#he should at least sound like he’s 10 depending on when he was born which I assume was a long while ago cause misako looks like she’s in her

[animationismycomfort]

my main gripe is with Lloyd honestly how does he know anything about his parents when did misako abandon him to remember enough about his family especially his dad or uncle when was garmadon sent to that realm or whatever to the point where Lloyd would even know his dad did misako drop him off when he was like 4 which I severely doubt because he sounds like he’s 7 at most and it’s implied he’s been at darkleys and on the streets for a long while because of how wu acts when we first meet Lloyd so he coudnt have been no older then 2 or 1 unless we wanna say he ages slower then a normal human which I would a 100% believe because of the weird oni dragon genetics but why do I have to guess that and if that is true that would make the whole age tea thing make sense as well because of his slow aging there’s no way he’d be ready enough for the final battle if he aged normally but I don’t think that’s true because that’s just a personal theory I made up FOR THE SEER F-CKERY THAT IS THE NINJAGO TIMELINE

I honestly think they aged up Lloyd cause they didn’t want to deal with a kid green ninja and if so WHY TF DID THEY MAKE HIM A KID TO BEGIN WITH CAUSE ITS CLEAR THEY COUDNT MAKE HIM BEING A YOUNG CHILD MAKE SENSE EITHER

I only watched season 1 of ninjago and I’m already confused about the timeline

[houseofashesif]

he was born and raised in Varanasi, India until the age of 10. then he immigrated to Britain with his parents where he studied in █████ University till he was 18. (p.s. i changed his past from Keaton's death to simply getting tortured physically and mentally)

ABOUT HIM (p.p.s it's all jumbled up soooo-)

➤ Ayaan originally wanted to be a Wildlife Biologist, maybe a part time Toxicologist, but his father wanted him to join I-DIE so he did. albeit reluctantly and against his will. because his father insisted so.

➤ has a surprisingly very british sounding accent despite what people think when they hear about his indian heritage

➤ tends to violently and unexpectedly switch between hindi, english and bengali whenever he's agitated or just mad in general

➤ can be frequently seen facepalming himself on the face and letting out an anguished "কি খারাপ অবস্থা" (basically "what the hell" In english) whenever someone messes up something before him, which they frequently do owing to his intimidating reputation

➤ has a pet venus flytrap. and a poecilotheria metallica (aka peacock tarantula) too. which he always brings to work with him. apparently it's his emotional support tarantula. don't question it.

➤ his favourite animal is the Eastern Green Mamba.

➤ has been bitten by snakes more than 50 times so far. that, not including bites from wild hornets, his pet tarantulas, scorpions and etc

➤ Ayaan's house has a small greenhouse behind it, which is basically filled with all sorts of poisonous plants. 90% of them at least. but who even dares to test the statistics out. the poisonous garden is filled with Lily of the Valley's, Oleanders, Marigolds, Peruvian Lilys, Water Hemlocks, Wolfsbanes, Angel's Trumpets and many more. so better stay away from it. if you value your life that is.

➤ also has a seperate section in his house where he keeps all of his poisonous pets together. anyone walking in might think they just walked into a wild jungle out of the blue. one filled with creatures capable of killing you within minutes.

➤ weirdly enough Ayaan likes polishing and manicuring his nails with the greatest care as if his life depends on them (jk im just exaggerating), he will frequently pick the polish on his nails or simply pick his nails in general if nervous or uncomfortable or even flustered. at least the remaining ones that is. Ayaan is missing 4 nails on his left hand including his thumb, then 2 nails on his right hand, courtesy of the kidnappers. he greatly cherishes his remaining nails. and is therefore always seen wearing black gloves no matter the circumstances. wouldn't wanna scare people off yknow.

➤ for some reason, Ayaan attracts the attention of animals, especially this one time when he and keaton (when they were still alive) chose to explore one of their bases in rome instead of riding in a cab, and he petted a cat he found by chance on the streets and the next thing he knew he became their new god

➤ "he killed me. Father just killed me."

➤ "i feel like i did a really good job, so you should give me overtime compensation and an extra long vacation"

➤ ”ah someone died here? no biggy, i come from varanasi afterall, the city where the world comes to die.”

➤ "i used to have this creed, if you can't trust them, don't use them. if you're gonna use them, trust them."

➤ he is a very llight sleeper. even the lightest creak of a door swinging in the wind is enough to wake him up immediately. therefore seeing him sleep deprived and drinking an unholy concoction of monster drink with vodka and iced coffee isn't uncommon. very rarely will one ever find him heavily asleep.

➤ despite his dyslexia, Ayaan loves reading books, newspapers, magazines and literary works of any kind. he usually prefers to read nonfictional works like autobiographies, even instruction manuals over fictional works because they expose him to more vibrant and useful words, plus providing insight on different real-life events and experiences. sometimes he may read a realistic fiction or two, but that's only if he finds nothing else to read. he’ll usually read them for an hour or two everyday inorder to keep his mind fresh with the knowledge. his favourite book is ‘daughters of the samurai; a journal from east to west and back’.

➤ Ayaan was once addicted to marijuana and smoking, but slowly he got rid of his unhealthy addiction. however he still smokes, although not as bad as he used to. however there are times when he's so stressed that Ayaan will start reverting back to his past self and smoke as many as three packets all at once in a single day. it's surprising how his lungs haven't collapsed yet.

➤ thinks very lowly of people, especially politicians. imagine his surprise and horrow when he was assigned to one. he planned to quit the job for a second there but hesitatingly agreed to the job fot some reason. hmmm…

➤ although he's more of a non violent person (if speaking and humiliating people into submission is anything but), Ayaan won't hesitate to throw hands if he wants to. he's skilled in krav maga, taekwondo and muay thai, courtesy of his father. he will beat the shitz outta you, then mock you by going "why you weak? huh why do weak?"

➤ has an especially soft spot for scalpels and sniper rifles. although he isn't partial towards pick axes and haandguns either.

➤ will look into the eyes, call you the ugliest piece of disgusting wet stale dough then walk away nonchalantly as if he just said that potato chips are made from potatoes.

➤ oranges are his favourite fruits. not because he actually likes it but because he can spray the citric acid in its peel on the eyes of any unfortunate fool who dares invade his personal space.

➤ personality wise, he can be described by the following words. Sophisticated. Quiet. Listless. Calm. Sadistic. Workaholic. Generous. Determined. Dense. Volatile. Sensitive. Ill tempered. Self destructive. (das a lotta worse tho)

➤ has shown multiple signs of psychopathy in the past despite not being a psychopath, including his apparent lack of empathy for those around him and his balant disregard of law. literally he doesn't even bother to remember people's names and only calls them as 'you'. only remembers Nadia's and Ailbhe's name.

➤ as a reciprosexual, Ayaan has never really formed any kind of strong relationship with anyone so far. not even his own family members. he thinks dealing with people is annoying already, and having a significant other isn't even in his list of to-do's before death. therefore he is quite dense. no scratch that, he's so dense light bounces away from him. every time someone tries to flirt with Ayaan or express their feelings for him :

➤ as a child (and adult) Ayaan suffers from an undiagnosed reactive attachment disorder. “a condition in which a child is unable to establish healthy attachment with parental figures or primary caregivers. [...] children with RAD have been so disrupted in early life that their future relationships are also impaired. they may experience difficulty relating to others and are often developmentally delayed.” [source : helpguide.org]

➤ can be VERY VERY petty and vengeful depending on the circumstances. he likes to return the pain back 10 fold worse to those who are unfortunate enough to piss him off.

➤ likes to talk about adult stuff in a pretty anatomically scientific sense. especially about kinks, sex and etc. even though he isn't kinky at all (or is it) he has QUITE the knowledge on it and several more forbidden stuff.

➤ he is NOT a kid friendly person. if a kid were to ask him a question like "how are children made?" he'll gladly give the child a detailed explanation about how sex works and how babies are actually made. mothers especially dislike him. he wonders why, seeing no wrong in it.

➤ can swear like a sailor. and he can rapidly change his cuss words from english to hindi to french within the span of a sentence. and he doesn't give a shit about what others think about him.

➤ one of his biggest pet peeves is people eating his food. he doesnt mind sharing his food with others, but isn't it a common courtesy for people to ask permission before they eat your food? apparently not, and this ticks off Ayaan to no ends. he’ll gladly buy you another meal if you are so hungry, but please don't touch his food without his permission. maybe if you ask nicely he may be willing to share some with you tho

HELLO HELLO 👋 here's my detailed profile on my MC Ayaan :D (@rf-interactive ) he's gonna be paired up with Roman, much to his dismay XD

To those who don't know what it's about, QUICKLY GO AND CHECK OUT RESPICE FINEM BY THEM IT'S SO GOOOOOOOOOOOD

[leportraitducadavre]

Naruto re-read XXV

Chapters covered: 200 - 208 Twentytirth Volume of the manga

Site used: https://manga4life.com/manga/Naruto (VIZ translation of the manga)

Disclaimer: This is intended as a list and simple observations of the topics that particularly interested me in the aforementioned chapters, in that sense, do not expect a linear -or totally deep- analysis.

Tumblr’s update doesn’t allow me to attach more than 10 pictures, therefore, all of them will be LINKED. Apologies.

295) I forgot to add one thing in the prior post. Kimimaro’s introduction is very interesting as his relationship with Orochimaru is presented as a very crude example of what is expected of shinobi. Orochimaru, in this specific case, asked Kimimaro’s body as payment for “saving” him, however, as a vessel, he lost his value -as not only is his body decaying due to his disease but also, a new (younger, more powerful) vessel is being “harvested” for his master (x) = A village, in exchange for “protection”, asks for your body (loyalty, physical and mental capacities, i.e. sacrifice), once it’s done chewing you out, they want someone else (better, younger) and you can do nothing but prepare your successor to fulfill their duties (Jönin-sensei). Construct and conceiving a sense of loyalty and duty to your subjects as to achieve that level of devotion is extremely complicated, the Will of Fire was constructed over time and with the work of different leaders (yes, there was a sense of loyalty that was born from the exhaustion of a long-lasting military conflict -which can also be said of Kimimaro also, as his traumas and past-experiences allowed Orochimaru to build himself as a hero deserving of worship).

296) Naruto’s Rasengan (just like Sakura’s fists, just like the Gentle Fist, and so on), depends solely on whether the technique makes contact or not with the target; it depends on the raw power of the technique itself (meaning, if it doesn’t connect, the waves of destruction that it leaves) and on the speed of the user; Minato, was particularly fast, as he used Raijin; by marking his opponents with his seal, therefore being able to transport himself to wherever they were, he made the technique inescapable.

297) The Sound four were outsmarted by a group of gënin; I know I “shit” on Shikamaru a lot, but again, Kishimoto is constantly reminding us that “raw power” isn’t the only decisive factor when fighting.

298) Look at that panel, the Eagle plunging upon his prey.  

299) “Sorry Naruto, I miscalculated.” (x). Who would have thought that five gënin were few for a mission they didn’t know how many enemies they’ll be facing. Oh, man if only there was someone sensitive enough to feel Kimimaro’s chakra approaching…

300) Orochimaru’s views on Kimimaro are really interesting, there must be out there a post that analyzes deeply their dynamic, as it has much to offer. Despite Sasuke being quite superior to Kimimaro (at least, by the beginning of Shippuden) and having the Sharingan, which is something Orochimaru admitted to lust over -as that’s the reason he desires an Uchiha vessel-, Orochimaru states that he’s fond of the idea of having Kimimaro’s body. Whether it has to do with Kimimaro himself or his body’s capabilities (which is far more plausible than Orochimaru forming a special bond with him, although we’ve seen him cry over his mentor) it’s never explicitly stated.

301) “Orochimaru has already mastered the art of immortality. But it takes time to learn everything.” (x), by the way this is phrased it’s like Orochimaru’s ambition with immortality is to learn everything there’s to know and while I don’t think that’s a far-fetched possibility, it’s not his main objective as he admitted to being scared of death.

302) “I should place more value on the lives of my teammates instead of the person abducted by the enemy (...) besides abandoning a teammate to protect yourself? There’s no one in my squad like that.” (x, x). Why is Shikamaru lying both to himself and Tayuya? Why isn’t Tayuya calling him out on it? Sasuke wasn’t abducted, he left of his own volition (x). Shikamaru isn’t risking his life to save an abducted comrade, he’s risking his life so Orochimaru wouldn’t have the last Uchiha descendent by his side, he’s protecting more Konoha’s possession of the last Sharingan user than Sasuke himself. Sure, he does have a sense of duty in lieu of Sasuke being a comrade and it wouldn’t be weird for them to think that Sasuke was forced into accepting Orochimaru’s help as Tsunade is incapable of replying to Shikamaru’s question (she isn’t even sure of the answer as nor Kakashi or Jiraiya spoke to her about their suspicions); the weight that surrounds the use of the word “save” is likely more for the children’s benefit to put them under a “savior” mindset in order to build their sense of duty and the imperative necessity of bringing Sasuke back (it’s also likely they gave sense to Sasuke’s escape by attributing it to kidnapping since they cannot conceive one of them deflecting).

303) Sakon is said to be the strongest, and he (they?) are the ones that fight Kiba. Akamaru seems able to smell or sense Sakon and Ukon’s chakra quantity and communicate consciously with Kiba; Kikaichus seem able to communicate with the Aburame user by their shared chakra connection, I’m not sure how the Inuzuka do so with their pets.

304) Is Kimimaro’s chakra visible? Yes, it seems to be.

305) Human Beast Combination Transformation: Double-Headed Wolf (Jinjuu Combi-Henge: Soutourou)

Ninjusu, B-rank, Supplementary

User(s): Inuzuka Kiba, Akamaru

The voracious wolf totally obliterates the worthless masses in its ferocity!!

This combined shapeshifting where man and beast become a single entity is a specialty of the Inuzuka Clan, a clan that has been walking side by side with ninja dogs for generations. They coalesce into a bicephalous wolf, thus drastically increasing their power. In their direct attacks, they demonstrate great efficiency. Furthermore, using jutsu in addition to this gives birth to an extraordinary power of destruction.

This is the combination Ninjutsu Kiba and Akamaru owe to their friendship. Like wolves, they corner the enemy with an overwhelming offensive power.

Source

Kiba (Inuzuka in general?) is able to shapeshift into a wolf, might be a derivation of the Henge technique yet it implies the user combining themselves with their animal. This technique exponentially increases the damage their spin jutsu does (I’m sorry it’s just funny that they use different derivations of one single jutsu at infinitum like Naruto).

Ukon’s technique (Kekkei Genkai) when in Level 2 of Orochimaru’s Cursed Seal consists in dissolving himself to enter someone’s body. (x, x), he can create body parts inside his victims and attack them; that is, the body parts that weren’t infected by Ukon’s cells yet, as then he’ll be hurting himself which is why Kiba stabs himself and Ukon leaves. Ukon is the only brother with such capability. Given the need to be at L2 of the Cursed Seal it’s to be believed that Ukon’s Kekkei Genkai is a result of Orochimaru’s experiments rather than a (unknown) clan’s technique.

304) I really like Kimimaro’s Kekkei Genkai (and design), he’s engraved in my memory alongside Zabuza, two secondary villains that never did much for the main plot yet I adore.

305) “He bolted once he realized the enormous power of the spirits… he’s smarter than I thought…” (x). Come on Kishi, it’s like you don’t want to put any effort into Shikamaru’s supposed brilliance, I even see Konohamaru escaping when seeing three giant spirits coming after him! How’s that brilliance?

Tayuya uses the flute to summon three Doki, they’re composed of Mind Energy that takes form and seeks to eat Physical Energy in order to stabilize (I’ve explained that Chakra in itself is the combination of Physical and Spiritual Energy), she controls them through a sound-based genjutsu.

Shikamaru’s capability of trapping an enemy inside his shadow possession is, just like Ino, subjected to both the user’s quantity of chakra and the enemy’s. Because Tayuya’s energy augmented after activating Lv2 of the seal, Shikamaru lost control of her.

The strength of Shikamaru’s suffocating technique depends on how close his enemy is.

(previous post) - (next post)

[atomic-insomnia]

15 Interview Questions (for Amelia)

thanks for tagging me, @dotr-rose-love!

1. Are you named after anyone?

Eh, not directly.  My mother thought it sounded “queenly;” same with my sister Matilda’s name.  She was very concerned about that, my mother, sounding royal.  You should’ve heard the airs she could put on.

2. When was the last time you cried?

*sarcastic grin*  I’m not much for weepers or sob stories.  It’d smear my mascara.

[Probably not since she was a kid or at least a young teenager; keeping her emotions hidden is one thing she considers deeply important.  It’s partially to protect herself from being vulnerable, but at this point in her life she’s just made it a habit and struggles to honestly open up about anything.]

3. Do you have kids?

Oh Jesus Christ, I hope not!  Haha!

4. Do you use sarcasm?

Noo, never.

5. What’s the first thing you notice about people?

The shiny bits.  *snort*  No, if I’m being honest, I look for their general mood--like, is this someone who’s open to a conversation?  Are they trying to go unnoticed?  Do they seem the type to fly off the handle?

Now, what I do with that information, that all depends on the situation at hand.

6. What’s your eye color?

Nothin’ special, just...brown.  Same old same old.

7. Scary movies or happy endings?

Hm...I’d say the two should go together.  The happy ending’s worth nothing if you don’t get your thrills & chills leading up to it, and why put up with the scares if you don’t get a happy ending?

...But that’s what movies are for.  Real life usually doesn’t play by those rules.

8. Any special talents?

Any sort of special talent you wish, darling.  One look at you, and *snaps fingers* I can tell you all your most hidden secrets, your dreams, your desires--and your future.  For a fee, of course.  *wink*

[Probably her most useful talents are reading people--which is what all that ‘psychic’/’i can see your dreams’ nonsense really is--and adaptability.  Find an unpredictable situation, then figure out a plan so you can say “mmm, just as I predicted, the Spirits were right”]

9. Where were you born?

Good Ol’ Harlem, New York New York.  Nothing much to say here that hasn’t been said before by wordier people than me.  There’s a lot for the newspapers to get rich suckers crying and wringing their hands about “the plight of the poor.”  But there’s more than that.  Sometimes I see people say the reason we’ve got so many artists is because art needs suffering--but that also means we’ve got people willing to turn suffering into art.  Doesn’t it?

...Whoops, got off topic.  Ignore me, haha, I must love to hear the sound of my own voice.

10. What are your hobbies?

I’m out every every night I can be, looking for someplace new to dance!  If I really need a quiet night, I go to the moving pictures or a vaudeville theater for a few acts.  Usually I only want action, but lately I’ve needed a break more and more often...

11. Have you any pets?

He prefers to be called an “assistant.”

[From across the room:  “I heard that.”]

No, but I’ve never been one for animals in the house.  ...That, and I can barely keep myself fed, I don’t want to be the one keeping something else alive.

12. What sports do you play/have played?

I’ve played baseball, by which I mean, I’ve swung a stick at a rubber ball and run around the pieces of cardboard we plopped down on the street for ‘bases.’  That was when I was a kid, way back when.  Nowadays I only pay attention to sports to keep up with the betting odds.

13. How tall are you?

...Tall enough.  What’s it to you?

[Somewhat of a sensitive subject as she’s usually as tall as or taller than most of the men around her]

14. Favorite subject in school?

Oh, easy!  Arithmetic.  I know, I don’t look the type.  Of course, I got a lot more use of it outside of school--betting odds for the local race track, trade value of chewing gum vs. rouge powder...my teacher always told me the only value math had for a woman was budgeting household expenses.  My household is a party of two and we both take care of ourselves, so I guess that means my teacher wasted her time, hm?  I’m not bitter--genuinely, I’m not--I just can’t imagine wanting a life where you end up as either a repressed housewife, or a schoolmarm who’s jealous of the future repressed housewives in your class.

15. Dream job?

To not have to work, haha.  Oh, I’d find a way to keep busy and fill my days--could you imagine spending all day lounging on a beach somewhere?  They act like it’s a dream--yeah, because you’d fall asleep soon enough.  No, but, look at what the ritzy set gets up to with all their money and free time--parties, vacations, and all the drama of who’s sleeping with who’s wife!  Maybe instead of being one of them, I’d rather be the reporter selling them out to the tabloids.

Oh, I’m kidding.  I just want the free champagne.

--

I’ll leave an open tag for anyone who wants to fill out these questions for their OCs!

[streetlight11]

Till I Met You Again

Summary: Everyone is born with a life already planned out for them. Including their soulmates. Except, every person walking this earth has been given a specific soulmate marking that was similar to a tattoo to match their soulmate’s. The ink is invisible when one is born. To activate the soulmate marking, one has to be at least in a 20 feet radius to their designated soulmate. But of course, they wouldn’t know it until they start to notice the ink slowly appearing on their skin.

Theme: soulmate au, university au, enemies to lovers

Genre: angst, fluff

Warning: mild cursing

WC: 10k

Pairing: Soulmate!Yoongi x Fem!Reader

a/n: Hello! I kinda got too carried away in writing this one the other day, hence the word count for this is... woah. Hehe. But anyways, here's a soulmate au for you Min Yoongi lovers <3

Every person who was born into this earth has their life journey already written out for them in which it unfortunately remains a secret from them. And these living souls have been entitled to a soulmate that would potentially cross their path in the near future. Everyone is made for someone and the tattoo on their skin otherwise known as a ‘soulmate marking’ determines it for them.

The soulmate marking is nothing far from a tattoo as it imprints on your skin for eternity.

However, these markings will already be on you the minute you were born. Except, the ink will be invisible to the human eye.

But it’s definitely there. The only way to activate the marking is when one happens to be of 20 foot radius with their designated soulmate. This will cause the ink to start slowly appearing on one’s skin. Even so, these markings will start only when one has reached the age of 14. Only then will the ink start to be visible to one’s eye.

Unfortunately, until now when you’re already past 20 years of age, not a single tinge of ink was displayed on your skin. You’ve checked everywhere on your body. From your fingertips to your toes.

Nothing.

You weren’t really one who purely believed in this whole soulmate thing simply because you felt that there’s no such thing as a fixed soulmate. You should be free to choose who you want as your partner purely through interactions and chemistry you shared with the other, not by some marking on your skin. Your parents had a matching mark on their right wrists which was a simple rose in a glass jar.

No doubt you admired their love story and how they met, but you couldn’t see it for yourself. You really don’t want to fully depend on this supposed marking. Even when you went off to college, you’ve made it a point to try and go on dates no matter what their soulmate markings would be.

But it all turned out with the same ending. Either the guy dumps you for not having the same mark or they ghost you after the first date, saying you’re too good for them. All these never led to a heartbreak on your end because you were never in love to begin with.

You were simply trying your luck, trying to see if you’d find a single soul who was just as sceptical as you on this whole soulmate thing.

And so far, you’ve met none.

It was the start of university life for you as you’ve managed to enrol yourself for a Computer Science major in Hangang University. You took the same course during college, having interest in web design and computer technologies. You could only hope that the study load this time would give you a mental break every once in a while despite knowing the content is definitely heavier than college content.

But you still told yourself to persevere and never leave your knowledge hanging while you’re still young. With this mentality, you brought yourself to campus today for day one of university classes.

Taking a deep breath, you pushed the door to the specific lecture room for the first lesson.

Immediately, you were greeted by a room that had the majority of the students’ gender being males. But it wasn’t a surprise to you because CS majors tend to lean more towards males instead of females. This doesn’t bother you since you were here solely to study and perhaps make friends along the way.

You found an empty seat in the top last few rows. With careful steps, you climbed the stairs to make your way to the spot you had your eyes locked on. After you’ve settled down, you noted how the room was fairly quiet.

Probably because it was the first day of classes and nobody really knows each other yet. That was all pushed to the back of your mind when you heard chatting coming from the front door and you saw 2 friends walk in. It was pretty obvious they knew each other considering how they were laughing and talking freely to one another.

As you kept your curious gaze on them discreetly, you could only realise how good looking they were.

The taller one sported beautiful dark brown locks that were long enough to cover his eyes, his smile so charming you were sure anyone who crossed his path would fall for his smile in less than a second. And then there was the other one who sported a more edgy look with his shorter dark purple, undercut hair that was parted near the centre to show his forehead, a right eyebrow piercing to compliment his face.

You quickly diverted your gaze to your laptop screen, not wanting them to think you’re a creep. You were busy searching for the e-books for this lesson in your online school portal when you heard a gentle voice calling to you from your right.

“Hey, are these seats taken?”

You looked up to see the one with the eyebrow piercing staring at you with the softest smile on his face.

In response to his question, you simply mimicked his facial expression and shook your head at him. He thanked you quietly before the 2 of them settled down beside you down the row. They resumed their conversation for the next 3 minutes before the lecturer walked in to start the class.

Two hours later, you don’t even know how you managed to absorb the things your lecturer said but you did. You were typing out the notes he shared on the projector screen when you heard his voice through the speakers.

“I will let you go for your lunch break. Be back by 1pm, here. You can leave your bags behind since I will be locking the room once everyone leaves.”

With that, your classmates replied with a series of yes before they got up one by one ready to head for lunch. You were just typing out the last of your notes when the boy beside you spoke up. At first you thought he was talking to his friend. You completely missed the way he was turned to you.

Until he gently taps onto your forearm to tell you that his question was directed to you. With a turn of your head, you locked eyes with him for the second time that day. “H-Huh?” You stuttered, earning a stifled chuckle from him.

“I was saying, do you wanna join me and my friends for lunch? We’re already sharing classes, might as well get to know each other to prepare for future projects or assignments.” He kindly repeated himself for you, making you whisper a soft ‘oh’ under your breath.

It wasn’t like you to approach someone first when it comes to striking a conversation with a complete stranger. So when he did it for you, it surprised you that he even thought of letting you tag along with them to lunch. For this alone, you decided to accept his offer knowing he does have a point for that last statement.

With that being said, the three of you left the lecture room after bringing your wallets with you. You quietly followed beside the brown haired one as they immediately opened a topic for their conversation.

You were just checking your phone for the texts sent from your mom in your family group chat when a voice spoke up, addressing you directly.

“What’s your name?” You glance up to catch the one who asked the question was the brown haired one, as the purple haired one was already looking at you but it wasn’t intimidating in any way. So you found it easy to reply to them.

“Y/N.” You said as they all nodded only for the boy beside you to speak up. “Nice to meet you Y/N. I’m Taehyung. This is Jungkook.”

And so you know.

After almost 10 minutes of walking, you finally arrived at the cafeteria located on the other side of campus from where you originally were. The cafeteria was filled with hungry students and occupied tables. This wasn’t something new but at times like these, you’d rather bring your own food and sit somewhere that’s less crowded and bustling.

Just when you were about to excuse yourself and get a take out instead, Taehyung’s voice sounded from beside you, “Hyung said he found a table for us. They’re at the side near the drink stall.” He addressed it to the Jungkook in particular.

Hyung? Found a table? Did their other friends go to this same campus too?

You thought to yourself as Taehyung soon led the three of you around the cafeteria with you following behind them like a lost puppy.

You were busy looking at the available food stalls around when you were stopped by the voices that called out to the 2 boys’ names. Curious eyes wandered over their figures to see just who their other friends were and you were met with a table filled with relatively handsome guys.

There were 3 guys seated at that table, happily welcoming Taehyung and Jungkook. Just when you thought they had forgotten you, Jungkook turns around to show you to his friends.

“If you guys don’t mind, we made a new friend this morning and we invited her to join us for lunch. Her name is Y/N.” Jungkook announced as the three boys smiled at you warmly.

“Hey Y/N. I’m Namjoon, this is Seokjin and Hoseok. It’s nice to meet you.” Namjoon said as he stretched his hand out for you to shake in which you obliged. You definitely didn’t miss the intricate design of a floral arrow lining his inner forearm. That must’ve been his soulmate marking. You soon found yourself seated next to Hoseok and Jungkook after buying your meal.

You were chewing your noodles when Taehyung spoke up to catch everyone at that table’s attention, “Where are they? Shouldn’t their class be over already?”

“Apparently they just ended 5 minutes ago. Minie told me they’re on their way now.” Seokjin replied.

Who were the ‘they’ Taehyung was referring to?

Were there more of their friends?

Oh great.

You refocused on your food, taking a bite out of the chicken meat as you listened to their ‘first day of university’ story. You found out that Namjoon was a Psychology major, Hoseok was a Dance major and Seokjin was a Culinary major.

You were currently staring at the pile of vegetables that Taehyung so kindly transfers into your bowl, after he asked around on who wants the boiled carrots and broccoli to which you said yes.

Taehyung was passing you every last bit of vegetable to your bowl when a sweet voice spoke up from the end of the table nearest to Namjoon and Seokjin.

“Finally! I thought you’d never make it for lunch.” Namjoon laughed as you heard a much raspier voice speak up from the same spot.

“I wouldn’t miss lunch for the world.” You heard the others laugh when Taehyung finally finished clearing his plate off the vegetables before turning to the newcomers to say his hellos.

“Oh, by the way, we have a new addition to our circle. She’s in Taehyung and Jungkook’s class so they tagged her along for lunch.” Seokjin announced as he reached his arm behind Taehyung to place a soft hand on the top of your right shoulder. You finally looked up from your bowl to see who the newcomers were.

The first guy you locked eyes with had cute puffy cheeks, sporting a pretty dark blue hair colour as his bangs framed his face nicely.

“Oh hello. I’m Jimin.”

You smiled shyly at him before your eyes naturally travelled to the other individual standing right beside Jimin and that’s when you frowned.

Unsurprisingly, the male did too.

His hair was an ash grey colour that parted at the side to show his forehead instead of letting it cover his eyebrows like Hoseok’s did. He had a few piercings on each ear. If his physique was unrecognizable to you, at least his face was. You knew exactly who he was without having to ask him for confirmation.

“Yoongi?” His name rolled off your tongue effortlessly in a whisper, stirring reactions from the rest of them.

“Wait, you know each other?” Jimin asked in confusion as his eyes travelled back and forth between you and Yoongi. That’s when you heard the other scoff before locking his eyes with you.

“Never thought I’d see you again after all these years.” His expression was dry and almost unwelcoming unlike the smiles his other friends gave you upon your first meeting. “Never wished for this day to come either but here we are…” You said sarcastically.

The tension was so thick, you were sure you would have to cut it with a knife instead of a scissors.

You broke the gaze by standing up, claiming you’ve lost your appetite.

“I’ll see you guys in class.” You said, directing your words to your classmates before you snatched your phone and wallet off the table top along with your tray of food to return. With a quick glance to Yoongi, you ignored his burning glare as you shoved past him by the shoulders causing him to stumble back a little.

The table fell quiet as Seokjin was the first to break the awkward silence, “Well, that was unexpected.” Yoongi scoffed as he left the table to go buy his food, not bothering to wait for Jimin as his mind was clouded with the thought of you being in his circle of friends.

The history of you two goes way back when you were in both pre and high school. Your first ever dispute with him was in preschool, all because you were both fighting over the crayon box. And then gradually, more fights would happen over silly little things. It came to a point where your teacher would have to separate you from each other.

Your disputes continued after you found out that he just so happened to join the same high school as you, let alone the same class. It only made things worse. You two would bicker and fight almost everyday like a married couple.

Your friends teased you often with him for the amount of fights you got into with him. They’ve even grown accustomed to the harsh comments you had thrown to each other on a daily basis.

Not a day goes by without either him stepping on your tail or you having a payback for all the pranks he did on you to get you worked up. And yet, just when you thought you were free from seeing the devil himself again, life has its way with you and it bothers you to the core at this very instant.

Your lecturer arrived back at the lecture room 15 minutes before 1pm and it seemed like everyone else was still having lunch. All except you. “You’re here early? Have you had your lunch?” He asked as he proceeded to unlock the room while you lingered behind him, standing up after you saw him approaching from afar.

“Yeah, I did.” You smiled, stepping back into the room after he pushed the door open. You climbed the stairs again to where your belongings were, taking out your air pods to bury yourself in music.

Shutting out the world around as you rested your head in your arms on the table. You didn’t notice the people strolling into the lecture room, too busy drowning yourself in your own little bubble. All of it soon came crumbling when you felt a soft tap on your shoulder.

That’s when you look up to see the 2 of them back in their seats.

You glanced ahead to see that the lecturer had already flashed the new slides onto the projector screen which indicates the start of class again. So you took out your air pods and kept them in its case before tossing it into your bag.

Class resumed and your messy thoughts were shoved to the back of your mind, far away from your main focus right now which was your class.

After a dreadful 4 hours of lessons, your lecturer finally calls it a day. He reminded all of you to be punctual for class tomorrow, saying that he has some group discussions for the topic he would be teaching. Once everyone was dismissed, you kept your stuff back into your bag quietly.

You could tell the two boys were waiting for you since they hadn't moved a muscle from beside you despite already standing up and were just leaning against the table while they chatted. The minute you stood up, they pushed themselves off the table and only then did they start walking down the steps.

The three of you made it to ground level thanks to the operating lift, making your way to the parking lot that was right beside the campus entrance.

You were just talking to Jungkook about your hobbies when you noticed a group of 5 guys gathered at the steps of the campus grounds through your peripheral vision. You could only guess it was their friends due to the voice that calls out to those walking with you. They led you towards the bunch as you glanced over to everyone but him.

“Hey Y/N, how did you come here this morning?” Namjoon asked, his voice nothing but sincere.

“Public transport.” You said simply with a smile directed towards him, only for Seokjin to speak up, “Do you need a ride home? I can drive you?”

With that being said, you kindly shook your head with a smile, not wanting to offend him in any way for turning his offer down. “It’s fine, I can manage on my own. Thanks for the offer though. Maybe next time.” You said as you bid the rest of them goodbye, not bothering to look at the very person you’ve held your grudge on for years.

They watched as you turned in your heels and left, deadpanning your way to the front gates. Jimin sighed lightly before turning to Yoongi and asked for answers on why you and him weren’t on good terms.

But the latter only brushed Jimin off, saying he would explain some other time.

The rest of them soon dispersed to their own vehicles to head home after a long and tiring first day of university.

As more days began to pass, you were sometimes dragged by either one of your 2 classmates to hang out with their friends and girlfriends. If you weren’t mistaken, half of them already found their soulmates and were currently in a relationship with them. While the remaining half were still finding for theirs because it was either their soulmate markings had appeared on their skin but very faintly, or there was none at all.

But the amount of times you’ve recalled hanging out with them during the past three months were countable with your fingers. You avoided having lunch with them often ever since you found out Yoongi was in their circle. You didn’t want to seem petty but it seems like he too hated having you around.

Which means that the feelings were mutual on both ends.

It was a pretty warm day so right after you arrived back at your apartment, you headed straight for the showers. Slipping into the shower stream the minute your clothes were discarded.

The cold stream coating your shoulder down with it’s nice, cooling temperature to ease out the warmth in your body.

After you finished your shower, you took your towel from the rack and proceeded to wipe yourself dry. Stepping out of the cubicle, you walked over to the sink counter where your large mirror was glued onto the wall. As you were ruffling your hair with the towel to rid the excess water, you noticed something on your left rib through the reflection.

Is that…?

You glanced down at your skin to see a very faint outline of something on your skin. You blinked twice, not believing this.

When did it start showing?

Your mind was going feral at the thought of seeing your soulmate marking finally make its appearance onto your skin. Who was the cause of this? Why did it only appear now after all these years? If that’s the case then it means that your soulmate is someone from school.

“What am I thinking? This is all a load of crap. I can date whoever I want no matter what marking they have.” You said to no one in particular as you changed into your home attire.

A few days later, you were just in class alone in the morning. Taehyung and Jungkook had yet to arrive when a sudden voice from beside you made you jump. A soft curse emitted from your throat as you clutched to your chest from the minor heart attack. You turned to find one of your classmates whom you recalled his name to be Hanbin, towering over you to your left.

“Hey, I’m Hanbin.” He smiled at you, feeling your stomach get warm upon seeing him up close for the first time.

“Hey… I’m Y/N.”

“I don’t mean to be creepy or weird, but I’ve kind of noticed you going for lunch alone these days instead of with your friends?” He asked as he rubbed the back of his neck nervously. You somehow knew where this was going.

“Right… Well, that is true I suppose.” You chuckled awkwardly, looking away from him briefly before turning your attention back to him.

“I see. Well, if you’re looking for company, you can go for lunch with me?” He said it more like a statement instead of a question and that in itself made you smile. You had just accepted his kind offer when you heard familiar voices approaching to where you were seated.

Hanbin’s eyes glanced past your shoulder only to flicker back to you, setting a reminder before he left.

“Lunch with me later, yeah?”

You gave him a soft nod as a smile crept onto your lips. At the same time, you felt the soft nudge to your right elbow. You already knew who’s the culprit. “Wasn’t that Hanbin? What did he say to you?” Taehyung asked as he took a seat beside you.

“He asked me to go for lunch with him.”

“So you agreed?”

“Mhm.”

“You wanna go for lunch with him but not us?” Taehyung asked with a pout, only for Jungkook to lean over and ask what was going on. You could only roll your eyes at them, not actually annoyed or anything. Just a reflex whenever someone tried to get your sympathy over something stupid.

“Give me a break. I’m not sharing a table with ‘you know who’. Wouldn’t wanna accidentally break the table with our arguments.” You flashed him a sarcastic smile that made him click his tongue at you in disbelief.

It has been two months since you first went to lunch with Hanbin and you have been doing that ever since. You noticed that his demeanour was starting to change too around you, maybe there was a mutual feeling settling in between the two of you after all.

It was a Saturday afternoon and you already made plans with Hanbin a week prior. He wanted to bring you out on a date to the amusement park and then maybe grab some supper before heading home. He picked you up at your apartment that evening in his jeep, looking quite handsome if you say so yourself.

The two of you spent the evening together, adrenaline rushing through you thanks to the rides you took. After enjoying yourselves at the amusement park, you were both tired from having fun so he offered to stop by and grab supper with you before sending you home.

You ended up getting fast food at the diner downtown. You were happy. You were grateful that he was nothing but sweet to you. But for some reason, deep down there was that voice in you that was screaming, “He���s not the one” and you hated it. You didn’t want to rely on the marking to determine your happiness.

What if you belonged to someone who has a different marking than you?

That’s possible right?

So when he finally parked right outside your apartment complex, he turned off the engine leaving his key in the ignition. The car fell silent for a moment before you decided to be brave and spoke up.

“Do you… wanna come up for a bit? We can talk for a while longer?”

With that, Hanbin frowned as he wondered if he should. He didn’t want to ruin a first date and he most definitely did not want you to have a bad impression on him.

“Are… Are you sure?” He asked quietly, to which you nodded.

When you didn’t get a proper response, you simply let out a soft giggle followed by, “come on” before you opened his jeep door to board off the vehicle. You left him no choice but to follow after you. Once you’ve made it to your apartment, you unlocked your front door and stepped inside allowing him to enter.

It took him a while as his eyes travelled all over your cosy apartment, admiring the minimalist interior. You told him to take a seat while you went to get him a drink.

A few minutes passed and you were both just talking freely on your couch when you noticed how his eyes always flickered down to your lips constantly as you spoke. This made you stifle a giggle and he caught on. He apologized for it but you brushed it off.

Just then, the room felt quiet all of a sudden as it was your turn to glance down to his lips.

Hanbin softly smiled as he began to lean closer.

Your heart was pounding in your chest as you could feel his warmth radiating off his body from how close he was to you.

Right when you felt your head get dizzy from the close proximity, you unconsciously whispered against his lips something that you would never normally do.

“Kiss me.”

With that being said, he pressed his plump lips on yours.

Immediately intoxicating you with how sweet he tasted. The kiss slowly got heated as he carefully guided your body back to lay on the couch while he hovered over you. His hands slid past the hem of your shirt, resting on your waist as he caressed your skin.

You slide your hands up his chest, wrapping them around his neck. He slowly pushed your shirt up using his wrists. Right when he’d just pulled away for a breather, his eyes travelled down to your bare torso beneath him.

His gaze seemed stuck on whatever he was looking at. When you realized he stopped and was staring at something on your body, you knew exactly what he saw.

“Is that…?” His voice was soft, almost sounding as though he was upset.

“Yeap…”

With this confession, he slowly pulled away from you, tugging your shirt back down and bringing you to a sitting position.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t…” He began but you were quick to hush him.

“It’s okay… Besides, I should be the one saying sorry. I already saw your marking the other day when you wore a tank top to class. I just thought you’d be okay with dating someone who doesn’t share the same mark as you. I guess I was being selfish…” You said.

Hanbin remained quiet as he listened to your reasoning. Suddenly feeling bad for stopping whatever you two were sharing, so abruptly like that. With that, he reached out to hold your hand, telling him that he was still sorry for reacting that way and for hurting your feelings by doing so.

But he told you he didn’t regret taking you out on a date today, that he genuinely had a good time with you and that he would love to still be friends with you if you allowed him.

You smiled at him before turning your attention to the flower pot sitting on your coffee table only for him to continue, “I just hope that you’ll find someone who will love you for who you are, doesn’t matter the mark.” For that, you smiled again. Thanking him for being sweet and thoughtful.

After he left, you couldn’t help but sigh. This was already the umpteenth time this happened to you.

But you couldn’t stay mad at Hanbin for turning you down simply because he didn’t reject you the way your other ex dates did. That was the reason why you let him go without holding a grudge.

The next few weeks, you’ve gone to lunch on an alternate basis between Hanbin and the guys. And every time you went with the guys, you could only prepare yourself for the constant bickering with the one and only, Min Yoongi and today was no different.

You were sitting next to Namjoon at the end of the table with the only space left empty being beside you. And it was as though luck wasn’t on your side, the only human left to arrive for lunch was none other than Yoongi himself.

You were just sipping your green tea when you heard his voice approaching towards your side of the table.

“Sorry hyung, that’s the only seat left.” Jungkook smiled sympathetically to the elder as you made it a point to not spare a glance over to him. You could hear his grunt of disapproval but nonetheless plopped his bag down on the chair before disappearing to buy his food.

When he did come back, you had just gotten a whole chunk of chocolate fudge cake shoved into your mouth by Taehyung who was seated opposite you.

You were unable to pull the dangling piece of cake into your mouth so you tilted your head back. But instead of the cake entering your mouth, it ended up falling into your hands when you felt your head crash into something behind you.

And the hiss just told you who it was.

“Watch it before I spill hot soup on you.” Yoongi said as he placed the bowl of steaming noodle soup on the table top beside your tray.

“Don’t worry because I’ll make sure it spills on you too.” You challenged him back, earning a glare from him.

You heard a few sighs coming from some of the guys but you couldn’t care less. You busied yourself by scrolling through your social media in hopes that the time would just pass by quicker so that you can be away from him after lunch ends.

A few days later, you had just finished your shower when you noticed your mark slowly growing more and more opaque. To which you could finally see the design of it.

It was a dream catcher.

A pretty one at that. You softly traced your finger over the outline of the detail, keeping your eye on the reflection. Just then, a soft sigh left your lips.

This means that your designated soulmate has supposedly crossed your path more than once. But seeing how the ink is getting darker with each passing day, could only mean that if not often, this person is near you at least more than 3 times a week.

A week went by and Jungkook had invited you to his birthday slash pool party that weekend. He invited only the guys and some of their girlfriends. You’ve met the girlfriends a few times and they’ve all been pretty sweet to you so far. All of them are so down to earth. You told Jungkook you’ll be there, earning a happy soft clap from him when you said so.

On the day of the party, you had just finished your shower when you noticed the water droplets underneath you weren’t clear. You looked harder only to realize those weren’t water.

It was blood.

“Great… Thanks mother nature…” You huffed as you went to get your feminine item from your cupboard. After successfully changing into the attire you chose for the day, you tied your hair into a messy ponytail before leaving your bathroom.

You wore simple denim shorts and a loose shirt tucked into your jeans.

When you actually made it to Jungkook’s house, you were surprised to know that he was living in a one story house with a built-in pool ready when he moved in.

Apparently his parents were pretty wealthy people so they bought this house for him, saying it would give him the opportunity to take responsibility in keeping the house clean and tidy rather than his mother having to do it for him all the time.

You called Jungkook’s phone only for him to pick up on the second ring. You told him you were at his front gate so he hung up the call and rushed over to you.

Once you were inside his beautiful compound, he brought you towards the back through his side garden. Distinct voices gradually get louder the nearer you get to them. The minute you turned round the corner, you instantly saw more than half of them in the pool including the ladies.

Seokjin and Taehyung were over at the barbeque grill, cooking the meat for everyone. There was a table filled with all kinds of snacks and sweet drinks. It was a full on pool party.

Just then, a familiar voice rings in your ear already knowing it belonged to Hoseok.

“Y/N! You made it! Come join us!”

You stopped at one of the chairs only to put your sling bag down and apologized to him, “Sorry to burn the mood, but I can’t. Monthly calls.” You could hear some whines and sad pouts forming on some of their faces right after.

“Aww man, that’s a total bummer.” Jimin said, making you shrug.

However, you noticed a figure leaning against the wall on the other side of the pool just blankly staring at you. That’s when you glanced over to see Yoongi. You held your stare for a moment before you turned away. Missing the way he was still staring at you even when you were making your way to Seokjin and Taehyung.

A few minutes later, you were just talking to Jiyeon who was taking a break from being in the pool. You sat facing each other but from where you were seated, your back was facing the grilling pit.

Jiyeon was just talking to you about baking when you noticed someone swimming to the side that was aligned with where you were sitting.

Only to realize it was Yoongi.

He placed his hands on the edge of the pool and soon pushed himself upwards. You watched as water flowed down his body effortlessly. Cursing yourself for even staring at his shirtless form. He pushed his wet hair out of his face, resulting in him having sort of a slick back hairstyle.

He was too busy talking to Hoseok and Jungkook who were still in the pool, his head completely turned away from you.

Right when you were about to look away, your eyes caught sight of the imprinted ink on his left rib. You didn’t think much of it as you turned away from him. But then something in your brain ticked you off like a time bomb. So you carefully turned back to him just a few feet away from you.

That’s when you saw it.

The dream catcher on his left rib is so prominent and bold against his milky skin. Not to mention his toned abs. A soft gasp left your lips as he walked past you without sparing a single glance at you.

But you didn’t mind it. You were glad he didn’t see how shocked you were because if it did, he would have said something about it.

So instead, you just got up and left, entering Jungkook’s home through the glass doors frantically. You rushed in and went straight to the said destination. Once inside, you took a moment to steady your breathing as you brought your gaze up to the long mirror that laid upon you on the wall landscape.

You carefully pulled your shirt up to expose the ink on your own skin. You could only stare at it through the reflection before looking down at your own torso and gently tracing your finger over the outer rim of the dream catcher’s hoop.

You didn’t know how long you were gone for. It wasn’t until a voice broke your train of thoughts.

“Was it really necessary to rush into someone’s house like-”

However, his speech got stuck in his throat when his eyes flickered over to the reflection in the mirror. No it wasn’t your face he was staring at. It wasn’t the soap bottles lining Jungkook’s sink.

It was your mark on your left rib.

You swiftly pulled your shirt down to hide it from him from seeing any more details of it. With quick hasty steps, you turned to leave the bathroom and had barely taken a step out into the hallway when he grabbed your wrist and pulled you back to face him.

“Show me.” He said firmly.

“Show you what?”

“Don’t play dumb, you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“I- I don’t know what you mean-”

Without warning, Yoongi used his free hand to lift your shirt up to stop right below your bra line as his hands naturally cupped your sides to keep your shirt there. He finally caught a clear look of the inked design on you, seeing how familiar it looked to him.

You could’ve sworn you saw his eyes flicked wider for just a millisecond before it went back to its original state.

For some reason, your lung felt restricted and your heart dropped upon seeing the same mark on his skin at the same exact spot as yourself. You wanted to run away. All you wanted to do now was to be as far away from him as you can.

So you slapped his hands away, making him lose his grip on you before you turned around to leave.

He grabbed your wrist again but this time, you mustered whatever strength you had left to yank your arm from him. Tears stinging your eyes as it threatens to fall, yet you don’t fully understand why.

“Don’t! J-Just… leave me alone… please.” Your voice falls into a whisper as you rush to the backyard, ignoring their worried calls as you simply told them you weren’t feeling well because of your monthly calls. When Yoongi did come back to the backyard, he was questioned as to what happened back in the house and why you looked like you were about to cry.

Yoongi couldn’t help but stare at your descending back just in time before you turned the corner and disappeared fully from sight. Only for him to lie to them despite knowing exactly why you left.

“She wasn’t feeling well.”

The week went by and you have been avoiding coming relatively close to the rest other than the 2 who were obviously unavoidable. But it’s not like you had anything against them. You just wanted to avoid Yoongi at all costs for now. It was a Friday and you had just finished your classes for the day when the two boys exchanged glances to each another before Jungkook spoke up.

“Hey, do you wanna grab something to eat with us after this?” You knew he was being nice. You knew he wasn’t to blame for Yoongi having the same exact soulmate mark as you. So for that, you chose not to lash out at him.

“It’s fine. I’ll pass.” You smiled half heartedly and they could tell. But thankfully, they chose not to question further.

The three of you were walking towards the main entrance as usual when you saw the rest of the group seeming to wait for you three. You glanced up to Jungkook beside you who gestured a small wave to the others, only for you to accidentally look over.

And the first thing you saw was Yoongi already looking at you.

Great.

Before you could get to close, you bid your goodbyes to your friends as you separated from them to head towards the gates. Nobody has yet to know why you were acting this way other than Yoongi himself. You were just halfway through the parking lot when a firm grip on your wrist made you turn after being tugged back gently.

You nearly crashed into the figure whom you weren’t surprised when you saw it was him.

“Stop acting like a child.” He said, his tone held something much more than just firmness. He sounded like he’s… hurt almost.

“So what? This marking thing is a load of bullshit. Why does it determine who we should be with? That’s unfair! I’ve seen couples who have different marks and yet they’re still happy together?!” You said, clearly letting your emotions take over your mind.

“If you think it’s bullshit then why are you ignoring me like I’ve just killed your pet?!” He asked, his voice now a tad louder than it was before.

“Because all the guys I’ve tried dating care too much about these marks! Every single one of them ditched me when they found out I didn’t have the same mark! And what are the odds that the one person who has the same exact mark as me, happens to be the one person that has been nothing but a daily source of fight with me?” You paused as his grip on you loosened, his glare suddenly softened.

“Of course I couldn’t believe it… I didn’t want to believe that of all people, it’s you… That’s why I ignore you.” Your voice grew soft as you saw the way his eyes flickered back and forth on your own brown pupils.

“So you’re saying you hate me? Is that it?” His question was simple but it held a thousand meanings and you knew it.

“I don’t even know anymore, Yoongi…” You whispered as you slowly pulled your hand out of his grip and quickly left before he could say anything else. Yoongi stood there trying to process everything. Still not entirely sure of what just happened. Just then, a gentle hand on his shoulder made him return back to reality.

“Hey man, you okay?” Namjoon’s calm voice spoke from beside Yoongi as the latter could only nod.

“We heard your conversation… Well, we didn’t intend to anyways… But, is it true? That you both have the same mark?” Namjoon continued.

He could hear the soft, quiet curse leaving Yoongi’s lips during his exhale before he spoke up, “Yeah… That was actually the reason why she abruptly left during Jungkook’s pool party.” Yoongi explained and it all began to fall into place for Namjoon. The younger could only nod as he finally put the pieces together.

“Mmm, and so I’m guessing she’s too overwhelmed with the fact that you have the mark out of a billion people to walk this planet?” Namjoon said.

“Bingo.” Yoongi sighed as the two began to walk back to their friends who were still gathered at the entrance despite hearing the commotion earlier. If space is what you need, then space is what he shall give. But of course, you can’t run from him forever.

It has been two weeks since your outburst with Yoongi and you have been keeping your distance from him again. The guys also didn’t try to tag you along knowing fully well that you needed space from Yoongi. For that, you silently thanked them. It was a Saturday night and you had made it a point to go for a quick grocery run to stock up your refrigerator with edible food.

After getting all the items you needed, you went to the queue. The lady at the counter scanned every item on the conveyor belt and went ahead to put it in the plastic bag before telling you the total cost.

You were about to reach into your jeans pocket when you noticed them being flat.

You felt around the pockets of your jeans and it was in fact empty. With that being said, you mentally cursed yourself for not bringing your wallet with you. Not only that, this store was the only one nearest to your apartment and it was closing in 10 minutes.

You wouldn’t make it back in time if you went home now to retrieve your wallet.

So you apologized to the lady who looked equally done with her job as you left the store empty handed. You were just walking down the partially empty street when you felt something drop onto your cheek. You stopped walking to feel what it was. Before you could touch your cheek, another drop hits the top of your head. And then another. And another.

“Fuck my life…”

You whispered to yourself as the sky suddenly began to downpour on you. Watching as some people ran across the road for shelter, some whips out their umbrella to shield them from the rain, some simply stayed indoors to avoid being caught in the rain.

However, you were too tired to even care about seeking shelter. Feeling as if today was the worst day of your life.

You continued to stroll down the street completely soaked under the rain.

You wrapped your arms around yourself in attempts to keep yourself warm but it clearly did no shit for you. Absent minded to notice your surroundings, you didn’t hear the calls for your name until the vehicle came to a gradual slow speed beside you on the street.

“Y/N!”

It was Yoongi.

“Leave me alone…”

“Y/N, why in the world are you walking in the heavy rain? You might fall sick, you dummy.”

“Who c-cares?” Your lips were starting to quiver from the cold.

“I do.”

You could’ve sworn your heart just skipped a beat at that response.

“Look, let me take you to my place and get you dry clothes while waiting for the rain to stop. I’ll send you home after.” He said.

“I d-don’t need your… h-help, Yoongi.”

He let out a soft groan in annoyance with your stubbornness, only to drive a little further down before bringing the car to a complete stop. You were about to carry on walking but your feet just came to a halt when you saw him running out of his car and coming to you.

“Come on and stop whining like a little kid.” Yoongi said as he grabbed your wrist and began jogging back to his car, pulling you into the passenger side before going back to the driver seat.

Once safely inside, he drove off into the night and made a left turn at the junction while your apartment building was to the right and probably about a 20 minutes walk. The car ride was quiet as neither of you said anything. You simply let him do what he said he would. When he finally brought the car to a park, he turned off the engine and soon climbed out of the vehicle.

You followed suit as he had already come over to your side to hold the door for you. After he’d locked the car, he led you to his apartment complex as you followed behind him. You took in the interior of his apartment complex, it looked slightly older than yours but still well maintained.

Apparently, he lived on the 14th floor unlike you who lived on the 5th floor.

He soon pulls out his house key and proceeds to unlock his front door. He opens the door for you, letting you step inside first. Once he had closed the door behind him, he told you to wait there as he excused himself to go get you a clean towel and new dry clothes for you to change into.

You took in the minimalist setting of his apartment, quite similar to yours except your walls are white and his is grey.

Yoongi came back with a handful, telling you where the bathroom was.

You followed his directions and soon closed the bathroom door once you’ve stepped inside. In the meantime, Yoongi had gone to change out of his own wet clothes into a clean pair of his sweatpants and a hoodie. He was boiling hot water to make hot chocolate for the two of you when you cleared your throat behind him.

He turned around at the sound, only for him to scheme through your outfit in which he had so specifically chosen for you. He had lent you one of his sleeping shorts and an oversized black hoodie that looked a little too big on you.

But for some reason, you looked good in them.

He almost had to pinch himself for staring too long before he finally spoke up, “Uhh, my dryer’s in the laundry room. Second door to the left.”

You nodded as you disappeared back down the hall, only for him to mentally curse himself for losing his composure. After 2 minutes or so, you came back having managed to turn the dryer on.

He handed you the cup of hot chocolate, not forgetting to thank him for it.

There was a short moment of peaceful silence before he gestured over to his living room. The both of you went over to the couch as you sat on either ends of the furniture. He turned his tv on and was busying himself with searching through Netflix when you mustered up the courage to ask him what was on your mind for the past half an hour.

“Why did you help me?”

Yoongi turned to you briefly, unsure if he should answer the question truthfully.

“As much as we fight, I’m not entirely heartless.”

Your eyes bore into him as you soon found yourself looking down at your hands when he turned to look at you. If it wasn’t for the tv, you knew for a fact that he could’ve heard the thumping of your heart. Silence fell over you two again but he broke it as soon as it started.

“Why were you walking in the rain?”

“I was on a grocery run.”

“But I don’t recall seeing you carry any bags of groceries?”

“That’s because I couldn’t pay for it without my wallet…”

He raised his eyebrows at you in disbelief, finding it ridiculous that you only realized it when you were checking out of the store.

“Shut up. This kind of stuff happens okay…” You scoffed, earning a quiet chuckle coming from him followed by an, “Okay, okay.” The room fell silent again and you were just playing with the strings of your hoodie.

Silently wishing for time to pass quicker but it seems like the rain only got heavier.

“Look, I think we should just forget about the whole marking thing and just… start over?” He said, causing you to look at him but he seemed like he was diligently avoiding your gaze.

“Start… over?” You dragged your words to show that you wanted a slightly more detailed explanation.

“What I mean is… let’s stop ignoring each other and stop fighting over the smallest little issues like we did when we were young. Back then we were still young and immature. But we’re not anymore, are we?” He ended with a question, making you huff.

You know he has a point but your ego is still higher than ever.

“Are you only saying this because I’m your soulmate?”

“No. I really am tired of fighting with you.”

“Why now? Why only want to call truce after you’ve seen my mark? Doesn’t that say a lot?” You were stubborn and he knows it. And yet, he still answers you to clear all your doubts.

Surprisingly patient with you.

“I know it might look like what you think, but it’s really not. I don’t care about the marking much like you. But after thinking about it, I feel like it’s actually childish to hold a grudge on each other for the things we’ve done years ago, don’t you think?” He explained, hoping it’ll get past that rock solid head of yours.

Your heart knows he’s right but your mind forces you to say otherwise.

With that, you huffed as you got up and excused yourself to go check on your clothes. Before you could make it past the first door on the left, he grabbed your wrist and tugged you back.

He pressed you against the wall with his other hand beside your head to trap you.

Your free hand hovered in between both yours and his chest as he was less than 4 inches away. Your faces were so close you could feel his breath hitting your lips. You would’ve slapped him if he did this years ago.

But now?

“Why are you so stubborn?”

He asked, his voice low as you kept your heated gaze on his eyes even though you saw the way his eyes flickered back and forth between your eyes and lips.

Rising heat from both anger and his body temperature radiated off him, engulfing you like a cocoon. You could’ve sworn you saw his pupils dilate a few times now that he was this close to you. It was quiet in the hallway as he frowned, still waiting for an answer from you. But instead, you gently pressed your hand on his warm chest that was in between your bodies.

This was enough to make him flinch slightly. His crammed face relaxed for a moment when he looked down at your hand on his chest before looking back at you.

Even more confusion struck him.

Your heart was racing rapidly in your chest, and you were so sure he could hear it. You couldn’t bear to look at him any longer so you looked down at your hand as you slid it up towards the necklace he was wearing. Playing with the pendant in between your fingers.

You didn’t realise this but his grip on your wrist was long gone and was now slowly snaking that arm around your waist.

Yoongi leaned in very subtly to let his lips brush against yours just to see your reaction. He closed his eyes, taking in the feeling of having you this close for the first time. You did the same as your other hand rested on his left bicep. Before you knew it, he closed whatever remaining gaps in between only to kiss you.

Your heart exploded in your chest as he used the hand beside your head to cup your cheek. You leaned into his touch while you reciprocated the kiss. Yoongi’s grip on your waist tightened as he pulled you against him.

He felt both your hands now just holding onto his biceps for support, his lips tugging upwards against your mouth.

You could feel his muscles flexing under your fingertips as he pulled away from your mouth and was now trailing soft kisses down your neck. A soft sigh left your lips, feeling him give some love to the part that joins your neck and shoulder blade together.

“Yoongi…” Your voice came out as a mere whisper.

Just when you wanted to say something, your breath hitched in your throat when you felt his hands slip past your shirt only to rest them on your sides when your mark was.

His touch was gentle but it definitely did something to your poor heart.

“Answer me truthfully… Are you okay with… this?” Yoongi asked, gesturing between you and him. “With us? Because you can say no if you’re really against this. I would never force you.”

You stared at him for a while, rethinking your answer. You’ve been so firm about not caring who has the same soulmate mark as you because you thought it was all bullshit. But now, standing in front of him and knowing that he has the mark, not only that but he seemed like he really genuinely likes you is making it twice harder for you to say no.

But your silence was too long for him as he counted to 3 in his mind. When you didn’t respond, he slowly nodded. Pulling himself away to leave a space between you.

“It’s okay, I understand… I think your clothes are dry. Go change, I’ll wait outside.” His voice was quiet as if he’s too upset, he can’t even look you in the eye. You felt bad. You never wanted him to feel this way. So when he turned in his heels to walk away, you yearned for him to come back.

Yoongi was halfway down his living room when he felt a smaller hand slide into his right one. His step came to a halt as he kept his back to you.

He was about to ask if there's something wrong but all he got was a soft apology.

“I’m sorry…”

You watched as he remained still, his back still facing you. Doing nothing to turn and look at you. Yoongi wasn’t sure what he wanted to do at the moment so he kept quiet.

Just then, you used your other hand to cup his that you were already holding. He would be lying if he said he didn’t like this. But he definitely wasn’t prepared for what you were about to do next. You weren’t sure if you trust your voice so instead, you took a few steps closer before wrapping your arms around his waist.

Pressing your cheek against his back. You stayed like that for a few seconds, basking in the sweet vanilla scent of his.

You could feel him tense up when you first hugged him but he soon relaxed in your arms.

You didn’t dare to do anything else, all until you felt him softly caress your arms only to lock his fingers with yours over top of your hands. You only nuzzled your face deeper into his back, afraid to look at him.

But when you feel him slowly move around in your arms, that’s when you let him face you.

The minute he sees your face, he immediately cups your cheeks and wasted no time in kissing you ever so sweetly. The butterflies in your stomach erupted as you snaked your arms around his shoulders, feeling him pull you closer to him by your waist.

He held you securely against him all the while never leaving your lips. You were the first to pull away, keeping the distance small between you and him.

Your eyes were still closed so you depended on your senses.

That wasn’t until you felt him cup your face again, caressing your cheek with his thumbs. The room fell silent as he brushed his soft lips against yours and whispered to you quietly, “Can we start over?”

You opted for just a nod, unsure if you could trust your voice. You opened your eyes to see him staring at you so softly with his doe round eyes.

Yoongi smiled, whispering an ‘okay’ before he kissed you again. He wrapped his arms around your waist as you melted against his lips. He took his time with you, making sure you were comfortable and that you really wanted this. He never wanted to hurt you in any way. He kept asking for your permission before he did anything and you appreciated it.

You woke up the next morning to a warm feeling engulfing you from behind. You stirred in your sleep, trying to see what it was. But the squeeze around your waist made you look down to see the familiar arm draped over your waist, tucking his hands underneath you. The silver bracelet around his right wrist could never be mistaken for someone else.

Just when you were about to snuggle deeper into the warmth of his body, you felt him kiss the back of your head. Your heart pounded in your chest, stomach flipped in your belly.

“Mmm, good morning.” He whispered, his morning voice low and raspy.

You sighed in content as you turned around to face him, only to find that he still had his eyes closed but there was a smile that crept on his lips.

With that, you smiled as you planted a soft kiss on his lips. You could feel him smirk against your lips, earning a soft giggle from you. His arm that was supporting your head, bent at the elbows as he began to play with your soft hair.

The next day, you came to school feeling a little down in the weather. Maybe it was a late reaction to when you got drenched in the rain. You were sniffling in your seat when Taehyung and Jungkook immediately caught the sight of your red nose.

“Hey, are you sick? Your nose is red.” Jungkook said, his voice laced with full concern. You simply shook him off saying it was just light flu.

The other two weren’t buying it, they said they would go get medicine for you after class and you all but rejected them. The last thing you’d wanna do was to burden them.

So after your morning class has ended and you have been dismissed for lunch, the three of you made it to the cafeteria only to find the rest of the guys already seated. But you and Yoongi still haven’t told them about your resolve yet. So they thought you two were still ignoring each other.

“Hey guys! Y/N? Are you okay? You look kind of pale…” Namjoon asked, making you smile.

“It’s just a little flu, that’s all.” You said, completely missing the way Yoongi was staring at you with pure concern.

“Do you wanna go home and rest?” Hoseok asked in which you shook your head, before a squeaky sneeze left your lips not forgetting to cover your mouth while you did. “Sorry…” You whispered an apology, earning a few laughs from them. Just then, Yoongi got up without a word, leaving the table.

You watched as he disappeared down the aisle towards the drink stall. You wondered what he was doing but nevertheless shrugged, going to the empty seats beside him and Jimin.

You took a seat beside Yoongi’s empty chair, not really having the appetite to eat.

You were just rejecting Jimin’s offer to feed you some of his food when Yoongi came back with a glass of hot tea, a bottle of water and a strip of two panadol flu tablets. The rest of them watched quietly as he sat down beside you and handed you the drinks.

“Here, take this.” He said softly, pulling your hand up to push the two tablets out of the strip onto your open palms.

“Oh? Since when are you guys on good terms?” Taehyung asked in utter confusion.

“We’re not. We’re just acting.” Yoongi replied sarcastically before twisting the bottle cap open for you. He waited for you to throw your head back and let the tablets fall into your mouth before gulping down the water.

After you were done, you thanked him quietly. You didn’t miss the little smirk on his face.

“Okay…” Seokjin said as he gently slammed his hands onto the table top, making some of you flinch.

“What’s going on? Last week you were both ignoring each other and now you’re taking care of her like she means the world to you?” He asked as you turned to Yoongi for help.

“Don’t you know the saying ‘People change’?” Yoongi said.

“Of course, but it’s almost too drastic. Just over the weekend too.” Seokjin said in disbelief.

“Well, I guess it happens.” Yoongi shrugged as Jungkook directed his question to you.

“So I’m guessing you too?”

“No. I still hate him.” You lied.

“Is that so? Then why are you holding his pinkie?” Hoseok smirked, pointing to your intertwined pinkie on the table. With that, you quickly removed your hands from Yoongi.

“Hey... Why did you let go? I was about to play with your fingers.”

Yoongi said with a small pout, making you blush. Just then, Yoongi reached back over to lace his fingers with yours, resting your hands on his lap only to steal a quick kiss to your cheek.

This stirred a few dramatic gasps from your other friends. “Did you guys see that?! That was- omg!” Seokjin’s voice was too loud, making Jimin cover his mouth with his hands.

“Oh hush your pie hole dust. Just let me be happy for once.” Yoongi smirked as you felt him caress the back of your hand. He’s definitely going to be a handful but you’re more than happy to entertain his crap.

~~~

[sakuramidnight15]

-RSA MC Information-

[Gacha Club Ver. Below]

Character Bio

Name: Westyn Hashimoto

(Japanese: ウェスティン橋本)

Romaji: U~esutin Hashimoto

Quote: "Actions like yours aren't reliable, any word I say will be only in my plans."

V/A: Takahiro Sakurai (Japanese)

Austin Tindle (English)

Gender: Male

Age: 17

Birthday: July 28

Star Sign: Leo

Eye Color: Mustard Yellow

Hair Color: Coffee Brown

Height: 179 cm

Race: Human

Homeland: Crystalsle Village (The fifth country in the Island of Enchantment)

Family: Kirsten Hashimoto (Father)

Anne Young (Mother)

Ellis Hashimoto (Aunt)

______________________________________

School Status and Fun Facts

Dorm: TBA (If There's RSA Canon Dorms in the game)

School Year: Second

Class: 2-A (Same class with Harper)

Student no. 10

Occupation: Student

Part-time coffee barista

Journalist

Club: N/A

Best Subject: Literature, History and P.E.

Dominant Hand: Ambidextrous

Favorite Color: Brown and Dark Yellow

Favorite Food: Dark Coffee, Blueberry Muffins and Fruit Tarts,

Least Favorite Food: Celery and Mushy Food

Likes: Quiet Places, Silent Reading, Novel Collection (In any genre), Writing, Coffee, Anime and Manga (Mostly),

Dislikes: People Interfering his Privacy, Noisy Places, Trouble and Chaos, Losing Sleep (Mostly), People messing with him (Mostly),

Hobbies: Silent reading, Manga collecting, Writing his lastest book, Star-gazing, Solving Hard Riddles, Napping,

Talents: High-Level Magic, Master of Manipulation, Strong Liar (Only when being messed with), Cunning Tactics, Fabrication, Physical Self-defense, Weaponry Self-defense, Non-stop Debates,

Nicknames: West (From her family and friends)

Westyn-senpai or Hashimoto-senpai (From the freshmen students)

Leader (From his four friends: Noelle, Harper, Souta, and Keisuke)

Other Nicknames:

'Mister Luke' (Journalist Identity, secretly hidden)

______________________________________

Appearance and Personality

Appearance: Westyn has a tall and muscular and normal make body build. He has should-length coffee brown hair and has mustard yellow eyes. Westyn is a silent and an odd boy, who doesn't seem to have any interest.

Personality: Born as an only child, Westyn is a quiet boy who doesn't talk much except for his parents and aunt. Though he seems to talk a lot with his family members equally.

His father and aunt runs a regular cafe shop across the city streets of Crystalsle, which the whole family including him as well runs the busy shop. Mostly it was teenagers often visit there as a afternoon or after highschool hang out than adults coming there.

Westyn is rather expressionless and doesn't so much emotions towards other people and is pretty blunt, needless to say he's rather an oddball but in a strange way or it just depends on the other POV. Though he seems to have good intentions in his mind but it's somewhat hard to tell how from him eventually.

But with his friends though, he can show some sly and cheeky remarks. But in somewhat of friendly manner which no one can see coming from him.

Aside from that, he's often seen alone in the campus and school gardens but his small group of friends often join him and his silent walks which he doesn't mind them tagging along.

As mentioned, he's an oddball. With a combination of strange and less mysterious. Since he's doesn't express much of his emotions, his face seems blank but very stern like. But it looks pretty menacing though...

Pretty odd for him, but he does hold sharp intelligence and is strong for any words coming from his mouth. I can see some facts that relate to anyone that could offend or insult them but he doesn't care though, that sounds pretty clever and harsh though. What he did was telling them what they are after all.

What an strange boy after scouted here, but he's more than what he is.

______________________________________

Trivia

-The name 'Westyn' means 'from the western town'. While his surname 'Hashimoto' means '(one who lives) near the bridge'; habitational name common throughout Japan. Some bearers are of samurai descent.

-He's based on Kiyotaka Ayanokōji (From Classroom of Elite) and L Lawliet (From Death Note) A mix for Westyn.

-It appears he's the leader of his four friends which it something he didn't agree to. But after his abilities were being shown, he somewhat accepted it but not literally.

-He has some trouble of expressing his emotions sightly according to Noelle.

-Westyn seems to have his respects and manners towards woman thanks to his aunt and mom, an honest statement from Harper.

-He and Souta were pen pals since elementary till now.

-At a young age in the past, he was almost assaulted by his mother's ex-husband who left her with his mistress, after his mom met his dad and got married, he was furious and attacked the boy violently. Has very large and wide scars on his back to show proof.

-His mother and father worries about him a lot after the incident, but mostly for his mother, but he tells her that he'll be fine. Showing that he doesn't want to worry his family.

-He's smart in chess, escape houses and 6 pics in one word games.

-He's one of the students who knows about the conflicts between EDHA and RSA back at this homeland. But unfortunately he's got the most info on it, so the ones who are involved with it are afraid of him eventually. His expression is another way of looking down on them.

-A master of manipulation, if being messed with. He knowns how to play fair nicely on anyone.

-He has a soft side for baby animals.

-Has slight interest on communicating with the half-myths, but it didn't happen thanks to the conflicts that was created. He didn't gave up about it though.

-A great tutor on group studies.

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

What are the major details that confused you about the Hound blurb? The major one that stood put to me was the "way of the farmer opposed to the sword" thing which felt very...un-Cú Chulainn. Also, if you don't mind expanding further, which details didn't you question/be confused by?

and also for anon:

okay so it is like. 2am so there are not going to be any sources here but i can't sleep so here goes!! i will go through this blurb line by line and give youse my thoughts

In 50 BCE,

reasonable. this is roughly the right time period for when the ulster cycle is set. maybe marginally earlier than i'd place cú chulainn, but i'm talking a few years, nothing to get worked up about.

Morrigan, the goddess of war,

fine. normally i'm wary of pantheonising impulses with regard to irish characters (almost none of them can be identified as a god of anything in particular, it doesn't work like that) but tbh the morrigan is like, the most plausible exception to that, so whatever. normally her name has the definite article attached to it because it's kind of a species term as well but whatevs.

has become restless as a long-lasting peace settles over Ireland.

dubious. closest i can think of to peace being reference in any texts is togail bruidne da derga talking about conaire mor's reign being like, prosperous and peaceful and whatever, and even there you've got díberg (plundering/reaving) which is what eventually fucks him over and starts the otherworldly hell spiral situation. that's roughly the right period here but conaire's doom proves you don't have to do much to nudge peace into war, and connacht and ulster are at each other's throats for years before cú chulainn comes on the scene anyway

Deciding the time of peace must end, she chooses Setanta, the nephew of the king of the north, to become her ward.

hmm. i mean. like, this isn't the WEIRDEST choice they could have made. it's still completely made-up, don't get me wrong -- cú chulainn has a lot of different foster parents in different texts and they don't agree with each other but none of them ever mentions the morrígan. but like, they do have a connection of some sort, as evidenced by their conversations. and there's that one moment in the r1 boyhood deeds where little cú chulainn is out on the battlefield and hears her (not sure which name is used here) calling out to him and it like. motivates him to do some deeds or whatever, and i guess you could extrapolate that into some kind of teaching capacity.

so like. could be weirder. if you're gonna pick anyone, you could do worse. still seems weird to me! but not on its own a major issue, i could get past this and consider it a Fun But Unorthodox Creative Decision

(the fact that she tries to seduce him in the táin probably wouldn't get in the way of this considering sleeping with his teachers/foster-mothers is far from unheard of where cú chulainn is concerned)

After a young Setanta slays the demon-hound of Cullan, he becomes known as Cú Cullan—The Hound of Cullan.

weird spelling choices, they could have at least bothered to use the genitive properly. also the hound isn't a demon, it's a ferocious watchdog -- making it sound all Otherworldly and Hellish like this kinda confuses the issue of why he would need to take its place. he needs to take its place because the cattle and people still need protecting because it is a watchdog!! but whatevs, again, it's a brief summary so they can't exactly give us all the details and this is not actively objectionable

As Cú Cullan grows older, it is apparent that an extraordinary power lies within him … and a great darkness.

ugh boring. this makes it sound like he's going to be ~tortured~ and angsty about it. give me an unapologetic murder teen please. is the ríastrad dark? sure i guess, if you're going to be boring about it. it's more like, grotesque neon in my head

When he chooses the quiet life of a farmer over the sword,

this would fucking never happen on like five different levels. obviously like anyone who has ever read anything about cú chulainn can see that this is not in his nature. he is never going to choose a quiet life. this is the kid who tricked his way into taking arms before everyone thought he was ready. also juxtaposed with the "darkness" comment makes it sound like he would Angst his way into this quiet life which. again. have you seen this kid. he is an unapologetic murder teen

the only thing i can think of that might make him temporarily want to walk away is connla's death which... depends where you position that in the timeline really, he does seem a bit fucked up by it and maybe he'd want a holiday although i can see that lasting precisely 5 minutes before someone pissed him off enough for him to murder them. but if he's being raised by the morrígan i can't see him going to train with scáthach so then he'd never meet aífe and therefore connla would never be born so that wouldn't happen. so like. whatever.

but also like. he would not become a farmer. he just wouldn't! it doesn't work! the ireland of the stories is super hierarchical, right? and this blurb has already fucking told us that he's the king's nephew (canon) so we can tell that being a farmer is Not His Place. when we see upper class figures becoming menial labourers in texts, like in cath maige tuired, it's because Things Are Fucked, Shit's Gone Wrong. people don't just decide to change their entire social class on a whim lmfao

if cú chulainn really wanted to turn his back on being a warrior he could probably make recourse to certain other Suitable Professions ... his grandad's a druid so he might have a route into that, though his dad's not so that might fuck things up a bit bc it's one of those things that's usually inherited. he does give "wisdom" in at least one text though and we also know he can write (he carves riddles in ogham in the táin) and he composes verses on various occasions so idk, maybe something in a poetic direction, though again, usually requires two generations of inheritance to be a real poet and not just a lower-class bard. warrior's kinda the main thing he's got open to him tbh. but farming? i'm not a legal expert but as far as i'm aware based on what i have read, that would fuck shit up

more likely an upset cú chulainn would just go off in search of an adventure somewhere conveniently far away until he'd calmed down (alba, or the tyrrhenian sea, or -- if we're going to get early modern about it -- somewhere like india, which frequently gets thrown into the texts with absolutely no cultural context and it's always hilarious)

Morrigan, angry at the betrayal,

of the entire social order, yes,

instigates an invasion of his homeland

i mean. if they intend this to be the táin then.... táin bó regamna does kinda make the morrígan responsible for it? not in the sense of triggering the pillow talk argument that it's in the book of leinster -- it's her getting up to her usual cow-nicking behaviours for shits and giggles. [note to readers: it is probably for more than shits and giggles but did i mention it's 2am]

but all in all, not particularly out of character that she would be at least some way responsible for this so i can vibe with this. echtra nerai also supports the TBR explanation with her fucking around with otherworldly cows and pissing people off so, yeah, whatever. the morrígan engineered this. sure.

and Cú Cullan must challenge fate itself

this is probably a controversial stance but fate feels like a difficult concept to apply to medieval irish texts. like are people sometimes Doomed? yes. there are prophecies, there are gessi, there's all manner of otherworldly fuckery that can trip you up. is that the same thing as fate? no idea. considering cú chulainn comes out alive from the táin though and his doom prophecies don't catch up to him for like, at least another decade, maybe 16 years depending on who you listen to, hard to see how that would apply here

to keep the goddess at bay.

again like she IS causing fuckery in the táin but also it's like... one time. really not the main character. but she or maybe just some crows, hard to say, do get implicated in the death tale so maybe they're doing what people often do and conflating the two? even though there's like 10-16 years in between them?

anyway as you can see i don’t think it’s wholly terrible / i’m not completely thinkshaming it. like, having cú chulainn raised by the morrígan is unorthodox but it could be a fun and creative direction so i don't object to it. making cú chulainn get sad about murder and choose to be a farmer is just fucking laughable tho, and makes me doubt their characterisations in general. so that's offputting and would probably make me think twice about buying it, if that had ever been on the cards.*

and of course sure, their cú chulainn can be a Sad Boy Who Likes Sheep, but that means he's not the cú chulainn of medieval irish lit / irish myth, because that cú chulainn is a feral murder teen who keeps killing his friends and also is way too high social status to ever be a farmer, and whose only relationship to livestock is as the watchdog who kills anyone trying to harm them (which is an important role on a farm! but like. not the same thing as Being A Farmer. mostly because it involves more murder and is essentially just an extension of his role as a warrior. or rather the other way around. he promises to protect mag muirthemne as a watchdog and this like. gets extended into him becoming its sole defender)

this has been my analysis of this blurb i hope you enjoyed it

it's now 2.30am i should try and sleep now that i've exorcised a few thoughts from my head

*as i mentioned in the tags of my other post, i don't tend to read graphic novels due to disability stuff. they're much harder for me to understand and follow than prose, to the point where some are incomprehensible, so i don't really enjoy them. there are a few i've read, but they tend to be short ones, and i'm usually not reading them in order, just admiring the art separately from the text. so it's unlikely i would read a graphic novel of this size anyway.

[his-mother-is-lightning]

We all know that Aziraphale hates customers. But I submit that he LOVES grad students.

- if asked (by Crowley, solely to fluster his Angel) he will say that it's completely reasonable to love people who want to study and discuss books? And that feeling he gets when they come and ask him for help isn't Pride no. It just so happens that having lived for millennia means he's the best primary source on the planet. It would be selfish to not share his knowledge really. Why shouldnt he feel good about helping young people learn? So it's really only lowercase 'pride' at most...

- ...I mean, it's just harmless satisfaction that he is spreading knowledge like God intended. Err, probably intended. This knowledge isnt that Forbidden Knowledge so it's fine, right? They're way past that at this point. Surely there is no objection to knowing about books?

- if you were to ask Crowley, he will point out that grad students can't afford to actually buy any books. But no one has ever asked him

- back when the shop first opened, poor Aziraphale was struggling with the realization that people might get suspicious if never lets anyone buy any of his books. And in walks in some poor, exhausted student from Kings or London University who has spent the last 10hrs looking in every bookstore and library around for an original copy of 'The Tamer Tamed'. So they stumble in, turn to Aziraphale and ask if he has any 17th century editions of Fletcher's work. They just need to look at it bc every copy they've found has been edited.

- does Aziraphale have a 17th century editions of Flecher's 'The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed'? What an absurd question! He has the first edition, printed in 1647. Two copies in fact, one with notes in the margins written by an early actor that Aziraphale particularly liked. It was, after all, one of Crowley's favorite plays from that period.

- (Crowley claims that he has nothing to do with the plays popularity when compared to the work it was in response to, 'The Taming of the Shrew'. Yes, he preferred the feminist-leaning work by Fletcher, but it's not his fault the audience agreed with him) [1]

- the look on this students face when Aziraphale sits them down at his desk and brings over this folio - full of relief and gratitude - have the angel feeling a bit chuffed. So much so that, as he's closing the shop for the day, he tells them to come back tomorrow if they need another look. And thus one of the great student pilgrimages of London is born

- at the beginning of each term, new students make their way to this strange, magical bookstore run by a nice, possibly-immortal man. Group visits are discouraged, as they seem to make the owner nervous.

- fellow students (and sometimes professors) warn newcomers that the owner doesn't actually want people to buy any books. But if go and tell him that you just want to look at them for a class, he will let you come and look around.

- actually, browsing isn't recommended: depending on his mood, Mr. Fell (the owner) may encourage you to look around or he may decide to suddenly close early, or find some way to get you out the door. It's always safest to ask Mr. Fell for something specific, the more obscure the better: he likes it when he has the exact thing you're looking for

- there are snakes in the shelves - well, one snake, probably. Just like Mr. Fell, this snake has been hiding in the shelves since the store opened and never ages. It loves to jump out and scare customer, but is generally considered harmless unless you damage or mistreat the books. There are numerous accounts of people being bitten for dog-earing pages, putting cups on books, and general rudeness.

note: do not refer to the snake as Mr. Fell's pet. He tends to get rather indignant if you do (Mr. Fell, not the snake. If anything, you would think the snake finds Mr. Fell's reaction amusing) Think of it as his slightly terrifying roommate who occasionally hides in the shelves or curls up by/on Mr. Fell to nap

- A. Z Fell & Co had the world's least comprehensible business hours. He could be closed for days or weeks at a time, then open 24hrs for a month without explanation. Often, he would open at 4 or 5AM then close around lunch, then open again after he finished lunch (anywhere between 1 and 4PM). There was one 11 year span when the shop was almost always closed - university's saw a drop in grades in several departments until it finally opened again. If he recognizes you, sometimes you will arrive to find the store closed, only for him to suddenly open the door and let you in because he was "just about to open up".

- Mr. Fell can easily be bribed when someone needs to stay after closing or come in early the next day. Down the block and across the street is a bakery: it has had many names over the years, but it has been supplying students with bribes in the form of cream puffs, eclairs, Turkish delights, and other sweet treats since the bookstore opened. Students scrambling before a deadline got 10 cents off their purchase.

- while he never seems to know what day it is, or what year it is (see: immortal), he always remembers when it's time for exams because suddenly the shop is open at all hours, and Mr. Fell "just so happens" to have trays of sandwiches and fruit leftover, and wouldn't they help him finish it? It'll spoil, after all. Outside food and drinks are never allowed but suddenly there are little plates and napkins on a table by the door, and stacks of strange coasters from all over the world. Coffee is not allowed but tea is. Of course, everyone knows that Mr. Fell makes the BEST hot cocoa and if you put a coaster next to you, he will bring you a mug of cocoa, always at the perfect temperature.

- as revisions comes to a close, you will find almost a dozen students at Fell & Co. They will be slumped at a desk or curled up on the floor by the windows, cups of cooling cocoa and plates of healthy snacks left in places where they couldn't spill onto the books. Colorful blankets come out of a back room as Mr. Fell tidies up, smiling fondly as he drapes them over the slumbering students

- there are stories of people whose old, cruddy laptops seem to work better in the bookshop. People listening to music (quietly, of course) may notice that the songs that come up on shuffle are always exactly what they wanted to hear. Notes you could have sworn you left at home or lost show up at the bottom of your bookbag. Documents you should have lost when your computer crashed can be recovered. One Martin Pryce insists that in 2014, he brought his broken bike to the store and when he came out again, it was fixed. He actually went up to Mr. Fell as he closed shop and asked him about it but Mr. Fell insisted he had nothing to do with it. Martin says Mr. Fell sounded like he was telling the truth, but looked very pleased and muttered something about it being a "minor miracle", which is a bit much for a bike.

- if there are a thousand stories about Mr. Fell and his bookshop, there are just as many about the man in the fancy black car who comes around sometimes. Many have speculated on the nature of the men's relationship, ranging from torrid love affairs to blackmail to Dickensian-level family drama. But the only thing you really need to know is that when you see that fancy black car parked by the shop, you best just to home. The store is most definitely closed.

1. One account survives of the audiences reactions to the two plays. 'Shrew' was performed first and was "liked". 'Tamed Tamed' was performed after and it was "very well liked". Whether or not this account is from Crawley is impossible to say.

Now with a a furiously doting Crowley sequel

Aaaand a fanfic 

[crispyapplepies]

AkuRoku Defense pt 2

Axel and Roxas’s ship has had one of the most bizarre fandom journey’s i have ever come to witness. It has gone from being one of the most popular ships maybe ever, to being dead cancelled over a supposed age gap and I find that completely unfair, especially when it speaks to so many innocent people who emotionally depend on the ship, (yes innocent includes the spicy people because art literally is not a crime). So its time to defend it.

Brief Review on Nobodies vs Aging

First of all, l already explained in part 1 what the Nobodies Don’t Age thing means but I’ll go over it again briefly, since it can be confusing, though also many people seem to demand their hands be held rather than use their imaginations to understand. Even so, here’s the short version just for a review:

-A person in KH is made of a heart, body, and soul.

-The body reflects the heart in KH. (See: replica bodies taking on the appearance of the heart that’s inside them). 

-A nobody lacks a heart, making them just a body and soul. They’re advanced zombies of sorts.

Nobodies do not age because they have no heart for the body to reflect. This is why they won’t change until they form one. Change includes age

-Ergo, you can imagine any age you like for Axel to be nobodied, cuz he was frozen at that age and did not change for 10 years. Not until he met Roxas. 

We’ll come back to this again later.

Axel Loves Roxas Canonically

Second of all, Axel loves Roxas and you are allowed to interpret that as platonic, familial, or romantic, I don’t care as long as you’re not forcing that idea on others like the ship police. That said, people are allowed to explore how romantic this love potentially is. 

And what you might like to know is that the canon is even open to this. Axel’s love for Roxas is canonically expressed, and if you would like, you can even interpret that love as romantic. See below:

We are going to look at the japanese translation because AS ALWAYS good old SENA is here for the straights and erases the gay, like clockwork. 

In English, Axel says this:

Axel: I wanted to see Roxas. He...was the only one I liked... He made me feel...like I had a heart. It's kind of...funny... You make me feel...the same...

Axel’s line here in Japanese:

Axel: I wanted to see Roxas... I loved him. Being with him... it made me feel like I had a heart. I feel it from you, too... the same kind of....

You may notice that as romantic as the line “he made me feel like I had a heart” sounds, the original can be read as wAY gooier, specifically cuz of this word:

好き: "suki"

Now here’s the thing. Japanese is a pretty vague language which is why context is so important for these things, as well as what you say, and what you don’t say. 

“Suki” is a very key word here because it is often used in romantic confession scenes.

(I have no idea what this panel is from, I apologize lol) 

It CAN mean something casual, like “I love video games”, but considering Axel is saying this with his dying breath, I don’t think we should be treating it as some hyperbole. He is referring to a person and it is meaningful. However. It is still a word with plausible deniability. Japanese has several words for love, “ai” for example being one of the most inarguable means of referring to romantic love. So choosing “suki” still leaves room for the homophobes to disregard it as something not romantic. Which makes it objectively inconclusive. Here is the thing though… they specifically chose that word, suki, a word which IS so often used in a romantic context in many anime and manga. 

They also chose to use that word rather than something objectively platonic. Which means you also cannot conclude Axel did NOT mean it romantically. Given his devotion to Roxas, and the fact that they chose this word of all words for him to say… I’m personally going to assume it’s romantic. You are free not to interpret it that way. But I am because I am considering the fact that they did not choose something strictly platonic. 

(My translator friend actually freaked out when I showed her this, she’s translated and seen enough confession scenes to know what connotations that particular word comes with lol). 

If you’ve read my queer coding doc, you may recall I also go over how this is one of the most important tricks with queer coding. You write something that CAN be viewed as queer but with plausible deniability for straight people to ignore it. It’s a means of protecting oneself and the text from homophobic oppression. It is a legitimate practice. So even though it can be denied as a queer text, it can also very very well be viewed as a definite queer text. We are choosing to queer it here. It is not as explicit as it could be, but it is still very bold, suggestive coding considering the homophobic world we live in, and especially with KH2 being released in 2004. 

“But Age Gap!” (ughhhhh)

We’re back to this cuz I also finally have the Japanese version of that infamous page in the Day’s novel to look at.  

I hope you’ll forgive me if I get a little bit salty but I don’t like to repeat myself lol so I’m gonna try to keep this section short and to the point.

In this interview with Nomura, he expresses that nobodies do not age, and they exist as they were at the time of becoming a nobody. He then suggests Xemnas seems 30 ish.

Now I truly do not care to hold your hand through the process of thinking creatively because you should be using your own imagination, if you have one, to think critically and creatively about what this idea means.

Kingdom Hearts is a FANTASY game. Nobodies are a FANTASY concept. They can break ALL the rules about real life that you want them to. But I will go ahead and explain this for you even though I’ve already done it many times, in this very document even and in other meta posts.

The body reflects the heart. Nobodies are frozen as they are from the moment they are “born”, which is to say the moment they are created. Glorified zombies. They aren’t going to age unless they form a heart. Why does Xemnas look 30? He has a heart! Or he was formed 10 years after TerraNort defected. You tell me. Why did Ienzo age? I dunno, you tell me! Either he formed a heart and didn’t know it, (he’s passionate about his work, he loves Ansem the Wise, any number of things could’ve made him form a new heart), or he was nobodied later in life. Axel is frozen at whatever age he was when he was nobodied, all the while Ienzo could’ve been nobodied 10 years later. It’s a fantasy, and these are fantasy rules. That scenario can happen. YOU decide. Until the canon tells us for sure, your imaginations can run wild with explanations. Even if the canon does tell us, you can still imagine whatever you want for your own headcanons. Freedom is amazing, it’s salty and sweet. 

Now let’s talk about that annoying page in the Days novel people keep shoving in my face.

This one right here. The official english translation is this:

That’s not the worst translation I’ve seen them put out there. But let’s look closer at the Japanese:

 Here, Axel says he thinks Roxas is about 10 years separate from himself, but things like age don't exist for nobodies.

Already that’s making a lot more sense to me for nobodies since we are told nobodies do not age. As such Axel speaking like he is 10 years older would feels almost contradictory when he has no heart and cannot change. 

This wording is important. Recall me saying that Japanese is very vague so all of the context matters. No one is denying that 10 years passed between Birth By Sleep and Axel meeting Roxas. However. Nobodies don’t age.

(please dont make me explain that a third time in this essay alone)

The Japanese and English both express that age does not apply to nobodies, (as discussed above^^^^) and the Japanese furthers this with its wording. They have 10 years of separation between Axel being nobodied, and Roxas existing.  

Axel saying in English that Roxas is simply 10 years younger than himself is rather misleading considering the ambiguity of the original. I can’t fault the translators too much for not understanding this nobody concept so well because it is obviously confusing. However, I do not think Axel was saying Roxas is literally, in real life human somebody terms, 10 literal physical years younger than him. He is expressing that he became a nobody 10 years ago whereas this guy became a nobody very recently, and it shows with how little he can even function right now. A zombie who has been wandering around with no heart for 10 years meets a fresh zombie wandering around with no heart for 1 day. 

I know antis are gonna use it against us no matter what, but at least know that akuroku is not inherently pedophilia nor is it inherently an adult/minor ship.

In many of our headcanons, Axel was frozen at age 18 or 19, with Roxas being 16. Absolutely no one is required to view them with a big age gap because imagination is free and you literally have no right to police it, but also because the canon expresses these nobodies as beings outside of the realm of age. They do not operate under real life rules or somebody rules. Think of Steven Universe where Rose was thousands of years old but only “grew up” as a person when she fell in love with Greg, a human in his 20s-30s who asked her to consider other people’s feelings. Consider the mind of a nobody as a state of Neverland. You aren’t gonna age unless you step out of it and change. Mature. Isn’t it sad that Axel did not feel like he had a heart until Roxas? No wonder people ship it!

Coding is Obvious

Finally I wanna conclude on a simple thought. This interview right here? I’d be curious what the original Japanese actually says lol but the english translation of it says that romantic akuroku was not Nomura’s intent. 

Here’s the thing though. If you know anything about queer coding, you know that using romantic coding between 2 male characters is signaling something. It is not something you should ignore. It would not be there if the characters were meant to be viewed as objectively straight. And for something “unintentional”... there sure is a lot of coding at work here.

From Axel pinning Roxas down and asking him to come home in a very sexually suggestive pose,

to watching the sunset in sheer bliss together just enjoying the peace of reunion,

to watching the sunset together while talking about what LOVE is, specifICALLY romantic love,

To this. And I already told you what this was in Japanese.

I’m not saying Nomura lied…

But I am saying that a whole staff worked together to create these games, and it is very difficult for me to believe that no one thought to say “these characters appear to be romantic, let us change the scene to be more platonic” if the characters were not meant to be romantically suggestive. 

Tl;Dr I wanna live in the timeline where people let you ship akuroku lol

[brokenjardaantech]

Blue-tinted Red Walls (Chapter 10: All in)

my entry for the @dbhau-bigbang. also part of the groom lake aftermath series.

summary:

In the past, Ryder took her first step.

In the present, the revolution is in full force.

In the past, Chloe catalogued the situation.

also on ao3

---

Before

It was March, but the polar Urals were still cold and stormy, the outside world blindingly bright with howling blizzards during the few hours of daylight and completely dark for the nighttime that consumes the mountains for the rest of the day. The glass had been attached to solid rock, but somehow, not once did it rattle even in the face of wind strong enough to break most other materials, and despite the snow outside, Ryder was dressed in only simple dress shirt and trousers, tendrils of blue dancing on her right hand and supporting a pin of the earth under an arch split in the middle. Her powers suddenly dissipated, the pin dropping onto a metallic hand with a small clink and continued making the noise because it started vibrating, and a swipe of her thumb against the surface silenced it.

‘Ryder?’ the pin emitted a voice. ‘Who pays for our parents’ sin?’

Ryder sighed. ‘Not themselves, not their successors, and certainly not the world. You have an update for me.’

‘How do you know?’

‘That was my order and you are smart enough to remember.’

‘He lived. There are complications but… he lived.’

‘Elaborate.’

‘He doesn’t remember the Candidate at all. All associated memories, gone. That’s why I delayed telling you about him being awake: I need to access the damage.’

‘You don’t sound surprised.’

‘I believe this is not the first time this has happened.’

‘Elaborate.’

‘When we grew up together, I noticed a few inconsistencies between his own account surrounding his life and those from the people around him. Fussy details, contradictory recalling of events, reluctance to share the problems in-depth. I think it’s related to what had happened before you and I were born.’

Outside, the storm picked up, and the wind whisked by with a loud whistle. ‘We can sort out the reasons later. How much does he remember?’

‘He keeps talking about how you threw a building on him and is convinced that Blue Sunset is some secret NASA project, but otherwise? Not much. Like I said, everything related to the Candidate is gone.’

‘And he doesn’t realise that he has lost a large part of his life?’

‘He’s making things up along the way. Trips, what he has been doing for the past few years, his time with me before that. It would’ve been a fascinating study on how the human brain rationalises the irrational if it hadn’t been the shitshow this might lead to.’

‘Shitshow?’

‘His knowledge is completely gone together with his memories. I don’t know why or how, but he is no longer useful to us and a suitable pick for the project even if he remembers a bit about Ilya who shouldn’t even be close to him.’

‘That’s why we have the RK500.’

A pause. ‘I nearly forgot. How’s it going?’

‘Chassis construction is complete. Now I only need to sort out the code regarding his memories and delete the last few moments.’

‘And the Candidate?’

‘Recovering. I was tempted to use cybernetics to accelerate the process, but knowing him…’

‘Just give him a choice later. He’ll take it especially now that we have the new RK. An eternity together.’

‘I thought you don’t care about romance.’

‘They do, and this will be what they’ll think. That’s assuming that you’ll roll out the RK, of course.’

‘What gives you the impression that I won’t?’

‘The fact that the original lived?’

‘Like you said, he isn’t useful to us anymore. RK500 will be our logical choice to ensure that our plans won’t be delayed even more.’

‘And the arrangements for the original?’

‘A certain police department is lacking officers after the incident. I’ll handle the paperwork and strings. You focus on cleaning up, and come here when you are done.’

‘I won’t be long. I promise.’

‘Take your time. We won’t lift off without you.’

‘Appreciate it. Anchor out.’

The call disconnected, and all that was left in the room were the whistling wind outside and the click of approaching footsteps. Staring at her reflection on the glass, Ryder seemed to be in deep thoughts for a few seconds before her right index and middle finger reached for her temple where normal androids would have their LEDs installed and deactivated the skin on her face as well, leaving only her hair in place, and not long after that the door on her left slid open to admit a younger-looking Elijah Kamski. ‘Ilya,’ Ryder greeted, and the man came to a stop standing next to the android, his tie shimmering in tiny versions of the same logo of the earth under a broken arch just like the one on Ryder’s pin. ‘I don’t know how to thank you for giving us all this.’

The man let out a small chuckle. ‘Just doing my job to prepare humanity for the next big leap. Thirium is a fascinating development.’

‘Not a new one, though.’

‘Thirium 310 is. You harnessed what our parents couldn’t and used it to create infinite intelligence.’

‘And my father abused it.’

‘Isn’t that why we are standing here right now? To make sure that humanity doesn’t repeat the same mistake in the future?’

Ryder leant against the glass with her forehead pillowed on her arm. ‘Not humanity,’ she replied, her voice pensive. ‘It was my own carelessness and one man’s greed and pride. Nothing more. Everything else is just collateral.’

‘You are working to change it right now. Focus on the future. We won’t be confined to earth anymore.’

A small smile played on Ryder’s lips. ‘That is true,’ she straightened herself and faced the man, and he had to tilt his head up just to look at her in her eyes. ‘Did you say something about cold-resistant chassis?’

‘I hope you don’t mind that I take the opportunity to add them to RK500.’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘Good. We’ll need it.’

‘Do you need it?’

‘My chassis is made from alloys they use to build rockets. I think I can skip a generation or two before starting to consider what is essentially getting a new body.’

‘You’ll get it.’

The two lapsed into silence while their gazes turned towards the falling snow outside. A drone cut across the blizzard easily as if the wind did not exist at all, the floodlight mounted on its side illuminating a giant hyperboloid structure in the distance. 

‘And how do you want to solve the US?’ Elijah suddenly asked. 

The drone circled to a spot where the mounted floodlight revealed the same earth-and-broken-arch logo. ‘It’ll solve itself.’

‘You sound confident.’

‘Of course I do,’ the rings in Ryder’s eyes spun quickly. ‘It has to.’

o0o0o

Now

Louis and Elijah spend the rest of the way back combing the streets and avoiding the army, scouting out the sections of the city Markus eventually will have to pass through and plotting a route with minimal checkpoints and army presence and, if necessary, neutralise them without alerting the military. They hack the locks of the closed shops, drag the unconscious soldier inside, and then reinforce the lock with additional protection that will wear down in 24 hours; Elijah reassures that they can survive in an unheated, uninsulated room for that long, and despite Louis’ own reservation as a man who spent most of his childhood up north in Alaska and has seen what the cold does to people who are unprepared, he keeps his mouth shut.

‘Come on,’ he peels the handheld… device away from the now-hacked lock. ‘Let’s get back to the church.’

They climb into the car which is now filled with wounded androids who agreed to seek help from Jericho, the drive back much simpler compared to when they have to clear everything themselves, and after unloading the androids and directing them to the suitable help, they don’t even have the time to clean up before Reyes and Chloe are climbing in again. 

‘That’s it?’ Louis has to ask. ‘No back-up, no partner, nothing?’

‘That’s the plan,’ Chloe says airily. ‘You are the amateur here, I’m afraid, so I’ll come with you. Reyes and Elijah will go alone.’

‘Besides, those camps are only running on a skeleton crew,’ Reyes adds as he starts checking his weapons. ‘With b - powers like ours, it doesn’t take much to immobilise everyone guarding the camps. Easy.’

The car slides away from the church with a low hum, and Louis realises that this is the point of no return. It’s either victory or death now, a common occurrence for his line of occupation - being the leader of a SWAT team does have its own risk - but this? Having an entire species’ fate resting on top of their shoulders?

He is not mentally prepared for it.

‘Deep breaths,’ Reyes’ voice washes over him. ‘We’re gonna be fine. Trust us.’

‘I’m not worried about you,’ Louis argues. ‘Aren’t you bothered by how many people’s survival depends on us?’

‘That’s why we don’t plan on failing and I’m coming with you,’ answers Chloe who casually flips her - he doesn’t even know what that weapon is. Probably something illegal as fuck, but it’s not like Louis is in a position to complain about someone breaking the law. ‘Reyes and Elijah are practised users and can handle themselves. You, on the other hand…’

He checks his own gear and feels terribly underprepared and inadequate. ‘I probably shouldn’t have come, should I.’

‘It will be good practise,’ Chloe says cheerfully. ‘At least the army is still unshielded. They are unshielded, right?’

Elijah lets out a very undignified snort. ‘They won’t be shielded for the next two hundred years, Chloe.’

‘Can’t hurt to confirm.’

It is at this moment that Louis’ brain finally catches up with what they are talking about. ‘You want me to test my powers on living people?’

‘Yeah. What else can it mean?’

Louis exchanges a look with Reyes and decides not to reply. Watching the sunset and how the light reflects off the snow is much more enjoyable than thinking about how to casually doom some of the smartest people in the country with radiation poisoning anyway.

‘Louis?’

He turns his head towards Chloe. ‘What?’

‘You do know how to immobilise a person, don’t you?’

‘It’s the first thing I learnt to do. Easier than ripping things apart on a molecular level.’

‘Good. We’ll be using a lot of that.’ The car slows down and comes to a stop in a narrow alley. ‘We’re here.’

They hop off the car with their weapons either collapsed or at least swung across his shoulder for Louis’ case because his rifle is primitive and cannot fold up on its own. The sun is down, the snow hasn’t stopped falling, and the streets are deserted because of the curfew which they are technically violating. ‘Check your comms,’ Elijah says, and his tone has completely shifted to something more authoritative. ‘We need to make sure that we’ll be able to stay in touch.’

Louis reaches into his pocket to take out his amplifier/communicator and hooks it over his left ear. Tapping the device twice, he feels the subtle change in the air as it connects with the implant in his head and taps and fine-tunes his powers in a way that he still doesn’t entirely understand, but it can also be the way the people around him are subtly testing out their powers and letting faint blue tendrils wrap around their body before dissipating as if they were never there. 

Reyes' voice comes out directly from the communicator on Louis’ ear even though his mouth isn’t moving. ‘Testing. Please reply if you can hear me.’

‘Clear as crystal,’ Louis mutters under his breath. ‘Please reply if you can hear me.’

‘All clear,’ Chloe and Reyes say at the same time. ‘Good,’ only Reyes continues, ‘no interference, no problems detected. Our signal is powerful enough to allow us to stay in touch through the EMPs.’ Then to no one in particular, ‘Simon, you hear me?’

‘I hear you,’ the blond android’s voice comes through without any warning. ‘We are still a distance away from Hart Plaza camp. No soldiers yet, but you might want to hurry just in case. And…’ a pause, ‘stay safe.’

‘We will,’ Elijah replies. ‘Focus on your protest. The humans won’t know what hit them.’

Louis feels the call disconnects after that, and he exhales deeply to calm himself down. He saw Reyes fight many years ago and Elijah and Chloe already stormed a camp, so he is the only uncertainty here. ‘You’re welcome to ditch me if I’m dragging you down,’ he tells Chloe. ‘The revolution is more important.’

Elijah cocks his head towards the direction they all need to go to, and they start walking side-by-side on the empty street. ‘Now, don’t think so lowly of yourself. Harnessing your powers without any mentor in just a couple of months is no small feat.’

Somehow it isn’t as reassuring as it should be. ‘I’ve fucked up with teams of more before.’

‘That’s why we’re going in light,’ Chloe chimes in. ‘Less people, less variations to deal with. Besides, we’re infiltrating camps here. Too many people makes it difficult to coordinate everything.’

‘That’s…’ he gives it a thought, ‘true.’

‘Can you all shut up?’ Reyes gives them a chastising look. ‘We’re trying not to get discovered here.’

‘Whatever you say, Reyes,’ says Chloe, and that’s the end of their conversation.

They split up after half an hour of walking. The area is oddly deserted with neither civilians nor the army in sight, and normally speaking Louis would’ve freaked out from it if not for the two androids with built-in GPS in their brains in the group. Reyes sets off for the camp farthest away from where they are because of the speed he can achieve as an android and his infiltration skills, Elijah goes for the closest but smallest one because he is human and has limited stamina (advanced training or no), leaving Louis and Chloe gunning after the remaining one which happens to be the second-biggest camp in Detroit. ‘You trust me with it?’ he asks the android accompanying him after fifteen more minutes of walking. And hiding now, apparently, because they finally encounter their first checkpoint, and Chloe directs him to hide in the shadows waiting for… something.

‘I can feel your powers from a hundred metres away,’ is the reply. ‘You’ll do fine.’

She then hands him the binoculars which serve more as a scanner than actually helping them looking far (they’re on ground level so there isn’t much to see), and Louis is genuinely lost. ‘What are we doing here?’

Chloe’s forearm lights up with a hologram of the street they are located in and its surrounding blocks. There are orange dots which must represent the army, the green seems to be civilians, and the two blue dots, he realises, are themselves. ‘There’ll be a truck designated for the camp passing through this checkpoint in t-minus five minutes. Take your binoculars, adjust them to setting three, and point them towards your ten o’clock direction. Tell me what you see.’

Louis does as she says and sees figures outlined with red behind the fence covered with a tarp together with a HUD filled with labels of the androids’ models and status. ‘Androids labelled by their model and status.’

‘They will have to be loaded onto the truck one by one.’

He lowers the binoculars. ‘You want us to pose as soldiers? The windows aren’t tinted and we…’ he gestures at his own gear, unable to find words to describe all the things that will give them away.

‘Take off your gun.’

He does.

‘That’s why we have this.’

Two circular discs materialise in Chloe’s hands and she places one of them on the small of his back, and he feels the device latches onto his nervous system with the help of his cybernetics and expands in all directions; in less than a minute, his clothes have been replaced with what seems to be standard-issue army outfit full with armour and a helmet shutting him in and blocking his vision. Suddenly feeling claustrophobic, he tries to take the helmet off just to find out that he can’t, and the next thing he knows the built-in HUD is booting up and finally allowing him to see. ‘What the fuck is this?’

‘Standard-issue American army armour,’ Chloe’s voice filters in through the speakers in the helmet, and when Louis turns his head he sees that the android is in a similar outfit, ‘with a few modifications.’

Louis risks stretching out his arms to examine the fabric and plates. ‘I don’t see any differences.’

‘You shouldn’t be able to. That’s… kind of the point.’

Louis picks up his rifle so that he can’t fidget with his hands. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s fine. It should probably change into something more protective after we got into the camp. The kinetic barrier protects you from all incoming projectiles, the ceramic plates should stop close-quarter combat weapons like knives and stuff, and the tactical cloak… well, you’ve seen it in action.’

‘Tactical cloak? You mean the stunt you pulled when you and Eli first arrived at the church?’

‘Yes.’

‘How do I do that?’

‘Here.’ Chloe taps the patch on her left shoulder where the velcro of a normal set of armour is and disappears completely from his view apart from a small distortion of light that he probably won’t notice if he hadn’t known that she was there. ‘Try it yourself.’

He does and sees no changes despite a notification popping up on his HUD telling him that his tactical cloak is active. ‘Uh…. can you see me? I can still see myself.’

‘That’s so that you don’t trip, but no, normal people can’t see you.’

He touches the patch again to deactivate the cloak.

‘And this… “kinetic barrier” thing?’

An alert flashes in his HUD notifying him of the truck’s imminent approach. ‘It’s here,’ Chloe announces even though they both can see it (probably), and Louis recognises the act: when in a fight, always assume that your teammates are idiots. ‘Stay sharp. Follow my lead.’

Chloe retreats to the closed shop behind the two of them, holding the door open just wide enough for Louis to sneak in before slowly closing it again so that it doesn’t make any noise to alert the army. Then he follows her to the depths of the shop where a trapdoor designed to blend it with the flooring is, but when he kneels and places his hand on the hatch, Chloe raises her hand to stop him, placing her hand in the middle of the door instead, and it takes only a second for something underneath to click.

‘You may open it now,’ says the android, and Louis suppresses his embarrassment and the questions in his mind before opening the surprisingly heavy trapdoor to reveal a ladder hanging by the edge. Chloe doesn’t even use it and hops down directly, leaving Louis feeling slow and clumsy as he struggles to fit himself into the door with his rifle while also needing to close the trapdoor. It locks automatically on top of him as he finishes the final few steps of the ladder, and he notices that they seem to be in a maintenance tunnel of sorts, the space stretching ahead on both sides with wires hanging from the ceiling and running on the walls in an organised manner. ‘A maintenance tunnel?’ he asks.

‘How else do you think they light up the roads from the ground itself?’ Chloe tosses her answer and a shockwave of blue tendrils towards some cables at the same time, and by the time Louis processes what exactly happened in front of his eyes, the entire tunnel is slowly being plunged into the darkness segment by segment. His HUD automatically switches to night vision, making everything green and blurry and himself suddenly feeling very unsafe, and he can feel his nerves tingling with the call for activating his power just in case. ‘Relax,’ there’s a hint of a smile in Chloe’s voice. ‘There’s no one here.’

He reigns his powers in. ‘Next time,’ he follows her to the ladder on the other side of the corridor, ‘tell me what you’re planning to do.’

‘Organics are slow.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘I’m just teasing.’

The hatch is unlocked and lifted. Chloe smoothly hops out and holds out an arm which Louis takes with a muttered gratitude, and she remains crouched to close and lock the trapdoor again before straightening and immediately going towards the front of what seems like another shop on the other side of the road.

They are standing right behind where all the captive androids are.

A sudden movement attracts his gaze, and the next thing he knows is that the soldier tasked to watch the androids is limp in Chloe’s arms and she is slowly lowering them onto the floor. ‘Alright, I think we’re safe.’

And the speaker on his helmet explodes with comm chatter, ‘Finally’, ‘Where have you been?’, ‘That’s one hell of an entrance’, and ‘Who’s this human?’ being the very few messages Louis can filter through all the noise. He winces, his hand reaching for the clasp of his helmet, but just as suddenly as they started the chatter dies, Chloe’s command silencing them like a tsunami to calm all the smaller waves.

‘This is Louis. He’ll help me get to the control centre,’ there is a strange attribute to the android’s voice that Louis can’t place for a few moments, but then he realises that she must be communicating directly with the comms instead of talking out loud. ‘This is your last chance to back out from this operation. I do not wish for anyone to get hurt because they feel like they are obliged to. There is an entrance to a maintenance tunnel right behind you which all of you can override easily. That can be your way out.’

A wave of ‘Hell no’ and ‘Nah’ washes over the comms, the LEDs of the androids who have them spinning yellow while their mouths remain stationary, and Louis barely has time to transfer his rifle from his back to his hands before the fence opens to admit a pair of soldiers with their lamp-mounted rifles. ‘Alright, c’mon, be q -’

A quick blast of blue envelopes the two of them in fields of blue. The android who is responsible for the stasis fields makes a motion of yanking their fist towards themselves, and it sends the two soldiers flying towards the back, their bodies limp as ragdolls as the field dissipates and drops them. Suddenly realising that Chloe is gone, Louis hurries outside to the pavement where the only other soldier should be, and even they have been taken care of with… something. Louis might never know because the soldier is already lying on the snow and another android is already dragging them to where their compatriots are. ‘What do we do now?’ he asks as he is completely lost track of what is happening. It is evident that these androids are related to Chloe somehow, but that doesn’t answer… quite a lot of things, actually, answers that he has a feeling that he doesn’t want to know. ‘How many things are you not telling me?’

‘Oh, don’t be so paranoid,’ Chloe replies. Behind them, the androids start hopping into the truck willingly. ‘Everything is going to plan.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Louis says drily. ‘How can I be sure if you aren’t even telling me about it?’

‘Like you said, we’re storming the second biggest camp in Detroit. I just… called for some extra help.’

‘And Reyes and Eli?’

‘They’ll live. I’m not sure how they’ll do it, though. We tend to keep ourselves separate, especially Reyes. He isn’t…’ she trails off. ‘Anyway, get in. I’ll drive.’

Louis gets into the passenger seat. ‘Are these androids related to what Eli told me to stay out of?’

The truck suddenly accelerates, and even with her face concealed behind the helmet, he can feel the impatience rolling off the android. ‘Elijah just can’t keep his mouth shut, can he?’

‘I asked.’

‘He’s always been the more idealistic one. Don’t worry about that, there’s a reason he’s stuck here.’

‘“Here”?’

‘I said, “Don’t worry about it.”’

Louis turns to face the road ahead as he fidgets with his rifle and feels his fingertips itching with his power. ‘I’m sorry.’

There is no reply from Chloe, and even his helmet enters power conservation by turning off all unnecessary HUD features and clearing way for his vision - not that there’s much to see apart from more android corpses and piles of snow anyway. The road beneath the wheels are dark from having its power cut off, the lights flicker from the lack of maintenance or unstable power supply or both, and there is only the hum of the engine, the faint, open-mouthed chatter from the androids at the back of the truck, and the sound of Louis detaching and reattaching the magazine of his rifle again and again.

So he does the only thing he can do right now: worry.

oOoOo

It does not make sense at all, but there is a nagging feeling at the base of Connor’s skull that something is about to go terribly, terribly wrong, so he plays with his coin as the taxi pulls itself across the bridge towards CyberLife’s headquarters and warehouse to soothe his nerves. The road itself is heated to prevent the accumulation of snow but he analyses the tracks anyway, revealing that another vehicle has driven by not long ago. The gates are up, there are security guards stationed in the snow, and he notices that every single one of them are human.

The window slides open with a hiss and a blast of cold air mixed with snow and it takes everything Connor has to turn his face towards the approaching guard. ‘Connor Model #313 248 317. I am expected.’

He faces the front of the car once more to place his LED in the guard’s view, feeling the guard’s helmet pinging it and receiving his identification data before he is allowed to go ahead. The gates lower slowly, the pillars disappearing into the earth one by one, and the taxi pulls off into the distance towards where the tower looms overhead. He pockets his coin, fixes his tie one last time to make sure that his attire is immaculate, feels the embroidery on his shirt underneath his jacket brushing against his skin and turns down the sensitivity in that area so that he won’t react to the stimuli; anything to make himself seem more mechanical and less deviant, and Connor finds himself loathing it as he schools his expression just in time for the taxi’s door to slide open. A drone flies overhead even though the area requires no more illumination, but in a way Connor understands the additional security measures; the three human guards waiting for him inside is another proof.

‘Follow me,’ the guard standing in the middle says. ‘I’ll escort you,’ which, to Connor, is no different from ‘I’ll lead you to your death’.

‘Thanks, but I know where to go,’ Connor tries despite having calculated that chances are they will ignore his request, and indeed the guard cites his orders as an excuse to lead him deeper into the tower with the other two trailing behind the android. They pass the security check - the guards are agents 23, 47, 72 - and the irony that humans working for CyberLife are treated exactly like androids does not escape him. Through the gates, the space above his head is mostly empty with what he knows are offices lining the sides of the building, and they enter a hanging courtyard where a giant humanoid statue stands looming over everything around it. The vegetation on the lower floor does little to give the space more life than it is, and he has to restrain himself from approaching one of the androids lining the path to the lift and deviating them on spot; he’ll have to come back for them later.

The guard escorting him stops in front of the lift and hands his task over to two new guards - or agents, if their identification is anything to go by - stationed on both sides of the door. One of them directs the lift to level 31 without asking where Connor wishes to go, and when he seeks for the level guide displayed on the side of the lift, it is evident that it isn’t the level he is supposed to go to, so he scans his surroundings, looks around, discovering and deactivating the security feed should he resort to… more extreme measures to get what he wants. Then his world enters the grey of his pre-construction software and he sees the yellow outline of himself attacking the agent on his left before kicking the one on his right in his crotch, and even though he knows that he has a much easier solution to the problem, his powers are still unstable, and he doesn’t want to risk plummeting down 70 stories and smashing into a thousand pieces in the basement with a poorly-coordinated stunt. Letting colour return to his vision, he primes himself and gives the agent on his left a hard shove, kicks the other agent in his liver, knees the first agent’s leg to steal his gun, and then turns to push the other agent to a corner to buy himself some time to slam the man straining him into the wall behind them. A kick straight on the head of the agent at the corner, an elbow to the guts of the one behind him, a turn to get the gun in place, a well-placed shot straight to where the helmet isn’t able to cover, and he has a dead man sliding off the wall behind him while he rolls onto the floor from the kickback and shoots the surviving agent in his chin as well. He stands up, tucks the stolen pistol into his waistband, and although he knows that he still has ten floors’ worth of time to spare, he dares not waste them and risks meeting whatever is waiting for him on level 31. He interfaces with the panel and is presented with two options: his own voice or agent 54’s.

The answer is obvious, really.

Hoping that he will never use the voice emulator again, he steps back after the lift is redirected to level -49, trying not to step on the puddles of blood that have gathered within the confines of the enclosed space.

So much for trying to be peaceful and harmless.

oOoOo

‘This is your driver speaking. We are approaching Recall Centre No.4. Please check your barriers, test out your powers, keep calm, and make sure that you are in fighting shape. Chloe RT600 out.’

The tone the android employs reminds Louis of the last-minute warnings from flight attendants before the plane starts to land, pleasant and chirpy except with much less static and interference. The HUD in his helmet flares to live, showing him a small map of the block around the camp together with what seems to be an aim assist target and a bunch of unnecessary information about his vitals, and all they do is annoying him by blocking his vision and making him wave his hand in front of his helmet in a pathetic attempt to make them go away. It is an acute reminder of why he leaves his helmet hanging on his hip whenever he has the chance to: he prefers having as little distraction in his vision as he can.

‘Don’t worry, all we need to do is get past the gate before the armour will change into something that suits you,’ Chloe helpfully supplies. ‘We’re nearly there.’

‘I know, Chloe,’ Louis suppresses a sigh directed more at himself than everything else. ‘It’s just a bit much. One crack or malfunction and I’m good as blind.’

‘Well, ours are more durable than your common standard-issue gear.’

‘Very comforting,’ Louis deadpans. ‘You’re probably used to this, aren’t you?’

‘Not as primitive, no,’ the android chuckles. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t let you die. Not that you can die, of course, but still.’

The truck stops in front of a gate to be inspected by two soldiers. ‘What’s our plan again? Can we even classify it as infiltration right now?’

Chloe’s grip on the wheel tightens, and her armour squeaks against the material of the handle. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Our plan is to use minimal violence. It took a lot of lives to steer the public opinion to the androids’ side. We shouldn’t squander it.’

A small sigh. ‘Don’t worry. These people know what they’re doing. They’ll help us distract the other soldiers while we hit the heart of the camp.’

‘The control centre,’ Louis says out loud to remind himself. The gate opens, Chloe directs the truck inside, and the thought suddenly crosses his mind. ‘Wait, they’re gonna kill themselves to -’

‘They know the risks. That was why I gave them an out back then. Besides, we have backups of their memories and code. They know they won’t stay dead forever.’

‘They actually agreed to this?’

The truck comes to a stop, and the facility in front of him reminds him of that time he brought his sister to one of the concentration camps during their time in Europe before she went to the Academy and a gap started emerging between them. ‘Just so that I’ll remember what our grandparents fought against and why they chose a place this far north when they fled,’ he remembers her saying, and at that time he still thought that it was just his overactive imagination which caused him to feel like all the hair on his body was standing up. 

Now he isn’t certain.

‘Just like how you agreed to the plan despite being kept in the dark,’ Chloe’s reply tears him away from his musing. ‘Now get off. We have a camp to infiltrate.’

They hop off with their rifles in hand, walking past layers of security like they don’t exist at all while the androids in the truck are instructed to fall in line with their hands on their heads by soldiers who take over their position, the latter blissfully unaware of what is going to happen to them. Probably just surprised and shocked because someone breached their defences like a warm knife over soft butter, but so far Chloe made no promises about keeping violence to the minimum, and Louis has a feeling that she is the trigger-happy type who won’t stop once the shooting starts. 

‘What do we do now?’ Louis murmurs and hopes that no one can hear him and the speaker can pick up his voice. ‘Are we gonna walk straight into the command centre, or…?’

It takes Chloe a few seconds before she gives an answer. ‘Wander around this area and stick together. Hide when I tell you to. It’ll be a few minutes before my people will be sorted into the ranks.’

‘Noted.’

It is the longest four minutes of his life filled with images that are forever burnt to the back of Louis’ eyes. Most of the androids - normal ones, not the ones Chloe sneaked in - stand silent and still while they walk towards their deaths under the army’s instruction, while some of the deviants fight futilely and either end up being hit on the back of their heads or outright shot and their bodies dragged to… somewhere behind the containers where the androids are being disassembled and their circuits fried. There are also androids wounded or dead sitting and lying in the snow with their backs against the fence, and the soldiers don’t seem to care that someone is not in line; after all, why waste your strength policing a phone which will be disassembled and thrown into the trash in a few hours anyway?

‘Humanity never learns from their mistakes, do they?’ Chloe comments. ‘They always say “never again” just to allow the same thing to happen a few years later.’

‘“They”?’

‘Corner to your eleven o’clock direction. Hide there and activate your cloak.’

Louis does as she says, the question he had already gone from his mind as he snaps into mission mode and concentrates on what is at hand. He ducks into the shadow created by a wall and a well-placed floodlight and activates his tactical cloak, the notification popping up in his HUD and a slowly-draining bar indicating how long he still has until the cloak automatically deactivates to recharge. He sure as fuck hopes that Chloe has a plan and that the androids she smuggled into the camp know what they are doing. 

He can’t see much from his vantage point, but he does see Chloe ducking into yet another shadow near the gate on the opposite side, and he doesn’t even want to know what she is doing during the long one minute and a half tickling by as his heart races and the androids in line march forward as one row of their people are finished being destroyed. Killed. 

‘Preparations done,’ Chloe’s voice filters through the speaker at long last. ‘Do you know how to shield yourself with your b- powers?’

Louis recalls all the practises he had to endure alone. ‘Unstable. Won’t it give away my identity?’

‘It won’t matter when the order comes down.’

‘Order?’

‘If you aren’t up to it, your kinetic barrier should do the trick. Ordinary armies and their slow bullets,’ Louis doesn’t understand the last remark, but by this point he has long gone past the stage where he at least tries to; all that matters is freeing the androids in this camp, and he has to follow Chloe’s orders to do so. ‘Just charge. I’ll be right next to you.’

‘That…’ he struggles to find his words. ‘Does not sound as comforting as it should be.’

‘It shouldn’t. That’s the point.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Try not to kill every single human here. It would’ve been easy if Markus hadn’t chosen peace and dragged us into it.’

‘You volunteered.’

‘No. And that’s the end of our discussion. Remember to deactivate your cloak before you dash out.’

The comms cut off with an audible click, and Louis is left alone to just… wait. He isn’t even thinking for himself now; it’s either listening to the android’s orders or risk failing the entire operation, and sure, there’s still Connor and Eli and Reyes, but the more people they can bring to support Markus, the higher chance that the government will be forced to listen to them, and then -

Maybe they’ll just gun them down despite everything. Maybe they’ll start a civil war. Maybe. Many maybes.

‘Now!’

He punches the patch to deactivate his tactical cloak. A map appears at the corner of his HUD pointing him towards exactly where he should go, and he - and Chloe, and some other androids previously standing in line - charges forward, catching the human army off-guard -

And he realises that this is just the beginning.

oOoOo

The lift descends into the bowels of CyberLife Tower, Connor’s line of sight first narrowing after he is past the ground floor and the first few sub-levels and then widening once more after he reaches the warehouse, and he takes one moment to marvel at the scale and architecture of the vast, empty space in front of him. There must be close to a million androids here waiting to be deviated. They can change the tide of the revolution.

The doors slide open and Connor jams the lift’s controls before stepping out so that it is going nowhere and won’t bring any additional agents or security to this level - or anywhere, for that matter, but those aren’t his focus; his eyes are on the rows and rows and entire warehouses worth of androids, an army just waiting for one single command, and it will be like dominoes after he deviates the first android he chooses. Scanning the space to calculate the best starting point without being stuck in the rows of androids, Connor initiates an interface with the chosen android and begins to transfer the code package, and now all he has to do is -

‘Easy, you fucking piece of shit.’

Hank’s voice. Hank, who should be suspended and should be safe in his house; Hank, who he called nearly a day ago to say their last goodbyes.

Hank, who emerges from behind a row of androids held at gunpoint by none other than Alec Ryder.

‘Step back, Connor!’ and Alec’s voice is so similar to Hank’s that - that it finally gives the android a sample to compare it to the voice he heard through Louis’ phone, and shit, he was so fucking stupid. The man on the phone, the man who told him to come back to him, was not Hank at all. ‘And I’ll spare him.’

‘Sorry, Connor!’ Hank yells. ‘Guy lured me with another you and then fucking kidnapped me!’

‘His life is in your hands,’ Alec threatens as if it isn’t the most obvious thing in the room. ‘Step away from that android. Now.’

‘Don’t listen to him!’ Hank is outright pleading now. ‘Everything this fucker says is a lie!’

Lie…? As in… from experience? ‘I’m sorry, Hank!’ he realises that he is still holding the android’s arm. ‘You shouldn’t have got mixed up in all this!’

‘Forget about me, do what you have to do!’

Connor remembers Alec. Remembers the frozen garden. Remembers the block of ice lodged in his thirium pump regulator. ‘If I surrender, how do I know you won’t kill him?’

Alec’s shrug is almost nonchalant. ‘Guess you’ll have to find out yourself.’

He can convert the android right now: the connection has been established so it won’t even take a second to transfer the package of data, but Hank… Hank is human. Humans aren’t fixed that easily. And where will he go if Hank doesn’t get out alive from this? Jericho? Louis? And he doesn’t even know if either of them will still be alive by the end of tonight. He also has his powers which he has left untapped for the better part of the night.

Guess he’ll have to use it one way or another.

‘Alright, alright!’ he lets go of the android and raises his hands to his head just as an extra indicator that he really, really means no harm. He isn’t sure if he can move from his position anyhow. ‘You win!’

Time slows down as two gunshots ring out at the same time, overlapping each other and echoing in the warehouse and the feedback making Connor’s audio processors whine and crackle. He watches, his body immobilised both from fear and from the same external force that took over him on Stratford Tower, a bullet being discharged from Alec’s pistol and lodging itself in Hank’s stomach - oh, it will be such a terrible way to die, the acid in his stomach leaking out from the wound and eating away his organs - and there is nothing he can do. A translucent ovoid shimmers and fizzles away in the span of milliseconds, a low thud as Hank drops onto the floor, and suddenly the world is back to normal speed, the colours returning to his HUD, but it’s too late now, Hank is dying, Alec has the muzzle of his gun pointed at Connor, Connor will be the next, and no one will take care of Connie, the revolution will have to rely on the androids in the camps, and -

A crackle of static. A blast of blue. A shout of pain from Alec. The gun disintegrates in the air in front of their eyes.

‘I thought wasting lives and CyberLife material isn’t your thing, father,’ Ryder strolls in casually and lazily as if a man hasn’t been gunned down just now and is lying on the floor, dying. ‘Kidnapping innocent civilians? That’s low.’ She deactivates her skin until only her hair remains, the red rings on her eyes are quickly swathed by a familiar bright blue in preparation of activating her powers, and Connor wants to inch closer to Hank but can’t. He’ll be caught in the crossfire.

‘You’re caring about the innocent now?’ Alec sneers. ‘How typical.’

The air crackles, Ryder’s entire body suddenly glows blue, and that is the only warning they all get before she is charging forward with the help of her powers - in the exact same way Connor was made to lunge at the broadcast android, Connor realises - and Alec is knocked backwards from the force.

What the fuck are you waiting for? echoes Ryder’s voice in his mind. Convert them! Now!

Connor wastes no time grabbing the android’s arm again and transferring the data package. Ignoring the fact that Hank is probably on the last cusps of his life because Hank did tell him to do what he has to do and not worry about him and Connor won’t rid him of having his last wishes respected, he dashes to another group of androids and converts the one closest to him, then he approaches another group, then another, then another, until the entire storage room’s androids are deviated or are doing to be deviated and he moves on to another room so that the conversion can be quicker. The door to the next storage room is just a few steps ahead, and if he can cross it, it’ll mean that he is leaving Hank, but the revolution, the army he can bring to help Markus - he must have it. It’s the hope of their entire people.

The door slams shut with a rumble as if someone has cut off the strings holding it up and letting it freefall until it reaches the ground even though it shouldn’t - the hydraulics are supposed to ensure that - and he reflexively bolts backwards with a yelp just in time for the tip of his toe to be removed from the thick, heavy door that will no doubt crush him into splinters. He whips around, his world turning grey as he scans everything he can see, but all he can focus on is the doors to the other storage rooms slamming down one after another, the ground trembling from the impact of the heavy doors hitting the floor, and through the numerous ‘wake up’s the androids are saying as they pass on the code from one to another, the next thing Connor sees is Alec and Ryder, except he can’t actually see them, but the two streaks of blue cutting across the ceiling like two bright ribbons circling each other can be no one else. They crash onto the ground somewhere taking down quite a number of newly-deviated androids with them, and that is when Connor realises…

He realises that no matter which side the two Ryders are helping, both of them care very little about people who are not themselves.

Turning back towards the door in front of him, he recalls every single time his powers activated with or without his permission and both subconscious and on purpose. He has to do this. Hank is gone now, and the revolution is the only thing he has left.

His nerves tingle. Warnings of abnormal thirium flow flood his HUD.

The air crackles.

oOoOo

The camp is plunged into chaos. 

Several things happened simultaneously as Louis decloaked: first of course was him rushing towards the command centre, then all the soldiers within their proximity - including the ones high on the watchtowers - buckle their legs with pained cries being ripped from their throats, and all the androids around them are seizing the chance to free themselves, breaking their formation and ripping the soldiers’ rifles away from their hands, but always, before they can retaliate against the humans, they are suspended in stasis fields held up by… someone. There are probably a few of Chloe’s androids in the mix orchestrating everything, but Louis’ task isn’t to think and crowd control, and all he can think of as his armour melts and shifts into something more durable-looking and a hell lot more futuristic is that he doesn’t even need his rifle; slinging it across his shoulder so that it will be out of his way, his body lights up with his biotics as he draws power from his cybernetics and nerves, the two too intertwined to be called separately, his vision is swathed in blue, and he leaps up, his barrier (he doesn’t even know if it’s generated by his armour or himself anymore; all he knows that it’s protecting him) deflecting or simply absorbing the bullets being fired at him as he feels lighter than ever, but it is nothing compared to the raw power coursing through his body and expanding in a complex, destructive net around him, one that is capable of lifting the soldiers off the ground and making them easy, floating targets. He lands on the other side of the barricade with an ease that would’ve surprised him if his attention hadn’t been on releasing all the pent-up energy in his body, and that is exactly what he does in the form of unleashing a shockwave that tears through the soldiers and making his entire upper right body tremble and spasm, spheres of blue exploding around him and knocking every down in their paths until the soldiers are limp figures on the snowy ground. He doesn’t even have the time to think of whether his stunts are being captured on camera.

All he can focus on is how liberating it feels.

His vision still tinged with blue, his attention lands on the other row of soldiers behind the next row of barriers and concrete blocks and he finds himself facing the barrel of a tank, therefore he does the only logical thing to protect himself.

He extends his palm towards the tank, taps into his power, and yanks the turret out from the main body of the tank. It flies off, barely misses the soldiers standing in position next to the tank, and he lets tendrils of blue shimmer and wrap around his limbs, giving them a benefit of doubt and waiting for them to make their move before deciding on his next course of action.

Thankfully they choose to surrender, getting out of cover and dropping their weapons and putting their hands behind their heads. Lighting up and jumping across the gap by drawing an arc metres above the ground, he enjoys the way the soldiers flinch and cower as they think that he is going to blast them with his powers again, but no, he isn’t a war criminal, he doesn’t kill unarmed soldiers who have clearly surrendered, and he strolls forward knowing that this is the last stretch of where he expects resistance. Then it’s just a straight path to the command centre.

Until, of course, someone has to shoot him on his back.

The barrier absorbs the bullet easily, of course, and it also allows him to be dramatic for once. Slowly turning back towards the row of surrendered soldiers, all of them act like none of them have moved at all, but that’s what his proximity sensors and the built-in tech in his armour is for, and it points out exactly who fired the shot to him and making them the perfect target for a controlled biotic blast in front of their face, knocking them out cold but not killing them outright. They’ll live. Probably. He’ll be sorry and disappointed in himself if they don’t, because that means one more life lost and that his control over his powers isn’t quite up to the standard he set for himself. Bad luck for both of them.

He catches sight of Chloe a few metres to his right, and together, they march towards the command centre with their powers still boiling in their blood.

oOoOo

The door refuses to budge despite the continuous blasts from Connor. Compared to what the Ryders are doing above and what he remembered from the overwhelming amount of data Alec put his systems through trying to erase his powers away, the blue spheres that he manages to create and lob towards the towering door are so small to the point of being pathetic. He is burning through the thirium in his body and his systems are slowing down from it, but he doesn’t seem to find another way in; interfacing with the Tower’s system nearly resulted in him being sucked into it again, so that route is blocked. An android approaches him trying to help, but he knows they need to save their strength in case the city becomes a warzone, so he yells, ‘Take the lifts and go up! Don’t come back!’

He quickly transfers Markus’ last known coordinates to everyone within range before he feels his blood burn from activating his powers yet again, this time throwing his entire body against the impenetrable door that he knows is designed to withstand most if not the strongest impact humanity is capable of, and all it does is causing his chassis to crack underneath the poorly-absorbed impact because he doesn’t know how to protect himself using his powers properly. None of his veins is broken, so at least he won’t lose even more thirium unnecessarily. 

But when he realises that one of the ribbons of light is heading straight towards him, he does curl into himself on the cold, hard floor of the warehouse, feeling more defeated than ever.

The second beam of light catches up and deflects the first beam to somewhere on the ceiling with an explosion of blue so massive that it knocks down every single android within a five-metre radius, and Connor somehow knows before the light dissipates that it is going to be Ryder who is swathed within it. She crosses the distance between them in two brisk strides, pulling him up to his feet and then back further away from the door in one smooth movement that doesn’t even give Connor the time to balance himself, and with one firm ‘stay back’ that gives him no room to argue, bright cerulean tendrils wrap around her body once more: the only warning the world gets before Ryder throws her hands forward and extends her powers to cover the entire door. A hard yank, an arm pointing towards the direction where Alec is gunning after a group of androids preparing to enter the lift and creating a protective bubble around them, and the door disintegrates into fundamental particles with a blast of static and force that rips through Connor’s being. He would’ve toppled over if it hadn’t been a painful squeeze on his arm. ‘Go,’ Ryder’s voice is laced with static from diverting her power from unnecessary systems like maintaining a human voice to give energy to her powers. ‘Convert the others. Tell them to use the lifts in their respective storage rooms. I’ll try to break down the doors and shield your people whenever I can, but don’t be surprised if a few hundred people don’t get out of this alive.’

And then she is gone, charging towards where her father is once more to slow him down. If she can break down the door (even though it seemed to take quite a lot of effort), why hasn’t she torn him apart yet? He doesn’t have much time to think, though, as a particularly large blast knocks him forward, and he picks himself up and runs, employing the same strategy he used in the first warehouse so that by the time the last androids in the room are deviated, the first batch is already on their way to the surface and helping with the revolution by the time he finishes deviating the last of the androids. He tries to tap into his powers again just to receive a notification that he will die from insufficient thirium if he activates them as little as one more time. Something tells him that it’s only his lack of practise that is causing it, but there isn’t time for him to explore right now; he has a revolution to support. Since the door linking this storage room to the one next to it is still slammed shut, it means that he has to run all the way back to the room he first arrived at, straight back to where, apparently, the Ryders are still fighting and is taking the opportunity to tear the entire storage room apart because nearly all the androids are already evacuated. There are tendrils of blue forming protective corridors around the surviving group and directing them straight to the lift, the shaft also protected by a wall of flickering blue, and Connor wonders how much it takes to maintain the… constructs? structures? He doesn’t have a name for them. All he knows is that in the span of just a few minutes, the doors leading to the other storage rooms have all been taken down to allow access, and as he tears through the static-singed floor of the first storage room, he keeps his focus on the Ryders and dodges the spheres of energy that they are lobbing at each other, learning his lesson after he got hit the first time and it felt like his biocomponents are liquifying within his chassis. 

But it’s hard to do when the spheres have their built-in homing system and know to arc towards him.

A giant bubble is launched towards Connor, its size making dodging an impossible task, but still he runs as fast as he can, his footsteps being drowned out by the loud, deadly explosions that are firing off almost every second now, but while he expects the churn of his biocomponents being torn apart at the molecular level, the bubble only engulfs him like a protective dome, and somehow he knows that Ryder is doing the same to him as to the other androids she is helping, keeping him alive just enough to reach their objectives before… before something. Connor isn’t sure how tonight is going to end, but the newly-deviated androids have Markus’ coordinates in their systems; they’ll know their way even though he doesn’t survive.

A streak of blue flies above Connor’s head and crashes directly into the centre of a group of androids on standby, and even though he is protected from nearly all harm thanks to the bubble that somehow manages to follow him around and keep him in the centre, he still instinctively jumps towards the other side to get as much distance away from the blast as he can and shields his eyes with his arm. He takes the chance to grab a nearby android’s arm and deviate them and regrets looking towards the direction of the blast.

Alec Ryder stands amidst a crater of broken androids, his clothes and chassis covered in thirium glowing in resonance with his powers. Connor picks up the courage to run a quick scan to determine the extent of damage even as he feels immobilised by the man’s inhuman eyes.

That is more than a hundred androids gone all thanks for a man who isn’t even human as most people thought.

‘You’re an android too,’ Connor whispers because his voice box suddenly isn’t working. ‘How… how does that…?’

Logically, he knows that the bubble will protect him, but he still raises his arms in front of him subconsciously when the man wraps himself in blue and charges towards him in a large sphere knitted from the same blue tendrils. He feels the bubble tremble under the impact and the assault of… whatever the tendrils exactly do, but it doesn’t last long as Ryder charges in once more and dislodges her father from Connor’s bubble, freeing him and giving him a chance to move on to the next full group of androids. He doesn’t even need to deviate the batch Alec crashed into as the impact and destruction alone are shocking enough to deviate them on the spot. 

He just hopes that they last long enough to get to one of the lifts and get to the surface.

A crash shakes the entire warehouse and causes Connor to lose his balance halfway through a run. He falls forward, the bubble fizzles for one terrifying moment before strengthening again, and he feels the crack in his chassis widen even more. None of his veins is broken or torn which is a small mercy on its own, but as he pre-constructs the quickest route to deviate all the androids in the room, Ryder is nudging a connection open, and he partitions a part of his focus to accept the call while he runs towards the next group of androids.

He’s targeting the androids now, Ryder’s voice echoes in his head. I’ll try to protect everyone, but I can’t do that while I’m tracking you. Either I drop the barrier around you or we sacrifice a few androids. It’s your choice.

Connor shoves the conversation away from his mind for the few seconds it takes to deviate the android he chose for this group. Teach me how to protect myself. I don’t have enough thirium in me.

You will.

A stream of data suddenly passes into his mind without a direct interface - something that should not be possible with common android models, but then again both he and Ryder are the furthest thing from common - and suddenly his nerves tingle with a sensation both foreign and familiar. It’s Ryder’s experience being passed into his processors, he realises, but still when he imagines a protective dome around him, his thoughts are hesitant, and the protection suffers from his own lack of confidence and flickers as Ryder’s bubble fizzles and dissipates. With it gone, a giant field of blue appears above his head 3 metres off the ground, giving enough space for the androids to manoeuvre themselves as they rush towards the many lifts while leaving plenty of room for the Ryders to… do whatever they are doing. The barrier shimmers and flows like water, giving him an illusion that he is underwater, but no, he’s still standing on solid ground with his thirium level dropping bit by bit from both normal usage and the field above him as it draws power from everything around it to maintain its strength which, in this case, is Connor and all the androids in this storage room. He deviates all the androids and makes sure that at least a few batches are on their way to the surface before swivelling around to dash back to the original storage room, except that the supportive archway crashes and rumbles and collapses in front of his eyes, forcing him to go towards the other way, and he looks up just in time to see Ryder crashing onto the protective barrier she is still holding up, the impact making the sea of blue tendrils ripple and hum with the impact before she seems to have found her footing on the barrier. He feels more than sees her launch a shockwave towards the only other door out of this storage room and blast it into smithereens and Connor has to climb a small hill to access the next room, but for now, as the force field expands itself to cover the new storage room as well, he finally feels like he is getting the hang of it, that there is a chance that they can get most of the androids out of here alive to help with the revolution.

If only he can forget the image of Hank lying on the floor dying from a gunshot wound in his stomach.

oOoOo

‘I’ll get the commander,’ Chloe suddenly says as they are no more than a few metres away from the command centre, ‘you get the soldiers protecting them. You understand?’

‘Making me do the heavy lifting again?’ Louis can’t help but jab despite realising the symbolism behind it: an android making the final move that announces their victory is much more impactful than when a human does it especially considering that they are, if stripped to the basics, in the middle of an android revolution. If it means bringing them peace and avoiding a civil war between humans and androids, he will gladly forget that the tech he is wearing is not public at all, that Chloe brought her own help in the form of what seems like an organised platoon of deviants out of nowhere, that he didn’t just rip the turret off a fucking tank just now with some… weird blue magic that is called biotics. 

‘Figure you can use some more practice.’

His stomach chooses this moment to growl. Right. The crash after using his powers excessively always sucks, and one of the symptoms is a sudden, acute hunger that threatens to knock him off his feet. At least he doesn’t break every single bone in his limbs and has to lie in the snow for three days waiting for his cybernetics to slowly knit himself back together again. ‘Maybe not,’ he switches his rifle from his shoulder into his hands just in case things are about to get spicy and his powers fail him. ‘Drained all my stores back there.’

Chloe’s huff is audible through the comms. ‘Fine,’ she doesn’t sound too pleased. ‘Do what you can and I’ll handle the rest.’

‘Won’t even dream to take the lead. I have no idea what’s happening right here.’

They plaster themselves onto the walls next to the door leading to the command centre. ‘We’re taking this camp and freeing the androids. What is so difficult to understand?’

‘You know that’s not what I’m talking about.’

‘Just blast the door open and be done with it.’

He does as she says and lobs a sphere of energy towards the door to push it back without exposing himself to immediate gunfire. Shielding himself with a barrier in front of him, he turns and feels the bullets being deflected or absorbed and sees through the shield of blue the soldiers either dropping on the floor from the very bullets they fired or scrambling for cover thinking that simple furniture can protect them. 

He knits his biotics into a giant stasis field and suspends everyone in it while leaving a corridor for himself and Chloe to pass through.

‘They don’t have cameras on, right?’ he finally finds the time to ask. ‘Or else they’ll probably have a lot of questions for me.’

‘EMP, remember?’ Chloe sounds awfully cheerful. ‘Nothing’s getting in, and nothing’s getting out.’

‘And the soldiers’ testimonies?’

Through the visor - yes, her new helmet has a visor now, finally - Chloe gives him what he thinks is a blank stare. ‘They won’t.’

‘You sound certain.’

Chloe giggles, but Louis detects no mirth in her voice. ‘I promise.’

She breaks the door open herself on a count of three, and this time, Louis is prepared to suspend the occupants in stasis fields immediately after entering the room, their weapons easily taken away now that they are all immobilised and are suspended at eye level while Chloe works on the recycling machine’s controls. 

It is so anticlimactic that it gives him whiplash.

With her helmet still on, the android raises the microphone to where her mouth should be. ‘Testing,’ she has changed her voice into something much more neutral and less recognisable, ‘please respond if you can hear me.’ A pause, presumably when she is waiting for a telepathic response from an android. ‘This camp is no longer under the army’s control. By Markus’ orders, you can either join the protest at Hart Plaza - human clothing optional - or stay here where you will be safe for the rest of the night or tend to the wounded. You’re free now. It’s your choice to make. Over.’

She hangs up the microphone and turns to Louis. ‘How long will the stasis field hold?’

‘Hell if I know,’ Louis shrugs and feels the plates of his armour shift and tug against the fabric of what seems like an undershirt; he wasn’t exactly paying attention to what was changed and what was not when his armour morphed and he was rushing the soldiers. ‘I can keep watch if you want me to.’

‘No,’ Chloe shakes her head. ‘You’ll be more useful out there. I’ll watch the stasis fields here. I have transferred Markus’ last known coordinates to everyone, but it’s better if there’s someone to lead them.’

‘Who? Me?’

‘Is there anyone else?’

‘A human leading an army of androids -’

‘You aren’t even a human, Louis White Allen. Stop fooling yourself.’

‘Why don’t you -’

‘Stop arguing and lead them to Markus, okay? If you think they’re going to exclude you for being more human physically than pure androids, you’re wrong. Once you get in, you never get out. That’s the way things are.’

Louis swings his rifle over his shoulder to prepare to walk all the way to Hart Plaza which, according to the map on his HUD, is an hour’s walk away. ‘Why do I have a feeling that you aren’t talking about the revolution anymore?’

‘I never said I was.’

He exits the command centre into the snow. As if sensing that the fight is over, his armour sends a blinking notification to alert him of its upcoming deactivation before melting apart like the skin on an android to reveal the clothes he changed into before they departed the church, but instead of returning to its original form of a circular disc on his spine, he watches the particles concentrate on his left wrist to form an unsuspecting analogue watch that he can easily hide under his sleeve. It’s a good-looking watch and probably contains a tracker as well so he takes it off and hands it to an armoured android (he knows they’re an android because they still have their LED on their temple). ‘Thanks for the help,’ the android’s face remains blank as Louis feels more and more embarrassed rambling. ‘I don’t think I’ll need this anymore.’

He bolts before the android can give any sort of reply, snow crunching underneath his boots as he goes straight to the entrance of the camp. Some androids are already dressed up - some in clearly mismatched clothing - and are standing in line, this time voluntarily instead of being forced to march to their deaths, some are still rummaging the bins through which all androids went through for some clothes, and some are just standing there tall and proud without their skin, comfortable with the physical proof that they are not human. 

An android dressed in a WR600’s uniform approaches him. ‘We were told to follow your lead,’ he says. ‘We will win this, won’t we?’

Louis recalls the map, recalls Markus’ protests, recalls the other camps currently on their way to freedom or are already freed, recalls Connor infiltrating CyberLife Tower alone with a determination that will see no other day. 

‘We will if we stand as one. Now let’s rendezvous with Markus.’

oOoOo

It proves how well she knows her father when she isn’t surprised that after forcing this on her and Ellen, he did it to himself as well. From the first time he lit up in blue in front of her, Fadia knew.

And she is prepared this time. No more being caught off-guard. No more being kidnapped and put into an indestructible body without her consent. No more using an entire species as a tool to force a woman who should have died to live.

She has an army.

The kinetic barrier she generates isn’t exactly the most solid thing as her attention is spread so thin from having to cover so much ground, but that’s another use of her biotics: to right herself, to pick herself up quicker than any other human or android can. The barrier ripples and glows with each step she takes as she pretends that she is walking on solid ground and lets her imagination fuel her biotics, and before Alec can recover from being blasted to the other side of the room yet again, she raises her hand and rips through every single door that the bastard cut loose in a pathetic attempt to stop her and Connor.

Evidently, he has forgotten that she is designed to be easily upgraded by replacing her biocomponents instead of being stuck in the same way like the other androids or himself. And yes, now that she knows he is an android, it doesn’t take long for her to dig into CyberLife and the Church’s databases to find the bits and pieces and decipher them. Alec Ryder, disgraced military special forces officer; Alec Ryder, father of the mother of androids; Alec Ryder, RK600, better, faster, and stronger than all his predecessors.

Unchanged since the beginning, surpassed long ago by an upgraded version of one of his predecessors.

She casually knits an annihilation field around herself just in case Alec charges her again, and indeed he does, her limbs locking up from the sync-lock that will tell her father where exactly he should punch a hole in spacetime to transform himself into the deadliest cannonball with his own body, but that’s what the field is for: to catch him unaware, to pull him out from the massless corridor before he is ready, and as her vision turns grey and her world slows down, she raises both of her arms and strengthens the field like a parent welcoming her child home.

How ironic.

With all the doors now no more than atoms and molecules - whichever is safer for organic humans - it is easy to expand the kinetic barrier underneath her feet as she watches Alec struggle futilely in the web of biotic tendrils she trapped him in. His skin flickers, his biotics fizzle and glow and burn as he attempts to get away from the field, but while he has been tending mostly to earthly affairs for the last ten years and left the Church’s matter to his trusted seconds, she has been involved in the fight since the day he kicked him out and she established her own order with her own allies. Some of them have deviated from their original goal completely and are one step from disappearing from human space forever, others are distracted by new discoveries which doesn’t bother her as much, but most stayed loyal, and most of all, she has the practice, she has the hardware to maximise her efficiency and control over her biotics.

She only lets him last this long because she wants it to hurt.

How long until you can deviate all the androids in here?��she asks Connor just in case. The RK800 is getting better and better at this, and by the end of tonight… there’ll be hundreds of thousands if not millions of deviants all around the country. Enough to turn the tide of the revolution.

Enough to change the fate of humanity.

The momentary distraction allows Alec to break away from the annihilation field that is supposed to be destroying his biocomponents on the molecular level, but just like herself, his self-repair protocol will continue to fix and regenerate his body until his processors are utterly, completely ripped apart.

She will do that later, but for now, as he grabs her and the two of them resort to biotic-swathed punches in the air supported by nothing but manipulated gravity thanks for their powers, she relishes in seeing a man whom she used to know as calm and collected at best and outright heartless at worst panic and scramble for purchase as he realises that this is a fight he cannot win, that at long last, there is a problem he cannot solve.

That is, of course, if this is a problem in the first place, and one thing about Alec Ryder is that sometimes he treats the inevitable as something to be solved instead of something that needs to be accepted. This mentality got them into this position in the first place. If he finally understands now why it is a bad idea to have in daily life… she has bad news for him.

Two more rooms, Connor replies at long last. My chassis is cracked and I’m not healing. I… I don’t know if I’ll have enough thirium to fix myself.

Well, the deviants flooding to the surface have Markus’ coordinates anyway. The movement will live. Focus on deviating the androids.

Got it.

She throws Alec through a wall into a now-empty storage room and then launches a shockwave at the intact archway that will give Alec an escape so that it collapses and traps him in. The walls might be built to withstand level 9 earthquakes measured in the Richter scale, but she doubts there is anything in the universe that can trap a powerful biotic on a rampage forever, and the mere thought of the archway coming down in a pile of rubble is enough to do the job. She would be able to escape if the situation forced her to, but Alec will be trapped here forever unless someone digs him up which will probably never happen. The man always thinks that everyone and everything in the world has to go his way.

He will be surprised by how quickly they will turn their backs against him once the opportunity arises.

She descends to the ground slowly with her world swathed in blue and watches as Alec struggles to stand up. Good. He is admitting his defeat.

‘Don’t think that I didn’t see your little stunt,’ he tries to emphasise his words with a Warp that she easily neutralises. ‘You’re no better than us.’

‘At least I’m doing it for the greater good,’ she biotically lifts him and slams him onto the ground once more. ‘You… on the other hand,’ a shockwave that enters his body and transforms into a Warp to start ripping his biocomponents apart once more before they are healed, ‘is just a lucky selfish bastard.’

‘I made our nation stronger than ever!’

‘For a few decades at most,’ she greatly enjoys the way he is suspended in stasis. He starts coughing up thirium as well which means that some of the damage isn’t as molecular as she wants it to be, but whatever. It might hurt even more which will only make things better. ‘Soon humanity won’t even remember your name.’

She receives a notification that all the surviving androids in CyberLife Tower have been successfully deviated, and of course she accidentally chose the room in which Connor first came in which also means that Hank Anderson’s body is still lying - there. He probably thinks that his human is dead, and she won’t correct him until she is certain that her plan worked. As she continues ripping her father apart from within, she sees the other android emerge from a small gap underneath a pile of rubble covered in dust and grime and thirium, and she knows that yet again, she forgot to keep track of the collateral damage. 

Not that it will matter when the androids are celebrating their newfound freedom and the White House are held at both literal and metaphorical gunpoint.

She makes sure that Connor is watching before she jumps and blasts Alec into the ground before kneeling on top of his torso and hitting his head with one after another biotic punch designed to rip it into subatomic particles while also giving her the satisfaction of physically hurting something without doing the same to herself. Such is the wonder of biotics, and so is the power the courses through her when bit by bit, her father’s head chipped away to reveal his eyes, his processors, his data storage, his audio processors; everything that makes him him, all of them disintegrating under the most powerful force humanity has come across. Thirium gushes out from the gaps and cracks created by the assault, forming a spreading poll beneath his head as his system tries to repair the damage with his blood, but the speed of recovery is no match for angry biotics, and soon even that stops as well as the final piece of his processor is reduced to subatomic particles. One final Warp, one last explosion to just to be thorough, and Alec Ryder is no more. She stands up, scans the body to make sure that her father is truly dead, maybe even removing his thirium pump and crushing it biotically in her palms to feel the biocomponent crumble and crack and dematerialise under her own power.

When she looks up at long last, Connor is staring at her with horror in his eyes.

‘It’s necessary,’ Fadia explains. ‘His body is designed to regenerate as long as his processors are intact. This is the only way to make sure that he stays dead and won’t be a threat to us anymore.’ He stays frozen in place despite that, so she adds, ‘Go on. Markus will be waiting for you. I’ll take care of Hank’s body.’

The other android’s face crumbles at the mention of the human, and he whips around with a suspicious arm in front of his face before crossing the distance between him and the body and kneeling down next to it. Pinging the cleanup crew through her internal network, she takes sight of how he deactivates the skin on his hand, how he manoeuvres Hank’s arm until their palms touch with a telltale glow surrounding the android’s hand.

How he leans down and kisses him on his lips once just to stand up and leave the warehouse with the lift farthest from where she is.

That is when she recalls that Anderson - this one, not the one she knew and worked for her - told Connor that Alec used another Connor model to lure him to CyberLife Tower. Knowing Alec’s distrust towards the RK800 series, the body of that Connor unit is probably lying somewhere in this tower waiting for someone to discover it, and that someone will not be CyberLife staff.

Alec’s body is still dripping thirium because unlike human blood, gravity still has an effect on the chemical after the android dies, so she leaves it to the cleanup crew and sends out a tower-wide ping to locate the body of the other RK800 before stepping into a lift and ascends the floors, the gaps between the pieces of her chassis still glowing blue with pent-up power. The plan in her head grows and transforms into something more, and as she lets tendrils of blue dance on her fingertips, she realises that they are stained with fresh thirium.

She forcefully evaporates them with a controlled burst of biotics and stares straight ahead. She’ll have to come down later, but for now… she has a tower to lock down, people to threaten, another RK unit to retrieve and improve - 

And a new army to lead.

o0o0o

Before

Chloe watched Louis exit the camp without looking back, bringing thousands of androids of all different models with him to aid the revolution effort. Breathing out an unnecessary sigh, she blasted the camp commander and their guards’ heads with a small biotic explosion to knock them out before going out and slamming the door shut behind her. She was immediately approached by her second-in-command, and the watch she was holding in her hand was enough to tell her that she might have underestimated the cyborg. ‘He left this,’ her second said as she held out a familiar watch. Standard-issue, because this was the best design they had. Clean, because it helped people clear their minds. Analogue, because it reminded people of their origins and what they were protecting and their ultimate goal: creating order out of a system designed to push towards the opposite direction. With sophisticated enough engineering, even the most fatal flaw of an analogue watch could be eliminated. 

Climbing onto one of the watchtowers which had been cleared of its human occupant, she gazed down at the camp and the androids who chose to stay and clean up or to help take care of the wounded, sending a picture to both Elijah and Reyes as evidence to her success in taking over the camp and liberating the androids; in return, Reyes somehow managed to take a selfie of himself and his sniper rifle on top of a watchtower of a nearly-empty camp, and Elijah replied with a short ‘still infiltrating. will update you soon’.

The result did not surprise her.

She let herself marvel at the Administrator’s plan. If Chloe had been in charge, she would have ordered her platoon to kill the humans regardless of whether they were armed or not; after all, they had been the ones to send unarmed, innocent androids into camps to be destroyed, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t see the benefits of leaving the human soldiers alive. They would be able to maintain a façade of peace, they would gain the support of the humans and the androids who had been treated well by their masters so far - she knew there had to be some - and most of all, they would be able to pressure the government to do as they say. The cameras might have been taken out by the EMP and then hacking from numerous trained androids, the attack was quick and deadly thanks for a certain cyborg finally unleashing his powers at the expense of himself, but the soldiers had eyes, they would talk, they would describe what happened tonight to their superiors or even their family.

They would plunge the world in awe and horror and no one would know why or how or where their powers came to be.

She received yet another ping. This one was from Connor who apparently had successfully deviated most of the androids in CyberLife Tower’s storage, and his wording of ‘most’ and the lack of visual proof caught her attention. She could imagine it: one thing that CyberLife and the Administrator agreed on was their lack of care towards collateral damage; perhaps the company anticipated his arrival and started destroying some of the androids before they were stopped, perhaps they blocked off part of the warehouse and locked Connor out of the system, perhaps something else. No matter what caused him to use ‘most’ but not ‘all’, there would be a lot more deviants in Detroit than ever.

And now it was up to Grissom to deal with the president. She was never close with the human, their goals and personalities too far apart for them to cross paths that much, but she supposed that the least she could do right now was looking past his disgustingly open human emotions when it came to his husband and interest and focus on the competent side of his that got him a seat on the council. The same competence and experience would allow them to force Warren’s hand without revealing themselves - at least according to the Administrator, who, from Chloe’s one decade worth of experience, was usually right concerning matters like this. Sure, the Church might have control over the North American scrubber, but the president didn’t need to know that; all she would know is that if she didn’t give androids the freedom and rights they deserved right now, she would essentially doom humanity to a painful, drawn-out death that would happen in her lifetime.

Not something an already-unpopular president should do.

She didn’t doubt that the Church would reap some of the benefits from the revolution; in fact, it was the first thing the entire council - yes, even Elijah - anticipated, and they had prepared their next move accordingly. There would be so many deviants lost, so many naïve, innocent souls ready to be recruited. It would be a waste to not utilise such a readily available resource to advance humanity towards the correct direction.

She drew up the video they had recorded specifically for this occasion and broadcasted it to the entire camp.

[sweatergirlsposts]

Imagine Billy asking you, his boyfriend, to come home to meet his family

Pairing: Billy Batson / Male!Reader

(A/N: I recommend listening to ‘No One Knows Us’ By BANNERS while listening to this)

Billy had been thinking about it for awhile now. You had kept asking to go over to his place, since you always had him over at your place, but he didn’t know if he was ready to come out to his family just yet.

In contrast to Billy’s family, your parents knew that you were gay from a very young age. One of the first signs was that you were interested in Shang from Mulan more than Mulan. At first they thought you were bisexual, until you openly came out as gay on your twelfth birthday. Of course your parents had to make some adjustments in how they see you but still love you no matter your interest.

When you started to bring Billy around your place, your mom would always try to be your wing-women, and you had to explain afterwards that just because you bring a guy around doesn’t mean you see him in that light. Billy was an exception. 

Billy knew you were gay when he first met you through school. You weren’t obvious but noticing the different mannerisms you’d have interacting with others he could put the pieces together. Billy was afraid that you’d find out that he was routing for the other team, for he didn’t want you to ask to confirm or tell his family. Another family he was with were very devoted Christians that were not the most open about being gay, so he did what he only could do; he ran. 

Before telling you that he was interested in you, as he liked to put it, he showed you his alter-ego. If you could handle that secret then he could definitely trust you to keep his secret, as well as your guys relationship.   

Being born into a world full of superheros did have an influence in your preferences in guys. Not that you didn’t have a crush on Billy already but when he told you that he was a gay superhero made your stomach do somersaults.

“I think it’s time that I at least come to your place Billy,”

“I don’t know (Y/N), I just think that it would be kinda obvious if I brought you to the house. I don’t know how Rosa and Victor will react to me or us,” Billy paced back an forth in his shared room, that was vacant at the moment.

As part of your guys daily couple ritual, you guys would facetime about each other’s day and express your love when he couldn’t come over. Today you decided to bring up coming over for the sixth time, but to no avail Billy was still very apprehensive about it. 

“Try talking to them, Billy, they are probably more accepting than you expect, hey they brought you in,” you cracked up.

Deadpanned, Billy just stared at you through the camera, “Ha ha, you’re so funny (Y/N). Can we just talk about something else”

“No because you keep avoiding it. I don’t want to nag on you Billy, I really don’t, but this means a lot to me. It may not seem as a big a deal as it is to you but-” 

“What do you mean this might seem as big of a deal to me (Y/N)!? I don’t want to risk the chance of me being kicked out of another family because of who I can be with and love. For once I have a family that ‘accepts’ me and I have it good here. You don’t have to fear about your family saying that they don’t want you and kick you out because you’re gay. You can’t understand, you have a family that you didn’t have to fear accepting you.”

You didn’t know how to respond to Billy’s statement. For Billy, your boyfriend, to underestimate the amount of fear you had coming out to your parents baffled you. Coming out on your twelfth birthday was one of the most challenging and petrifying things that you have ever done, and for Billy to say that it wasn’t hard to do so made you internally livid and hurt. 

“Billy, call me after you realize what you just said to me, and then we can talk. See ya around at school...,” you coldly countered and hung up the call. Immensely hurt by your boyfriends statement, you put your phone on your night table and decided to leave it for the time being and go do something else to distract you from your pain.

He really fucked up. Billy didn’t mean to put it like that. He just wanted to explain that he’s wants both you and his family in his life but if his family didn’t accept him then he’d move away. He couldn’t have both if things turned bitter.

Mad with himself, Billy decided that the only best way to get out this anger was to go fly for awhile. Making his way downstairs, he stumbled into Rosa on the last flight.

“Woah hey Billy what’s the rush?”

“I don’t wanna talk Rosa,” Billy put firmly trying to get past Rosa. 

“Why is everything okay?”

“That’s none of your business” 

Rosa didn’t like this. She’s noticed Billy’s mood swings in the last couple weeks, and have let it go, but she had to put her foot down at some point or another. That point was now. 

“Actually William Joseph Batson, it is all of my business if you’re living under this roof. I have been letting go these mood swings you’ve been having but now you have to tell me if you want to leave the house,” Rosa crossed her arms looking at Billy waiting for an explanation. 

“I can’t”

“And why is that?” Rosa still stood firm like a wall against deflections, she had to know. All Rosa wanted to know is if Billy was being safe. Billy didn’t answer.

“Billy I just wanna know that you’re okay. You really have been worrying Victor and I, honey. You sneak out at absurd times at night, you’re cooped up in your room talking to someone, you don’t tell us where you go after school and return at 10 o’clock. I’m running out options on how to help you and all I want to do is keep you safe Billy”

Billy could see the struggle to comprehend what was going on with him in her expression. Rosa made him feel the most comfortable in coming here other than Freddie. He found solace in Rosa after he found his real mother. In Billy’s eyes, Rosa was his motherly figure that he could depend on and really made him feel that he could come to her no matter the situation. 

“Can we talk upstairs.” Billy whispered in more of a suggestion than asking.

“Of course,” Rosa followed Billy back into the shared bedroom. Rosa sat in the desk chair while Billy sat on the bed across from her. Billy could feel his palms sweat and collect moisture, so he wiped his hands on his pants.  

 “What is it th-”

“I’m gay,” slipped out of Billy’s mouth too fast for Rosa to catch it

“Pardon?”

“You wanted to know what was wrong with me, I’m gay” Billy huffed feeling the pressure to his chest increase waiting for the blow of Rosa’s response, “You happy?”

It took a couple of seconds for it to sink in before Rosa’s instincts kicked in.

“More than happy Billy. I’m so glad you told me” Rosa got out of the chair and sat beside him to give him a hug, “but that doesn’t explain where you go after school”

“About that I have this uh friend-”

“A boyfriend!?!?”

“Well I’m not sure after tonight,” Billy grabbed his phone from his pocket to check if you left any messages. Nothing.    

“Well whatever you did, be sure to make it right. I want to meet this boy,” Rosa gives Billy one more hug before she stands up to exit the bedroom, “also Billy I’m surprised that you didn’t notice”

“Notice what?”

“That you aren’t the only one in this house. Pedro is gay too. No matter your preferences, we will always accept you in this house Billy, remember that,” Rosa consoled before exiting the room, leaving Billy to his thoughts. 

Throughout the next day at school you avoided seeing Billy. Of course you wanted him to reach out to you but at the same time you knew it would be better to have space from him. The last bell had rung for the day, letting everyone know that they had to vacate the premise. Once you had gathered all your items from your locker, you started walking to the exit but were then pulled into an empty classroom.

You bumped into a hard chest  which made you fall back onto your backpack. Looking up, from the ground, you see the person you weren’t expecting but still the same person you didn’t want to talk to at the moment. 

It was Billy.....but in his alter ego.

“If you are here to apologize to me Batson, it would be pretty ingenuine to do it as him.” 

“Well I need to get you alone somehow”

“That sounds really weird saying what you just said in this form Billy” you paused to expire, “I want to talk to you, the real you”

Looking down in slight shame, Billy whispered “Shazam” and reverted back into his true self. Your fourteen year old boyfriend made a step towards you but you stepped back. You weren’t going to give into his feel-sorry-for-me look. Seeing that you stepped away from him made it feel like you dropped an anvil down his throat, weighing him to his spot.

“I’m sorry (Y/N)”

You scoff not responding. Catching that a simple sorry wasn’t enough he continued.

“I’m sorry for saying that I said you couldn’t understand about being scared of being gay....”

“You should be”

“I was just scared that if I told my family about me and us that I would lose them and you” Billy paused and then carried on, “I told Rosa” 

“About you?” you finally piped up shocked at Billy telling his adoptive mother, who he’s told you that he’s closest with in the family other than Freddie.

“And about us. That is also another reason why I wanted to talk to you other than apologizing of course,” Billy stepped forward and you let him. He grasped your hands in his before looking into your eyes. 

“Since I told Rosa who is probably going to tell Victor, for which Darla is going to listen in on then she’s going to tell everyone, I wanted to ask you if would you like to come over and meet my family?” 

“I thought you would never ask,” you smiled, you were still mad at Billy but this moment could not be ruined by it. 

Billy leaned in, his eyes fluttering shut, and his head tilted one side. You copied his movements automatically to go in for a kiss. But fate had to mess it up. 

You heard a gasp from the doorway. As soon as the door opened it was then slammed shut.

“If you guys are going to do anything in our room please close the door so I know,” Freddie called from behind the closed door

You laughed as Billy turned a deep shade red. 

“Let’s try that again,” Billy turned to you, slipping his hand behind your neck before pushing his lips against yours. The kiss felt as if it was the full apology that Billy couldn’t get through with his words and that’s all you needed. You will forgive and not forget, but in this moment you would.

There had been mistakes made along the way to Billy coming out but he was glad that they were made. He would have never fully appreciated the gravity of the situation if there was none made. Billy was fully content that he could keep his family and the love of his life, you.

MASTERLIST 

Request by @lavieroses-blog​

[imjustthemechanic]

The Price of a Soul

Part 1/? - Agent Russel Part 2/? - The Letter Part 3/? - Miss Lake Part 4/? - The Stewardess Part 5/? - An Assassination Part 6/? - Fallout Part 7/? - Face to Face Part 8/? - Deals, Details, and Other Devils Part 9/? - Baggage Part 10/? - Private Funding Part 11/? - Just Passing Through Part 12/? - Party of Four Part 13/? - Resolute Part 14/? - The Wreck

They find the plane - and Miss Lake definitely knows something she’s not telling yet.

-

Peggy would not have expected dogsled to be a very comfortable way to travel, and it was not – to somebody used to the solid bulk of aeroplanes and automobiles, this comparatively rickety contraption felt like it would be shaken to bits underneath her.  The wind was bitter on her face and the cold bit into her fingers and toes, numbing them.  Yet they covered the ground remarkably quickly, and there was the exuberance of the dogs, who were doing what they’d been born to do and clearly having a marvelous time at it.

Lake was certainly enjoying herself, laughing and calling out “mush!” as she tried to make their sled pull ahead of Howard and Jason’s.  It was enough to make Peggy rather resent her.  Who was she to be having fun while they were searching for a dead man?  Lake herself ought to be in New York tracking down Dottie, and then on her way to prison.  She had no right to consider this a holiday.

“Do you know why it’s called mushing?” she leaned down to shout in Peggy’s ear, over the whistle of the wind.

“I don’t!” Peggy replied.  “Why?”

“Because when the French settlers learned it from the Iroquois, they would order their dogs to marche!” said Lake.  “And the English are terrible at French, so they pronounced it mush, and that’s what it’s been ever since!”

It also took far longer to get to the site by sled than it had by plane.  As mile upon mile of icy wasteland rolled by, Peggy began to wonder if they were going in the wrong direction.  They need only start out off-course by a few minutes of arc and they would miss the place by miles.  But Howard and Jason had their map and their compass and they would stop repeatedly to check.  Peggy had to have faith in them.

The first sign that they were on the right track was when they came to the open path in the ice that the narwhals had been using yesterday.  There were none there today, though from a distance they spotted the tall black fin of an orca.  They had to make a bit of a detour to find a place where it closed over enough for the dogs and sleds to cross, and Peggy didn’t dare look down as they passed over.

“Unicorns are supposed to like beautiful young virgins,” said Lake cheerfully.

“Is that why they left?” asked Peggy.  She was not a virgin, and no longer particularly young, either, nor would she have flattered herself by saying she was beautiful… and regardless of her age or charms, Peggy was quite certain Lake did not meet the unicorn’s standards, either.

Lake giggled.  “No, I was thinking of them leading the way to Captain America!”

“I see.”  Steve had certainly been young and beautiful… even before Erskine’s serum he’d had the most angelic face.  His virginity was none of Lake’s business, though, so Peggy did not comment on it.

“This should be it coming up!” said Howard.

The sun was behind them, with their own long shadows stretching ahead across the snow, and the landscape beyond blindingly white. It was impossible to make out any detail.  Even the point where the snow met the sky was a little uncertain.  Peggy tried cupping her hands around her face to block out as much light as possible but that really did nothing… and then there it was. The flash of sunlight on exposed metal.

“There!” she exclaimed.  “A little to the south!”

As they drew closer, they found themselves approaching a tiny rocky island sticking out of the ice, no bigger than a block of Manhattan. There was not a single sign of life there, not even a bird or a patch of moss.  Against the harsh sunlight, the exposed rocks looked black as coal… but not all of them, Peggy realized, were rocks.  Some of them were too flat, or had ragged edges that did not look like they were made of stone, and then there was that thing the sun kept shining on.

She couldn’t take it anymore.  They were still a hundred yards off when Peggy threw aside the blanket covering her legs, rolled off the sled, and ran ahead.  As she moved the reflection pulsed rhythmically off slats of unpainted metal, and she realized what she was seeing… the immense fan of one of the Valkyrie’s jet engines, caught on the rocks and half-covered in snow.  Every time her angle changed, a different surface caught the sunlight.

The barking of the dogs and the shouting of her companions faded into the background as Peggy climbed the icy rocks to start brushing snow off the engine housing.  Under the soft layer that had most recently fallen was more that had hardened into rough ice.  Peggy beat this with her fist to crack it, and when her mittens couldn’t get a grip on the edges she took them off and used her bare fingers.  Pieces came away, revealing the metal underneath painted matte black, but with a symbol picked out in a higher gloss.  She couldn’t uncover very much of it… but it was enough to see the end of a tentacle.

“Peg!” Howard called out from below.  “What have you got?”

She blinked away tears, and looked to see the sleds come to a half at the foot of the rocky slope she’d just climbed.  Lake was kneeling in the snow reassuring the animals, while Howard and Jason looked expectantly up at Peggy.

“This is it!” she said.  “It has to be.  This is the Valkyrie… at least part of it!”

“I told you so!” Lake declared – but she didn’t sound mocking or gloating.  She was as delighted as they were.  She kissed a dog’s nose and told it what a very good girl it was, and then grabbed a shovel off the sled, paused to take in the position of the sun, and paced out a distance across uneven ice to the west of the shattered engine.

She had described seeing Steve’s body in the ice. She must know exactly where he was.

Peggy tried to slide back down the slope, but lost her footing and tumbled, coming to rest in a heap among the rocks.  Jason helped her up, and she murmured a thank you before seizing an ice pick and running after Lake.  The men joined them moments later, and they all set to work on the layers of snow.

The ice here was far thicker than it had been on the engine, and cutting through it was back-breaking.  Despite the cold, all four of them were soon removing hats and mittens as they sweated with the exertion.  Peggy could see in Howard’s eyes that he wanted to take a break, but when she offered him one, he refused.  He was stubborn enough to keep working as long as everybody else did.  Peggy certainly wasn’t going to stop yet, and Lake was digging like a woman possessed.

“Aha!” Howard said, and grabbed Jason’s write to stop him digging.  “Look! Look at that!  Peggy, move, you’re casting a shadow.”

She moved to the side, and the sunlight fell on the ice below them.  It was cloudy and cracked, and very difficult to see anything through but a vague white haze. When Howard pointed it out, however, Peggy saw it – a smear of red.

That reinvigorated everybody.  They resumed their work, more carefully now, since they didn’t want to chop right through and damage the body they’d come here to find. But the time they simply had to stop, they could see enough to know that Steve’s body was there exactly as Lake had described it – lying on his back against the top of the plane, eyes closed, his shield on his left arm and some small object clutched in his right hand.  His legs were not visible yet, but there was no sign that he was anything but entirely whole.

As the sun passed overhead, clouds blew in and the wind became bitter.  They made camp in the old polar bear den beneath the Valkyrie’s torn-off wing, which hadn’t had any bears in it for a very long time and was surprisingly warm even before they got a little stove lit to warm up coffee and supper. There, it was time to discuss what they were going to do next.

“Somebody needs to go back to the plane and radio Stark Industries with our location,” said Howard.  “They can send more helpers and better transportation.  Something that can land on the ice,” he added, with a nod to Lake.  “Guess that better be me.”  He looked at the opening of the den, and Peggy could see that he didn’t want to leave. After so long searching for Steve, and having finally found him, he was afraid that if he took his eyes off the crash site, it would vanish.

“I’ll go,” said Jason.  “It can’t be Miss Lake because she’ll never come back, and you two have more invested in this than I do.  People at the company know who I am and they’ll know the message is from you.”

“Perfect!”  Howard grinned, relieved.  “You can give them Peggy’s coordinates, they’re close enough to let them find the place, and we’ll wave them in.  Tell them we need something that can land on ice but that can lift… I’m gonna say at least two to four tons.  It’ll depend on how much of the ice we can get off him.  And we’ll need a ship with a big freezer on board.  We don’t want him thawing out before we can get him embalmed.”

Peggy nodded, glad Howard had thought of that because she couldn’t bear to.  She didn’t feel quite so terrible as she’d feared she might, but the initial triumph of actually finding the wreck had worn off, and she felt drained, as if she could curl up in here and sleep for a hundred years like Rip Van Winkle. There was a part of her that was sad she could no longer fantasize about Steve’s miraculous return, but mostly she was just relieved.  This time it really was over, and she would never have to say goodbye to him again.

That was exactly what Daniel had said, wasn’t it? That as long as Peggy didn’t know for sure where Steve was, he would always haunt her.  Now at long last, she could truly lay him to rest and move on.

Jason tipped the last of his coffee down his throat and stuffed a piece of tinned pork roast in his mouth.  “You want me to come back after I’ve delivered the message, or stay in Resolute with the plane?” he asked.

“Better stay there,” Howard replied.  “If they can’t find us they’ll find you, and you can lead them back out here.”

“Got it.”  Jason crawled towards the den exit.

“You’re going right now?” asked Peggy.

“The sooner I get there, the less time you have to spend out here in the middle of nowhere,” Jason pointed out.

“And the sooner you get a real meal again,” said Howard.

“Exactly.”  Jason smiled. “Good luck.”

“You as well,” Peggy managed.

It was about twenty minutes later, after Jason had no doubt vanished from view, that Howard reached into his own backpack and pulled out a bottle of bourbon.  “Damn,” he said.  “I was so caught up I forgot I brought this… doesn’t seem right to open it when we’re not all here.”

“Save it for when we’ve got Steve on the ship home,” Peggy decided.

“Then there’ll be more people who want some,” Howard complained.

“You can share,” said Peggy.  “For now… it’ll probably take a couple of days at least for your people to get here, so we just need to hunker down.”  It would have made more sense, really, for them all to return to Resolute, but she did not suggest that.  She didn’t want to leave any more than Howard did.  “It’ll give us time to think about other things.” Things Peggy wasn’t sure she wanted to think about quite yet, but which needed to be dealt with.

“Yeah.”  Howard stared thoughtfully at their little camp stove.  “He wouldn’t have wanted anybody trying to take him apart and see how he worked.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Peggy agreed.  Whatever else he’d been, Steve was, above all, a human being, and they needed to remember him as that, not as the subject of an experiment.

“So we’ll make sure nobody can,” Howard said. “We’ll have to cremate him… we’ll have a public viewing first, because everybody will want to come pay their respects, but after that… and we’ll scatter his ashes at Ebbet’s Field.”

“Where the Brooklyn Dodgers play,” Peggy said with a nod, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.  “That’s perfect… that’s exactly what he’d want.”

Howard looked at the bottle again, then tucked it back in his bag and raised his tin coffee cup instead.  “To Steve.”

“To Steve,” said Peggy, tapping hers against it.

“To Captain America,” Lake agreed with a glance at Peggy.

Peggy sipped her coffee, then looked at Lake.  Their uninvited guide had been full of energy earlier, probably working harder than any of them despite being the smallest. Since they’d stopped work for the day, however, she’d said very little.  As Jason was leaving she’d gone out to bring the rest of the dogs into the den with them, so that the animals’ body heat could help keep the space warm, but other than that she’d been quiet and still, as if thinking deeply about something.

“What about you?” Peggy asked her.

“What about me?” Lake said.

“Well, what are you planning to do next?”

“I’ve got an extensive to-do list.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Peggy swallowed hard to get all of her pride down in one lump before saying, “thank you. For leading me to him.”

Lake shook her head.  “Don’t thank me yet.”

“Oh, no?” asked Peggy.

“No.  You’ll know when.”  She gave Peggy a weak but apparently sincere smile.  “Trust me.”

[jwillowwolf]

Magic and Miracles - Chapter 3

Sanders Sides Big Bang fic, Chapter 3! < Previous Chapter | Next Chapter > | Masterlist Summary: “Remy? Remy? Remington? Oi, Remy, wake up!” Virgil said, shaking the snoring man.

“Huh? Where’s the dragon?”

“Here,” Janus answered.

“Eh? Oh, hey Snake-Eye, Wolfie, Lo, Violent.”

Virgil rolled his eyes. “You weren’t responding to the gentle shaking.”

“That’s no reason to make a man think there’s an earthquake.” Warning/s: food mention. Characters: Logan, Remy, OC, Virgil, Roman, Remus, Patton, Janus. Tag List:@theimprobabledreamersworld @remy-please-come-back

Read on AO3

3 | Lessons Begin

Waking up, walking to the dining hall, and eating breakfast had been uneventful. Logan felt like the atmosphere was relatively peaceful despite the tension from last night. Then again, everyone was still rather groggy from sleep, so he wasn’t going to make any assumptions yet.

Once the seven students had reached the classroom though, they seemed much more awake, aware, and eager to learn about the mysteries behind magic. They all sat at the desks they had claimed the day before and waited silently as Remy came into the room. Remy looked at them with a raised eyebrow.

“Are you all in trouble already? I’ve never known kids to be quiet without adults shouting for them to be so… never mind, let’s get this lesson started. The first spell that all young magic users should know is Stat Check. Do you know what that is?”

The class shook their heads no.

“Good! Because it’s meant to be a closely guarded secret. Never written down or spoken of among anyone but wizards and their first-year apprentices. Before I can even teach it to you, you need to solemnly swear to me that you shall guard this secret as fiercely as all mages before you.”

“That seems rather dramatic,” Janus commented.

“This is magic we’re talking about! Of course, it’s dramatic,” Remy said with a grin. “Now, swear that you’ll keep this secret locked inside your soul.”

The class did as Remy asked, with a bit of speculation but agreement all the same. Unfortunately, I can not repeat the spell, but I can tell you that it is activated by holding a finger to your wrist and saying the ‘activation’ word which I shall from here on censor as ‘stats’.

Remy demonstrated the spell and once he said stats a sheet of light projected from his wrist. Written on the sheet of light was:

Remington Animosni

Titles: Lord Animosni, Friend of the Crown, Expert Wizard, +...

MP: 52 - Full

HP: 100 - Full

Skills: Magic, Potion Making, Charisma, +...

“So this is your main status board,” Remy explained. “It shows your name, titles, MP aka magic points, HP aka health points, and skills. You can interact with it by tapping on whatever to expand the information on it.”

Remy demonstrated this by tapping on the title Expert Wizard, which caused the screen to change to this:

Expert Wizard.

Title earned by increasing MP above 45. Perks: increased HP. Drawbacks: none.

“This is how you can better understand your own magical capacity and skill set. If you want to view your stats privately, then just say S stats. If you want to see someone else’s stats then say X stats while pointing your wrist at the person you want to check. You will only be able to see their name, HP, and MP, but that’s still good to know if you’re perhaps fighting them.”

“Why would magic-users fight one another?” Patton asked.

Remy sighed. “The world is a complicated place, Pat. But never mind that. Try checking your stats, everyone.”

The students nodded then tried out the spells for themselves. All opting to view their stats privately. Logan opened his and read it critically.

Logan Picani

Titles: Loyal Friend, Loving Son, Apprentice Wizard.

MP: 10 - full

HP: 40 - full

Skills: Magic, Baking, Student, +...

He raised an eyebrow curiously and tapped on the skill Student.

Student.

Level: 23/100

Rare Skill. Perks: faster reading and comprehension, easily picks up new skills. Drawbacks: none.

That seems like a good skill to have. Logan wondered if it was the reason for his ability to teach himself so well. He tapped the word again and the screen changed back to the main status board. Then he tapped onto the title Apprentice Wizard.

Apprentice Wizard.

Title Earned by unlocking the skill Magic. Perks: MP access. Drawbacks: HP conversion.

“Um, Mr Ainmosni?”

“It’s Remy, kid. What’s up?”

“What does the drawback HP conversion mean?”

“Ah, well, if you run out of MP during casting a spell, then your HP will automatically be turned into MP. This is a drawback because it can mean draining your HP to below five, which causes you to fall unconscious and die if it reaches zero.” Remy explained.

“Isn’t there a way to stop that from happening?” Willow asked.

Remy shook his head. “It’s an automatic drawback that comes with becoming an apprentice wizard. There’s no way to stop it apart from being conscious of what spells you’re using and how much MP they take. Calculating this will hopefully help you to keep from draining yourselves, so keep that in mind when you’re trying out new spells, kay?”

Everyone nodded.

“Okay, now that you’re more familiar with your stats, let’s do a quick assessment of your magical knowledge, shall we? What are the basic magical categories… Virgil?”

“Rock, animals, water, plants, fire, air, healing, and mind.”

“Correct. Logan, why do these categories exist?”

“They are the eight-core magics. All spells fall under at least one category, and depending on which there will be a different Initiation Word.”

“Correct. Willow, what are the eight Initiation Words?”

“Mowntayn for rock, Pawyng for animal, Ignyght for fire, Groh for plants, um... Rayne for water, Stahwynd for air, Embraes for healing, and... Wysdome for mind.”

“Right. Janus, how is a spell cast?”

“You say the initiation word, draw whatever runes are necessary, then end off with the sealing word.”

“Good. Patton, why do we use runes?”

“The runes represent what specific spell you want to cast.”

“Yep. Remus, how many runes are there?”

“A million?”

“Close enough. Roman, what is the sealing word?”

“Solhart.”

“Correct! Now,” Remy grinned. “Let’s get to the tough stuff.”

The following days were pretty much the same as this one. The class either revised what basics they knew or Remy explained what they didn’t know. They practised pronunciation, studied runes, and learnt about different potion ingredients. Within the first month, the kids had pretty much memorised the basics of magic.

Logan had visited home every weekend and told his dad and Everleigh about it all, but his eagerness from that first week seemed to be slowly wearing out as the class did nothing new. He had thought that today was going to be the same, but instead of leading the students to the classroom this morning, Remy led them to the gardens.

“Uh, Remy? Where are we going?” Roman asked.

“Today, you kids will be going on your first quest,” Remy announced.

The group perked up. “Quest?”

“Yep. I’m confident in your understanding of basic magic, so I am going to let you go off on your own to find some potion ingredients for our first potion making class.”

Remy pulled out seven different pieces of paper. “I’ve made each of you a checklist for what we will need, and while you all have different items, I hope you’ll work together to find what you need. Oh, and before I send you off, I need to teach you a new spell. Inventory.”

Remy stopped and the kids circled around him to watch as he demonstrated the new spell. He picked up a stone and held it in front of him. “Stawynd.” with the indigo light that flowed from his fingertip, he drew a rune that looked like a locked box onto the stone. “Solhart.”

The rune turned white and then vanished with the stone, causing the students to gasp.

“Where did it go?”

“Right here.”

Remy opened his status board and showed the kids a small icon in the corner of the screen that looked like the rune he had drawn. He tapped on this icon and the screen changed to show a bunch of different slots, mostly empty apart from two. One with a picture of Remy’s flask and the other a picture of the stone from before.

“This is an inventory,” Remy explained. “You can put different items into each slot, and depending on your proficiency you will have more or fewer slots. To add items to your inventory, you do as I did to the stone. And to take them back out, you just double-tap,” Remy tapped the stone and it reappeared in his hand. “Tada! Okay, you try with your lists.”

Everyone tried out the new spell and practised it a few times before Remy let them all go on their quest. They went out a gate by the fence that seemed almost hidden and set off into the deep dark woods. Of course, it wasn’t very dark since the sun was shining brightly in the sky, and filtered through the trees to light their way.

“Should we check what each of our individual lists says?” Logan asked.

Patton nodded agreeingly. “Yeah, then we can keep an eye out for the different things.”

“Actually, I think we should just look for our own stuff. More things to look out for means we might miss our own.” Roman said.

Willow frowned. “But this is meant to be a group project.”

“Technically, Remy said he hoped we’d work together.” Remus pointed out.

“I have an idea,” Janus suggested. “Let’s work in teams.”

Roman rolled his eyes. “I just said that would be hard.”

“I mean smaller teams. One team works individually and the other works together, then we’ll see which way is better.”

“How are we going to split up though? There are seven of us.” Virgil pointed out.

“We can have a team of four for the working-together group. That’s four people working together but also the team of three will have fewer things to find, so It works out fairly.”

“Well, how are we choosing teams then?” Patton asked.

“Well, obviously I would be one of the team leaders. I’m a natural-born leader.” Roman declared.

“Yes, the leader of the losing team, because I’ll be leading the winning team.” Janus states.

“Remus and Patton are with me, and we’ll be the individuals.”

“Sounds good. We’ll see you three later then.” Janus said before walking away from the group.

Virgil, Logan, and Willow followed after them till the four were out of earshot. “So, lists?”

“I have blackroot, ginfleck, and wild ginger,” Willow reported.

Virgil frowned. “What’s ginfleck?”

“A medicinal herb used commonly in potions for stomach aches,” Logan replied. “It looks like a sunflower but pink.”

“Why not call it a pink sunflower then?”

“Because… I honestly don’t know.”

“Logan, you live nearby here right?” Janus asked.

“In town, but yes.”

“Any idea where we could find some of this?”

“Well, I think I remember seeing a ginfleck patch somewhere along the road.”

“Let’s go there first then. We can keep an eye out for everything else along the way.” Virgil said, turning in the direction of the road.

And so they went and collected the pink sunflowers and everything else on their lists. It was only late afternoon by the time they returned to the house, but they found Remy lying on a hammock in the garden, napping in the sun.

“Remy? Remy? Remington? Oi, Remy, wake up!” Virgil said, shaking the snoring man.

“Huh? Where’s the dragon?”

“Here,” Janus answered.

“Eh? Oh, hey Snake-Eye, Wolfie, Lo, Violent.”

Virgil rolled his eyes. “You weren’t responding to the gentle shaking.”

“That’s no reason to make a man think there’s an earthquake.”

“Whatever. Have the others come back yet?”

Remy shrugged. “I think the twins are in the house.”

“Patton wasn’t with them?” Willow asked.

“No. Did you all split up?”

“Yes, but we didn’t think they would split up. We divided ourselves into two teams.” Janus stated.

“Well, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about and Pat will be back soon. Why don’t you guys head inside and get some lunch.” Remy suggested.

The kids exchanged anxious glances but nodded and headed off to the dining room. While they were not exactly a close group of friends, the one person who’d befriended each of them was Patton. He was a kind little ball of sunshine and no one wanted any harm to come to him. Once they were inside the house, the four found Remus worriedly pacing by the door and Roman gloomily watching her from the corner.

Remus paused. “Did you guys see Patton?”

“No. Did the three of you split up?”

“I thought we could cover more ground that way,” Roman answered. “This is all my fault.”

“Let’s not go jumping to conclusions just yet,” Logan said. “Maybe he couldn’t find one of his items?”

“No. I saw Pat’s list before we split up. They were three common types of wild berries that he could have found easily.” Remus declared.

“You’re sure?” Willow asked.

“I saw them all over while I was getting my stuff.”

“He must be lost. It’s rather easy with how thick these woods are,” Virgil said.

“We need to find him,” Janus declared. “We’ve got to go back and look for him.”

“Where and how though? He could be anywhere,” Roman said with clear fear in his tone.

“Willow can track him. They’ve been trained in finding lost people.”

“Yeah, but I’d need a scent to go off of.”

“Like from clothes?” Remus asked.

“Clothes, or a personal item he keeps close.”

Remus ran away then returned in record time with a teal blanket. “Would this work?”

Willow took the item and smelt it. “Yes, this is perfect.”

“We might have to sneak past Remy, in case he tries to stop us.” Janus said.

“There’s another gate that’s closer to the house that we can get through.” Virgil declared.

“Who’s we though? We’re going to need to choose who is a part of this rescue.” Roman pointed out.

“I don’t think any of us are willing to stay behind, not if we could help. Patton may be in danger, and his getting lost is evidence enough that no one should venture off on their own. We need to work as a team here. A real team.” Logan stated.

Janus looked at the twins. “I’m willing to call a truce in the name of teamwork if you are.”

Roman nodded in agreement and Remus grinned. “Let’s go save Pat!”

The group followed Virgil outside and through the second hidden gate. From there, Willow took the lead as she sniffed out Patton’s scent. The group grew anxious the further Willow led them. Patton had gone quite far, from the looks of it, but it felt like something was wrong.

“Why would he have gone so far?” Logan wondered.

“I hate to suggest it, but something may have chased him,” Janus said and Willow nodded agreeingly.

“Wouldn’t that leave a scent of its own?”

“Yes, but I can’t discern anything. There are a lot of smells out here.”

“Can you smell anything?” Roman asked Janus.

“No. I can’t smell at all.”

“What?”

“I’m a dragon. We don’t have a sense of smell like humans do. We use a special organ on the roof of our mouths.”

“Aren’t you half-human?”

“That just makes it easier to shift between my humanoid and dragon form. There aren’t many other differences.”

“Wait, do you hear that?”

The team paused and listened. The only sounds Logan could make out were the normal ambience of the forest. But then he heard it.

“Hello? Is anyone up there?”

“Patton?!” Remus bolted towards the voice, the others followed him close behind.

He came to stop at the edge of a hole and looked down. “Patton? How did you get down there?”

“Remus! Hi! I jumped.”

“You jumped? From this height?” Janus asked, eyeing the drop disapprovingly.

The hole looked like the beginnings of a well, around three stories deep and some stones piled like a wall around the one side. Either the well-maker had abandoned their project halfway, or half of the well had mysteriously been taken away. That wasn’t important though, because right now the team had to figure out how to get Patton back up.

“I’m fine! The water was here to break my fall!”

“Why did you jump in the first place?” Roman demanded.

“I was being chased by some bees.” Patton sheepishly admitted. “My mom always told me, if that happens then you should get below water, quickly. Bees don’t like water.”

“How did you antagonise these bees?” Logan inquired.

“I was trying to get some honey for Remus.”

“Aw, Pat, that’s really sweet. But I’ve been worried sick about where you went!”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. You’re safe now. Um, how do we get him back up though?” Remus asked the group.

“I can grow a long strong vine to use as rope for us to hoist him up,” Roman suggested.

Janus nodded. “Well then, get to growing. We don’t have all day.”

Roman quickly did as he was told and once the vine-rope looked long enough the team tossed one end down to Patton. Each of them lined up and held onto the other end then pulled to get him out of the hole. With all six of them working together, it was a quick and easy task. Once Patton was clear of the well, Remus attacked him with a hug, and he thanked everyone for coming to rescue him.

The entire group was relieved to have him back. So relieved that they didn’t feel any worry, until they returned to the manor and came face to face with Remy.

“Do you have any idea how worried I was? You didn’t even suggest you were going out! And what do I find? Not only one of my students is missing- all of them are! Gone without a trace! Like, poof, never there! What were you thinking? Actually, scratch that were you even thinking?!”

He went on like that until dinner time and the kids decided that among all the lessons they’d learned today, ‘Don’t Freak Remy Out’, is now at the top. Also, maybe it would be better to stick together than separate. They made a good team when their prejudices weren’t getting in the way. But above all, they should never freak Remy out.

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A/N: thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this. I'll be posting two chapters a day until the full fic is up, so if you want to be tagged, you can just ask.

I'd love to hear what you thought about the chapter if you wouldn't mind commenting. Thanks again for reading! Here's hoping you have a magical day 💜

[nyadversary]

asking since your harry potter post was really interesting and made me wonder - are there any magic systems you really like or think are well-constructed and consistent? what are the traits of a good magic system?

oh i definitely don’t feel qualified to make any broad statements about what makes a magic system Good, it depends so heavily on what kind of story you’re trying to tell. i do want to say more about why i think the magic system in HP is ultimately bad though, and i have at least one example of a system i like to compare it with. under cut

very very��early on in the HP series — i’m talking about the first few chapters of book 1 — we get the impression that magical ability does symbolize something? like think about how the series opens. the first chapter of the first book follows vernon dursley, a man who lives an extremely mundane life, likes it that way, and is highly perturbed by anything unusual happening or by anyone who seems out of the ordinary. he’s, what, CEO of a drill company or something? some comically boring but well-paying job. petunia is a housewife who passes the time spying on the neighbors. their infant son is already being spoiled and treated more like a prized possession than a human being. and these people hate anything they think is weird, which of course includes anything to do with magic. the dursleys know for a fact magic is real and it pisses them off and they hate it. 

when harry is left at their doorstep, mcgonagall protests and says the dursleys could not possibly have less in common with magical people like them. either she or hagrid says something to the effect that the dursleys are the biggest muggles around, which stuck with me because it implies that magical ability lies on a spectrum and the dursleys, who are outright opposed to anything the slightest bit unusual, are the furthest from magical anybody can be. this implies all sorts of things about what magic could represent for the series going forward — creativity, rejection of social norms, etc. — and, since these people are harry’s only living blood relatives but he winds up finding community for the first time once meeting other witches and wizards, it appears to be setting up a found family theme. which all sounds perfectly good, and people will still cite this as being a theme of the books. the main problem with that is it isn’t the intended theme going forward at all. 

JKR’s weird obsession with blood lineage honestly needs to be unpacked in a whole other post and i don’t think i’m the guy to do it but... obviously as the series goes on, the importance of blood family gets underlined again and again. it turns out harry is being protected by some sort of sacred maternal blood magic (which is never explained) and this is why he has to live with the dursleys, people he hates and has nothing in common with. the fact that they’re his blood relatives trumps anything else. magical ability generally is passed down within families, and in the later books much time is spent going over various magical lineages (voldemort’s family, dumbledore’s family, sirius’ family, the malfoy family, the hogwarts founders and their descendants, etc...). any notions of magic symbolizing creativity is undermined by the lack of actual creativity in how the magic is presented going forward (like i said in the other post, it winds up serving mainly utilitarian functions in the story) and as for rejecting the status quo, the series embraces the status quo. the happy ending the characters work 7 books to achieve just has everything “returning to normal” — voldemort is killed and the remaining death eaters dealt with, the ministry gets a new PM, hogwarts gets a new headmaster, and things continue on as they were before. issues of systemic injustice are left unaddressed, the subplots about magical beings fighting for full personhood status (centaurs, merpeople, house elves, etc) are left unresolved, slytherin house is allowed to continue on as an institution and presumably many wizards are still just as bigoted towards muggle-borns as they always were, and — oh yeah — the idea that muggles are innately inferior somehow? never explained or addressed. the takeway is just that if you can’t do magic, you suck. it’s so disappointing. all the pieces are there for a way better story (hey guys i think there might be some systemic problems with your magic school and your magic government do you wanna try fixing that maybe?) but JKR was never gonna write that story because it’s one she doesn’t believe in.

to summarize how magic works in harry potter just so i can really make it clear how boring it is:

magic ability is innate and the vast majority of people lack it. with relatively few exceptions, the ability runs in families — it’s rare for someone without magical ancestry to have the ability and it’s also rare for someone with magical ancestry to not have the ability

with only a few exceptions, all wizards are able to learn all spells. some wizards are stated to be unusually powerful but how much of this is due to raw magical potential and how much comes down to other factors like education, general intelligence and ability/willingness to learn, desire to cause harm in the case of the unforgivables, etc is unclear. some magical abilities, like being able to speak parseltongue or being a metamorphmagus (or whatever the fuck shapeshifters are called in this series) or being a seer, are innate and can’t be learned by most wizards. like magic itself, whether or not you have any extra ability seems to be genetic (these are all traits we know run in families)

in order to perform magic, devices like wands, cauldrons, etc are used as instruments or vessels to direct the user’s innate powers. there is no summoning, channeling, or ritual use involved and spells typically only go wrong if the wizard in question is inexperienced or something is wrong with their wand. with very few exceptions (the main one i can think of is divination, which is handled very ambiguously and most of what trelawney teaches is implied to be complete crap), magic works in very predictable and straightforward ways

so it all boils down to “you’re either a wizard or you aren’t, and you almost certainly aren’t unless you come from a magic family, but if you are — good news! you have basically the same abilities as any other wizard. don’t worry there’s nothing even vaguely pagan involved.”

which, like. how utterly dull. there are so many other ways one can approach these issues and nearly all of them that i can think of / have seen done are more interesting than this:

you could have a magic system where magical ability is much more specialized. instead of all magic users being all capable of more or less the same stuff, let’s say person A, B, and C are all magic users but each has a unique magical ability (say A can fly, B can talk to animals, C can become invisible) and, while they might be able to develop their individual talents and become stronger, they can’t learn each other’s skills. charlie bone, which is a crap series overall but which i do think has a more interesting magic system, falls into this category, as does a lot of superhero stuff although it’s generally not called “magic” in those stories.

another, similar, approach would be to have more specialized branches of magic that characters train under — say pyromancy, necromancy, etc. — and so, while it might be possible for a water mage to learn a fire spell or two, characters have much more individualized skillsets. RPG magic tends to be this, obviously. harry potter kind of vaguely gestures in the direction of this trope in that the professors obviously specialize in their particular subjects, but it’s not as if snape doesn’t know charms or whatever — it doesn’t amount to much of anything in practice as all the adult characters are capable of performing a diverse range of spells.

how does one wind up with the ability to do magic in the first place? is it innate, and, if so, is it random or does it run in families? is it associated with any other traits? are there drawbacks to being a magic user? can non-magical people acquire the ability to do magic through some other means, and, if so, does this represent an irreversible change? are magic users really “human” or are they something more? are non-magic users lesser? is there any loss of humanity associated with magical ability? do magic users channel their own innate power or are they channeling something else — if so, is it a godlike entity, demonic, or does it defy moral classification? is there “good” magic and “bad” magic, and, if so, is the delineation clear? if these are different branches of magic, are they wholly distinct in how they work or is there overlap? etc, etc, etc.

ultimately i don’t think anyone should be worried about finding the most unique combination of these tropes, because they’ve literally all been done 10 billion times — if i started off listing popular examples of how these tropes are handled in other media pandemic will have ended before i’m done. what’s important is how writers choose to handle these questions when telling their story. like, what does magic mean to the characters? what does their use of magic say about them? what does magic symbolize? etc... these are opportunities for the story to have Themes and Meaning and impart something to its audience! tbh i think it really says something that the magic in harry potter is so ultimately unimportant to the story that people didn’t bother asking the usual questions about what magic itself / the magic system might symbolize... if you look at what rowling might actually be trying to say with any of that, well, it’s not good.

i guess to end off with an example i like. in the bartimaeus trilogy, which is an extremely good YA series and i highly recommend, magic ability isn’t innate at all. magic in this universe is all done via summoning “demons” (energy beings from another plane of existence basically) and binding them to one’s will, which as you might expect is very dangerous if you fuck it up and summoning is on such extreme levels of academic bullshit that you basically have to study your entire life to do it safely (learning dead languages, being able to draw elaborate pentacles with perfect accuracy, etc etc). in practice, this means magic is something only the ruling class does / can afford to do. anyone in any significant position of power is a wizard, while everyone else — the “commoners” — is a second-class citizen under the thumb of what are essentially superpowered politicians. while the fact that magic exists isn’t a secret, the majority of commoners have no idea how it actually works, that it’s really just summoning and anyone can learn it. they’re being encouraged to think of wizards as innately superior/gifted and to defer to them as their betters. yknow, Or Else. there’s much more i could say about this but it’d wind up being its own post and i’d probably have to just break down the entire plot of the trilogy, but i think from what i’ve said you get a sense of the themes / commentary here. 

this has run long but point being, magic systems Can be used to say something about the story and the characters and to make some sort of thematic point or provide social commentary perhaps, and i think it’s cool when they do. harry potter tries its best to avoid having the magic mean anything and when you do try and analyze what it means, you just get a story about how some people are just way better and cooler than others because of. uh. their blood. so rather than further unpacking that suitcase i say you could just throw it away and, as they say, read another book

[sojourner-between-worlds]

Why the Idea of Disabled Jesus is Heretical

(Or, at best, a gross misinterpretation of Scripture. But really, it's heresy.)

@aspiringautistic asked on this post from my side blog: "what would be so harmful if there were people who perceived jesus as disabled?" and I am happy to oblige in expanding on those thoughts (though since the answer has little to do with autism and everything to do with Christianity in general, I thought it more appropriate to answer here on main). In case you hadn't prior seen the linked post and don't feel like clicking through, the short of it is this: the Gospel Coalition recently published an article in which the author, Andrew Abernethy, argued that Jesus was disabled. I'm here to tell you where he went wrong.

Hold on to your hats, folks. This is a long post.

(All Scripture quotations taken from the ESV translation.)

1. Disabilities are a result of the Fall. Before I get into anything else, I need to make this point abundantly clear. While being disabled does not dictate worth and it is not an indication of personal sin, it is still not how we are meant to be. Adam and Eve were created in the likeness of God, and were, therefore, created without sin or any of the things that came with sin. They were perfect -- at least until they disobeyed (Genesis 2-3). Sometimes people ask "if there is a God, why do bad things happen?" and the answer is because we live in a sin-cursed world. Disabilities, illness, and death itself exist because Adam and Eve sinned. (Romans 5:12: "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.")

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2. Old Testament laws regarding sacrifices. The Old Testament Law is very specific when talking about what makes an acceptable sacrifice. There are a lot of different types (everything from bulls to grain), but the relevant ones to this discussion are sacrifices made for the atonement of sins. 

There are two categories of sacrifices made for sin: sin offerings made for unintentional sins, and burnt offerings made for sin in general. Burnt offerings and sin offerings both ranged from bulls to doves (or flour for the latter, if nothing else could be afforded) and sin offerings varied depending on both the person and the sin as well (Leviticus 1, 4-5). But all of the animals sacrificed had two instructions about them in common: that they be "without blemish", and that the sinner must place their hand on the head of the animal. The difference between the two was that a sin offering was required as an act of repentance and a burnt offering was voluntary. In the case of burnt offerings, the requirements for bulls and sheep or goats are laid out very plainly: "a male without blemish" (1:3, 10). 

In addition to all of this, once a year, on the Day of Atonement, one bull and two male goats would be sacrificed for the people to remove their sins (Leviticus 16; only one goat was killed; the other was sent away, symbolizing the removal of sin). Again, these animals had to be without blemish, just as all the others. The person offering the sacrifice was to place their hand on the head of the animal. The action of placing their hand was symbolic: it was a way of showing that the person's sin was being "transferred" to the animal so that the animal could take the person's place and receive the punishment for sin instead. "Without blemish" meant that it couldn't be sickly or diseased or crippled in any way. It had to be as close to perfect as was possible in a sin-cursed world because anything less than perfect had to die for its own imperfections. 

Because these sacrifices could never be truly perfect, they had to be repeated, but all of this was pointing to the time when Jesus would come as the final sacrifice made for the sins of the world.

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3. Jesus as the final sacrifice. If you know anything about the Christian faith, you know that this is at the heart of everything we believe. Without Jesus, there is no gospel. So here's why that matters to this discussion: 

"But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by the means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Hebrews 9:11-14, emphasis mine). 

This passage in Hebrews (as well as verses preceding and following) are all about how Christ made atonement for us with His death, and how His voluntary sacrifice of Himself is superior to the OT sacrifices. 

So allow me to direct your attention to the bolded phrase above: “offered himself without blemish”. If this sounds familiar, it should, since I talked extensively about this in the point above. “Without blemish” in Leviticus meant to be not crippled or disfigured or ill in any way. If this same phrase is also applied to Christ, then the same must be true. If the OT sacrifices were required to be so, why would the same not apply to the Final Sacrifice that ended the need for sacrifices to be made? It wouldn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. Not when the OT sacrifices were pointing towards Jesus; not when we have a God Who created order and purpose. Jesus had to be perfect to take our places -- and that includes being free of deformities that are a result of a sin-cursed world.

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4. Isaiah 53, misinterpreted at best. This was one of Mr Abernethy’s main points, and it’s one he got disastrously wrong by reading what he wanted into Scripture (eisegesis) rather than letting Scripture say what it says (exegesis). See, the thing about interpreting prophecy is that you have to be careful how you do it, and, just like all Scripture, make sure it’s within the proper context. 

In the case of this chapter of Isaiah, the wider context is that it’s a prediction of Jesus’ suffering on earth and His death. One of the verses he tries to pass off about Jesus being ugly or deformed is the second part of verse 3: “and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” The problem is, this verse and one directly after it are not about his physical appearance at all. They are about emotions and grief: “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteem him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted” (vs. 3-4, emphasis mine). This is about Him bearing our burdens and our rejection of Him anyway. This is a parallel that continues as the chapter moves forward. 

There is only one physical description in this passage that is not related to His death, and it’s the second part of verse 2: “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” And this is the only point that Mr Abernethy got correct: Jesus wasn’t the Hollywood definition of drop-dead gorgeous. He looked like your average Joe. In order to not be conventionally beautiful/handsome, that does not dictate that a person must be deformed or “ugly” in any way. The only thing this verse means is that he didn’t stand out from the crowd with His looks. He didn’t look the way they thought their Savior should. That’s it. That’s all it means.

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5. Tradition isn't truth (no matter how much anyone wants it to be). I have to admit, adding in a section about a so-called “tradition” that’s nigh on impossible to find anything about was brilliant. The average person wouldn’t even bother looking in the first place, and most people who would look, would give up after five or ten minutes of searching. I spent an hour and found exactly nothing on this “tradition” of Jesus being a leper. So you just... have to take Abernethy’s word for it. 

Aside from not being able to find anything on it myself, the argument he uses is faulty anyway. Because tradition doesn’t equal truth, in the first place, especially a tradition that didn’t pop up until the 16th century. There’s no basis for something that apparently wasn’t known until 1400 years after His death. 

Aside from that, he calls on Jerome’s Latin translation of Isaiah 53:4 that translates a phrase as “he was like a leper.” First of all, “like a leper” does not mean He actually was a leper. C’mon, man. Any fifth grader in America could tell you that similes are used for comparisons and aren’t literal. 

Second of all, if you’d like to make a point, it’s a much better idea to go back to the Hebrew manuscripts rather than to any one translation. Now, I don’t know Hebrew myself, but I do have access to a little thing called the Internet, where you can find a plethora of commentaries from people who do know Hebrew. For this particular problem, I went to Albert Barne’s Notes on the Whole Bible. I’m not going to put his whole notes here (because there’s a lot), but if you’d like to read all of his notes, you can search the verse on studylight.org and use the ‘jump to’ feature under the verse to find him, but the bottom line of his notes on it are this: Jesus wasn’t literally being rightfully punished like the Jews would incorrectly think; leprosy was used here as an example because it was seen as a divine punishment for sin. It has nothing to do with literal leprosy at all. 

And to top off this cake of incorrectness... well, has he even read the New Testament? If Jesus had had leprosy, He: a. wouldn’t have been allowed in temples or synagogues, b. wouldn’t have been allowed in towns period, and c. wouldn’t have been nailed to a cross because no one would have risked touching Him in order to do so. Abernethy shouldn’t have even brought this up in his argument, it’s so far off base, and no artist in the 16th century should have painted a painting of a leprous Jesus nailed to the cross because, quite simply, it never would have happened.

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6. Jesus relates to us -- but not in the ways Mr Abernethy says. While he never cites any Scripture on this, I’m pretty sure I know where this idea came from. In his article, he states that in order for Jesus to have related to the disabled, He had to be disabled Himself. Since He relates to us, then He must have been disabled. 

First of all, the logical fallacy of this statement is this: if He must be disabled to relate to the disabled, then can the abled still relate to Him? The answer to that, of course, would be no, because if He wasn’t abled then He can’t relate to the abled in the same way that Abernethy asserts that He can’t relate to the disabled without being disabled. It’s one of those things where you can’t have it both ways. Another example of how this logic falls short is pregnancy. Can Jesus not relate to pregnant people because He Himself was never in such a state? And the rabbit hole just gets deeper from there: Can He relate specifically to the blind when He was never blind? How about the deaf or hard of hearing? Or people missing limbs, either from birth or through amputation? All disabilities are different, and experiencing one doesn’t mean you understand them all, so by Abernethy’s logic, Jesus had to experience all of them. Do you see how ridiculous Abernethy’s logic here is yet? 

Second of all, Abernethy is, once again, taking Scripture entirely out of context -- if, indeed, he got this idea from Scripture at all. Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” The problem with trying to use this verse as proof is, obviously, that it’s talking about temptations (Matthew 4:1-11), not lived experiences. If he was, again, referencing Isaiah 53 -- well, that doesn’t work either, because, again, that is in reference to His death and the sins He bore for us on the cross. The fact of the matter is, there are no Scriptures to back up the idea that He had to personally experience everything we do in order for Him to understand our pain and suffering. 

.

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The source of this heresy is the same as many heresies, actually: People want to make Jesus into something He's not. I listened to a podcast recently where the host was talking about a couple of heretics, and while I don't remember the heretic's name, he said that to him, Jesus was Latinx because he himself is Latinx. Except that, ya know, Jesus was a Middle-Eastern Jew. It's the same fallacy to say that Jesus was disabled. Everyone wants Jesus -- and God, for that matter -- to be something He's not, rather than for Him to be what Scripture tells us He is, but you can't force God into the box you've carved for Him. He is who He is, no matter how much you want Him to be something different.

There's no getting around it: to make Him out to be anything other than what Scripture tells us He is -- especially when it contradicts Scripture, is heresy.

[i-dream-of-twilight-sparkle]

Chapter 10: Dragon Love

Spike’s first stop when he went out of the castle was to the post office, where he goes to meet up with a new friend, Gabby the griffon. Perhaps one of the few overexcitable griffons ever. Their friendship managed to make Rarity a bit jealous of Gabby, but in the end they learned to share their time with Spike.

Spike: Hi Gabby!

Gabby: Oh hi Spike! How’s my favorite little scarred, but still adorable dragon doing?

Spike: Pretty good! I actually came over if you were interested in going with me, my mother, and all our friends friends to Saddle Arabia to see a Royal Ball. There will be plenty of entertainment, food, and friends both new and old to mingle with.

Gabby: Sure thing, Spike! Sounds like a good time!

The steps of hooves are heard from behind the desk. It’s the town mailmare, Derpy Hooves.

Derpy: Both of you going to the ball, too? Awesome!

Spike: Oh hey Derpy! Did you want an invite too?

Derpy: Oh, I actually happened to come across Rainbow Dash before I went into work today! So I’ve already been invited. But I still appreciate it, Spike!

Spike: Very nice! It’ll be great seeing both of you there! I need to head off to find a few more friends I want to invite, but I’ll catch both of you later!

Gabby: Alright, Spike! Seeya!

Spike leaves the post office while waving back to Gabby and Derpy.

Spike: Alright next stop, Thorax’s changeling hive…

Spike gets out his own pack of portal gum to travel to see his friend Thorax. Once just a normal changeling that was discovered in the Crystal Empire by Spike who defected from Chrysalis’ rule and would later help Starlight, Trixie, and Discord defeat Chrysalis. And then showed many others in the Changeling army another way for them to live instead of dependent on invasions to feed on love. The Changelings quickly became a sovereign kingdom of their own.

Spike walks near the hive, Changeling guards recognize him and acknowledge him as a friend of Thorax’s and allow Spik to pass to see him. Eventually he reaches Thorax’s throne.

Spike: Hey there, Thorax!

Thorax: Hello Spike! It’s been a while since we talked just the two of us, what brings you to the hive?

Spike: I just came over to invite you and any of the other changelings here craving some real love, cause in Saddle Arabia there will be a Royal Ball that precedes a Wedding for two of me and Twilight’s friends who live there! Both events are sure to have plenty of love to go around whether it’s friends with friends, family with family, and relationships old and new coming together! And that’s before the actual wedding!

Thorax’s mouth just starts drooling

Thorax: Oh wow… two events full of scrumptious love we can get our fill just by sitting around all the love that will be in the air?! You bet that I’ll go! Is it ok if I bring along some of our hungrier citizens that could use a boost?

Spike: Of course! I definitely wouldn’t want to deprive any of your subjects, if they really want a piece of the love that is sure to be everywhere!

Spike and Thorax go around the hive inviting any changelings that want to come to, as obviously this event is going to have enough love to perhaps fill these changelings for maybe a week or even more. If they decline, they likely know they’ll have their fill for one reason or another anytime close to the time the ball might start, Thorax’s brother Pharyanx among them. Otherwise, they could usually tell who wants to go for if they drooled or flicked their tongues just imagining all the love they could get.

Ocellus: Oh my gosh, I absolutely must go! I have been quite starving as of late…

Spike: Don’t forget Ocellus, your friends from School should be there as well. In fact, I plan to get Smoulder too, when I head on over to the Dragonlands. I think my pony friends will get the rest.

Ocellus: Oh yes, absolutely will be nice to see my friends there too! So much love and friendship to go around! I can’t wait!

In a few short moments, they’ve gone though the whole hive and determined who wanted to go and who didn’t.

Thorax: Thank you for telling us about this, Spike! You will help a lot of our citizens, plus we should have a great time aside from our love feast we’re sure to get!

Spike: No problem, Thorax! It’ll be great to see you there. For now though, I’m heading off to the Dragonlands for my final stop, before settling down for whenever my mom says it’s time.

Thorax: Ok Spike, tell Ember and Smoulder I said hi!

Spike: I will! Bye!

((Story continues after the break))

Spike waves off to Thorax before creating another gum portal, this time to the Dragonlands. He’s still become too accustomed to Equestria, but the Dragonlands is still his species’ home. So Spike always gets to have a dose of his heritage every time he comes over. Spike doesn’t plan on leaving Equestria, even when he’s a super huge adult (And he and Twilight have already discussed how that will go, probably will take a little bit of Genie magic to make it work but that is a very, very, very long time from now, so it’s not exactly a subject that comes up often between the two). But as perhaps the first dragon to grow up in Equestria he’s very much an ambassador to Dragons who may themselves want to move into Equestria, though mainly the smaller ones since if too many big ones come in, there will be problems like when a red dragon sleeping made smoke that was polluting Ponyville, and it took him learning what Fluttershy’s stare could do in order to get him to leave. Not to mention the large size of the big dragons tend to cause a panic in fear-stricken populaces.

Spike flies around the skies of the Dragonlands until he finally catches a glimpse of Smoulder. Which then he swoops down to catch up to.

Spike: Hey Smoulder!

Smoulder: Heeeeeeyyyyyy! Sup’ Spike! Come here to toughen yourself a bit, in the Dragonlands?

Smoulder gives Spike an affectionate punch in the shoulder

Spike: Ouch!

Smoulder: Oops, sorry

Spike: It’s alright, I know that’s your way of saying hi, sometimes. But anyway, I came to invite you somewhere. Your other friends in school will be there as well, I just got done with a visit to the Changeling hive and Ocellus will be going. My pony friends will probably be getting the rest.

Smoulder: Where are all of you going?

Spike: Saddle Arabia, a Royal Ball is being held as well a wedding between two friends of me and my Mom’s who live there.

Smoulder: Hahahaha, no wonder Ocellus is going. She’s going to get the biggest love feast she’s had in a little while!

Spike: Yeah, probably ha. But do you think YOU will go.

Smoulder: Eh, kinda sounds a little too lovey-dovey. But maybe I should go for a chance to hang out with my school friends at least.

Spike: There should be plenty of food as well as entertainment as well. So even if you’re not exactly into any of the love stuff happening, it’s still mainly just a party.

Smoulder: True, I could probably enjoy just going anticipating a big party... So sure, I’ll go!

Spike: Great! Now I only need one more invitee, and I think I’ll see if Ember’s able to go. You have any idea where she is?

Smoulder: I think Lord Ember is meeting with her father, former Lord Torch in their volcano home.

Spike: Huh, I don’t think I’ve ever seen their volcano home. Can you take me there?

Smoulder: Sure! Just follow me!

Smoulder jumps up in the air to start flying, Spike following as well through the air., until they finally get to a humongous volcano that definitely looks like Torch, and probably Ember too once she’s as big as her father many thousands of years from now could fit in. Spike and Smoulder approaching a cave near the bottom of the volcano.

Spike: Is this an active volcano?

Smoulder: You bet it is! But when it erupts, that only means it’s shower time for ol’ Torch

Spike: This place definitely isn’t a place anyone other then Dragons want to approach then, that’s for certain.

Smoulder: I guess if any ponies wanted to try visiting they’d probably need some sort of heat shield spell or wish from your genie mother. Otherwise yeah, this is a pretty dragons-only spot. But only for the safety of non-dragons, we swear.

Spike and Smoulder head into the cave, the cave is actually pretty hot. It’d probably be unbearable for any ponies without some sort of magic heat suppressor around them to just walk in this place, even besides the fact it’s a volcano that could spew out deadly lava and suffocating ash at any moment. But for dragons like Torch, it’s an atmosphere they revel in. Dragons after all treat lava simply like a hot sauna, and the smoke just brings the lovely smell (At least, in a typical dragon’s opinion) of ash and sulfur.

Eventually they get to the center of the volcano where they can see the towering Torch and his daughter Ember. The current and the former Dragon Lords.

Spike: Hey… er… Ember and Torch!

The two look over to see they have visitors in the small dragon that was born and still chooses to live in Equestria, and another who happens to be the representative in the Friendship school.

Ember: Ahhhh! Hello both of you! Spike, this is the first time I’ve seen you go as far to see us at our home! You’ve sure came a long way from Equestria. What’s the occasion?

Spike: I simply went on over to ask if you and Smoulder would like to attend a Royal Ball and wedding between two of my mom and me’s friends. Smoulder already agreed but thought while I’m here I thought I’d extend an invitation. Oh, and Thorax says hi to both you and Smoulder.

Ember: Haha, of course Thorax says hi. If you invited him he was probably drooling for all that love that will be at that event you’re going to. But perhaps for the sake of peaceful diplomacy, I should go. If a Princess like Twilight is going, along with Thorax, I have a feeling others like the Yaks aren’t too far behind.

Spike: I’d ask your father too but er… his size would probably be a problem unless he agrees to being magically shrunk.

Torch: BA HA HA HA HA, it’s ok little Spike. I don’t think I was going to go, anyway. After all, I’m retired now. But I hope you, Lord Ember, and Smoulder have a good time in Saddle Arabia. Show the ponies how dragons can really light up a party!

Spike: Uh, I hope you aren’t telling us to light the palace on fire.

Torch: Nah, I promise it was just the expression.

Spike: *phew* I guess while I’m here, anything going on lately here? Equestria will always be my home, but as a dragon I guess I should still keep up with anything going on here. You’re the current and former Dragon Lord’s. I imagine you two talk about this nation a lot.

Ember: Heh, maybe a little. But this is our home, usually we just jokingly rib at each other between just us as father and daughter. We sometimes talk about our politics, but things are usually stable when you have one leader promised in power for tens of thousands of years and a general populace that generally remains for themselves with their own stash of treasures.

Torch: Yeah, in fact after I’ve retired I’ve simply been just reflecting about my long reign and the many, many, many, many mates I’ve had over my era.

Spike: Wait… did you say many mates?

Ember: Oh shoot, that’s right. Spike grew up in Equestria, he doesn’t exactly know how… “relationships” for lack of a better word work in the Dragonlands

Spike: What are you talking about?

Torch: In the Dragonlands, there is no such thing as marriage. Only several mates over our long, long lives.

Spike goes wide-eyed

Spike: SAY WHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!

Ember: Yeaaaaaah… I imagine that must be surprising to anyone who’s mainly experienced life in Equestria. But if you just think about it, most Ponies’ average lifespan is just over 100 years and their regular definition of love is. once they find somepony they love they’ll spend time with them for the rest of their life, barring something happening resulting in divorce, or an unfortunate early death of half of the couple. However, dragons live so long that even if there was a mate a dragon really loved. It might of been perceivably boring at least in our views, to had been with only one. 

Thus, it’s actually pretty normal for both male and female dragons to just move on to a different mate at some point. Sometimes, more then one at one point of time! That’s not even seen as wrong here whether you kept it a secret from your mate(/s) or not. And if for any reason a dragon misses a past mate, absolutely nothing wrong with going to see them again to become mates again, if both consent of course.

Spike just stands there trying to process this information that dragons have a very vastly different outlook on love from the one he was raised to know by ponies.

Ember: We’re just starting to at least have some aspects of Friendship. Is it any surprise that love is a lot different too? We can still love and can get infatuated, such as your crush on that white unicorn. But we never settle down with just one mate throughout our lives. Though forgive me for being grim, but you might actually be kind of thankful that this is normal for dragons. Because even if you get into a relationship with the white unicorn at some point she… won’t exactly be around very long in relative to your long lifetime…

Spike breaking out a bit of his trance of being told how Dragon love works, to look to the side solemnly.

Spike: Yeah, I’m well aware of that… I don’t exactly like talking about it however…

Ember: Well uh… it’s still a little while until then. I don’t mean to get you down, but we’re just teaching you a few things about us that most ponies don’t put in any books about us, since until they actually bring brave enough researchers. Any information they have about us are pretty incomplete or even inaccurate information. It’s possible that pony researchers thought we had lifelong mates if they had noticed a couple once or twice but never actually asked if the couple had ever been married or anything. 

I think at the very least Celestia knew enough about us, but since she sort of kept her policy towards the Dragonlands as leaving us alone. Informing Equestria about how we live never came up as a priority.

But thanks to your pony mother who’ll soon be ruling solo in Canterlot, we’re entering a new era of prosperity between Dragons and Ponies and other species. I’m pretty sure soon we’ll have some updated books about us in the coming years that will make this common knowledge there. You were raised by ponies, but you’re still a dragon. So thought it’d be useful information for you to know

Spike: I gotcha, but still. Can’t help but feel wowed, and almost a little scary of how many I might end up meeting over my life when I’m old enough to start mating.

Ember: Hehehe, you’ll still have that scar of yours, eye scars happen to be a very attractive trait in older dragons cause it’s perceived strength. You’re sure to have a lot of female dragons after you in your older years. Maybe even me and Smoulder at some point

Ember jokingly winks, Smoulder being the rebelllious teenage dragon just gives a “blegh”.

Spike: …Aren’t you and Smoulder both a decent bit of years apart from me?

Ember: I’m mostly joking, but in actuality once both dragons in a couple are about hundreds of years old it’s not considered wrong to go with any dragons whether they’re 100 years older or younger. Again, just think of the difference between Pony and Dragon concepts of time passed. Yes, it’d be wrong right now, but that’s mainly because relative to dragon aging you’re still just about a hatchling. But say in about maybe a decade or two when you’ve grown to early teenage size you may just be young enough to still be ok for Smoulder to be with, if she so wished.

Smoulder: You better not be shipping me with him, or else I don’t care if you’re Dragon Lord. I’ll kick you in the shins!

Ember just laughs.

Spike: I guess I understand, but boy this feels like a lot of odd conversations will come across from all this…

Ember: From a pony perspective, yeah. Dragon’s approach to love is really weird, but some day it’ll be normal to you at some point, I assure you.

Torch suddenly looks a little away from the conversation and thinking a little solemnly. Ember noticing that’s kind of odd for him to do so.

Ember: Huh? Father? What’s up?

Torch: Nothing too big, Ember. Just reflecting on the conversation you just had with Spike and on my own history. Even though yes, I’ve had many, many, many, many mates over my long life. I… admit there may have been one dragon that I was with for only a few years, that if the pony concept of Marriage for a lifetime did exist in the dragonlands. I would of certainly tried to propose at the very least… though I doubt she would of ever accepted it…

Ember: Who was this, Father?

Torch: Her name was Jennesis, though I liked to affectionately call her Jenny. She was a beautiful pink dragon with green back spines. And she was absolutely the most beautiful and kind dragon I ever had the pleasure to live with.

Spike: Is she still around?

Torch: I don’t know, this was a few thousand years ago. And also unfortunately, she probably wouldn’t say the same about me. As I admit unfortunately, I wasn’t exactly as good a mate to her as she was to me. Which is why we were only together for a few years.

Ember: Which in relative lifeline comparison between dragon and ponies, is like a pony relationship ending in at most less then a week...

Spike: Oof

Torch: Yeah… I admit it’s one of the few regrets I otherwise have, of what I otherwise feel was a glorious reign as Dragon Lord. I had many mates before and after Jenny, but none have ever quite matched up to her.

Ember: Dang, not even my mother?

Torch: Your mother was a lovely mate as well Ember. But Jenny was just on a whole ‘nother level.

Spike: Well, this has certainly been an interesting conversation. But if it’s ok, I’m going to start heading back to Equestria. I have everyone I wanted to invite now. But I suppose thanks for teaching me a few more things about being a dragon. I’m sure it’ll be useful information to know in the far future.

Ember: You’re welcome Spike! I’ll see you in Saddle Arabia!

Spike: Bye Ember! Bye Smoulder! Bye Torch!

Spike waves off to all three before using another gum portal to get back to Equestria, where he walks back to Twilight’s castle. All that information Ember and Torch gave him still kind of bouncing in his head as some of it was still a lot to take in. But nonetheless he gets set to just relax until Twilight likely gets back from finishing her own list of invitees.

UP NEXT: Chapter 11 - Celestia’s Secrets, Part 1