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dear-yandere · 5 years ago

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aphrodisiac. [kinktober]

yandere! mafia boss! dazai x f! reader. not sfw (18+) scenario. tw: noncon, dissociation, mind break, aphrodisiacs, gunplay. disclaimer: this is not a healthy relationship.

part 1 — part 2 (here)

dazai’s eyes were devoid of any regrets about drugging you; rather, they were brimming with unparalleled excitement and lust. you wanted to feel disgusted, to feel violated and angry, but you couldn’t. part of you always wanted to be taken by this man even though these circumstances weren’t what you had in mind; still, you found yourself almost enjoying the way his body pressed against yours as if baring it all for your taking. you wanted to blame your attraction on the drugs, but you knew you didn’t mind this side of him, as scary as it was. perhaps you knew this day would come, where he’d invariably snap and claim you as his like he always threatened he would whenever you’d misbehave.

and you’d misbehaved to the highest degree, having tried to escape.

brown eyes met yours with a sickening look of sheer love, forcing you out of your reverie. a gloved finger rested on your lip, idly playing with it as if it were a delicate flower whose petals could fall at any moment. “try to stay quiet, i’ll be gentle.” his voice seemed ethereal and distant under the influence of the mixed drugs, but you somehow heard it loud and clear. in fact, it was the only thing you could hear clearly, no doubt a side-effect of the drugs he’d forced down your throat.

dazai chuckled when you slowly nodded and leaned into his warm touch, his finger tracing the contours of your face like you were an exquisite art piece. just seeing you like this, eyes cloudy and practically begging for him, nearly made him lose control -- but he wanted to savor this moment just a bit longer. it’s not everyday he gets to fuck his beloved any place other than the bedroom -- no one else was allowed to see you so vulnerable, after all.

before you could process it all, soft lips danced across your skin in a skillful and passionate display, peppering your collarbone and jawline with gentle nips and chaste pecks. paradoxical feelings bubbled in your stomach at how gently he was handling you despite how messed up this situation was. even without the drugs, he was a master at making you feel conflicted, both yearning for him and disgusted by him.

“don’t look at me like that, darling.” he ordered, hating the way your spiteful glare contrasted the pretty blush on your cheeks and the eager bite of your lips. “this is for your own good. once i make you mine, you’ll see how foolish trying to leave was.” his voice was making you dizzy, but you nodded in agreement despite your better wishes, your expression softening as if simply by his command.

he smiled approvingly. “i love when you’re a good girl. you love me too, right?”

another quick nod, this time accompanied by a delirious smile. it’s true you loved him dearly, but you loved yourself more. leaving was the only way to ensure your survival, but even before knowing of his affiliation with the port mafia, you couldn’t have chosen a more dangerous person to fall in love with. he would never let you go that easily and the drugs altering your mind proved the lengths he’d go to ensure that.

you gasped when cold steel pressed against your panties, vaguely remembering that he had a loaded gun and he fully intended on threatening you with it. you squirmed against the barrel as he lightly rubbed it down your clothed clit, curiously pushing your panties to the side. against the cold air of the warehouse, the steel barrel nearly made you clamp your legs shut had dazai not been holding them apart with his hand and elbow.

“ah ah ah, be a good girl. this’ll be fun, you even lubricated the gun wonderfully.” he chuckled and eyed the still-wet barrel before cautiously pressing the gun against your opening, careful to move your folds apart and slowly work the barrel in. he didn’t want to ruin you -- that’s best saved for later. you hissed at the intrusion, tears speckling your eyes as he pushed the gun further into your warmth. the gun’s girth was far larger than dazai, the latter of which was already so well-endowed it took weeks to get used to his size... especially when he never cared to fully get you in the mood whenever he felt like fucking you senseless.

he waited patiently, like a wolf basking in the fear of its cornered prey, as he let you grow accustomed to the desert eagle’s size. much to his surprise, you hungrily bucked into the barrel with ease. “oh? i didn’t know my darling was so lewd. did i prepare my pet well?” his laughter echoed off the walls as he reminisced about all the wonderful times he shared with you behind closed doors. licking his lips in anticipation, he steadily increased the speed and watched in awe as you met each thrust like a whore that had been starved of pleasure for a mere few days.

“i’m so happy we’re bonding like this. i’m learning so much about you...” his hot breath tickled your ear, the warmth of which quickly radiated in your cheeks. “things i could never hope to learn just by watching.”

your stomach nearly dropped realizing the insinuations of those words, the reality of the situation finally setting in -- he’d been watching you, following you, ruining your life for far longer than he’d let on -- but he didn’t relent in the near-violent thrusts of his gun. pleasure was quickly conquering the fear you desperately tried to cling to. giving in meant you were no longer human, nothing more than a puppet in his hand or a pawn in his game of chess. or, perhaps you were his queen. ironic, for even though the queen was far more powerful than the king in chess, he’d easily overpowered you. without the king, the game cannot go on, and dazai had every intention of playing this game until the bitter end.

you were going down with him, and him with you.

but god, did the way he used you feel divine. each breathy and conflicted moan was met with a soft and restrained whine from him as he watched you soak the large gun and his fingers with hot cum. pleasure coursed through your body like thundering rapids, and the delightful quiver of your hips and thighs was almost too much for the seasoned mafioso. he wanted to bury his face between your legs, to flick his tongue over your heat and listen to your adorable little moans reverberate down your body. he wanted to see you flustered, submissive, helpless -- he wanted to make you completely his.

the gun was quickly becoming a hindrance to dazai, but he liked seeing you enjoy being fucked by his weapon. the way it stretched your skin looked so painful and yet... so delightful. his erection throbbed as if in response to seeing your folds coil around the gun barrel, seemingly trying to suck the entire thing deeper into your core with every thrust. he licked his lips, an impatient and earnest itching shooting to the head of his penis.

he couldn’t take it anymore. patience had always been a virtue, just as much as masks and acting was second nature, but even those years of experience didn’t matter when you came into the equation.

with a final thrust into your abused pussy, he pulled the gun out, earning a pained groan from your parted and bruised lips. the notches and edges of the firearm left an uncomfortable sensation on your insides when he’d harshly pulled it out without warning, the sheer size of the gun leaving your entrance slightly agape -- ready for everything he had to offer.

“someone’s eager~” he chirped and raised the gun to his pink lips, tongue already darting out to lap up your cum. you watched through half-lidded eyes, your own tongue hanging out of your mouth like a bitch in heat, wanting nothing more than to have his tongue on you... in you.

“don’t worry my love, i’ll give you what you want. but first...” he leaned in, sadistic smile finally reaching eyes which shone with his true colors. with his thumb, he traced the contour of your lips, following the beautifully split curves that had resulted from weeks of biting born out of paranoia. nevertheless, you were entranced.

“beg for it.”

you didn’t have to think twice -- you couldn’t, not when the drugs had reached their zenith, forcing you to feel things you could hardly comprehend. you slipped your fingers into his hair, caressing his lightly tousled and curled strands impatiently. your lips parted before you could think, already mewling and begging the mafioso to fuck you senseless.

“p-please...”, you whined and desperately tried to buck into his hips, wishing he would finally undress himself. being the only one naked felt awfully lonely. but he only clicked his tongue in malcontent and moved slightly backwards.

“please what, belladonna?”

“please me!” your voice echoed in the near empty warehouse as your thighs clasped around his waist, struggling to bring him closer. he hummed blissfully and let your thighs latch around his waist, your pleads building a fire within him. “touch me! do me! fuck me, please, dazai!”

his smile was predatory. whatever self-restraint he’d built up had shattered upon hearing your sweet and needy mewls. one thrust and he was buried deep inside you, your slick allowing him to slide in with ease. you let out an elated moan, dazai following in your stead as your hips rutted into his to meet each thrust. your eyes lolled into your head, the sensation of his entire length filling you up practically setting your nerves on fire.

“mm, how i missed this, dear.” he leaned into your ear, his husky and low voice musing sweet moans and whispers of how much he loved you, how you no longer belonged to anyone but him. his words, his presence, his sheer love for you was on full display-- so beguiling it left you no choice but to shamelessly purr in agreement and press into him, marveling at the way your heated bodies intermingled, held together by a thin sheen of sweat across your chests.

his nails dug deep into the tender flesh of your hips, but pain refused to register in your head at this point. the drugs had your vision swirling, fading from black to clear every so often as his body violently and harshly bucked into yours. the only thing you could see, the only thing you needed in life, was him.

his moans were intoxicating as they were blithe, easily stroking and reigniting the lust that had caught in knots within your stomach. whether it was an aftereffect of the drug or from the smothered acknowledgement that you were being raped by the monster who’d taken everything from you, your stomach twisted with indignation and detestation. you wanted to throw up, to close your eyes and pretend this wasn’t happening, to pretend this was no longer you -- but the drugs he’d forced down your throat had brought out a carnal side of you, a side that delighted in how carelessly and reprehensibly he took your innocence from you.

“my belladonna…” his tongue prodded against your neck in hot, wet bursts. you squeezed your eyes shut as his gentle love bites stung as if to leave marks for days to come, your senses heightened by the aphrodisiacs. looking up at you through dim light that pooled into the abandoned warehouse, his eyes were lusty with satisfaction. “you don’t know how long i’ve waited for this, love. i-i can hardly hold myself back, much less drag this out for too long, unfortunately...” he bit at his lips, straining to keep himself from cumming too soon.

instead, he embraced you, allowing himself to enjoy your warmth and scent. your perfume was just as he imagined it, the light sheen of sweat coating your body was proof of how scared you were, but the cum staining your inner thighs and his dazai’s dick was proof of how much you were enjoying him. paradoxical and confusing emotions had blurred your foggy mind, leaving you with remnants of what was right and wrong. you shouldn’t be enjoying this -- you didn’t want to be enjoying this -- not when the bucking of your hips and the parting of your lips was not your own.

you hated this. you hated him. but right now that didn’t matter, and you hated that too.

you’d asked for this, but it was hard not to screw your eyes shut and try to forget about what was happening. you wanted to imagine he was someone else, or that he was someone you actually loved in the first place, or that this was all a fever nightmare -- but you couldn’t. your senses were heightened beyond a boundary you didn’t know you had; whatever drugs he’d used were potent and you only hoped they wouldn’t kill you at this rate.

then again, perhaps death was preferable at this point. whatever he had in mind when he was finished would surely be along the lines of keeping you like a beloved pet for his entertainment.

“don’t close your eyes, belladonna.” he cut into your thoughts with that sultry voice that seemed all the more euphoric and irresistible under the influence of aphrodisiacs. despite yourself, you audibly whined when he stopped fucking you, waiting for you to follow his command like a good girl. it was surely only a few seconds, but the suffocating silence and the sickening heat of his body pressing into yours felt like the length of an entire war -- one which you lost. he smiled, unable to resist a small chuckle when you finally opened your eyes, still avoiding his gaze. “good girl. now watch me make you mine, darling. this will be the norm from now on anyway.”

your lips trembled, successfully resisting a moan, when he continued his ministrations, fingers harshly digging into and grabbing your hips for better access. the sounds of sex -- the slapping of skin, the gross sound of his cock rubbing against your slick cunt, his feverish moans coupled with the ones you couldn’t hold behind closed lips -- it almost felt like forever. dissociating from the situation was surprisingly easy, eyes now wide open -- if only to make this go by faster -- and pinned to the steel beams of the warehouse ceiling. his moans, ragged and animalistic, were fuel for the sickening heat pooling within your abdomen, but there was nothing you could do to drown out your own sounds of pleasure. part of you wanted to scream for help, scream in pain and agony from being taken so ruthlessly by a man who could ruin your life with a snap of his fingers, but that part of you was stifled to near-death under the influence of his black market drugs and the weight of pleasure you didn’t want.

you thought -- hoped -- he’d leave you thereafter he’d had his way with you. but fate was not kind to you; in fact, it liked to watch you suffer. that much was apparent when a playful spark of curiosity flashed across umber brown eyes.

“rid your thoughts of any prospect of escaping, belladonna. you’ll never get far. i’ll chase you to hell and drag you back myself if i must.”

the cold metal he pressed against your left hand was a welcome change to the overwhelming heat of your body... until you felt a tight, clenching sensation wrap around your heart, realization dawning upon you. renewed panic shot through you when he laid an insouciant and loving kiss upon your new engagement ring. his eyes flashed with sadistic bemusement as they rose to meet your frightened gaze. the emotion in his eyes was frightening, a flux of intense adoration and obsession.

“till death do us part, yes?”

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allaboardtheloonyexpress · 4 years ago

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I Rewrite “The Force Awakens”

BACKGROUND INFO:

It has been thirty years since the Battle of Endor. The NEW REPUBLIC rules most of the Galaxy. However, the Republic is spread thin fighting Imperial Holdout factions, which still control pockets of the Outer Rim and key worlds along hyperspace routes. Fortunately, none of these Holdouts are currently working together. The largest surviving holdout is the FIRST ORDER, which holds a large portion of the Southwest Galaxy. Worst of all, they are working on what looks like a Death Star, STARKILLER BASE. Because of this threat, the New Republic has sent a group of Special Forces, led by General LEIA ORGANA to take down the FIRST ORDER, led by the mysterious REGENT SNOKE. Rumors imply SNOKE is a powerful Force-User, as is his apprentice, REY. Unfortunately, LUKE SKYWALKER, the last JEDI KNIGHT is nowhere to be found. He disappeared seven years ago. The last person to see him was his apprentice and nephew, BEN SOLO, who has been looking for him ever since…

PLOT SUMMARY:

The movie opens largely the same. POE DAMERON is visiting JAKKU, a planet on the border between NEW REPUBLIC and FIRST ORDER space, meeting LOR SAN TEKKA, picking up a map to Luke’s whereabouts. Unfortunately, the meeting is interrupted by REY, who has arrived with a battalion of Stormtroopers, which includes FN-2187. You know the scene. POE DAMERON is taken captive, but not before he gives the map to BB-8, instructing him to “Find Ben. Get help.” The dialogue between REY and LOR SAN TEKKA lets us know this is her homeworld. She was abandoned here as a child before LUKE SKYWALKER found her and took her away. She leaves the village after ordering it destroyed, returning to her Star Destroyer.

There, she meets with her subordinates, ADMIRAL HUX, CAPTAIN PHASMA, and FN-2187. There, they go over the fact that they failed to get the map, but they suspect POE had a companion on JAKKU. The basics of the politics are explained: right now the REPUBLIC is stretched too thin to give the FIRST ORDER their full attention. However, the REPUBLIC is slowly taking out the other Imperial holdouts, and certain Senators are calling for a full-scale invasion of FIRST ORDER SPACE. The call to invade is particularly being made by the Senator from HOSNIAN PRIME. “HOSNIAN PRIME?” HUX asks. “That’s in the Core itself, practically next to Coruscant. The entire Republic fleet must stand between us and them.” His frown turns into a wicked grin, and he only says one word. “Perfect.” No further detail is given. The conversation turns to FN-2187, and why he’s here. Rey reveals her plan: POE DAMERON must escape with FN’s help. His ability to shield his mind from the Force will allow him to infiltrate the NEW REPUBLIC base under the nose of BEN SOLO. He will then let the NEW REPUBLIC know where to find LEIA so they can kill her, destroying their morale. More importantly, FN is to get his hands on the map to LUKE SKYWALKER.

FN does as he is told. He helps POE break out, notably avoiding shooting his fellow STORMTROOPERS. POE gives FN the new name of FINN. FINN is notably struck by this, in a “I’ve never had a name before” kind of way. However, their escape is detected, and the TIE squadrons shoot them down, and POE seems to die. FINN is left stranded in the JAKKU desert. However, he finds BB-8, who has been in the care of BEN SOLO, who we see on screen for the first time. We learn he has been trying to find a ship offworld, as POE had their ride. The scene then unfolds largely the same as before. FINN and BEN make their way offworld in the MILLENIUM FALCON. With neither being an experienced pilot, they get lost, sending the MILLENIUM FALCON quite a ways off course into the OUTER RIM, which is dominated by Pirates. Speaking of Pirates, a group of them capture our heroes, and declare their intention to sell the ship (and its crew) on the black market. They were, in fact, just about to sell some other stolen goods to some dealers that are arriving now… except these dealers start firing on the pirates. Meanwhile, the pirate ship is taken and boarded by the leader of these vigilantes… HAN SOLO, with the ever faithful CHEWBACCA at his side. We learn that HAN has dedicated himself to hunting down the pirates and slavers that prey on the innocent people of the OUTER RIM, since the NEW REPUBLIC won’t pay attention to this area. His vigilante crew includes PAIGE TICO, who led the shootout while HAN disabled the ship. (ROSE is also among them, but apart from a mention by PAIGE perhaps, we won’t see her.)

It is only then that HAN realizes that one of the people he has rescued is his own son, BEN. The two of them catch up on the FALCON, with FINN as their guest. We hear FINN’S cover story: he is a child soldier who didn’t like how expendable he was. We get a feeling he may be lying to himself. From their conversation, we learn the following: when BEN was four, he was sent to live with LUKE to train to be a Jedi. HAN was so angry at losing his son that he left LEIA, and admits that he still hasn’t forgiven her for separating them. For some years, BEN trained as a JEDI along with several other children, including, sadly, REY. For some reason, one day REY snapped, and killed her fellow students, with BEN being the only surviving student. (He was fourteen, by the way. REY was eighteen.) The only other survivor, LUKE, found BEN among the wreckage. He told BEN to go find his mother, while he would “do something I should have done years ago.” BEN obeyed, but never saw LUKE again. BEN says he is following LUKE’S trail to a lost JEDI TEMPLE. HAN expresses skepticism. If LUKE was doing anything useful, where is he now? HAN invites BEN to rest and recuperate with his old friend, MAZ KANATA.

Meanwhile, we go to STARKILLER BASE. It is a large base, similar to the DEATH STAR in all aspects, save one. Above the main laser, there is a strange metal ring. (It must be featured prominently in the shot.) REY arrives, accompanied by her underlings, and is met by COMMANDER PRYDE, a spymaster of the FIRST ORDER. The conversation establishes that the FIRST ORDER rose to prominence because they came across some mysterious weapons depots and Imperial credit stores that allowed them to quickly rebuild their forces. They have continued, in fact, to have more lucky finds like this. PRYDE’S job has been to determine if they have a mysterious benefactor, and what he wants. PRYDE’S travels have taken him “from Kamino to Moraband.” He admits he has found nothing, and asks if STARKILLER BASE is ready. HUX confirms it is, and says, “The GATE RING should function perfectly.” PRYDE leaves for BASTION, the FIRST ORDER capital, before letting REY know her master, REGENT SNOKE, is waiting for her.

We cut from that to TAKODANA, where we meet MAZ KANATA. BEN asks MAZ to contact LEIA to meet them there, and let her know POE is dead. Exploring, he discovers ANAKIN’S lightsaber, which triggers a flashback. He is a child, eating with his fellow students. REY walks in, clearly cut up and hurt. One student confronts her, asking where LUKE is. “LUKE is dead. Get out of my way or you’ll be too.” Scared, the students try to take her down, but she cuts through them like butter. Terrified, BEN is backed into a corner. She tries to persuade him to put down his sword, but he brings down the building on them both. Later, he is found by LUKE and R2-D2. The flashback ends with MAZ meeting him. She gives him the lightsaber, as she feels it is his birthright. Finally, FINN calls the FIRST ORDER, letting them know the Map, BEN SOLO and LEIA are all about to be on the same planet.

Sorry to cut away from all that, but we finally get to see REGENT SNOKE! He's not CGI this time, unless we want to make him an already established alien species. (He can still be played by Andy Serkis.) He asks about REY'S progress in hunting down LUKE, and says she may not be ready to face her old Master. REY disagrees, and sets off to TAKODANA. Meanwhile, HUX is given the order to demonstrate the new power of the FIRST ORDER. He calls up the SENATE in a standard, "supervillain addresses the masses scene". (Hux's actor should chew the scenery like bubble gum.) We now find out what makes STARKILLER BASE special: the "gate ring" lets them fire their laser at any point in the galaxy without moving! HUX demonstrates this by destroying HOSNIAN PRIME, which sends the SENATE into a panic!

We cut to TAKODANA, where BEN falls down, overcome by the destruction he just sensed in the Force. The destruction of HOSNIAN PRIME is announced over the HoloNet. HAN lets us know the situation is serious, as he says something to the effect of, “HOSNIAN PRIME? The FIRST ORDER is too far away. Wait? They can do WHAT???” But ain’t nobody got time for that! The FIRST ORDER is attacking! FINN comes out to be picked up, but instead he is attacked by TR-8R! He tries to tell him he’s a double agent, but TR-8R doesn’t listen, and FINN is forced to kill him in self-defense. FINN is captured by stormtroopers, and only not killed because CAPTAIN PHASMA arrives, saying “Excellent work, FN-2187!” As FINN notes, she should have told the other Stormtroopers not to attack him, as he just killed one of his friends for nothing. PHASMA basically shrugs and says, “Hey, had to keep it secret.” FINN is clearly shocked and quite angry, but they’re off!

While all this is going on, HAN tells BEN to get out with BB-8. BEN naturally objects, but HAN says, “No matter what, they can’t know where LUKE is.” BEN proceeds to run, before being confronted by REY. BB-8 runs off while BEN faces REY. BEN futilely tries to drive her off with his blaster, which does not work, and REY’S facial expression seems to say, “Really? When has that ever worked?” She advances on him, and while he fumbles with his lightsaber, she knocks him out with the Force. She leaves carrying him with the Force, telling the FIRST ORDER to leave.

Just as they’re doing so, the NEW REPUBLIC force arrives, led by LEIA and POE DAMERON! (Who, as it turns out, is not dead.) However, the only person there to meet them is HAN, who is not happy to see LEIA. Their conversation tells us about BEN’S childhood. He has had trouble controlling his Force Powers, particularly when sleeping. When he was four, his power nearly destroyed their house. LEIA naturally decided she and HAN weren’t safe around him, and gave him to LUKE for training as a JEDI. HAN never forgave her for that, and left. She brings HAN and his crew back to the NEW REPUBLIC hideout to discuss plans to take down STARKILLER BASE. The idea is right now, several REPUBLIC worlds are in panic that they could be next, calling for immediate surrender. Taking out STARKILLER will let the REPUBLIC take out the FIRST ORDER. HAN points out that BEN is on STARKILLER BASE, and he might die if they blow up the base. LEIA agrees, but she can’t call off the attack. If another world suffers the fate of HOSNIAN PRIME or ALDERAAN, she would be responsible for millions of deaths, compared to just one. She tells HAN to try to save BEN, as it will take some time for her to get her fleet of X-WINGS and Y-WINGS ready. She also tells him to take out the shield generator for the base.

Speaking of BEN, we cut to him, strapped to a table, with REY sitting beside him. As REY explained, he has been shot up with a bunch of sedatives that are only beginning to wear off. Their conversation is surprisingly cordial, at least on her end. She expresses her surprise that he’s not with LUKE, as they were very close at the Academy. She reads his mind to find out LUKE’S location, but he is able to reverse the stream, and gets a look in her mind. He sees something that terrifies him. She simply says, “Well, now you know,” and leaves to report to SNOKE. She leaves behind a group of Stormtroopers, ordering them not to let BEN leave until she sends for him. HAN and CHEWIE land on STARKILLER in the FALCON. After this, FINN arrives alone, claiming he is here to take BEN to REY. The commanding officer is skeptical, as FINN is one soldier. He calls in to clear the transfer, before FINN shoots the other Stormtroopers. There is a call in, which FINN fumbles before shooting the intercom. He proceeds to let BEN out of his bindings, and BEN proceeds to strangle him. (As you do…) FINN only talks BEN out of killing him by pointing out BEN is in no fit state to fly. They make their way to the hangar, where they find the FALCON. Realizing HAN is likely there, BEN calls him on the comlink. They get back in touch, with HAN telling BEN to stay put while he takes out the shields. FINN interjects, saying he knows how to turn off the shields more subtly. HAN tells them to go do it while he sets up explosives on the base. (The idea is that they will distract the FIRST ORDER while POE attacks.) FINN and BEN proceed to press-gang PHASMA into turning off the shield, before leaving her in the trash compactor. Unfortunately, HAN is captured by some STORMTROOPERS, who take him to REY.

REY is very happy with this, as she is furious BEN has escaped. She makes an announcement over the intercom, saying, “BEN, I have your father. If you want to see him alive again, come to the main antechamber in one hour.” She proceeds to pour out a drink for herself and Han. She is somewhat starstruck by HAN SOLO, saying he is legendary, and LUKE mentioned him a lot. She openly speculates what she’ll do to LUKE when she meets him. She says SNOKE expects her to kill him, but she wants to thank him. After all, if not for, she would have stayed on JAKKU forever. SNOKE would not have found her, and she certainly would have never found out about her father. HAN asks her what the hell she’s talking about. REY notes that for years, no one has asked why SNOKE refers to himself as “REGENT” SNOKE. As she points out, a regent has one job: rule until the prince, or in her case, the princess, is ready to rule. REY, as she claims, is the daughter of none other than EMPEROR PALPATINE himself. HAN is skeptical. PALPATINE never had a family. Moreover, he died thirty years ago, and REY is still in her twenties. REY then clarifies; PALPATINE never wanted children, but his court kept a sample of his DNA preserved just in case. Some time after his death, this DNA was used to create a child. In order to protect her from the NEW REPUBLIC, she was hidden on a backwater world until she could be brought to safety. Unfortunately, the scientists were arrested for war crimes, and by the time SNOKE found out about her, he didn’t know where she was. HAN is skeptical, which annoys REY significantly. But now it’s time to meet BEN.

They meet in the antechamber, with HAN surrounded by stormtroopers. There, REY delivers her ultimatum: if BEN surrenders himself to her, HAN will go free. There is a prisoner exchange, and as they pass each other, HAN simply says, “I’m sorry.” He grabs BEN’S blaster, and begins firing wildly at the Stormtroopers. As he calculated, the Stormtroopers start firing back, and one shoots him in the chest. BEN lets out a massive scream, which begins to tear the room apart in a display of raw Force Power. HAN’S last words are just, “Get out of here.” FINN takes the hint, and tears BEN away, just as POE begins his attack on STARKILLER BASE, accompanied by HAN’S gang, including PAIGE TICO. Unfortunately, they are not able to destroy the base, but they are able to destroy the gate ring, meaning that, until it is repaired, STARKILLER will not be able to fire from far away. POE, under LEIA’S orders, orders a retreat.

While this is happening, REY confronts BEN and FINN. First FINN tries to fight her off, but not successfully. It is not until BEN gets ANAKIN’S lightsaber out that this becomes a real fight. Even then, it is clear REY has the upper hand, and she is only not killing BEN because she wants him alive. Nonetheless, BEN manages to land a lucky cut, temporarily stopping REY. After this, a stray bomb landing on the base separates them, and FINN and BEN manage to make it to the FALCON. They take the FALCON back to LEIA. There, LEIA tells BEN to go find LUKE, and get his help. Meanwhile, she and POE will make their way back to REPUBLIC space. She will let them know the FIRST ORDER is vulnerable, but only if they attack quickly. She has to abandon the base, as the FIRST ORDER will almost certainly follow them in order to silence her. The movie closes with BEN landing on AHCH-TO, finding a hooded LUKE, and handing him his lightsaber. The two men look each other in the eyes after years of being apart, and the credits roll.

#star wars #sequel rewrite #The Force Awakens

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blondeblackwidow · 5 years ago

Note

Poe and the reader getting stranded on a small deserted planet for a few days and they’re all domestic, and everyone back at base is surprised when they get back. Please? Your Poe pieces have been so cute!

Rumors and Lies ( Poe x Reader)

GIF CREDIT: @winterswake

prompt: Poe and the reader getting stranded on a small deserted planet for a few days and they’re all domestic, and everyone back at base is surprised when they get back. Please? Your Poe pieces have been so cute!

a/n: this was literally so fun to write I got so carried away. Thanks for the request Anon, I hope it was worth the wait!

tw: implied smut

wc: 1749

“Are you happy now, Dameron?!” You shouted, looking at the flaming rubble of the ship.

“How is this my fault?” He threw his hands in the air.

“You HAD to try your fancy flying tricks.”

“We had FOUR TIEs on our tail, what would you like me to do?!”

“You’re insufferable!”

“You’re ungrateful, we’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for me.”

“OH PLEASE.” You rolled your eyes. Poe grunted, looking around for things to fix the ship, while you tried to hotwire the comm units to send out a beacon. Night came fast, and luckily for you, there was an abandoned farmhouse nearby. It looked as if it’s owners had deserted once the First Order set up a base on the moons orbiting this unfortunate planet.

“This will have to do.” Poe only nodded in agreement, and set down the bags of supplies from the ships. You cleared the house, and eventually settled in what looks like a sitting room. You sat on opposite ends of a couch that seemed untouched by the rest of the dust that settled on the house. You two ate MRE’s in silence. But in true Poe fashion, he broke the silence first.“Who do you think lived here?” He asked, looking around. You were a spy, a damn good one at that, and you had gotten used to using people’s things as clues into their lives.

“Well by the amount of land out back, probably a farmer, no idea what.” You shrugged. “It was a male farmer though, presumably human by the size and shape of those gloves.” You gestured to the gloves on the small end table, Poe handed them to you, and you examined the left one. “He was married, there’s wear marks for a ring.” You got up and wandered around the room, all personal things like pictures and keepsakes were gone, but there was enough to piece together a life. “They had a young baby.” You picked up small socks, and a bottle that were left on a shelf. Poe watched in awe as you pieced together a life from the smallest of details.

“You’re pretty good at this.” He smiled.

“I have to be, bad storytellers in this profession get killed.” You shrugged.

“So what’s your story, actually?” He put his feet up on a small footrest and leaned back. You could only laugh. Only Poe could be stuck on a deserted planet with no reinforcements and make himself comfortable.

“My parents were some dignitaries from Alderaan, they were off world when it exploded.” You had always wondered about how different your life would be if the Empire haven’t blown your homeworld into ash and stardust. “They were childhood friends of the General. They did their best to protect me, but eventually, at 16, we were separated. From then on I had to lie, scam, and cheat my way to survive. Alderaan’s survivors wanted to form a New Alderaan on some planet, they wanted my parents to lead them, but they couldn’t find any trace of them. I think the First Order took them out, I’ll never know.” You shrugged.

“Commander of the Resistance’s covert forces…” Poe snickered. “And Princess of Alderaan.” He laughed, and you threw the farmers glove at him.

“Oh can it!” You laughed

“Whatever you say, Princess.” You wanted to correct the incorrectness of the nickname, but it sounded so sweet from his lips, your stomach did flips just thinking about it. Before you could even retort, there was a knock at the door. You both froze.

Glancing out the window, you saw it was First Order patrols. “So much for a scrambled beacon.” You mumbled, you grabbed Poe’s hand, and dragged him to the door. “Act like you love me. And follow my lead.” Poe furrowed his brows and before he could think about it, you swung open the door to meet the visors of stormtroopers.

“Hello!” You greeted cheerfully. “Is there anything I can do for you, Gentlemen?” You had taken on a different pattern of speech, and Poe wrapped his arm around your waist and pressed a kiss to your cheek. “Oh please, honey, we have guests. Sorry, my husband can get a little handsy. We were just in the middle of a very heated..”

“No need for details ma’am.” The trooper held up a gloved hand. “We were wondering if you knew anything about the ship crashed about a mile from here.”

“Oh no, I did hear a very large crash though, I hope whoever was flying it is alright.” You smiled, and interlaced your hand in Poe’s free hand, clutching it, as if you were sick with worry.

“Would you mind if we searched your home?” Your stomach dropped.

“No matter at all.” You gestured them inside, and as soon as they passed, you pressed a very deep kiss to Poe’s lips. The lead trooper turned around to look at you two for guidance. He cleared his throat and waited for you to separate. “So sorry, like I said, very handsy.”

“There’s a closed door at the end of the hall, we can’t get it open and need your help.” He said grimly, all your supplies were in there, it would blow your cover in a heartbeat.

“Oh, I suppose.” You said, and began to walk down the hall. “You will be quiet though, and leave the light off will you?” The trooper tilted his head. “We welcomed a baby boy last month and I just got him to sleep.” They stood, staring at you, you had your hands folded, to hide the fact they were shaking.

“That’s alright ma’am.” He went to turn around. “I’ll escort my squad out.”

“Oh thank you all.” You smiled genuinely. “Have a safe evening gentlemen.” You latched the door behind them, and let out a huge sigh of relief. Poe was leaned up against a wall.

“That was a risk.” He said, he almost looked like he was frowning.

“Yes it was, but it paid off.” You giggled. “Husband.” You imitate your voice from before. Poe only half laughed, and you couldn’t understand why, until he walked over to you and shoved you against the latched door, and pressed his lips against yours. You kissed him back eagerly. You always had a thing for him, but you were committed to the resistance, you weren’t there to have a boyfriend. He tugged at your blouse and you let him pull it over your head. You two didn’t speak in words all night.

The next morning, you were half expecting things to go back to normal. You woke up, head buried in his chest, legs tangled in each others embrace. He was sleeping soundly, and you just laid there, watching the sun peak through the blinders.

Eventually, you had to figure out a way of getting a hold of the general. You untangled yourself slowly, and grabbed your bag, making for the kitchen. You started to pull anything with wires apart to rig your comm unit to encrypt for real this time. You were so engrossed in your project that you didn’t even hear Poe come in. He came up behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist and pressed a kiss to your cheek.

“Mornin’ Princess.” He mumbled.

“Morning Poe.” You smiled, and turned around to face him. He had put his trousers on but not his shirt, and you knew that wasn’t an accident.

“What are you working on?” He asked.

“Comm unit.” You shrugged. “Gotta get a message for someone to come get us.” You picked it up. “I’ve almost got it.” Poe took it from your hands.

“How about we send the message later?” He smirked. “I kinda liked last night.”

“As much as I would love to stay and have crazy amounts of sex all day, we have jobs Poe.” You shake your head and reached for the comm, and he held it out of your reach.

“Who said anything about sex?” He stared you down. “I meant I liked us, just being together, pretending we had a life outside of this war.” You blinked. “Okay and yes the sex was great too but outside of that.” You laughed.

“Fine. But we send that message tonight.” You rolled your eyes and he came in closer, pressing a soft kiss to your lips.

“Thank you, wife.” He winked and you rolled your eyes again.

“Anytime, husband.” You laughed, and so did he.

Back on base, you got back to training a group of rookies who had chosen Covert Ops as their specialty. You were currently in the middle of sparring with a tall, fairly muscular man. You lesson for today was about overpowering your odds. You moved through your opponent, and he handed on his flat back on the ground, knocking the wind out of him.

You look up to see Poe, head to toe in orange, he had mentioned earlier that he had a training flight. You offered your trainee your hand, and helped him up. “Everyone go get something to eat, and rest, we’ll meet back here in an hour.” You weren’t even looking at your class, you were lost in a pair of brown eyes. “You’re dismissed.” You walked over to Poe.

“It was pretty impressive to watch ya know. I could’ve waited.” He was smirking. You wanted to punch him and make out with him all at once.

“What do you want, Dameron?” You tried to maintain your professionalism, you were aware that your students were still listening.

“General needs us in Command.” He smiled, and handed you a holopad.

“Another one?” You grumbled. “Where to this time?”

“Canto Bight, we need to pose as some rich couple to extract some information from some people at the casino.” He winked. “We leave tomorrow morning, wife.” And with that, you turned around to walk to command for the official briefing. You watched as your training classes jaws hit the ground.

“Poe Dameron you did not!” You laughed and ran after him, only half mad.

Rumors floated around on base that you two were secretly married on that planet. They were ridiculous, and you told people that you didn’t pay them any mind because you knew the truth, but if you were honest, you just liked the warm feeling you got in your gut when people referred to Poe as yours.

Even if you got an occasional pointed glance from a new recruit or two.

#poe dameron #poe dameron imagine #poe dameron x reader #star wars #star wars x reader #star wars fanfiction #poe dameron fanfiction #requested

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cielrouge · 6 years ago

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2019 YA Reads by Authors of Color

96 Words for Love by Rachel Roy - While exploring her grandmother's past at an ashram in India with her cousin Anandi, Raya finds herself and, perhaps, true love in this modern retelling of the legend of Dushyanta and Shakuntala.

After the Fall by E.C. Myers - A year after the destruction of Beacon Academy, Team CFVY answers a distress call and are forced to relive their former battles, from both the fall of Beacon and from everything that came before.

All-American Muslim Girl by Nadine Jolie Courtney - Allie Abraham has it all going for her—she's a straight-A student, with good friends and a close-knit family, and she's dating cute, popular, and sweet Wells Henderson. Only one problem: Wells's father is Jack Henderson, America's most famous conservative shock jock...and Allie hasn't told Wells that her family is Muslim.

All the Things We Never Said by Yasmin Rahman - 16-year-old Mehreen Miah's anxiety and depression has taken over her life. So, she joins MementoMori, a website that matches people and allocates them a date and method of death. When Mehreen and her new friends change their minds, the website won't let them stop, and an increasingly sinister game begins.

The Athene Protocol by Shamim Sarif - Jessie Archer is a member of the Athena Protocol, an elite organization of female spies who enact vigilante justice around the world. But after Jessie goes her rogue, her former teammates have been ordered to bring her down. Jessie must face danger from all sides if she’s to complete her mission—and survive.

Barely Missing Anything by Matt Mendez - Three Mexican-Americans--Juan, JD, and Fabi--each try to overcome their individual struggles as they all grapple with how to make a better life for themselves when it seems like brown lives don't matter.

The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi - An epic YA fantasy about a girl with a special power to communicate with magical beasts and the warring kingdom only she can save.

The Beautiful by Renee Ahdieh - In 19th century New Orleans where vampires hide in plain sight and a serial killer is on the loose, half-Asian Celine Rosseau, a dressmaker from Paris, becomes embroiled in a murder mystery, connected to the glamorous supernatural cohort, known as the Court of Lions, and catching the eye of their mysterious, charismatic leader, Sèbastien Saint Germain.

The Beauty of the Moment by Tanaz Bhathena - Saudi-Canadian Susan is the new girl. Malcolm is the bad boy. Susan’s parents are on the verge of divorce. Malcolm’s dad is a known adulterer. Susan hasn’t told anyone, but she wants to be an artist. Malcolm doesn’t know what he wants—until he meets her. Love is messy and families are messier, but in spite of their burdens, Susan and Malcolm fall for each other.

The Best Lies by Sarah Lyu - Remy Tsai was happy once. Remy had her boyfriend Jack, and Elise, her best friend—her soulmate. But now Jack is dead, and it was Elise who pulled the trigger. Was it self-defense? Or something deeper, darker than anything Remy could have imagined?

Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America edit. by Ibi Zoboi - A short story anthology about what it is like to be young and black, centering on the experiences of black teens and emphasizing that one person's experiences, reality, and personal identity are different than someone else.

The Boxer by Nikesh Shukla - When racial tensions are rising in the city, and when a Far Right march through Bristol turns violent, 17-year-old amateur boxer Sunny faces losing his new best friend Keir to radicalization.

Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak by Adi Alsaid - Teen relationship columnist Lu Charles navigates life in the wake of a devastating breakup, and her decision to chronicle the planned breakup of another couple, Cal and Iris, in the summer after they graduate from high school.

The Candle and the Flame by Nafiza Azad - Set in the city of Noor, along the Silk Road which has become a refuge for those of all faiths, Fatima becomes embroiled in a war between two clans of powerful djinn who threaten to destroy her peace in different ways, forcing her to make unlikely alliances to survive.

Caster by Elsie Chapman - In this Chinese-inspired, magical Fight Club, Earth is already at the brink of environmental disaster due to the magic overuse. And 16-year-old spell caster Aza Wu must navigate through an illegal, underground battle magic tournament, while evading local gangs and police scouts to save her family from ruin.

Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Legacy of Orïsha #2) by Tomi Adeyemi - After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally succeeded in bringing magic back to the land of Orïsha. But with civil war looming on the horizon, Zélie finds herself at a breaking point: she must discover a way to bring the kingdom together or watch as Orïsha tears itself apart.

Circle of Shadows by Evelyn Skye - Love, spies, and adventure abound as apprentic warriors Sora and Daemon unravel a complex web of magic and secrets that might tear them—and the entire kingdom—apart forever.

Color Me In by Natasha Diaz - In this coming-of-age novel, biracal Neveah learns about the meaning of friendship, the joyful beginnings of romance, and the racism and religious intolerance that can both strain a family to the breaking point and strengthen its bonds.

Color Outside the Lines edited by Sangu Madanna - A groundbreaking YA anthology explores the complexity and beauty of interracial and LGBTQ+ relationships where differences are front and center.

Dealing in Dreams by Lilliam Rivera - 16-year-old Nalah leads the fiercest all-girl crew in Mega City, but when she sets her sights on giving this life up for a prestigious home in Mega Towers, she must decide if she's willing to do the unspeakable to get what she wants.

Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika & Maritza Moulite - Told in epistolary style through letters, articles, emails, and diary entries, when a school presentation goes very wrong, Haitan-American Alaine Beauparlant finds herself suspended, shipped off to Haiti, and writing the report of a lifetime.

Descendant of the Crane by Joan He - In this Chinese-inspired fantasy, Princess Hesina of Yan is thrust into power when her beloved father is murdered, and she's determined to find his killer--whatever the cost.

Don’t Date Rosa Santos by Nina Moreno - Rosa Santos is cursed by the sea-at least, that's what they say. Dating her is bad news, especially if you're a boy with a boat. As her college decision looms, Rosa collides - literally - with Alex Aquino, the mysterious boy with tattoos of the ocean whose family owns the marina. With her heart, her family, and her future on the line, can Rosa break a curse and find her place beyond the horizon.

The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee - In 1890, Atlanta, 17-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady's maid, but by night, Jo moonlights as newspaper advice columnist "Dear Miss Sweetie." When her efforts put Jo in the crosshairs of Atlanta's most notorious criminal, she must decide whether she, a girl used to living in the shadows, is ready to step into the light

A Dream So Dark by L.L. McKinney - Still reeling from her recent battle (and grounded until she graduates) Alice must cross the Veil to rescue her friends and stop the Black Knight once and for all in Wonderland.

Eclipse the Stars by Maura Milan - Criminal mastermind and unrivaled pilot Ia Ccha and her allies make unpredictable choices as they fight to keep darkness from eclipsing the skies.

The Everlasting Rose by Dhonielle Clayton - Camille, Edel, and Remy, aided by The Iron Ladies and backed by alternative newspaper The Spider's Web, race to outwit Sophia, find Princess Charlotte, and return her to Orléans.

Fake It Till You Break It by Jenn P. Nguyen - Neighbors Mia and Jake pretend to fake date to get their respective mothers off their back. All they have to do is pretend to date and then stage the worst breakup of all time. The only problem is, maybe Jake and Mia don’t hate each other as much as they once thought.

Far From Agrabah by Aisha Saeed - On an adventure in a fantastical kingdom, Aladdin and Jasmine get caught up in the magic therein. But soon sinister outside forces come into play, threatening to strand them there forever.

The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe - When Norris, a Black French Canadian, starts his junior year at an Austin, Texas, high school, he views his fellow students as clichés from "a bad 90s teen movie."

Firestarter (Timekeeper #3) by Tara Sim - Colton, Daphne, and the others must choose between those striving to take down the world's clock towers so that time can run freely, and terrorists trying to bring back the lost god of time.

Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns #4) by Kendare Blake - In this conclusion to the Three Dark Crowns series, three dark sisters will rise to fight as the secrets of Fennbirn’s history are laid bare. Allegiances will shift. Bonds will be tested, and some broken forever.

Five Midnights by Ann Davila Cardinal - If Lupe Dávila and Javier Utierre can survive each other’s company, together they can solve a series of grisly murders sweeping though Puerto Rico. But the clues lead them out of the real world and into the realm of myths and legends.

Forward Me Back to You by Mitali Perkins - Told in separate voices, Kat and Robin leave Boston on a church mission to help combat human trafficking in India while Kat recovers from a sexual assault and Robin seeks his birth mother.

Frankly in Love by David Yoon - Korean-American Frank Li Frank falls for Brit Means, who is smart, beautiful–and white. Fellow Limbo Joy Song is in a similar predicament, and so they make a pact: they’ll pretend to date each other. Frank thinks it’s the perfect plan, but in the end, Frank and Joy’s fake-dating maneuver leaves him wondering if he ever really understood love–or himself–at all.

Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett - HIV-positive teen Simone Garcia-Hampton must navigate fear, disclosure, and radical self-acceptance when she falls in love--and lust--for the first time.

The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi - Paris, 1889: Treasure-hunter and wealthy hotelier, Séverin Montagnet-Alarie gets the chance of a lifetime when the all-powerful society, the Order of Babel, seeks him out for help in exchange for a priceless treasure: his true inheritance.

The Girl King by Mimi Yu - Sisters Lu and Min become unwitting rivals in a war to claim the title of Emperor.

Girls of Storm and Shadow (Girls of Paper and Fire #2) by Natasha Ngan - After escaping the Hidden Palace, Lei and her warrior love Wren must travel the kingdom to gain support from the far-flung rebel clans.

The Grief Keeper by Alexandra Villasante - To have her family’s asylum request accepted, 17-year-old Marisol participates in a risky experiment to become a grief keeper, taking another’s grief into her own body to save a life.

His Hideous Heart edited by Dahlia Adler - 13 of YA’s most celebrated names reimagine Edgar Allan Poe’s most surprising, unsettling, and popular tales for a new generation.

A House of Rage and Sorrow (Celestial Trilogy #2) by Sangu Mandanna - As gods, beasts, and kingdoms choose sides, Alexi seeks out a weapon more devastating than even Titania. The House of Rey is at war. And the entire galaxy will bleed before the end.

How to Be Remy Cameron by Julian Winters - When Remy is assigned to write an essay describing himself, he goes on a journey to reconcile the labels that people have attached to him, and get to know the real Remy Cameron.

Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food & Love edited by Elsie Chapman & Caroline Tung Richmond - Interconnected short stories that explore the intersection of family, culture, and food in the lives of thirteen teens.

I Hope You Get This Message by Farah Naz Rishi - When news stations start reporting that Earth has been contacted by a planet named Alma, the world is abuzz with rumors that the alien entity is giving mankind only few days to live. And with only seven days to face their truths and right their wrongs, Jesse, Cate, and Adeem’s paths collide even as their worlds are pulled apart.

I Love You So Mochi by Sarah Kuhn - Japanese-American fashionista Kimi Nakamura who journeys to Japan on a quest of self-discovery after her college plans fall apart; along the way, she reconnects with her estranged grandparents and finds romance with a handsome med student Akira who moonlights as a costumed mochi mascot.

I Wanna Be Where You Are by Kristina Forest - Chloe Pierce’s chasing her ballet dreams down the east coast— with two unwanted (but kinda cute) passengers in her car, butterflies in her stomach, and a really dope playlist.

I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver - Non-binary teen Ben De Backer is kicked out by their parents after coming out, but learns that sometimes from disaster one can build a happier new life,

If It Makes You Happy by Claire Kann - Winnie dreams of someday inheriting the family diner—but it'll go away if they can't make money, and fast. Winnie has a solution—win a televised cooking competition and make bank.

In the Key of Nira Ghani by Natasha Deen - Guyanese-American Nira Ghani struggles with parental expectations and her love for jazz.

Internment by Samira Ahmed - Set in a near future in the United States where Muslim Americans are forced into an internment camp, 17-year-old Layla Amin must fight against Islamophobia, oppression, and complicit silence.

Inventing Victoria by Tonya Bolden - In 1880s Savannah, Dorcas Vashton offers Essie an offer she can't refuse, she becomes Victoria. Transformed by a fine wardrobe, a classic education, and the rules of etiquette, Victoria is soon welcomed in the upper echelons of black society in Washington, D. C. But when the life she desires is finally within her grasp, Victoria must decide how much of herself she is truly willing to surrender.

It’s a Whole Spiel: Love, Latkes & Other Jewish Stories edited by Katherine Locke & Laura Silverman - Get ready to fall in love, experience heartbreak, and discover the true meaning of identity in this poignant collection of short stories about Jewish teens.

Kick the Moon by Muhammad Khan - 15-year-old Ilyas finds a kindred spirit in Kelly Matthews during detention. But when Kelly catches the eye of one of the local bad boys, Imran, he decides to seduce her for a bet. Standing up to Imran puts Ilyas’ family at risk, but it’s time for him to be the superhero he draws in his comic-books, and go kick the moon.

A Kingdom for the Stage (For A Muse of Fire #2) by Heidi Heilig - The rebels are eager to use Le Trépas’s and necromancer Jetta’s combined magic against the invading colonists. Soon Jetta will face the choice between saving all of Chakrana or becoming like her father, and she isn’t sure which she’ll choose.

Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron - Set in a West African-inspired fantasy kingdom, Arrah comes from a long line of powerful witchdoctors, yet fails at magic. When Arrah trade years off her life for magic to stop the Demon King from destroying the world—that is if it doesn't kill her first.

Kings, Queens, and Everything in Between by Tanya Boteju - 17-year-old, biracial, queer girl Nina Kumara-Clark is plunged into the delirious world of drag where she has the chance to explore questions of identity and love.

The Last 8 by Laura Pohl - Young Latina pilot Clover Martinez finds herself grounded and alone after a devastating alien attack, but soon finds hope in an unlikely group of survivors who aren't what they seem.

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki - Teenager Frederica Riley undergoes what might possibly be the most epically complicated breakup in lesbian history -- or at least it feels that way

The Light At the Bottom of the World by London Shah - Set in a future where the Earth is underwater, Leyla McQueen must navigate the treacherous abyss to find her missing father, but discovers a world drowning in lies.

Like A Love Story by Abdi Nazemian - It's 1989 in New York City, three teens, Reza, Judy, and Art cross paths. Judy has never imagined finding romance...until she falls for Reza and they start dating. But as Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won't break Judy's heart--and destroy the most meaningful friendship he's ever known.

The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali by Sabina Khan - After she’s caught kissing her girlfriend by her conservative Muslim parents, Rukhsana Ali whisked off from Seattle to Bangladesh, where she must find the courage to fight for her love, but can she do so without losing everyone and everything in her life?

Love from A to Z by S.K. Ali - 18-year-old Muslims Adam and Zayneb meet in Doha, Qatar, during spring break and fall in love as both struggle to find a way to live their own truths.

Love Me or Miss Me by Dream Jordan - Kate's fantasy life of having the perfect family comes to an abrupt end when she is suddenly forced to return to the group home. Alone and vulnerable, Kate falls for the ever so gorgeous Percy who treats her well at first, but soon a cycle of controlling and abusive behavior begins. Will she be able to escape Percy's clutches?

The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan by Sherry Thomas - As they cross the Great Wall to face the enemy beyond, Mulan and the princeling must find a way to unwind their past, unmask a traitor, and uncover the plans for the Rouran invasion . . . before it's too late.

A Match Made in Mehendi by Nandini Bajpai - 15-year-old Indian-American Simran “Simi” Sangha, who comes from a long line of matchmakers, decides to try to gain high school popularity using her family's matchmaking traditions to create a dating app.

The Never Tilting World by Rin Chupeco - In a world ruled by goddesses that has been split in two—one half existing in perpetual scorching Day, the other in freezing Night—twins separated at birth Odessa and Haidee embark on a quest across the great divide and rule a reunited world.

No One Here is Lonely by Sarah Everett - After having her heart so broken, Eden resorts to having her memories erased instead.

Nocturna by Maya Motayne - In a Latinx-inspired kingdom of Castallan, face-changing thief Finn Voy and grief-stricken Prince Alfehr must race to vanquish a dark magic they have accidentally unleashed.

Not Your Backup by C.B. Lee (Sidekick Squad #3) - As the Resistance moves to challenge the corrupt League of Heroes, Emma Robledo realizes where her place is in this fight: at the front.

Oh My Gods by Alexandra Sheppard - Half-mortal teenager Helen Thomas goes to live with her father—who is Zeus, masquerading as a university professor—and must do her best to keep the family secret intact.

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas - When 16-year-old Bri, an aspiring rapper, pours her anger and frustration into her first song, she finds herself at the center of a controversy.

Once & Future by Amy Rose Capetta & Cori McCarthy - In this Arthurian retelling set in space, King Arthur is reincarnated as 17-year-old Ari, a female king whose quest is to stop a tyrannical corporate government, aided by a teenaged Merlin.

Opposite of Always by Justin A. Reynolds - After falling for Kate, her unexpected death sends Jack back in time to the moment they first met, but he soon learns that his actions have unintended consequences.

Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao - 17-year-old teen outcast Ali Chu is simultaneously swept up in a whirlwind romance and down a rabbit hole of dark family secrets when another Taiwanese family moves to her small, predominantly white Midwestern town.

Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribar - When 17-year-old Jay Reguero learns his Filipino cousin and former best friend, Jun, was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, he flies to the Philippines to learn more.

Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi - Brooklyn bodega worker Pablo crosses paths & falls in love with multi-platinum recording artist Leanna Smart.

Rated by Melissa Grey - For the students at the prestigious Maplethorpe Academy, every single thing they do is reflected in their Ratings System. But when an act of vandalism sullies the front doors of the school, it sets off a chain reaction that will shake the lives of six special students -- and the world beyond.

Teen Titans: Raven by Kami Garcia - When a tragic accident takes the life of the only family she's ever known, 16-year-old Raven is sent to New Orleans to start over. She soon discovers that she can hear the thoughts of others around her...and another, more disturbing, voice in her head.

Rebel (Legend #4) by Marie Lu - Brothers Eden and Daniel Wing struggle to accept who they’ve each become since their time in the Republic, but a new danger creeps into the distance that’s grown between them. Eden soon finds himself drawn so far into Ross City’s dark side, even his legendary brother can’t save him. At least not on his own.

The Revolution of Birdie Randolph by Brandy Colbert - Dove “Birdie” Randolph maintains a close bond with her parents until first love and a family secret threatens to tear them apart.

The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee - The never-before-told backstory of Avatar Kyoshi, from a girl of humble origins to the merciless pursuer of justice who is still feared and admired centuries after she became the Avatar.

A River of Royal Blood by Amanda Joy - A North African-inspired feminist fantasy in which two sisters, Eva and Isa must compete in a magical duel to the death for the right to inherit the queendom of Myre.

Rogue Heart (Rebel Seoul #2) by Axie Oh - Two years after the Battle of Neo Seoul, 18-year-old telepath Ama must use her telepathic abilities to infiltrate the base of the Alliance’s new war commander, Alex Kim, her first love who betrayed her. Will she be able to carry out her task? Or will she give up everything for Alex again—only to be betrayed once more?

Ruse (Want #2) by Cindy Pon - In near-future Shanghai where society is divided between the fabulously wealthy business elite and the masses they exploit, Jason Zhou must play a dangerous cat and mouse game with the ruthless CEO of an all powerful corporation which has an ever-growing choke hold on the polluted metropolis.

Soaring Earth by Margarita Engle - In this memoir, Young People’s Poet Laureate Margarita Engle recounts her teenage years during the turbulent 1960s between Cuba and America.

Shadow Frost by Coco Ma - When Asterin Faelenhart, Princess of Axaria and heir to the throne, discovers that she may hold the key to defeating the demon terrorizing her kingdom, she vows not to rest until the beast is slain.

Take the Mic: Fictional Stories About Everyday Resistance edited by Bethany C. Morrow - A YA anthology focused on a collection of fictional stories of everyday resistance.

The Shadow Glass (Bone Witch #3) by Rin Chupeco - Bone witch Tea's dark magic eats away at her, but she must save the one she loves most, even while her life—and the kingdoms—are on the brink of destruction.

Shatter the Sky by Rebecca Kim Wells - Maren, desperate to save her kidnapped girlfriend Kaia, plans to steal one of the emperor's dragons and storm the Aurati stronghold, but her success depends on becoming an apprentice to the mysterious dragon trainer, which proves to be a dangerous venture.

SLAY by Brittney Morris - Black video game developer Kiera Johnson battles a real-life troll intent on ruining the Black Panther-inspired video game she created, and the safe community it represents for black gamers.

Somewhere Only We Know by Maurene Goo - In Hong Kong, k-pop star Lucky who'd like to be anyone else meets charming con-boy Jack, looking for a big break to impress his paparazzo father. When sparks ignite, the two must decide if they can risk it all for each other.

Song of the Abyss (Towers of Wind #2) by Makiia Lucier - When menacing raiders attack her ship, navigator Reyna must use every resource at her disposal, including placing her trust in a handsome prince from a rival kingdom.

Song of the Crimson Flower by Julie C. Dao - After cruelly rejecting Bao, the poor physician's apprentice who loves her, Lan, a wealthy nobleman's daughter, regrets her actions. After learning that Bao’s soul has been trapped inside a flute by a witch, Lan vows to make amends and help break the spell.

Soul of the Sword (Shadow of the Fox #2) by Julie Kagawa - As the paths of Yumeko and the possessed Tatsumi cross once again, the entire empire will be thrown into chaos.

Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim - 17-year-old Maia Tamarin poses as a boy to compete for the role of imperial tailor, and embarks on an impossible journey to sew three magic dresses, from the sun, the moon, and the stars, with help from the mysterious court magician, Edan.

Spin by Lamar Giles - When DJ ParSec, rising star of the local music scene, is found dead over her turntables, the two girls who found her, Kya and Fuse, are torn between grief for Paris and hatred for each other--but when the investigation stalls, they unite, determined to find out who murdered their friend.

The Stars the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petraus - Audre from Trinidad and Mabel from Minneapolis, fall in love and create magic at the same time they learn one of them might not have long to live.

Stronger Than A Bronze Dragon by Mary Fan - In this steampunk fantasy set in Qing dynasty-inspired China, warrior girl Anlei teams up with a thief to save her village from shadow spirits, but after arriving at the Courts of Hell, a discovery challenges everything they know about who the real enemy is.

Symptoms of a Heartbreak by Sonia Charaipotra - The youngest doctor in America, Indian-American teen Saira makes her rounds―and falls head over heels in this romantic comedy.

Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi - Sana Khan and Rachel Recht, on opposite sides of the social scale must work together to make a movie and try very hard not to fall in love.

The Things She’s Seen by Ambelin & Ezekiel Kwaymullina - As Beth Teller and her father unravel a mystery, they find a shocking and heartbreaking story lurking beneath the surface of a small town, and a friendship that lasts beyond one life and into another...

There’s Something About Sweetie (When Dimple Met Rishi #3) by Sandhya Menon - Told in two voices, disappointed-in-love Ashish Patel and self-proclaimed fat athlete Sweetie Nair begin to find their true selves while dating under contract.

This Time Will Be Different by Misa Sugiura - 17-year-old CJ Katsuyama’s mom decides to sell her family’s flower shop—to the family who swindled CJ’s grandparents during WWII Internment. Soon a rift threatens to splinter CJ’s family, friends, and their entire Northern California community; and for the first time, CJ has found something she wants to fight for.

A Thousand Fires by Shannon Price - In modern-day San Francisco where three gangs rule the city streets, half-Filipina teen Valerie Simons enters the Red Bridge Wars to seek vengeance for her younger brother's death, but soon finds herself torn between old love and new loyalty.

The Tiger at Midnight by Swati Teerdhala - In ancient India, soldier Kunal hunts the “Viper,” rebel girl Esha accused of killing his General, embarking on a dangerous cat and mouse game and where both must decide—loyalty to their old lives or to a love that's made them dream of new ones.

Truly, Madly, Royally by Debbie Riguad - When Prince Owen invites Zora Emerson to be his date at his big brother's big royal wedding, Zora is suddenly thrust into the spotlight, along with her family and friends.

The Universal Laws of Marco by Carmen Rodrigues - Told through the lens of a guy in love with the cosmos (and maybe two girls), this story explores the complicated histories that bring us together and tear us apart.

Virtually Yours by Sarvenz Tash - NYU freshman Mariam Vakilian tries out a virtual reality dating app, only to be matched up with the high school ex she's still not over. Mariam’s heart is telling her one thing, but the app is telling her another. So, which should she trust? Is all fair in modern love?

The Voice in My Head by Dana L. Davis - When a sequence of wrenching secrets detonates, Indigo must figure out how to come to terms with her twin sister Violet, her family…and the voice in her head.

War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi - Set in a futuristic, Black Panther-inspired Nigeria, sisters Onyii and Ify, separated by a devastating civil war, must fight their way back to each other against all odds.

Watch Us Rise by Renee Watson & Ellen Hagan - Jasmine and Chelsea start a Women's Rights Club and soon go viral. But with such positive support, the club is also targeted by online trolls. When things escalate, the principal shuts the club down. Jasmine and Chelsea will risk everything for their voices—and those of other young women—to be heard.

What Makes You Beautiful by Bridget Liang - Encouraged and supported by his friends at school, Logan begins questioning his gender. Realizing they are not a gay boy, but a transgender girl, Logan asks for people to call them Veronica. As a girl, does Veronica stand a chance with straight boy Kyle?

We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal - In a world inspired by ancient Arabia, 17-year-old huntress Zafira must disguise herself as a man to seek a lost artifact that could return magic to her cursed world.

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia - Set at the Medio School for Girls, where young women are trained to become one of two wives assigned to high society men; with revolution brewing in the streets, star student Daniela Vargas fights to protect a destructive secret, sending her into the arms of the most dangerous person possible—the second wife of her husband-to-be.

The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf - A music-loving teen with OCD does everything she can to find her way back to her mother during the historic race riots in 1969 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

When the Stars Lead to You by Ronni Davis - 18-year-old Devon longs for two things.The stars. And the boy she fell in love with last summer. Senior year, Ashton shows up on the first day of school. Can she forgive him and open her heart again? Or are they doomed to repeat history?

Wicked Fox by Kat Cho - After 18-year-old Miyoung Gu, a nine-tailed fox surviving in modern-day Seoul by eating the souls of evil men, kills a murderous goblin to save Jihoon, she is forced to choose between her immortal life and his.

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo - With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior and aspiring chef Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions. But even with all the rules she has for her life — and all the rules everyone expects her to play by — once Emoni starts cooking, her only real choice is to let her talent break free.

You Must Be Layla by Yasmin Abdel-Magied - Layla's mind goes a million miles a minute, so does her mouth. Despite the setback of a high school suspension, Layla's determined to show everyone that she does deserve her scholarship and sets her sights on winning a big invention competition. But where to begin? Looking outside and in, Layla will need to come to terms with who she is and who she wants to be if she has any chance of succeeding.

#authors of color #book recommendations #yalit #women of color authors #AWW YISSS IT'S MY FAVORITE TIME OF THE YEAR AGAIN!!!

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penpatronuswhump · 4 years ago

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WHUMPTOBER 2020

No. 4

Fandom: Avengers

Whumpee: Tony Stark

Caregivers: Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers

Title: We’ll Do That Together, Too

By: PenPatronus // PenPatronusAooO

The arms dealers built their camouflaged headquarters into the side of a Rocky Mountain cliff face like they were Pueblo Indians. It was three stories high and a football field and a half wide. The only way to enter the facility was through the camouflaged helipad on top of the mountain. It was guarded heavily, but the cliffside above a raging river wasn’t. And that was why, at Midnight, the Quinjet hovered above the river on autopilot while Thor flew the other five Avengers up to the lowest patio one by one. The weapons the arms dealers were selling to terrorists were supposedly built from Chitauri technology. They had to take the stockpile out and arrest the bad guys that night before anyone else got hurt.

Steve crouched behind a picnic table on the patio and waited patiently while Clint put arrows into the cameras. Bruce sat beside him, wringing his hands. Thor was on the other side, impatiently twirling his hammer. A perturbed Natasha grabbed his wrist. Her silent glare made him stop. On Steve’s other side, Tony was using his Iron Man suit to scan the base. “We should split up,” he advised. “Each pair can take a floor.”

Steve agreed. “Barton, Romanoff, go up top. Stark and I will take the center floor. Thor, Bruce, you stick to the basement. Remember – capture the arms dealers and collect all the weapons. Meet back here when your floor is cleared. Let’s do this quick and quiet.” The team went to work. Sticking to the shadows, avoiding the cameras, quiet as possible to not disturb whatever arms dealers were still awake, Clint and Natasha raced up the west staircase. Tony and Steve ascended the east and Thor and Bruce went straight in.

It was Thor who tripped the first wire.

An actual wire – not even a laser – crisscrossed the entrance to the cafeteria on the bottom floor. Simultaneously, alarms blared across the entire facility while the bomb exploded in the cafeteria. It was designed to take out the entire first floor and whoever happened to be on it – friend or enemy. Thor, Banner, hundreds of potatoes, the cafeteria, a basketball court, half a dozen bad guys and everything the facility had in storage fell off the cliffside and barreled towards the river. The two Avengers disappeared into the surf.

On the top floor, though deafened by the sudden alarms and the thunderous sound of the first floor disintegrating, Clint and Natasha still barged into the first room they found, which happened to be security central. Natasha used bullets and bolos to take out and capture the first three men while Clint’s arrows took down the next three. Then, while Clint guarded the door, Nat got into the computer system and cut the power for the entire base. The two remaining floors went quiet and dark. Only a few emergency lights remained on – flashing strobe lights. When security teams arrived, the rest of the base having woken up, they aimed guns at the two Avengers but couldn’t seem to hit them. In the blinks between the strobing lights, Hawkeye and the Black Widow cartwheeled and rolled, shot their weapons with a precision the average arms dealers’ goons didn’t have, and managed, in under ten minutes, to take out all 60 bad guys on the floor. A personal best, they agreed. They enjoyed their victory for half a moment before they went looking for the weapons.

It was Clint who tripped the second wire. An actual wire – not even a laser – surrounded the wide staircase that led up to the helipad. “Ah, shit,” Clint said, and Natasha sighed, and the bomb under security central exploded. The floor disintegrated. The Avengers didn’t mind, though, because they’d already sprinted up the staircase and out onto the helipad… Where a dozen armed guards were waiting for them.

The top floor landed on the middle floor – landed on Tony and Steve. Tony, mostly, because when it happened he pushed Cap to the floor and covered his body with the Iron Man armor. When the dust settled, Steve found Tony tented over him, the armor holding up half the ceiling, which threatened to squish them both. “Crawl!” Tony ordered. Cap obeyed, Army-crawling towards the only light he saw. Tony left the armor behind, leaving it to hold the place up while he and Steve escaped. The pair ended up on another patio. Below them was the river. Behind them was the ceiling. Underneath them, the foundation was crumbling. They had, maybe, a minute.

The pair looked down. The first floor had fallen directly onto the Quinjet, which was in pieces and floating away down the river. There was no sign of Thor or Bruce or the Hulk. Steve examined the distance down to the water. “That might be 200 feet,” he estimated.

“People have survived dropping from 245 feet into water,” Tony remembered. The floor rumbled. A crack skittered across the concrete. “Of course, they didn’t have a building immediately collapse on them.” The two Avengers looked up, down, and around. Barton and Romanoff were MIA. They had no jet, no Hulk, and the Iron Man armor was half a minute away from crumpling under the weight of the building.

Steve swallowed, turned to Tony, and held out his hand. “Together?”

Tony took Steve’s hand and held on tight. “Nice knowing you.”

“Same.”

“Together, then. On three.” The two men counted at the same time: “One, two, three!” and jumped.

Barton and Romanoff took out the dozen armed guards almost flawlessly. Nat took a bullet to her upper arm and Clint got stabbed in the thigh when one of his own arrows went askew and ricocheted off the black helicopter. “You never miss!” Nat said as the pair scrambled into the machine. “I brag about that all the time!”

Clint didn’t bother to put on a safety belt when he got into the pilot’s seat. Under them, the concrete was starting to falter. The helipad was about to collapse along with the rest of the structure. “I’m not perfect!” he yelled over the sound of the propellers revving up.

“He’s perfect! Why do you think they call him Hawkeye, I’d say,” said Nat from the copilot’s position.

“I will throw you out of this helicopter!” Barton yelled.

“If he misses I’ll eat my hand, I’d say.”

The helicopter lifted into the air less than five seconds before the base collapsed.

Steve lost Tony’s hand when they hit the water, feet first. He’d tried to hang on – ordered himself to – because if they were going to die, they should die together. They’d done everything else together for so long that it seemed fitting. But, he lost Tony’s hand. He lost him.

And then Bucky was there. He was pulling him out of the water by his collar just like he had when Steve had fallen out of the Helicarrier. Wait – no – Steve realized. Bucky wasn’t there, and his rescuer was wearing a red cape and carrying a hammer. Thor dragged Steve out of the water and propped him up against the opposite cliff face. “Where are the others?” he asked. The god was soaking wet and he coughed between each word. “Where are they?”

Steve felt like his lungs were full of sand. All he could do was shake his head and cough. His whole body was one bruise. The water felt like concrete when he landed. “Tony,” he choked. “Where’s Tony?”

Thor collapsed down to one knee. “I don’t know… I don’t know.”

A roar came from the east. Both Avengers perked up at the sound of the Hulk. They looked downstream and saw him pulling something out of the water. The dark figure wasn’t moving. Hulk dropped him on the shoreline and took a sniff. Then he leaned back and roared again, the sound shaking the cliffs. Then Hulk looked down at the figure, snorted impatiently, and nudged him with his big green foot. By the time Steve and Thor raced over to Hulk, he’d reverted back into Banner.

Bruce started CPR on Tony.

“Uhhh,” Steve groaned, and he collapsed down to an Indian-style sit. “God, Tony…”

Tony’s left leg was obviously broken. It was bent at the knee, but also slightly at the shin. The sight of it made Steve nauseated. Tony’s face and neck were a cross between bruise-purple and drowned-blue. Something sharp had hit him in the back of the head, and blood was pooling beneath it. Pooling too slowly. His heart wasn’t beating.

“Dammit!” Bruce hissed as he did compressions. “Dammit, Tony, dammit, come on – come on!” Bruce briefly rolled him over smacked his back, forcing a little bit more water out of Tony’s mouth and nose. He breathed into him, then started up the compressions again. Water rained down on Tony’s face from Bruce’s wet hair.

“This is unbearable,” Thor whispered. “Wake up, Stark.”

Steve put his palm on Tony’s forehead and gently rearranged his hair. He flicked aside a sticky rock and a strand of grass. He’d never noticed before, but Tony really did have stress wrinkles and discoloration around his eyes. Of course he did – how could he not? Stark as astounding, Steve realized. What didn’t he do? What hadn’t he done for his team – for the world? Steve suddenly wanted to thank him – wanted him to wake up so he could thank him for – for everything. But Tony’s lungs wouldn’t breathe, and his heart wouldn’t beat…

Bruce suddenly put his lips right next to Tony’s ear. “You listen to me, you son of a bitch,” he all but shouted. “We need you, Tony. You do NOT get to give up – you don’t have that luxury. The Avengers can’t function without you – this world can’t, anymore. Now breathe, you asshole, breathe!”

When Tony finally did breathe – another 30 seconds of CPR later – it was a gasping, choking, desperate series of inhales. He rolled and vomited water right into Bruce’s lap, then collapsed back and would’ve passed out again if Steve hadn’t ordered him not to. Tony’s eyes fixated on Steve’s like they were an anchor. “That’s right,” Steve said, encouraging. “You’re going to be all right. We’re here.”

“Ribs… Broken…” Tony sputtered. The pain pushed tears out of his eyes. “Leg…”

“I know.” Steve’s hand returned to Tony’s forehead. “We’ll get you out of here, I promise. We’ll get you home.”

Tony suddenly reached up with both hands and latched onto Steve’s left arm. While Steve clenched his muscles and held his arm steady, Tony, grunting, pulled his upper body right into Steve’s lap. He curled up there, soaking wet, exhausted, pale, and still coughing, and shut his eyes. Steve wrapped both of his strong arms around Tony and held him close.

A helicopter flew overhead, low enough that they could see Barton piloting it. Nat dropped a steel chain ladder down. Steve and Bruce climbed up it while Thor carried Tony. The Avengers escaped.

Thor laid Tony down on the bench so that his head was in Steve’s lap and his feet were in Bruce’s. “Hospital, Barton!” Steve ordered the archer. He turned his attention back to Tony, hand on his forehead once more. He remembered what he wanted to say when Tony was dead. “Thank you.”

Tony’s dazed eyes blinked up at him. “For what” he croaked.

“Just…” Steve shook his head. He almost laughed. “For you.”

The End

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lapsedgamer · 5 years ago

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Death Stranding (PS4)

Death Stranding is the culmination of four years of anticipation and, for me, mild concern. Hideo Kojima was taken from the height of his career at Konami and the more-is-more excess of Metal Gear Solid V, and thrust in to an environment where he had - seemingly - far fewer resources at his disposal but not even the slightest hint of oversight. The years of development steadily revealed a director who was in no way financially constrained, and whose Hollywood aspirations seemed to be more heavily indulged than ever. Yet to actually sit down and play the end result is to meet a new kind of Hideo Kojima game, one that is markedly different in tone and style, which indulges his need to spell out every bit of world-building and research but which provides a structure where that content can actually be appreciated, one where gameplay expresses theme and cinematic flourishes are a garnish and a dessert rather than the core of the experience. This is perhaps the most Hideo Kojima game yet, but it is also one of his most creatively successful.

Death Stranding opens in media res in the style of the best science fiction, dropping the player in to conversations full of of unexplained but curiosity-piquing terminology that invite you to sit, listen, interpolate and reason out how the story world must work. It is, if anything, too mysterious - the player is thrust in to a mission of nation-spanning importance without a grasp of some of the more important character relationships that are supposed to motivate it - but it cultivates the mindful, steady, curious mindset that is the primary tone of the game, and it sets the you up for the explanations and background reading that will turn from a trickle to a steady flow as you progress.

The gameplay cultivates a similar sense of patient contemplation and constant observation. Sam Bridges’ movement in the game world is engagingly tactile but demands a steady and considered awareness of the terrain and his own current state. The left stick does not merely direct Sam across the landscape in the fluid, effort-free manner of the modern third-person adventure but very noticeably shifts his centre of balance. Run down-hill at a clip and you’ll feel his front-heaviness start to get away from you; ease back or even pull back on the stick and he’ll continue to descend at speed for a time but with his body more strongly centred over his scampering boots. Stride across widely spaced broken boulders and you will become conscious of the need to alternate left and right movement to balance out Sam’s inertia, lest he begin to pivot off in to a spiral and eventually crumple on to one side.

In time, this becomes second nature but never becomes automatic. The game doesn’t demand the constant, finicky persistence of a Bennett Foddy game, but nor can you simply set your eyes on the horizon. It’s the closest a game has come to the sensation of a good hike, your brain absorbed by the task of placing your feet while devising the best route across the terrain towards your ultimate goal in the distance. Even when the game gives you equipment and upgrades that make traversal easier, these are balanced such that you are using your focus in a different way, not abandoning it entirely. A rope may allow you to abseil down a precarious cliff-face and skip a lengthy walk, but the abseil itself - and any subsequent climb back up - needs care, lest you knock your backpack cargo on an overhang and send it plummeting to the ground below. Bionic legs that automatically assist your balance on rough terrain come with a dramatically reduced cargo-carrying capacity which will tempt you not to use them. Vehicles all come with jump buttons, not to greatly enhance their manoeuvrability but because of the absolute certainty you will wedge them, and their un-carryable tonnage of precious cargo, in between some boulders. (Their turning radii are even tuned so that you need to consider the best line to follow on paved highways.)

Movement itself is at the bedrock of the game’s hierarchy of goals. Your medium-term objective in Death Stranding is always a cargo delivery from one place to another, which must be completed according to certain conditions of volume of goods, speed, or cargo damage. Individual deliveries can then be manually threaded together, in the manner of Elite or any MMORPG fetch quest, in to an overall plan, which will boost your standing with multiple customers in an efficient manner. To play Death Stranding is to be conscious of the relationships between structures in space and the topography upon which they lie, and to exploit them to the best overall benefit.

This is game design and a tone which almost entirely reject conventional ideas of mastery and excellence. In Kojima’s other games, success depended upon acting with skill, speed, and excellence, but Death Stranding consistently rewards persistence, thoughtfulness, and planning, and denies you the opportunity to achieve a friction-free, graceful effortlessness. Even the game’s finale ranking system is grindable; Kojima simply does not care whether you reached your grade by doggedly completing a thousand shoddy deliveries or dramatically resolving one hundred excellent ones. A great Death Stranding player is not to be found weaving through the landscape like a death wind as in Metal Gear Solid V, but standing patiently in a river waiting for their stamina to rebuild, or contemplating the long way down a mountain rather than the swift, risky descent of a cliff face.

Which brings us to theme, and the first time in many years that Hideo Kojima has successfully communicated his game’s ideas through the gameplay itself. The core concept of connection is clearly expressed in the delivery-based gameplay, which as I’ve mentioned forces you to consider the spatial relationships between locations. The cargoes themselves tell stories about subtler connections: who might be sending which objects to who tells you about their collaboration, cooperation, and perhaps even attitudes. These connections are made concrete by your ability to build structures in the world, with each bridge or ladder or road speaking to the links between the previously-isolated denizens of the United Cities of America. These connections are in turn shared between the different players: structures and even misplaced cargo and vehicles from other players’ worlds will appear in your own, and vice versa, to be exploited, improved and recovered towards your now-shared goal of reconnecting America.

The game reinforces at every stage that you must collaborate to succeed. Structures are expensive, particularly in the early game, but by sharing with others you can create a better, less-frustrating and more survivable world. Hiking through the snow and rounding a hill to find another player has built a refuge for your cold, wet, hungry Sam is like spotting a warm cafe window on a cold and lonely evening. You will be rewarded for, and you can reward, this altruism: the sending kudos every time I come across a rope or ladder has conditioned me to smash the like button on every social network I use with a ubiquity and enthusiasm that I was sure had been washed away by cynicism. This may be the best and most positive argument yet that games have the capacity inherent in all art to influence people’s thoughts and behaviour.

Kojima’s newfound emphasis on thematic gameplay has not tempered his love of narrative exposition, but it does fit Death Stranding better than his previous, more action-oriented games. The opening couple of hours and the finale are exposition-heavy cut-scene-fests in a universe full of vaguely human ciphers with motivations that are relatable yet communicated entirely through exposition. (There’s some remarkable Hollywood talent here doing its best to sell it, but the scenes focused on each character are, enjoyably, completely incongruous with each other, like a low-key Spider-Verse treatment.) But for the bulk of the game, all eighty contemplative hours of it, the player is left largely to their own devices, with the scene-setting and research-regurgitation coming almost entirely in the form of text dumps. In Death Stranding, more than any Metal Gear Solid game, there is time to mentally unpack the ideas about human connections Kojima is lecturing you about, and a setting and goals that actively encourage you to consider the implications. As narrative fiction it’s unsubtle, with cloth-eared dialogue and a bias towards expressing its ideas verbatim rather than through the characters, relationships, or even much of the plot, but viewed as part of a game, and of this game, it actually works well.

There is actually an idea I’ve been toying with, since Tim Rogers made the case that Hideo Kojima writes non-fiction, that perhaps he is a creator of edutainment games: that the nearest analogue of something like Death Stranding or Metal Gear Solid 2 is not Stalker or The New York Trilogy, but Crystal Rainforest or Granny’s Garden, or I guess Where On Earth Is Carmen San Diego (we never had that here, but we got the TV show), a game where you’re given a great deal of non-fiction knowledge in an enjoyable, interactive environment. True, Death Stranding lacks quizzes to test you on your acquisition of the knowledge, but I think that’s probably the least important part of any edutainment game’s design. I made the joke recently that Hideo Kojima spent one hundred hours reading about the words, concepts, and objects related to the English word “hand”, and by golly he’s going to make you sit down and do the same thing, but I’m not sure it was entirely a joke, or that it’s particularly negative for the game to work this way. Perhaps Death Stranding is the world’s greatest multimedia educational experience. Perhaps Hideo Kojima should just start giving TED talks and get it all out of his system.

Death Stranding is entirely itself in a way only an indie game or a Hideo Kojima production can be, and was destined to be divisive. Its patient, mindful pace and resistance to streamlining are bound to frustrate those who approach games as sport, and its needlessly convoluted plot and casual disregard for narrative will turn off those expecting an interactive movie from the supposed master of the form. But the past few months of going for long, productive hikes in the mountains, surrounded by ghosts and rewarded by lectures about puzzling scientific curios, has been a genuine pleasure.

A modern classic.

#death stranding #kojima productions #ps4 #hideo kojima #edutainment

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dreamofcentipedes · 6 years ago

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Red Lotus Blooms: 6 - To Ashes

Summary: A monster is forged in flame. As light burns out, red leaves unfurl. Chi She Lian fights its final battle, and Tatara's world is reduced to ashes.

Characters: Tatara, Houji.

Rating: Teen Words: 8,219 Link to AO3

Link to Table of Contents.

A/N: I made an 8tracks for this series, if anyone's interested in some background music. Also, linguistic note, I'm British, so what I call the First Floor will be the Second Floor to American readers (we call the floor beneath the Ground Floor).

What they thought to be the remains of Fei Huo were recovered from a junkyard in the 5th District. They were charred and dismembered, with the kakuhou ripped out and harvested, but the Chi She Lian ceremonial garb together with the dry strands of white hair that still clung to the skull left little doubt. Fei, with no forewarning, had not come back to the mansion that night, so Yan had sent out scouts to search for her. This was what they returned with three days later.

Tatara saw it. There was little that could be done to prevent that, although Yan knew it was best not to shield the young man. Tatara had been so quietly concerned that he had wanted to join the scouts himself if Yan had not counselled him to avoid areas where the CCG had been active recently. He was too valuable a piece to lose so carelessly. A leader should know to pick their battles on their own terms and to delegate when necessary. He told him all this and he listened, but he had still waited ardently by the doorstep for days on end for the scouts’ return - and so he saw it.

An ice chilled over that fiery spirit. Yan could see it in his eyes. He sat there staring at the exploded limbs until Yan ordered them to be taken away, and sat staring at the same empty spot long after that. Eventually, he turned to his elder brother and spoke softly, but with something like a charnel rage consuming the light of his eyes.

“Who did this?”

“The doves. Our spies reported their presence in the 5th District recently, and there was no kakuhou in the body. It seems certain it was them.”

Tatara returned his eyes to the spot where the remains had been, boring a hole into the table with the force of his gaze.

“We’re going to destroy the doves, aren’t we?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Yan had to stifle his hesitation. Certainly, that had been the plan from the start, but that plan seemed to have gone hopelessly awry. A flock of doves may be coming to their doorstep soon enough, but with how little time they had to prepare, Yan could not be sure who would be destroying who. He had a few divisions of Chi She Lian troops standing by specifically out of caution for such an eventuality; the heightened CCG presence was obvious enough as it had considerably delayed his scouts’ efforts in locating Fei. However, it was not the army he needed, and he hated battles where he could not ensure victory.

But for Tatara’s sake, he inched closer and added.

“We’re going to kill every last one of them.”

Yan did not lay a comforting hand on his shoulder and he certainly did not embrace him, for he was not that kind of man. This was the only kind of comfort that he understood. And from the red-blooded bile flooding into Tatara’s face, he knew he understood it, too. It was the kind of comfort that made one strong.

Nevertheless, when Yan had left the room and shut the door into his study, that strength drained out of him. He collapsed into his chair and lay flat against the desk, staring at the wall.

He had failed.

He remembered the childish terror that had reawakened in him when he realised his parents had to be disposed of. He remembered how his father masked his heartbreak with paternal outrage, how his mother had looked at him with disdain and disappointment and fear, and how he made those faces unrecognisable. They had hit him again and again and again, but when it came his turn to hit them, they never got back up. That was the essence of the weak. When he escaped that smoking bier and saw Tatara’s frightened face waiting for him at the other end, he knew the path he had chosen was the right one. He knew what he was fighting to protect.

Everything I have done, I have done for my family.

But Fei could not see that. He could not make her see that. And because of that failure, she had…

Yan had organised a search of Fei’s room after he sent his scouts out. Her disappearance so soon after their argument felt too timely to be a co-incidence, and sure enough, he found two aeroplane tickets to Tokyo in her desk together with forged passports under different names for her and Tatara.

He could not know for sure what Fei had done, but the evidence suggested that she had intended to smuggle Tatara out from under his nose. It would have been easy for her to throw her family weight around and get one of the Lian ghouls to forge passports for her. Then she had engaged with the CCG, purposefully or otherwise, and…one way or another, it was clear that Fei had betrayed Chi She Lian. Yan could already smell the scent of annihilation seeping into his chambers.

He had already decided not to tell Tatara. That lust for vengeance would be the fuel he needed to survive the CCG onslaught. Telling him risked complicating that.

And - it would destroy him.

There had already been too much destruction. Yan was still waiting for the phoenix to rise out of it all. Wearily, he pulled himself out of his chair.

Perhaps not in my lifetime, Yan ruminated. Perhaps there needs be a bigger bonfire yet.

He stepped slowly to the great window at the back of his office that looked out over the Beijing skyline, illuminated by the radiant summer sky. Its enormity was breathtaking to this day.

Chi She Lian would live through Tatara. The dream, ghoulkind’s salvation, the nirvana outside this infinite cycle of suffering – he would realise it. Yan was fully confident that was how Tatara would choose. But he would have the ability to choose.

Then this, Fei, is my concession to you.

There was something remarkable about this final Beijing skyline. Like a fresh corpse, the city had stopped breathing. The roads were free of traffic, and the streets free of people.

The dove blockade had begun.

We will leave it to the man himself to decide which ghost he will honour.

It was such a normal summer’s day. The skies were bright and blue with great clouds roaming lazily along, and the breeze that met the hordes of CCG infantry barricading the roads of Xuhangli was fresh and pleasant. It was really a stomach-churning contrast. Even such a gentle breeze felt harsh to Houji, who had formed ranks with the rest without fully knowing what he was even doing here.

Wu had managed to summon a gargantuan force from the higher-ups when she submitted her report. After living in fear of Chi She Lian for so long, it should not be surprising that they would spare nothing when the opportunity came to finally crush them. Among the three hundred investigators stationed outside the Huo residence, there were sixteen Special Class Investigators including Wu and thirty of Associate Special Class. Nothing would be left to chance, it seemed.

The evacuation had been undertaken on the day itself, much to the surprise of the citizens – naturally nothing could have been announced in advance, lest they gave the game away – and now fences and tape and robust bulwarks had been erected in a wide radius around the mansion. All that was left was to huddle like sardines and wait for the order to advance and for the bloodbath to begin.

Lives would certainly be lost this day. Houji had written a testament, a practice he found, to his comfort, was in effect in China as well. It was something that, for the Clown Operation, he had put a lot of effort and thought into – showing his gratitude for the people who had brought him this far and honouring those he had lost along the way. His testament this time was also respectable to the uninformed eye. But not to Houji. This time, he could not write anything but a carbon copy of his previous testament. He had lost the will for anything more.

Packed tight against the hulking investigator who had murdered her colleague in cold blood, Houji wondered what would be on her testament. Would it be blank, like that of the quiet but phenomenal young investigator Kishou Arima? No. Certainly Arima’s testament in advance of the Clown Operation had surprised Houji at first, but, rather than an expression of carelessness, he had come to see how deeply it was true to Arima’s somehow empty nature. Wu’s nature could not possibly reflect such profundity. More likely she just wrote some crude joke.

He could not forget the looks on their faces as they had died – Jiang, and the ghoul too. How camaraderie and honour to one’s oath were discarded without a second thought, trampled on like trash. In trying to understand the events of that day, Houji had wracked his brains to reformulate his picture of Wu, and his efforts took him back to the day of his first encounter with Chi She Lian and the conversation he had had with her on the rooftop. It began to make sense – twisted, terrible sense, but the logic of the Whale was consistent. Where Houji had asserted the importance of working for the benefit of the whole, Wu had only ever spoken of her own advancement and her own satisfaction. She was an isolated unit in a swarming world, above its concerns and above its values.

And yet, she got results.

The thing that hurt Houji the most was that he could not even bring himself to hate Wu. She was the embodiment of a concept so beyond him that he could not feel so towards her any more than he could towards a tiger or a typhoon. Because of her callous, heartless actions, Chi She Lian would be wholly crushed. If she were not there that day, two highly dangerous ghouls from a legendarily powerful bloodline would escape to live another day, and there would be a chance the whole operation would be rumbled.

Houji had long been looking for the reason Wu held the high position she did against all the odds, and it was more than just her skill with a quinque. It was precisely this unpersonality of hers that allowed her to push the cause of the CCG so far forwards. No wonder she spent so much time investigating by herself. Houji remembered how she had told him and the rest of the team how they would only get in the way, and she was right. Not for lack of skill, but for lack of depravity.

So when the moment had finally come to take down Chi She Lian once and for all, Houji could take no pleasure at the prospect of avenging the deaths of his comrades over these past two and a half years. When thinking of the ghouls he was soon to exterminate, he could only think of the horror on that teenage girl’s face when Hollow had blown her to pieces.

In some ways Wu in her cavalier selfishness was more aware of what it really meant to be in the CCG than he had been. That was the reality Kousuke Houji found himself faced with. He felt the pull of two giants at his legs and shoulders: simultaneously, his desire to destroy Chi She Lian was weaker, while his imperative to do so was even stronger. His pity for Jiang and the ghoul was uncomfortably contrasted with ggrudging awe for the harsh necessities Wu espoused.

Houji truly hated the air here.

When the calm breeze began to blow more harshly, a voice was carried on the wind. A sharp voice in Mandarin was yelling out over a megaphone the order to advance. And Houji followed suit: because that was his role.

The building was quickly surrounded. The white shapes of the Chi She Lian ghouls inside the mansion rushed past Tatara, quickly assuming battle formations and erecting crude barricades in the hallways. The house was large, so there would be plenty of opportunities to catch the invading army off guard once they breached its walls. Yan had alerted the nearby Lian squadrons about the attack by telephone, although there was no telling how quickly the reinforcements could arrive on such short notice. Their small force would just have to hold their ground as long as possible against the white leviathan bellowing at their walls.

Moving to one of the windows, Tatara could see the ghouls burst out the doors en masse to intercept the advancing doves. Watching the ensuing carnage unfold, Tatara wished he could be down there. His bikaku unconsciously slipped out of his cloak and reflexively crunched the air within its grasp. He imagined a human head caught between its red veins, bleeding and then bursting apart until it was no more recognisable than what Fei had become.

The blood within his veins felt drier since then. A horrific emptiness had run from his brain down to his body when he was forced to look upon what had been his sister, stilling his body with cold like a needle.

He was glad the doves had come now. He was glad he was not forced to contemplate what exactly he had been fighting for all this time when his family had been laid dead at his feet once again. He was glad he was not forced to contemplate what he was even doing standing here. Now, he could feel a hellfire warming up his heart again, and he knew what he would do.

He would defend Yan. He would defend Chi She Lian. And he would avenge Fei a thousandfold. He would create a field of ashes where these human insects now swarmed.

He took out the aeroplane ticket from the forged passport Yan had given him and crumpled it in his fist. How could he expect him to run? It was the last thing he expected from Yan, even if it was only meant to be a last resort. He brushed his fingers against the cool red iron mask covering his mouth. He had even given him this. Tatara knew what it meant: he was trying to pass the torch down.

He had no intention of carrying it. If Yan went down, so would he, spoiling the snow-white feathers of these doves with blood along the way. He was fully healed from his encounter with the Longxia. He only stayed his feet now because he trusted Yan’s strategy; but as soon as the doves broke in, he had no intention of running.

He stuffed the items back into his pocket. Then he took up his position at the top of the tall, winding staircase, and hungrily waited.

Houji was already panting from exhaustion by the time they dealt with the outside forces. Chi She Lian ghouls were not easy prey. They had become savvy to methods of avoiding the destructive capabilities of Hollow, much to Wu’s annoyance, though each blast still left none ungrazed. Houji stood over the corpses and shook the blood off Iitsu before hearing yet another loud bang as Wu blew the mansion door down. Swept up with the tsunami of the crowd, already smaller than it had been when it arrived, he burst through the empty doorframe into a large mahogany hall, furnished with an onyx statue of a Chinese dragon and a red rug that led all the way up the winding staircase at the back.

There was little time to admire the décor. Immediately doors from either side of the hall burst open and white-cloaked assailants wielding glistening koukakus charged directly at them. Houji ducked in and out of the flurry of blades, spinning back and forth and carefully waiting for the right moment to lunge forward with his quinque. Thankfully, quinque combat was Houji’s specialty. He punctured one’s throat and disembowelled another, stabbing one through the eye and another through both cheeks. However, with this many assassins, even Houji’s dexterity could not avoid shallow cuts to the arms and legs, and the blood that mingled with his black battle gear was somewhere between ghoul and human.

He was the lucky one. The conflict spread out across the entire room, and, when he had eliminated enough blades lurching towards his face that for an instant he could breathe freely, he could see fallen bodies all across the long stretch. The lifeless arm of one investigator lay by his feet with a wedding ring on its finger, and further along he observed a decapitated human head slide across the gory floorboards. Houji felt another painful stab of misery when he realised it belonged to one of the men on his team. But within the room of screaming sound, Houji found he could not differentiate the cries of the humans from those of the ghouls.

The thought died as quickly as it appeared as Houji was quickly brought back into the fray with a barrage of shards from ukaku on the staircase. His head was now filled with nothing but the spike of adrenaline and the rhythms of battle. He rushed towards the enemy, slicing apart the shards in the air with the elegance of a duelist and shouting out a primal cry as Hollow’s explosions lit up the world behind him.

Tatara waited as he heard the instruments of war sounding off closer and closer. Risking a glance out the window, he noticed the few numbers of CCG who had remained outside the building were being thrown into disarray. The bloody shards he could see smash into their ranks confirmed it: at least one reinforcement group had arrived. He took solace at the greater chances of victory, but his itch remained unsatisfied. He could feel his whole body heating up as he prepared to rain down hell from above.

He heard one shout rising above the rest. Over a cacophony of cries of panic and the sound of blood spurting from fresh cadavers, a yell reverberated through the hallways as one tall, broad, inky-haired man emerged up the stairs onto the first floor clutching two long sanguine blades. Tatara was caught off guard by how quickly he seemed to be advancing on his own, and before he knew it, five, ten, fifteen other investigators followed him as he charged towards the dining room where Yan laid in wait. There was no more time.

Tatara threw himself off the railings of the second floor stairway and activated his half-kakuja in mid-air. As soon as his helmet was formed, he let out a titanic burst of flame. The landing and staircase both combusted and huge burning chunks of them tumbled down onto the investigators climbing up to the first floor. Some were crushed, some retreated, some fell through the floorboards, and when Tatara hit the first floor, a miserable number were directly incinerated.

As usual, the kakuja frenzied Tatara’s judgement, but the blind panic of the Longxia’s den had been replaced with the pure, undistilled fury that now guided Tatara’s every action. The same choler that had beheaded the Longxia in a single punch now unleashed itself in a Jurassic roar. The brute force of his kakuja’s pillar-like appendages swept like a bulldozer through the ranks of doves, knocking aside their quinques and cracking open their skulls again and again and again.

“FEEEIII!” The beast clamoured.

When the doves on the ground floor scrambled back in retreat from the young titan bathed in flame, the creature turned its head to the investigators behind it who had darted so nimbly past the ukaku guards. Most were speeding onwards to the dining room or breaking off into side rooms, but for a split-second Tatara caught the eye of the inky-haired man who, for a split-second, had stopped in his tracks and turned his gaze backward. For that split-second, Tatara recovered enough of his reason to acknowledge the look of misery on that man’s face, before the dove sped off and Tatara felt quinque bullets against his back. His ire boiled over again. He turned back to his enemies storming the stairs and scourged them with flails of red flame.

It was sheer chance that it was Houji who found the right door. Chance, or destiny. There was something about those grandiose, gold-panelled gates that spoke to him of the dragon’s lair. He pushed aside the enclosures with a sweep of his hand and came upon what must have been a dining hall. The chandelier still hung menacingly, but the chairs and long cloth-draped tables had all been pushed to the sides. There was only one thing that could catch one’s attention when entering that room.

The shadow of a colossus loomed large beneath the candlelight. At the end of the hall, the familiar cold blue flame burned expectantly at the head of the Herculean silver form of Houji’s old foe. The ghoul codenamed Loong. The business giant Yan Huo. The leader of Chi She Lian.

Houji’s concomitant investigators quickly formed ranks behind him amid gasps of fear. Houji immediately entered a defensive stance. This would decide it, he knew. In a closed-off room like this there could be no escape for either of them. This unrelenting tension of equal and opposite forces would finally yield a victor. Beads of sweat formed on Houji’s head as his heart began to beat faster. His body was ridden with the anxiety of a finish line.

He heard a great rumbling amidst the low roar of the fire. The demon began to speak in a voice like an earthquake.

“What is your name?”

The creature had no eyes he could see, but Houji knew it was talking to him, just like how he knew that it would be waiting in this room. Speaking to ghouls was ill-advised unless necessary, but somehow he felt compelled to give it at least this much.

“Kousuke Houji. First Class Investigator.”

There was a pause before the fiend posed its next question:

“Did you kill Fei?”

Houji’s face crumpled. Fei…Fei was her name. He remembered how the burning kakuja that had ambushed them had screamed her name. For a moment, that scorching abomination felt all too suddenly human. Now, the great grey nightmare hunching in front of him felt the same.

It did not change what he had to do.

“Yes.”

Because now, I am no different than her.

The sapphire flame seemed to glow all the brighter and spewed forth furiously from the sides of his bonelike helm. Yan Huo entered a battle stance. His voice was suffused with spite.

“Then your death will not be merciful.”

Houji felt his whole body tense with anticipation, gripping his quinque with an almost maniacal tightness as he stared down the grimness of the task before him. Then, slowly breathing out, he pressed down his emotions as he had become so accustomed to doing: as circumstances had forced him to do.

“Excessively passionate emotions rob one of their objectivity.”

More than a warning to his opponent, he meant it as a mantra to himself.

Inexorably, and with a final growl, his adversary charged forward.

Rage dominated Tatara. He was blind to the legions of doves assailing him, senseless to the quinques shattering against his skin, deaf to the shrieks of the pulverised investigators. All was the blood-rush of anger. There was only one thing he heard that pierced the roar of the rapids in his brain. A far-off sound, in the room he meant to defend. A man by the name of Kousuke Houji was in there now, who had just admitted to killing his sister.

He flung the investigators off him with a smash of his pole-like appendage and breathed fire at them so that they clambered away desperately, howling in pain from the burns. Using the moment’s opportunity, he turned around and began sprinting towards the dining hall.

The strategy had been to hold off the other investigators so that Yan would not be overwhelmed with too many enemies at once; that way he could concentrate on destroying the cream of the crop while Tatara dealt with the mounting piles of chaff. Tatara’s position on the stairway was also meant to ensure his greater mobility if the numbers became too much, thus allowing him to escape by retreating to a higher floor and heading to a window at the back of the building. Tatara had already set the upper stairway ablaze, lacking any such intention, and now he abandoned his position and Yan’s strategy to head directly into greater jeopardy. Wrath had overpowered anything left of reason, and his berserker mania would not tolerate the murderer behind him breathing a second more.

His turned back rendered himself vulnerable to the barb that nestled into his shoulder and blew open his carapace. Tatara’s great armoured weight plunged to the floor with a fierce thud. Infuriated by the obstruction more than the pain, he twisted his head around as he used his poles to push himself off the ground, and spied through the fumes a fat, grinning old lady dove wielding an ukaku quinque.

Rationality sparked in Tatara’s mind for a moment at the sight of her. Yan had warned him about this one: despite her appearance, she was highly dangerous. The Whale, they called her. Shouldn’t someone of her calibre have been in the vanguard? But before he could process anything further, another barb came flying directly at him.

The kakuja’s bestial instinct took over and swung its pole to knock the bolt aside where it exploded against a wall and burned a hole straight through it. Anger spiralling at the assault, Tatara barrelled directly at the Whale, belching out a protective blaze along the way. He was gaining on her like an enraged rhino and almost reached the staircase where she had taken up position before a missile exploded just below his feet and sent him flying backwards. His kakuja helmet cracked on impact with the ground and, with the scent of the smoky air that poured through, Tatara regained some of his logical faculties.

More and more barbs were flying around him and exploding in front of him so that he could not rise. The half-kakuja was just too heavy and unwieldy against this relentless onslaught of firepower. Tatara shot a quick look over his shoulder to where Yan was fighting the man called Houji. He could hear the sounds of combat within and he desperately wanted to join Yan, but, narrowly dodging another barb and shielding his face from the explosion, he knew there was small chance of that unless this woman was dealt with first.

He grasped the edges of his helmet from around the crack and, with a mighty tug, broke it off. Cracks ran through the rest of his kakuja which he smashed through, and extracting his more nimble, humane body from the shell, he darted liquidly in between the combustive arrows until he shot his bikaku kagune into the wall above her and swung up onto it. She could not turn around in time before Tatara descended on her, grasping at her eyes and beating at the sides of her head with a whirlwind of fists. She spat out blood, calling out the name “Jiang!” as if for help before cursing and bludgeoning her quinque against Tatara’s back - but he clung on, animalistically.

The other investigators took the opportunity to pour past the combatants towards the dining hall, as well as the investigators who had been searching the other rooms on the first floor and dealing with the Lian forces therein. The full mass of the doves on the ground floor could not completely push through, because of the fires ahead and the Lian reinforcements who had broken past the CCG barricade behind. Still, there were far too many getting past for Tatara’s liking. He gripped the sides of the Whale’s head, hoping to snap her neck and end it, before she suddenly threw herself backwards down the stairs.

Tatara instinctively leapt out of the way and launched his kagune into the high wall, pulling himself upwards; but his escape was hindered by an enormous strain on his leg, as the Whale clung onto it. His kagune was stretched taut and his leg screamed at the ligaments, but his ghoulish strength managed to handle the weight and he successfully pulled himself up close to the ceiling. He flung Wu off him with an asslike kick of his leg, and her grip finally relented, flying off onto the hitherto untouched second floor with a painful thud.

Now was the opportunity to finish her, while her old and frail body was winded. Tatara propelled himself onto the second floor and bore down on her with the razor-point of his kagune. Just as he moved into point blank range, the old lady swung out her quinque and cracked Tatara across the jaw, shooting him across the hallway. As Tatara pulled himself up, rubbing the wound, he saw she was standing again and was raising the quinque in his direction.

Tatara ran before the projectile obliterated the space where he was standing. He pelted down the narrow corridor to the left as barbs exploded in front and behind him. Whenever he tried to turn around and fight, a burst of flame would send him backing away again. Tatara gritted his teeth in frustration. This was not where he wanted to be. He should be down there, with Yan, fighting against Fei’s murderer. Instead, he was trapped in this narrow labyrinth, dodging pellets to the cackle of whalesong.

Special Class Li was the next body to join the towering inferno. He would be joining Special Class Gao, Special Class Wang, Associate Special Class Chen, and a whole host of other names that Houji had not had the chance to learn. All in all, well over fifty investigators had been slaughtered by Loong. The number of Special Classes and Associate Special Classes among them was, to Houji, an unbearable horror. The best and brightest of the Chinese CCG were being squashed like so many ants by this king of the urban jungle, the ghoul supreme.

The troops who had been with Houji at the start were obliterated almost immediately. He was exceedingly grateful for the reinforcements that arrived, but even with all their manpower they struggled to put a dent in Loong. No matter how many stratagems they devised, no matter how many beatings he took, he withstood it stalwartly before reducing his attackers to cinders. His onslaught was relentless, and as more and more warriors poured out against him, the frenzied speed of the battle seemed to last an eternity.

Houji realised what was different about this battle. It was the first time both parties were fighting without the intention of escaping. This was the reality of Loong’s strength when he had nothing to lose.

He was jolted out of his hopeless reverie by the shock of a sudden hand on his shoulder and a voice that had faded from his hearing.

“Houji! Houji! You’re Houji, right?”

Houji turned to face the voice, blinking away his horror. He vaguely recognised the square, middle-aged visage and close-cropped black hair of the man talking to him.

“Yes, that’s right. Special Class Zhao…?”

He gave a firm nod. “The boys say you have the most experience fighting this thing. You think you have a shot?”

Houji looked at him, dumbfounded. His eyes swam back to the battlefield, where Loong was decimating a squad wielding rinkaku quinques. Couldn’t he see the reams of far better men Loong had already stomped under heel? Zhao followed his eyes.

“Fair point.” He grumbled, massaging his temples between his stubby fingers. “I thought as much. But what if –” he briefly paused as though it was challenging to continue, before meeting Houji’s eyes with an intense stare. “What if we gave you an opening?

“An opening…?”

“A suicide charge.”

Houji was speechless. Then he was indignant.

“Special Class, how many investigators would –“

“How many investigators are already dying?” Zhao snapped back. “Caution is useless against this monster! Whatever happens, we need to nail Chi She Lian today. Forever. Or who knows how much more blood will be spilt? I’ll lead the charge, they’ll trust me. Then you need to take advantage of the distraction. Can you do it, Houji?!”

Houji felt a terrible frost inch over his neural matter. It felt as though the walls of his identity were narrowing more and more the longer he stayed here, the values he upheld, the principles he held dear, crushed mercilessly by their inwards march. Or worse – he would have to destroy them personally just to leave enough room for him to survive. Or what remains of him…

“Houji! There’s no time to vacillate, I need an answer!”

Houji’s head throbbed with the memory of that day. Yes, there were two deaths back then. Wu had killed Fei…and she had killed Jiang…

“Houji!”

“Yes!” He yelled, and then, controlling his voice to an even tone, “Yes. I will do it.”

He decided he would do what needed to be done. If he did not remain objective, then there was no telling where his emotions might take him.

Zhao gave a final nod and a lingering look that said he was counting on him, before he rushed off to rally the remaining fifty-odd people in the room to their almost certain deaths. Houji gripped his quinque with hands that were no longer shaking. There was a time before now when he had delivered a major blow to Loong, and if he had not retreated, perhaps he could have even finished him. That meant the lives lost here were already on his hands. There was only one way he could atone. By granting an ending to all of them. To all of this. A final stroke to put this whole sorry story to its conclusion, no matter the cost.

Houji replayed in his head his first encounter with Loong from all those years ago. He remembered it as clearly as if he had been shot back in time – every movement had imprinted itself precisely into his memory in the clarity of the near-death experience. Taking into account everything he had learned in their subsequent fights, he devised a plan.

When he saw Zhao leading masses of investigators in lotus formation against the platinum dragon, Houji lifted his feet off the ground and began to run. He sprinted against the backdrop of blue flame as warriors flung themselves into the air only to be crushed against the wall, pounded into the floor or broiled in ruthless calefaction – but they kept on coming. As Loong batted them off of him like flies and snorted out jets of flame, Houji found the opening they were sacrificing themselves to create.

Angling his body just right, he would slide beneath Loong like before and hit him right in the centre of his chest. When he fell to the floor, before he had the chance to breathe fire Houji would ram Iitsu into the opening of his helmet and finish him off. That was the plan. But when Houji glided across the floor to make the initial hit, Loong threw down his appendage.

He managed to roll out of the way at the last second. His eyes darted up to see the black void inside the helmet staring down at him with what looked like a forest of eyes masked in its shadow. That darkness was abruptly lit up by a luminous blue.

The stream of fire lurched to the side as Loong was struck in the face by an explosive projectile, narrowly missing Houji. The onslaught continued, explosive after explosive, while a sea of investigators hacked and slashed at Loong’s feet. Loong kicked and stomped at the investigators and threw up his great arms like a cross to shield his face.

Houji was struck with a sudden inspiration. If he did not strike now, he knew he would never have this opportunity again.

From his close position, he leapt right up into the air. Loong saw him coming, but his heavy arms were not fast enough, and Houji thrusted both spears of Iitsu through both of those arms at once. His armour had been weakened by the shells from the other investigators, so with a hefty feat of strength, Houji was able to crush the quinque through the layers of crust that remained. As Houji fell to the floor again and rolled to create some distance, he grabbed a quinque like a poleaxe from the body of an investigator covered head to toe in third-degree burns. Spinning around again to face Loong, he saw the kaiju shaking his arms in wild frustration as the weight of the quinque bore them down and letting out a low moan of pain.

In an instant, Houji was darting back again, his legs stamping against the burnt, broken and blood-slicken floorboards to propel himself over the immobilised arms of his foe and fly straight for the head. Before Loong could raise his head in time, the axe came crashing down, splitting the helmet apart and slicing through the flesh beneath.

The thought Houji had when the awaited moment finally came was strangely serene. It was: Rest now. Who those words were for, he could not say.

The axe completely its trajectory, and with one final howl, like a dying wolf at an unforgiving moon, the great kakuja collapsed on the floor. Houji landed on its legs, and saw, at the head of the beast, through the monstrous flesh that had covered it, something that had resembled the face of a man – now bloodied, now mutilated, but a man nonetheless. A ghoul…and a man.

Still panting for breath, Houji looked around the room to see what remained, or rather, who remained. He saw about ten people standing. They were about as noticeable as plankton in the expansive ocean of warm bodies piled dishonourably around the dining hall. It was an apocalypse of life.

Houji set his teeth together and scanned the room for Zhao. He found him, unconscious but alive, but for how much longer he could not say. His left arm had been torn clean off and blood was pouring out effusively. He had to receive medical attention immediately, and Houji almost left to call for a medic, before remembering that his mission was not yet complete.

Whatever happens, we need to nail Chi She Lian today. Forever. Or who knows how much more blood will be spilt?

That’s what Zhao had told him. They had dealt with the head of the snake, but that had not collapsed the organisation when Svarog died. Houji remembered in particular the smaller kakuja he had encountered on the stairway, and how similar it had looked to the corpse that now lay in front of him. So long as a single member remained, they would be a threat, and all the lives lost here today would mean nothing.

Tearing his eyes away from Zhao’s pitiful state, Houji pushed another survivor towards the casualty before running for the exit.

This ends today.

As he ran, a howl reached Tatara’s ears. He froze in his tracks, careless to the Whale’s pursuit. Wordlessly, it spoke to him, and he knew what it meant.

It was a howl like death.

The next barb the Whale shot out, Tatara caught by the tail and threw back at her. She narrowly dodged to the side with a yelp and fell on her back, when Tatara began storming towards her, his half-kakuja encircling him again mid-motion. The Whale fired off barb after barb at her approaching enemy and they all hit home, blowing up against Tatara’s chest and blasting off chunks of armour, but his pace did not slow in the slightest. He could not feel that pain above all the rest.

Now the Whale was scrambling to her feet, but when she finally managed to stand, Tatara had almost closed the distance. In a manic movement she jolted up her quinque and targeted her foe.

“Stay back, you overgrown lizard!”

His pace did not slow.

A beam of red hot flame roasted the Whale’s hand before she could pull the trigger. The quinque cluttered to the floor as she reeled back in horror. Tatara seized her by the neck. His voice gargled like a burning bush from the back of his throat.

“You shouldn’t have interfered.”

Then he set her on fire.

Her skin burnt up like dry parchment. The more she screamed, the tighter he gripped and the closer he moved, bringing the fire with him. The choked noises she eked out were hardly decipherable, words like “Stop!” and “Please!”, but they were lost in the discordant song of burning flesh and Tatara’s own screams, of hatred and Whale and Yan and Houji and failure. By the end of it, nothing escaped Tatara’s mouth but flame, and nothing escaped hers but smoke.

He flung her lifeless body to the ground and started walking back down the corridor.

It was not long before he collapsed. All of a sudden the pain from his wounds flooded through him, and it took a masterful effort of willpower to even stand back up. He had to keep moving. To avenge Yan. Kill Houji. Kill them all.

Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill-

He fell to the floor again, chipping his helmet. The ensuing rush of common sense was enough for him to realise it was useless. So he lay there, waiting for them to come to him. They could all go out in the same singular blaze.

There was nothing else left for him now, but to kill them.

The crack in his helmet spread, and the whole thing collapsed around him. A stab of fear plunged into him. What if he died before anyone arrived? How pitiful that would be. He did not want that. He could not let that happen. So again, he struggled to rise.

As soon as he was up, he had to press himself against a wall. His cheek brushed his hand and he felt the cold metal of Yan’s mask around his face. It was so icy it nearly brought tears to his eyes, but they would not come. It was as though the noxious heat had dried them all up inside of him. He had always hated crying. Now that door felt closed off to him forever, he supposed his wish had been granted. A barely audible laugh escaped his lips, muffled behind the mask, dry, bitter and cynical.

I wonder if this is how it felt, he wondered, to be Yan.

His brother never let a weak emotion show. Tatara did not know if he even had any. Always calm, collected, in control. It was that coolness that had kept Tatara safe, and had made Tatara strong. He had raised him up out of infantile vulnerability and made him the ghoul people spoke of as Salamander with fear on their lips. Tatara had wanted to protect Fei in the same way. She was his sister, even if she did not understand, so he tried his hardest - but in the end he failed her, too. She had protected him more times than he was willing to admit, but when he tried to protect her...

He had been protected all this time. In the end, even Yan had wanted him to run. He touched the frosty metal again.

He had been protected. And he had failed to save them.

So if he tried to avenge them now, he would fail them too.

The simple equation coaxed the embers inside of him. He could not die yet. First, he would have to become stronger. Strong enough to avenge them both. Otherwise, he would just be taking the coward’s way out, blessed with the ease of a useless death without ever atoning for his failures. He refused to dishonour the memories of Yan and Fei that way. For their sake, he would stay in perdition for just a little longer.

He searched for an escape and remembered the window at the very back of the house. However, even if he could limp his way there, he would still have to deal with the CCG surrounding the building. There was a good chance the Lian reinforcements were still keeping them occupied, but at this pace he could hardly hope to slip by unnoticed.

Tatara stared down to where the smoke was billowing into the air. He had an idea.

Houji had scoured the building and exterminated what footsoldiers remained, but there was no sign of even the corpse of the second kakuja. The only unexplored area was the second floor, to which the stairway had been carbonised. Reluctant to leave any stone unturned, Houji hauled himself off the shoulders of a colleague onto the isolated passageway. He saw signs of combat and isolated flames, and noted particularly the large holes of explosive damage indicative of Hollow.

Wu, Houji mused. He had not seen her in the fight against Loong. She was meant to be in the vanguard with the rest of the Special Class Investigators, but she likely could not manage the same pace as the rest of them. She had a bad habit of doing whatever she pleased in any case. Had she been fighting that kakuja? Houji wondered what he would find at the end of the corridor.

What he found he was not sure of. Had it not been for the sight of Hollow lying on the floor, Houji could never have recognised the body of Huiyin Wu. It was charred black as the night, with whatever features or expressions its face once held melted into sludge. It was torn asunder, with a leg here, an arm there, the head lying not much further off, and with other parts missing entirely. It reminded Houji of how the body of Fei had looked after Wu killed her and harvested her kakuhou.

He knelt by the body, closed his eyes and put his palms together in respect. He had not liked her, and perhaps, for a time, he had even hated her; but she had made him, for better or for worse, what he was today. She had taught him what it took to survive and what it took to win. Bearing this in mind as he watched over her desecrated skin and bones, Houji felt the force of irony, and could not laugh.

Picking up her quinque, Houji moved along the corridor to find an open window. He looked outside. He could see a trail of CCG bodies lying on this side of the grounds, but it disappeared into the general carnage of CCG and Chi She Lian alike amidst the barricades. Houji’s shock scarcely affected him at this point. Chi She Lian reinforcements must have attacked, though he could not see any left alive. They had not gone quietly.

There was no sign of the kakuja ghoul.

What Houji felt, staring out into the empty air, was not anger or frustration. Just despair. Despair and pity.

He pitied everyone. He pitied Wu, he pitied Jiang, he pitied Zhao, he pitied his colleague whose head he had seen decapitated. He pitied Loong, he pitied Fei, he pitied this nameless ghoul that had escaped his reach. He pitied the scores of human dead and ghoul dead alike; and he pitied the lives of all those that would perish because he failed to capture this ghoul this day.

He had his suspicions as to who it was. Fei had mentioned a second brother – Tatara. Another member of the Huo family. After everything it took to defeat Loong, Houji understood how even Wu could be defeated by a ghoul from this bloodline. And after everything that they had done here, Houji hardly expected him to live quietly.

He looked to the massacre outside, and then to Wu’s remains and the torrefied ruins behind him. He had wanted to end everything today so he could leave these ashes behind.

The wind had blown them this way. Would the day ever come when it would scatter them again?

In the depths of the Beijing sewers, a white-cloaked ghoul wandered through the river of grime and primal matter. His limbs were exhausted from fighting off the CCG by the barricades, but the Whale meat kept him going long enough to find a manhole to slip down in the chaos of the melee. There had been plenty to feast on, though it was all roasted to hell. The bitter taste lingered in his mouth.

Bitter, bitter, it was all so bitter.

He fished in his pocket for the ticket that Yan had given him. Beijing International…to Narita, Tokyo. Japan. Yan had chosen well. He surely could not have predicted this, but if anyone could…

Houji was a Japanese name. This battle would not end here.

Guided by this shaky light, he slipped from the ashes, like a salamander.

#tokyo ghoul #tg fanfic #red lotus blooms #tatara #kousuke houji #rlb

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janethepegasus · 6 years ago

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BMC Miraculous AU RP Thing: Stranded in the Desert

An RP me and @pika-ace did related to the BMC Miraculous AU, where an akuma leaves Jordan and Roger in a desert and they have to travel through it to find civilization.

(Roger was just walking by the street, but then all of the sudden, a van zooms up towards him and stops by him. The van door opens and vines lash out towards him) Roger: Wha-AH!! (The vines wrap around him, yank him into the van, and the van drives off) (Meanwhile with Jordan, he and Eric were walking together, but then the van zooms towards them, with the driver's eyes being on Jordan)

(They see the car zooming towards them) Jordan: What the-?

(The van stops by them, the van door opens and vines come out of it and wrap around Jordan)

(Jordan gets yanked in and the van zooms away) Eric: JORDAN!!

(Jordan struggles in the vines) Jordan: Ack! Let me go! Roger: Jordan?! (Jordan looks and sees Roger struggling in vines as well) Jordan: You! >:/

Jordan: Oh fucking wonderful, we get kidnapped by the same asshole! >:/

Roger: Greaaat...i'm stuck with a suicidal idiot! >:/

Jordan: Yeah, and I'm stuck with a dumb lazy hunk of muscle; fuck off >:P

Roger: Excuse me?! >:( Jordan: Ya heard me! >:P (Suddenly, the akuma laughs) Akuma: Now now you two! Settle down back there, cause i'm gonna drive ya two to a FAR away place! >:D

Jordan: What are you up to?!

Akuma: You'll see once we get there! Now hang on tight! >:3 (The akuma steps on the gas pedal and he starts to drive REALLY fast, somehow zooming through the streets without hitting anyone or anything)

Roger: Jesus, slow down!! Jordan: What, can't handle a little speed? >:P Roger: Not when the driver is my kidnapper!! (The bickering continues for the whole ride)

(The akuma keeps driving for a while, until he stops, which cause Roger and Jordan to slam against the wall) Akuma: Okay, we're here! >:3

(Jordan and Roger don't hear him as they're still fighting)

(The akuma rolls his eyes, gets out of the van, walks to the door, opens it, and drags them out)

Akuma: Have fun getting home!

Roger: *blinks* Wait, what?! (They look around and they see that they're in the middle of the desert) Jordan: What the hell?! Akuma: Alright, heres some food and water for you *hands them some food and water* take this off of ya *cuts the vines off of them* and this too! *takes their

Miraculous* Jordan: Hey!! >:( Akuma: Aaaaaand some money! *gives them a couple of dollars and coins* Roger: Money? Why would we need money for? Akuma: Plane tickets, cause it's gonna be a LOOOONG way home if you traveled on foot! >:3c

Akuma: Well...bye! (He drives off)

(Jordan and Roger watch the van drive away from them)

Both: O_O

Roger: ...So this akuma kidnapped us...just so he could drop us off in the middle of nowhere?!

Jordan: Bastard!! >:(

Jordan: Now i'm stuck with a god damn living hunk of muscle! >:(

Roger: Oh fuck off! I didn't ask for this!

Jordan: Neither did i and yet here we are! >:/

Jordan: Let's just fucking find an airport or whatever, cause I want to go home to my husband! >:/

Jordan: He's probably worried sick that i'm not home... Roger: Ah yes, your husband. Didn't I help him improve him mentally and physically when you two did that split up thing? I'm sure he'll survive a whole day without you

>:/

Jordan: Yeah, but for that I wasn't KIDNAPPED! We were taking a break! There's a huge difference!

Roger: Well as long as we're not out here for more than a day, i suspect that Eric will try to keep himself somewhat calm

Roger: Let's just go >:/ Jordan: FINE!

(They start walking)

(They walk for a while, rest, and then walk again, repeating the process as best they could)

(During their walk, Roger's stomach starts to growl)

Jordan: Hungry? Roger: What gave it away? >:/

Jordan: Oh gee, i don't know, just instinct? >:P

Roger: Just give me some of that food that akuma gave us >:/

Jordan: Fine fine...

(Jordan opens the bag of food to see what they have) Jordan: We gotta ration this as best we can...

Jordan: So don't eat it all, okay?

Roger: Since when are you Mr. Survival expert? >:/ Jordan: I don't see YOU going on any long hiking or camping trips >:P

Jordan: Which i bet ya DON'T do, cause you're rooted in the city! >:P (Roger fumes and glares at Jordan)

(Jordan fiddles with the food before giving Roger a portion) Jordan: Alright, I've divided up about six days worth for both of us; if we don't find civilization soon we'll divide what we have left again so it lasts as long as

possible.

Roger: Alright then

(Roger eats the food and they keep walking)

(They walk for hours, but then the sun starts to set)

Jordan: We better find someplace to sleep

Roger: Yeah...

(They wander and happen to find a cave)

Jordan: We can sleep in there

Roger: Sounds good Jordan: Alright, settle in, I’ll be right back Roger: Where are you going? Jordan: Getting firewood; you’re a teacher, don’t you know the desert gets freezing at night?

Roger: I teach math and science! I don't know much about how environments work! >:/

Jordan: Oh gooood for you! Don’t go anywhere okay?

Roger: Okay

(Jordan leaves; a little while later he comes back to Roger shivering in the corner of the cave as the sun has fully set)

Roger: *shivers* O-O-Oh F-F-FINALLY y-you came b-back! >:/

Jordan: You try finding wood in the goddamn desert >:P (Jordan tosses the wood down) Roger: H-H-How...are y-y-you not FREEZING?! Jordan: I’ve been walking for hours, that’s why

(Roger glares at Jordan and pouts)

Roger: H-How d-do you p-p-plan on lighting- (Jordan rubs two sticks together with amazing force and a fire starts)

Roger: ...Oh O_O

(Jordan gives him a smug smirk)

Roger: Oh don't rub it in! >:/

(Jordan grins and they sit and get warm)

(Roger warms himself up by the fire, he looks up and sees Jordan with a smug smirk) Roger: Wipe that smug look off your face! >:/

Jordan: Sorry, can't help it; bet you never imagined a 'sacrificial red neck' as you call me would be saving your ass, right? XP

Roger: Oh shut up >:/

(They sit for a while and Roger eventually tries to doze off but finds he's still quite cold; Jordan watches him lying on the ground trying to ignore his shivering and

rolls his eyes) Jordan: Alright, c'mere. *he moves towards him*

(Jordan walks towards Roger)

(He makes to lie down next to him and Roger recoils) Roger: What the fuck are you doing?! Jordan: It's called body heat, asshole, it won't kill ya -_-

Roger: So you're gonna cuddle me to keep me warm?! >:/

Jordan: Yeah, smart-ass, that's how heat transference works and it's how people in the cold don't die in their sleep; I don't like it anymore than you do but it's our

best bet. And what are you so afraid of, I'm married! >:/

Roger: Well what if we're stuck out here for several days and you start hitting on me?! >:/

Jordan: One, why would I cheat on my husband? Two, why the fuck would I want to hit on YOU of all fucking people?? >:/

Roger: I don't know!! But it will happen if our sanity starts to dry out! >:/

Jordan: You really have THAT little faith in the others? Will SAW me get taken, he's probably already told everyone by now to go out looking for us or the akuma!

Roger: Well it's not MY fault i don't know the others more than you do! >:/

Jordan: Well maybe if you stepped outside your goddamn classroom every once and a while you'd learn the wonders of social bonds >:/

Roger: >:O Do you have ANY idea how stressful and time consuming working as a teacher is?! I spend SO much time trying to manage both my work for every week AND my

sanity from all those crazy teens! Of COURSE i don't have much time to take a break! Cause i'm spending so much time managing being a teacher!! >:(

Jordan: Oh bullshit, Will's a teacher too, and he still finds time for us or himself >:/

Roger: Well at least he doesn't work in a school where you handle over hundreds of students every day instead of just 15! >:P

Jordan: Have you considered getting ANOTHER teaching job, smartass? >:/

Roger: Oh like YOU know any teaching jobs that will satisfy you vision of me having time to do whatever you want me to do >:/

Jordan: Uh, Will’s school? Duh; they’re short on teachers

Roger: Oh THAT'S your only recommendation? Me going to the same school your husband works? No offense, but that school is BARELY hanging on to living another year!

Plus they don't have to support themselves unlike my school >:/

Jordan: Ugh whatever, stay at your shitty job, and go to sleep

Roger: Fine! >:/

(They both lie down and slowly drift off to sleep; the next morning, Roger is the first to wake up. The fire has gone out, the sun is up and...he’s curled up into

Jordan, Jordan’s arms around him due to them seeking warmth from each other in their sleep)

Roger: What the...?!

(Roger shoves himself away from him and Jordan blinks awake) Jordan: *yawns* Good morning to you too, asshat...

Roger: Why the fuck were you wrapped around me?! >:(

Jordan: *rubs his eyes* That’s what people do when they’re cold at night, they find something warm and go to it, even in their sleep. Jesus, you’re such a dumbass

outside your precious city...

Roger: >:O I am not!!

Jordan: Couldn’t even think about the heat transferred between two human bodies? Yeah you are >:P

Roger: You assume i NEVER had that kind of thing before?! >:(

Jordan: I feel like you haven’t had a lot of things; seriously you’re like the extreme version of Will I knew in college: moody, hot-headed, and pretty much helpless

when shit doesn’t go as planned and can’t adapt because he doesn’t know shit about friendship and social values >:(

Roger: You're comparing ME to your husband?! I am NOTHING like him at all!! >:(

Jordan: Not now you aren’t; my husband has come a long way; and I’m starting to think YOU’RE what he would’ve turned into if I hadn’t come along >:(

Roger: Well at least I know i won't turn into a male damsel in distress and have a reckless, stupid, suicidal red neck pretty much nearly killing himself just so i can

fucking live!!! >:(((

Jordan: Yeah and that makes you sooooo much better than me, why? >:(

Jordan: Tell me, why the FUCK do you think that you're better than me? Hm?! >:(

Roger: Because I can at least go into a fight knowing I’ll fucking live! Jordan: Yeah? Well I think because your job sucks and you got practically nothing to show for yourself throughout your life, not many people would miss ya if you died

>:( (Roger almost flinches at the harsh words)

(Roger glares at Jordan and fumes) Roger: Well...at least i still got a fucking family that i keep in touch with, such a shame you don't have that, cause they're all dead anyways! >:(

(Jordan freezes and Roger almost immediately regrets his words; Jordan then gets up) Jordan: Cmon, we gotta keep moving...

(Jordan walks out of the cave and Roger follows)

(They walk in silence for a while, Jordan taking the lead)

(Roger stays silent for a while, until he sighed and spoke up) Roger: ...Look, I’m...sorry for saying that, but you really went too far with what you said about me...so I just...fight back...

(Jordan is silent for a bit) Jordan: ...Alright, fair enough...this whole scenario is just frustrating beyond belief so...we’ve just been taking it out on each other...

Roger: Yeah...

(They keep walking) Jordan: I’m sorry too I guess...maybe we should call for a truce, at least for the really low insults; what do ya say? (Roger says nothing) Jordan: Aw c’mon, I’m trying to extend an olive branch here, don’t make me ask again! (He still says nothing and Jordan finally turns around) Jordan: Are you just too damn proud...to... (He looks down and sees Roger had sunken down into the sand, with only his hands and the top half of his head sticking out)

Jordan: Oh my god, Roger!!

Roger: Mmmmmmph!! (Roger’s hands flail as he panics) Jordan: Dont move, hang on!

(Jordan runs towards Roger)

(He grabs one of his hands and starts to pull) Jordan: Let me do the pulling, you’re fighting a losing battle against a sand vacuum here!

Roger: Mmmmmmph!!!

(Jordan slowly but surely pulls Roger out of the hole; the moment he’s able, Roger scrambles as far away from the pit as possible, breathing deeply)

Roger: Oh...thank...god...!

Jordan: You Alright?

Roger: Y-Yeah...i'm okay...

(He coughs and spits out some sand)

Roger: What...the fuck...did i fell into?! *coughs*

Jordan: Dry sand pit; it’s like quicksand but without the water

Roger: *cough* So i fell in a sand pit?!

Jordan: Yep; and they’re pretty rare so, lucky you XD

(Roger glares at Jordan)

(Jordan hauls him to his feet, only for Roger to squirm away from him)

Roger: Don't touch me! >:/

Jordan: Geez, Lighten up, man >:/

Roger: Just...hands off >:/

Jordan: Fine! >:/

(They keep walking, Roger brushing sand off him and his clothes as they do)

(Roger looks at Jordan and sighs) Roger: ......Thanks...for saving me...

Jordan: ...No problem; I may hate your guts, but you’re still my teammate

Roger: Yeah, that's true...

(They keep walking)

(They keep walking for a while, until Jordan suddenly stops) Roger: Hey, why did you- Jordan: Don't. Move Roger: Why? (Jordan gestures a rattle snake that was nearby)

(Roger sucks in a breath)

Roger: Oh god....!

Jordan: Calm down...just slowly move around and away...

(They slowly move around the snake)

(The snake watches them, it’s tail rattling)

(Roger whimpers a little as they slowly move around the snake)

Jordan: Dont panic! Roger: I’m not!

Jordan: Then why you're wimpering? >:/

Roger: Shut up!!!

(They keep slowly moving around the snake)

Jordan: Dont worry, they usually avoid humans...

(Once they were around the snake, they moved far away from it)

(Once it was gone Roger let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding)

Roger: Oh thank god...!

Jordan: Yeah...

Roger: Let's...keep moving...

Roger: Uh...is there anything else in the desert we should...watch out for? Jordan: Well, uh, there's scorpions. sandstorms, mirages, contaminated water, thorned plants, and of course weather things *gestures to the sun* but don't worry, I'll

get us out of this Roger: Who put you in charge? >:/ Jordan: The person who decided to throw you in a sand pit >:/

Roger: I FELL into a sand pit! Though i wouldn't be surprised that YOU would throw me in though >:P

Jordan: Don't tempt me >:P

(Roger glares at Jordan)

(They keep walking and the sun starts setting; both are breathing heavily, but Jordan is keeping up a decent pace while Roger's feet are dragging)

Jordan: *breathing heavily* It's gonna...be dark...soon...we should...find a place...to rest...

Roger: *breathing heavily* Y...Yeah...you do that...I'm just...gonna... *he starts to lie down where he is* Jordan: Dammit Roger this isn't what I meant!!

(Roger lays down on the ground)

Roger: So...tired...

Jordan: C'mon, get up! We can't just sleep here!

Roger: I can't...go on... (Jordan rolls his eyes and hauls him to his feet before slapping his face a few times) Jordan: Up and at 'em!!

Roger: OW!!

(Roger shoves him away and shakes his head, blinking awake) Jordan: Good; c'mon, we gotta find another cave or something

Roger: Alright...

(The night passes and the next day they repeat the process) Roger: There's GOT to be SOMETHING near by now!

Jordan: Yeah! We have to find SOMETHING out here! (They keep walking for a while, until eventually, Jordan spots, in the far far distance, he sees a road)

Jordan: Hey! Look! :D

Roger: What?

Jordan: A road! We're getting somewhere!

Roger: It might lead us to a town if we follow it! :D

Jordan: Or a car could come down it! :D (They hurry and start following the road)

(They follow down the road for a while, seeing cars pass by them as they went)

(They try waving a few of them down)

(They tried hitchhiking but all of their attempts were ignored by drivers passing by)

Jordan: Well at least there's a bunch of cars so something's gotta be close by now...

Roger: Yeah...

(They keep walking along the road and no cars come for a while as night starts to fall; because of this it becomes a lot harder to see anything along the side of the

road)

Roger: I can't fucking see anything...! XS

Jordan: That's kinda how night is -_-

Roger: Yeah i know that! But i'm not used to night being this...dark! Where's the lights?!

Jordan: This is why you city boys need to go camping once in a while -_-

Roger: Well some of us "city boys" don't have time to do that OR show no interest in doing so! >:/

Jordan: And look where that got ya >:/

Roger: Oh shut up! >:/

(Roger pushes him and walks ahead, but he’s so mad that he doesn’t see the rattlesnake until he steps on it)

Roger: *notices he stepped in something* Wha?

(He hears the rattling and at that moment, a car passes, the headlights illuminating the snake for a split second before it strikes and bites Roger’s leg)

Roger: GAH!!

(Roger falls over, clutching his leg) Jordan: Roger?! (The rattlesnake slithers closer to Roger)

Roger: Ow!! Fuck!!

(Roger screams and writhes on the ground and the snake readies to strike again)

(Roger sees the snake and closes his eyes shut)

(But the bite never comes; Roger opens his eyes to see Jordan stomping on the snake’s head, killing it)

(After Jordan kills the snake, he goes over to Roger)

Jordan: Jesus Christ... Roger: I-I’m Fine... Jordan: No don’t move! You’ll mix the venom around more!

Roger: Ow...call a hospital...! Or something...! Ow...!

Jordan: If our phones had service here don’t you think I would’ve done that by now?! >:/

Roger: Well what the fuck are YOU gonna do, huh?! >:/

Jordan: Obviously I’m gonna carry you Roger: Wha- wait! (Jordan manages to get Roger onto his back in one fell swoop)

Roger: Hey!! >:/

Jordan: You can’t move around, the poison will get to your heart quicker that way; suck it up

(Roger sighs)

Roger: Just...hurry and find someplace...

Jordan: Alright

(Jordan jogs along the road with Roger, looking for any sign of civilization)

Jordan: C’mon, there’s gotta be a town somewhere!

(As Jordan moves, Roger gets more and more light headed as the venom starts to take effect)

Roger: Ugh...I don’t...feel so good...! XS

Jordan: You’re gonna be fine!

Jordan: Just hang on!

(Jordan keeps jogging and Roger eventually passes out and at that moment, Jordan sees building lights)

Jordan: Wha?

(He sees a small town in the distance) Jordan: Oh thank god!

(He jogs as fast as he can towards the town)

(Hours later, Roger feels himself waking up)

Roger: Ugh...

(He slowly opens his eyes and finds he's in a small hospital room)

Roger: Wha...Huh...?

(He groans and slowly sits up; the door then opens and Jordan enters) Jordan: Look at that, he lives

Roger: Wha...? You...!

Jordan: Yeah, me

Roger: Wha...where- Jordan: You’re in a hospital, Roger, you’re lucky I found one

Jordan: Remember what happened? Roger: We...we were walking and...oh god, that snake-! Jordan: Yep, he got you good

Roger: I...I felt so light headed...then I passed out... Jordan: Yep, and then I found a town, got to the hospital and got you in.

Jordan: And since you've been out for *checks watch* a long-ass time, I went ahead and got everything else figured out Roger: Everything? Jordan: Yep; called Eric and the others to clue them in and booked us a flight home. The others took out the akuma so we don't have to worry

Roger: Oh...good

Roger: You...really did all that while I was out? Jordan: Well duh. There was NO WAY I was just gonna sit and mope over you >:/

Roger: Heh, guess you didn’t have any time for me, since you hate my guts! >:P

Jordan: Don't act like you wouldn't have done the same if it were me >:P

Roger: Oh please, if you were bitten by that snake, you’ll probably walk it off like it was nothing! >:P

Jordan: Eh, fair enough :/ (Jordan suddenly blinks and freezes) Jordan: Whoa...hold the fucking phone...did you just...COMPLIMENT me???

Roger: *blinks* Wait...I did?? O_O

(Roger thinks back on what he just said; he said that Jordan could walk off a snake bite, complimenting his strength and endurance) Roger: O_O Fuck, I did....

(Jordan’s eyes widen and looks at Roger)

Jordan: Holy shit...did hell freeze over? Roger: *blushes slightly* Shut up... Jordan: You fucking complimented me! Holy shit, I better see if the rapture's happening! Roger: *blushes more* Shut up...!!

(Jordan looks out the window) Jordan: Oh my god, it’s not! Roger: *covers his face and blushes* SHUT UP...!!!

Jordan: Oh this has made this whole three days of hell worth it! Wait 'till I tell Will about this when we get home!

Roger: Ugh... XS

(A day or two later, Jordan and Roger are on a flight home (Roger having crutches), where the armada are waiting for them in the airport)

(When the plane landed on their destination, they get out of the plane)

(They head out of the plane and once they're fully out, they see the armada) Jeremy: There they are!! Eric: Jordan! :'D Michael: Dad!! Momo: Roger!!!!

(Eric runs towards Jordan at top speed and tackle hugs him tightly)

(Jordan catches and spins him around before they both go for a deep kiss)

(As they deep kiss, Momo runs over to Roger) Momo: Roger!!! :D (Roger stops her from hugging or glomping him, but he gives her a little pat on the head)

Momo: Why do you have crutches?? D: (Meanwhile, Jordan and Eric break the kiss so Michael and Jeremy and Lin can hug Jordan tightly)

Michael: We missed you, Dad!

Roger: *to Momo* It's a long story... XS Jordan: I missed you all too!

(Jordan hugs them back and smiles)

Ann: Oh no Roger, should I transform and heal you? :( Roger: I don't think that will be necessary

Ann: Are you sure? Roger: Yeah, I’m fine, I can adjust to this

Roger: After a day or two I should be fine Momo: Are you gonna tell us what happened or not? >:/ Joe: I think we should all get home first and Jordan and Roger can explain from there

Jordan: Yeah *to Eric* And Will, you’re gonna be surprised what Roger said to me at the hospital! X3c Roger: Ugh.... XS

#bmc miraculous ladybug au #bmc au #Jordan Ellis #Roger

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shadowream · 6 years ago

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so i wrote something

Cause I love @phoenixqueene and she has been itching for a Voltron whump!fic lately. I have in no way, shape, or form edited this. It is garbage. Especially the end cause I was being rushed to get to bed. But here! (Mostly just for easy access) It’s kinda Klance-ish. And it would have taken place at the end of S7. Just be warned. :p

They were standing around the Bridge, all of them with worried expressions. How could they not be worried? Allura and Lotor were gone, vanished into the quintessence field like so many particles of space-dust. Lance scoffed under his breath. Even now, Lotor had him on edge. It wasn't even how close the new Emperor was with the Princess. There was something fishy going on. Lance knew it. But there was nothing he could do about it right now. They were already gone, beyond reach until they returned to this plane, this reality. So Lance stood, hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket, and stared at the viewing screens along with everyone else. He couldn't keep his hands still, though, not with his nerves so frayed. The fingers of his right hand, they fiddled. They twirled back and forth, moving the tiny white pill along each digit.

That pill. It was the last one. He was so screwed.

How he had managed to last this long was a miracle. He had been lucky that night, when this had all started. The night he had collected Hunk and gone out in search of Pidge. The mail had come earlier in the day, and he had stuffed the package into his jacket pocket without a second thought. And he had never bothered to take it out. How no one had heard all the rattling in their escape from the Garrison was anybody's guess. But Lance counted his blessings that they hadn't. His own laziness had probably saved his life.

These stupid headaches, they were awful. There was no reason for them. No doctor had ever been able to figure out the root cause. He just, had them. So he was given pills to try to keep them at bay. Three a day, the prescription read. That concept hadn't lasted very long. He figured out pretty quickly that he had to ration the pills out. First, he cut back to twice a day. Then one. He had suffered for it, too. There were so few days now when there wasn't a constant throb in his head. And no one had noticed.

Maybe that was because he hardly hung out with anyone anymore. Which was fine with him, really. He didn't want to be in the way. He was glad that his friends were all happy and enjoying what they were doing. He was glad no one had to see or hear him cry at night when the pain in his head got so bad that he couldn't sleep.

Back and forth, the pill twirled. Throb, throb, throb went his head. He was going to have to take the pill soon, before the pain got unmanageable. He needed to be able to function for when the Princess and Lotor returned.

Everyone's attention was caught by an alarm, and Lance looked with the others as they rounded on Coran. His hand stilled. He could hardly hear the words through the pounding of his own heartbeat through his skull. A ship? He followed the others to the hangar.

No one could see him. They were all in a rush. At the back of the pack, he slipped the little white pill from his pocket, and into his mouth. He swallowed it dry. They didn't need to know.

---

Was it the Quintessence? Was it the relief of the medication finallY taking effect? He didn't know. But he was certain that it had been many years since he had felt as good as he did while they fought inside of that Quintessence field.

---

It was over. They made it. They were alive. How? Lance wasn't all together sure. It was a magic that he had been a part of, but by no means understood. Lotor was gone. The Castleship destroyed. Shiro was alive. Shiro was ALIVE! How in the absolute QUIZNAK had everything gotten so turned around?!

Lance pondered it all as he sat at the edge of the cliff, looking out at the expanse of stars. They were partially stranded, barely collecting themselves on a bare asteroid, reeling from their battle, scrambling to make plans. Lance let them get about it. They had never asked fro his input about that kind of thing before. He doubted they would now. Which was fine, because damn. The adrenalin was fading. And he had burned through his last pill. He could barely keep his vision focused; the pain in his head was absurd. So he never heard anyone approach. And he jumped at the sudden voice right behind him.

"Lance?" It was Keith. Why was he here? "You okay?" What did he care?

"Yeah," he answered automatically, plastering a smile to his face. "Just taking in the sights before we leave." Fuck, it hurt to keep the smile on. He cursed in his mind as Keith took a seat beside him. He didn't... he didn't want Keith to see him like this. Lance was supposed to be stronger than this!

"It is beautiful, huh?"

"Yeah," Lance answered. So what if it was a rhetorical question. Fuck. Were they really going to fade into small talk and awkward silence? Lance shifted a bit, turning ever so slightly to hide a bit more of his face. He couldn't keep up the smile. But he couldn't bare to slip away from Keith either.

"You, uh..." Lance looked to Keith from the corner of his eye. Was that... was that a blush on his cheeks? Or was it just the fading light? "You did good, Lance. With the fighting, I mean." Why was Keith floundering for words? "And uh, keeping the team together."

Lance let out a huff of laughter. "I didn't do much, really."

"What do you mean?"

Lance winced. A crate had crashed behind them, the sound ringing in Lance's head. It hurt. "The team doesn't need me to keep it together anymore."

Lance could almost pretend that the grimace on his face was a smirk. At least, he hoped it looked like that when he turned to look a bit more directly at Keith, because Lance could read Keith well enough now that that cute little quizzical look on his face meant that he was asking for Lance to elaborate.

"Hunk and Pidge are stuck at the hip. Allura has grown above and beyond needing some flirtatious little problem like me hanging around, especially when she was busy working with Lotor. Shiro... Shiro didn't need a right hand like me..." It was getting hard to talk, the sound of his own voice increasing the pounding in his head.

"Lance what on earth are you saying?" Lance flinched and looked away again. "Of course the team needs you."

He lifted a hand, wiping at his eyes. Maybe it would look like he was wiping away tears of emotion, rather than of pain. Fuck. His head always hurt worse when he cried.

"What the heck is going on in that pretty little head of yours?" Keith asked, lifting a hand to poke at Lance's temple. He recoiled in shock when his fingertip touched sweat-slick skin, and Lance let out a cry of pain. Whatever was going on with the others behind them stopped at the noise. "Lance? Lance what's wrong!"

Lance held his head in his hands, leaning over his knees and over the edge of the cliff, hunching in on himself. It hurt! Fuck, it hurt! Tears streamed down his cheeks and dripped off of his chin. His breath whistled through clenched teeth. Fuck!

The pain spiked when he heard Keith's yelling voice right beside him. "I don't know! I just- I touched his temple, that was it!" It sounced like he was answering a question, but Lance had never heard one asked. Then came the grating sound of boots on gravel, and three new hands on him. He was being dragged backwards, away from the cliff-fuck, he hadn't realized how far forward he had leaned- and forced to lay upon the rough ground. When a cool hand came to brush his bangs away from his forehead, another cry of pain pushed past his lips, and he flinched away.

"Lance, Lance what's wrong?" The pitch of Pidge's voice pierced, sharp stabs into his mind.

Lance tried to open his eyes, but all he could see were knees. He was on his side, his head in someone's armored lap, the cool metal helping the ache in his head. "My head," he whined before closing his eyes again.

Hunk's voice came from somewhere overhead. "Shit! Oh my god, how did I forget! Shit, Lance!"

"What," Keith demanded. He sounded so loud, so close. Lance flinched again and pressed his palms into his eyes. "Forget what! What's wrong with him!"

"Lance gets migraines," Hunk explained. Was his voice always so rough against his eardrums? "He took pills for it at the Garrison, but then when all of Voltron happened..." His voice trailed off, ashamed.

"How in the hell did he survive out here without them?" Pidge asked sharply.

"I don't know!" Hunk sounded distressed.

"Does he have any felt?" Keith asked. "Go- go check in Red!" A beat of silence. "She said she'll allow it. Go see if he has any!"

A thundering of boots rushed off and faded. Lance couldn't help the whimper that escaped.

"I don't know if he would even have any left, Keith," Pidge cautioned. "If he managed to bring any out here with us, they're most likely gone by now. We've been away from Earth for a really long time..."

"Well then what do you suggest we do!" Hands were on Lance's head again, and part of him hated how he leaned into the touch. His hair was slick with sweat, and the hands brushed it away from his face.

"May I?" Never before had Lance hated the sound of Allura's voice so much.

No words were exchanged, but the rough hands playing with his hair vanished, replaced by delicate, slender fingers touching gently to his temples, forcing his face skyward to be able to reach their destination. Lance howled in pain at the pressure, until a soothing coldness flooded his head. It felt so good!

The breath of relief flooded out of Lance, and he opened his tear-filled eyes with gratitude. Above him, he could see Allura, her eyes closed in concentration, her skin radiating a gentle blue glow. Hovering to one side was a worried Pidge, thumb in her mouth. To the other side, and much closer, was Keith, his eyes so round and scared. Was he the one who was holding Lance's head in their lap? Lance hoped so.

All too soon, the sweet, sweet relief started to face, and throbbing head flooded his mind once more. He closed his eyes, seeking the shelter of the blackness of his eyelids, as the pressure of Allura's fingers vanished from the sides of his head. An earthquake vibrated through his skull as Hunk returned.

"Did you find anything?" It sounded like Keith was yelling into a megaphone.

"No, no I couldn't find anything-" Hunk was clearly out of breath from running, but he was still far too loud. Lance tried to bury his face into Keith's lap.

"Then what are we going to do-"

"I could try to make something-"

"That's not gonna work-"

"There has to be something-!"

Everyone was talking at once, and it was too much! Too much! Lance clutched at his head, pulling at his hair, sobbing.

"He seemed fine when Allura was touching him-"

"What you expect Allura to just hold his head the entire trip back home?"

"Well no, but-"

"Hunk we need something realistic!"

"It wasn't me." Under him, Lance could feel Keith freeze.

"Well if it wasn't you, then what was it!" Keith demanded.

Silence.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"I am afraid I am not. The Quintessence from my crystal was what helped clear the pain from his head. If he were to wear it..."

"Oh he is just gonna love this..."

He whined as Keith's rough hands forced his head up out of the other Paladin's lap. Rough grating dug at ears as someone knelt down.

"It'll only be until we get to Earth. Then we can get him some medication. See if we can fix this."

"I understand."

Something slid over his head, settling delicately over his sweaty hair just above his ears. And from his forehead poured more of that sweet, cool relief. A gasp pulled at his lungs with how quickly the pain vanished. It was a miracle.

His eyes blinked open once more, the last few tears of his pain vanishing past his temples to get lost in his hair. Allura pulled her hands back, a bittersweet smile upon her face.

"Lance, is that better?" she asked. She sounded so worried.

It took a moment for Lance to find his voice. When he did, it was thick and hard to use. "Y-yeah. What- What did you-" His eyes flicked over her face. Something was different. She had said something about her crystal.

The golden circlet that had so beautifully adorned her head was gone.

One shaky hand rose to touch at his own head, and he felt cool metal beneath his fingertips. Allura smiled.

"Well that's one way of doing it," Pidge muttered. She was still biting her thumb.

Lance sat up, pulling out of Keith's grasp, and he looked up at his friends. He felt like he was back in the Quintessence Field, the relief was so complete. A hand came to steady him at his back, and Lance looked to see Keith, his violet eyes still worried.

"I'm- I'm okay!" His voice broke with a grateful laugh. "Oh God, I'm okay!" This was amazing! Without even thinking about it, Lance stood and gathered Allura in his arms, hugging her close. "Thank you. Thank you so much!"

The Princess was slightly taken aback, still not accustomed to how much Lance seemed to touch others. After a moment, she returned the hug, and hid her face in Lance's shoulder. "You are certainly welcome. I am very glad we were able to find something to help you so quickly."

"Yeah, what the hell dude!" And suddenly Hunk was barging in between them, demanding Lance's attention. "Why didn't you ever say anything! We could have figured something to help you out sooner!"

"Did you even have any of your medication with you?" Pidge asked?

"Yeah, I uh..." Lance scratched at his chin in mild embarrassment. "I've been rationing them. I took the last one earlier, just before Keith returned..."

Pidge just stared at him for a moment, her expression an easy indicator as to just how done with this boy she was. "And it didn't once cross your mind to give me a sample so we could, oh, I don't know, find a way to make you some more?!"

Lance froze. No. The idea had never even crossed his mind. And the shocked look seemed to scream it to all of them. "I, uh........"

Laughter rang out around him.

---

Keith was polishing his blade, sitting silently in front of the dying fire. Everyone else was asleep. It had certainly been one HELL of a day...

"Hey." Keith smiled at the voice, not even surprised to find that Lance was awake.

"Hey," he replied. Keith kept his eyes on the knife, cloth running over the sharp edge carefully. There was some rustling, then some crunching, then a slight grunt as Lance came to sit beside him.

"I'm uh... I'm sorry, about earlier." Keith nodded. "About, you know, not telling anyone about my migraines." Another nod. "And not asking Pidge and everyone for help." And another. "And for scaring everyone...." And another.

It was Lance's heavy sigh that finally got Keith to turn and look at him. He looked... He looked ashamed.

"Hey," Keith whispered. He lifted one hand and placed it gently upon Lance's shoulder. "I'm just glad you're okay."

The wet laugh that came out of Lance's lips was enough to break Keith's heart all over again. God, he had been so afraid. He had barely touched Lance, and he had suddenly collapsed! If Hunk hadn't remembered about his migraines, who knows how big the fallout would have been.

"Thanks," Lance answered, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand.

The fire glinted off of the gold band around Lance's head, and Keith found his eyes drawn to it. The warm metal fit so nicely against his tanned skin. It looked good on him. Lance followed Keith's line of sight, and reached up to the circlet.

"It doesn't look too weird, does it?" Lance asked quietly.

"No. It looks good on you."

"So," Lance smirked, "It looks good on my pretty little head?"

Quiznak, Keith should have never said that.

#voltron #vld #klance #whump #whump!lance #am writing #my writing #i haven't written anything in so long #garbage

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smoljohnlock · 7 years ago

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THE FINAL PROBLEM (PART 1)

“May be the hardest case of your career”

1. THE GREAT GAME

JIM: D’you know what happens if you don’t leave me alone, Sherlock, to you? SHERLOCK: Oh, let me guess: I get killed. JIM: Kill you? N-no, don’t be obvious. I mean, I’m gonna kill you anyway some day. I don’t wanna rush it, though. I’m saving it up for something special. No-no-no-no-no. If you don’t stop prying, I’ll burn you. I’ll burn the heart out of you. SHERLOCK: I have been reliably informed that I don’t have one. JIM: But we both know that’s not quite true.

2. A SCANDAL IN BELGRAVIA

Making Sherlock aware of John’s feelings for him & making John jealous. So The Fall will have a bigger emotional impact on them.

IRENE: And somebody loves you. If I had to punch that face, I'd avoid your nose and teeth too.

IRENE: The key-code to my safe. JOHN: What was it? IRENE: Shall I tell him? My measurements.

You quote the whole episode but the Battersea scene is the key here (the conversation between John and Irene which Sherlock eavesdrops)

SHERLOCK: Oh, you’re rather good. IRENE: You’re not so bad. JOHN: John Hamish Watson – just if you were looking for baby names.

(Sherlock’s monologue shows him opinion on love at that point but it’ll also be important later on) SHERLOCK: I imagine John Watson thinks love’s a mystery to me but the chemistry is incredibly simple, and very destructive. When we first met, you told me that disguise is always a self-portrait. How true of you: the combination to your safe – your measurements; but this is far more intimate. This is your heart and you should never let it rule your head. You could have chosen any random number and walked out of here today with everything you’ve worked for but you just couldn’t resist it, could you? I’ve always assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage... Thank you for the final proof.

3. THE REICHENBACH FALL

SHERLOCK: So how’re you going to do it ... burn me? JIM: Oh, that’s the problem – the final problem. Have you worked out what it is yet? What’s the final problem? I did tell you... but did you listen? How hard do you find it, having to say “I don’t know”? SHERLOCK: I don’t know. JIM: Oh, that’s clever; that’s very clever; awfully clever.

Okay, let’s stop here for a minute... Sherlock geniuely didn’t know what The Final Problem was, and he didn’t even get it on the roof (SH to Jim: I am you. Prepared to do anything. Prepared to burn.), distracted by the ‘code’ and Jim’s fairytale stories. The suicide was exactly what Moriarty wanted, because TFP was all about the consequences of Sherlock’s ‘death’.

“What’s the final problem? I did tell you... but did you listen?”

Back to TGG: I’ll burn the heart out of you. SHERLOCK: I have been reliably informed that I don’t have one. JIM: But we both know that’s not quite true.

The heart is John Watson. Jim’s (or Mycroft’s really, but I’m not gonna get into that here) plan was to break John. By ‘killing’ himself Sherlock saved his friends. But.. did he really?

JOHN: You ... you told me once that you weren’t a hero. There were times I didn’t even think you were human, but let me tell you this: you were the best man, and the most human ... human being that I’ve ever known and no-one will ever convince me that you told me a lie, and so ... There. I was so alone, and I owe you so much. No, please, there’s just one more thing, mate, one more thing: one more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don’t ... be ... dead. Would you do ...? Just for me, just stop it. (He gestures down at the grave.) Stop this.

4. THE EMPTY HEARSE & THE SIGN OF 3

John trapped in an unhappy relationship with Mary, pining for Sherlock

I’ll burn the heart of out you... literally.

MARY: Oh my God, oh my God. Do you have any idea what you’ve done to him? SHERLOCK: Okay, John, I’m suddenly realising I probably owe you some sort of an apology. JOHN (in a whisper): Two years. I thought ... (He groans, unable to continue and gesturing helplessly. Mary stares at him in sympathy. John finally straightens and turns to Sherlock.) JOHN: I thought ... you were dead. Now, you let me grieve, hmm? How could you do that? How?

In TEH, Sherlock still hasn’t figured it out. He accuses John of overreacting and plays a trick on him to force forgiveness. Although the realization of all the pain he put John through starts to slowly sink in.

The wedding, both John and Sherlock pining for each other, Mary stands in the way. There’s no hope for Sherlock to be with John anymore, even though he wants to.

MRS HUDSON: I remember she left early. I mean, who leaves a wedding early? So sad.

(He walks through his bedroom to his wardrobe, where a morning suit is hanging from the open door. He looks at it.) SHERLOCK: Into battle.

SHERLOCK: Ah, that’s why he’s bouncing round him like a puppy. MARY: Oh, Sherlock! Neither of us were the first, you know.

MYCROFT: Oh, by the way, Sherlock – do you remember Redbeard? SHERLOCK: I’m not a child any more, Mycroft. MYCROFT: No, of course you’re not. Enjoy not getting involved, Sherlock.

Just... the whole episode, It’s all p a i n

5. HIS LAST VOW

John’s just back from the honeymoon, already missing Sherlock. Sherlock finds relief in drugs, sells John a lie it was for a case. In TRF, Moriarty talks about pressure points, so does Magnussen in HLV.

MAGNUSSEN: Very hard to find a pressure point on you, Mr Holmes. The drugs thing I never believed for a moment. Anyway, you wouldn’t care if it was exposed, would you? But look how you care about John Watson. Your damsel in distress. JOHN: You put me in a fire... for leverage? MAGNUSSEN: Oh, I’d never let you burn, Doctor Watson. I had people standing by. MAGNUSSEN: I’m not a murderer ... unlike your wife.

(In S4, Mary is a mirror for Sherlock. If you think S3 is EMP as well, you could say Mary is a mirror here, as well)

Mary shoots Sherlock. Forwards or backwards? Backwards. So from now on, we’re going through everything that has happened before.

6 .THE ABOMINABLE BRIDE

This episode is extremely important, because Sherlock finally realises what’s The Final Problem, then S4 is solving it.

In TAB, Sherlock tries to figure out how Moriarty survived and what happened on the roof. (Funny thing is, we’ve got three final problems in BBC Sherlock - TRF, TAB and TFP. Proof that it’s what Sherlock is still working on)

HOLMES: Gun in the mouth; a bullet through the brain; back of the head blown clean off. How could he survive?

Deep waters, going deeper into his mind (will be important in S4)

I shall have to go deep. Into What? Myself.

These are deep waters, Watson, deep waters. And I shall have to go deeper still.

You're in deep, Sherlock, deeper than you ever intended to be.

H: Still not awake, am I? Moriarty: Too deep, Sherlock, way too deep. Congratulations, you will be the first man in history to be buried in his own Mind Palace.

MORIARTY: This is how we end, you and I. Always here, always together. HOLMES: You have a magnificent brain, Moriarty. I admire it. I concede it may be even be the equal of my own. MORIARTY: I’m touched. I’m honoured. HOLMES: But when it comes to the matter of unarmed combat on the edge of a precipice you’re going in the water short-arse. MORIARTY: Oh, you think you’re so big and strong, Sherlock! Not with me! I am your WEAKNESS! I keep you DOWN! Every time you STUMBLE, every time you FAIL, when you’re WEAK ...: I ... AM ... THERE! No. Don’t try to fight it. LIE BACK AND LOSE! Shall we go over together? It has to be together, doesn’t it? At the end, it’s always just you ... AND ME! WATSON: Professor, if you wouldn’t mind stepping away from my friend. I do believe he finds your attention a shade annoying. MORIARTY: That’s not fair. There’s two of you! WATSON: There’s always two of us. Don’t you read The Strand?

What’s different here is that John saves Sherlock, rather than Sherlock being like ‘alone protects me’. Sherlock should have trusted John in TRF. He finally gets it. And we get this beautiful moment:

HOLMES: Thank you, John. WATSON: Since when do you call me John? HOLMES: You’d be surprised. WATSON: No I wouldn’t. Time you woke up, Sherlock. I’m a storyteller. I know when I’m in one. HOLMES: Of course. Of course you do, John. WATSON: So what’s he like? The other me, in the other place? HOLMES: Smarter than he looks. WATSON: Pretty damned smart, then. HOLMES (smiling): Pretty damned smart.

This is a huge turn, because from now in Sherlock will be aware of the consequences of TRF and what it did to John, then he’ll solve The Final Problem.

7. THE SIX THATCHERS

There are so many parallels in S4 not because the writers are ‘lazy’ but because Sherlock’s going ‘backwards’. Lemme bring a few lines from TAB: 1. MORIARTY: Is this silly enough for you yet? Gothic enough? Mad enough, even for you? It doesn’t make sense, Sherlock, because it’s not real. None of it. This is all in your mind. 2. MORIARTY: Doesn’t it remind you of another case? Hasn’t this all happened before? There’s nothing new under the sun. What was it?

Btw, I listed the deep waters quotes form TAB. Now think about water in S4.

S4 is just a cont. of TAB.

What’s important in S4 is that Mary is a Sherlock mirror.

MARY: My darling. I need to tell you this because you mustn’t hate me for going away. I gave myself permission to have an ordinary life. I’m not running. I promise you that. I just need to do this in my own way. but I don’t want you and Sherlock hanging off my gun arm. I’m sorry, my love. I know you’ll try to find me, but there is no point. Every move is random and not even Sherlock Holmes can anticipate the roll of a dice. I need to move the target far, far away from you and Rosie, and then I’ll come back, my darling. I swear I will.

Isn’t it familiar...? Yes, this is a reference to Sherlock hiding after TRF. Many Happy Returns. Just replace ‘you and Sherlock’ with ‘you, Mrs Hudson and Lestrade’.

MARY: I didn’t know what else to do. JOHN: You could have stayed. You could have talked to me. That’s what couples are supposed to do: work things through. MARY: Yes, of course. JOHN: Mary, I may not be a very good man, but I think I’m a bit better than you give me credit for, most of the time. MARY: All the time. You’re always a good man, John. I’ve never doubted that. You never judge; you never complain. I don’t deserve you. All I ever wanted to do was keep you and Rosie safe, that’s all.

Sherlock’s trying to untangle the mess he’s done.

SHERLOCK: What did you hear, Ajay? When you were a prisoner, what exactly did you hear? AJAY: What did I hear? Ammo. Every day as they tore into me. Ammo. Ammo. Ammo.

SHERLOCK: How’s your Latin, brother dear? MYCROFT: My Latin? SHERLOCK: Amo, amas, amat. MYCROFT: I love, you love, he loves.

Sherlock tortured by love/thinking of John when in Serbia...

NORBURY killed Sherlock Mary

SHERLOCK: If you ever think I’m becoming a bit full of myself, cocky or over-confident would you just say the word ‘Norbury’ to me, would you?

Wasn’t he cocky and over-confident on the roof? He definitely was and as it turned out, he had no idea what he was doing. Idk about you, but I’m amazed at the character development.

Sherlock Mary dies - and it breaks John.

Sherlock asks Ella for help: I need to know what to do about John.

He finds a CD - MISS ME?

I’m giving you a case, Sherlock. When I’m gone – if I’m gone – I need you to do something for me. Save John Watson. Save him, Sherlock. Save him.

--------------------------

I’ll post the second part as soon as I have some free time & energy. Didn’t want to squeeze everything into one post, because it’s too long anyway. I didn’t reread it, so sorry for all the mistakes. Transcripts x

#sherlock #bbc #season 4 #meta #the final problem

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seyaryminamoto · 7 years ago

Note

what sokkla fics do you recommend?

AHAHAHAHA OMG this is going to be long again… but yes, I had said I’d do this, so let’s go!

…

Under the cut, that is. This is WAY too long.

First off, multichapter stories!

The Princess Guard by prinsesseazula

Zuko asks Sokka to help protect Azula from an onslaught of threats that are jeopardizing her safety. Slowly but surely developing the romance of our two dorks. Rated T.

Bonfire Heart by Madame Atomic Bomb

A dangerous group, called the Smoke Demons, plot to kill Zuko. Mai infiltrates the group to protect him, and enlists Sokka and Azula as well so they can prevent the attempts on Zuko’s life. Rated M.

She’s Something by haley97

An alphabet challenge that explores Sokka and Azula’s budding relationship following the prompt word for each chapter. Rated T.

p a i n t by lotusunset

Sokka is a widow, traveling across the world to overcome the loss of his wife and child. He stumbles across Azula in an Earth Kingdom village, where she’s been working as a painter, and he tries to unravel how she came to this place. Rated T.

Of Farms, Fairs and Fame by BellatrixLestrangey

A modern AU where Azula and Sokka live near each other in the USA countryside and have been friends for a long time. Azula is an aspiring musician while Sokka works at his family farm. Rated T.

Opposite Elements by LordStone

Set in a world where the Hundred Year War didn’t happen, Sokka travels to the Fire Nation to live as a guest of the Fire Nation Royals. He clashes with Azula at first, but soon enough they learn to see each other with different eyes. Rated T.

Proving You Wrong by PurplePlatypusBear21

Sokka travels to the North Pole and is surprised to bump into Azula here. He tries to decipher the mystery of why she’s here, and finds himself wanting to help her in any way he can. Rated T.

Reclaimed by Sokkaweekly

Azula escapes from the asylum and Zuko asks Sokka to help him find her and bring her home. Sokka does as he’s told, not knowing that his story with Azula is only just beginning. Rated M.

Prisoner’s Dilemma by PurplePlatypusBear21

Sokka finds Azula freezing in a cooler during the escape from the Boiling Rock, and he’s overwhelmed by his sudden desire to help and protect the Fire Nation Princess. Rated T.

Blue Eyes, Blue Fire by PurplePlatypusBear21

A collection of short stories for Sokkla Saturdays. Rated T.

Saturnalia by clarielparke

Another collection of short stories for Sokkla Saturdays. Rated M.

The Black Cage by Fanwright

In a setting where slavery exists and Ozai’s ambitions got the better of him, his family is confined to a life in the Black Cage, where they’re occasionally entertained by a Water Tribe slave. Rated T.

Lightning and Boomerang - The Bounty Hunters by Chaosconetic

Not comic-compliant. After Ursa’s search ends, Sokka and Azula decide to try their luck as bounty hunters in the Earth Kingdom. Rated T.

Collected by Sokkaweekly

Shapeshifter AU. Sokka seeks to kill a dragon who’s tormenting his village. He doesn’t expect the dragon to have the human form of a young girl with gold eyes and raven hair. Rated T.

Airship Down and the Mountains of Madness by Keith B. Real

Sokka attempts to attack the Fire Nation airship fleet when they’re near the South Pole, but everything escalates out of his control. What began as a reckless mission turn into an ordeal of survival when he has to work with a wounded Azula to save themselves from the horrors buried deep under the Mountains of Madness. Rated T.

Love of Madness by Keith B. Real

Three years have passed since the horror in the South scarred both Sokka and Azula. The return of the monsters of the depths brings them together again as they try to put a stop to their conquest for once and for all. Rated T.

Sokka, Agent of OWL by storywriter1id

Sokka is tasked with retrieving Azula by the Order of the White Lotus, and he must find her in the Earth Kingdom and bring her home. Her life will depend on the success of Sokka’s quest. Rated T.

Majesty by Anariel Tindomerel

AU where Sozin’s Comet arrives many years later: Sokka infiltrates Azula’s troops in the Earth Kingdom, hoping to serve as a spy for the White Lotus. But once he’s in Azula’s radar, she starts to unravel just why this soldier seems so familiar… Rated M. Warning: it’s in Spanish.

Imprisoned by conspiracy victim

Azula captures Sokka while trying to ensnare the Avatar. But the more time she spends with him, the harder it is to resist the temptation they pose for each other. Rated M.

A Week of Steam by Nara Shikaku

Collection of Sokkla stories, a few of them of the smutty kind. Rated M.

Puzzling Pieces by Vayleen

Collection of 100 Sokkla drabbles, a few of them connected with each other, about Sokka and Azula and the development of their story. Rated T.

Gaining One’s Freedom by LadyFireNation

Non comics-compliant. Azula is released from the asylum seven years after the end of ATLA, and Zuko sends her on a quest to find their mother with Sokka’s assistance. Rated M.

Solace by bevesy

After falling out of her father’s good graces, Azula is sent away to the South Pole as punishment, on the pretense of an arranged marriage. But as time goes by and she adjusts to life with her husband, Sokka, winds of change start to blow in the Fire Nation. Rated M.

It Was All Ty Lee’s Fault by Fokusas

A crack fic if there ever was one for this ship, Azula and Sokka have an intimate encounter by accident that results in their marriage in the middle of a war-torn Fire Nation. Rated M.

The Night Before the Wedding by Lord-Captain000

Azula is being forced to marry someone she doesn’t love, while engaged in an affair with Sokka. Rated M.

Now… Oneshots!

Kiss Me Like This by Princess Tyler Briefs

Azula’s birthday party features an entrancing guest who sweeps her off her feet as they dance together. Rated K.

Noble Daughter by LoveBackwards

A fluff piece on the aftermath of the birth of Azula and Sokka’s daughter. Rated K+.

Mother Knows Best by RedBayly

Azula meets Sokka after their affair culminates in a child neither one was prepared for. Rated T.

Flying Dragon, Crouching Tiger by Fanwright

In the Second World War, Sokka’s plane falls during a military operation, and he’s found by three dangerous Chinese military officials. Rated M.

Scribble Hearts by Fanwright

The morning after their wedding, Azula gets her hands on Sokka’s sketchbook and tries to unravel the meaning behind his doodles. Rated T.

Renewed by Sokkaweekly

Azula ponders her circumstances after the war, now that Sokka is often looking after her. Rated T.

Wholehearted by Sokkaweekly

A modern AU take on the Avatarverse where Sokka tries to surprise Azula who only seems to have her mind set on one thing. Rated K.

Genesis by Sokkaweekly

Azula is surprised when a simple sickness turns out to be the signs of pregnancy, and she must inform Sokka about it. Rated T.

Corrupted by Sokkawekly

The Day of Black Sun takes an unexpected twist when a secret alliance changes the fate of the world forever. Rated M.

Defending by Sokkaweekly

Sokka and Azula work together with Aang and Katara to protect a Fire Nation village from rogues. Rated M.

Pampered by Sokkaweekly

Azula’s handmaiden takes a day off, and it’s up to Sokka to provide his services for Azula in the best way he knows how. Rated T.

Singing Metal by BellatrixLestrangey

Azula is worried about the dangers of blades in a house with a newborn baby and tries to approach Sokka on the subject. Rated T.

The Right Decision by BellatrixLestrangey

Azula doesn’t know how to turn her one-night-stand with Sokka into a regular occurrence. Rated T.

Eternal by icewhisker21

Sokka brings a gift for Azula on their anniversary, hoping the hidden meaning of the present will convey the depth of his love for her. Rated T.

Fire and Ice by icewhisker21

A sparring session between Sokka and Azula takes an unexpected turn for the better after the Princess gets tired of losing against him. Rated M.

Shadow by clarielparke

Sokka finds Azula in a village, in the middle of a dark night. But the truth behind his intentions might push her away from him for good. Rated M.

Swordplay by Fanwright

While sparring in the Agni Kai Arena, Sokka and Azula find themselves succumbing to a hunger they cannot quench through anything but each other’s bodies. Rated M.

Teaching You The Ropes by clarielparke

Sokka is sent by Zuko to capture Azula, who has been working as a bounty hunter. But the assignment brings complications when the Princess proves to be craftier than Sokka anticipated. Rated M.

Tales of the Stranded by icedcoffeepanda

The adventures or misadventures of Sokka and Azula while under the influence of cactus juice. Rated K+.

Stressed Out by Gd2go2

Long days of work at the United Forces offices have been very stressful for Sokka. Fortunately Azula knows just now to help him. Rated M.

Trick or treat by prinsesseazula

Modern AU. Sokka’s Halloween party is a complicated event for Azula, as she’s not sure she’s welcome amongst his friends just yet. Rated K+.

To Sleep With Fire by BellatrixLestrangey

Sokka fights with Azula over the covers in the bed. Rated K

The View From Atop Your Shoulders by BellatrixLestrangey

Modern AU. Sokka allows Azula to sit on his shoulders during a rock concert. Rated K

In Perfect Silence by BellatrixLestrangey

Sokka and Azula sneak away during a festival to find a place where they can be alone. Rated K+

…

Ya’ know, I’m actually missing out on a huge bunch. I know I am. And that actually makes me kind of happy because it really shows we’ve got a ton more content than we did five years ago. Damn, I’m glad.

But alas, I’ve already spent like 3 hours of my life making this list? Or has it been longer? I was supposed to answer other asks too xD so I assume you have plenty to go on with the list as it is! Do enjoy, anon!

#seyary finally answers #sokkla #fic rec list #my god I can't believe how long this took #and I still have a full inbox #dear god

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evilsquirrel18 · 7 years ago

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@tragedypoetry wrote this and sent it to me it is so beautiful I had to post it! I reposted it so that I could tag you in it. For some reason it only gave me the post option and wouldn't allow me to tag you. This is beautiful work!!

The corner of my eye let me witness the last red guard swirled his weapon towards her. Though my vision became hazy, my ears were perfectly in tune to her every move, the every whish of her lightsaber. With a precise swipe, he sliced open her forearm, creating a deep and intense gash. She screamed a sound so piercing, I felt it resonate in the depths of my stomach.

She turned to her head to see me, and she must have noticed the pooling crimson that surrounded me. I heard her heartbeat accelerate with rage and in a blink, that vulnerable red guard was on the ground, in a state I would be in soon. She ran over to me and cradled my head in her hands. “Ben, we have to get you out of here. Onto the Falcon, we’ll get you help. You’re going to bleed out.”

“Rey, stop. You have to go. I’m sure more of Snoke’s guards have been alerted and are on their way. You’re injured, and too weak to fight more. Please, go. Take care of yourself. Please.” I felt the weakest I ever had. It might not have been all physical. It might have been the fear that she would do what I said.

“Ben. STOP.” She ripped the top layer of her tunic off, still concealing everything, but showing more of her upper arms and collarbones. She lifted my back with all her strength, and I groaned pathetically. “I’m sorry, I just have to stop the blood.” She wrapped the clothing piece around my wound and tied it tight on the other side. I felt her head being flooded with thoughts of losing me. Fear of the only person she ever longed for, the only person she felt so connected to, the only person she so desperately needed…. The only person she desperately needed? Tears threatened to spill onto her absent colored cheeks. “I’m going to try to lift you, but you have to use whatever strength you have left to help me.”

I nodded and felt the pressure in my thighs and calves as I assisted her to help me get up. I looked at her face, and her eyes closed, and I felt as if I were levitating into her small arms. She was using the Force to carry me. I felt pathetic and small. But I could not let those emotions override me, for I felt my eyelids begin to get heavy and there was no stopping.

I woke only about 10 inches from a ceiling. The cot I was on was a dry and rickety thing that I was surprised could hold me. I looked down to see myself shirtless, but my lower abdomen wrapped in gauze. Pain built in my ribs, which pressed on my lungs, and I coughed forcefully. Where was she? Was she alright? What happened? Where am I? I heard light footsteps coming my way. It was her. She seemed to have a new beauty, raw and vulnerable, blood caked on her skin, sweat beads still radiating, hair messily framing her face, and clothes ripped and fraying. She came towards me and put her cold and tiny hand on my forehead.

“You still have a fever. How bad does it hurt? Do you need water? Do you think you need a new gauze?” I still felt that high anxiety that clouded her mind that I would not survive.

“No….”, I barely managed to whisper. I tried to crane my neck up but I had no strength, not even in my neck, to move. She ran her small fingers through my hair; such a small gesture, and yet I felt the remaining hardness in my soul soften some with her gentle touch.

“I didn’t know where to go. So I searched for a peaceful, seemingly isolated planet for you to heal on. There was something called Naboo. And I just wanted to do anything to make sure you would be okay. Are you sure you don’t need anything?”

“You.” Such an impulsive statement, though just one word. Her brow furrowed in uncertainty. Me? I’m nobody. What does he mean? I can’t fix this. What if I ruin it? What if this is my fault? And any care he once had turns to rage for me? I shivered, hearing her deep and vulnerable thoughts.

“….me?” Her eyes were so innocent.

“Here. Please.” I whispered so faint, but words that were so strong. Her face was in pure relief and satisfaction. I looked at her, just basking in the presence of serenity she gave me. Then I remembered her wounds, just as she tended to mine. Selfish bastard. “Your arm.” I looked at it, and the blood was dry and dark, but some burning, bright red still seeped from the center of the gash.

She looked down, “It’s nothing.” I felt a surge of strength come from my feet to my head. I leaned up, and reached for her hurt arm, and she winced and I heard the faintest of a whimper.

“Get me a gauze and a wet cloth. Now.” I was sure I seemed bossy and dominant, but there was no way in hell I would not let her wounds and pain go unnoticed. She came back with the two, and I winced in agony as I sat up. I pulled her small framed body onto the cot, beside me, and I wiped the damp cloth with one swipe, from her hand to her elbow. Her face was painted with pain, a shade I knew too well. I then wrapped her forearm in the gauze; tight but loose enough for her injury to breathe.

“Thank you,” she said so softly and genuinely. It may have been just seconds, or minutes, or hours. But time let me sink into her hazel eyes. I pulled her non-injured hand down, requiring her body to lay down. She seemed hesitant, but then I felt her relax. I laid down, with her back pressed to my chest on the small and quite uncomfortable cot. But there was nothing uncomfortable about being in this position. This moment.

The wound on my lower torso seemed to disappear, and all of my being was not focused on my pain, but what I could do to erase the pain of her own. Her eyes began to close, and I brushed the hair away from her neck, and I kissed the sweet skin. Not in a lustful way, nothing sexual, or trying to start anything of that sort, but to do the most intimate thing I could to make her feel protected, to make her feel safe. I don’t want his lips to stop. I don’t ever want his touch to go away. I wish our skin was stitched together. I’ve been strong for too long. I’m not afraid of anything when I’m near him. Not the darkness, not the Sith, not the conflict, not the pressure, not even what he has done or is capable of. All he is capable of right now is making me melt. Like a candle dripping wax so slowly, but so heated. My skin was overcome with a wave of goosebumps. I picked up my arm and placed my hand in her soft, honey brown hair and brushed my fingers through the strands. In moments, I paused to kiss her temple, her cheek, her hair, her ear, her jaw, and her neck. She drank in every softening gesture I gave her and I felt every atom within her fall fast asleep. It wasn’t long before I drifted off myself. I woke to her jostling around, shaking, and I felt her fear. She moaned loudly, but the decibels slowly descended into the softest, yet scariest whimpers. I touched her forehead, and it was burning, just as she said mine was earlier. With a small shake of her shoulders, she awoke with a gasp. She shivered.

“Rey, are you alright?”

“Yes, sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.” “You’re not alright. You had a nightmare.”

“Jedi don’t have nightmares.”

“But you’re much more than just a Jedi.” She lay silent, but I knew her mind was shouting. “Please tell me.”

“I saw you leave. You walked away. Because I couldn’t decide, the dark or the light. I saw you fade from the view, but I tried screaming, but you couldn’t hear me. And I couldn’t do anything but take the lightsaber from my belt and end it.” There was nothing pathetic about the flood of tears that escaped from my tired eyes.

She tried to speak again, but I gently flipped her towards me, wary of her wounded arm. She couldn’t even force out a mumble, but I placed a finger on her soft lips. “Shhh.” Her cheeked were stained with tears and her eyes were bloodshot. I leaned my head down, and touched my forehead to her. I kissed the tip of her nose. Another stream of tears came from her eyes, but they were not out of fear. But out of contentment. Please don’t leave me. I can’t….I won’t ever…..be able to….go on…. Her plea made every ounce of lost strength I had come back, renewed and more intense than ever. Not out of rage, but reason.

“I won’t leave. You’re mine. I’m yours. Galaxies apart, you’re still stitched to me.” Her eyes looked in mine, and her entire soul hoped I meant it. And my entire soul was sure I would make her know that I did.</p>

#beautiful submission by a beautiful writer #reylo fic #not mine #so beautiful #thank you so much for sending this to me!!!#reylo

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nightmareonfilmstreet · 7 years ago

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10 Movies We Can’t Wait To See At This Year’s Fantasia Film Festival

Ladies and Gentlemen, the 22nd Internation Fantasia Film Festival is upon us! This year’s lineup boasts from heavy hitters, including the World Premieres of Robert D. Krzykowski’s The Man Who Killed Hitler and then Bigfoot starring the legendary Sam Ellitot and Nightmare Cinema, directed by Mick Garris, Alejandro Brugués, Ryuhei Kitamura, David Slade and Joe Dante (who will also be recieving a lifetime achievement award). Also peremiering at the festival is David Robert Mitchell’s highly anticipted follow-up to It Follows, the neo noir Under The Silver Lake, the Spike Lee produced Tales From The Hood 2, and Dennison Ramalho’s (The ABC’s of Death) feature film debut, Among The Living.

There is no shortage of incredible, must-see films in this year’s lineup and it promises to be other banner year for genre film. The Fantasia Film Festival run from July 12th – August 1st in the heart of Montreal. Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased HERE.

Below are 10 movies that ewe can’t wait to see at this year’s Fantasia FIlm Festival. If you are going to be in attendance at the festival, let us know what your looking forward to seeeing in the comments below, on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and in the Horror Fiends of Nightmare on Film Street Facebook group!

Mandy

Director: Pananos Cosmatos Writter: Pananos Cosmatos, Aaron Stewart-Ahn Cast: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache, Bill Duke, Ricard Brake

“The peaceful existence of Red Miller (Nicolas Cage) in the Shadow Mountains of 1983 is burned to the ground when a deranged religious sect fixates on Mandy (Andrea Riseborough), the love of his life and, as is soon made very evident, a significant grounding force in his universe. Things deteriorate into a tranced-out nightmare of insect venom, hard drugs and broken-minded delirium as Red journeys into hell in order to avenge the woman he once lived for. Blood will flow in rivers. Worlds will collapse unto themselves.”

Nightmare Cinema

Director: Alejandro Brugués, Joe Dante, Mick Garris, Ryuhei Kitamura, David Slade Writer: Sandra Becerril, Alejandro Brugués, Lawrence C. Connolly, Mick Garris, Richard Christian Matheson, David Slade Cast: Maurice Benard, Richard Chamberlain, Annabeth Gish, Elizabeth Reaser, Mickey Rourke

“At a forgotten, haunted bijou, a group of strangers have assembled to watch a series of macabre vignettes unspooled by the mysterious Projectionist (Mickey Rourke). Like the best anthology films (DEAD OF NIGHT, CREEPSHOW, TRICK ‘R TREAT), the stories’ tones range from truly deep, dark, psychological, demented horror to ones with a lighter, satirical spin. Witness a ghost story that will chill you to the bone; an exorcism story guaranteed to make your head spin; a B&W descent into clinical madness; a plastic surgery gone horrifyingly awry; and a cabin-in-the-woods slasher ditty with a unique twist you’ll never see coming.”

Under the Silver Lake

Director: David Robert Mitchell Writer: David Robert Mitchell Cast: Andrew Garfield, Topher Grace, Riley Keough, Zosia Mamet

“Silver Lake, Los Angeles. The city of angels. The dream factory where it’s all too easy to lose contact grasp of Earth and see nothing but stars… Take for example Sam (Andrew Garfield), a prototypical slacker in his mid-thirties, without ambition… though he does have an unpredictable temperament, a penchant for voyeurism, and an unhealthy obsession with pop culture. When a mysterious neighbor (Riley Keough) appears in the sights of his binoculars, then disappears overnight without a trace, the first-class geek cannot help but investigate – possessed, somehow, by the eternal spirit of the countless detectives who stalked the hot asphalt of LA before him. But a Bogart he is not. Sam’s unorthodox methods very quickly leave him confounded; through the looking glass and into the heart of a strange city where dog killers, owl-women, aspiring actresses and gurus rub shoulders, among other high-society demiurges pulling the strings of an entire culture…”

Terrified

Director: Demián Rugna Writer: Demián Rugna Cast: Ariel Chavarría, Maximiliano Ghione, Norberto Gonzalo, Elvira Onetto

“The lives of three neighbours in Argentina are turned upside down following a series of violent deaths in the area. For retiring inspector Funes, what was supposed to be an easy case suddenly takes a strange turn and he finds himself dealing with more than he can handle. Paranormal experts are brought in to assist in investigating what they believe to be haunted houses, where they will be tested by an evil the likes of which they have never encountered. As the night goes on and chaos is unleashed upon them, nothing, and no one, can be trusted.”

Tales From The Hood 2

Directed: Darin Scott, Rusty Cundieff Writer: Darin Scott, Rusty Cundieff Cast: Keith David, Alexandria DeBerry, Bill Martin Williams, Bryan Batt, Lou Beatty Jr., Martin Bradford, Kendrick Cross

“Horror is back in the hood! The sequel to the groundbreaking original film TALES FROM THE HOOD reunites executive producer Spike Lee (Honorary Academy Award® winner) and writers/directors/producers Rusty Cundieff and Darin Scott for an all-new gripping, horrifying and oftentimes devilishly comical anthology. Keith David stars as a contemporary Mr. Simms to tell bloodcurdling stories about lust, greed, pride and politics through tales with demonic dolls, possessed psychics, vengeful vixens and historical ghosts. Mr. Simms’s haunting stories will make you laugh… while you scream.“

The Witch In The Window

Director: Andy Mitton Writer: Andy Mitton Cast: Arija Bareikis, Alex Draper, Greg Naughton, Carol Stanzione, Charlie Tacker

“Divorced dad Simon (Alex Draper) brings his 12-year-old son, Finn (Charlie Tacker) out to Vermont to help him renovate an old house he recently purchased. Used to the speed of New York City, Finn has an impossible time slowing down to a smalltown pace, and he’s disappointed before even getting there. So is Simon (“I guess I was hoping I would catch you on the 12 side of 12, instead of the 13 side of 12”). Afflicted with a rare medical condition in which there’s a literal hole in his heart, Simon, ever resourceful, does what he can to make things good as he and his son attempt to repair what’s broken. Soon, a series of nonsensically terrifying happenings occur, nightmarish and incomprehensible. It becomes clear that they aren’t alone in the house. That there is more work to be done than either could be capable of grasping. That death is a partially living state. And that they are in a very special kind of danger.“

The Dark

Director: Justin P. Lange Writer: Justin P. Lange Cast: Nadia Alexander, Karl Markovics, Toby Nichols

“Once upon a dark, dark time, there was a girl, lonely, undead and bloodthirsty. Behind her a dark, dark past – a curse. Hidden in the dark, dark woods, she tirelessly haunts her childhood home. Mina (Nadia Alexander) is a damaged soul, and tears to pieces anyone who dares enter her hunting ground. When she meets Alex (Toby Nichols), a disfigured and blind boy, brought to her by mysterious circumstances, her animalistic cannibal instincts seem to strangely fade away. As this uncanny friendship grows, little by little, both of these lost children learn how to reach out to the hints of light left within.”

Cold Skin

Director: Xavier Gens Writer: Jesus Olmo, Eron Sheean Cast: Aura Garrido, David Oakes, Ray Stevenson

“In the early years of the 20th century, a young man (David Oakes) takes over the responsibility of surveying the weather of a secluded island in the Antarctic. Hoping for isolation and time for self-reflection, he instead finds a crazed and weathered person named Gruner, played by genre favourite Ray Stevenson (DEXTER, THOR, DIVERGENT). Gruner quickly reveals that there is more to this island than meets the eye and that below the icy depths, a terrible scourge lurks. The extent of Gruner’s madness slowly becomes more and more pronounced as his bloodlust for the creatures becomes apparent. Struggling for survival, the surveyor must choose between a madman and a legion of creatures he does not fully understand.”

Heavy Trip

Director: Juuso Laatio, Jukka Vidgren Writer: Juuso Laatio, Jari Olavi Rantala, Aleksi Puranen, Jukka Vidgren Cast: Johannes Holopainen, Minka Kuustonen, Ville Tiihonen

“Life has its downsides in a small, northern Finnish town. The local bros give long-haired, leather-clad Turo a tough time, and his job at the mental hospital is literally shitty. His crush on Miia at the flower shop is thwarted by the tacky lounge singer Jouni, and his band jams in the back of a reindeer slaughterhouse. In the plus column for Turo, well… there’s the band, even if these black-metal true-believers have never gigged in all their 12 years together (Turo’s concealed but crippling stage fright hasn’t helped). A miraculous crack at a major metal festival in Norway jumpstarts the quartet’s dreams, and Impaled Rektum set out on a metallic mission that will make them confront not only doubts, detours and difficulties, but also Vikings in longships (plus an elf), graverobbing, Swedish rocket launchers and wolverine-wrestling (dangerous… and awkward!).“

Dans La Brume

Director: Daniel Roby Writer: Guillaume Lemans, Jimmy Bemon, Mathieu Delozier Cast: Romain Duris, Olga Kurylenko, Fantine Harduin, Michel Robin, Anne Gaylor

“Mathieu (Romain Duris, DE BATTRE MON COEUR S’EST ARRÊTÉ) and Anna (Olga Kurylenko, QUANTUM OF SOLACE) are the parents of a girl (Fantine Harduin, HAPPY END) who suffers from a genetic disorder forcing her to live in a hermetic box that filters the air. This already vulnerable existence becomes even more precarious on the day Paris is hit by an earthquake, and then filled with a mysterious toxic gas that seems to come from below ground. Only those hiding on the higher floors and rooftops of buildings survive, but they are left stranded, without any resources. Wanting to check that their daughter remains safe in her “bubble”, Mathieu and Anna will have to face the fog.”

The Man Who Killed Hitler And Then Bigfoot

Director: Robert Krzykowski Writer: Robert Krzykowski Cast: Sam Elliott, Caitlin FitzGerald, Ron Livingston, Aidan Turner

‘The year is 1987. Calvin Barr (a too-great-for-words Sam Elliott) is not a violent man. But he is more than capable of violence if sufficiently provoked. What many don’t realize about the thoughtful, elderly bloke regularly seen at the neighbourhood tavern is that he’s a legendary WW2 veteran who many years ago assassinated Adolf Hitler, an incredible secret that he’s frustratingly unable to share. One day, just as he’s coming to terms with rounding out his life, Calvin gets a visit from the FBI and the RCMP. They know what he’s done, and what he can be capable of. They have a mission for him. After discovering that it harbours a disease capable of eradicating humanity… they need him to take out Bigfoot.”

Will you be in the Montreal area the next few weeks? Are you planning on seeing any movies at the 2018 Fantasia Film Festival? If so, let us know in the comments below, on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and in the Horror Fiends of Nightmare on Film Street Facebook group!

The post 10 Movies We Can’t Wait To See At This Year’s Fantasia Film Festival appeared first on Nightmare on Film Street - Horror Movie Podcast, News and Reviews.

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