#he was suck fun to draw but i think his staff needs more its very plain

[cpyclopse]

I'm gonna join a dnd campaign over the summer! Here's my guy!!!

[spinaroos-47]

Hunter Noceda AU: Venance

(can't digitalize these rn so you'll get the sketches for now)

So yeah, Golden Guard version two!

When Belos does find out about Hunter in YBOS, Hunter gets the bomb dropped about them being related (idk how yet). but Hunter obviously doesn’t believe in it. Until Hunting Palismen comes around and they find this small thingy, Venance.

(thank you @bernardo-draws-and-cries​​ for the name. Its based on the name Venâncio, which means “the one who hunts”)

He is another grimwalker made by Belos, he’s 12 (yeah.) and way more stressed (Belos has gotten more iron fisted after losing Hunter). Someone save this poor child

- He’s just starting out as the Golden Guard (and he’s not a coven head. Kikimora is. And she still wants him dead too), he’s still getting the hang of it. He does act tough and serious, way more serious than canon GG/Hunter, no space for goofyness.

- So yeah, a duo Hunting Palismen thing would be fun. Haven’t sorted out everything here but I do think Hunter would also go with Luz because of no palisman reasons. And he hasn’t met Ven yet, he only heard Lilith talking about him and Luz and Eda dealing with him on Separate Tides (he was busy drowning in guilt and trying to help with the money situation in other ways), so when he meets Ven and when he sees his face and how similar they are (and how many scars that kid already has), he’s reasonably confused/upset, like “Oh, that creepy man wasn’t lying. This doesn’t make anything on this situation better”

- After the initial surprise/confusion, Luz and Hunter jokingly call him Ghaterer until they learn his name, then they start calling him Ven. At first Ven hates this nickname but ends up reluctantly accepting it.

- Even before Eclipse Lake he’s so scared about being replaced, and knowing about Hunter’s existence in the Boiling Isles makes it worse, now he’s super sure he isn’t as valuable to Belos anymore. So he hates Hunter

- Hunter: come here youre part of the found family now

Ven: NO

Hunter: too late *picks him up*

Hunter: If Luz taught me something is that if you didn’t want to get assimilated into my found family, you should have killed me when you had the chance

Yeah that’s their dynamic when Hunter learns a bit more about him

- Venance doesn’t have much respect as the Golden Guard yet. He’s small (like, maybe even less than 1,50m/4′11″), young, has just been starting out on this role, like, in the last few months, could easily be picked up like a kitty, so he has to fight quite a bit to be taken seriously. Which results on him being way more grumpy and short tempered

- So he doesn’t take it very well when hes made fun of by the scouts in Latissa. Not at all

- Hunter, who was joking around until then:…are you okay?

Ven: I AM! *barely holding the tears back*

Hunter:

Hunter: that’s it youre part of the family now

Ven: you can’t do that

Hunter: we’re two and you’re one, we have your staff and youre very light.

(he still would put up a fight, and it would take a while for it to end. And he bites hard, he has very sharp fangs)

- Scouts: Go home with your sibiling

Hunter: *oh. Oh yeah i forgot we have the same freaking face*

- They don’t know yet about the grimwalker thing. Well, maybe Ven discovers later but at the moment where Hunting Palismen happens, neither of them know anything besides them being related, Ven got told he is his brother, and that Hunter was taken away from the coven before he was born

- Rascal seeing Hunter: hey you’re cool, i kinda want to be your palisman

Rascal seeing Ven: oh heck this kid needs help 

- I’m not sure if Hunter gets Lil Rascal. Because on one side, would be fun for him to have Lil Rascal and train doing magic like this, but also could be good for Ven to have some small support back at home, like how they are to Hunter in canon. So this hasn’t been decided yet. Hunter could either get Lil Rascal and Ven doesn’t get a palisman/gets a blue jay palisman, or Ven gets Lil Rascal and Hunter comes back also empty handed

- So I’m going with the no palisman for Hunter route for now. 

- It’s a bitter moment for both him and Luz. He tries to convince her that it’s okay, that they’ll get theirs soon, but she still kinda feels like a failure about this. And he himself thinks it’s because they don’t have a magic bile sac, so it’s not a good time for them. Eda and King lift their spirits a bit about this, though.

- Either by peeking around or just flat out being told, Ven does learn about him (and Hunter) being grimwalkers. What does he do with that? He has a crisis about it, which raises even more the stakes for him in Eclipse Lake. He still wouldn’t know his purpose for the Day of Unity, but he would know that he was created for it and could lose his position if he didn’t prove himself worthy of it.

- He would explode at Hunter one day and end up telling the truth about them being Grimwalkers (after Eclipse Lake)

- Ven: Do you want to know what you really are?! You’re a clone! You’re just someone’s clone just like me! A replacement!

Hunter, trying to not freak out but freaking out anyways: ...are you okay?

Ven; WHAT DO YOU THINK?

- If Belos is searching for Hunter, on the grounds of him being a more mature grimwalker than Venance, Ven could end up resorting to sabotaging the searches, he doesn’t want to be replaced.

- And he’s making Ven convinced that he will be replaced, to pit both boys against eachother. He gets Ven more under his thumb and not risking Hunter making Ven change his mind. Which doesn’t work as he intented, Ven does get scared about it but Hunter ends up pretty quickly going “dude why do you think I want to replace you?” and Ven is quickly thrown into a loop because he can’t understand why he wouldn’t want to do that

- Ven: what do you mean with “I don’t wanna be the Golden Guard”? If you’re like me you should DESIRE IT SINCE YOU WERE BORN

Hunter: lol no. I dealt with my need of approval a year ago on therapy.

Hunter: Also being a cop sucks.

- This boy is a tense child always a few bad moments away from a breakdown/meltdown. And has anger problems. A lot of anger in a very tiny body

- There’s some more interactions between Ven and the Noceda duo, and he would rather die than admit that he’s got slightly attached to them

- Eda: Luz told me that Golden Guard is a uwu smol boi that needs to be protected, hell knows what this means 

Hunter, who definetly came there too because FUCKING COOL ASS CAVE AND LAKE: i hate/love her

Ven: If i ever see that human again-

Amity AND Hunter: watch your fucking mouth

(definetly not how it would play out but very funny sdkdshdfsj)

- In terms of strength he couldn’t defeat Amity in a fight for the key, he would lean more on the blackmailing. He is a 12 year old but he’s still on a position of power on the emperor’s coven and he knows where the key is, it would put the owlfam on Belos’ line of sight again (if they even ever went away from it)

- That or he passes out, gets dragged out of there by them (he’s a lil shit but they’re not going to leave him there alone where Kikimora could kill him) and he falls asleep for 12 hours in the couch on the owl house. Which ends up giving him a day where he can be just a kid. He’s very weirded out by everything but he enjoys it a little bit at least. He would still try to get the key and would be torn apart by the guilt of thinking of doing this and the guilt of not doing this

- It wouldn’t take much to make him want to stay in the owl house. He’s starved for positive attention. It wouldn’t be easy but also it’s not as hard as for how Hunter is right now in canon

- I don’t think this could happen but I keep thinking about one day him and Hunter switching places so he can be just a kid for one day. Would be cool to see him sneaking into Hexside (or being dragged there, which is more likely to happen) and interacting with Willow and Gus

And that’s some of what we have for Ven right now! He’s a fun character to figure out :3

This took SO MUCH TIME to write

[levixreader]

Lemon!Modern!AU (Levi x Reader) - Dirty Talking - Joy Ride

Warning: Mature content, public exposure, blowjob

Summary: After leaving you hot and bother, you decide to have some fun while Levi is driving.

Previous Chapter | Master List | Requests | Next Chapter

Story 16: Joy Ride

Today was the company's getaway weekend. One that you had actually pushed for. In your previous workplace, they used to do a getaway weekend every six months. It had helped your team a lot, you bonded and just got in the same vibe and page. Every once in a while a reset was needed and you could feel that the Corp's needed a hard reset.

Everyone was stress all the time. And even if upper management was actually very productive and helpful you didn't think it normal for a whole division to be left with almost 60% of all the work required in the company. Especially because the Corp's had a high attrition rate (staff turnover). In your short months there, around 10% of the whole floor had left, which was problematic as you got few recruits and the best talent chose to go on an easier division.

But, right now, at this moment you wished you hadn't pushed for a getaway weekend.

"Stupid Levi", you thought groaning sitting on the front seat of the car next to him. You glared quietly at the man in question. He was wearing a grey long sleeve that clung to his muscles as if they were water. "Maybe I will rip your stupid shirts this time", you muttered to yourself. of course, Levi had heard you and smirked quickly stealing a glance your way. "Stop acting like such a brat", he said putting his free hand on your thigh. His thumb started drawing small circles on the inside of it. You looked down at his hand and glared at it. He had left you hot and bothered in the morning and now his stupid hand was near where you had wanted him earlier. "I can feel you glaring", he called out squeezing your skin. You pouted, the sensation felt very nice.

You looked up to watch him again. There was little to nothing that could compare how sexy he looked driving with one hand. "I am not", you argued. Still not looking at you, he offered you a small shy smile.

The getaway was at the beach and boy you were going to have fun. You had a plan. An evil plan. If he didn't like your dresses, well, he wouldn't like your swimsuits either, or any of your wardrobe for that matter. You smirked at the thought. Last time you had been at the beach, well, he had done something to ensure you require a cover-up. Not this time. If he did something then you would just... you know... show it off. And if someone asked about it, he could deal with it.

"What are you smirking about", he asked looking poignantly at you. You were at a red light which allowed him a moment to look your way. You looked at him mustering all the innocence you could. He, however, knew the look you were giving him. It was the same one you did when you were about to push his buttons. "What are you planning?", he asked his eyes narrowing. He didn't like that look. It would result in him getting horny and you winning. And he could not allow that. He had been winning recently and was enjoying leaving you, for a change, frustrated and aroused. "I'm not planning anything", you quickly interjected feeling his hand stop its movements. His eyes narrowed even further. He wasn't buying it. You raised your hands as if you had nothing to hide. "Don't try any funny games", he warned narrowing his eyes even more. It was already difficult enough that he wouldn't have you for the weekend. He didn't need any extra impediments.

"When I have I ever", you responded feigning offence. He glared pushing the gas as the light turned green. You crossed your arms, turning to look ahead. "You're no fun", you said pouting. He rolled his eyes giving your thigh another squeeze, "Behave". You closed your eyes frowning. You didn't want to "behave". You wanted retaliation.

And that's when it hit you.

Sure, you could behave, but before that...

He took away the hand on your thigh changing gears. You smirked. Your left hand sneaked towards his lap. He frowned as soon as he felt your palm on him. "Braaat", he warned feeling your finger inching towards his own shift gear. Your smirk widened, he was half hard already. "Yes?", you said sweetly. Still driving he turned to look at you glaring, you, on the other hand, stared at the road ahead. His jaw clenched as you rubbed your hand against his growing problem.

"Stop", he said. You bit the corner of your lip. Your hand momentarily stopping its movements. He clenched his jaw again. Then your fingers touched the metallic circle of his pants. "Stop what?", you asked with phoney naivety. He groaned your hand had undone his button and lowered the zipper. "If you don't stop, I will stop the car and fuck you", he threatened.

You stopped.

That didn't sound like a bad idea.

Your hand reached into his pants earning you another groan. "Or", you said offering an alternative, "We can just enjoy the ride". Your fingers wrapped around his girth. He didn't answer. You smirked again, moving your hand upwards the best you could. "Maybe", you said earning his ears attention, "We could stop so that you could loosen up", you proposed. "We're almost at another light", he countered gear changing again. Goddam he looked so hot doing that.

True to his word, you reached yet another light. You removed your hand from his pants as he lowered them to allow you enough space to work. You stared down his cock already half hard. "Well?", he asked expecting you to say or do something. You stole a quick look to his eyes before returning your gaze down to the little corporal. "Yeah little", you mocked yourself. Levi was big, but as you had discovered many, many, times he grew too. You knew he was getting impatient, but that didn't matter. You could afford the wait to admire him for a second longer. His cock twitched. Your eyes widen and he groaned, it was turning him on that you were staring at him. "Brat", he called out for you his tone beastly. "Yes?", you said taring your eyes off him. His eyes bore holes into your skull. "I want your mouth on my cock", he said crudely. His hand reaching out to grab your face.

His fingers held your chin between them as he pulled you closer to him. You could feel your mouth fill with saliva. "Open", he ordered his nose cuddling against yours. You swallowed the pooled drool in anticipation. You loved when he got like this, ordering you around, it was sex inducing. His low almost growling voice made you want to just comply with whatever he told you to do or say. Without even thinking about it, you pressed your lips together, making him frown, before opening it slightly. "Wider", he said, his tone more militant. You opened your mouth slightly wider. You felt his fingers pressure your chin, "My cock can't fuck your mouth if you don't make room for it", he said eyes narrowing.

Your lower stomach clenched. This man, could tell you to get out of the car and that he would fuck you by the tree outside and you would answer "What position?".  You wanted him to melt in your mouth, you wanted him to be the one at your mercy. You opened your mouth wide enough that you knew you could take him. He smirked, "That's my girl". His hand changed spot so that his index finger was under your chin and his thumb was on your lower lip. You felt as his thumb stroked you. Your teeth biting it seductively. He smirked wider and removed his hand moving it behind your neck.

BEEEEEEEEEEEP

You heard the car behind you honk. Levi looked a the light, it had turned green. "Tch", he said glaring at the car behind him through the rearview mirror. "Suck", you heard him say before gently guiding your head down at his cock. Your lips eagerly welcomed him, your tongue ready to attend. "Fuuck", he groaned into your throat. He pressed the gas pedal zooming way above the speed limit. It took a second to adjust to the moving car, your hand tucking a stray strand of hair behind your ears and then moving on his thigh so that you had more stability. "You okay?", he asked lowering the speed. He felt you smile on his cock and smirked. His free hand stroked your head encouraging you to move. Your other hand grabbed him by the base making him bite his lip as your fingers wrapped around him. His fingers tangled themselves on the back of your hair. Before he could even prepare himself, you raised your head up to the tip of his cock letting your tongue swirl around it before plunging back down. "Fuck!", he bellowed, his cock twitching inside your mouth.

Deep, dark sounds came from his throat. You were going to make him cum faster than he had anticipated. You felt him buck his hips trying to get to your throat. But, you weren't going to choke, not now that you had him quite literally by the balls. You moved upwards and allow your hand to work him while you recuperate and tease his tip. His hand on your hair clenches, grabbing a good handful and twisting it around his wrist. It was your turn to moan. You rolled your eyes upwards, maybe you were the one who was being held by the balls. He pushed your head down feeling his release close.

"I'm-gonna", he moaned out. You sucked the head of his cock pushing it against the roof of your mouth. Your jaw hurt. You could hear him panting and breathing quickly, "Yes", he screamed, your head lowering taking him in until you felt him close to the back of your throat. "fuCK!, he half cried, half moaned realising himself in you. The car slowed down until it came to a stop. He was heaving. You painfully slowly pulled his cock out of your mouth. He closed his eyes, trying to calm down his erratic heart.

You smirked watching the proud and mighty Levi crumbled in his seat.

"Don't worry, I'll behave", you taunted sitting back in your seat.

[aros001]

First time reading through the light novels. Vol. 1 random thoughts.

A while back I'd seen the first episode of the anime and...didn't take it well because of that one specific scene. I was interested in where Goblin Slayer and Priestess would go from there but I was worried about my ability to handle the rest of the series. So months later I asked this Reddit if you guys would recommend I continue and you were very supportive and encouraging. I watched the rest and really enjoyed it. I just recently wrapped up another light novel series (at least the books that were available in english) and figured why not give Goblin Slayer's LNs a try?

These are just some random thoughts I had while reading the first volume. I did the same with Rising of the Shield Hero and it was fun to do, with other fans pointing out things I might have missed and starting discussions about what happened each book.

Right off the bat, I think Goblin Slayer is one of the few series I've ever read that brings up weapons getting dulled and damaged by blood and fat (or even bringing up fat from a slain foe at all). Shield Hero had a little bit that early on but most stories just have weapons that are so high quality that the quality never dips.

Also, back in the anime I'd found it interesting that goblins could make poison when everything else about them seemed so crude. But in a general view "poison" is basically a harmful substance that you don't want in your body. That the goblins can make poison out of their own shit and some herbs actually makes sense and works with the idea that they have the mental capacity of cruel children.

The first kill we see Goblin Slayer make seems to say a lot about him. Pinning a goblin to the wall with his shield before stabbing a burning torch into its face. Efficient yet feeling almost vindictive.He kills it in the most painful way he possibly can at that moment.

The Priestess blocked the one goblin with her staff on instinct and kept it from getting away long enough for Goblin Slayer to throw his sword into the back of its head. I'm curious if that's why he let her accompany him through the rest of the cave or if he would have done the same regardless? If he didn't see her potential would he have ordered her to leave instead of asking what she was going to do?

Are the gods of Truth and Illusion meant to be literal gods or just figurative? Either way, I'm looking forward to hearing more about them and the Earth Mother, Dark Gods, and Supreme God. I like mythology and that includes the party's talk about where goblins come from. I like that they, and we the audience, don't yet have a for-fact answer. All the possible origins they share are from legends, folktales, and stories you tell children (with some racial bias thrown in between the elves and dwarves). It really helps the world feel more real and lived in.

Out of curiosity, do Slimes exist in the GS universe? They mention giant rats and goblins as the monsters a lot of beginners take on and slimes are a famous kind of newbie monster in other fantasy stories, so I'm curious if they have those as well (or if it's a Konosuba kind of case where slimes are NOT a monster beginners should be fighting).

Oh jeez, the anime really wasn't exaggerating with Cow Girl flopping over the windowsill. Why is that so funny to me?

“Yes. A group of rookies are in the southern woods. That one is a request from a village near the forest.”

“Beginners,” he murmured. “Who was in their party?”

“Let’s see...,” Guild Girl said. She licked her thumb and began paging through a sheaf of papers. “One warrior, one wizard, and one paladin. All Porcelain rank.”

...

The day after that, showing no hint of fatigue, he joined Priestess in venturing to the southern woods. Cow Girl heard later that the rookies never returned from the forest.

I might be misremembering or thinking of a different group but the rookies came back alive in the anime, didn't they?

A big thing that helped me get through the anime was the introduction of High Elf Archer, Dwarf Shaman, and Lizard Priest. They brought a lot of life both to the series and to Goblin Slayer himself. He's a man who really needs friends and something other than goblins in his life. What he does is important but spending too long in nothing but that darkness would eventually break anyone. In fact, nearly all the characters help bring some enjoyment to the story. I was afraid Spearman was just going to be another Motoyasu but he quickly proved himself to be, overall, a pretty good guy.

I also like that this novel gives more insight into the extra characters. Not just the humans like Guild Girl, Heavy Warrior, and the Hero (which was a very welcome surprise. I want to know more about her), but also some of the goblins as well, like that one guard of the old elf ruins. Even if they can't talk in a way humans can typically understand, it's cool (and a bit uncomfortable) having a direct show of how an individual goblin thinks.

While it's not as much as Priestess, I do really seem to have a soft spot for Guild Girl. Why she seems to like goblin Slayer is just really appealing for me. She likes him because he's different but not in the traditionally tropey way of "Oh, he's so different from the other guys". He takes the jobs that no one else wants to do, not to brag about it or hit on her, but simply because they need to be done, which means a lot less newbie adventurers have died or worse at the hands of goblins, something she's indirectly seen happen way too many times, even if it's a reality she has to live with. Completely unintentionally, he takes a lot of burden off her heart and mind. I can easily see how her respect and appreciation for him would eventually lead into feelings of affection.

Goblin Slayer = Beard-Cutter? I can understand to an extent Orcbolg and that both names come from a goblin killing sword, but do Dwarves refer to goblins as Beards? And if so, why? Or am I missing something here? This confused me in the anime too.

“I owe it all to you, sir!” Her gaze, her beautiful eyes, bored into him. He caught his breath. What should he say? There was a long pause.

“Not at all,” he finally squeaked out. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You did so much!” she responded with a grin. “You saved me when we first met.”

“But I couldn’t save your companions.”

“True, but...” Her face stiffened for a moment. She couldn’t quite finish her sentence—understandably.

Even he still remembered the awful scene all too clearly. Warrior, Wizard, Fighter, who had all lost everything. Her party had been trodden into the dust.

I really like this. It's be really easy to just make Goblin Slayer a complete hardass who's oblivious to everything and cold to the world (and to an extent he is). But he does still have emotions other than anger. He's at a loss by Priestess' gratitude and doesn't know what to say. He has regret that he couldn't save her old party. He's used to the sight of what happened but still finds it awful. He appreciates the elf, dwarf, and lizardman's help and isn't against partying with them again, even if he won't go out of his way to join them again. He feels truly helpless when he tells Cow Girl he can't defeat the Goblin Lord's army. As the story goes on I imagine it'll be explored how much he's doing what he does to keep the past from happening again vs. him just wanting revenge on all goblins. Which side rules him more?

But all things must end—often too soon.

The end to his idyll appeared in the form of repulsive black blotches on the dew-drenched morning pastures. Trailing mud and excrement across the fields, they were unmistakable: small footprints.

This is the one part I think the anime did a little better, if for no other reason than that we had a lot more times of Goblin Slayer checking for signs of goblins every morning. It was a great Chekhov's gun. It was something the audience knew had to come back into play later...but that you really, really did not want to because you knew what it'd mean. Every time he checked and didn't find anything was a relief but it left worry about the next time, building up that dread and anticipation, until finally we get that morning where he sees all the tracks.

At a table deep in the room, High Elf Archer made to stand, her face a furious red, but Dwarf Shaman and Lizard Priest stopped her. Witch sat on a bench, a slippery smile floating on her face. He glanced at the front desk to see Guild Girl vanishing into a back room in a panic. It occurred to him that he was looking for Priestess.

Awwwwwwwwwww! He does like having her around!

I think the main reason the story works, at least for me, is because it isn't just one of those "Life sucks. The world is dark. F**k you." types of "adult" literature. Yes, the world of GS does get very dark and messed up, but what gets you through it are these very likable and sunny characters who do care a lot about each other. At least with the content of this volume and what was covered by the anime, the draw isn't supposed to be how "edgy" the story can get but rather these characters trying to fight back against the darkness that exists in their world.

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/GoblinSlayer/comments/fq3z9a/first_time_reading_through_the_light_novels_vol_1/

[honey-dewey]

Sway

Pairing: Jack ‘Whiskey’ Daniels/Assassin Reader

Word Count: 1,838

Warnings: a bit sexier than my usual writing, one pretty knife, reader wears a dress so I guess it’s a female reader, but other than that I think it’s safe.

Permanent Taglist: @phoenixhalliwell @star-wars-hell

They say when you engage in immoral or risky behavior that you’re dancing with the devil. If that’s true, you must be very good at dancing. Killing people is typically your area of expertise, but what happens when your target is much more interesting than you’d expected? 

Being an assassin had its perks. For one, you got paid a lot. You got into lots of places both legally and not so legally, and the thrill of the hunt made your entire body pulse with excitement. It was the perfect job.

However, it was jobs like this one that made you absolutely exhausted.

Your target was a man named Jack Daniels. He was, to the public, a high ranking employee at the Statesman distillery. But you knew better. He was a Statesman agent, and a damn good one too. You’d had your own share of Statesman encounters, including one with the mysterious Agent Whiskey who you’d identified as your target. Since then, you’d had a few more run-ins with Jack, but he’d never been your assignment.

Adjusting your dress, you sighed. Undercover work was always something you excelled at, and this time would hopefully be no exception. Statesman had announced a gala, although you didn’t know what the occasion was. They had a few every year that you ignored unless you had to, but this time, you would be attending. You had even bought a new dress for the occasion.

The dress in question was slinkier than you were used to. It was silk, colored in a deep rich red that reminded you of blood. The dress had a low back and front, showing what you hoped was a professional amount of skin. But it wasn’t the thin straps or the tight hug of the dress that made your heart flutter. It was the slit up your thigh, the cut of the fabric ending just below your dominant hand. Under the slit lay your weapon of choice. An ornate dagger, one of the only weapons you could possibly sneak into the gala.

You unsheathed the dagger, examining it before testing the edge on your thumb. A tiny drop of blood pooled on your skin, and you nodded, slipping the dagger back into its sheath and sucking on your thumb until the blood stopped.

The gala was being held in a ballroom closer into town, a place you were familiar with due to working there more than once. You knew the hallways and the doors, the secret passages and the security measures, knowing exactly where to make your move to ensure no one would find the body until you were long gone.

Music echoed behind the closed ballroom doors as you gathered your nerves. Jobs no longer made you nervous. In fact, you had to steel yourself so you wouldn’t get too excited, the adrenaline pumping before you needed it.

The doors opened silently, but your entrance drew a few eyes. People watched with a detached interest as you walked down the stairs, black heels clicking on the stone. To them, you were just another guest, here to mingle and drink and have innocent fun.

You caught his gaze quickly. He was standing to the side, talking to a few women all dressed as elegantly as you were. You smiled at him, and he tipped his hat ever so slightly in your direction. You had his attention.

The song ended, and as Jack Daniels excused himself to come talk to you, a song you recognized came on. ‘Sway’ by Michael Bublé.

You walked towards Jack, head held high. When you finally collided, you grabbed his tie and dragged him to a secluded corner. He smirked as you pushed him against a wall, one perfectly manicured hand on his chest, holding him in place. You were inches from his face, his breath tangling with yours as he breathed heavy, pupils wide.

Your non-dominant hand began to explore Jack’s chest, and his breathing picked up. You could feel the heavy pattering of his heart under your fingers as you slowly reached down with your other hand. Your fingertips were just brushing the tip of the dagger’s hilt when Jack’s hand caught the wrist of the hand exploring his body.

Next thing you knew, you were the one with your back against the wall, looking up into Jack’s eyes. He had one elbow pressed to the wall, the brim of his hat brushing your hair. His legs were barely touching yours, but his knee was against your thigh, trapping you in place. He was so close. His other hand brushed your bare thigh, smirking as he reached up your dress and slowly took your dagger out.

“Oh darlin’,” he drawled, spinning the dagger across his fingers. “Don’t you know it’s rude to kill a man on his birthday?” He took the ornate hilt and quickly stabbed the wall centimeters from your ear, effectively drawing all breath from your lungs. It quivered in the wall, and Jack leaned in close to your other ear, shifting his weight so his breath sent shivers down your spine when he spoke. “Why do you always have to kill the mood?”

He gave you one last smile before walking away, leaving you and your dagger against the wall, both shaking.

It took a minute for you to compose yourself, but when you did, you quickly tugged the dagger out, sheathing it and smoothing your dress down. Jack had walked away to go talk to someone at the bar, but he kept stealing glances in your direction, as if he was daring you to approach him again. The music, which was back at the forefront of your hearing, continued to play as you walked up to the same bar, sitting at the opposite end as Jack and ordering something to sip on.

“Well hello darlin’. What’s a pretty thing like you doin’ all alone at the bar?” An unfamiliar voice asked, and you rolled your eyes. A man who smelled strongly of alcohol was beside you, his smile lopsided and his tie half undone, the hat on his head tilted, but he made no move to adjust it.

You, instead of doing what you’d normally do, decided to incite some panic. You shifted your dress, showing the man the hilt of your dagger. “I’m here to kill the birthday boy.”

The man, despite his intoxication, leapt up, his eyes wide. “You’re-“

“Yep,” you said, walking off. Alarms rang out seconds later, but you didn’t move with any urgency. Slipping past the mass of panicked bodies, you slid into a secret entrance that was typically used for wait staff. Climbing the stairs, you soon got used to the emptiness of the slim hallways, the only sound being the click of your shoes.

Until you heard another set of footsteps behind you.

Whirling around and unsheathing your dagger, you pressed the tip against Jack’s neck, his mildly amused face curling into a smile as your heartbeat picked up.

“I should kill you right now,” you growled, pressing the dagger tighter into Jack’s neck, forcing him to take a step back, so he was pressed against the wall. Without the music, you could hear every little sound his breath made as his chest rose and fell.

“You won’t,” Jack said, hands up.

“Why?”

Jack’s smile never faltered. “Because you can’t.”

It was almost enough to make you drive the dagger through his heart. You had found it already, and knew exactly where you’d have to hit to kill him almost instantly. But you couldn’t bring yourself to draw your arm back. Instead, you sighed and sheathed your dagger. “Dammit Jack,” you grumbled. “I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” Jack said, putting a hand around your waist. “How many times is this? Four?”

“Four,” you agreed, leaning into Jack’s touch. “I’m persistent.”

Jack nodded. “I see that,” he said, his other hand tracing over your thigh. “Well, I guess that’s a promise that I’ll be seeing you again.”

You grinned, pulling his hand out from under your dress. “And soon,” you purred, kissing Jack’s cheek and leaving a blood red lipstick stain.

Your trip home was uneventful. You’d removed your shoes, despite the fact that driving barefoot wasn’t the safest idea. Your head reeled with thoughts of Jack. You’d left him in the hallway, a smile on his face as he watched you go. Now, halfway to your apartment, you couldn’t stop thinking about him.

The apartment was dead black when you opened the door, but someone was lounging on the couch. You snuck up behind the figure, putting your hands over his eyes and smiling. “Guess who?”

Jack laughed. “Baby doll, did you really have to ruin my party?”

You turned a lamp on and sat down beside Jack. “I have a very specific skill set,” you said, leaning into Jack’s chest and kissing over the lipstick mark, renewing the vibrant red shade “Once an assassin, always an assassin. You’re home early, so what does it matter?”

“I asked you to help me come home early,” Jack pointed out. “Not to make it seem like someone’s trying to kill me.”

“Potato,” you said in a sing-song voice. “Anyway, do you want cake? I picked some up when I went to get groceries.”

Jack nodded. “Nice dress,” he added, watching you go. “Where’d that come from?”

Reaching into the fridge, you grabbed a cake and put it on the counter. “It’s my birthday present for you,” you said, cutting a slice of cake. “Happy birthday.”

As you handed Jack his cake, he pressed a warm hand to your bare thigh. “I get a knife to the throat and a pretty red dress for my birthday?” He asked. “God above, what did I ever do to deserve you?”

You laughed, swiping your finger through the icing and sticking it in your mouth. “We both tried to kill each other. Multiple times,” you reminded.

Jack fed you a bite of cake, and you hummed around his fork. “Darlin’, you trying to kill me somehow became the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “Thank you for springing me from that damned party.”

“Thank you for almost letting me kill you,” you said, leaning down and kissing Jack, the sugar sweetness from the icing mingling with the flavor of Jack’s lips. “I’m gonna go change. Meet you in the bedroom in ten?”

Jack smiled, putting his hand yet again on your thigh and pinching the soft flesh there. “Make it five. It was a damn struggle to keep my hands off you today.”

“Oh was it now?” You cooed, leaning in close. “Someone needs to learn some restraint.”

“Well maybe you should teach me,” Jack said in an equally teasing tone. “After all, you’re the assassin here.”

You chuckled, walking towards the bathroom with Jack not far behind. “Jack,” you said, unzipping the dress and letting it fall off your body. “I’m an assassin. Not a miracle worker. I don’t think God himself could teach you restraint.” You turned, grabbing makeup wipes so you didn’t stain the sheets again. “But,” you said softly, seeing the look on Jack’s face. “I’ll certainly try.”

Jack smiled, leaning on the edge of the bed and unbuttoning his shirt. “Yes ma’am. Where do we start?”

[thestayway90]

The Rollercoaster Incident: Bang Chan - One Shot

Author: thestayway90

WC: 1298

Warnings: Mentions of a Panic Attack and Anxiety over a fear of heights

Relationships: Chan x gn!Reader

Summary: When you get stuck at the top of a Rollercoaster the stranger next to you tries to help... lots of fluffy helpful Chan!!!

Author’s Note: This was based off of a prompt I saw somewhere and thought it would suit our beautiful leader perfectly!

Also I have a huge fear of heights and rollercoasters so this is literally my worst nightmare :|

Enjoy lovelies <3 feel free to leave any and all feedback including constructive criticism!!!

You squeezed your eyes tightly shut, willing yourself not to panic.

“Hey, are you okay?” A soft voice came beside you and you silently cursed your friends who had all paired off leaving you sitting next to a stranger.

You peeled your eyes open a little, just enough to see the boy sitting next to you. He was watching you with worried eyes, obviously concerned with you pale pallor and the way your hands were gripping the safety bar so tightly that your fingers were completely white.

“I’m just not good with heights,” you confessed, closing your eyes once again and leaning your head back into the seat.

The boy couldn’t help but chuckle at this, looking down at the drop beneath them. “A rollercoaster probably wasn’t the best idea then.”

You opened your eyes just to glare at him. “They’re not meant to get stuck half-way. I’d be fine if it was moving.” You felt like you shouldn’t need to point out the obvious.

The boy smiled lopsidedly, unbothered by your sharp tone. “I’m Chan by the way.”

“Uh huh,” was your only reply, still concentrating on not looking down.

He kept looking at you expectantly and it finally dawned on you that he was waiting for you to introduce yourself. You sighed, telling the curious boy, “I’m Y/N.”

“How’d you find yourself on this Rollercoaster, Y/N?” He asked, his crooked smile revealing a dimple in one cheek.

You stared at him for a moment, half of your brain trying to discern his words while the other half was still shrieking in fear. “Uh, I’m here on holiday with friends and we thought I’d be fun to go to an amusement park, even though I don’t really like rides. Which is why my friends suck coz when it came to get on this god-forsaken rollercoaster, they all paired up and left me the odd one out, to sit next to you, a complete stranger, so that you can listen to me ramble…” you petered off slowly, your anxiety making you babble almost incoherently. “Sorry,” you muttered, feeling your cheeks turning pink.

“Don’t be sorry,” Chan smiled warmly, obviously trying to put you at ease.

The car that they were strapped into gave a sudden lurch, making to whole structure shudder and shake. You let out a sharp shriek, hands lowering once again to clutch at the sides of your seat.

“Hey, you’re okay,” the sweet boy reassured you, holding out a hand towards you. Without even thinking, you grasped it tightly, feeling the contact ground you and take away some of the tension.

“So what are you planning to do while you’re here?” Chan questioned, still trying his best to distract you.

“Uh,” you tried to get your muddled brain to cooperate. “Maybe do some sightseeing. Go to the Zoo,” you stuttered out finally.

“The Zoo’s nice,” Chan agreed amiably, as if you were simply conversing in a cafe rather than hanging several miles in the air.

“Do you live here?” You finally mustered up the capacity to ask.

Chan nodded, happy to have you talking. “Yes, I’ve lived here for a while now. We decided to come to the park for my brothers birthday.” Chan waved a hand over his shoulder and you assumed that his brother was somewhere behind you but didn’t even try to shift in your seat to see.

Another small jolt made you inhale loudly and grip Chan’s hand even tighter, making him chuckle a little. “Careful you might break something.”

“Oh, sorry,” you apologised immediately, going to draw your hand away.

“No, no, I was just joking!” Chan grabbed onto your hand again and gripped it firmly, not allowing you to drag it away a second time.

“Not the best to joke right now,” you muttered at the boy, feeling sweat beading on your forehead.

It was then that the ride finally began moving slowly along its track, eliciting cheers and exclamations of relief from the cars occupants.

“Finally,” you let out a large exhale as the ride continued at its very slow pace.

Chan smiled and gave your hand a squeeze. “There see, not so bad after all.”

You returned his smile but then blanched as you looked at the track ahead. The car had been making its way down towards the ground but was now ascending once again and this time the climb included a loop that would place them upside down at very peak of the loop.

“Uh oh, this can’t be good,” Chan muttered under his breath, thumb working calming circles into the back of your hand.

As the car continued it painfully slowly progress up, you felt your chest restrict tighter and tighter the higher you climbed. 

You closed your eyes tightly, at this point just praying for it to be over. You felt yourself being tipped upside down and knew that the car was now at the very highest point of the ride. You squeezed your eyes even tighter shut, gripping onto to Chan’s hand with all your might.

Suddenly the ride shuddered to another halt with its occupants still dangling upside down meters in the air.

You couldn’t help yourself and opened your eyes to see the whole world looming beneath you, your vision pulsing along to your erratic heart rate.

The sight sent you into a panic attack, hyperventilating and scrambling at the seat trying to grab at something, anything.

“Hey, hey,” Chan’s calm voice pierced through your haze of panic as two hands reached across to grab your cheeks and guide your gaze towards him. “Hey, look at me, just look at me, okay. Don’t look anywhere else, just look at me.” 

You concentrated your gaze on his face, fighting to get your breathing under control. Other occupants in the car were also panicking, screaming and crying echoing through the air surrounding you.

“Just breathe,” Chan continued to keep his voice low and soothing, hands still on your cheeks, the warmth helping to ground you just a little.

You shook your head helplessly side to side, taking in big hiccuping gulps but feeling like you weren’t drawing any oxygen into your lungs.

You watched as Chan’s expression grew more and more worried the longer your hyperventilating continued, eventually turning desperate as his attempts to calm you failed.

Taking in a deep breath he fixed his gaze and you and leant forwards, connecting his lips to yours in an extremely unexpected kiss.

You choked as he pulled back, your fear momentarily forgotten as you stared at him in shock.

Chan gave a self satisfied grin as his distraction succeeded. His hands still cupping your cheeks now felt overly warm, almost searing into your blushing skin underneath.

You kept eye contact with him, even as the ride continued on its journey and cheers filled the air around you.

Chan only dropped his hands when the ride returned to ground level, coasting smoothly into the platform. It came to a halt as emergency personal and park staff amassed around the trapped occupants, noise and chaos surrounding you.

“So, uh, sorry bout that,” Chan said his cheeks also very red and looking sheepishly down at his hands that were twisting nervously together. “I didn’t have any other ideas what to do.”

You gave him a large smile and grabbed his hands in both of yours, stilling their movement. “Thank you!” You said simply, not needing to elaborate any further.

Chan gave you a relieved chuckle. “You’re welcome,” he answered, as a staff member worked at releasing you both from your seats.

Chan craned his head to see you over the people working between you, giving you a lopsided smile as he asked.

“So, uh, you want to go on a date sometime?”

[beautifulterriblequeen]

I’m curious to see how Tales of Xadia balances the mage character archetypes. Like, I imagine that Sky mages have world-class agility (the attribute scale goes up to 12) while Earth mages have world-class strength. But neither one would have a martial prowess of a battle mage, which would specifically be a Sun mage thing. But then Sun mages have limited agility and strength in turn.

Should be interesting.

The fandom keeps getting surprised, it seems, because we keep trying to make everyone monolithic, and then TDP keeps giving us individuals with their own specific personal details. Perhaps it’s time we stopped thinking in archetypes. Tropes are much more fun, anyway, as the chaotic grandchildren that the archetypes have no idea how to control when their parents drop them off.

I don’t know if you remember when much of the fandom kind of assumed that Tinker was a Sunfire elf because he knew how to forge weapons, but that was a headcanon that spread out and lasted quite a while... until an interview that just casually dropped the info that the elf who had made Runaan’s and Rayla’s swords was just another Moonshadow, just like them.

Now we’ve all met Ethari, and he’s very much a Moonshadow elf, fitting into his world and expanding our understanding of it simply by being himself. Lain and Tiadrin expanded our understanding of Moonshadows, too, and now Feathershawl and Eljaal are adding even more info.

Then there are the overlaps, things that are the same in different races. Seems everyone can have a stocky craftsman: Skywings, Sunfires, Moonshadows, they all have one. (and thank you very much btw) So I imagine it’s entirely likely that mages will self-balance with a combination of crossover and individuality, just like the rest of the characters we know so far. Viren is probably similar to every other mage who fights, really. He slings his staff around very nicely, so I imagine Babukar does too.......

In fact, I wonder if having possession of a magic staff is what makes you a battle mage, for all intents and purposes. The elves from the intro pix were certainly ready to throw down. We never saw Ibis swing his staff in battle--or fight without it either--but we all know he’d be a force to be reckoned with with that Sky primal stone in his hands. Though I’m not sure how he’d handle his mage wings and his staff at the same time... he may need to choose. I hope he can make his Manus Pluma Volantis spell kick off faster than when he was showing it to Callum. That would be a time suck during battle.

Now I’m thinking about Lujanne, and how she doesn’t have a staff--that we know of, anyway. She just chills at the Moonhenge and draws runes in the air with her fingers and vibes with her spooky creations.

And I’m thinking about Aaravos, and how fast he could cast. He drew his runes two-handed, for speed. Time is of the essence in battle, and he and Viren kept a decent pace together, since they were basically two halves of a working battle mage in the S2E9 fight.

Also, hmmmm, on the subject of Agility. Winged Skywings will naturally be agile because they travel and think in three dimensions in a way the rest of the elves don’t. We’ve seen Nyx just casually spinning around like it’s entirely subconscious to do so. And if you have a winged mage like Ibis, then yes, I can see him personally being ridiculously agile!

But Rayla’s Moonshadow elf Distinction from ToX has an agility comment as well, which indicates that Moonshadows are, as a group, more agile on average than Skywings, as a group.

Skywing mages don’t necessarily come with wings, and there’s no guarantee they can all master the magewings spell, but practicing their magic means practicing their agility, right? I wonder who would be more agile in battle, then: a Skywing mage whose magic requires agility, or a Moonshadow mage whose heritage grants higher inherent agility and who dances their spells?

You know what, I don’t care who’s better. I want to see them both casting together. They’d both be delightfully amazing and so pretty to watch. Let them be battle mage buddies, please.

Also can they be Ibis and Ethari, because. Because.... they have almost the same markings on their cheeks? Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. Mmhmm.

Okay, Babukar can totally come too, because, and did I mention, BATTLE MAGES.

Please, I will perish of joy watching all these bois sling magic staffs around.

Last note: I gotta admit, I’m genuinely not following you, anon, with why only Sunfire mages could be battle mages, because

what else did you think this Moonshadow dude with the magic staff was standing here for, right alongside the Sunfire battle mage?

Or this Moonshadow, with her own staff, and her own Sunfire mage ally?

Moonshadows and Sunfires are the defenders of Xadia and its borders. They’re at the border together, their symbols are in the books together. I don’t know why the other elven races don’t show up prominently (border)/at all (books). That’s a worldbuilding mystery that I’m eager to understand. But Moonshadows have a martial side to their culture, and that does include defending the border in times of need. And for whatever reason, it’s not something that Skywing mages have been shown doing. Perhaps Skywing mages fight elsewhere than the border due to Reasons?

If you use your magic in battle, you’re a battle mage. Maybe they’re not all bright and flashy, like Babukar undoubtedly is, and that’s okay. They still need to be ready to act swiftly and have a world-class skill set, and I support them all.

[jackedspicer]

a bio for my xiaolinsona! she’s a work in progress so i’m bound to come back and change it. trivia and more in depth information is under the readmore :)

continued trivia:

she’d show up somewhere near the start of season 4

she’s used a LOT for slapstick. in fact she’s mostly a comic relief character

she’s guided mainly by emotions, is right brain oriented, and is a hands-on learner

there is a running gag where she frequently has bandaids on her fingers, hands, arms, or anywhere really

she’s a massive funk junkie. LOVES disco. she’s also a great dancer

when she comes up with xiaolin showdowns, sometimes she’ll base it off of fun recreational activities or things that seem harmlessly mundane, like mini golf..... tic tac toe.....dance-off...... rock paper scissors..... the showdowns themselves obviously end up being high-stakes and lethal as they always are, except they’re based off of goofy premises

she’s probably musically accented by grunge that’s slightly funky

when it’s funny, she occasionally will use huge words or make jarringly philosophical statements, eg patrick star’s “the inner machinations of my mind are an enigma” cut to footage of milk spilling

shes a lot like charlie kelly. in general. any charlie moment is just. Her. she’s a wild card and screams every line and huffs glue and tries to get the honey out of a hornets nest outside of jacks house because she thinks hornets make honey and she likes ghouls and she genocides the rats in his basement and sleeps ass to ass with him and is illiterate

she likes to do arts and crafts but they almost always come out as abominations. she’ll occasionally borrow some of jack’s tools to construct her latest atrocity, and she’ll refer to them by a wrong/made up name while she’s at it. “the hacksaw duey”, “the electric hole puncher,” ”the automatic pizza cutter”, etc. yes the projects and the bandaids have a direct cause and effect relationship. please refer to this video (and this channel in general)

imagine her sitting at a table and just doing this in jack’s lair... this video alone can be used to sum up so much of her. the technique. the bandaids. the blatantly wrong information that’s said with such conviction. the dark turn towards the end of the video. “superfluous protrusion.” the way it ends

continued trivia pt. 2, taken from my instagram

(i’ll get into this more further down the post)

fighting style because this is xiaolin showdown:

she has a very nimble, disorienting style of combat. using pokemon stats as an analogy, her highest would be speed by far, followed by attack, with her lowest stats being defense and special attack. this combined with her unrelenting nature makes her an excellent distraction and a general nuisance, but she doesn’t fare well in prolonged head to head battle.

favorite shen gong wu: 

monkey staff, mikado arms, fancy feet, neptune helmet, hoduko mouse, woozy shooter (on herself), tongue of saiping, longi kite, indigo pyramid (on jack (cause it’s funny))

*the shen gong wu she’s most skilled with in battle are ones that trip up her opponents and cause status ailments. kinda like a prankster

backstory/analysis:

at her core, she’s a jolly, optimistic, humorous person, but her unruly, isolating childhood put a blow on her psyche. much like jack spicer, she’s been virtually alone her entire life - she was rejected by peers and adult figures alike since earliest childhood, and her home life was turbulent at best.

to ease the pain, at some point, she took on resenting and judging those around her as a means to cope. she has a holden caulfield-esque defense mechanism in play where if everybody sucks for this reason, or that reason, or those reasons, then she has justification for detaching herself from others, and she can derive her only source of self esteem from being better than them. this hurts far less than the devastating truth that she cannot connect with people on account of feeling so worthless and estranged from other human beings that she could never have the chance to be cared about by anyone. deep down, she’s in desperate, thrashing need of support and genuine human connection, and she has a warped perception of how she can achieve that.

she’s taken up evil as a hobby because it nurtures her desire to be destructive and, again, just like jack spicer, she engages in it as a way to feel seen. all press is good press, and the best way to make the headline is to cause some damage. what sets her apart from him in this regard, though, is that she takes all of her pain out on her enemies (in this case, the xiaolin monks) because she can’t stand how well off they are - instead, on the basis of their acceptance of one another, she sees them as goody two-shoes phonies who ought to be knocked down a peg. while evil to jack is both a means of getting much needed attention and a convoluted way of spending time with friends, to sid it’s a way to vent frustrations and a way to, well... still garner attention, but also spend time with a friend, except the friend is jack.

the other half of the reason she partakes in petty villainy is that it’s just... fun. she only got wrapped up in all this because she’d been restlessly putzing around somewhere remote, found a neat doohicky she planned on keeping, and when one thing led to another she wound up in a xiaolin showdown against jack. experiencing the chaos unfold revealed a golden opportunity she couldn’t pass up, so she asked jack to let her come with, debuting their partnership (i talk about this in further detail at the end of the post). goofing off and doing evil with him is so much fun to her! it makes her feel alive, a sensation and state of mind she never could fully achieve before.

noteworthy relationships:

jack: 

they have a team rocket thing going on. not in terms of their interpersonal dynamic, but rather their role in the story, how much of a threat they pose as, their schemes, and even their overall attitude are reminiscent of the iconic duo; they’re petty, recurring villains with hearts of gold who aren’t above occasionally siding with the good guys.

even though they both are on the same tier of comic relief and general foolishness, the metaphor i like to draw is that jack is the left brain and sid is the right brain.

their personalities have such chemistry and they’re both so goofy that they effortlessly sync up. everyone thinks it’s REALLY annoying

they’re best friends! they actually care very deeply for one another, even if they might have funny ways of showing it. they may be evil, but they’re mutually the only and closest friend the other has ever had, and with that carries a lot of weight. think of it - the first person you meet who hasn’t been nothing but awful to you likes you and wants to be around you. What a concept

while their relationship is platonic, there are several gags implying a romantic element, even though nothing is ever outright stated. kisses on the cheek, bashfulness, other characters making fun of them (“where’s your DUMB little girlfriend?” “..........she’s not DUMB!!!!!”), domestic references (“am i sleeping on the couch”)..... it’s left ambiguous because it’s hetbait plain and simple. somebody asks them what they even are and they say Partners In Crime wym. jack asks sid What Are We and she fist pumps the flat of her own chest twice, throws a peace sign and says We’re Bros

their nicknames for each other include but are not limited to “jackass, jacky-boy, jack-o-lantern, smarty pants, wiggles, spack jicer, spack, mr spack, spackle”, and “shortstack, pipsqueak, sid the kid, champ, funky monkey, foxy (in a funny way, he’ll say it like Whatcha Up To Foxy ? while she’s like making a mess doing an arts & crafts abomination or just vibing bein her weird lil self....  it comes from a place of playful sarcasm and affection) (champ, funky monkey, and foxy are courtesy of @currentlyfallingthroughspace)

to piggyback off of the left brain vs. right brain metaphor, “heart vs. brain is how they think, right brain vs. left brain is how they act, and two halves of a heart represents their natural dispositions” is how my aforementioned friend put it. they both have a lot of heart and are ooey gooey on the inside, but the difference is that sid can grasp the intricacies of emotional/psychological matters while jack can’t (actually knowing how to EXPRESS this is another topic). it’s in the same way that jack can effectively plan ahead, use logical reasoning, and know where to go and how to get there, but sid is shabby in this department. “one is aware but doesn’t address it until it’s too late, and one can’t see it and doesn’t ask until it’s too late.”  

another feature of potential conflict in all incarnations of them is the juxtaposition of sid actually being more down to earth than jack in the grand scheme of things. jack has the potential to go completely overboard, and whether or not he demonstrates the ability to catch himself on the event horizon will ascertain the outcome.

deep down, neither of them are truly evil, and they bring this out in each other as they ultimately contribute to the redemption of one another. how this actually happens is a lot rockier. sid has the intuition and self awareness to become increasingly cognizant of the fact that she engages in schemes as a way to bond with her friend, and, over time, she’s able to recognize that she’s simply been acting out, and she consequently softens up over time - but jack is much denser in this regard. he doesn’t consciously pick up on the same things she does and still believes that she’s drinking the koolaid as much as he is. the crucial dissonance in what matters most that had been incubating under the weight of things left unsaid emerges in a major falling out that challenges the nature of their entire dynamic and respective moral codes. i had a lot of help from the same friend with the following series of events and it’s really something that ought to be gone into detail on its own post, but a whirlwind brief summary is that jack becomes desperate from losing over and over so he comes up with this sinister plan that’s just too far, sid tells him to stop, they get into a nasty fight, sid leaves and makes it clear she’s not coming back, she goes to the xiaolin dragons for help, jack goes on an evil rampage but also loses his grip and has this mental breakdown because he lost the one person who’s ever cared about him (or so he thought), sid has the same brutal separation pangs but it doesn’t change the fact that jack is still doing what he’s doing, sid gets a firsthand view of a fight breaking out between the monks while she’s working with them and has a moment of clarity when she observes how they resolve it in such a healthy way, as they continue to work together and help her through the whole fiasco she realizes they’re not so bad, an entire excruciating series of events that’s genuinely too large to fit on this post unfolds and it ultimately ends with jack actually having to team UP with the good guys to stop what he started, and it ends with them breaking down, apologizing, and beginning their redemption BUT not without the illustration of several lessons that arose out of the complications of the entire thing...... the overarching lesson that’d been entrenched in their entire dynamic from the start, albeit corny, is that caring and being cared for was all they ever needed, and they learn to cultivate that within each other right under their own noses. it would be fun to have them stay as recurring villains forever, but seeing how much good is in their hearts is enough to make you wonder how they were ever evil.

xiaolin monks:

she thinks she hates them, but she doesn’t really. while her opinion of them is marked by resentment and distaste, she also holds them in high regard. a part of her wishes she could be friends with them, but the mental landscape she’s paved for herself doesn’t reveal that as an option. in her mind, she’s already been rejected by them. so why try?

the way she takes her pain out on them - people who had nothing to do with her traumas - can be summed up by the spinel su quote, “why do i want to hurt you so bad? i’m supposed to be a friend. i just want to be a friend.”

she gets chummier with them upon her redemption. out of the group, she gets along best with clay and dojo :) 

bonus origin episode

this would be the imaginary early season 4 episode i mentioned at the beginning of the post. it’s more of a loose string of ideas tied together with reckless abandon but hey. the episode would open with jack feeling lonely and down on his luck to establish the theme that he kinda needs a friend (”wuya’s gone, chase trained his cats to get surly with me if i show up, my evil dream team won’t answer my calls....”). his sulking is interrupted by a shen gong wu alert and he’s like. whatever. i don’t need them. i’m still gonna do this on my own. even if it’s. ˡᵒⁿᵉˡʸ. fastforward to the scene i described where sid is putzing around with her doohicky (which i’m considering might be the neptune helmet) all by her sad miserable lonesome when suddenly some flying bloke in a trenchcoat who looks like he hasn’t seen the sun in years shows up telling her she’s got something he needs. she of course responds with something along the lines of “you know what? why don’t you try to take it from me since you want it so bad, mr big stuff,” triggering a xiaolin showdown. this is around the time the xiaolin dragons show up too late - but they’re grateful for somebody having been there to fight jack in time, even if they have no idea who they are. she has no clue what’s going on, but whatever it is, she LOVES it. she goes buckwild. she has a time. jack, on the other hand.... well, understanding how badly he needs that wu is certainly throwing a wrench in it, but he can’t help but feel like he’s having a bit of fun too. well, up until he loses. post-showdown, the monks kinda count their chickens before they hatch so to speak and they rush over to this new kid with a shower of praise, thinking they have a friend on their side. instead, she cuts them off, shouts to the guy who’s gathering his bearings (or lack thereof) - “hey! jack was it?” - and playfully tosses her shen gong wu in the air, catching it. “you look like you need this thing way more than i do. tell you what! take me with and i’ll let you borrow it,” is what she follows it up with, implying she wasn’t really that invested and only saw the whole thing as a fun game. jack and the monks are flabbergasted. what’s more bizarre is she did in fact ask to join him, something nobody’s ever done out of their own volition before. she talks about how boooooooooooring it is here and how that was soooooo much fun and to pleeeeeeeease take her with. he’s really iffy about it and doesn’t know if it’s such a good idea. he tries to make himself look cool, telling her “as IF, shortstack..........im afraid The Jack Rides Alone................................................. but-” and ultimately buckling because he can’t deny that it would be nice to have someone around.

[phykios]

people on ao3 were thirsty for this fic so... here you go, tumblr ❤ 

put on the red light M, sex work au, modern royalty au, no powers au  [read on ao3]

🌊🌊🌊

Sometimes, she really regrets being best friends with Piper.

Said best friend still gapes at her from across the table, jaw practically on the floor. “Never?”

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “Never.”

“Not even, like, at school?”

“When I would have had the time?” she asks. “I was attempting a five-year program in four years, and then… well, you know.” And she does know, all about the very exciting drama that went down in Annabeth’s senior year.

Piper is still flabbergasted. “Not even high school?”

Annabeth takes a sip of her drink. “I wasn’t exactly a hot commodity in high school.” She’d been passively pretty all her life, but she hadn’t exactly been what some might call Girlfriend material, capital G. She’d stuck to her fifteen year plan to the letter, eschewing most social contact, working herself into the ground to overcome ADHD by sheer force of will and get into Harvard, a plan which allowed approximately zero time for a boyfriend. Not that there were even boys that she had really liked at the time.

The only boy she had ever considered liking in that way, well. She had lost contact with him a while ago.

“I can’t believe this.”

“Believe it or not, Ripley, it’s true. I’ve never had sex. You happy?”

“I mean, if you don’t mind me asking, are you ace?” Piper asks. “Because that’s totally cool, of course.”

She shakes her head. “Definitely not ace.” She has a minor collection of personal massagers and insertable devices should she ever need to take care of an urge, and plenty of fantasies she can call on whenever the need arises--a system which has worked just fine for years.

“I just…” Piper stares, unconvincingly. “How?”

Shrugging, she takes another sip of coffee. “Just never got around to it, I guess.”

It’s not something she’s proud of, but by the same token, it’s not something that brings her shame, either. It is what it is; Annabeth, a notable workaholic, has never had sex with another person in her life. In some ways, it sucks, sure, but in other ways, it’s been a blessing in disguise. After all, no previous partners means that there’s no one to spread any dirt on the newly minted Princess Anja Elisabet of Sweden.

But Piper isn’t having it.

“Do you… want to have sex?” she asks. “Like, ever?”

As the daughter of one of the biggest movie stars in the world, she knows that Piper has had her fair share of high profile relationships, something that earned her a little bit of a nasty (and, quite frankly, racist) reputation among the paparazzi, which is ridiculous, since Piper is one of the most effortlessly gracious and classy people Annabeth knows. Piper does not go slinging herself and her partners around in the media like some of her contemporaries; instead, she likes to keep her personal details a bit closer to the chest, sharing them only with trusted confidants, like Annabeth, who knows full well how much Piper enjoys the act of sex. Sex for Piper isn’t dirty or taboo, it’s fun and it’s being close with other people, it’s liberating and exciting and intimate, and she extols its virtues whenever asked to give her opinion.

She makes sex sound really good, but never in a way that makes Annabeth feel ashamed for never having done it. Until now, of course. “Well… yeah,” says Annabeth. “I’d like to. I mean, I think it’d be kind of nice, you know, to do it at least once.”

“But then you’d have to start dating,” Piper surmises.

“Yeah,” says Annabeth, glumly.

Dating is a notorious problem for people in her line of work. Royalty, not architects, that is. Dating for architects is easy; just find someone who doesn’t mind the type A personalities and the obsession with work. Dating for royals is… significantly harder, and not really something she wants to engage with right now. She’s only been a royal for a few years, after all—she still feels like it’s a big cosmic joke, that someone is going to unearth some old documents or reveal a couple of forgeries that will bring the whole thing crashing down, and she doesn’t want to bring an outsider into all that drama, let alone deal with it herself.

Piper takes a sip of her drink, thoughtful, then lays out her next question carefully. “Have you ever considered a one-night stand?”

Annabeth stares. “You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not! People do it.”

“Yeah,” she scoffs, “people. Not me.”

“It’s really not hard,” Piper says, “I’ve done it plenty of times.”

“What, you want me to make a tinder?”

She laughs. “God, wouldn’t that be a riot. But no, I mean, there have to be other single royals or celebs around. Why not one of them?”

“Because they’re all insufferable social-climbing jackasses that make me want to rip my skull out of my face every time I’m forced to listen to them at a state dinner.”

“Okay, then.” Never one to be deterred, Piper pulls out her phone, then waits until Annabeth has taken a sip of her drink, presumably to keep her from immediately disagreeing, before dropping the bomb to end all bombs. “Let’s get you an escort.”

Annabeth snorts iced coffee directly out of her nose.

“Shit! Sorry!” Piper shoves a handful of napkins at her. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, do you need water?”

Wheezing, Annabeth shakes her head. “Give me a sec,” she coughs, fingers covering her mouth.

Thank God she’s got her trusty, anti-pap hat on. If anyone took a picture of her like this, her uncle would probably disown her.

“What the hell, Piper?” she rasps when she can finally breathe again.

“I’m so sorry, I should have timed that better.”

“No, I mean—”  she coughs again. “The other thing.”

She raises an eyebrow. “The escort?”

“Keep your voice down!” On instinct, she glances around the London cafe, looking for any stray microphones. Satisfied that no one is listening for the moment, she turns back to her insane best friend. “Yes, the… that thing.”

“It’s not that crazy,” says Piper, turning back to her phone. “We’ll find you a really nice one, someone super high class and discreet, draw up an NDA, and then you can cross it off your bucket list. Man or woman?”

“Man, but—" she sputters. “I—I can’t see a prostitute! Can you imagine the scandal if it got out?”

Forget the iced coffee thing. The princess of Sweden, caught with a hooker… Annabeth is nauseous just thinking about the media circus.

“Not a prostitute,” Piper corrects. “An escort.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Same umbrella, but no.” She types away, faster than Annabeth can keep track of. “Pimping is illegal here, but escorts usually have managers.”

“Be that as it may,” because Piper seems to have forgotten the key part of this conversation, “I can’t have sex with an escort.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” The million and a half legitimate reasons not to go through with it all fly through her mind, getting lost somewhere on the way to her mouth. “Because!”

Piper just smiles at her. “I’ll get you a really nice one, promise. Think of it as a late birthday present.”

“It’s September.”

“Early Christmas, then.” And she grins, full of teeth. “Just trust me, okay? Let me take care of it.”

Famous last words, she thinks, popping a bit of scone in her mouth.

***

7PM, the Dorchester Hotel. Dinner first, then… whatever, later.

Annabeth can’t help but arrive early. She’d never been a punctual person before, but apparently now it’s been beaten into her with all the rest of her princess training.

Five-star hotels are still something of a novelty for her, even though she’s stayed in quite a few by now. Thankfully she’s never stayed here before; she’d be too worried someone on staff would recognize her.

She had thought that she’d show up early, psych herself up a little, get emotionally prepared, or at least have a little time to calm her racing heart before her… date… showed up.

Unfortunately, as punctual as she is, apparently, he’s beaten her to the punch.

He’s exactly where he said he’d be, wearing exactly what he said he’d be wearing; black suit, blue tie, gold watch. Her heart is beating so loudly, she’s sure he can hear it from across the room. “Um, excuse me,” she asks, a little more timid than she’d like, sidling up to the man. “Paris?”

At his name--well, she assumes it’s his name, but it’s probably a pseudonym now that she thinks about it--he lifts his head up, his lips already quirking up in a smile that she can only describe as troublemaking. “Bethany?”

Right. She used a pseudonym as well. A second pseudonym—one other than Anja. “Yeah,” she smiles in return, her shakiness easing.

“Hey!” He stands up from his seat in the lounge, leaning in and kissing her on the cheek. “It’s so nice to meet you!”

“You too.” She realizes with a pang; he is so tall. He’s tall, with broad shoulders and a trim waist, startlingly green eyes and thick, curly black hair. And… “You’re American?”

“I am,” he says, unashamed. “The accent gave me away, huh? Hope you weren’t looking for something else.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” she assures him. “I just wasn’t expecting it. It’s fine!"

He grins, crookedly, and she feels her heart skip a beat. “I’ll take it. Shall we head to dinner, then?”

***

Dinner was amazing, of course. The food, the atmosphere, and the company, she fully admits—all exceptional. Paris is an amazing conversationalist, she discovers, smart and funny and attentive, even gently teasing her a little. “You’re American, too, you know,” he’d said, sipping on his glass of wine, “so you can’t give me any grief over my lack of an accent.”

“I don’t live here,” she’d retorted, pointing her fork at him, “unlike some people I could mention.”

“Where do you live?”

“Ah, well—” Covering up her hesitation by taking a bite of chicken, she’d thought quickly. “Grew up in the States, but recently I moved to, um, Sweden, to be closer to my family.”

He’d nodded. “Expat, huh?”

“Something like that.”

He’d listened to her, really listened, chimed in at appropriate moments, made surprisingly insightful comments about her job and her life, and, well, he’s kind of perfect. If he weren’t an escort, he’d make an amazing boyfriend. She tells him as much, in the elevator on the way up to his room.

“Aw, thank you!” He smiles at her, a single dimple popping out under his strong cheekbones. “That’s very kind of you to say.”

“Why do you do this, anyway?” she asks. “I mean,” oh God, that question is some kind of faux pas isn’t it, Christ what the hell happened to all her etiquette training, “you don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to—”

“No, it’s okay,” he says as the elevator door opens. They’re up on a high floor, where the higher high rollers like to stay, and she follows him as he walks confidently down the hallway. “It’s not an offensive question.”

Still, she feels pretty shitty for asking. “I’m sure you get asked that all the time.”

“Most clients honestly aren’t all that interested,” he admits, shrugging a shoulder. “They need something, I can provide it. It can be a little transactional at times, but I’ve met a lot of really cool people, so it all balances out in the end.” Arriving at their door, Paris swipes his keycard, holding it open for her like some kind of butler. “After you.”

The room is enormous, even for a five-star hotel. It is a full-on suite, with a seating area and separate bedroom, a large wooden desk off to one wall, a gorgeous, floor-to-ceiling window that looks onto Hyde Park, full of lights dotted about like mini constellations. “Wow,” she breathes, “look at that view.”

“I never get tired of it,” Paris says, coming up behind her. “No matter how many times I come here.”

“You come here a lot?” she asks. She almost follows it up with a question on how he can afford it, but she ruthlessly quashes that down.

“My clients like it,” is all he says.

“I’m not surprised, all that 1930s deco in the lobby. The façade is a little plain, though, in my opinion.”

“Oh yeah? How would you do it better, Miss Architect?” She gets the sense that he’s teasing her. It feels oddly intimate for the situation—he’s not a friend, or a boyfriend, or even a date. He’s an escort. Providing a service, as he put it. He shouldn’t be so friendly with her.

And yet. “Well, I love Neoclassical, but honestly, I’m not super into hotels.”

“What are you into, then?” Casually, he undoes his tie, sliding it off his neck. She swallows.

“Um.” Focus, girl. “Office buildings, monuments. I dunno. I just want to… I just want to build something good, you know? Something permanent. Proof that I was here, you know?”

“Something permanent, huh?” He speaks softly, a respectable distance away, but she’s drawn in anyway, by his open shirt collar and his easy demeanor and his stupid sea green eyes that remind her so much of— “That sounds really nice.”

Then he steps up to her. His hand, warm and big, draws up her arm, fingers tracing lightly over her skin, and she shivers. He cups her neck, fingering the hair at the base of her scalp, and leans in, his lips parted. He smells like salt, like the perfume of the wine they shared, like the sea on a sunny morning.

“Wait,” she murmurs against his lips.

Immediately, he pulls back. “Is something wrong?” he asks, concerned.

“No, no, it’s fine, I just—” She swallows, her heart racing. “I just need a minute.”

“Of course.” He takes a step back, and she has to stop herself from pulling him in further. “Do you need anything? Water, champagne? They always stock the minifridge.”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m fine. It’s just, I’ve never… done this before.”

“What, hire an escort?” He grins, rakish. “I can tell.”

“Not that—I mean, yes, that too, but I mean—I’ve never—” She huffs, annoyed she has to have this conversation twice in one week. “I’ve never had sex before, okay?”

That shocks him a little. His eyes widen, taken aback. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Chuckling weakly, she rubs a hand on her arm, looking out the window. “So… yeah.”

“So, don’t take this the wrong way,” says Paris, “but, there are easier ways to get laid than by using a professional. I mean, I’m grateful for the business and all, but, well, look at you.” He looks her up and down, somehow simultaneously respectful and entirely indecent. “I don’t think you’d have a problem getting a date.”

“It’s… complicated.” Understatement of the fucking millennium. “My friend thought this would be the easiest way to… go about it.”

Paris laughs. “You don’t agree.”

“I don’t… not agree,” she says. “I’m just. A little nervous.”

He nods. “I’d bet.” Chewing his lip, he looks towards the bedroom suite, and Annabeth tries not to think about how those teeth would feel on her mouth instead. “How about this; why don’t you take a shower? It might help calm you down a bit.”

“Won’t you be lonely?” she quips, a moment of reckless bravery.

“I have a few calls I can make,” says Paris, eyes dancing. “Go on. Make yourself comfortable.”

***

She has to hand it to the five-star hotels; the shower is always outstanding. Amazing pressure, amazing heat, it definitely rivals the plumbing in some of the castles she’s stayed at. And the robes, always so soft and warm, though a little on the small side. This one just barely covers her ass, which she figures isn’t a huge problem for tonight, but still.

When she steps out of the bathroom, she can hear Paris talking. “Uh huh,” he says. “Yeah. No, it’s going great. Professor Kleio said she’d write me a recommendation. She was really impressed with the last build. Yeah.” She runs her fingers through her wet hair, pushing it back from her face. “No, the conference is next month. Probably. Pretty sure I can get Tyson to help, but I don’t think it’ll get that far before the end of the week. Uh huh.”

Paris had taken off his suit jacket at some point; she can see it hung up in the closet on a hanger, perfectly pressed. He’s still in his shirt, but he’s unbuttoned it, the sleeves rolled up around his forearms. It is effortlessly attractive, even from the back. She coughs lightly, unwilling to startle him, and he turns, giving her another up-and-down, this one decidedly less respectful than the first.

“Hey, I gotta go, I’ll call you tomorrow. Say hi to Estelle for me. Love you.” And he hangs up.

“Your girlfriend?” she asks.

He smiles, all soft. “My mom.”

Something in her melts at his tone. “Aw,” she coos. “Is she back in America?”

“Yeah. I don’t get to see her all that often, so I try to call her every day.”

It is so unfathomably sweet, sweet and… humanizing, as weird as that sounds. He’s not just an unbelievably handsome man with a jaw cut like a diamond and a five-star rating, according to Piper, he’s a person with a whole other life that she knows nothing about. It’s liberating, in its own way. She can make mistakes with him, and he’ll understand. He won’t judge her, not against his other clients, or even his other partners.

Swallowing, she slides the robe off her shoulders, slowly, achingly. Maybe he turned the heat up while she wasn’t looking, because all of a sudden, she feels hot all over, from her cheeks to her chest and down, and down. Maybe it’s all coming from him, from the heat of his gaze on her, his pink tongue coming out to wet his lips. She wants it, wants them, wants him, on her and in her and all over her.

But he stays on his side of the room, waiting for her to take the plunge.

She steps up to him, close but not touching, breathing in the heady, strong scent of him, raking her eyes up his body for a change. Even through his shirt, she can tell he’s fit, the exposed skin of his arms tanned a deep brown, thick, coarse, dark hair running up to his wrists. On his right arm, there is a black trident long and straight, crossed by an old, white scar. “What happened here?” she asks, lifting her hand to trace it, leaving visible goosebumps in its wake.

“Sailing accident,” he whispers. “Long time ago.”

There’d been a kid at her summer camp for troubled teens who’d gotten thrown off his boat and hurt like that, once. She remembered so vividly, because she’d been on infirmary duty that day, and all she could think about while wrapping up his arm was how fucking stupid he'd been, how he could have gotten himself really hurt, how badly she’d wanted to kiss him.

She'd moved across the country before she'd gotten the chance, though, and no one else had ever made her feel like that since. Until now. “Got any other ink to show me?”

But instead of answering, he leans down, and he kisses her.

She’s been kissed before. She’s never had sex, but she’s done some kissing in her life. It’s usually pretty awkward, in her experience, too much of one thing and never enough of another.

Nope, not Paris. Of course, he’s also a phenomenal kisser. Why she expected anything else, she’s not sure.

His hands come up to circle her neck again, his thumbs running against her cheekbones. He kisses her, pouring passion and intent into her, his mouth soft and sweet against hers. And then he slips her some tongue, and it’s a whole different ballgame.

“Take off your shirt,” she whispers into his mouth.

He does, effortlessly, without detaching himself from her. It’s a smooth, easy motion, and she is delighted to discover that he is as firm as she suspected he was, the muscles jumping under her touch.

Almost without her realizing it, he backs her up towards the bed, her knees hitting the edge of the mattress. He lays her out against the sheets, his bare chest hot against hers. “Before we go any further,” he says, and she can feel the vibrations of his voice all throughout her body, “tell me—have you ever made yourself come?”

She flushes at his words, the dirty talk which should sound stupid but instead comes out all sultry and sexy. “Yes,” she says, breath hitching as he nips at her neck. “Yes, I have.”

“Good.” He smiles into the skin of her collarbone, traveling down, and down, and down. “I want you to show me how.”

“Isn’t that,” she pants, “your job?”

“Hmm, you’re right.” He pushes her thighs apart with his shoulders, bright eyes staring up at her as he licks his lips. “Let me get to work, then.”

Breathing heavily, she curls her fingers into the ten thousand count sheets, eyes fixed on the ceiling pattern. She can’t look at the dark head between her legs, can only breathe in through her nose as he kisses up the skin of her thigh, higher and higher and higher until…

Jesus fucking lord almighty.

***

“I found the perfect guy for you.”

“Piper, come on.” Theses brunch dates of theirs were starting to get a little repetitive. “I let you set me up with a professional, but I draw the line at a blind date.”

“Have I steered you wrong yet, your highness?” Piper asks, knowing grin firmly on her face.

Annabeth blushes. So what if that night with Paris was the most incredible experience she’d ever had? Doesn’t mean she’s ready for a full-on relationship, yet. “No,” she says, rubbing her temples.

“Great!” Then she does something that Annabeth doesn’t expect—she starts packing up. “So he’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” she smiles, so bright it borders on painful, her nose scrunching up. “I invited him to brunch. But he’s really, really nice, I promise.”

“Does he know about—”

“No, he doesn’t, but if you wanted to spill, he’s a fantastic secret keeper.”

“How do you even know—”

Piper glances over Annabeth’s shoulder, eyes lighting up, waving a hand. “Friend of a friend of Jason, he’s a grad student at Cambridge, he’s doing his dissertation on naval history, so you know the king will love him.”

“Piper!” Annabeth half-calls, half-hisses at her friend as she stands up “Piper, you can’t just—”

“Hey,” says a voice behind her. A very familiar voice. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize anyone was joining us.” She turns around. Slowly. “Nice to meet you, I’m… Percy…” he trails off, sea green eyes widening behind a pair of thick, black glasses, beneath dark, curly hair. On his arm, a black trident stood out against his skin, straight and proud.

“Percy, meet Annabeth,” Piper says. “Annabeth, meet Percy. Okay, have fun you two!”

And she waltzes out of there, completely unaware of the absolute shitstorm she left in her wake.

[nataliedanovelist]

GF - Beauty Within the Fallen ch.V

Summary: Two misfit twins come across an enchanted castle, home of a mysterious beast, and slowly begin to form a strong bond that just might survive through anything. Even evil demons.

AU and artwork belong to the beautiful and very talented @artsycrapfromsai​. Go give her some love, guys!!!

ch.IV - ch.VI

~~~~~~~~~~

When the children arrived back with the master of the castle and a pig, Soos was a horrid mess and Wendy took charge. The servants of the castle helped to bring the old beast up to the West Wing and back into his bedroom. The journal watched, uncovered by glass, and listened to the children working together to take care of Stan. Mabel was soft, Dipper was strong, and they were both kind. Once Mabel made sure Stan was comfortable in his bed, Dipper accepted the large supply of bandages and washcloths with hot water and began to work on his injuries. It turned out that Stan had several bad scratches and bites on his back as well as his arm; one bite on his right shoulder was particularly nasty and probably hurt a lot.

All while the boy cleaned the wounds, the beast growled in his throat, almost like purring from an angry cat. He tried to mask his pain, but Mabel sat by his head and held his claw, telling him that if he wanted he could squeeze her hand when he was hurt. Stan gave her a funny look as Mabel petted the back of his paw, feeling the soft texture of his gray fur and smiling. “I can take care of myself.” He growled. “I’ve been doing it this long.” “We know.” Dipper said firmly, free to roll his eyes since Stan’s back was to him. “But we kinda owe you.” “You’re darn right you do.” Stan sneered. “I’ve got a long list of disgusting chores that’ll give my face a run for its money, and it’s got your names on it.” He sighed and added in a softer tone. “Guess it’s not all your fault, though.” Mabel shook her head. “It’s okay, Monsieur Stan, we shouldn’t have come into your room. We’re sorry.” Dipper nodded. “I’ll admit, I suck at knowing when to quit.” Stan snorted a laugh. “Wanna call it even?” “Deal.” Mabel accepted happily and squeezed his paw. As Dipper continued to work, Stan’s tired old body, comforted by the girl’s petting and the boy’s care, started to lose its strength again and he soon fell asleep. Mabel giggled, listening to his deep breathing, and turned to look at the journal. It was closed, so Monsieur Ford had no way to talk if he wanted to. Pitying him, Mabel got down from Stan’s bed and went to the journal. She opened it and sat it on the table, touching as little as she could. Dipper paused bandaging an injury and watched with a skeptical look. “There you go, Monsieur Ford.” Mabel said kindly. Words soon appeared on the page. Thank you, my dear. Thank you so very much for bringing my brother home. “You’re brother?!” Mabel gasped, but then covered her mouth with both hands, afraid of waking Stan, but he was too exhausted to be stirred right now. Yes. The master of this castle, my brother Stanley. “Monsieur Ford,” Dipper said, finished helping Stan, and he walked towards the journal and his sister. “You weren’t always a journal, and Stan wasn’t always a beast, right?” And he looked back at the portrait of the twin boys. That is correct. We were once human, like you, but we were cursed. “S'il vous plaît, Monsieur.” Mabel pleaded. “Will you tell us what happened?” Since you two seem to enjoy stories, I shall. You will have to help me along, reading. Ford’s tone seemed to be warm and inviting. Despite this, Mabel’s face turned red and she rubbed an arm nervously. “I don’t read very good.” “That’s not true, Mabel.” Dipper said quickly and side-hugged her. “Don’t worry, I’ll read out-loud.” I am sure a bright girl like yourself is a fine reader, Mabel. The journal wrote. </i>You remind me so much of Stanley; he too often thought little of his intelligence, but he is way smarter than others (and he) gave him credit for.</i> Mabel smiled, still red, and sat on her knees, looking up at the book. An armchair scurried up to the kids and spoke. “AH! Mi precioso, do not sit on the cold floor! Come, come! Have a seat, both of you, and relax.” Kids, this is Abuelita, as she prefers to be called by everyone. Soos’ grandmother. Ford explained as Mabel sat in the cozy chair. “Thanks!” She said to Abuelita. Dipper joined her with the journal in his hands. He laid the book on their laps and said, “We’re ready, Monsieur Ford.” Very well. Thirty years ago, shortly after our parents’ death, we became entangled in something we shouldn’t have. It was my fault. While Stanley was as strong as five men and more witty than any professor, I excelled academically and held a lot of promise. Father and so many others unfairly showed favor in me and I was ignorant to how it must have hurt my twin. I also felt out of place, alone. Notice the six-fingered hand on the cover; as a human I have six fingers on each hand. As a child I was bullied and made fun of, but Stanley was always there and told me it made me special. It became my mark as I began to investigate the strange mysteries of the woods and the wonders of the world. Intrigued, I soon met a golden triangle with one eye and formal attire. When the words slowly disappeared, they were replaced with a drawing. The kids looked to indeed find a triangle with a top hat and a bowtie and a cane, having only one eye and two stick arms and two stick legs. Bill Cipher. A dangerous demon of nightmares and a master of the mind. Ford went on. I was a fool, blinded by his flattery and games. I was falling down a very deep hole, but I was lucky to have Stanley there, like always, and he managed to con the ultimate conman. This angered Bill, and as revenge he cursed us. “How?” Dipper asked. “What exactly did he do to you?” He turned Stanley into a beast and me into a journal, and all of the servants turned as well, as we are now. I cannot walk or talk like the staff can, only communicate through writing, and I slowly lose my pages. With each page, I lose part of my memory and a part of myself. When the last page falls, I will be nothing more than an empty shell, and everyone will remain cursed forever. “This story's so sad!” Mabel exclaimed. “There’s gotta be a way to get a happy ending!” “Mabel’s right,” Dipper said. “Is there a way to undo the curse?” The journal was blank for a moment, but then these words seeped onto the page: After he cursed us, Bill only said that when Stanley loves someone and earns their love in return can the curse be undone. Mabel lit up. “Love? We can help! There’s tons of cute single ladies in our village who would love to go out with a nice, smart, strong guy like Stan!” “I dunno, Mabel,” Dipper said hesitantly. “Everyone in our town thinks we’re weirdos and make fun of us. How do you think they’ll react to Stan?” “But once they got to know him…” Your people think you are weird? The journal wrote. How come? Dipper crossed his arms over his chest. “They think we’re ‘odd’ because Mabel’s learning how to read, I don’t wanna join the army, and we like to invent things.” They make fun of you over that? I’m sorry. I think reading and inventing is no reason to be made fun of, nor is a lack in desire to fight. “Oh, I still wanna learn how to fight, I just don’t wanna be anyone’s tool.” Dipper then suddenly turned bright red. “No offense.” Ford, however, quivered ever so slightly and big capital letters spilled over the page. HAHAHAHAHA! No offense taken, my boy! Holy Moses, I haven’t… well, I wouldn’t call that laughing, but thank you for making me almost laugh for the first time in thirty years. “Thirty years.” Mabel repeated with a small moan. “Don’t you worry, Monsieur Ford, we’ll help Stan fall in love so everyone will be free.” It is not for you to worry about. “Yes it is!” Mabel insisted. “You’re our friends. We wanna help you.” “Yeah, man,” Dipper said, actually gradually siding with Mabel on this one. “Once Fiddleford finds this place we’ll go home and help find someone for Stan.” “He’s a great guy,” Mabel said. “And I’m the best matchmaker in the world! I bet together we can end this curse and kick Bill’s butt!” “Mabel,” Dipper hushed as she became overly passionate and was a bit too loud. Your enthusiasm is greatly appreciated and valued, kids, but do not fret over it. We have time. “How much time?” Dipper asked, eyeing how many pages Ford had. If I absolutely had to make a guess of how long we have left… ten years. “Oh.” Dipper said, freed from the sense of urgency. He yawned into his hand. “Still, we’ll do what we can for you guys.” The journal was blank again, like he was doing some thinking, but then he wrote, Thank you, again, but now is not the time to worry about all that. You two should get to bed. It’s late. Mabel shook her head. “Nuh, uh. What if Stan needs our help with his boo-boos? We’ll just have a sleepover right here, won’t we, Abuelita?” “Si, niña.” The armchair said and used her unusual arms to throw a blanket over the twins. Dipper took off his hat, finding Abuelita quite comfortable, and he wrapped an arm around his sister. After the scare he had earlier, he had to admit he liked the idea of sleeping by her side tonight. “Good idea, sis.” “I’m full of good ideas.” Mabel joked. “G’night, Monsieur Ford.” Goodnight, Dipper and Mabel. Sweet dreams. Mabel hugged Dipper around his waist, his arm still around her, and she smiled as she closed her eyes. She could hear his heartbeat. It was faster than it should be for sleep. Knowing just what to do, she began to quietly sing a lullaby. “Days in the sun, though your life has barely begun, not until my own life is done will I ever leave you.” Dipper chuckled, remembering the song Fiddleford and Shermie used to sing, and he muttered sleepily, “Oh, I’ll tremble again to my dear one's gorgeous refrain. You will not forever remain out of reach of my arms.” His eyes, which had been open, found Ford’s open pages spilling a poem missing it’s tune. All those days in the sun, What I'd give to give you them all, All to my love, And sing out my call. “You know that song?” Dipper asked and Mabel opened her eyes to find it on Ford’s pages. Our mother used to sing it to us when we were children, every night. Please, continue and ignore me. “You should sleep, too, Monsieur Ford.” Mabel said sleepily. She took the journal in her arms, hugged the closed book, and held him as she leaned on her brother. Ford didn’t get a chance to explain that he did not sleep, but as he could ghostly feel the girl’s warmth, he was beyond happy to be in her embrace for the night. Dipper smiled, gave Mabel a squeeze, and closed his eyes for sleep as he uttered under his breath. “Days in the sun will return, we must believe. As lovers do, that days in the sun will come shining through.” ~~~~~~~~~~ Despite the wolves, despite the darkness, despite the freezing cold and the falling snow, Fiddleford trudged on. He held his casted, broken arm close to his chest for warmth, crushing a few inches of snow with his boots. The snow was coming down hard, blinding him and making it feel like a hundred tiny knives were cutting his face, but he forced himself to keep going. The idea of his children somewhere in this snow terrified him. “Dipper!” He called out. “Mabel!” Fiddleford brought his scarf up to his nose so his breath would warm the bottom-half of his face. The familiar scents of family and love came to his schnoz. Mabel had knitted him this green scarf. In fact, she knitted him his sweater and gloves, too, but this scarf, tangled and elementary, had been Mabel’s first scarf and once Shermie’s, but when he died and left it back to Mabel, she insisted that Fiddleford have it. Every time Fiddleford went to Paris to sell the clocks and music boxes in the past, he always asked the twins what they wanted, as a way to help handle his absence better. Every time, Dipper asked for a book everyone would want to hear him read and Mabel hesitantly asked for yarn. Yarn was usually very expensive, and she knew that, but she had a raw talent for knitting and sewing. No one had taught her how to knit or sew, but the minute the materials were in her hands, as young as four, she knew what to do. She was amazing like that. Better yet, with her gift of yarn, if lucky enough to have some, she always made clothes for others before herself, knitting Dipper, Fiddleford, and Shermie sweaters and gloves and scarfs and hats to keep them warm during long winters. The first time she surprised Fiddleford with a blue sweater, she smiled at him and said, “Now you can have me wherever you go.” Fiddleford wiped his eyes dry; he couldn’t afford to cry, his tears would freeze on his face. Mabel needed him, Dipper needed him, so he continued to call out their names as the rest of the village searched behind him, much slower than the old man. ~~~~~~~~~~ Stan woke up to the sound of giggling. He opened his eyes, facing the window and Ford’s table, and he found Mabel standing there with a quill in her hand and playing tic-tac-toe with Ford. She was Xs and Ford was Os. Most of the time Mabel won, but occasionally (whether to keep her humble or because Brainiac couldn’t help himself) Ford would win, but Mabel seemed just as delighted by Ford’s wins as her own. “Yay! Good job, Monsieur Ford! Okay, you go first.” Stan smiled and slowly sat up. Dipper was by his side and smiled. “Morning, Stan. How are you feeling?” “M’fine, kid.” Stan said, popping his old back and stretching his arms. He ruffled his fur loose and gave the boy an impressed smile. “Good job fixin’ me up, I feel good as new.” “Thanks.” Dipper said. “Monsieur Stan!” Mabel called, turning away from her game with Ford for a moment. “Did you see?! IT SNOWED! We should all play outside!” “C’mon, Mabel,” Dipper said easily. “Stan’s just a hurt old man, he should take it easy.” And he gave the beast a smirk. “Old man?!” Stan barked and stood tall and strong. “That’s it, you just earned yourself a huge snowball to the face!” “And don’t worry, Monsieur Ford,” Mabel said, setting her quill down and scooting the table with Ford on it closer to the window. “This way you can watch us. If you want to.” Thank you, Mabel. The words read. Waddles oinked happily and showed his belly to Stan, lying on the floor. He glared at the animal. “And what is that?” “That’s my pet pig, Waddles!” Mabel joyfully introduced. “He found us in the woods last night.” “No,” Stan said firmly and shook his head. “No pigs allowed in this castle. They’re nothing but fat, naked jerks.” “Aw, come on,” The girl cooed and hugged her pig with big brown eyes. “Just for a few days?” Stan winced. Sacrebleu, that girl was just very manipulated. He ignored the painful reminder that the kids were only here for a little while and growled, “Fine, just make sure he doesn’t eat any of Sixer’s pages or I’m eating him for lunch.” “Don’t worry, we keep books around him all the time.” Dipper said as he petted the pig’s head. “He knows not to bother them.” Dipper and Mabel dragged Stan out by his paws and for the outdoors. Waddles climbed up on Abuelita the armchair and curled up for a nap. The kids admired the beautiful garden covered in the late autumn snow. A soft blanket coated the whole world, fluffy but not delicate. Everyone was warmly dressed and ready to play. The twins took in deep breaths and then slowly counted to three. On three, they simultaneously jumped off the short balcony and landed on their faces. Stan watched, confused, but then they both rolled on their fronts and laughed, their breath visible, and they began to make snowangels on the ground. “Come on, Stan!” Mabel called. “Yeah, c’mon, man!” Dipper shouted happily. Stan smiled mischievously, took a step back, and then launched himself into the air. He landed with his beefy arms over each kid and his head in the middle, and when he turned on his back with the kids in his hold, all three were laughing like mad. Mabel swiftly made a snowball and threw it at Dipper’s face. He scrambled up after his running sister and threw one at her. Stan sat in the snow, watching the kids play, throwing snowballs at each other and running around the yard. His tail wagged against the sparkling snow. Dipper threw one and Mabel ran around Stan, resorting to the ball hitting him right in the face. Stan shook the snow out of his eyes as Mabel laughed and Dipper paled, but wearing a kind smirk on his face, Stan gathered a snowball in his paw and threw it at Dipper, who was hit in the chest and ran. Stan scurried to his feet and ran around with the kids, throwing slightly bigger snowballs that the kids enjoyed. Stan soon made a huge snowball with his strong arms, the ball almost as big as one child, but when Mabel threw one at Stan’s face he accidentally dropped the huge ball that was held over his head and he was covered in snow. Dipper and Mabel laughed so hard they had no choice but to stop running, leaning on each other for support. Stan found their laugh more contagious than the plague and roared with joy as he shook off the snow like a dog on all fours. Mabel ran into his arms and Dipper soon followed, hugging him to warm him up and apologize without words for winning the war. Stan was surprised by their desire to hug him, but he hugged them back gently and rubbed their backs, finding their clothes soaked. “Alright, gremlins, let’s get you dry and warm.” Stan said and picked them up to go back into the castle. “We can play again later.” “Okay,” Mabel cooed as she snuggled against Stan’s chest, holding onto his gray fur. “Hm, you’re so warm.” Stan’s own face suddenly felt a little warmer. “Yeah, well, there’s some benefits to being a big ugly monster, I guess.” That didn’t sit right with the twins. From each of his arms, they exchanged looks, but an idea came to Dipper that distracted him from Stan’s comment. “Hey, can we read with Ford while we dry off? He says he’s got lots of great stories to tell.” Stan smiled down at him. “You like him, don’t you?” “Yeah, he’s pretty cool.” Dipper said, glancing away. “I thought you would. You’re both nerds.” Stan teased. Dipper shrugged in a whatcha-gonna-do-about-it style. Mabel hopped down and said, “I’ll go get him so we can read together!” And she ran up the stairs. Dipper got down from Stan’s hold, too, and was about to go to the living room, but Stan spoke and stopped him in his tracks. “Kid, wait. You really like books, right?” Dipper turned and responded with a dip of his head. “Yeah, I do. I was pretty much the only one that read the library in town, and by library I mean one bookshelf.” Stan waved a paw towards himself. “Follow me. I got something for you.” Dipper casually followed Stan down a hallway and they stopped at the double doors. The beast turned to the boy and gave him a cunning smile. “Ah, ah. Close your eyes.” Dipper crossed his arms over his chest and sneered at him with a smile. “Is this a prank?” “No, just do it.” Stan chuckled. “It’s a surprise.” Dipper gave in and closed his eyes. After testing that he truly was blind by waving a paw in front of his face, Stan opened the doors and put a hand on his back to help him walk. “Okay, okay, here we go… okay, stop.” “Can I see?” “Hold it, squirt, gimme a sec.” Stan hurried to pull back curtains and brighten the room. Candles magically came to life. “Okay, okay… open ‘em up!” Dipper opened his eyes, blinked to adjust to the newfound light, and then his jaw dropped. Towering over him, a room arguably bigger than the ballroom held thousands if not hundreds of thousands of books. Rich mahogany desks sat filled with parchment and quills and ink, globes and atlas took up some desk space, but Dipper couldn’t tear his eyes away from all of the books. Stairways and ladders could reach the books up at the very top and giant windows seeped in beautiful sunlight to ease the eyes. “Shut. Up.” Dipper said hoarsely. “I’ve never seen so many books! Look at this place!” He went to a bookshelf and gently ran a hand over the dozens of spines exposed to him. “You like it?” Stan asked, leaning by the door with his arms crossed over his chest. “I love it!” “Then it’s all yours.” Dipper’s jaw was nearly on the floor when he turned to look at the master of the castle. “You really mean it?” “Sure do, Smart Guy.” Stan smiled at him. “Go nuts.” Dipper, trembling, ran to a shelf and began to pick books to read. Mabel came in, carrying Ford carefully like he was a baby, and she gasped joyfully. “Wowie, zowie! A whole library!” She gave Ford to Stan to hold and joined her brother, helping him by holding his stack of books. Stan smiled and opened Ford to talk to him. Immediately words appeared before him. That was ingenious, Stanley. Dipper will surely make good use out of the library. “Thanks, Sixer.” Stan watched the kids from across the vast room, his smile dropping. As a twin, he knew that it was rare to have something done only for you and not you and your twin. He wanted to do something special for each of them, but each of them separately. The library was Dipper’s, though Mabel was free to use it since she obviously liked stories (Stan noticed that Dipper liked “books” and Mabel liked “stories”), but she needed something of her own. “I wanna do something for Mabel.” He whispered. “But I know nothing about what girls like. Make-up? Dolls?” My knowledge on girls is also very limited. Ford admitted. But I do know that you should consider something that sparks her interests and not something exclusively femanine. You didn’t give Dipper a gun or a sword. Stan shrugged. “Okay, good point. So, what? What does Mabel like?” Well, I can recall her saying this morning that she loves sweaters. When I asked her about it, she said she loves to knit but could rarely afford the yarn. “That’s it!” Stan closed Ford gently and held him against his chest one-armed. “Mabel, sweetie, can you come with me? I got something for you, too.” Mabel shoved the twenty-plus books in her brother’s arms and ran up to Stan. He smiled at her huge grin and walked with her down the hall. He led her to a single door. Mabel instantly took off her pink headband and tied it over her eyes so she wouldn’t be tempted to peek. “I wanna be surprised!” She squealed. Stan chuckled. “Give me your hand, kid.” Mabel did and Stan led her into the room. He opened a curtain and let go of the girl’s little hand. “Alright, you can look now.” Mabel pulled her blindfold down onto her neck and she gasped so big her lungs filled quickly. It was like a grand supply closet. There was a wall full of rolls of different patterns of fabric and silk, figurines to make clothes on, drawers full of supplies, desks full of paints and canvases and brushes, and an odd shelf of some kind, squares that held bundles of yarn, all in rainbow order. What was better yet, this room may have been only twenty feet wide, but it was forty feet tall, like a tower, and a rolling ladder helped to reach the higher fabrics and yarns. A window as tall as the room let in bright sunlight to make crafting easy. “OH MY GOSH!” Mabel cried out and looked around the room. “It’s like arts-n’-crafts heaven!” “It was Ma’s room.” Stan shared as he chuckled over Mabel’s joy. “She used to come down here and spend hours painting and drawing and making clothes. Pa used to get on her case about it. Said she didn't give the seamstresses enough to do.” “Your dad sounds like a stupid jerk.” Mabel added quickly before resuming her cheerful attitude. “This is wonderful! I love it! LOOK at all the COLORS!” “If you like it so much, then it’s yours.” Stan said. Mabel turned and Stan was clutched to find her crying. Well, not really crying, but there were tears in her eyes and one escaped each eye, rolling down her cheeks. “THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU!” Mabel cheered and ran to him. One arm busy holding Ford, Stan fell on his butt by the impact of the girl and she hugged him around his big neck, nuzzling her face into his fur. He stared ahead in astonishment and wrapped an arm around her, petting her soft brown hair and admiring her warmth. Too soon she skipped away and climbed up the ladder for some red yarn. “I’m gonna make you a sweater first! Then I’ll make Ford one, a little book-holder to keep him warm.” “I don’t think he really gets cold anymore.” Stan said as he stood again. “Well then, I’ll go ahead and make him a sweater to wear when he’s human again.” Mabel reasoned. Stan was distracted by that statement. When he was human again. When they were human again. He had lost all hope for so long of someone ever loving him that it seemed foolish to think of the curse ever being broken, but Mabel and Dipper seemed to like him, and Ford probably loved him (for some odd reason) so maybe it was possible for him to find a beautiful mademoiselle to love and have her love him back. Stan shook his train of thought away as Dipper now joined them, six books stacked in his arms and making his limbs quiver, but he didn’t seem to care. “Mabel, what’s… whoa-oh!” Dipper awed at the room. “No way! Cool art supplies.” “Thanks!” Mabel said and climbed down with red and orange yarn in her arms and she opened a drawer full of different size knitting needles and pulled out a pair she liked. “Wanna read to us by the fire?” “Sure.” In the lounge, Stan sat in front of the huge fireplace, making plenty of room for Ford to be safe. Dipper and Mabel sat in his lap, the boy at his left and the girl at his right, and Dipper opened Ford and the journal began to tell a story. Dipper read the words out-loud, occasionally having Mabel give reading a try, only needing assistance a handful of times for bigger words, but Ford seemed to purposely use smaller words when it was her turn to read. Stan, without realizing it, was purring. The children noticed, but said nothing. Mabel nuzzled closer to him, grateful for his large body and fluffy gray fur. She thought he was wonderful in every aspect and Dipper full-heartedly agreed. The biggest mystery of them all was how Dipper didn’t see this all before.

~~~~~~~~~~

Author’s Note: This… this is where, in my humble opinion, the story actually becomes worth reading. I feel like the patience we, the audience, must have with the BatB story - seeing the Beast as he is before his change of heart, seeing Belle run away and all the obstacles before them both - make the bonding scenes even better. Gives a FINALLY sort of feeling. I wanted to carry that over here, making the beginning a little slow (though I probably lost some readers that way), but making it even more rewarding for those who read on. Or maybe I’m just making an excuse for a suck-ish beginning. Who knows. Okay, so Waddles NOT being a footstool is so that it ties in more to the canon GF storyline. I didn’t want Waddles to be some pet Stan didn’t like and only tolerated for someone else’s sake or a farm-animal that was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Rather, I had him always be Mabel’s and I also left him at home in the beginning to better parallel the show’s canon (even though Waddles is in the intro, he isn’t introduced until S1E9). I also, mainly, just really wanted Stan to only allow Waddles in the castle to make Mabel happy, cuz Imma sap that’s why. Moving on, I put both Days in the Sun and a hint of Something There at the end. When writing the snow scene, I listened to Wolf Children’s Snow soundtrack; I personally thought it fit so well. Not much else to say except Mabel’s craft-room is my idea and I love love LOVE the library scene (both in this fic and in the animated BatB movie; the live-action movie RUINED the scene!) Thank you so much for reading, and I hope y’all enjoy it!

[venus-says]

Yes! Pretty Cure 5 Episodes 25-49 + Movie

So... this happened.

This second half of Yes! 5 was... boring.

Yeah, it had its moments, but overall? It was pretty lackluster. And, I know Yes isn't the most eventful season, as I mentioned on the first post, this is a character-focused show so the plot won't move much until it needs to, proof of that is the Pinky collecting thing that is never on the front seat and when we see it they are in the final 4 episodes and there's only one missing for them to complete the collection. The thing is that the characters part was pretty... problematic?

I don't know if it's because they knew a second season would be coming that they decided to go very light in character development in order to focus on something else, but this second half lacked a lot in this department. Again, they had great moments, Milk, Karen, and Rin probably got the best development out of the cast, but when we look at everything together we see that there were still things that lacked quite a bit.

Another thing that was weird was the timing for the villains, the pacing in which a new villain would come and an old one would go was very weird, there were villains we spent more time with than we should and there were villains that we didn't get enough time to leave an impression and you can say that the precure stuff is actually the less important part of Yes so this isn't that big of a deal, but it's still an element that is present so I think it's okay for me to complain about it. Also, I kinda dislike how they ended the villains, not the part of sealing Despariah and such, but they were going for a "let's talk our way out of this" approach and they were building up for a good moment but they brought Kawarino back for that moment and it kinda ruined it.

But the thing I hated the most, and that made it almost unbearable for me to watch in this second half, was the whole romance thing. Pick everything I said about it in the first post, multiply that for 10, and that's pretty much how I felt about it in this second half. On the first portion it was bad, but in the second half this gets horrible, they shove you the romance thing in the face in whatever opportunity they have and it's just hideous. They made an entire episode where the conflict was Nozomi being jealous of Coco. They had an episode about marriage and each girl fantasized about their wedding and in Nozomi's fantasy Coco was the freaking groom. Heck, they even made something romantic out of a ghost. This was gross, this is definitely the worst aspect of Yes, and because it was so present in this second half I've lost a lot of my interest for this season.

But not everything was worse, in comparison with the first half, the animation has gotten a lot better, there are still ugly drawings and clunky animation, but they improved a lot. Also, the action got better, the attack spam is still there, but they had more fights, they were more creative which made things more fun. Heck, they made Aqua joust with one of the villains in one episode and that was freaking cool. Also, I like that despite having a group attack they only use it to defeat the generals so it feels like something that is very powerful and special and I think this is something we've been missing in precure lately. So, as I said, not everything was worse.

I think that's all I have for general comments, let's jump down to the characters.

It was hard to follow Nozomi around, everything related to her character ended up being about Coco. She was there for her friends and everything, but still, every decision her character made was centered around Coco, even when she finally chose a dream to pursue, that dream was because of Coco, and it's sad that a character with so much potential was reduced to just a planet orbiting around this freaking mascot.

Rin was a bit complicated, I think they've picked the "precure of passion" thing a little too literal and almost all Rin focused episodes had a romantic thing involved. They never pair her with anyone, which is great, but is kinda sad her whole thing was just that, we didn't get to see her interact with her family, we didn't get to see her playing futsal, the bare development we got for her was while she was with Karen as they started to tighten their bond inside their friendly rivalry, which was awesome, don't get me wrong, but I wish she had gotten more. But I like that she decided to be an accessory/jewelry designer as her dream because it wasn't the most obvious path for her, or for a red cure for that matter.

Poor Urara got a bit faded, I can't remember much of what she has done in this latter half. She remains great and all, and she had a very sweet bonding episode with Komachi near the end, but other than that she didn't do much other than just tag along for most of these episodes. And that's pretty sad, in the first half she was my favorite character but after this part where her light was a bit dimmed I'm afraid she may have lost the position.

Komachi had a similar situation as Nozomi, a lot of what she has done had Nuts influence on it, but I think it worked better with her because her entire goal wasn't to get together with Nuts, it was more like he was always hanging around her rather than she pursuing her. It's still an awful relationship because it's an adult and a kid, and Nuts freaking sucks as a human, but it didn't offend me as much. Also, Komachi got to do more stuff that didn't necessarily have to be involved with Nuts, we got to see more of her friendship with Karen, she grown closer to Urara and now wants to write a play/script/story that she can act, and she got great interactions with Rin because the whole telling scary stories thing. So I think her deal was more balanced.

The best of this second half, at least to me, was Karen. She was freaking awesome, I like that they paired her with Milk, it seemed like a relationship that shouldn't work because I didn't see how they could bond, but it was great, and I like that was something that was escalating slowly and it reached its peak in the episode where Milk gets sick and Karen wants to take care of her. Karen and Rin were also great, as I mentioned. I wasn't really into their rivalry in the first half but they got to work it very well here in this portion of the series, it evolved from just a dumb thing to an "I have a strong personality, just like you, and I have this vision of world about something that I won't let go of it, but I respect you and I know how to hear you and comprehend you points", it's a simple but complex thing that worked very well and that I'm glad they went with this route for these two.

Milk was also a tricky character, she was unbearable whenever she interacted with Nozomi (though she had a few points some times), she was in the mix of fun and obnoxious whenever the thing was about Coco and Nuts, and she was absurdly cute when she and Karen tagged along, so her character was a bit of a roller-coaster. I think by now I like her because I understand she just wants to be useful to the people she likes and it's a feeling I can relate too, but I admit she has her problems and she can be a handful to deal with.

Coco and Nuts shouldn't exist, they don't have an arc, they don't have development, they don't have a purpose, they're there just to push this ridiculous romantic bullshit that we don't need. Heck, Masuko Mika did in a single episode more than these double-sided plushies did in 49 episodes and a movie, she grew, she developed, she was fun, we should've got more of her and less of them. Thinking about them makes me pissed, thinking about how they're basically two different persons in their fairies and human forms because they wanna hammer down the idea that they're attractive makes me want to jump in front of a truck. I freaking hate them. Sorry, not sorry.

I wanted to talk about the villains, but there's pretty much nothing to be said. Like, from Bunbees subordinates that remained, they were already doing extra hour at this point, Bunbee being relocated to a new section but with less power seemed like could be fun but they didn't do much with it, the new staff introduced could've been great, but they were around for such a short amount of time, I think Bloody had only 4? episode where he acted as the villain, that's less than Pissard and Karehan got and they were the level 1 bosses, it was pretty ridiculous. Kawarino was cool, I think he's very scary and very creepy, but they kinda ruined him when they gave him his monster form, that wasn't 50% as intimidating as "human" Kawarino was. And Despariah was a letdown, she seemed so powerful and menacing but then her wish was to be immortal because she wanted to be young forever? I know this could be their attempt to make an allegory to how beauty standards are very oppressive to women, but this was in 2007 and I don't know if they would do that so early on in the franchise.

I was going to wrap things up now, but I managed to watch the movie before the post went out even though I forgot to download it together with the episodes, so here are my thoughts in the movie.

The Mirror Kingdom's Miraculous Adventure!

This is going to be short, I promise. This movie was a mixed bag, I was entertained, but this could've been way better. The concept of the Dark Precure is great, and they look amazing, but I feel like they weren't used to their full potential, first because it takes quite sometime before the five of them attack, and also the fact they keep cutting the battles to show everyone else kinda weakens them because I couldn't really feel how menacing or how their psyche was. Shadow was pretty bland, and the movie fairies were also very whatever, but the plot was very decent if we ignore the miracle light portion. But the thing this movie does that I can't forgive them is that they give all cures a power-up but they don't fight in that form, they just perform their attack, and that was very anti-climatic, especially considering the action for this movie was quite good

Wrapping up, Yes! Pretty Cure 5 is a decent season, it tried to do something different and that's worthy of praise, sadly they took some dumb decisions about the things they wanted to work, It's fun and has good characters but the romance element ruins it a lot, It's probably my least favorite of the four seasons I've covered so far. Thankfully they have another season so they can pull a Max Heart and be incredible so I'm both hopeful and excited for starting GoGo in the next week. What are your thoughts about Yes! 5? Share them with me in the comments. Thank you so much for sticking with me and reading this insanely huge post, I really appreciate it. I'll see you all around. Bye-bye~

[mydisenchantedeulogy]

Love Killer (Chapter 1) Light Show (Judal | Judar)

A'isha Kilani stood in the soft, green grass rotating a staff lined with black iron between her fingers, otherwise a meager excuse to occupy her free time while she remained put and cure her frustration. Her blood boiled and she positioned the staff above her head, ordering the white rukh to alter into the energy needed for her magic. The sphere-shaped, red crystal at its apex began to glow and with a silent command, Asha brought the staff into a vertical slash and shot her magic through the air like a bright beacon into the straw figure erect in the ground ahead of her. In modest appreciation she sighed and watched the dummy burn to ashes, settling herself into the grass to rest.

Asha stared at her staff and cursed, choosing to point blame at the wooden vessel rather than admit her fault. She calmed her uneven breathing and directed the rukh to alter again. Her staff came to life and glowed brighter than before, but her body numbed and she cut the flow of magic in defeat.

Two bursts is about my limit. Anything more will put strain onto my body. Heat burned at her face. She snorted in mock laughter at herself. Surely even the twins; her sisters, Hala and Nasira had more to display with their magic than their elder sister did. But Asha, more accustomed to war than manipulating magoi just could not tolerate the praises their father gave to them and pleaded with him to find her a tutor. He did just that, but as fate would have it she didn’t catch on quite as fast. Slow and steady Asha.

A sudden realization dawned on her. Even her brother, battle hardened Kamal knew more on magic than she did. Asha felt her heart sink. She threw back her head and screamed, choking down a squeal of surprise at the sudden flash of dark, pink hair in her face.

“What are you doing here?” Kougyoku’s voice laughed at her.

Asha felt her face grow warm and glanced away from her princess.

Kougyoku’s hands cupped her round, baby face as she laughed again. “Are you hiding from Judal-chan?”

Asha tossed her a glare and puffed out her red cheeks. “Maybe I am. So what?” She allowed the princess a second to chuckle, chewing the inside of her jaw. “To answer your previous question, I am here with Kamal on business. Racketeering and such. The usual.”

Kougyoku hummed to herself and sat at her side. “Is that all?”

“That depends. Did you know the caravan Kamal and I arrived by is loaded with illegal weapons and armor boosted by magoi?” Asha chewed at her jaw again and sighed. “Or that my family are felons, stealing, modifying, and reselling our merchandise to the Empire?”  

Kougyoku narrowed her eyes and clicked her tongue. “Sounds beyond me.”

“You’re not much help, you know?” She nudged her shoulder and let out a laugh. Brown eyes hardened. “What is this interest with picking on me over Judal?”

She smiled and slid the ornate, golden pin from her hair. “How about a competition?”

Asha’s eyes widened. “A competition? Now of all times?”

“There is no time better than now.” Kougyoku’s voice melted into deceit as she stood and skipped ahead, flaunting the pin at her. “Beat me and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Asha snorted at her, shrugging her shoulders. “What makes you think I want to know?”

She remained still, lips pulled into a smirk and prompted her metal vessel to take shape into its sword form. “Curiosity is nature, wouldn’t you say?”

Asha hoisted herself up and rotated her staff between her fingers. “Very well. I am in no position to refuse the princess of the Kou Empire after all.”

Kougyoku clasped her sword and trained the blade on her. “Excuses are futile.”

“Spoken like a true warrior.” She mocked the eagerness in her keen expression while keeping the staff out in front of her.

Asha and Kougyoku clashed. The sword struck first and Asha blocked while sparks flew, the iron decorated around the staff surprising held well against her metal vessel. Again and again she blocked the sword’s well-aimed strikes setting into a kneeling pose as Kougyoku aimed high to take her head. Asha took a chance and slashed downwards only to be blocked and slammed in the side by the sword’s aqua-colored hilt.

Kougyoku smirked and seated her position. “One to nothing.”

Asha hissed a curse and blocked a low strike with her staff. Yet again she stopped the sword from reaching her until Kougyoku blocked an overhead slash in a crouch and Asha spun right, hitting her side. “One to one. We are even.”

“Not for much longer.” Kougyoku’s words sneered at her. She stood and hacked at her much harder than before, making it so that Asha planted her feet firmly to keep her balance but accustomed to such force from endless hours of training Asha parried and took another point at Kougyoku’s right arm.

Asha attacked first this time around and recklessly evened the score. “Two to two.” Her side burned in pain as she rubbed the discomfort from it. “Shall we make this more interesting?”

Asha’s eyes narrowed at her. “More interesting? What are you proposing?”

Kougyoku slammed the blade of her sword into the ground and rested against it. “A magoi shoot-out. One technique against the other, considering neither of us appears to be really letting go.”

“Or having fun, you mean?” Asha rolled her eyes. “Speak for yourself.”

She had started to feel a little bored herself, and a shoot-out could be fun. But it could also put injury on her body using her very life force to sustain her magic. Not only that, but Asha had used her light magic previously and another burst of the magnitude needed to overpower the Djinn equip of the Kou Empire’s princess could kill her. Asha rotated her staff and sighed, eyes greeting the princess with defeat.

Kougyoku shook with delight and drew her sword pulling it above her head. “Brace yourself. Water God’s spheres.” Her water magic burst out the air and created a spear around the metal vessel in her hands aimed to fire at her.

Asha mocked her stance and commanded the rukh to alter drawing a loop into the air. “Astral Halo.” The crystal pulsed and the loop began to expand in size as she forced her magoi, but the flow of magic came to a stop and the crown of light fizzled out with a pop. Asha panted from exhaustion, but to be mindful she had to offer thanks to Judal for stopping her, even if were by force of his fist in her stomach.

“What is it you think you’re doing?” His voice taunted her.

Asha coughed and dropped her staff to the ground, using his shoulder to keep herself from falling over. Her knees buckled beneath her and blood leaked from her mouth obviously a side effect of expending her magoi.

Kougyoku dispelled her water magic and scowled flicking her sword at him. “What is the deal Judal? We were about to have a shoot-out. You interrupted and that’s not fair.”

Judal met her eyes. “I was just helping Asha out. Her magoi can’t hold up against your own after all. The fight would be unfair, so don’t get mad at me for being honest.” His arm locked her against himself. “Just look at how weak she is.”

Kougyoku peered at her and frowned. “I wasn’t aware you were hurt.”

Asha smiled despite the pain and Judal’s constant badgering. “I am fine Kougyoku, just a little exhausted.”

“See, I helped.” Judal’s warm breath tickled her cheek. He pulled her hair and tilted her head to meet his bored expression. “You should say thank you. I earned it.”

Asha glared feeling her face heat up. “I fail to see how, other than causing me more pain.”

“How rude.” His voice crooned. “I am the oracle of this empire, so you’d do best to remember that. Say thank you.”

Asha hissed at him having enough of his childish antics. She felt like a pet dribbling at his feet and sucking up to him all the time just because the rukh favored him. Even in her own country the people worshiped the very ground he stood on but she would have none of that. She huffed back her bangs and gave him a hateful glare. “No I will not say thank you. I appreciate the help but I will not praise you, magi.”

His eyes narrowed and upon seeing that she would not obey, he shoved her aside and watched as she fell to the ground in a tussled heap.

Kougyoku watched in disbelief. She felt pity for her for the reason that surely, Asha couldn’t see the trouble she had caused. It had been as if she hoped for Judal to correct her, and he just might, curling his lips into a snarl. The very air around him felt cold and gloomy.

“What was that for?” Asha cursed at him. She spoke even before she thought it over just happy to have caused him to make such an expression other than that which he gave her. “I wish you would grow up spoiled brat. I will not suck up to you. I don’t believe you deserve it.”

Kougyoku went pale. “Please stop Asha.”

Judal silenced her with a look and crouched to his knee, clutching her face roughly in his fingers. “I’ll make you regret those words.”

Asha’s smile faded. She felt ill, looked into his bloody, red-ringed eyes, and swallowed her fear.

“Do you think that I am scared? You’re childish and you’ve got threats. You may frighten the Empire with your power, but I will not be shaken so easily.”

Judal tapped her nose and laughed, “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 141

Film: Futari wa Precure Splash Star The Movie - Tick Tock! Escape in the Nick of Time! Date watched: 11 July 2019 Original release date: 9 December 2006 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/2vJnPUD (over 200 pictures, so enjoy!) Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

this is about the closest we get to a movie form

This movie really demonstrates what the series is capable of. The animation is gorgeous, fluid, and very dynamic. The fight scenes have the characters moving all over the place and the character expressions are wonderful. It’s going to be hard for me to go back to the series after this (although I do want to pick up the story of Michiru and Kaoru). There’s so much quality in this, it really proves what you can do with animation. But I’ll elaborate on my thoughts after I put them in context.

The Plot

Saki and Mai are planning to enter a karaoke contest, but Saki oversleeps and is almost two hours late meeting Mai, who has wandered into a nearby clock shop to wait. Saki is annoyed that she wasn't at the meeting point and hurries her along. They take a shortcut across a river, but are stopped by a strange man who inquires about a very old clock. They direct him to the shop they just came from and continue to the contest. However, at the registration desk they're told that they're too late to enter. They apologize and beg to be allowed in, and the staff relents and puts them in the last spot. Saki is happy that everything worked out but Mai reminds her that she was late and that they are only being allowed entry out of kindness. There's some friction developing but they both try to put their best foot forward and continue. They prepare silently in the dressing room, with Saki putting on a monkey kigurumi and Mai dressing as a poodle. Eventually it's their turn to perform, but seeing the crowd gives them massive stage fright and they freeze, silently begging for time to stop.

Then time stops. They take a moment to collect themselves and try to figure out what happened when they see two spirits land near them. They follow the spirits back to the clock shop, where they are transported to the Land of Clocks, and the spirits named Hours and Minutes explain that an evil man stopped the Infinite Clock. Surprise surprise, it's the man who stopped Saki and Mai earlier, who introduces himself as Sirloin from Dark Fall, and they transform into Precure and battle him. Unfortunately, he can keep up with the girls and he even tricks them into attacking each other before he sucks them and all the fairies into a maze.

When the girls regain consciousness they find they've been separated from Moop and Foop, and they argue over whether they should prioritize getting out of the maze or finding the fairies first. They wander around for a while but ultimately they get fed up with each other and Bloom storms off, only to come running back when she hears Egret getting attacked by an Uzainaa. By the time Bloom arrives, however, she can't find Egret, and the monster punches her back across the desert. It turns out Egret was actually nearby but she was trapped behind a disappearing door, unable to call out to her partner or do anything to get her attention before the door faded away and they were separated. Being separated causes their feelings and strength to waver and the two wind up detransforming. 

They wallow in their doubt for a while but Hours and Minutes encourage them to make up with each other, so they each start looking for the other. Saki is yelling Mai's name, and Mai calls back, but their shouting attracts unexpected company: Moop and Foop with a bunch of clock spirits, and the Uzainaa, who swoops in to attack the girls. The monster stops them from transforming but they realize there is a double door on its head: the escape! Saki and Mai each jump to grab a handle, at great personal risk, and the Uzainaa dissolves as everybody is sucked out of the maze and lands back in front of the Infinite Clock, while Sirloin just looks confused.

He commends them for escaping before trying to crush them in a pillar of sand, but Saki and Mai finally come together, hold hands, and apologize to each other. They slowly begin to transform into Cure Bright and Cure Windy as they explain how much they value each other's friendship and declare how, when they're together, they can save everyone and there's nothing to be afraid of! They break free of the sand and fight Sirloin again, and this time they manage to break through his barriers and dodge his attacks, defeating him before embracing each other.... until he transforms into a giant red bull. He yells out that he wants to stop time so he can be alone, but the girls counter that life is more fun together and they won't let him destroy everyone's lives. They perform Spiral Star Splash as he fires his own beam of sand at them, but despite him seeming to have more power, Hours and Minutes contribute their energy, all the clock spirits give strength, and the Infinite Clock itself comes to life as the animals of the zodiac, carved into its border, shine and burst out to surround the Precures. They add their energy to the attack and then they charge Sirloin one by one while the girls yell that even if he's more powerful than them, when they're together, they can do anything, and that's why Pretty Cure is two people! All together they manage to finally destroy Sirloin, and restore the flow of time. The first credits roll past the screen as Hours and Minutes reaffirm their own friendship by holding hands like the Precures, and then Saki, Mai, and their fairies are all instantly transported back to the moment they left as time is fully restored. The music has stopped, so the MCs restart it and Saki and Mai dance to Ganbalance de Dance.

The Analysis

This movie is beautiful in every sense of the word. Beautifully animated. Beautifully written. Beautifully paced (okay maybe that could use a little work...). It shows the truest sense of what Splash Star can be, and that long, non-stock transformation while Saki and Mai talk out their feelings may be one of the best things ever put to film in this franchise. Interestingly, the upgrade in animation means there’s less use of spirit power, as Bloom and Egret fight much more physically than what we typically see in the series. And the motion! The first battle with Sirloin has everybody moving around extremely rapidly, with none of the lag that commonly plagues the show’s attempts at dynamic motion. The final battle is similarly spectacular, with the addition of some creative ways to use the moon and wind powers. Plus, the scene of all the zodiac animals coming out of the clock and aiding the Precures in their attack is really cool! Some of them are only represented very briefly, which makes me appreciate the effort all the more.

There are some moments of less than stellar animation and drawings but those shots are still on the level of an average TV episode.

I adore the message about two people coming together. Obviously, teamwork and partnership are at the root of Precure, but the movies especially give them a chance to shine a light on what it means and why. Despite Sirloin being stronger, the heroines are fighting together! Their bond is their strength, and when they aren’t perfect, when they can’t do something alone, they have help from each other, and help from everyone around them! That’s why Hours and Minutes lend their strength, and all the zodiac animals on the clock appear because of the power of their partnership. Their journey through the film cements this. They had a conflict, it weakened them, but even when they separated, when they were at their lowest, they still cared about each other and wanted to apologize, and that is where they started to rebound and become stronger, strong enough to defeat Sirloin.

I found the plot to be a little uneven. It’s similar to the second Max Heart film in broad strokes: the two girls have a disagreement that causes friction between them, which impacts their ability to fight, they are separated from each other but eventually reunite and make up, and with their resolve now stronger than ever, they overpower the villain, proving that their bond is strong enough to overcome any obstacle. The big differences between the two lie in the approach. MH2 began with a pretty minor offense and there was fairly equal blame to go around, while in Splash Star it’s pretty clear-cut that Saki’s extreme tardiness and subsequent lack of consideration for the burden she imposed on everybody else as a result is the problem, and Mai getting irritated at her for this is perfectly reasonable. It seems like the narrative wants you to say “Saki was late but Mai wasn’t where she was supposed to be so they’re both at fault” but I can’t really agree with that. This doesn’t break the movie, but it affects the perception of the resolution. Instead of Saki apologizing for being late and inconsiderate, they both apologize for their own faults. This is not bad, and it’s true that Mai has some issues to apologize for throughout the film, but treating the two as equal just.... doesn’t quite make sense to me. Saki was almost two hours late to meet Mai, which caused them to miss the deadline to sign up for the event that Saki wanted to do in the first place, and she gets pissy at Mai for not being at the exact meeting point when she finally shows up, and again when Mai reminds her that she inconvenienced the registration folks. Frankly she’s lucky Mai had confidence in her and didn’t just go home.

Additionally, the pacing feels a tad rushed in the middle. This movie is 50 minutes, the shortest of any Precure film period (the Go! Princess triple feature counts as one movie, fight me), when they’re normally about 70-75 minutes. They didn’t necessarily need another 20 minutes, but I think a further 10 minutes exploring the maze (especially separately) might have helped the resolution feel more earned. Them feeling remorseful almost immediately after they sit down and think about their fight makes sense, but have them work harder to reunite! Have them really desperate to find each other for that little bit longer, and it would be better to me.

That being said, there’s a particular sequence I like, when Saki and Mai are walloing in their doubts, they both flash back to the night they met as children at the carnival, but in each of their flashbacks, they are their current age looking down at the younger version of the other, who acts uncertain and runs away, visualizing their fear of separation.

There’s a bit of distortion, like a soft fisheye or something, that really sells the unease.

When I was first getting into Precure back in the early 2010s, the people I chatted with described the Splash Star film as exceptionally gay, and in particular were fond of describing the slow transformation as essentially an open declaration of love. Love is much less of an overt topic in this film compared to the Max Heart films, where Nagisa’s romantic frustrations were at least shown, or outright contributed to the plot. In this movie, Kazuya is only shown once, sitting in the audience with the rest of Mai’s family, and absolutely no allusion is made to Saki’s crush on him. However, is it there beneath the surface? All I can say is that it’s an understandable read of the film. The text of it treats them as good friends who care deeply for each other’s well being, and want to rectify their wrongs to each other. Fundamentally, that’s what love is, but they never quite spell it out to the audience for multiple reasons, so what you’re left with is subtext. After my MH2 review, I had a discussion with @punk-mahoucore who pointed out that the writers gave themselves plausible deniability about the intent of the romantic subtext in that film by the inclusion of a male love interest, so it’s interesting that they don’t even have that here. You can choose to see them as close friends, or as girlfriends, and there’s nothing but heteronormativity to really say you’re wrong.

Veering away from the heavy subjects, I have a few minor things that don’t merit paragraphs of discussion.... starting with Sirloin.

Okay, sure, the movie is probably not canon, because it’s hard to fit it into the quest to revive the Fountain of the Sun, but Sirloin flies in the face of Dark Fall’s objectives, since he wants to stop time for everyone, eternally, and this would undermine Akudaikaan’s rule. It makes much more sense for him to just be a rogue villain as he doesn’t fit in with Dark Fall thematically, aesthetically, or in motivation. I don’t know why they chose to do that. Also, it’s such a silly name, I legitimately laughed out loud the first time they said it in the movie. I wonder if it was meant to be a pun with a title, Sir Loin, like Miss Shitataare. As it stands it’s just a strange name until he reveals his bull form. Also he’s voiced by Aizen from Bleach so that’s neat.

Hours and Minutes are a fun batch of movie-only mascots. They’re a bunch of references in one: Hours is shorter than Minutes because the hour hand is shorter than the minute hand, they are a turtle and a rabbit respectively because turtles are slow (like the hour hand) and rabbits are fast (like the minute hand), and they also represent the fable of the tortoise and the hare. They manage to not be particularly annoying! In fact I really like them! They’ve got a fun dynamic, with Minutes being more sentimental while Hours is a bit more aggressive, but he’s nice at heart and very open about how much he cares about his partner in time. Also, they don’t speak with a vocal tic, a rarity for fairies in this franchise, and that’s a plus. They’re brought to life by a couple of veteran seiyuu, Tarako as minutes and Kikuchi Misami as Hours.

The Land of Clocks itself is a pretty interesting place. It’s got lots of rock formations with various rocks shaped like numbers just scattered about, as well as grassy fields with lots of clocks laying there. The Infinite Clock is a giant hourglass inside aperture, with some gearing and weights. The disc that it’s in is shown to have illustrations of the zodiac animals on it, although the reason for this is never made clear.

Saki and Mai also get some really lovely outfits for this movie. Saki has a yellow belted dress or coat that has rolled-up sleeves and her cat emblem on the left hem of the skirt, with a pink long-sleeve shirt underneath, and she’s wearing dark gray pants with tan boots. Mai’s attire is a light pink shoulder-cut sweater with a darker pink collar and waist, worn over a white button-down shirt. She wears a blue skirt with tan hose or leggings, light blue pumps, and white leg warmers with a blue bow at the top. They’re outfits that evoke cool weather, which makes sense as this movie was released in late fall/early winter.

I want to move on to the opening and ending. I really love how the opening wordlessly tells the story of how Saki is desperately running late and Mai patiently waits for her, and it also showcases just how gorgeous the animation is going to be in this film. Take a look!

As cheesy as it is I’m especially fond of Saki rolling down that hill.

The ending, meanwhile, is “Ganbalance de Dance - Saki & Mai ver.” and while it plays in-universe, they don’t actually sing (weird for a karaoke contest), and most of the footage is external stuff. I do like the shots of Saki and Mai dancing with both of their alter egos, though, that’s pretty cool.

In conclusion, this movie is excellent. The Precure movies so far have all been strong. I don’t think it passes MH2 as my favorite movie but it’s a close second for sure. Some minor issues with pacing in the middle keep it from its full potential but it’s in the upper echelon of series films due to its strong characters and wonderful animation.

Finally, I want to note for the record that Kenta is present and has a few lines at the beginning of the film, but none of the other major cast members have any dialog. Mildly strange. Also, the judges for the karaoke contest are two real-world people: Uchiyae Yuka and Mukai Aki.

Uchiyae Yuka (on the left) sings the opening song, so her inclusion makes sense, but Mukai Aki has no involvement with Precure except for this part. I looked her up and she seems to be a TV actress and talk/variety show host from the late 80s and 90s, who has continued to make public appearances. I have no idea why they tapped her for this movie but I guess she fills the minor celebrity quota.

Next time we resume our normal activities. It’s Kintolesky and Dorodoron’s turn to attack, and Michiru and Kaoru get to celebrate their reunion with their friends! Look forward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 1 Zekkouchou Nari!

[toloveawarlord]

Ieyasu x Rena “Alone with You”

You can find my masterlist in my bio!

This takes place back before The Ties That Bind Us, right after Ieyasu and Rena get engaged. This is their first time in Azuchi together!

Their first trip to Azuchi had taken less time than initially anticipated. The sun hung low in the sky cascading hues of orange and purple across the cloudless sky. Rena lingered in the open doorway, only half listening to the Lord of Azuchi speak about the manor and its preparations. Her amber eyes swept over the entrance to their new home in Azuchi before returning to Ieyasu and Nobunaga.

“All preparations have been completed, but the staff will not arrive until morning. I hope this does not inconvenience you, Lord Ieyasu,” Nobunaga said, though his tone showed no ounce of caring. He had not been expecting them, thus irritation for their early arrival still showed in his features.

Ieyasu cast a glance at Rena and shook his head, “This will suffice. As for staff, we need nothing for the night, so it’s fine.” The sun hidden behind him cast a bright halo around his golden locks, bringing a smile to his betrothed lips.

Rena gave a curt bow, smiling at Nobunaga. “This is lovely. Thank you for your hospitality, Lord Nobunaga,” she replied sweetly, hiding the smirk that tugged at her lips. The manor has no other inhabitants for the night. What mischief the two could get up to…

With his vassal at his side, Nobunaga left them. He had arrangements to make for the morning’s meeting and evening’s celebration. Only when he was far out of sight, did Rena giggle with delight and scamper into the manor for a better look. “Ieyasu, do you know what this means? We have the entire manor to ourselves!”

“I understood what Lord Nobunaga said very clearly,” Ieyasu responded with little amusement. It was only a house, a place to stay. Whatever could she be so excited about? That part of her confused and intrigued him.

Rena waited for the door to close before pouncing. Her arms laid over his shoulders, one hand lazily playing with the soft hair at the nape of his neck. She lifted up onto the balls of her feet to brush her lips across his, not enough to kiss but their breaths mingled in between. “That means, no prying ears. No one to interrupt,” Rena whispered, gazing up into his deep green eyes. She delighted in the wave of desire that washed over him.

Ieyasu dipped his head down to steal a kiss, only to miss completely.

She reeled back, turning sharply on her heel. “But first you’ll have to catch me!” Exploring this beautifully designed manor while evading her lover would be quite a good time, in her opinion. Abandoning her shoes, Rena escaped down the nearest hallway.

Ieyasu stood, stunned. Half of him wanted to chastise her for being such a child. He’s a warlord. She’s his fiancé. It would be quite ridiculous to chase her around the manor. Yet, when it came to Rena, all of his reason and logic was abandoned. “Rena, you’re playing a dangerous game!” He called out, receiving silence in return.

If he must…

Her head start had left her already heaving for air. Being a lady in the castle had left her lacking in physical training. This reminded her of her roots, and how out of shape she was becoming. His declaration of war amused her. He might be a warlord, but she had been a professional thief. Sneaking around had been her specialty.

“I’ll forgive you for this if you give up this absurd game,” Ieyasu offered in the distance.

Rena let out a breathy laugh, risking her position by calling back, “I believe I’ll gamble the punishment, my lord.” Stressing the title he despised her calling him, Rena snuck around a corner without a sound.

The design of the manor was impeccable. Every room had been carefully placed and crafted to fit the space masterfully. She would need to give her regards to the carpenters and designers. The kitchen placed in the center, easily accessible from most any room.

Sliding the door of the nearest room open softly, Rena paused in the entry. This must be their bedroom. Their belongings that had been brought with them were neatly placed on the floor. The spacious room filled with elegant decorations and inscriptions in the walls had her breathless.

“Caught you,” Ieyasu whispered into her ear, both arms sliding around her waist to prevent her escape. Her squeal of surprise and delight was music to his ears. He pulled her against his body, biting down softly onto the soft skin of her neck, relishing in the sound of desire and pleasure that passed her lips. “Now, how shall I punish you for this.”

Rena let her head tilt to allow him further access. His lips peppered kisses along her exposed neck, pausing on the last to bite and suck on the sensitive spot he knew she loved. The assault continued up her jaw until he caught her lips in a feverish kiss. “Ieyasu.” His name fell from her lips with a needy sigh.

Easily lifting her small frame into his arms, Ieyasu carried her to the bed. Her amber eyes sparkled up at him, unaware of the punishment he had in mind for her. Once resting on the soft blankets, Ieyasu pressed another loving kiss to her lips, fingers tugging her kimono free. He traced the soft skin of her stomach, lulling her to be putty in his hands. “This is your punishment.”

His words weren’t enough to draw her back completely from the pleasure she had been ready to drown in. Her amber eyes were filled with confusion until his gentle touches were replaced with relentless tickling to her sides. Rena’s head fell back against the mats, laughter erupting from her. “W-wait! Ieyasu, st-stop!”

Ieyasu positioned himself to straddle her hips, caging her body under his own. A smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I do not think you get to say when your punishment is finished.” Drifting his fingers lightly over her skin again, he waited patiently for her to catch her breath. “I decide,” Ieyasu said, craftly assaulting her most ticklish spots once again.

Her small frame writhed under him, no hope of escaping but desperately trying anyways. The empty manor halls were echoing her uncontrollable laughter, carrying the melodic sound throughout the entire home. Rena swatted her hands at him, hoping for any attempt to stop him.

It was his turn to laugh. Ieyasu caught her wrists with one hand, holding them tightly. His free hand continued to torture her for a moment more. Her cheeks were painted red from her inability to breathe properly. Threateningly, Ieyasu held her in that position, tapping his fingers against her side. “Had enough?”

“Yes!” Rena answered, her smile never wavering despite her aching jaws. She wiggled under him. Her exposed torso lifted and fell heavily with each breath she took. “You win!”

He was elated to hear those words from her. His position and upbringing had left him without much to find fun in the world, but this crazy girl had made it her mission to teach him how to do that. Ieyasu released her arms, licking his dry lips. “Good, then I will take my prize as well,” he announced. His green eyes held a promise that they both would see through that night.

Being alone in the manor hadn’t been as dull as first imagined.

Thank you to @plumpblueberry​ for allowing me to write these two love-muffins and loving OCs as much as I do! ^_^ I hope you enjoyed your Ieyasu fluff with a tad bit of spice!

[purecamp]

Hi, I have a question about your mamma mia au! Is Pat dead on Here I Go Again? Because I was thinking that if she passed away before higa, Sharon and Willam would attend the funeral right? Wouldn't Sharon bring Trixie too? Wouldn't Willam go talk to her and get suspicious about Trixie? Is this me subtly asking you to write an oneshot about it just because I'm not ready to let go of this universe and also wanting you to write more Shillam? 😂

ahaha anon this tickled me tbh. first of all thanks for the love (!!!), so i’ll try to answer in parts

-unfortunately she has passed before higa because she would be 113, which is possible but... unlikely ahaha -ive been debating this since waaaay before u asked me bc its something i thought about a lot, like would sharon bring trixie or not? would she even go? lots 2 think about, decisions decisions -i would write oneshots for you in a second. plz feel free to request them at any time omg

anyway, i guess i’m gonna give it a go here! 

She was a good age, Sharon knew that. Spritely in nature right up until her last moments, Patricia Belli passed away in her retirement home at the age of ninety six.

Her letter had arrived in the post; a short and not-so-sweet note letting Sharon know that if she received this letter, then she had died, and the nursing home staff had actually honoured her request of them to send it to her. Somewhat of a doting grandma - owing to the fact that Sharon had no idea what Pat would be to Trixie if she even was related - she had attached some plastic-wrapped sweets and lollipops.

God, this was going to be difficult. On top of having to close the hotel, at least for a day whilst she attended the funeral, Sharon was going to have to explain the concept of dying to her three-year-old girl, who thought the world was nothing but sparkles and sunshine.

And that was without slotting in time for her own grief. In four years, Pat had transformed Sharon’s life, and she owed her everything.

Times like these were when Sharon wished she had a little bit of help. She needed to cry and sniff and weep into somebody, to wallow in the horrible feeling of finally being alone in the world with herself as the only adult to rely on. She needed to continue working in order to stay alive, and keep her home paid for and her daughter fed. She needed to sit down and explain to Trixie than Nana Pat was gone, and she wouldn’t be coming back. She needed someone else to bundle her up for once and tell her it was all going to be okay.

“You alright?” Maria broke her out of her thoughts, tapping her as she went past behind the bar to fetch a few more bottles of ale.

Sharon grabbed a rag and continued drying up the glasses - Maria had offered to extend the hotel into her bar, meaning Sharon now managed a hotel and taverna in one. “Yeah, just... Can’t believe she’s gone, you know? I always felt like Pat was gonna live forever.”

Maria nodded. “It will be strange, we miss her around here. She was regular for many years at this taverna. Party held here after the service, in her honour.”

“She’d like that. Everyone getting drunk for her.” She sighed, her eyes filling with tears. “I don’t want to have to tell Trix. She’s only young, after all.”

Shrugging, Maria offered a kindly smile. “Brave and strong, like her mother. Even if teeny tiny.”

Despite her heavy heart, Sharon laughed.

---

“Mama! You’re here!”

The same cheerful greeting that Sharon was met with every afternoon came at her once again, lifting her low mood a little. A flurry of pink shot towards her, Sharon noting a smudge of blue paint on her face and some scuffs on her shoes from a day of playing before she was tackled in a huge hug.

“I’m here, little pumpkin. Did you have a good day?”

“The best!” Trixie trilled. “We did painting, and running, and I played dolls with Kimmy and Pearl showed me how to draw hearts!”

Ever-suffering, her preschool teacher was stood by the door to the classroom, her gaze tired but still warm as her last student clung to her mom. It wasn’t too often that Sharon was last to pick up her little girl, but it happened enough that she knew to just sit Trixie down with some colouring and leave her to it. Today, the grief had slowed Sharon down, and she was behind on most of her maintenance.

“Sounds fun! Now, are we walking out of here or is mama carrying you all the way home?”

Trixie took a moment to think about it, before smushing her face into Sharon’s neck. “Mama carries me home.”

Sharon sighed, figuring that she needed to keep Trixie happy if she was going to deliver such bad news. “Okay, just this once. Say bye bye, now!”

“Bye bye, Miss Coulée!”

Just Sharon’s luck, the walk was roughly long enough for them to discuss the subject. She was careful not to let her own emotions influence Trixie’s too much, knowing that a sobbing little girl would be much harder to console when she herself wanted nothing more than to break down in someone’s arms. Curious and a little confused, she asked a few questions which Sharon tried her best to answer, all while avoiding the term “Heaven”. It felt like she’d done an okay job, all things considered, but the fact that she had to do it alone meant she was more than nervous. This wasn’t going to traumatise her into therapy as an adult... she hoped.

“Will she miss me?”

Fuck, this kid was tugging at every single one of Sharon’s heartstrings. It didn’t seem possible that she had been the one to give life to something so goddamn cute.

“Nana Pat? I’m sure she will miss you, baby. And we’ll miss her, too.” Sharon took a deep breath. “But she’s still with us, isn’t she? Because we remember her, and we always have our memories.”

Trixie nodded thoughtfully. She had begged and begged to sit on Sharon’s shoulders, so now she idly played with loose strands of her hair, the messy bun practically ruined from the day’s work anyway.

“But she won’t come back because she’s too old.”

The child-like ability to make the most innocent and heartbreaking of things funny was one that Sharon hoped Trixie held onto forever. Even with her own heavy sadness, she giggled slightly.

“That’s right, bubba.”

A pause. “Are you sad, mama?”

Sharon nodded infinitesimally, trying not to trigger her tears. “Lots of people will be sad. When we go to the funeral on Saturday, there will be lots of sad people wearing black who all love Nana Pat very much. Will you promise me to be a really good girl and just sit quietly with me? We don’t want to disturb anyone.”

Trixie leaned forwards, pressing her lips to the top of Sharon’s head in an awkward, well-meaning kiss. “I’ll be good.”

---

She was golden. Sharon had done all her crying in the morning, before Trixie scrambled into her bed, and she was relieved at how easily her toddler had gone along with everything. Getting herself dressed had been a breeze; she even tried brushing her own hair, which was unsuccessful but nevertheless touching. Trixie then scampered off to play whilst Sharon got ready, giving her a few more moments alone.

Smoothing down her skirt, she examined herself in the mirror. An uncomfortable possibility had dawned on her that night, as she tried to sleep, and it made her unbelievably nervous. After all, he was her great-nephew...

She didn’t look that different than the day they met, surely? But yet, staring at herself, Sharon started realizing how little she resembled that girl already. Only four years had passed, near enough, and at twenty one and a mom, there was almost nothing to anchor this version of herself to the similarly-burdened yet unrealistically carefree seventeen-year-old that Willam had known.

Her hips were wider now, one of the few permanent modifications that Trixie had given her, and for all her low income meant a reduced diet, there was still the remains of a post-baby pouch that stubbornly remained. Black dresses were slimming, Sharon reminded herself, not that the rest of her needed it, but she hoped it was enough that if Willam did see her, he wouldn’t notice anything different.

That being said, he was a man. The little things didn’t matter. The living, squirming three-year-old, however...

Sharon sighed and relaxed, not bothering to try and suck in her stomach like she had before. Willam definitely wouldn’t notice it, he’d be too busy staring at Trixie. The human that he might’ve helped her create. That she had opted not to tell him about. Even though she had an easy way to do so via his now deceased great-aunt.

Fuck.

They made their way up to the little old chapel on the island in good time. Pat knew and loved her home more than anything, so relatives had been flocking from around the world to a tiny chapel on a tiny island out in Greece. It was a difficult walk, and with every step Sharon had to face that she really was in this alone now.

Not wanting to intrude in spite of her invite, Sharon slipped into a pew at the back and bowed her head, clutching Trixie in her lap as more of a comfort than anything else. Thankfully, as more and more people filed in, Trixie seemed to sense that her mama was upset, and quietly played with her flamingo teddy.

He was one of the last to walk in, of course - he would have to make an entrance. Swaggering in, his expression mostly calm, and his sheer confidence was highly inappropriate for a funeral and god if Sharon didn’t sound like her fucking mother. He was young and hot and the swagger seemed to be a Belli thing, because no one paid him any attention. Somewhere, whether in heaven or in her coffin, Sharon knew Pat was cackling with laughter.

And, of course, he just had to speak too. Sharon lifted her head a tiny bit to watch him, trying to ensure his gaze didn’t flicker onto her.

“So many kind things have been said about my dear great aunt today, and whilst it has warmed my heart I’m here to undo it all.” Willam started, filling the room with soft laughter. “Rest in peace, Granny Pat. You were old as fuck, but we’ll miss your rottenness. She had an ego bigger than mine and a liver bigger than Dad’s, and she was the life of the party. We love you, Pat.”

Everything about him was so familiar. Sharon tried not to think about it, but her mind was flooded with him. He didn’t look different at all, but she supposed LA had treated him well. Tanned and charming as ever, he seemed to woo his family as easily as he had seduced her into bed with him... or at least, that was how Sharon chose to remember it.

This was going to be a long day.

---

In all honesty, Sharon didn’t go out much anymore. It came with the territory of being a full-time parent and hotel owner-manager-chef-bartender-maid, but she was tired almost all the time. When Raja and Jinkx came over she made exceptions, but on a day-to-day basis, once Trixie was in bed, Sharon was exhausted from exerting herself to make sure she could even be finished and home in time for Trixie’s bedtime story. So, being out in the taverna in the late evening?

Unbearable.

As soon as everyone came in, Maria offered to take Trixie and keep her entertained behind the bar - which probably wasn’t the most responsible choice Sharon had made as a mom, but she knew Maria would take good care of her as she always did, and insisted she needed to mingle.

Mingling was the last thing on her mind, but she reluctantly grabbed a drink and tried to remain casual in a room full of strangers. After all, none of them knew who she was. None of them knew what Pat meant to her, and everything the daft old woman had done for her. None of them knew that without Pat, it was likely that her beloved daughter would’ve been given up for adoption and Sharon would’ve had to return home to her mother with her tail between her legs. Pat had made it possible for her to live, and as rough as it was, it was nice to be self-sufficient at twenty one.

“Hey! I thought it was you! Hi blondie!”

Sharon clutched her glass a little tighter and turned around slowly. “Forgot my name already?”

There he was, right next to her, having made his way across the room with bright eyes and a shiny grin. LA really had treated him well.

“You’re unforgettable, Sharon, don’t play me like that.” Willam teased. “Good to see you again. I knew goodbye wouldn’t last forever.”

Sharon scowled, but it didn’t last. “Hence why I said we wouldn’t have one.”

“Good point.” He gestured to her glass. “Vodka?”

She shook her head. “Just coke.”

“Pffft. Boring. Pat would want you to have some vodka. Or gin. Or both.”

Rolling her eyes, Sharon took a sip from her decidedly non-alcoholic drink. “I have responsibilities to take care of, I can’t just get drunk.”

As she spoke, her gaze went searching through the throng of people, praying Trixie wasn’t about to run over and squeeze her legs in a damning cuddle. To her relief, she was that she was balanced on Maria’s hip, happily giggling away with her out of Willam’s eyeline.

“We’re twenty one, Shar, and you haven’t seen me forever. Live a little!” Willam encouraged. “Seriously though, it’s good to see you. I didn’t know if you would still be here or if you still saw Pat around. It’s nice to see a face that I know she’d be happy to see, too. She hated most of the people here.”

God, the past tense. Sharon tried not to well up.

“You’re the only face here I know.” She admitted, her voice thick. “I feel a bit lost, honestly. If I didn’t have work, I’d be doing shots to loosen up.”

Willam laughed at that. “Right! I’m glad you know my face, at least. Familiar face, familiar arms, familiar chest, familiar d-”

“Stop!” Sharon shrieked, giggling in spite of herself. “Your great aunt has just died and you’re talking about our teenage sex? You’re disgusting.”

He shrugged. “I’m a Belli, it runs in the family. All this nonsense about her living to a ripe old age... please. She wasn’t ripe, she was rotten. It’s why we love her so.”

Sharon chuckled appreciatively. “I’m gonna miss her.”

“Me too. She’d be glad to see us brought back together, though.”

“Yeah. Although I’m not gonna sleep with you again.”

Willam’s laugh was a little too loud, attracting some disgruntled murmurs from surrounding family members. “Welp, there goes my weekend plans.”

It was surprisingly nice, talking to Willam. As much as Sharon had been terrified that the first topic of conversation would be them, and it would inevitably lead to a confession, they fell into a fleeting friendship as easily as they had four years ago. Determined to keep things light, Sharon steered away from her work or home life as they talked, but it was still nice to catch up.

That being said, she also kinda never wanted to see him again. Nothing personal, just... for Trixie’s sake, she had closed that chapter of her life and under no circumstances would she be reopening it. Not now, not in twenty years, not ever.

“I assume you’re breaking into stardom in Hollywood, right? I’ll be seeing you on movie posters?” 

He laughed. “A star is born, baby. Keep your eyes open. And you, are you taking to the stage now you’re away from your bitch of a mom?”

Sharon shook her head. “Nah. I don’t... I don’t have time anymore. And with the girls gone, too...”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t need them. And we should sing together again sometime, too.”

At that, Sharon sighed. “There’s nothing keeping you here, Willam, not now she’s gone. We had fun, but... there’s no point holding onto that. I got over my exes, I have to keep living and so do you.”

Willam nodded. “A goodbye without a goodbye. I get it. It’s difficult, but we have to let go.”

Yeah, Sharon told herself. In more ways than one.

“It’s not a personal thing, you know I care about you as a friend-”

“I know.” Willam told her. “I care about you too. But I get it.”

He pulled her into a hug. “Needles, take care of yourself. You’re skinny, take advantage of the free food. Fall in love. Make music. Do things to make you happy. You deserve that.”

Speechless, Sharon could only nod as he held her. “I can tell you’re ready to leave, so I’ll say goodbye now. You’re a one of a kind, okay? Keep going, angel thighs.”

Pfft. The old parody nickname - trust Willam to remember that.

“Thank you, Willam.”

---

Trixie was fast asleep in Sharon’s arms. Her warm weight had settled comfortably into her as she walked home, and Sharon relished in the way her sweet daughter could fill her aching heart so perfectly. Her blonde curls were messy, just like her own were as a child, and she was completely tuckered out.

Her adorable girl had little outfits, a bedroom of her own and a roof over her head all thanks to the love and kindness of one foul-mouthed, gin-loving lady. As the sun started setting, Sharon realized she owed another Belli a lifetime of gratitude.

“Thank you, Pat.”

[demaury]

Game On -- High School AU | Enemies-to-friends-to-lovers AU (chap.1)

Ten years after his father shipped him off to boarding school, Jude is back to Los Angeles for his senior year. As it turns out, relinking with his childhood friend isn't nearly as hard as it is to deal with his almost estranged father. 

Zero is the typical high school heartthrob and a basketball prodigy on the way to make a name for himself. Everything should be easy, but years in foster care and physical abuse don't make for the smoothest reunion with former teen-mom  and her perfect family. 

Really. They have a lot on their plate already.

Falling in love was not supposed to be an option. (read on ao3)

Jude Kinkade was many things.

Unfortunately, hopelessly naïve was one of those. Especially when it came to certain matters, he thought bitterly as he stared, probably for the umpteenth time that very morning, at his still desperately silent phone.

C’mon, it’s not that big of a deal, Kinkade.

I’ll call you when I get home.

Yep. Jude had been just that naïve apparently, he had been waiting for that exact thing to happen ever since, and it had already been five days.

The clicking sound of a pair of high heels caught his attention, and Jude quickly buried his phone in his jean pocket, affectedly tugging at his grey shirt while staring at his own reflection in the full-length mirror. Lionel Kinkade, née Hemsworth, and formerly known as Davenport, leaned against the doorframe of her stepson’s bedroom, heaving a loud sigh as she crossed her arms over her chest.

“Jude, honey, could you stop moping? It’s going to be just fine.”

Jude lifted his hazel eyes to her through the mirror, grumpily chewing at his bottom lip. “Being the new kid always sucks,” he grumbled.

Eight years of boarding school and here he was, back in Los Angeles for his senior year, as if all those years in-between had meant nothing. At a goddam public school, of all things. Don’t get him wrong, he hardly cared about the standing of his school, or the rankings, or whatever, really. He just wished he hadn’t been forced to abandon everything and everyone he knew, one random morning a month into the school year, just because his dad had suddenly decided he needed to.

“See it as an adventure. It’s scary but it could lead to some fun along the way,” his stepmom shrugged, like it was no big deal.

He gave her a pointed look. “I’ll be in this school for less than three months. What’s even the point? Dad could have left me at Ellis Harwood, that would have been just as fine,” Jude protested, shoving his hands in his jean pockets.

He felt like they had had this conversation a thousand times already, and maybe they had, judging by the look on Lionel’s face. Was it his fault if his father was almost never around? What was he supposed to do, just not complain to the only other person in this house who didn’t belong to the cleaning staff?

Lionel waved dismissively. “Come on, you know he didn’t want that stupid story to affect your records.”

Jude huffed and shook his head.

If only the Principal of Ellis Harwood Institute, ME., hadn’t had the brilliant idea to flee the country with the donations made to the school by the wealthy parents of his students, then maybe Jude would have had the time to prepare before everything was packed up and he was on a plane back to Los Angeles.  The problem was that no private school in the whole country seemed to be accepting students out of the blue after the beginning of the first quarter, so Oscar Kinkade was told that money or not, his son would not start afresh until January. Unless, of course, he went to a public school. Jude wished he didn’t have to endure his father’s tantrum when he was told about it, but he did — at length.

Lionel finally stepped into the bedroom, affectionately adjusting the shirt on Jude’s shoulders, brushing away an invisible speck of dust.

“You’ve dealt with a bunch of rich assholes for eight years, that was scary,” she observed, then a wicked smile formed on her full lips: “Everybodywill want to get to know you, trust me. Time has made wonderful work of you.”

Instantly, Jude sarcastically snorted and looked away. In the course of the last year and a half, he had matured to a point where people everywhere were starting to notice him. Not in a weird, reproachful way, but with something that looked ridiculously close to approval. Attention was hardly the worst of his daily struggles, though. He had yet to get used to his quickly developing body, an upgraded version much taller and with much broader shoulders. As if all of a sudden his nearly ten years of swimming competitions had decided to catch up with him. He had been bumping his head, his shoulders, his knees, his elbows — literally any part of his body, really — more often during the last year than ever before in his entire life.

Kids always wanted to be taller, but nobody ever warned them about the downside of being tall.

The only positive so far? He had stopped feeling ridiculously self-conscious about his size in an all boy-school, but even that had been taken from him now.

Lionel glanced at her sparkling Cartier watch with a hint of disdain. “We should get going. I once learned at my expense that being fashionably late in high school is highly frowned upon.”

Jude rolled his eyes and went to grab his Eastpak from the empty desk. Most of his bedroom was still empty, save for the bookshelves that were literally crumbling under the weight of voluminous sci-fi novels that he used to devour a lifetime ago, and his trophies and medals in a corner that served as a reminder of his glory days on the swim team.

Jude half-heartedly followed his stepmom, barely listening to her pep-talk as they were heading downstairs.

Three months. It wasn’t like a lot could happen in less than three months.

Right?

*

Wrong.

A lot could happen in almost three months.

Jude stared, glowering, as Lionel’s ridiculously ostentatious red Porsche pulled away from the school’s sidewalk, drawing attention to her from every person within hearing distance.

What a way to be discreet.

He was going to kill her.

He forced a tight smile at the students who were looking at him, then he turned back and tried to drown himself in the flow of students heading for the doors marking the main entrance of the building.

Hollow Creek High was one massive block of concrete, almost popping out of nowhere at the corner of a street, buzzing with the energy of the city’s traffic and the warm, glowing Californian sun. It was a far cry from Ellis Harwood, sticking out of the woods and spreading its dozen different buildings over a glorious, perpetually tender-green field of grass, like the $45,000 a year hypocritical post-card it was. Since Internet and the technological revolution had hit the educational system, transferred students were receiving their new schedules by email, which was nice in a way because it meant he could skip the part where he’d have to present himself to the secretary’s office.

The problem was that he was literally walking in without knowing a single thing about the place.

And now he was standing in the middle of the hallway.

Okay, Kinkade.

It’s gonna be fine.

When he was done with his own personal affirmation, he looked up and was startled by a pair of blue eyes staring at him, belonging to a blonde girl leaning on a nearby wall. She didn’t shy away when he glanced back at her, instead, a frown soon appeared on her face as she was tugging at a strand of her hair. Jude couldn’t help but look behind his shoulder, which gave the girl enough time to disappear among the other students.

The bulletin board, where she had been standing, didn’t look like the worst thing to pretend to care about at the moment. He’d have pretty much cared about anything if it didn’t mean that he was standing there like an idiot. A quick glance at the board had him reconsidering his options, given that the only information on display were for last spring’s cheerleading try outs and last year’s prom night, he could only guess that no one really cared to update things here.

Great, he definitely looked like an idiot now. Jude retrieved his phone from his pocket to check the room number of his first class for the hundredth time, then looked up only to see the signs pointing in the right direction right above his head.

Second floor, then according to-

“Jude?”

Jude startled and scooted around, his eyes dropping onto two girls standing beside him.

He recognized one of them (the blonde one) as the girl who had been staring at him not a minute ago; her friend was a fairly shorter brunette, with straight dark hair, for some reason, she looked strangely familiar to him. She knows your name dummy, of course she’s familiar! a voice yelled at him in his head.

“Uh, yeah?” he cleared his throat, furrowing his brow.

The blonde girl lost her pout and nudged her friend, grinning. “You owe me ten bucks.”

“Oh my God, it’s me,” the brunette said, ignoring her friend, “Raquel. Raquel Saldana. Remember?”

For a moment his mind went blank.  Oh no, would she be upset if he couldn’t remember her? Then an intense memory of burnt cookies and birthday parties by the pool in his backyard crossed his mind. So what does this mean? He just walked into a brand new school and stumbled across the one girl he had known since he was born, and who had been his best friend until he turned 8 and was shipped off to the other side of the country? Could it be that simple?

Really?

If he had another second to think about it he’d definitely start looking for hidden cameras, but suddenly things felt like they were going way faster than what his mind was ready for.

“Oh God, it’s been forever,” he sputtered awkwardly.

Raquel started grinning too. “Something like ten years. You remember Kyle?”

“Hart. Kyle Hart,” Jude said automatically without really knowing what had happened.

Where did that came from though? As far as he was concerned, an hour before he was feeling like he was in a whole different country.  He wouldn’t have even been surprised if people were speaking a foreign language around here.

“My memory is definitely still working,” Kyle declared, very pleased with herself. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were in a fancy school or something.”

Jude was a little taken aback. He had certainly not thought this situation would happen and he hadn’t planned on discussing the ‘fancy boarding school’ side of his life, but here he was. “I, uh, I just got transferred… um, here.”

The girls exchanged glances.

“No way,” Raquel exclaimed. “What happened?”

Jude waved. “There’s been a bit of a… well, a mess at my school, but that’s, like, a long story.”

Raquel turned to Kyle. “Talking about mess, wasn’t Blondie supposed to meet with Geyer this morning?”

Kyle groaned. “Yeah, but he left before I woke up. I love him but I swear I want to smash his head in at times.” Not even a second later she stood up on her tiptoes and glanced around in the crowd. “Have you seen Jelena? We were supposed to talk about music stuff for our routine.”

“She told me she went with the guys,” Raquel shrugged.

Jude shoved his hands in his pockets, balancing his weight on his heels as he tried to look like he wasn’t listening to things that were none of his business. It was hard when the only two people you knew were the ones doing the talking and you literally had nothing else to do in the meantime. He considered going to find his class on his own when suddenly the girls seemed to remember his presence.

“I gotta go,” Kyle said, more to Raquel than to him, but then she gave him a nice slap on the arm that he wasn’t exactly expecting from someone like her. “See you later, guys.”

Raquel nodded and Kyle disappeared among the other students.

“Sorry, we’ve had our own drama too, lately,” Raquel said as she started walking. “Anyway, it’s so great to have you back in town. Do you need a tour?”

Jude smiled, a little embarrassed. “I guess I just need to go find my teacher first, you know, to tell him who I am and stuff.”

He just hoped to limit the chances of his new teacher making him stand in front of the whole class and introduce himself. Not that he minded much talking in front of an audience, he didn’t at all in fact. He just didn’t want anybody to make a big deal. His only consolation in coming into a public school was to drown himself in the flow of students and so far he couldn’t say it had worked very well.

“Who’s your teacher?” Raquel asked, tugging at her choker, cocking her head.

“Gibbins,” Jude replied, and she immediately snorted, grabbing his arm.

“Then you’ve got plenty of time to tour around,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “He doesn’t give a flying fuck about anyone. Last year we had this exchange student, Loy. Gibbins didn’t find out he wasn’t a native speaker until after Christmas,” Raquel explained as she dragged him in the opposite direction.

Jude scrunched his nose.

Great.

What were the odds that the good Mr. Gibbins would ask him every day who he was and what he was doing here?

The next ten minutes with Raquel flew by before he even noticed, but Jude found a way to figure out a few things. One of them was that he wasn’t in some prank show; apparently he had found his childhood friend five minutes after showing up. Also, he was positively screwed, as far as he was concerned. Raquel was one of the popular crowd here, and having her show him around was more like “showing him off”, which would have been flattering had he not planned to keep a low profile until his next transfer after Christmas.

He sucked it up however, because knowing where the Cafeteria was seemed important, and not something he’d come to regret by lunch time. Raquel was also taking her role very seriously when it came to giving him the fully detailed version of the school’s social hierarchy as they progressed through the crowded hallways.

“So, Kyle is on the Cheerleading squad, as is my best friend Jelena, who happens to be the squad Captain. Don’t ever think that they’re here just to cheer on the guys, because they’d scratch your eyes out. It’s a competitive squad and they take it pretty seriously. You’ve been warned,” she added with a knowing look.

Jude promised himself he’d do more than try, even though he knew nothing about cheerleading anyway. Being in an all-boy school, they were represented by their sister-school, and the students from Parkland were carted in to their events to sway their hips and sing a school anthem that wasn’t theirs… You could definitely find better in terms of girl power.

“Baseball team,” Raquel told him as they passed by an open door where a few guys were fussing loudly in the empty classroom before first period. “They are attractive and friendly for the most part, but they aren’t going to fix global warming anytime soon.”

Jude huffed a laugh. “We had the same with the water polo team. How many sports do you guys have over here?”

Raquel gave it a thought. “Baseball is a bit of a go-to for the freshman kids. They don’t do so great but it’s always nice to be a part of something, I guess. We used to have a male water polo team but the girls’ got all the medals and the coverage so they mixed both at one point and now there are only girls. I used to be in it but I quit last year,” she went on. “We’ve got a swim team,” she said after that, pointing to a dozen students heading down the stairs. “Weird people, strictly assholes. They only hang out together and you can tell that they don’t like you already.”

Jude forced a smile and nodded politely. It wasn’t new to him, swim teams generally had this reputation everywhere, except that back in Ellis Harwood, he was on the other side of it and things were just fine, assholes or not. He risked a somewhat longing look in their direction. He wasn’t supposed to apply for this club, or at least he hadn’t wanted to so far. What was even the point of getting into a brand new routine if he was going to disappear just before the launch of the season?

But God, in that moment, he missed his former school.

His childhood friend’s continued exposé managed to regain his attention as she kept speaking. “Footballers range from ‘trashiest asshole’ to ‘happy puppy’, there’s no real pattern and sometimes they can switch faces at any given moment,” Raquel commented, slightly scrunching her nose. “Of course, there’s the Cheerleading squad, and that leaves the Basketball team. We’ve got a soft spot for that one because three of our friends are playing. Jelena’s boyfriend is the team Captain. They are cool, you’ll see. Come on, I’ll take you to your class.”

*

It was shortly before lunchtime before Jude got sight of Raquel again, after she guided him to his first class, but in the meantime he had been introduced to her best friend. Jelena Howard was a small girl, literally tiny, with full lips, brown skin, and curly brown hair framing her face. She was undoubtedly good-looking, but in a much colder way than Kyle or Raquel -- which, strangely enough, didn’t particularly discourage Jude.

“I’ve been to boarding school,” Jelena had told him to his surprise between two classes, when he had tiredly explained once again that he had been out of town for the last decade or so. “But it was only for a year, before I moved to LA with my mom.”

“I’m a veteran then,” Jude had snorted, and when she smiled in response, he felt like it was something he should be proud of.

The rest of the morning had dragged on, and between unknown faces of the students and unknown faces of the teachers, his brain was having a hard time processing everything — honestly, he had stopped caring by the third period. The Spanish teacher, whom he had forgotten the name of, had him stand and present himself to the class (which didn’t exactly make Jude like him). But he was the only one to do so and he counted that as a small win.

“How did it go?” Raquel grinned at him in sympathy when they found themselves together in the Cafeteria.

“Fine, I guess,” he admitted, because all in all, it could have been a lot worse.

The facilities, the food, even people’s clothing overall were a thousand times cheaper than what he had been used to since he left Los Angeles for his first private school, but he could probably survive it for three months without much trouble if that meant not being called out as the outsider.

Raquel strode through the Cafeteria with her vibrantly yellow tray in hand.

One more thing he had to get used to. For three years he had been seeing life in shades of orange and green, the colors of Ellis Harwood, while Hollow Creek High’s were black and bright yellow.

Jude followed her to a table where Kyle was already sitting opposite another guy he hadn’t met yet. Raquel sat next to the guy and Jude took the spot next to the blonde. The guy had short black hair, and his skin was a warm, golden-brown that made his silver nose piercing stand out. His most distinctive feature was definitely his dark eyes, mostly because he was staring sternly at Jude, likely trying to figure him out.

“Roman, you remember Jude? We were in third grade together,” she said naturally as she gestured between them.

“I can’t remember shit like that, c’mon,” he huffed, shaking his head. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Jude snorted.

Raquel rolled her eyes. “Derek, Jude. Jude, Derek.”

Jude gave him one of the hundred polite nods he had been giving all morning, then he saw Jelena casually walking in from the corner of his eye, two boys on either side of her who could have easily passed as her bodyguards. They couldn’t be more different, except for their matching size. One had a dark complexion, the face of someone who was everybody’s friend, and shoulders that would have made a few NFL players feel self-conscious; Jude recognized him without any trouble from her phone background he had caught a glimpse of between periods.

The other one?

The other one had sandy blond hair, perfectly chiseled cheekbones and electric blue eyes glaring around like he was on the verge of murdering someone.

The pure, authentic, stereotypical Californian beauty. With an extra ‘I’ll-be-the-last-thing-you-see-before-you-die’ vibe.

Oh hell no, Jude thought categorically as he tried to ignore the horrible backflip his stomach made, unable to take his eyes away.

Not a fucking chance.

I’m not doing that again.