#hugo the masked man

[ceragondubs]

Itchi will be playing as our Hugo Peers in our Wizardess Heart fandub! Y,es I will be doing these voice reveals for everyone in the cast, regardless of whether or not they are new to the team or have already made an appearance on the channel! :)

You may have also heard Itchi as "Kaname Shishido" in our Ninja Shadow prologue fandub! Stay tuned for more voice over announcements, both for new and old VAs in the cast! :D

Hear more of Itchi here:

[weirdlookindog]

Tony Robert-Fleury (1837–1911) - Alix apparaissant au masque (Alix appearing to the Mask), 1890-91

illustration for Victor Hugo's unfinished play 'Les Jumeaux'

[isthatrightkiki]

Some more sketches of ideas for my DC au thingy.

[angelamontoo]

Types of soup you'd give to Peter Lorre characters/Parodies. They all deserve a soup unique to them!

Hmm very good question. Starting with characters:

Polo would like tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich(with the crusts cutoff). He puts two extra spoonfuls of sugar in the sauce. It's simple and sweet, just like him!

Fenningers fancy so he probably eats consommé, a soup I can't conceive of someone eating for any reason other than to feel fancy. Cairo probably would too tbh, but I prefer to imagine him having better taste A.K.A. something very spicey like a nice Tandoori soup or something

Herman would enjoy vegetable soup with a lot of turnip and carrot

Arthur and Cornelius would both enjoy pea and ham soup, but Lorentz likes his with the peas whole and thick cubes of smokey bacon, while leyden purees the peas and substitutes ham with slices of Bavarian wurst

Now for Parodies:

Slappy enjoys clam chowder with seahorse milk. Slippy likes it too, but she's more of a stew girl and prefers shrimp gumbo

Ren is also a consommé enjoyer

Booberry invented his own "desert soup" using the flavoured milk left over from a bowl of his cereal as a base. He likes a good French onion soup aswell though

Hugo loves a good egg drop soup with plenty of scallions

[latenightdaydreams]

The Chair (fem)

Poll story!

MDNI🔞

Master List

>cw: fem/afab, mentions of cheating, p in v, oral, cucking, dirty talk

3.3k word count

🪑

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After three years of marriage, you found out that your husband, Hugo, has been having an affair for the last two years. He completely broke your heart. Trust was something you struggled to build, and he just completely shattered yours. After only three months of therapy, Hugo comes to you with the idea of making things ‘even’ between the two of you; allowing you to cuck him.

Hugo only made you even angrier when he said this to you. You’ve never thought about having sex with another man before. For one, your self-esteem was so low now. You love Hugo, you’ll never see another man in the same way as you see Hugo- so you thought.

It’s Saturday; you’re dressed in a simple white dress that clung to your shape. Hugo was invited to his best friend’s brother’s homecoming and took you with him. He quickly left your side at the party to go mingle with his friends, making you feel rejected. You make your way to the kitchen where it’s quiet, leaning back against the counter and looking out the window.

König sees you by yourself, so he approaches you. The way your dress clings to you catches his eyes immediately. He walks into the kitchen and opens the fridge, grabbing two beers. With one hand stretched out handing you a beer, his mask hides his expression.

“Hallo, I don’t think we’ve been introduced.” His Austrian accent piques your interest.

“Oh, thank you.” You grab the beer. “I’m y/n.”

“Pleasure to meet you. I’m König.”

Your eyes go wide and you smile as you realize this is who everyone is waiting for. “Oh, everyone is outside waiting for you.”

“I know, I’m avoiding the crowd for as long as I can.” He chuckles as his eyes openly trail down your body. “Who are you here with?”

“Hugo—”

“Jakobs friends?”

“Yeah.”

“Who would have thought little Hugo could pull someone like you?”

A smile pulls across your lips as you let out a soft giggle. König stands at 6’10 while Hugo stands at 5’8. He chuckles with you as he steps closer to you. Just then, the sliding back doors open. It’s Hugo with Jakob.

“König!” Jakob excitedly rushes to his brother.

Hugo’s smile slowly fades away as he eyes you and König, seeing how close you two were just standing. You gazed up at him with bright eyes, the same as you used to look at Hugo with. His heart skins to his stomach.

König turns to see Hugo, his eyes dead as he glares at him. König wants his wife. Craved his wife. He’s going to have her.

A few weeks pass. König has added you on all social media. Today, while at the gym, he sent you a gym selfie. He’s shirtless and flexing. His body is riddled with scars, sculpted like a piece of art. König’s blonde hair covers part of his face, your eyes glued to the dark blonde hair that trails from his belly button down.

As you inspect the photo, you close your legs and press them together. Hugo see’s your movement and recognizes it as you being aroused. He smirks.

“What are you reading?” He stands and walks to you, assuming that you’re reading smut. As he gets closer, he sees you quickly close what looked like a man’s photo.

“Nothing.” You stand and walk away to the bedroom.

While there was a feeling nagging at him, he let it go. The sex life between the both of you is basically nonexistent since the affair came to light. He figured it was simply porn. The conversation that comes next, he wasn’t expecting.

You both sat at the dinner table, pushing your food around with your fork as you contemplated your next words. Hugo notices that you’re lost in thought. He clears his throat and sits up.

“Um, are you okay babe?”

“Hm? Yeah.” You place the fork down on your plate. “I want to talk.”

“Okay.” Hugo can feel his heart beginning to sink.

“Do you remember when you offered me the option to have sex with someone else? Cucking?”

Swallowing hard, Hugo nods with a look of dread on his face. Please don’t let it be König.

“I want to take you up on that offer.” You look up, making direct eye contact with him.

Hugo shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Do you know who?” He picks up his glass of water, taking a big gulp.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Who?”

“König.”

Hugo leans back in his chair and rubs his hands over his face as he lets out a deep breath. “König?” He leans forward, arms coming down hard on the table. “What makes you think he would even like you?”

His insecurities begin to show through his words and body language. He holds himself like an injured boy. As if the simple mention of König killed his ego.

“He’s told me.” You look at him with a new found confidence.

“He told you? When?”

“We’ve been talking.”

“How?” Hugo’s eyes widened.

“Social media and texting.”

Hugo stands, combing his fingers through his hair. This can’t be happening. Not with König. “For how long?”

“Since the party.” You watch him pace back and forth.

“Have you seen him?” He stops and looks at you with pleading eyes.

“Only for lunch.” You admit.

“Only for lunch.” He repeats, shaking his head, dropping it to look at the floor.

“He said he’s free Friday night.”

Hugo slowly looks back up at you in disbelief.

.

.

Friday night, you have fresh sheets on your bed, a bottle of wine, three wine glasses, and a chair in front of the bed. You’re dressed in a short silk negligee, the deep blue color complimenting your skin tone perfectly.

Hugo looks at you. He never thought he’d be sharing you with someone. Then he thinks about the pain he causes you over the past two years. The doorbell ringing pulls him out of his thoughts. He walks forward towards the door and opens it to see König without his mask on. His face is covered in scars, but he’s still a handsome man. Hugo always felt inferior to König, being over a foot shorter than him.

“Hallo, Hugo.” König smiles and walks past him into your home.

König’s eyes fall on you, the way your little negligee hugs your body; it’s like you’re a gift for him to open.

“Hallo, Liebling.” He walks to you and hugs your body tightly. “You look magnificent.”

“Thank you.” There is a cheerful giggle in your voice. It sickens Hugo. Your small hand slips into König’s. “Follow me.”

Hugo watched you lead König upstairs towards your shared bedroom. He followed reluctantly. He knows you’re going up with or without him.

You enter the bedroom with König. As you go to open the wine bottle, König gently swoops in and takes the bottle from you.

“I’ve got this.” He opens the bottle for you, his muscles flexing under his tight black shirt as he does so.

König pours wine into each glass, a little extra into the third. He hands you one, then turns to Hugo and hands him the fuller one. A little smirk on his lips as he looks down on Hugo. “Here go, a little extra for you to relax.”

You take a large drink of your wine and place it on the bedside table. König’s eyes travel up your legs to your plump ass, the way it sways as you move. He places his glass down alongside yours. His large hands wrap around your waist and hold you in a firm grasp.

König leans his body down, his lips pressing into yours passionately. You quickly reciprocate, your lips parting slightly to lick his lips, causing König to chuckle, “Eager little one, aren’t you?” He grabs you by your thighs and lifts you in his arms.

“You may want to take a seat now.” König turns to Hugo as he holds you in his arms.

Hugo looks at you in König’s arms as he holds you. You look like Aphrodite in Ares's arms. He saunters to the seat in front of the bed and sits, wine in hand. There is nothing else to do but to watch you with him.

König gently lays you down on the bed, his lips clashing against yours as your tongue twirls around one another’s. Slowly his lips leave yours and trail down your neck, drawing small sighs of pleasure from your mouth. One hand comes up and squeezes your breast gently, his fingers coming around your nipple and lightly pinching. A small moan leaves your lips, followed by a nervous giggle.

He backs up to see you with a warm smile, leaning down to kiss your lips again. Hugo sat, watching the chemistry shared between the two of you, and it makes him feel sick. This is suppose to be a fuck, not…whatever this is.

König stands upright and undresses. He pulls his shirt off to expose the body you’ve only ever seen in photos, in person. Your eyes roam up and down his body. He is stunning. The black shirt he had on is tossed to the edge of the bed. His hands undo his belt buckle. You sit up to help him, your lips pressing against the warm skin of his chest.

A deep sigh leaves König’s lips as he combs his fingers through your hair, your gentle kisses sending a chill throughout his body. Once his pants are undone, he pulls his pants down, kicking them off to the side. His enormous erection is pressing up against the fabric of his boxer briefs, his cock so big his tip sticks out the waistband of his underwear.

Hugo’s eyes travel up and down König’s body. He feels his anxiety spike, taking a big drink of his wine. The way you touch him, it’s as if you’ve been thinking about this for a while. You’re enjoying his body. His eyes follow your hand, go to his cock and grasp it through his underwear. König’s hands on your jaw, holding your face to him as he kisses you passionately.

You grab König’s hands and move them, kissing down his chest again until your lips reach the bit of cock sticking out. Your tongue licks over the tip, scooping up a dab of pre-cum that has come to the surface. König looks down at you as you pull down his boxer briefs, your warm wet mouth slowly wrapping around his cock.

König lets out a loud groan as he gazes down at you. He looks over to Hugo with a smile before wrapping some of your hair around his head and guiding your mouth down the shaft of his cock. You eagerly accept his cock, taking in as much as you can as you suck.

Hugo shifts in his seat uncomfortably. Even if he turns away, it doesn’t help. The sound of his cock fucking your mouth consumes the room. You gaze over at Hugo shifting uncomfortably and it made you feel happy to see. Slowly pulling your head off his cock, eyes gazing up at him.

“Let’s take this off of you.” König whispers as he moves back slightly to pull your negligee off. You lift your hands above your head and to assist him. He steps back more to see your bare breasts and the small blue thong that covers your precious little cunt.

Hugo feels sick watching König look at your body. He looks at you the same way a dog would look at a piece of meat. He’s hungry for you like Hugo has never been.

“Look at this body…you look like a work of art, Liebling.” König grabs your body and pulls you back onto the bed more.

Your head rests on your pillow as König crawls over your body. His lips meet yours as one hand explores. One caresses your cheeks, the other plays with your nipples between his fingers before moving down more to your pussy, his fingers rubbing the thin fabric. He can feel how wet you are for him and it drives him wild.

His fingers hook into the fabric of your thong and pull it down slowly. Your creamy pussy comes into view as he sees the mess you made in your underwear. “Beautiful.” He whispers to himself. Without looking back, he tosses your thong behind him. It lands on Hugo’s lap, causing him to just look at it before looking back up at you.

Hugo watches as König spreads your legs with his knees, getting his body comfortable between your legs. König’s cock rubbing up and down along your folds, relishing the wet heat. The view Hugo has, he watches as he slips his cock into your pussy. Your legs instantly tensing around König’s body. A loud moan leaves your lips as he sees König’s balls press against your ass, burying himself deep inside of your cunt.

König pulls his hips back before slamming them down into you again, watching as you jerk forward and your eyes flutter. Your fingernails are digging into his forearms as you try to hold on to him.

“Please…” You whimper.

“Please?” König teases, licking from your chin to your lips.

“Fuck me…”

König looks to his side and grabs a pillow, tossing it on the side of the bed. Without withdrawing his cock, he lifts your body and turns you. “So, Hugo can get a better view of that beautiful face with I make you cum.”

Hugo has no reaction but to glare at König. In that moment his mind begins to flash back to all the moment’s he has ever spent with König. He never thought he would be in this situation with him.

König lifts one of your legs to be over his shoulder, the other he pushes off the bed. Your foot falling on Hugo’s lap. König pulls out slightly as there are streaks of your creamy arousal up and down his cock.

“Look at that, your wife has a beautiful pussy.” König makes eye contact with Hugo before looking down at you. He grasps your breast as he fucks you.  His hips roll into you desperate to bury himself deeply into you.

Hugo can’t help but to get an erection as he watches König stretch you beyond anything he could imagine. Your face contorted into a pleasurable high, you don’t even look in his direction; as if he wasn’t even there.

“Oh my god König…” You mewl, lifting your head to look at your vagina and watch him fuck you.

“Your pussy is fucking…heavenly.” König growls.

“I love your cock.”

Hugo feels his heart drop and a pang of jealousy flare deep within. Especially when König begins to taunt him. He pulls his cock out, grabbing your effortlessly as if you were a doll. He moves the pillow too, placing you over it, lifting your ass to him.

You are now face to face with Hugo, König begins bullying his cock back into you. He grabs your waist and holds you, watching your ass bounce off of his hips as he bucks forward into you. Intertwining a handful of your hair between his fingers, he pulls your head back and makes you look at Hugo.

“Say it again, Liebling.”

“Please…” You whimper pathetically needing him to fuck you harder.

“Nein, the other thing.”

“I love your cock, König.” You moan out as you look into Hugo’s eyes. You can see the discomfort and pain he feels; you can truly careless. “Please fuck me!”

“Such a good girl!” He slaps your ass, continuing to hold your head up as he fucks you harder.

Your mouth drops open as you forget words and just babble sounds of pleasure. Hugo watches as your eyes flutter back. Reaction’s he’s never gotten out of you before. “König please!”

“Look at your husband and beg.” He growls pulling your hair harder.

“Please make me cum! Please!”

“More. Beg for another man’s cock!”

“Please! I want to cum on your cock!”

You look Hugo right in the eyes as you tremble on König’s cock. “Fuck…”

König pulls his cock out quickly and drops to his stomach between your legs. His tongue presses flat against your folds and licks up, tasting your cunt finally. His tongue lapping at your clit, causing your legs to twitch with every pass.

“I don’t know how you don’t eat this pussy every day.” König makes the comment to Hugo. “Maybe I should come over and do it for you.”

You moan and run your fingers through his hair, looking down at his pink tongue parting your folds to drink you in. If you could have König over everyday for this, you really would.

“Too bad you ship out again soon.” Hugo says in a snarky tone, reminding you both of the temporary bliss.

“Watch it, I can bring a spouse to base with me.” König makes eye contact with you as his wet lips kiss your pussy’s fat mound, biting it gently. You caress his face; he moves up to kiss your lips. Your tongue pushes out to taste yourself along his hips. König lets out a small moan; trailing his hands up and down your body, grabbing your waist and kissing you lustfully.

For a moment, you both forgot Hugo was even there. König pulls away from the kiss, letting his hand trail down your body before grabbing you and sitting you on his lap. Your back is on his chest as he drapes your legs over his muscular long legs. He scoots the edge of the bed, uncomfortably close for Hugo’s liking.

Hugo adjusts himself in his pants as he watches König grab his cock and slowly thrust up, showing it into you. He watches as your lips spread and wrap tightly around him. König wraps his arms under each of your knees and pins his hands back behind your head, holding you in the Full Nelson position.

You’re folded in half as König uses you as a flesh light. Ramming his cock rapidly into your messy wet cunt. König’s muscular legs flex with every thrust.

“Whose cock is better?” König’s voice is a low growl as he speaks.

Eye’s locked with Hugos, “Your cock König.”

Hugo looks away, still forced to hear you repeat over and over that you love König’s cock better. König’s humongous 10-inch cock over Hugo’s average 5.5-inch cock. Of course you liked his better. The way you look like you’re in a different world with every thrust, he already knew.

König can’t hold back any longer. Your little cunt is the first he’s had in four years and he’s done his best to not cum too fast. The sounds of your beautiful moans, the feel of your lovely pussy…he can’t.

“Beg for my cum, Liebling.”

“Please cum in my tight pussy.”

Hugo sits at the edge of his seat, about to speak up. You both agreed to not let him cum in you. He’s not supposed to risk getting you pregnant. It’s bad enough he’s fucking you completely raw, which you said you wouldn’t let happen.

“Fuck, I’m cumming.” König pants.

“Yes!”

Hugo watches König’s heavy balls tighten as they drain deep inside of his wife’s pussy. His cock throbs as soft moans leave his lips.

König lifts you up, letting his cock pop out of your pussy. His white cum drips out of your stretched hold. Hugo just sits and watches it drip out.

“Want to taste it?” You rub your clit teasing Hugo.

He just looks into your eyes with a serious look, a look of pain. “No.” His voice cracks slightly.

.

.

The next morning, you wake up with a pep in your step. Your skin is glowing and a wide smile is spread across your lips. As you pour yourself a cup of coffee Hugo sits at the kitchen table, watching you. He feels sick, but at least the ‘payback’ is over, he thinks.

You sit and sip your coffee, looking at your phone. König snaps you a photo of his hard cock with the text saying, “I dreamt of you all night.”

“I can’t wait to see you again.”

“When does Hugo leave for work?”

“Come over in an hour.”

[chainsawmanicure]

if batman had instagram

9+ direct mesaages

joker: Say Batsy, have U heard of Hawk-Tuah? HAHAHAHAHA! -J❤️

poison ivy: I NEED cocaine.

hugo strange: I NEED cocaine.

catwoman: Hey, handsome. Just checking in… 😏🐱❤️

mr freeze: I NEED my wife.

killer croc: Throwing a BBQ this Sat. DONT MISS IT, B-Man.

solomon grundy: gnwqioqjsmsmjdoo

harley quinn: my wife NEEDS cocaine.

scarecrow: Are you SCARED of Cocaine, Batman? HROOAAA…

riddler: solve my puzzles

penguin: Try as you might, Bat-Freak… you will NOT stop me from getting my COCAINE! -Oz☂️

mad hatter: Hello, Batman. I hate to ask you this but… would you mind reading me a bedtime story? I know it’s a stupid question, but… ah, whatever. Forget I asked…

nightwing: do u even watch the reels i send you. you say LOL but not all of them are funny

clayface: Wicked is playing in Gotham again. PLEASE let me out of Arkham. PLEASE LET ME OUT

manbat: Soz about that last message, was in batmode when I sent it. LMAO

black mask (idk anything about black mask): Im big and gay batman. Whats up

bane: hey are you going to croc’s bbq? i was gonna bring your favorite… deviled eggs… you like those rihgt?

calendar man: dont even try bro ill get u. Tomorrow’s Monday

[fanfic-obsessed]

Failing to Thrive then Thriving in failure

I just had the funniest notion. Time travel comedy, but the twist is that Palpatine is the one to go back in time. 

So we start just after Kenobi, Palpatine has been emperor for about a decade, he succeeded. The Sith plan is complete, he has everything he had dreamed of and worked toward for a decade…and he is so bored. He never realized that 90% of his joy actually came from pretending to be a benevolent Chancellor and the intrigue of fooling people.  Now he has shown his true colors and could not go back to pretending (it simply would not work). Being the Sith in charge is not as fun as he thought it would be. Even getting to openly torture people has lost its appeal after 10 years.

It’s ok for Vader. For one Vader was never interested in those intrigues in the first place. For two 45% of Vader brain is taken up by trying to resurrect Padme Amidala, 50% is taken up by Obi Wan Kenobi (Palpatine is not sure if Vader wants to kill Kenobi, Kriff Kenobi, make Kenobi tuck Vader in every night and tell him is it going to be alright, Force Kenobi to help Vader resurrected Padme, or make sure Kenobi is eating, taking care of himself, and has a good enough blanket), leaving only 5% for everything else.  

Frankly if this is what Kenobi had to deal with before the war, Palpatine is somewhat impressed he got anything done.

Vader isn’t bored. Palpatine’s assorted lesser minions are not bored, they are living the dream of being as bigoted as their little fascist hearts desire. But Palpatine just could not find joy any longer. 

I do want it clear. Palpatine is not repentant. He does not regret the deaths that he caused, the genocide, the enslavement, any of it. He’s just bored. 

One day Palpatine finds a book, or maybe an artifact, or possibly a scrap of paper with an archaic formula. The title roughly translates to ‘Sith Master Time Travel’ (Listen The Son was also very bored, and being outside of Space Time meant He wanted to see what would happen). Palpatine is able to time travel, but only as far back as when he became a Sith Master. It was also a one time deal, he would not be able to use the method again AND it would destroy his origin timeline (not that that actually factored into Palpatine’s decision at all).  Not to mention he would essentially be possessing and killing his previous, alternate timeline self. 

Of course Palpatine time travels. He goes all the way back to the moment he became the Sith Master (it turns out the Sith titles are not just titles), looking at the still warm corpse of Hugo Damask, just as the Naboo crisis is wrapping up. 

Now Palpatine had already decided to do some things differently.  At first he was still working outward the Grand Sith Plan, if trying to keep his ‘Kindly Politician’ mask a bit longer, however he has decided that instead of Vader (or possibly in addition to Vader, if things get boring again) he will get Obi Wan Kenobi as his apprentice, figuring that there must have been a reason that every Sith Apprentice for 20 years ends up obsessed with the man (also because he thinks it would be funny to corrupt the Jedi’s ‘Guiding Light’). Dooku and all the pieces needed to start the Clone wars are already mostly in place. It is just a matter of maintaining until the clones are the right age.  So he does what he needs to to maintain the Empire building plans and decides to focus on corrupting Obi Wan. 

He fails, utterly. He fails so fully that Obi Wan did not even notice his attempts at corruption. Like he knew it would take time to corrupt a Jedi, he had done before after all, but he still expected at least a little change within the first year. There was nothing. 

And it was not a case of Obi Wan not trusting Palpatine. This is still a decade before the war. Obi Wan is a grieving, freshly knighted,  trying to keep up with a nine year old with somewhat unique trauma. Palpatine knows how to get Obi Wan to feel comfortable and trust him (Palpatine probably knows too well how to get Obi wan to feel comfortable and trust him, between Dooku and Vader). Obi Wan is just, for a given value, incorruptible. 

Now Palpatine’s obsession switch has been flipped. He went into it thinking that corrupting Obi Wan would be a fun side project, a way to pass the time.  He was wrong.  He knows from the previous timeline that torture would not be effective (Listen if the torture mask specifically built to corrupt lightsiders did not make a dent after a month it is pretty well proven that torture will not cause Kenobi to fall, Palpatine knows this) nor would killing Kenobi’s loved work (again, if it didn’t last time we have some pretty concrete proof). 

So now we have Palpatine trying every method he can think of to seduce Kenobi the darkside, always just shy of admitting to being a Sith or being creepy. To the point that he has actually forgotten the Empire building he was doing. He kind of even forgets to be Sidious.  He almost ghosts Dooku, before he remembers that Dooku is Kenobi’s grandfather(that is not the correct term, Dooku tries to correct Palpatine an even dozen times before giving up) and gets Dooku involved in the corruption that is STILL. GOING. NOWHERE.

Dooku basically becomes Grandpa Dooku to both Obi Wan and Anakin, and falls back into the Light while trying unsuccessfully to corrupt Obi Wan to the Dark. Due to darkside vow complications (also because I think it would be really funny) Dooku is not able to say, imply, or otherwise do anything to make the Jedi suspicious that Palaptine is a Sith. Also, to a certain extent he thinks that as long as Palpatine is focused on corrupting his incorruptible grandson, the other Sith is not thinking about galactic domination (To be fair he is correct).  

Palpatine spends most of his time trying to corrupt Obi Wan, while keeping up the act used to maintain Obi Wan’s trust. The thing is Palpatine is fully aware that Anakin in the original timeline was about observant as a particularly dense brick wall and would not have realized that the persona of ‘My friend Palaptine’ did not match the reality of ‘My pal Friendpatine’. Obi Wan would realize if his act was not consistent. 

So Palpatine decided to keep the act up 24/7.  And everyone knows that your actions become your habits become your personality. 

Somewhere in year 8 Palpatine forgets how to Sith. 

Technically he is still a darksider but not the extra layer of fucked up that comes from being an actual Sith. And he still has not even made a dent in Obi Wan’s light. He has also, almost single handedly, derailed the war that had been brewing and fixed about 40% of the corruption in the Senate.  All without killing a single senator.

Palpatine spends most of his time very confused. 

Palpatine lets his term as Chancellor end, having gone down in history as one of the most beloved Chancellors in history.  The Clones are found and mostly are inducted as an arm of the Jedi Order. Jango Fett is given a metric ton of therapy, which helps him see that the Jedi were not actually at fault for Galidraan (Jango had, in fact, been the person to escalate things to violence) before he is allowed to take Boba back into the galaxy. By that point the Clones want little to do with him. 

For the rest of his life Palpatine tries, unsuccessfully, to corrupt Obi Wan (who never noticed). At this point he is genuinely friends with a number of Jedi (He and Mace Windu have a surprising amount in common, including a love of the theater and a mild exasperation for Anakin Skywalker's antics). He is an honored guest at both the CodyWan and the Anidala Weddings (including a Jedi based wedding ceremony).

Honestly he is having the most fun of his life. 

He is also never caught as a darksider. He never figures out how that is possible either.

[gothic-cepho]

Lethica Nightborne as a character is driving me insane.

She’s a Priestess of Shar, her deadly sin is Pride, she was a recruiter for her sect, her face is always covered in a white porcelain mask with no notable features, she spat on the floor when Selunê was mentioned, she’s deals cutting insults with little repentance, she willing gave up her memories to her God

but she asks Jericho to sing for them when they’re travelling, she called dibs on the bathroom that almost drowned them in sweat to make Yorgrim laugh, she lost all the bones in her left arm and immediately tried to high-five Briggsy, she laughs and jokes easily with Farryn, she healed/comforted Hugo without hesitation knowing what he’d done, she gave food and water to a dying man in a dungeon despite protests

everything about Lethica is designed to be mysterious and sinister when people encounter her - she’s always saying cryptic shit about Shar! Her domain is Trickery!!

but Lethica isn’t what you’d expect from a Sharran Cleric - she’s always making silly jokes! and her first instinct is to show kindness to those around her! Lethica chooses to lean in and she reassures and she took note of what Marius ate for breakfast so she could make him a little meal when the rest of them ate without him so he wouldn’t be hungry!

It’s a fascinating character dichotomy, because it’d be so easy to lean into a Proud Drow cleric of a NE Goddess as someone who was callous or manipulative whilst still maintaining that surface level charm…

but Derek chooses to do the opposite. He makes Lethica kind just to be kind, and always a little surprised when she’s rewarded for it. And her devotion to Shar doesn’t waver in the face of it. Lethica isn’t kind despite being a Sharran, she’s just a kind Sharran

Lethica Nightborne…. what a woman

[bitterkarella]

COVER REVEAL!!!!

It's MOONFLOW, the debut squelchcore splatterpunk horror novel by me, Bitter Karella!

Moonflow arrives September 2025 from @orbitbooks_us and @orbitbooks_uk !! ⁣ Moonflow is three-time Hugo Award nominee Bitter Karella’s debut horror novel—a gloriously queer and irreverent psychedelic trip into the heart of an eldritch wood and the horrors of sisterhood. Answer the call of the forest, if you dare.⁣ ⁣ I see something out there, in the woods. It does not have a face. ⁣ ⁣ They call it the King’s Breakfast. One bite and you can understand the full scope of the universe; one bite and you can commune with forgotten gods beyond human comprehension. And it only grows deep in the Pamogo forest, where the trees crowd so tight that the forest floor is pitch black day and night, where rumors of disappearing hikers and strange cults that worship the divine feminine abound.⁣ ⁣ Sarah makes her living growing mushrooms. When a bad harvest leaves her in a desperate fix, the lure of the King’s Breakfast has her journeying into those vast uncharted woods. Her only guide is the most annoying man in the world, and he’s convinced there’s no danger. But as they descend deeper, they realize they’re not alone. Something is luring them into the heart of the forest, and they must answer its call.⁣

GET THE BOOK WITH 🍄eldritch fungus gods 🤪psychedelic trances 💉drug trips 🐴horse piss 🏳️‍⚧️trans feels 🌲haunted forests 🧙‍♀️weird rituals 💀blowjob murders 👺masks ☮️lesbian hippies 👮monster cops 🩻skeletons!!! 🚗muscle cars 🫦fat sex 👀gigantic gahongawongas 🏳️‍🌈problematic queer rep 🩸gore! 🦝raccoons

I am told that you can preorder it now, which you should all do if you enjoy quality books!!!

[lazycats-stuff]

Hey, I'd love to request Jason x big brother reader, before Bruce adopted Jason he had a big brother who took care of him, but one day the reader kinda vanished and money just randomly appeared near Jason. The reader made some sketchy deal with someone in exchange for Jason to be taken care of. The reader was an experiment and got turned into some sort of monster (still a human silhouette but just a bit different, memories wiped, can't speak etc.) and years later, when Jason is red hood and on a mission with the batfam, they encounter the reader. Jason remembers the reader through some jewelry he gifted them, and he tries and helps the reader remember who they are.

My poor Jason. And the poor reader. Also, why am I writing such short pieces? What is happening with me?

Summary: (Y/N) makes sure that Jason is taken care of. But there is a catch.

Warnings: experiments, not the good kind, monsters, but not in the detail, Jason doesn't remember (Y/N).

Jason looked at a photo from his childhood. He was sitting on the bed in his apartment, looking at the photo from his childhood. It was Jason, but way before Bruce adopted. Years even.

The photo came in a brown envelope, seemingly out of nowhere. It was in his PO box, just waiting in there. At first, Jason thought that it was dangerous and that it had something like anthrax, but after closer inspection, the envelope was fine.

He didn't know who this boy was. They were happy in the photo, just the two of them. Smiles and happiness. One of the rare moments in the Todd household.

But now he wondered where this person was. Where did he vanish? Why did he vanish? When?

But Jason remembered that once the man left, he was... Taken care off? There seemed to be some extra money in the Todd household and that might have been a first. Some extra money. Huh.

But Jason remembered that thing were better for a while. It was somewhat stable and he didn't worry about being hungry or anything like that.

And then Bruce adopted him. Well, Batman was there first so technically, Batman adopted him. Bruce had to personas. Batman and Bruce Wayne.

What does he even do with this? Who sent him this? Should he talk to Bruce? Dick?

He groaned, hands going through his own hair. What to do now?

Jason sighed. There was a mission. Something about human experiments. Jason shuddered at that. And the worst of all? They were in Gotham, under a guise.

Hugo fricking Strange.

Jason never liked him. He thought he was insane and full of himself. Also, he suggested the idea of Arkham City and that, according to Jason was the dumbest idea ever. A prison in the middle of the city?

Hell no.

The facility was kind of empty, if you disregard the dead bodies of what Jason thought were failed experiments. He scowled underneath the mask, gun in his hand, just ready to strike.

This was a disaster waiting to happen. Something out of a horror movie, but Gotham was a horror movie in real life. A psychotic clown, egoistical man who is obsessed with riddles, insane mob boss, a human crocodile who is nuts-

A crash from one of the rooms made everyone jump. Batman didn't, he just walked slower. Jason pointed the gun towards the sound of the crash.

Who knows what was going to come out of the corner. Jason thought about the fact that they were going to die, because only stupid people would go to a facility where there were human experiments.

" You know everyone, I will say it. This is how white people die in horror movies. "

" What about Robin? " Nightwing asked.

" Robin would scare off the monsters. " Jason said, smirking at the TTs he got in return.

He pointed his gun towards the hall, seeing a normal human here. But it wasn't really normal. It was the man from the photo he got. But who was he?

Jason's eyes fell down onto the necklace he was wearing. Oh my God.

" (Y/N)... You are here?! " Jason screamed out, putting his gun back into the holster.

The others looked at one another. Who is (Y/N)?

" It's me, Jason. " Jason started, taking his helmet off.

" What the hell? " Tim wondered out loud.

" This is my older brother. I now know you vanished. You sold your soul, your body to protect me... Oh my God. " At this point Jason raised his hands up.

" B, we have to take him back. (Y/N), can you say something? " Jason prompted.

(Y/N) was ready to attack, but Jason was quick to jump at him and knock him out.

" I have to find out what happened. I have to... " Jason said, looking at his older brother.

" We will. Don't worry. But you need to explain to me what has happened with him. "

[chopinski-official]

Chopin's Funeral

By Benita Eisler

Funeral at La Madeleine, 1868

On a sparkling Paris morning, Tuesday, October 30, 1849, crowds poured into the square in front of the Church of the Madeleine. The occasion was the funeral of Frédéric Chopin, and for it, the entire facade of the great neoclassical temple had been draped in swags of black velvet centred with a cartouche bearing the silver-embroidered initials FC. 

Admission was by invitation only: Between three thousand and four thousand had received the black-bordered cards. Observing the square with its crush of carriages, the liveried grooms and sleek horses, the throngs converging on the porch, Hector Berlioz reported that "the whole of artistic and aristocratic Paris was there." But another who surveyed the crowd, the music critic for the Times of London, suspected that of the four thousand who filled the pews, a large number had been admitted just before noon, strangers to the dead man, mere bystanders even, "many of whom, perhaps, had never heard of him." 

Facades of La Madeleine, 1840-70

If death is a mirror of life, Chopin's funeral reflected all the disjunctions of his brief existence. The most private of artists, his genius was mourned in a public event worthy of a head of state. Canonized as "angelic," a Shelleyan "poet of the keyboard," Chopin seemed to personify romanticism, and before he was buried, its myths had already embalmed him: a short and tragic life; an heroic role as Polish patriot and exile; doomed lover of the century's most notorious woman; and finally, his death from consumption, that killer of youth, beauty, genius, and of courtesans foolish enough to fall in love. 

Chopin's Last Chords by Józef Męcina-Krzesz

In reality, he was the least romantic of artists. While the generation that had come of age just before his own in France, including the Olympian Victor Hugo, had defined romanticism as a holy war of the "moderns" (themselves) against the "ancients" (their literary elders), setting off riots in theaters to make their point, Chopin clung to the past. His musical touchstones were Haydn, Mozart-but especially Bach. He harbored doubts about Beethoven's lapses of taste, was incurious about the music of Schubert, and generally contemptuous of his other contemporaries: Schumann, Berlioz, and Liszt, towards whom his feelings were further tangled by rivalrous friendship. In art, he preferred the marmoreal neoclassicism of Ingres and his followers to the radical inventions in color and form of his friend Delacroix. Socially and politically, he was still more conservative. 

The same aristocratic circles that had embraced Chopin the child prodigy in Warsaw were waiting to welcome the twenty-one-year-old sensation of Paris. Chopin arrived in France in 1831. One year before, revolution had replaced the Bourbon Restoration with the Orleanists swept in by Louis Philippe and his July monarchy. It was still a world of fixed hierarchies: of titles, birth, and breeding, buoyed by a flood tide of fresh money coined by the financiers and industrialists whose entertainments outshone the Sun King in splendor, if not in style. Chopin made some friends among the professional middle class-a less grand banker or diplomat, a few fellow musicians. He had a horror of "the People" as a force of upheaval or even change (which he dreaded in any form), and he was suspicious of those who championed their cause. He was appalled by that quintessentially romantic belief, whose most ardent proponent was George Sand, that art must serve the cause of social justice-or, indeed, any other cause except itself. 

Like many who have thrived as "exceptions," propelled by talent from modest origins to a place among the privileged, Chopin was repelled by marginality: by poor Poles, by Jews, by the ill-dressed and ill-mannered, by coarseness or slovenliness, in art or life. 

Chopin’s hand and death mask

Most likenesses of the composer suggest that he was far from handsome. He had pale, colorless hair, a thin, hooked nose, a pursey mouth, and rabbity, lashless eyes. In these images, Chopin bears only a glancing resemblance to his famous portrait by Delacroix-the portrait of romantic genius itself, with his tousled chestnut mane and burning inward gaze. Chopin's famous dandyism, then, must be understood as another labor of creation, like his music an imperious quest for perfection. The dandy enlists distinction-in dress, speech, manners-along with distance, to create a masterpiece: himself. 

What appeared to many-then and now-as the snobbery of a provincial, self-invented aristocrat and aesthete, had deeper sources. Chopin needed the reassurance that a fixed social order provides. Dependent and childlike in many ways, he clung to the security of protective institutions-the monarchy, the Church, and the family-which defined themselves proudly as patriarchal, stern but loving fathers keeping watch over children, dedicated to exalting an ideal past and to keeping present chaos at bay. 

Two years and only two public concerts after his arrival in Paris, Chopin ranked among those few artists who moved in every circle that counted. Ignoring protocol, older, established musicians called upon him. He was a fixture at the grandest houses, where, arriving in his own carriage, he was welcomed as a lionized guest who never failed to charm and amuse; if he could be prevailed upon to perform, he hypnotized every listener. The musically knowledgeable drew close to the piano to study the wizardry of his technique and his famous inventions in fingering, third finger crossing the fourth, that made his impossibly difficult compositions appear effortless. Fellow exiles heard laments for a homeland in the languorous rubato of the mazurkas, with their heart-catching drop from major to minor keys, but the mood of elegy was as often shattered by discordant salvos of unleashed rage. Even those guests whose attendance was simply an occasion to wear the new diamonds, to remark casually at the bourse that the reception last evening at Baron James's had been more than usually delightful, stayed well past midnight, straining to hear the final note, when the pianist, pale and exhausted, rose wearily to take his bow. It was uncanny how Chopin's music spoke so intimately to their most private, long-buried thoughts and memories, evoking childhood happiness and lost love; innocent, nobler selves trampled by the harsh rules of life. 

Seventeen years later, he died, destitute, in an apartment paid for by friends at the most fashionable address in the most expensive quarter of Paris.

A drawing by T. Kwiatkowski of Frederic Chopin on his deathbed, 1849

Now, at the funeral, emissaries from the world of music were outnumbered by mourners from the ranks of the rich and titled. The Polish émigré aristocracy and its French counterpart among the old noblesse were in turn outshone by new money: bankers and speculators whose wives and daughters had also been among Chopin's pupils. Certain of the fashionable, one reporter noted, appeared indecorously attired in brilliant colors, glittering with jewels. 

While the crowd filed through the portal, the closed casket was carried from the sanctuary and placed under an elaborate catafalque ("utterly pretentious," in the view of Paris's leading music critic) at the transept. Chopin's embalmed body had lain in the crypt for almost two weeks since his death on October 17, aged thirty-nine. His dying had been long and terrible, the disease that killed him still not diagnosed with certainty: tuberculosis of the larynx, cystic fibrosis, mitral stenosis, or a rare viral infection? 

Interior of La Madeleine, 1845.

With a dandy's discipline, in his final agony of slow suffocation, Chopin had planned the musical program whose principal offering was to be a performance of Mozart's Requiem. Unknown to the dying man, women were not permitted to sing in the city's parish churches; it had taken days of pleading on the part of Chopin's most powerful friends before a special dispensation was issued by the Archbishop of Paris. The decree allowed female participation provided it remained invisible; thus the women singers, including Chopin's friend Pauline Viardot among the featured soloists, were hidden from view behind a black velvet curtain. 

As the mourners took their places, the organist played the funeral march from Chopin's own Sonata in B-flat Minor. Then, the choir of the Paris Conservatory sounded the opening notes of the Requiem's Introitus, followed by the first solo — "Te decet hymnus, Deus," Viardot sang, her glorious mezzo-soprano soaring above the chorus and orchestra. Then, voices and instruments were stilled while the priest chanted the High Mass for the Dead.

Modern day interior of La Madeleine

The pallbearers emerged from their pews. Two princes, Adam and Alexandre Czartoryski, represented the community of Polish exiles. The painter Eugène Delacroix mourned the friend he had both loved and revered, calling him "the truest artist among us." From the world of music, the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, decorations glinting against his dark mourning attire, appeared the personification of success. He had been the merest acquaintance, but Chopin, passionate for opera, had been a fan, like millions of others who had made Meyerbeer a rich man. In contrast, cellist and composer Auguste Franchomme was known to few. But the modest, scholarly professor at the Conservatory had been the inspiration for the only music Chopin would ever write for an instrument other than the piano. Franchomme was followed by a collaborator of another kind, Camille Pleyel, manufacturer of the pianos that Chopin, more than any other composer who ever lived, had made the instrument of genius. 

Shouldering the massive coffin, the six men moved up the nave to the sounds of the organ playing Chopin's Preludes in E Minor and B Minor. Many of those now leaving had heard the composer play these pieces-his favorites-in their own houses, in the salons of friends, or in Pleyel's concert rooms. The familiar notes on the somber instrument spoke of the voice they would never hear again, and they wept. 

Sick Chopin at Piano. Illustration on postcard by A. Serkowicz

Outside the church, the mourners gathered around the corbillard, the wagon hearse particular to Paris. Drawn by black plumed horses, it aroused shivers of dread, but also of excitement: Parisians loved a funeral. By this time, most of the mourners had dispersed; Chopin had forbidden any graveside ceremony. With the exception of the pallbearers, freed now of their burden, those who remained were women. They surrounded the small figure of the composer's older sister, Ludwika, summoned from Warsaw by the dying man at the end of June. "Please come, if you can," he had begged, even if she had to borrow the money, of which, he, alas, had none to advance. "Apply for a passport immediately," he urged, and lest he should sound like his familiar hypochrondriacal self, he invoked the advice of others close to him and concerned for his health who had agreed that no medicine would help him as much as the sight of his sister. At the same time, he tried to deny the urgency of his condition. "I don't know myself why I yearn to see Ludwika," he wrote, with a wan coyness, to the rest of the family. "It's like those whims of pregnant women." 

Ludwika Chopin

Chopin might have spent the last twenty years in the most emancipated company of Paris, but it was still natural to him to ask permission of his brother-in-law for Ludwika to make the journey: "A wife must obey her husband," he wrote. "Thus, I am asking you as the husband to accompany your spouse." With the intervention of the czar's ambassador to France, whose wife was Polish, the endless passport process was hastened and Ludwika, accompanied by her husband, Józef Kalasanty Jedrzejewciz, and fifteen-year-old daughter, arrived in Paris in August. But the grumpy Kalasanty returned to Poland in September; it was only Chopin's sister and his little niece Louisette who remained with him to the end. 

Another young mourner, Adolf Gutmann, thirty years old, was one of Chopin's few pupils training to be a professional musician. Others, including pianists said to be just as talented, could not have performed by virtue of birth; they were women and aristocrats of title or wealth; indeed, the most gifted of all Chopin's students was a princess, Marcelina Czartoryska, who had walked to the cemetery accompanied by Countess Delfina Potocka. Sumptuously beautiful of face and body, her golden hair as bewitching as her soprano voice, Delfina, long separated from her husband, was so prodigal with her sexual favors that she had been crowned "the Great Sinner"-no small distinction in the Paris of the July Monarchy. Chopin was rumored to have been one of her many lovers. She had rushed to Paris from her villa in Nice at the news that he was dying. With only hours to live, he had begged Delfina to play and sing for him. A piano was moved to the open door of his bedroom. But the sounds of the voice so dear to him or the music she played or sang caused spasms of choking and he motioned for her to stop. 

Death of Chopin by Félix-Joseph Barrias. Showing Potocka singing to Chopin.

Sending their carriages ahead, the Polish noblewomen walked the distance, east along the grand boulevards, skirting the slums of Paris to Père Lachaise Cemetery. Others, arriving earlier in hired cabs, stood waiting by the open grave: a brawny red-haired sculptor, Auguste Clésinger, and his young wife, Solange, daughter of George Sand. Clésinger had been summoned to the dying man's bedside to mold the death mask, but the resulting likeness-bald head, drooping eyes, mouth contorted by agonized efforts to breathe-was rejected by the horrified Ludwika. Working swiftly, the sculptor had applied another layer of wet plaster, which, after removal, he reworked, smoothing away all evidence of struggle and pain until the dead man's features were composed into an expression of Christian peace. Clésinger's reward was the commission for a funerary monument, and he now surveyed the site where his marble tribute, featuring a Muse holding a lyre, would rise above a small oval profile of the composer. 

Chopin’s Grave, All Souls’ Day.

Towering over the Clésingers, Ludwika, the priest, the Polish nobles, and the pallbearers was the angular figure of Miss Jane Stirling, a Scottish heiress, Chopin's pupil and patroness, who had supported the composer in the last year of his life. It was Stirling who had paid the bill for the funeral-five thousand pounds-of which two thousand were spent on the orchestra and chorus alone. 

In the silence ordained by the dead man, his coffin was lowered. The mourners pressed closer together for a last look. But they also seemed to close ranks, filling an empty place among them.

[puuuders]

In Pursuit of Something Better ~ Part 3

Ghost fanfiction

Previous | Next

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Yeah these parts probably won't be super long lol. Just how it seems to be working out.

~

The ghouls receive their new uniforms. Gets heated.

~

Read on AO3

1.4k words

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"You did not seem as pissed yesterday as you do now."

Omega scowled at Pebble, the shorter earth ghoul. He was conveniently stood beside Delta. Being protected by a bigger ghoul seemed to be the only time Pebble wanted to pipe up with something snarky to get under another ghoul's skin. He learned that from Delta, the water ghoul that Omega forced himself to withstand for the betterment of the pack. Omega's glare shifted to Delta, before he ultimately decided to ignore them altogether. He turned his attention back to examining their surroundings. The previous red fluorescent lights of this conference room had been replaced with purple, having to be overnight since no one had noticed anyone coming in and out. The decor was also different; high quality cashmere table clothes replaced the knitted covers that Secondo enjoyed, reason being unclear whether it was because it was cheap or he was truly into knitting.

The room was less crowded, minimalistic. There were two small, white pillows on either corner of the black couch that sat against the wall near the door, contrary to the dozen that Secondo had there. A fuzzy black carpet beneath their feet. A few lamps lining the walls. Alpha was especially relieved to see these changes. He could not stand the texture of velvet and wool that their previous Papa seemed to obsess over.

Alpha's tail instinctively intertwined with the quintessence ghoul stood next to him as the door on the other side of the room opened. They silenced their pointless bickering, straighting their backs and clasping their hands together behind their backs in unison. Absolutely conditioned.

However, the man who had promised to return was not necessarily a frightening figure in the moment. He was backwards, holding the door open with his foot, his compact figure covered from the waist up by the new uniforms that the ghouls eagerly awaited. He stepped backwards into the room, a barely audible grunt, and then he caught his robe on the heel of his shoe that he wore to appear at least a little taller. Terzo gasped and stumbled backwards, huffing in frustration as he caught himself and kicked his lengthy robe out from under his feet. Aero, the air ghoul, tilted his head curiously, and Delta grinned under his mask.

Terzo slapped the uniforms down on the table, two of the new metal masks clanking against the wood and dropping to the ground.

"Oh, fuck me." Terzo mumbled under his breath before looking up at the lined up ghouls, sighing and forcing a smile. "I do hope you like these. Made of gabadine, very strong. Very good to the eye."

Terzo lifted a mask, gently holding it in one hand, examining it like a Shakespearean, two fingers pressed to his painted chin.

"Resplendent, posh. You will no longer resemble a Hugo character. You will resemble - no, be - a ghoul of importance and class." Terzo looked towards the ghouls, smiling. For some reason he expected to see a reaction of excitement, but their expressions were hidden, their body language stoic. His smile faded, and he set the mask back on the table with an echoing ring. He pressed his palms together, holding his own hands. He stepped around the table, walking towards the ghouls that towered over him, their bright burning eyes intimidating him. He smiled curiously at each of them.

"Another ugly thing that will change for you is your room. I went in there today."

Alpha clenched his teeth, his tail squeezing Omega's at the confession. There was suddenly a thick fog of tension in the room.

"What is that you sleep on? Your own clothing? There are no beds. That is filthy, ghouls. You must get your own rooms."

With that, Terzo reached up into his robe. Alpha's head recoiled slightly at the sight of Terzos robe riding up, revealing his bare calves, the only evidence of any clothing beneath his robe being the fact that he pulled out 5 keys. Unless he was storing them in his prison pocket, he had to have been wearing shorts.

Terzo placed a key in each one of the ghouls massive hands, humming as he studied the appearance of their hands. Omega's were large and purple. Alpha's were almost glowing maroon and orange. Delta's blew, webs between his fingers. Pebble's were the smallest, beautiful vitiligo spreading across his gray and brown hands. Aero's were albino.

"You ghouls should know where the Siblings rooms are, yes? You do work for them. You are Siblings under my thumb. So you will be accommodated as such, so long as you perform your usual duties. That is fair, do you think?"

Terzo stopped in front of them, scanning them for any evidence of personality. His eyes stopped on Omega.

"Why are you so quiet now, witty one?"

Omega felt his heart sink to the pit of his stomach. His vocal cords vanished, his face heating up with embarrassment at being put on the spot. Alpha looked at him. Omega looked back at him. Silence.

Terzo sighed. "Do you do the thing again? Speak out loud."

"Thank you, Papa." Omega quickly spat out, simply wanting the attention off of him. Terzo hummed.

"You call me Terzo. We are friends, are we not?"

"I barely know you."

"Don't you want to know me?"

"Thank you, Terzo."

"Such a good boy you are."

Alpha whipped his head towards Terzo, disgust written on his face under his mask. Terzo shifted his attention to him.

"What about you, Alpha ghoul? Your friend says that you-"

"Papa!" Omega snapped, a guttural hiss that intensified the fog of tension. "Do not."

"Do not what?" Terzo grinned. He knew exactly what.

"Do not what?" Alpha repeated. His voice was gruff, but an obvious tone of emotion that Omega always failed to produce.

"Nothing." Omega glared at Alpha, speaking to him with his mind. Alpha ignored his internal pleas for silence.

"What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything."

"Why do you lie, Omega?" Terzo chimed. Omega felt a bubbling in his chest, his face burning with anger. Stay calm.

"You are lying." Alpha growled. Terzo studied their interaction intently. The crumbling of their facade.

"We will talk about this later." Omega barred his teeth.

"You are saying bad things about me."

"And you, small one!" Terzo had walked towards Pebble. Though he was the shortest ghoul, he still towered over Terzo. "Do you posess this rage that these two ghouls do?"

Delta's tail snaked around in front of Pebble. Terzo watched, following the blue up to Delta.

"You are protective! You are strong," Terzo was speaking to no one ghoul in particular anymore, "you have a passion that you hide. Why do you hide? Why do you want to be weak?"

Terzo was pacing back and forth, his voice raising, pumping his fist by his side. "Don't you want to be better than this? You want to be more than tools. You do the work, you play the instruments, you control the minds. Without you this ministry would be nothing! There are more of you, less of them!"

"Less of you," Delta hissed. "You want to start shit , then-"

"Shut the fuck up!" Omega roared. He stomped forward, shoving Alpha as he barged towards Delta. Delta growled, meeting Omega's force as Omega slammed his hands into his shoulders, shoving him into the wall and snapping his teeth at him. Alpha grabbed Omega, desperately trying to pull him back.

"Less of me!" Terzo shouted. Fueling the flame. "More of you, less of me! Take it out on me! Not each other! Ghouls!"

Omega was blinded by rage.

"Omega!"

He didn't realize he was stabbing his claws into Delta's larynx.

"OMEGA!"

Suddenly, he was tired. His muscles gave out, and he collapsed to the ground. His mask bounced off of his face. His vision blurred, his white pupils staring up at Terzo who held a familiar book in his hand, the one he had seen him studying yesterday in his office. He blinked, and his pack was surrounding Terzo, not attacking. Tails swishing low to the ground, masks thrown to the floor. He blinked again. Muffled, exhilarated chanting, something in Latin. Terzo knelt to the ground in front of him. Then, he fell asleep.

[cliozaur]

While the barricade is still holding on, Hugo decides that this is his last chance to write about other barricades which he ordered to be taken by siege in June 1848. To make sense of what is going on, I read a chapter about Hugo in Jonathan Beecher’s Writers and Revolution: Intellectuals and the French Revolution of 1848 (2021). “Victor Hugo never forgot what he saw and did between June 22–26. Unlike our other writers, he participated in the fighting, and he did so on the side of the government.” Sigh.

This is where his lengthy explanations about the differences between uprisings and insurrections from 4.10.2 become relevant. He genuinely believed that everything that was going on in February 1848, before the abdication of Louise Philippe was revolution (insurrection), and what followed in June was uprising against the Republic. It was “a revolt of the people against itself.”  

The problem was: people had legitimate causes to rebel. “Once settled in the Assembly, Hugo was immediately confronted by the question of the National Workshops. Like many on both the right and the left, he believed the Workshops were a disaster. They produced nothing and were “an enormous waste of resources”… he urged that they be closed… He apparently believed that by voting to dissolve the National Workshops, he was not voting to shelve the question of unemployment. He was wrong.” Moreover, when workers erected the barricades and the confrontation began, “Hugo seems to have convinced himself that the best way to limit bloodshed was to defeat the insurrection rapidly. For the next three days he became a tiger, “haranguing insurgents, storming barricades, taking prisoners, and somehow remaining alive.”

According to an account from a member of the National Guard, Hugo was acting suicidally: “This man... was M. Victor Hugo, a representative for Paris. He was unarmed and nonetheless he led us; and while we took cover behind houses, he alone kept to the middle of the street. Twice I tugged at his sleeve, telling him: “You’ll get yourself killed!” “That is why I am here.”” But this was because he believed that he was acting under divine protection.

During these days, Hugo was not able to contact his wife and his mistress. He heard rumours that his house was burnt down, but finally found out that it was not true: “When he finally got back to the Place des Vôsges, he found fourteen bullet holes around carriage entrance, but everything in the house was intact: rugs, furniture, silverware, wall hangings, ancient swords and muskets, and above all his manuscripts. A leader of the insurgents, a school teacher and a reader of Hugo, had even led tours of the house for other insurgents.” The last detail is heartbreaking.

In this chapter, Hugo conveys his point of view on the events of June 1848, infusing them with symbolic images of two barricades: both quite eerie and ominous. He is exploiting his talent of horror writer again: “The Saint-Antoine barricade was the tumult of thunders; the barricade of the Temple was silence. The difference between these two redoubts was the difference between the formidable and the sinister. One seemed a maw; the other a mask.”

The sad thing is that after this chapter with its context in Hugo’s biography, it is hard to read his depiction of other barricades from other time without thinking of him as a hypocrite. This is Hugo — an embodiment of controversy.

Siege of the barricade during the June days of 1848:

[i-who-has-never-had-a-name]

Books I think the crows would enjoy:

Kaz: Frankenstein, One flew over the cuckoo's nest, The catcher in the Rye, The secret history, Crime and Punishment, No Longer Human, The silence of the lambs, Demon Copperhead, Eileen, Trainspotting, Hesse's and Cormac McCarthy's works, Antigone, Hamlet, The Stranger, Sherlock Holmes (when he was a child), Attack on Titan & Vinland Saga (manga)

Inej: The color purple, all of Toni Morrison's books, Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, Jane Eyre, Love in the Time of cholera, Mrs. Dalloway, The Bell Jar, a lot of Shakespeare's work, Antigone, Medea, White Nights, Wuthering Heights, Valley of the dolls, Play it as it lays, On earth we're briefly gorgeous, Sex and Rage

Wylan (he'd listen to audiobooks): Giovanni's Room, The picture of Dorian Gray, also the secret history, The great gatsby, The song of achilles, The Illiad, Shakespeare, Letters to a Young Poet, Demian, also Jane Austen's works and Wuthering Heights, Confession's of a Mask, Joan Didion's works

Jesper: That man doesn't read for shit nor does he have the patience to listen to most audiobooks but he'd like to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Harry Potter, definitely a lot of fantasy partly ya, On the Road and also The Great Gatsby.

Nina: Let's be honest she would probably read a lot of trashy romance novels or fun, lighthearted stuff, not that there's anything wrong with it she has endured enough. Would enjoy tropes like enemies to lovers, smut and ya. I have a feeling that she'd like Sarah J. Maas' stuff. I think she would also like Daisy Jones and the six and the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

Matthias: He doesn't care.

Feel free to leave suggestions.

[bigasswritingmagnet]

Zeetha, Daughter of Klaus Ch 1/3

Fandom: Girl Genius Summary: Twenty years ago, Queen Zantabraxus gave birth to twins. Twenty years ago, Klaus had a choice to make. Twenty years ago, Klaus brought one of his children with him when he fled back to Europa.

In one universe, he took his son.

In this one, he took his daughter.

A very brief look at what happens when you have to play a part that wasn't written for you, trapped in a narrative that belongs to someone else.

AO3 Link Ch 2 Ch 3

Klaus Wulfenbach could not have made a more dramatic entrance if he’d planned it. The only reason Agatha felt he hadn’t was because she couldn’t think why he would waste it on such an unimportant audience.

The Baron strode into the room with his hands behind his back, his face a mask that managed to be both emotionless and displeased at the same time. Four massive war clanks, gleaming in the overhead lights, formed a protective square around the Baron and his entourage, led by a fearsome Jägermonster. Walking just behind Klaus on his right was a four-armed man scribbling industriously into a notebook. On his left, a girl about Agatha’s age, dressed in a charcoal grey suit and an embroidered waistcoat.

Being Agatha's height and only slightly broader in the shoulders, she should have been dwarfed by the Baron, but she exuded a proud, boisterous air that refused to be ignored; emphasized by her large brown eyes and wide mouth, both bright with barely-concealed amusement. Agatha was sure that she would have made as striking a presence as the Baron...if it wasn't for the hair. 

Dull, coarse, mousey brown, worn short in an unflattering bob, it was all the more eye-catching for how out of place it was on a person otherwise so sleek. Surely, Agatha thought, she had to know. Color and texture, one could only do so much, but haircuts were on purpose.

Suddenly the girl met Agatha’s eyes and grinned, revealing very sharp canines. Agatha, realizing she'd been caught staring, gave her a tight smile and looked instead at Beetle, who was fluttering around Klaus like a nervous butterfly, insisting that they could have this conversation elsewhere, there was no need to bother the professors.

“Damn it all, Klaus, this is my university!”

“In my town. In my empire. These are the ones I asked for?” he continued, nodding to the doctors before Beetle could say more. The Tyrant, red in the face, gritted his teeth.

“Dr Silas Merlot, my second in command and Dr Hugo Glassvitch, my chief of research.” Absentmindedly he waved a hand at Agatha. “And my lab assistant Miss Cl—”

Beetle whipped around to look at Agatha, his expression one of frantic horror that Agatha thought was far too dramatic.

“Miss Clay! Where is your locket?”

“I was robbed on my way here,” Agatha said, twisting her fingers together. “There was some sort of electrical anomaly, and I was trying to get away from it when I was…”

Beetle was barely listening.

“In my city? I’ll have the watch commander’s head for this!” He grabbed her arm and began to hustle her towards the door. “You must go home, my dear, you are clearly shaken--”

“Actually I feel much bett—”

“Nononono, I’ll not hear it, you must—”

A heavy hand landed on Agatha’s shoulder.

“Wait. This event—you saw it?” The Baron leaned over her, practically blocking out the light, fixing her with an intense, piercing gaze that made Agatha feel like a specimen under a microscope.

“Yes, sir. I was right there.”

“Stay. I have questions—but they must wait for later.”

“I can do it.” This was the mystery girl, stepping in closer to Agatha—who was starting to feel penned in. “I’ll take her home. It may be easier to interview her in a more comfortable setting. Besides—you don’t need me here for this.”

“That’s really not nec—” Agatha began.

“I would prefer you be here for this,” the Baron snapped, turning his focus from Agatha to his associate, who did not seem at all bothered by the laser glare.

“But you don’t need me,” the girl insisted. “And have you considered, Father, that you may not want her here for this?”

Father? This was—this was the Baron’s daughter? Agatha had heard the rumors about Zeetha Wulfenbach, everyone had, although the rumors couldn’t agree on much besides the fact that the Baron had announced her out of nowhere only a few months ago.

Then the rest of the girl’s statement hit her, and Agatha’s face went red. She must have heard about Agatha’s... problem from someone in the university—and very few people would have been kind about it. They probably told her she broke everything she touched, and Zeetha wanted her out of the way where she couldn’t do any damage.

“ I said I’m fine !” Agatha snapped. Everyone stared, and Agatha cleared her throat as her cheeks went red. “ Thank you . I appreciate everyone’s concern, but I’m. Fine.”

“There,” the Baron said. “The matter is finished. We can attend to business.”

He turned away, wandering towards the machine in the center of the room. Zeetha caught Agatha’s eye and, to Agatha’s amazement, winked at her. With a small, approving smile touching her lips, Zeetha followed her father.

She didn’t have any more time to think about it, because the Baron said:

“The real reason I wanted to meet here today, Beetle, is because I am here about the hive engine.”

“ What?” Agatha yelped. No one noticed her. Instead, the Baron advanced slowly on Beetle, who backed away.

“Hive engine, what—what are you talking about?” Beetle stammered.

“The hive engine. The on the field team stumbled across two weeks ago. The one you had moved into the university for study. The one you have been testing. The one that, based on changes in laboratory schedules and chemical requisitions, is in this room.”

The Baron was very good at looming, and he did so now, staring down at Beetle with contempt.

“ That hive engine.”

“Preposterous!” Beetle blustered, drawing himself up. “Where could I possibly be hiding a hive engine?”

Zeetha had begun to meander towards the storage closet. Agatha noticed—as Zeetha had—that the rivets were straining, the wood of the door bulging as it gradually weakened against internal pressure.

“You’re certainly hiding something in here,” Zeetha said, casually.

“No, wait—!” Agatha cried.

“I don’t think I will,” Zeetha said, almost playfully, and turned the handle.

“ Nooooo!”

A wave of paperwork, lab equipment, and anything else Agatha had found that wasn’t nailed down or too heavy to carry, erupted from the storage closet. Agatha cringed, squeezing her eyes shut at the cacophony of her work being undone. When it stopped and she dared open her eyes, Zeetha was standing untouched beside the pile, having neatly stepped to the side upon opening the door.

She was holding a goldfish bowl in one hand, its occupant swimming in frantic circles as the water sloshed back and forth but did not spill a drop.

“Oh.”

“Hive engines are slightly bigger than that,” the Baron said, icily.

“ I know that ,” Zeetha snapped, her cheeks going slightly pink. “I thought it might have been something guarding the mechanism to open that false wall back there.”

Wordlessly, Klaus crossed the room towards the back wall and pulled a large lever. He kept his eyes on Zeetha, who turned a brighter pink as the far wall trembled and mechanisms hummed. A section of the wall slid neatly into the floor to reveal--

To reveal the most horrible thing Agatha had ever seen in her life. A massive orb of metal and glass, full of black liquid that swirled, rose, fell, tendrils sliding over the glass as if looking for a way out. And there were...things. Shapeless things moving in the dark, and Agatha could see glimpses of teeth or eyes or terrible, terrible faces.

“One rule, Beetle. I made one rule: report all unusual discoveries, and immediately turn over any devices of the Other. You agreed to this rule.”

“I had no choice!” Beetle shouted. “You had me over a barrel! It was you or let the city starve!”

“So that was it? You kept it in the middle of the city—in the middle of the university ,” Zeetha spat, “and put your people at risk of the worst fate imaginable, so you could get one over on the Baron? I should—”

Her right hand flew to her left hip and closed around empty air. Zeetha growled in frustration and lunged forward, only for the Baron to grab her by the collar and pull her back.

“And yet,” Klaus said, as if there had been no interruption, “you signed the agreement. Which means—”

“It meant nothing then, and it means nothing now! I don’t need you or your empire now! So you can just get out!”

“Just like that?” Klaus asked, dryly.

Overhead there was a crack, a splintering of wood, groaning of timbers, and a metal gun the size of a large tractor leveled itself at the Baron.

“DO NOT MOVE,” boomed Professor Tock.

“Just like that,” Beetle confirmed, smugly, and cackled.

There was a pause as the Wulfenbachs considered their situation.

“Are you stupid?” Zeetha asked, finally. Beetle let out a squawk of outrage.

“How dare you!”

“Zeetha, do not antagonize the man with the large gun pointing at us,” Klaus said, wearily.

“Listen to your father, girl ,” Beetle sneered.

“He doesn’t have a large gun," Zeetha argued. "His clank has a big gun.”

“Which is still pointed directly at you,” Beetle said, “so if I were you I would hold my tongue!”

“If you were me, you’d know better than to think this would be a successful method of stopping us. See, that’s the problem with Sparks like you—you only think about the size of the gun and how much firepower you can give it. You never think about the downside!”

“...what downside?” Beetle asked, taking a slow, nervous step back.

“Things that are big…”

The air blurred. Agatha blinked, and Zeetha was standing directly behind Beetle, one arm around his throat, her free hand holding a knife beside his face.

“...are slow.”

It took several seconds for Tok’s head to turn all the way to see where she’d gone; even longer for the gun to ponderously swing towards Zeetha and Beetle. It paused halfway as Tok’s mechanism finished calculating the risk to its creator, and swung back towards the Baron.

Zeetha nodded to Agatha. “You might want to put that somewhere out of the way.”

Agatha looked down and realized she was holding the goldfish bowl. She looked back up at Zeetha in amazement. She’d never known anyone who could move that fast who wasn’t a construct.

“Now,” Zeetha said, smugly, and panic hit Agatha’s heart like a misfired lightning bolt.

“Don’t!” she cried, putting the fishbowl on the table so she could reach out imploringly. “Don’t kill him, please! We...we need him.”

“You need him?” Zeetha exclaimed. “You need a man who was one minor accident away from wasping your city? And what about that gun? You’re right within shrapnel range—if it shoots now, you could be hurt, maybe even killed! People keep telling me that the Tyrant keeps them safe, but I’m not seeing a whole lot of safety in this room right now.”

Agatha didn’t know what to say to that. She was saved from having to answer by Beetle himself piping up.

“Don’t worry, Miss Clay. She can’t kill me.” Beetle was pale and sweating, but he was also sneering. “The moment she does, Tok will open fire, and the Baron will have to be buried in a matchbox—Hgk!”

He choked as Zeetha’s grip tightened, her forearm pressing down against his windpipe.

“That’s true,” Zeetha said. “We’re in a proper standoff. Neither of us can make a move. But here’s the thing—I’m still going to win, because I’ve got something you never even considered for yourself.”

“And what is that?” Beetle asked, his nerves once more beginning to show.

Zeetha grinned, a wolf-sharp grin of victory. She leaned in and spoke in a stage whisper.

“ Backup.”

The side of Tock’s head exploded. The clank rocked sideways, its gun swinging up and out, flailing as it tried to keep itself from falling. A squad of airships, guns drawn and aimed at the oversized clank, drifted into view. Zeetha’s lip curled and Beetle cried out in dismay as another salvo struck Tok. This time the great clank stumbled back, losing its grip on the roof of the building, which slammed back into place with a crash that cracked the plaster on the walls.

A few seconds later, an even bigger impact shook the ground under their feet.

“We arrived here in a massive airship surrounded by lots of other airships, all of which are equipped to shoot very large targets—what did you think was going to happen? Were you going to hope no one would notice?”

“Guar--!” Beetle began to scream and again was cut off as Zeetha tightened her grip.

“Oh no you don’t. You’re done and you know it. The only reason you’re alive right now is my father thinks you’re more useful to us that way. But you would be equally useful as a head in a jar. Which would you prefer?”

Very slowly, without a word, Beetle raised his hands in surrender. Zeetha smirked and released him. Twirling the knife neatly over her fingers, she sauntered back to the others.

“I told you not to bring weapons,” Klaus said.

“You told me not to bring my sword ,” Zeetha said, unrepentant. “You didn’t say anything about knives.”

Agatha couldn’t take her eyes off of Beetle. He looked so small, standing alone in the middle of the room. He stared at the floor, his hands repeatedly smoothing over his jacket and waistcoat.

“Useful,” he mumbled. “Oh yes. I know what use you would have for me, Klaus.”

The Baron looked sharply at Beetle.

“What was that?”

“Useful,” Beetle murmured again. His signet ring snagged on one of the beetle broaches on his jacket and it popped off into his hand. Beetle stared at it, blankly. “You want me to be useful.”

Zeetha shifted her weight, uneasily.

“Tarsus,” Klaus said, carefully. “Whatever it is you believe I intend—”

Beetle suddenly looked up. His eyes were wild and his lips were bared in a horrible grimace; his grip was white-knuckled on the broach.

“I will show you useful. ”

And flung out his hand.

Wings snapped open and the beetle shot towards them, zigzagging wildly but with unerring aim.

Agatha was frozen in place. The Jägermonster began to run towards them, but everything had slowed to a crawl—everything but the beetle.

And Zeetha.

Who grabbed the fishbowl off the table, caught the goldfish, removed her hand from the water, swung the bowl like a butterfly net and neatly scooped the bomb out of the air.

Electricity crackled through the water, the beetle flashing brightly once before fizzling. It bobbed to the surface , a thin stream of smoke escaping from its carapace.

Setting the fishbowl back down, Zeetha grabbed the beetle by one mechanical leg and drew it out of the water before dropping the fish back inside.

“You should probably change the water,” Zeetha told Agatha, smiling smugly. “No idea what’s in these.”

Beetle slowly sank to his knees. Agatha felt tears rise to her eyes at the look on his face—that of a man who has been utterly broken.

“Oh, don’t be such a baby ,” Zeetha scoffed. “You’re going to be fine. Here. You can even have your little toy back.”

As if she were flipping a coin, Zeetha lazily tossed the tiny clank at Beetle’s feet.

It exploded.

Agatha felt heat on her face, and then she was landing on the ground, hard. Strong arms pinned her in place, practically crushing her to the body curled protectively around her. The noise rattled Agatha’s eardrums; she could feel it vibrating in her bones.

Then it was gone, leaving an audial aftershock of hissing smoke and tinkling glass. Carefully, Zeetha unfolded from around Agatha, releasing her from her unexpectedly vice-like grip, sitting back and staring at the destruction before her.

“But...” she said. “No, but--! But I neutralized it!”

“You neutralized the machinery that allowed the bomb to move ,” the Baron said, coldly. “You did not neutralize the elements that made the bomb explode.”

“ What? That’s ridiculous! You can’t half-neutralize something!”

Agatha stared in horror at the blackened remains of Doctor Tarsus Beetle, charred beyond all recognition.

“No,” Agatha whispered. Beside her, Zeetha flinched. “No! Dr Beetle!”

“His head,” the Baron said, sharply. “How is—”

Dr Glassvitch shook his head, his expression grief-stricken.

“ Damn it all.”

“You killed him,” Agatha whispered.

“Not on purpose!” Zeetha exclaimed, embarrassed.

“Perhaps next time,” the Baron said, “you will engage in confrontations with a little more care, and a little less showboating.”

Zeetha’s eyes narrow.

“Oh yes , Herr Baron,” she said, getting up off the floor. “How foolish of me. Next time someone throws a bomb at me, I’ll be sure to stand there and let it hit me.”

“Dun vorry, Mizz Zeetha,” the Jäger said, jovially, holding up some unidentifiable organ. “Hy dun tink he vould haff been verr useful anyvay—Hy izn’t findink a whole lot of brains in diz mess.”

“Herr Baron, may we leave now?” At last, the Baron’s secretary spoke, his voice tinged equally with exasperation and irritation. “My feet are sticking to the floor.”

Agatha erupted to her feet.

“How dare you!” she screamed, breathless with anger—though not so breathless she could not find her voice. Everyone—even the Baron—drew back in alarm. And that felt good, it felt. . .it felt right. They should be cowering before her! They should be filled with dread for invoking her wrath! How dare they come into her place like this!

“Is this some kind of a joke to everyone? Doctor Beetle is dead! The greatest ruler this city has ever seen was killed, and you’re complaining about your shoes? Do you have any idea what you’ve done? The people of this city will never stand for this! They will rise up and they will —”

Agony, lightning and knives and fire, burst in Agatha’s head with such ferocity she felt it halfway down her spine. She collapsed to her knees, clutching her head as tears of pain and frustration poured down her cheeks.

Worse than the pain was the loss—that ferocious sense of surety and strength melted away in the rising swell of humiliation. She did not need to open her eyes to know the look the others would now be giving her. Whatever Dr Glassvitch said was muffled and unintelligible.

The Baron’s murmured “Pathetic ” was loud and clear.

But both Agatha and the Baron missed the expressions that flitted over Zeetha and the Jägermonster’s faces—her, a flinch, hurt that wanted to be anger but wasn’t; him, bitter disappointment not quite managing to snuff out desperate hope.

“She just watched her mentor explode ,” Zeetha said. “I think this is a pretty understandable reaction.”

“Hmm. She was right. The people may cause a problem if this is not handled delicately.”

“That’s not what I—”

“It may not be such an issue, Herr Baron,” Merlot said, helpfully. “Very few people actually saw Dr Beetle on a reg—”

“ Silence.” Klaus’ voice was as cold as death and nailed everyone in the room in place. “Do not imagine me ignorant of your complicity, doctor. You both knew about the hive engine; you both helped Beetle hide it. The only reason you two are not in a transport headed for Castle Heterodyne this moment is that I am aware neither of you were in a position to resist the orders of the Tyrant if you did want to.

“As Doctor Beetle’s second in command, I leave the running of the town in your hands, Dr Merlot. Dr Glassvitch will be responsible for the university.”

Glassvitch went pale.

“I—but, but I’m not qualified—”

The Baron loomed.

“I recommend you acquire qualification with speed , because t he moment either of you give me cause to so much as suspect your involvement was willing, there will be... consequences.”

“I...But…”

The Baron turned away, waving a hand.

“I want all of the existing notes on the hive engine collated and sent to me by the end of the day. Boris will tell your assistant where to bring them.”

But Merlot’s eyes had locked onto Agatha, who had already braced herself for the inevitable.

“I have no need for an assistant as useless as this one. Miss Clay, you are dismissed.”

“Yes, doctor,” Agatha murmured, eyes downcast. “When I come to class tomorrow, I’ll get my things.”

She felt it. There was no sound, she could not see him react, but she felt Glassvitch’s guilt like heat from a fire. She turned her head. Her eyes met his. He did not need to say it.

“No,” she whispered.

“Agatha—”

“ No, you can’t—”

“ Please understand,” Glassvitch begged. “I am not Beetle; I do not have the kind of sway he did. I will not have the time or the power to protect you here—”

“So you’re just, just going to throw me out?”

Zeetha grabbed her father’s arm.

“ Do something!” she hissed. He raised an eyebrow at her. “Stop him!”

“It is his university.”

“Only because you gave it to him! This is only happening to her because of us! ”

“Us? Or you?”

Zeetha went rigid and released her father as if he had burned her.

“You were my friend ,” Agatha said, tears once more streaming down her cheeks.

“I am ,” Glassvitch said. His expression was agonized. Agatha did not care. “I promise, when things have settled, I will come visit you—”

She jerked away when he tried to put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t bother,” she spat. With all the dignity she had, she turned on her heel and left the room with her head held high.

Glassvitch shut his eyes and rubbed his face.

“Herr Baron, please allow me to send someone with her to walk her home. I fear she may have another attack—”

Zeetha shoved him aside and stormed towards the door, following Agatha.

“Zeetha!” Klaus said, sharply.

“ I’ll get her home safe,” Zeetha snapped over her shoulder. Under her breath, she added, “I owe her that much, at least.”

[comradeacerbus]

Lil sketch of Lord Nicholas, just to decompress. Might not refine it, dunno yet. I always loved the boss fight with him, with all the fire. Totally metal the way he just sets himself on fire trying to get to Hugo and Amicia, love the aesthetic. Also sexy masked man with deep voice go brrr