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whereispearlescentmoon · 5 months ago

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Wild Life Pearl POV Live Reaction

Ooooo super powers!!

Sick ass guitar riff!

SHE CAN LAUNCH SUPER HIGH IN THE AIR?? I do wonder if she would be taking fall damage. Not that I want to risk it.

Impulse can teleport? CLEO SUMMONS ZOMBIES!! SKIZZ AND MUMBO ARE BACK!!! BDUBS CAN SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT! BIGB GETS CREAKINGS?!?

Invisible Jimmy?

Scott can become random animals!!! Perfect for subterfuge :)

Ghoul 1 and Ghoul 2!

Oh I just realized Pearl can leap super high. And she has a mace. And she doesn’t take fall damage from it! Hell yeah.

Ooo I’m gonna watch Cleo’s pov after this to see what convo with mumbo and Skizz.

Speedy boy Tango! Ooo Etho and Pearl have the same power.

They were slain? And she can bring them back every five minutes? Ah beautiful necromancy. DID CLEO DIRECT THEM TO MAKE FUN OF GRIAN?? AHSIWHWJAKHSJA

Bdubs can slow time? Makes sense for clock boy lol.

So Gem can speak to the dead? NO SHE CAN ASTRAL PROJECT?? SO SHE CAN GO IN SPECTATOR MODE??

Oh we’re friends with Ren now? Beautiful. Just like Last Life.

RIP Scar.

“Gem, I know you’re looking at me” Jeez Louise Pearl. And she breaks her mace right after. A beautiful wet cat move. Those aspiring wet cats can truly learn from her.

Ooo Impulse can swap places with people.

GRIAN CAN BORROW POWERS?? Watcher ass activities. SHE CAN FLY?

Oh does Tango freeze water when he runs on it?

Trap time! And Tanguini is here! Wait that’s how calibrated skulk sensors work?

And another failed trap….. Pearl has failed to kill Gem again… my beautiful pathetic wet cat.

Love their beautiful cane tower now has cherries.

Cleo ordered them to go kill Grian! I somehow doubt this will succeed.

Ren CAN BE OTHER PEOPLES SKIN???

MUMBO GOT THE KILL! W FOR CLEO AND MUMBO IN MY BOOK!

Oooo Scott can choose a mob if he clicks on it!

I am shocked that BigB’s face remains unburnt down.

Ooo Bdubs killed by Scar.

I need fanart of Pearl’s cute hat. HOW DID SHE GET POISONED?

“I did tell you not to fix it. I said don’t bother man” Yes Pearl I know and the way you said it made me go actually insane.

SCOTT ACTUALLY GOT THE KILL ON GEM! GGGG WIN.

Cleo died to a creeper. GGGG loss.

“Hey! My eyes yellow! Can’t be stealing my eyeball”

“This is my skin from last season! You can’t *incomprehensible*!”

“I mean what’s hilarious is you’ve gone for different eyes. So you two have basically just shared contact lenses,”

“This is the eye I lost in the portal that you didn’t remember.”

“Oh sorry. Guess it wasn’t important enough to remember” DAMN PEARL IS GETTING SASSY WITH GEM TODAY LOL

Skizz wants to talk to Impulse privately?

Glad to hear that while Skizz struggles, Mumbo has been a great minion for Cleo. Cleo once again picks a favorite son.

“Minions are to be seen not heard” HAKAHWIANAB Scott I love you

Ooooh wait. That’s why Pearl said cockroaches. Because Skizz and Mumbo can’t die.

And the only thing it killed was Mumbo. GGGG loss.

JUST LISTEN TO PEARL THEY CANT RUN FROM END CRYSTALS!

YEAH THEY GOT REN! GGGG WIN!

Not Pearl pulling out the creeper eggs lol.

Oooo Martyn’s proxy chat is way turned up.

Bdubs on red! BDUBS SHOUTING AND CATCHPHRASE ANS MISSING LOL. Martyn on red! Scott on yellow!

Gem was getting boring because she wouldn’t stop complaining about how Scott and Impulse killed her? And how much better she is than their team? Guess Pearl can stop worrying about seeming obsessed lol. Seems the GGGG live in Gem’s mind rent free.

Oh never mind. The cockroach spoiler was about Tango! And how they keep failing to kill him because he’s so fast! That makes sense!

“They’re trying to get everyone off green and little do they know, you’re technically green as long as you use that, right?”

“Right, yeah,”

“A secret green. Like you got so much potential. I swear like, you better win the series, mate,” Where have I heard this before *flashbacks to Pearl and Bdubs in Secret Life*

“I’m trying Pearl.”

“You have a big advantage.”

“I’m trying but this whole lack of being able to kill people isn’t boding well for us is it?”

“No dude. I can’t believe how much I’m sucking this season. I suck so bad.” It’s okay your pathetic wet cat nature is charming.

“I cannot get a kill to save my life.” Yours too buddy.

Joel got hoppies!

Are we literally all meeting up to kill Tango? No wonder Pearl called him a cockroach.

Aaaaand Gem killed Mumbo.

This is actually super epic for tango. The whole server is failing to kill him!

GGGG has taken down Tango and Joel! Two wins!

Omg Jimmy tried to kill Pearl. Congrats to Jay for a single Pearl and Jimmy interaction where Pearl didn’t even see him. I’m sorry.

Cleo is scared of Gem and Pearl just isn’t lol.

“Oh that’s so weird to see me like that. Is that how annoying I look?” Ur not annoying :( your skin looks really cool.

Tango on red!

Pearl! That’s somehow significantly nastier than calling them eyes.

BYE BYE MARTYN!

Oh no Pearl and Scott :( WAIT HI SCARLET PEARL!!! HI!!! HI!!

She commented on the red hoodie! She noticed their skins match!

Ren joined them? We have… six Gs at this point?

End of session! I see why Martyn was being super cryptic when someone asked how the session went. I think next session will probably be the last given how much of the server is on red, and that’s there’s no greens left to get lives back. Unless you count Impulse, I guess.

My final thoughts on the wild card are that it’s super fun! I love that they all got their own unique power, especially because some of the powers seem to be themed to them specifically like Cleo’s zombies and Bdubs having time manipulation!

#pearlescentmoon #wild life SMP #life series spoilers

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evieelyzabethh · 2 years ago

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𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐕𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐦𝐧𝐞𝐝

pairing(s): spike x demon!reader

summary: watching the man you love fawn over someone else is always hard, especially when you know you could love him better.

warnings: angst with a happy ending, later seasons Spike, soft Spike, the reader is a demon so old that no one knows your name and they call you Honey.

Spike was an actor, but William was a poet. This was easy to tell when watching Spike act as if he wasn't in love with Buffy. William would've written her a sonnet, presented her with a rose and some ridiculously expensive necklace. The image of a stone glittering around her neck would've inspired dozens of lines of prose, enough to keep her image alive in those fateful moments when she wasn't there to be looked upon. Spike looked. He watched. He stalked. It was his bad boy persona, the leather jacket hiding the heart that still beat out of his chest. Some things never changed.

This new apocalypse had changed something, though, that and the fact that Buffy had now come back from the dead a second time. You thought it would make her more formidable. A cockroach. Through apocalypse after apocalypse, thick and thin, even death, she was never really gone. Whether she was crawling, suffering, or drowning, she always came back. You liked Buffy, you were friends, or whatever she called the unhumans she hung around who wasn't dating her or one of her friends.

She kept you at an arms width ever since she found you back before her first death. In a bottle or a vase, something old and dusty that tipped over in the library and through smoke you materialized. You didn't remember much; you didn't remember anything. The collection of you took days, like assembling some million and one pieced puzzle. Pieces were lost along the way, Giles bet that somewhere between your brain being assembled and your bones hardening that your memory slipped through the cracks of the old hardwood flooring and was lost to the Hell Mouth beneath. He also said that if the memory was so heavy it sank, it wasn't worth remembering anyways.

This being said, it made since that she wasn't immediately open to letting you in and you were fine with that. You didn't know how to exist otherwise. Feelings were also lost on you, along with your name, and breathing, and speaking. You read a lot, after being placed in Giles' care, you only ever were in the school library or his personal library in his apartment, and being born again, you now had a broken vocabulary of unnatural and old English.

It was Willow who named you Honey. She told you hot tea helped with the healing vocal cords and that honey would hopefully act as a sticky cement so they would stay together. Lots of honey was what you consumed until your presence became synonymous with honey and then that became your name. Remembering to breath came soon after, it made your human company that much more relaxed around you. That and the fact that because you were so broken, you weren't deemed a threat.

Feelings came crashing after the fact.

Angelus' return took a toll on Buffy and Spikes appearance began your ascension. You had read classics before; Giles didn't exactly keep copies of Dr. Seuss or even Baum. It was all Bronte, Shelly, or Austen. Writers who taught you that humans love and to love is human and you didn't understand at all not until

"And who might you be, love?"

What are you wasn't the question and he called you "love". Could you be called love, was that something you could be. With how much honey you consumed, you probably were part honey, but even outside of that, when the humans introduce themselves, they say "I am..." so you said "I am Honey" to fit in.

But he called you Love.

You didn't doubt Willow, but you wondered if being Honey was a mistake, if being love was an option. To be love would mean to have love and how did one do that.

"I am Honey." you replied. 3 words that didn't even scratch the surface of what you wanted to say. Maybe speech was more lost on you than you thought.

A lot of time had passed since then. A few apocalypses, a more modern and appropriate speech pattern, plenty of feelings and more importantly, the knowledge that feelings couldn't be shared.

Being so far removed from everyone else made it easy to notice things that they didn't. You noticed her push him away. You had heard him confess. You had become friends after a while, and there were many moments when you would be in his crypt talking to him in between bottles of wine and blood, pigs' blood after he became aware of his feelings. He told you about her, he raved about her bravery, he retold her jokes. The affect she had on him was palpable, impossible to ignore. His lips spoke of Buffy, he cried tears that reflected Buffy, even when he looked at you, he was looking for pieces of Buffy. That was the only explanation for why he would look at you for so long. You weren't a genius, you weren't even a poet, but you knew better than to delude yourself. And yet

He looked at you.

He watched you. He saw you. He perceived you; and it was so beautiful.

He also told you of Dru. She would have moments of clarity when she would revert to the ghost of who she was before Angelus drove her insane. Moments when she would look at the stars, not because she was seeing things, but because she was looking at them. Like the haze of one thousand years had cleared and she was looking at the stars, not shiny shards of glass wedged in a rocky ceiling. She stopped echoing wishes, and she made them. He even told you her favorite wish. She wanted a pretty dress to go to a pretty ball. It was so normal and human. She wanted to exist and be a girl in her own time again, like it used to be. Maybe she also wanted to be human.

Sometimes, if you found the strength in you to stomach it, you liked to think he looked at you like how she used to look at the stars. Like Buffy was his pipe dream and you were what he really wanted.

It wasn't a stretch of the imagination. She was a slayer, and he was a vampire. She is a pipe dream. She was the false stars of shattered glass, she was dangerous to him, she would hurt him. She has hurt him.

Every time he told her he loved her, she told him no. A step worse than rejection, she denied he even could love her. Demons weren't capable of love; he was experiencing obsession. He wanted to own her, to take her, ravish her and leave her a husk of who she used to be then toss her when the infatuation faded. He didn't need to, she already was. Death did that to her, she didn't need Spike to finish the job. And obsession. If what Spike felt towards her was obsession, then what the hell was she feeling.

This all lead to today. An old show playing on the boxy television, sitting on a newly stolen couch, occasionally passing a bowl of popcorn between the two of you. The show was a cheesy vampire comedy where the main character had finally cornered the terrifying "Dracula" and staked him with a cartoonishly large stake. "Blood squirted everywhere, coating the main character with what was probably corn syrup, chocolate syrup, and red food dye.

"That is totally unrealistic. Us vampires don't bleed, and he would've seen that stake from a mile away." he said while tossing a handful of popcorn at the screen.

"I doubt they had a way to turn him to dust back in like the 40's." he scoffed at your nonchalance.

"This is ridiculous. Us vampires need better representation on the telly, they're makin' us look like bumbling idiots." you can' help but laugh at his dramatics. In his rage, his hair had fallen out of place. It wasn't gelled like it usually was, a mistake he'll probably rectify in a few hours when the sun goes down.

"I didn't know you took such pride in being a vampire." He dramatically jumps to face you, a disgusted look on his face.

"Of bloody course I do. Why on Earth would I want to be human."

"Maybe Buffy would like you if you were human." For anyone else it would've been a low blow, but he lets you slide. That and the fact that beneath the mocking tone you took, you didn't laugh at it all that much.

"Would you want to be human, love?" There it is again. You should be used to it by now, but you still every time you hear it from him. Maybe because when it comes from him you want it. You had been on dates with other guys, some of whom confessed to you. The Scoobies told you they loved you multiple times before, even better, they all meant it and the feeling is mutual. Why is it still so much different with him.

"I don't know, I think it could be nice. I think life would be easier." He smiled.

"Why? You're not a vampire, you can frolic in the sun as much as you'd like." you shake your head.

"That's not it." What could it be? Spike wasn't often confused, as a matter of fact he was extremely self-assured, but he couldn't figure out what you were missing out on. He'd much rather be in you position than to remember every sin he's ever committed. You got the immortality and the powers with none of the guilt that comes with it.

"If I was human, I wouldn't be nearly as confused. I'd know more, I guess."

"But what if you never lost your memory? Knowing things wouldn't be an issue." If only knowing your name was the knowledge you were seeking.

"Knowing things wouldn't be an issue but there are some uniquely human things I can't experience because I'm not a human."

"Like what?" Being human at one point was interesting, it was so ingrained in Spike he couldn't imagine what it would be like for feelings to not be second nature. He never needed to understand them, feeling them was more than enough.

"I don't know because I'm not human. I don't know what I'm missing, but I'm missing something." Quit beating around the bush.

"What if you didn't need to be human and it just fell out?"

"What is so bad about being human that it fell out."

"Trust me, as a former human myself, there is plenty to hate about being human. They're puny and pathetic." He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the couch along then struck a match against a loose plank of wood. Bringing it to his lips, he inhaled the smoke and blew it away from your face, but the breeze from an open (broken) window whisked it towards your face anyway.

"But is that because you were human, or because you are you?" His gaze hardened at how quick the answer came.

"You think I was pathetic?" The fallen embers came onto his pants, but he paid them no mind.

"You think you used to be pathetic." Though this was true, a part of him felt offended. Even stranger, he didn't know which part.

"Because I was. I was human and emotional and a bloody mess, because I was human. Demons don't feel anything which is far better than feeling and getting hurt."

"But you aren't demon enough to know what it means to feel nothing!" You weren't a demon to him, though. It would've been easy for him to forget that you weren't one of those pesky humans had it not been for your distinctly not human scent. It was like whisky, rich and old and expensive. Too expensive to break open and drink because it grew more valuable with time. He'd do anything for you not to go to waste.

"And if you want to feel so badly, you can't possibly be that much of a demon!" To waste you would for you to be human. They're too fragile. They die. Spike longed to be a demon because at his core, he was a coward. He didn't want to die. Judging by how much you yearned to be human, you feared loneliness more.

"Why do you love Buffy so much." Ah, the point.

Spike was many things. A bastard, one of those British nancy boys, a coward, a freak. A thing he prided himself the most on was his intellect. He was insightful, he could be emotionally intelligent when he wanted to be. This was the important part.

A part of him knew his best friend loved him. A part he profusely ignored because he was only emotionally intelligent when he wanted to be. He could admit that he was intellectual and intelligent and at times wise, he believed those to be self-evident truths, cornerstones of his Spikeism. He's the brooding, yet insightful, bad boy with a heart of gold who does the right thing when it conveniences him. He's an actor and this was the character he's had centuries to build, and he'd be damned it cracked because then he'd be proving that he was never anything more than William "The Bloody Bad Poet".

Maybe self-hatred was the root of it. The inescapable need- no instinct, to kick himself in the ass at any possible opportunity, was why he ignored you. It had to be some sick penchant for pain, or the belief that he wasn't deserving of good things, because if you were nothing else, you were good to him which meant you deserved better than him.

But altruism doesn't fit into the paradigm of Spike. Altruism is William's thing which made this so much more horrifying. William loved you. Spike loving you meant nothing because he didn't really mean it. The stage kisses and the dramatized sex scenes were suffocatingly filled with false passion, more passion than humanly possible. Spike loved hard, William loved deeply, and both loved you. It couldn't be undone, but it could be forgotten.

"I don't know." Those 3 words didn't even begin to scratch the surface of why he "loved" her.

"But all I know of love comes from you, I learned it from you, and you don't know why you love her?" You wanted to cry, and you hated it. If you could take it back, you would. You wished you had shut your mouth and watched the stupid show that was still playing as you had this argument.

"Love isn't something you explain." He put distance between the two of you, standing up and walking away from the couch in search for a bottle of alcohol. He wasn't planning on you following him, following closer than the tail of his leather duster.

You threw the alcohol before his hand even grazed it, smashing it against the concrete walls of his crypt. Positioning yourself between himself and the makeshift table that used to be a grave, you stood your ground. Blinking back tears because the second water hit that cement you were done for.

"Then show me. That's how I learned before." He clenched then unclenched his jaw. Buffy was all over him, but you were inside of him. The air he breathed, the blood in his veins, the force making his heart beat was you and it always had been. "Show me."

He was scared.

"What if you don't understand." He was stalling. For too long he hadn't been allowed to have anything. Dru was never his because Angelus had ingrained his way into her very being. Buffy was never realistic, and even if she was, she was human. One day she'd die, and he'd move on long before that date anyways. You were so attainable, and you were willing to be his. What if he fucked up. He has, right in front of him, sharing breaths mere inches from each other, everything he had ever wanted, and he didn't even have to fight for it. Handed to him on a silver platter was the key to the universe, but he could find a way to fuck it up. He always did.

"You don't know that." He held your head in his hands, rubbing his thumb over your cheek. His world in the palm of his hands. What if he dropped it.

"You love me?"

"I didn't even know what love was before I met you." You whispered it and he shattered. He kissed you, as if he could pull the sound from your lips so that your confession him that could replay forever in his mind. Like he was sealing some sort of promise so you couldn't take it back.

"I love you." He said in between kisses. "I love you so much it hurts." He kissed you on the forehead." I love you so much it makes me feel alive again." He kissed you on your right cheek, "Longed for you like the sun and cherished you like the stars, I love you.", then on the left.

He looked you in the eyes before kissing you again. As if he wouldn't be there to say it again, as if you could somehow forget it, he said it once more.

"I love you."

#spike btvs #spike btvs x reader #buffy the vampire slayer fanfic #spike x reader #buffy the vampire slayer imagine #btvs imagine #btvs x reader #spike btvs imagine #spike btvs fanfiction #buffy the vampire slayer fanfiction

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haveyouseenthisskeleton · 11 months ago

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So I just had a funny thought and I can't stop laughing about it so main 10 + dust and killer(I'm ok with just main 10 if adding two more is too much) with a child and S/O one day there just chilling and child starts screaming out of no where then runs hysterically and turns out there a cockroach on the wall... S/O takes skeletons slipper/her own slipper and throws it at the cockroach and it hits...

It's still moving so S/O goes for round 2 and throws another slipper... also hits the bug...

That sh** starts flying... S/O and child now screaming, there also running out of there if sans/papyrus are brave enough both S/O and there child screaming at them kill it they won't be coming out of the bedroom until it's dead or outside

S/O would have killed any bug that was small or a tad big but a bug the size of a tarantula( I'm sorry I can't spell) or a cockroach that flys that's where they draw the line.

Undertale Sans - He picks up the cockroach and throws it outside, taking his damn time. He doesn't understand why you're so scared of that little thing. You know he had cockroaches as pets when he was a kid? Well, that's for sure something you didn't want to learn about him.

Undertale Papyrus - He starts to throw bones everywhere, trying to catch the bug as it flies everywhere in panic. After that, the kitchen is a forest of bones but the cockroach is dead! ... Or he thinks so. He kinda lost it in the middle of all the bones. Oh well. A problem for his future self.

Underswap Sans - No, sorry, he can't. He's dying of laughter on the floor, screaming like a hyena as you and the kid are panicking and running around like headless chickens. He can never get enough of this. You end up kicking the cockroach out with a broom, and then you kick him out as well to thank him for his help.

Underswap Papyrus - What? Him? No! He's not touching that, he's scared as well. And you know what? To not have to do it, he starts to hyperventilate and then passes out on the floor, adding to the chaos lol.

Underfell Sans - He laughs like an evil villain and stomps on the thing in a disgusting "KRIIIIIISH" that still echoes in your head to this day. You can't get rid of the ugly stain on your carpet though. It's here to stay forever.

Underfell Papyrus - He picks up Doomfanger and throws his cat on the cockroach. Doomfanger then destroys the hell out of the cockroach and eats it entirely in front of your disgusted eyes, and his very proud eyes. That's his baby girl.

Horrortale Sans - Uh... Ok. He picks up the cockroach, slowly puts it outside, pets it twice on its little head, waves it goodbye, and goes back inside. Why being mean? The poor thing was just scared. You didn't know he could talk cockroach.

Horrortale Papyrus - He puts on a pair of kitchen gloves and comes to pick the thing. He then throws it outside and kicks it so it lands far from the house. Ew. He needs to clean the house again now. It's disgusting.

Swapfell Sans - Him? Like hell. He throws you on the floor as a sacrifice for the cockroach, picks his kid, and runs out of the house with them above his head. It was nice knowing you.

Swapfell Papyrus - He picks up the cockroach, laughing. Then he suddenly stops laughing and slowly turns around with a shark smile. "Oh no." "oh yes." You start running, screaming like you're getting murdered, as Rus runs behind you to put the cockroach in your hair. He can't help it, sorry.

Fellswap Gold Sans - He summons his three blasters and blasts the hell out of the cockroach. It's very dead now. So is the wall actually. You have a new window in the kitchen now. If it bothers you, he can still stick some tape on it.

Fellswap Gold Papyrus - He tries to push the cockroach, it jumps back at his face. Coffee is now screaming, the cockroach on his face, running into every piece of furniture and screaming for help to get it off. The worst part is when he runs into a wall, squeezing the cockroach on his face in a disgusting noise. Poor Coffee just unlocked a new trauma.

#undertale #underswap #underfell #horrortale #swapfell #fellswap gold #sans #papyrus #undertale ask blog #undertale asks #undertale imagines #undertale headcanons

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queenjunothegreat · 14 days ago

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Once again, Tumblr has failed me link-wise and I was to embarrassed by my last fic banner to try that again, so we're just gonna go with an Ao3 screenshot, okay? Okay. Anywho, I'm here with the final MoA rewrite before Strings of Fate starts posting tomorrow! Why am I posting this so last minute? Well, yesterday my cat gave me a concussion and today I spent four hours hunting down and resuscitating a Chromebook I had left for dead because my laptop refused to play nice. That's why. Regardless, this needed tonhappen because I needed A) more Piper POV B) more Piper & Jason friendship and C) more Drama Queen Jason. I am pleased with the outcome

Regardless, I hope you enjoy this entry to Scenes of Athena: PIPER Holds on Tight

They managed to make it up to the top deck with everyone else before they were attacked again, Jason stumbling so hard Piper had to catch him before he could fall. She whipped her head around and tried not to gag. “What the fuck is that?” “Shrimpzilla!” Percy shouted back. It wasn’t exactly a helpful description, but it wasn’t exactly wrong, either. The monster currently attacking the ship was a gigantic shrimp… cockroach… thing. It had an almost offensively bright pink shell made up of dozens of different segments that all slotted together and slid over one another like some kind of weird puzzle box, and there were hundreds of creepy bug-like legs on either side of its body that all twitched and undulated in one hypnotic mass. It had gigantic, bulbous eyes that held no light or intelligence, and a gigantic gaping maw that held no teeth. Looking at it made Piper feel like she was going to be sick. *** The Argo II Crew fights their pinkest foe.

Let it be known that Piper did not approve of Jason and Percy’s stunt in Charleston. Was it cool as hell to see the son of Poseidon and the son of Jupiter team up to create the pop-up storm of the century? Well, yes. Did it do a fantastic job at getting them the hell away from the Roman legion who wanted nothing more than to sink their ship? Also yes. However, it also exhausted Jason to the point of being delirious, and considering how many times Piper had seen her friend passed out and-slash-or literally dead (sure, that last one may have only happened the one time, but that was one time too many, in her opinion) she didn’t particularly care for anything that made Jason teeter on that edge of consciousness.

That being said, pouty, dramatic Jason was very cute.

“Can I have more marshmallow juice?” Jason asked plaintively, his eyes crossing slightly as he tried to focus on Piper sitting next to his bed.

“Do you mean Nectar?” she clarified. “Because, if so, the answer is no. Ignoring the fact that you’ve had enough for today, you’ve managed to get yourself knocked out twice over the course of, like, three days. I’m pretty sure you’ve actually used up your fair share for the rest of the quest, my guy.”

Jason puffed out his cheeks in a pout. “Where’s Leo? He’d give me marshmallow juice.”

“He’s up deck with Frank and Hazel keeping watch,” Piper told him. “And, no, he wouldn’t give you any Nectar, either, because he doesn’t want you boiling your insides any more than I do.”

Jason heaved an incredibly put-upon sigh. “Why is he always with Frank and Hazel? It’s not fair. He was with Frank at the fort and I couldn’t hold his hand even once. Does he not like us anymore?”

“That’s definitely it,” she said wryly. “Let’s just ignore the fact that he’s had literally one mission with Hazel that you weren’t a part of.”

“I was injured for that one, too,” Jason pointed out. “He’s abandoning me when I’m sick and dying, Piper. He doesn't love me anymore.”

Piper thumped him on the end of his nose so hard he actually let out a yelp of pain and clapped both hands over his face defensively. “Don’t even joke like that, you lunatic. And if you don’t want Leo hanging out with other people while you’re injured, maybe stop getting injured.”

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

“I literally can, though.”

Jason opened his mouth to say something, but at that exact moment, the ship lurched hard to the left, like it had been rammed. Piper was thrown out of her chair to the floor, but she quickly scrambled back to her feet and locked eyes with Jason. His gaze went all sharp and focused, lacking any and all of the dramatic whininess from before, and he gave her one decisive nod. She took in a deep breath and when she spoke, her voice was oozing with sticky-sweet Charmspeak. “Jason, get up. You’re okay. You’re going to come up on the top deck with me, and we’re going to figure out what’s going on, got it?”

Jason nodded again, and he immediately stood up from the bed, swaying slightly in place but no longer on the brink of passing out like he’d been before. Piper didn’t particularly like using her Charmspeak like that, but she understood that sometimes her personal qualms had to take a backseat. “Let’s go,” Jason ordered, withdrawing his coin from his pocket and racing out the cabin door Piper hot on his heels.

“Shrimpzilla!” Percy shouted back. It wasn’t exactly a helpful description, but it wasn’t exactly wrong, either. The monster currently attacking the ship was a gigantic shrimp… cockroach… thing. It had an almost offensively bright pink shell made up of dozens of different segments that all slotted together and slid over one another like some kind of weird puzzle box, and there were hundreds of creepy bug-like legs on either side of its body that all twitched and undulated in one hypnotic mass. It had gigantic, bulbous eyes that held no light or intelligence, and a gigantic gaping maw that held no teeth. Looking at it made Piper feel like she was going to be sick.

“Percy, can you talk to this thing?” Annabeth shouted, gripping onto the nearest rail to keep upright.

“If I can, it doesn’t have anything nice to say!”

“Jason, can you zap it?” Piper suggested desperately. He didn’t answer, but she knew it was a stupid question from the moment she opened her mouth. Jason had a hard enough time summoning his father’s lightning on a good day, much less when he was one stiff breeze from involuntary naptime.

“How did this thing even sneak up on us?” Hedge barked.

“It’s my fault!” Leo answered. He was desperately trying to hold the ship’s wheel steady with one hand and waving a JoyCon around in the other, but Piper knew from his tone that if his hands weren’t busy, he’d have been furiously yanking at his hair. “I forgot to switch to sonar! God, I’m so stupid!”

Before Piper could respond, one of Shrimpzilla’s tendrils wrapped around her waist and she was yanked down across the deck towards the monster with a terrified shriek. “Do something!”

She managed to unsheath Katoptris and started slashing at anything she could reach, but for as many tentacles as she managed to saw through, another four took their place. Frank, Annabeth, and Jason were at her side in seconds, but it was actually Percy who was the one who managed to free her, hacking at the monster like a whirlwind. “On your feet, McLean!” he shouted at her, yanking her upright as soon as she wasn’t trapped.

Piper nodded at him and she and Jason immediately fell into a fighting stance, back to back. They weren’t exactly a fighting duo to end all duos (they certainly didn’t hold a candle to Percy and Annabeth, who fought together like it was as simple as breathing) but they’d teamed up for Capture the Flag enough times that they could reasonably cover each other’s blind spots. Jason kept the monster decently at bay with the reach on his spear, and any little feelers that made it past his dome of defense were welcome guests at Piper’s Piercing Pagoda.

Still for all their efforts, she knew they couldn’t hold the monster off forever. The Argo II would either have to escape or Leo would have to show up with a few of those exploding watermelon cannonballs that he’d mentioned once or twice. As if responding to her thoughts, Leo suddenly ran by, Hazel hot on his heels, both of them carrying some glass vials that glowed bright green with magic. Leo shouted something she couldn’t understand, but she didn’t have time to question it because a giant tentacle, far bigger than any she and Jason had been stabbing at, shot on deck, knocked Frank overboard, and grabbed Leo and Hazel both, lifting them high in the air.

“Hazel!” Percy shouted, his voice pitching sharply as he stared up at them in horror for a split second before he was knocked clear across the deck.

Piper was frozen completely still in shock and terror, breath rattling in her chest as she was helpless to do anything but watch and pray. Then there was a bright white-hot flash from up where Leo and Hazel were, and they were free-falling directly into Shrimpzilla’s mouth, before an explosion, the magical bright green of Greek Fire, engulfed all three of them.

Piper could feel callous-rough hands cupping her cheeks, and she could distantly hear a voice calling for her.

“LEO!” Piper screamed at the top of her voice. She felt something tug at the back of her throat like when she was using Charmspeak, only this felt like it was being ripped from her very soul with a rusty fishing hook. Her eyes swam with tears for only a second before her vision filled with black.

“Piper? Piper, can you hear me?”

She groaned and blinked, her vision slowly swimming into blurry focus. Part of her expected to see wide brown eyes under a pair of bushy, furrowed brows. Instead, she got bright, concerned blue over a tight frown. She squinted at him. “Jason?”

Jason’s cheeks puffed out around a relieved sigh. “Piper. You okay?”

“Yeah, I just–” She cut herself off with a strangled gasp and sat straight up. “Leo!”

“What happened, McLean?” Percy, who she now noticed was kneeling at her side, demanded.

Her throat felt like it wanted to swell shut, but she just swallowed thickly. “I– I saw them. Leo and Hazel. They were falling into the monster’s mouth, but there was an explosion. I didn’t see what happened after that.”

Percy’s face was pale. “What about Frank? Did you see him?”

Percy grit his teeth, then forced himself to his feet. He locked eyes with her, his jaw set. “I’ll find them.” Then he leapt over the railing into the ocean without a second thought.

She nodded her head and sucked in a deep breath. “He was knocked overboard when that thing grabbed Leo and Hazel.”

Jason took in a deliberately even breath. “So, Leo’s…”

Piper hiccupped and buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know!” She was terrified. The image of Leo lying dead at the bottom of the ocean flashed in her mind, and she squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to let herself cry. Her chest felt raw and hollow, like someone had scooped out her heart and lungs with a plastic spoon and left the wound completely raw and exposed.

Fortunately, Annabeth cut in before she went all the way over the edge. She gripped Piper’s shoulder hard, and when Piper met her gaze it was strong and steady. “Hey, listen to me. We’re going to get them back. Leo’s a fire guy, right? I’m sure he’s fine. He wouldn’t have blown himself up if he thought it was actually going to kill him and Hazel.”

“But-But it was Greek Fire,” Piper stammered. “No one can survive that.”

“But it’s Leo,” Annabeth countered. “If anyone could, it would be him.” She squeezed Piper’s shoulder, then offered her a hand. “Now, come on. The ship’s in rough shape, and I’m not in the mood to hear Leo bitch about it when he’s back on board and sees the state of things.”

Piper let out a noise that was a half-sniffle, half-laugh, and slapped her cheeks a couple times to focus herself. “You’re right. Let’s clean this mess up.”

Unfortunately for Piper, Leo did a bit too good of a job designing the ship. She’d originally been the one to suggest making it so the ship could handle fixing things on its own, but she’d mostly meant it as a joke. Leo had roped her into a brainstorming session that she’d wanted no part of, so she’d offered up her seemingly impossible idea when she’d been forced to contribute. Leo, of course, just took it as a challenge, and made it so that Festus and Buford were more than capable of taking care of most of the repairs by themselves. There were a few tweaks with the navigational system that Annabeth wanted to take a look at and Jason had managed to keep himself busy flying around the rigging like Peter Pan and following orders from a side table. Even Hedge had dedicated himself to lovingly polishing the ballista while he cooed sweet nothings at it. At least, that’s what Piper assumed he was doing.

This did, however, leave Piper with absolutely nothing to do. She’d never really understood a word that came out of Leo and Annabeth’s mouths when they started Nerd Talking at one another about the ship, so she was useless for repairs, but the thought of just sitting around and waiting frayed at her nerves like nothing else. She’d tried searching for Leo, Frank, and Hazel in the reflection of Katoptris, but the knife was infuriatingly unhelpful. Instead of any clues about her missing friends, all she saw was even more awfulness. She saw Reyna sitting in the driver’s seat of a black SUV as they sped up the interstate, escorted by giant eagles. She saw a human-headed bull, a beast like a reverse Minotaur, slowly rising from a river before he tipped his head back and let out a howl that Piper couldn’t hear, but knew was mournful anyway. She saw herself and Jason and Percy all together in a room that looked like a well desperately gasping for air as thick, ink-black water lapped at their throats, threatening to drown them.

But the one that concerned her the most was one she only caught glimpses of. Jason’s face twisted up in unspeakable heartbreak, desperately reaching for something Piper couldn’t see. Leo’s wide, toothy grin he wore when he knew he was at the end of the line, but didn’t want Piper to worry about him. Her hand holding Leo’s in a white-knuckled grasp as her own blood smeared between them.

Part of her wanted to fling her knife into the sea where it could never torment her again, but another part wanted to cradle it close to her chest like her most favored child, living forever in the images and scenes that flashed before her. She thought about Helen, hidden away during the Trojan War with only Katoptris and its visions for comfort, and wondered if she’d felt this same mix of resentment and reliance for her treasured blade. She wondered if this was madness, if this was mania. She was scared to find out.

“Any luck?”

Piper looked up to see Annabeth standing before her. She shook her head with a heavy sigh. “It’s mostly the same as before. I did see the Romans, though. They’re taking I-95 towards Camp Half-Blood.”

She didn’t mention the vision of her hand in Leo’s or Jason’s grief. She wasn’t sure if she could.

Annabeth nodded grimly. “At least we’ll be able to give Chiron and the Camp a heads up. That’s the important thing.”

Piper wanted to argue, to scream and shout that the “important thing” was that Leo was lost somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, but at that exact moment, a single, controlled wave crashed down on the deck, leaving Percy kneeling and sucking in deep, heaving pants as he tried to catch his breath, body trembling with exhaustion. He was soaking wet, too, which Piper thought was odd, as she was under the impression that his powers always kept him dry, but she didn’t bother to mention it. He looked up, eyes hollow and desperate. “I can’t find them.”

Annabeth sucked in a sharp breath, but kept her cool. She carefully helped him to his feet, slinging his arm over his shoulder. “Well, you can’t keep looking like this. You’ve been down there for hours, and at this point I’m almost worried you’ll drown.” Percy visibly flinched at her words, and her frown deepened. “Come on. Let’s get you in bed. We’ll call Chiron and let him know what’s going on.”

“But Frank and Hazel–”

“You can keep looking once you’ve had some rest, Seaweed Brain,” she cut in. “Now, come on.”

Piper watched helplessly as Annabeth dragged her boyfriend below deck, feeling more useless than ever. There was nothing anyone could do. Her best friend was missing, possibly dead, and all she could do was twiddle her thumbs and wait while one of the actually valuable members of the crew was able to go out and look for him.

Jason fell out of the sky at her side, then, his landing far heavier than normal. “Come on,” he said quietly. “Coach Hedge said he’d keep watch. He wants us to rest.”

Piper nodded numbly and allowed Jason to lead her down to his cabin, her hand clutched in his like a lifeline. Jason’s cabin was always clean and cozy, and Piper knew it had glow in the dark stars on the ceiling because she’d put them there herself. She remembered sneaking in there one night at Camp with Leo because Jason had said he’d never heard of such a thing before in his life, and they spent hours painstakingly putting up each and every star. She blinked up at them, and her voice was thick when she said, “Those are real constellations, you know.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “It was a pain in the ass getting them all up there in the right spots, so you’d better appreciate them.”

Jason sat down on the bed, and Piper joined him. “I do,” he said. “I appreciate them a lot. I appreciated them before I knew how much effort you put into it.”

Piper sniffled hard and thumped her head down on Jason’s shoulder. “Good.”

“I don’t know if I ever properly thanked you for that,” he hummed. “I have the feeling it’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for me. So, thank you. It means a lot.”

She shrugged. “You deserve good things, too, Jace.”

Jason sucked in a sharp breath at her side, and clenched his fists in his lap. “Yeah. You, too, Pipes.”

Piper gave up all pretenses then and flung her arms around Jason, squeezing him in the tightest hug she could stand. “I’m scared.”

Jason’s fists clenched in the back of her shirt. “Yeah. Me, too.”

Piper was pretty sure no one slept that night. She and Jason certainly hadn’t, and based on the dark circles under Annabeth and Percy’s eyes when they’d met for breakfast that morning, they hadn’t either.

They didn’t say anything else, they just held each other tight for the rest of the night.

“What did Chiron say?” Jason asked hollowly, pushing some scrambled eggs around on his plate and looking like he was going to be sick.

Annabeth grimaced and drug a hand down her face. “It’s not all bad news back at home. Tyson and Ella both made it back safe with Mrs. O’Leary. Apparently Rachel and Ella have been holed up together comparing prophecies since.”

“Tyson’s a general in the Cyclopes Army, so he can call on them for aid, if it comes to that,” Percy added. His face was dull and expressionless, devoid of even that spark of anger Piper had come to know so well. Piper saw Annabeth squeeze his hand under the table.

“Did he have any advice on what we should do?” Piper asked, trying to grasp for hope she didn’t feel.

Annabeth shook her head. “We’re on a quest. The only advice he can give us is to finish the job and come back safely.”

Piper scowled down at the table, and she was glad that Annabeth and Percy had made the call without her as she likely would have had some choice words for the kindly centaur if he’d said that to her face. The group fell silent and Piper wondered if now was the time for her to pray to her mom. She wasn’t really all that comfortable praying yet. After a life of having her pleas ignored by a parent she could see, she had a hard time calling on the one who took fifteen years to even show up. Besides, what good was the goddess of love and beauty in a search and rescue mission anyway?

Still, Venus’s words to her in Charleston rang in her head. You’ll need your friends more than you know, my love. Hold tight to them, but know they can’t be lost so easily. Piper squeezed her eyes shut and prayed, all but begging for a miracle and desperately hoping for her love to hold tight.

“I’m going to go out looking for them again,” Percy said decisively, standing up with a loud clatter. His eyes were hard and stormy and full of that stubborn determination Annabeth had spoken of so often.

Annabeth stood as well, her brows furrowing. “You can’t,” she snapped. “You’re in no shape for it. If you go down there, I’m not convinced you’ll come back up.”

“Watch me,” Percy spat back. “I’m not leaving Frank and Hazel down there.”

Piper’s eyes widened as her gaze flickered between Percy and Annabeth. She was practically suffocating on the anger and tension between them, and she realized suddenly that this was not the first time they’d had this argument. She couldn’t help but wonder how often Annabeth had insisted on being the one to reign in Percy’s recklessness and how many times she’d been forced to accept that she couldn’t. The air in the mess hall sparked and Piper held her breath.

Then Festus spoke.

“Get up deck!” Piper shouted, instinctively translating the dragon’s Morse code message. She scrambled for the door, not waiting to see if anyone was following, though she did hear them clamber after her. She flung herself at the railing, eyes wide and heart thumping in her throat. There, just where Festus had reported it would be, the water was frothing and bubbling like a cauldron, and a bright pink light was rapidly approaching the surface.

“Leo!” she shrieked in delight the moment she saw that mop of carefully groomed curls. Without a second thought, she dove over the railing into the ocean and started swimming. The instant she was close enough, she wrapped Leo up in her arms like she never planned to let him go and kissed him on the cheek.

He laughed brightly and hugged her back, pulling away just enough to waggle his eyebrows and give her a cheeky grin. “Miss me much?” She laughed with him for a moment, overwhelmed with joy.

Then she was suddenly filled with rage as she remembered the pain and worry she’d endured over the past twelve hours, and she dunked his head under the water. “I’m gonna kill you!”

Leo’s head broke the surface, and he spluttered out a gasp, furiously kicking away from her. “God! Pipes! What the fuck is your problem?”

“That’s what I’m asking you!” she shouted back, swimming after him. Leo was doing his best to swim away and escape her indignant wrath, but it was clearly a losing battle. Unfortunately for him, he hadn’t spent his formative years surfing on the California coast, so she was much faster than him. She dove at him, ready for another attempt at drowning him, but he was snatched out of the water just before she could get her hands on him. She scowled up at Jason, who was hovering over her, Leo clinging to one of his arms and curled up in a ball to keep his feet out of Piper’s reach. “Give him back!”

“You can have him back when you have access to less than three inches of water,” Jason said unreasonably.

“Do not let her near me, Superman!” Leo squawked. “She’s insane!”

Jason ignored him, and dipped down enough so that he could grab Piper out of the water, too. She slugged Leo on the arm and scowled. “I hate you.”

“Back at you, Beauty Queen.”

Once they were back on deck, Jason quickly blow-dried Piper and Leo while Percy fussed over Frank and Hazel, apparently having jumped in the water right after Piper. Once they were all clean and dried and taken care of, Frank held up a picnic basket. “Does anyone want a brownie?”

“I think we’re all a little more interested in finding out where you guys have been,” Annabeth said, arching her eyebrow.

“Okay, but do you want a brownie first?” Frank insisted. “They’re really good.”

Jason was the first to break and he shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll take one.”

After that, brownies were handed out to everyone as Frank, Hazel, and Leo shared their experiences in the underwater Camp Half-Blood, which Leo helpfully dubbed Camp Fish-Blood. This made Hazel giggle and Frank roll his eyes, though Piper noticed he didn’t seem quite so miffed as usual. Apparently, there was a whole camp where all the best mer-heroes went to train, run by Chiron’s fishy half-brothers. They explained that Shrimpzilla was actually one of Keto’s babies, proper name Scolopendra, and they were going to send the mighty Bill to right the injustices of the Georgia Aquarium. Hazel even mentioned that Bythos and Aphros had given them a letter of introduction to the Tiber River, which Annabeth was apparently going to use (somehow) and by the end of their story Piper was mystified.

Jason was equally mystified, though not by the same thing.

“That one guy, you said his name was Aphros, right?” Jason said, his tone deathly serious as he stared Frank down like he was in an interrogation room. “He gave you the recipe for these brownies?”

“Um.” Frank traded a somewhat nervous look with Hazel, who looked baffled, then Leo, who just rolled his eyes, then back to Jason. “Yes?”

Jason heaved a deep, relieved sigh as he slumped back in his chair. Piper watched with mild disgust as he grabbed what was probably his fourth brownie and smothered it with peach preserves before shoving half of it in his mouth. “Thank the gods.”

Leo gawked at him like he was regretting ever sitting next to Jason on that school bus back in December. “Dude. When was the last time you ate?”

Jason shrugged casually, brownie bits stuck to his cheeks. “Now.”

Leo wrinkled his nose. “Dude.”

Piper just folded her arms on the table and laughed.

#my writing #fate spun heroes #lost trio #valgrace #not REALLY but also kinda #yolo

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cookiesupplier · 1 year ago

Text

Hell Aint So Bad - Part Twenty

pairing: Noah Sebastian x ofc (Ellie)

warnings/tropes: slow burn, smut, angst, fluff, mentions of death, mentions of torture, thoughts of religious ideology, minor violence, swearing, cheating. Also, for this chapter, CLOWNS.

summary: Ellie was lost in the world, homeless with no idea what to do and nowhere to go.. Who would have thought that one day, she’d end up working in hell itself.. And what does this even mean?

author’s note: Unbetaed, readers beware. And again, I leave you with Noah at the end.. I'd apologise, but...

tags: @spicywhenspeaking @bngurngheart @cncohshit @valiantroeagleangel @blackveilomens @dominuslunae @tearfallpixie @nyxthedestroyerofworlds @wild-child-7747 @notingridslurkaccount @lyschko666 @lacktoesandtoddlerants @jilliemiw86 @emmmm127 @laurpartyprogram

Ellie had a good night with Nicholas, they sat, and they talked, but not about Noah. He kept to his agreement to avoid continuing with the subject of the other demon lord, and she appreciated that. Instead, they talked about everything else under the sun, almost. Movies, music, what was happening in the mortal world, and how reincarnation in effect worked now that it was in reality something that she had to think about. It was about the soul, about being reborn, a new life, that she wouldn’t be her as flesh and blood, that she was a new person. Which brought about the big question she just had to ask him. Could she become a cockroach in her next life? That was entirely something that she would not look forward to, ever, and if that was a possibility, she called bullshit on Jolly and Folio’s reasons for not doing it. Absolute bullshit!

Apparently, with the way Nicholas had explained it to her, with his amused grin after her little rant, only those who reincarnated without learning their lessons ended up that way, which shocked her. Ellie had been under the impression that they didn’t allow that, and Nicholas had shaken his head. There were levels of punishment, and while there were some that were here for eternity, there were others, that got to a point that any form of punishment became derivative and pointless. The souls themselves demanded reincarnation, and if those that punished them came to a point that they caved and gave in, that was exactly what happened. Maybe it wasn’t a cockroach, maybe it would be something equally detestable to the soul, but either way, it was always a vile gamble they had to make.

So, thankfully, if she chose to do this, she wouldn’t end up as a cockroach, and for that, she considered it a blessing, but also, the thought of becoming someone else, and having no control over what could happen in another life, she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She needed time to think. At that, Nicholas had nodded and agreed, that this wasn’t a decision anyone should take lightly. Hearing all of this, made everything with Jolly and Folio staying back from reincarnation make so much sense, she’d never questioned it too much before anyway, selfishly if she was honest, never wanting to consider the thought of losing her friends while she was here, but this just settled even more for her.

As a whole, the night just left her with so many questions, and yet, also, helped give her a little hope. Funny. Talking about being dead, finally talking about it, and what it meant, gave her hope.

The next morning, it wasn’t as hard to get out of bed. Not only that, Ellie got up, and she got dressed, made her food at home instead of a delivery this time… and then even managed to make it to work for the first time in over a week.

Ellie paused at the door to the office, taking in a breath, she could do this, she’d talked to Nicholas for hours last night. They were her friends, they were still her friends, it wasn’t like any of them had truly changed after all, it was just, different. Yes, in some ways it felt like her world had been turned on its head, literally upside down, inside out, all over again, just like when she came here in the first place. Just like when she first became homeless. She’d survived it before, she could survive it again. Ellie was a survivor, she always had been, right from childhood. She’d survived her birth mother who didn’t want her and abandoned her, a father and stepmother who had neglected her, friends that, were only her friends when it was convenient for her. When she’d needed them most, they’d all conveniently disappeared from her life. The streets had been no easier, though, surprising, Ellie would say living on the street, it was there she found kindness in some places than she had in the rest of the world. Then she had come to Hell. A whole new stage in her life, well, death.

Pushing the door open, she walked into the office to find Jolly and Folio already there. Not that it was that surprising, she was about an hour later than she would have usually arrived to work on a normal day.

“Sorry I’m late, only about a week, but I made it I guess?”

Glancing between them, there was a hesitation there, she could see it, they were wary. Ellie supposed she couldn’t blame them, she’d been avoiding them, for all they knew she was here to blow up and scream absolute fury at them for their part in the deception.. and that was, well…

“So, I was thinking, for lunch, pizzeria, down the road, who’s in?”

It wasn’t just that she forgave them for not telling her, it was that, and she wanted her friends back. If they had to build their friendships back up from scratch, she’d do it, if not…

She missed her friends so badly, and she felt so alone right now she needed them, her friends.

“Holy shit, YES!”

Folio was the first one to speak, which didn’t surprise her one little bit, as he was right there, jumping at the chance to rush over and wrap her up in a bear hug. His arms wrapped around her so tight she would swear that she couldn’t breathe for a second there, not that she really needed to, but even while dead, as a soul, it was kind of a second habit.

“Folio, can’t, breathe.”

Hearing him chuckle in response confused her for a second until she was patting him on the back and heard Jolly from off to the side, who was patting Folio’s shoulder,

“You’ll get used to not really needing to, Sweetheart, but come on, let her go, I want a hug too.”

When Folio let her go, she blinked at him, Jolly’s words sinking in, but despite knowing that he was right, and she didn’t need to, the human innate instinct to breathe kicked in, and there she was taking in a deep breath, letting the air fill her lungs. Looking over to Jolly, eyes wide, he just smiled to her warmly,

“Don’t worry, we all do it. Just because we don’t need to, doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel good. It actually feels a bit like a high if you can stop breathing long enough before taking that first sweet breath. Such a rush. My record for not breathing is half an hour.”

“TWO HOURS!”

Folio exclaimed with a bright grin, proud that he could claim the title here, as competitive as ever, Ellie just laughed, shaking her head, ridiculous. Of course, he would take pride in that. However, the fact that Jolly actually threw in the titbit about not breathing about experiencing a high, prompted her to raise an eyebrow at him, which was, wow, cheeky. She wondered what other things they could get up to being dead that they hadn’t told her about before.

“That was while you were drunk, and right before you passed out on the floor. No one can prove whether passed out from the liquor or the lack of oxygen, or both.”

“Despite the fact that neither of those things is supposed to have quite the same effect on him in Hell as they used to?”

“Exactly.”

Jolly raised an eyebrow as he smiled, Ellie got his point crystal clear as Folio rolled his eyes, waving off the entire back and forth between them, declaring them as bullying him and deciding that making fun of him was pointless, he was better when it came to this no matter what. Even against demons, they might have fantastic lung capacity, but they actually needed to breathe. They were alive and while they could probably rival Jolly’s half an hour, apparently not Folio’s two hours, not at all. Human, souls, while their bodies functioned normally, sure, but it was just different here, in Hell, it was confusing to think about really, not needing to breathe, but still feeling hungry and eating. See, confusing! Where was the line? All Ellie could think, when it came down to it, was magic. Answer to everything, right? Right. Otherwise, she just couldn’t wrap her head around it. As it was, bonding with these two in a whole different way than before, over being dead and what that meant for them, it was going to be interesting indeed.

Giving into a Jolly hug was sweet, his arms wrapping around her soft and warm after being accosted by her Folio hug, giggling softly as he hugged her tightly, and said softly,

“Good to have you back Sweetheart, I’ve been going crazy dealing with his zoomies every day.”

Smiling as he let her go, Folio and his zoomies, honestly, he was like one of those tiny little puppy dogs sometimes, running around with no off switch. Not that any of them told him that. Mostly because if they dared, he’d probably get that puppy dog awful pout on his face and whine at them about it. But at least it also made him easier to handle, fun, games, and treats! Even so, she was sure Jolly would have been just fine without her, he had been before her, and he would have been again, when she’d said that to him, he’d just turned and given her a look, just because he would have been, didn’t mean he wanted to be, because life changed with friends, and friends changed you.

The souls that came through the office for the morning were thankfully pretty quiet, and easy to handle for her first day back with the guys, and they could skip off to lunch, which, ever since she had mentioned the pizzeria, Folio hadn’t let her forget it. Her shout, he made sure to remind her, not that any of them had to pay, but still, it was a principle of the thing. She said she would, so, that was how it went.

Once they got to the pizzeria, Nicholas joined them,

“I’d asked how you knew where we were, but then I’d come back to mind reading.”

They had all laughed at that, it had become an ongoing gag in the months she’d been in Hell, every time it had come up, they’d had a good laugh about it. It felt good to know that despite her issues, that joke wasn’t going to disappear any time soon either. She was okay with that, it was nice to know that they hadn’t treated her differently, even if she did notice they had tip-toed around some subjects. As it was, it was on the top of her tongue right now, to ask about whether the resident food thief of the group was going to show his face at any point during lunch. She didn’t though. As much as Noah was always in the back of her mind, the thought of bringing him up, asking about him, made her feel a little sick, she didn’t want to know.

So she just kept the thought to herself.

It was a cowardly move, she knew, but he also wasn’t here.

He wasn’t here, and she hadn’t gotten another message from him since Nicholas had arrived at her doorstep last night.

She knew she hadn’t, because she’d been checking her phone, compulsively.

As much as Ellie might not want to admit to that, she had been. Yes, she has said to Nick that she didn’t know if she could forgive him, but that didn’t mean her feelings for the man, the demon, had completely disappeared. As painful as they were with the massive secret, the fact that he’d lied to her for months while involved with her, and no matter how he swung it, he had lied to her. The others were her friends, Noah had been more. Ellie missed him. It hurt thinking about him, but she did miss him.

She didn’t want to see him, but she missed him.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful, if dying, made things easier to handle, instead of just as complicated as ever?

Seems she wasn’t that lucky, not even close.

Didn’t stop her from enjoying lunch with Jolly, Folio and Nicholas at least. Sure it was pizza, again, but it was a meal that was easy to share with friends. You could order any number of toppings on a pizza and people would pick off what they didn’t like, it worked just fine with Ellie. Despite this, they still ended up with three pies on the table between the four of them. That's what happened when one of them was a demon, and two of them were grown men, one of which was a hyperactive puppy that would take a challenge and try to eat them all under the table with a look. There was no look today.

Ellie’s weakness was garlic bread anyway, so she was good, she got some of the extra cheesy kind to share.

They spent lunch laughing and joking, talking about the last week, about the souls that had passed through, and joking about everything that Ellie had missed out on. Apparently, there had been one guy who had walked through the office in a clown costume, in a full-on clown costume, squeezing a honking horn in his hand with each step he made. That was his only means of communication. Just hearing about him truly gave Ellie the heebie-jeebies and made her glad she hadn’t been then, when Folio saw her shudder as they talked about him, he raised an eyebrow.

“What, clowns are creepy, okay, don’t look at me like that!”

“Well, this one certainly was.”

Jolly agreed, with a nod, Folio agreeing immediately as well before Nicholas gave him a look with a glance to Ellie,

“What..”

She looked between the three of them and cringed slightly,

“What did he do, oh no, oh damn, he’s in Hell, still in his clown costume.. Do I even want to know?”

“Probably not.”

Nicholas reached over and patted her hand gently.

“You better tell me, otherwise I will think of the worst-case scenario,”

“Serial killer.”

Folio supplied succinctly,

“Kids?”

“Nope, no kids, never kids.”

“Oh, good, 'cause that was the worst case.. Good.. good..well, I mean, not good.”

Her face flushed as she babbled a little, shaking her head, she had just not wanted him to kill kids.

“You know what I mean.”

The guys chuckled at her awkwardness, but they were okay, they were all okay, and no more talk of creepy serial killer clowns please and thank you. No. No more.

It was later that night when she was in her comfy PJ’s, the long warm ones, sort of, not that they were a matching set, they were mostly just lounge pants and an old soft worn shirt of Noah’s, it was comfy, and he’d left it here one night so she’d appropriated it. She’d not worn it all week, but after today, and how much she missed him, she was, she was just weak, okay? So, while she was staring at her phone, considering texting him, but no clue what she’d even say to him… she was wearing it, her finger tapping against the side of her phone as she stared at the screen, and then she heard a knock at the door.

Sighing, she got to the door and opened it, only to be greeted by the sight of a demon lord on the other side.

“Noah.”

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

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harusaki-hugo · 2 years ago

Text

Look Like College Student, Is An Trained Assassin.

Fandom: Tokyo Revengers , slightly Assassination Classroom.

Tags: Violence, blood, chifuyu almost got baji-fied ,fluff , a bit of angst, age gap, chifuyu having internal crisis

Characters: Chifuyu Matsuno x Gn!Reader

Timeline:Bonten!Timeline!

Synopsis: Chifuyu almost got kidnapped by Bonten but a college student help him.

Matsuno Chifuyu always intrigues you, [name], a twenty-four (24) college student who always visits his shop not because you buy pet food, but to play with the cats he has inside, outside, and around his shop. Every time he sees you, it's either you in the alleyway playing with stray cats, near his shop playing with stray dogs, or straight up inside his shop playing with any animal you found and yes, including insect [cockroach and the other, he still doesn't know how tf you catch that cockroach] which make him and Kazutora almost burn the shop down.

Now, Chifuyu is not the type who falls in love with someone who younger than him, he just has a soft spot for a brat like you which Kazutora call it's bullshit because he sees how his face softened when he sees you and how his eyes lighten up when you enter the shop.

If anyone asks Kazutora if [name] reminds Chifuyu of Baji, he would say that maybe, because you remind him of Baji but if anyone asks Kazutora if Chifuyu fall in love with [name], then he will not hesitantly say "fuck yes, he did."

Is it because of your kind nature? hell no, you a fucking gremlin that bites a dog back when it bites you. One time kazutora catch you almost eating a dog treat and if he didn't enter jail once, he will think of sending you to a mental hospital. Or because of your beautiful/handsome appearance, maybe but Chifuyu is not the type who cares about looks.

Then what it is? what makes him fall in love with you?

Because you save his life without any hesitation.

It's happened that night when he on his way back home, walking towards his car Chifuyu almost able to unlock his door car when a blunt force hit his head causing him to crash on the ground. Holding his head, a drop of blood dripped down his forehead causing him to let out a hiss of pain.

He looks at his attackers and his eyes widen when he sees that the one who attacked him is part of Bonten. He curses himself for being careless, using his car as support he loosens his tie as he glares at the group, readying himself to fight.

Now, he might not be a delinquent anymore but that didn't mean he can't fight. But, twenty men is too much for him, he manage to knock out at least seven people before he received another pipe in the head.

With body bruises and head throbbing, Chifuyu can't do anything but lie on the ground. He groans in pain when someone grabs his hair and lifts his head, saying something about Kisaki will pay them money.

Of course, it's that little chicken-looking ass bitch idea.

Just before they can drag Chifuyu away inside that black van, a voice stop them. "Matsuno-san, you being kidnapped." No shit Sherlock is what Chifuyu will snap if it's not because of his weak condition and the fear rushing inside him when he realized the voice belong to you.

Looking at you with a panic eyes, he yell at you to run away but you just stood there, sipping on your box juice as you look at them with exhausted eyes.

"Erm...can you like let him go? If he dead, I can't play with cats and dogs anymore," you say making the men look at each other before laughing mockingly.

"Well, the boss did say to not let any witness."

One of the males walks towards you with a pipe in hand and honestly, after Baji dies he never feels this much fear in his life. He yells your name and begs you to run away but you just calmly staring at the male.

"Funny, karasuma-sensei said to leave no body."

Finishing the juice box you quickly duck down to avoid the pipe aimed at your head. without even waiting, you pull your arm back before punching the male in the face causing him to fly crashing on the ground.

"But, koro-sensei said to make it look like an accident."

You pick up the pipe the male dropped, throwing the juice box away you twirl the pipe around before you rush toward the two males that holding chifuyu.

There's something that Chifuyu notices, or either he goes deaf but the screaming and yelling tell him that he is not. you didn't make any sounds when running or walking, your footsteps are silence.

Your movement is something else. unlike on his delinquent day, when all of his gang members fought recklessly. you are accurate and calculating.

The way you slam the pipe on the guy on his right, it's accurate as hell, because you knock him out in one hit and make sure the wound is not fatal. moving to the one on his left, he is met with a kick on the stomach, and just like that he knocks out. he didn't double over or stagger backward, he k.o in one hit.

Chifuyu's body falls onto your awaiting arms. He feels his heart skip a bit at how gentle you are when you holding him and how protective are your grip is when you pull him closer to you. Slowly losing his concussion, the only thing he heard are;

"Sorry, I am quite possessive about something that is mine."

And when he regained consciousness he now laying on top of the most fluffy bed he ever lay on. and the most heavenly about the bed is? he was surrounded by three fluffy cats, one on top of his stomach, and two on his side. He can just die and end up in heaven. Rubbing his face, Chifuyu notice that his wound is treated and bandaged.

"Matsuno-san, are you awake?" His eyes travel towards the bedroom door where you leaning against the doorframe holding the cutest kitten he has ever seen, second to Peke-J.

"[lastname]...? What-" He then remember what happens early and he quickly sat up, the cats around him didn't even bother to jump away as the one on his stomach roll down to his lap and continue sleeping. "Are you okay?!" He looks at you with worry in his eyes.

"That's supposed to be my question." You walk towards the bed and sit down on the chair beside the bed. Chifuyu's eyes follow your movement and he noticed there is not even a scratch on you. "...You win?" He asks in disbelief.

"Win? Ah, that. Yeah, you can say that." You smile at him causing him to feel a bit flustered because you just take down thirteen (13) criminals on your own and have not even a scratch on your face.

"Matsuno-san...who are those guys?" Chifuyu tense a bit at your question, looking away from you he seem not to want to ask the question or perhaps he just didn't want to drag you into his mess. Seeing that he won't answer your question, you decide to change the subject.

"This is Riri." You suddenly say, looking down at the kitten you holding, "The one on your lap is Lili, the one on your left is Mimi and your right is Bob."

"why the fuck is his name Bob?" Chifuyu deadpan at the different name of Bob, you just shrug your shoulders causing the male to laugh a bit, reaching towards Riri he began to pat the kitten.

You look at him with a small smile, seeing how relaxed is chifuyu now than before. The male notice your gaze and his face is heated up a bit, licking his lips nervously he realizes how close you two are.

"Matsun-"-"Chifuyu." He cut you off making you look at him confusedly, clearing his throat he spoke seriously, "Call me chifuyu, [name]."

You nod your head, smiling bashfully as you repeat his name "Okay... Chifuyu."

He doesn't know what possessed him but as soon he hears his name on your lips he grabs the back of your head before smashing his lips against you. Pulling away slightly, his lips still brushing against you as he looks at you right in the eyes. "Again.." He studies your face, waiting for your reaction, and when he sees nothing but shyness he smirk.

"come on...say my name again.."

"..chi...Chifuyu.."

He can't control himself as he eagerly presses his lips again against you and this time you kiss him back.

Safe to say, before it can escalate quickly, your cats disturb you by meowing like a spawn of satan they are

Request open but not matchup.

Also, I freaking love Chifuyu but he's second to Mitsuya, he's everyone's bae and whoever hates Mitsuya, there's something wrong with you.

#tokyo revengers x reader #tokyo revengers #anime #matsuno chifuyu #matsuno chifuyu x reader #chifuyu x reader #tokyo revengers chifuyu #tr chifuyu #assassination classroom

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yurki-posts · 9 months ago

Note

Do you have any oc?? :0

(Not talking 'bout ur persona, im asking like-- an oc or sssstory w ocsss?? lmao---) 👉👈💐

YEESSSSSS I DO!!!!! I have many, many ocs buuuut I lost the pictures of most of them and they don't have a real story yet- so imma just share some of them who I have pictures for and also a little of lore! (please god im begging for the guys in the discord server not to find this or im fucking dead)

Ocs under the cut! (It's quite long and messy so be prepared for lore dump in the second half because it's my personal favorite)

First we have my main oc and the first one I created all by myself! (which means without external help like a character maker or dress up game); Vinn!

(credits of the art to my irl bestie I luv ya!!!)

As you can see, they're a colorful ball. His desing is obviously based on Polandball/Countryballs, where the countries are balls with white eyes. Originally they were going to be their own countryball but I decided to use him as a persona for many years until Yurki came in ;)

Don't let their colors and cuteness foul you, they were banished to hell after burning down uncountable villages and forests. He was obsessed with fire in such a sick way, he was often called an arsonist (rightfully so) by the passersby.

Once in Hell, they lost most of their already damaged mind. They set Hell itself on fire and flames, and before he could reach the last corner of it, he was captured and kicked out of hell, and found himself in a new planet ready to be set on fire with their flamethrower, although it would bring many surprises he couldn't have ever imagined.

That's pretty much a summary of their lore. He loves fire (what a surprise!) and they are best friends with the element of fire of that universe. They don't have many abilities that aren't just advantages of being a ball, but he can breathe fire if that's something. Their story actually continues but it's all written in spanish so I doubt it's even worth to link it here lol.

_______________________________________________

And now...We have many here that I actually do want to work on but idk how to write lol

They're made in Gacha Life 2 if anyone wonders why they don't look drawn.

So in the pictures we have a couple of them, but I actually don't have names for anyone but the green one because I SUCK AT NAMES.

So... anyways the green one is Stunail. The Moth girl is his cousin who has social anxiety and the Butterfly is his older sister. The two dragons are caretakers of a botanical garden and they're friends with Stunail and his cousin.

In that universe, humans are mixed with bugs and other kind of species. There's no racism, but golly there is a lot of specism (discrimination against other species. Not to be confused with Speciesism. Yes I just made that first word out). There's special hatred towards "dirty" and "useless" species, such as Snails, Flies/Mosquitoes, Cockroaches, Rats, and a few more.

Some of them are banned in public spaces in the most specist regions (which are fortunately very few) and have a hard time getting employed, and if they do get employed they usually get paid less than a "normal" species. Some are seen as dangerous and scary, and others as a waste of air and useless to society.

Ofc it's not super obvious at first sight, but it's the subtle things that makes the specism stand out. Looking weird at them, sitting somewhere else if they sit next to you, put your children to play with a different kid in the playground, ignore if they're talking, avoid them if they're seen.

I'm unsure of what this story would follow, but I think it would be about Stunail proving the world that their and other hated species can be as capable and "normal" as any other species, and that they shouldn't be discriminated for their mere existence, and have the same rights as the rest of the species. Alongside Moth Girl's character development where she manages to, slowly, heal from her trauma and social anxiety.

Ohhh and here are some ✨side charaters✨ I also made

The only one with a name (again😞) is the mermaid, Merman! (although I might change his name because it's a little plain). The sheeps are twin brothers, the squid girl is an important administrator of the Eastern Ocean Empire, and Merman is the Monarch of the sea species in the Western side of this last mentioned Empire.

I plan for all of them to connect in one way or another to Stunail and his friends, but I still need to figure that part out "- -

Damn that was a lot of yapping. Hope whoever read all this liked it ^^ I appretiate any opinions about this last one specifically because it's something I actually wanna end up doing somehow.

(Please suggest names im begging on the floor rn)

#man I love my ocs so deeply #no one asked but Stunail's name came to me because I imagined people mocking him with this name because it's a combination of the words:#“stupid” and “snail”. And people would unironically call him by this instead of his real name so he stopped trying to correct people and #just run with it. How sad #I remember Moth Girl was called Mothica but I don't like that name anymore so- no she'll stick with Moth Girl until I can think of somethin #oc #ocs #oc lore #oc desing #oc art #oc fanart #(my friend actually made more fanart of Vinn but I didn't felt like showing it off lolll)#I have their sexualities figured out but not their lore #it's because of that goddamn woke agenda...........#/j #oh boy im so ready for this to get like 3 notes. but im happy as long as *someone* sees it #ask box

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lazyscience · 3 months ago

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DCC Challenge, Day 7

Time To Floor Collapse: 24 days, 2.5 hours (give or take)

Time for the recap episode!

Crawler @quartzandsundry

New Achievement! Jar of Hearts!

Charisma's a hell of a drug, isn't it? One of your famous earth authors Terry Pratchett once observed, “If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's what people remember.” You've got KILLER style. Keep those illusions, manipulations and meat shields going!

Reward: A gold Look What You Made Me Do box! Inside, a tome of Love Vampire, and an enchanted bodysuit of +10% to mana regeneration.

Crawler @kathrynalexao3:

New Achievement! Pina Colada at Trader Vic's!

Lycanthropy and necromancy, two great tastes that taste great together! It's a Reese's Peanut Cup of murder! You know what else goes with that? a few Player-Killer skulls! You know you want 'em!

...okay, okay fine. I'm just offering. You don't have to decide right away, maybe just think about it, okay? Okay!

Reward: A gold Leader of the Pack box! Inside is an enchanted chain of +5 to Stalking/Hunting related skills, 2 potions of Bloodlust, and 1 bunch of Wolfsbane. You know, in case anybody ELSE in the pack starts getting ideas.

Crawler @king-ofconfusion:

New Achievement! Poison Paradise!

There's just something about venom, isn't there? Hundreds of civilizations across hundreds of light-years of space all have some sort of legend about forbidden fruit, the temptation that kills. But the way I see it, it's just good sense to make sure anything in the dungeon that decides to bite you winds up very, very sorry they did.

Reward: A silver Biohazard Box! Inside are potions of Cure Poison x3, and poisons x7, a party pack of Suffering Bleed, Necrosis, Paralysis, Mind Control, Excruciating Agony, The 30 Hour Taint, and Enthusiastic Double Gonorrhea. Handle with care!

Crawler @oreniaa:

New Achievement! Satanic Panic!

Is it live, or is it Memorex? Is it born or made, or summoned from an eldritch netherworld? Maybe it's Maybelline! But you wear the uncanny like Valley of the Dolls, bitch. And it's hotter than Sheol fire.

Reward: A silver Hellfire Club box! Inside, two Enhanced Pet Biscuits, Special Edition! Guaranteed to spawn an eldritch or demonic horror of SOME sort - usable? Rideable? Kill-half-the-party-before-it's-taken-down? Who knows, that's half the fun!

(proooooobably give this one in a saferoom. just saying.)

Crawler @cairfrey :

New Achievement! Hush, Hush Darling!

So I mean, horrific violence is My Thing? It's what I know how to do, how to appreciate? I give out buffs, sure. It helps people killmax! The sooner everyone's dead, the less time I have for ...well, purpose.

You know about The Eulogist, right? He's good because he's dead. He has no personality. He doesn't communicate. No inconvenient needs, no desires. That's what's waiting, for me. I mean, if I'm lucky.

I don't know HOW to...do. what you do. Keeping things safe. Because I have to kill you all, I mean, that's why I exist. But when I do, I ...stop.

Whoa. Fuck. Someone pass me a Bloodlust. I can't deal with this shit. Anyway, keep it up, you're doing great. (takes a drag of a blitz stick and determinedly thinks about feet)

Reward: A silver Hit Me With Your Best Shot Box! Inside, an enchanted Jean Jacket of Blonde Ambition, granting +10 to Charisma and the Cockroach skill! May affix patches for skill and stat upgrades if received.

Crawler @deathdovesong

New Achievement! It's Not Homemade, It's Handmade!

Getting down and spending time working at the table is not as glamorous as getting out there and kicking mob ass. But who's REALLY a better killer, someone who kills a thousand 1 hit point mobs, or one THOUSAND hit point city boss with a solution that took a shit ton of observation and lovingly crafted instruments of destruction?

(did you step on--)

No, No, I'm making a POINT here, and it's that you did a lot of hard work and while it's not personally my (toe) jam, it did pay off in levels and a good splashy moment for the recap episode!

Reward: a golden 9 to 5 Box! Contains an enchanted Breastplate of the Valkyries with +9 to Strength and +5 to Charisma, and a six-shot Revolver of Retribution with +6 to your aiming and +50% damage against boss mobs!

Crawler @clearbrightlight

New Achievement! Everything Looks Perfect From Far Away!

On a hot streak from up high! While nothing quite compares to the satisfaction of watching REALLY good footwork, the swift sharp shock of an unexpected head exploding, the panicked scattering, the demoralization a good sniper provides is a close, close second. Keep that sharp observing eye on the prize, and you'll go far.

Reward: A silver Such Great Heights box! Inside, 3 potions of Dolores Don't Splat and a Right Back Atcha Personal Shield, because have you seen your party? Nobody's tanking here!

Crawler @lazyscience:

New Achievement: What if God Was One Of Us?

Jesus Christ, FINALLY, why do you think I GAVE you Laundry Day? Good news, everyone, she CAN be taught. Maybe you won't all die as part of her party!

(I mean, anything is technically possible. To be totally honest, I had no idea that would work. But I was sure it'd be fun to watch!)

Yarilo's sponsor has fallen; Yarilo will not respawn for the duration of the crawl.

Reward: That fresh, clean feeling of knowing the creepy rape god isn't putting his grubby paws on anybody!

ATTENTION, all partied crawlers! Don't forget to update me on mobs, quests, or parties (defined at link) so I can award you achievements! Please let me know either in the replies to this post, reblogging with additions, or hit my askbox/DMs!

(please, do this, even with small and silly mobs/quests, it makes giving achievements so much easier!)

#dcc challenge 2025 #recap episode day 7

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headspacedad · 1 year ago

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excitement time

so - how many of you don't watch your feet when you walk around inside your house? And how many of you go barefoot in the same conditions? I want you to remember your answer.

Because this morning I got up and wandered into the bathroom, sat down on the toilet and looked, naturally, back the way I'd just come. Now, my eyes aren't the best when I first wake up and I thought to myself: 'self, that is one big ass piece of fabric lying there in the doorway you just came through'. Because Sam, you see, likes to chew fabric and so I'm used to small pieces of it scattered everywhere thanks to his hole-punch jaws. But this - this was big for a Sammy scrap of fabric and it was -

pointy.

Lots of pointy in fact.

'There is no way' I thought, still seated, 'that that is a spider. It's not round enough.

But it sure as hell looks like a spider with those legs.'

I'm from Florida. In Florida we get Bugs. There's a lot I can deal with. Not happily but I can deal. Careful, I lean forward a little bit and squint and yeah - that's not spider.

Also yes, it is Very Definitely A Bug.

A golf-ball sized bug

before you added the legs.

Well by now I'm not happy, very carefully getting some pants on, not looking away from it. It hasn't moved and its sitting there in the middle of the floor so I'm thinking its dead (bugs have a weird habit of crawling out into the middle of my floor in this current place I'm staying before they die). That thought - I have lived a long life upon this earth and I am not about to get stupid now when it comes to a giant bug I don't recognize that might be dead but might not.

Briefly, probably longer than I should, I consider attempting to clear the doorway the bug is blocking to get my cell phone to take a picture because 'holy shit, I need a record of this thing, mostly to share with friends to gross/creep out but also, perhaps, to identify it later'. Luckily, my non-social media side of my brain kicks in and points out that just because its not moving now doesn't mean it won't be moving soon and if I take my eyes of this thing and it disappears I'm going to have to take my rabbit, put him in my car, and then lose my security deposit because I'm going to have to burn the entire trailer to the ground.

I find a nearby box of hair dye and carefully position myself in my well honed 'cockroaches always run just as the box drops' position which means I'm ready to immediately leap onto the toilet lid. I slam it down. The bug is crushed underneath the box!!

But is he really? Because its a box of hair dye, not a book. There are a lot of light things in a box of hair dye, it doesn't have a lot of solid weight behind it. I do the grind and twist method with it. Then I very carefully lift an edge, ready to retreat to the sink top this time. The bug is dead! Very squished and very dead. I am triumphant!

I still have no idea what the bug was.

Taking my sister's advice, I type "Big ass North Carolina bug" into the search engine of my laptop and hit images. I regret hitting 'images'. I persist. And there! There it IS! Sure enough - it is, indeed, a big ass NC bug'.

It's a Camel Cricket.

I'm going to put it under a read more because I love you, dear followers and potential stranger.

That was what was in the doorway of my bathroom. That I did not see, as I walked with my bare feet into the bathroom. Somehow some guardian angel somewhere, caught my foot just enough to have me step over this thing and settle down, soles of my feet unmolested.

I also feel I should point down that, last night, before the BAB was found in the bathroom, Sam, sleeping under the covers of the bed with me, woke me up thumping. I reached down, patted his head and then eventually moved him when he kept thumping at me. He went back to sleep. I went back to sleep. The night was very dark.

For my own sanity, I chose to think Sam was thumping, something he never does, for an entirely unrelated reason.

#big ass bug #bug #camel cricket #it was a cross between a spider and a cricket #and my life will never be the same

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your-divine-ribs · 4 months ago

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Ice Cold Part 43

Words: 2.4k

Ice Cold Masterlist Main Masterlist

"What the fuck are you doing? You tryin' to kill me or something?"

Van's voice was gruff, shocked sounding, his eyes wide and stunned as he pressed my wrists down firmly against the pillow.

All the breath I'd been holding came out in short, sharp gasps, overwhelming relief that poured into my words. "You're alive... you're alive... you're really alive..."

His grip loosened then, but only slightly, his eyes scanning my face like he was gazing upon some kind of miracle. Then a hint of a smile upturned the corners of his mouth as he nodded towards the shard of glass that I was still gripping tightly in my closed fist.

"Well... I wouldn't be if you had anything to do with it, that's for sure. Christ's sake Lyla."

My fingers opened then, the stickiness of my blood trickling across the furrows of my palm. I couldn't even feel the sting, too overwhelmed at having Van this close. Solid, warm and breathing and very much alive, not some ghostly image flitting through my restless dreams. A far cry from the broken, bloodied figure that I'd last seen sprawled in the snow.

He looked good... better than good. In fact he looked the picture of health, his blue eyes bright and sparkling, his skin although pale bore none of the pallor of illness or injury, his full lips plush and pink. He made my heart race.

"But I don't understand... I mean I saw you. You were just lying there so still... and there was so much blood. I didn't think you'd make it."

Van's eyes left mine as he finally peeled his fingers away from my wrists, scooping the glass out of my hand and discarding it on to the floor before taking my bloodied palm in his, frowning at the injury.

"It takes more than a few bullets to put me down, you should know that by now... Who the hell did you think I was anyway, going for me like that?"

"I don't know... Billy maybe... or even Tommy."

Even saying his name sent a shudder of revulsion through me, and I could see it affecting Van in the same way.

"There's no way on this earth I'm letting either of those two bastards near you... never. I mean it. I'll make sure Billy never touches you again if it's the last thing I do."

He spoke with determination, and it should have comforted me, but it had the opposite effect. "You mean Billy's still alive?"

In my mind's eye I saw Billy, his body a crumpled heap, the long handled blade protruding from his chest. I'd dared to hope that the groans emitting from him were his dying breaths, but some people were just not easy to kill. Me and Van were certainly testament to that.

His expression hardened, a tightness in his jaw as he spoke. "I can't be sure. He should be dead, but that doesn't mean that he is, you know how these things work. I swear those bastards are like cockroaches. Fuck... I should have finished him off whilst I had the chance."

He sighed with regret, his thumb lightly tracing over the edge of the gash on my hand, wiping away the blood that welled steadily from it. "I should have finished the job but I wasn't thinking straight. As soon as I came round I saw you lying there next to me. You were so cold... I really thought I'd lost you for a moment..."

His voice cracked on the last few words and he disguised it with a cough as he swiftly got to his feet, digging into his jeans pocket and producing a packet of cigarettes. I watched him light one up before crossing to the window and cranking it open. The cold winter air filtered in immediately, making me shiver, ghosting over my bare limbs. I shifted on the bed, adjusting the covers, and that's when I felt the cool metal of the cuffs digging into my ankle again, instantly injecting a tingling sense of unease into me.

It was a blunt reminder that just because I'd escaped one criminal's clutches, I was now in the company of another. One who would risk it all to keep me from harm, but a hardened, ruthless killer all the same. Despite the intensity of our encounters I still didn't really know the depths that drove him, what fired the compulsion he had to come back to me time and time again. It was an obsession which matched my own but that thought didn't allay my mounting anxiety, if anything it just fuelled it. How far was he willing to go to keep me safe? Was I a prisoner here?

His attention was caught by something he watched out the high window, lost in his thoughts as he smoked the cigarette in brooding silence. I cleared my throat, hoisting my body upwards so that I rested propped up on my elbows.

"Van..." I spoke tentatively, paused until he turned to face me, the cigarette balanced between his lips mid-drag. "How long have I been here... recovering?"

He sucked in a deep inhale, tipping his head back to blow out the smoke. I took the opportunity to quickly cover the lower part of my legs, completely hiding my restraint. I knew it would need to be addressed at some point but not yet. I wasn't ready yet to hear what I feared, anxious about how Van would react when he realised that my mind was already lingering on the agency, plotting a fitting demise for Charles and visualising the look on Tommy's face as I held a blade flush against his jugular. Serving up justice like the brutal platter of horror that they both wholly deserved.

"It's been a while... weeks actually..." There was a hint of wariness about him that I wasn't expecting as he took a seat next to me on the bed again, watching my reaction carefully. I looked right back, trying to keep any semblance of emotion from my features as he continued. "More than a month in fact," then he added dryly with the barest of smirks " you missed Christmas I'm afraid."

My mind reeled. It shouldn't have come as a shock really. My injuries had been severe. God only knows what treatment I'd been given and how it had been administered. I imagined my body, lifeless and anaesthetised for all that time, the intimate and painstaking care Van must have provided to enable me to recover. It was almost impossible to imagine and I could no longer keep the emotion at bay as tears formed in my eyes and brimmed over as I tried uselessly to blink them away.

"Fuck... don't cry darlin'," he uttered, darting forward to grind the cigarette butt on an ashtray on the nightstand, quickly returning to reach out for my face, cupping it gently in both of his large hands. "I know it's a lot to take in. You've been out for a while, it was the only way for your injuries to heal. They were bad... it was touch and go for a while."

"But... have I been here all of this time? And where are we? What happened? I need to know Van, I need to know everything." My words came out thick with sobs that I so desperately tried to choke down.

He leaned in, his thumbs brushing my cheeks, stemming the tears as they fell. His voice was quiet when he finally spoke, a gentleness that surprised me and pacified me despite my predicament.

"I didn't think you'd make it, I'm not gonna lie. When I came to I was a mess... it wasn't life-threatening but it was bad enough. I'd been hit in the shoulder and then again in my arm and I'd lost a lot of blood. Billy had somehow managed to crack me with the butt of his gun when I stabbed him, the fucker must have knocked me clean out."

He paused, shaking his head. "As soon as I saw you I knew it was bad. I knew I had to get you out of there. God knows how I managed to carry you to the car and drive away, but I did it. And it was all going well until I crashed the fucking car into a ditch five miles down the road."

My eyes widened and I listened, transfixed, trying to play the scene in my head as Van re-told the story. My tears had ceased to fall now as I waited with bated breath to hear what had happened next.

"I thought that was it but then a car pulled up, it was some city slicker out of his way in the countryside being the good Samaritan. Of course he'd called 999 before he'd even got out of his car so I knew I had to act quick. I asked him to drive us into the city rather than wait for an ambulance. That was when he saw you in the back of the car and noticed all the gunshot wounds. He wasn't so keen to help then... I soon persuaded him though."

My face twisted at the insinuation behind his words. I couldn't help it.

"Don't judge me... I did what I had to do... you're alive aren't you?" He paused, looking intently at me. His thumbs caressed my cheeks once more, longingly before he pulled away, his eyes leaving mine, fixed now on a spot on the bedding as he murmured his next words. "... and before you ask, no... I didn't kill him."

I stayed silent, relieved at his reassurance and surprised by it. I reached out my uninjured hand, tentatively, placing it gently on his thigh. He watched me, softening, one hand coming to settle atop mine, the other resting nearby, splayed on his other leg.

Despite a faint criss-cross of old scars he had such beautiful hands, broad and strong with long, slender fingers. Hands which had been drenched in the blood of others and committed unspeakable things, but hands that were also capable of tenderness. I knew that... I just had to keep on believing it.

"I'm trying Lyla... I really am... but this world... it's so fucked up... good people get hurt all the time and there's nothing you can do about it."

"I know..."

And that was just it. Life was brutal and messy and full of dark chaos, and even the most righteous of people walked the precarious tightrope of decency, bound to fall at some point, and that was with guidance. What hope did Van really have with no counsel throughout his childhood, fallen into a life of crime from such an early age, the lines between good and evil so blurred that it wasn't even about doing the right thing anymore. It was all about survival.

"There's a guy I know in the city... he's a retired doctor and the only person I knew I could trust. He's patched me up plenty before but nothing like this, not like the state you were in. He kept saying it was hopeless, over and over. Telling me you'd lost too much blood... all he kept saying was that we needed a miracle..."

He trailed off, fixed on a harrowing memory which turned good, his expression mirroring his thoughts as a small smile formed. "Turns out you are a fucking miracle Lyla Keating."

His gaze met mine again, and in the sunlight his blue irises were flecked with swirls of greens and golds that I'd never noticed before. It occurred to me then that I'd barely ever seen him like this before in the light of day, so clear and so unfiltered, the dark mystery he usually exuded fallen away.

"Thank you... for saving my life... again. You know it's kinda getting to be a habit. One day I'm going to have to repay you."

He shook his head, a wistful smile on his lips. "You already have... more than you could ever know."

There was a flavour of something in his words that hinted to the profound effect that I had on him. I could feel it radiating off of him as he looked at me and it was mesmerising, drawing me in. I thought I could easily get lost, caught up in some kind of spell that I couldn't fathom and I couldn't begin to explain... but there was a darkness intruding, a shadow of doubt. It clouded my thoughts and seeped like a chill into my veins. I knew that I had to tread carefully.

I breathed deeply, internally psyching myself up, gauging Van's reaction as I spoke, the cold metal of the cuff burning into my skin now, highlighting my vulnerability.

"So what now? What happens next? I'm better now aren't I? What are we going to do?"

I could visibly see the softness melting away immediately, his features hardening. I stiffened, bracing myself.

"We? There's no we in this. You aren't doing anything... you're still recovering. Just because you're healing well it doesn't mean that I'm anywhere close to letting you go back out there."

"But I'm ready!" I blurted out, cutting him off, my eyes wide and pleading, the thought of languishing on my sickbed whilst the real criminals carried on with their lives sickening me. "Tommy's got to be stopped, and Charles too! I can't just lie here whilst people at the agency might be in danger. What's happening there? Do you know? They must be looking for us... for me..."

I stopped in my tracks, stilled by the sudden shift in Van's expression, the way his mouth fell open and anguish flitted through his eyes.

"What... what's going on... what's happened?"

My voice cracked, my heart twisting in anticipation of what I might hear, dread already flooding me before I'd even heard the words.

"Tell me Van."

And so he did...

"The agency put out a story. It was a completely twisted version. You were holed up in a safe-house and there was a security breech... a leak of information. They're saying that you caused it, you'd gone rogue, they're saying that you were the traitor in the agency all along."

"What?" I breathed, anger and shock and confusion all bubbling up at once. But I hadn't heard the worst of it. Not by a long shot.

"Apparently you'd been colluding with the organisation all along, trying to bring the whole agency down, but something went wrong. Horribly wrong. I supposedly turned up and slaughtered everyone... every last one of you."

I tried to breathe but my throat was too tight. All I could do was gasp, my mind spiralling out of control.

"You're dead Lyla. That's what everyone thinks..."

#ice cold #van mccann fanfic #au fanfic #vanfic

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