winced into his water glass; that wasn’t a good start.

“And what are you working on?” he asked, tone derisive, ready to tear apart whatever his response was. Rhodey opened his mouth to reply, and Tony knew this wasn’t going to go well.

“AI,” he burst out, kicking Rhodey hard under the table. “Isn’t that what you were telling me? Tones?”

Rhodey drew in a deep breath but managed to get himself under control. “Yup,” he agreed, voice tight. “AI.”

Howard rolled his eyes. “Sounds like a waste of time,” he decided.

“Maybe the AI can find Captain America for you,” Tony grumbled at the table, forgetting for a moment that Howard’s quest to find a long-dead super soldier was supposed to be classified. Thankfully, nobody was paying attention to him except for Rhodey.

***

Somehow they managed to make it through dinner, and Tony and Rhodey had made a quick escape back to Tony’s bedroom. They’d dicked around for a bit, Tony talking through his plan for rebuilding their body… transporting… machine (he really needed a name for that) and Rhodey bitching about what an absolute asshole Howard was (he wasn’t wrong). But it had been an incredibly long day, and eventually Rhodey slipped off to his own bedroom to get some sleep.

Tony had gone through his normal bedtime routine perfunctorily, brushing his teeth and changing into pajamas. He’d flipped off the lights and slid into bed and was suddenly left with the realization that he was alone, in the dark, and this was Rhodey’s body, that fact seeming like a much, much bigger deal than it had before.

The problem was that lately he’d been… Noticing Rhodey more and more. Getting distracted by his arms, or his chest, or his smile, thinking about him when he wasn’t even around. Tony kept telling himself it was just that they spent most of their time together, and he wasn’t dating, and eventually it would go away, but so far that hadn’t been the case. Quite the opposite, actually. He kept resisting calling it a crush but, well, that’s exactly what it was.

And now he was lying in bed, in the dark, hyper aware of the fact that he always jerked off before bed, but oh, hey. This wasn’t his body. For longer than he felt really comfortable with, Tony was tempted anyway. Wanted to slip out of his clothes, wrap his hand around his cock. Get to see what Rhodey looked like, feel the weight of him in his hand, find out what made him twitch, and gasp, and moan, and go cross-eyed. It would probably be his only chance to find out.

But even as he thought it, he knew he wasn’t going to go through with it. Of course he wasn’t going to go through with it. That crossed all sorts of lines that he wasn’t going to cross, even if his brain wouldn’t shut up about it.

Sighing, Tony slid back out of bed and turned on the light, spreading the machinery over the floor as he got to work on rebuilding the machine.

He ended up staying up the entire night, losing track of time like he always did. It hit him harder now though, and by the time the sun was well up and Rhodey was slipping in with a mug of coffee and a muffin for him, Tony’s head was pounding and his fingers were shaking.

Rhodey glared at him as he passed over the goods, face scrunched up sourly, and Tony winced. “Wow, that is not a good look for me.”

“Did you stay up all night?” Rhodey asked, glare increasing. “You can’t do that with my body, Tones!”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Why yes, Rhodes. I did in fact make a shit-ton of progress on this machine. We should be able to switch back before we leave for Boston, actually, if I pilfer some stuff from the garage. You're welcome.”

This news didn’t seem to have the cheer-up effect that Tony was hoping for, Rhodey just glaring at him harder, and Tony pouted a little.

“Jeez, what crawled up your butt?” he muttered into his coffee cup.

“Nothing,” Rhodey growled, sounding almost mad about it.

Giving him a weird look, because what the fuck was his problem, Tony took a sip of his coffee and nearly spit it all over the bed. “Ugh, what the hell is wrong with this? Is the coffee bad? Can coffee go bad?”

Rhodey took a sip from his own mug, and wrinkled his nose. “No sugar. I made it black, like you usually take it. But I guess, technically, you’re not the one drinking it.” He yanked the cup out of Tony’s hand, ignoring the faint whine of protest that slipped out of his mouth as he passed him the other one. “Drink this one instead.”

Tony sipped the coffee with Rhodey’s customary three servings of sugar, expecting it to be awful, but was pleasantly surprised by the flavor. He hummed as sweet, sweet caffeine filtered through his body, thankful that that, at least, was a common factor between them.

“You said we’d be back to normal by tomorrow?” Rhodey asked, taking a seat on the edge of the bed.

“Yeah, I think so. We’ll still have to go to the party tonight, but I figure we can get away with hiding away up here today. I can get most of it done and then we sneak down to the garage early tomorrow morning and be back to normal before Jarvis takes us back to Boston.”

“Good,” Rhodey grumbled. “Can’t come soon enough.”

***

Tony didn’t know what Rhodey’s problem was. Normally he could be counted on to be in a good mood; he was easy-going, especially compared to Tony’s chaotic energy, and it took a lot to phase him. But today he was a miserable excuse for a human, growly and grouchy, and his mood only got worse as the day went on. There wasn’t much he could do to help with the rebuilding -- Tony wasn’t great at explaining his thought processes, and sometimes it was easier to just let him handle it -- but it wasn’t like letting him go wandering around the house where he could encounter Howard, or Maria, or Jarvis was a smart plan either. So he was stuck in the bedroom with Tony, flicking through the channels on the television and bitching about everything from the weather to Tony’s body’s tendency to constantly fiddle his hands.

By the time they had to get ready for the party, and Rhodey had gone back to his own room to shower and change, Tony couldn’t help feeling a little relieved to get a break from him. He’d maybe been exaggerating slightly about how easy peasy rebuilding the machine would be, and trying to manage it while fending off Rhodey’s bad mood was exhausting.

He’d been hoping that a shower and maybe a nap would calm Rhodey the fuck down, but if anything he was worse when Tony met him outside the ballroom, glowering at the guests and tugging at the crotch of Tony’s dress pants. “Can’t you wear pants that fit?” he hissed as they moved into the party.

“My pants fit,” Tony retorted, the only thing he had time to manage before his mother was whisking Rhodey off on a whirlwind tour of business contacts and debutantes. Tony had been dealing with this since he was a little kid, knew how to smile and ask the right questions and play pretend. But Rhodey didn’t, and so all Tony could do was hover by the drinks table and fend off curious looks as he watched Rhodey from across the room, glowering more and more with each new person he was introduced to.

The second Maria had released him, looking less than pleased with ‘Tony’s’ behaviour, Tony was across the room. He grabbed Rhodey by the arm and yanked him out a side door with a careful look back to make sure no one was watching them.

“Okay, what the fuck?” he demanded the moment they had some privacy. “What is going on with you?”

“Nothing,” Rhodey grumbled, yanking his arm away with a sullen expression. Vaguely, Tony couldn’t help thinking that it was no wonder that look was so effective at pissing off Howard. He kind of wanted to punch himself in the face right now. Then he looked at him closer.

“Are you blushing? Stop doing that with my face. You look stupid.”

“Your face is stupid,” Rhodey shot back automatically, and Tony stared at him.

“Okay, are you a literal child right now? Seriously, what the actual fuck is going on with you? Are you trying to get me killed? Because that’s what it looks like from here.”

“It’s nothing!” Rhodey insisted. “Don’t be such a drama queen.”

“I’m not. Howard will literally kill me if he thinks I’m doing something to ruin Mom’s party.”

Rhodey looked a little guilty at that. “I wouldn’t let him hurt you, Tones. You know that.”

Tony felt some of his anger dissipate, warm butterflies fluttering in his stomach at how easily protective Rhodey was. “I know,” he said. “Come on, would you just tell me what's wrong?” he asked again, this time. “Is it really that bad being stuck in my body?”

“Well it wouldn’t be if your dick would just calm down!” Rhodey snapped before his eyes went wide, colour draining from his face. He buried his face in his hands. “Oh god. Please just pretend I didn’t say that.”

“Oh.” Tony cleared his throat a little awkwardly. Admittedly, his sex drive was kind of stupidly high, even for someone his age. It just hadn’t occurred to him that that would be what was going on here. “That’s what’s got you all on edge? I thought there was an actual problem.” He winced at the baleful look that Rhodey sent him between his fingers; that probably hadn’t been the most sensitive of responses. “No, I just mean… You can go ahead and…” Tony made an abortive motion with his hands, trying not to get distracted by Rhodey’s long fingers. “Like, you have my permission. To do… whatever… you need to… do.”

Rhodey made a pained noise. “You think I haven’t tried that?” he asked, and Tony felt his brain white out at the admission. For a minute all he could focus on was the idea that Rhodey had been jerking off his dick, that Rhodey knew what he felt and looked like, that he had felt comfortable enough with Tony to just go ahead and do it. For all Tony’s internal conflict about touching himself in Rhodey’s body, knowing that Rhodey had done the same with him didn’t feel like a breach of trust in the slightest. Then, abruptly, he realized that Rhodey was still speaking. “It didn’t work, I couldn’t… get there. I don’t know, it felt all weird. Seriously dude, does your dick have a trick shot or something to come? I’ve been goin’ around half hard all day, in someone else’s body. That’s why I’m so pissed off.”

“Oh,” Tony said again. He could feel his heart racing, felt a little like he might pass out. “I could, uh…” He trailed off, hoping he wasn’t going to get punched in the face for what he was about to suggest. “I could show you? What I usually do, I mean. If that would help?”

Rhodey froze. “You’d do that?”

Tony gave a lazy shrug, trying to feign a coolness that he didn’t feel. “It’s only fair, right? It is still my body, makes sense that I’d show you how it works. And you’re kind of a bitch to be around right now, so it’s not like I’m only doing this from the goodness of my heart, here.”

God, Rhodey had no idea.

“What about the party?” Rhodey asked, but eyes were dark and his voice had gone low and rough, and Tony knew he was going to say yes. He shrugged again.

“You’ve already done the rounds with Mom. She’ll leave you alone now, especially since I’m here too. And I grew up in this house. I can get us back upstairs without anyone noticing.”

Rhodey nodded, tongue flicking out over his lip, and nonsensically Tony wondered if he always did that when he was horny. “Yeah, alright,” Rhodey agreed. “It’s worth a try.”

***

They ended up in Tony's bedroom -- his actual bedroom, not the one that he’d been using as Rhodey -- not quite meeting each other’s eyes as they stripped out of their jackets and ties and pants until they were left in boxers and t-shirts.

“How, uh… How do you want to do this?” Tony asked, eyes focused somewhere on his own collarbone.

Rhodey’s eyes went wide. “I don’t know, man. This was your idea!”

“Okay.” He gave Rhodey a crooked smile, trying to ease some of the tension in the room. “I mean, do you want me to just talk you through it? Call in from another room with walkie talkies? Or… Are you gonna freak out if I touch you?”

Rhodey snorted, rolling his shoulders back. “No. It’s not like I’ve never been touched before,” he pointed out, but he was posturing just a little, Tony could tell.

He hummed, consideringly, and his gaze drifted lower, blinking when he realized that Rhodey was hard. It was kind of weird, looking at his own erection from this angle, but also it was Rhodey. “Okay, what if… What if I just sit behind you, on the bed, and then I can just…” He made a jerk off motion with his hand, grinning when Rhodey bit back a laugh. “Do it like it’s me.”

Rhodey nodded, swallowing hard. “Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat when his voice cracked on the word. “Yeah,” he said again. “Let’s try that.”

They didn’t speak as they shifted into position, Tony sitting back against the mountain of pillows, bending his knees and spreading his legs wide enough to leave room for Rhodey to settle between them, back to Tony’s chest. Rhodey was tense and stiff in front of him -- and not (entirely) in the good way -- and Tony dug his knee against his ribs.

“Hey, we don’t gotta do this, you know. If you need to stop or something, just say the word.”

In response, Rhodey elbowed him in the stomach, making him grunt. “What, are you chickening out on me, Stark? Man up!”

Tony rolled his eyes and then pushed Rhodey’s t-shirt up, stroking his fingers down over his ribs. Rhodey made a soft, punched out noise at the touch and Tony grinned. “Feels good, huh?”

“Yup,” Rhodey bit out, but he was still tense so Tony figured he’d skip the foreplay and move right to the good stuff. He rolled his boxers down over Rhodey’s hips, noticing the way that Rhodey inhaled sharply, stifling a whine as his cock sprang free, hard and wet at the tip and twitching in the cooler air of the room.

“There we go,” Tony hummed, curling his hand loosely around Rhodey’s cock and giving it a slow stroke. Almost instantly, Rhodey melted back against him, body going limp as he let out a low groan. Tony shuddered a little in response, the sound going right through him. He pressed in closer, rubbing his cheek against Rhodey’s hot shoulder. “Feels good, right?” he purred, and the fact that he was speaking with Rhodey’s voice in that tone sent heat flaring through his body. “I’m really sensitive,” he admitted softly, stroking his thumb over the head of his cock until Rhodey’s hips rocked up against him. “Gotta start out light, or else it’s too much.”

He tightened his fist just a smidge and Rhodey’s breathing picked up, panting hard as he squirmed back against him. “Jesus Christ, Tones,” he muttered. His hands twisted in the sheets, hips rocking. “Fuck, that feels good.”

Tony grinned against his shoulder, fighting back the urge to kiss him. He could feel himself getting hard against Rhodey’s back but did his best to ignore it, instead twisting his hand over the head of his cock so that the next stroke was wet and slick.

“Christ, Tones. Is it always so… Much?”

“Usually,” Tony admitted. “It, uh… It helps having a partner.”

Apparently something about that was appealing to Rhodey, because he ground back against Tony, and Tony couldn’t help the low noise that he made as his cock rubbed up against his own ass because wow. His butt really was phenomenal.

He nearly giggled at that thought, but then he tightened his hand a little more, picking up speed, and Rhodey practically wailed in response. Instinctively, Tony clapped his hand over his mouth, just in case any other party guests had had the idea to slip away and overheard them. Rhodey only groaned harder, cock throbbing in Tony’s hold and his hand scrabbled to grip at Tony’s wrist, trying to increase the speed, or get him to go harder, or something.

“Oh yeah,” Tony huffed out a soft laugh. “I really like that too. Being pinned down, held in place.” He tightened his legs around Rhodey, pulling him in closer. The height difference between them was minimal enough that Tony had never really paid attention to it before, but suddenly, all folded around Rhodey like this, he was conscious of every inch of difference between them. Not just height, but build too, his arms thick and muscular compared to Tony’s more wiry frame. Suddenly, Tony desperately wanted his body back, wanted to be the one wrapped up in Rhodey’s hold, thick arms holding him down. He could imagine it too clearly, couldn’t help grinding harder against Rhodey at the thought.

“Tones,” Rhodey gasped out, his free hand clutching at Tony’s thigh. “I’m so…”

“Yeah?” Tony hummed, trying to pretend like he wasn’t hard and leaking too, dangerously close to coming in his boxers. “Gonna come for me?”

Rhodey groaned, shifting in Tony’s hold. “I want… I need…” He twisted his head back, the angle awkward, but then he was kissing Tony. It was wet and messy, the angle awkward, and the kisses were more panting against each other’s mouth than anything, but Tony had never felt anything so amazing. He tightened his grip around Rhodey, moving his other hand to scratch over the inside of his thighs and Rhodey sobbed against his lips as he came, spilling over Tony’s hand.

“Oh shit,” Tony mumbled, stilling himself against Rhodey’s back and fighting back his own groan. He stroked Rhodey through it, touch lighter with each pass, until Rhodey went completely limp against him, letting Tony take the entirety of his weight. “Good?” Tony asked, eyes trained on the drop of sweat sliding down the length of his neck.

“Fuck, man.” Rhodey’s voice was raw. “That was incredible.” He shifted against him, trying to get more comfortable, and Tony made a punched out noise as he dragged against his still aching cock in the process. Rhodey frowned, sitting up to look at him a little better. “You didn’t…?”

“Well, you know.” Tony rubbed his hand over his mouth, shrugging a little awkwardly. “I thought we were doing this for you and so it might be a little weird if I… You know.”

Rhodey pulled away entirely then, turning around to face him properly. “Tony, you are the dumbest genius I’ve ever met,” he informed him before shifting forward and kissing him properly this time, grinning at him dopily when he pulled back again. His hand slid down to cup Tony’s cock through his boxers, making him whine, and he smirked at him. “Now how’s this body of yours at giving blow jobs?”

Tony stared at him, and then he was groaning as Rhodey’s hand squeezed and he came in his boxers. He slumped forward against Rhodey, breathing hard into his shoulder while he shuddered through the aftershocks, Rhodey’s hand tracing soothing strokes up and down his back.

“Jesus Christ,” Tony muttered, when he felt like he could breathe again.

“No kidding,” Rhodey told him, voice teasing. “Never took you for being such a quickdraw.”

“Excuse me?” Tony gaped at him as Rhodey slid off the bed, disappearing into the bathroom and coming back with a damp washcloth. “Are you kidding? You were pressed up all against me, panting and moaning. Like you would have lasted half as long in the same situation. And anyway, this is your body, dumbass. If anyone’s the quickdraw here, it’s you.”

Rhodey snorted as they stripped off the last of their clothes and cleaned up. “Orgasms are 99% mental, Tony.”

Tony shook his head as he climbed under the covers with Rhodey, the thought that maybe he should go back to ‘Rhodey’s’ room never even occurring to him. “What kind of idiot told you that? And you believed them? That sounds like terrible math. There’s no way that’s true.”

They were still lazily trading insults when they drifted off to sleep.

***

Tony opened his eyes and then immediately closed them again, groaning as his head pounded in response. “Oh god, what the fuck happened?” he asked.

Then he froze as he remembered everything. Keeping the rest of his body perfectly still, he opened his eyes just in time to see Rhodey on the other side of the garage, doing the same thing.

“Oh, thank god,” Rhodey muttered, and Tony felt a matching wave of relief as he watched him pat down his body, checking to make sure everything was as he had left it.

Tony got to his feet and grabbed the sledgehammer that he’d left nearby before turning the machine. Beaming, he passed it over to Rhodey. “Care to do the honours?”

When Rhodey had finished smashing the machine to smithereens, a pleased smile on his face, there was a long moment of slightly awkward silence. “So,” Tony said, trying to quell the anxiety that was building in his stomach. “Back to our own bodies, huh?” He didn’t know what this meant for them, if fooling around last night (and then again this morning) was just a one off from an extreme situation, an extended science experiment. Didn’t know if Rhodey would just want to pretend it had never happened.

But before he could really work himself up into a panic, Rhodey was turning to face him. And as Tony stared at him, confused, he curled his arms around his neck and drew him in for a slow, lazy, perfect kiss.

“Now that feels right,” Rhodey declared, and that dopey smile looked way better on his own face. “Getting to kiss you is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. And having my own mouth back to do it helps.” He gave Tony’s shoulder a warm squeeze. “Come on, Tones, let’s go home.”

EPILOGUE

They were just about the pull out of the driveway when Howard came storming out of the house, looking furious about something. Tony winced, fighting back the urge to slink down beneath the window until he was out of sight.

“Can we just go, Jarvis?”

“No, wait!” Rhodey yelped before Jarvis could switch the car into gear. “I forgot something!”

He was out of the car before Tony could protest otherwise, and as he watched with a mixture of horror and awe, Rhodey stomped up to Howard, said something he couldn’t quite hear, and promptly punched him in the face.

Tony stared with wide eyes as Rhodey turned back to the car, moving at not-quite-a-jog, and then slowly turned his eyes to meet Jarvis’ gaze in the rearview mirror. He was a little terrified at what he’d find, but Jarvis was smiling back at him.

“Anthony,” he said, “Let me be the first to tell you how much I absolutely approve of your new boyfriend.”

Tony stared at him as Rhodey climbed back into the car, beaming and just a little out of breath, and gave Tony’s hand a squeeze. “Okay, now we can go.”

#tonystarkbingo2020 #tsb2020 #ironhusbands #tony stark #james rhodes #bodyswap #mit era #lemon #fic #my fic

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ragnarachael · 6 years ago

Text

Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda.

Pairing: Deadpool x Daughter!Reader, Peter Parker x Reader

Word Count: 1,945

Summary: Wade didn’t want to ruin his kid's night with her ‘boyfriend,’ but he didn’t have much of a choice, she had a right to know.

A Note: i really don’t think this is all that different from the original piece i wrote back in june 2018. you can’t fix what ain’t broke? (rereading and editing this, i just realized how close to home this hits right now)

Warnings: a bunch of angst that you probably haven’t seen me write before, major canon character death, cursing, crying, all the sad stuff with a bit of jokes at the end. (i don’t know if it’s considered a fourth wall break, but there’s a reference to your local writer behind the screen)

masterlist

Wade had been sitting in the apartment for a few hours now. He was soaking wet in his shirt and sweats, holding onto Vanessa’s limp, cold body like his life depended on it. He was still covered in the blood of the douchebag that pulled the trigger.

He was still sobbing on and off with the door still broken open and the rain pouring through the open window.

If Vanessa were still alive, she would be huffing at Wade for doing such a thing and then he’d make a joke and then they’d make their way to the bed and celebrate their anniversary as planned.

Of all the days he fucking finished his duties early and had idiots follow him back home, it had to be today.

Y/N had made plans with her friend (more like boyfriend, Wade and Vanessa knew something was up) Peter just so they could celebrate.. accordingly.

How the hell was Wade supposed to walk over to the Parker’s apartment complex in Queens and tell his little girl her mother was dead?

How the hell was he supposed to act like a normal human being when he was covered in two different peoples blood right now?

And more importantly, how was he going to pull himself together and get up from the rug where he sat with Vanessa in his soaking wet arms?

Wade took a deep breath, pressing a kiss to Vanessa’s pale forehead before gently laying her body back where it landed what seemed like hours ago now. He slowly stood up, looking at the clock above their bed, seeing it only being almost nine o'clock at night.

Wade just shook his head and moved to his closet, throwing on a hoodie and a pair of jeans to not only to warm up and hide all of the blood seeping through the cloth fabric, but also so he can get his kid. Poor girl deserves to know what the fuck happened.

Queens was only an hour walk from their complex. The Parker’s was then 20 minutes from that point on. That put Wade in front of the complex doors at exactly 10:30 pm. He pulled his hood off as he walked into the warm lobby, ignoring the gasps from the people in the room as he made his way to the elevator.

He either had a lot of blood on his face, or he still looks like the world’s worst burn victim.

He’ll take either for 200, Alex.

He pressed the seventh floor button once he stepped foot into the elevator. Thankfully, he was completely alone in the metal box and started to try and think of how the fuck he was going to do this.

What do you say to the second best thing that’s happened in your life that the first best thing that’s happened in your life is fucking dead?

The elevator opened up too soon to his liking. It wasn’t slow enough for him to get his shit together and man up enough to march down the hall to get to the Parker’s apartment. Either way, his brain was on autopilot as he walked down the long hall, having dropped her off here earlier in the day before he went to do his shit.

He made the first left he saw prior to earlier in the day, stopping at the second door on the left.

He had hoped Peter wouldn’t answer the door. Y/N didn’t need her happiness to be ruined in this moment. If May answered again, that’d be a blessing within itself.

Wade took a deep, deep breath, trying to get his thoughts together before he removed his right hand from his hoodie pockets and knocked on the door firmly.

He placed his hand back in the pocket and waited. It seemed like an eternity before he saw May’s face contorting from sweet and kind to worried, already seeing Y/N’s father here soon.

“Hey, May. Uh, can I speak with Y/N?” Wade got out before May could ask anything. She was taken aback, his his lighthearted, joke filled tone from the day gone, riddled with sadness.

“Of course, Wade. Come in?” May said gently, opening the door a little wider for him to enter as she turned around to go get Y/N.

Wade slowly entered, closing the door gently behind him. He looked around the apartment, smiling very faintly. It looked cozy and like a home. Compared to the apartment that awaited for both Wade and Y/N, depending on her reaction.

He could hear laughter. It was a combination of Y/N’s laughter mixed with Peter’s. His heart flew up into his throat practically at that.

Wade’s mind slowly started going into panic mode.

He shouldn’t have come, he would just ruin her night with her ‘he’s not my boyfriend, but if he would be his nickname would be honey bun because yes, dad, he’s that sweet.’

Wade heard May and Y/N conversing as she came from the hall from the far left of the door, Y/N freezing when she saw her father.

“Dad? What’s going on? I thought you’d be with Mom tonight..?” She questioned softly, her head tilted as May sent Wade a sad smile, probably knowing something was wrong, before she went back to navigate her way to the kitchen, probably to occupy Peter so he didn’t come out.

Y/N’s tone sent a dagger through his heart. He couldn’t break the news to her like this.

She was just a kid. His kid.

He didn’t want her to turn out like him at any point in her life. He didn’t want her to be without a mother. He didn’t want any of this to be a reality but here we are-

“Dad?” Y/N questioned again, carefully reaching a hand out to place on his arm as he just stared at her, the gears shifting around in his head.

Y/N carefully placed her other hand on his other arm to hold Wade steady as he swayed back and forth.

“She’s gone.” Easy. Simple. Filled with all the pain in the world.

Y/N just rose a brow in concern and started to rub at the damp fabric clinging to her father’s arms.

“She who? Mom? Did she go to the store after your rounds and hasn’t come back yet? She probably stopped at that one shop you both love-” Y/N was cut off with Wade’s harsh sigh before his hands went to rub at his eyes, ignoring the horrendous texture as his tears blurred his vision.

His heart couldn’t take the pain it was going through. Well, technically, it could, but that’s not the point.

Y/N was about to list off another thing that her mother could have gone before Wade finally spoke up.

“Sweetheart, no.”

It was quick and firm, which was the complete opposite of their father-daughter relationship.

Y/N was taken back and moved her hands from her father’s arms, slowly crossing her arms over her chest.

Wade took a moment to notice she was wearing some dumb shirt you could buy from a tourist place. It had a white base with a bright yellow taxi and the ugly letters “I survived my trip to New York!” on it smack dab in the middle.

She doesn’t own that, does she?

His father instincts wanted to kick in and question who’s shirt it was, but he held it back.

“The drug lords I went after during rounds today.. they followed me back. I thought I had enough time to catch the bullet. I.. I thought I hit the fucker,” Wade spat, his voice faltering and cracking at the end of his sentence. Y/N’s face went from confusion to sadness, finally understanding what’s going on.

“It hit your mother,” Wade finished. Rip it off like a bandaid.

“You’re joking, right? This is a sick joke to scare me to leave the house, isn’t it?” Y/N said slowly, her eyes starting to sting from the sudden tears filling her eyes.

Wade saw how her eyes glossed over.

He wanted to rip his heart out of his chest.

“I-I..” Wade sighed and looked down at his boots he pulled on. “I kinda wish it was, but it’s not.”

Wade heard Y/N’s breath hitch before he let out a grunt the second she connected with his chest, her arms wrapped around his middle tightly.

His arms wrapped tightly around his daughter’s frame, finally lifting his head up to rest his chin on her head, his own eyes starting to gloss over.

The silence between them was filled with Y/N’s pained sobs in his chest.

Wade really wanted to crack, but he had to be strong for his girl.

Eventually, Wade had moved his head from the top of his daughters and moved one hand that was around her to wipe his eyes which was when she looked up at him with bloodshot eyes, seeming somewhat recovered.

“W-What are we going to do?” She questioned suddenly, Wade now feeling how tight she was clinging to his hoodie.

He sniffled in response at first. What were they going to do?

“I don’t know, sweetheart. I don’t know,” He concluded finally, shocked his own voice was even steady in the first place.

The both of them started to sway slightly as Wade could hear footsteps coming from the kitchen now.

“I just wanted to tell you, you had a right to know. I plan on heading back and figuring out what to do with her body-”

“She’s still in the apartment?!” Y/N whisper yelled, also hearing the footsteps as she ripped herself from her father's chest.

“What was I supposed to do?! Chuck her out the window with me when I chased down and killed the guy that shot her?” Wade hissed back before the footsteps stopped close to them.

“H-Hey, Mr. Wilson,” Peter said awkwardly, smiling shyly as he held two steaming mugs. Wade rose a brow as he looked at the boy, eyeing the mugs.

“Hey, Peter.” Wade forced a smile at the teen before reluctantly letting Y/N go and let out a soft sigh.

Y/N was quick to pull herself from her father’s arms and walk over to her boyfriend, sniffling as she gave him a small smile before taking a mug of hot chocolate.

“Thanks, Pete. I’ll be back in the kitchen in a sec, okay?” She said quickly, Peter giving her a reassuring smile and encouraging nod before he moved in to quickly kiss her cheek, awkwardly making his way back to the kitchen where his Aunt May resided.

Y/N turned back around to be met with Wade’s look that definitely looked smug.

“So you two are honey buns-”

“Oh my God, shut up,” Y/N insisted harshly as she sipped her mug before placing it on a close by coffee table, Wade letting out a hoarse chuckle.

“Two honey buns in one package? That’s a steal!”

Y/N let out a harsh sigh as a small smile grew on her face before moving back to wrap her arms around him and rest her head on his chest.

“You’re lucky I can’t think of a good come back,” Y/N mumbled Wade letting out a scoff.

“It’s just lazy writing on her end,” he reasoned, gently patting his daughter’s back before she moved her head slightly.

“Who’s lazy writing?”

Wade just huffed and shook his head fondly, moving a hand to cup Y/N’s cheek before dropping another small kiss to the middle of her forehead.

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart.”

#deadpool x daughter!reader #peter parker x reader #deadpool x reader #marvel imagine #marvel fanfiction #wade wilson x daughter!reader #wade wilson x reader #rachael writes

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thewhiterabbit42 · 6 years ago

Text

Breakfast in Bed

A sequel to Home

Pairing: Gabriel x Winchester!sister reader Summary: Gabriel starts his morning by savoring one of his favorite meals. You. Written for:@spnkinkbingo Square Filled: Domestic Word Count: 1791 Tags/Warnings: Fluffy feels, oral sex (female receiving), pleasuring awake

It’s amazing how you already know he’s not there in the space beside you. You don’t even need to check, your arms heavy at your side as sleep keeps your thoughts slurring muzzy.

“Babe… what’rydo...?”

Gabriel’s surprised you manage to get that many words out before you slip back out of consciousness, though he can feel the way some parts of your brain are beginning to shake off the fog at the light pressure his mouth leaves as he presses a series of kisses down the center of your body.

There isn’t as much activity as he pushes your T-shirt up to your chest, exposing the softness of your stomach. Though, he aims to fix that, but before he does, he takes a moment to admire you, breath ghosting over you in warm, short waves.

Your skin, however, feels everything, from the sear of his fingers as he palms your waist to the gentle flick of his tongue, warm and wet along your hip. He can hear your nipples harden, cloth fibers giving the faintest of stretches as peaks form through your shirt.

He notes with pride the way goosebumps radiate from his touch, your brain cells firing in ways that suggest pleasure rather than alarm.

You draw the comforter up to your elbows, mistaking everything for a chill.

He smirks. "Can't have that, sweetheart."

His hands emerge from beneath the covers, gently cupping your breasts and drawing a breathy sigh from you. He loves every inch of your curves, how the lean hardness of your old life has faded beneath soft, well-nourished contours. He could spend hours appreciating them, but that's not on the menu for this morning.

His thumbs begins tracing a wide arc, starting at the edges of soft swells before moving toward the center. Round and round they go at a maddening pace, drawing your senses into awareness and making them stand on end despite the fact that you're still so very not awake.

Your body knows, a petulant whimper catching in your throat. Your need sparks; beautiful, fleeting hues across synapses that remind him of clusters of Christmas lights. You arch into his touch as he continues, feather light, drawing out the colors as he keeps himself just shy of reaching taut nubs.

They never reach them, and the spectrum that flares when he pulls his hands from your chest resonates closer to frustration.

That almost rouses you. Definiately arouses as he listens to the cadence of your heart get a little faster, your blood rushing lower.

You mumble something that suspiciously sounds like dick, though it’s hard for him to tell.

His lips give a wide stretch before descending upon your naval, hands teasing along your waist. They hook beneath the band of your underwear, dragging it down as his fingertips drink in the smoothness of your skin.

Cotton whispers along your thighs which shift in response, and he leaves the garment bunched around your knees. He could just snap them away, but you don’t like that. You want everything to be as normal as possible, and there’s something oddly rewarding to him about doing it all the “hard” way.

It’s been easier than he thought, living like a human rather than just pretending to be one. No magic snaps. No shortcuts. No mojo whatsoever (save the occasional indulgence in the bedroom), though he still doesn’t understand the need to spend so much time away from you.

Sure, you both have a keener appreciate for the time together, but he would regardless, knowing that your lifespan will pass by him in the blink of an eye.

He hasn’t told you that. He’s not sure how to, because he knows how difficult it is for you already. You try so hard to keep your insecurities hidden, but he can’t help but pick up on the questions that plague your mind late at night when you think he’s sleeping.

How long before my youth fades and I no longer catch his eye?

How long before the novelty wears off and he grows tired of me?

When will he realize he deserves so much more than I can give him?

He doesn’t. If anything you deserve more, but he has yet to find a way to make you believe that.

But, most moments you’re happy. With him. Together. And that’s all that matters.

He brings his mouth down at the edge of your hip, smiling at the way you wriggle as he hits a sensitive spot. He’s spent hours mapping them out, each one of them seared into his mind. What really amazes him is the way you’ve diligently memorized his as well, as much as you can anyway, given the limits of human cognition.

He’s never met anyone who’s so focused on him. On what he likes. His thoughts. His feelings. It’s like he’s as much your world as you are his, and he almost doesn’t know what to do with that.

Pleasure, however, now that’s an area he knows.

By the time he’s scraping his chin against your thigh he’s wearing a full on grin, the familiar tickle lighting up cells across your body and mind in ways he’s never seen with anyone else. It’s like you recognize him on a whole other level. With every fiber of your being, you brighten to him and only him, whether or not you’re awake.

When his tastebuds hit your folds you’re aware enough to hum, and your sweet tang erupts across his awareness like the finest of nectars. Your legs part unconsciously as he tongues deeper, gliding along your slit to lap up the juices already gathering there before lifting higher.

It isn’t until he reaches your clit that you finally float into consciousness, pleasure exploding across your neurons like fireworks in the night.

You gasp, hand shooting straight beneath the covers as your instincts immediately take over. A fullness spreads through his chest at the way your fingers simply slide through the tangle of curls at the back of his head, fondly stroking, when months ago, you would have wrenched him off you in panic.

“Mmm,” your fingers tighten in his hair as you arch into him. “Whatcha doin’ down there?”

“Just having some breakfast in bed,” he purrs before getting back to business.

He knows what you like, working his tongue around the sensitive bundle of nerves as his hands reach back up to your breasts. There’s no teasing this time as his fingers head straight for pebbled peaks, brushing lightly to watch those scintillating colors burst into flames before he gives your nipples a light pinch.

“Fuck, Gabe,” you groan, legs shifting as you try to shimmy your panties low enough to catch it with a foot.

He reaches down, assistance given in the quick snap of elastic. It draws a small white flicker of discomfort through your desire before quickly being drawn into it.

Your range of sexual appetites has been a pleasant surprise. You like roughness as much as tenderness, the day and mood determining where along the spectrum you lay. Right now, you’re happy to let him take the lead, knees eagerly falling open with their freedom as you wait for his next move.

“Take your shirt off,” he says. “I want to see you.”

You do, without hesitation, and before the garment even hits the floor he feels his chest stop moving.

It amazes him, how you're still able to do that. He's had many attractive paramours over the years, but looks have only held his interest for so long. Kali held his interest far longer than anyone, her tenacity reeling him back in every time he thought he might be ready to move on.

But you are different. As cliche as it sounds, you are the embodiment of beauty on every level possible, your mind and body lethal in their own right, but add your heart and soul to that mix and you are nothing short of stunning.

He can't imagine a time where you won't steal his breath or send a tremor of nerves dancing through his system.

“You’re so fucking beautiful, you know that?”

“Shut up." It's a knee jerk response, false irritation trying to cover the shy tiny tint that blossoms across your face and tugs at the edge of your lips.

You've gotten much better at accepting compliments from him, and he's noticed it's only in the moments you feel vulnerable that you revert to deflection.

"You're such a dork - stop looking at me.”

He wonders if you realize just how many places you blush when you’re embarrassed? It’s not just your cheeks that get a dusting of pink, small rosy patches springing up across your chest and highlighting the tops of your breasts.

One day he'll find out just how many other shades he can paint your body on words and looks alone.

“Seriously, Gabe, if you don't get back to business, the only place you'll be dining this morning will be Louise's diner."

He holds back a chuckle, knowing his amusement would only rub salt into the rawness you feel beneath his gaze.

“Somebody’s demanding before they’ve had their coffee." He infuses just enough sarcasm to toe the line of snarky, a place he finds you feel the safest when exposed.

"Yeah, well…" You begin talking as he settles between your legs, hands smoothing up the back of your thighs as he hooks your knees over his shoulders.

"You knew what you were getting into when you -- ohhh."

You groan as the flat of his tongue immediately finds that sensitive spot again, licking broad strokes in ways he knows gets your blood flowing.

“Ah - You're too good at this." You throw your head back into your pillow, rocking yourself into his face.

He pauses, just to be a shit, his tongue freezing in place.

"Ith thah a complain'?" He smirks, watching the glow of vivid colors flare bright with burnt copper as he takes it another step further and withdraws his mouth. "Because if it is, you're welcome to--"

"Eat me, choir boy." You're only partially joking, fingers grasping strands of honey, tightening their grip before pushing him back into position.

This time he does chuckle, vibrations jolting your brain waves back to desire as he wisely doesn't argue. His goal isn’t to tease you, for once. Not much, anyway.

No, today is about savoring. You. These simple moments where he can pleasure you awake in the comfort of a home you’ve created together, a place where you can slip back into an endorphin-soaked haze without being interrupted while he whips you up an actual meal.

But first, he needs to finish his. After all, they say breakfast is the cornerstone of the day.

ALL the tags:

@girl-next-door-writes @fand0maniac @feelmyroarrrr @lucifer-in-leather @blondecoffeecake @tistai @room-with-a-cat @authoressskr @revwinchester @flufy07 @tardis-is-mine @tangle-of-ivy @luciferseclipse @mrswhozeewhatsis @protectivedestiel @angelofwinchester17 @phantomwarrior12 @jeanjeaniethings @wontlookaway @copperseraphim @fandomsrourlives @archangelgabriellives @shadows-and-padlocked-hearts @mizzezm @disneymarina @zpandaqueen @idabbleincrazy @katekvnes @han68000 @brokencasbutt67-writer @crashdevlin @klinenovakwinchester @bofa-deans-nuts @sherlockedtash88 @lovelyhexbag

Gabe Squad:

@bloodstained-porcelain-doll @lacqueluster @baritonechick @samikitten @kazosa @nobodys-baby-now @acarpouschimerical @cipherwheeldecoder @megasimpleplan4ever @azlinh @fruitypieq @koithings @booknerd1324 @the-kryomancer @karichanarts @archangelashiah @calamity-chaos @erisunderthemoon @hankypranky @missihart23 @curious-trickster @gabegirrl86 @trickster-emissarie @sweetmisseddreams2002 @bun-dpdbny @greeneyedtrickster @marichromatic @ourloveisforthelovely @supernaturalways

@a-wing-and-a-pen

#gabriel x reader #gabriel #spnkinkbingo #spn fanfiction #spn fanfic #supernatural reader insert #spn reader insert #gabriel fanfic #gabriel oneshot #spn gabriel #rabbit writes

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bipabrena · 6 years ago

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Rodorah/Mothzilla AO3 fic

Sequel to this. You can read this as a stand-alone, but I suggest you read the prequel so you’re not too confused.

Half-arsed summary: so, in the prequel, a lot happened during the fight that challenged San’s perspective, and conflict brewed in him. He thought he wasn’t too different from Mothra and Godzilla. Ichi was forced to decapitate San after he stopped he and Ni from killing Mothra three times, and he begged the two to listen to him. In this fic, Ichi and Ni panic when San isn’t regenerating no matter how hard they try. Ichi and Ni’s emotional states are explored, while Rodan laments what happened in the previous fight to Mothra and Godzilla, even though his devotion to Ghidorah borders on fanaticism.

When San musters the courage to regenerate, Ichi and Ni are overcome with emotion, but they are soon forced to confront San’s actions in Boston. The change in him is overwhelming, one Ichi and Ni can’t understand.

Ni knew it.

He just knew it.

Ichi had always been incredibly perceptive, and his senses were far superior to San’s and his own, but Ni had always had a talent for intuition. For things one couldn’t physically perceive. Things for which he’d normally have no evidence for, but he still had no doubts would happen, in one way or another.

This was the final proof.

He just knew this would happen.

He clenched his jaw so tightly he felt his teeth would shatter. Wrinkles formed around his brow as his frown deepened, and his worried, unblinking eyes wouldn’t leave Ichi.

Ichi’s eyes were closed in a pronounced frown.

He was attempting to concentrate and remain calm as best he could, but he was clearly growing alarmed.

After several minutes, Ichi opened his eyes.

“… Well?” Ni asked.

Ichi stared ahead, at nothing in particular, really.

He seemed neutral, like he wasn’t thinking or feeling anything in particular, really. But if Ni concentrated, he’d see it.

And he did see it.

Behind the façade, Ichi looked like he’d made a terrible realisation, and it was slowly sinking in.

His unblinking eyes darted to Ni.

Ni looked worried. Alarmed.

It was an expression Ichi had never seen in him, and the guilt it made him feel burned his insides.

“I can’t do it,” he said.

Ni had no visible reaction. He didn’t say anything either.

So, Ichi looked ahead again.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when the shadow of a silhouette entered his field of vision. He turned his head slightly.

He found Ni’s impossibly widened, dark and cold eyes looming over him.

It was a frightening expression that forced him to hold his breath.

“What do you mean you can’t do it?” Ni asked coldly.

“What do you mean you can’t do it, Ichi?” he reiterated. “Stop fooling around,” his voice grew more belligerent.

Ichi’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.

He was taken aback when a pronounced scowl overcame Ni with a deep growl.

“Stop fooling around and regenerate!” he demanded.

“I…” Ichi frowned further as the realisation fully sank in. “I can’t. I don’t know why, I just… I—“

Ichi’s eyes twitched when Ni head-butt him and pressed their foreheads together.

“What do you mean you can’t!? You have to do it, Ichi! You have to bring San back!”

Ichi’s mouth opened in a frown. He had no idea what to say.

“You have to bring our little brother back!” Ni shouted, growing less aggressive and more pleading.

“Tch!” Ichi scowled, “I’m trying!”

“You’re not trying hard enough!” Ni growled. “Bring him back!”

Ichi felt like their heart was about to burst.

That’s when he perked up. He looked to the side, and Ni’s instinctive reaction was to understand Ichi had sensed something.

They grew quiet as they heard wings a minute or so later, and Rodan landed before them.

He bowed.

“Your Highness,” he greeted.

Now aware that King Ghidorah liked to keep things short and to-the-point, Rodan didn’t await a response.

“The MUTO has emitted the call. She and Scylla have found an egg in what is supposedly called the Yunnan province. It’s most likely Mothra’s.”

When Ghidorah had no visible reaction, Rodan grew a little nervous.

Especially when he realised the left head hadn’t grown back yet.

“… We didn’t want to do anything without your permission,” Rodan continued. “I can go there myself and destroy the egg before it hatches, or would you prefer to allow her to hatch so she can serve you?”

The anguish plaguing Rodan’s insides worsened by the silent second. Was it because he was aware he’d broken his orders, and silently feared for punishment?

He shivered for a short moment, both because of his lack of familiarity with this freezing weather as because of fear.

“I don’t care,” Ichi said firmly. “We already told you that you’re free to do as you please.”

Rodan’s eyes wavered.

That was true, but… he didn’t want to do anything without his permission. Surely Ghidorah would—

“Rodan,” he said, and Rodan immediately looked at him with wide eyes.

The way his name left the King’s mouth—the way his tongue tipped both syllables against his palate, the firmness and imperialness in his voice.

Rodan could feel his heart thumping.

It was the first time King Ghidorah had ever uttered his name, and it was regal.

“We were clear in telling you you’re free to do as you please for now,” he reiterated.

Ni was entirely silent, as it was evidently Ichi who represented the two.

“Do not come to us unless called. I shall not repeat myself. You will not get another chance. Understand?”

Even though his life was being threatened, Rodan could do nothing but stare in awe.

This magnificent creature, this creature that held unrivalled power, asserted his warnings without violence or anger. He was clearly firm, he was clearly no non-sense, but never unnecessarily belligerent or violent.

Not only was Rodan being allowed to do as he pleased, he was not being punished for breaking his first order.

“Do what you want. Don’t come to us unless we call you.”

His greatness was second to none.

“Yes, sire,” he responded.

He was going to fly away, to relish to himself over his awe-inducing experience; until he saw the right head’s expression.

Clearly worried.

Clearly desperate.

The right head hadn’t heard a single word the leader had said.

It took little to no time for Rodan to understand why.

Was his King hurting?

The possibility alone that this was the case tore something inside Rodan. A stinging feeling similar to the lacerations inflicted by the late Queen, except that this time it ran further, it hurt deeper.

Was it because the left head hadn’t regenerated?

Was there something, anything Rodan could do?

He opened his mouth to say something, but it was forced shut the moment he took a look at the leader.

When he heard his rattling tail, Rodan understood.

His ideals were resolute and inflexible; his devotion bordered on fanaticism, but Rodan still held the instinctive, primal feeling of self-preservation.

He would not risk his life thoughtlessly.

He bowed again, and quickly took to the skies.

The moment Rodan was out of sight, the bravado completely vanished for Ichi.

He felt it at once; the overwhelming pain. It felt as though he were underwater, being dragged down by an impossibly heavy anvil.

The grief was so immense, Ichi felt his heart would burst.

It wasn’t only because of his own pain.

The brothers shared a body; every organ, every vein, every pint of blood.

Their heart.

Their bond was undeniable, resolute and unbreakable; one brother’s grief was the other two’s.

Ni’s grief was his own, and so it added to his own.

The guilt ate Ichi from the inside.

He didn’t know what to say.

“… I’m tired,” is all Ni said after much, lingering silence.

Ichi nodded silently. With a sharp inhale, Ni shifted and sought something that had been carefully placed behind the mountain; something that had been treated with tenderness and care, as though the slightest move would disintegrate it.

He gently, tenderly dragged San’s severed head.

He coiled around the snowy head; nuzzled it, cuddled it. He tried to give the insentient head warmth.

After killing Mothra and Godzilla, after the first regeneration attempt failed, Ni had been a quick thinker. He wasted no time to voice Ichi his suggestion, and Ichi wasted no time to accept it.

These cold, sub-zero temperatures had stopped the decomposition process altogether.

Ni closed his eyes with a distressed, pronounced frown as he cuddled San’s severed head.

Ichi’s lids dropped sadly as he observed Ni dose off.

“Brothers, please, just listen to me for a moment!”

“If I had stopped…” he mumbled to himself, “then the three of us would’ve died…”

No, is what he immediately thought to himself.

Mothra and Godzilla had been as shocked as he and Ni had. They were also incredibly weakened. Mothra’s attacks would’ve had no effect, and Godzilla couldn’t even stand.

Now I’m just making excuses, he smiled sadly to himself.

He shook off his undeniable exhaustion after several days of no sleep, and closed his eyes to start again.

Ichi attempted to concentrate as best as he could.

His cells worked hard. They used signalled pathways to speak amongst each other; they operated as a giant symphony, spreading all across the bloodstream to interact and function as an entire system.

He felt the familiar, ticklish sensation in his nether regions, but nothing happened.

He ignored the sickening throbbing inside his head, the throbbing that was a clear warning he was overexerting himself.

The blood trickling down his nose was ignored as well.

Until it happened.

As a primal, self-defence mechanism, his brain shut down.

The copious blood supply Ichi sent to the inner core of bone to begin the process of rebuilding the missing spine left his brain with little to no blood and oxygen.

As a defence-mechanism, his brain grabbed whatever blood and oxygen it could at the expense of Ichi’s bodily functions.

He completely passed out. The mountain vibrated, and piles of snow fell below when his head hit the rocks with a grating thud.

Read the rest on AO3 here.

#king ghidorah #ghidorah #godzilla #rodan #mothra #rodorah #mothzilla #godzilla kotm #ghidorah x rodan #godzilla x mothra

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thedarkenedkeeper · 7 years ago

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Glitched: Part 16 - Curious I See

Author’s Note: Oh my GAAAWWWWDDDDD!! FINALLY! I FUCKING LIVE!! Jesus FUCKING Christ! *dies*

How I absolutely LOATHED working on this chapter. Don’t get me wrong, I like it and I wrote it because I felt it was necessary for the story, but jfc, I had such a difficult time writing it out the way I envisioned it in my head. I apologize for just how FUCKING long it took for me to get this out. Things came up in my life, it’s been ridiculously hot the last couple of weeks which naturally made me so hot that I didn’t want to do anything. And I’m going away the next few days, so I wanted to get this done before I leave. SO here it is! Hallelujah!

So I kind of lied, there is some horror in this chapter (surprise, surprise!). I didn’t lie though about it being a “break” chapter so don’t worry - there’s no angst or gore in this, so you can all relax and breathe (’cause believe me, you’re going to need it). Slight warning though: things tend to get quite creepy and uneasy in this chapter (what else is new?). A character is described as a corpse with gross descriptions.

I’m taking a notebook with me while I’m away so I’ll hopefully get started on Part 17.

Read this while listening to this playlist.

Enjoy the (final) break, guys! ;D

Close your eyes and open your mind. Take deep breaths – inhale and exhale slowly…slowly…slowly…

Feel your body going slack, feel your muscles loosening and your nerves relaxing. You’re beginning to feel tired but not sleepy, drifting into a state of unconsciousness but still very much awake. You’re floating away into a sea of darkness, and yet you still have a grip on your body, you can feel it. There’s a comforting warmth blossoming in your chest and weaving throughout your veins, relieving you in knowing that you’re alright and your body – your physical body – isn’t going anywhere. You can’t see anything, even when you open your eyes. There’s nothing but never-ending black – that is until there isn’t.

The void – an otherworldly dimension of space, a dream within a dream. A haven that you and you alone can escape to and warp to your exact liking, a place where you can become a god and shape your own world with a flick of the wrist and a snap of your fingers. A sanctuary for your inner personas to feel safe and content. A mind palace where no one but you holds the power and control over everything.

No one can be let in and no one can be let out.

Because if something were to somehow find a way to get inside, there’d be no telling what would happen.

The darkness would probably no longer be your blanket of security. The warmth would probably be sucked from right out of your chest cavity. The air would probably become tainted with something so putrid you’d find yourself suffocating. Something twisted and unearthly would probably have its nails sunk deep into the roots of your safe place, creating its own diseased world. And you would probably find yourself rotting from the inside out, desperately trying to escape from the place you had built and known to have once been wonderful and welcoming.

The worst part?

You would probably not notice any of it until it was too late.

* * * * *

Why are you out here again?...Oh! Right! ‘Cause you felt like something was wrong and you felt the need to go and see for yourself. Curse you and your instinctive need to make sure everything’s okay!

The lone hero was currently wandering around in the void – not his specific part of the void but the overall spacious part of the void that didn’t belong to any particular ego. Given just how empty the space was, it was quite literally a never-ending black abyss; not a whole lot of light brightened the place, although there wasn’t much to shed light on. And yet, within the darkness, there was beauty and a sense of comfort.

The entire floor wasn’t a floor at all, more so a continuous runway of water; illuminated by bare-branched neon trees rising tall on either side of the paths leading towards each individual ego’s world. Those trees weaved out up high into the shadows, a thick smog clouding the sky and dissipating the closer it reached the ground. Pulses of blinding shades of color originated from the roots and surged upward throughout the shimmering bark every couple of seconds. It was as though the energy and life of the trees were visible to the naked eye. The branches were so thin and veiny; anyone would surely do a double take and think they resembled nerves in the brain, what with the charges of power coursing through each branch.

With each step the green-haired man took, the water beneath his feet rippled and produced a faint glow of ruby red, an indication of which ego was out and about. The color was always different, depending on which ego was taking a stroll through the void. Surprisingly, although the ground was completely made of water and appeared frighteningly deep, the man didn’t sink. In fact, his feet weren’t even getting wet; the clear liquid just ran off of his boots in droplets, not soaking into the material or leaving behind any evidence of him having walked along water. He strolled along the path, a faint trail of crimson following behind him as he took a look around at his surroundings. The neon trees, the darkness, the foggy haze, the pathways leading off to his friends’ own sanctuaries. He hummed with thought, kicking at the ground, sending a splash of red forth.

It was very rare for an ego to ever leave their little world and wander off into the open void. But every now and again, whether it was to go and visit one of their identical twins or to just get some fresh air and have some peace and quiet to think, they’d find their way out into the dark.

So what was the heroic Jackieboy Man’s reason for venturing off into the mystical?

One moment the hero had been rescuing an older lady’s poor cat from up high in a tree and the next he found himself getting hit with a gut-wrenching sense of dread, like something was very wrong. His first thought was that maybe someone was in need of a superhero somewhere in the city. Maybe someone had gotten hurt, maybe someone was being robbed, maybe someone was getting their car jacked. Anytime someone was in need of help or there was any danger, his superhero instincts would automatically kick in and give him a heads up. It had made sense for him to assume it was just his “spidey-sense” notifying him of any nearby danger. But that was just the thing: there wasn’t anyone in need of a hero during that time. He figured it was his brain tricking him and that he just desperately wanted to do more heroic things that day, so he brushed it off and went off on his merry way. It wasn’t until later on when he strolled past the entrance to his world when he was once again overcome with a wrongful feeling. Chills creeped up along his spine and everything seemed to had gone eerily quiet around him as he stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the wormhole with perplexity but more so concern.

Was something wrong outside of his world? Had something happened to one of the other egos? He had no idea, and even though he knew very well that Jack was always the first one to be notified of strange goings-on in the void, his instinct was to take immediate action and make sure things were okay. He was there when Jack had shown up, throat slit and choking on his own blood, and he had been there when Chase attempted suicide, lying in a dazed state and bleeding out. He may have been there, but he hadn’t shown up in time. He hadn’t saved them. He hadn’t been the hero he was supposed to be. So if something was really wrong somewhere off in the void, then he was going to make sure he would make it in time before anyone would get hurt.

He had left his world and stepped out into the open darkness, storming off and taking glances around to search for anything out of the ordinary. Everything seemed fine. The trees were all still glowing brightly in the multiple colors they always interchanged from. The ground was still wet and illuminated red with each step he took. He didn’t see anyone rushing off to someone else’s world out of panic. He didn’t see Jack show up to see for himself what was going on. There didn’t appear to be anything wrong with the void, nor were any of the other egos out in the open. And yet, that godawful cancer of dismay remained festering in his stomach, chewing at his insides piece by piece. Everything may have appeared normal, but he knew – he KNEW – something wasn’t right.

The masked hero slowed his pacing as he finally came to the crossroads, lining out the four pathways to each ego’s part of the void. Marvin the Magnificent’s carnival was straight ahead, a faint purple ring in the distance indicating where the entrance was. Off to his left, in the far vastness of space, a bright blue portal was seen – an entrance to Dr. Schneeplestein’s world – and to his right, a loop of energetic orange, home to Chase Brody. He stopped in the center of the intersection, scanning the area around him for any sign of movement.

“Hello?” He called out into the never-ending blackness. “Hello? Guys? Is everything alright?”

He didn’t receive any sort of response, nor did he manage to make out anyone come out of their worlds to see him. Nothing but eerie, dead silence filled the air, and it didn’t make Jackieboy Man feel at ease in the slightest. He had called out for them – surely someone would’ve heard him. Someone would’ve come out to see what the commotion was about. And yet, there was nothing. He was alone in the dark, and that was something that never happened. Anytime he’d come out into the open for a stroll, he may have been alone, but he never truly felt alone. He knew the other egos were each there in the void with him, off doing their own individual things. He was never truly alone. But now – what with this harrowing leech wriggling through his insides…

Slowly – and barely even there – thin, icy-cold digits creeped up along his shoulder blade.

Jackie jolted and immediately spun around on his heel, sucking in a breath at only seeing eternal darkness in his wake. His eyes darted around the place wildly, searching for someone – anyone! He damn well knew he had felt someone’s hand on his shoulder, so how come he didn’t see anyone around?

An unearthly chuckle of glee reverberated throughout the void, an even more mangled giggle overlapping it and coming from off in the deep black of space. Jackie jerked his head in the direction of where the giggle seemed to be originating from and cocked his head in slight confusion. It wasn’t coming from any one of the egos’ worlds – he was staring directly out at pitch blackness, completely off the paths made for the egos to wander on.

It was coming from out in an open, uncharted area of the void where no light was seen.

He swallowed dryly and parted his lips, still staring at the shadows. “Hello?” His voice echoed. “Who’s there?”

The silence returned for a moment or two with a vengeance, admittedly sending chills up and racing along his spine. He cautiously took a step forward, never taking his attention away from where he had heard the giggle.

“Hello?!”

A shot of ice burned through his spine at feeling someone tap at his shoulder.

Jackie gasped sharply and whirled around, wide-eyed and a tad bit shaken. No one was there. Another childish giggle sounded from the abyss before him, almost taunting him. He frowned, starting to get agitated. Was one of the others playing a trick on him? Because if so, it wasn’t funny.

“Hey!” He shouted, immediately charging forward and leaping over the marked pathway; sprinting off in the direction of where the giggle had come from. He may not have seen anyone, but he had definitely felt someone touch him. He didn’t feel so alone anymore – someone else was there in the open void with him and he was going to find them and put an end to this joke of theirs’.

Into the darkness he delved, the foggy breath of black ghosting over him and sucking him in the deeper he went. He couldn’t see a thing at this point now, not an ounce of light shining through. If possible, it seemed to be getting even darker the further he ran. Whoever was hiding from him let out a mocking laugh, evidently deriving sheer amusement from the hero’s puzzlement and desperate need to find the culprit. Releasing an uneven breath and slowing himself down to a halt, Jackieboy Man scanned around him for any sign of movement. All he saw was black – pure, empty, cloak-of-the-Grim-Reaper black. Even when he reached his hand outward, he couldn’t see it; it was one with the darkness. He searched all around him, turning around in circles until he was dizzy, but there wasn’t any sign of light whatsoever. He couldn’t see the neon trees branching upward towards the sky. He couldn’t see the illuminated watery pathways. He couldn’t see any of the portals to the egos’ homes. He saw absolutely nothing and it was only making the lingering feeling in his gut tighten to a sickeningly discomforting extent.

Where were the paths and the trees? There was no way he had run off that far, and even if he had gone a pretty lengthy distance, he would still be able to see the lights from where he was. So why was everything gone? Why couldn’t he see anything?

An awful, cruel cackle resounded through the place, jabbing pins and needles into the hero’s back and making his heart give a jolt of worriment. His eyes darted around nervously, swallowing thickly as he took a couple of wary steps forward.

“Show yourself!” He demanded, his words getting dragged out of him and floating through the endless space for god-knows-who to hear.

He only received a stifling chuckle in response. Following it, an abundance of whispers began to blossom in the air, each distinct and faintly reaching out to him. He couldn’t pinpoint what they were saying as there were too many voices speaking at once, but each one was using a haunting tone of voice that drove home what he feared: he was now in a dangerous situation and he needed to turn back NOW. Forget trying to find who was behind all of the taunting and teasing, he didn’t feel safe – his wellbeing, as well as the safety of the egos, was his top priority at that moment.

Jackie began to backtrack his steps, trying to recall the way he came, but how do you know you’re going in the right direction when you can’t see a damn thing? A few of the whispers increased in loudness, wisps of them drifting right past his ears and feeding him the most chilling of things, they made him stop dead in his tracks. His eyes widened, a quivering breath getting wrenched out of him so violently he nearly doubled over.

“…couldn’t save them.”

“…dead…”

“Where were you?”

“…you let…”

“Why?”

“…them suffer…”

“The poor souls…”

“…your friends…”

“What kind…”

“Please…”

“…left to rot.”

“The children were…”

“of hero are you?”

“He’s coming…”

“…for you.”

A loud bubbly giggle belonging to a little girl rang out from behind the scared hero, causing him to jump and turn to very vaguely make out something deathly-white race by in the distance. With his poor heart feeling the effects of the festering cancer taking hold, Jackie strode forward. His breathing had picked up and alongside the whispers, all he could hear was the deafening beating of his heart pounding away at his ribcage. He clenched his fingers, balling them up into tight fists in an attempt to stave off his growing anxiety. He was a superhero, he didn’t fear anything! He could take anything on with ease and was never one to back down on a challenge! He would NOT succumb to this scheming individual’s tricks of getting a rise out of him!

“Hello?” His voice echoed. “Guys, if this is some kind of prank, it isn’t funny!” He snapped, a sliver of his building dread interlacing his words.

Another sweet girlish giggle met his ears, his eyes staring straight ahead to find a small pale figure standing still, staring right back at him with what looked an awful lot like a large grin – he couldn’t fully tell given how far away this individual was and with how dark it was. He squinted, trying to make out the figure more clearly. He licked his lips, hesitating to speak.

“Who are you?”

Now hold on, Jackie, think about this for a moment. A little girl was giggling a second ago and that looks a lot like a little girl. Who has a little girl? The doctor does, as does Chase. Maybe she’s one of them. Maybe she’s a part of –

His thoughts got cut short when he noticed the figure begin to move, bee-lining straight for him. As the figure drew closer, Jackieboy Man’s vision started to clear up and the shapes and details of long dark hair and a cute floral dress could be made out. It was a little girl – probably four years old – one who gave off an eerily similar appearance as Dr. Schneeplestein’s youngest daughter.

“Ilsa?” Jackie questioned. “What – What are you doing out here all alone?”

The girl suddenly came to an abrupt stop, her head cocking to the left with a gross crack, sending prickles of unease throughout the green-haired hero’s veins. A bouncy laugh ruptured from her throat.

“I’m not awone, silly! I’m here with you!” She chirped happily.

Jackie, gulping down the fear strangling his insides, warily approached her, shrinking down a bit as he moved, feeling the need to be on her level. As he did, the whispers grew louder as though they were warning him to stay away.

“Ilsa, you shouldn’t be out here.” He coughed, nearly choking on his own breath.

He felt himself struggling to breathe the closer he got to the girl – it felt like a giant weight was slowly but surely being pressed down on his chest, like some force was resisting him and not wanting him to go any further.

“Your,” He cleared his throat, “Y-Your mother is probably w-worried sick.” He coughed harshly and groaned out of discomfort.

The air was growing revoltingly moist and putrid, so much so he nearly gagged. It was heavy and thick, he found himself gulping down breaths of air. He immediately regretted it. He wrinkled his nose in disgust as a waft of rot and decay unexpectedly attacked his senses. He couldn’t begin to describe the smell. Rancid milk, moldy fruit, rotten eggs – none of that could beat this scent. His eyes screwed shut as he clasped a hand over his mouth, hunching over while holding his stomach. Bile flooded his throat and he had to stop for a moment to try and settle down his insides from coercing him into vomiting.

“Come pway with me.”

Jackie hesitantly pried an eye open to take a glance at the girl, who seemed to have closed a good distance between the two. She was still staring at him with cold eyes, lifting an arm and outstretching her hand palm up, almost as though she was expecting the ego to take it. However, there appeared to be something shiny glinting in her hand. Trembling all over from just how nerve-racked he was, as well as from his will power to stave off the need to hurl, the hero swallowed down the sick in his throat and struggled to keep himself upright. He gradually inched toward the child, still finding it quite hard to make out her face or the object in her hand. His heart was pummelling deep inside his chest, the roaring rush of blood racing in his ears making him feel all the more nauseous. It took him a prolonged moment to hear over the noise and make out a faint buzzing coming from around the girl. His brows furrowed in question at not only the sound but finally noticing something dripping from the girl’s hand, and at that moment, an overwhelming odor of iron overcame him. His eyes widened slightly, mouth hanging agape, about to ask what the hell she was holding.

He didn’t get to ask.

His heart jolted painfully in his chest, nearly springing out of his chest cavity at hearing the evil laugh from earlier reverberate from behind him. The masked hero jumped and whirled around to see no one standing there. His breathing was very ragged now, coming and going in sharp gasps. He couldn’t even get himself to speak!

“Come pway with us, Mr. Jackieboy.”

His face contorted with puzzlement at hearing what she said. He began to turn around to face her.

“Us? What do you – AH!” He yelped in alarm, staggering backward at seeing her now standing only a few feet away from him.

The buzzing was more audible, the insistent humming of flies invading his bothered ears. His face scrunched up out of disturbance at seeing an accumulation of flies swarming the girl, quite a few landing on her face and extended arm. Jackie opened his mouth, lips trembling and fighting to part so he could ask her what was going on. But his question got lodged in his throat as soon as she stepped forward, finally revealing herself and looking up at him with her milky-white eyes.

“Pway with us, Mr. Jackieboy.” She giggled, causing her deeply-cut decaying Glasgow smile to stretch impossibly wide; a fly squeezing out and taking flight. She held her hand out to him, causing the horrified hero to cast his gaze downward to find a bloodied scalpel in her palm.

Jackieboy Man’s eyes bulged out of horror, a hand slapping over his gaping mouth. He shook his head, taking a hesitant step back.

“Oh my God – Oh my GOD! Ilsa, what –” He lowered his hand, instantly surging forward and kneeling in front of the girl, grabbing her by the shoulders. His fingertips seemed to sink easily into her bare skin. It felt quite mushy and gross, her flesh and muscle horribly putrefied. The hero nearly choked on his own saliva. His eyes quickly raked over her small body before meeting her fogged-up stare. “what happened to you?! Where are your parents’?!”

Ilsa dropped her hand at her side and chuckled lightly, shaking her head, her whole body moving with her. She lifted a finger to her lips.

“Shhh. I can’t tell you. It’s part of his game.”

Jackieboy Man’s brows screwed together. “His game? Who is he? Please, Ilsa. Come on, please tell me!” He tightened his grip on her, his finger slipping into her rotten meat with ease. “What is going on?!”

The little girl sighed softly and glanced off into space, humming with thought for a drawn-out moment. She looked back at the frightened man before her and shrugged.

“Alwight, I guess I can tell you a secret.” She blinked, tilting her head and leaning in a bit. “Can you keep a secret, Mr. Jackieboy?”

He gave a nod in agreement. “Yes, yes I can. I’ll definitely keep your secret.” He was getting desperate now. He wanted to hear what had happened to her and NEEDED to know about it. Whoever or whatever had done this to her was going to face justice immediately.

Ilsa raised her hand, curling in all of her fingers except her pinky. “You have to pinky pwomise.”

He shifted his attention to her malformed finger, hooking his own with hers’, a chill running down his spine at feeling it squish against his. He eyed her, nodding again. “I promise.”

Ilsa took back her hand and smiled brightly, knowing fully well she was about to tell him something she wasn’t supposed to.

“You can’t find Mommy or Daddy because he’s alweady found them.” She said in a whisper, shaking her head. “And he’d be weally mad if you found them too.”

Jackie jerked away from her, only becoming further confused and looking at her with dread settling deep into his nerves. “Who has found your parents, Ilsa? Did this guy do this to you?”

There was a very long, increasingly uncomfortable interlude growing between the two, the masked man staring at Schneeplestein’s daughter in the dying need for answers. He watched as the smile on her face stretched, the major cuts in either side of her mouth only making her once angelic face all the more grotesque. She giggled with delight and slowly tilted her head backward, staring up at the endless darkness above them. Jackie glanced at what she was looking at, seeing nothing but black.

“What? What’s so funny – why are you laughing?” He asked, shaking her shoulders gently before releasing his hold on her.

Ilsa giggled once more, acting as though someone or something was communicating with her – something that only she could hear. And it was with that realization that Jackieboy Man cautiously began to rise to his feet and step back away from her.

“He’s here now, Mr. Jackieboy.” The little girl beamed.

From the darkness, a few feet above her, a set of piercing neon-green eyes sliced through the black, shooting fear directly into the now-quivering hero’s poor heart. A soft hiss slithered through the dead air, accompanied with a cringe-worthy crack of the entity’s neck; its eyes now boring into his on an angle. Jackie’s breathes were starting to come out panicked and raspy, instantly taking a few more steps back. Ilsa lowered her head and looked back out at her favorite hero, crudely cut-up smile on her face.

“He wants to pway with you now.” She giggled with delight.

A pair of black hands with elongated fingers curled over her shoulders possessively as another hiss came from the creature behind her. The demonic, sinister laugh Jackieboy Man had heard earlier erupted in the room all around them, and that was all it took. He instantly began running backward, wanting to be as far away from her as possible, his wide-eyes fixed on whatever was staring at him.

Ilsa didn’t move from where she was; she remained standing there, still staring at him with a glazed-over expression and holding the bloody scalpel down at her side. It took Jackie what felt like ages until he tore his gaze away from her and that thing, laboured breaths of panic expelling from him as he rushed to get away from Schneeplestein’s corpse-of-a-daughter. He bolted through the eternal darkness, hearing the whispers whine and moan, black sinister tendrils lashing out and attempting to claw at his arms and legs. He had no idea where he was going, but he needed to get out of here, he NEEDED to get out of here, HE NEEDED TO –

The green-haired hero ran smackdab into someone, a dull ache pulsing through his body at the collision. He felt a set of hands grasp his shoulders and gently stop him, holding him a good distance away. However, he was so shaken up from what he’d seen a minute ago that his entire body tensed up all over at being touched by some unknown thing. And not being able to see who or what it was, he immediately started swatting at the thing’s arms, wriggling in its grip.

“Let go of me! Let go of me, goddamn it!” He shouted, making attempts at escaping the entity’s hold. “I’ll break your arm, I swear to God, I’ll do it! I’ll – !”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Jackie, stop! Stop! It’s me!”

With a blink of his eyes, the hero broke out of his terror-induced state and found himself staring into the eyes of his creator, Jack. The Irishman was lightly holding him by the shoulders, astonishment and concern gleaming in his cerulean eyes. He looked genuinely unsettled by the man in red. Jackie blinked rapidly out of stunned bewilderment, taking anxious glances over his shoulder to see if the decaying reanimated corpse of Ilsa was still there, standing in the distance, waiting for him to “play” with the entity speaking to her. She wasn’t anywhere in sight, nor were the set of green eyes. In fact, when the masked hero turned back to Jack, it took him some time to even recognize where he was.

He was out by the crossroads again, standing on the watered pathway with the trees glowing bright on either side.

His brows knitted together as his eyes took in his surroundings. What the hell had happened? He had just been out in the far off reaches of the void – places no one had ventured off into – and he had experienced what he could only call a living nightmare. Everything had felt so incredibly real. The mocking giggles, the haunting whispers, the stomach-churning stench of death, the feeling of being watched, the dead-alive mutilated cadaver of his friend’s daughter. He couldn’t get any of it out of his head. Jack stood there, not taking his hands off of the ego’s shoulders, still looking at him worriedly.

“Jackie?” He asked softly, not wanting to upset him in anyway.

The hero flinched at suddenly hearing his name, his attention immediately shifting back to the YouTuber, eyes blown wide with fright. Jack bent his head down a tad bit, searching the masked man’s eyes for understanding, hoping he recognized him.

“What’s wrong?” He once again used a gentle tone of voice, nearly whispering.

Jackie continued to stare at him with a hybrid of perplexity and fear for a drawn-out minute. He shook his head, taking glances over his shoulder again.

“I…I-I don’t…I don’t understand.” He stuttered, having a tough time getting out the words he wanted to say. “I-I was…Sh-She was there. I saw her and the way she looked, the-the way she…” A whine of distress slipped out of him before groaning out of annoyance for not making clear sense. “I saw her! I know what I saw – it was all dark and she –”

“She?” Jack interjected, tilting his head out of confusion. “What did you see, Jackie? Tell me.”

Jackie stopped his babbling and shifted his attention back onto his creator, staring at him, taking note of just how puzzled and bothered the man appeared to be. He licked his lips, hesitating to ask.

“You…You didn’t…You didn’t see her?” He took another glance over his shoulder, pointing out in the direction of where he had run off. “She was somewhere in there! Ilsa was in there, and she-she was undead, and there was some…some thing there with her, and –”

“Whoa, wait, hold on. Ilsa? Henrik’s daughter?” Jack asked, looking at the ego puzzlement.

Jackieboy Man nodded, still taking worrisome glances over his shoulder. “Yeah, I saw her out there, but Jack, she –”

The Irishman shook his head. “But…But that’s not possible. No one from any one of your guys’ worlds can come wandering about out here in the open – you know that. Only you four came come out here.”

“I know, but I swear, Jack, I saw her. I know I saw her.”

Jack shook his head slightly. “Jackie, I…I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know what you think you saw, but I didn’t see anything. I just got here a moment ago, and within a minute of my arrival, you suddenly ran into me and started hitting me, freaking out and threatening to break my arm.” He said bewilderedly.

It was Jackie’s turn to be stricken with major confusion. “What?” He blinked, turning to look back out at the eternal darkness of the void. “But…But I was out there…I know I was.” He whispered to himself out of thought. He looked back at Jack to see the man staring at him with uncertainty along with concern.

“Jackie, what’s going on? Are you feeling alright?” He moved forward to feel Jackieboy Man’s forehead. He hummed. “It doesn’t feel like you’re running a fever.”

Jackie groaned and grabbed Jack’s hand, pulling it away from his head. He shook his head. “I…I don’t know. Maybe it’s my ‘spidey-sense’ getting the better of me. I just…” He sighed with exhaustion, “I just thought that maybe something was wrong out here, that’s all. I guess I wanted some more action – more adventure – and came out here in search of it, I don’t know.”

The Irishman was still looking at him doubtfully. “You sure? Because you seemed extremely disturbed a moment ago. I know you’ve got your superhero instincts set to a high alert level and all, but I –”

Jackie’s eyes shot up to meet his. “I’ll be fine, Jack.” He shrugged. “Maybe…Maybe I need to try and distract myself with other things, you know? Get some hobbies – do some things that aren’t hero related. Change things up a bit and not let the adrenaline and need to prove myself get in the way too much.”

Jack searched his eyes, trying to determine if the ego was telling the truth and would, indeed, be alright. After a good long minute of going over everything that had happened and what Jackie had said, he saw through the façade and noticed how the hero was keeping something from him. He was chewing on his lip and continuously looking around as though he was expecting to get jumped by something at any given moment. Jack’s eyes narrowed.

“There’s something else bothering you…What is it?” He took a look past Jackie’s shoulder, seeing nothing but pure blackness. “Is it involving what you saw?”

Jackie didn’t reply, not instantly anyway. He was on edge, the things he had seen and heard repeatedly tormenting his mind to the point he wanted to curl into a ball. His fingers clenched into tight fists, his nails digging into his palms through the fabric of his suit. He bit his bottom lip deeply, almost to the point of cutting it, hesitant to give an answer.

“Jack…nothing can get into the void…right?” His gaze slowly glided back to his creator, trepidation hanging off of each word that slide off of his tongue.

Jack blinked, having not really expected the question. He shook his head. “Right, nothing but me can come and go from here.” He frowned. “Why do you ask?”

Jackie stepped closer, a hybrid of worry and suspicion upon his face. “I…I think there’s something wrong with the void.”

His creator’s brows rose up into his hairline. “What makes you think that? If there was something wrong with the void, Jackie, I would be the first to know about it, believe me.”

The masked hero huffed. “I know, I know – and I believe you. But something doesn’t feel right to me. All afternoon, I’ve gotten nothing but bad vibes, and when I stepped out here to investigate, those vibes grew a lot worse.” He eyed the green-haired man as he motioned out to the egos’ portals. “I even called out to everyone, asking if everything was alright, but no one answered me back.” He scoffed. “Hell, no one even came out to see what the fuss was about.”

This got Jack’s immediate attention, if his eyes widening a tad bit was anything to go off of. “No one responded? No one?”

Jackie shook his head slowly, eyes firmly fixed onto the Irishman. Jack tore his gaze away, staring off at each portal with concern as Jackie continued.

“I know you’re not sick, Jack, and if something was troubling you, you’d tell us immediately, so I know that if something is in fact wrong here, it can’t be because of you.” He exhaled unevenly, taking an anxious look off to his left, spotting the circling blue ring to Dr. Schneeplestein’s home. “Thing is…after everything I just went through...I’m beginning to feel like something else is in here, with us, and my first guess is that it wants to bring harm to the good doctor.” He turned his attention back to his creator.

The Irishman seemed to tense up a bit only to relax almost instantly, turning his head to look at the ego with wonder. He raised a brow. “How would anything, aside from me, manage to get in here, Jackie? And if something were here, how is it you could sense it before me? And why would it target Henrik first out of all of us?”

Something was beginning to feel off yet again – Jackieboy Man could sense it. His heart was constricting tightly in his chest and the cancerous leech of warning and dismay he’d felt earlier on had returned, biting at his insides insistently to the point it was nearly driving him mad. There was something about Jack that wasn’t sitting right with him. He couldn’t exactly put his finger on it, but the way the man was acting – the way he was responding, the way he was asking questions – none of it felt comforting. In a situation like this, the Jack he knew would surely try to put his mind at ease, he’d listen to what he had to say and fully recognize just how bothered the ego was. And he most certainly would be concerned about the other egos’ wellbeing after everything Jackie had said. The Irishman would NOT simply brush off his paranoia and retort back with questions about his suspicions like what he was doing now. His questions may have seemed logical and genuinely laced with worry, but with the way his gut was twisting into one tight knot after another, Jackieboy Man KNEW something wasn’t right with his creator. Either he was hiding something…or maybe…

Jackie licked his lips, telling himself to remain calm and not bombard the Irishman with questions. “I don’t know how it’d get in here…but maybe I sensed it first,” Because you’re not really Jack, “because my ‘spider-sense’ kicked in and you were probably busy with something.” He took a brief glance back at the entrance to the good doctor’s home. “As for why it’d target Dr. Schneeplestein first…” His gaze slid back to his supposed creator, “he’s a doctor…he helps people, like me…He’s a necessity in this void…If he goes down, then the rest of us would end up going down with him, one by one. You take out the medic and the soldiers are left to fend for themselves.”

He swore for one fleeting moment he had gotten a brief glimpse of a smirk tugging at the corner of Jack’s lips, one eye twitching almost like he was holding himself back from saying or doing something. It made the hairs on Jackie’s neck stand up on end, only giving him all the more reason to be suspicious of who he was currently talking to. He swallowed and turned, eyeing Schneeplestein’s portal.

“I should go check on him, make sure everything is alright.” He moved to step forward, about to storm off to the doctor’s home.

“Now hold on a minute.” An arm lunged out and grasped the hero’s wrist, stopping him from proceeding any further. Jackie gave him a questionable look. “I’ll go.”

The hero’s heart gave a fierce jolt in his chest, not comfortable with the idea of Jack going in there to check on his friend. Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm…

“Jack, I’m worried about him, okay? I have about as much right as you do to go in there and make sure the man’s fine.”

“I understand that, but Jackie, it’s my job – my sole responsibility – to come and check up on you all every day and make sure each and every one of you is happy, and more importantly, safe and sound.”

“Yes, but –”

“Jackie, just because you’re a hero, doesn’t mean you have to be responsible for every single life here in the void. That’s my job, not yours’.” He stated calmly yet firmly. “I get how your instincts are telling you that you need to make sure everything’s well, especially since it involves a close friend, but you shouldn’t put that sort of stress on your shoulders.”

He leaned in a patted the hero’s shoulder lightly, looking into his eyes and showing sincerity.

“Please. Go back to your world and resume your heroic duties there. Trust me enough to go and visit Henrik myself. I’ll go and see how he’s doing – hell, I’ll check up on the other two as well if it’ll put you at ease. I’ll report back to you, I swear on my name.”

That wasn’t sincerity in his eyes, that wasn’t even genuine kindness he was looking back at. Those blues eyes may have gave off the exact same look as Jack’s, but the heart and care was completely one-hundred percent gone and nonexistent. Whoever this was, they were straight up mocking the hero. Jackie stared at him for a dragged out minute, the cogs in his head turning, attempting to think of a plan. Finally, he gave a nod, tore his gaze away, and released a defeated sigh.

“Alright…Alright, fine, you’re right. I need to stop letting my ego get in the way.” He eyed him. “And I do trust you. You care for all of us just as much as we care for each other.”

Jack gave a reassuring smile and began to move away from Jackie. “Of course. I created you guys, after all. Why wouldn’t I care?”

The masked man could barely breathe at this point what with how tight his chest felt. Those last few words…

Jack motioned for him to go on back to his part of the void as he slowly walked backward toward Schneeplestein’s portal. “Go on. Go back home. I’ll check back in with you within the hour, I swear it.” He beamed warmly before spinning on his heel, nearing the blue ring. “I’m sure everything’s alright. Knowing him, he’s probably just busy.” He scoffed. “Maybe he’s working things out with his family, who knows?” He stepped into the ring and with that, he was gone.

A vivid flash of Ilsa’s reanimated rotting corpse with her mangled face burst through the hero’s mind and he cringed violently, clenching his eyes shut in an attempt to block out the image. Inhaling and exhaling deeply to steady his poor nerves, the quivering Jackieboy Man reopened his eyes, his attention set on the open blackness of the void – the unmarked area for which he knew he had ventured out into moments ago.

He knew what he had seen, he knew that something was here in the void and whatever it was was lurking within the depths of this world. The man he had been speaking with before – he may have looked and sounded like Jack but his overall demeanor was unnervingly questionable. He seemed to come off as knowing something Jackie didn’t and it was racking the poor hero’s body with apprehension. If he was Jack, someone or something must’ve done something to him. But if it wasn’t Jack…

Answers. He needed answers. And he needed them now.

Glancing out at the entrance to the doctor’s home for a split second before returning his attention to the darkness, the masked ego stood up straight, sucked in his one and only breath of bravery, and stormed off into the endless shadows of nightmares.

Jack had left to check up on Schneeplestein and was most likely going to check in on Marvin and Chase afterwards as well. Jackieboy Man had about no more than an hour to search for proof of what he feared – one hour for him to be the hero everyone knew him to be.

Only one hour to wander in the dark. And only one fear he honest-to-god hope wasn’t true.

Part 15 - Good Puppet

Part 17 - Do You Really Like Him That Much?

Author’s Note: No more breaks ;)

@gridhorizon @jse-fandom-protection-squad @septic-possessed @septic-fallen @butterlover328 @steffid101 @sketchy-scribs-n-doods @no-strings-puppet @haveaverynicetime @golden-eyed-guardians @fear-is-nameless @nightmarewolf133 @maybekatie @jack-a-yote @lil-gib @aeoix @lemonofweirdness @jaysflight @vity-dream @thatdorkcaci @jacksinsanity @silvadraconis @adreamoverlife @viostormcaller @wingsofthefierydragonheart

#glitched #jacksepticeye #jacksepticeye fanfiction #jacksepticeye fanfic #antisepticeye #antisepticeye fanfiction #antisepticeye fanfic #jackieboy man #jackieboy man fanfiction #septic egos #horror #creepy #dark

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division-m · 7 years ago

Text

The Merge [3] - Sweet Pea

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Paring: Sweet Pea x Reader

Genre: angst | AU

Word Count: 2,649

Part [3] Warning: Violence, Swearing.

Part [3] Brief: ❝ In which the silver moon was high in the sky giving off the only light over Riverdale, apart from the lampposts whose rays died inches from the dirty tungsten bulbs, and Sweet Pea held a rage the power of a wildfire, you could practically see the flames roaring in his eyes, ready to ignite anything that he came in contact with. We learn [y/n] is an enigma - not like that of books where words are so plainly written out and flow from page to page, but of books torn, frayed, and indecipherable.❞

Masterlist

[y/n] was currently lounging around with youngest Cooper just like old times;

[y/n] admired Betty’s room.

Her room was like a princess wonderland. The walls were a baby pink that pulsed in the light, sprinkled with various pictures, mostly of friends and a few celebrities, [y/n] noticed she still kept the montage they made together of them since they were 6 up to the age of 14. Her comforter was pulled over her bed. It was messy as they both laied on it together, this resulted in lumps of varying sizes and shapes to form on the comforter.

A desk sat in one corner, littered with wadded up pieces of paper and pens. A few shelves were pushed against the walls and filled with books. Some books sat on the floor in front of the shelves. How does Betty manage to make a mess of books look like they are perfectly placed? [y/n] will always wonder.

"Simple, I heard the devil call out my name" [y/n] said in response to Betty's question;

"Why did you leave Riverdale two years ago? you just got up and left, it broke my heart”.

Betty's eyes shifted to the side and they soon became glazed with a glassy layer of tears. As she blinked, they dripped from her eyelids and slid down her cheeks. She bit her lip tightly in attempt to hide any sound that wanted to escape from her mouth; my heart sank.

Seeing Betty like this really broke my heart, all I want to do is protect her, that’s one reason why I left in the first place.

[y/n] whipped the tears from Betty's eyes.

"Betty.." [y/n] cooed,

"I'm back now and I'm staying, trust me, its like everyone born in this town in bound forever to it".

Betty accepted that response, however [y/n] didn't want anymore questions around why she left, so she changed the subject.

"Betty.. Chic seems nice.. Considering his current situation, I mean I can understand why he is a bit crude, he just reconnected with the family that gave him up, but your dad, he seems to hate him?" I inquired, really curious to why this is.

Betty shook her head "[y/n] I have no idea, mum loves him already and if im honest its like shes trying to make up for all the years she lost with him, but I can't understand why dad doesn't want the same, its like-" Betty was cut off by her mum entering the room with a huge smile.

"[y/n] its getting late, are you going to stay over?" Alice asked politely.

I always loved Alice, she was like a second mother to me when I was little, if I wasn't at my house, I was at hers, if I wasn't eating at my house, she always made sure I was feed.

"That’s okay Alice, I should be getting back to my Grams now, I'm sure she’s getting worried, iv been out all day" I refused politely much to Betty's dismay.

[y/n] hopped off Betty's bed and gave her a warm embrace and told her she'll see her tomorrow at school and made her way home.

[y/n] walked. She walked as her hair fluttered in the air, her clothes clung to her body, arms tightly wrapped around her. [y/n] felt cold wind stroking her skin, wanting to rip her clothes off her, as if she were its enemy.

She lifted her hands to the air to feel short bursts of rain.

As she walked she couldn't help but remember that cursed night, that night her family left for Greendale, [y/n] remembers this path, because she ran it that night, remembering passing Betty and Archie's house at an ungodly hour, never knowing when she'll see them again.

*Flashback*

Being chased was nothing like the movies. The stars look heroic, sexy and in command of the situation. Reality was far removed from that pretty version of running to save you skin.

I'd had no time to put on shoes or even grab my jacket, my parents pulled me from my bed whispering to me;

"It's no longer safe".

Panic took over my expression. I could only think one word.

Hunters.

They travel to innocent towns, looking to exterminate unwanted family's. At the time Riverdale was innocent.

Greendale on the other hand was not. It was known for its mystical nature. Hunters wouldn’t dare enter, it was the only safe place for our kind.

The mundane fear the town over Sweet Water River, ever heard the saying;

'you should know better than to be caught in Greendale after midnight'

Usually you would run from the town, yet the crescents were sprinting towards it.

My souls crashing into the asphalt a few times before I transitioned to the balls of my feet. My face is flushed red and my expression is pure panic.

The crescents managed to make it into the forest, the moon was at its peak and spooky doesn't quite cover it and eerie is an understatement of this situation.

I've seen darkness before, the kind that makes this forest look like an old fashioned photograph, everything a shade of grey. This isn't like that. This is the darkness that robs you of your best sense and replaces it with a paralyzing fear.

I only know my eyes are still there because I can feel myself blink, still instinctively moisturizing the organs I have no current use for, since the darkness was blinding. The only way I am getting through these thick trees is the hand of my father pulling me along.

By my genes I am a predator, I have the front facing eyes and brain enough to hunt, but I feel like prey in this utter black.

The dawn is hours away and until that precious time I can only run for my life.

Hunters, they are skilled, deadly skilled, yet still mundane, and don't have the senses of my parents. Hence why they hunt us. And why they will always hunt us.

*End of flashback*

The memory sent shivers down [y/n’s] spine, as well the now pouring ice cold rain.

However the rain was the least of her problems in this moment, as she heard the revving up of motorcycles, she found herself in stumbling into a civil war.

There was stillness on both sides. If hatred was visible the air would have been scarlet.

Screams broke out. The men rushed forward, the attack was fierce and efficient.

[y/n] wasn't foreign to battles, she fought many herself, hence why she decided to climb the tree to her left and perch herself up on nearest branch. Ready to watch this turf war commence.

'This should be interesting' she entertained this thought.

As the fight was happening, [y/n] noticed a certain tall dark and handsome serpent throwing punches left and right.

'He is a good and confident fighter, its like he is trained.. Riverdale needs more of that' she smirked as she studied his fighting skills.

A certain red head crashed a punch into Sweet Pea's stomach, a sudden gush of pain jolted throughout Sweet Pea's body. His stomach ached, his arms lost tension and his legs began to weaken.

[Y/n] studied the look on his god like features, its like she could read him like a book.

"He will not get the better of me" his features read.

His tongue was soaked in the taste of blood. Bruised and winded, with a leg in agony, he grabbed the foot of the captain and pulled him to the ground. His head was pounding. He brought a fist to the captain’s face, snapping his nose into a state of grotesquerie.

It pained [y/n] to see Archie this way but she commended him, he grew up over this past two years.

'Least he is out here throwing elbows, thats my boy' she praised him internally.

"Listen here Northsider!" Sweet Pea demanded loud enough for the whole street to hear, as he man handled Archie's letterman collar.

"Normally I would give you mercy, however you think you can come to my house, stick a gun in my face, and there wouldn't be any payback? You're stupid. You blame the Northside for all the problems in this town! Watch us be declared innocent then see me come out fighting. I've thrown one punch at you and I already see you quiver. How weak you are? This isn't cruelty Andrews, this is justice. You cannot control your actions and so I’ll control you. Continue to fight me and you know I'll win, or maybe you like gambling? It's a sin, you know"

I sat there with my jaw dropped in utter shock at Sweet Pea's monologue.

'What the fuck have you been up to Archie, i thought he knew better than to mess with the Serpents.. Jesus' I internally battled whether to stop this, Archie can clearly fight but facts are facts, Sweet Pea could easy take him out.

Just as I was about to come down I heard my name being called.

"Veronica?" I whisper yelled.

She looked as though she had been running due to her flushed cheeks.

"What the hell are you doing here" She asked me wide eyed.

"Being entertained" I deadpanned.

"[y/n] that’s Archie out there, with the serpents fighting, we need to stop this right now!" Veronica rushed towards the madness but I grabbed her by the arm to pull her back to me.

"Veronica no listen, they are hand to hand combat right now, running in there unarmed or just running straight into those muscle pigs will get you hurt" I warned, Betty informed me Archie and Veronica were an item, and I also know Archie.

He would be beside himself if she got hurt.

"Oh but sweet [y/n] I am armed" Veronica pulled out a gun out of her obsidian hooded cape.

[y/n] studied the gun, it was, small, discreet and deadly. The metal was cold in Veronica's hand, icy perhaps.

"Oh Lodge you really are a paradox but I am not going to ask why you have that right but If you want to stop this fight I have a plan".

"Shoot, what's the plan" Veronica was serious about stopping this fight.

"That’s exactly the plan, shoot" I deadpan once again.

"What! Are you crazy we can't just-" Veronica panics.

"No no not at them! up into the air! It's a small gun but trust me it will be loud enough to capture everyones attention, but once you do that, you have to run and get Archie out of here! if the cops aren't already on their way they will be now, then once you’re safe get rid of that fucking gun!" I carefully yet firmly explain to Veronica as i hold her shoulders, she is smart she understood every order and was on bored.

[y/n] gave Veronica a encouraging push.

Veronica ran between two cars, now her senses sharpened with adrenaline, Veronica held her breath, still straining to focus with every ounce of her concentration is focused on making this right. Cool air whispered through her body, she breathed in;

She fired.

Not too long before Veronica fired, [y/n] ran over to where the Serpents kept their motorbikes, knowing Sweet Pea will run this way out of instinct.

[y/n] was right, once that gun was fired he sprinted in her direction, she took this oppotunity to grab his arm and drag his weak state into her side.

"Listen to me, the cops are on their way, now unless you want to be hauled in by the police you should follow me, I'll help you" [y/n] said with utter seriousness.

In this short moment she wasn't admiring him from afar, she was inches away from his heated body. For a moment it shattered her to see his features this way, He's a bloody mess, nose bleeding and his right eye black and blue thanks to Archies left hook. His arms are wrapped round his guts like he's holding them in. he's beat so bad.

"We don't have all day!" [y/n] raised her voice in fear as she saw him contemplate.

"Why do you want to help me" he didn't say with a raised voice, it's like he's speaking while being choked, he must have taken a few hits at his throat while [y/n] was with Veronica.

"Remember when you saved me from falling on my ass? Yeah well lets call this me paying back my debt to you okay, now let me help you this time". [y/n] made her point, a broken chuckle escaped his busted lip.

The sirens were becoming louder the cops were coming, it was time to get going.

[y/n] snaked an arm around his waist, he slung an arm over her shoulder, instinctively, almost like it was a natural fit.

Their bodies were much different in height and stature, yet that didn't stop [y/n] from easing any type of pain she could.

My feet slip outwards on the wet autumn leaves as I round the corner, the cold night air shocking my throat and lungs as I inhale deeper, faster. It wasn't easy having Sweet Pea lean on me. Sweet Pea was 6'5 and very heavy in this weak state.

With each footfall a jarring pain shoots ankle to knee through Sweet Pea's legs, this was evident as I kept hearing him hiss.

"C'mon we can't slow down, lean on me more if you need to" [y/n] aided him with words.

He let out broken "mhm's" and “ah’s” in response. His mouth continuing to fill with an Iron taste as his teeth bit into his lips, clearly trying to stop himself from moaning in pain every second.

Due to this he kept spitting blood onto the ground.

"I'm sure you're leaving a trail with the amount of blood you're spitting" [y/n] sassed him.

"Well princess I can't swallow It can i? if I was Dracula, I would" He still managed to sass back even though he's seconds from passing out.

I'm confident I'll get Sweet Pea back to Grams safely, I know this estate better than they do, those cops are just pretty boys in uniform, shipped in from the nicer end of town. They're weighed down with guns, batons and electrical stun devices, all of them useless unless they get a clear shot, which they won't.

I can hear them panting with the effort from three hundred yards behind, that's how freakin' noisy and slow they are. Conditioning from a tread-mill with a stop-watch will never beat real-life training on the streets.

[y/n] knows that better than anyone, and if anyone can understand her street training, It would be Sweet Pea.

He wouldn't have trusted her with his life unless he had a feeling she knew what she was doing.

And Sweet’s had an intuition that was never wrong.

A/N: ahhh! This was so fun to right, I didn't want to end it! But I have to keep you guys wanting more hehe. How are you guy's enjoying so far? I'm mixing the current Riverdale storyline and the storyline from past episodes, so I hope you can understand that. And oooo what do you think about little miss crescents past? Feedback is always encouraged and welcomed :)

Be well x

Also should out to @sweetypeaimagines <3 go check out her work its so lovely! And she is so sweet! She deserves all the recognition she gets.

#Sweet Pea imagine #sweet pea x reader #sweet pea au #sweet pea smut #sweet pea #sweet pea fanfic #sweet pea riverdale #riverdale #riverdale imagine #sweet pea the merge #sweet pea headcanon

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avengers-nextgen · 7 years ago

Text

The Rise Of The Lost IV

Bianca shivered in the cold confines of her cell. The surgery had been finished but no one had bothered to provide any pain relief. The girl was stuck laying on her stomach. Any form of movement brought tears to her eyes and tugged at the fragile stitches trailing her spine.

Bianca had no idea how long she’d been unconscious for again. If it was her luck maybe a day. The soldier knew, however, that her pain would not stop Dr. Strauss from her work. There was always room for improvement, first the arm for aesthetic effect, then the spine, what else?

The grating of a lock releasing was followed by footsteps and a white lab coated individual. “We have finishing touches, my dear.”

Bianca could only grunt out a response of pitiful protest.

“To your feet soldier.” With a set of gloved hands Bianca was slung to a standing position. Pain mirroring the sensation of burning alive made her vision dot with white spots.

Bianca’s knees buckled and the doctor was forced to support most of her weight. The shuffle through dim lit hallways was slow. Spotting the same metal table as before sent a flurry of panic through the soldier, but she could not flee. Physically-it was impossible.

Swallowing the grief already settling in, Bianca followed the normal procedure. With extremely slow and gentle movements the girl stripped from her uniform. The air, cold to the skin, burned tender bits of unhealed flesh.

— — —

Bucky didn’t get far when Siyanda caught up to him. “What do you want?”

“You need tnis.” The teenager held up a small earpiece. “Chances are she is being experimented on. If you interrupt the process it could cause permanent damage. I will have to walk you through the proper procedures to make sure you both make it out alive.”

Bucky contemplated the device before plucking it from Siyanda’s fingers. “Have someone ready to evacuate us.”

“Understood.” Siyanda nodded.

“Chances are you’re going to need a good pilot.” Both of the heroes turned in surprise to see Orion dressed in a flight suit.

“You are supposed to be in the infirmary.” Siyanda scowled.

“I’m tired of being pent up.” Orion shrugged. His slender fingers tugged anxiously at leather gloves. “Besides, my uncle rocket got experimented on without his consent. I’m not letting that happen to anyone else. You tell me where I need to be and I’ll be there.”

— — —

Bucky was putting a lot of faith in two teenagers. To be honest it worried him, but there was little else to be done. Equipped with hidden weaponry the soldier set on a determined path through the New York streets.

Each second that passed was a longer opportunity for Bianca to slip through his grasp. He couldn’t explain the protective instincts flaring in him. He had hardly talked to the girl and she’d made it quite clear he was nothing more than a monster to her.

Yet, here he was. About to take on an unknown enemy by himself. Bucky supposed that no matter what, all fathers had some attachment to their children whether they’d known them forever or not. Just looking at Bianca was like looking in a mirror and he’d be damned if Bianca was subjected to torture because of his own creation as a weapon.

— — —

The armory was non threatening on the outside but underneath was a rat’s maze of systems. Getting inside wasn’t an issue-as an assassin Bucky knew every trick in the book when it came to accessing off limits places.

Beneath the armory floor (which now was a ceiling) Bucky began to traverse the cold and dank tunnels. Faint lights flickered overhead like clumsy beacons. The atmosphere was charged with tension despite the silence.

A scream shattered the air. Bucky’s first instinct was to cover his ears but his heart leapt in his throat and he began to run. Drawing the pistols from his belt his boots slammed heavily on the concrete.

A camera blinked to life as he emerged into a small chamber. Without another look the device was shot. It exploded in sparks and its guts hung out in fritzing wires. As soon as the camera died an alarm began to wail overhead.

“Looks like a party is about to happen.” Bucky grumbled. “I didn’t know they celebrated father’s day.”

Setting his jaw the soldier tore on through the next passageway. Behind him were the sounds of heavy breathing and thick soled shoes slamming on the ground in a hungry pursuit. Metal arm skimming his belt, Bucky pulled out a metallic ring and pressed the center. Tossing it backwards over his head the tunnel flashed in violent blue as electricity incapacitated the enemy. “Gotta thank Natasha for giving me a bunch of those.”

Another scream more pitiful than the last urged him forward. As Bucky rounded a corner-getting closer to the pleading cries an arm jutted outwards close lining him in the neck. If it hadn’t been on sheer adrenaline Bucky would have landed flat, but he used the backwards momentum to turn his fall into a back flip.

Without hesitation Bucky fired at the body of his attacker sending them to the ground in a pool of their own blood.

— — —

“Almost done.” Crowed the false motherly time of Doctor Strauss. Bianca wanted to scream at her that she was lying. Only the stupid muzzle wouldn’t allow it. The metallic device only allowed screams to break through on occasion.

The sound of someone rushing down the opening up ahead brought the doctor’s attention. “Ah, I see you’ve arrived with the medical equipment.”

“Like hell I have.” The voice was gruff and the doctor froze in fear. Bianca located the intruder. Bucky stood with his gun raised and a look of murder on his face. Blood was splattered across his uniform and his eyes glared angrily at the doctor. “Siyanda!”

“Copy!” Siyanda replied.

“You’re going to do everything I say doctor if you want to live.” Bucky studied the lab coated individual carefully. He could tell right away she valued herself too much to consider dying. “Tell me exactly what you’ve done.”

— — —

The process of pausing the final touches to the spinal implants was more painful than continuing on with the procedure. The doctor’s nerves made her hands shake and the retraction of pins and needles was flawed.

Each muffled and pained cry, each twitch of hurt, the labored breathing going suddenly still-it all made Bucky incredibly anxious. Was the doctor even following Siyanda’s instructions? Had Bucky relayed something wrong?

It was only when the restraints holding Bianca in place released that Bucky let out a sigh of relief. The doctor lowered the platform back down to floor level as if it were a table and Bucky was confronted with the true damage done to the girl.

Metallic ridges resembling the vertebra of a spine glinted in the low light. The metal panels shifted and moved in an identical manner to that of her arm and his. Her spine would be able to support an ungodly amount of weight and would be able to handle an unimaginable beating.

“What are your plans with her-“

“Do you know who I am?” Bucky questioned. He barely titled his head to look at the doctor and it was as if she noticed his true identity for the first time.

“Oh-oh my-“ Bucky nodded in recognition as if she’d actually said his name.

“You have two options doctor. The first, you come back with me and face legal repercussions. The second, I kill you right here and now-no one would be the wiser.” Bucky held the gun up to emphasize his point. “No one even knows this place exists.”

The doctor didn’t hesitate to select option one. Bucky scrounged up Bianca’s discarded clothes and returned to her side. She didn’t move, didn’t look at him, her eyes only stared into an emptiness he could not see. She was in shock.

Perhaps it was a mercy.

Bucky was able to dress her without her feeling an ounce of pain. He acted unknowingly like a father whose kid had fallen asleep in the car and had to be carried to bed before changing the child’s pajamas.

With ease the soldier scooped up the quivering girl covered in a light sheen of sweat. The doctor followed close behind. An anxious air radiated off of her and Bucky felt like yelling at her to cut the crap and keep it together. Instead he spoke to Siyanda, “Tell the kid to pull the jet around.”

“Copy that.” Siyanda replied in her clipped and formal tone. The receiver crackled for a moment as the signal shifted.

“I’m outside.” The boy’s voice broke in. “Make it quick. They have some big guns out here.”

“It’s an armory.” Bucky snorted. “Of course they do. Don’t worry it’s all been deactivated.”

“Yeah, I sure hope so. Otherwise I’m about to repeat my crash landing and I don’t think I’m waking up in a cushy hospital bed next to a synthetic green and red robot dad.” All Bucky could think was that Peter Parker would get an absolute kick out of this kid.

— — —

As promised, the jet was hovering tentatively outside with onlookers gawking in awe. Thankfully? They were so impressed by the machine they didn’t notice Bucky or the doctor.

The asphalt grated against the soldier’s boots and the sound was somewhat comforting-until he heard the bang. One second the doctor was walking beside him, the next she was laying on the ground with her brains blown out.

“What the hell was that?” The kid cried.

“No idea but we have to high tail it out of here.” Bucky felt some guilt at leaving the doctor there but he couldn’t risk ending up like that as well. Once safely aboard Bucky settled Bianca on the medical cot. With some general knowledge of medical equipment Bucky began to monitor her vitals. They stabilized after a few IV drips.

Orion remained quiet the rest of the way back home and Bucky didn’t mind it one bit. He sat with his hands clasped watching the poor haggard girl shake. She was curled into an extremely tight, protective ball. The fear etched on her face along with the pain made his stomach clench.

One fateful tear trailed down her cheek. Bucky reached out and his metal index finger skimmed lightly across her cheek to wipe it away.

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deejay223writes · 8 years ago

Text

The Siren and the Leviathan

As Murrough and Seor approached the ocean, Murrough heard an enchantingly beautiful call emanating from the horizon. He stopped dead in his tracks, transfixed. Seor, however, did not hear anything. Nor did she notice Murrough’s reaction to the ethereal lullaby. She continued walking, intent on her loot as she was. Heavily clad in Ataxian armor, the waves of heat pouring out from her protected her from the bitter cold of the mid-winter ocean spray. Only when she stopped to admire the stars did she realize that Murrough wasn’t standing there with her.

“Murrough?” She called. Looking left and right, she could not see her only friend on this planet Terra. Turning fully around and away from the glittering ocean waves, she spotted Murrough just past the dune ahead. “What are you doing back there?” She called. “Come on over, there’s nothing to be scared of. It’s just a bit of water.” Nothing she said, however, seemed to faze him. He was just standing there, with a joyous expression on his face. His eyes, she noted, seemed to be locked on her, but… her instincts told otherwise. Turning around, drawing her signature weapon, the spear she had dubbed “The Brimstone Lance,” a large, sturdy pike forged out of the hellish material brimstone and the powerful metal she found there. Studying the shoreline, she saw nothing. Looking further out, she thought she saw something under the waves, but when she locked her eyes on it, it vanished. Trick of the moonlight, I suppose, she thinks. Turning back around to face Murrough, she still feels uneasy.

‘Oh, by the Profaned,’ the Siren thought. ‘I think she saw me. I have to be more careful.’ As this new prey wanders over her land, the Siren has begun a song. Her friend, the Leviathan, is perpetually hungry due to her size. The Siren has been trying to get these two out here for a long time, ever since they appeared here on Terra. Their foreign nature has protected them this far, but being so close to the Siren, they can no longer hope to keep their wits about them. ‘That one, however, must still be immune to my calling.’ The Siren thinks. ‘That’s not a good sign. She may still be able to stand up to me. Oh well, she stands no chance against Leviathan with that tiny stick. The man, though… he will be a problem if I cannot keep ahold of him.’

Walking back to Murrough, Seor realizes that her instincts were right. He wasn’t looking at her, rather at something past her. Looking back again, she still sees nothing. “Murrough! Come on, snap out of it! There’s loot to be grabbed down there!” Although that statement got only a mumbled response from Murrough, that was enough for Seor. “Oh good, you do still have a brain in that skull of yours.” Having gotten a satisfactory response from Murrough, she wanders back to the ocean to grab her loot that she heard would be down there. Her armor, forged from the stuff of where demons reside, is more powerful than the entirely nonmagical ocean of Terra. She simply walks down the ocean floor, enjoying the sound that the ocean makes when washing over the armor for a while, then takes off a a full sprint. A few meters in, though, she sees a sea-green mermaid with an orange fin and yellow ram’s horns there, shimmering slightly above the ocean floor. She stares at it for a few seconds, then moves up to it. As she creeps closer, being entirely non-stealthy, the mermaid watches her approach. Once within a meter of the mermaid, Seor notices that it’s mouth is open in an O, her neck pulsing on some sort of rhythm. Even though she hears nothing through the water pressing down on her, watching this mermaid’s neck pulse makes her feel as if she’s never seen anything more beautiful in her whole adventure throughout Terra.

Priding herself on having a logical mind, she snaps herself out of the trance soon after she is pulled into it by the Siren’s seductive magic. Infuriated by how this mermaid tried to take over her mind as she is, she doesn’t notice the faint reverberation through the water. Taking her Brimstone Lance, Seor drives it at full force through the water perfectly at the Siren’s chest. The Siren, having crept closer while Seor was bewitched, was too close for Seor to get a really good hit on, so the Lance glances off of her, what Seor now realizes to be, shimmering scales. Having her prey escape her snare, the Siren now drops all pretense of being beneficial and goes in for the kill, singing her deadly war cry all the while.

Meanwhile, Murrough is still staring over the shining sea at what he believes to be the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Even that steampunk woman back at home pales against this. Murrough, with his magical boots of the angels, walks over the ocean waves to reach this magnificent being. Just as he reaches out to touch her arm, the water below him buckles and not even angelic magic stops him from falling through. Seor and the Siren come bursting out of the water, sending a fountain of starlike water droplets sparkle in the air that would have been beautiful if it weren’t for the traces of blood mixed in with them.

Murrough, having been shocked by the sudden change of temperature as his own Ataxian armor works to warm him, gains a modicum of his senses back. He realizes that if he doesn’t get back above the surface, he will drown. Frantically, he beats his frigid wings of ice to bring his body back on top of the water’s surface. As he alights, his angelic boots start pulling the water below him to be dense enough for standing on. Soon, he is standing above the water yet again, no longer cold due to his armor’s demonic energy. As soon as he recovers from his shock, however, the Siren’s deadly war cry bewitches him yet again, quicker this time because of the Siren now being above water.

Seor’s own wings are losing energy from flitting around the Siren, dodging her deadly gaze. Once or twice she is caught in it, and it singes her through her armor painfully. The Siren, however, is simply perched atop an orange trident, and moving faster than Seor. Having studied how the Siren flies and moves outside of the water, Seor takes off again, but this time aiming to keep the trident facing away from her. Jabbing her Brimstone Lance, she lands a much better hit, yielding her a look of shock that goes as quickly as it comes from the Siren. Still, that brief moment of pain takes the Siren’s concentration away from her war cry, releasing Murrough from his enchantment.

Murrough’s first reaction to this is fear, and then he wipes that away from his mind. Now is not the time for thinking, he thinks. Now is the time for doing. Murrough immediately dashes off towards the shoreline, whipping out his own signature weapon, a bow made out of the stuff of cosmic proportion, the “Astral Greatbow.” Honing his consciousness to a point as sharp as his arrows, he draws, aims and fires at the Siren in less than a second. His arrow leaps from the string as an ethereal twang comes from seemingly the cosmos itself. It flies true, and, by luck or skill, not even Murrough knows, lands on the neck of the Siren.

The Siren’s scales are too tough for any normal arrow to have much of an effect, but the force of the arrow carries on to her neck, and puts a dent in her windpipe for a long time to come, crippling her ability to sing. The harmonic melody suddenly halts as the Siren croaks out a few ugly notes, and shrieks. A terrifying sound, her voice. No longer able to infatuate and charm, the Siren moves to terror and overwhelming panic. Murrough, being the weaker-willed of the two, is too far away for the Siren’s above-water abilities. His arrow-sharp consciousness of a fight is too much for the Siren’s magic, and his mind is too well defended for magic to have an effect. Seor, however, is too close to not be affected somehow. Seor is gripped by fear, but instead of having the desired effect of paralyzation, it only gives her more adrenaline-fueled energy.

The unnatural sound of the Siren’s call is only a fraction, however, of her power. She flies into a frenzy, and moves faster than Seor can react. Only the unholy power of her Ataxian armor saves her from the trident’s piercing power. Seor is thrown back a good twenty meters, and skids along the surface of the ocean before sinking in. The cold shocks her, and renders her incapable of movement for a while. The faint tremor from before that sent Murrough submerging into the water now rises to the tremendous roar of a beast too large for human minds to comprehend.

Murrough continues firing upon the Siren, even as Seor goes down. He recognizes everything logically, but doesn’t allow anything to tear apart his focus.

A beast larger than even the tallest of buildings erupts from the very depths of the ocean, sending waves taller than Murrough, a fully grown man, pulsed outwards from the Leviathan in all directions. Murrough runs to a higher spot on the beach, and barely keeps above the immense amount of water the Leviathan sent hurtling his way. Seor, being beneath the waves, isn’t affected as much, but still feels the presence of an enormous beast flying past, barely missing her.

Seor realizes she stands no chance with her puny little lance against such a humongous creature. She slides out of the ocean surface, buffeted by the waves as she flies out. The Leviathan lets out a roar deep enough to rattle the very bones of the earth, and Seor goes deaf from her proximity to the source of the noise. Aberrations come spewing forth from the Leviathan’s mouth, possibly symbiotic parasites that feed off of her kills. Watching all of this in horror, she realizes that the two of them are going to be hard pressed to defeat these monstrosities together. Apart maybe, but… not together.

An idea strikes Seor. If we can’t beat them together, then we’ll just have to take down one of the to focus the other… So which one? I can’t do much damage to that giant thing, so I suppose it’ll just have to be the mermaid… How do I tell Murrough this without bringing these things down on top of him? No solutions come to mind, so Seor instead opts to simply keep smacking the Siren. Hopefully, Murrough will realize what I’m doing. As such, Seor continues to attack the Siren, hoping that Murrough will not be harassed by this giant creature, and that he will notice what’s going on.

What’s she doing? Murrough wonders. She isn’t even bothering to attack that beast… is it an illusion? Curious, he fires off a few shots at the Leviathan. When none of them seem to have any effect, he concludes that it must be an illusion concocted by the mermaid-thing. Wow… to think that there’s a creature so powerful that it can make such realistic and large illusions… it must be powerful indeed. That matter having been smoothed out, he returns his attention to the Siren. Since Seor has already found out that the giant beast is an illusion already, I suppose I should just focus on the mermaid-thing.

He continues to focus fire on the Siren until he notices, out of the corner of his eye, that there is a thing swimming up to him. Instinctually, he turns and fires a shot that pierces straight through the space between its eyes. Upon further inspection, he notes that it is the same creature that has been coming out of the gigantic beast’s mouth. Oh. He thinks. Oh no. That thing isn’t an illusion. He turns his gaze back to the Leviathan, looking like a deer in headlights. Oh my gods. We can’t fight both of them! He thinks. They’re too strong together. Maybe separately, but together? No… OH. SHE’S A GENIUS! Realizing what Seor is doing, exhilarated, he turns back on the Siren, now looking worse for wear from Seor’s consistent stabbing, and fires even more rapidly now. This could work.

As Seor tires from the multiple minutes this fighting goes on for, she starts to worry that Murrough, the blockhead that he is, hasn’t realized what she’s doing. Until the Siren gets an arrow in her butt, that is. Finally, an attack has gotten through the Siren’s unrealistically tough scales, and it distracts her from the fight for just a moment. That moment, however small it is, is still crucial. It is large enough for Seor to get in a good solid hit, and the Brimstone Lance punctures her hide with a hole much larger than an arrow. Pulling it back out, Seor glimpses her unholy pike’s brimstone inferno burning away at the Siren’s flesh. She wails, and falls off of her trident, back into the ocean.

In the brief moment of victory Seor and Murrough might have had, the Leviathan lets out a mighty roar. Seor, in her deafened state, only gets a forewarning of a deep vibration that goes through her core before the Leviathan, enraged by the loss of its only friend in the world, the thing that the Leviathan clove off half of her body for, lunges at Seor, swallowing her whole.

Suddenly, Seor can no longer see. Any light that might have gotten through to her is blocked off by thick Leviathan flesh. Seor, not realizing what happened, loses her balance on the Leviathan’s enormous tongue. Panicking, she stabs her Brimstone Lance into the Leviathan’s tongue, making a relatively small hole in such a giant thing. Thankfully, the brimstone on her lance starts burning the Leviathan’s tongue, and starts making some light to see by. The pain from a tongue burning from brimstone is too much for the Leviathan, and she lets out a wail. The Brimstone Lance burns away the hold that Seor had, and the Leviathan crying out launches Seor out and away from the Leviathan. The Leviathan submerges its head, trying to ease the pain that brimstone inflicts. Sadly for her, brimstone is not quenched from ordinary water. The brimstone continues to burn away at her tongue, and blocks the mind from any senses but pain for a few seconds.

During those short few seconds, Murrough manages to fire off some more arrows into the Leviathan, making the burning even worse as the cosmic bow launches the arrows at high velocity into the roof of The Leviathan’s mouth. Pushing her tongue on the roof of her mouth now only makes the burning worse, and she ceases her yowling. Seor recovers from how far she was thrown, and flies back to the Leviathan for another jab, this time aiming for the eyes.

Seor’s aim is true, and the Brimstone Lance is half-buried into the Leviathan’s pupil, viciously crippling her for the rest of her life. The Leviathan, in too much pain to even think straight, retreats, intending to heal and recover. Seor starts after it, but is met with a croaking screech from behind her. Not prepared for the Siren’s magical assault, Seor is paralyzed with fear. Curling up into a ball, she falls into the ocean, only to come out too late to follow the Leviathan and the Siren back to their hiding place.

#terraria calamity mod #terraria #calamity #terraria leviathan #terraria siren #fanfiction

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crossroadsdimension · 8 years ago

Text

Alluring Enchantments

Chapter 1 is here

...so...this idea didn’t decide to leave me alone for even a few hours. @hntrgurl13, it seems that someone doesn’t like Addi’s choice of a pet. :3

Chapter 2: Stan Pines makes his voice heard

Ford woke up on a soft bed of coral, the song still running through the back of his mind and dulling his thoughts. He felt like he should be somewhere else, but then the song strengthened.

You are home, little pet. Think not of the chaos and hurt above.

“Nngh.” Ford relaxed into the bed.

He heard a splash from nearby and turned his head, instantly catching sight of the woman who had pulled him from...somewhere...he couldn’t remember. It probably wasn’t important.

“Sleep well, little pet?” the woman cooed from the pool in the small, brightly-lit cave.

Ford nodded mutely, then yawned, causing the siren to laugh as she pulled herself up onto the ledge. Bright golden scales that matched the color of her hair glistened, and she patted her lap.

“Come, little pet,” she cooed.

Ford obeyed, pulling himself from his bed and crawling across the cave floor to slump across her lap like a ragdoll cat. She laughed and began running her fingers through his hair, petting him. Ford didn’t argue against the treatment; it felt...nice.

He felt loose and relaxed and -- with that song constantly bouncing around in the back of his mind -- he felt content. And safe.

“Good, sweet pet.”

The praise felt nice, too. Ford hummed in pleasure at it, getting a laugh in response.

Slightly-sharp nails started to work their way down his back, scratching away places that itched and loosening him up even more. “Do you feel safe, pet?”

“Yes.” Ford kept his voice quiet, soft.

There was another laugh, and Ford felt a kiss get planted on the top of his head, causing him to hum again.

“You are mine now, little pet. And nothing is going to--”

A loud splash came from somewhere else in the pool. “Mistress Adeline! We have a problem!”

Minutes Ago...

Stan woke up and noticed immediately that something was wrong.

Ford wasn’t anywhere on the ship -- on deck, below deck, or otherwise.

“What the hell, Sixer?” Stan scratched his head as he stood out on deck, looking around. “Where’d you go off to?” He leaned over the edge of the boat, looking around. “Disappeared off the boat without so much as a note. Stanford, where are you?!”

Ford didn’t normally disappear like this without leaving a note somewhere. The only notes that were all over the kitchen detailed the place they had anchored at and that they were looking into the disappearances of local sailors….

Wait.

Stan wracked his brain for myths and things that ended with sailors disappearing.

The first one that came to mind made his blood run cold.

Stan ran out onto the deck again. “HEY! WHERE’S THE DAMN SEA WITCH THAT TOOK MY BROTHER, HUH?! COME OUT HERE AND GIVE HIM BACK!”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then there came a splash from one side of the ship, causing Stan to turn sharply to his left.

A little human head with fins where her ears were supposed to be was staring at him.

“About damn time,” Stan muttered. He stomped over to the kid, who moved back nervously into the water and stared at him from where she treaded water on the surface. “All right, kid. You see anyone who looked like me and with six fingers get dragged off our ship?”

The little blond kid looked reluctant to answer. Then Stan remembered something that had happened over the summer.

“If you don’t, Mabel Pines is gonna be very mad that she lost her grunkle,” Stan said pointedly.

The kid’s eyes widened sharply; her little mouth opened in a gasp before she disappeared back underwater.

Stan frowned. He glared down at the water, drumming his fingers against the side of the ship. “If you don’t come back here and tell me where my brother is, I’m gonna do to this whole damn Bermuda Triangle what I did to Bill Cipher, so help me--”

Something splashed up from the water again -- another blond chick, but older. She looked more annoyed than the kid did.

“And you are?” she asked coldly.

“The guy who’s mad you took off with my brother,” Stan snapped back. “My niece is gonna tear you all a new one when I’m done with you if you don’t give him back.” He pointed at her accusingly. “So if you don’t mind giving me him back, I won’t call Mabel up and get Mermando and his manatee queen to bring their combined armies down on your heads to let him go.”

“What makes you think I haven’t killed him?” she asked casually.

“I’d rather not think about that,” Stan replied shortly. “Give me my brother back.”

The woman eyed him with dark eyes, considering him. Stan kept his composure as best he could while not thinking about how Ford might be dead. He drummed his fingers on the railing of the ship, thinking about his brass knuckles and whether or not he should pull them out of his coat and jump into the ocean to deck this chick.

After a moment, she sighed and disappeared under the water, then came back up...and up…and up.

Stan was barely holding onto his composure as he saw the mass of octopus tentacles that made up this chick’s body from the waist down. Well, that was unexpected.

Even more unexpected was that Ford was wrapped up in them, eyes half open and glazed over with some kind of breathing mask over his face. He was also completely limp.

“FORD!” Stan yelled, losing composure with a sense of panic.

“Your brother is fine.” She came towards the ship and unfurled her tentacles slowly, laying Ford on the deck of the ship and pulling the breathing mask off -- which, now that they were closer, Stan noticed it was made of coral. “I do not treat my pets harshly.”

“Pet?!” Stan glared at her. “My brother isn’t a pet, you--”

Ford groaned, cutting off the string of curses Stan was about to unleash. Stan rushed over and helped Ford sit up as he blinked his eyes open blearily.

The siren folded her arms across her bare chest. “He is mine.”

Ford rubbed at his eyes with both hands and looked around with foggy confusion. He looked at Stan and blinked. “Stanley?”

“Yeah.” Stan hugged him. “What were you thinking, you idiot? What happened last night?”

Ford rubbed at his forehead, brow furrowing. “I...everything’s hazy. I...remember music?”

The siren hummed something, and Ford’s expression went slack and sleepy almost instantly. She settled down onto the deck, tentacles and all, and rested a hand in his hair. He leaned into it instantly.

Stan bristled. “Let him go. Now.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“Didn’t you idiots hear me when I said that--”

“I heard you.” The siren turned her gaze on Stan. “But when you were here last night you were just two fisherman who should have known better than to wander into my territory. And now your brother will never be able to wander far from the sea for long -- he will always come back. He will always find me.”

One of her tentacles wrapped around Ford and pulled him closer to the siren. He started to look more like one of those sleepy puppies that had found somewhere safe to sleep. The comparison left Stan’s stomach twisting in knots.

That, and the fact that Ford couldn’t just get back on land and stay there.

“Well, whaddaya expect me to do?” Stan snapped back. “I’m not just gonna let ya do whatever ya want with my brother.” He pulled Ford away from the siren and gave him a couple gentle knocks to the head, causing Ford to blink rapidly and shake his head as his expression un-slackened and look confused again.

“I’m not planning on using him in the way that tales claim I will.” The siren raised an eyebrow. “Humans are strange things in this part of the waters -- we don’t see them often, and the ones we do, well...let’s just say you were lucky you didn’t wander a few reefs north of here.”

One of her tentacles slapped against the deck in the sound of a whip-crack. Stan pulled back instinctively as Ford stiffened, looking more awake suddenly.

“And then there are the ones to the south that...well, let’s just say that not even the ships are found afterwards.” The siren bared her sharp teeth.

Stan blinked a couple times, absorbing that, then shook his head and refocused. “Still, we’re not pets.”

“Hmmm….I’d beg to differ,” the siren replied lightly. “But, I can see that we are at an impasse.” Her octopus tentacles gathered under her. “I can’t undo the spell on my pet.”

“His name is Ford,” Stan said pointedly.

The siren hummed a little, looking amused. “Then you can call me Adeline.”

Ford’s brow furrowed, and he muttered something under his breath.

“I have decided that I will let you go -- for now. But when you reach land again -- and you will need to -- I will find you.” Adeline moved to the edge of the ship, preparing to jump off. “And I would like to meet this...Mabel Pines in person.”

With that, Adeline dropped off the ship with a rather spectacular splash.

Stan sighed irritably and looked over at Ford. “What the hell were you thinking, letting yourself get tricked like that?”

Ford shrugged. “To be honest, I...don’t really think that I was. She caught me when I wasn’t quite awake -- if I had been, I...I doubt that…” He frowned, then shook his head. “Regardless, I doubt that she’s going to be going after anyone else.”

“I wish she hadn’t gone after you.” Stan poked his brother in the chest. “What is it with you and gettin’ dragged off by sea monsters, anyway?”

Ford shrugged again, then paused. “...Stanley, how much longer until the children will be back in Gravity Falls, do you think?”

“A month, probably.” Stan paused. “Wait. This isn’t because--”

“I’m...I’m not sure? I have this...faint feeling of something on my mind, but every time I try to focus on it, it...slips out of my grip. It...it’s a song that’s stuck in my head, but every time I try and think about where it came from….” Ford gave his brother a helpless expression as he shook his head.

Stan sighed irritably. “We’ll figure out how to get it out of yer head. Might be some voodoo back in Gravity Falls that could help or somethin.’”

“Stanley, it isn’t voodoo, it’s magic,” Ford said pointedly. He paused to consider that. “And...yes, there...might be something. We would have to turn around and make our way back now if we were going to find a way, however -- I doubt we want to wait too long and find out if this is permanent.”

“Yeah.” Stan started hauling up the anchor. “Might as well get moving, then. An’ call Mabel up an’ see if Mermando can dig anything up on that Adeline chick.”

Ford hummed in agreement. “I’ll chart our course.”

As the two men prepared to turn around and head back towards the west coast of America, neither one of them noticed the bobbing head of the siren behind them.

#I wasn't expecting to write this so fast #but the muse hath struck and I must listen #cross' fanfiction #gravity falls #siren!addi #stan twins #sea stans #Nana and I have talked a bit about what could happen in the future shortly for this #and the thought is that Mabel will Convert Siren!Addi into thinking that humans are actually NOT pets #but that enchantment's not gonna be going anyway unfortunately #so Ford's gonna wander into the sea in a hypnotized state sometimes #or make a beeline for Addi whenever she starts singing #and Stan is NOT gonna be happy about that let me tell you #(it was either this or have Addi hypnotize Stan and have TWO pets)

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rubyredhoodling · 8 years ago

Text

Some John Wick Shit

Derek awakens to the slow knitting of bone and muscle. His brain feels raw and exposed as the world begins to swim back into focus. The cold concrete under him, for once, feels comforting, but the harsh blue light from the fluorescents, sting the back of his eyeballs and fires a sharp wave of pain into his skull.

His body feels sluggish and heavy, his mouth is sour and dry. Distantly, he can pick out a faint whispering, something low and foreign that Derek isn’t sure he would understand even if wasn’t concussed. Eventually, enough of the haze lifts that he can flex his left hand.

“Hey, welcome back, big guy.” A familiar voice quips.

Derek groans and tries to roll himself forward towards the bars. A flare of heat explodes into his veins, making him hiss and clench his entire body.

“Take it easy. They gave you quite a beating. You also got two doses of wolfsbane running through your system, so it’s going to be awhile.”

He waits for the burning to subside into a tolerable throb before he stretches one of his hands towards the water bowl near the front door of the cell. Gradually, he pulls it closer to his face and leans over to take a long drink. His vision is clearing but his head is still pounding.

“How long was I gone?” He rasps.

“Six hours.”

“Shit.” Derek glances towards the new empty cell in their row. “Where’s Faye?”

The witchling offers a wan smile. “She’s gone.”

“It’s too soon for them to take another.” Derek forces himself onto his elbow and tries to think against the stream of pain. “We’re supposed to have at least two more days.”

“It wasn’t like Jacob.” His voice tightens with emotion, but he clears his throat to smooth it into something calm and even. “Our kind don’t last long under these conditions. Faye was old and a caretaker, she wasn’t trained to endure this sort of damage, it’s amazing she lasted this long.”

It’s odd to hear those words coming from the boy’s mouth. Stiles hardly looks like an adult, especially with the patchy hint of stubble along his jawline. Out of the sixteen that once shared this block, Derek had not expected Stiles to survive this long. He was lean when they first arrived and a month later the boy was starting to get skeletal. Under the drugs Derek feels his wolf reaching out towards the boy, trying to offer comfort through non-existent pack bonds.

“Stiles…”

The witchling shakes his head so Derek foregoes asking a question he knows the answer to. Instead, he redirects their attention to the plan.

“How long do you need?” He asks, settling himself back onto the ground.

“Need is not the question.” Stiles dries his wet face with the back of his hand. “Rest. I’ll tell you when it’s dinner time.”

Derek is startled awake by violent thrashing outside his cell. The guard under Stiles’ is slowly turning purple under the weave of his long fingers.

“Nice of you to join the party, big guy. You wanna grab that keycard so we can get out of here?”

Derek spies the bloodied employee ID near his water bowl and makes quick work of the door. The wolfsbane is mostly out of his system but the sudden blood rush combined with adrenaline makes him dizzy. The guard’s eyes finally roll back and Stiles begins to pull various items from the man’s pockets.

“Cameras are down but we have ten minutes until the shift change.” Stiles hands him a stun baton and a wallet, before offering up his wrists. “I’ve only got a little juice left but removing the iron could buy us a few more minutes.”

Derek frowns at the shackles. There’s a bolt of iron pierced through each of his forearms. Stiles shakes his arms impatiently and Derek focuses all his strength on snapping the bindings off and pulling the bolts out of the witchling’s flesh. The scent of infection mingles with fresh blood but Stiles shudders with relief.

“Thank you.” He sighs.

Derek grunts a response and quickly shoves him towards the entryway.

They encounter two more guards. They’re quickly dispatched and stripped. Two more flights of stairs and they find themselves in an abandoned lot in some nondescript warehouse district. Derek hits a couple of keyfobs until a pair of headlights flashes at the far end of the lot, and starts to jog towards it when he realizes Stiles isn’t behind him.

The witchling is staring up at the light in the third floor window.

“Stiles, we have to go.” Derek urges.

“I don’t think I can.”

“What are you talking about? The next shift is going to be here soon!”

“I need to know.” Panic ebbs from Stiles’ body and is replaced with something calm and cold. “Someone did this to us. What if they’re doing this to other people? I can't leave, not without knowing if there's other places like this."

They watch each other for a moment. They’re barely both standing. Stiles wounds are still bleeding and Derek can still feel the last echoes of wolfbane in his muscles. Every instinct within him is screaming to get them to safety but he can’t move. Stiles tilts his head and lifts his hand out.

“C'mon, Derek. Let’s finish this.”

They watch the warehouse fire from the ‘comfort’ of a Motel 6. They’re in some shittown in New Mexico. Stiles powers through fifteen tacos and half a pizza before crashing. Derek only manages half that before throwing up, he settles for half a liter of soda and Stiles' leftover pizza crusts. After his stomach feels more settled, he bundles their trash, grabs a discarded blanket, and settles into a chair to keep watch.

He rouses late into the evening to the sound of Wheel of Fortune and the smell of greasy Chinese food.

Stiles’ face looks a little fuller and the holes in his arms have healed over into angry, glossy circles. The scent of infection is gone and replaced by a bitter anxiety, considering their situation, it’s a world of improvement. He has freshly washed clothes that look a size too big and smell heavily of cheap detergent. Derek shifts himself off the scratchy comforter and stretches his limbs. His spine pops and cracks, sending a blissful relief through the rest of his body. For the first time in weeks, he feels normal.

“I guess wolves really are nocturnal.” Stiles smirks over a square takeout box of noodles.

He tosses a bottle of water. Derek catches it and drains it greedily while glancing around the room. There's a variety of snack food and take out spread over the twin bed, and the floor is littered with empty containers and candy wrappers. There's also a new pair of backpacks and a old worn duffle that smells like the car they stole.

“You’ve been busy.”

“I require more calories than sleep.” Stiles preens at his haul.

"I can see that." Derek nods towards the devastation and grabs a carton of kung-pow shrimp from the nightstand. "Besides the shopping spree were you able to figure anything out?"

"The last thirteen hours have been enlightening." Stiles nods slurping another mouthful of noodles. He idly digs at his food for a moment. "I want to let you know I appreciate you helping me last night. You had a chance to make a break for it but you stayed anyways."

“No, you were right, no one else should have to suffer like that.” Derek offers him a small smile, but Stiles is focused on digging for stray peanuts. An odd weight settles between them as the witchling mulls over his next words.

"Look, it’s not much but the black backpack is yours. It has everything you need to get you as far as Sonoma. There's a bus stop about a mile up. I suggest keeping a low profile until you reach civilization."

“I don’t understand.” Derek furrows his brows. “What about you? What about the information you stole?”

“I sent it off to an associate to decrypt. I was able to do a little researching on my own. I have a pretty good idea where one of their safehouses is.” Stiles tosses the carton into a trash bag on the floor. “I think I have a thirty-two hour window before they move another shipment.”

“Okay, but what does that have to do with me getting to Sonoma?”

“Nothing, but I said I would be your ticket to freedom, thus Sonoma.” He waggles his fingers in a jazzy fashion. “This is where we part ways, wolfman.”

“You’re going to take on those hunters by yourself?” Derek says incredulously. “You’re still healing!”

“Hey, you weren’t looking so hot with poison in your veins either, pal.” Stiles glares. “I’m not as fragile I as seem.”

“You’re still not up to fighting capacity either.” Derek stabs his chopsticks into the half eaten container. “I’m coming with you.”

Stiles laughs. It’s an oddly boyish sound but lacks real mirth. “Look, spilling a little blood because you’re trying to escape, that’s understandable. This...this is going to be a revenge story, black cowboy hat, John Wick, shit. Not everyone has the stomach for that kind of business.”

Derek narrows his eyes.

“Yeah, well not all of us like to sit on the sidelines, witchboy.” Derek growls. “After a month of torture and seeing all those people be taken to who knows where, I think a little revenge is in order.”

Stiles stares at him for a moment, contemplating the lines in his face.

“Are you really sure you want to kick in with me, wolf? It’s a long way down this rabbit hole and it won’t be clean on the other side. Can you live with that?”

“Yes.”

"Well then, this sounds like this is the start of a terrifying relationship." Stiles grins, eyes bright with mischief. "I look forward to rampaging with you, Mr. Wolf."

#Sterek #sterek ficlet #my writing #trying something out #revenge quest #magic!stiles #I don't know what to do with this #but enjoy!

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crescendo-system · 8 years ago

Text

Did a memory walk as Eridan Captor.

-the memory opened up with me in my room I think, I was pacing nervously while talking to fef, who was sitting nearby. I was trying to amp myself up to confess to Karkat Maryam I guess, who was my biggest flush crush.

“I’m worried Fef, what if he says no?” I was pretty anxious, my voice wavered a lot even at this point.

“Eridan it’s ok, you know he likes you,” Feferi reassured me fairly confidently, listening to me pace (she couldn’t see me, she was blinded by this point.)

“yeah as a friend, but what if he doesn’t like me like that?” I countered, stopping to turn and face her. She just sort of frowned and sighed - she wasn’t mad or annoyed, but I think she wished I could learn how to relax for just once in my life.

“Eridan he’s not gonna hate you if you tell him. You know him well enough to know that.” Which, was also true. Karkat Maryam was one of the nicest trolls around aside from Fef, and he was not the type to get mad or hold grudges over things like that.

“yeah ii- i know fef,” I started, feeling emotionally overwhelmed. Almost instinctively, I dropped into a crouching position and held my head under my hands. I felt my eyes spark for a moment, like my psionics were about to go off, and I waited until I was sure it was done.

“I’m just… scared,” I admitted to her, still looking at the floor. I heard her say hey or something, to grab my attention so she could reassure me, but when I looked up at her my eyes just... focused on her own scarred and blinded ones, behind her red glasses. I felt a terrible pang of guilt looking her in the eyes like that, and despite myself I couldn’t help mumbling an apology to her in regards to her blindness.

“…… im sorry.”

(I’m pretty sure I inadvertently blinded her with my powers, which would explain my sudden stop and drop as well.)

-my memory switched around then to a karkat maryam conversation snippet. I feel like it was the same location as the one where we were when he was bandaging my hand and lecturing me over whatever I had done to it at the time. This time we were standing/walking around the hive, this was definitely his place, and we were admiring the plants he tended to that grew around the hive. Well, he was. I was too busy admiring him to really focus.

"And you know how this bush here has certain properties..." He was trying to tell me, lifting one of the fat leaves of the bush in demonstration (well I say bush but it was very succulent like so I might be wrong but hey I wasn’t paying attention what can I say). I already tuned out though, as my eyes studied him.

I was thinking to myself something along the lines of "god he's cute. He's so cute, just look at him, look at the way his hair curls and the way he talks and the sound of his voice and uh oh he's looking at me i haven’t been listening."

"eridan are you hearing anything I've saying? Is something bothering you?"

"It's nothing," I deflected, flushing and struggling to maintain eye contact with him (I failed). He squinted at me with this really adorable pout, his front teeth kind of sticking out over his lower lip. Already I had gotten lost in staring at him again.

-The next memory switched to in my respiteblock. I explored a little - i had video game consoles in my room and a computer i think. Definitely a tv monitor for games. Room was darker, muted colors, pretty sure blue was part of the color scheme. I had a carpet in that room too. I had posters on the walls but I didn’t get a good look at them. I assumed they were movie posters. I wandered over to check out the recuperacoon. The outer husk was actually rough to the touch, with a raised, unevenly bumpy texture. I stuck a couple of my fingers into the sopor slime so I could get a sense of the texture, sliding them into it and pulling them back out, rubbing my fingertips together as I processed the texture. The slime was sorta sticky and gooey, but slick enough it can slide off the skin alright. That's why being naked in it isn't an issue bc it cleans off the body nicely. Fabric is probably another story though.

-I moved on from this tactile exploration to my computer, and pestered someone on trollian while in my room. They had indigo text so I'm guessing they were the zahhak swap. I was also fairly certain whoever it was, they were one of the male trolls.

"Hey, it's eridan," I typed, and the response was quick and to the point.

"i know its you eridan" the text read back, and the voice I read it in was monotone, low on patience, a deeper voice. I faltered, and made a nervous noise in my throat, kind of like a laugh, as I responded. Of course he knew it was me, everyone knew each other’s trollhandles and my text color gave it away anyways.

"oh right. Anyways i was wondering if I could ask a favor," I stated. I can’t remember what the favor was supposed to be, but the words came out naturally so I had something I wanted to ask.

"what" the response was even shorter and felt more terse, and I began to panic a little.

I’m not sure if this was actually how the memory played out, or if this was my conscious self deciding I wanted to change focus memorywise, but what I typed next was along the lines of the following;

"oh you know what never mind it's not that important anyways".

and before they could respond I pushed my chair back and stood up away from the computer, turning away so I couldn’t see their reply.

- whoever the indigo text was, they freaked me out and their responses always seemed fairly emotionless or lacking. I think I was quite intimidated by them.

Based on the swaps I already remembered, I guessed later that if it was a Zahhak swap and male, that it was probably Gamzee, which also was fitting for the vibes I was getting from him.

-I decided to take a break since I was so unnerved, and chose to look at my shirt- a yellow longsleeve/turtleneck. The symbol... looked like the gemini one instead of Aquarius? Unsure. Hands were sorta thin/gangly, and my nails were a bit long. I realized a few of my more tactile memories, such as resting my hand on the recuperacoon or while typing, a part of my brain registered having to navigate around things because my nails would get in the way, so the way I moved my hands accommodated that, or else the tips of my nails would catch on raised surfaces and textures.

- Pestered fef next, the memory skipped to shortly after she got blinded.

"Hey fef" I sent, and was a little surprised when she responded back cheerfully.

"hey eridan!"

"How are your eyes?" I asked, remembering how last time I saw her she had bandages over them.

"They're a lot better than before! I still can't see but my lusus is teaching me a way to sense colors!!"

"Oh, is that what you're doing now?" I asked (since I was somewhat understandably confused about how she was talking to me)

"No, im not that good at it yet. I need help for things like this still!" (I don’t know what she was referring to specifically, but I remember thinking about how someone specifically was helping her. I guess I’d known she had someone acting as seeing eye troll but didn’t realize it’d include this as well. I don’t know who it was though.)

"... oh." I felt a fresh pang of guilt at this point, knowing it was my fault she needed this help in the first place. Fef of course caught on quickly, and sent me a heartfelt reassurance.

".... hey eridan? It's okay. "

".....thanks fef"

I knew it was ok as far as she was concerned. She was struggling, but she didn’t blame me at all, and seemed pretty optimistic about the outcome. It didn’t help me feel bad for doing this to her though. I think in some ways it was worse because I wanted her to get mad, or even complain about her circumstances. But even this early on she was making sure not to, not around me at least.

- I switched focus, and tried to remember my dreamself - i wore yellow and my room was bright, suggesting i was a prospit kid. I tried to picture derse robes but it didn’t sit right. I tried focusing on my classpect one more time, picturing my godrobes - I saw dark green colors for that. Also had long sleeves? or something covering my arms at least, that’s what I saw when I looked down at myself.

-still felt like the troll with purple blood who got flung by the black king was Nepeta. Whoever they were they were pretty small framewise. they were wearing purple And looked like a knight, so knight of rage? I didn't see their wings though. Could have just been their normal high blood attire too.

#memory walk #grumblememories #grumbles #I took this memory walk June 2nd #kin.txt

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antialiasis · 8 years ago

Text

The War of the Worlds

So after seeing that live War of the Worlds concert the other day, I started getting curious about the book. I was interested in exactly how faithful of an adaptation the album was, plus just feeling a little uncultured for considering myself a fan of this classic story without being more than very vaguely familiar with the actual book. So I decided to do something about that.

I started by just going on Wikipedia (hence that H. G. Wells quote I posted the other day) and reading the plot summary to get the basic gist of how it might be different. The plot summary featured passages like “Now in a deserted and silent London, he begins to slowly go mad from his accumulated trauma, finally attempting to end it all” and “The narrator continues on, finally suffering a brief but complete nervous breakdown, which affects him for days”, which made me think that aaactually maybe I should just read it, particularly after feeling a great kinship with the author after reading that quote that I posted. And luckily, it’s in the public domain and freely available online.

Overall, I enjoyed it a lot, actually more than I expected. The War of the Worlds came out in 1897, and like a lot of people, I can’t help but feel sort of instinctively prejudiced against books written that long ago - I expect something kind of stuffy and unrelatable, rooted in the values and concerns of a bygone, alien era. The War of the Worlds, somewhat ironically, is not alien in that way at all. Human society may have changed over the course of the past 120 years (120 years!), but the basic emotions and instincts of human beings are the same as always, and The War of the Worlds is an intensely human novel - more than the activities of the Martians per se, it’s about human reactions to the invasion, the narrator’s harrowing emotional journey through his encounters with the Martians, how the people he meets cope with the horrors that are happening, the dawning realization that humanity is powerless to stop this alien apocalypse.

In other words, it’s also my kind of novel, and it’s delightful to me to see just how similar this is to the sorts of things modern authors write about analogous situations - the sorts of things I might write. There’s even a bit that presses my buttons pretty hard: The narrator is holed up with a curate (the book equivalent of Parson Nathaniel) who is slowly losing his mind and has started shouting and raving in a way that’s set to alert the Martians outside to their presence. After trying desperately in vain to get him to be quiet, the narrator, “fierce with fear”, grabs for a meat cleaver on the wall and leaps after the curate, then, “with a last touch of humanity”, turns it around to strike him unconscious with the butt of it instead. A man desperate to survive after weeks of unending horrors is driven almost to horrific murder with pure, animalistic terror, but can’t actually do it? Yes, please. This is totally what I would write into a story about a Martian invasion, and 120 years ago H. G. Wells wrote the same thing, because humans and the fascination with the outer edges of human psychology in extreme, horrifying situations transcends time and culture.

That being said, it is of course obvious in the framing of the novel that it’s set and written in the 1890s, and that’s pretty fascinating too. I noticed particularly how much communication has changed - in the novel the Martians have murdered a party of scientists and set a large area on fire days before the news starts to spread that okay, there are Martians and they’re hostile and this is kind of a big deal. A man sends a telegram to London about it, but is dead before they telegram him back to confirm, and when they get no response, they shrug and figure it’s a hoax. It seems incredible to read about people going about their lives normally the day after an alien mass murder, simply because they’ve only heard vague third-hand stories if that and none of it seems terribly real. It’s unthinkable in the modern world to imagine information spreading at such a slow, human pace - it really makes you appreciate how much the world has changed in that respect.

In other places, the novel is simply scientifically dated, in delightfully quaint ways. Everything about Mars in it is of course wild speculation from long before we’d gone to space or knew much of anything about Mars: Wells posits that its red color is the color of its native vegetation, for instance. The Martians themselves have evolved to sustain themselves simply by injecting the blood of other creatures into their own veins, and this completely removes their need for a digestive system, allowing them to consist almost entirely of brain. And the narrator asserts that this (along with their asexual reproduction) is what causes the Martians to experience no emotions - because human emotions come from the digestive and sexual organs, and would simply disappear if we were to evolve to discard those organs! The way it’s described sounds very logical, and it must have seemed totally reasonable at the time, but it’s pretty amusing for a modern reader.

That speculative aspect is often really interesting, though, and it was fun to see how much more of that background the novel has than Jeff Wayne’s adaptation (understandably). I was not at all expecting an explanation for why the Martians would decide to feed on humans specifically rather than other animals, but that’s in there: the Martians brought in their cylinders the corpses of a couple of Martian animals which coincidentally happen to be bipedal and fairly similar to humans in size, and it is subsequently deduced that these must be their primary native food source. They simply regarded humans as the most edible-looking creatures on Earth, the same way we’d probably feel most comfortable eating a bulky, quadrupedal alien resembling cows or sheep than one whose basic form looks more like a human or an insect. It takes a standard weird trope that your average person would just shrug and accept and explains it to make perfect sense - beautiful.

In the musical version there is a moment where the narrator mentions the Martians have long since eliminated bacteria from their planet, obviously in order to set up the ending; I’d often heard the ending referred to as one of the most infamous examples of a deus ex machina, so I wondered if the novel had had no such setup at all, but it actually sets it up even more extensively, in two separate chapters (once when discussing the biology of the Martians in detail, from which the line in the musical is taken, and also in a different chapter where the narrator explains that the Martian red weed would eventually be killed off by microbes).

(Really, the ending is fucking awesome and I will fight you on this. The whole point of the novel is how for all of humanity’s arrogance and what they consider awesome weaponry, they can barely touch these superpowered invaders, but the Martians’ own arrogance and reliance on their superior technology is their downfall in the end - they’ve rendered their own bodies frail and defenseless against these invisible threats that they simply forgot existed and never accounted for (or never knew; the novel also suggests maybe bacteria never even evolved on Mars), which we humans are protected from because of our evolutionary history of struggling with disease and developing defenses against it. It is not an authorial asspull to save the day on any level at all; it’s carefully foreshadowed and exactly thematically appropriate and makes perfect sense within the established premises of the novel and is generally one of the best endings of anything ever. Putting it in the same category as lazy “but then a contrived coincidence/power pulled out of nowhere/conveniently arriving character fixed everything” resolutions is pretty ridiculous.)

Of course, since at the outset I had wanted to examine how Jeff Wayne’s musical version had adapted the novel, I was also looking out for that. The adaptation is all in all quite faithful to the basic story; the actual core storyline of the Martian invasion is pretty much identical aside from being compacted, with most of the narrator’s lines closesly adapted from the novel as direct or near-direct quotes (where changed, they’re usually cutting out detail or slightly simplifying the language).

There are mainly two major changes. In the novel, the narrator never goes to London himself until the end; instead, there are a couple of chapters from the point of view of the narrator’s younger brother, a medical student in London (still written in the narrator’s voice, though, since in-universe he’s writing this account after the fact, relaying what his brother described to him). The brother is there for the panic when (several days into the invasion) the government calls for an evacuation of London, and then eventually gets on a steamer out of the country, from which he witnesses the HMS Thunder Child’s valiant last stand. These chapters feel a little out of place, and the introduction of several new characters to tell this part of the story who then simply disappear is fairly extraneous and doesn’t get the reader terribly invested, so it’s definitely a solid and sensible choice in the adaptation to simply remove the brother and have the narrator be in London and witness the Thunder Child chapter himself. Since he’s obviously not going to be on the boat getting out of England himself, though, to get the listener invested in the fate of the steamer, Jeff Wayne instead puts the narrator’s girlfriend/fiancée Carrie and her father on the boat - with them also providing his reason to go to London to begin with. In the novel, the narrator is married and lives with his wife near where the first Martian cylinder lands; after they turn out to be hostile and dangerous, he leases a horse-carriage to take his wife to safety in the town of Leatherhead and then comes back alone to return the carriage, which is how they get separated. He then spends the rest of the novel worrying for her safety and wanting to get to Leatherhead to find her again. This setup is a bit complex, and all in all I think the musical version made a good call in simplifying it to one that’s easily comprehensible with much less dialogue; it does create an interesting difference in the narrator’s situation during the second act, though, as in the musical version he knows that Carrie made it to safety, while in the novel he believes his wife to possibly if not probably be dead until they both meet again in the epilogue.

The other major change is in the narrator’s dealings with the curate/Parson Nathaniel. In the novel, the narrator meets the curate, a young man, shortly after escaping from the fighting machines and being separated from the artilleryman, and they spend weeks together, first traveling and then trapped in an abandoned house after a cylinder lands on top of it. The curate is cowardly, indecisive and grows increasingly agitated and incoherent, and he is in a constant conflict with the narrator for most of this time. His character is frustrating, pitiful but starts to border on despicable, a man reduced to a gibbering, animalistic mess selfishly hogging food and recklessly endangering the narrator and himself with inane ramblings.

Parson Nathaniel in the musical adaptation, however, is a more genuinely pitiable figure. The narrator only comes across him shortly before the cylinder lands on the house they take shelter in; he sounds much older than in the book, and he has a wife, Beth, who he deliriously believes to be one of the devils here to claim the earth for Satan. His religious philosophy, while deranged, feels much more coherent than that of the curate in the book, and ultimately he comes across as much more of a sympathetic and tragic figure. That’s likely the root of why this change was made - the curate in the book is desperately unlikeable, which mostly fuels the narrator’s conflict with himself and the long, grueling setup culminating in that desperate moment of nearly killing him. Obviously I’m a fan of that part, but it would’ve been very hard to do that setup in a way that would actually work in the musical version, and making the parson’s desperation and misguided faith into the focus for that part instead makes a lot of sense. It helps that “The Spirit of Man” is one of the best songs on the album.

(Interestingly, the outtakes on the Collectors’ Edition include some voice outtakes with a much younger-sounding parson who is much closer to the curate’s character in the book and seems to match his role much more closely, with more direct or near-direct quotes from the book. The change to the parson’s character must have happened fairly late in the development of the album, then - after they started recording vocal work. I’m pretty interested in the story here and how they developed the final version of “The Spirit of Man”.)

The addition of his wife Beth is a less obvious choice, and even before I read the book it felt a little weird how unceremoniously she was disposed of in the musical version. Part of me thinks she may have been added in part just to get one female voice on this album - the book contains basically no real female characters with significant speaking parts whatsoever. That lack isn’t too glaring in the book - there are very few characters with significant speaking roles to begin with - but it’s still reasonable to want to patch it up a little in a more modern adaptation. But her role is also as an optimistic, hopeful contrast to the parson’s apocalyptic ravings, which the narrator probably couldn’t have provided in the same way after everything he’s seen. And the parson’s relationship with her develops him a bit more and adds to his tragic nature - she’s his wife, so they must have loved each other once upon a time, but this alien apocalypse has driven him to believe she’s in league with the Satan himself, and even when she dies he only channels his anguish into his nonsensical convictions. Beth is the only character who remains steadfastly hopeful and urges sanity and reason - in the book, the narrator remarks that seeing the curate’s descent into madness tightened his grip on his own sanity, but perhaps Beth’s genuine hope serves the same purpose for him in the musical version.

(It also occurs to me that theoretically Beth’s optimism could be viewed as setup for “Brave New World” - if one man could stand tall, she sings, there must be some hope for us all, and later, the narrator comes across what initially seems to be just such a man, with a plan for saving humanity and keeping its spirit alive. But I’m not sure I buy that as a reason for her presence - both because it seems a bit backwards given the artilleryman turns out to not actually represent the true hope of humanity and because otherwise these two songs feel very separate and not like they’re supposed to be connected at all.)

I found it interesting that in the book, the way the artilleryman frames his plan is a lot more explicitly eugenicist in nature - he talks a lot more about getting the right sorts of men and women into their underground city and keeping the riffraff out (“We can’t have any weak or silly. Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. It’s a sort of disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race.”), compared to “Brave New World”’s vague, innocent-sounding “With just a handful of men…” Interestingly, the Icelandic translation of the musical version felt closer to the book in this respect, because there that line was translated as “With just a few chosen men” - definitely getting the feeling the translator had read the book. I suspect this was very intentionally toned down for the musical version because the narrator initially pretty much buys into the plan, which would be a bit jarring with the full implications of the original.

The artilleryman’s character in the book also generally comes across as more of a… well, the sort of nerd who today might fantasize about the zombie apocalypse. He focuses a lot more on how the Martians will keep humans as pets and how most humans will eventually just accept their Martian overlords, relishing the minutiae of how grim things will be and the depths to which humanity will sink and how they must resist descending into savagery, while Jeff Wayne’s version is far more focused on his grandiosely optimistic ideas about what the underground city will be like - banks and prisons and schools! We can get everything working! He sounds enthusiastic at the idea of this underground living, whereas his book counterpart appears to suggest it strictly as a means of survival.

I don’t have much of a big conclusion here; Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds is a good adaptation, its changes are solid, and overall it puts the novel fairly faithfully into an accessible dramatic format, but I still really appreciate the book’s somewhat more complex and nuanced, if also somewhat more cynical, takes. Overall, I think The War of the Worlds is a really good story, and I’m amazed that here I am enjoying its explorations of human nature 120 years on. And if you want to enjoy it in a more accessible form than a 120-year-old novel, go give the musical version a listen, because it is great.

#the war of the worlds #jeff wayne's musical version of the war of the worlds #review #adaptations #ramble #my buttons

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