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luvo27 · 6 months ago

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just so we're clear: the reason i used so many words to describe the steph &/ cass relationship in the fic that does not exist is because the theme of that nonexistent fic is about the wonderfully complex nature of aspec relationships and how language serves and also fails to accurately describe them and the way that the world can try to impose a type of relationship in an attempt to either understand or make more palatable what is not something that can be easily understood, and so boiling it down to steph/cass or queerplatonic steph/cass or steph&cass would go against what i'm trying to do, even if the fic in question literally does not even exist. so why am i still talking about this nonexistent fic?

this is an excuse to talk about my feelings regarding aromantic and asexual representation on ao3. (note that i say on ao3, and not in fandom in general because this is me talking about my specific personal experiences, which mostly take place through ao3)

BIG DISCLAIMER THAT I WENT BACK AND ADDED IN BECUASE THIS WENT OFF THE RAILS: this is based on PERSONAL EXPERIENCE and FILLED WITH MY BIASES and was written IN A HAZE. (that being said this is something i've thought a lot about over months if not years.)

that tiny disclaimer aside, it goes without saying that fandom as a whole is primarily motivated by shipping, and so fanfiction on ao3 is primarily focused on shipping as well. shout out to this one time i was in high school and reading fic and someone asked (with good intentions) what ship i was reading for, and when i answered none, they asked (again, with good intentions,) what the point of doing that was. this, as you might imagine, made me feel weird to say the least! anyways, go on ao3 and the majority of fandoms will have an m/m pairing in the top most written. go into a small number of fandoms, and an f/m or f/f ship will hold the top spot. (femslash in fandom is a completely different topic) how many fandoms have platonic relationships at the top?

anyways i got curious so working off the knowledge that i have i did some quick looks at a handful of different fandom tags. fandoms which had platonic relationships at the most popular that i expected: dream smp and teenage mutant ninja turtles (all media types). honestly i was a little surprised to see that platonic relationships were at the top for both batman (all media types) and batman (comics), and I was expecting umbrella academy to have a platonic relationship at the top, but it was actually Dave/Klaus! in dr who and related fandoms, there aren't any platonic tags that break the top 10. and ohoho, here's where we get into it: dimension 20's top written relationship was fig/ayda, followed by riz/fabian in second place.

luvo, why did you say here's where we get into it? well, i just talked about the way that fandom focuses on shipping over platonic relationships, but i'm here to talk about aro/ace characters! in ao3's advanced search, if you look for fics with 'asexual' in any category, there are as of 1/7/2025 a total of 67,515 works. looking up 'aromantic' in any category whittles it down to 26,845 works. out of the over 14 million works posted on ao3? (number pulled from wikipedia) these are small numbers, but IT GETS BETTER. if you click on the AROMANTIC TAG, the top written relationship in the AROMANTIC TAG is a SLASH SHIP. (Alastor/Vox, Hazbin Hotel at 533 works.) sort fics under the aromantic tag by kudos, and the first fic under the gen category instead of m/m or multi is the 6th work down, and overall, gen works account for 6,950 out of 18,413 works under the aromantic tag.

my point being, only a small number of fics written with platonic relationships add to aro/ace rep in fic, and following that, when aro/ace characters ARE represented, it seems to be...how do i put this...typically with a shipping lens?

let's take a step back. I want to ask the question of how many canonically aromantic and/or characters exist. just. exist. wikipedia has a decently respectable list of asexual characters in fiction, as well as a much shorter list of aromantic characters in fiction. quick disclaimer that some medias are not represented such as podcasts (jon magnus archives?) or ttrpg shows (riz gukgak?)

what i will point your attention to is: how many of these characters are made explicitly aromantic or asexual within the text of their media? answer: not a lot of them. the majority of these characters have their sexualities confirmed in behind the scenes type things, such as Victor's (Arcane) voice actor saying he's asexual in an interview, Lilith (Owl House) confirmed asexual? or aromantic? over a charity livestream and twitter, Max (Miraculous Ladybug) confirmed asexual in a tweet, etc etc. kudos to Todd and Yolanda (Bojack Horseman) for being confirmed asexual in the media they're portrayed in! these all taken from the asexual characters page, the trend follows in the page about aromantic characters: namely, that if characters are aro/ace, typically explicit confirmation of these identities takes place outside of the media they're portrayed in.

why is that important? because without an explicit confirmation, it makes it a lot easier for denial of these identities to occur. yes, maybe it was the intention of the creators, but look. once a story leaves the author's hands, it belongs to the audience and intentions often have little to no bearing. additionally, if you're reading this then you probably understand that people will also deny coding characters as being gay or bisexual without an explicit onscreen kiss or declaration or some such. and why is this important?

putting the pieces together: characters can be confirmed as allo lgbtq+ through physical acts portrayed explicitly in their stories. characters who are aro/ace, well. more often than not, they can't. they're relegated to being coded as such, and confirmation, no matter how strong the coding, can often be easily ignored or possibly never even heard of.

do not get me wrong, I GET IT. Characters exist in settings where they don't have the word aromantic, or maybe it wouldn't be in character for them to say it as such. I UNDERSTAND COMPLETELY. one of my most popular fics i've posted is about Riz Gukgak and his struggle with internalized aphobia. the words aromantic or asexual do not appear ONCE in the fic. In the sequel, A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CHARACTER has to say the words, and RIZ NEVER ACTUALLY CONFIRMS HIS IDENTITY. I UNDERSTAND THE STRUGGLE.

let's continue down the riz gukgak train. here are the facts: a sizable number of fans of dimension 20's fantasy high would say that riz gukgak is heavily aro/ace coded, with scenes such as:

making up a fake partner ("Clearly you haven't been kissed yet." ... "Actually, I'm dating somebody in the Baronies." Fantasy High Sophomore Year, Sophomore Start, 1:26:55)

being told that he is afraid of his friends leaving him for romantic relationships, (“The years will go by, and everyone will find someone that matters more to them than you do.” - Fantasy High Sophomore Year: Fearful Symmetry, 46:24)

telling his dad that he doesn't want to have sex ("yeah, I don't know... it just isn't happening yet? Like, not even just the act is not happening yet, like me wanting to do it." "It's not happening?" "It's not happening yet. And my friends are all like, [whispered] super horny." - Fantasy High Sophomore year, My Green Heaven, taken from a conversation around the 33 minute arc)

additionally, in an adventuring party episode of a spinoff series, the seven, Brennan Lee Mulligan says that Riz is asexual. ("...in a scene, Murph's character lies about having a partner, like a romantic partner, because Riz is ace, is asexual." - Adventuring party, season six episode eleven at 31:22 )

with all the love to my friends over in the d20 fic server for hunting these quotes down for me. truly my life is made all the better by the d20 fic community in a way that i will never know how to describe

here are some more facts! late march of 2024, with the release of the episode Baron's Game, I was lurking around the fhjy tag on tumblr. given the nature of the internet, there was discourse about riz and his identity, or his lack thereof. apologies to my d20 friends reading this who i love a lot, my rendition of a summary of said discourse follows below:

"if he's only coded to be aro/ace, that doesn't make him actually so. Brennan Lee Mulligan isn't the person who plays Riz, and him saying that he's ace is in behind the scenes content for a different show. Additionally, he only says that Riz is asexual, not aromantic. And even if Riz is aroace, aroace people can still be in romantic and sexual relationships, or a queerplatonic one!"

"why does it seem like everyone is ignoring the fact that riz is aroace? Kristen Applebee's sexuality (lesbian) would never be erased to ship her with a guy, so why are so many people doing it to Riz? Writing Riz in queerplatonic relationships is inaccurate because he's shown to be uninterested in relationships resembling anything like romantic ones, it seems like people are only interested in writing queerplatonic relationships as an excuse to write aromantic characters in the ship dynamic they want to," etc, etc. you get the gist.

let's get something straight about my stance on what people can and can't do with fictional characters: you can do literally whatever you want forever. ship riz in a romantic and sexual relationship. don't. whatever. i do not care. i do not care. he's not real. he's a fake character. he is a character. he exists for the audience to do literally whatever they want with him forever. i'll argue for someone's right to ship this character in whatever way they want. if they go down i go down with them-

ahem. sorry. my overall stance on fan creation crept into this thing that's supposed to be about how aro/ace characters are represented in fandom. whoops.

no, but let's talk about that. so, my personal interpretation of riz gukgak is that he's aroace and both romantically and sexually repulsed. i'm fairly confident in saying that my interpretation is supported by canon. some of my friends interpret riz and fabian seacaster's relationship as a queerplatonic one and they write fic about it, and i've read some it it, and i enjoyed it a lot!! and their interpretation is also supported by canon!! some people will interpret riz as simply being a late bloomer! or demi! or whatever! and guess what!!!! this will also have basis in canon!!!! gasp. shock. it's almost like stories exist for a wide variety of people to interpret them however they want to and i'm back to my philosophy on how we interpret stories in general stay on task luvo this is already too long.

so. recap. there aren't a lot of aro/ace characters who exist. often, their sexualities are reliant on coding due to the nature of the identity, and confirmation if it exists is often found behind the scenes instead of in the media. relatively, there isn't a lot of aro/ace fic on ao3. within that aro/ace fic, there's often relationships tagged with the typically romantic and/or sexual slash.

let's talk about aro/ace characters written in relationships of the romantic, sexual, and queerplatonic variety. mostly the queerplatonic variety. look, the thing is that sometimes it's easier to write a good story explicitly about being aro/ace if it's also a story about finding a queerplatonic relationship. sometimes it's easier to write a good story about being aro/ace if it's a story about finding a romantic and/or sexual relationship. writing the story comes down to the same reason so many aro/ace people struggle to find their identities in the first place: how do you find something that isn't there? sometimes, you do that by focusing on what is there.

let's keep going down this train. there aren't a lot of aro/ace characters. there are a hundred million different unique and complicated ways to have a romantic, sexual, queerplatonic, or straight up platonic relationship. Every single story written about aro/ace characters in relationships of any kind will resonate with someone, whether that's the person who wrote it, or someone who will read it. people write fic about characters in queerplatonic relationships that are exactly like what would generally be considered a conventional romantic relationship, and the only difference is that the characters refer to it as a queerplatonic relationship. thinking ungenerously, maybe this fic was written by an allo writer who just wanted to write a ship. The thing about fanfiction and its growing popularity, is that i would put money on the fact that this has happened, and at least one aspec reader stumbled upon it and their mind was blown and they felt seen.

the first fic i ever wrote with an aroace character tag was 1.8k words, posted over a year ago, and quite honestly i don't think it's very good. i wrote a second fic with the same character tagged as aroace again almost half a year ago, and again, not one of my personal favorites. but I got comments on those fics where someone felt seen, and were happy that they got to see this character be aroace, and were happy to see that this character got a happy ending, if a nontraditional one.

and remember when i brought up the slash fic under the aromantic tag? if you look under the tag Queerplatonic relationships, at the time i'm writing this there are 14,400 works. 5,941 of those are gen, the rest fall into m/m, f/f, m/f, multi, and other. the thing is, there isn't a signifier for queerplatonic relationships. a lot of the time to indicate one, authors on ao3 will use &, /, or a combination, or whatever. the fact of the matter is that the words romantic, platonic, and queerplatonic are doing so much work to carry such a wide variety of how a relationship is expressed, and even if there was a symbol to indicate queerplatonic relationships, (which there are in some places. the comic fan fiction author archive uses ~ to indicate qprs,) there are a hundred thousand different ways for qprs to look like.

um so. i started writing this like maybe 2 or 3 or more hours ago and i don't even know if i have or have ever had a point and this is extremely rambly and not organized in the slightest, but if i do have a point, it's something like:

there aren't a lot of aromantic characters. there aren't a lot of asexual characters. there aren't a lot of aro/ace coded characters. there definitely aren't enough to encompass the incomprehensible number of ways that people can experience or express their identities, and there are never going to be. the human experience is too wonderfully diverse for that, and it's too difficult to distill into the pitifully small vocabulary we have. my point might be to touch grass. by which i mean, don't like don't read, and remember that people are just that: people, with lives and worlds and perspectives of their own, and some of them you will never be able to understand, and sometimes you're not meant to understand them, and they are deserving of love regardless.

#i think i lost the plot maybe #um. yeah.

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jinnaizaemon · 6 months ago

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The Yamada Family Gets to Rest [translated]

Once again, I translated the script at the back of an illustration given as a bonus to movie goers. This one is part of the second set of scripts, and features Denzou, Rikichi, and Doi. It takes place after the movie Nintama Rantarou: Dokutake Ninja Corps’ Strongest Tactician, so beware of spoilers! Again, the illustration itself is spoilery so I'm putting it under the cut.

The Yamada Family Gets to Rest

Doi “Rikichi-kun, are you already leaving?”

Rikichi “Yes. I have to go report the results of my investigation to my client…”

Doi “I’m sorry about all that.”

Rikichi “Not at all. I’ll be a little late giving my report, but all that matters is that I succeeded in investigating Dokutake. Everything’s alright.”

Doi “I mean, not just about your work. You had to fight Zatto Konnamon for my sake, right? I don’t think it must have been an easy feat.”

Rikichi “Oh no, that’s… I might have fought him, but it’s nothing worthy of praise. At the very least it made me realize just how terrifying Zatto is. Just facing him gave me chills all over.”

Doi “You did a great job holding back such an opponent.”

Rikichi “Well… If I was able to be of any help, then it must have been thanks to the teachers who taught me ninjutsu up until now, don’t you think?”

Doi “Do you mean…?”

Yamada “(He’s watching them.) Glares………”

Doi, Rikichi “Mhm?”

Doi “Yamada-sensei.”

Rikichi “Father, why are you glaring at us that intently?”

Yamada “It’s just that while Hansuke might be praising you, this battle shows you still have a long way to go, Rikichi.”

Rikichi “Huh… Well, I guess you’re right.”

Yamada “You never relied on me and kept having Hansuke and others teaching you ninjutsu instead. Honestly, I wish you had learned more from me.” Rikichi “Huh…”

Yamada “Moreover, you still have a long way to go too, Hansuke.”

Doi “Y-yes…”

Yamada “To think you’d fall off a cliff in the middle of a fight. You should have focused on keeping a strong footing! You were too careless.”

Doi “I’m terribly sorry. I guess I still have a lot to learn, and am only halfway there.” he calls himself 半人前 “half portion”, “inexperienced” here, like in 32-64 of the TV anime. 半 "half", is pronounced "han", and is the same "han" as in "Hansuke".

Yamada “Hmph.”

Doi “...Yamada-sensei, I’m very sorry for causing you so much concern.”

Yamada “I already told you I wasn’t worried at all.”

Doi “Really? …By the way, now that I finally get to wind down, I’m starting to crave Mrs. Yamada’s home cooking.”

Yamada “Hm?”

Doi “Once Rikichi-kun is done with work, how about the three of us go back home together just like in the old days?”

Rikichi “I’m sure this would make Mother very happy.”

Yamada “Well… I guess it’s fine once in a while.”

Doi, Rikichi “(They exchange looks and smile at each other.)”

#nintama #nintama rantarou #op #translation

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catboy-beckett · 10 months ago

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So a few months back, I started getting ads for a game called Tokyo Debunker. The ads had WILDLY different tones and genres, not entirely unusual for mobile game ads, and usually I just ignore it when this happens. They want me to be curious so they can get me to download. It's a cheap, common trick, not worth my attention.

This time though, the ads were so bizarre and disconnected that it actually worked on me. I HAD to know what this game was about.

For context, here are all the screenshots I took of these ads:

(no, the bright flash on the second image isn't censorship, it's just a poorly-timed snapshot of a visual effect)

So, we're getting essentially three distinct genres of ads here: Dating Sim game, Horror game, and Cute Casual Cartoon Cat game. I think it's really the horror imagery that put these ads above the rabble. It was too high-effort and offputting. Normal clickbait goes for as generic and appealing as possible.

So, what was the truth? What IS the game, actually?

Well, uh.

Here are the actual screenshots I've taken in-game:

It's not just the ads that are all over the place, that's for sure. It turns out this IS a horror dating game filled with cute cats!

I'll explain further: the main mode of the game is a visual novel (that "story" button on the fourth screenshot) which occasionally has comic panels in the middle of scenes. In the background, you have the "Campus" where you can build facilities that generate currency that you can use to upgrade or build more facilities, and these gradually passively increase your character stats. What are stats for? Why, you can have your characters do battle with monsters or other players' teams! It's an auto-battler sort of thing so it's not very involved, but powering up the characters is surprisingly convoluted. Wait, how do you get "characters"? Oh, there's a gacha too! (The "summon" button.) The gacha is kinda shit to be honest; rates are bad enough but they lumped equipment and characters into the same banners, so even when there's a "rare guaranteed in 10 pulls" it might not even be a character.

It's definitely a romance game, though not the sort with "routes" or even story choices, really--you can get characters' affinity scores up outside of the story by making them fish or taking them camping (oh yeah the fishing is to summon cats to eat the fish and then if you're quick you can take photos of the cats, Neko Atsume style--) but nothing in the course of the story changes.

Honestly, I think this game is great. I've completed all the available chapters of the story so far, and the writing and characters are great. I love the horror too, and I really appreciate that they don't pull any punches with it just because this is fundamentally a game about flirting with eccentric 2D men. I hope in the future they revamp the gacha system to make it less ass.

BONUS:

Lightning round of ✨which aspects of these ads were accurate?✨

Rescue Him-- That artwork is in the game, but the minigame is not, and there is no need to "rescue him". He's fine. That's just Jiro. He's always like this.

Do You Always?-- That artwork is also in the game, though I'm not sure why Jin is labelled "guy from cafeteria". The UI is also not right.

Who is Cheating Whom?-- This one is interesting. Not only is this scene entirely fabricated (and the player is never tasked with solving riddles like this), I can only identify one of the characters. The guy on the right looks like Ren (albeit wearing another character's earring) but I have no idea who the guy on the left is? Rui or Towa are my best guesses, but I've heard that these ads just sometimes fabricate entire characters. That octopus is in the game though.

Vegetable Ninja-- Not a real minigame. That cat is one of the ones you can get in the Neko Atsume clone guild cat album, and it can indeed be seen slicing carrots.

Cat Town?-- This is real, just with more of the collectible cats added for flavour. (You can even see this area in one of my screenshots!) In the actual game, there ARE cats running around delivering messages, as well as chibi versions of the anime boys.

Eye Monster-- This monster is actually real! She appears in the beginning chapter. The human in front of her however, doesn't look like the protagonist or anyone else currently in the game. You also never see that pixelart style.

Customize Your Crush-- Not a real feature. You can pick which character you want on the home screen and can change their outfit to a limited extent, but you can't freely undress them or mess with their features. That character is named Alan though, and they did just release a shirtless card of him. Hi Alan!

Slenderman, Sadako, and Jeff the Killer-- Breaks my heart to say, they are not in the game. There is an anomaly that kind of looks like Slenderman, I suppose? The "You have been cursed" tagline is actually true though; in the beginning of the game, you DO get cursed.

Bathing in Blood-- Curiously, this scene is in the game... but it's not a horror scene. It's not sketched like that, it's not red and black and white, there's no explicit or implied blood. It's just a brief fanservicey scene of Leo in the bath.

Cat on Rails-- This one is the closest to being an actual minigame! There's an overhead view of a cat running along in the rhythm game "bonus stages" you get in-between some of the autobattler stages. You have to tap the screen to make the cat turn at certain points in time with the music. It's not very good, but it's easy to cheat. The cat is identical to the one pictured but the stage looks different and there's no food.

#horror imagery #cw eyes #horror #tokyo debunker #mobile game ads

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chil-aglia · 4 months ago

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For The Bad Things Happen Bingo Card:

Bingo Slot: Cabin Fever

Character: Adriaen

Plot: Basically Adriaen and the other turtles go on a little mini vacation together to a cabin in the woods to relax after a few hard missions, but after a few days of being there some weird stuff starts to happen (almost like the cabin that they’re staying in is haunted), and eventually everyone realizes that they’re being stalked by this Wendigo-like creature and Adriaen tries to kill the creature but it doesn’t work and he and the others have to try and leave the cabin without getting hurt or killed by the wendigo creature.

This will be marked off as ‘Cabin Fever’ as that is the main focus!

Honestly cabin fever was hard. And I still feel like I didn’t do it justice. Sorry about that y’all

Hope you enjoy this! And sorry for any grammar errors made!

@badthingshappenbingo

Link to the fic on Ao3: Do you see what I see? - Chilaglia - Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018) [Archive of Our Own]

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Do you see what I see?

Quick note: This is not canon to the main story of Collide. And I made some little changes, so instead of a cabin it’s the farmhouse from April’s family.

Bingo slot: Cabin Fever

Fandom: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles + my OC’s

Warnings; Stalking/being stalked by a creature, horror elements (kinda?), cabin fever, anxiousness, haunted/paranormal activity, implied hallucination, etc

Summary: They just wanted a place to relax. So, April offered them the farmhouse for the week. All was fine until strange things began happening. Not to mention, a creature that should not exist is stalking them.

——————————————————————————————————

They deserved the peace and quiet lately, after countless hours of fighting mutants that wanted them all dead, the boys deserved a get away from the sewers.

Which is why April came to the conclusion of letting them stay over the week at her family barn deep in the woods away from civilians and the noisy streets of New York.

It was perfect. Splinter was going to get some peace from the rowdy turtles since he was going to stay at the lair, and April was letting the boys stay without her at the barn so long as they cleaned the place.

It was a good deal. Everyone packed their belongings, and April drove the boys to the home.

-----

“Don’t break anything!” April calls out, waving her arm at them as she backs out the driveway in her parents' minivan.

She gave a final goodbye air kiss before forcing down the road and out of sight. Leo whoops, “Dibs on the master bedroom!” He laughs racing inside with his brothers hot on his trail.

Adriaen hung back, picking up his mini suitcase he brought along with him for the week. He entered the house and quietly observed it. It was a cute place he won’t lie, very homey.

It was old, the way the floorboards creaked every now and then. But he couldn’t control that. It was still a lovely home regardless. He couldn’t control the rowdiness upstairs from the brothers, making him shake his head. Putting down his suitcase on the couch nearby as he walks around to inspect the place further.

Kitchen over here…living room over there. Downstairs bathroom to the left…

He takes mental notes on where everything was. It wasn’t an entirely big house, but big enough for a family of at least 4 or 5.

The bedrooms were upstairs, but he’ll go check them out later. He made his way to the kitchen, looking out the window, it was a big yard, no fences or anything of the sorts, and it led directly into the woods.

If he recalled correctly, April told them on the drive here that there was a lake nearby that they could go swimming in.

“Adri! Save me!” Leo suddenly calls out, running into the kitchen and twirling Adriaen around to hide behind him as Donnie, Mikey and Raph had been chasing the slider. What for? He didn’t know. And he didn’t think he’d want to know.

“Guys calm down. We can’t break anything in this house.” He scolded them like a mother would, which seemed to have the boys deflated but calmed down.

“Fine, but to make things fair I say we each pick out a stick. Longest one gets the master bedroom.” Donnie suggests, earning groans from his brothers but an approving hum from Adriaen.

-----

It had been 4 days so far since their arrival. Adriaen had got the longest stick, so he was staying in the master bedroom, Leo in the next room, Donnie across from Leo and Mikey and Raph bunking together in the room to the right of Donnie.

For the 4 days that they have been at the barn, they have done mostly exploring, even finding the lake and taking a few swimming trips to cool off. But everyone was each doing their own thing. Adriaen currently sat at the windowsill in his temporary room, looking outside calmly as he had his headphones on, listening to a music playlist Leo made for him long ago.

Mikey and Raph were outside playing some sort of tagging game. Donnie and Leo were somewhere around the house.

Adriaen softly sighs, turning his gaze away from Mikey and Raph to glance into the woods. Honestly he found the wild to be a little…creepy. But that was probably just the domesticated sewer life turtle nature in him giving him such an eerie feeling of the woods.

Adriaen was about to look away until he saw movement in the bushes. He narrowed his eyes, leaning slightly against the window to try and see better.

It was hard to make out, but it was a creature, with large horns and glowing white eyes that had Adriaen shudder.

He blinked once and it was gone.

“What the….?” He mumbled to himself, observing the woods but saw no sign of the creature. Mikey and Raph didn’t seem to notice it either.

“It’s just the forest playing tricks on you.”

He turns away to lay down on the bed instead.

-----

From the moment he saw that strange creature in the woods, Adriaen couldn’t help but be on guard, and became suspicious of everything. Jumping at the slightest noises and creaks the house made.

At one point he came into the kitchen to see the cupboards all open, which was strange itself considering he had only been gone for a few minutes, and remembered that everything was shut.

It had become night, with him and the boys staying up downstairs watching TV. But Adriaen wasn’t listening or watching the show, his eyes were darting around the place.

“Adri, are you okay? You’re looking like something might jump out and take you.” Mikey noted, gazing up at Adriaen as he was sitting on the floor with Donnie next to him. Leo was sitting on a single couch while Raph and Adriaen shared the larger couch.

“What? Yeah, no, I’m okay…I think.” He waved him off, inhaling some much needed air as he remained high on alert. Leo raised an invisible brow at his crush's behaviour.

“All right, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Your leg is bouncing which is what you do when you're anxious.”

Leo smirks, knowing he got Adriaen there with the way the mutant tenses and grumbles with a small glare.

“I guess…I don’t know. Don’t you guys feel off? Like there’s something in this house? Or that you’re being watched from the forest?”

Donnie hums in acknowledgement, “What, like, paranoia? I don’t see how we’d be feeling like that. Did something happen?” He inquired, his own curiosity perking up as Adriaen shrugs his shoulders.

“I thought…I saw something outside when Mikey and Raph were playing their game. And then when I was in the kitchen and left for a moment to grab my phone, the cupboards were all open.” He explains the mess that he was experiencing, shaking his head with a heavy exhale.

“Maybe I’m just missing home?”

Raph nervously fiddled with his fingers, “Actually, Raph’s been feeling sort of the same. Earlier when I was out gathering some wood, I thought I saw something in the corner of my eye.”

Leo sweats a bit anxiously, but keeps a brave face. “Like what?” He questions, waiting for Raph to answer, the mutant gulping and shuddering. “I don’t know exactly. But it was big and had horns and white eyes.” He recalled, flinching when Adriaen stood up from the couch, his eyes widening at him.

“That’s…what I saw too.”

An eerie silence fell upon everyone, Mikey whimpering as he tucked his head into his shell slightly. “Uh…movie night some other time?” He suggests, the others nodding and murmuring as they switch the TV off and one by one went upstairs.

Adriaen pauses, a chill running down his carapace as he looks out towards the window, for a moment, he thought he was being watched again. In a hurry he went upstairs to the bedroom.

-----

“AHH!”

Adriaen awoke with a startle, the shouting of Mikey waking him up in the middle of the night as he jumps out the bed and swung open the door, the others doing the same as they see Mikey at the bottom of the stairs, trembling as he was backed against the wall, looking like he saw something terrifying.

“Mikey?! What’s wrong? What happened?!” Raph immediately interrogated as the box turtle mutant breathed heavily, “I-it’s in the house…” He stuttered, his tone low and fearful. “What’s in the house?” Leo asks, sweating as they all one by one head downstairs to comfort Mikey who flinched.

“The thing…that Raph and Adriaen talked about. I-I saw it in the kitchen!”

Before anyone could say anything, a loud, powerful and eerie like whistle that reminded Adriaen of what an elk sounded like, rumbled in the house, the boys placing their hands over their heads to block it out as much as they could.

When the noise died down, the air itself felt suffocating as they heard hooves coming closer and closer. A low growl as a tall shadowy figure emerges from the archway from the kitchen.

“Holy fuck….” Leo gasps out, staring wide eyed at the creature. Adriaen pales at the sight. The creature smelt of rotten flesh, eyes glowing white as it stared. Body covered in black fur with large antlers standing tall and proud on its head.

Its long arms and legs had overgrown claws.

“Is that a yokai?!” Raph shouted, while Donnie quickly looked up something on his gauntlet, “F-from the looks of it…it’s a Wendigo!” He exclaims, yelling when the Wendigo charges at them, the turtles quickly dodging and dispersing into groups.

Leo, Donnie and Adriaen on the left. Mikey and Raph to the right. The Wendigo crashes into the wall, turning its head towards Adriaen’s group as it opens its mouth and lets out that screeching elk whistle.

”Don’t let it touch you! It’s said that the Wendigo possesses humans and turns them into cannibals.” Donnie informs, jumping back in fright when the extended class almost grazed his skin.

“But we’re not humans!”

Adriaen clicked his tongue, sweating as he ducks down from almost getting hit. “To the basement now!” He orders, shoving Leo into a run as the slider was quick to race off.

His brothers followed as Adriaen kept an eye on the Wendigo that would sometimes just stare and watch like a soulless monster.

Fuck this is crazy!

He runs after the others, skidding to a stop when Leo found the hatch for the basement and opens it, Adriaen holds the door open as he ushered for them to get in, the Wendigo screeched briefly and ran at them.

“Fuck!” Adriaen hisses, kicking Raph down in the basement when he was the last one in. “Adri? Adriaen what are you—?!” Leo began to call out but was cut off when Adriaen closed the hatch door, turning around and yelling when he was pinned down by the Wendigo’s sharp nails on its toes.

Leo and the others pound on the door and their voices muffled. Adriaen stills, he felt like he couldn’t breathe as he watched the Wendigo raise its hand up, its nails glistening briefly from the moonlight.

It was going to strike down at Adriaen.

He was frozen in place; he flinched and closed his eyes when the creature lunged down at him.

He expected to be met with pain. But when nothing happened, he slowly and hesitantly opened his eyes, his breathing rising up and down rapidly from adrenaline as the Wendigo was no longer in sight.

“What the hell?”

He shakily stands up. His knees almost buckled but he looked around for a sign of the intruder. The basement door opens as the brothers cross around Adriaen, each asking what had happened, why did he leave them down there, where’s the creature.

“It’s gone…” He muttered, blankly staring ahead as the boys shared an uncertain look. “I think we should call April. Let her come and get us.” Raph suggests, instantly being met with agreements.

Adriaen could feel his heart thumping against his chest. Was he going crazy?

Was this all a hallucination?

He shakes his head. He was never going to be comfortable in the woods again after this.

Could…could this have been a state of cabin fever? He’s heard of it before and what it can do to people. He also realised that during the few days he’s been here, he actually never went outside.

Leo placed a warm hand on his shoulder. Giving a strained smile. “Let’s go sit on the couch, okay?” He advises, leading Adriaen towards the living room.

Yeah…he was never coming back here again. He’s sticking to the sewer life from now on.

——————————————————————————————————

Bad things happen bingo (OPEN)

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finn-m-corvex · 1 year ago

Text

Lightning in a Cubicle Pt. 4

And here it is! At long last! The fourth part of Lightning in a Cubicle! We have finally crossed the halfway marker and are on our way to the finale, which is looking like two more parts away (5 and 6) and that'll be a relief for me, honestly. I know this is quite late, but I hope you guys enjoy reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it!

Words: 3.4k

Slight TWs for very very very small wanting to rot in hell instead of the Administration! Taglist @rainofthetwilight @lightning-chicken @i-love-jay-walker and @sir-robyn! Enjoy! Remember if you want to be on future taglists, please tell me explicitly!

Sora was seriously growing on Jay, and it was a problem.

A couple of weeks had passed since the girl first became his intern, and she was probably the best thing that he could’ve ever asked for. She was efficient, on time, productive, and always managed to make him laugh on a day day. Plus, she was always on his side whenever Shitty Sharon decided to try and start shit, as her name implied. Overall, the past two weeks were probably the best that Jay ever experienced while working with the Administration, and he couldn’t think of anything else that would make it even better.

Well, there was one thing, but he already knew that there was no way he was ever getting those memories back.

“...so I told the guy to shove off if he didn’t want pictures of his ass hanging around the office,” Sora said between bites of food that the two picked up from the cafeteria, “because you know that I would’ve put his ass on the copier.”

“Oh, I know,” Jay said, looking at the girl fondly as she stuck her feet up on his desk. He couldn’t find it in himself to be angry about it, especially when his cubicle was as tiny as it was. “Then what happened?”

She continued to regale him with tales of her adventures in the mailroom three floors down, and Jay did his best to listen, but he was distracted.

Every night since Sora had shown up he would have dreams. Weird dreams of things that he couldn’t place, people that he couldn’t remember, and in the morning he would do his best to sketch whatever remnants he could pick out from the haze of his mind. The pictures were hanging up all around his apartment with push pins and thumbtacks, and Jay hoped that his inspection would be delayed. Otherwise he might get sent off to the psychiatric ward, and fined for all of the new drywall that would have to be installed.

Did the Administration even have a psychiatric ward? With how often upper management drives the lower classes crazy, they better have one. And it better not be coming out of Jay’s paycheck.

“Hey,” Sora said, snapping her fingers in front of his face, “are you even listening? Geez, don’t tell me we’ve gotta get you hearing aids now.”

“I’m listening,” Jay protested, “just thinking at the same time. You were saying something about one of the guys sticking his hand up the pneumatic tube?”

Jay’s brain kept working while Sora talked. All of his searches for someone named Lloyd turned up with nothing, unless he was somehow dreaming about the legendary Green Ninja, but there was no way that someone as ordinary as him would have any association with a ninja. Jay didn’t even know that Ninjago had ninja! Which you would think would be something that he would remember considering he was from Ninjago!

And yet, faint memories tugged at the farthest corners of his mind, there but just barely out of his reach. Most of them were of Cole in his black gi, great green scar on his forehead and eyes of charcoal brown, but there were some of a younger man in green next to a taller man in red, a harsh scar over the latter’s eye and irises a molten brown. One in white, with shiny metallic skin that gleamed in the sunlight and eyes glowing icy blue, but the one that twisted the knife is his gut the most was the one woman in his memories. She had beauty greater than the depths of the sea, with eyes that floated between blues and greens that he had only seen in pictures of ocean waves.

They were the Ninja.

He found things about all five of the Ninja: green, red, black, white, and gray or cyan since the articles couldn’t decide what color she officially was. She was the most gorgeous woman that Jay ever laid eyes on, and he knew that he would be thrilled if she ever became his manager—

“Jay!”

“What?” he said, annoyed.

The girl sighed. “Alright, now I know you’re not listening. What’s got you so distracted? I know you don’t like working overtime, but I thought the pay was good enough to help you at least pretend to be doing something.”

Usually it was, but even that sweet overtime couldn’t push his thoughts out of his head. “You said you lived in the Crossroads for a while, right? Did you learn anything about the Ninja?”

Sora looked surprised, and Jay knew how much of a risk this was. “I may have heard some things, why?”

“I-I was looking at some stuff about them to try and learn what they were like,” Jay said, but he decided to backtrack. “You know what? It’s nothing. We should probably just be heading home.”

“Wait,” Sora said, springing up after him as he stood and started grabbing up his things, “you can talk to me, Jay. What’s wrong?”

And he wanted to so badly; Jay trusted her more than he trusted anyone else in this place. Their trip to the aquarium had only strengthened their bond into something that Jay never knew he would have. Before she came into his life he probably would’ve said that he trusted Luke the most, but ever since he first met Sora he started acting more and more cagey whenever the two would walk by. He would only talk in short sentences to her, sometimes not at all, and it rubbed Jay the wrong way. “It’s nothing, really. Do you need me to walk you home?”

“Uh,” Sora paused, “I don’t think so. I should be okay.”

The two of them started walking out of the office, Jay bidding goodbye to the rest of his exhausted coworkers as they went. Luke was nowhere to be found, and the man standing there in the security uniform instead of Luke instantly brought a smile to Jay’s face. The shaggy hair was achingly familiar, and the man looked up to see who was exiting. A smile split Jay’s face in response to the man’s, and for some reason it just felt right to drop his briefcase and sprint to the man.

“Cole!” Jay exclaimed, jumping into the bigger man’s arms and hugging him tight. Cole laughed, reciprocating, and a rush of familiarity made him light-headed even though Jay only met this guy once before. Jay stayed there for a minute or two before realizing how weird it probably was to be hugging your security guard, and pulled back after a minute; Cole’s grip made it a little difficult, almost as if the ravenette didn’t want to let Jay go.

His head started throbbing, trying to conjure up all of the fragments that he could remember about Cole, but the only things that came to his mind were the drawings hanging up on his walls. They couldn’t be everything that Jay had from Cole, not when his arms made him feel safer than the Administration security forces ever did.

Smile still on his face, Cole put his hands on his hips. “Guess who got the job?”

“You did?” Jay guessed, and Cole flexed his large muscles as confirmation. Someone coughed from behind them and Jay belatedly realized that Sora was still standing there, looking very confused. Her eyes were wide as they looked at Cole, and Cole’s eyes widened in response.

“Oh! Sora, this is Cole. Cole, this is my intern Sora. She’s great,” Jay babbled, not noticing the tension starting to leak into the air. Instead, all he could focus on was that now he had his two favorite people in the entirety of the Administration in the same hallway. You would be surprised at how hard that was to accomplish in a building with over 300 floors.

“Yeah, we’ve met before,” Sora said stiffly, and Jay caught a brief glimpse of Cole making a shushing motion before he turned to look at his intern.

“Oh shit, really?”

“I saw her in the elevator the other day,” Cole said quickly, and Sora’s face scrunched in confusion before clearing. “We had a good talk about, uh, the printers and everything! Right Sora?”

“Printers?” Jay asked.

“Right! Printers!” Sora said, picking up Jay’s briefcase and handing it to him. “Pesky little things, right? C’mon, we should get going. We still have to get to your apartment.”

Jay sighed, patting Cole’s arm as he faced the now fixed elevator. “She’s right. Sorry man, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow—”

“I can walk with you,” Cole blurted, and Jay paused.

“Don’t you have to stay here and keep watch?”

“With all due respect, Jay, I don’t think anyone’s going to be breaking into the accounting department after 8 P.M. I can walk you to your house and come back. I’ll even walk Sora to wherever she needs to be so you don’t have to worry about it.”

Well, what did he have to lose? His job? Maybe that would be a free excuse to finally get out of this damn place.

“If you’re sure,” Jay said, walking to the elevator. He tried to hide the pep in his step, shoving his lightning down as far as it would go. There had already been way too many close calls with Sora, he couldn’t slip up now. “I’m on floor 275, so it might take a couple minutes.”

“Totally fine,” Cole assured, watching as Jay drew out his keycard and swiped it. The elevator dinged not even a minute later, and the three of them stepped inside as the doors closed behind them with their signature soft woosh. Cole was standing abnormally close to Jay, something that the man would’ve normally minded if it was anyone but Cole. Somehow it just felt right when it was Cole.

Some strange feeling of dread started to creep over him, but he knew it wasn’t from Cole and Sora. Memories tugged at his senses, and his sight started to blur with colors that Jay wasn’t familiar with as sounds pinged off of the elevator walls. What was happening?

Jay started babbling about random nonsense to pass the time, a nervous habit of his, but neither Cole nor Sora tried to stop him. If anything, Cole looked like he was hanging on every one of Jay’s words, and it was a nice change from the constant ignoring or fake interest from Jay’s coworkers. Now that Jay was looking at Cole properly, trying to focus on something he could see and process, he did kinda look like the black ninja from the pictures. His hair was a bit longer, and his face was a bit more weathered, but there was definitely a resemblance.

“Say, Cole,” Jay started, cutting his rant about the horrors of cardstock paper short, “would you happen to know anything about a group called the Ninja?”

Cole choked on air. Sora looked slightly alarmed and quickly whacked him on the back, Cole finally catching his breath and looking at Jay with wide eyes. “What?”

“If you’re from Ninjago, then you should know who the Ninja are, right?” Jay continued. His mouth felt weird from saying the word.

“O-Oh yeah,” Cole scratched the back of his head, “I guess you could say that. I, uh, actually knew them before the Merge happened?”

“What was the girl like?” Jay asked, fiddling with his sleeves. He couldn’t shake the feeling of deja vu, even though he knew for a fact that he had never been in this kind of situation before. “She’s really pretty, you know.”

The elevator whirred as it went up, and Jay noticed that Cole didn’t seem to be feeling any of the normal motion sickness effects. Maybe he was already accustomed to it. “I know,” Cole said, “I think you and her would’ve gotten along really well, Jay.”

“Seriously?” Jay’s face brightened, and Sora made a fake gagging sound in the background. “Shut it, Sora. What did she like? What did she eat? Is she still here? Is she nice?”

He grabbed the front of Cole’s shirt, reeling with sensory input from the memories, preparing himself to ask the most important question of all. “Is her favorite color blue?!”

The security guard looked a little startled at how close Jay had gotten in the past minute, but then he relaxed, chuckling. “Yeah, buddy, her favorite color is blue.”

Buddy. The word awakened something in Jay, and suddenly he was clutching onto Cole for a reason other than to be dramatic.

Lightning flashed in his head, blisteringly hot and turning his vision white as he gripped onto Cole’s shirt. Cole was saying his name but Jay couldn’t speak, his tongue feeling like a wad of cotton in his mouth as he was gasping for air. The elevator kept going up and up and up, but all Jay felt was falling down-

Crashing onto his knees, Jay kept heaving, feeling Sora’s hand on his back and Cole’s on his chest as his vision blurred with tears. Finally, the elevator came to a stop, and Jay couldn’t help the relief that came over him when he realized that he was finally going to be able to go home. But no matter how much he tried his knees wouldn’t move, and more tears came to his eyes when he realized that the others were going to have to help him get home. They were going to see what was in the apartment.

They were going to abandon him. Who wants to be friends with someone who was losing his fucking mind?

“Get him up,” Cole ordered, and Sora came up on Jay’s other side. She draped his arm across her shoulders and lifted, and the two of them dragged him out of the elevator and down the hallway. Jay was still getting his bearings back, head spinning out of control as the carpeted floor suddenly looked very inviting yet again. Anything was better than having to face them after something like this.

Sora scanned the hallway, looking at each of the numbered plates. “I don’t know which one is his!”

“64,” Jay croaked, and Cole found it almost immediately. The poor office worker tried to give the security guard his keycard, and Cole refused it at first, instead taking up a stance that indicated that he was going to kick Jay’s door down. Jay did not feel like explaining that to the house inspection team on top of everything else. “You break my door down and I’ll break your spine.”

“You could definitely try,” Cole grunted, but he heeded Jay’s warning, instead taking the keycard and swiping it.

A soft click, and the larger man pushed the door open. Sora brought Jay in and set him down on his ratty old couch, the man sinking into the cushions and slamming his eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to look around his apartment. Sora rubbed his shoulder, asking if he was okay, and then she noticed the drawings.

“Jay, what the hell is all of this?” she said, reaching out and touching one of the many pieces of paper. It was the first one he did back in his office, before he ever met her, of the Black Ninja in all of his glory and bearing a striking resemblance to the new security guard. Cole was also examining them, biting his lip as his fingers brushed across the one with the Black Ninja falling into the dark cloud. Jay never did manage to find any information on something like that happening in Ninjago. “Are-are you going crazy?”

“I…” Jay paused, “I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.”

Because he didn’t. He really, really didn’t.

And that scared him.

Looking away from the drawing, he watched as Cole’s hands tightened into fists, his face contorting into something that Jay didn’t recognize. Resignation? “There’s something that I should probably tell you,” Cole said softly, turning to look Jay in the eyes. “You’re not supposed to be here, Jay. You never were.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Jay said bitterly, blunt with hurt. “You think that I don’t know that I wasn’t meant to be here?”

“How much do you remember?”

Jay’s shoulders hitched. “Nothing. I don’t remember anything before this stupid place. All of these, all of them, they’re from my dreams. I don’t know what they’re trying to tell me, and I-I don’t even know if they mean anything.”

There was a box of tissues placed down next to him, and Jay glanced up to see Sora giving him a soft smile. “Here, these might help. Just take a few minutes, we’re not going anywhere.”

Grabbing up one of the tissues, Jay began to try and clean himself up a little, but he felt just as shattered and broken as he did on the first day he woke up. He had woken up in a bed, the same bed in his apartment, with only a note on the nightstand about how he had been in a coma from a workplace accident and that he was expected to be in his office at the normal time.

He didn’t know where his office was. He didn’t know the normal time. All he knew was that nothing, nothing felt right when he woke up and it hadn’t gotten better in three years of working in the Administration. There was always some small voice inside of him, whispering that he was destined for something greater than fixing copy machines, but-but..

Jay was trapped. He didn’t even know what he could say to get him out of that place.

But..but maybe they could help him get out.

Sora picked something up out of the box with his gi, left open on his messy desk, and Jay’s heart sank when he saw the light gleaming off of it. It was something that he only had second-hand knowledge about from his parents, and even that was fuzzy, but it was the only explanation he had to go off of because the Administration did not consider information about Ninjago traditions very important.

His Ying-Yang medallion.

Cole sucked in a breath when he saw it, eyes watering. “You still have that?”

“You know what it is?” Jay asked, standing up and instantly having to sit back down from the dizziness. He motioned for Sora to come closer, and took the medallion when she offered it. “Please, Cole, you have to tell me everything you know about this.”

Please. Please. They—they had to know something he didn’t, something to get him out and to see her—

Silence.

Sora wouldn’t meet Jay’s eyes, but he wasn’t giving her much of his attention; most of his attention was on the security guard, whose eyes softened, and Jay was startled to see tears forming at the corners. Cole quickly wiped them away with his jacket sleeve, grunting, before looking back up at Jay. Earthen brown on electric blue. Jay had the sinking feeling that this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

Maybe it had something to do with the drawing of the two figures trapped deep in an arena pit, staring each other down from atop a pillar. It was dark, and there was a green blade gleaming in the corner of his vision when he was fighting for his spot on the pillar, but he could still hear the sounds of screaming applause echoing in his ears. Jay knew now who was the one in the black suit, but..he never managed to dream up who the second person could’ve possibly been. Whose eyes he was looking through.

“Her-her name is Nya,” Cole started, his hands clenched into fists. “She’s the Elemental Master of Water, and my-my sister. You’re my brother.”

“My parents didn’t have another kid,” Jay said. Something wasn’t right. “They were too old. Is your name even Cole? Or was that a lie too?” The idea of Cole lying to him about this was nauseating, and Jay wished that he was still sitting down in the elevator, hitting the bottom floor and wishing that the cable would’ve snapped so he would be plummeting straight down to hell. Maybe he was already there.

“I’m not Ed and Edna’s kid, and I wasn’t lying about my name. I’m not lying to you,” breathing out of his nose, Cole met Jay’s eyes, hardening with a resolve that sent tingles up Jay’s spine. “Jay, I need you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to tell you, okay? You cannot freak out on me.”

Jay nodded, struggling to swallow past the lump of anxiety and fear in his throat. What-what was he?

Cole sighed. “You’re a Ninja, Jay.”

Yeah, he was in hell. Maybe he would’ve preferred the high water.

#ninjago #ninjago jay #finn's writing #ninjago dragons rising #ninjago cole #ninjago sora #lightning in a cubicle #ninjago dragons rising spoilers #finn's ninjago aus

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oh-lordy-lord-save-me · 2 years ago

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Hello, I just wanted to let you know that I am really fascinated by your version of Usagi and wanted to know more about him. What are the similarities and differences between your version and the comic version of Usagi? And well the other characters of Usagi Yojimbo appear as well, like Kitsune, Gen, and Tomoe, and if so how are they like in your version?

hi!!! thank you for taking interest in my iteration, its means a lot. in my au usagi is a teen(around 16-17) who traveled from japan to new york because he “wanted to travel more.” in reality he is trying to avoid another encounter with jei, as the last one kinda scarred him a bit. the thought of jei being in any town he’s visiting took away the possibility of a peaceful night for him.

gonna cut it off here since i just noticed how long this is haha

ayway, he definitely still sticks his nose into other people’s business and gets involved into things that were 100% avoidable.He would still be incredibly good with kids as well as helping anyone who needs it no matter how difficult the task is. Either way he still has a shit ton of warrants on his head!!!

Another thing that is absolutely vital to him is his inability to commit to anything🙏 he likes his life of wandering and it feels wrong to him to stay put in one place. he does not want his life to change and that doesn’t really help if he ever wants a relationship. to make it worse he will not speak about his feelings, i think he’d rather be struck by lightning.

the way he acted before moving to the hidden city was very different. he was much more carefree and always got into situations without much of a plan. he’d throw in some jokes in the middle of fights and hype himself up sometimes. i based off this phase of his life off of his younger self in the comics. but after this he tries to take things more seriously, keeping to himself and not breaking rules as often and acts like a dick sometimes . he gets better tho after hating leo for a while and gets to know him better.

i did change some characters a bit like katsuichi. he still lives as a hermit but took usagi in when he was much younger due to his dad passing. he takes on a more fatherly role than just a sensei for usagi. i dont see him calling him a cockroach or a head lice knowing this poor kid just lost his dad😭

kitsune, gen, and tomoe are living their lives back in japan. kitsune still lives as a street performer and a thief and shes having a good life rn honestly. shes knowledgeable in some mystic items as they’re usually a part of her performances. she’d be active on social media platforms, she’d have very organized posts. she’s also the one who reaches out the most to usagi; she pokes fun at him but she does it as a way to check in on him since the last time she really saw him he wasn’t in the best shape. i haven’t really gotten to gen yet, but he’s still a bounty hunter. he’d still be a bit of an ass when it comes to money or usagi.

dont have much on tomoe, which is honestly a crime, but i have the idea that she is a student at her father’s school. i think she’d be entirely dedicated to her skills and wouldn’t have much time for anything else. she’d only ever see usagi if he’s visiting the geishu province. i plan on them leaving eachother on strained terms when he left japan, they’d eventually sort it out in the future though. there’s also chizu, who usagi has worked with in the past but eventually stopped. She’s completely dedicated to the neko ninja, willing to do everything she has to for their cause. she ended their friendship by deceiving him since “friendship is a weapon that is used by the ninja, but it can be much worse if the ninja develops feelings of friendship.”

chizu is honestly a big reason who usagi heavily distrusted leo at first; his experience with ninja isn’t very pleasant

#ask #dear lord this is long sorry :’D #also happy holidays

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roguephenon · 10 months ago

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Hi, I started planning my own KND fic, and started with figuring out the ages and birthdates, and I have to ask. 1. How was it for you the process of coming up with a chronology of a show that doesn't really have a set and consistent timeline? 2. In what year does your fic takes place?

My process and answer is long so have it at under the cut

The first part of my process was deciding if I wanted a set timeline or just to go with what worked for me from fic to fic. Over the years (and after watching the series hundreds of times and taking novels worth of notes and screenshots), I’ve settled on a set timeline that works for me and what I like to do.

(Fun fact: I have 3 different timelines! 1 is the main one I use, and the other two are bit more loose depending on the AU I wrote. In one, the GKND doesn’t exist.)

First, I would decide how religiously you want to try and make sense of the timeline the show tries to give us. There aren’t many, but there are a few events that have specific years that can be pinned down. For example, one is the Great Junior High Rebellion of ‘99 where the recommissioning module was allegedly “damaged beyond repair” (maybe they didn’t try turning it off and back on again?). The next one is 1969 where the KND faked the moon landing so adults wouldn’t discover the Moonbase. They’re small throwaway mentions, but important if you need some dates to anchor to.

Also consider that (probably almost) everything in season 6 that’s not a flashback happens AFTER Op. ZERO due to the shots of the Moonbase being the rebuilt Moonbase Zero.

Now, saying all that, my next piece of advice may be weird, but honestly, I think it’s important: don’t stress too much about it! Details are essential, but getting hung up on them can be a headache and stop the process. As you mentioned, the show doesn’t have a consistent timeline, so trying to make sense of everything will run you up a wall.

Just breathe and pick any year or era you want that makes sense or resonates with you! Wanna set it in 2018 or even in 2024? Go for it!

But why aren't kids/teens seen using smartphones? Maybe there’s super duper strict regulation that keeps anyone under 13 (perhaps even 18 because Father apparently controls the Teen Ninjas) from not having smartphones, and the KND uses 2x4 tech as a way to get around it. There’s already legislation in the works in the US that does this already to ban kids from using social media.

How come sector V are all in the same grade yet are different ages? Again, maybe in this world, there’s some super weird law the adult villains lobbied for that keeps kids in certain grades for extended times. There was literally an episode that ended with a 4th Grade President going to City Hall and coming out and saying, “by the way, school day ends at 8:25pm now. Sucks to suck, also Father is the best.”

Let the show's lack of a consistent timeline be an unexpected strength! Besides one or two cultural nods as the show evolves, there's not too much to date it. For example, they make up corporations and franchises to parody real ones and never give the name of a sitting world leader.

Also, it’s a cartoon, and their world is not bound to the same laws as ours. It’s not real life! Be silly and stretch things if you need to! If trying to take the show and make it more realistic is your goal, then, of course, do that as well! Just for me personally, I try not to get bogged down with “this event or timeline doesn’t exactly match up or happen how it would in real life” because I’m not writing real life: I’m writing Kids Next Door fighting candy monsters or the living avatars of puberty.

I’m getting off-topic. Anyway, the last piece of help I offer is just (if you can) rewatching the show and paying attention to context clues in the background! In season 5, two shots of a gravestone end with 2005. So, with that in mind, we can infer a few things:

1. From wherever you put that episode in timeline, it at least happens during or after the year 2005.

2. The same gravestone appears again in IT, so everything that has happened up to Rachel deciding to call a game of tag, again, happens either during or after the year 2005.

Take that as you will!

For the next part of your question! If you’re talking about Cold Reception SPOILER AHEAD BECAUSE IT WILL NEVER BE DIRECTLY STATED IN THE FIC! ....

...

you really wanna know?

...

The year Cold Reception takes place is 2011.

Hope this helps! If not, let me know and maybe I can give more specifics! Good luck on your fic! Writing is fun.

#knd #my writing #my process #timeline creation #worldbuilding #also that bit about “not real life” is just about fantastical elements and aesthetics #asks #always happy to help if i can

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shaotie · 4 months ago

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Where Loyalties Lie - Ch 16: Every Day Run of the Mill Razor-Fanged Terrorworms

Leo X banged the kitchen door open a little harder than necessary and stormed up to his workstation with Mikey’s gift in his hand. But he stopped halfway there when Bully asked: "Went that good, hey?"

The seasoned ex-pirate knew the beginnings of an anxiety-fueled meltdown when he saw one, and considering everything he knew Scrubs had been through recently, he was honestly surprised it had taken this long.

A testomony to the ninja warrior's self-control.

X stood in place, thinking. His whole body was tense, and his repeatedly tapped his index finger on the sheet in his hand, as he gazed around the room, refusing to make eye contact or even look at anyone in the kitchen.

Overall he looked like he was about to explode any second. Explode and do something he would later regret.

And considering his history as a highly skilled ninja warrior Battle Nexus champ, Bully figured 'doing something he would later regret' would no doubt involve the violent loss of a life or two.

"Uuuh . . . yeah," X said, in answer to Bully's question. He raised his right hand to absently and nervously rub his fingertips across his forehead, looking to be about a million miles away and trying to figure out who or what to take out his frustrations out on, how, and to what degree (he was). Then he stopped rubbing at his face (it was a nasty habit to develop that Draxum wouldn't tolerate, anyway), gazed down at the stickers in his hand, and flatly said: "It went good."

Bully snorted out a laugh at the sight of colorful stickers in the hardened killer's grip, and in a condescending tone asked: "What's that you got? Stickers?"

The tone in Bully's voice seemed to go right over X's head, and while still looking at the stickers he calmly and factual replied: "Yeah."

He didn't take his eyes off his sticker sheet until Bully said something so casual-like it was as if he was merely uttering a simple truth he assumed Leo agreed with:

"Probably from that pansy little one."

"Hey! Mikey’s an artist, and he's my brother so back off!" Leo defensively snapped.

Bully smiled at the angry slider, glad he gave the right response by loyally defending his family, even though they just met and he barely knew them. Then he instructed him: "When you're done those dishes throw the scraps in the back room."

X nodded his head and went to where his gray leather satchel and fox mask were hanging on the wall. The satchel was closed with a big leather flap attached to the top, that went all the way down over the front, and he took off his cape to hang it up before opening the flap to put the stickers inside his bag.

X stopped halfway through when he saw a blue lightning bolt that reminded him of his ninpo powers; so he discreetly checked that no one was looking, peeled it off the sheet, and put it on the top right corner of his open satchel. Then he put the sticker sheet all the way in - being careful not to bend or tear it - closed the flap over the front where it covered the sticker, and went back to work.

Not long after, Yolinda came in the kitchen and went straight up to the hard-working slider, to lean her back against the counter by his right side, in front of the sink where he was putting the clean dishes he washed.

She looked at him in her cute, snarky way that he did not find cute in the moment, and Bully watched her closely, ready to step in and shoo her away if she ended up pushing one too many of Scrubs buttons.

Who was he kidding? When was more like it.

"I like that brother of yours. The big one with all the muscles. He looks really tough. I bet he can take a hit better than you."

No response. X kept right on working.

"He told me his name. I think it was Ralph or something."

X's jaw and throat tightened. She said the wrong name on purpose. It was disrespectful. It was infuriating.

She kept going.

"I wonder how much he can bench press. Do you know . . . Leeeo?"

"That's not my name."

X's voice was a little tense but calm. His emotions were anything but.

"Sure it is. Leo"

"Order up!" (Bully)

"One second!" (Yolinda)

X's hand tensed so much under the water he bent a spoon back without meaning to. Good thing his fixable 'oopsie' was concealed under a layer of bubbles.

Quietly through clenched teeth, he told her in a tense voice: "That's what my brothers call me, but it's not my name."

He discreetly fixed the spoon in the soapy dish water and continued with his work.

"I said order up!"

"I said one second!"

Yolinda's voice squeaked on the high-pitched 'second.'

X didn't find it endearing.

. . .

Ok, maybe not much.

"What is your name; Leeeo?"

'Count down from ten and take a deep breath.'

X took in a deep breath through his nose and didn't reply or acknowledge Yolinda in any way while she looked him over with a cocky grin.

"If you don't take that order out RIGHT NOW..!" "I'm COMING!"

Her voice squeaked again.

Hearing it calmed his nerves just enough to stop him from slitting something with the steak knife he was tightly grasping under the water.

Like his own hand.

The three-fingered, elbow-length dish gloves he couldn't replace in the above ground human world was a big incentive not to do that.

Despite what she told Bully, Yolinda didn't move and kept looking X up and down, like he was the prey in her web and she was the spider trying to decide what scrumptious part to eat first.

"That's ok, you don't have to tell me. I'll just call you Leo like your brothers. . . . Leo."

X's arms and shoulders tensed and he clenched his jaw tighter, but kept washing with his head down.

If her antsy, whole-body fidgeting was any indication, Yolinda was getting agitated over the lack of response. So she tried to push his buttons some more by misspronouncing his brother's name again.

"I think Ralph's gonna ask me out."

"His name is Raph," X muttered through gritted teeth.

'Oooh, that got a reaction,' the crafty fox thought.

Yolinda was itching for one of their entertaining, yet still frustrating arguments (which were only frustrating for her if she was on the losing side, of course). She casually leaned her back against the sink where the wet dishes were drying, watched 'Leo' intently, and intentionally swiped the tip of her tail across a couple of plates so he would have to rewash them, to try and get even more of a rise out of him.

Bully kept glaring at her, about ready to jump across the counter to make her get that order out and leave the already agitated, mistreated slave alone if she didn't back off and soon.

When that didn't get a reaction like she was hoping, Yolinda nonchalantly looked down at her black manicured claws and said: "Ralph, Raph, it's all the same. His name doesn't matter, guys like him are a dime a dozen. I think I'll get my nails painted red for our first date. That's his favorite color, right? Those sappy buffoon types love stuff like that."

X's eye twitched.

He was about to pop.

'How does she always KNOW the right BUTTONS to press!!?'

The plate he didn't realize until now he was tightly gripping with both hands, cracked into three pieces under the sudsy water.

His eyes widened and his countenance fell ever so slightly at the realization of what he just did.

X quickly regained his composure, gently laid the pieces aside at the bottom of the sink so Yolinda wouldn't know what he did, and carried on with his work (but this time being more careful with his grip).

And that was Bully decided it was time to step in.

He abruptly stopped his work, came out from behind his workstation, and aggressively stormed up to Scraps to get in her face and loudly yell: “When I tell you to take out an order I expect you to DO it!” He pointed with an outstretched arm at the plates of food on the end of his counter and demanded: “Take that to the customers NOW or I’ll put you on scrub duty for a MONTH!”

“Uuughh!” Yolinda whined in a high-pitched voice. Then she snapped her head to glare at the turtle she frustratingly couldn't get a rise out of this time, and got her angry energy out by screaming at him: “You make me so mad it’s . . . it's . . . INFURIATING!!!”

X continued on with his work, and without looking up at her, or giving away how his mind was like a hot soup of conflicting thoughts and emotions about ready to boil over, he quietly and tensly replied: “The feeling’s mutual;” with the only thing preventing him from losing his temper with her being the fact that he knew when he eventually blew, it was going to be something big.

He was looking for a fight, not an argument, and if Draxum hadn't specifically ordered him to go above ground to New York, he would have given serious consideration to antagonizing a wild ravager in the 'Lush Berryfields' network of caves and caverns, that housed it's very own diverse mystic biome deep underground.

(He wondered if there were any above-ground equivalents to massive, hairy, four-footed beasts with a giant horn on their head, poor eyesight, and a quick temper)

Yolinda clenched her fists, let out another high-pitched squeal, and stomped her foot once when she screamed: “I HATE you!!!”

Scrubs didn’t in any way respond, and the fiery fox yokai stormed out with the order. But before she left the kitchen, Bully yelled at her: “For someone who’s so clever you can sure be dumb sometimes!”

She looked behind her back to squeal at Bully again before going out through the kitchen door.

As soon as she was gone, Scrubs let out a deep sigh and said: “I…” “It’s nothin’ to worry about, I break stuff myself from time to time,” Bully reassured the turtle slave of the cruel Baron Draxum. One by one, X took the broken pieces out of the sink to lay them on the counter for now, while saying: “I’ll get Seňor Hueso to take it out of my pay.” Then he looked up at Bully from surprise when the multi-armed yokai pointed a ladle at him and sternly said: “Hueso may be the owner but I’m in charge in my kitchen and I said it’s nothing!”

He continued staring at Scrubs as he stuck the ladle back in a big pot of the soup of the day (a yokai-human clam chowder amalgamation) to stir it, and X’s only response was to look away and quietly stick his hand in the soapy water to pull the plug so he could rinse out any glass shards left behind.

While he was waiting for the jumbo-sized sink to drain, X calmly grabbed one pile of dishes after another from the right sink to put them on the counter to the left, with the rest of the dirty dishes - determined to rewash every single one after (in his eyes) Yolinda ruined the entire bunch by swiping her tail over a few.

To an untrained eye, the quiet turtle seemed calm and at ease. But Bully knew better, and he could see the tension Scrubs was still holding in.

The emotional release X felt from ‘winning’ that round when Scraps lost her temper first and stormed away only delayed the inevitable and possibly changed his 'anger outlet' target to someone else who crossed him the wrong way. But Scrubs was still on the verge of an explosion.

He needed a proper release; to vent those intense emotions in the right way. And Bully knew how to make that happen, with a plan he put in motion when he ordered Scrubs to chuck out the food scraps.

X tapped his gloved hand on the edge of the empty right sink and blankly gazed into it before saying: "I'll get rid of those scraps now.” Bully pulled a pizza out of the oven and curtly ordered: "Clean out that sink first," to buy himself the time he needed to finish setting up his plan.

With nothing more than a hum in reply, Scrubs pulled out the faucet attachment that was a spray nozzle on the end of a hose, rinsed out the fully-drained left sink, and then put it back to pick up a scouring pad and begin the process of thoroughly scouring every last inch to ensure absolutely no trace of broken glass could have been missed.

While he did that, Bully wiped off his many hands, threw the cloth he used over his shoulder, and walked to the back of the kitchen, where there was a door on the back of the left wall. He went into the small storage room empty-handed and likewise came out empty-handed less than a minute later, to go back to his workstation and continue where he left off.

On his way past, X glanced up at him in the middle of his scrubbing, but was far too angry to give curious thought to what he did for more than a second.

As soon as X was done his thorough clean of the sink, he took off his gloves and apron and grabbed the bucket of scraps to put them in the same storage room Bully just left from; so he could finally release some of his pent-up anger by cursing and loudly complaining in privacy. But when he got inside the dimly lit room, he stopped and stared wide-eyed at a solid glowing yellow circle on the wall to his right.

A portal.

X slowly shut the heavy metal door behind his back, and stood perfectly still, examining the yellow mystic light of the portal.

Judging by the color, this was a special portal that only certain people had access to open (like it was now). And on the brick wall above it it, in big letters, were the words:

‘KEEP OUT!’

X didn’t take his eyes off the solid yellow glowing orifice that - like many other portals and unlike the entrance portal at Run of the Mill - when opened he couldn’t see through.

There was only one way to find out what was on the other side.

X had every intention of walking straight past the portal to dump the bucket of scraps into the big bin in the corner on the other side of it; but instead stopped right in front of the glowing light, stood facing it, and absent-mindedly reached into the bucket to take out a big piece leftover pizza crust.

“They don’t have a terrorworm pit. That leads to the magma fields or a vortex portal or something,” X told himself. But he couldn’t stop staring.

Without taking his eyes off the yellow light, X finished walking up to the big bin and dumped the scraps from the bucket into it; but he kept ahold of the pizza crust in his right hand.

Instead of cursing and yelling in anger like he intended on doing when he first got in here, or returning to his job, X kept his eyes on the portal, slowly laid the bucket down, and then stood up straight to continue staring at the yellow light.

“They don’t really have a terrorworm pit,” he said a little louder, trying to reassure himself.

Without realizing what he was doing, he absently reached his left hand down to scratch a phantom pain in his nonexistent left leg.

The one that was chomped off in a Battle Nexus fight.

When his fingers made contact with the cool metal instead of his flesh, he looked down at it in surprise; his mind having been too numb to realize his mistake until now.

X straightened up again, raised his right hand to hold up the pizza scrap close to his chest, and followed the beckoning of his disbelieving mind by taking one big step ahead, right through the portal.

‘They don’t really have giant razor-fanged terrorworms. Seňor Hueso was just pulling my leg.’

. . .

X came out the other side on a four foot wide metal plank that was eighteen feet long from where he stood, and looked like what one would expect to find on a yokai mystic pirate ship.

Along the edges to the left and right were straight poles with silvery, reflective spheres attached to the top of them. Each one was about four feet apart with a thick ship’s rope linking them together, about waist high, to act as a barrier to stop anyone from accidentally walking off one of the sides and plummeting far below.

The plank was protruding from the wall where the portal was, only it wasn’t a wall. On this side (wherever this was) X was inside a huge circular cavern with solid rock stretching straight up to a dark, curved rock ceiling far above his head. And even further straight down the smooth, sheer rock surface, was the bottom.

The ‘Battle Nexus champ’ stepped ahead one step before stopping, with his eyes glued straight ahead at the unbarricaded open end. He leaned over the side of one of the ropes and tore his eyes away from the end to gaze down below.

Hundreds of feet down was a sandy bottom that reminded X of something he had seen once before. He absently scratched at his prosthetic again while glancing up at the glowing orange-red rocky 'walls' that kept the cavern sufficiently lit, with special glowing rocks or algae or mystic energy of some kind. Then he stopped the scratching he didn’t even realize he had been doing, straightened up, and put his eyes ahead on the end of the plank once more.

X fidgeted with the pizza scrap held up close to his chest and let the fingers of his left hand graze along the top of the rope as he took one slow, purposeful step forward after another. When he finally reached the end, he rested his hand on the last metal sphere and looked straight ahead at the glowing rock on the other side of the cave.

Stretching out his right hand in front of him, X swallowed nervously to relieve the tension in his throat, just before spreading apart his fingers to let the food scrap drop from his grasp. Then he gripped the knob tighter and looked down to watch it fall far, far below.

Before it even reached the sand, there was an explosion of life when the huge, gaping, circular jaw of a six foot long, giant razor-fanged terrorworm filled with curved, razor sharp teeth (teeth that could slice through bone with a single chomp) burst out of the sand. The teeth lined all sides of the inside of its mouth like the edges of a giant drill, and in one chomp it ate the scrap and disappeared back under the sand again.

The numbness X felt was replaced with terror, and his pupils shrank into tiny dots at the horrific sight, just before the sand came alive with the movements of dozens of terrorworms hidden underneath. It looked like a tawny-brown ocean with a reddish hue, filled to the brim with a school-full of tightly packed fish that were thrashing around because there wasn't enough room for them all to fit.

X’s eyes widened fearfully when his brain finally caught up to his vision and he gripped the silvery knob so hard it was difficult to tell where it ended and his hand began.

Instead of high-tailing it out of there, X was frozen from fear, with the memory of the traumatic day he lost his leg in the Battle Nexus flashing before his eyes.

The memory of his very first - and last - giant razor-fanged terrorworm fight.

The floor of the Battle Nexus was made up of a deep layer of sand for this particular high-profile fight. He was only eight years old at the time, but had already proven himself to be worthy of the challenge with his lengthy win streak.

One that he didn’t know was about to be broken.

He thought he was prepared, he thought he was ready. But he was really overconfident. And that was his undoing.

The creeping young ninja stepped so silently, carefully, and delicately he never made a sound and barely even left a footprint behind; but that was when it happened.

He foolishly crack a crooked smile and gloated over his ‘greatness’ with a joke; saying it so quietly it hardly even reached his ears. But his overconfident slip-up made tiny vibrations come from his mouth that the sensitive hair-like sensors covering the terrorworm’s entire body picked up on.

“Terrorworm? More like terror-bull, because this fight is so terrible I’m going to die from boredom if this thing doesn’t…”

Suddenly out of nowhere, the gaping mouth full of serrated, razor sharp teeth exploded out of the sand. But on that day, it appeared directly below his left foot, and it didn’t chomp down and leave with a piece of pizza crust in it’s mouth. Instead it chomped down and disappeared under the sand with the majority of a mutant turtle’s left leg.

Big Mama - who fully comprehended his potential for years worth of crowd-pleasing greatness - immediately ordered an end to the match; which was quite rare for the Battle Nexus in all the many years it had been entertaining yokai with bloody and gory entertainment.

In a moment that seemed like a blur to the potentially mortally wounded kid turtle, a metal grating floor extended out about two feet beneath the surface of the sand from opposite sides, to meet in the middle. The ring was then drained, taking the terrorworm with it, and X was left behind on the metal grating, bleeding out and missing a limb. He was rushed to the medic and only saved in time thanks to the ingenious design of his superior mutant body.

The first few days after his attack, Big Mama hardly left his side and his ‘doting auntie’ did exactly that, by doting on him. That was until Draxum got fed up with her behavior and the round-the-clock medical care his turtle slave received; citing that her unnecessary babying over what amounted to nothing more than a 'fixable' injury would soften his last remaining mutant warrior, making him too emotionally weak to properly fight again; and he absolutely insisted X return to him at once for immediate rehabilitation.

Back in the cavern, as soon as X got enough control of his shocked, terror-filled mind to react, he turned tail and bolted for the portal in a panic. But when he got there, he ended up smacking straight into the rock wall, not realizing in his terror the glowing yellow light was gone.

Because someone shut the portal from the other side.

“NONONONO!” He frantically felt around the warm, bumpy, vertical rock surface, in a futile attempt at searching for any way out, any weak spot, anything that would get him out of the monster’s dinner room. But at the sound of a deep rumbling coming from the terrorworms far below, he spun around in fear with his arms, the palms of both hands, and his injured back pressed firmly against the rock wall, and his eyes darting around for any sign of a mouth full of razor sharp teeth coming at him; willing himself to sink through the rock behind his back. But, of course, that didn't occur; and the thought of attempting to use his portals likewise didn't once enter his mind, because of how panic-stricken he was.

(Not that his ninpo ever worked for him when he was exceptionally stressed)

X abruptly snapped his head up next, and gazed his wide, petrified eyes around above the cave ceiling, from the sound of a voice coming out from some kind of unseen speaker hidden somewhere amongst the rock.

Bully’s voice.

“Do ya know what we used to do on our ship to scallywags who stuck their nose in where it don’t belong?”

X gulped nervously.

“M… make them walk the plank?” he obediently answered.

There was the mechanical sound of motors whirling from somewhere within the rock wall behind his back, and X’s eyes snapped on the end of the plank when it began coming closer.

In his panic, he didn’t even realize he was doing this, but his feet were taking steps to keep him upright on the only walkable surface between him and the terrorworms far below, as it was gradually retreating into the wall.

X wanted to cry out for help, scream for it to stop, or beg for forgiveness from his grievous error, but he couldn’t find his voice in the moment. Not until the end of the plank that he couldn’t peel his eyes away from got dangerously close.

Then the sound of a blood-curdling scream reached his ears, but his whole body and mind was far too numb to register it was coming from him.

He heard the ear-piercing scream twice more, and when the end of the plank was within two feet of his toes, it came to an abrupt halt; two sets of big, broad hands slammed down on top of his shoulders and around his shell; and the giant terrorworm pit disappeared as he was pulled backwards, out of the death trap.

X’s flesh and bone leg felt like rubber at the realization he was out, but he was spared from collapsing onto the floor by Bully’s warm and firm grip, when he spun his body around to face him and the spent turtle collapse onto his chest, instead.

X was leaning ahead against Bully’s big, broad body with his likewise broad, muscular arms wrapped around him, sort of like a hug but really holding him up because he couldn’t stand under his own power.

He was still so terror-stricken - with his eyes wide open and his pupils tiny dots - that he didn’t realize tears were falling down his face that was smushed against the apron covering Bully’s chest; that he was tightly grasping the fabric on Bully’s clothes; or that he wasn’t taking in a single breath.

“Breathe Scrubs, just breathe boy.”

At the reassuring sound of Bully’s voice, X gasped in a sharp breath of warm air through his mouth, and that was when the room started spinning around him.

He hung onto whatever it was he was grasping for dear life and gasped in one deep breath after another; only doing so by the prompting of the disembodies voice repeatedly telling him to breathe.

Once his brain got sufficient oxygen the dizziness began to subside, and so did the total body numbness, which was replaced with a tingling sensation throughout. But his leg was still rubber and he was still leaning against Bully’s chest with his fists tightly gripping a shirt sleeve in his left hand and the brute yokai's apron in his right.

As soon as he realized the numbness was lifting and he got sufficient oxygen to compensate for his rapidly pounding heart, Bully patted him on his right arm (intentionally avoiding the badly burned carapace) and told him in his rough but kind voice: “Let it out kid.”

That was all the encouragement he needed for Leo's mind to fill with a flood of emotions that years worth of abuse and neglect brought with it...

...of bearing through the painful punishments without a cry of anguish or word of complaint escaping his lips…

...of pushing through the pain, the laborious slave work, the heavy burden of bearing responsible for taking another life... another death… another murder… another spectacular, crowd-pleasing finale in the gory Battle Nexus...

...of his unjust treatment of being tortured and severely burned because his owner was furious with his brothers and unjustly took it out on him. Of the unfairness of the powerful Baron Draxum doing whatever he pleased to his turtle slave with the law on his side and no one to stop him...

... of bearing the grief of witnessing or coming to know of his fellow slaves being beaten, starved, humiliated, and killed - some of whom were his comrades - all because their owners could do whatever they wanted to them, and the law was on their side...

...of holding it all in, sticking a smile on his face, and coping with humor, puns, and 'lame' one-liners. But not tears for fear his weakness would be spotted by - or reported to - the great and powerful Baron Draxum.

. . .

Until now.

Leo sobbed openly like he had never wept before in his life, his body heaving with each heart-wrenching sob. His eyes were spilling oceans worth of tears of bitter sorrow over the life he was forced to live; mournful regret over the blood he spilled; resentment against the only father he ever knew treating him like nothing more than a worthless slave - a numbered, unnamed experiment; of being abandoned by his biological dad, who could have given him a means of escape but instead took his three brothers and left him behind; and over everything else he felt in between.

He cried until his eyes were red and his face was sore from the constant stream of tears. He cried until his voice was hoarse and his chest felt sore and tight; until his body trembled and his hands went numb again from how tense his muscles were as he tightly gripped onto whatever it was clutched in his fists.

Until nothing made sense anymore and his insides felt like they were spilling out and his outsides felt like they were caving in.

Until time became nothing more than a forgotten concept that lost all meaning and seemed to stand still just for him; so he could stay in this moment and cry forever.

It wasn’t until the sobbing eventually tapered off, the spinning came to a complete stop, and the numb tingling in his body and mind eased off a little that he realized he was standing and not laying on the floor somewhere.

Where? he didn’t know anymore.

But he did know that he wasn’t standing under his own power at all because his rubber right leg and left thigh had melted into limp pools, unable to hold up a single soap bubble, let alone the heavy-shelled body of a mutant turtle.

Eventually his mind cleared a little more, just enough for him to realize he was only standing upright because someone was holding him up in his massive, pink, muscular arms.

Because Bully was respecting the unspoken rule of the streets, that fighters stay on their feet right up to the bitter end.

A downed fighter better be dead or as-good-as because there was no other excuse for - no sympathy extended to - those who fell under their own strength as a result of fear and not a mortal wound.

The only exception was something like this, when a fellow fighter held them up until they could stand under their own strength. Otherwise, those who trembled and collapsed from fear were labelled as cowards and ostracized from the fighting community for the rest of their lives (which usually didn’t end long afterward, because they became an easy target for whoever they angered over the years to pick off).

Once he saw that the seasoned fighter in his grip was mentally stabilized enough for his frayed mind to be able to process and comprehend what he had to say, Bully gave Scrubs another reassuring pat on his arm and said in an unusually soft, kind (perhaps even tender) tone of voice:

"There you go, kid. That oughta take care of the murderous rage for a good long while."

"I don't kill to blow off steam," X bluntly and immediately replied in a monotonous tone, before taking two more deep breaths through his mouth and added through a shaky voice: "But... but I needed this."

Bully correctly took Scrubs' comment about killing to mean: 'I only murder when I have to because I'm a slave, I don't have any other choice, and I hate myself for it.' In reply, he patted his comrade on the shoulder, and softly said: "You're somethin' else, kid."

That small, gentle but firm pat was a respectful reminder that X could stand under his own strength now; because it helped focus his half numb mind on the fact Bully noticed before him the trembling in his likewise half numbed body had settled down sufficiently.

X nodded his head slightly and grasped Bully's clothes tighter to push his chest up and off his support beam; but before moving he swallowed the tiny bit of saliva in his dry, pasty mouth, and opened it to say in another flat, monotonous tone: "Don't tell Hueso. He reports to Draxum, and he'll kill me for being weak."

At any other time, X wouldn't have uttered those words, but as circumstances changed so did viewpoints, and he believed what he said was true - at least for however long Draxum stayed furiously angry with Leo's brothers over the latest setbacks and challenges he faced, as a direct result of their unscheduled visit to his lab.

A large part of him wondered if he had been sent away because Draxum didn't know if he currently lacked the 'perfect' self-control he normally displayed so as not to waste years worth of time, work, and resources by killing his turtle slave creation in the heat of anger for no good reason at all.

The turtle who reminded him of his three failed mutant turtle experiments, who should have rightfully been his property because he created them, but who turned from what also should have been allied slaves into pesky antagonists. The ones who threw his own shortcomings and failures in his face, who were living proof that in one night one pathetic caged human was stronger and smarter and faster than him, and capable of destroying all his hard work by escaping his ingenious confines, stealing his most valuable creations, and leaving his lab incinerated by a fiery inferno.

"I'd tell you Hueso don't report to Draxum but you won't believe it; and you might be a lot of things, but weak ain't one of them."

X let out a muffled humm in reply and - more as an acknowledgement than agreement - he nodded his head so slightly Bully didn't know he had done it.

Next he pushed himself up onto his steady, but still shaky body, keeping himself in the position where any sort of eye contact was impossible with the way he stared off to his left when Bully's head was on his right, and how he staying so close to Bully's chest his skin and shell were still brushing up against his clothes. He was also still grasping Chef's shirt and apron so tightly in his fists it seemed like his fingers must have frozen off from how numb they felt.

Incidentally, ruffians never, under any circumstances, hugged one another.

That was why this wasn't a hug. This was one ex-pirate steadying a fellow comrade because that was how they kept each other alive and kicking; able to fight another day on the cold, hard streets; protecting your own because in the end you knew that was all you really had worth fighting for.

"How did you know?" X asked, keeping his blank stare on the small glint of light reflecting off the blade of a butcher knife in the dimly lit room, to give his frazzled mind something to focus on.

"We got recordings of your fights when we tracked you down," Bully explained, referring to him and Hueso. "Watched every one of 'em. You're sure somethin' else, kid. Ain't never seen anybody fight like that since Lou Jitsu was in the ring."

"I hate myself," Leo volunteered at the many traumatic memories of him maiming, torturing, bludgeoning, mutilating, and murdering failed half-mutated human experiments under Draxum's command; and doing likewise to yokai in the gory Battle Nexus ring, for no other reason than to 'further his training' and put on a spectacular show too appease the masses of blood-thirsty crowds.

Paying blood-thirsty crowds.

Bully patted his upper arm and gently said a kind but firm: "Get on your feet now and don't go sayin' nothin' you'll later regret."

X nodded his head and pulled away; not realizing until then that at some point he began drooling on Bully's apron from the smell of freshly baked pizza, that he realized now was coming from a pizza box on the floor and not Chef Bully's clothes or apron. He also noticed for the first time that the yellow light of the bright portal was gone, because the portal was shut off and locked again.

X wiped the drool off his chin with the back of his ninja wrapped right hand and then walked away from his 'physical and emotional crutch for the day;' being sure to step further into the room, closer to the knife he had been staring at, so he couldn't see Bully's . . . anything.

Bully understood the unspoken rule of respect that didn't allow a ruffian to look at another ruffian who was 'getting the blood out of their eyes' and walked ahead to clasp the knob of the heavy metal door in his hand.

Staring straight ahead at the gray steel door so he couldn't see X, Bully said: "Some idiot ordered the wrong toppings for his pizza. Blamed the kitchen staff like the scallywag he is. Hueso gave him another pizza just to shut him up and get rid of him, but that leaves all my hard work down the drain with the one he wouldn't eat. It really gets under my skin when I gotta throw out good food with the scraps. What a waste."

Bully left and firmly closed the door behind him. When he was gone Leo got the hint and turned around. At first, all he did was look at the box. But then, ever so slowly, he walked over to it, sat his trembling body cross-legged on the floor, and opened the lid to begin eating.

And from that day on there was a new understanding between the two of them. Namely:

Bully would respect X's emotional boundaries by not prying into his personal life or asking questions that were best kept private...

...And X respected that Bully wouldn't hurt him or turn against him, even when he was weak, trembling, scared, and vulnerable; and that he was someone he could safely turn to in times of need.

And that was when their budding relationship that was somewhat a mixture of work associates, fellow comrades, and close friends, first bloomed into a beautiful flower one could get close enough to look at and smell; but not touch...

...because that would be crossing the invisible line drawn between them.

🔹🔹🔹

🔹<<previous || next>>

🔹 Where Loyalties Lie masterpost

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #shaotie #shattered_ontheinside #au

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brightbeautifulthings · 1 year ago

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Katzenjammer by Francesca Zappia

"They're all so dark, Dad said one day, watching over my shoulder as I worked at the kitchen table. Why don't you paint things like a blue sky, or a field of flowers, or a bird flying on a breeze? Something happy that your mom can put on the fridge. She can put these on the fridge, I said. Maybe just one flower? he asked. There are no flowers where I live, I said."

Year Read: 2023

Rating: 4/5

About: Cat has been stuck in School for as long as she can remember. The hallways slowly expand and contract with School's breathing, the showers run red with blood, and the students have divided themselves into changed and unchanged. While the unchanged hide in the fortress of administration, Cat and her friends haunt the courtyard and hallways. Her best friend is turning into cardboard, and Cat's face has become a cat mask made of her own hardened flesh. There are no doors or windows in or out of School, and something is hunting them down one by one in the hallways. To escape, Cat will have to understand why they're trapped in the first place. Trigger warnings: Some triggers are listed at the end of the review because they include spoilers. Character death, guns, violence, blood/gore, dismemberment, body/eye horror, bullying, slut-shaming, vandalism.

Thoughts: Thanks to @ninja-muse for recommending this book, since I'm not sure I would have found it on my own. This is probably my favorite Francesca Zappia novel to date, and one of the best novels on this subject I've ever read (more on that after the spoilers). However, I believe it's best to go into it not knowing much more than the description provides. This book works extremely well as a slow reveal. What starts out as a mindfuck becomes slow understanding as we realize more or less alongside Cat what is happening in School, and you'd be doing yourself a disservice to read the spoilers if you plan to read this. However, it covers a number of very heavy and potentially triggering topics (and it's difficult to gush about how I think it works without giving things away), so I'll include those thoughts at the end. I can't stress it enough though. If you're not easily triggered, stop here and go read this book!

This is also one of the best examples of uncanny horror that I've read in a long time. Zappia expertly manages to capture the quality of a nightmare without sacrificing the continuity. School is creepy and semi-sentient, and the changes it brings about in half the students are a study in body horror. Perhaps even more terrifying are the parallels it draws to some very real life horrors such as bullying and, indeed, I found the flashback chapters of Cat's surfacing memories of her former life of being targeted, bullied, and slut-shamed at school more difficult to get through than the surreal scenes of hacked up bodies or bloody showers in School. Real life horror always affects me a lot more than the supernatural, and Katzenjammer does an excellent job of balancing both. The ending is cathartic and effective, and there's less of a plot twist than a sort of inevitable, dawning horror-- which is honestly the best kind.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. TURN BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE.

Remember how I said that real life horror is always worse than the supernatural or the uncanny? I stand by that statement. Zappia draws such excellent parallels to real life in her uncanny School that it's almost impossible not to realize before Cat does that the traumatic event that put them there was a school shooting. I've read a couple YA novels that handled the subject fine, but I don't think any of them capture it as well as this one. We need something like the supernatural School and the horror of bodies changing in ways we can't explain to fully grasp the senseless horror of gun violence. Killing children makes no more sense than hallways that breathe or girls who turn into their cat masks. It takes Cat the entire novel to understand the horror and absurdity of what's been done to her and to accept it-- that there are reasons but not excuses, and that we will never know all of them. I cried a little at the end, but I think the real life horror of it is too big for tears. Instead, it's a feeling that will sit with me long after I've turned the last page.

#book review #francesca zappia #katzenjammer #ya horror #underrated books #4/5 #rating: 4/5 #2023 #ninja-muse

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the-writing-trash-panda · 2 years ago

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An unedited snippet of a new Ninjago fic I’m working on. The title is Fractured Bonds.

Skylor sat in the passenger seat of the red sports car, her hair tousled by the wind. Closing her eyes, she finally was able to relax. Running a noodle restaurant was exhausting. Feeling Kai place a hand on her thigh she smiled moving her hand to hold his.

“Fare warning, because Nya’s pregnant my mom might pester you about having kids,” Kai laughed as he thought about how excentric his mother could get.

Skylor squeezed Kai’s hand reassuringly, a laugh escaping her lips, “I’ll be sure to prepare for that.” Honestly, she didn’t care if Maya asked about kids, any conversation with her mother-in-law was an enjoyable one for Skylor, not to mention that she had found out she was actually pregnant and was waiting until they made it to the Smith’s residences in Ignacia to tell anyone.

As the couple pulled into the small rice-farming village the sun had begun its descent behind the horizon. Pulling up to the blacksmith shop Skylor saw that Nya and Maya were already waiting outside.

Nya, with a noticeable baby bump, waved excitedly as Skylor and Kai parked the car. Maya, Kai's mother, beamed at them, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.

"Skylor! Kai!" Nya called out, her voice filled with warmth. "So glad you could make it!"

Skylor and Kai stepped out of the car, the warm evening breeze gently playing with Skylor's hair once again. Kai put an arm around Skylor, and they walked towards Nya and Maya.

“Hey guys, it’s been a while. How’s everything at the restaurant?” Jay asked as he and Ray walked outside. Noticing his wife’s struggle to stand up Jay offered Nya a hand while Kai and Skylor embraced Maya.

“I mean other than the occasional shitty customer things have been going great,” Kai answered, walking over and giving Jay a fist bump. “What about you? CTO of Borg Industries, that’s pretty big.”

Jay grinned, reciprocating the fist bump. "Yeah, it's been a wild ride. But nothing beats the excitement of starting a family," he said, looking down at Nya, who had successfully stood up with his help.

Nya chuckled, placing a hand on her baby bump. "It's a whole new adventure for sure. I can't wait for our little ninja to join the team."

“Well why don’t you guys come on in, the soba is ready,” Ray said, ushering the rest of the Smith family inside.

As the family ate and laughed, Skylor couldn’t help but place a hand on her abdomen. Looking up when Maya addressed her, “So Skylor, have you and Kai given any more thought to having kids?”

Chuckling a bit, Skylor answered, “Funny you should mention that. We’re actually expecting.”

Maya's eyes widened with joy as she heard Skylor's announcement. She gasped, her hands flying to her mouth in delight. "Oh, Skylor! That's wonderful news! Kai, did you know about this?"

Kai grinned, shaking his head in amusement. “No, I’m assuming she wanted to tell everyone at the same time.”

Maya squealed with excitement, pulling Skylor into a tight hug. "I'm going to be a grandmother! This is amazing news! See Ray, I told you having the whole family get together for the holidays would be a good idea."

Ray chuckled, looking at Maya with a twinkle in his eye. "You always have a way of making things special, dear. Jay, you said your parents would be coming in tomorrow, correct?” Jay nodded, swallowing the dumpling he had shoved into his mouth so that he could talk.

"Yes, they're starting their drive tonight. I'm sure they'll be thrilled to hear the news," Jay replied, a big smile on his face.

Nya, still glowing with the excitement of impending motherhood, added, "It's going to be a full house for the holidays. I can't wait!"

Skylor smiled to herself as the warmth of the Smith house enveloped her. She couldn’t ask for a better family. Did she miss her dad, sure. But she would forever be grateful that Kai and the others helped her escape from the living hell that was Chen’s Island.

The evening continued with laughter, shared stories, and the comforting aroma of delicious food filling the Smith house. Skylor felt a deep sense of contentment as she sat among the people she now considered her family. The news of her pregnancy added an extra layer of joy to the gathering, and she couldn't have been happier to share the moment with Kai, Nya, and the rest of the Smiths.

As the night unfolded, the group gathered in the living room. Maya, beaming with pride, couldn't resist sharing anecdotes about Kai's childhood, much to his playful embarrassment. Skylor and Kai exchanged knowing glances, grateful for the warmth and love surrounding them.

In the midst of the festivities, the realization struck her: she had found a home, not just a place to live, but a family that welcomed her with open arms. The Smiths had become her anchors, providing love and support that she had never experienced before.

As the night wound down, Skylor and Kai found a quiet moment together. They stood on the porch, looking at the starry sky above the rice fields. The tranquility of the night mirrored the peace Skylor felt in her heart. Kai wrapped his arms around her, and together, they marveled at the journey that had brought them to this point.

As they gazed at the stars, Skylor whispered, "I'm grateful for everything, Kai. For you, for them," gesturing towards the lively house behind them.

Kai kissed her forehead, his voice soft, "And I'm grateful for you, Skylor. We've come a long way, haven't we?"

They stood there, hand in hand, embracing the moment and looking forward to the new chapter that awaited them. The future held uncertainties, but with the love of family and each other, Skylor and Kai felt ready to face whatever challenges lay ahead.

Unbeknownst to them a storm was brewing in the distant horizon, clouds gathering in ominous formations. Yet, in that serene moment on the porch, Skylor and Kai remained blissfully unaware of the approaching tempest.

The next morning, before the sun had even finished its ascension, the quiet atmosphere was disrupted by the roar of an engine and the bright Christmas lights strung around the car.

“Hey mum and dad. How was your drive?” Jay asked groggily as he walked out to greet his parents.

“Oh, you know, same as always. Your father got us lost and one of the headlights went out but we made it,” Edna replied, stepping out of The Jalopy and embracing her son.

“Good morning Mr. And Mrs. Walker, glad you could make it,” Nya grinned, slowly walking over to the Walkers.

“Oh, Nya dear! You should be resting, not worrying about us,” Edna said, trying to push the water ninja back inside.

“I’m fine, really. I'm just excited to have everyone together for the holidays," Nya reassured, gently resisting Edna's attempt to usher her back inside.

“Well you two got here just in time, I just finished the coffee,” Ray said as he helped Ed lug the bags inside.

The day was full of festivities, the woman making cookies and decorating the house while the men went out to cut down a tree.

The evening culminated in a grand feast, where the extended family gathered around a table adorned with dishes that represented a fusion of cultures. The air was filled with gratitude, stories, and the clinking of glasses.

“Well the first day of the family gathering was a success!” Jay announced, his cheerful smile faltering when there was a panicked knock at the door.

“I’ll go get it,” Maya offered, pushing her chair away from the table and walking away to the entrance of the house.

Opening the door she let out a small gasp. In front of her stood an old friend. Her blonde hair was disheveled and her blue eyes were looking around frantically as if she was being followed.

Maya's expression shifted from surprise to concern as she recognized the distressed figure at the door. Without hesitation, she ushered her old friend inside, closing the door behind her.

“Ray, could you come here for a minute,” Maya called to her as she sat the other woman on the couch.

Walking into the living room Ray’s smile fell when he saw the other person, “Libber, what are you doing here? Didn’t you leave to Cancester Isles with the intention of never returning?”

Libber looked up at Ray, her eyes filled with a mix of desperation and regret. "Ray, I didn't plan on coming back, but things have changed. I need your help. It's about Chen and a threat that could affect everyone."

Ray's expression hardened, and he exchanged a serious glance with Maya. The festive atmosphere of the family gathering hung in the air, momentarily disrupted by the unexpected arrival and the weight of unresolved history.

“Hey, is everything okay in here,” Kai asked as the others walked in.

“Not exactly, but before I explain I believe introductions are in order.” The room was blanketed with a tense atmosphere, “Everyone this is Libber and Libber the only one you don’t know is Skylor.” Maya said, gesturing to the redhead.

Libber nodded at the introductions, her eyes scanning the faces in the room and quickly dropping when she saw Jay.

Jay, sensing the tension, spoke up, "Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Libber. What brings you to Ignacia?"

Libber took a deep breath, her eyes avoiding Jay's gaze. "I never thought I'd return, but I discovered something that poses a threat to everyone here. It's about Chen returning, the possibility of Nerola still being alive and a dangerous plot. I need your help.”

Skylor’s heart started racing at the mention of her parents and the possibility of them no longer being dead.

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