Fluent Freshman - Part 24
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“What do you MEAN Smithy is in the hospital with a stab wound to his stomach?!” Nicky’s own voice is agony for his hangover but honestly, how the fuck else was he supposed to respond when he had asked Andrew where FF was and gotten that as a response.
“Calm down.” Andrew says and he looks tired, looks stressed, and maybe even just…a touch nervous?
Nicky isn’t as good as Neil at reading Andrew Minyard. He doesn’t think anyone will ever be as fluent in the language of Andrew Minyard as Neil Josten but Nicky has picked up some key phrases.
He can see when he’s making a joke that is a step too far. He can see when his cousin wants to kiss Neil but is holding back. He can see when his cousin is stressed.
He can see a guilty curve to Andrew’s spine.
“Andrew, answer me honestly, did you stab my sweet baby freshman?” Nicky asks and he’s not sure if the nausea he feels anymore is from horror or from the sheer number of drinks he had put in his system the night before.
Roland usually cuts him off before he gets this level.
Roland also has a habit of pouring heavier when he’s stressed.
Roland also also tends to make complicated fruity drinks that Nicky likes when he’s stressed.
Andrew’s jaw tenses but it’s Neil who speaks up, “It was an accident. It happened during a fight.” Neil says and Nicky throws his hands up in the air.
“You got into a FIGHT with my sweet baby freshman? Sweet little Smithy? The boy who made brownies that made me feel kinda straight for a dead woman?!” Nicky exclaims and sees Andrew and Neil open their mouths to say something but, “I promised him that if he wanted I’d get him something hard that’d mess his GUTS up but this isn’t what I MEANT.” He lets himself collapse dramatically over the table.
“Nicky, shut up!” Kevin hisses from his spot on the couch.
“When the fuck did Kevin get here?!” Because seriously, how fucked up was Nicky last night that he doesn’t remember Kevin coming on this Columbia trip? Where’d he sit? He couldn’t really remember coming over after Thanksgiving. Had Andrew put Kevin in the trunk? Had Andrew put Nicky in the trunk?
“He came with Wymack.” Neil cut in before Nicky started testing reality. “Wymack is at the hospital since he’s…uh…he’s the…”
“Medical Power of Attorney” Andrew answers.
“Yes! Thank you, the Medical power of attorney for Smith. He needed surgery and Wymack wanted to be nearby in case he had to make any pressing decisions.” Neil explains and yeah that tracks, he knows a little bit about FF’s family and knows that aside from his grandma on his dad’s side the rest can go take a long walk off a short volcano observation platform
“Okay, that explains why Kevin is here….how?! Despite all of the unwarranted advice, Kevin is not a medical professional.” Nicky says before turning to Kevin, “So Kevin, what insane Exy-related reason are you here? Don’t lie and say it’s because you want to sign the get well soon card.” He hisses.
“Fuck you!” Kevin spits, “I need to know how long Smiths is going to be out of commission and what his PT is going to look like. He was supposed to be starting during the spring season.” Kevin growls.
“There it is!” Nicky throws up his hands.
“Nicky, just calm down!” Neil pleads.
“How can I stay calm? Andrew stabbed Smithy! So not only is my favorite freshman in the hospital Andrew’s going to end up back on those god forsaken meds again!” Nicky shouts and buries his face in his hands.
“Smith isn’t going to say that.” Andrew’s voice is calm but Nicky can hear the slight edge.
“Oh yeah?” Nicky asks because he could see FF promising to never mention who stabbed him if Andrew would just spare his life. FF was going to be even MORE of a disaster when it came to his anxiety around Andrew. Nicky wouldn’t be surprised if his friend just straight up dropped out after this. His cousin is safe but he’s absolutely going to lose his friend.
“Because he’s saying Romero Malcolm stabbed him.” Andrew finishes.
Nicky sits up.
“Wait, what?” Nicky asks.
“Last night Romero Malcolm was at Eden’s.” Neil says voice even in a way that lets Nicky know that he’s trying to stay calm, “Smith recognized him, heard he wanted to grab,” Neil swallows thickly, “…grab one of my friends and saw them looking at…” Neil trails off and looks to Andrew who shakes his head, “…around for someone to grab.” Neil seems to decide and Nicky knows when something is being hidden from him but he’s more interested in the story than what Neil is hiding at the moment, “He got Romero’s attention so that he wouldn’t do anything bad in Eden’s and let Roland know to call help. He went out alone into the alley but Romero didn’t follow him.” Neil explains.
“Oh thank god.” Nicky sighs.
“Because he’d alerted Jackson Plank was lying in wait to ambush him.” Neil continues.
“Oh dear god.” Nicky exclaims.
“He uh…” Neil looks to Andrew who shakes his head again, “okay we don’t know exactly HOW Smith managed to do it but he beat Jackson up pretty bad.” Neil explains.
Nicky feels his brain stop working.
He has watched FF trip over his own feet, walk into four different trees, and almost sprain his ankle walking across a flat surface. He knows FF has been watching self-defense videos and had even gotten some pointers from Matt but even Matt had told him his better bet was probably just to yell “WOW WHAT’S THAT OVER THERE?!”, point behind the attacker, and run as fast as humanly possible away from a fight.
Neil is still talking.
Nicky boots back up quickly.
“…a gun. He tackled Romero into Andrew and Andrew’s knife ended up in Smith’s stomach on accident while they were wrestling for the gun. Smith is the one who said he’s going to tell everyone who asks that it was Romero. He even said it to me.” Neil says with an awkward laugh.
“And you believed him.” Andrew says and there’s warmth in his cousin’s eyes as he looks at Neil and teases him.
“And I believed him.” Neil confirms.
“Okay, so you swear to me that you did not INTENTIONALLY stab my BFF?” Nicky asks looking at Andrew seriously.
“BFF, seriously?” Kevin asks.
“Best Freshman Friend.” Nicky answers quickly, “Don’t worry Kevin, you lose out to Matt in all regards for my Best Senior Friend.” He says.
Kevin just flips him off but Nicky turns his attention back to Andrew, “Andrew, I need to hear it.” He says .
“I did not intentionally stab Smith.” Andrew confirms.
Nicky lets the horrified nausea leave him with only his hangover nausea.
“Okay, we can work with that.” Nicky leans back. “Have you heard from that Agent?” he asks looking at Neil.
Neil nods but then looks nervous and shoots a look towards Kevin, “The FBI is sending Browning and a field office agent to talk with us but…Ichirou also contacted me.” He says and Nicky watches as Kevin perks up.
“He did?!” Kevin squawks looking around like he expected the head of the Moriyama family to appear from the shadows.
“He wants to make sure we do our part to keep the Moriyama name out of this. He is going to deal with Romero and Jackson himself.” Neil says looking nervous.
Nicky clenches his eyes shut, “Well you’re not going to mention them right?” he hears Kevin ask.
“Of course not Kevin.” Nicky hears Andrew hiss.
“Good.” Kevin says.
There’s silence in the wake of Neil’s statement.
Nicky takes a deep breath and wishes his head was a little less agonizing. “Why aren’t we at the hospital to see Smithy?” he asks because he has nothing he can do about Ichirou so he may as well put it out of his mind.
There is some grumbling.
“Wymack said that he’ll just make us sit in the waiting room without any updates.” Neil says. “We’re picking up Smith’s grandma from the airport and she’s our ticket to getting an actual update beyond ‘not dead yet’ from Wymack.” He adds.
“What, you really can’t get updates without Wymack?” Nicky asks.
Andrew looks at Nicky and Nicky can’t read a single thing his cousin is thinking.
“What’s Smith’s first name Nicky.” Andrew asks.
“Oh God fucking Dammit.” Nicky’s head hurts too bad for this.
MASTERPOST FOR ALL PARTS OF FLUENT FRESHMAN AU
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ok dude the finale (this is gonna be cringe and sappy lmao look out)
i wasn't even expecting dean's death to hit me so hard because i was so prepared for it and because it'd been almost memeified on here
but
fuck did it ever hit me. sobbed for real.
i mean that's dean
that's my character
i saw him on my screen in real time back in like '07 and was like "oh yeah that's gonna be the guy i'm gonna model my personality after" (look we can talk about how wise that was but i was 15 okay)
i started drinking my coffee black and listening to blue oyster cult and ac/dc because of dean winchester. i copied his tough as nails attitude and used it as my own shield when i was a miserable teenager.
blah blah i quit the show and moved on and then picked it back up 12 years later and i still love him. that's my guy!!! dean winchester meant a lot to me!!!
and, well. yeah. the worst possible ending. dying the way he always thought he would. it reminds me of season 8 when he told sam he was nothing but a grunt (i relate to him ugh fuck) and that was all he could expect.
but sam told him he's not just a grunt, he's a genius. we saw him talk about wanting to experience things and people in a different way or for the first time. we saw him wanting out, wanting a break, wanting to go the beach with sam and cas and feel the sand between his toes.
and he got none of it. and they treated him like the grunt he always thought he was.
and they never let him see cas again. his best friend who loved him and who told him he was so much more than what he thought of himself. that he WAS love.
they took him away and then they killed dean and we're expected to be fine with it cause he went to heaven and saw sam.
i'm tired and gutted and i saw it all coming lmao, i knew every last bit of this happened!!!! so why is seeing it in context so awful!!!! i feel sick!!!!! ha
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it's nice that we're getting anything i guess, but, i'm gonna be what may come off as a little petty and whiny here; it'd be cool if either iteration of the gen 9 anime so far was actually about gen 9's characters instead of using them as cameos to promote original stories we have no investment in yet
it's like, i dunno, like the bait and switch with sonic appearing in wreck it ralph ads, except if wreck it ralph existing meant there would never be a sonic movie, and if you were invested in those characters and recognized they weren't generic platformer mascots, sucks for you, nobody cares
maybe they're just giving the DLC space to do its thing with them first (if they do anything at all...) but idk, i was cautiously optimistic about nemona in horizons, only for her to be a character of the day that the episode wasn't about, and pretty excited by "gen 9 prequel anime" only to find out it's going to be like, four short stories about OCs who have quick brushes with them. these are like the lacroix hint of what an anime about the game could've been like and you're left to imagine the rest yourself
i shouldn't be that surprised if the gen 8 anime reduced hero of galar hop to a character of the day with a level 5 wooloo in order to let the galaxy revolve around ash battling his brother because epic charizards, but man. what if it wasn't like that that now that ash is gone.
we haven't seen penny and team star at all because they're the hardest to talk about without bringing up the trauma of school bullying and the fear of being yourself at school when you're way too young to be dealing with all that drama responsibly. she's still learning to love and forgive herself and feel wanted.
arven's story is about, like, being a latchkey kid to a self-absorbed parent, being unsure how to feel about repairing the relationship or how seriously to take them saying they love him, and struggling to make friends due to misdirected resentment toward people he's jealous of for having apparently normal families and the stubborn self-reliance he was forced into. he's still trying to process things, find himself, and let people in.
nemona is supposed to have been a directionless lonely and depressed kid who hated being called gifted when everything was hard for her, until she met the player character and gained a peer who understood and appreciated she was a little different and she didn't have to mask her true self to have friends anymore. she's happy for now, but may still be under a little too much pressure to be perfect at the expense of her own personality, and probably won't deal well with being abandoned.
as much as they resonate with adults and are a little darker than usual pokemon fare, they're also smaller scale and realer. they are all stories that are explicitly about and meant to be relatable to kids going to school! y'know, your audience! you don't need to paint over them with 3-4 new characters and new stories every time like there was nothing there, or something shameful you need to sanitize and cover up! you can just use the game the way it is!
this got a little more heated than i intended, i just feel a little ridiculous waiting anxiously for loose scraps of a sign that this story isn't over and in the trash already and nemona's life-changing attachment to the player character isn't going to go totally ignored, as we are bombarded with what is supposed to be followup material that almost all seems eager to talk about literally anything else like they think the main story was a mistake they need to run away from
now, i'm not one to complain about original stories being told, but this was already a story that had room to grow. imagine a world where the gen 9 anime was actually about nemona, arven, penny, and the friend who brought them together. or what their lives were like before that friend came along. every episode. that would get me to watch the anime again and whatever movie came out for it. ask yourself why we don't have that, or even the traditional, like, 1-2 characters tagging along with the MCs per region thing that would leave us knowing them better than we know some irl friends
how was starting over with 100% original characters and new lore that might conflict hard with the upcoming DLC the safer bet? why is a 44 minute miniseries specifically for fans of the game making up OCs for them to get invested in and scrambling to tell their stories as quickly as possible before throwing them in the trash instead of being about the damn game?
sigh. i shouldn't get invested in a series that's about selling monster plushies just because it had one story that stuck with me
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