#i collect scraps to create a mountain

[happi-dreams]

aa i woke up!! it’s 6 am god !!

uhhh silly doodle cause i realise i do this literally any time i see benny and emmet now

[brisquad-unit-4402]

Hello, if you write angst, may I request a any character you want x reader, where in the process of time travel, they lost reader.

If you don't write angst, may I request a any character you want x short reader, with anything you want.

lost in time with luxiem

part 2 here ↣

mmmyess YESSSS i do write angst! it’s been a while since i wrote some but i’m glad i got to practice my hurt skills :D long post incoming but i really enjoyed writing these. especially the gory scenes. man. i really am a briskadet aren’t i

tags: established relationship, hurt no comfort, gender neutral reader

⚠️ drinking + gore in luca’s entry

⚠️ drinking in mysta’s entry 

⚠️ suffocation + fainting in shu’s entry

⚠️ gore + panic attack in vox’s entry

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

When you’re ripped out of your universe and sent to a completely new world, it’s only natural to react like that...

🖋 Ike Eveland

His usual solution is to throw himself into his work. The must tumultuous of times create the best stories, pressure turns carbon into diamonds, and writing down the pain make it so much easier to let go of when he scraps the draft.

Ike commits pen to paper, as is second nature. He holes himself up in his office. Sleep comes to him randomly. He can never predict when, but he sleeps deeply, and when he wakes up it’s right back to his nightmare. Food becomes a second thought to written word, then third, then fourth, until it’s forgotten completely. 

It’s addicting, is what it is. He needs to write. The situation he finds himself in, peeled away from everything he knows, is so wildly impossible that maybe, maybe, impossible thinking will return him to where he once was. If he wishes so much to return to the one he loves, creates a world within his pages that mirrors his own, then maybe the stars above or the spirit of the universe or some cruel higher power will hear him and return him to where he came from.

The world he finds himself in is angular, blocky. Its features are so foreign to the intricate architecture of his homeland. Where there once was grass is now endless gray and metal and stone, pavement under his footsteps, so he stays inside now. The office, just as geometric as the outdoors, is blank and the paper serves as the color he’s neglected to spread within his room. 

Because, after all, he’s not going to remain here. Of course, he can’t remain here.

There’s so much he wants to do in his original world. He’s no revolutionary author, but his works are getting recognition after years and years of publishing. He just used the money to move into a proper home of his own, and it’s no mansion but it’s more than comfortable, and the window in his bedroom is at the perfect angle to gently wake him with soft sunlight every morning.

And after all, there’s an angelic face sleeping next to him every time he rises.

He writes tales of a princess trapped in her own castle, with no way to communicate with her subjects. After that, a novel about a hermit who returns to society, and how decades of living alone impacts his daily public life. Whenever he runs out of ideas, he works on a collection of short stories from the perspective of various people locked within a strange, enclosed new environment. 

The poetry is new. Novels are paintings, but poetry is sculpture, and he struggles to find the right words in the right order, but whenever he writes the last line it always tells stories of loneliness. 

Each draft takes place along flowering fields and rolling skies, clouds that adorn tall trees. Houses painted in candy colors. Streets in sepia. Snow that falls gently like blankets, and sun rays that greet mountain peaks. The aurora borealis heralds the climax of each protagonist’s journey.

Ike’s pen runs out of ink on what he would estimate is the seventh night. He curses, and his throat is so out of use, the sound is barely decipherable. He reaches to his drawer of office supplies, only to grab nothing. There is no drawer. He’s forgotten exactly where he is again.

Ike clears his throat, and raises his voice. “Reader? Be a dear and get me some more ink, please?”

Ike waits.

“Reader?”

There’s no response.

“Reader, my darling.”

There is no Reader. He’s forgotten exactly where he is again.

It’s strange that he does, he notes. Why, he’s written so many stories as his own escapism, but he can’t even remember that he left his darling Reader. 

His darling Reader, all alone, the only person in their shared home. They make meal servings for one, now, and wakes up later now without another in their bed. They have access to the study and the shelves upon shelves of home-bound books, the first edition before publication, but there is no novelist at the desk, no handwriting, no one to hold a mug and offer his gratitude. No one to sit behind as they read his latest work and offer their thoughts and notice his plot holes and typos and errors, no one to hold his pen back and insist, It’s late, let’s go to sleep, and carry him out of his chair and tuck him into bed themselves, and run their hands through his hair until his eyes close and his breathing softens and he wakes up to warm soft sunlight on an angelic face.

“Reader.” Ike says it again, but this time he knows there’s no one to respond to it. His voice breaks halfway through.

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

🦁 Luca Kaneshiro

At the end of the day Luca Kaneshiro is a social creature. Moreover, he’s a social creature that just got cut off from his friends, family, mafia, and lover all in one fell swoop. 

It’s that appreciation for others that drives Luca to walk the streets, acting like he still owns the world despite the completely different reality he finds himself in. He’s a man that’s spent his life around family, both blood and hired. New people to meet and friends to catch up with. A sweet thing he could hold and love openly, one that he would do anything for. Believe it, he means anything; that’s a promise only a mafia boss could keep and truly mean. 

There’s no replacement for them in this time, but he can’t let go of it. He doesn’t actively drink in his original time but in 2022, there’s a party every night, and he wakes up every morning with a hangover. Luca admits it. He’s a nobody, a friendless loser here, but at least every night coupled with the booze and the bodies all dyed under the colorful lights he can forget. Pretend those faces are the ones he’s come to know underneath lion masks. 

The first night was the hardest. He entered the club to color his mindlessly lonely days, because at least he could have a meltdown properly with drinks than the husk he is during the day. A young woman taught him to dance, and he traded dance partners with the rest of her friends until most of them went to get drinks, and the best dancer of them all cozied up to his arm.

By the time they returned with cocktails Luca was already long gone on the way back home, his coat wrapped around his body. He felt dirty. Everything about that night was supposed to make him feel like his legacy was still alive but when it wasn’t you feeling him up, he could feel his stomach turn. 

Sure enough, the next morning he retched out the remains of alcohol and women, and swore he’d never go clubbing again until he returned to his timeline with you by his side… until the loneliness threatened to swallow him whole, and that very evening he was back to pretending that the people in the club were his. 

People flirt with him often, and he’s surprised he hasn’t bolted from one yet. Instead he politely excuses himself and ditches the club with a hollow feeling in his chest.

Luca wakes up every afternoon- noon or later, depending on how wild the night before was- alone in a bed meant for two people. His apartment is nice, but it’s devoid of personality. Glass encompasses one side of the wall, granting him a view of the skyline, and every piece of furniture is clean white. It’s almost hilarious how much it resembles one of his penthouses in Melbourne, but without any of the charm that branded a Kaneshiro home. 

He misses it so much. His active schedule has gone to the wayside, and instead he can spend hours at a time laying in bed. It’s a destructive cycle. Party at night to keep up the pretend life, then wallow during the day about how the life is gone. How unfair, he thinks bitterly. I never asked for this. I don’t even know how I got here. Why me?

The dreary thoughts never ebb while the sun’s out, and once night falls he can’t bear to spend another moment with them. Everything is a distraction now. He can’t bring himself to imagine the mafia surrounding him at the clubs anymore. It sends him into veiled turmoil.

That’s a future worry for future Luca, though.

He walks home one night in better condition than usual. The night is blank and silent, only to be interrupted by a stifled cry. 

He turns to the source of the noise. Two people stand by a closed store. One of them is a older man, and the other is a young woman. Luca recognizes her as a girl from the club he just left, mostly because she barely looked old enough to enter. Her face is flush with alcohol, and the man practically drags her along closer to the door with a hand over her mouth.

Luca’s eyes meet the woman’s. They’re nearly closed, but widen when she realizes there’s a bystander, and then she’s gone. The man led her into an alleyway out of sight.

Sobriety regained, he dashes to the alley, and feels for the hidden pocket on the inside of his coat. It was one of the first things he reached for when he fell into the future, and he thanked his lucky stars he still had a pistol and rounds of ammo on him. 

He takes the safety off but keeps it concealed, and turns into the alley. Two other men lurked deeper into the row, while the first shrugged the woman’s body off to the ground. She was barely conscious.

One of the creeps cocked his head. “The fuck’re you looking at?” 

Another raises an arm but Luca fires before the loser aimed his weapon properly. The bullet shatters the wrist, and the gun spills out of his grasp along with blood. He clutches the mangled appendage and cries out. “Bastard shot my fucking hand!”

The second man raises his gun as well but Luca’s already aiming for his arms and fires, disabling him long enough to move closer into the alley.

The final guy brings out a knife, but Luca’s built for this. He shoves him off, then grabs his arm with one hand and forces the knife away in the other. There’s a cold look in Luca’s eye, he hasn’t said a thing. He pushes the arm the wrong direction, and feels muscle trembling to stay upright. The creep curses again, an empty threat Luca doesn’t care to hear, and the knife clatters to the floor. Luca stomps on the handle with his sole, preventing it from moving any further. 

Luca keeps his grip on the arm, and feels the other guy’s joints give out. An ugly thought wants him to go further. So he indulges even after he hears the snap of broken bone, and when he’s done twisting the limb he yanks it out. The scream of dislocation is like music. 

He feels monstrous, but the most alive he’s been in weeks, an animal let out of its cage with the scent of blood in the air. He notices the one with bullets in either arm struggle for one of the guns, so in one clean movement Luca pins him down, blows an elbow joint out with his own gun, and drags the disfigured arm out along the jagged pavement as his weight rises. Hopefully he’ll get it amputated. 

The first one he shot, the one with one less hand than he started with, helplessly struggles for the gun he dropped with his good arm, so Luca drives the leftover knife through the flesh and into the ground. He lets the bloodthirst win as the blade curves into the muscle like a hook, twists, and snatches it out.

He covers the knife in a handkerchief, then retrieves the guns, and crouches eye-level to their drunken target. Her head is lolled to the side, but unharmed.

“I’m gonna bring you back outside the club,” Luca says. “Get some staff to watch you and call a taxi.”

He helps her up. She’s conscious enough to walk, but her body is limp, and she relies on him to guide her. The blank silent night returns as they return. 

The woman slurs something out, and when Luca looks to her in confusion she repeats herself. “You’re the guy that’s always there…? At the club.”

“Yeah.” Luca keeps his face steady. “Yeah, I am.”

“You always have people around you.” She giggles. At least she seems to be a happy drunk. “Normal people don’t gun. Have guns.” She throws her free arm into the air and makes a finger gun. “Pew, pew…”

He doesn’t answer that. “What’s your name?”

She tells him. “Don’t remember it. You’re too sad for me.”

“I just saved you.”

“And thanks but you’re so… fake!” Luca should be insulted, but he’s so taken aback he doesn’t say a word. The woman is amused by it though. She continues. “Like, okay, you’re cool, I’d hang, but you’re avoiding something, aren’t you? And I’m not talking about the, the pew, guns…”

She used up so much energy talking that she doesn’t notice a crack in the sidewalk and trips. Luca catches her. 

“Hero, much?” She laughs. “You’re such a hero, you’re waiting around for something. What, want me to trip again? Go find it if you care so much about it.”

The woman babbles on as they return to the club. Barely five minutes after, a taxi pulls up to the curb.

“Bye, hero!” She chirps. “Stop being so sad all the time!” Luca gives her a small wave and she’s off. 

He re-embarks on his walk home, and her drunken ramblings follow him the way back. He’d save her again without question, but her words pissed him off. 

She’s right, you know, he thinks. But of course she is, and of course it’s not as easy as a drunk woman makes it out to be. Longing for something is one thing. Longing for a time long gone is another. 

Luca looks back at the club, so small in the distance. Already he can feel the isolation taking hold, and it’s only going to get worse the more time he spends in his apartment, but it’s not like he has the energy for anything else. 

He brushes his hand against his coat. A splatter of blood stains the fur, not so much to be noticeable in the night but daylight is a whole other story. Some hero he is. He’s never been as brutal in a fight as he was today, and the way he didn’t feel a thing, how easy it was for the ugly and dark and depressed to control his weapons… it scares him. 

That’s all he is. Afraid. Is this really who he is without anyone by his side? Maybe it was a good thing he was cast out of his original time. Someone like him shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near you. You’re too good for human trash that drinks until he can’t straighten out his thoughts anymore and revels in inflicting pain. Monsters don’t deserve kindness like yours, after all. 

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

🦊 Mysta Rias

There is logic in everything. Everything happens for a reason; every action has an equal and opposite reaction; energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed. This is what the detective Mysta Rias knows. 

But people don’t just disappear like that. The city he finds himself in is tall and sweeping just like his home, but the lights are brighter and the people are stranger. He catches the year 2022 on a billboard advertisement and balks. This is what the detective Mysta Rias doesn’t know, and he’d admit he doesn’t know in a snap. There’s simply no reasonable way he sprung over sixty years in the future just like that. 

It’s been a while since he was transported into the future with no warning. After week two, he resigned himself to living long-term in the twenty-first century. About a month in, he started a private investigation service to scrounge up money and make sure his deductive abilities stayed sharp. He met some lovely people, but at the end of the day, this isn’t his time. 

What goes up must come down, and what gets magically transported out of his intended timeline must return. You can’t toss an apple on Earth and expect it to float into space. Mysta acknowledges how silly it must be to apply physics to a time portal, but it’s the only thing he can cling onto. The Doctrine of Uniformity states the present is the key to the past, and surely the present must be the key to the future as well. 

During his first week in the future he already searched for his information when he was in his original time. His house was destroyed decades ago to make space for a school. The home phone went to a storefront in Glasgow. So he retraces the steps. Surely there needs to be a gap where the original homeowners sign off on a deal with new owners, and that’s where he can identify the whereabouts of him and his partner. 

Hours of research and calling later, either any mention of Mysta Rias and Reader were wiped off the face of the earth, or they were never on this earth in the first place. 

Mysta tries not to let it get to him. After all, even if the original hypothesis is inaccurate, it narrows down the possibilities. Just keep going. 

Staking out his old haunts proved to be fruitless as well. His favorite restaurant is gone, as expected, but so is the library downtown that his city insisted on preserving for decades. 

Later that evening Mysta grabs a cocktail glass of orange juice, pours vodka into the glass, and places the screwdriver on the coaster of his desk as he looks deeper into the people of this world. Clearly there’s no records of Mysta Rias nor the person he spent his life with, but he recognizes the Queen of England even in her old age, and Paddington Bear is still a thing, so surely there must be other similarities between his UK and the one he landed in. 

The first thing he searches for is his mother’s name, and he’s not exactly surprised when no search results come up. His associates are nowhere to be found either. The closest he gets to finding one of his old friends is an online obituary for someone he doesn’t recognize and an archive of a newspaper comic strip. 

Your family is nowhere to be seen either. A few awkward calls later, he’s confirmed the phone numbers of family and friends as well as his old detective agency are being used by completely different people. He wishes he had some kind of photo from the past. While browsing around online he learned about reverse image searching. Maybe he could see if there were any social media posts or timeless landscapes that could trace back to his origin. Being able to see your face would be a good motivation too. 

Mysta pauses. Man, he misses your face. He’s been so focused on getting back to the right time that he hasn’t even acknowledged the pit of loneliness he’s been fighting off. Emotion makes reason messy, after all. The screwdriver isn’t helping either. If only Reader was here, he muses. They always watch over me when I’m drinking. Fuck, his head’s spinning. How much vodka is in this thing? He’s poured another glass, at least one more, his recollections are getting blurry. 

He blinks out of his thoughts before they can begin to spiral. Even if he didn’t measure out proper shots there’s no way he’s getting drunk on a screwdriver, and during a work night no less. 

The detective hones in on his legal pad and the scrawl of notes on it. He crosses out another failed method. There has to be something out there that can explain it. He chants it under his breath, because after all, he’s a detective. What is a detective without his reasoning?

Whenever he’s struggling on a case, it always helps to have fresh eyes look over his thought process. It’s always you. But he’s alone now without his partner, and he fears he’s working himself into a rut. Ugh, who is he kidding. He begrudgingly drains the rest of the screwdriver. The rut’s already here, and it always has been. The drink’s making it worse but it’s about time he acknowledges it. 

He’s sick of this feeling, so isolated out from everything he knows and the future that’s left him behind, and it’s almost like he can hear your voice melting into the silence of his bleak office. But the words that you’d say evade him. You’re irreplaceable even in his imagination, and it mocks him. His focus has abandoned him, and he’s been spiraling for a while now, it’s just that his mask is starting to crumple now, and he’s already starting to regret letting it slip.

“There has to be something,” he utters, and his voice is already lifting from the alcohol. It’s high and pathetic. Mysta slaps his hands over his face and lets them drag down, as if that would fix everything, and picks up his pencil again. “There has to be a reason.”

The pencil doesn’t move. Mysta repeats himself, reason is a mantra he’s lived by, but doubt drowns him. There’s no reason in time travel, after all, but he says it again, expecting something to change. He’s running out of platitudes. But he clings to it, clings to reason, because without it he’s nothing, and stripped of his home and love, it’s all he has left. Denial of absurdity is the only thing he can do. He can’t afford to wrap his head around it, because that means he accepts this nonsensical problem, so he lives without believing it at all. 

He pours himself vodka without juice and drinks. 

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

👟 Shu Yamino

The Yamino household was no stranger to holding the supernatural within itself. For as long as Shu can remember, there’s always been scrolls hung up on the walls in thumbtacks rather than frames for easy access, rows of herbs left out to dry for spellcraft, even the living room regularly had its furniture pushed to the side to make space for a magic circle.

That was what made morphing his own home into a witch’s hut a smoother transition than he expected from the apartment unit he shared with you. The glamour made it easier to work, and besides, looking at your favorite things and the home you created together hurt too much. Either way, you were going to come back. There wasn’t a single question about it. 

Shu drags a clump of chalk along the stony floor. The outline of the circle is already complete, featuring countless shapes crafted for the exact target, and all that was left to do was to etch runes into it. The chalk digs into the floor with intention. 

“It’s going to work.” He rubs a stray line of chalk away, and checks his handiwork. The angular shapes inside of the circle are in position for a standard summoning. Runes form coordinates along the outline. 

He doesn’t even let himself feel proud for the summoning circle before he dashes off into your room. Moments later he returns with three items: your favorite accessory, your hairbrush, and a framed picture. 

There are three winding spirals drawn equal distances apart from one another in the circle. He gently placed your accessory in the center of one, before pulling out a strand of hair from your brush and into the second spiral. One represents sentimental attachments, and the other is something physical for the forces that be to identify a target.

Shu takes great care as he removes the backing of the frame and turns the photo in his hand. He sees himself first. He’s barely holding a giant teddy bear in his arms, and the plush head poked his face, threatening to make the sunglasses on the top of his head fall. On his other side, his beloved partner held the phone in one hand and his shoulder in the other. You timed the phone to take a picture just in time as you pecked his cheek and the beginnings of his blush started to set in. When you printed out the picture, you insisted on captioning it with a thin marker. “5/11/2022: Went to an amusement park and Shu won me a bear. He got a prize too!”

The memory is warm but Shu’s face is still grim. He sets the picture down on the final spiral. Any sorcerer worth their salt knows that you reap what you sow and miracles don’t come from thin air, and if you want that miracle, you’d better be willing to sacrifice something with emotional value. 

The picture captured his surprise and your affection from that day, and stares up at him as he stands. It’s been weeks since you were cast out of this reality. Even as a practitioner of the occult, Shu had no idea where the spontaneous portal came from, but it stole you away in front of his eyes. He was lucky he had the instinct to cast identification spells just as soon as you disappeared. They classified the portal as a time travel rift, and allowed him to reverse-engineer a summoning circle to locate and retrieve you. That picture, one of the most recent, was one of his favorites. It marked a shift in his relationship to you that was a long time coming, which is why it was so treasured. He would miss it, but, well, miracles aren’t cheap. He’d make new memories soon when you’re back in his arms in the timeline you’re meant to be in.

Shu lights a stick of incense, and rising smoke couples with the scent of jasmine and palo santo. He allows it to trail around the witch’s hut glamour and cleanse the room, a clean slate for his sorcery. Curses are his specialty, but he’s no stranger to ritual casting. He steps into the circle, and begins his incantation.

Shu’s flames alight after the first verse, a series of commands and words crafted carefully in accordance with the mystical. Shikigami circle around him as he gets to the second,  manifestation of his ability. The room feels like it’s floating. Static prickles in the air as it warps, the smoke mixing with the buzz, and for a moment the glamour blurs. It’s the spirit of the circle shifting the world around it as it was programmed to do.

The chalk along the floor brightens, shining luminescent with his words in white to lavender to bright, burning violet. A bead of sweat dribbles down Shu’s neck. It’s getting harder to breathe. If the world intends on taking Reader away from me, he thinks, then I’ll shred the very fabric of space-time itself to bring them back.

His fury is quiet, but concealed under how the air compresses around him. It’s a strange sensation, and if the Yamino name didn’t have generations of magic practitioners before him, the way that the atmosphere around him morphs would take him by surprise and ruin his ritual. 

Shu remains steadfast, though, and holds his breath through gritted teeth as the oxygen itself fights to separate itself from the circle. Even his flames flicker at the absence of fuel, and the heat transfers from the halo around his head and into his lungs as the air pressure increases tenfold, and tenfold of that. 

The third verse of the incantation is a fight to speak clearly, especially as the movements require him to fight hard against the resistance of literally rending space-time apart in his living room. For a moment he thinks of Atlas, the titan sentenced to hold the world itself. Then he tells himself to get off his high horse, fight the urge to let go of his breath, and finishes the verse half-ready to choke.

As he does the circle of chalk bursts into flames that lap at his feet, now floating in midair, and he doesn’t need a mirror to know the fire spouting from his body resembles pillars more than anything. Doesn’t matter. He’s fighting to keep his eyes open, but he swears there’s a crack levitating in nothing right in front of him. The fire around him pulses away from the crack and the air gets even tighter, teasing him with the vacuity of the universe he provoked.

The sorcerer thinks of the final verse less of words and more of sounds, anything to make it seem less like all the world’s weight is suffocating him. The crack in space is real. It stares at him unblinkingly.

Even when his eyes are open he’s seeing double, even in the silence he can’t hear himself utter the incantation. His chest is screaming and burning, a red-hot sensation unfamiliar to his purple heat, like claws raking through his lungs and threatening to shred him into ribbons from the inside. The pressure is too much to bear. 

The body is practically frozen in place as the vast emptiness of the crack slowly widens into a hole- a portal- and absorbs all the life from the room, and constricts him to where he stands. The claws inside start to pry and drag along his organs running dry without oxygen, and it’s a completely different sensation than incineration, it’s dead and deep, and slow. Shu’s eyes widen and strain, before blinking once, twice, and feeling the world turn upside down as everything goes black. He faints.

The sorcerer gasps alive minutes later, before entering a sharp coughing fit. The burning in his lungs has subsided, but the coughs are raspy and gritty. 

Shu clutches a hand over his heart as the memories of the ritual flood back, some areas spottier than others. The last thing he remembers is the way that the portal widened and the watercolor webbing inside of it, freckled starlight between the pure pitch, and clouds of color dyeing the fabric of space-time.

He rolls over weakly. He doesn’t have the energy to stand up. Instead he drags a tired hand over the remains of the magic circle, now a smoldering drawing in the center of his living room. Looks like the witch’s hut glamor faded. Not only that, but the chalk has turned to residual ash, easily brushed away by his fingers.

He inspects the rest of his surroundings as best as he can in his faint bleariness. The incense has gone out long ago, the room is in utter disarray, and barely a speck of dust is left on the spirals where his components were spent. They’re gone.

Shu tries to call your name but before he can get a sound out he’s already choking on his words. He fights to stand upright and clear his throat. He doesn’t know why he tried calling out to you. He should’ve known it was a failure. It’s just that he’s gone so long without you, without answers, without a single successful summoning, but this was the first time he saw the crack in space. 

Something’s going right. His body feels like it got caught in a land mine, but he’s on the warpath now, and he’s got his sights set on a new ritual draft, something that will certainly bring you back next time.

Shu hacks out a plume of ashy smoke and violet sparks. He’ll return to the drawing board soon, but he’s overexerted himself like nothing else. 

Despite how much his body feels like a crumpled ball of paper, he writhes to a pen and paper knocked to the ground from his ritual. He’ll summon you yet. Hopefully his next ritual won’t result in drowning on land, but he’s not too optimistic. He’s not going to stop until you’re back in his arms or his body gives out entirely, but he can’t kid himself forever. He’s going to burn himself out one day if he keeps this up, either metaphorically or literally. 

He writes down new observations from this ritual. It still doesn’t change a thing. He’s going to break himself if it means returning you to where you belong.

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

👹 Vox Akuma

The Voice Demon snaps awake with fire in his eyes and a growl from his throat. He’s been in stasis for what feels like eons but the memory of searing flames and cold wet blood and the razing of Akuma Castle is fresh. His heart aches. A look down and he identifies why: his red shirt is even redder along the center of his chest, and darkness blooms through the fabric in an unsightly stain. He stares underneath the fabric and sure enough, his torso is covered in slashes, though they fade in supernatural speed. This is demonic reincarnation, as expected, the same mind in a new body, the old transfiguring into the new. His blood boils as he watches the lesser lacerations fade into pale skin. The clotted blood reforms, places itself into his open wound, and the skin reseals itself. A fresh patch, an untouched body, a man seemingly unharmed.

It’s nothing compared to the first man fallen in his clan. Shot dead in the temple, an arrow protruding from his brain, pink and red staining the other end of the arrowhead. The young scholar that took up a bow to defend in the castle’s time of need, only for a catapult to sling a boulder directly to their perch, and send them falling to their demise. A woman, well-known by her Kindred for being a second mother to all, and how she went up in flames when the opposing army set fire to her refuge shelter.

Vox was no stranger to combat, and no coward that would allow his clan to fall for his sake while he stood by. He took to the battlefield, sword in hand, accompanied by his most trusted advisor and most capable warrior. 

“Be safe,” was all you said before you armed yourself with your treasured naginata, grabbed him for a life-or-death kiss, and launched into the fray beside your lord. 

You worked in tandem with Lord Akuma. His sword slid bodies for you to stab through, confirming they would never rise again. But you were only two of 522, and Tokugawa’s troops made short work of the defenseless, the inexperienced, the unprepared.

Blood pooled along your naginata blade, but when you could catch a glimpse of the metal, it reflected the burning of Akuma Castle behind you. You dodged one blade and blocked another, then skewered the man for his sloppy mistake. 

Vox fought his own battles, now, as the shogun commanded his troops to target the lord of the castle. His sword caught on the bone of a soldier before slicing another. He snapped his wrist, shaking the two off his weapon, before raising it into a defensive position in time with another attacker.

You spun the naginata in your hands and fell back to reposition. The maneuver forced your enemies to approach, just in time for you to attack first. They dwindled in number. You were no longer the priority. You held your own against another warrior, decorated in medals and a wakizashi in their hands, more seasoned than the last unit you fought against. 

The duel was a mind game, littered with fake-outs and feints, neither you or the warrior landing a blow. Their movements were calculated, without an obvious weakness, so you focused on observation. Their slashes were quick and left little room for a counterattack. They stayed in your face so your naginata can’t outrange them. They were mobile, moving low and high, their body contorting unpredictably against the backdrop of your burning home and-

And Lord Vox…!

You screamed his name. One of the bodies, one you recognized, still moving. Bloodied, barely alive, but quiet, behind your lord, raising his blade.

“Behind you! VOX!” You cried out so loud your throat went hoarse, only for blood to pour out of your mouth.

In your attempt to warn your lord, the warrior noticed an opening, and drove their wakizashi through your neck.

Vox spun on his heel at your command and drove his sword clean through the ambusher, only to watch as you fell to the mud. “Reader!”

He howled as a knife drove through his arm, the first good hit against him. You didn’t move. Another katana next. The gash on his leg disabled his movement. The fire against his blade flashed. Your body laid in a pool of your own blood. Tokugawa stood before him and pulled his own weapon back, aiming for the heart. You were dead, and he was no fool, but the sword plunged forward…

Vox stands. The ground below him, concrete. Across from him is a tiled wall and railroad tracks. He turns on his heel, fury in his eyes, ready to tear apart this subway station. “Woah, dude,” the man next to him says jokingly. His beard is turning gray and he’s covered in a worn winter jacket, and stays seated on the ground. 

“Piss off,” Vox snarls.

The man is as unbothered as ever, but seems concerned. “No thank you. Er, you good?”

“Good? Why, yes, I’m the very picture of ‘good’.” Vox lowers himself to the man’s eyes. He slams a fist against the wall, next to his head, as his words alight with poison and ember through gritted teeth. His voice burns demonic. “I said, get out of my sight like the vermin you are and PISS. OFF.”

The man’s face, once so calm and and sympathetic, forms into a visage of fear. He trembles like a deer in headlights before pushing Vox out of the way and bolting further into the subway. 

The subway platform Vox finds himself in is dismal and lonely. It’s dark, with some broken fluorescent lighting, and debris along the ground. The signs suggest the next train isn’t arriving anytime soon.

So Vox wracks his hands over his face, contorted in rage, and screams. When he runs out of breath he inhales and cries out again, ugliness crawling out of his throat, and when he closes his eyes he imagines the ugliness as blood, the splatters that coated your lips as you fell. The wakizashi sword through your neck. 

He can’t form words, but the heartbreak is primal. It echoes through the empty station, and when his voice shatters into a sob the acoustics remind him of his mourning. His broken heart tightens, tries to reform itself around the blood of his chest, and only gives him palpitations that lodge in his chest. 

Panic becomes him. What else could he be? Vox’s legacy is besmirched, his subjects slain, and most brutal of all, his greatest love gave their life to warn him in futility. He heeded their advice but- but the shaking in his heart, it’s so stifling, he can’t think straight, he needs to sit down- but he was useless to do the one thing you requested, to be safe. Now here he is, another casualty right after you fell, without the grace to even stay a dead lord. In another world, with another chance at life, and the first thing he does is spiral. How pathetic of Lord Akuma. Utterly disgusting. Even after his demonic blood gave him another chance, he’s spending it bawling like a baby, crumpled on the ground of a grungy subway station, his breath so shallow he feels like he’s about to die again. 

Misery. He’s too afraid to take in the world around him without the comfort of you, so his hands tangle into his hair and against his tears. Rebirth is nothing to an infernal, but today, the very picture of grief, the Voice Demon has been defeated for the first time in his immortal life.

.　 . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆

[mezzy303]

Ok laddies time for this week's theory time (do I need to make a masterpost of my theories? This is getting a little ridiculous lol)

Spoilers for One Piece chapter 1115 spoilers under the cut

The way I jumped and threwwww my kindle (onto pillows) when Vegapunk confirmed all the Atlantis theories!!!!!!! I made the mistake of reading it right before bed and I was wide awake for like another two hours talking to a friend and just thinking about it 😅

I honestly was ready to scrap my theory from ch 1113 about there being whole continents 800 years ago before a great flood happened, and I'm still reeling on how it all turned out to be true besides the natural phenomenon part (here's my theory from ch 1114). And Oda once again proves how fucking genius he is bc I never expected 200 meters?????? Omg???? That's over 650ft for my fellow US folks. Here's an image going around Twitter from a YouTube video that shows what are own world would look like if sea levels rose 200m

Insanity

These recent chapters have had me really questioning the mechanics of the One Piece world lol. Tbh I think we all just assumed that the world was just Like That and mainly functioned to drive the plot forward. But there are actual reasons behind it?? With this revelation, I started thinking about how the sinking of land could have been intentional on the Allies' part, beyond the destruction of the Great Kingdom and erasing it from history. The way the world is now, with the Red Line going all the way around and the Calm Belts running perpendicular to it, it's incredibly hard to travel between the different Seas. The islands are also fairly isolated from each other, especially on the Grand Line. It makes it hard for information to travel around, and the only way to get world news is through a heavily vetted newspaper. To me, it all seems purposeful to further subjugate the world by physically dividing the people, making them easier to control and rule over.

I also want to reiterate how easy it would've been to erase the Great Kingdom from history and collective memory when the Allies/World Government had the capabilities of mass destruction that could cause sea levels to rise hundreds of meters. Not only does it make the original land inaccessible, the amount of people that died was probably immense. And with the death of a large number of people comes the loss of knowledge. Those that survived likely wouldn't have wanted to pass down information on the Great Kingdom from both the trauma of the event and the fear of retribution by the World Govt (I assume the laws forbidding research on the Void Century was immediate). So potentially after just one generation, knowledge on the Great Kingdom and how the world used to be would've disappeared. Iirc only the Minks and the Kozuki family passed down info on the kingdom's existence, and their lands are largely isolated from the rest of the world. (Speaking of which, they both are in locations where further rising sea levels wouldn't affect them)

Looking into it further, the way the geography of the world also seems like it's trying to prevent (or at least discourage) people from getting into or leaving the Grand Line and also travel between islands. Just trying to get to that sea is dangerous because it requires a person to either sail through Reverse Mountain, where many pirates canonically have died because of the crazy currents and storms and end up crashing into the mountain, or going through the Calm Belt, which is current and wind free and infested with Sea Kings. And once you're in the Grand Line, the waters itself are extremely difficult to navigate. Now what's in the Grand Line that the Allies may have wanted to prevent people from getting to? Laugh Tale.

For a little while now, I've been playing around with the idea on how the magnetic fields on each island may have been created to specifically help a pirate/sailor get to Laugh Tale. We've already seen Kidd using his awakened devil fruit powers to change the polarity of different objects, what if it's possible to change the polarity of an entire island? With those powers, a person could have created the seven paths of the Grand Line. I'm still trying to decide if this was done outside the Allies' control, or if it was an order from the Allies and the person was secretly loyal to the Great Kingdom.

And don't think I missed that little detail Vegapunk said about the Allies using ancient weapons!!!!!!! Literally each chapter has been teasing the reveal of the Elders having Uranus!!!! ｡゜(｀Д´)゜｡ It seems like the Lulusia attack really was just a taste of what their weapon can do. I can't imagine how big an attack (or how many attacks in succession?) it would take to cause 200m sea level change???

[alolantikibar]

While the train oyaji hyperfixation is back in full swing, I wanted to post some snippets of a fic that I've been working on in bits and pieces. (Otherwise I know I'll have a hard time finding motivation to finish it, lmfao.)

The idea behind the fic was to write a bunch of dreams that Ingo has, while also incorporating a Dusknoir in many of them. Dusknoir is one of my favorite Pokemon and this particular Pokedex entry stood out to me:

"It is said to take lost spirits into its pliant body and guide them home."

Some snippets from the fic are under the readmore. :)

Dusknoir do not make their home in the Coronet Highlands.

Ingo thinks he’s seeing things at first. Hallucinating, even. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

A faint red light that pulses as it floats through the maze of birch trees, getting easier to see as the more Ingo stays out past the time he really should be getting back inside.

Time passes. Ingo begins to see an outline when he sees that red orb. Then faint bands of gold. A distended chesire face. He starts to recognize what the apparition is, piecing together tiny scraps of his memory until he remembers such a Pokemon. Drawing upon the buried knowledge that’s allowed him to survive out here for this long. It’s sheer frightening presence causes Pokemon to exert more energy when battling…

Ingo reasons that it must be curious more than anything if it hasn’t attempted to harm him yet. There’s been plenty of opportunities where Ingo had his back turned even while knowing that looming presence was nearby. He’s found that many Pokemon here tend to get curious about the one human soul living this far deep into the Highlands.

The ghost seems braver some days. Like it wants to get close. Ingo would gladly welcome it should it choose to do so- he finds he has a fondness for ghosts that he can’t quite explain. But then it begins watching Ingo from further and further away, until some weeks pass and Ingo hasn’t caught sight of the lone Dusknoir again. A part of him starts missing seeing it there staring at him from afar each time he went to forage and collect firewood.

A hallucination. Yes, it must have been. Ingo shaves another layer of wood off the carving in his hands, drawing out sharp zigs-and-zags with a small blade. A chesire face stares back up at him. Even if he imagined it, he still wants to create a physical memento for it. Maybe he’ll remember more eventually.

---------

Ingo dreams of ice and snow. He dreams of sheer mountain cliffs. Many nights he does not dream at all. A good nights sleep is imperative for staying alert and being able to safely operate. He’s thankful that he sleeps well at all, given how many nights he would lay awake in a cold sweat when he first arrived here. He could sacrifice pleasant dreams for sleep.

Something changes. Maybe he’s finally exhausted himself, given how late he finds himself sleeping in nowadays. Ingo starts to dream strange things. The line between being merely a spectator in his dreams and feeling as though he’s lucid begins to blur.

He starts to wake up in cold sweats again.

---------

It’s dark, minus a dim blue light that shines off in the distance. It does little to illuminate Ingo’s immediate surroundings. His fingers feel below him and the ground feels coarse, cold, solid. It’s not a cave then. Still, he shouldn’t rule out the possibility of there being not-too-friendly Pokemon in a place this dark.

He’s more concerned with getting his way over to that light than he is thinking about how he got here in the first place. A strange impulse that tells him that is more important.

Ingo’s hand presses against the ground blindly until it touches something solid, something familiar. His fingers wrap around the object and he knows immediately that it’s a torch. Well, that’s convenient, if not a bit strange.

He grabs the torch and drags it near to him so that he does not lose it’s position while he continues feeling against the ground. There’s nothing else nearby.

No way to light the torch then. Ingo looks back to the light that beckons him from afar. There’s no telling what lies between where he is now and that light.

Ingo begins fumbling in his coat pockets (what did he come here with? he can't seem to remember, normally he would be much more prepared) for something to light the torch with. If only he had a lighter...

What is a lighter?

Ingo shakes his head. Not important now.

Something tells him he should snap his fingers. A muscle memory that seems to conjure flames in his mind. Flames in a dizzying array of purple hues.

Ingo brings his thumb and middle finger together, their calloused pads making a loud snap that echoes in the dark. But nothing happens.

He snaps again. Snap.

The inferno is so vivid in his mind- roaring past him with furiosity, but Ingo stands without flinching, sure of his tactics, sure of his partner-

He snaps once more. Nothing happens. Foolish to think that would do anything. He can't safely navigate in these conditions. He'll have to figure something else out. Ingo takes the torch into his hand and rises from the ground. He begins swinging the torch in front of him, trying to see what barriers it may hit. It hits air and nothing more. Ingo cautiously takes a step forward, making sure the tips of his shoes connect with something before following with his heel.

A few steps. The torch swings and hits nothing. Another few steps. No walls nearby. Ingo lifts his foot once more to go forward and freezes as he realizes there is nothing there to step on. He quickly steps backwards but loses his footing.

A split second of panic, not knowing what lies beneath him, until he manages to prevent himself from falling forwards. Ingo grunts as he hits the ground and scrapes his palms. The torch slips from his grasp and makes a sound that echoes along the walls when it hits the ground. It echoes and echoes through the darkness, and Ingo holds his breath. If he’s not alone here, something heard that noise.

---------

Ingo wakes in a field of grass.

He can feel cold droplets of dew on his hands. His eyes open and he sees nothing but stars. He lays there for a moment, adjusting to the sensation of being wet and tickled by grass moving with the breeze. As Ingo slowly becomes more lucid, he realizes this place is familiar from the view of the stars alone.

Ingo rises to his feet and wipes a few stray dew droplets off of his coat. As his hand runs across the fabric, he realizes that it’s not torn in it’s usual places. No, it’s as untarnished as the day he first found himself in Hisui. Perhaps he is reliving the memory of waking up in this place. The feelings he felt that night begin to creep up inside him. His fingers clench at his sleeve as the world seems to stop for a moment. Ingo can only hear the hammering of his heart.

The breeze kicks up into a sudden gust, pulling Ingo from his thoughts. No, this isn’t quite the same then. The breeze was gentle that night. Tranquil, even. The little details come back to him in pieces. He spent many hours just sitting there in that field of grass, trying to understand where he was, how he got here, who he was.

Ingo begins walking, trying to ignore the cold sweat he seems to have broken into. There is something different here, and he wants to find out what it is. The grass sways gently now, the wind no longer as strong as it was a moment ago. The grass seems to stretch for miles, grass that comes up to his knees and makes him continuously look down to ensure he’s stepping somewhere solid.

There are only sparse clouds in the sky that touch the peaks of the mountains off in the distance, and it’s thankfully a full moon. He has a vague memory of there being a sky where the amount of stars that could be seen paled in comparison to what he sees now.

[lightningblade1994-blog]

{SONIC THE HEDGEHOG} "Story/Plot Summary [3rd Rough Draft] (For © KatarinaTheCat)

"THE DEATH EGG SAGA"

Part I: The Prelude Arc

The genesis of the Death Egg saga can be dated back to the start of the South Island incident, when Eggman, frustrated by his constant defeats, learned of the six Chaos Emeralds resting on South Island and carried out a massive invasion of the island to use them to conquer the earth. The doctor kidnapped all of the local Animals to use them as power sources for his robot army of "Badniks", and built his fortress, the Scrap Brain, as a base of operations. However, Sonic heard of the invasion and rushed to South Island to save it. After facing hundreds of Eggman's robots and the doctor himself at various points, the hedgehog made it to the Scrap Brain with the six Chaos Emeralds in his hands and defeated Eggman one final time, bringing peace back to the island. He then released the gems, which filled the areas there with flora before being flying off to West Side Island along with a seventh Emerald.

Part II: Little Planet Arc

In what became known as the Little Planet incident, Dr. Eggman learned of the appearance of Little Planet - a mystical planetoid that appears over the earth's Never Lake region once every year - and the seven Time Stones that were resting there that were said to be capable of controlling time itself. Coveting these stones to conquer the world, he trapped the planetoid inside of a nasty metallic shield that was chained to one of the mountains in Never Lake. Eggman then sent his Badniks to Little Planet to wreak havoc. These events caused the future of the planet to be a desolate wasteland ruined with pollution and machinery.

Upon learning of his nemesis' actions, Sonic traveled to Little Planet, where he learned that he could undo Eggman's operations by going back to the past and destroying a "robot transporter" there. A while after his arrival, he met Amy Rose - a female hedgehog deeply in love with him - who got kidnapped by Metal Sonic, a deadly robot created by the doctor to counter Sonic's abilities. Making his way through Little Planet's regions, Sonic liberated them from his adversary's control, resulting in "good futures" with harmony and peace. Upon arriving at the Stardust Speedway city, the hedgehog encountered Eggman and Metal Sonic, the latter of whom challenged him into a deadly race. When he won, Sonic rescued Amy and then freed Little Planet from the scientist's control when he destroyed the doctor's Metallic Madness base.

Part III: Death Egg Deployment Arc

Following these victories, Sonic boarded his biplane, the Tornado, and left off in search for adventures, eventually finding West Side Island and going to rest there, not knowing that Eggman was following him. Soon after landing on the island, the doctor kidnapped the local Animals for his Badniks to find the seven Chaos Emeralds that were said to be resting there according to legend. The villain's plan was to use the gems as a power source for his newest orbital weapon/space station: the Death Egg. Meanwhile, Sonic met Miles "Tails" Prower, a young fox with two tails and a great passion for machines, and the two quickly became best friends.

A few days later, when Eggman began to terrorize West Side Island's regions to find the Chaos Emeralds, Sonic and Tails set out to stop him. While making their way through the island's various areas, the duo collected the seven Emeralds and had numerous encounters with the doctor. With the gemstones in his hands, Sonic was also able to attain a Super transformation - Super Sonic - for the first time. Eventually, the heroes boarded the Tornado to chase after the scientist in his Wing Fortress battleship. However, an ensuing assault caused the biplane to be heavily damaged and begin to fall off, thus forcing Sonic to continue on his own. After bringing the warship down, the hedgehog saw Eggman escape in a space rocket to outer space. Fortunately, Tails returned with a repaired Tornado and helped Sonic grab ahold of the doctor's rocket. Soon after, the hedgehog found himself boarding the Death Egg, which had been finished and launched with no Chaos Emeralds. Following a showdown between Sonic and Eggman, who was piloting his Death Egg Robot mech, a chain-reaction caused the Death Egg to begin exploding, forcing the hedgehog to go back to the earth as Super Sonic, where he reunited with Tails as the space station was seemingly destroyed.

Part IV: Angel Island Arc

In the "Angel Island incident", it turned out that the Death Egg had actually not been destroyed; following the previous events, it began falling into the earth's atmosphere and collided with a floating landmass known as Angel Island. This crash of catastrophic proportions caused the island to fall into the surface of the ocean, resulting in massive tsunamis around the world. Having survived this calamity, Eggman detected energy fields of the Master Emerald. Wanting to use this powerful gem to relaunch his space station, the scientist began kidnapping Animals for his Badniks yet again. Eventually, he came across Knuckles the Echidna, the guardian of this massive Emerald, and falsely claimed that he was a kind scientist who was researching the Death Egg's crash and that Sonic was coming for the Master Emerald. Falling for Eggman's lies, Knuckles promised to help him drive Sonic off the island upon his arrival.

Days after the Death Egg's crash, Tails caught a strong Chaos Emerald signal on his Emerald Detector, while Sonic found a Ring that gave him an unexplainable desire to go to Angel Island. When the two arrived at the island using the Tornado, however, Knuckles ambushed them with a cheap shot from below, causing them to lose the Chaos Emeralds, which the echidna picked up and ran off with. Soon after, the heroes began making their way through the floating island's various regions, recollecting the Emeralds along the way. Despite facing countless setbacks, they eventually made it to the Launch Base, where the Death Egg was undergoing the last few repairs, and got onboard the station just as it began taking off. There, they faced various of Eggman's most powerful mechs. Despite the odds, the doctor was again defeated, and the Death Egg - due to the battle having taken place during a critical point of its launch - crashed back onto Angel Island's volcano, Lava Reef, while Sonic and Tails landed on Mushroom Hill.

Part V: Sonic & Knuckles Arc

Knowing that the Death Egg would soon be relaunched yet again, Sonic and Tails continued their adventure across Angel Island while resisting various setbacks from Knuckles and Eggman. Eventually, they discovered a "Super Ring" which led them to the Master Emerald's altar at the Hidden Palace that upgraded their Chaos Emeralds into the very powerful Super Emeralds. When the heroes collected these enhanced Emeralds, Sonic became able to attain a Hyper transformation - called Hyper Sonic, an even more powerful version of Super Sonic. After boarding Eggman's Flying Battery, Sonic and Tails landed at Sandopolis, where they made their way to the Lava Reef. At the heart of this area, the doctor activated the Death Egg's laser eyes, causing the volcano to become active. After managing to escape from this place, the duo entered the Hidden Palace, where they had a confrontation with Knuckles. However, their encounter was interrupted when they saw Eggman steal the Master Emerald despite the echidna's best attempts to prevent this. Without the Emerald where it belonged, Angel Island began falling down. Realizing that he had been tricked, Knuckles guided Sonic and Tails to the celestial Sky Sanctuary, where they had several battles against the scientist's Mecha Sonic Mk. II before barely boarding the Master Emerald-powered Death Egg which was leaving the atmosphere.

Along Sonic and Tails' path was a space station full of traps, Badniks, and dangerous areas. After overcoming these hazards, the duo faced Eggman's Giant Eggman Robo, powered by the Master Emerald itself. When this massive mech was destroyed, the doctor tried to escape one last time with the massive Emerald in his Egg Mobile, as the Death Egg itself finally crumbled and got completely destroyed, but his attempts ended in vain. Afterwards, Sonic transformed into Hyper Sonic and gave chase to the mad scientist, who was using his Final Weapon in a last-ditch effort to escape with the massive gem, in outer space. The hedgehog defeated Eggman, retrieved the Master Emerald and, along with Tails, returned it back to Angel Island, which began ascending into the sky again. After this showdown, the Death Egg saga came to a close.

[iced-cofi]

Holy shit I've been freed.

I can say my thoughts that I yearned to say on Twitter about Elon and every other fuck ass billionaire without being banned twice.

Holy shit.

Uh, ok some quick ones.

I hope Elon gets comically flattened beneath an Acme anvil.

I hope the conservatives have better aim for Trump.

I think it'd be funny if we collected every billionaire, put them in a sub, sent it to the Mariana Trench, and had a live feed of them the whole time. How quickly do you think the wolves would begin tearing each other apart? How quickly do you think the claws they wielded to keep the defenceless and poor down would turn on their own? Would they feast on each other in the eye of oblivion? Would the weaker cower the same way they forced us to? Would they cry, and beg? Would monetary value matter then? Would regret fill the cavernous voids inside them, spilling out of their eyes and hands and mouths in rage and hatred, the same rage and hatred they held like a sword to the neck of those less fortunate, now turned against their once friends and allies? Would they barter? Beg? Scream? Cry?...

Would they kill? What purpose would that even serve? Do they need a purpose? Or would they try to grasp at the scraps of what was once their finitely infinite power, and watch as it slips and flutters and fades away into the wind?

The rich are savages. Cavemen who claim to be bringers of civilization upon the world. Colonists and slavers, who mold the world to allow for this ravenous cruelty. Whose satisfaction can never be found, cup never filled, souls never complete. They are evil, lifeless, shambling tyrants, who wear the masks of the same inventors and artists they crushed beneath their heels on the journey to the top.

The top.

It's lonely. At the top. Once all the world is left in ruin, and the powerful stand atop their mountains of lies and lives, and they breath in the smoke and smog and ash and dust of a destroyed world, will they rejoice? Will it be worth it? Or will they hunger for more? Will their greed rumble for something, anything more to feast upon, bursting at the seams? Will it be painful to find no power, money, control amongst the embers of the planet they wrecked in their hubris?

I hope it is.

I hope the hunger pangs tear. Rip. Burn.

I hope they feel the pain they've caused. Writhe in agony as they fall apart from the inside out. And as they shutter, stumble, and collapse to the ground, their vision hazy, I hope they look up. And see the downtrodden standing taller, together, United and strong. And in that moment, of true, unadulterated loss, I hope they die. I hope they pass knowing all they "created", "innovated", "invented", was their own demise.

We will win. Stay together, and they cannot defeat us.

And finally, I hope bezos stubs his toe!

Feels so good!

Here's a silly pic to show how excited I am about being able to say this!

Eat the fucking rich!

I feel like someone is standing next to me talking about how I'm dead

[xtrememetalstx]

The Role of Metal Recycling in today’s Supply Chains

A Shiny Solution to a Growing Problem

Think about all the metal around you right now. Your phone, your computer, maybe even the chair you're sitting on. Now, imagine all that metal multiplied by billions of people across the planet. That's a lot of metal, right? And here's the kicker: we can't keep digging up new metal forever. That's where recycling comes in. Metal recycling is all about creating a circular economy where the materials we use today become the resources of tomorrow. This process is helping industries reduce their environmental footprint while also cutting costs.

From Scrap to Spectacular              

Ever wondered what happens to that old refrigerator you finally replaced? Or the mountains of metal left over from construction projects in Flint, TX? They don't just disappear into thin air. Instead, they embark on an exciting journey of transformation.

Here's how it works: First, the metal is collected and sorted. Then, it's cleaned and processed to remove any non-metal materials. After that, it's melted down in huge furnaces and reformed into new products. The process can happen over and over again without losing quality. Unlike some materials that degrade when recycled, metals can be reused indefinitely.

Why It Matters More Than Ever

You might be thinking, "Okay, that's cool, but why should I care?" Well, the benefits of metal recycling are pretty impressive:

Energy Savings: Recycling metals uses way less energy than mining and processing new ore. We're talking up to 95% less for aluminum!

Reduced Emissions: Less energy use means fewer greenhouse gas emissions. It's like giving the planet a big, eco-friendly hug.

Conservation of Resources: By recycling, we're preserving natural resources for future generations. Because let's face it, we don't want to leave our kids with a planet-sized hole in the ground.

The Future of Recycling

The role of metal recycling in today's world is more important than ever. It's not just about keeping our planet clean, it's about creating a sustainable future where resources are valued and reused. From small towns to big cities, every piece of recycled metal contributes to a larger goal of environmental stewardship and economic prosperity.

So next time you toss that empty soda can into the recycling bin, give yourself a pat on the back. You're not just getting rid of trash; you're taking part in a global movement that's reshaping our world, one piece of metal at a time. And who knows? That can might just end up as part of a shiny new skyscraper or the next Mars rover.

[awkward-at-parties]

Scrapbook Staccato Proposal

Animation Software

Character Animation (Storyboard thru Color): Toon Boom

Asset Preparation: Photoshop

Effects Animation: DragonFrame and After Effects

Compositing: After Effects

Final Editing: Premiere Pro

Medium

Character Animation: digital 2D animation

Special Effects: mix of stop-motion and traditional 2D Animation

Aesthetic

The style should feel very hand-crafted, like you are reading through an actual scrapbook. 

Genre

Fantasy

Dark coming-of-age

Target Audience

Young Adult.

Plot

A teenager dives into her scrapbook to indulge in her childhood memories, but soon discovers the memories do not intend to let her go.

Written Proposal

Scrapbook Staccato is the story of a 17-year-old girl named Alice. She has found herself at the crossroads between childhood and adulthood, but she is not ready to let go of her childhood. In the film, she opens a scrapbook that documents many of her precious childhood memories and then physically appears inside it as a smaller version of herself. She goes around interacting with the photos and momentos in there. Some of them are able to come to life and interact back with her, such as a drawing of her childhood dog Posie who follows her around. However, there are also memories in the scrapbook that don’t fit into Alice’s idealized view of her childhood like her parent’s divorce, her first boyfriend breaking up with her, and the death of Posie. Alice would rather not even think about those memories, so she begins ripping them out of the scrapbook. As she does, the smaller version of herself in the scrapbook gets taped down into the scrapbook by some mysterious force. This continues until she is unable to do anything but re-watch all the happy memories re-play in front of her while mountains of scrapped bad memories pile up around her. In the real world, Alice’s face is buried in the scrapbook. A door appears behind her with someone knocking on the other side. The film ends on Alice blankly staring at her happy memories, all the while ignoring the bad ones piling up around her, as the knocking persists. 

The film is meant to depict both the enjoyable and dangerous aspects of nostalgia. Alice is an example of a person who has indulged so much in her childhood nostalgia that she sees her childhood as the peak of her life, so everything that has come next in her life pales in comparison. She would rather continue to relive her childhood than actually deal with the pain of growing up. 

I will be taking a multi-disciplinary approach to this film. Alice will be a 2D character and animated in Toon Boom Harmony. Everything else in the scrapbook world will be a choppy, collage style of animation. Think Madoka Magica. Assets for the scrapbook world will be collected from real photos I either take or acquire online, edited in Photoshop, and animated in After Effects. All final animations will be edited together in Premiere Pro. I would also like to possibly use a variety of animation techniques like traditional 2D and rotoscoping for certain shots to give a chaotic mix of styles that almost seemed modge-podged together like a real collage/scrapbook. My goal with this film is to experiment with a variety of animation tools to create a very unique yet cohesive alternate world coated with nostalgia for a feminine childhood. 

[wicked-elfie]

Love Letter

I’m not sure what this is. You could call it a diary entry, a vent post, an emotional word-vomit; I’ll call it a love letter. “To whom?”, you and I may both find ourselves wondering. I suppose it’s for several people, several places, things, and times in my life. However, I guess in the end it’s a love letter in the most classic, stupid, corny way; for my boyfriend. Well, him, and cartoons.

I watched Avatar the Last Airbender when I was nine. My cousin and I were sticky with icecream and cake from his tenth birthday party in a sunny Arizona October. Our Opa had just passed away, and I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had been shipped off so I wouldn’t have to watch my dad and his siblings pick up the countless memories and piles of chess sets collected from all around during World War II. My cousin and I, however, got to celebrate life with a deadly amount of sugar and a movie-length series finale, culminating in a breath-takingly animated fight sequence and heart-wrenching soundtrack as the sky faded to purples and oranges over Iroh’s tea shop. Maybe that moment sticks with me because I realized that I had finally found a universe that lived up to my imagination; Maybe it sticks with me because that was the last time I went to visit my cousin before his dad and mine got in a fight over our Opa’s orphaned possessions.

I discovered Gravity Falls several years later. I created mountains of horribly drawn fan art of Mabel. I loved the colors she wore, how she never shut up, and how she always seemed so positive; strikingly similar to me. My dad noticed my interest in the show and decided to start watching it with me as season two began to air. It started as curiosity, and ended with him shouting from the living room couch to me in the kitchen to hurry with the snacks as the final few seconds of an ad played before Weirdmageddon III aired live.

The obsession only progressed from there. I remember hours and hours of drives and dinner-table conversations with my father, pouring over theory after theory, compiling art books and comics, and dragging each other to conventions when we had time. I remember dancing my hand out the passenger-side window; taking in the scent of barbeque; as yellow, orange, and red leaves covered the Blue Ridge parkway in the most beautiful blush. I would recite episodes word for word if he hadn’t already seen the show. I would comment on how Korra had a polar bear-dog that looked strikingly like the retriever that had his jaw laid against the center console, nudging our elbows. I would rant about the numerous queens in Star vs The Forces of Evil and I would go home at night and pick up my guitar to practice another Steven Universe or Adventure Time song, while he made verbal notes about Rebecca Sugar’s ethereal compositions.

I would sit awake at night, staring at the blue light that sparkled across my ceiling from the window, making my own stories and creating my own realities. I would tie myself to certain characters, at one point making the connection to Marceline, and taking notice of how a girl I knew reminded me of Bubblegum. We would sit on the carpet in my room, dissecting every second of Legend of Korra for scraps of queer representation, all the while experiencing what I would later call love for the first time. And I would love her for three years.

But she would create a new life, my dad would create a new life, and I would move in with my best friend who screamed and kicked and pulled at the worlds and stories that I had held to my heart my entire life, and I would lose them all.

I would forget my guitar and my music, forcing myself to listen to countless grey minutes of whatever she wanted. I would remove myself from any of the communities I had grown fond of, whether creative or queer or both, for the sake of making my life more in tune with hers. In the dead of night, I would force myself to drive for hours and hours to take her friends wherever they wanted, and I would hate myself when she ignored me the next day for nearly falling asleep at the wheel. I would wear unwashed sweatshirts, under-eye bags, and my hair would come out a little too quickly.

But sometimes she would work late. So one day, in a random spur of the moment decision, I pulled up a new show, The Dragon Prince, on Netflix. I recognized one of the creators as the head writer from Avatar; How cathartic is it that I began to live for the second time, reading Aaron Ehasz’s name across the screen.

You were there for it. You were her friend at the time, but at some point you just started to hang around to talk to me. You never really watched anything like this: usually sticking to Spongebob or That 70’s Show. You even openly admitted to changing the channel when Avatar would air on Nickelodeon; I punched your shoulder for that, “You’re crazy for thinking Spongebob is better.” However, a few hours in, I found myself buried against your chest, my lungs constricting as you rested your chin in my hair, while we stared teary-eyed as Rayla fell.

You listened to me when I talked about it; the colors, the music, the character designs, the everything; and not for any particular reason- just that you liked it when I talked. In fact, you never told me to stop talking or being emotional. You never once asked me to hide it all.

For three years you’ve watched me and listened to me and encouraged me. When I watched through the Owl House and Amphibia, you would let me fumble groggily over my thoughts and ideas as we downed Voodoo Donuts after twelve hour shifts. You helped me submit my application for a degree in Graphic Design and sat on a call with me when I had to wait in line for my new drawing tablet. You would watch me try on the brightest, most abstract sweaters; the most sparkly and colorful dangle-y earrings; and you would beam at me, telling me I looked beautiful when I wore what I wanted to.

Most recently, I’ve gotten you to watch the 2018 iteration of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. At first the animation was overwhelming to you, but you persisted after you decided Raphael was your favorite. I always say you have to watch it through if you have a favorite. You’ve never seen me write or draw this much, and it almost worried you, till you heard me talking to my dad over a facetime call while we both cooked quesadillas. His was paired with home-made salsa verde and black beans. You and I don’t have a lot of money- running on the bank account of a couple of college students- so mine was a solo cheese and tortilla, crisped up in my favorite butter. You told me later that I had been ranting to him about autism representation and deconstruction of toxic masculinity for three hours.

You took me for a drive. And I laid back in the passenger seat, dancing my hand on the window, imagining wild horses galloping beside the car, led by a striking buckskin mustang through the plains. I could see spaceships hovering amongst the stars: lasers zapping in greens, reds, and blues. I built castles above the crests of the Rockies, and painted various dragons, twisted around the spires. I could hear frogs, croaking in a river band as they drifted down the bayou on the most extravagant Louisiana ferry. I smelled fresh pizza, set down on the tacky surfaced table in some small corner shop in New York. And you were there; You wanted to be there.

I will never again experience the life I once had. I will never be able to gain back the months and months of storm clouds and dissociation and self-hatred at nineteen years old. I will never have another 20th birthday: one that isn’t tainted with COVID and minimum wage work in a 40-year-old-male-dominated kitchen. However, every single year, this gets easier. You didn’t make this happen, I know that. I did this myself. I got out of that apartment, I stood up for myself, I decided to take classes again, I decided to draw and write again. But you were there. You’ve gotten to watch me rebuild myself, a happier version of myself, and you’ve expressed nothing short of admiration for my success. You have to know how much that means to me.

You have to know- spending forty minutes every few nights to watch stories of siblings, friends, and families- how much that means to me. Every time we watch an episode, I get to remember my cousin, my dad, being a kid, being a teenager… being me. I get to be me.

[genderfluid-druid]

[ID: A collection of images and texts focused on the Arctic Sublime.

Image 1 is the painting “The Sea of Ice” by Caspar David Friedrich, which portrays an Arctic landscape with jagged ice floes crushing against each other and jutting into a tower shape. There is a shipwreck just visible amid the crush.

Image 2 is a Wikipedia excerpt that reads: “Influence: The painting has been hailed by critic Russell Potter as a key instance of the ‘Arctic Sublime’, and an influence on later nineteenth-century polar paintings.”

Image 3 is a screenshot from The Terror, in which an arctic landscape is viewed through a spyglass. It is overlaid with the text: “Not here! the white North has thy bones; and thou, / Heroic sailor-soul / Art passing on thine happier voyage now / Toward no earthly pole.”

Image 4 is an article excerpt that reads: “In their imaginations, the British people, and other peoples as well, had voyaged with Franklin ‘toward no earthly pole.’ They had created in their minds an Arctic that was at least partly imaginary in its sublimity. Their imagined Arctic was a place of terror, but even in its terror it was beautiful in the sublime way that immense mountains or the vast reaches of space are beautiful. Like the sublimity of mountains or space, the sublimity of the Arctic partly depended on its imagined emptiness as well as its vastness and coldness. It was imagined to be not only inhuman but even inorganic, and that was part of its beauty, terror, fascination, and challenge. It was an environment within which a cosmic romance could be acted out: man facing the great cold forces of Nature and surviving if not prevailing over them.”

Image 4 is another screenshot from The Terror, in which a team of men are hauling a sledge across the pack ice.

Image 5 is another shot from the same scene, in which Mr. Goodsir looks out across King William Island and says, “It’s beautiful.”

Image 6 is an article excerpt titled: “Sect I: Of the passion caused by the sublime.” It reads: “The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.”

Image 7 is a screenshot from the opening credits of The Terror, in which the titular ship is caught and destroyed by jagged pack ice while the Aurora Borealis lights up the sky.

Image 8 is an article excerpt that reads: “…mastered it, man would somehow be enlarged in mind and soul. Instead the Arctic had swallowed him, obliterated him. As expedition after expedition sailed into the Canadian Archipelago and returned with only minor scraps of information about what had happened to Franklin, the dream turned to nightmare, and the full terror of the Arctic Sublime began to be felt.”

Image 9 is a screenshot from the final episode of The Terror, in which Mr. Goodsir, now ragged and with an overgrown beard, says, “This place is beautiful to me, even now.” End ID]

The theory of the sublime combines the emotions of horror and pleasure.

The Terror and ‘The Sublime’

Caspar David Friedrich’s ‘The Sea of Ice’ / The Terror (2018) / Franklin Memorial inscription / ‘A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful’ / ‘Nature and the Victorian Imagination’

[itsapapisongo]

mingyu of the jungle | act i

Pairing: Mingyu x Female!Reader

Genre: Adventure | Fluff | Non-Idol AU | Rom-Com

Content Warning: Brief tacky and racy joke (Yellow Ape), mansplaining, and a scene depicting some violence and slapstick.

Word Count: 13.1K

Synopsis: Raised by the Primate Clan in a remote jungle in Africa, Mingyu grows up to the would-be king of Ape Mountain. Now an adult, he has his first human encounter with none other than you. Or the one where Mingyu is a vine-swinging himbo, you’re smitten by him, he’s smitten by you, and hilarious chaos ensues!

Act I: Meet (Jungle) Cute

WITH NOTHING TO get in its way, nature grew in every imaginable direction in the remote land known to few as Bukuvu.

The land’s sparkling rivers and streams spread out and created an intricate pattern from high above. Lush velds, hills, and valleys were grazed by a plethora of exotic animals. The sweet melody of colorful birds filled the air. This was a beautiful country, a gift from the gods themselves, and had remained untouched by modern men for time immemorial until—the crash!

A small twin-engined plane flew above this mysterious land, carrying nearly eighty passengers. They gazed at the beauty never-before-seen sights beyond their imagination with awe. Unfortunately, with Bukuvu being out of most, if not all, maps, the pilots were unaware of one of the land’s greatest, darkest secrets: its hidden mountains.

As they reached the outskirts of Bukuvu, a huge mountain suddenly rose upon them and the pilots, without time to maneuver through them, hit it. In the span of a minute, the plane drifted to the ground, was ripped open, and scarred the Bukuvu soil, landing with a crash that shook the entire jungle.

Smoldering in the jungle’s floor, having successfully unrotted two or three trees, the plan laid in ruins . . .

●

ALERTED TO THE large metal beast that fell from the sky, four young gorillas investigated this strange occurrence. They saw hairless apes escape from its maw—or was that the metal beast’s bunghole?—as they rushed to help each other. This beast, which they would later learn was a man-made invention known as an airplane, had somehow remained almost intact.

These strangers had, somehow, survived this; they were scrapped and boo-booed, but relatively safe from real harm. There were too many, though not enough to outnumber the Primate Clan. To make matters worse, they looked lost and positively dazed.

Four young gorillas hid in the foliage, shocked at the intrusion on their utopia.

“There goes the neighborhood,” said one of them, Chiwetel, with a grimace.

“Should we help them?” Phil asked, scratching his forehead. “I don’t know what we're supposed to do in this situation. This is unprecedented.”

“We watch then we decide,” replied Bast, the oldest of the four, as he sat and crossed his legs in a meditative stance. “Then we report to Old Gray.”

Phil and Chiwetel nodded in agreement as the youngest, an ape named Ape, watched the bald strangers with apprehension.

●

THE GREAT APES observed for six hours. They reported the arrival of the bald strangers an hour later. The strangers, humans as Bast would later let the others know, lost their collective shirt over eight times as they banded together to search for something they had lost.

A day later, the humans were escorted out of the jungle and toward the nearest village. To the surprise of absolutely no one, the survivors would forever try and ultimately give up on convincing people that two talking gorillas guided them to safety.

But the truth is that these humans would never find that which they lost. It was a precious cargo that was found that same morning the humans were escorted out of the jungle. And It wasn’t an ‘it’. The precious cargo was a he. A bouncing baby boy wearing a bib that said “Gyu.”

Among the debris, Ape found a book with a cover that displayed a little monkey being carried away by two men in blue. Written in cursive and red letters, the book’s yellow cover bore the story’s title and its author’s name: Curious Mingyu by H.A. Rey. Inside, neatly written in the tongue of man, though of different alphabets, was what Ape assumed to be the baby’s full name.

김민규.

Which, in the tongue he was semi-fluent in, read KIM MINGYU.

Ape huffed, confused. He thought it was rather appropriate; the curious bit applied to this hairless baby that looked at him with nothing but curiosity and a giddy disposition as it giggled upon being picked up. Ape considered rechristening the baby, naming him George, but ultimately relented.

Kim Mingyu will always be Kim Mingyu, Ape thought, but now he’s one of us.

This adorable and hairless ape with pink skin and dark-hair only in his head was thereafter accepted into the Clan. He was christened Mingyu Primate, son of Old Gray and Golde, and brother of Ape. He imbibed the Yabai Fruit, grew strong and observant of the ways of the clan: how to hunt, climb trees, swing from vine to vine, fight, swim, protect and defend those that couldn’t defend themselves.

He became the elusive White Ape. An enigmatic legend to many, a strange myth to others, an absurd tale to the rest. Yet, to his kin, he was and is simply Mingyu: protector of the innocent, defender of the weak, and all around good guy Mingyu of the Jungle.

●

APPROXIMATELY TWENTY FOUR years later, the bouncing baby boy has grown into a handsome, vine-swinging, would-be jungle king.

Behold the one and only Mingyu of the Jungle! He is swift. He is strong. He is confident. He is swinging from vine to vine. He is humming to himself. He is not paying attention to the tree he is about to crash into—

Sigh.

He’s unconscious.

●

TWO AND HALF decades after the crash, Bukuvu has remained a mystery to the outside world. That hasn’t stopped an intrepid group of tourists from crossing the dangerous Congo River and pave a path up mountains and jungle clearings under the hot African sun.

Forty-three vines away from where an unconscious Mingyu lies in a Mingyu-shaped hole on the ground, this group of civilized folk, you among them, has reached the outskirts of Bukuvu and have stopped to set up camp and rest for the night.

You stand in front of an enormous tree, your hair blowing in the warm breeze, smiling a satisfied smile while you absorb the natural beauty that surrounds you. The sky is a shade of blue that seems almost ethereal as thick, white clouds move slowly across the horizon, accompanied by the sun’s bright glow; it looks like a painting come to life.

“That’s a banyan tree,” says Kwame, the tour’s guide, smiling as he points at it.

He stands about ten feet from you, unloading his belongings into a tent he just finished setting up. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, and bald with a trimmed, white goatee. Kwame carries himself with an air of ease and awareness that makes anyone that travels with him feel comfortable.

You turn to him, nod, raise your DSLR camera, and snap a photo.

“It’s incredible,” You say, noticing something moving around the tree. After a beat, you realize it’s a handful of monkeys. “What kind of monkey are those?”

Kwame raises a hand over his brow, keeping the sun away from his eyes, and nods as notices the barrel of monkeys resting under the tree’s shade through its intricate branches.

“Those are black-and-white colobi,” the guide replies, waving at them as if they were to wave back. “The colobus is quite an adorable creature to look at, but it’s best if we keep our distance. I don’t like to intrude in their territory.”

You snap another photo and raise an eyebrow. Kwame chuckles, but you can tell he means it. He cares about the fauna and flora and observes both from a distance, preserving their beauty and place within Bukuvu’s ecosystem.

He waves you over, and you follow him. He walks you over to a modestly made “common area” around what will be a campfire in the evening. Logs, meant to be used as chairs or to lean on, have been set in a circle with several blankets draped on the ground for comfort.

“This is our sanctuary for tonight.” Kwame spreads his arms, smiling. “I hope it’s to your liking.”

You chuckle at how simplicity goes a long way. If your mother were here, she’d be complaining about how tacky the whole thing was, but thankfully she isn’t. You chuckle at the look of horror she would be sporting and shake your head because of how absurd and entitled she can be. Your father, on the other hand, would love it.

“It’s perfect,” you tell Kwame, gently clapping him on the shoulder. “I love it.”

Kwame nods, giving you a thumbs-up. “I’m glad you do. Your friend seems to like it, too.”

My friend? I don’t—oh. You smile acidly as you remember him and slowly turn to your left to see the travel companion. It’s not like you had planned with him to come with you. No, your former roommate and friend had insisted on coming along as he had already packed his bags and bought his ticket without you knowing.

You blink then look away, noticing the glint of mischief in the guide’s eyes. “He’s a pain in the tuchus, but, sure, he’s my friend.”

Kwame shrugs. “With friends like these, huh?”

Your eyes widen with forced glee, a glint of frustration is visible in your expression. It’s now Kwame’s turn to clap your shoulder. He leaves with a wink and stops to help the porters unload their things.

Reluctantly, you tilt your head to see him filming himself in front of his tent. He’s waving his hands as he speaks into the camera. Though he drawls his words, his voice is infused with enthusiasm. You feel second-hand embarrassment and an equal amount of endearment towards him.

Yoon Jeonghan is a ball of energy that ebbs and flows depending on his mood. He’s clad in casual attire that accentuates his lean physique and is comfortable for the sort of weather and ecosystem that surrounds you. His hair is perfectly styled and parted in the middle, strands of auburn falling over his face’s left side. The look of confused wonderment at his beauty one of the porters gives him forces a cackle out of you, which you hide by pretending to have sneezed.

“You okay?” Jeonghan asks, lowering his camera to give you a cursory, if worried glance.

“I am,” you reply in a strained voice that barely conceals your desire to laugh. “Thanks for asking.”

He points to his tent with a nod of his head. “I have stuff for allergies, y’know?”

You offer him a thumbs-up. “Good to know.”

“If you need something, give a shout!”

“Will do . . .”

●

“THE DAY’S HOT, but it’s beautiful out here—say hello, guys!”

Jeonghan turns the camera to film the porters. It takes a second for Baleto, Kip, and N’Dugo to realize they’re being filmed but they naturally wave and say hello in Swahili and Yoruba, laughing as they pass a flask between them. N’Dugo is as lanky as Kip is small and Baleto is stout; and while N’Dugo and Baleto are bald, Kip has short black hair.

Jeonghan swiftly transitions to film you and Kwame having a conversation by the improvised common area. Innately aware of when a camera is pointed in your direction, you instinctively stare at him with a blank expression and lethargically wave back. The world’s smallest and most subdued nod signals your acknowledgement.

“Make sure I get a copy of that,” Kwame says, chuckling.

“Sure thing.” Jeonghan’s thumbs up appears in the camera’s frame. “Now show the folks back home what I taught you.”

You raise an eyebrow, cringing. “Does he have to?”

You had seen it once—and once had been enough—but Jeonghan seems to love improvising so whenever you took a rest in between mountains and hills, he’d teach Kwame and the porters a move or two to keep the mood light.

“Come on,” Jeonghan pouts, “it’ll be fun.”

You blink. “It won’t.”

Kwame chuckles and appeases you both with a nod that says, “settle down, kiddos, I’m about to amaze you.” It’s a perfect display of his confidence, which is something his wife absolutely loves about him.

Jeonghan half-smiles, giving you a smug smirk. Then, focusing on Kwame, he begins to count.

“One, two, three—”

With the energy of an entire high-school senior class, Kwame takes a stance, winks at the camera, and Hits the Perfect Woah: hand up as though throwing something, pause, catch, followed by a “woah” pose dripping with finesse. Whereas Kwame laughs and waves at the camera, you cringe and shake your head.

Jeonghan cackles and turns the camera to you. “Told you it was worth it.”

“It really wasn’t.” You smile a small, pained smile. “Whatever that was is now embedded in my brain.”

“You haven’t seen Baleto do it.” Kwame, optimistic and laid-back as always, heartily laughs. He gestures a thumb over his shoulder and shakes his head. “Hopefully, for your sake, you won’t have to.”

You raise both eyebrows, eyes wide, mouth gaping. After a beat, you nod as if to say, “fair enough.”

“So . . . what’s next?” you ask your tour guide.

“Ah,” the Kwame exclaims, leaning forward with a half-smile. “The best is yet to come.”

You feel invorigated at his words. You can’t believe your luck. After years of always wanting to travel, meet people, immerse yourself in the culture, here you are: on the outskirts of terra incognita, near a peaceful sanctuary where nature is free to expand and exist without being tainted.

Nothing can ruin this moment.

But, boy, are you blatantly tempting fate. Tempt fate once, it’s no biggie. Tempt fate twice? You’re practically asking to get kicked in the garbanzos.

●

JEONGHAN IS NOW back to being the director of his own African vlog, setting up a wide shot of the rest of the camp.

“—and this is my tent,” he points to a tent that’s more of a house than a tent. Pointing the camera to himself, he speaks in a conspiratorial tone. “I can fart as much as I want and no one can complain!”

You, who happens to be sitting nearby, perk up, frown then look from left to right with a “Did I hear that right?” expression. This is the Pardon, Squeeze Me Maneuver, a gesture you’ve perfected over the years of listening to mind-boggling comments. You throw an aside glance to someone who isn’t there then cock your head to the side.

“I’m right here.” You deadpand. “I can hear you.”

“Whoops,” Jeonghan mumbles, genuinely embarrassed. Though said embarrassment doesn’t last long because he shrugs and zooms in on your look of disgust. “Has anyone told you that looking constipated is your Blue Steel?”

You feign flattery with a blatantly forced gummy smile, beaming with sarcastic uwu energy. “Why, thank you!” you reply. “That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard all day.”

“Pfft.” Jeonghan immediately notices your sarcasm and pulls his tongue out. “Dork.”

“Influencer.”

“Snob.”

He opens his mouth to say something else but his eyes wander elsewhere and he says, “Isn’t that your narcissistic fiancé? ‘Cause that guy looks an awful lot like him.”

“What?” You squint at him. “What kind of smack talk is that?”

Jeonghan points a firm finger at something behind you, his expression an impressive mix of surprise and amusement. He keeps the camera on, leveled between his chin and his chest, as films the arrival of three men that are currently stepping out of an all-terrain Jeep. Two of them are dressed in jungle-appropriate attire but the third man, walking toward you with an awkward swagger, is clad in designer’s clothes appropriate for a runway.

You jump so hard and unexpectedly that you fall off the log you are sitting on and onto the ground with an unceremonious thump. A breathless “off!” is forced right out of your diaphragm as your fiancé spreads his arms out, as if basking in the adulation of a standing ovation.

“Seungcehol?” you exclaim, taken aback.

Choi Seungcehol dramatically waves a hand over his head. “Hey, hey!”

“What—” You look between your fiancé and Jeonghan, aghast. “What are you doing here?”

Seungcehol grins that obnoxious grin of his that he has always believed to be charming then promptly kisses you on the lips. His handsome features and exceptionally smooth skin are framed by his recently cut and dyed black hair. Despite how much you love him, how much you care for him, he looks so obviously out of place.

“Is that how you say hello to your fiancé, honey?” Seungcheol half-smiles. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“Of course, I am. It’s just that—”

You blink, unsure of what to say. Words fail you. The shock’s too much for you to actually verbalize the dread and frustration you’re currently feeling. You had, after all, planned to take some time for yourself before the wedding was to be properly planned and organized, but it seems Seungcheol had other plans. And if he had other plans, so did your beloved smother.

“The jungle loves you, baby,” Seungcheol says, not really listening to you as he embraces you in a tight hug. “You look beautiful—no, scratch that—you are beautiful.”

Behind you, you hear Kwame and Jeonghan pretend to vomit. You glance over your shoulder, give them a pointed look, then turn to stare at Seungcheol in  bemusement.

“Thanks?”

“You’re welcome.” Seungcheol winks and turns to his travel companions. “Hey, fellas, remember to unload my things, ‘kay?”

“Of course, Mr. Choi,” says a soft, but exasperated voice.

From the Jeep come two men. Even before Seungcheol has told them to, they’ve already begun to unload his expensive luggage. They now carry it unevenly between them with the taller of the two holding a fanny pack and a carry-on bag. He has reddish-orange hair styled in a mullet that somehow works and somehow doesn’t, and wears all kind of fancy, shining rings in both hands.

The other, the smaller of the two, carries four bags by himself, his face a blank slate that doesn’t display neither his frustration nor his exhaustion. He’s modest in his attire, posture, and hairstyle. His hair is a light hue of silvery-blue, he wears a watch backwards in his left hand, and stands there, shining like a ray of sunlight not because he’s particularly cheerful but due to his pale complexion.

You stare at the smaller man—the small, grumpy boy—and push your lips downward, impressed. You hear Jeonghan mumble something about “how his small muscles bulge” and Kwame snorting. You can’t help but conceal a chuckle, but you’re still too stunned to actually feel anything but first- and second-hand embarrassment.

“How did you even find me?” you ask.

“Well, honey, I only hired the best trackers in the business,” he replies, gesturing a thumb over his shoulder. “They know this area well.”

Someone snorts. You briefly catch the small, grumpy boy concealing a smirk as he clears his throat. The other man clicks his tongue and nudges his side with his elbow as he steps forward and bows.

“Call me—” the taller of the two poses, lifting his hands in the shapes of claws “—Tiger.”

“Don’t,” says the other, shaking his head. “Please, don’t encourage him.”

“Now, now, Jihoon.” Seungcheol shakes his head, waving a hand as if to swat away a fly. “Soonyoung here is just introducing himself, as—er—cringey as it might be.”

“I’ll only respond to Tiger or Hoshi. There’s no Kwon Soonyoung here.”

“I can’t believe we’re ‘business partners’,” Jihoon grumbles, doing his best not to roll his eyes. He adjusts the bags, lifts them a bit, and turns to Seungcheol. “Where does all of this go?”

Seungcheol points to what he assumes is your tent, but it’s actually Jeonghan’s “Over there,” he absent-mindedly replies.

Jihoon nods and heads to your tent, greeting Kwame with a nod. The guide correctly points to your tent and tells him to be careful.

“Soon—er—Hoshi, do you mind helping your associate?”

Hoshi watches Jihoon casually drop the bags in front of your tent and shrugs. “He’s doing okay on his own,” he mumbles with a pout.

“Then start settling down,” your fiancé suggests, forcing a smile.

Before Hoshi can protest or retort, Seungcheol spots one of the porters, N’Dugo, and snaps his fingers. “You there,” he calls after him. “Take the rest of my things to my beloved’s tent. Oh, and shake a leg.”

By the look on N’Dugo’s face, he isn’t appreciative of your fiancé’s attitude. He walks up to Seungcheol, makes sure he’s being noticed, and shakes his left leg several times. While glaring at Seungcheol, N’Dugo slowly turns to Hoshi, greets him with a fist-bump, then takes the fanny pack and carry-on bag from his hands and carries them to your tent.

●

ONCE SEUNGCHEOL TAKES the rest of his luggage to your tent, you settle down a few feet from the camp and watch the nearby fauna mingle in their natural habitat. That’s when he decides to ask the question you’ve been hoping he wouldn’t ask.

“Honey, what are we doing here?”

You roll her eyes and pretend to take a photo of a colobus atop the banyan tree. You sit in one of the chairs he brought—an ergonomic stool, of all things—a few feet from the camp, taking in the refreshing breeze that envelops the area. Seungcheol scootches closer, nudging your ribs with his index finger.

“I know you’re ignoring me,” he mumbles, moving to poke your love handles.

“I’m not. I’m just . . . being in the moment.”

“Are you? You’re just staring at nothing.”

You point at the Old World monkeys that move along the banyan trees’ branches.

“Is that nothing to you?”

“I mean if you wanted to see monkeys,” he begins, “we could have gone to the zoo.”

“Zoo?” You frown. “Are those still a thing?”

Seungcheol hums, thinking. “Last time I checked.”

“Cool.” You raise the camera and snap a photo of him. “That’s good to know.”

He sighs, resting a hand on his chin. “When you said you were taking a week to sneak off to God knows where, I imagined you’d go to a place with sunshine and coconuts.”

“There is sunshine,” you point at the sky then at some faraway palm trees, “and coconuts.”

“Yeah, on trees. Not in juicy refreshing drinks like they’re supposed to.”

You squint at him, as if to scrutinize not only the meaning of his words but the expression on his face. He looks passive, almost understanding, but there’s something in his eyes that lets you know he’s not entirely comfortable with your little last-minute sabbatical. You fully turn to him, snap another photo, then nod as if you say “go on.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point?” He dramatically lays a hand on his chest. “Well, honey, it’s not exactly like you to rough it up. This all seems . . . impulsive. I followed you all the way here just to know why you would pack everything for a trip to the middle of the jungle.”

At this, you exhale in exasperation. “You couldn’t just text me? A phone call would have been perfect.”

Seungcheol dismissively waves a hand, the gesture indicative of his blasé demeanor. “I wanted to see you, silly.” He shrugs. “If a call is impersonal, a text is even more impersonal.”

“Haven’t you ever dreamed of just . . . going on an adventure? Or, y’know, disconnect yourself from all the things that hold you back from genuinely living in the moment?”

He makes a face. “No,” he replies, snorting. “Why would I? I—we—got everything we might need back home. You want adventure? I say we spend a nice long weekend in Jeju.”

“That sounds nice.” You nod, but don’t smile. And, yes, it does sound nice but it’s not your idea of adventure. “But I was thinking something else . . .”

“Like, say, dropping everything before our wedding and disappearing in the middle of the jungle?”

“Second time you’ve mentioned being in the middle of the jungle.”

“Yeah.” He widens his eyes, nodding frantically. “Because that’s where we are.”

He’s right, of course, yet you roll your eyes at how redundant his argument has become. Sighing, you rest a hand on his thigh and lean in to peck his lips.

“Can we at least try to enjoy this?”

“Listen, hun, I’ll try but no promises.” Seungcheol leans in, lays a gentle kiss on your lips, then boops you on the nose. “I still wonder, though . . .”

You squint again, lips pursed into a thin line. “About?”

“Are you having second thoughts about us getting married?” He pouts in that adorable yet frustrating way he tends to do when he doesn’t get his way. “Your mother mentioned you might be—”

“My mother?” You stand up, groaning. “Did she—no—did she send you out here to check on me?”

He stands up, matching your energy, following you as you pace in a circle. “Well . . . she thought you may have cracked under the pressure—”

“Cracked?”

“Her words.” He smiles thinly, eyes wide in slight terror at your temper. “Not mine.”

You laugh mirthlessly. “It sure sounds like her.”

“Because she said it . . .”

“Cheol, now’s not the time to give me sass.”

He frowns. “I wasn’t, though.”

You groan and kick up dirt, imagining your mother smirking home. Everything she does is deliberate and passive-aggressive; it’s concealed behind a thin veneer of politeness and obfuscated ignorance. Whether or not Seungcheol is aware of that, you’ve never known, but some part of you knows that it’s best if he remains blissfully ignorant to your mother’s cunning.

“So . . . what’s the plan? We walk through all this green, take some photos, then turn around and go back home?”

You sigh. “That’s an oversimplification, but, yeah, something like that.”

“Okay, okay.” Seungcheol closes his eyes, opens them then snaps his fingers. “I know how we can have our cake and eat it too. First thing in the morning, we see the monkeys and then we hop on a jet straight to Seoul.”

“Hop on a jet—”

“I feel much better.” He hugs you, gently laying kisses on your neck. As he looks over your shoulder, vaguely focusing on the banyan tree, he lets out a long sigh of relief. “We thought you might be out here getting cold feet, y’know? But I’m glad we’re good.”

You close your eyes and groan inwardly, as you feel the weight of his words and your heart sink.

●

LATER THAT NIGHT, you roll your eyes as you finish your dinner. You’re currently and unsuccessfully trying to ignore Seungcheol, who is sitting next to you with his phone glued to his ear; he wastes no time to make arrangements to whisk you, his wayward betrothed, back home.

Unsurprisingly, he’s utterly unaware of the synchronized displays of contempt and ridicule occasionally performed to his face by the porters and Jeonghan.

“Yes, I’m still on the—would you guys please keep it down? I’m trying to talk here. It’s an important call with the Nairobi Hilton.” Seungcheol shakes his head and wedges a finger in his left ear. He clears his throat and speaks into the phone. “You got room? Perfect!”

He turns to you, smiling a wide, dumb smile.

“They can airlift us there in two hours,” he announces, winking but immediately turning his gaze upward, as though he could see the receptionist in the starry sky above. “Neck pillows? Of course. That’s a must! Wait a second—I can’t hear—I’m losing you! There’s terrible reception here.”

Seungcheol stands up and kicks the log behind his ergonomic stool. He immediately recoils with pain, muttering expletives as he hops on one leg; he huffs and begins to pace, raising the phone over his head. Around the campfire, everyone watches him and tries to enjoy dinner. Seungcheol stops, paces a bit more, then groans in annoyance. Jeonghan, who watches all of this with subdued amusement, stifles a chuckle. The chiding glance you shoot him makes him snort and hide his face behind his palm.

“Great,” Seungcheol mutters. “My phone’s dead.”

“Oh what a nightmare,” deadpans Jeonghan, eating a spoonful of Kwame’s homemade chili.

“It might as well be.” Your fiancé agrees, ignorant to Jeonghan’s sarcasm. “No offense, Mr. Cream.”

Baleto chokes on his chili. “That’s not how you—”

Kwame modestly shakes his head. Baleto glares at Seungcheol, but N’Dugo and Kip just chuckle amongst themselves.

“I think you should just relax and enjoy the moment. It’s not like I’m in a hurry to leave.” You tug on his wrist and force him to sit down. “In the morning, we’ll be going up the mountain to see where the big  apes are. It’ll be fun.”

Jeonghan smirks. “Don’t you wanna see them?” he asks, fully aware that he’s just adding fuel to the fire.

“Only if they can shake and open up a bottle of soju without spilling it.” Seungcheol laughs condescendingly. “Hey-oh!”

“Jihoon and I would be thrilled to help both of you up the mountain, Mr. Choi,” says Hoshi as he sets down his plate by his feet. Beside him, Jihoon pulls himself away from the leather-bound journal he’s been jotting down his thoughts on for the past hour to give a small nod. “With Mr. Kwame leading the way, of course.”

Jeonghan raises an eyebrow, intrigued. Ever since Seungcehol arrived with these two, he’s been nothing but skeptical about their intentions. And, granted, Jeonghan isn’t exactly the modicum of good behavior, but if he suspects someone of foul play or shady behavior, you don’t question it. More than once, he’s been an excellent judge of character.

“Scared of the jungle, are we?” Jeonghan asks, wiggling his eyebrows.

Hoshi shakes his head, smugly ignoring the comment. “We’ve heard the apes are supposed to be a fascinating sight, but we don’t know this area as Mr. Kwame does. And, besides, we’ve heard stories about a supposedly elusive White Ape and we’re very curious about whether or not it really exists.”

Silence falls around the campfire as everyone, even his men, look at Kwame. Everyone waits for him to elaborate. Only he’s too busy munching on a spoonful of chili. It takes him a few seconds for him to catch on before he stares back at you and the others, gulps, then clears his throat.

“Come again?”

“White Ape, really?” Seungcheol bursts out laughing. “What kind of nonsense is that?”

Kwame, immediately caught up, slumps his shoulders and gives an annoyed nod.

“Oh.” He rolls his eyes. “That.”

You cock your head, taken aback. “You make it sound like it’s boring,” you coax.

“It isn’t. But after fifteen years of bringing people up the mountain, you tend to get tired of telling the same story over and over again.”

“Remind me again, what is that you do?” Jeonghan points his spoon at the tour guide. “Don’t you regurgitate the same facts over and over again on every tour?”

“I don’t regurgitate the same facts over and over again.” Kwame smiles and wags a finger at him. “I impart the same facts over and over again.”

“Right. Regurgitating. Imparting.” Seungcheol interjects, bored. “Back to the info-dump.”

You raise an eyebrow then make a face. “The what?”

“He’s referring to the blatant and lazy exposition of important information to the audience.” Kwame explains with a blatant disregard for the Fourth Wall. “Let me give you an example . . .”

Jihoon closes his journal and leans forward. “Does it involve the White Ape?”

The guide sighs. “Yes.”

Jihoon nods and adjusts his glasses. They make him look both innocent and adorable. Which to some extent, he is—but not really.

“It’s a story that the locals tell to each other.” Kwame rests his empty bowl of chili on his thigh. “You could say it’s an urban legend, but it’s obviously not an urban tale.”

“Because we’re in the jungle,” Seungcheol mansplains and you catch Hoshi nodding, his mouth opening and taking a ‘O’-shape as the explanation sinks in. “That’s why it’s not urban.”

“Right.” Kwame pauses and clears his throat, turning to you and Jeonghan. “You see, they say that the White Ape is over seven feet tall and that he’s strong as a lion and as fast as the wind. That when the moon is full and the air is sweet, he wanders alone though wilderness, piercing the silence of the valley with his mournful call.

“Some say he’s an unfettered and bloodthirsty spirit of the jungle. Others say he is waiting for the mate he longs for but will never find. By the day, the White Ape rules over the entire Bukuvu from the top of Ape Mountain but by night—”

“He and Bigfoot run the popcorn stand at the Bukuvu Cineplex.” Seungcehol interjects, looking particularly smug and proud of his wit. “Now playing on all 14 screens: War for the Planet of the Apes.”

As Seungcheol guffaws, Kip, who is sitting between lanky N’Dugo and stout Baleto, whispers in Swahili, “My moron radar is going off.”

The porters laugh, prompting Seungcheol to look at them and wink, mistaking their mocking for genuine appreciation for his joke. You, fascinated by the tale but exasperated by the interruption, lean forward in your seat.

“Do you believe this White Ape is real?” you ask.

As Kwame shrugs, the porters stop laughing and their faces display a smudge of horror.

The guide offers a small smile, “Part of me believes it but it’s, after all, just a tall tale.”

You lean back in his chair and face Jeonghan. He just smiles, looking skeptical, but open to being surprised.

Seungcheol, on the other hand, looks beyond bored.

●

HAVING WOKEN UP with one heck of a headache after hours of unconsciousness, Ape Mountain’s tallest and most unbelievable tale makes his way back to his humble and secluded abode. The night, which had been relatively silent, is now interrupted by the mournful call of the White Ape.

Listen to his ominous cry echo across the jungle—

“Ouchie!”

Oof. Terrifying.

●

YOU DON’T KNOW if it’s because you were tired or because Seungcheol’s surprise arrival had drained you of your social energy, but you just feel exhausted after dinner. Sleep envelops you almost immediately and you fall asleep faster than expected.

You dream of apes . . . of Seungcheol waving goodbye . . . of an impressive mighty mountain whose peak reaches and scars the sky . . . and of a tall glass of tall, dark, and handsome swinging through the jungle.

You don’t think too much of it in the morning.

And yet some dreams, no matter how strange, do come true.

●

AS THE SUN rises over Ape Mountain, its agitated inhabitants send an urgent message to Mingyu via bongogram, warning the jungle heir that intruders are close afoot. Four apes, back to back, fiercely bang on oversized bongos and create a rhythmic cacophony that immediately summons their brother.

Startled awake, the heir to the jungle wakes up mid-snore and groggily jumps into action—only to promptly return after realizing he’s naked. A few seconds later, our bouncing young hero swings toward the danger. Because whether he’s tired or energized, hurt or healthy, eating or famished, he will always answer the call.

For he is the defender of the innocent, protector of the weak, and all around good guy Mingyu of the Jungle.

●

YOU WALK THROUGH a lush veld with Kwame leading the way and the porters mingling between Jeonghan and Seungcheol’s suspiciously suspicious companions. You actively avoid your fiancé and take photos of your venture further into the wilderness. Jeonghan, who pauses every so often to film the untouched paradise, asks Kwame about the region.

Seungcheol, on the other hand, is too invested in cutting the vacation short as soon as possible. He paces in front of everyone, desperately trying to catch up to you but his shoes, too expensive and definitely made for marble floors and not complex African topography, prevent him from keeping his balance.

“Hey, honey, slow your roll,” he sing-songs in a pathetic attempt at attention.

You try to ignore him, but you feel him reaching for you and abruptly stop, bumping into Jeonghan as the entire jungle comes to life. The fauna sings, snarls, hoots, and hollers; birds fly over you and the wind carries a foreboding breeze. Everyone stops walking to look around.

“Listen,” you hear N’Dugo whisper, awestruck.

You snap a photo of a flock of colorful birds then turn to Kwame, curious yet apprehensive. “What was that?” you ask.

The guide, a bit surprised, offers a small smile. “I suppose it’s the jungle waking up,” he guesses.

“It could be the mating call of the White Ape,” Hoshi interjects, pushing his lips downward in a pensive manner. Suddenly, he perks up. “Or it could be that a tiger is nearby and every animal around here respects its power.”

Jihoon rolls his eyes. “Aish,” he grumbles. “I’ve told you already. There are no tigers in Africa.”

“That you know of . . .”

“Why are you the way you are?” Jihoon squints, gritting his teeth. “Why are you so—ugh—never mind.”

Seungcheol snorts. You see him holding back laughter, his eyes clenched shut and almost nonexistent, as his face turns from pink to a violent and worrying shade of red. He shakes his head then roars with laughter, holding his sides as Hoshi and Jihoon look at him in confusion. Jeonghan tilts his head and opens his mouth to sass him, but ultimately decides to save it for later. Kwam and the porters simply look at each other, mumble something in Swahili, and shrug.

“Oh, you guys are a riot.” Seungcheol wipes the fountain of tears off his cheeks with the back of his hand. He clears his throat mid-chuckle and cocks his head in a “come on, now” sort of way. “If the tale of the White Ape is a thing, why can’t tigers be nearby?”

“I think we should keep moving,” Kwame announces as he turns (exasperatedly rolling his eyes) and leads the group forward. “We can set up camp a bit farther up this way.”

Seungcheol nods then exclaims, “Answer me this, though!”

Everyone but you sighs. You’re used to him obsessing over something and not letting it go until his curiosity or ego have been assuaged. He takes the lead and walks shoulder-to-shoulder with Kwame.

“Why do they call him the White Ape?”

Kwame shrugs.

“Is he an albino ape?” Seungcheol muses and counts off his fingers. “Is he even an ape? What if he’s a Tarzan wannabe? What if he’s not even Caucasian? Or even a man?”

Jeonghan exhales loudly. “Cheol, buddy, did the bed bugs bite you last night?”

“Think about it. We don’t know anything about whatever this cryptid fantasy is.”

“Oh-kay.” You pull him to your side. “Let’s put a pin on this White Ape discussion and never talk about it again.”

Seungcheol nods but immediately raises a finger, your words going through one ear and leaving through the other. “What if he’s Asian? Shouldn’t he be the Yellow—ouch!”

You pull hard on his ear. You can’t see it but your face is contorted with irritation. Seungcheol complains but quickly shuts up. Humming, you close your eyes and count to five. You can hear Jeonghan’s distinctive giggling and count all the way up to ten.

“I’ll pull your ear as well.” You point a firm finger at him “Don’t tempt me.”

Jeonghan cackles even harder but quickly composes himself, his face devoid of expression. “I love you,” he whispers.

You glare at him, exhale through your nose, and walk on, joining Kwame to lead the way.

“If he really is Asian,” Seungcheol pipes up, trudging closely behind Jeonghan. “He should be the Yellow Ape, right?”

Jeonghan, who is fighting the urge to laugh, suddenly grows serious. He clicks his tongue and moves along to avoid smacking the back of Seungcheol’s neck. Now alone with the companions he brought to the jungle, your fiancé continues his strange fascination with a potentially Asian jungle man when Hoshi interrupts him.

“You do know that’s—er—kinda racist, right?” Hoshi asks through the side of his mouth.

Jihoon nods. “We’re Asian, boss man. Korean-born, but Asian nonetheless.”

Seungcheol waves them off, not really listening.

“Yellow. White. It sounds like a drink.” He raises a hand, gesturing to an imaginary bartender. “Yes, uh, I’ll have two Black Russians and a White Ape.”

A hypothetically delightful but hard drink the venal miscreant would be begging to imbibe if only he knew how near the White Ape is at this very moment. Groggily flying through the foliage, and swinging on through the trees with effortless ease, he closes in—no, Mingyu, watch out for that—

He is unconscious.

Sigh.

Again.

●

ONWARD AND UPWARD, the tired trekkers trudge on feverish footsies over perilous paths.  And so, after a lengthy trek, the group reaches their destination: Ape Mountain.

It’s exactly what says on the tin: a mountain in the shape of a great ape’s meticulously detailed head. Beyond being an iconic landmark representative of its fauna, it’s a monument to the Bukuvu’s indomitable nature. So it’s no surprise that when you and the rest of our cast finally behold the mighty mountain, all of you react with awe.

“Aww.”

I said “awe”. Not “aww.” Awe. A-W-E.

You stop and share an intrigued, awestruck “Ooh!” while nodding.

That’s better.

And now for something completely different . . .

●

BEWILDERED, MINGYU WAKES up whimpering and massaging his temple.

“Ouch,” he groans. “Big boo-boo.”

Bukuvu’s young heir rises to his impressive full height and looks upward, gaping at the Mingyu-shaped dent the tree he crashed on bears as a symbol of shame. He stands there, amazed yet bemused.

“Deep,” the jungle man mumbles, nodding to himself.

Suddenly, his ears perks up to the rhythmic beat of news traveling the thick green of the jungle, Mingyu listens to the bonogram: intruders near the mountain! He cracks his neck, pushes his long hair back from his face, then looks for the nearest vine to swing on.

As he leaps into action, something terrible is about to happen.

●

“CAREFUL, FRIENDS, THIS is an old bridge so take your time and step with caution,” Kwame warns you as he patiently leads the way.

And he is being generous. The rope bridge is not only old and close to collapsing, it swings eerily in whatever direction the wind is blowing. It’s a miracle it’s still in one piece but you have to get from Point A to Point B and there’s no risk in doing that by traversing a perfectly new bridge.

Kwame is up front with stout Baleto, closely followed by Jeonghan, you, and Seungcheol. Standing four steps behind you, N’Dugo and Kip walk stiffly and are being closely shadowed by Hoshi and Jihoon.

“Slow and steady steps, people!” Kwame reminds the group, glancing over his shoulder. “The wood is rotten and it can give in quite easily. One misstep and you’ll be waving bye-bye for a good while.”

At this, Seungcheol scoffs. He takes two steps forward, standing so close behind you that you feel his chest on your back. He throws his arms over your shoulders, as if to hug you, and reaches out to grip the ropes of the bridge with both hands.

“This isn’t that bad,” he haughtily proclaims. “I was on a bridge like this in Maui and that sucker was steady as a rock.” He begins to shake the ropes and thus the bridge. “See?”

“What in God’s—Mr. Choi, don’t—hey, hey, stop that!” Kwame tries to keep his cool, but Seungcheol shakes the bridge harder. “Please! Stop! This!”

Amidst the protests and expletives yelled in Swahili and Yoruba, your idiot fiancé continues shaking the bridge with an inappropriate “Yeehaw!” and a smug look on his face. Kwame is about to tell Seungcheol how big of a moron he is in a very indecent manner when he notices something terrible happening: N’Dugo swaying dangerously on the left side of the bridge’s ropes. The porter tries his best to maintain balance but between the bags he carries and his lack of a proper grip, he ultimately loses his footing.

One second he’s on the bridge and the next—

“NO!” Kwame cries, his voice echoing with that of N’Dugo’s and yours.

Plummeting hundreds of feet down to a deadly crevice, the distant view of a river below haunting everyone on the bridge, N’Dugo screams at the top of his lungs.

All while making obscene gestures at Seungcheol . . .

●

WORRY NOT, DEAR reader. Nobody dies in this story. They just get really big boo-boos. A band-aid here, some gauze there, a kiss on the knee, and you’re as good as new.

Which is why good old N’Dugo is still in one piece and glaring at Seungcheol. Baleto tends to his boo-boo and Kip offers him some coffee. Seungcheol gulps and looks away from N’Dugo.

Glancing at the porters every two seconds, he whispers to you, “They shouldn’t let inexperienced guides like that on these treks. It’s dangerous.”

“You were shaking the bridge,” you whisper back, pinching his arm.

“Hey, that hurts!” He looks offended, rubbing the spot with a frown. “So it’s my fault he has no balance?”

“That’s not the point—”

He pushes a finger against your lips. “Listen . . .”

The porters are talking to each other and openly staring at him. Their tone is aggressive and accusatory, the word “Maui” being uttered derisively, as they lift their chins at him in unison. While N’Dugo glares, Kip smirks and Baleto nods.

“Did you see the look they just gave me?” Seungcheol crosses his legs and leans closer to you. “They probably think I’m the world’s biggest moron. I bet they’re even planning to retaliate.”

“That guy is the world’s biggest moron,” says N’Dugo in Swahili.

Chuckling, Kip nods smugly. “I told you my moron alert was going off.”

“We have to get back at him.” Baleto half-smiles. “I say we retaliate.”

Seungcheol gulps and meets your bemused stare. You want to smack him some sense into him, but you’re too dumbfounded at his idiocy to do anything. You’re not sure if it’s the stress of the engagement or just the fact that he wasn’t entirely on board with this trip to begin with that has him all riled up, but you’re beginning to worry that he’s unraveling and close to having an anxious breakdown.

“If they turn on us,” he mutters, “we’ll never return to Seoul.”

You gently kick him in the shin. “As if,” you tell him. “What you should do is apologize.”

Seungcheol rolls his eyes, reaches into a bag, pulls a bottle of soju, and stands up. Clearing his throat, he forces a smile and approaches the porters. You watch him go, grimacing, wondering if he has more soju in his bags. Suddenly, despite being worried he’s going to dig a deeper hole than the one he has already dug, you find yourself in the mood for a drink.

“Hello, friends,” Seungcheol greets the trio, raising his voice and speaking slowly. “I bear gifts from South Korea.”

He hands the bottle of soju to N’Dugo. The bottle is passed around then secured in one of their bags. He grimaces at this but nonetheless pushes on and pulls out his iPhone from his pocket. He snaps a picture of them and shows it to them as though he had painted a magnificent masterpiece.

“Do you like that? Great quality, huh?” Seungcheol wiggles his eyebrows. “Instant picture.”

N’Dugo says something as he pulls an iPhone from his pocket. He snaps a photo of Seungcheol, shocked and offended, then laughs at his face. Blinking the disbelief away, your fiancé turns to Kwame.

“Translation, please.”

Kwame, through a bout of laughter, translates: “He says it’s bold of you to assume he would have an Android.” The guide shakes his head and continues to laugh. “He also says your phone’s camera is dirty and that he can clean it for you.”

“Is that so?” Seungcheol smiles thinly. From his pocket, he pulls something shiny and hands it to N’Dugo. “Tell him to clean this instead.”

Shaking his head and muttering under his breath, the venal socialite claps N’Dugo in the back. Seungcheol is unaware of the porter’s wincing reaction as he trots back to you and pulls you to a standing position.

“Whoa, what’s with the manhandling—” you snap then, noticing him staring defiantly at the porters, you pull on his ear. “Hey, soju man, what’s up?”

“Ouch—what was that for?” He massages his ear and turns to you, only to find himself under the coldness of your glare. He clears his throat and pulls you aside. “Come on, we’re—er—exploring the jungle.”

“No, we’re not.”

He turns on his heel, dragging you along. “We’re finding that White Ape and getting the fork out of here.”

You do a double take. “The fork?”

“I said the fork.” Seungcheol pauses and looks at you, frowning. “What the fork? I can’t say fork—forkity fork fork!”

You look shocked but then snort as a smile creeps on your lips. You’re about to laugh when he shakes his head and continues to drag you away from camp. A gasp is forced out of you as you take a sudden left into the thick green.

“We could get lost—no, we can—no, we will definitely get lost!” You protest, pulling on his forearm to no avail. “Hey, Cheol, come on. We can’t go on our own.”

“Don’t worry, honey! I have an impeccable sense of direction.”

You grimace because you know he doesn’t.

●

ALLOW ME TO interrupt for just one second and issue a bit of a spoiler alert: we’ll meet a dangerous feline in this act. And if you were expecting a lion, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Lions are often referred to as the kings of the jungle, even though they have no idea what or how a monarchy works. They also live in—let me check my notes—the savannah.

Now you may ask: Narrator, why, of all the animals, have you chosen a leopard?

And to that I say: Why not?

●

HAVING DILIGENTLY ANSWERED the call, Mingyu spies on the intruders from high above a treetop. He looks down and inspects a modest camp: logs in a circle occupied by strange men of similar and different complexion to his; heavy bags are strewn here and there, most of which are belongings unfamiliar to him.

With his senses amplified by years of living in the wilderness and imbibing the nectar from the Yabai Fruit, he picks up a distinctive smell unlike any fragrance he has smelled. For a moment, lost in this heavenly aroma, he finds himself swooning until he hears a conversation that echoes into dangerous territory.

With a quick motion, sliding a curved branch and expertly landing on another, Mingyu leaps into the foliage and swings further into the jungle.

Danger is on the horizon and he can smell it.

●

SEUNGCHEOL WHISTLES LOUDLY, though the sound comes across more like someone choking with a whistle stuck in their throat than someone actually, well, whistling. He impatiently trudges through unknown territory, slapping away branches and kicking rocks. Behind him, still being dragged around like an exasperated rag roll, you grit your teeth and roll your eyes as your fiancé continues to rant.

“—it’s my job to get you what you want, honey.” His hair is a mess and his once immaculate clothing is now dirtied by sweat and mud. “Because if you want a double decaf latte with mocha sprinkles, well, you’re getting a double decaf latte with mocha sprinkles!”

“Cheol, let go of my hand.” You stomp your feet and bury them in the earth so that your entire weight holds you in place. “I’m not taking another forking step if you keep dragging me around.”

“You said forking!”

Exhaling through your mouth and inhaling through your nose, you glare at him. “That’s your take away?” You wrestle your hand away from his and punch him on the shoulder. “I tell you to let me go and you think the point is that I can’t cuss?”

“Neither can I.” Seungcheol shrugs and takes a step only to stumble. He grabs your wrist again, more gently this time, and tugs on it but you remain unmovable as a boulder. “We just gotta move a bit forward.”

“We shouldn’t be here on our own. We’re gonna get lost out here.”

“I told you I have an impeccable—”

“Sense of direction, yeah.” You yet again slap his hand away. “You also said you have an impeccable fashion sense yet you’re wearing a Prada belt in the middle of the jungle.”

He looks down at his belt and meets your judging expression. Caressing the belt, he pouts.

“And what does that have to do with anything?”

“Absolutely everything! It exemplifies who you are, Seungcheol!” Your eyes widen as you walk in a circle and gesture at your surroundings. “We’re in the middle of the jungle and you want to go scavenger hunting.”

“You said you wanted to see the apes . . .”

“Yes! But as responsibly and as cautiously as possible—”

“Then it’s settled!” He shrugs and reaches for your hand again, but you swat his away. “You want to see the White Ape, I’ll arrange a meet and greet.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?”

“I’ve seen Animal Planet,” Seungcheol says confidently. “I’ve seen how it’s done.”

“Okay . . . I think you’ve made your point. If you want to leave so badly, we will,” you coax, pulling on his arm in the opposite direction. “Let’s go back to the camp.”

“Here, monkey, monkey, monkey!” He holds it out and pretends to hold food in it.  “Here, gorilla, gorilla. Come on.”

Having paved a path that leads you to a small clearing surrounded by impossibly tall trees and more thick foliage, both of you reluctantly take a break to catch your breaths. As Seungcheol prepares to whistle yet again, a low snarl startles you. Suddenly, you feel watched. A few minutes ago, you had felt someone—or something—following you but had ignored it, certain it was mostly unwarranted paranoia. Now, as you lean on Seungcheol, you come to accept that such paranoia, as brief as it had been, doesn’t feel unwarranted.

“Don’t move,” you whisper in a hoarse voice.

“You’re telling me that I found one? Did it work—” Seungcheol moans as you slap his mouth, your fingers squeezing his cheeks and nose in the process.

“Just for a second,” you whisper, shaking him in place, “be quiet!”

Your eyes struggle to find your stalker and your attempts to pinpoint their location are futile. Seungcheol, on the other hand, continues to mumble against the hand on his mouth.

The stalker watches and snarls to themselves, playing with you—their potential meal.

For the slightest of moments, your eyes unknowingly meet those of your stalker but you’re too focused on keeping your calm and making sure Seungcheol is silent that you don’t notice it. Then there is silence. Both of you listen and find yourselves nervous but strangely calm.

You slowly let go of Seungcheol’s mouth and wipe your hand against his shoulder. Too terrified to cry, you laugh and pat your own chest to cope with the shaking.

“That scared me,” you whisper mid-chuckle.

“Yeah, I know.” Seungcheol looks confident, but there is visible fear in his eyes. “Scared me too—”

It is then that, ten feet across from where you stand, a big silhouette jumps into the light. That’s when you see it—the biggest leopard you’ve ever laid your eyes on. The feline’s fangs and claws are bared, and he moves with such deadly graze that you feel yourself taking two steps backwards and freeze out of fear. The leopard’s fur is dirty gold with black and brown spots; the face is round and masculine whereas the body is all muscle. His roar prompts Seungcehol to squeeze you by your shoulders.

“I’m gonna—I’m gonna go get help,” he stutters, then impulsively pushes you aside. “Wait here!”

He swiftly turns on his heel and makes a run for it—only to trip on a tree’s root and fall flat on his face, knocking himself out cold. The leopard witnesses all of this with palpable amusement and disgust. The famished feline looks at your fiancé then very slowly turns to you, his snarling turning into a throaty growl.

“Good kitty, nice kitty.” You back up, one hand toward the leopard to keep distance, the other behind you to feel your way out. “Good kitty, nice—”

“Do you really think that’s going to work?”

You blink. A leopard didn’t just sass me, you think. You stare at him, frowning in confusion and disbelief.

“Nice kitty?”

The leopard tilts his head, seemingly cringing. Then, without missing a beat, he says, “What are you going to do next, sing me a lullaby?”

You look close to fainting as you straighten up and point at the vicious predator.

“Did you just—”

“Speak?” The leopard sits and nods. It dawns on you that he’s not only speaking but he’s doing so with an offensively posh accent. “I believe I just did.”

“What the f—”

●

HOLD IT!

I know. You’re confused. I didn’t info-dump you enough. How could I forget about such an important detail? I’m only the Narrator. I shouldn’t forget stuff like this.

As we know, animals are complex and unique creatures that we admire—and should protect—but, unfortunately for us, they can’t talk. Their specific dialects, languages, and colloquialism are beyond our understanding. So in our story, Bukuvu’s eclectic and poorly researched fauna is going to talk so that you, dear reader, don’t miss a thing.

You’re welcome.

●

“LANGUAGE,” THE LEOPARD retorts, his posh accent once more taking you by surprise. “No need to be so vulgar.”

“Sorry.”

“No biggie.” The predator shrugs then glares, immediately returning to stalk his prey. “Now, darling, I’m afraid I’ve played with my food long enough.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, to put it plainly, it means I’m going to devour you and that imbecile over there.”

You nod but object by raising a finger. “He’s actually my fiancé.”

About to pounce, the leopard halts and makes a face. “Oh . . . that’s just depressing.”

You reluctantly agree with a small nod.

“You can do—no—you could’ve done so much better than him.”

You shrug and nervously giggle as you continue to back up. You feel a tree behind you and, aware that this is the end, whisper an agnostic prayer to whatever deity that may listen in and deem themselves generous enough to intervene.

You close your eyes and listen as the leopard closes in, snarling to tenderize his meal with fear. Just as death is about to pounce and snatch you, an ear-piercing sound startles you. It’s a cry of heroism arriving in the nick of time. It reminds you of Tarzan’s jungle call, only it echoes across the clearing as if being performed by a teenager undergoing puberty with a terrible case of voice cracks.

You open your eyes to see a lean but fit man standing on a thick branch of an impossibly tall tree to your right. Your savior surveys the scene then leaps into action, swinging from a vine. His jungle call echoes across the clearing and flies through the air, no doubt reaching the folk back at the camp.

He moves fast in the leopard’s direction—

“MINGYU COMING IN FAST!”

And yet he misses his mark.

●

MINGYU HAS NEVER been a big fan of math.

Not because he doesn’t understand the subject but because there has never been much use for it in Bukuvu. Granted, he knows enough to get by but besides using the complicated numbers science to calculate a swing, Mingyu has had but passing and rather ambivalent relationship with geometry.

So, as he misses his target by the tiniest of margins, he thinks to himself that he should have crunched the numbers better before leaping into the jaws of danger. And just as he finds the mistake that threw off his calculation, he flies straight into a tree.

The impact shakes the tree to its very foundations but it isn’t thick enough that Mingyu makes a Mingyu-shaped dent on it. Instead he hangs there, groaning, and sort of hugging the tree trunk. He shakes his head, clenches and unclenches his jaw, and simply lets go—which only prompts gravity to ostensibly take a hold of him.

He slides down the tree trunk, pausing every two branches—his groin painfully, if safely slowing down the fall. With every smack and crack, he moans and yelps until he finally descends and disappears into a bush.

●

I’M SURROUNDED BY idiots and a posh leopard, you think to yourself, tightly closing  your eyes out of embarrassment and dread. I’m so forking dead. Is this even really happening? Holy shirt. No one’s gonna believe this.

“How did you miss me?” The leopard sounds genuinely confused. “I’m not even moving!”

To your surprise, your hear the man, no doubt the elusive White Ape, boisterously reply—

“Mingyu didn’t crush numbers right.”

You snap your eyes open and see your would-be savior darting out of the bush to tackle the leopard. He moves so fast you’re only able to see his long hair and tan skin.

The leopard, having anticipated the incoming tackle, moves gracefully to the side but Mingyu manages to slow his momentum enough to reposition himself and stare down at him.

“Mingyu,” the leopard snarls, his voice laced with vitriol.

“Leopold,” Mingyu greets while crouching. Though his body language implies aggression, his tone displays levity. He hoots and smacks the ground, lifting dirt and leaves. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty!”

Leopold the Leopard bears his fangs. “Stop that, you little shirt.”

“Leopold know better than to cuss.” Mingyu smirks and reaches with his right hand to boop the feline’s snout. “Here, kitty! Mingyu wanna show kitty a trick. Here, key-tea!”

“Now listen here!” Leopold swipes a clawed paw at his enemy and misses. Annoyed, he tackles Mingyu to the ground. “I’m having lunch whether you like it or not!”

They roll on the ground. Mingyu has the upper hand until Leopold has the upper hand. Rinse and repeat for about thirty seconds. Mingyu thrusts a finger on the leopard’s side and rolls him over—only to have the angered leopard breathe on his face.

“When Leopold brush last?”

The leopard retorts with a weak attempt at preserving some of his dignity: “I brush every morning!”

“Sure and Mingyu lack armpit hair!” The jungle man chuckles as he puts his opponent in a complicated lock. “Leopold know better than lie.”

Shamed enough, Leopold swipes a paw that connects with Mingyu’s jaw. Dazed for a second, Mingyu reciprocates and pushes the leopard off himself. He jumps to his feet, runs to a nearby tree and literally bounces off it. Meanwhile, working his jaw to make sure it isn’t broken, Leopold gets his bearings and reorients himself.

By the time he composes himself, the leopard turns to see an advancing Mingyu coming at him, left hand extended to the side. Leopold tries to move but is caught in the attack and slumps to the ground.

Mingyu laughs then spots you crouching near a tree.

“Huh,” he mumbles, “strange fella.”

You gasp and take a step back. Though he’s at a distance, you’re too shocked to see a grown man fight a big cat to properly focus on his face. Just then he opens his mouth to say something.

I better pay attention, you think, trying to not faint due to the sheer absurdity of the situation you’re in.

“Rubber tree is always good for clothesline,” Mingyu tells you, a wide smile on his face. He raises a finger and motions his thumb over his shoulder. “Excuse Mingyu for a second.”

Leopold is now even more dazed than before. Unable to get on his four paws, he’s purring on the ground. Grilled birds ready to be devoured float around his periphery.

“Upsies, kitty!” Mingyu picks up the leopard with ease and holds him over his head with both hands, not even breaking a sweat.

“Is that you, mother?” Leopold mutters. “Have I been a good cub?”

Mingyu proceeds to turn Leopold until the leopard has gained enough momentum to be spinning like a basketball. As though what he’s doing is not impressive enough, this weird jungle man strikes a pose—left hand on his waist, chin up, smirk present—and spins Leopold on a single finger.

To emphasize how easy it is, he shrugs. You gape at him in utter disbelief.

“Mingyu not even trying hard,” he announces, sounding both nӓive and smug.

He stops the spinning as fast as he started it and plops Leopold on the ground. Grabbing the leopard by the base of his neck and his tail, Mingyu lifts him a few inches from the ground, sways him back and forth, then punts him ten feet into the air. With a loud crunch and a thud, Leopold lands somewhere in the foliage.

“Hidden bushes always good to break—” Mingyu turns to you and finds you on the ground, unconscious. “Oh. Poor fella.”

●

WHEN SEUNGCHEOL comes to, coincidently at the same moment a tall figure runs and disappears into the thick of the jungle carrying someone on their shoulder, he rolls on the ground and finds your scrunchy.

“You—ah—dropped your scrunchy, honey,” he feebly whispers. “Honey?”

Flabbergasted, he looks at it and groggily gets to his feet. He shouts your name as he looks left and right, up and down, then whimpers when he gets no response.

“Forking great.”

●

TAKING THE SCENIC route, Mingyu swings through the jungle and (respectfully) carries you. He takes a breather twenty-two vines away form his humble abode and accommodates you in your arms, avoiding any inappropriate touching form his part. To his surprise, you stir and blink up at him.

“Oh,” you whisper in a low, hoarse voice.

“Fella shouldn’t worry,” he whispers back. “Mingyu taking fella to safe place.”

He nods at a distinctive tree in the distance. It’s tall and robust and unique from the rest. He half-smiles to emphasize how close to safety you are. You nod back in gratitude, your hair covering half of your face.

“Thanks,” is all you manage to say before fainting.

Mingyu shrugs as he prepares to swing again.

“No biggie,” he says, then leaps further into the jungle.

●

HAVING SURVIVED A deadly encounter by virtue of being immensely dense and an embarrassing lack of self-awareness, Seungcheol absentmindedly squeezes your lost scrunchy on his right hand and bites the nails of his left.

What the fork just happened?

He shakes his head and slaps himself. Just now he swears something snarled at him and he’s having none of that business. With a lame “Go away!”, he tries to have some semblance of dignity and control as he gets his affairs in order.

Which, to be frank, is a waste of time.

Terrified, Seungcheol analyzes the scene. He sees prints of a large animal deeply imprinted on the ground; these are mixed with those of a seemingly large man. In conclusion: there was an obvious struggle, an obvious victor, and, now, you’re obviously missing.

“Where the heck are you?” Seungcheol scratches his head, the scrunchy now tied around his left wrist. Eye roll, sigh of frustration. “Aish.”

Thinking slightly harder than usual, which is not saying much, the haughty socialite does a one-eighty and scans the small clearing for clues. Unfortunately, he finds nothing that helps him solve his fiancée’s disappearance. Until—

“The White Ape!” Seungcheol claps, suddenly enthusiastic but just as quickly he deflates.

Glancing over his shoulder, he taps a finger on his chin. The wheels in his head begin to turn, working overtime as they dust themselves off. An idea is turned over and over and over in his mind and until—click!—a dim light bulb is turned on in his brain. A daring yet tragic (and obviously false) story unfolds in his mind’s eye, simultaneously being written and edited.

“It was—it was horrible,” Seungcheol mumbles to himself, his tone too stiff to be believable. He clears his throat, slaps himself, winces, then produces an award worthy performance. “It was horrible. It was a four hundred pound monster.”

He slaps himself again, harder than before, kneels, and rolls on the ground. His clothes, which had earlier been stained, are now completely ruined. Still on his knees, he drags himself in a circle and stands up. Pathetically practicing a limp, he tears his shirt’s left sleeve as he pretends to cry.

“The White Ape has my fiancée!”

He tries his best to produce tears as he notices a batch of berries and reaches for them. He squeezes them, sticks them to his clothes and face; they perfectly fake dried blood.

“I held him off as long as I could. There was—there was blood everywhere!” Seungcheol continues to paint his face, putting some squeezed berries here and there. To himself, he whispers, “The White Ape—fiancée—blood—horrible struggle.”

He checks himself and sees that his Prada belt is still intact. With a whimper and a shake of his head, he takes off and tosses it aside as hard as he can. I’ll get you back, he tells himself but unfortunately for him, and fortunately for some lucky ape, he won’t be able to. And as he limps away, arms being pathetically swung in the air, Choi Seungcheol proclaims to the entire jungle that he has lost his betrothed to a monster.

“Man needs help!” Seungcheol screams, looking like a total imbecile. “The White Ape kidnapped my fiancée—he almost killed me!”

Yeah, right.

●

A ROOSTER CROWS, signaling the passage of time and the arrival of a new morning. And so, after a night of feverish fantasies, you awake to the melodious music of Bukuvu bird life. You blink and find yourself in search of the mysterious hero that saved you from being a leopard’s dinner.

But, as you pull yourself from the softest bed you’ve ever laid in the most unlikely place you’ve ever slept in, you’re shocked to realize that isn’t who you see first. Calmly walking toward the bedroom and carrying a tray with breakfast is a gorilla. He wears a handmade flowery apron and round glasses, and hums to itself.

“Good morning,” says the gorilla with a peppy tone and a soft yet distinctive Scottish accent. “Made you—”

You scream at the top of your lungs and startle the gorilla. The large primate does his darndest not to drop the tray.

“WHAT?”

The gorilla blinks and sees you running behind bed and hiding on a corner. Very gently, he walks up to a nightstand that looks to be made of a big leather suitcase and slowly puts the tray down on it.

“Get away!” You whimper, an arm out to keep distance, the other blindly reaching for something to throw. “Not a step closer!”

The gorilla scoffs, swatting away something from his apron. Surprisingly, much to your confusion, it’s fashionable, colorful, and well made. To say he looks strangely well in it seems like a crazy thought and yet, lo and behold, this gorilla is wearing the heck out of it. You eye him suspiciously but are distracted by the smell of breakfast.

You glance over to the tray and see two fried eggs on top of a sliced avocado, some fruits, and a grilled fish. You salivate, though quickly notice him staring at you, and apprehensively clear your throat.

“Is that for me?”

The gorilla nods, adjusting his glasses. He opens his mouth to reply when a familiar sound calls your attention: the jungle cry of a teenager with voice cracks. The great ape turns to see a man arrive, swiftly, expertly swinging into this strange place you haven’t yet explored. Glistening in sweat with an excuse for garment covering his privates, your long-haired and charismatic savior carries an entire cluster of bananas.

“Hello,” says Mingyu, ever smiling and ever cheerful.

He takes a step, trips on a leaf-made carpet, and falls flat on his face. All of this happens in the blink of an eye yet the bananas never touch the ground nor leave his hands. The gorilla, already used to this display of clumsiness, whispers something and shakes his head.

Just as quickly and as he thought he hadn’t fallen, this cheerful jungle man gets to his feet, tosses the bananas aside, and smiles . . . with a handful of leaves in his mouth. He gently taps his chest and spits them out, waving at you with an expression of relief.

“Feeling better, fella?”

You tilt her head, bemused. Looking between this Tarzan wannabe and the great ape, you scoff and shake your head. And then it hits you. None of this is real.

“Okay.” You smile to suppress the cackling that wants to erupt from you to cope with all this insanity. “It’s a dream, yeah, that’s what all of this is. I’m still having that psycho dream and I’m gonna wake up next to Seungcheol and he’ll complain about my snoring—”

Mingyu and the gorilla exchange a look. As the gorilla twirls a finger around his head and whistles like a cuckoo clock, jungle boy just snorts and shakes his. You blink then shrug, ready to test the limits of this strange lucid dream.

“Hello,” you reach out to shake the great ape’s hand.

To your surprise, he reciprocates. Hysteria settles again and you shriek and try to run at the first door you see—which just so happens to be behind jungle boy.

“Get away!”

“Don’t worry!” Mingyu raises both hands, as though demonstrating he’s harmless. He offers a smile and nods toward the gorilla. “Ape friend. Ape make you breakfast.”

You assume a half-remembered pose from your taekwondo lessons. “What does it want, huh? What does it—”

“It,” Ape retorts with an eye roll, “wants its Physician’s Desk Reference, if you don’t mind.” Ape picks up a large outdated medical tome and calmly peruses its pages. “Unless, of course, you’d rather die of dengue fever.”

You very slowly begin to chuckle then violently cackle, disbelief present in your features and body language. You point at Ape with a smile so broad it hurts. “That is so funny,” you exclaim, your words slurred. “I thought I heard the monkey talk—just like that leopard! But that is, like, totally understandable, right?”

Ape narrows his eyes at you, taking his glasses off to sigh in exasperation. Mingyu, you notice, is eyeing you rather intently. As your eyes lock with his, that’s when you really take a good look at him. He’s tall, lean, and properly fit. His complexion has been tanned by the hot African sun and his long light brown hair somehow isn’t greasy or tangled. He’s definitely handsome and definitely not Caucasian because he definitely looks Korean; the eyes and cheekbones give it away.

For a second, you find herself lost in his eyes but Ape clearing his throat reminds you that you’re far from being in a normal situation. Scathing laughter comes out of you again as a coping mechanism that is uncontrollable and, perhaps, inappropriate.

“Talking ape!” You snort. “I mean, sure, why wouldn’t an ape read textbooks or make breakfast? And why wouldn’t I find myself in—is this a treehouse?”

Mingyu nods.

“Right.” You suddenly feel dazed. “Where was I?”

Ape sighs. “You were sarcastically asking yourself about being in a treehouse.”

“Yes. Thank you.” You winks, very gently swaying as though you’re drunk. “Why wouldn’t I find myself in a treehouse with room service and a Tarzan wannabe wearing a—uh—what’s that you’re wearing?”

Mingyu looks down at his garments, takes a step forward, and replies, “Butt-flap.”

“Gyu, it’s a loincloth,” Ape grumbles.

“Mingyu think butt-flap is funnier.”

You look between them, nod, giggle, and then promptly faint.

“Ooh!” Mingyu winces. “That gonna leave mark.”

“It will,” says the ape named Ape, calmly moving to get a bowl with water and a rag. “As soon as she gets used to us talking, she’ll be fine.”

Mingyu kneels beside you, brushing your hair off your face.

“Fella never heard apes talk?” he wonders, frowning.

“I assume so.” Ape moistens the rag and hands it to him. “Not everyone is used to animals speaking. It’s not the norm outside of our land.”

Mingyu touches your forehead and feels it hot. “Fever,” he correctly assumes.

“Cold compress, dear boy. Dab her lightly.” As Mingyu does as he’s told, Ape leans back and shakes his head. “‘Talking monkey’, she says. Unbelievable.”

“Huh?”

Mingyu curiously stares at you and stops dabbing once he notices that your chest is definitely different from his. For one, just grazing it makes his skin tingle.

“Somethin’ funny about this fella,” he whispers, sounding nӓive.

At this, Ape gives an amused shake of his head. “She’s not a ‘fella’, Gyu. She’s a woman, the female of your species.”

He blinks. “Like, uh, lady Mingyu?”

Ape shrugs, but when he answers, his tone is infused with mild annoyance.

“That’s one way of putting it.”

A scary thought prompts Mingyu to ask a question he daily ignores, “But does that mean Ape and Mingyu are not brothers?”

“Well, in a sense, we are related. We are, after all, members of the primate family—”

“Primate family!” Mingyu smiles broadly and extends a hand for Ape to shake. “Brothers!”

“Yes, yes, brothers.” Ape agrees. “I suppose one could make the claim—”

Then you stir in Mingyu’s arms, groggily turning to point an accusatory finger at Ape. “Mom, make the monkey stop talking—”

Ape sighs and picks up a poetry book. “I’m going to refrain from speaking around her. It seems to upset her.”

“Thank you, mom.”

You fall unconscious again. With ease, Mingyu lifts you and moves you back to the bedroom. Very gently, he settles you in bed. He leans in to sniff you and thinks about licking your cheek—

Hmm. Mingyu.

“Yes?”

Don’t lick her.

“Huh?”

Don’t lick her. It’s creepy and definitely not the best first impression.

“Okay. No licking, Mr. Narrator.”

Thank you. As I was saying . . .

Having settled you on your bed, he watches you and wonders where you come from . . . how you manage to get so close to the Clan’s territory . . . and why are you so pretty. Just as he’s about to leave, you momentarily stir awake.

“What your name?” Mingyu asks, genuinely curious.

You tell him your name and stare at him, your eyes hazy.

“And you are?” you ask.

“Mingyu Primate.” He points at himself then at Ape. “And that’s Mingyu’s brother. Ape Primate.”

Ape suddenly tosses the poetry book aside and bangs his chest, grunting and hooting. You look at them, a glint of disbelief still visible in your eyes, then make a sound between a sigh and a groan.

“Nice to meet you but—uh—I’m gonna pass out again.” You pout and nod. “Bye.”

And, as a woman of your word, you pass out.

Again.

[shoutogepi]

Heart of the Storm

Todoroki Shouto

word count : 11.0k bruh why do i do this

[ ☀︎, ✘ (nsfw!) ]  a lil fluff in beginning/end

themes : igloo sex?? LMAO, shy!reader, steam/sweat kink?, dom!shouto, teasing, temperature play

bio : Shouto warms you up in the midst of the blizzard, in more ways than one.

author’s note : this stemmed from a crack fic idea but damnnnn if it isn’t hot in here now :O this is also a piece for @bnhabookclub ‘s first event— the provisional licensing exam! i’m using prompt #9: “Your lips are really warm.”

tagging: @simplybakugou thanks for beta reading lovely ♥︎ & big thanks for thirsting with me & basically directing the fic @lildreamer93​ ♥︎

also available on AO3 here

  ─── ・°* ﾟ✧:* • ｡ﾟ:*･☽･*: ｡ﾟ•*:✧ ﾟ*°・ ───

🅃he dark clouds approaching the mountain paint the sky in an ominous manner, the wind scraping your raw cheeks. You place one foot in front of the other, the snow crunching with protest underneath your weight. Your nose is runny, tucked beneath a thick scarf, and your eyes are glassy from the freezing winds that only seem to be intensifying. The thick coat does its best to block the wind from your body, but the powerful gusts manage to sneak through the fastenings down your middle, allowing cold to quietly spread into your body.

A hand around your forearm rustles you from your bleary focus on the path ahead of you. Your accomplice’s heterochromatic gaze pierces into your tired eyes, the only parts of your faces that aren’t tucked away under layers of clothes. He gently pulls your arm towards him, and with his gloved fingers wrapped securely around your limb, he guides you off of the path. You enter an empty snowbank littered with skinny, ice-covered trees, almost collapsing on the slight decline of the trail.

Shouto catches you awkwardly, the thick outerwear making his movements slower than usual. But he holds you steady, refusing to let you fall into the thick carpet of white that licks up to the middle of your calves. Pulling your body close to his, his worried eyes fall on your closed ones, making his heart thump against his ribcage. With your head laying on his shoulder, he leans forward and talks in a slightly heightened voice so you can hear him over the screaming winds. “Y/N-san, let’s take a break,” he suggests, but it doesn’t sound like there is much room for disagreement.

You nod weakly, your gloved hand finally coming up out of your pocket to push yourself off of him to show him you still have some strength left. It’s just so damn cold.

Shouto frowns underneath his scarf, his hands falling from your figure as you stand on your own once more. He watches you lean against one of the thin trunks that pierces through the chalky blanket on the ground. He can tell you’re exhausted, and he won’t lie— he’s not feeling his strongest at the moment either. His left hand offered to you, you grab onto his arm for support, mustering up the strength to continue the trek to your destination.

But he steers you into the middle of the clearing, where no spindling trunks break the perfect layer of ivory on the forest floor. He shakes your hold off of his arm much to your distaste, but as soon as he’s freed the limb, he wraps it around your shoulders, collecting your body into his chest. You bend into him willingly, your hidden cheeks feeling warm for the first time in hours.

With you secured tightly against him, Shouto pushes down the scarf covering his face, his teeth gripping the fingertip of his right glove. Your eyes widen as he exposes his hand to the howling, icy winds, and a part of you wants to immediately grab his fingers and tuck them away from the offensive temperature. But you can’t help the awe that blooms in your chest as a stream of frost explodes from his outstretched palm. He flicks his wrist casually, and the ice that lands on the ground builds around you into an effortless, shiny dome. He continues the motion until the bellowing wind no longer assaults your ears, and your eyes are no longer watery.

Your gaze roams over his creation, admiring the way the ice has a perfect sheen, halfway clear enough to produce a distorted reflection that peers back at you. Your shaking hands snake out of the pockets in your jacket, hesitantly hooking the material of your scarf down to tuck under your chin. “W-Wow, Shouto-san, this is… incredible,” you murmur, eyes finally landing on the tall male who’s currently savoring the cute, dazed look on your face.

His mouth curves into a half smile, his expression softening at your pink cheeks and nose. “I’m going to step out and thicken the walls before the storm hits, so just sit tight, Y/N-san. I won’t be long.” He turns and removes his other glove, placing the pair on the glistening snow by his feet. He activates his quirk, blasting a hole half his height into the side of the dome, and leaving your field of vision.

You quickly pull the scarf back up over your face. Even if the formation Shouto had created shields you from the full force of the wind, the powerful gusts still creep into the dome and tousle your clothes. You waddle over to his gloves, collecting the cloth and tucking it under your arm so the snow doesn’t dampen the material. You shake the heavy pack down your shoulders, frowning as it lands unceremoniously into the snow. Your clumsy fingers quivering, it takes a few tries to pinch the zipper— but you finally latch on and pull it sideways triumphantly, your other hand searching for the black, waterproof material inside.

You finally find the tent at the bottom of your backpack, and you unfold it haphazardly, spreading the textile across the top of the snow. Hopefully the fabric will be thick enough to stop some of the cold from the frozen ground from seeping through. Your mind wanders as your hands run over the thick material, thinking back to just days before you were caught in this blizzard.

Your agency had been working with Shouto’s in order to take down a ring of criminals who were known for slipping into the shadows after committing their heinous acts, due to their extensive knowledge of the Japanese landscape. You and Shouto had been in the same group that was to watch over the foothills of the mountains surrounding the village that was known to be their next hit, but the villains had scattered upon seeing the group of heroes. You had each been prepared with packs, clothes, and rations, but the ensuing blizzard was quite the surprise. You weren’t sure how exactly you ended up with Shouto, just the two of you, but you could not muster up even a scrap of a complaint. He was so charming and handsome after all— if you had to be stuck in this storm with anyone, you were glad it was with him. Not to mention his quirk seemed like the perfect match for the cold storm almost upon you.

You’re torn from your thoughts as Shouto’s frame hunches through the hole he had created, his back to you as he seals the tunnel with more ice. You realize how much darker it had become, the ice not nearly as transparent as before. You wonder how much he had thickened the walls of your refuge, or if the dark was due to the icy squall that had begun to howl outside.

Shouto turns, heaving out a sigh as he drops the pile of logs he had carried, the cylindrical segments rolling on the icy snow. He takes in the tent on the ground, and lets out a breath of air as he forces the hood of his jacket off his head, his scarf once again falling down to reveal his face. “Looks like we’ll be here for awhile,” he humors, crouching down in the center of the floor and directing his left palm there. Flames lick his skin as he melts the snow, a puddle forming in the center of the ground before it evaporates, leaving a rocky, earthy terrain underneath. “Perfect,” he murmurs, positioning the logs into a triangular pile, keeping the flame on his palm lit to provide enough light.

You watch as he nods absentmindedly at the wooden stack on the ground, lowering his hand to the logs and letting the flames lap at the bark. You chuckle hastily, making his eyes dart towards your face. At his inquisitive look, your gaze drops to the flames starting to take on the kindlings. “Shouto-san, I don’t know what I’d do without you,” you state bashfully, sitting down atop the tarp. You add a bit quieter, “I think I would’ve froze to death by now if I hadn’t found you.”

A miniscule shade of pink flashes across his cheeks, but it’s hard to tell if it’s from your words or from the cold. He intently watches the flames grow for a moment before his eyes jump to yours, the small smile resurfacing on his rosy lips. “I would never let that happen, Y/N-san.”

Unsure how to respond, your eyes dart away from his, landing on the fire once more. “Won’t that melt the, uh… igloo?” You ask, looking at the high ceiling of the dome directly over the growing embers. Shouto had made the structure a considerable height, so you figured he had accounted for it, but you wanted to change the subject anyway.

“I tried to make the top of the structure far away enough so it won’t… but even if it does, I can just refreeze it,” he assures, standing up and walking over to you. You scoot to the side as he sits beside you, taking advantage of the tent. You nod as if you hadn’t already come to that conclusion, taking a shy glance at him.

He’s a respectable distance away from you, but close enough to reach out and touch. He catches your glance, the gentle smile still gracing his mouth. Your eyes widen as you notice a long scratch on the side of his face, slashing over the bottom of his scar. “Shouto-san! Are you okay?” You scoot towards him, your hands reaching out to touch his face. His eyes widen at your bold gesture, and he stiffens as you take his chin into your gloved hands.

Shouto lets out a stifled chuckle, his hands folding tightly on the tops of his legs. “It’s just a scratch.” Even if it’s through the thick sheepskin mittens, he allows himself to enjoy your touch for a moment. He shakes off his own backpack, your hands sinking off his face as he holds it up in one hand and jerks his head toward it. “I’m better off than this thing, anyway.”

The backpack is torn, the majority of the bag totally missing as if it had been ripped away forcefully; completely shredded. You gape at the object, then check the back of his jacket to thankfully discover it’s totally intact.

“The guy I was chasing had a strange animalistic quirk that gave him sharp teeth,” Shouto looks at the disheveled rucksack, “and claws.” He points at the scratch along his high cheekbone, shrugging his shoulders in a relaxed manner. His stomach flips at the frown that blossoms on your lips.

You turn away from him and rummage through your bag, making an exclamation as you find the small first aid kit you had packed. His eyebrows raise as you look at him shyly, pulling off your gloves in a modest fashion. “Please let me patch you up,” you appeal, grabbing the tube of antibiotic ointment hastily and uncapping it. “I want to feel like I’ve at least helped you in some way today. My quirk isn’t very useful out here,” you chuckle sadly, eyes trailing off to the side of his face.

Shouto nods crisply, his gaze trained on the hand stretching toward him. “Thank you,” he mumbles, watching how your bare fingers shake violently. He knows you’re cold, but it shocks him when your fingertip touches his cheek— the icy feeling making his skin prickle. He allows you to spread the cream across the cut, but immediately once you’re done, he envelops the back of your hand in his own, long fingers folding around yours. “Y/N-san, you’re so cold,” he says almost to himself, his other hand following the same action.

With your hands in his, your face blooms into a heated flush, a gentle gasp escaping you at the tingles that sprout on your skin fed by his natural warmth. Your reaction spurs him on, and he transfers your hand so that both of them are tucked neatly into his left. The burst of intense heat makes your eyes go wide as he activates his quirk ever so slightly. The sheer strength of even a fraction of his power sends a chill down your spine, a fuzzy numbness rushing through your hands as they regain feeling.

“S-Shouto-san,” you gulp, attempting to pull your hands from his to no avail, “you should save your strength, I can use the fire— I’m fine!”

Shouto’s eyebrow quirks amusedly at your request. “This is nothing,” he counters, but upon inspecting your sheepish expression, he begrudgingly grants your wish, his hands placing yours on your lap before disappearing into his pockets.

Your newly-nimble fingers hastily grab a flat, rectangular paper out of the first aid kit. You peel off the strips from either side of a bandage, placing the sticky side diagonally over the scratch on his cheek. He seems satisfied with the way your fingers only barely quiver now, and he doesn’t attempt to take your hands into his again.

“Thank you for helping me, Y/N-san,” he smiles at you, making the cold in your bones feel just a bit duller. You nod, closing the kit and placing it on the ground next to your bag. The conversation dries, and you wrack your brain to think of something to talk about. You and Shouto were friendly colleagues, but you’d never really had the chance to talk to him alone like this, and you were both not really the talkative type.

Reaching into your pack, you produce a cup-ramen and offer it to him. “Are you hungry, Shouto-san? I have two, so I have more than enough to share.”

Shouto accepts the package, a grin spreading on his lips. “Now here you are, saving my life,” he jests, peeling the lid halfway before shoveling some snow into the bowl with the lip of the container, “I could get used to your care.” You laugh a little too hard at his joke, following his actions with your own cup. You hand him the cup and he melts the snow leisurely, the water turning to a boil before he closes the lid, placing the cup on the ground in front of you.

As he copies the actions on his own cup, your hands find the chunky receiver the team had given each member before the stakeout started. Turning the device on, you hiss at the static shriek that pierces your eardrums, quickly lowering the volume before checking each of the channels. “Seems like the storm is interfering with the walkie,” you comment, placing the malfunctioning device back into your bag.

Shouto nods thoughtfully, his fingers laced underneath his chin as if he is in deep thought. “The storm will probably last the majority of the night. We’ll have to camp here for a while and we can check how the weather is at first light,” he explains his plan and you agree.

The pair of you eat your ramen in a comfortable silence, your toes slowly gaining feeling as you hold the tips of your boots close to the fire. You share the filtered water you had brought with the man beside you, both of you drinking only a third of the water combined in a mindful manner.

With the blood rushing to your stomach to digest the processed noodles, your fingertips begin to grow cold again. You push up your scarf once more, covering your pink nose and sticking your palms out toward the fire.

Shouto watches you with careful regard before glancing at his watch. “Y/N-san, perhaps you should try to rest while we wait for daylight,” he suggests, eyes twinkling at how cute you look with your eyelids drooping heavily in near-slumber.

You shoot him a lazy smile, nodding at his suggestion. You find the thick, silky sleeping bag that takes up the majority of your backpack’s capacity, undoing the bands that keep it compressed together. Noticing his lingering gaze on you, you shoot him a confused look. “Are you going to lay down as well, Shouto-san? We can use the tarp here if we lay next to each other.”

He smiles at your offer. “I would rather keep watch in case the villains decide to surprise us.”

You frown at his responsible intentions. “No one is going to be out in this blizzard, though. If the villains are dumb enough to do that, then they’ll surely be popsicles by the time we find them. Please, you should rest too, Shouto-san.” You pat the space on the tarp next to your sleeping bag expectantly.

He chuckles awkwardly, palm landing on the back of his neck. “I… seem to have lost my sleeping bag, actually,” he trails off, looking at the scraps of his backpack that remain. “Most of my things fell out when I was fighting.”

As if the thought comes to you both at the same time, your eyes meet and a flush replaces his usual suave expression. “You can share mine,” you speak before the words register in your brain, and as soon as they do, sweltering heat infiltrates your own cheeks. “I mean— if that would— if you need…  it wouldn’t be w-weird. Besides… we should probably stay close for,” you gulp, “b-body heat.”

“Are you sure you’re okay with that?” He replies a little too quickly for his own liking, cringing minorly at himself. He looks sideways at you, hesitance clear on his face.

You nod at him and he stiffly moves to the other side of the sleeping bag, willing his breath to stay steady. You unlace your boots, immediately sliding your woolen-sock clad feet inside. You wiggle into the slot, heart racing. Shouto takes off his own boots and shimmies into the envelope with you. It’s a one-person sleeping bag so the fit is a bit snug, the front of his jacket brushing against the back of yours. His long arm reaches over your torso to zip the bag closed, instantly withdrawing his hand to his side afterwards.

Now that you’re pushing up against him, he can feel your coat is slightly wet from the snow. “You should take that off— it’ll only make you colder since it's damp,” he whispers in your ear, making you stiffen against him. Shuffling a bit, your bottom skims against his crotch and his breath catches in his throat. His eyes admiring the tight sweater that’s revealed as you shed the jacket, he realizes his jacket is probably the same. He removes his as well, his hips pressing into your ass but they’re gone before you can even blink, his folded jacket a makeshift pillow long enough to cushion both your heads.

With both your jackets removed, he can feel how truly cold you are; your body shivering and your breath slightly hitched. You curl into yourself as much as you can, willing the frost away by brushing your limbs against each other slightly. The sleeping bag has good insulation, but it barely does anything yet since you offer no heat for it to retain. Your hands curl into half-fists, pressing them against your lips in hope to thaw them with your shaky breath.

Shouto’s warm breath on the shell of your ear sends a shiver down your spine. “Y/N-san, you’re shivering,” he comments, eyes raking over the smooth skin at the back of your neck. You gaze into the fire for a moment, begging for some kind of confidence in this situation.

You shift onto your back, rolling onto your other side so you can look at him. The wisp of courage you had scraped up is viciously snatched from you as your eyes meet his.

The emotion in his eyes is something you’ve never seen before, the intensity intimidating you so much that your lungs still mid-breath. His gaze is half-lidded, his hair falling perfectly over his eyes. Hot breath washes over your raw cheeks enticingly, making your skin prickle with apprehension.

“Can I…,” he trails off, and you’re surprised when you feel his fingers sheathe around yours, pulling your wrists directly toward his mouth. Your stomach flips as he breathes out, the warm air caressing your chilled skin. “Can I warm you up, Y/N?”

You swallow harshly, your eyes the size of dinner plates, you’re sure. But Shouto’s expression doesn’t falter, and your silence doesn’t bother him as he places the softest kiss on your knuckle. You’re shaking again, even though the cold in your body is pushed far into the back of your mind. “S-Shouto-san,” you peep, your voice an octave higher than usual. It feels strange to say his name so intimately, but he seems to enjoy the sound.

He lets out a long exhale, closing his eyes as his thumb presses into the middle of your palm, forcing your hand to open. “Your teeth are chattering— you’re so cold,” he states, a hand letting go of your wrist to jump to your waist.

It’s true, your skin is shockingly frigid against his, and your teeth rattle slightly at the loss of your jacket. His lips press against the next knuckle, keeping your gaze captured to his magnetic stare. His eyes are so intoxicating; one a refreshing aqua and the other a swirling storm of gray. They both hold an unspeakable passion; a force that quiets all your worries as soon as they sprout.

“I said I wouldn’t let you freeze, Y/N.” His fingers on your waist tighten and he pulls your body flush against his in one swift movement. Only the thick sweaters keep your skin from touching, and his hand slides up the curve of your waist, underneath the hem of the knitted fabric. You gasp, watching his wrist disappear at the bottom of the sweater as his hand glides across your skin. Even though this is his ice side, his touch is so warm compared to your flesh. You look back up to see he’s inched closer to you, lips nearly brushing against yours. “Are you gonna let me keep my word?”

You can’t seem to find any words, your body overwhelmed by his hot fingers dragging along your side. His stare demands your attention, and no matter how desperately you want to look away, your body refuses to follow your wishes. You can feel your nipples hardening against the cup of your bra, a warm tingle emerging between your legs. Your pussy flutters underneath your panties as he continues to kiss your hands, lips wandering over each knuckle, fingertip, and line along your palms. The realization that his touch is doing things to you only makes you feel more flustered.

Shouto’s hand weaves over yours, heat radiating off of him as he places your hand on the cusp of his jaw. “You’re still shivering,” he states, finally breaking eye contact only to glance at your lips briefly before his gaze returns to yours.

You find yourself nodding slightly, unconsciously welcoming his next intentions. Your fingers, now warmed and feeling fuzzy, push into the hair behind his ears, gently guiding his face toward yours. Your lips part with a soft whimper as his hand underneath your sweater flattens, the entire palm introducing a pleasant heat to your chilled skin. Shouto gathers you closer to him, strong arm wrapping around your waist tighter and pushing your face to fall only a short distance away from his. You can feel his breath on your face, warm and soft, as his eyes search your face for any hint of reluctance. He closes the space between your mouths at a turtle’s pace, allowing you ample opportunity to push him away.

But you don’t— you grab the front of his shirt with your free hand, the hand behind his ear pushing him forward so his lips lock with yours. A shared, strangled moan resonates off the walls of the igloo, lips pushing and pulling against each other at a feverish pace. The kiss is hot, and his lips feel like heaven against yours as his hands feather down your spine.

“Your lips are really warm,” you murmur as you pull away to catch your breath, eyes still closed and lungs feeling tight from a combination of the lack of air and the excitement— lust— pumping through you. Heat floods your cheeks as you realize you’d voiced your thoughts, an entertained look crossing Shouto’s features.

“Good,” he says as his lips touch yours again, this time more delicately than last. He kisses you for a moment, just long enough for you to lose your train of thought, before he pulls back quickly. “I’m gonna get you nice and warm, Y/N— I promise,” Shouto vows, capturing your mouth and claiming it as his, his tongue separating your lips and exploring your mouth.

You moan at the new sensation, allowing the wet muscle to dominate yours, body feeling weak, and hot, and wonderful. Shouto’s hands are still wandering over your skin underneath your sweater, rounding your waist to creep up your chest. Just as he’d been to initiate the kiss, his touch rises slowly, pausing just underneath the swell of your breast. The warmth seeps into your ribs, and you surprise yourself when your own hand leaves his chest to push his elbow up, moving his hand on top of your bra.

Shouto groans into your mouth, and you swear you can feel your panties dampen at the noise. Vibrations against your lips, your hand in his hair pulls gently at his scalp in response, only to elicit a second, similar sound from his throat. His hand squeezes your chest just the right amount— not too rough, but not gentle either— making you whimper into his mouth. He thumbs over your nipple through the thin silky material, lips curving into a satisfied smirk when you moan louder this time, fingers tightening your hold on him.

Your tongues tangling in a slow, sensual embrace, you drink up the heavy breaths that leave his open lips, high on his warmth and his touch. The thumb rubbing along your bra traces the edge of the cup, toying with the soft flesh underneath.

“Is this okay?” Shouto inquires huskily against your lips, inducing shivers to shoot toward your core. He’s crawling atop your body to hover above you, the sleeping bag rustling as he stays close to you, one leg splitting between yours and the hand not on your breast moving to prop himself up.

“Y-Yes Shouto-san,” you whine, eager to feel his tongue back on yours already. Your limbs are still shaking from the cold, but the excitement that blooms from his touch mixes into your veins like warm nectar to combat the icy frost that lingers there. His knee isn’t quite high enough to touch your pussy, but your cheeks become warmer at the realization that you want it to be.

“I’m gonna take care of you,” he murmurs before his lips press against yours again, eliciting a weak moan from you. His kiss is warm and intoxicating, yet firm. Tongue invading your mouth again, you sigh contentedly as his hand squeezes at your breast, thumb dipping underneath your bra to brush against your pebbled bud. He starts to move his body just enough to create some friction between the two of you, and you moan again at the novel sensation, your hand moving around his broad shoulders to dig your nails into his sweater.

Your mind is hazy, unable to focus on anything as his mouth lands on the skin of your neck, a breathy moan washing over your throat as he begins to kiss and suck there. You squirm underneath his wide frame, the feeling of his tongue rolling against you stoking the fire between your legs. Your body is beginning to feel warm, your heart beating erratically against your ribs.

Shouto’s hand wanders further up your torso, the hem of your sweater sliding up to rest on the top of his wrist. He smiles against your neck, pulling your bra down so your breasts fall out of the cups, his calloused thumb immediately caressing your nipple again and rubbing over it gently. “Do you like that?” He asks, lips trailing to kiss the underside of your jaw. “Because I really like that.” A forefinger joins his thumb and he pinches the nub, causing it to harden under his warm touch.

You cry out, head thrown to the side in pleasure. It seems that was Shouto’s plan all along, because he ravishes the newly revealed skin on your throat, altering between roving his tongue along your flesh and nipping his teeth softly. “Y-Yes, I like it, Shouto-san,” you answer breathlessly, your legs curling to draw his hips closer to yours. The feeling of his body flush against yours has an incredible heat surging through your entire being, caressing your bones and fluttering in your core.

Shouto’s purr rumbles along your skin, his head dipping down to place a path of kisses along your collar bones. Your hand flies up to grab onto his red and white locks, fingernails scraping his scalp gently and causing a moan to fall from his parted lips. “You’re so beautiful, Y/N,” he praises, lifting your sweater over your shoulders and off your body. Before you can feel self-conscious, he swiftly delivers another kiss to your lips as he tears his own sweater above his head, revealing a pale torso rippling with firm muscles. Your breath catches in your throat at the sight hovering above you; his hair slightly messy from taking his shirt off as his gaze holds your own, a hunger blatant and all-consuming in his eyes.

You whimper as his mouth crashes to yours once more, your spine arching naturally as his arm curls around your waist, fingers moving to undo the clasp of your bra and succeeding swiftly. His kiss is slow and soft as he pulls the straps from your shoulders, tossing the item onto the tarp beside the sleeping bag.

Shouto looks at your naked form below him as if he’s a man starved, and you the most delicious feast he could possibly imagine. His hand moves to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, eyes half-lidded and tongue poking out to roll over his lips. You watch as he leans down, warm lips brushing against your jaw and moving to trail down the length of your neck. But he doesn’t stop there; his mouth wanders further down, prospecting the soft flesh of your breast with kisses and long swipes of his tongue.  

“S-Shouto-san,” you call his name when he finally reaches your nipple, mouth enveloping the bud and rolling his tongue around it leisurely, showering you with kitten licks that makes your pulse race. A long moan escapes you, your head thrown back onto his jacket and your eyes drifting shut as he begins to suck on your sensitive nub. “Oh, that feels—” you cut off as his teeth scrape your flesh, hips bucking up into his instinctively.

He only smiles, gently pulling your nipple between his lips and continuing to wash your skin with his hot tongue. “Does that feel good, angel?” He asks, his free hand moving to cup your other breast.

You nod even though he can only see the bottom of your chin, your mouth agape as rushed pants tumble out. Your pussy twitches in your panties when his mouth moves to your other breast, ravishing it in the same fashion. Your brows cinch, fingers woven in his hair and grabbing frantically at the roots as your body welcomes the waves of pleasure Shouto provides. A hand lands on the thick muscle atop his shoulder, gripping onto him and fingernails nearly breaking his perfect skin. Your hips buck again when his teeth graze your nipple, and heat bursts through you as your thigh rubs against something hard.

Shouto moans at the friction, the noise sending vibrations through your chest. “Fuck, Y/N,” he grumbles, popping off your breast and returning to hover his face above yours. “You know you’re absolutely gorgeous, right?” He doesn’t allow you to reply, lips conquering yours and sending a sweet chill through your body.

You make a noise of surprise when he begins to gently grind against your crotch, rubbing his erection onto you. The action has your brain short-circuiting, lust surging through your body now more than ever. God, you want him. You want him bad.

Shouto seems to feel the same way, for he presses your bodies flush against each other, and you whimper when his hot skin touches yours. Another meek noise floats out of you as he shuffles the two of you into a new position, landing on his back with you hovering above him this time. He’s kissing you again, and your brain can’t seem to catch up with him, for he now has two free hands and he uses them to grab your hips, guiding them to move along his own and continue providing the friction of the grinding from before.

Your head is spinning at the stimulation, your slick clit rubbing along the inside of your panties. And even though there’s two pairs of thick pants between the two of you, you can feel your pussy right above his clothed cock, dragging deliciously against him.

His fingers move to the front of your pants, ripping the zip downwards and digging his thumbs into the space between the material and the flesh of your hips. Shouto pushes the cloth off your body with surprising ease, your ass coming into contact with the sleek lining of the sleeping bag. Leaving the material bunched at your knees, Shouto places his hand on the back of your neck and guides your lips to land on his, his tongue tracing your bottom lip before he pulls it into his mouth gently, a growl-like moan rumbling in his throat.

You jump slightly when a hand lands on your hip, long fingers sprawled out over your panty-clad ass. His dull fingernails drag along the cloth, digits looping underneath the band at your hip and toying with it— pulling it down gently before putting it back in place, and repeating the action. You whine against his mouth, falling to your elbows on either side of his head, your hair cascading around your faces.

Shouto’s hand slips between your legs, cupping your pussy in his large palm. “Do you want more?” He teases, tone dark with desire and a hint of playfulness. He kisses the corner of your mouth as you moan quietly, trying to grind yourself against his hand. The action only makes him grin, his other hand cupping your chin and guiding you to look at him. “Answer me, beautiful.”

Your throat tight and mind foggy, you whine at his demand, eyelids falling closed as you lean into his touch. “Yes, I want m-more, Shouto-san,” you respond, humiliation spurring a heat to rise to your cheeks. You’d never begged for a man’s touch like this, and the thought has you both wanting to hide in mortification and spread your legs wide for him.

“Mmm,” he mumbles, moving your face to place your lips on his again. The very tips of his fingers begin to move along your slit through your underwear, starting with gentle circles on your entrance and trailing up to your clit.

His touch has you gripping his hair again with both hands in trembling fists, broken whimpers dislodging from your throat. His long digits toy with your pussy through the sheer, soaked material, separating your folds with his pointer and ring finger for his middle to dip into you just a tad, pushing your panties inside yourself slightly. You cry out, for even at such a shallow depth, the heat leaks from his fingertip into your pussy, melting away your inhibitions. It’s not enough to stretch you, but your walls twitch in anticipation around the digit, causing a smile to spread on Shouto’s lips.

He kisses the other side of your mouth, your eyes still shut tightly and your lip caught between your teeth. “Do you want even more?” He murmurs, stroking your cheek with the back of his fingers. “Say my name, Y/N.”

His command is absolute, tone gruff, like he can’t seem to catch his breath—  it makes you look at him, only to send another shocking thrill toward your cunt at the lustful fervor in his gaze. You lick your lips, croaking out a shy, “Shouto-san.” His thumb grazes over your clit in reward, but you only push your hips down in search of that searing fingertip. When he moves his fingers in accordance with your body, you let out a distressed whine. “Pleaseee,” you whimper, placing a hesitant kiss on the column of his neck.

Shouto sighs at your appeal, deft fingers curling around the edge of your panties to gather them to the side of your throbbing pussy. Your body jolts as he brushes your slick folds with the lightest touch, another noise of desperation floating past your lips. “No, beautiful,” he murmurs, voice deep enough to drag you under like a powerful tide pulling you lost into a sea of pleasure, “My name— just my name.”

The gasp that you surrender surprises you, and you’re not sure if it’s more from his request or from his thumb beginning to circle your needy clit. A string of low moans flees your throat as he presses harder against you, the digit sliding around the bundle of nerves with ease, slick with your arousal.  “But… but Shouto-s-san, I…,” you trail off, distracted as two hot fingertips begin to play with your entrance, curling just enough to hook against the edge of your walls and tease another groan out of you.

“You…,” Shouto continues for you, that taunting tone dripping from his voice again, “You don’t want it, Y/N?” He’s teasing you, but only because you’re so delectably responsive to him— he can feel your pussy twitch against his fingers, your slick drenching the digits and making it irresistible for him to go even further.

“No— I want it,” you hurry to respond, fearful that he’ll withdraw his touch before you have the chance to feel him inside of you. Anything for that. “I want more,” you take a small breath, propping yourself up with your hands on either side of his neck, your eyes finding his. “Please, I— I need you… Shouto-s—”

Two fingers slide into you with ease, stealing away the chance for you to utter the honorific, instead rendering you helpless as a loud, wanton moan erupts from your lips. Shouto’s fingers are long and thick, the pads rough and already rubbing against just the right place. His other hand rests on the front of your hip, digits curled around your side as his thumb stretches to stimulate your clit. Your eyes roll back as he pulls out, your velvet walls shuddering and another sound of pleasure filling the still air inside the igloo as he pushes back in. You’re already embarrassed enough from his teasing and him cheating away the respect the -san represents, but a new wave of mortification crashes over you as the spring inside your stomach begins to compress. You’ve never been so turned on in your life, so embarrassed, so naughty— desperate.

“You’re gonna cum already, aren’t you?” Shouto’s voice cuts through your foggy, aphrodisiacal headspace, and you can only nod, jaw hanging open and broken mewls tumbling out. Your hands fly to grab onto his shoulders in favor of the sleeping bag covering the ground, nails grappling into his skin. You can’t even find the sanity to shield your dissolute, wrecked expression from his watchful gaze underneath you, which he laps up eagerly— only fueling his plight as he begins to curl the digits toward himself. He’s rewarded with a higher-toned squeal, your cunt squeezing around him until he can only repeat the ‘come here’ motion. “Go ahead, beautiful. I wanna see your pretty face when you cum for me,” he implores.

That’s all you need to topple over the edge. Your pussy grips his fingers snug, fluttering as a numbing bliss explodes between your legs. Hips rocking shakedly against his grasp, you release a ragged groan as he continues to rub circles on your sensitive pearl. Your entire body is filled with a blistering warmth; you can feel it from the tips of your ears to your still-curled toes. Collapsing onto his chest, your lungs gasp for air as your head continues to spin, a content thrum pulsing through your bones as your pussy continues to spasm upon his hand. “S-Shouto,” you sigh, one hand slipping down to rest on the other side of his chest, fingertips biting into his skin slightly.

Shouto exhales a similar sound, fingers leaving your sloppy hole as he wraps his other arm around your waist. Bringing his fingertips to his lips, he keeps his gaze locked with yours as his tongue darts out, concealing the first knuckle from your sight.

Horror floods through you at the sight; dirty, nasty thoughts pouring into your mind. You try to get him to stop, your cheeks feeling hot once again. “Shouto-san, that’s—”

You succeed to some degree; he pulls his fingers from his mouth, but only to press them against your lips, sliding the digits deep into your mouth until they hit the back of your throat. “Bad girl, using honorifics,” he admonishes, tone suddenly dark and not at all warm nor soft as it was before— yet somehow it makes your cunt flutter in excitement, reawakening and already aching to be filled again. Your eyes widen in surprise, but you don’t gag, and Shouto only groans at such a discovery. “Don’t you think we’re past using formalities?”

He has a point, so you just flutter your lashes at him and moan onto his fingers, lips pursing around them and sending a shiver down his spine.

“Taste yourself— see, angel? You’re so sweet— god, you’re sexy, and you’ve no idea, do you?” He seems to be saying that last part to himself but you still nod, tongue wrapping around his fingers and making sure to clean him well. You want to show him you’re not bad; you’re a good girl, you can be a good girl for him.

Shouto swallows, eyes following your tongue as it wanders along his finger to poke between your lips, washing against his skin. He growls at the sight, ripping both hands away from you and ensnaring your wrists in his palms. With just one solid movement he tosses you underneath him, your back sliding against the silky lining of the sleeping bag and warming at the heat his body had left behind. You’re trying to find your bearings as Shouto fumbles with his pants, finally managing to rid one leg of the thick material and slip himself between your thighs.

Your heart begins to thump rapidly in your chest as you feel the smooth head of his cock drag against your folds, your cunt clenching in desire and your lip held prisoner between your teeth. Both of your ragged breaths tangle in the small space between you, your hands reaching to grasp the tops of his shoulders, legs spreading as much as they can in the confines of the single-person sleeping bag. Tossing your head back in agony as he teases your opening, coating himself in your slick, your cum. You’ve never felt so needy before— the urge to be filled and stretched around him dominating your every thought.

“Please— god, please Shouto,” you beg, and for a brief moment you find yourself wondering what exactly his cock looks like, the realization that you haven't actually seen it hitting you and yet here you are pleading for him to just put it in. What if he’s hung like a horse? And you’re about to be split in two— or what if he’s an average joe? Well from the foreplay he definitely knows what he’s doing so maybe—

Your entire body stills and a breathless squeal escapes your lungs as he thrusts into you in a single, swift movement. Your walls quiver in fiery pleasure as he penetrates you, his thick cock spreading you and filling you and reaching deep inside of you as his hips bump yours. You didn’t realize you were this wet; he slid into you in one go and by the feel of him, you know that’s no easy feat. But your mind doesn’t have any time to process it, for Shouto lets out the most sexy groan you’ve ever heard in your life. His head falls to rest against your throat, soft hair tickling your skin as you feel gentle pants wash over you.

“You’re so tight, Y/N— shit,” he moans again as his hips retract, pushing back inside of you slowly as if to test the waters. His cock glides inside of you, thick veins rubbing against your silky walls and making a soft whine struggle to evade your lungs. It’s the first time you’ve ever heard Shouto swear, and a twisted sense of pride fills your chest at the thought of him being so into this— into you— that he’s lost all his usual self-restraint.

A few more tentative thrusts have you crying out for him, another flash of intense heat spreading through your body and each of your limbs. Shouto cradles the back of your neck in one palm, the other hand slipping around the back of your waist in order to bend your back to his liking. The angle pops your breasts up against his chest, and he swears again as your hard nipples drag across his skin. Claiming your lips as his once again, his hips begin to push into yours at a steady pace, setting the tempo at a slow but hard pace. With each crash of his hips against yours, you feel like your lungs have lost all function— his balls slap heavy against your ass, sweat starting to trickle down your thighs that come around to draw his body closer to yours, your wrists crossed around his neck and his lips slotting against yours messily.

If your mind was foggy before, now you cannot even see your own hands in front of you; your brain is dizzy and oxygen-starved, mind spinning in circles every time his hips knock into yours. Each thrust has him burrowing far inside of you, your pussy trying desperately to keep up with his quickening pace but failing— leaving you butterflied, completely open for his assault to continue. When your ankles lock behind his waist, heels digging into his firm ass, his cock begins to hit a new spot inside of you, and you wail out in shock and ecstasy.

“Shouto!” you exclaim, brow furrowing and letting out a particularly wanton moan. Your eyes nearly cross at the powerful sensation, that embarrassed feeling returning and rekindling the heat in your cheeks. From just one particularly angled thrust, the spring in your stomach makes its presence known once again.

Shouto is quick to take advantage of the weak spot you’d just revealed; his grip on you tightens as his hips begin to crash against yours, mouth sucking in your lower lip to hold hostage. Your eyes can barely stay open, but you fight yourself to maintain the eye contact Shouto offers. His stare is searing; sparks flying between the two of you as he scrutinizes every hint of pleasure you render.

The intensity has you gasping for breath, suddenly feeling hot— so hot; the sleeping bag retaining all the heat your feverish session provides. Even though you’re so close, your hands land on his chest hesitantly, tapping his sticky skin. Instantly his hips still, and he begins to examine you, a concerned expression overtaking his handsome face.

“Are you alright, beautiful?” He asks, not skipping a beat. Examining the flush on your chest and cheeks, he seems to come to the correct conclusion, turning to tear the zipper down the track toward your joined hips. Cool air washes over your sweaty skin, and you sigh at the refreshing sensation licking over your skin. You whimper as Shouto leans down toward you, frosted breath swirling over your clavicles and offering you instant relief from the hot flash that previously took over your whole being. “Guess I warmed you up too good, huh?” Shouto chuckles, and you smack his chest with a weak fist. He shifts his hips forward in response and you keen as his cock shifts deeper inside of you.

Shouto allows you a moment to catch your breath, continuing to blow cool air along your throat and chest. You bask in the revitalizing sensation, whimpering lightly as Shouto keeps a subtle and gentle pace, cantering into you just enough to keep himself hard. He kisses your neck and jaw, lips chilly yet sending hot tingles zipping through your body. “S-Shouto-san,” you mewl, sprawling out into his caress like a cat.

He only smiles against your skin, lips wandering all over your chest. The cold air radiating off the icy walls of the igloo collides with your hot skin and sends shivers down your spine. “San?” He hums, icy lips trailing along your breast until his tongue pokes out to greet your nipple. Your pussy constricts around him, his ice-cold muscle twirling round the sensitive peak and slurping it into his mouth, only to pull away with a pop. “I thought we were past that, angel.”

You groan as his cock recedes from your folds, leaving you empty and eager for more. Large, hot hands guide your hips to roll over, steering you to your face the wall of the igloo on your hands and knees. With just a cavalier flick of the wrist, a shiny coating of fresh ice blankets the interior wall, creating a cloudy reflection that brings more heat to your cheeks. You can see Shouto behind you; firm, abundant muscles lining his wide frame and his hair tousled back atop his crown, those bicolored eyes regarding you with unwavering desire. Your forehead falls to brush against the plastic of the tarp as he traces the head of his cock along your slit, your hips jerking when he nudges your clit.

Your eyelids flutter open weakly when warm kisses dance across your shoulders, a shaky moan leaving from your lips as Shouto presses into your slippery cunt once more. He sighs beside your ear, and you watch as he closes his eyes, heated lips meandering up your jaw to take the tip of your ear between his teeth. “Don’t hide from me,” he whispers, sucking cold air along your skin when your pussy grips him tight in an automatic response. He nibbles at your cartilage, thrusting halfway inside as his hand collects your chin. Turning your face, he pushes his lips against yours, silencing your moan when his hips press flush against yours. The new position has your eyes rolling back, his cock massaging that sacred spot nestled deep within your core. His tongue starts to wrestle with yours in your mouth, his palm leaving your face to press flush against your pelvis, perfectly lining up two fingertips to greet your clit.

Your jaw falls open at the added stimulation, pussy winding tight around his length and pulling him deeper inside. That familiar coil is present again in your stomach, your pulse racing and perspiration gathering down your back and above your brow. Shouto’s tongue only drives further into your mouth, toying with yours. His hips begin to smack against your ass, balls slapping the fingertips that rub steady patterns on your pearl of nerves. You can feel your orgasm building, pressure heightening at a surprising speed, and you begin to whimper onto his lips, fingers curling into the tarp underneath your hands.

Shouto takes his tongue from your mouth, a silver string of saliva connecting your mouths. “Look up, beautiful,” he instructs, nodding to the wall in front of you.

Your elbows almost give out at the scene before you, and Shouto grabs your shoulder to pull you upright, thighs spread wide to showcase where his body connects with yours. Your eyes can’t decide whether to stay on his slick cock pumping in and out of your tight hole, fingers working diligently on your clit, or to linger on his face, his scorching eyes half-lidded and teeth clamped gently on your shoulder. He kisses your neck sloppily, free hand curling around you to cup your breast and pinch your nipple with cold fingers. Your back arches, ass pressing against his hips as he starts to pound into you, your cunt quivering and trying desperately to keep up with his insatiable pace.

“See how pretty you are, Y/N?” Shouto goads in between kissing and nipping the soft skin on the side of your neck. You take a glance at yourself, that embarrassed feeling leaking through your pores again when you see how fucked-out your expression is; pupils blown in lust and mouth hanging open, tongue resting on your lower lip. “Who’s making you make that pretty face?”

You can barely find your voice, pussy pulling snug around his thick length as you hurtle toward your climax. Throwing your arm backwards around his neck, your hips try to meet his rapid tempo, and your face turns to nuzzle against the smooth expanse of his cheek. “Y-You, Shouto,” you cry, his fingers on your breast pinching tighter and beginning to roll. The honorific dangles on the tip of your tongue, but you bite your lip in order to seal it away. “I’m so— so close,” you warn, but he does not slow. His hips keep their frenzied pace, and the fingers on your clit suddenly surge with a searing heat, leaking into your pussy and pushing you over the edge.

Shouto bites out a swear, his corded arm holding you upright against his torso as your slouch onto him. Your thighs tremble as you fist the hair at the nape of his neck, the other hand flying to hold onto the wrist glued to your abdomen. Euphoria rushes through your body and your pussy clutches onto his cock like a vise, a string of incoherent babbles and moans jumbled together slithering over the skin on his throat. You want to beg him to stop, to give you a second to catch your breath, but your voice is silent as he continues his ministrations on your overstimulated clit, hips never stalling. He carefully pushes your shoulder, allowing you to catch yourself on your shaking hands, parallel to the tent. With your cheek pressed against the plastic, both his hands fly to your waist, fingers turning white as he rams into you with renewed vigor.

Unaware that he’d been holding back from full force, you scream out in absolute ecstasy at his new tempo. His cock draws along your swollen walls, balls smacking your puffy clit, fast and rough. Blearily you look at the reflection in front of you, already feeling another orgasm approaching at an alarming rate just from the sight before you; Shouto’s eyes in thin slivers underneath a furrowed brow, focused on the bounce of your ass in front of him, jaw hanging open unabashedly and hot puffs of steam billowing out. A cord stands out along his neck as he strains to deliver you such pleasure, muscles taught and tense along his torso. Both of you are breathless and about to cum, perspiration rolling along your skins from the steam and heat trapped inside the igloo.

His eyes meet yours in the reflection and you give in, cunt spasming around him, your fingers grappling onto the tent in bliss, and his name falling from your ajar lips. Through your haze of euphoria you hear him swear, a loud groan bouncing off the icy walls of the structure before he pulls out, hot ropes landing along your spine, all the way up to the curve of your shoulder. Your pussy flutters as you ride out your orgasm, vacant and craving to be filled by him again. Shouto’s hands are gentle on your hips, one turning to trail his knuckles along your skin.

Shouto leans forward and gathers you against his chest, despite your protests about the sticky fluid dripping down your back. You can feel his hot cock against your spine, still slick and hard. He carefully pulls your hair to the side, tilting your head to place his lips on yours. You melt into his embrace, feeling peaceful and satisfied. His lips curl into a soft smile to mirror yours, and you deepen the kiss for a moment before pulling away.

“Warm enough?” Shouto asks after clearing his throat, that charming smile still turning up the corners of his mouth.

You chuckle at his question before you pause, your brain beginning to come back to reality. “Definitely, but… getting cold now, actually,” you realize aloud, head swiveling around as you take in the icy walls of the igloo still standing tall, sheltering your naked bodies from the storm.

Shouto lets out a quiet noise of agreement, one hand leaving your body in favor of searching through his disheveled backpack. He swiftly returns his hand to your body, a handful of unused napkins from your earlier meal in his palm. He also cups his other hand into the snow on the ground, melting it and heating it before he lets it glide down your skin, following the rivulets with the napkin. “If we were in any other situation, I hope you know I’d take much better care of you right now,” he comments, a hint of humor in his deep voice.  

You smile at his statement, letting your hair fall in your face as you lean forward in order to aid him. “That’s alright, I think you’ve taken care of me enough,” you reply cheekily, moving toward the sleeping bag once he taps your ass gently, signalling he’s finished.

Shouto raises a thin brow, eyes trailing over your naked breasts as you slip your bottom into the sleeping bag. His hand runs over his sculpted chest, repeating the same procedure he’s just completed on his own skin. “What, now that I made you cum three times, you’re not shy anymore?”

Your cheeks flush at his remark, and you slither into the safety of the sleeping bag, shielded from his perceptive gaze. Your refuge does not last long, for Shouto shuffles inside the bag too, his warm skin pressing against yours. After he zips the compartment closed, he gathers you in his arms, shifting you so your head lays on top of his chest. You can hear the quick thump of his heart underneath your ear, blood rushing through his veins and sounding like a sweet, soothing melody. When he speaks, it rumbles in your ears, shivers swirling underneath your skin.

“You know, you’re pretty cute whether you’re shy or not,” he confesses. You make a squeak at his compliment, your cheeks feeling hotter than ever. Shouto only laughs, the addicting noise ringing off the walls of your haven. “Well, especially cute when you’re shy.”

Shouto wonders how you can be so timid after he’s fucked you senseless, but he doesn’t push his luck. He only grins as you smoosh your face onto his pec, a hand covering your inflamed cheek. You’re more than grateful when he changes the direction of the conversation.

“You should sleep, Y/N,” he suggests, fingers tracing along your hip. “You’ll need to be well-rested for the return down the mountain tomorrow. Most likely my agency already has reinforcements on the way here— it’s protocol— so we won’t have to pursue the villains any longer. Though I doubt they made it through the blizzard.”

You nod, eyelids already drooping with exhaustion. You hadn’t realized you were so drained, but after hiking up a mountain and trekking through a snowstorm, you suppose it’s only rational your body is so spent. Not to mention you’d just had the best fuck of your life, with probably the most handsome, dapper man you know.

Before you can submit to the alluring tendrils of slumber, Shouto smooths his warm palms along your spine, his voice soft and sweet like honey. “Are you sure you’re warm enough? Just tell me and I’ll heat you up, for real this time,” he murmurs, a quick wave of heat emanating from his palm as if to prove his offer holds legitimacy.

“No,” you sigh, never having felt this warm, and safe in your life, “This is perfect.”

Shouto holds you as you succumb to slumber, and he hopes you don’t notice how his heartbeat quickens, a flustered pink dusting his pale cheeks.

-—-—-—-—-—-

The trek down the mountain the next morning is light-hearted and much easier than the journey up. The sun high in the sky, the perfectly smooth snowbanks reflect the bright light of day, nearly blinding if you gaze at them too long. Shouto trudges through the knee-deep snow ahead of you, creating footholds for you to step into with more ease.

Without the heavy storm from the former night, it’s easier to see where the pair of you are going, and you make your way down to the sloping foothills of the mountain in good time. The expedition feels less cumbersome without the icy storm biting into your body, but also because Shouto talks with you the entire time. He touches your waist, holds your hand for a moment too long when he offers you his support, and grins at you without restraint. Your heart races at every interaction, giddiness trickling through your veins.

When the pair of you finally reach the base of the mountain, you’re greeted by the rest of your team. They’ve set up a makeshift camp a short distance from the mouth of the trail, just through a small spattering of trees.

Relief surges through you at the sight of your coworkers, your eyes widening and your foot automatically taking a step toward the group. But Shouto grabs your wrist, spinning you around and pulling your body close to his. The weather isn’t nearly as freezing at the bottom of the mountain, and the heat that rushes into your cheeks at the action is much more noticeable. His arm wraps around your waist, leading you to the side of the path slightly and blocking your figures with the trees.

“Y/N,” Shouto starts, eyes cast toward the side and a boyish blush on his cheeks. The sight of him so hesitant makes your stomach drop; you’re not accustomed to seeing the pro hero anything but confident and collected. Yet his voice is still just as deep and calm as he speaks, despite his flustered disposition. “Before we rejoin the team, I wanted to ask you something.”

You place your hand on his chest, fighting your bashful demeanor to comfort the man before you. “Shouto? What is it?” Head tilted to the side, your fingers spread and retract over his coat, smoothing over the stiff material there.

Hearing you call him by just his name makes him smile warmly, his stare flickering to your hand on his chest. “I know this is kind of backwards, but… I wanted to know if you’d like to have dinner with me,” he chokes out, shocked that the words come out sounding effortless and suave. “I want the chance to show you that last night was more than just sex to me.”

The rock-like feeling in your stomach dissipates, your frown melting into a timid smile. He wants to have dinner with you— a date! Last night meant something more to him; he wants to spend more time with you. Your heart swells in your chest and you nod eagerly. “Yes!” You nearly shout before you attempt to reign in your eagerness, “I mean— yes, I would— I would really like that, Shouto.”

The grin that splits across his face is more blinding than the snowbanks. It makes butterflies swarm your tummy and you can’t help but smile in return. He chuckles and the arm around your waist tightens, your body pressing against his. His lips graze your forehead and your breath catches in your lungs, a soft laugh falling from your lips.

Shouto holds you for a moment before he lets you go, dusting off his gloved hands on his pants. The faint pink drains from his cheeks, his usual indifferent expression sliding back onto his face. “Alright, let’s join the team, then,” he gestures for you to move back onto the path, and you take a step forward in front of him. A strangled noise of surprise catches in his throat when you press your lips to his in a quick, gentle kiss.

You pull away and examine his bright red cheeks, two-toned eyes wide and lips parted slightly, clearly unexpecting your sudden affection. You laugh at him, taking his wrist and tugging his stiff body back into the camp’s line of vision. Shouto seems to recover rather quickly, pinching your ass as you begin walking toward the camp. You’re about to swat at him, but your coworker notices the two of you approaching, and begins to run toward the pair of you. You shoot him a playful glare and he only smirks.

The team of fellow heroes pulls the two of you apart, fussing and showering you with a million questions— but you don’t really pay attention to any of them. Your eyes meet a blue and gray gaze through the commotion, and even without a raging storm to freeze your bones, your heart fills with warmth once again. 

  ─── ・°* ﾟ✧:* • ｡ﾟ:*･☽･*: ｡ﾟ•*:✧ ﾟ*°・ ───

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o my frickin god you guys i cannot believe this fic turned into such an absolute monster. 11k words— i am so mf extra. i hope it was worth it though, please lemme know if you wanna be trapped in an igloo with shou too LOL 🤪🥶🥵

➥ masterlist

𝐂𝐨𝐩𝐲𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 © 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐩𝐢 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟎. 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐝.

[tommyspeakycap]

Uncle Charlie and the Shelby sis?

omg i love this idea !!!!

I actually think that little Shelby would be quite close to Charlie so here’s a sweet blurb! (set in 1920 - so moving towards end of season 1. i also made up charlie’s war history as we don’t know much about it)

“Fucking, shitty, stupid bastard-”

“Oi!”

When you hear the sound of the voice cutting in likely to chastise you for your use of explicit choice language while you were practically beating the shit of the hay you were shovelling for the horses, you turn around to face him. He see’s that you look rather flustered, face a bit red as you blow a sigh past your lips and shove your hair back out of your face. “Sorry, uncle Charlie.”

“Mhm,” he nods his head, “And what’ve your brothers done this time eh?” You sigh again with some sort of disgruntled huff afterwards to display your clear irritation with the behaviour of who Charlie assumed would most likely be Tommy, Arthur at a push but very unlikely to be John. John annoyed you a lot, he knew, but never tended to make you genuinely angry. At least, never angry enough to switch off the sunshine and rainbows girl who sang and hummed while shovelling hay and horse shit.

“Tommy’s being a fucking idiot. Again.” You bite harshly.

“Oi!”

“Sorry, Charlie.”

He shakes his head at you with the very slightest of smiles. “And how’s that? What’s he done?” Your uncle grabs the spair shovel from where it was leaning against the barn door so as to join you in your cleaning of the stables. Charlie can sense the anger that had built in you from Tommy’s seemingly incessant enforcement of all sorts of new and more restrictive rules for the members of the family - especially you and slightly Ada - since he had started to try expand the business into the race tracks. He doubts this time will be any different from the last three times you’ve complained about him in the last week.

“Finn’s 11 and he gets to go with them to the races sometimes, but i’m nearly 17 and i can’t even step out the house without an escort when the boys aren’t in Small Heath. It’s so unfair!” You rant almost desperately. The frustration is clearly heard in your words, and Charlie was no fool to picking up on your feelings by the way you spoke and acted. Charlie very, very much understands your brothers desires to keep you safe; you’re his favourite if he’s totally honest. So he’s incredibly protective himself, he felt quite a sense of fatherly responsibility for you.

Charlie had gone to fight in France for around a year and a half. That definitely did a number on him, but he was transferred home after being shot. It was then that he was appointed a post on the home front as a farmer and some kind of war horse breeder and trainer because he was so good with animals. As a result, it had become his job to look after you during the years of the war that your brothers were away. Polly did your breakfasts and dinner and would make sure you were well looked after, but Charlie took you out to the farm during the day where he would make packed lunches. You would get to pick vegetables, train the sheep dogs, collect wool and the likes of that sort of work. He knew that since you were 12, had you stayed hanging around the factories in Small Heath, you might’ve ended up having to work in one, so brought you to work with him instead. It had brought you extremely close to your uncle.

It’s why now, it was his scrap yard you went to when Tommy and the rest of the family were getting to you. He would often find you there, felt like a sixth sense of some sort that he would just get a feeling you were there - if he hadn’t heard you shouting or singing. Most commonly your troubles were caused by or at least had some distant correlation to Tommy and something he had done. The head of the family does of course think through his decisions and what they’re impact will be, but the one mistake Thomas tends to make when he thinks abouts these impacts is what appears to always affect you.

And that is, that he looks for direct danger. He overthinks and spends nights riddled with fear that his plan will bring harm to those he loves. He fears Billy Kimber will come to try and take from Tommy what he holds most dear in retaliation if he doesn’t act exactly the right way. He fails to look at less direct impacts. He sees your protection escorts as keeping you from being harmed and sees keeping you in the house constantly as ensuring he knows that you’re safe, always. He doesn’t see you missing out on your youth or missing your friends or feeling threatening and anxious at the fact you’re always either in house arrest or practically with a fucking protection detail. He never thinks like that and Charlie knows that is what gets to you so much, because you just see that as he being malicious and not thinking about what’s best for you at all.

“Sometimes i just wish we were normal y’know?” The change in tone of your voice from red hot anger to a timid quite mumble tells Charlie that you’re hurting more than you may ever let on in words. “Just miss my life.” You lament lowly, dropping the shovel and instead opting to drop yourself down on a nearby haybale.

Charlie signs not in annoyance or anger, but in a kind of sympathetic way as he leans himself on his shovel and turns to face your direction. “I know you do, love. Think we all do these days. Missing your brother eh?” Charlie tries to ask you as softly as he can despite having a generally grumpy, grumbling voice. The question marks another change in your demeanour as he immediately notes that your shoulders slump and you begin clenching your jaw to try not to get all upset.

You just nod in response.

“Mhm,” Charlie hums, moving to sit on the hay bale next to you, “Though so.” He pulls you into his side and feels you shaking a little with a few small sniffles to tell him your were crying. It breaks his heart and he know it would shatter Tommy’s if he knew. He had known for weeks that part of your rage and irritation was a smoke screen for the painful fact that you just missed your brother. You missed being little and holding his hand, having him play games with you and look after you, spend time with you and have genuine, actual conversations that weren’t two minutes long, arguments or about business and rules. You were still young and the four years you’d spent without them, plus the trauma you’d gone through in your life, meant that you missed and relied upon them a lot more than most would. Your hurting heart just longed for your big brother to make all things right again, just like he used to.

Things were so much more complicated now than they were before, you knew that. But it didn’t stop the hurt, it only just made it more painful.

“Listen, hey, listen,” Charlie comforts, “It’s alright. I’ll have words with that brother of your eh?” He feels you nod your head. “Yes please.” You whisper, sniffling again.

A silence falls between you as it often does, a bubble created where you could feels your feelings and your uncle would do all that he could in his limited power to move whatever kind of mountains you needed moving so you could feel better again. It was damn near his very top priority that you were provided with a better childhood and better young adult-hood than what he was able to give the Tommy, Arthur and John.

But it just so happened that Charlie Strong made a promise to the woman he loved - your mother. The woman you were so very like. He felt it his duty to protect you like a daughter because that is what your mother would have wanted. He promised to look after you and in doing so he recognised what your brothers often didn’t. Your physical well-being wasn’t everything. Of the same importance he wanted, just as the rest of the family did, for you to be safe, happy and loved in an emotional sense. They did love you, all of them. So much it was painful and so much that it was enough to do you a lifetime; they just had such a bad way of showing it.

Charlie decided it was time now to give your older brothers a wake up call. It was time they learned how to love you in a way you understood. Killing for you and keeping you bubble wrap didn’t tell you they loved you, they had to show you in a true way. They had to tell you and hold you just like he had learned to do to show his care and love for you. He had to change to accommodate how you experienced love, so he did just that; he changed.

Charlie was determined and he held a level of authority with the boys he practically raised. So starting with Tommy, he was going to enforce that same change in order to make sure you knew just how fucking loved you were in that family.

And for Charlie Strong, all of the fighting, the pushing and the moving of seemingly unmovable mountains was worth in to no end when you mumbled, “I love you, uncle Charlie.” Against his shoulder while he hugged you tight.

“Yeah yeah, Shelby,” he sniggers, pressing a kiss on top of your head, “I love you too.”

[archerdaryl]

Peppermint Sugar.

You’ve been tasked with decorating the Christmas cookies while Carol is out on a hunt. It would have gone just fine if the archer hadn’t shown up.  

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x Reader Tags: more cute christmas vibes, sfw, fluffy and fun but still a little slow burn Word Count: 2.5k  Notes: This one-shot follows on from London in Your Eyes! I’m thinking about turning it into a little collection of Christmas fics that all link together. As always I would love to hear your thoughts. ♥

You’d been at Carol’s house for barely ten minutes and you were already overwhelmed.

The air was thick and sweet like molasses, a pleasant surprise that was almost enough to soften the visual overload that was waiting for you in the kitchen. There were trays upon trays of cookies sitting on almost every counter space you could see. You had happily agreed to help decorate while she went out on a run with Ezekial and his knights, but good God.

There were at least a hundred cookies there. And they all needed expertly icing.

You approached the kitchen island slowly, eyebrows knitted together as you cursed under your breath. You can’t have been the only person she asked. Especially considering you weren’t exactly artistically inclined. Sure, a snowman was simple and you could probably figure out how to ice a Christmas tree adequately enough, but a couple of the shapes you couldn’t even identify.

“She’s lost her fucking mind.” The words escaped you in a mumble, followed by a long exhale.

Looking back you weren’t sure why you agreed to this in the first place. Maybe it was the assumption you wouldn’t be stuck here alone at 7am or that it would only be a few cookies you could hide at the bottom of the pile. You couldn’t have been more wrong, but you were at least relieved that you didn’t bother to change out of your yoga pants for the occasion considering you were going to be standing there decorating for hours.

Eventually you accepted that simply staring at the endless trays of cookies wasn’t actually going to do anything and you moved towards the stove to boil some water for coffee. While you waited for it to bubble, you organised the trays according to cookie shape and decided to start on what you could only assume were snowflakes.

How could you possibly mess those up? All you needed was white icing. If by some miracle Carol had got her hands on some food colouring, maybe you could be real fancy and mix a little blue in too.

You continued to wipe down the counters, dusting off remnants of flour before placing the first tray in front of you. You soon found a set of instructions left behind by Carol and you would be lying if you didn’t say you were relieved. You followed them, grabbing everything you needed and mixing up some sort of concoction that resembled a very basic icing.

Carol had to have chosen you for a reason. You hoped she had more faith in you than you did in yourself.

She had to, because you were already bored and you had barely begun.

And then the door swung open, almost making you jump.

“Oh my god, my very own knight in shining armour.”

Daryl Dixon stopped in his tracks and stared at you in confusion.

“Wha’?”

“I could settle for scrap metal.” You grumbled.

He narrowed his eyes before hesitantly moving his way through the house, eventually disappearing into the basement with Dog trailing along behind him. You mumbled a rather sarcastic goodbye before grabbing a ziplock bag and carefully spooning the icing into the bottom right corner, following Carol’s instructions as closely as possible.

“Thought you were huntin’ today.” Daryl shouted as he climbed back up the stairs.

“I was supposed to be. Carol wanted me to do… well, this.” You gestured to the mountain of cookies behind you and tried to hide your disdain. Dog happily padded towards you and demanded neck scratches by pushing his snout against your legs. Naturally, you obliged.

“On yer’ own?”

His crystalline gaze traced your form as he leaned onto the opposite side of the kitchen island. You were in an old hoodie, hardly form fitting but the dark red hue complimented your eyes, and there was a dusting of icing sugar across your cheek. He smiled ever so slightly, but said nothing.

“Unless you’re offering to keep me company, yeah, it looks like it.”

The pair of you hadn’t spent much time together since the Christmas fair. Keeping food stocks up was more important than ever with the snow being as heavy as it was, and the fact The King insisted on an extravagant Christmas celebration wasn’t helping anyone’s work load. Keeping busy kept you both from thinking about that stolen moment of innocent intimacy, though Daryl still found himself staring at you just a little bit longer with his fists clenched every time you crossed paths.

He was chasing the sensation of your hand in his without even knowing it.

“Ain’t got much else t’ do,” He lied, shrugging and leaning further onto the countertop with his forearms, “Watchin’ you fuck up might be fun.”

You didn’t bother glaring at him, your hands went straight for the icing sugar, picking it up in a pinch and flicking it right into his face before turning to find some scissors. You heard him splutter and blow hard, as if that alone could erase your act of vengeance.

“Don’ start somethin’ you can’t finish girl.”

You snorted and returned to your original position at the kitchen island, your grin widening after seeing the mess you made of him.

“I think you look great.” You insisted, “As ruggedly handsome as always.”

Daryl’s lips thinned in faux annoyance, though his eyes betrayed him. He was unable to come up with a retort of his own. He was stuck on two words in particular.

Ruggedly handsome.

He knew you were being sarcastic, you had a habit of that, but it still made him feel a little embarrassed. If not for the icing sugar speckled across his face, you likely would have noticed him blush a little.

“Handsome huh?”

Daryl had never been one to concern himself too much with the way he looked. He could never afford to and there certainly wasn’t any point anymore with the world in the state it was. However, in that moment he realised that when it came to you, he felt a sense of insecurity previously unknown to him.

“Oh yeah. I’m super into the whole dandruff thing.” You teased further, gesturing to the sugar speckled in his hair.

He rolled his eyes and pushed himself up off the island counter, “You talk too much.”

You had thrown him off on purpose. You had no choice. You couldn’t stand there and lie to him to protect yourself from the feelings you constantly tried to bury. Daryl Dixon was many things but ugly was not a word that ever came to mind. Yet, you couldn’t look him in the eye and tell him he looked like home either.

“C’mon. Carol will kill me if I don’t get something done.”

Daryl wasn’t sure what exactly it was he was supposed to be doing, but he was perfectly happy to be there even with the nerves causing havoc in his stomach. Anyone else would have considered them butterflies, but he wasn’t exactly a teenager dealing with a high school crush.

He met you behind the island and towered over you at your side. You forced yourself to concentrate on the task at hand, continuing to spoon icing into the ziploc bag. As he watched your hands at work, he leant down onto folded forearms and chewed the inside of his bottom lip absentmindedly

How did they look even softer than before?

He supposed it was because you were inside where it was warm, nuzzled within that oversized hoodie of yours. Was the rest of you as soft as your hands? He lost himself for a moment wondering what it would be like to fall asleep against your chest, your heartbeats perfectly in sync.

What the fuck was he thinking?

Quickly clearing his throat, he took his index finger and scooped up a blob of icing before you could steal it away with your spoon. He savoured the sweetness as he sucked it off his finger and then looked up at you with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

This was the most time they had spent together in days and he wasn’t about to ruin it by getting caught up in shit that didn't, no, couldn’t matter.

“Don’ start somethin’ you can’t finish girl.”

You met his gaze, eyes briefly drifting to his sugar sweet lips before you allowed a smirk to tug at the corners of your own.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish, Dixon.”

“Oh yeah?” He replied, cocking a brow before going in for a second scoop of icing.

Before you could even try to swat him away, Daryl had gotten his hands on the bowl and darted out of reach. Though his mischief may have been a distraction from his wandering thoughts, you were none the wiser. To you, this was one of those rare moments where he let his guard down enough to act a fool without wanting to beat himself up about it. You couldn’t be pissed even if you wanted to.

Grabbing the bag of powdered sugar, you immediately rushed after him, eager to make an even bigger mess than you already had. You followed him into the lounge where he had collapsed onto the couch, making himself comfortable and continuing to scoop out sticky white icing with his fingers.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” You whined, unable to keep an amused grin from tugging at the corners of your mouth, “Don’t think I won’t ruin this couch.”

Daryl looked up at you and allowed a snort of amusement to escape him. He didn’t doubt you for a minute, but he didn’t care about decorating no cookies and he knew you didn’t either so it wasn’t like he felt particularly guilty about the matter.

You stood your ground, your hand venturing into the bag of powdered sugar. Daryl watched you carefully and weighed up his choices, which didn’t take long at all because he soon found himself leaning forward to grab your forearm, pulling you down onto the couch with him in a poor attempt to keep you from attacking again.

What he didn’t consider was the bag of sugar doing a somersault out of your hands and creating  an even bigger mess anyway.

“Ah, shit!” He groused.

You landed awkwardly on him, having to adjust yourself so that you were flat on your back while he was laying on his side next to you with his arm bent to prop up his head. You quickly found yourselves coughing and having to wave your arms as you tried to dissipate the cloud of sugar, which mostly landed in a little hill on the rug but had still managed to leave heavy traces all over you.

“This,” You gestured to your hoodie and the mess around you, “- is on you.”

“Fuck that, I weren’t the one chasing me with sugar.”

After a futile attempt of wiping down your stomach with your hands, you turned your head to look at Daryl with a frown. You didn’t realise how close you were to each other until you met his eyes, which almost made you trip up on your words. You didn’t remember them being that blue.

“You’d really leave me to fend for myself like that?” You pouted.

Daryl opened his mouth to speak but the words got stuck in the back of his throat. You were so close. Too close. He could smell the sweetness on your skin, paired with peppermint which he could only assume was your toothpaste or some sort of lip balm.

“Carol won’t get mad at her pookie.”

He reached for the pillow by his legs but didn’t follow through on the threat as you quickly grabbed his arm and pulled it back towards you.

“I’m kidding!” You practically shrieked, his arm resting over your stomach with your fingers still wrapped around it to keep him from going for the pillow again, “Well, actually…”

“Stop.”

“It’s true and you know it. Please don’t leave me with this.���

Daryl went a little stiff. He wanted to pull away. He could feel the warmth of your body against his, could see each individual eyelash, and, fuck, those fingers of yours were wrapped around his arm. He was almost afraid to breathe. He didn’t want to take up more space than he already had.

You had spent many sleepless nights at each other’s sides in the past, either in temporary shelter while on a run or for comfort when things got bad. You had not, however, been this wrapped up in one another. Not in the slightest. He only had to put his head down for you to take him into your arms, and the thought of that alone was enough to make his heart skip a beat.

Once again, something had shifted and those uncharted waters were only getting deeper.

“Ya’ know, Dog can be pretty bad sometimes.”

“Yeah?”

Your eyes were locked and the words spilled from each of your lips slowly. Your grip on his forearm softened but you made no effort to let him go. In that moment it seemed as if you only saw each other and that the wall you insisted on keeping up was starting to crumble. It was only a matter of time before one of you rebuilt it, but right then, right in that moment, you could have laid there forever.

You wanted to know what he was thinking, if his thoughts were as scrambled as yours. You felt safe at Daryl's side, as if nothing could ever hurt you again, and you found yourself wanting him to pull you in closer.

God, he was already so close. One of you only had to lean in.

“Yeah. Carol don’t gotta know.”

“But the cookies…”

“Can’t ice no cookies without icin’.”

You couldn’t argue with that.

Daryl wet his bottom lip with his tongue and he could have sworn your eyes lowered to his mouth for just a second. He wanted to be put out of his misery. He felt like a damn school girl losing his head over someone he couldn’t have. You hadn’t approached this - whatever this is - for a reason but he wasn’t feeling very reasonable anymore.

Did your mouth taste as sweet as his? Would the peppermint make his lips tingle?

All he had to do was lean in.

Then, the unmistakable sound of the front door being opened echoed throughout the house. You both froze and confusion turned to horror when Carol eventually called out to you, claiming the weather had taken a turn for the worst.

You sat up on your elbows, eyebrows knitted together in worry whilst Daryl went completely silent, both annoyed and embarrassed that Carol had trespassed in her own home. You were mortified, there wasn’t a damn thing to show for your time there other than icing sugar everywhere, but you were also a little relieved - not because you didn’t want to be pinned in place next to him, but because you were finally able to take a full breath.

“Quick.” Daryl muttered, “Out the back.”

“But -”

Daryl didn’t give you a chance to argue. He quickly but carefully climbed up off of the couch and grabbed your hand without hesitation, squeezing it tight and pulling you along towards the back of the house where you could both escape.

You squeezed back, a childish grin growing across your sugar dusted face as your hand fit perfectly into his once more.

[piduai]

Interview with Noda Satoru from the Golden Kamuy fanbook

sharing anywhere is fine, but please credit me.

Q: Tell me how you feel about passing 6 years of serialization. Noda: I was already serializing at the time of my debut, so I guess I’d be able to give a summary when I’m finished. I don’t really think about how many years it’s been, it’s merely a checkpoint.

Q: What made you decide to become a mangaka? Noda: I feel like I wrote it down as my goal in my yearbook back in middle school. I also wanted to become a movie director, but as a mangaka you can create the entire thing by yourself. 

When Golden Kamuy just took off I was living in a tiny apartment and the postman, a young fellow and a reader of Young Jump, realized that I’m Noda Satoru. The magazine was sending me a lot of things, so it was rather obvious. “Are you the author of Golden Kamuy?”, he asked in a surprised tone while looking around the cramped entryway. I could feel feel his confusion regarding the fact that that vast Hokkaido world of the manga was being created in this modest apartment. Or maybe he just expected me to be making more money and afford a better place. Anyhow, I just thought again about how a manga can be created in even the smallest room in the universe.

Q: Who is your favorite character and why? Noda: As always, it’s Tanigaki. But well, I love all of them. I want to showcase only the best parts of them, and it hurts when I fail. For example I’m very happy that there’s a character who stirs the pot as well as Usami. He’d be Katsuo in the world of Sazae-san.  

Q: Which characters are the easiest to draw, and which ones are the most difficult? Noda: Characters like Shiraishi, Tsukishima and Nagakura, they don’t have a lot of hair and even if they turn out a little ugly their faces are well-defined so it’s easy to draw. In general faces that are strongly distorted and resemble caricatures are easy. Meanwhile Asirpa, Kiroranke and Inkarmat have neat facial structures on top of wearing Ainu clothing, so they are a very high-calorie effort for me. Ogata and Kikuta are difficult too. Their faces are distinctive and I have to make them look cool too, which is wearing me out the most.

Q: Have you decided on all 24 convicts at the very start of the story? Noda: Wouldn’t I sound like a badass if I said that that I have? Anyway. There were the ones that were based off real-life Meiji era criminals, such as Shiraishi, Kumagishi Chouan or the lightning couple, and of course there was Hijikata.

Q: Tell me of a funny thing from the manga that you are fond of. Noda: Gansoku’s “Hah! ☆”. And also when Koito Jr. Was flapping his arms and legs around trying to keep himself in mid-air.

Q: Why did you decide on Otaru as the starting point? Noda: I am from Hokkaido, so I’m familiar with Otaru and Sapporo. Otaru is close to both the mountains and the sea. Sapporo used to be a swampland, it’s wide and flat and there is no sea. Otaru is a place where foreigners come and go, there are many criminals roaming around creating danger, and money is found. There aren’t many big cities in Hokkaido. There were Ainu living in Otaru but sources are scarce, however Nakagawa-sensei, the supervisor over the Ainu language, told me not to worry too much about the difference of location, so I figured it would be best to make it Otaru.

Q: Was there any real life experience you had while growing up in Hokkaido that you turned into a scenario? Noda: When I was about 19 someone I knew told me that there is a locust graveyard on a nearby mountain, which sounded so ridiculous I had to laugh in their face. Turns out it indeed was a heap of locusts and their eggs left after a locust plague, that place was the Teineyamaguchi locust mound (a real historical site). I realized I ended up using this in my story. I owe that person an apology.

Q: Was there any scene that was particularly difficult to draw? Could you elaborate on it? Noda: The time Sugimoto went against Nihei and Tanigaki. It gave me a very hard time. Who goes where and does what, how does Nihei carry Asirpa, stuff like this. I had no time to waste either, I just remember that sequence overall driving me insane. 

There was also the sequence with Wilk, Sofia and Kiroranke being at Hasegawa’s photo studio. It’s really frustrating to draw something that you know will bore the readers, the story flow becomes less exciting too. I was praying for everyone to have a little more patience and keep reading, because the twist was so good.

Q: If you were to take part in the gold hunt, which group would you like to belong to? Noda: It seems that Hijikata’s group doesn’t have funding problems, and because Kadokura is there the atmosphere is relaxed too. I’d go there.

Q: If you were to find all that gold, how would you use it? Noda: No idea. Had a couple when I was younger, though.

Q: Were you planning to eventually transfer the action to Sakhalin from the very beginning of the series? Noda: Asirpa and Kiroranke have roots there, so I anticipated that the story will eventually move to Sakhalin. I also expected to have to travel to Amur river myself, but couldn’t go after all, only went as far as Khabarovsk. 

I was thinking of making Sugimoto eat permafrost mammoth. There was talk of a research team or an ivory excavation team’s dog eating mammoth. However there was no reason to make Sugimoto and Co go as up north as needed for permafrost, so I scrapped the idea.

Q: Tell me something about the hardships you experienced while doing research is Sakhalin. Noda: It was tough, but fun. I was only able to understand the clear differences between Nivkh and Orok people by going there; I couldn't by only looking at records and materials while in Japan. 

Complete unrelated, but I was surprised by how many stray dogs wander around there. One time my cameraman and I ended up being chased by one while looking for a factory and we had to run for it. The beast was big, about the size of a German Shepherd. The guide also warned us about junkies, it was really scary.

I also went to the Japanese military pillbox over 50th parallel north and prayed at a cenotaph deep in the mountains. I met a group of Japanese people in the hotel by the place where it's said you can still find remains of Japanese soldiers and their driver, a Russian, seemed to help with collection of the remains on the regular. He said that he's doing it out of reverence, even as a former enemy. As a Japanese, I felt gratitude. The 7th Division are villains in my story, but I don't have any personal bias against either side.

Q: What were the biggest differences between drawing Hokkaido and Sakhalin? Noda: Well... it's Russia. Even though Sakhalin is so close, it's already Europe. The structure of houses is strikingly different. There's also the differences between Hokkaido Ainu and Sakhalin Ainu, and differences between Orok and Nivkh people. There is no manga that will conveniently lay the differences of those down for you. 

It seems that the Orok and Nivkh's relation with Japan only got more difficult by the beginning of Showa era, there is only one person in the whole of Japan who can supervise on the Orok language. The professors in cultural studies I consult for Golden Kamuy are truly top-level; not only are they tremendously knowledgeable, they also understand how important to me is to stay impartial.

The wildlife, as well. There's a biogeographical boundary between Hokkaido and Sakhalin, observing animals I would never be able to see in Hokkaido was riveting. 

Q: Did Sugimoto really have a hidden plan during the whole stenka business? Noda: No idea. Even if he used it as a pretext to get everyone involved, though... cut him some slack. He's only a man. Sometimes he just wants to fight and win. Not for Ume-chan or Asirpa-san, just for the sake of proving to himself that he's strong.

Q: Your art is dynamic and detailed. I think your style changed quite a bit with time, though. How would you describe yourself as an artist? Noda: I want to preface this by saying that in no way do I think of myself as more skilled than other mangaka, but if you're drawing everyday for more than 10 hours you're going to improve a lot eventually, whether you want it or not. People who are able to keep the same style for years without change are the ones who are impressive, because it means that they achieved the peak of their potential. Ageing and health problems influence your art a lot, you know. I try to draw by observing. I use a lot of references. Drawing by memory alone is not a good thing.

Speaking of other artists, I once had one of the assistants I had working for me for years draw me a door knob from memory, and the result was a truncated cone resembling pre-packaged pudding. The actual shape of a door knob has an intricately angular circular shape. It's the result of being unobservant in everyday life. Good art requires constant observation.

Q: What was the foundation for your style? Is there an artist you were influenced or inspired by? Noda: Araki Hirohiko-sensei, for sure. During my time as an assistant, many authors told me to not even try to be original when it comes to battle abilities, it's already been done in JoJo, it has it all. He's kind of the Beatles of this industry, isn't he? 

By the way, I usually have no intention of parodying JoJo in Golden Kamuy, but my friends will tell me that they identified this or that reference from time to time. I read Part 1 about 30 years ago but I was obsessed, so maybe some things were just left in my subconscious. I only did one obvious parody, during the stenka fight. Funnily enough that trope started in Fist of the North Star, though, not JoJo.

Q: What's one thing that gives you the most motivation to write? Noda: Fan letters. I know how straining it is to write long and neat sentences by hand, and am thankful for them. I'm happy that people go that far to share their thoughts about my work with me. I'm really grateful to the people who keep reading and supporting Golden Kamuy.

Q: Did you have an interest in Ainu culture before starting the series? Noda: I did not. I'll be glad if my work makes people interested in the Ainu. Prejudice is born out of ignorance, so if you want to learn about the Ainu, don't limit yourself to Hokkaido only; there are museums all around Japan, and they have knowledgeable curators. It's important to remember to take into account the time period and the occupation of the person on which the research materials are based when you're trying to learn about the subject.

Q: You showed us a lot of aspects of life during Meiji and Taisho eras. Tell us about what surprised or impressed you in the process of research. Noda: It's not that I was particularly knowledgeable, so having to check every single thing was quite exhausting. The Ainu, the military, katanas - all of these needed research on my part. 

There are more regulations and rules set for things out there than one could assume, and mangaka who base their works on real life need to be especially careful about this. You have to take into account things like the size of the buttons on a military uniform, how a tea cup is held, and and how different people talk in different ways. For movies there's staff working on costumes and props, there's the cast, there are screenwriters, but in a manga you are the one responsible for every single detail. I wish I had a time machine and travel back to those eras. There are things I couldn't get right here and there that I keep having regrets about.

Q: Golden Kamuy was the main visual in the British Museum manga exhibition between May and August in 2019. I know you went there in person. How was it? Noda: The trip felt like a reward for all of my efforts. The exhibition is jam-packed by opening time, but I got special treatment and they let me inside early in the morning so I could walk around the vast British Museum in solitude. I also travelled between Jack the Ripper's crime scenes at night by taxi.

The driver in a taxi I caught by chance was wonderful, she looked up photos of the crime scenes and surroundings taken at the time of investigation on her smartphone and showed them to me one by one, saying things like "the third victim was found here!". 

I've always had a soft spot for Jack the Ripper, back in middle school I even wrote a screenplay for a school festival stage and played him in it myself. It was done in very poor taste, like that one scene in the Addams Family movie where there are arms blown away and fountains of blood gushing out. The audience loved it. 

Q: Please leave a message for the readers. Or maybe some advice for the troubled youth. Noda: I want people to say that everyone in Golden Kamuy had a satisfying ending, and I want that for everyone involved more than anything. As for advice for the troubled youth, there's none. Life is survival of the fittest. The weak ones get eaten.

[tsarbomba567]

I have create two more Ninjago OCs.

The first is a human. Their true name is actually unknown, but he likes to call himself Alistair. His true age is unknown, but appears to look in his mid-60s; he is also 5 foot 5 inches tall, and has white hair and red eyes, though his eyes are that of a Serpentine's. He has tattoos and body paint that cover his body - from head to ankle - in ancient Serpentine religious iconography and symbols. Alistair is a mysterious fellow, who is mostly called a wise man by many who cross him, but is also sometimes called a wizard or sorcerer, sage, or prophet. Personality wise, they're a tolerant and open-minded traditionalist that's secretive and skeptical of outsiders. He wears the skull of an Anacondrai that he's modified so that he'll be able to comfortably wear it, in addition to wearing a grey cloak and leather sandels. They wield a pilgrim's staff made out of snake bones, which can be turned into an Anacondrai sword or spear by using his magic.

He also carries a revolver shotgun, which he calls El Desterrador, which also has ancient Serpentine religious iconography and symbols painted and ingraved on its wooden stock. It's able to hold five slug rounds, which cause devastating damage to those shot, most likely leading to the target's death (depending on where they're shot). Most surprisingly, should Alistair do a small blood ritual, not only will he be able to see people and animals through walls, but also shoot through walls using the enchanted gun; during the duration of this ritual (1 minute), anyone shot by it will disintegrate into smoke, and depending on the type of round fired, the victim will either disintegrate normally (if the round is made of enchanted metal) or will disintegrate and leave sticky fire in its wake (if the round is made out of enchanted bone); the gun will also magically reload itself during the ritual's duration, as well as Alistair having his eyes glow red.

The most unusual aspect about Alistair is that - for reasons unknown - he's also a pure-blooded Anacondrai, and is able to shift between his human and Anacondrai forms. In his Anacondrai form, the Anacondrai skull the human wears disappears, seemingly to have merged with his person, while his tattoos and body paint expands to cover his Serpentine self. His Anacondrai form looks like all other Anacondrai, except for his red eyes and gems on his head and chest; his Serpentine form is 9 foot 4 inches tall, and appears to look in his mid-130s. The most defining feature about his Serpentine form is the white outline that perfectly depicts his skeleton, which encompasses his entire body. He can also switch from having a tail to having legs to traverse tough and difficult terrain. Alistair rarely uses his Anacondrai form, since it would draw unwanted attention.

He lives in an ancient Serpentine temple in the mountains, where he and some Serpentine and Snake Warriors help maintain the Temple and the ancient artifacts and relics, in order to to keep the Serpentine's religion alive. He rarely leaves the Temple, only venturing to either get some new recruits or some supplies.

Out of the Serpentine and Snake Warriors working at the Serpentine Temple, the most accomplished of them all is a Cobra Mechanic named Isabelle the Second. 108 years old and 7 foot 9 inches tall, she's tranquil and trustworthy, determined to keep the Serpentine's religion alive. Being both a mechanic and engineer, she also likes to both tinker with old electronics and engineer new creations. She originally roamed Ninjago, collecting electronic and metal scrap from junkyards, before meeting Alistair, who convinced her to join him after seeing her creations. While she was skeptical about the human and his project, she quickly realized the importance of his task when she was introduced to the Serpentine Temple and all the knowledge it held. Over the years, Isabelle and Alistair have become very close friends, to the point that he showed her his Anacondrai form, something that's seen as him being extraordinarily trustful. She also learned snippets of his past, which he agreed to divulge on the condition that she doesn't reveal them to anyone else; obviously she accepted his terms, and was baffled at what Alistair had witnessed and heard.