#i could just teleport to the coordinates i wrote down

[yappacadaver]

i still know the way to our secret house. The path i made and then hid so no one could follow, i still remember it. The house is gone and the world it was a part of is gone. You're gone too. But i still remember how to follow that secret path home.

[talltales-shortstories]

Decisions..

Harper wasn't quite sure if he should head directly to Southwatch with the knowledge he'd gained regarding the phylacteries, for one he couldn't shake the feeling that this West person might be watching the roads. Instead he decided to take his time and reinforce the warding over the crystal until he was certain no amount of scrying would reveal its location. This meant he'd spent a considerable amount of time in Stormwind since his return, wandering the streets and enjoying a pint or twenty at whatever tavern happened to be near. During one such tavern crawl, Harper found himself near the Stockades, a place he generally avoided, but a few too many pints had found him zigzagging his way by.

"HEY!" He heard a familiar voice cry out from one of the barred windows. "HARPER! YOU LITTLE SHIT! YOU LEFT ME HIGH AND DRY!"

The mongrel paused, blurred vision failing to focus on the large blob of what he eventually realized was an arm reaching through the bent bars to give him several middle fingers, no wait.. his vision blurred once more, it was just one. He managed to climb onto a barrel after several attempts and sat down. "Hang on.. that you, Vicky?"

Which is what he meant to say. What came out was.. "'Angin.. fat choo, Ficky?"

"Oh, bloody brilliant.. you're fuckin' sloshed, you wee cunt." She pressed her face to the bars. "You never showed up, I tried to do the job and was nabbed makin' my escape. Now I'm back here!"

"Vicky, Vicky, Vicky.. shouldn't have done the job without me." Is what he meant to say. What came out was.. "Ficky, Thicky, Sicky.. shoulna doon th'yoob wiff oot mesh." Or something like that.

"What the fuck are you yammerin' about, you toe-headed shite stain?" Though she tried to take a swipe at him through the bars, it was useless, Harper was only four feet tall and the window she was reaching out of was six feet off the ground and set nearly two feet back from the exterior wall. "When I get out of here, I'm comin' for you, you hear me? I'M COMIN' FOR YOU!"

Harper nearly lost his balance, but managed a thumbs up to the blurry outline of his old friend, now enemy, though this fact wouldn't sink in for some time given his current condition. "Heh.. Okay!"

And though she kept shouting at him through the bars a flickering light from one of the lamps caught his attention and suddenly Harper felt the need to investigate this... for the next several hours. Giggling. Pointing. And ignoring the faint shouts coming from the Stockades.

The next morning was painful, and the world didn't want to stop spinning. His head was pounding and his stomach was churning like a stormy sea. He didn't remember a thing about the night before and likely that was a good thing, being small as he was, the threat of a woman could crush his head with one hand hanging over his head would have found him fleeing the city until things cooled off or he could ensure her stay was more permanent.

But with no memory or threat hanging over him to his knowledge, Harper set a plan in motion. Not wanting to alert West by taking the trip to Southwatch and finding himself snared in the undead's web once more, he wrote a letter:

Lady Rosemarrie Sunshield, (Hopefully I spelled that correctly, never seen it written down) I know it's been some time since I have been around you and your people and I wish I could tell you the tale through this letter but I must keep it short. If you could be so kind as to meet me in the graveyard behind the Cathedral, I have something I need to show you that will either interest or infuriate you.

If you do not wish to meet with me, I would be most grateful if you could send someone you trust in your stead. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration. If I do not hear from you I will request permission to be allowed to teleport some place you felt more comfortable, I'd only require the coordinates and a roughly five foot square of space to accommodate the spell and reduce any possible damage the portal may cause.

Sincerely, Harper

@agilneanrose (mentions)

[miss-tc-nova]

Beneath the Tree - Y’shtola Rhul x WoL

I think of the three I wrote for Christmas this year, this is the one I love the most. Yes, the premise is similar to the Riku one, but I absolutely could not help myself when I thought of it. Originally the idea crossed my mind with G’raha, but it just hit me so much harder when I decided it would mean more with Y’shtola. 

Happy Starlight, everyone.

~~~~~

               It’s been a few days since I received a summons from the Adventurers’ Guild in Ul’dah. The moment I arrived, a bombardment of tasks and requests fell into my hands. Preparations for the Starlight Celebration are in full swing and adventurers across the star are being coordinated in a mass effort to distribute gifts to children everywhere. Of course the Warrior of Light—with a history of traveling and “go-fering”—was one of the best candidates to brave the snow. Besides, I knew in my heart that I couldn’t let down innocent children if there was something I could do about it.

               However, this stupid, selfless deed meant that I was away from The Rising Stones for days at a time, with only a few hours to recoup in between before heading out again. And, with how things were going, I would likely be giving up my own holiday with the Scions—with my girlfriend. When I told her this, I could see the spark in her eyes dim and it nearly broke my heart. She wouldn’t willingly show me that, however. Even when I told her I would stay if she just asked, she said that all was fine and that it was just another day. She didn’t mean a word of it, but there’s no arguing with Y’shtola, even if she’s clearly wrong.

               So weeks of work progress, delivery upon delivery is made, and I take cheer with me wherever I go; people get excited to see the Warrior of Light, especially when bringing gifts from the Saint of Nymeia.

               With the end in sight, I make a stop in Gridania. Today’s Starlight Eve, but I still have one last run between Doma and Limsa Lominsa that I must take the long way. As I stroll from the Adder’s Nest towards the aetheryte, I hear my name. Looking back, I find a fellow Scion.

               “Thancred, what are you doing here?”

               He slings a bag over his shoulder. “Trying to lighten the load. The Order has a delivery bound for Ul’dah.”

               “Aw, a big softy at heart, aren’t ya,” I tease.

               The man awkwardly scratches at the back of his head. “Perhaps that’s part of it, but I admit it’s a bit of a relief to be away from The Rising Stones at the moment.”

               Immediately, my brows furrow. “Did something happen?”

               “No, all’s well. It’s just Y’shtola—”

               Before I can even think about it, I snatch his jacket. “What?! What happened to Y’shtola?!”

               Once his surprise drops, he chuckles and pries my hands from his clothes. “Calm yourself. Y’shtola is perfectly fine, if a little short as of late.”

               Feeling the embarrassment climb my neck, I say, “Oh…Sorry.”

               “I didn’t know she could get any pricklier.”

               “Aye, Y’shtola can be sharp.”

               “I see you’re struggling with the separation as well.”

               With a deep breath, I try to reclaim my composure. “It’s taxing, I admit.”

               “And demand for the famed Warrior of Light appears high.” His arms fold. “You are taking proper breaks, right?”

               “That’s rich coming from the king of overworking himself.”

               A smirk splits his lips. “Y’shtola will be deeply displeased when I tell her.”

               “Tattling on me now?” I accuse. He shrugs. “Unfortunately, it’s too busy for me to slow down; best I can do is take the long way around instead of pushing aether sickness.”

               “I suppose that’s the best we can ask for,” he sighs. “Won’t do to have the realm’s savior permanently incapacitated from over-teleportation.” I laugh exhaustedly. “Do you think you’ll be back before tomorrow? Tataru’s got an entire get-together planned.”

               Guilt grips my gut. “No, I probably won’t be back in time. I have to take a boat from Doma to Limsa which will take a few days in itself.”

               “Shame. The only time Y’shtola is mildly approachable is when she talks about spending the Celebration with you.”

               Hearing him say that, I feel conflicted. She knew full well that I wouldn’t be back before the day ended, but to hear that she’s talking as if my return is assured squeezes my heart.

               “Thancred, I have to go.” I start past him towards the aethryte.

               I hate how smug that grin is. “Very well, just don’t push yourself too hard. You’ll have severe consequences should something happen to Y’shtola’s beloved.”

               Turning back, fueled with new determination, I smirk. “Guess I’ll be prepared for a punishment then.”

               Eyes roll. “Go on, you depraved miscreant.”

               I wave a pair of middle fingers at him before climbing the steps to head for Doma.

               Needless to say, those waiting for me at the Doman Enclave were ecstatic upon my arrival. Gifts from the Saint Nymeia’s bag get passed around along with some trade goods. However, before I can load up and head out for Limsa, Yugiri puts me down. She and Hien insist I stay and enforce rest on me, having heard from Alphinaud of my ceaseless task. I attempt to protest, but there’s now a line of guards near the aethryte with specific instructions not to let me near. It’s not until some hours later—after food and a nap—and the sun is nearly gone that they let me go with their well wishes.

               Limsa Lominsa isn’t much different with its excitement. This time, though, I refuse to be swept up in the celebration and confined. Yet again, though, I’m refused access to the aethryte and Merlwyb even threatens to blast my foot off should I take another step towards the crystal. I’m exhausted and frustrated and consider the fight, but her gaze softens as she offers me the fastest chocobo sent by the Order of the Twin Adders meant to deliver me to Costa del Sol. From there, she figures I might be fit enough to travel by aethryte, but a boat awaits me there nonetheless to ensure I get to Mor Dhona before tomorrow’s end. In my state of exhaustion and irritation, I accept her offer and go.

               Knowing the hours of this Starlight Eve are few, it takes everything I have not to overexert the chocobo—it’s not his fault I’m in this situation. It’s deep into the night when I finally make it to Costa del Sol. The crew manning the boat waiting for me tries to usher me aboard, but I refuse. It’s not enough—not fast enough. No matter what either of us said or the toll my aether’s taken, I can’t lose even another minute of this holiday with the one I love most.

               Straining to hold myself together, I approach the crystal structure and my heart begs to return home. My body easily dissolves in the light, breaking down to the basis of all creation and whisking me away.

               A stinging pain is first brought to my awareness. It rolls across my body, pulsing as my aether solidifies. The sensation distorts my balance, which instigates a nausea that tries to bring me down. It’s been a long time since I’ve had an aether sickness so severe.

               But I’m home.

               When I finally get some sort of grip, I glance around. Not a soul disturbs the peace Revenant’s Toll and the snow welcomes me home with a gentle flurry that brings a new beauty to Mor Dhona. Still, it has nothing on the woman waiting for me.

               Dragging lead feet, ignoring the tingling pain, I push my way into The Rising Stones and kick off my sopping boots. My duties not quite finished—I collected my gifts to the others in my adventure—I amble further inside towards the festive tree Tataru and F’lhaminn decorated.

               I freeze and the final bag of gifts slips to the floor.

               Curled up beneath the tree, beautifully blessed by the magical light of the decorations, is Y’shtola. Tears peak in my eyes and my heart swells. She might be waspish at times or stubbornly taciturn, but I’m hopelessly in love with this woman. Despite it all being against me, she had faith I’d be here.

               Weak knees easily bring me down beside her. Brushing the hair from her face are my careful fingers once freed from stuffy gloves. Perhaps I was too rough or maybe my touch is too frigid, because my snoozing partner begins to stir. My heart skips when her eyes flutter open, highlighted by the same light glowing softly around us.

               Once her gaze clears, a sweet smile pulls at her lips. “I knew you’d make it.”

               “With everything I’ve ever wanted waiting for me under the tree, how could I not?”

               The most perfect blush bleeds across her nose, but her eyes flicker to the tree as she sits up. “I was not waiting under the tree.” Even so exceptionally late into the night, she’s stubborn.

               I laugh. “Then what are you doing out here?”

               “I told Tataru I’d close The Rising Stones for her tonight.” I quirk a brow but she picks up the book at her side. “But it seemed a shame to waste candles when I already had a perfectly good source of light.”

               “Ever in pursuit of knowledge, even on Starlight’s Eve,” I hum, pulling her closer to press a kiss to her temple.

               Through a yawn, she replies, “Always.”

               Bringing the woman into my arms, I stand. “I love you, Shtola.”

               She settles in, resting her head on my shoulder. Blood rushes into my face when I see the smallest of content smiles on her lips. “I love you too.”

               With that, I lock up The Rising Stones and carry my dearest to bed. She’s already fast asleep by the time I lay her down, still holding to her tome. Somehow, I sneak the book from her grasp to set aside and get dressed for bed. The moment I slip beneath the covers, Y’shtola pulls me closer, hooking her leg across my waist and pressing against my chest. Pure bliss courses through me as I hold onto her, relieved to have made it in time to spend the holiday with her. And the look of sheer peace on her face is all I could’ve asked for this year.

~~~Bonus~~~

               “Ack! Shtola! That hurts!”

               Another burst of pain shoots through me as she strikes my shoulder a second time.

               “It wouldn’t hurt at all if you didn’t push yourself,” she scorns. From across the room, I can see Thancred’s dumb, smug face as he sips his ale. “Of all people, you should know the dangers of over-teleportation. Count yourself lucky that the damage appears superficial. Still, mending is going to take several days. You won’t be going anywhere until you’re healed.”

               “What if someone’s in danger?”

               “If you’ve forgotten, managing the realm’s problems was the job of the Scions before you came along and we got along just fine.”

               I just can’t bite my tongue around her. “Wasn’t I brought in to fight primals because none of you could?”

               Instant regret. I choke on a strangled cry as that uncomfortable wave of agony overwhelms me.

               “Eorzea be damned, you will stay put until I say so.”

               Sulking, I stick my tongue out at her. She retaliates by pinching at my cheek and aggravating damage.

               “Ow ow ow! Okay! I got it! I’ll stay put!”

               Y’shtola releases her victim and smiles. “Good.”

               I gingerly rub at my sore face. “Do I get to at least enjoy my Starlight Gift while I’m cooped up here?”

               She rolls her eyes but there’s a smile all the same. Much softer this time, she runs her hand through my hair. “Perhaps if you behave. Would you prefer it with or without the wrapping?”

               That ensnares my interest. “Does it come with a bow?”

               “I’m sure I could find one lying about,” she purrs.

               The beautifully decorated tree beside us draws her attention. Reaching down, she plucks a bow from the nearest gift and nestles it into her hair.

               There’s a snort followed by a bout of hacking. I receive a healthy dose of schadenfreude when I see Thancred choking. From between concerned Alphinaud and G’raha, I see him glance to me. Y’shtola, paying him barely any attention, lets me pull her into my lap where I purposefully rest my head against her chest. He glares, flipping me the bird, which I return two-fold.

               “What are you doing?”

               Snapping my gaze to her, I answer, “Nothing, my dearest. Happy Starlight.”

               It’s plain to see she doesn’t believe me, but she lets it slide, granting me a gentle kiss. “Happy Starlight, my love.”

~~~~~

Nova’s Final Fantasy Masterlist

[littlemisspascal]

Death and an Angel part 14.5

Death!Din x Cupid F!Reader

Summary:  And it’s unbelievable, truly, that he’s found someone who makes him feel as though he’s flying and falling simultaneously. 

Rating: T

Word Count: 3,701

Warnings: angst, dialogue heavy, language, angst, Violence, plot plot plot, did I mention angst? Cuz it’s here

Author Note: Texas weather is no laughing matter and never have I hated snow more than these last few days. This is definitely more of a transition segment so I wrote shorter snippets as a result, but there is some serious plot development nevertheless. The response to last chapter was so amazing I can’t thank everyone enough for all the love and support 💖💖💖

Links to Part 1 and Part 14 and Part 15

Cross-posted on AO3.

Photo Inspiration:

Ahsoka hijacks the Razor Crest as soon as Din teleports her aboard the ship. She pushes Din out of the cockpit, refusing to let him so much as glimpse the coordinates of the destination she inputs into the nav computer. The Oracle hadn’t been kidding when she said she didn’t trust him going alone to rescue his soulmate.

Bo-Katan hadn’t been phased by Ahsoka’s arrival, adapting to her presence with the same ease as a duck to water. However, Din couldn’t help noticing the moment her mask of cool indifference slipped when Ahsoka asked the reaper to stay in the cockpit with her, claiming they had important matters to discuss. 

Din climbs down the ladder into the hull, recognizing that the conversation about to ensue is not one he needs to be involved in. Fingers twitching restlessly, he commits himself to checking each of the weapons in his armory, sharpening his vibroblades and loading a set of whistling birds into his vambrace. He’d made a promise to Ahsoka against killing Moff Gideon, but he’d made no vow against scarring the Seraph beyond recognition.

When Din’s finished with him, Gideon will be a warning to the rest of the galaxy what happens if you steal from Death. 

He stills at the thrum of satisfaction that runs through his body at the thought of pressing Gideon’s eyeballs out with his thumbs. The darkness within him has grown stronger since he killed Hess and it’s becoming an increasingly harder challenge denying its craving for bloodshed. If not for Ahsoka’s intervention, he would have reaped Xi’an’s soul, breaking another sacred rule. He should feel grateful, but the darkness expresses annoyance instead, upset to have been denied its kill. 

There is a thought that has been plaguing the back of his mind, shackled in the same corner as his other doubts and regrets. He once had iron control over his powers and emotions, but now he’s holding onto his human façade by a mere thread. So slowly he hadn’t even been aware it was happening, his darkness has usurped his morality. 

He’s meant to be a neutral entity, but when he looks at his reflection in the fresher mirror all he sees is a weapon. 

Obsidian orbs have replaced brown eyes. Flawless tan skin has become dissected by lines of ink that once were blue veins. 

Darkness is corrupting him from the inside out, making him a slave to the power he once mastered.

And he doesn’t have a fucking clue how to stop it. 

~~

Bo-Katan joins him in the hull an hour later. She doesn’t say anything , just leans against the wall across from him, and Din continues cleaning the barrel of his amban rifle as if he doesn’t see her. 

The silence isn’t tense or uncomfortable, but he feels her gaze trying to penetrate his helmet. He knows the reaper well-enough to tell there is a question on her mind, but her hesitance to voice it unsettles him. Bo-Katan rarely holds her tongue around him, preferring blunt honesty over sugarcoating, which means whatever is on her mind must be serious. 

He bites back a sigh when she starts restlessly shifting in place and pauses his task. “Ahsoka told you,” he says at last.

“That Moff Gideon fucked with our lives?” Bo-Katan snorts humorlessly. “Yeah, she showed me everything.”

“I’m sorry about your sister.”

“Me too. But it’s...good not being in the dark anymore. I needed to hear the truth,” she replies stoically, but the pointless adjustment of her headband betrays her internal strife. There is a moment of pause before she looks at him again. “I heard about your promise,” she says, and it’s not really a question, except that it is.

Din’s fingers tighten around the rifle. “Did she make you swear the same one?”

“No.” Bo-Katan shakes her head. “No, she didn’t.”

He’s not surprised by the answer. He actually thinks he should have expected it, considering the universe has always held him to a stricter standard than other entities. 

“Ahsoka made it clear to me that this is something between you, Gideon, and your angel alone. I cannot interfere just like you cannot kill him.”

There is bitter resignation in her tone. He recognizes it because he felt the same when he made his promise to Ahsoka. No one likes being told no when they want something. But this—knowing with absolute certainty Gideon is the one responsible for hurting their loved ones and being told you can’t do anything to avenge them? This is the kind of pain that will linger for years to come as an ache in their bones and a scar over their hearts.

It isn’t fair. But Din’s lived long enough to know the universe never intended life to be that way.

“Can I ask you a favor?” Bo-Katan asks, pulling him out of his thoughts.

He blinks at her, realizing this is the question she’d been withholding since she came down the ladder. Never has she asked him a request before. “What is it?”

“You must separate Gideon from the Darksaber,” she answers, expression one of absolute seriousness. “The Armorer warned my people if the Lightsaber was ever mishandled, it would turn against the wielder by transforming into the Darksaber. Instead of empowering you, it deceives you. Fills your head with delusions until you lose your grip on reality entirely.”

“And you want to spare Gideon’s sanity?” Din asks slowly.

“Of course not. The son of a bitch deserves to be punished for his crimes. Even if I did want to,” her lips curl into a snarl at the thought, “there’s no way of undoing the damage done to his mind. What I want is for the weapon to be returned to the Armorer. She’s the only one who can properly dispose of it.”

“Right,” he agrees quietly. Anything that comes out of the Armorer’s forge is built to last the length of eternity. He could toss the Darksaber into the center of a sun and it’d remain whole and unaffected, waiting to twist the mind of the next wielder. Nodding his head, he assures her, “I’ll take care of it, even if I have to cut off his hands.”

“Good.”

~~

Din paces the length of the hull, each thud of his boots making contact with the metal floor blends with the low hum of the engines. Usually he’d ignore the creaks and groans of his home, but the metallic symphony is the only thing capable of drowning out the thoughts in his head urging him to storm the cockpit and retake control from Ahsoka.

“Pacing isn’t going to make us arrive any quicker,” Bo-Katan tells him, not even bothering to open her eyes as she lounges atop one of his storage crates. “Ahsoka said it will be another hour at least.”

He has a retort ready on his tongue when a voice calls out his name from somewhere beyond the Razor Crest.

“Din!”

Din freezes in place as unexpected, heart-wrenching hope slices through his chest. He knows that voice. It’s his favorite in all the galaxy.

“Death?” Bo-Katan asks, concerned by his stillness. “What’s wrong?”

He tentatively reaches out towards the bond, giving it the slightest of tugs. When he feels the distant flicker of a reaction on the other end from his angel he nearly forgets how to breathe.

“The bond,” he murmurs, voice thick with awe and relief. “I can feel it again.”

Longing fills his chest where the hollowness used to reside now that the invisible block separating them is gone. It wraps around his heart, squeezing so tightly he nearly falls to his knees. Din pulls at the bond again on impulse, possessed by the all-consuming need to see her, to have her at his side where she’ll be safe.

The bond protests the harsh treatment, too weak to physically bring them together across the vast distance separating them. He snarls a curse under his breath, hating being helpless to protect her. It’s unfair, he finds himself thinking for a second time. Unfair how it hurts more now being able to feel her presence compared to when he couldn’t at all.

A paper airplane flickers into existence on the horizon of his mind, flying straight into his hand when he reaches out for it. I can’t leave this place. Not yet, the note says. The words themselves are unsettling, but it’s the strength of the emotions she’s attached that has him reeling with shock. For one crazy, electrifying moment he thinks he’s passed onto the afterlife. 

Another note arrives. I miss you, Din. I want to see you so much it hurts. And it’s unbelievable, truly, that he’s found someone who makes him feel as though he’s flying and falling simultaneously. 

As he sends a message of his own, never has he been more certain that if anyone can put an end to the darkness inside of him—it’s her.

~~

“The Moff is an expert when it comes to defensive warding,” Ahsoka says as the three of them stand looking up at a canyon wall that extends in either direction as far as their eyes can see. “But even he can’t hide from my sight.”

Din scuffs at the salt-covered ground with his boot, still coming to terms with the fact all this time Gideon’s been hiding out on Crait of all planets. As much as he wants to believe Ahsoka’s right, his powers can’t detect even the barest hint of the Seraph’s presence.  

Bo-Katan’s eyebrows arch with skepticism. “You’re sure this is the right place? It’s kind of remote.”

“Perfect for building an army,” Ahsoka replies without missing a beat.

Din exchanges a look with his reaper, realizing this is the first time either of them are hearing about this. 

“Gideon has an army?” he asks. “Who—”

“Mercenaries,” she interrupts, turning around to face them. Her blue eyes are distant and cloudy, entranced by a vision. “When I break the warding, all but one will meet the end of their mortal lives attempting to overpower us.”

“All but one? I don’t think so.” Bo-Katan rests her hands deliberately on her blaster pistols. “Anyone who works for Gideon is an enemy in my book.”

“Migs Mayfeld is not to be harmed.” There is steel in Ahsoka’s voice as she blinks back into the present moment.

Din nudges Bo-Katan with his arm when it looks like she wants to continue arguing. The reaper huffs a quiet breath of annoyance, but eventually jerks her head in the tiniest nod of compliance. 

Ahsoka grabs her twin sabers from her belt and ignites their blue blades. She handles her weapons with deadly grace, altering her appearance from peaceful Oracle to fierce and cunning warrior. Turning back to the canyon wall, her gaze trails over the red-brown rocks only to pause and narrow at seemingly random points.

Bo-Katan tries and fails to follow her line of vision. “What are you—”

The Oracle leaps into the air with surprising agility, lashing out with her sabers against the rock. Blinding light bursts forth from the point of collision followed by a flickering glimpse of a gigantic metal door. 

“—looking at,” Bo-Katan finishes quietly, watching Ahsoka swing herself higher to attack another portion of the canyon wall where the next segment of warding is hidden. 

There is something undeniably satisfying about seeing the door materialize as the wardings cloaking it are destroyed. Every precise strike of Ahsoka’s sabers brings Din one step closer to reuniting with his soulmate.

As if spurred by the mere thought of her, fear ripples across the bond like a gust of icy wind, stopping his heart cold. His angel is terrified. Din reaches out as far as the bond will allow in its fragile state, trying to get her attention by pulling at it and shouting her name, but none of his attempts breach the storm of panic. 

“She needs me,” he mutters to himself, stepping forward with clenched fists. His vision narrows until all he can see is the door in front of him, an obstacle that must be dealt with. “She needs my help.”

“Wait,” Bo-Katan calls out, but her voice sounds as if it’s coming from thousands of miles away. “Ahsoka isn’t finished with the warding yet!”

If he were capable of rational thought in that moment, he would have heeded her warning. As it is, he summons his power into the palm of his hand, the darkness inside of him crowing in wicked delight. He winds his arm back, preparing to slam his fist against the door, only for a whipcord to wrap around his wrist with an audible zip. 

He’s pulled backwards onto the ground, breath knocked from his lungs as he lands with a heavy thud. Bo-Katan appears not a second later and pins him in place by straddling his waist. The darkness is demanding he push her aside, knowing with absolute certainty the reaper is no match against him, and it takes all his strength to wrestle the urge under control. 

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” She glares at him, eyes resembling green flames eager to incinerate him.

“I—” he rasps, breathing heavily. His hand starts trembling, a burning itch under his skin. “I can feel her fear. She needs me.”

Bo-Katan blows out a long, frustrated breath. “Well, shit.” She jostles him then, forcing his head to momentarily clear as his helmet smacks the ground. “Look, soulmates are soulmates for a reason, right? I heard it’s like being two halves of the same whole. So if your soulmate is anything like you, she’s not going to give up without a fight. You have to trust she can take care of herself right now. That she’ll be fine.”

Din bristles. Trust is not the issue here. There is no one he trusts more than his angel—not Bo-Katan, not Ahsoka, not even Kuiil. The issue is he’s being asked to deny the instinct to shield her from danger which is woven into every cell of his being.

“She’ll be fine.” The words come out sounding sharp around the edges, cutting his tongue like shrapnel. “Everything will be fine.”

Bo-Katan disconnects the whipcord and rises to full height, apparently satisfied by his agreement. Din pushes himself onto his feet at a slower pace, his hand still shaking as if it's electric. He looks down at it, noticing for the first time the flesh is gone, replaced entirely by shadow. His expression tightens as he observes the change, realizing the black tendrils are slowly creeping up towards his wrist. 

An alarm rings out, reverberating off the canyon walls like an explosion. Din’s gaze snaps up just as Ahsoka lands on the ground in a defensive crouch. Now that it's been fully unveiled, the door bears a striking resemblance to ones he’s seen at military fortresses across the galaxy, ridiculously massive to intimidate enemies and impenetrable from outside attacks. It makes sense, he thinks with a scoff, someone as power-hungry as Gideon claiming an abandoned base as their lair. Without the wardings, Din is able to detect the massive number of souls gathering on the other side, resembling vermin crawling over one another in their haste to arm themselves. 

He searches for his angel’s soul, even just a glimpse of her bright light, only for his powers to instead encounter a massive cloud of dark, negatively-charged energy within a distant corner of the underground tunnel system. It fills an entire room, prohibiting him from sensing if anyone is inside. There is something strangely familiar about the energy, like he’s encountered its essence before, but he can’t recall the specifics of when or where. 

“It’s time.” 

Ahsoka’s voice reels his focus back to his physical surroundings. He notices the way her grip on her sabers tightens in anticipation and out of the corner of his eye Bo-Katan withdraws her blasters from their holsters.

The bottom of the door begins to raise with an earsplitting groan, but the mercenaries only wait the minimum amount of time it takes to pass under without hitting their heads to start charging forward. 

Every mortal has a beginning and an end just like everything else in the galaxy. These mercenaries are no exceptions, having long sealed their fates when they agreed to accept Gideon’s payment. So when Din’s shadowy hand phases through a man’s chest and tears his heart out of its cavity, staining the white salt under their feet crimson as blood bursts from the vacant hole, Din tells himself he’s simply fulfilling destiny. 

He repeats it when he discharges an assault of whistling birds, each one puncturing the throats of each target they encounter with a shrill warcry. And also when he rips a devaronian’s horn out of his head, a fragment of skull and bits of brain matter still gruesomely attached. 

Again and again, with each permanently silenced voice and every shattered fragile bone, destiny is fulfilled. 

~~

Din would be lying if he said he’s never wondered what it would be like to die. To pass on from this world into a new realm for him to explore. He’s imagined the idyllic afterlife mortals have written poems and novels about, describing it as a blissful safe haven where sorrow and tragedy have no definition because they do not exist. He’s familiar with their opinions of damnation’s appearance, too, as an infernal place of fire and brimstone and screaming.

They were wrong about that.

Damnation is not a distant hell. It is found in an underground lair on Crait. 

Instead of flames and sulfur, a Cupid’s blood is split and a soulmate bond is snapped in half. 

Instead of screaming, a madman laughs.

“I’ve waited so long for this moment,” Gideon says through his chuckles, hauling himself onto his feet. His voice is an abrasive rasp, as if he’s shredded his vocal cords by screaming. “I’ve had to be patient, wait to find your weakness so I could catch your attention. It’s a shame, really, she had to be the one you fell for. She was quite the little spitfire.”

Din stares at his soulmate’s motionless body, frozen in place. Please, he pulls at his severed half of the bond, resolutely ignoring how cold it feels. Open your eyes, angel. Don’t leave me. Please.

There is no response. Just heartbreaking silence.

“I sense your anger, your hurt, and grief. Those are mortal emotions.” The Seraph grimaces in disgust, then lets out a low hiss when he agitates the wounds on his face. “By living amongst their kind you’ve forgotten your true potential. You are not their equal, Death. You are their superior. Immortals are meant to be better than them. To rule over every aspect of their pitiful lives.”

“I don’t want to rule anyone,” Din says, dragging his eyes away from his angel to glare at Gideon. Both his hands begin to shake as his mind plunges into a gaping abyss of remorse and despair. “I just want a life with her.”

“Even dead, she continues to blind you.”

Din snarls viciously in response. His control is pushed closer to the brink, holding on by mere fingertips, and darkness engulfs the entire room as a result. 

The glow of the Darksaber persists, reflecting off his beskar and Gideon’s armor. It reminds him of moonlight, and he thinks for all that Bo-Katan warned him about the weapon’s sinful qualities, she did not mention its beauty. Even Ahsoka’s vision had failed to truly capture its radiance, just as a holovid can never compete with a face-to-face conversation. 

His powers are drawn to the Darksaber. The energy it emits matches the one encountered earlier when searching the tunnels for his angel’s aura. This close, there is no ignoring its familiarity, not when his brain feels seconds away from exploding. 

“I used to believe love conquers all,” Gideon prattles on, seemingly oblivious to Din’s torment. “I chose it as the Cupid motto because I thought there was nothing mortals cared more about than the health and happiness of their loved ones. Only after our fateful encounter did the Lightsaber reveal to me the truth.”

Lightsaber? Din’s head jerks up to stare at him, biting back a wince when the throbbing in the back of his mind intensifies at the movement. Does Gideon not realize the weapon has transformed? 

By connecting Ahsoka’s claim that Gideon didn’t fully understand the consequence of corrupting the Lightsaber with Bo-Katan’s explanation that the Darksaber deceives its wielder, the answer is an obvious one: he doesn’t.

Gideon mistakes Din’s confusion for interest and his lips slowly curl into a smile. “Mors aeterna. It means—”

“Death is eternal.” The translation slips unbiddenly from Din’s lips before he even realizes his mouth has opened.

“There is no one more feared or respected than you. But for what reason? What have you done to earn your reputation?” Gideon demands, spit flying as his anger flares. “You are no more than the universe’s favorite puppet. Mindlessly obedient to its every demand.” 

Hearing the truth always hurts, but hearing it from Gideon is especially torturous. Din’s creed to the universe has dictated his actions the entirety of his existence. He never fought against its orders, never thought of his own desires as more important than what it wanted.

Until he matched with his soulmate. She changed his priorities and shifted the center of his entire world by revealing to him even Death could experience love. 

There had been no hesitation when he broke his creed for her.

And he doesn’t hesitate breaking Ahsoka’s promise now.

“I just murdered your soulmate right in front of you and you do nothing. Did you ever love her at all?”

“I do.”

Din summons every trace of power and darkness he possesses and combines them together within his core—a volatile, pulsating mass of pure chaos. His beskar armor starts to crack and chip away, unable to withstand the increasing pressure. 

He thinks of his angel’s smiling face, the sound of her laughter, how bright her soul shines, and he thinks all those things are gone now. Not even a chance to say goodbye.

“More than anything.”

And Death lets go.

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[carnationcreation]

Hi! I have a request for a Jason x reader. Jason and the reader are best friends and/or dating. One day, the reader needs to be rescued by the Power Rangers. The reader recognizes Jason's voice and confronts him about it. Thanks so much! 💞

TITLE: Dear Diary (Jason Lee Scott x reader)

✌🏻Masterlist Taglist, Requests, and Works in progress!

Please check bio to see if requests are open before sending any in! 

Request: Hi! I have a request for a Jason x reader. Jason and the reader are best friends and/or dating. One day, the reader needs to be rescued by the Power Rangers. The reader recognizes Jason's voice and confronts him about it. Thanks so much! 💞

Prompt/summary:  Jason keeps running off from his best friend, until a chance encounter reveals a secret he wanted to keep hidden. 

Word Count: 1,705

Authors note: Italics are written in a diary. Tbh I’m really feeling this format and might do more like this in the future!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Diary, 

The past few days have been… strange. I’m not even sure how to properly explain it, but I think Jason’s hiding something from me.

He was supposed to meet me at the youth center yesterday to help me with some of my self defense moves I learned in class that day. He never showed up though.

“I’m so sorry,” Jason said over the phone. It was almost midnight when he called my house, luckily my parents were out of town so it wasn’t a problem.

I sighed, “It’s fine Jace. We can just go over them some next week.”

“I promise I won’t miss it,” he said, “Besides I like seeing you kick ass.”

“Oh shut up,” I said, he could probably hear my smile through the phone.

And over the weekend he said we could go out to lunch to celebrate being nominated for senior homecoming candidates. He was almost an hour late.

“I’m sorry I’m late!” Jason said. He sat down at the table and dug into some chips and salsa.

“You’re lucky I didn’t get up and leave earlier Mr. Jason Lee,” I said, closing the book I had open on the table.

“I know, I know, I’m the worst best friend ever.”

I don’t know what’s going on with him. In school I’ll try to stop him in the hallway but he’s always in a rush to get somewhere. It’s really making me worry.

I just really want my best friend back.

I closed the diary and wrapped the elastic cord around it to keep it closed before it went into my bag. The warm sun felt amazing on my face. The park was bustling today as people of Angel Grove enjoyed the clear sunny day.

I hadn’t heard from Jason in a few days. His absence was really starting to make me worried. Yeah, I had other friends, but Jason and I had been best friends for years ever since we met in primary school. 

The sound of laughter made me look up. I watched as Jason passed by with no more than a glance in my direction.

I grabbed my bag before trying to catch up to them, “Jason!”

He turned around with a slightly surprised expression on his face.

“Hey,” I tried to smile and not make things awkward, “Are we gonna meet up at the Youth Center this Friday?”

“Oh… I’m sorry (Y/n) but the gang and I already had plans.”

My heart sunk as I looked at his new group of friends with a solemn expression, “Oh, alright then. Guess I’ll catch you later…”

I tried so hard to not let the pain come out in my words, but I never was a good actor. I left the park holding back tears and walked all the way home with them staining my cheeks.

 ~~~

Three weeks flew by in a hurry and I was sucked into the frenzy of the prom committee. To my surprise (and some dismay) Jason’s new friends had volunteered to help decorate the gymnasium. The exact area I was in charge of. Luckily I was too busy to even dwell on the fact that my ex-bestfriend came to talk to them more than he did me. 

“Hey (Y/n),” Kimberly said, “Which spot do you think would be best for the drink table?”

“Over by the photo booth,” I said, writing down every task we had gotten done that day on a clipboard. I must’ve gotten so caught up in my work I didn’t realize that Jason’s whole friend group had entered the gym.

“Wow! This place looks amazing!” Trini said.

Kimberly smiled, “Yeah all thanks to (Y/n).”

“It was no big deal. Mrs. Saslow bought all the decorations we just had to set them up.”

“Well,” Billy adjusted his glasses, “You did a phenomenal job coordinating everything.”

“Thanks guys.”

My eyes caught Jason and I looked away quickly. Maybe it was the awkward silence, or maybe they were in a rush, but Trini quickly led the boys back to the hallway to help her bring in more folding chairs.

“What happened between you and Jason?” Kimberly asked while putting a light blue tablecloth over the drink table.

“Nothing.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” she said, “Everytime you’re around him anymore you just seem so sad. You two used to be inseparable and everyone knew it.”

“I mean it literally, nothing happened. He kept promising to hang out and do all the things we used to do together but then never did. I’m not even sure why.”

Kimberly sighed, “I promise, Jason’s just going through a lot right now.”

She must’ve noticed the tears forming in my eyes when she placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

“Are you in love with him?”

“I- I’m not exactly sure,” I sighed.

Kimberly chuckled, “For you to be as heartbroken as you are whenever you see him there has to be something a little more than friendship there.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll figure it out one day, right now he doesn’t even want to be around me so I should just move on.”

“That’s not true.”

I huffed, “He hasn’t called or stopped to talk to me in three weeks Kimberly. He doesn’t want me around.”

“Kim! A little help here?” Zack yelled from the hallway.

Kimberly grabbed a napkin and the pen from my hand, “Here, call me this weekend and we can hang out instead. No stupid, idiotic boys, just some girl time.”

“Thanks Kimberly, I appreciate it.”

 ~~~

Dear Diary,

Jason finally got back to me today. He asked for us to meet up at the park. I’m not sure exactly why, but I’ll update you on it when I get back.

 The swings had always been my favorite part of the park, so as I sat and wrote the latest entry in my diary my legs swung back and forth slightly.

Wham!

My diary is knocked out of my hands and before I could react my arms were being tugged on by two weird gray looking creatures. One of them has rope in their hand as they lead me to the nearest tree. I swiveled my arm out of one's grip and knocked its legs out from under it. The other tries to do the same to me but I jump and flip it over onto it’s back before it even got the chance.

A bright flash goes off to my right knocking me to the ground.

When I finally get my bearings I'm being tied to the tree by those weird creatures.

From the corner of my eye I see people in bright colored suits running towards the gold monster. 

Holy shit, it's the power rangers. 

“Stop right there Goldar!” the one in red yelled.

My eyes narrow as I try to place where I had heard that voice before. I barely even noticed some of the fighting as I wracked my brain trying to think. He sounded so familiar.

One of the rangers came crashing into me with a hard hit to my stomach.

“Sorry!” the girl in pink yelled.

Wait a second…

Finally the monster teleported away and the rangers rushed over to untie me from the tree.

“You’re safe now,” the one in the black suit said.

“Here’s your stuff,” the yellow ranger said.

“Uhh, thanks…”

“Are you alright?” the red ranger said. Hearing his voice for a second time made everything click.

“Jason?”

I could visibly see him freeze up causing me to chuckle, “Is it really you?”

With a sigh him and the rest of the rangers demorphed. In front of me stood Kim, Zack, Billy, Trini, and a really embarrassed looking Jason. 

“I promise I was on my way to meet you.”

“It’s alright,” I said, picking up my bag and grabbing my diary from Trini, “It looks to me like you had bigger problems to handle at the moment.”

“Yeah,” he said shyly. 

“What did you need to meet me here for?” I asked.

“Oh!” Kimberly yelled, “You guys wait here, Jason I’ll let you know when it’s ready!”

“When what’s ready?”

“Just don’t worry about it, see you guys later!” Billy said as he, Zack, and Trini took off after Kimberly.

I looked to Jason only for him to smile shyly and take my hand. My heart was racing as he led me over to the swings. Was his hand always this nice to hold? Why hadn’t I noticed this before?

“I’m really sorry for avoiding you. I promise I was trying to keep you safe.”

“Safe?” I asked, “Safe from what?”

“Rita. The one who keeps sending all these monsters. I promise I’ll make it up to you, whatever way you want me to.”

“I understand Jace, but…”

“But what?”

“Hmmm maybe a proper dinner at our favorite restaurant on main street might help me forgive you.”

He chuckled, “It’s a deal, right after this though.”

“After what?”

The bracelet on his wrist went off before he could answer me, “Jason! We’re ready!”

He smiled and grabbed my hand again, leading me down the path that leads to the parks gazebo.

“Oh, wait,” he said, stopping me before we could round the corner, “You, uh, might wanna cover your eyes for a second.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see, please?”

“Fine,” I huffed.

He placed my hands over my eyes before guiding me by the small of my back. Which made my heart beat even faster. 

“Alright, open them.”

I pulled my hands away from my face and looked around in awe. Fairy lights had been strung around the banisters and a giant sign was placed in front of where he stood.

“PROM?”

A laugh rang out from my chest as I jumped into his arms in a bonecrushing hug.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes you dummy!”

“She said yes!” he yelled.

“YAY!” the rest of the rangers yelled and clapped from the edge of the clearing where the gazebo stood.

I laughed as he finally set my feet on the ground, blushing madly from his friend's reaction. 

He kissed me gently on my forehead making me smile and lean my head on his chest.

 Dear Diary,

He made it up to me. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[itsclydebitches]

To be fair, as Ozpin describes it, you don't NEED a blueprint, it just really helps get the specifics you want down, which is why the only thing RWBY needed to make the portals was to point at the vault and go "Work like that." and use blueprints to specify where the portals should appear. Which is... You know, even more bullshit and OP. Hell, if 'can't bring back the dead' and 'Only one at a time' are the only rules; can this dude make a copy of the relics? Can we wish for more wishes?

To me Ozpin’s speech made it sound like it was a requirement, but it’s admittedly a wishy-washy explanation. 

So Jaune is like, let’s teleport everyone to safety, or even to another kingdom!

To which Oscar replies that you can’t just magic the problem away like that (even though that’s precisely what they’ll end up doing). 

Ozpin then comes in to describe Ambrosius as a “character” (implying here that he’s difficult to work with) and lays out the requirements: You can get anything you want, but you have to be able to explain what you’re getting. “Like any craftsman, he needs blueprints” or another reference of some kind. Though not required, you have a better chance of getting what you want if you can point to what you want him to build in the real world, implying that getting duplicates of what already exists is easier than building something the world hasn’t managed to create on its own yet. But even then, you need knowledge of how this things works, either personal or through blueprints. Ambrosius won’t do that work for you (which is why Cinder’s fire wish does work. She can literally summon fire up and say, “Make more of this please.”) 

The issues in the Penny wish aside, when Weiss tries to ask for a way to get everyone to Vacuo  — Jaune’s original idea  — Ambrosius lays out the stipulations of achieving that: If you want to move an entire population to another kingdom you need to provide exact coordinates for where every door will appear, an explanation for how to bend time and space, and then the coordinates for where everyone is coming out. 

The group... does not do this. First, I personally fail to understand how the vault is the solution here. Weiss says they need to funnel everyone through one place, presumably getting rid of the door coordinate problems, which is why when the episode aired I thought they were going to bring all of Atlas to this vault. They don’t need to figure out where to put a thousand different portals because they’re just telling Ambrosius to build their gateway here, the spot we’re standing on. That’s your reference. Instead, the group still gets portals, but they just lead to a pit-stop first? Second, we’re thus left with them getting portals they couldn’t provide a reference for, let alone say where precisely they’ll all open up. Weiss shows Ambrosius an image of “AMC HQ” and “SHIPMENT SYSTEMS” and then Ambrosius immediately grants their wish, acting like they’ve thought of everything... even though these blueprints don’t seem to fulfill any of his needs. The winter vault does not tell him how to make a portal to a void place that then leads to Vacuo, it tells him how to make more entryways into the winter vault. Showing him what I assume are images of the kingdom does not tell him where to put the portals. Weiss never says, “We want 100 portals at these exact coordinates,” she just shows Ambrosius schematics the viewer barely has time to see and I suppose he decides how many to make and where they’ll go all on his own, despite requiring both pieces of information. 

Third, the vault doesn’t solve the issue of bending time and space. Space maybe given that it exists in its own pocket dimension, but time? And fourth, what coordinates did they give for where the refugees would come out? Did someone just randomly have that Vacuo info on hand? And if they did, why does the group act like they arrived in a place different from what they’d planned. The city should be dead ahead of them and it’s not. 

So there are all these questions of how the group’s “answers” to these problems hold up, questions about how much they actually decided (meaning, did they choose where the portals popped up like they were supposed to? If so, they’re then responsible for no one in the army making it out), as well as questions about how much help Ambrosius just randomly gave them. Because it sounds like a lot. It looks like Ambrosius just gave Penny a human body because he’s nice like that, dodging the “can’t destroy” limitation by fulfilling the group’s additional wish that they... never expressed to him. It looks like Ambrosius just gave the people of Mantle and Atlas a bunch of portals despite lacking firm coordinates for them, or (arguably) a good explanation for how they work because rather than knowing how to build portals, it seems he just used the vault reference to create this pit-stop location. It looks like Ambrosius allowed them to bend time and space because... the vaults just exist? And it looks like Ambrosius just picked a random spot in Vacuo to let them out because the group didn’t provide that either. But why stop now when you’re already filling in so many gaps in the wish to begin with? 

It’s a terribly constructed scene and relies heavily on confusing the viewer. RT wrote a bunch of nonsense that sounded impressively complicated, had the group speak confidently like they were coming up with solutions, and had Ambrosius congratulate them on their genius every few sentences so the audience is less likely to go, “Wait, does any of this actually make sense?” Yeah, at this point I think they could wish for more Relics... but only if Ruby is the one asking for that wish. Throw anyone else in that situation and they’d get roadblocked by magical limitations, but Ruby’s group skates by on sounding smart while, in reality, getting a whole lot of unexplained help. At this point I wish they’d just introduced the idea that, as creations of the God of Light, all the relic spirits are pre-disposed towards helping the good guys (meaning, those working to fulfill the God’s wish of uniting the people). At least then we’d have an explanation for the number of times Jinn and Ambrosius seem to go against their nature to assist Ruby, other than the meta explanation of her being the main character. 

[cuthian]

Music Gives Color - JatP Peterpatter Oneshot

HI EVERYONE!

I wrote this in like three-ish hours. It's one AM 😅 It's probably full of mistakes and both boys are all over the place, but I love the idea of this so much that I couldn't wait for it to be beta'd to post!

Apologies for any and all mistakes.

Love Annaelle

PS Comments are love and make my day ❤️

Music Gives Color

“Music gives color to the air of the moment.” – Karl Lagerfeld

Reggie

Reggie hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about soulmates in general. When he’d been alive, it hadn’t even been on his radar—he’d been too caught up in the band, too caught up in Luke’s magnetic enthusiasm for their music to even think about real romantic relationships—and now that they were dead… well, they were dead.

Even if he happened to run into his soulmate now, they’d have to be dead too for him to even be able to know. He couldn’t exactly go around kissing lifers.  

It wasn’t a big deal.

It was much easier now to tease Luke so he could make Alex smile again, to wipe that devastated, hurt look from his face because Alex should never look like that—and Luke was an easy target, really.

It had, however, not been his smartest idea.

Chemistry.

“You guys ooze chemistry.”

“I have chemistry with everyone.”

And the thing was that Reggie knew that Luke wasn’t lying; he and Luke had been sharing a mic on stage for years because people lovedtheir chemistry, because it got the crowd all riled up and it provided them both with a rush of adrenaline so strong it set them bouncing across their stage with the energy of ten hyperactive teenagers.

Reggie knew just how magnetic Luke could be when he set his mind to it because he’d been subjected to it for years, and still, he didn’t quite know how to deal with it, because… because Reggie liked girls—he’d always loved girls.

He loved the cheerleaders with their carefully coordinated routines and athletic bodies and skirts that were so short Reggie’s ears burned when he dared look, and he loved Cara Micheals, who’d sat next to him in English, with short curly hair and bright eyes and a silver lip ring on deep purple lipstick, and many, many of the girls that had attended their gigs and bought them drinks afterwards, that had danced with him and kissed him—

Reggie really liked girls.

But.

But.

He wasn’t blind. His bandmates—both of them, honestly—were unfairly attractive, and the worst of it was that Luke was absolutely 100% aware of it and was not opposed to using it to his advantage, which had led Reggie to his current… predicament.

He shouldn’t have teased Luke, should’ve expected the other boy to find a way to retaliate that would utterly humiliate Reggie—like singing at him, moving closer—closer than he usually stepped when they were sharing a mic, his big, beautiful eyes fixed on Reggie and Reggie couldn’t breathe.

Luke’s hand was warm and heavy on the back of his neck and he was so close that Reggie could count his eyelashes if he really wanted to, that he just needed to move forward the tiniest little bit and their lips would be touching—they’d be kissing and Reggie had never wanted to kiss someone so badly in his entire existence—

“Wow,” Alex interrupted, and Reggie was abruptly reminded that there were other people in the world too, that their best friend was watching and Reggie was straight.

There wasn’t—he didn’t—why would he want to kiss Luke?

“That—that was pretty hot,” he squeaked and God, why? That wasn’t what he’d been trying to say at all, but it was out there now and Luke was grinning that infuriatingly handsome grin at him, smug and self-satisfied and—and—

And Luke smirked, pulling his hand from Reggie’s neck, pecking the tips of his fingers and pressing those fingers to Reggie’s lips like a brand. The touch of them burned like a brand too, hot and searing and Reggie’s breath caught in his lungs. The world seemed to have slowed to a stop around him, and the familiar hue of Luke’s hair was changing, taking on a different shade of grey than it’d always been, warmer and softer and—and—oh.

Oh.

Those were colors.

He was seeing colors. He was seeing colors.

“Oh my God,” he breathed, his bass slipping from his slack grip, staring at Luke, who turned back to him with a mildly puzzled expression and—and his lips were pink—

“Reg?”

His head snapped towards Alex and his breath seized in his lungs again. Alex was looking at him with a concerned expression and Reggie would feel bad about making his friend worry after he’d just managed to make him smile again, but most of his higher brain power—if he ever had any—was occupied with trying to process that Luke had touched his lips and Reggie was seeing colors.

“Reg,” Luke said quietly, stepping closer again, “It was a joke, bro, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfor—”

“Your eyes are green,” Reggie blurted, and Luke’s eyes went wide with shock and Reggie heard Alex gasp beside him. “Oh my God,” he whispered again, still mesmerized by Luke’s eyes. “Your eyes are green. It’s so beautiful.”

“Wha—how—what?” Luke choked, and that snapped Reggie from his hazy thoughts.

“You—” he swallowed thickly, still unable to take his eyes off of Luke, “You don’t see it?” Something clenched painfully deep in his chest even before Luke shook his head, abrupt and searing and it was only because the other two didn’t move that he realized it wasn’t another one of those jolts—and that was worse.

He’d never heard of a soul bond being one-sided, but… but clearly his was, and that made sense because literally anyone with eyes could see how bad Luke had it for Julie, and it wasn’t even like Reggie had ever let himself look at Luke like this before, but now that he had, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to stop either, even if Luke would want him to.

“I’m sorry,” he choked, shaking his head and taking a step back, finally tearing his gaze from Luke’s eyes, eyes darting around the studio before falling on Alex, who was looking at him with an entirely bewildered expression and that—that was too much, he couldn’t deal with this—

“I gotta,” he choked, “I’m gonna go.”

He poofed out before Luke or Alex could say anything else.

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

Luke

Luke stood rooted to the spot, staring at the spot Reggie had just poofed away from in stunned disbelief.

“Alex,” he said shakily. “Alex, what just happened?”

When he finally managed to move, to turn so he could look at his other best friend, Alex was staring back at him with wide eyes and an utterly shocked expression. “I—I think—” Alex stuttered, “I think Reggie’s your soulmate. You—he was seeing colors, Luke.”

“But I don’t see anything,” Luke exclaimed desperately, his stomach churning in discomfort. “Everything looks exactly like it always has—how—h—how could that even be if—”

“I don’t know,” Alex shook his head. “I don’t know, Luke, but you—you gotta go after him.”

Luke turned to stare at the spot Reggie had disappeared from again, a knot forming in the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t that the idea of Reggie being his soulmate was a terrible one, or that he couldn’t see himself… falling in love with him—if he were really honest with himself it’d be all too easy to fall in love with his best friend—but… but he’d never let himself consider it because Reggie was about as straight as they came.

Or so he’d thought, anyway.

And then there was Julie to consider too.

Their relationship might be an unusual one, but their connection was real and for all the teasing and denying, Luke knew he had at least a little bit of a crush there too.

What the hell was he supposed to do with this?

“What am I supposed to say to him?” Luke asked, a little desperately, eyeing Alex pleadingly. “I’m sorry you somehow made you see colors but I don’t see any?”

“Luke,” Alex whispered, “You haven’t even kissed him yet. Maybe start there. If you still don’t see colors after that, then… you can cross that bridge when you get to it.” He smiled tremulously at Luke and added, “I know you’ve always been a little… sweet on him, I guess. It’s part of why we broke up. Maybe don’t dismiss this out of hand.”

Luke gaped, and Alex grinned. “Of course I knew, Luke. Now go find Reggie. And don’t come back until you two have sorted this out. I’ll tell Julie what’s going on.”

“You will?!” Luke squeaked, and Alex rolled his eyes.

“Yes, I will, because someone needs to tell her the truth, and you’re going to be busy,” he snorted, sitting back down behind the drums. “Now go.”

Luke nodded shakily, shut his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath before teleporting out of the studio and onto the beach, where he knew Reggie would be, because this was Reggie’s safe spot—this had been Reggie’s safe spot for as long as they’d known each other and Luke didn’t think that’d changed.

He was right.

Reggie was sitting on the sand right by the edge of the water, staring out at the ocean, arms wrapped around his folded legs, chin set on his knees. He looked small and hurt and Luke hated seeing him like this, hated that he had done this somehow, that he had made Reggie feel like this, even if he wasn’t sure how exactly, he’d been able to screw up a soul bond.

He moved closer and sat down next to Reggie, leaving a few inches of space between them, because he didn’t want Reggie to feel uncomfortable or pressured or stifled.

“I wish you could see it,” Reggie whispered, not taking his eyes off the horizon. “I never imagined there were so many shades of blue and green in the ocean, but—it’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful before.” When he turned to look at Luke, his eyes were rimmed with red and his cheeks were wet and Luke’s heart clenched, because he’d made Reggie cry.

He hated seeing Reggie cry.

“Reg,” Luke whispered, but Reggie shook his head, pulling away already, stumbling to his feet. Luke hastened to follow his example, nearly tripping over his own feet as he followed Reggie halfway up the beach before he managed to stop him.

“I haven’t,” Luke began, “Look, I don’t know—I don’t know what happened, but I know one thing.” Reggie was looking at him with wide eyes, and Luke was terrified, but he forged ahead anyway. “We haven’t kissed. I don’t know why or how we triggered a soul bond before a kiss, but Reg—I haven’t kissed you, so—” he swallowed thickly and glanced down at Reggie’s lips before looking back up at his eyes. “Can—can I?”

Reggie looked unsure if he could talk—a feeling Luke was intimately familiar with—but he gave a jekry nod, keeping his eyes steady on Luke’s, even though the eye contact was so intense Luke wasn’t sure he could stand it.

They stood like that for a moment longer, breaths mingling and eyes locked together. Luke was almost afraid of what would happen when Reggie’s skin touched his, but he didn’t hesitate to take one, final step closer, raising his hands so that the—too rough, too calloused—skin of his palms pressed to Reggie’s flushed cheeks—

There weren’t words to describe the feeling that filled Luke when Reggie’s skin touched his again, but it was overwhelming and warm, and he could’ve sworn he could feel Reggie’s heart, his life—even though they were dead—thrumming in the beat of his own heart.

Christ, they hadn’t even kissed yet and Luke already felt like he was going to fall to pieces.

Was this what forming a soul bond felt like?

“Reggie,” he breathed, eyes wide and prickling with unshed tears, tipping forward into Reggie’s arms easily when the other ghost laughed wetly and slipped his arms around Luke’s waist.

“Luke,” Reggie replied shakily, his arms warm and steady around Luke, holding him up and close as Luke pressed his face into the hollow of Reggie’s throat. “You feel that too, right?” Reggie whispered, gasping quietly when Luke sneakily slipped his hand up the back of his shirt, trailing his fingers over the knobs of Reggie’s spine gently, the fingers of his other hand tangling in his hair.

He couldn’t quite believe he was doing this.

He was in Reggie’s arms, holding him, breathing him in and he was real and he was Luke’s soulmate.

Luke’s soulmate had been right in front of him all this time and he hadn’t seen it.

“I’ve been waiting for you for years,” he whispered, half to himself, half to Reggie, but he wasn’t surprised the other boy heard him and pulled back to smile weakly at him. He slipped his hands from around Reggie’s waist to take Reggie’s face in his hands the way he’d never let himself admit he wanted to before. “I can’t believe we didn’t notice this before.”

Reggie grinned and dipped his head forward a little, resting his forehead against Luke’s. “Me either.”

Luke closed his eyes and exhaled blissfully. He hadn’t felt this good in years, and having Reggie’s hands on his skin was a sensation he didn’t really understand he missed until he finally felt it. “I don’t think I ever wanna let you go again,” he blurted impulsively, cheeks flushing immediately with embarrassment, though he refused to let go of Reggie.

“Luke…”

And he couldn’t, he couldn’t let Reggie say anything that would ruin the moment, that would remind Luke of the world beyond their little bubble. Instead he tipped up onto his toes, heart pounding in his chest and nerves burning through his veins as he pressed his lips to Reggie’s.

He held himself stiffly for a moment, unsure of what Reggie would do—for all that they’d admitted they might want this, Luke really wasn’t sure how Reggie would react—and suddenly uncomfortably aware that they were still in public, even if no one else could see them.

He was so caught up in his own head it took him a few long, tense heartbeats to realise that Reggie was kissing him back, and then—

Then Luke stopped thinking altogether.

Reggie’s fingers were slipping up into Luke’s hair as he stepped closer to him, and Luke could feel him, could feel the warmth of his every touch, could feel Reggie’s nerves and excitement and couldn’t get enough. They parted for a split-second, barely long enough to breathe—even though they didn’t need to anymore—before Luke surged up again and slipped his arms around Reggie’s neck, pressing himself against his… his soulmate.

Reggie was his soulmate.

Reggie, on his end, didn’t even hesitate, didn’t question if they should stop, should slow down. Instead, he moaned quietly against Luke’slips and opened his mouth, and the kiss went from passionate but contained to searing hot, and all Luke could do was fist a hand in Reggie’s hair and hold on as best as he could. He held on, because he was still so scared that if he let go, if he opened his eyes, his world would still exists in various shades of grey, and it would it would turn out Reggie wasn’t his soulmate.

Reggie seemed to know, seemed to understand Luke’s fear and apprehension better than Luke did, and slowed the kiss before he leaned back, rubbing his thumb across Luke’s lower lip gently. “I have to know too, Luke,” he said quietly, the words breathed into the miniscule space between them. “Please open your eyes. Tell me this is real.”

Luke’s dead heart stuttered at the words, and he exhaled shakily, leaning his forehead against Reggie’s, eyes squeezed shut for a moment longer before he opened his eyes.

“Oh,” he breathed, feeling like the air was punched out of his lungs.

He stared at Reggie’s eyes.

“You’re right,” he whispered, a watery grin spreading across his lips. “Green really is beautiful.”

And Reggie gaped at him for a second, smiling wonderously and awed, before he lunged at Luke again, wrapping his arms around the other boy in a tight, desperate embrace, pressing their lips together again. “Luke,” he gasped against the other ghost’s lips, digging his fingers into Luke’s shoulders. “Luke, you’re my soulmate. Luke, I’m not straight.”

Luke couldn’t help but laugh at that, delighted and exhilarated, and Reggie almost whined when he pulled back a little, and Luke felt absurdly, intensely gratified to see Reggie’s pupils blown so wide the black nearly eclipsed the green altogether. “Reggie,” Luke said, voice rough and breathless. “I love you.”

“Oh,” Reggie choked, before leaning in to kiss him again, messy and eager and excited. “Me too. I love you too, Luke.”

FIN. 

BASED ON THIS GIF: 

[wirewitchviolet]

How not to Write a Campaign

I have been playing RPGs for a very long time. Back in the day, I avoided any and all pre-written adventures of any sort because my limited experience with them was... just frankly terrible. Weird inconsistencies in tone, unfair encounter setups, too many assumptions about PCs’ motives and actions, etc. Then much later I discovered a group of writers who actually got it, wrote things perfectly in line with how my friends like a game to go, and we’ve been all in on those for a decade and change. But I just finished running a ROUGH one, and I want something good to come of it.

I don’t want to make this a specific review, because... I’m in the industry, I know the people who wrote this campaign, I can guess at some of the problems involved, and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or reputation, so let me just refer to the offending prewritten campaign here as the Amnesia Campaign. It’s for a big fantasy RPG, it riffs of a particular author’s work, you can probably guess what it is from that, but, I’m trying.

The first problem I need to bring up with the Amnesia Campaign is that it just commits the cardinal sin of long term RPG campaign writing- The mustache-twirling villain who always manages to escape from the PCs at the last minute. I cannot convey just how important it is that you never, ever do this. The worst sort of example is when you plan around the PCs actually confronting your villain multiple times, and failing to kill them, which is a terrible idea because there really is no way to ever stack the deck and account for every contingency to make an unwinnable fight, or even one where escape is always possible, and especially if you’re publishing adventures, some number of groups will kill the villain too early, either shorting things out or forcing a handwave to keep an ineffectual villain in play and pretend they’re still a threat.

The Amnesia Campaign doesn’t quite go there. Having an actual chance to go toe to toe with the villain is reserved for the very end, but it does use another variant, where no matter what happens, the PCs arrive just after the villain they’re chasing has left. Now... there’s a way you can make that work. If you have a villain who cannot be reached in practical fashion, and can launch attacks anywhere within a huge region, you can build a whole campaign out of characters reacting to the aftermath of evil actions they could not be expected to even learn about until the villain has left the scene. Here, meanwhile, we have a villain with a big elaborate plot that requires traveling all over the world gathering things, based on research he does at the very start which the PCs can, and indeed are expected to do, quickly pick up on these research notes, and basically know everything the villain plans to do from nearly the start of a very long campaign. And... frankly, the villain has no real edge to keep him believably one step ahead. He is a mildly wealthy man hiring goons, mundane forms of transportation, and having to negotiate and fight his way through to various sub-objectives needed for his plan, and it is at least strongly implied that he doesn’t have a lot of lead time. When presented with a scenario about someone needing to be chased down and stopped, PCs can pretty reliably be counted on to constantly be rushing forward, coming up with clever ways to accomplish what they need to in less time, and cut down if not completely nullify their travel time. But, like with battles the villain somehow keeps escaping from, I am forced to continuously state to my players in running this that no, somehow even after avoiding this whole side quest by reading the mind of the person with important information, and directly teleporting to where the villain left for by riverboat, he somehow beat them there, and once again, just left. It’s frustrating, and implausible. We end up with a villain who seems overwhelmingly outmatched, but keeps succeeding because... well, he has plot armor so we’re railroading this.

Admittedly, having a good villain when writing a full campaign in advance can be tricky. The safe and tested formula is generally to start off with minions of your main villain, starting with some who don’t even know who they’re ultimately working for, gradually build up to who’s calling the shots and to what end, have a big side trip to prepare for the final confrontation not directly involving the villains, than cap it with a big showdown. If the PCs know who the main villain is from the very start and where to find them, it becomes hard to rationalize anything between. Sometimes you can pull it off if they’re leading an army or ruling a country, but even then, you want to work up a food chain to them.

A similar problem, which crops up a bit towards the end of the Amnesia Campaign, is making too many assumptions about how the PCs react, and who they befriend. In RPG writing, you need to make as few assumptions as possible about the specifics of what the PCs will do in any situation. You can count on the real broad strokes. The party will investigate the situation described in the adventure, they’ll explore the area, find the villains, fight them, win, learn something to keep the larger plot growing, but that’s it. You can’t assume they’re going to team up with this NPC, enter this room from that direction, or otherwise reenact what you’d imagine you’d do in their place, or what happened in your test play of your adventure. This is particularly important when you include a little sidequest unconnected to their primary goal, or you’re presenting an open-ended investigation.

Ideally, you just have a sensible location, have some villains in it with clear goals and personalities laid out, and you scatter around some things to enable various clever tricks if players think to try them, without mandating any of them. Mention where windows are, and chandeliers, and holes just too small for the average human to fit through, but don’t, as part of the Amnesia Campaign does, invest heavily in the assumption that the PCs will start investigating a sewer system when investigating how a cult gets around a city and go sparse on other possible clues. Also don’t waste adventure background note space on thousands of years of history at the expense of what the actual current problem in the area is and who or what is behind it.

The next problem is one that, were I the average consumer just buying this book would bother me a hell of a lot more than it does as someone who knows how the sausage gets made. Put mildly... you do not want to play a rogue in the Amnesia Campaign. Nor do you want to play a swashbuckler, a critical-hit focused character of any stripe, really any class out of the... roughly 25% of all classes who rely on knowledge of where to make a hit count the most to do the full amount of damage with their attacks, because practically everything is immune.

Now, again. I partly understand how this happens. We have several different authors writing different chapters of the campaign, simultaneously, in pretty unforgiving crunchy conditions, with just a rough outline to go off. Nobody really has a chance to confirm notes and say “hey, did your chapter totally invalidate one of the foundational character archetypes, because I was thinking of doing that and having two of those back to back would be a bit much.” And while the publisher of the Amnesia Campaign does throw out little booklets of tips for players on what sort of character concepts will/won’t work, they’re not written last, so this sort of tip is missing there too. On the other hand, it’s a huge problem within nearly any given chapter just on its own. If you’re making the call on what all monsters to include in a multi-level stretch of a campaign, you should generally avoid choosing nothing but monsters immune to one of the most common bread and butter class features. And honestly, given how the subject matter naturally lends to the deployment of a particular monster type, erring on the side of assuming everyone else is heavily deploying them wouldn’t be a bad assumption for any author to make.

This though, unlike the rest of my gripes, is ultimately a high level problem that needs a high level solution. When you’re publishing a whole campaign, and you’re doing it in a game where several foundational character concepts kinda live or die based on things like whether things are properly harmed by particular flavors of damage, or whether a decent percentage of enemies fall under a certain classification, that really shouldn’t be a double-blind. Coordinating to get all authors to use a decent spread, or include outline notes like “it’d make sense for about half the enemies in this chapter to be fire elemental themed in various ways, but keep a good variety otherwise,” and/or trying to get a rough handle on emergent themes to adjust for/warn about in player-facing pitch material. Even the best-written campaigns are prone to rude awakenings or hilarious reductions in challenge as turns out, say, going all in on cold damage does indeed pay off for the one with Fire in the title.

Meanwhile, on the other side of that coin, more or less, huge swaths of the Amnesia Campaign really just completely break down by failing to account for some basic standard issue capabilities of a typical party. Particularly the fact that past a certain point, you need to account for the fact that the PCs are almost certainly capable of flight. It’s a thing that happens. If you are really keen on writing adventures where local warlords are chilling out on the open-air rooftop patios of their otherwise heavily fortified fortresses, or melee-oriented monsters plan an ambush in a canyon in a vast wasteland, or a dangerous leapfrog between a series of elevated platforms over something dangerous, you want to make those low-level adventures, or else a typical party, possibly even accidentally, will just completely circumvent the whole thing. There is a whole lot of that in the back of the Amnesia Campaign. My group... literally skipped giant swaths. Heck, there was a whole side quest in the last book where the PCs are rewarded with the location of a giant obelisk which I had to cut because... it was in the middle of a big open outdoor space, and they flew over the city on the way in. They definitely had a view over those hedges.

This sort of dovetails into the next issue, consistently escalating threats. The whole fantasy RPG gimmick is that at level 1, you’re a helpless peasant barely capable of doing anything remarkable, and by level 20 you’re literally punching gods in the face and have more money in your pocket than everyone else in your home country combined (with the obvious exception of the other people in your party). Now, mechanically, balancing around that is a very easy math problem. Characters of level X are meant to deal with threats of level Y, either pull a Y level monster out of the book, or slap levels on something lower to bring it to that point, or spread that out over more enemies, then they drop Z amount of fancy loot. Easiest thing in the world. But you also need things to fit together thematically. You can absolutely throw fighter levels onto the local chicken-stealing goblins to make them mechanically as threatening as a demigod bursting through from another plane of reality, but when a group of characters is at a level where they can be expected to handle the former, it’s just plain weird for them to end up dealing with the latter. Like, yes, these particular goblins have 200 HP instead of the usual 4, so the local town guard can’t handle them, but that should never be true of chicken-stealing goblins. You don’t get that tough stealing chickens, and once you’ve gotten that tough, you should have your sights set a good deal higher than that. At least be stealing rocs or something.

The 4th chapter of the Amnesia Campaign is a particularly blatant example of not getting this, featuring a large number of “please be aware the party can fly at this level” moments mentioned above, and also just demanding the PCs deal with problems that really are beneath them at that point. Seeking out local guides, impressing petty local warlords, getting challenged by giants they must impress to rest safely when crossing a huge desert. These are... not appropriate speed bumps at a point in the narrative where the party is traveling to a location where they are going to literally fight a god, weakened or otherwise. The whole setup would be wonderful as the first chapter of a campaign, but that far in, it just doesn’t work. Particularly when the actual opening of the Amnesia Campaign sets the tension very high right off the bat, with extradimensional threats, shapeshifters, an evil cult, things that typically come later as things start to escalate.

This isn’t to say you can’t mix things up a little. Dealing with threats well below a party’s capabilities can be really nice as a chance to just sort of flex, and get some perspective on how much more capable they’ve grown over time, but you have to do it in a low-tension point of the narrative, and a little self-awareness about it doesn’t hurt.

Finally, while I really kinda hate modern wealth-by-level assumptions, they are baked into the design of the game, so if you’re running with it, you really need to make sure you’re really giving the players something they can use. The Amnesia Campaign really leans heavy on treasure being weird oddities that may be of value to a collector... while also being set, generally, in places so totally removed from civilization that shopping trips aren’t really practical. Much less those needing the party to really find the right sort of buyer.

Really, you want to give out entirely practical loot (really hard to do without knowing the party makeup, but variety can work), big piles of cash/sellables along with sufficiently large cities along the way for viable shopping, or raw materials suitable for crafting plus ample time to really do something with them.

Anyway, hopefully this has come across more as practical constructive advice for anyone writing a campaign, either as a printed product or just for your home game, not just me tearing into the Amnesia Campaign at length.

[sleepyfan-blog]

*whispers* DS cross x error, soulmate au,, pls,,, thank you kay qwq

Fandom: dreamswap by @onebizarrekai

Characters and pairing: DS Cross, DS Error, DS Crerror

Warnings: cursing

Word count: 1,016

Summary: Cross writes to his soulmate and they meet! Error’s really cool.

Cross hadn’t heard of the concept of soulmates until after he’d gotten to know Nightmare - the latter of whom had quietly asked him if the monster who Dream had turned to his side was his soulmate. That had been a very strange and awkward conversation, but it explained the writing that had occasionally shown up on his arms and fingers, in a person’s hand that he hadn’t recognized. Nightmare did apparently have a soulmate, but refused to name who it was. Cross was pretty sure that his horrifyingly unlucky friend was cursed with Dream von fuckface as his soulmate. Not that he’d ever asked for confirmation, as even thinking about his soulmate greatly distressed the negative guardian.

Cross had stolen some of that disappearing ink that was apparently really good to use while writing with your soulmate - as it vanished so that you could use the same spot on your body to talk to them without needing to wash off the old bit first. he dipped one of his fingers into the pot of disappearing magical ink and wrote on one of his radius [Hey. Sorry for not responding earlier. I didn’t know what the writing meant.] He had been raised to be an efficient guard - and nothing else. Gaster hadn’t seen fit to teach him about a lot of things, if Nightmare’s reactions to some of his actions were any judge. [I do now though. Hi soulmate, my name’s Cross! What’s yours?]

After what felt like an agonizing eternity, his soulmate responded, their handwriting shakier than what he remembered last [Hi Cross. I’m Error. What do you know of the alternate world theory?]

[I know that other AUs exist. I have a friend who can travel between worlds, if that’s what you’re trying to hint at.] Cross responded back - having to write up and down both sides of his lower arm bones in order to write all of that at once.

[What is his name? I… I have a friend like that too, but…] Error wrote out, stopping writing [I am in Outertale PNR89721. I would like to meet you.]

Cross had no idea what that meant, but he assumed those were the multiversal coordinates. He got up and teleported over to where Nightmare was - cooking something in the kitchen “Hey! My soulmate is in this timeline! Can we… Can we go get them please? Their name is Error!” He shoved his arm excitedly in Nightmare’s face, bouncing on the balls of his feet a little.

“I… Hang on, stop moving you dumbass. I’ve never been to that world before, but I know for sure that I’ll be able to get us there.” Nightmare answered, grabbing his arm and holding him still long enough to read it. “… You’ve never been to an Outertale, have you?”

“No? Why, is it really weird? Not that it matters,  my soulmate’s there… Although I probably should ask what they think of JR… Since I’m kind of on their shit list.” Cross responded, his eye lights shrinking a little in panic. He quickly wrote out [What do you think of Justice Reigns?]

[I have no idea what that is. My friend isn’t home at the moment… I could try coming to your world, if you like?] Error wrote back immediately.

[We’re currently in the OT - only Frisk can allow other people to come in here, so we’ll have to ask them to let you in first. Oh! What are your pronouns? Mine are he/him/himself.] Cross wrote down excitedly [Nightmare - my friend - and I are headed there right now!] He was so excited! This was going to go great… Or so he hoped. “They say that they don’t know what Justice Reigns is. Thank the stars.”

Nightmare opened a portal and dragged Cross through it as he waited with bated breath for the other to respond. “Ask them where they live in Outertale.” The negative spirit prompted, poking one of his sides.

Cross barely heard him as he stared at the stunning AU that he’d just been brought too. Space! they were in space! That’s amazing! There was just… It was so… Words failed him. This was the most beautiful place that he’d ever been to “I… Uh… Uh-huh… Give me a sec…” [where do you live in Outertale? It’s so beautiful here.]

[In the furthest home in Stardin on the main road to Starfall.] Error responded back. [My pronouns are he/him/himself. Thank you for asking.]

Cross dutifully told Nightmare this, and the older skeleton nodded “We’re not far from there - come on, I’ll teleport you to that side of Stardin. I don’t know if this AU has had contact with JR and we need to stay out of the public eye as much as possible.”

Cross sulked a little but nodded as the other teleported him off. He wanted to see more of this beautiful world… Btu the two of them were wearing some very distinctive clothing, and he didn’t particularly feel like getting chased by some of Dream’s goons today. They walked up to the small house and Cross wrote [Knock, knock] on his arm before knocking on the door and calling out “Error, you in here?”

Moments later, a dark-boned skeleton with strange blue tear-track like marks on his face opened the door a crack and asked shyly “Are you Cross and Nightmare?”

Cross nodded, bouncing forwards enthusiastically “Yes! I’m Cross. It’s really nice to meet you, Error.”

Error smiled shyly up at him and answered “It’s wonderful to meet you too, Cross. Hello - ah - Nightmare? Please, why don’t the both of you come in? I’m unfamiliar with a timeline where one needs permission to enter. What does OT stand for?”

“Oh! OT - Omega Timeline. It’s an AU that was created by a Frisk who fell into the Core of their AU… They fell into the void and created a timeline for those who didn’t have a home to go to because their world was destroyed in one way or another.” Cross explained, sobering up a little. The three of them talked for hours.

[braincoins]

Meeting the in-laws

Sorry it’s not Shallura, but while I was on vacay, I wrote more Braym goodness (thanks for the suggestion, @thesoulsikeep!!).

I am working on a Shallura story though, but in the meantime...

           Bram smoothed his hand over his hair nervously. He’d used enough Macassar that the wind kicked up by the craft’s landing didn’t twitch so much as a single hair out of place.

           “It is a good thing your equipment does not have a safety switch, or none of it would work right now,” Ray teased gently.

           Bram re-adjusted his coat as the wind died down. “I can’t help being nervous.” He brushed off any dust the landing might have kicked up. “What if…?”

           Ray stopped him before he began the same question he’d asked a hundred times at least. “That is the thirty-seventh time you have asked that.”

           “Of course you counted,” Bram muttered.

           “And my answer has never changed, nor will it now.” He kissed Bram’s temple. “Be the same man I have fallen in love with, and you will be fine.”

           “Right, right. I can do that,” he said, nodding absently as they watched the alien spaceship’s door dematerialize. “CAN I do that?” he asked, panic lacing his voice. “I mean, I don’t even know why you do love me, but…”

           And then there was a joyous blast of what Bram could never stop thinking of as gobbledygook. He’d tried to learn Ray’s native language. Ray had insisted it was pointless and he had, of course, been correct. Ray’s people had vastly more flexible tongues (which had uses – wonderful, amazing uses – beyond the linguistic) and some distinctly non-human mouth structures that enabled them to speak words that were simply impossible for limited Earthlings like himself.

           What Bram could do was recognize sounds though. He heard Ray’s actual name from the smiling pair approaching them. He summoned up the same mask of calm he used for fast-talking to make sure his own smile didn’t look as nervous as he felt.

           He couldn’t immediately tell which, if either, was female. A person’s sex and gender were largely irrelevant in Ray’s species. Ray had only ever referred to them as his parents. One of them was larger, built more like Ray, though his face was closer to the other parent’s. One parent’s nose, another’s cheekbones and eyes and mouth. The slightly smaller parent had Ray’s eye colour; the other parent’s was darker – too dark for Bram to make out from this distance. The ears were all the same to Bram’s eyes. One parent had deep purple hair, the other was closer to a sea green? Their skin tone was similar to Ray’s.

           They were both wearing leggings of some description, though each was differently-patterned and coloured, and what amounted to a shapeless shift dress of a single colour. There were some differences in sleeves and necklines, but both fell to just above the knee and gave no hint as to the body contours beneath. Short black boots completed their outfits.

           They ran up and hugged Ray at the same time – a bit awkward, but they managed. They babbled at each other excitedly in their language and then they turned to him. Bram made sure he was standing up straight.

           “Parents, this is my,” some word in that impossible language, “Bram. Bram, these are my parents…” He paused. “Oh, they do not have English names.”

           They looked between themselves and then looked at Bram. “You are yes English?” one of them – the larger one – asked in a soft lilting voice. They tsked and tapped that same spot behind their ear that Ray had his translator chip located in.

           The other one continued, in a voice only slightly deeper than the other’s, “Perhaps you could come up with names for us?”

           “Oh, uh… that seems a bit…” He wasn’t prepared to name his boyfriend’s parents. He scrambled and, in his internal panic, registered the colours of their hair. Ray was properly “Blu-Ray” after all. “How about Purple and Sea Green for now? Until you can come up with something you like better?”

           They looked at each other and then back at him and nodded. “This is acceptable. Thank you, Bram,” Purple said. Sea Green was still tapping their translator chip in irritation.

           “Come, parents,” Ray said, gesturing grandly. “I will give you the coordinates for our living quarters. Make sure you lock up before you leave though.”

           “Are you not living on your ship?” Purple asked.

           “Not since Bram and I obtained our joint living quarters.” Bram glanced at Ray to see him practically beaming. He was so happy and proud to be living with him, and seeing that warmed Bram and even helped steady him a bit.

           Sea Green’s translator seemed to have been fixed, because they asked, “Bram, is it normal for humans to redden like that? Do you require medical assistance?”

           “Oh, uh… N-no. I’m fine.”

           Ray interjected. “Spontaneous reddening of the face can possibly indicate a medical emergency, but when it starts in the cheeks like this and spreads from there, it is a phenomenon known as blushing. It is akin to our own,” and a word Bram had never heard before.

           But the parents latched onto it immediately. “Oh, I see!” Sea Green enthused. “It is a good sign that you care for our Ray so much!”

           Bram cleared his throat. “Uh, well, I can’t teleport, so I’m going to head back. You guys chat, catch up, swap coordinates and such, and I’ll…”

           “Our chips have already transmitted the data,” Ray said. “And while I cannot teleport you on my own, the power from three chips together should be enough to bring you with us.”

           Bram blinked. “Oh.” He was about to suggest they enjoy a nice walk through campus, but given what campus was often like… He was stuck with it.

           “Do not be nervous,” Ray told him. He leaned in and kissed Bram’s temple again, causing the parents to giggle like schoolchildren. That didn’t help Bram’s blushing any. “I would do nothing that would endanger you.”

           Bram exhaled shakily and nodded his assent. He still wasn’t real sure he liked the idea, but he trusted Ray. Everything would be fine.

           Everything was not fine.

           They wound up going out to eat without him because the teleportation had sickened him so badly that he couldn’t stray too far from the toilet. Ray had apologized and laid a throw pillow down in front of the commode for him so his knees wouldn’t hurt too badly. He also brought him the book he was reading so that, inbetween “bouts of emesis,” he could at least sit on the edge of the tub and distract himself somewhat.

           Not that it helped. He gave up after the third try of reading the same sentence. All he could think about was the impression he wasn’t making – or, worse still, the impression he was – on Ray’s parents.

           Things had been going well with Ray. Bram loved him, and thoughts of marriage had become increasingly persistent. He couldn’t imagine being with anyone else, certainly, but it was more than that now: Bram did not want to have a life that didn’t include Ray. And, because of that, he wanted Ray’s parents’ blessing.

           He figured it would take some time and repeated visits before they knew him well enough to assent. Just as well; it would give him time to plan the perfect proposal. Ray deserved nothing but the best. Also, Ray still had more schooling to see to, and Bram didn’t want to add more stress (or possibly unwanted surprises) to his love’s life.

           They weren’t getting married anytime soon, but they were together, and life was wonderful. Bram had been resolved to present himself as the perfect potential son-in-law. And yet, here he was, hovering anxiously near the toilet in case he had to throw up whatever else was left of his lunch. And he hadn’t even eaten much then, given how nervous he’d been for dinner.

           “Who knows what they must think of me?” he groaned. “And I named them after colours?! What the bloody hell was I thinking?!” But then there was no more time for that, as another wave of nausea went through him. He sighed, set the book down on the tub edge, and resumed his kneeling position before the porcelain throne.

           By the time Ray returned – alone – Bram was in bed (though with a large bowl close to hand, just in case).

           “How are you feeling?” Ray asked, walking over to kiss his forehead.

           “Weak. Tired.”

           “You need hydration.”

           “I had hydration. I’m afraid to even ask what your parents think of me.”

           Ray cocked his head. It usually meant that a cultural question was coming. “You believe they will think badly of you because of the teleportation sickness?”

           “Well… yeah. You guys do it all the time; you can handle it, and I clearly can’t.”

           “You are human,” Ray said gently. “And you have never teleported before. It is common for those unused to it to become sick. I have done it so often now that I had forgotten. It is my fault, not yours. I should not have insisted.”

           “And I couldn’t go to dinner with you, so they didn’t get a chance to get to know me.”

           “They will come back next weekend. They would have stayed longer this one, but Purple has experiments to tend to.”

           “Ugh, and the NAMES,” he groaned. “I named them after colours! I just froze and…”

           “They like the names,” Ray told him. “Purple says his name feels bubbly to him. He likes the ‘p’ sounds. And Sea Green likes that their name has two words with similar sounds.”

           “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”

           “I am telling you the truth.” Ray’s smile was gentle. “They are sad they did not get to spend more time with you, but they understand. They are looking forward to next weekend.”

           Bram felt a little of his nervousness ebb. “I just wish it could have been tonight. I wanted to get to know them, for them to get to know me.”

           “You have never explained to me why you are so anxious for them to have a good opinion of you,” Ray said. “Will you explain it to me now?”

           “Oh. Well… it’s just… You want your boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s or… or significant other’s parents to think well of you. They won’t protest about you spending time together or…”

           “They cannot protest very easily when they are several systems away. Anyway, we are both adults, and we are living together. I am happy with you. Even if they hated you, it would make no difference to me.”

           “But they don’t hate me, right?”

           Ray sighed. “They do not hate you.”

           “And… well, the way I was brought up, y-you would eventually need the… well, not strictly need, but it was better to have the parents’ blessing on the match.”

           Ray studied him for a long moment and Bram shifted uncomfortably.

           “Bram, you know I have studied your era’s mating rituals and habits as part of my educational program.”

           “Yes.”

           “What you are speaking about sounds to me like a preparatory step for marriage.”

           Bram knew his face was heating. “I mean, it’s… something to think about for the future.”

           Ray laid one of his hands over Bram’s. “You are thinking about including me in your future?”

           Bram just nodded.

           Ray smiled and leaned in to kiss him. Bram was glad he’d taken the time to brush his teeth and rinse his mouth out with mouthwash (after some weak tea and toast). And when Ray pulled away, his eyes were sparkling. “You likely do not know the term I used when I introduced you to my parents.” He repeated the word.

           “I assumed it was something like ‘boyfriend.’”

           “It is closer to ‘beloved’ if I were to use a single word to translate it.” Bram’s blush deepened, but Ray wasn’t done. “A better approximation would be ‘person who I love and hope to partner with.’”

           Bram’s eyes widened. “Like… fiancé?”

           Ray made a thoughtful noise. “More like ‘hopeful fiancé.’ It is more than boyfriend, less than fiancé.”

           Bram didn’t even think about it. “Would you like to be my fiancé, Ray? It doesn’t mean we have to get married right away, but…”

           “I would love to, Bram.”

           Bram swooped in for another kiss and Ray held him gently. “I promise I’ll make you happy.”

           “You already do. And do not worry so much about my parents’ approval. They are happy that you make me happy. I spent much time talking to them about you, after all. Our culture does not have parental blessings, but, in a sense, you already have it.”

           Bram exhaled. “Good. I’m glad. Come to bed. I want to hear about all the stories you told them.”

           Ray grinned as he stood to start getting undressed. “I did not tell them about the six-month anniversary dinner.”

           “Thank Christ.”

           “I was going to save that for when you could join us.”

           “RAY!”

           Ray laughed and Bram smiled to hear it. Perhaps everything would be fine after all.

[ofwitchlightcrs]

I’m only making this post so I can have his plots and history all on his blog so I can easily access it. I’ll most likely be adding on to this from time to time.

Past Lives

Sir Lancelot Du Lac ( 5th & 6th century )

Ethan Price ( 19th century )

History

Chris was born on October 26th, 2004 [ Scorpio af ]

His childhood was about as normal as one can expect being brought up around the Charmed Ones. He witnessed his family vanquishing demons from an early age and always had a very strict moral compass for good.

When he started school he always showed an inclination towards his studies, which was always a priority to him. So it did not surprise his parents that he took a vested interest in learning witchcraft when he was old enough to.

His parents chose not to bind his powers at any point, so Chris always had them and learned to control them at a very early age. Even as a child he was told to conceal his magical identity from others since there are consequences for exposing magic to mortals.

Chris always felt a special bond with his mother. She saw him whereas his father was more focused with Wyatt and Melinda. Since she grew up being the middle child she did not want Chris to feel like he was just a shadow to his siblings, so she made sure to spend more time with him. With his mother’s guidance he was able to become a skilled potioneer and through extension he learned to become a decent cook. ( He is also able to replicate his mother’s powers through potions, something he found very handy growing up).

Around middle school age is when he realized that he was attracted to guys. It was something that he was ashamed of anyone finding out. He was already different since he was a witch, but being gay on top of that made him feel like he was some kind of freak of nature. Eventually he came to terms with his sexuality.

When he was about 11 he was hanging out with a mortal friend of his. Chris was buying them some ice cream since it was hot out, so he did not notice a vampire attacking his friend. When he came back he saw the sight and his first instinct was to protect and defend. The vampire was soon overpowered by the child and subsequently died. His friend was on the brink of death but luckily was able to heal him. His mom helped him with a spell to make his friend forget about the whole incident with the vampire and Chris using magic in front of him.

Around the time he started high school he was contacted by an Elder as they thought he was ready for the responsibilities of being a whitelighter. They did not want to rob him of his own studies and calling, so they paired him up with someone that wouldn’t pose as a complete challenge for him. His first charge was Miles Palmer a guy from his own school that was still a novice witch. The two eventually became close friends due to their connection.

They were friends for a while, but it did not last long since his charge was killed by a demon. He was calling for Chris for help but he couldn’t orb to him since he was busy taking the SAT. When he finally was able to go to him he discovered his lifeless body on the steps of his friend’s backyard. Determined to make things right he casted a spell to rewind time so he could help save him, but no matter how many times he went back he always kept dying. It prompted the Angel of Death to appear to him and explain him that it was his friend’s time to die and that his death was part of the grand scheme of things. Chris had no choice but to give up and he mourned the loss of his close friend and charge. Thankfully he had the love and support of his mother to help comfort him during his time of need.

Unfortunately when he was sixteen his mom was killed tragically and this changed him for the worse. His mother was his lifeline and having her gone from his life destroyed him in ways he didn’t know existed. His father was not quite there for him especially during this tough time in his life, so he wrote him out completely.

Since he wasn’t quite on speaking terms with his dad he moved in with his grandpa, with whom he shared a close relationship with. Although he lived out of the manor he still made an effort to spend time with his brother and sister whenever possible.

Upon graduating from high school Chris felt that he needed a change. He lived in the town all his life and never really had the chance to see what was out there for him. He decided to follow his heart and move away from home so he could attend college. While it was hard for him to be so far from family he knew he had to do this, but he was always an orb away if they needed him.

It was at college that he met Joshua Croft. Chris would often study at the very coffee shop that Josh worked at and although he kept to himself the entire time it did not take the man long to know when he’d be there. It came to the point that as soon as he saw Chris enter the store he would start preparing his order before he hit the counter. At first there was lingering gazes followed by mild blushing and avoiding eye contact when he was ‘caught’. It seems that Josh was reading into the signs since  decided that he would make the first move by writing his number on the sleeve of his coffee. The two hit it off from there.

A little over a month into their relationship Chris wanted to be more public about the two of them dating since he knew it wasn’t fair to Josh to keep him secret. During their school’s big homecoming party Chris faced his internalized fears and the two went as a couple. There was of course the few that were seemingly uncomfortable with their presence but he did not care or pay them any mind.

Chris caught news of some Thorn Demons killing innocents in the area and knew he couldn’t quite let that go. What little free time he had between classes he spent tracking the known locations of their hits. He even had to cancel his dinner plans with Josh so that he could vanquish the demons, but soon realized it was for naught since he couldn’t quite pinpoint their location. Feeling terrible about avoiding his boyfriend all day despite having plans Chris wanted to make it up to him by surprising him with takeout, but ran into the demons anyways. Just when he was vanquishing them he noticed Josh and was likely going to use a spell to reverse his memories, but he surprisingly took everything well. That night the two of them became closer than Chris ever suspected would be possible. Most people after learning the truth would rather run to the hills, but Josh accepted him. 

Things were becoming rather serious between the two of them. Chris met Josh’s family during the New Year’s Eve festivities and he knew it was time that perhaps his own family knew about Josh. As fate would have it, that day would never come.

After a lovely dinner at their favorite restaurant Chris convinced Josh to go with him to the park so they could watch the stars. He was starting to round up some stuff out of his car when a darklighter appeared, but he wasn’t aware of its presence. Josh in a split decision jumped into the path of the arrow and was struck in the heart. Chris couldn’t remove the arrow since it’s poisonous to whitelighters and Josh was getting weaker by the second. He screamed for help but no one was there to hear him. His dying words to Chris was to not blame himself, but of course how could he not?

The experience of losing another person he loved made him harden his heart. He knew people were destined to die, but this was the third time that someone close to him died at the hands of demons and he knew it wasn’t going to be the last. This prompted him to withdraw from school and he fully submerged himself in his witch and whitelighter duties.

It wasn’t until a few months later that Wyatt decided to expose the existence of the supernatural to the entire world. At first he thought that it might bring the world closer together if they knew what was out there, but that naive thinking soon went away when he saw just what his brother was trying to do. This was all some kind of power move to prove himself on top of the new food pyramid—that everyone of all stature should be fear and worship him.

While he wanted everyone to co-exist with one another he could not approve of his brother’s actions and quickly decided that he needed to be stopped. There were some family members that bought into the fear or even just wanted to share in the power that was Wyatt, but there were other family members that didn’t agree with his tactics. It was then that the Resistance was born.

Soon he realized that him and the few family members he had on his side wouldn’t be enough to stop Wyatt. The only other person he knew could rival with him and his brother was Hope Mikaelson, the tribrid. With her support and equal partnership in helping the Resistance their numbers soon grew and soon they were recognized as the true treat they are to his brother’s tyrannical rule.

Most of his time during the war was spent recruiting people for his cause, overseeing some safehouses, and helping Hope coordinate some attacks to make it safe for people.

Despite the years he spent fighting his brother and his members he still believes that his brother is worth saving. He knows deep down that he can try to get Wyatt to see the light and at least have him change his ways.

Of course now that Cade is in the picture there’s no telling what might happen. Chris has spent time talking to Hope and has decided that perhaps he should contact his older brother and call a truce in order to take care of a common threat.

Powers

Basic Powers

Spell Casting

Potion Making

Scrying

Mediumship

Active Powers

Telekinesis

Crushing

Agility

Telekinetic Orbing

Remote Orbing

Teleportation Manipulation

Deviation

Orb Shield

Whitelighter Powers

Orbing

Sensing

Photokinesis

Hovering

Glamouring

Healing

Cloaking

Omilingualism ( only with a charge )

Other Powers

High Resistance

[phantom-le6]

Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2 (3 of 5)

This post has been slightly delayed by a temporary prioritisation of my novel writing, but we’re now up to the middle round of episodes for Star Trek: The Next Generation’s second season.  So, let’s quickly make up for lost time and dive right in on the first episode of the round…

Episode 10: The Dauphin

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise is assigned to transport the beautiful Salia, future ruler of Daled IV, and her governess Anya from a planet to which she has voluntarily exiled herself. Her parents, rulers of two opposing factions on Daled IV, have died, and Salia represents a chance to bring unification to the two factions. As such, Anya is overly protective of her. On board, Salia meets young Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher, who instantly becomes smitten. Wesley receives courtship advice from the crew members including from Worf, Data, Riker and Guinan. The two young people form a bond. He introduces her to Thalian chocolate mousse, and takes her to the holodeck to show her several other worlds after she expresses an interest in exploring the galaxy.

 Anya, touring the ship, first gives advice on warp engine and then discovers a crew member with a virulent disease being in a containment field in Sickbay. She demands the crew member be killed to protect Salia. Chief Medical Officer Dr Pulaski refuses and insists the disease is contained, but Anya transforms into a large monstrous form, easily matching Worf's strength when he tries to intervene. When Captain Picard arrives, Anya reverts to her petite humanoid form and defiantly explains her actions. Dr Pulaski identifies Anya as an allasomorph, a shapeshifter, who could present a danger for the crew. Picard orders Anya to be confined to quarters, and Worf, as head of security, promises Anya he will watch over Salia. Picard, aware of Wesley's attraction to Salia, asks him to stay away from her, to which he agrees. At night however, as Anya is sleeping, Salia slips out of their quarters and visits Wesley, and the two share a kiss. However, they are interrupted when Anya bursts into his quarters in her beast form. To Wesley's horror, Salia also transforms into a similar beast, holding Anya at bay. Both revert to their human forms as security arrives. Later, Salia attempts to apologize to Wesley for her deception, but Wesley, hurt by seeing Salia's appearance was not the real her, is upset and refuses to listen.

 The Enterprise arrives at Daled IV with no further incidents. As Salia prepares to depart, Anya reveals she will not be going with her, instead returning to her home on an orbiting moon. Anya also warns her that she will likely be unable to leave the planet once she has taken the leadership role. Salia thanks Anya for her upbringing before Anya departs. Just before Salia is to be beamed down to the planet, Wesley arrives to say his goodbyes, bringing her one last taste of chocolate mousse. Salia thanks him, and transforms into her natural form, a luminous figure of energy, before she is beamed down to the planet.  In Ten-Forward, Wesley notes that he will never feel this way about anyone else, and Guinan notes that he is right; while he will fall in love again, it will not be in the same way as this time.

Review:

This episode suffers from putting Wesley in the middle of a love story to begin with, because when he goes asking for advice from the main cast, you get some very cringe-worthy scenes that demand fast-forwarding.  I mean for crying out loud, the Enterprise is a family ship and we’ve seen at least one kid about Wesley’s age on board back in season 1.  You would think he’d have someone more in-line with his own age to seek advice from, and even a holodeck relationship consultant would have worked better.  Discounting the likes of Worf and Data, Wesley’s best bets, Riker and Guinan, sound like they’re reciting a load of drivel out of some cliché romance novel, and they get so into their phony, puke-inspiring romantic drivel that they seem to forget Wesley entirely.

 However, once the episode pushes past this, we get a decent middle component, and a half-decent set of underlying messages about duty versus personal desire, judging or nor judging people on appearance and the consequences of personal deception all come through as the episode progresses through to its end.  That said, Wesley is a little too petulant at feeling betrayed by Salia’s ruse, justified though he is in feeling that way, and his decision to suddenly be the proverbial “bigger man” then feels forced as a result.  Frankly, this episode ends up feeling like a call-back to the horrendous quality of season 1.  As such, I only give it 4 out of 10.

Episode 11: Contagion

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise receives a distress signal from its sister ship, the USS Yamato, from within the Romulan Neutral Zone and travels to rendezvous with them in order to assist with repairs. After the two ships meet, the Yamato suddenly suffers a warp-core breach and explodes in front of the horrified bridge crew, leaving no survivors. Shortly afterwards, a Romulan Warbird, the Haakona, decloaks before the Enterprise and demands their retreat from the Neutral Zone. Captain Picard informs the Romulans that they will not leave until they have determined why the Yamato was destroyed.

 Picard reviews the ship logs made by his friend, Captain Donald Varley, to see if there was any connection between the destruction of the Yamato and the Romulans. Varley, an archeology buff like Picard, believed he had found the fabled planet of Iconia on a planet within the Neutral Zone. Varley believed that the extinct Iconians had developed extremely advanced technology, and that the Romulans might be attempting to acquire this technology for use against the Federation. However, when the Yamato neared the purported planet, the ship was scanned by a probe from the planet, and then began to experience system failures and became stranded in the Neutral Zone. Picard orders the Enterprise toward the coordinates Varley had identified as that of Iconia. Wesley asks Picard how he and the other officers are able to cope with perennially witnessing death and destruction. After reviewing the log, the Enterprise begins experiencing similar system issues that the Yamato had experienced, beginning with Picard's replicator producing a potted plant instead of his usual Earl Grey tea.

 When they enter the planet's orbit, a probe is automatically launched from the surface. Having reviewed the Yamato's logs, Chief Engineer La Forge recognizes that the probe carries an alien computer program that led to the Yamato's destruction. He insists that they destroy the probe before the virus can be unleashed. However, a portion of the program was stored in the Yamato logs and had infected the Enterprise. Although mostly contained, the program still threatens to destroy the Enterprise at any time. Picard, Lt. Commander Data, and Lt. Worf beam to the source of the probe launch. While exploring the ruins, they find a teleportation portal that appears to allow for instantaneous interstellar travel to a different location, with that location changing in a cycle every few seconds. Among the destinations are the Enterprise and Haakona bridges. Data attempts to access the Iconian computer systems and becomes infected with the program himself, but retains enough of his functions to instruct Picard on how to destroy the base.

 Meanwhile, in orbit, the Haakona decloaks in front of the Enterprise and threatens to attack, but soon appears to be suffering from similar system failures. The threat of attack, however, forces Commander Riker to raise the shields, which prevents them from retrieving the away team. Picard orders Worf to return with Data to the Enterprise using the Iconian gate, while he starts the destruct sequence. Before the entire structure explodes, and before the Enterprise could beam him out, Picard uses the gate to jump onto the Haakona's bridge, and discovers that their ship is set on an auto-destruct sequence they cannot stop due to the Iconian program.

 On the Enterprise, Data's systems are nearly overtaken by the program. His body automatically shuts down as a protective measure, and then restarts a short time later. La Forge finds Data's systems to now be completely free of the program, and suggests a similar cold boot to clear the program from the Enterprise. With the transporters back online, Picard is beamed off the Haakona, and Riker sends instructions to the Romulans on how to clear the program from their systems. The Enterprise then leaves, not wanting to hang around in case the Romulans are less proficient in solving their technical issues.

Review:

The original Wikipedia plot summary for this episode contains a major error that I’ve just spent a bit longer than usual correcting for this article, and I’ll quickly explain what that is.  Whichever idiot wrote the synopsis on Wikipedia constantly refers to the Iconian probe program as a virus, but that’s not what it is at all.  In fact, the show never specifies what the program is.  All they say is that it’s so advanced that it’s fundamentally incompatible with the technology of the Enterprise, not unlike trying to install a Windows 10-compatible version of Word on a Windows 95 PC.  As such, this episode isn’t dealing with computer viruses and hacker culture, or if it is there’s too much metaphor and/or differences in the tech specs of what is going on to make that apparent.

 If this episode does have a point, I suppose it might just be about looking at how we’d deal with encountering technology more advanced than we’re necessarily prepared for, or maybe it’s meant to highlight the importance of technology having effective safeguards if you use it to travel through hostile environments like space.  However, I personally look at it as just a good episode for developing Picard as character by adding in his archaeological interests and giving him a puzzle to solve in that vein.  There’s also an interesting point about revisionist history, but again it’s something later episodes of the Trek franchise would cover to greater effect. The episode is very good, and one of the better ones of this series, but it’s not quite top-level Trek.  I give it a 9 out of 10.

Episode 12: The Royale

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

Following a tip from a Klingon ship, the Enterprise finds debris from an Earth ship orbiting an uninhabitable alien planet. A sample of the debris beamed aboard shows NASA markings and a 52-star American flag, meaning the debris of the ship is several hundred years old, and has travelled far beyond the capability of ships of that era. Scans of the planet reveal a small anomalous area capable of supporting human life, so Commander Riker, Lt. Worf, and Lt. Commander Data beam down to investigate, and find a revolving door in an otherwise blank environment. Upon entering they find themselves in an old Earth-style hotel and casino called The Royale, where they are cut off from contact with the Enterprise.

The away team soon discovers they are trapped inside the casino, and after making several unsuccessful attempts to leave, they decide to explore the building. They find the desiccated but preserved remains of Col. Steven Richey, a NASA astronaut, and a pulp novel entitled Hotel Royale. Upon reading Richey's diary, they learn that his starship was accidentally contaminated by an unknown race of aliens, then thrown across the galaxy, and he was the only survivor. Taking pity on him, the aliens created The Royale for him, thinking the novel's story represented humans' preferred way of living, whereas Richey found it unbearable thanks to the poor quality of the novel.

Riker, Data, and Worf realize that the plot has been recreated in detail by the aliens and is playing out in front of them, and surmise that they might be able to leave if they are scripted to do so. They assume the role of a trio of "foreign investors" described in the novel and, taking advantage of Data's ability to precisely manipulate dice at the casino's craps table, win enough money to buy out the Royale, and are then able to leave.

Review:

For me, this episode is yet another example of this show having a great premise that suffers from poor execution.  Ultimately, it revolves around the idea of aliens creating a world for a human to live in based on a piece of fiction, only to go about it wrong and pick a badly-written stereotype of 1950’s Americana as their template.  Apparently, the literature basis for the environment wasn’t in the original draft for the show, which had first revolved around the idea of the ancient astronaut being kept in their most pleasant memory on a loop.  As such, I think the re-write to make it novel-based is a vast improvement, but they could have picked better literature.

 After all, the setting of the novel in question might be torturous for being so badly written, but it’s not really giving us much as an audience to really reflect on or enjoy.  Now I’m not going to suggest even for one moment going for something really stereotypical like the aliens borrowing from Shakespeare, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie or anything else of a very classic nature.  However, they still could have picked another form of literature.  If this episode was being made now in the era of feature television, for example, it would be interesting to see something like Warhammer 40,000 novels, superhero/sci-fi literature or even something more fantastical used.  To my mind, the episode takes a great concept and just ruins it by picking a bad novel over something that could have perhaps been thought-provoking but unpleasant in some other fashion.

 Add in a number of notable errors in various areas, and really The Royale just comes over as a Royale cock-up.  3 out of 10, next episode please.

Episode 13: Time Squared

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

While the Enterprise is en route to the Endicor system, the ship's sensors detect a lone shuttle craft drifting through empty space with no power or fuel reserves. When Lt. Worf and Commander Riker use the tractor beam to bring it into the shuttle bay, they find it has the same name and registry as an Enterprise shuttle. Inside is a double of Captain Picard, barely clinging to life.

 After the double is brought to sickbay for treatment, Lt. Commander Data and Chief Engineer La Forge power up the shuttle, after lengthy delays due to unexpected technical incompatibility. It is then discovered that the shuttle's internal clock is about six hours ahead of the ship's chronometer which means that the shuttle, and therefore Picard's double, is from six hours into the future. They recover a very poor-quality sensor log video that shows the Enterprise falling into an energy vortex and being destroyed after the shuttle is launched.

 Chief Medical Officer Dr Pulaski determines that the incoherent double's biological functions are out of sync, but are improving as the future Picard draws nearer to his own time. Picard orders that his future self be revived, but is unsuccessful in extracting any information from him. Picard is disquieted at the idea that he would abandon his ship and its crew.

 As the crew members debate their options, they decide to continue on their current course. They are suddenly stopped by the vortex seen in the shuttle log and are unable to escape, even with the engines at maximum output, and become drawn further in. They send a probe into the vortex which is immediately destroyed. Scans emanating from the vortex appear to focus on Picard and an energy beam strikes him, leading him to theorize that there is an intelligence controlling the vortex which seems to be interested in him personally, and that his double left the ship to draw its attention.

 Picard's double, now almost completely aware and coherent, sets out to leave the Enterprise as he did before. Picard follows him, asserting that there must have been another option, though the double only mumbles about it being impossible, as moving forward would have presumably destroyed the Enterprise. As the double is boarding the shuttle craft, Picard proclaims that the cycle must be broken and kills him with a phaser. Dr Pulaski wordlessly examines Picard's double with a tricorder as Chief O'Brien stares in shock.

 Picard returns to the bridge and orders that the Enterprise fly straight into the centre of the vortex. The Enterprise comes through the other side into normal space, and the doubles of Picard and the shuttlepod disappear. The Enterprise resumes its course to the Endicor system.

Review:

Apparently, the writer of this episode had originally planned for it to feed into a subsequent Q-centric episode and make Q responsible for the vortex and Picard’s time-hopping, but Roddenberry apparently prevented this.  It’s a pity, because the episode fails to assign any other cause or rationale to what happens.  It’s just weird time-travel confusion for its own sake, which is generally the worst form of time travel story you can get.  Anything involving time travel is generally the most headache-inducing form of time travel going, unless you take a cue from Gargoyles and just make history immutable, and all time travel consequently just becomes a necessity for history to unfold as it already has.

 The fact that we don’t get an underlying rationale for the time loop makes the episode tank, as does the blithering deliberation of the crew at numerous points.  Frankly, the whole concept would be played out to better effect in a later episode of TNG, and the only real value anyone might see in this is in two points.  First, we get to see how far Picard is willing to go in order to do the right thing, both in terms of his future copy trying to sacrifice himself for the ship, and then his current self phasering the future copy to death to break the time loop. Second, there is a slight allegory about breaking out of self-destructive cycles to move forward, but it’s rather wasted because the idea comes up so late and isn’t really explored.  For me, this episode only warrants 3 out of 10.

Episode 14: The Icarus Factor

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

While the Enterprise is en route to Starbase Montgomery to run diagnostics on its engines, Picard receives a message from Starfleet offering First Officer Commander Riker command of his own, the Aries, which is on a potentially dangerous exploration mission in a distant sector. Picard advises Riker that while the Enterprise is a prestigious assignment, it cannot replace the experience of having one's own command, and gives him 12 hours (the duration of their stop at the Starbase) to decide. Riker's decision is complicated by the fact that the civilian adviser Starfleet has sent to brief him on his mission turns out to be his father, Kyle Riker, with whom he has an antagonistic relationship.

 After his father makes several attempts to reconcile, which Will rebuffs, the tension between the two finally boils over, and they agree to a match of anbo-jitsu, a form of martial arts. During the match, the two continue to argue, with Will venting his bitterness over the death of his mother. Will interrupts the match, claiming a move his father used is illegal, and realizes his father had only been able to beat him in his youth by cheating, which his father admits. The two are finally able to talk and reconcile, and Will admits he is glad his father came.  Later, Will opts to remain on the Enterprise because he feels it is the best place for him to be at present.

 Meanwhile, Acting Ensign Wesley Crusher notices that Lieutenant Worf is acting particularly agitated, and enlists the help of Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge and Lt. Commander Data to find out why. The trio eventually learn that Worf was coming upon an important anniversary, 10 years since his Age of Ascension, which is normally celebrated with an important Klingon ritual among other Klingons. They recreate the ritual, which involves a gauntlet of Klingon warriors brandishing pain sticks, on the holodeck as a surprise for Worf. While reciting vows of honour, Worf undergoes jolts from the sticks with each step forward, enduring the extreme pain, and finally reaches the end, where he is grateful to his "family" aboard the ship for honouring him in this way.

Review:

Much like the previous episode, this is another episode that falls down because of Roddenberry’s interference, as he diluted the level of tension and drama between Riker and his father in the episode’s A-plot.  According to Memory Alpha’s notes on production, Roddenberry believed that by the 24th century, we’d have resolved any tendency to harbour anger towards other people for their mistakes, including parents who acted like jerks to us much in the way it seems Kyle Riker did with his son.  This just goes to show why post-Roddenberry Trek surpasses the Trek produced while he was an active producer of the franchise.  Some of his idealism about the world of Trek seems to have been excessive and unrealistic.

 The fact is anger is as important an emotion to the human psyche as any other.  I know a lot of people tend to categorise emotions as good or bad, but really no emotion is either one.  Fear keeps us alive by counselling us against stupid risks, anger gives us the impetus to express outrage and complain against injustice, sadness lets people know something is wrong with us, and supposedly positive emotions like happiness can be negative if we somehow misuse them.  As such, no one in their right mind should be thinking of any given emotional state as something we’ve just ‘gotten over’.  We might get past some of the root causes that bring up certain emotions, but we need to retain the emotions themselves for anytime a new emotional trigger is discovered and has to be addressed.

 The A-plot around the Rikers also falls flat because it also involves a possible promotion and re-assignment for Will.  Since mid-season cast shifts are not a common occurrence in most shows, even with the season 1 death of Tasha Yar as precedent, you’re almost certain as an audience member that Will is going to stay, and lo and behold he does.  As for the B-plot, it’s ok but the scenes where Worf loses his temper at Wesley and then Data made me go for the fast-forward again.  Add in Roddenberry’s delusion watering down of the A-plot, and all I can give this episode is a meagre 3 out of 10.

[g-on-ef]

Why the bad things Happen to the good people

Fandom: Super Sons, DC Batman, DC Superman

Parings: Damijon, Birdflash, TimKon, JayRoy, BatCat, Clark/Lois, BluePulse 

Characters: Damian Wayne, Jon Kent, Wally West, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Connor Kent, Jason Todd, Roy Harper, Bruce Wayne, Seline Kyle, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Jaime Reyes, Bart West

{Inspired by Empire's song Good People. The words in italic are part of the song.

A/N: So this is a two part story that I wrote because I was bored and wanted to try something new, now fair warnings this story is rated E for graphic displays of violence, murdering, character death, and sexual content {that will be show in flashbacks in the next chapter}, I should also mention that this story will have mpreg just because I want it ^^ anywhore enjoy this story and let me know if I should update the second part tomorrow. Also to those who sent me prompts I plan on posting them tomorrow so be on the look out for that. Okay now on with the show ^^

Summary: Instead of Clark killing Lois and their baby he accidently kills Damian, as well as his unborn Granddaughter. Heartbroken and full of range Jon decides that the world no longer needs the Justice League instead it needs new heroes’ ones who aren't afraid to cross the line. Jason was right you can't defeat crime you can only control it. He and a new team take over and show the so call heroes how easy it is for the good guys to win when they are no longer playing by the rules

 Sometimes it's hard to pray, sometimes it's hard to keep your faith when it's always being tested, you try to stay strong, you continue believing that everything you've done was worth your sacrifice and continue living in a fantasy world, but reality keeps crashing in, finding ways to destroy the illusions that your heart has created to fool your mind making you see the world for what it really is, and then you realize, you are no longer a kid living in a fantasy dream, that the real world is full of dangers, and death is always taking something from you even when you work on the side of good and do good deeds the world still finds a way to punish you.

 Sometimes it's hard to stay grateful, you wanted to be a hero, but no ever told you the price you had to pay was the death of a love one. No one warned you of the consequences, the sacrifices you had to make. The people you would lose.

 It's painful, hurts so bad you put on a mask of ferocity to show the world show them that despite what it threw at you, you are still the man of steel, the strongest warrior to ever exist, after all you not only killed your grandfather who claimed to be the strongest man alive but you brought fear into the ones who once protected the Earth and were once known as Gods. The ones responsible for the death of your family, your soul's mate. Because you never want them to see you break, never want them to see that despite being the strongest man alive you're still a broken boy.

Crying for help. Begging the heavens to return what was once yours.

 Sometimes it's hard to breathe You rule the world with an iron fist, despite the fact that you feel like you are drowning in your thoughts, you feel like the darkness is trying to claw it's way up to drag you to the abyss and keep you as it's prisoner. You are tired of living with Demons because they are always inviting more and with Demons come the ghosts, the ones that have chained you to the past and refuse to set you free. Sometimes you don't want to be free because the demons, the ghosts, they may haunt your future but they still bring you memories of the past and you are okay with that.

It's hard to keep goin' He remembers, he'll always remember, the day that ruined his life but also changed it.

Jon remembers the message from his father, remembers the dreaded look that clouded his father's eyes as he told him that his father-his birth father-his was still alive.

He remembers how terrified he looked to not only know his biological father is alive but that he is an evil man who wants to destroy the earth.

He remembers it all.

After the meeting with both the Justice League and the Teen Titans Jon decided now was a good time to head back home, despite his father, Batman, and Wonder Woman wanting to speak to him, the young hybrid wanted to leave the Watchtower and go home.

Entering the coordinates to his safe house Jon was teleported back home before either of the big three could talk to him.

When he arrived the first thing he did was headed for his room, once inside he saw his beautiful husband sleeping in their bed.

Damian Wayne-Kent was everything Jon wanted and more. When they were younger the two hated each other hell Jon was certain that they would kill each other, if it weren't for their parents they probably would.

As the years passed on the two's mutual hate slowly turned to mutual respect to trusting one another, to a strong friendship to them falling in love and getting married and starting a family together.

The marriage was a secret, just like their relationship kept from everyone except their brothers. They were the only ones who knew about their relationship and marriage.

"You're being creepy,"

Jon was startled to hear the velvet sound of his husband, he watched as his angel got up from bed; he then grabbed a shirt that was on the floor and put it on.

If Jon had to guess it was his especially since it was a little longer than his body. Damian walked over to his beloved before he wrapped his arms around his neck. Jon responded by wrapping his own arms around Damian's waist and pulled him closer to his body. Enjoying this peaceful moment that they rarely had.

Both Jon and Damian jumped a little when they felt a little kick between them.

They pulled back a little making Jon laugh as he placed his hand on Damian's stomach.

"Looks like she's an active one, isn't she?"

Damian rolled his eyes fondly as he placed his own hands on top of Jon's.

"She's been keeping me up all night, not to mention she's always craving chicken!"

Jon had to bite his tongue to stop himself from laughing.

"She wants chicken?"

"Yes, and cheeseburgers, beef, tacos, and meat! She wants meat Kent! I'm just glad that she doesn't want pork,"

Jon chuckled a little, he knew his husband was 100% vegetarian and refused to eat pork since he was Arabic. Still he decided to less Damian's burden a little.

He bend down and kissed his belly before whispering,

"Hello Amiera, it's daddy. I hope you had a good day with Baba, now I know baba has weird eating habits," this earned him a smack from his husband making Jon laugh.

"But you need to try to be a little easy on him okay? He maybe a strong and powerful person but he's not use to carrying a half kryptonian baby so please be gentle with him,"

The kicking stopped making Jon look up to his angel who just laughed as he bend down and kissed Jon's forehead.

"You are such a sap,"

He then placed a hand on top of Jon’s who smiled softly at their joined hands.

"And you are gonna be a daddy's little girl,"

Jon laughed as he brought Damian’s hand to his lips and gave it a gentle kiss before his oceanic eyes met Damian’s emerald jewels.

"I love you, forever and always,"

"And way pass eternity,"

The two kissed one another enjoying their moment of peace before it all came crashing down.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 "Kill him, he's your enemy," Clark heard the whisper and he had to agree this man, this creature was going to kill Jon, Lois, everyone he cared about. He would not let that happen.

He heard a voice, telling him to stop, begging him not to, but he ignore it he kept attacking the enemy trying to defeat it. It wasn't until someone punched him hard in the jaw that he finally came to reality.

Clark shook his head to clear the fog that had cloud it, slowly the fog was lifting as he crashed down to reality looking up he saw in horror as his son cradled the battered body of his best friend's son.

He looked around him to see Bruce, Dick, Jason, Kon and Tim as well as the entire Justice League with the Teen Titans staring in horror as the youngest robin was clinging to life. His son, slowly cupping his cheek and whipping off the blood that was covering his face.

"Damian, oh my, you're gonna be fine okay, you’re gonna be fine," Jon said trying hard not to show weakness but finding it hard to do as he held onto his husband's body, as he moved his hands from his cheek to the top of his tummy, his heart broke when he felt a flat stomach. He felt his heart breaking as he could feel his husband’s bloody hand covering his own.

"Jo-Jon..."

"Yes?"

Damian tried to reach for his face with his free hand but it was taking all his strength to reach for him Jon grabbed his hand and placed it on his face he turned his face and kissed it, ignoring the blood that was on it. Trying his best to comfort his beloved.

"Our...our baby...I can't, can't feel our baby, where is my baby? Where is our baby," his voice cracked at the end, despite his heart rate slowing down Jon could hear it speeding up a little a sign of pure panic that Damian was feeling, Jon closed his eyes as tears fell from his eyes, becoming a part of Damian's own tears and mixing in with his blood.

"I'm sorry Dami, I'm so sorry, I couldn't protect you or our baby,"

Damian’s emerald green eyes met his blue ones a heartbreaking sob escaped his lips, he could feel himself slowly slipping away, this wasn’t supposed to happen, he wasn’t supposed to die again. He was supposed to live with Jon and their baby, he didn’t want to die, not now not like this. He didn’t want to leave Jon, he needed to stay, to at least have the chance to tell him how much he loved him and how he shouldn’t blame his father for what’s happened. Jon needed to know, needed to understand that he didn’t blame Clark, that he only hopped that Jon didn’t either.

"Jon I, I" whatever Damian was going to say will never be known to Jon because in that moment, that horrible heart breaking moment Damian Wayne-Kent was gone.

“Dami? Dami, please open your eyes please Damian don’t leave me!” the boy of steel shouted as he shook Damian’s corpse.

Jon listen carefully to Damian’s heartbeat, praying to every God out there that his angel was alive, that this was some cruel joke that the League was playing on him and Damian would open his eyes again and Jon will have the chance to see those jade eyes once again.

“Damian please, open your eyes please don’t leave me. I’ll do it, I’ll give up being Super-boy, I’ll, I’ll stop fighting crime and putting my life in danger anything you want but please, I’m begging you DON’T LEAVE ME!” Jon begged to Damian’s corpse.

It never happened, Damian’s eyes did not open, the League did nothing but watch as Jonathan Kent, son of Superman, boy of steel broke down and cried at the lost of not only his beloved Damian, but their daughter as well.

“Bruce…what…what did I do?” Clark stared as his little boy held onto the corpse of his best friend crying his poor heart out.

“The Joker, he…he drugged you, tried to get you to kill Lois and your daughter but…but Damian…he…he,”

The fog that clouded his mind was slowly disappearing clearing his head of any confusion that he was currently feeling, memories of past events creeped their way as pieces of the missing puzzle were slowly putting themselves together creating the image of Clark being poison and attacking Damian as he tried to defend Lois and Martha.

He saw how he fought Damian, attacking him; he remembers Damian’s pleas to stop to not attack his belly, which he didn’t understand why but when he said it Clark attacked it, showing his stomach no mercy.

Clark felt sick to his stomach as he watched his son and their friends trying to stop him but he was able to stop them, he sees his son trying to get to Damian but Clark stops him by freezing him, he sees it all, his body attacking everything and anything that was protecting Damian it wasn’t until his boy punched him with brass knuckles that contain Kryptonite that he finally stopped attacking Damian. But it was too late, Damian Wayne was already clinging to life trying hard not to fall into Death’s embrace, for the second time in his life.

“Oh my God Bruce, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…I…I,”

Bruce didn’t know what to say, he wanted to be mad, he wanted to yell and hurt Clark in any way but he didn’t, he couldn’t. Damian died protecting Lois and Martha, he gave his life protecting Jon’s mother and little sister, Damian was willing to do anything to protect them. Even at the cost of his own life.

Yes it broke his heart and crushed his spirit to lose his son but he had to remember that Damian was a hero, willing to sacrifice anything and everything for those he cared about.

“It’s okay Clark Damian gave his life to protect your family, I know that Damian wouldn’t want you to blame yourself, that he-“

“Don’t,” Jon growled as he continued to hold onto the body of his dead husband his hand resting on top of his once round belly, where his little princess once rested in.

“What?” Bruce asked looking at the son of Superman.

“Don’t you dare speak his name!” Jon yelled as he glared at not only Batman and Superman but the entire Justice League as well.

How could Bruce be so calm about this? Clark killed Damian and instead of being pissed he was calm? Did he not care for Damian? Did he not care that his own flesh and blood was dead?

Jon mentally slapped himself, of course Bruce didn’t care, if he did he would feel the same anger that he was feeling, but who was he fooling? Bruce was never a father to Damian, Dick was Damian’s father, Dick was the one who was there for Damian when he needed him. Glaring at Bruce the boy of steel said,

“You never cared about him! He was nothing but a nocuous to you! You have no right to say what Damian would want or wouldn’t want! You never even gave a damn about him so SHUT THE FUCK UP! And keep Damian’s name out of your mouth.

“Jon don’t-“

“And you,”

Jon glared at the man he once worshipped, the one he idolized and wished he grew up to be like him; a hero, a father, a loving husband. Now Jon wanted nothing more than to end his life.

“You killed him, you killed my HUSBAND AND MY DAUGHTER!”

“I did what?” Clark asked praying to God that his misunderstood his son, that what Jon said was a case of a misunderstanding and he was just hearing things, that he was not only responsible for the death of Damian who was Jon’s husband-which he had no knowledge of-but the death of his grandchild.

“You killed my family, you…you…MURDER!”

In a split-second Jon was on top of his so call father and punching him as hard as he could. Clark could easily push him off hell he could have easily stop his son’s attack but didn’t because it wasn’t Jon hitting him that was breaking his heart and stopping him from defending himself but the words that he threw at him that were cutting deeper than any knife could and hurting him more than any physical attack ever could.

“Murder! You killed the love of my life! My husband! MY DAUGHTER! You took away my family! Robbed them of their lives! Rot in hell you piece of shit! I hate you. I. Hate. You!”

The boy of steel continue to attack his father showing him no mercy, he wanted him to hurt, to feel the pain and suffering that Jon was currently feeling.

Damian…his beloved was gone, and so was their baby; the only reminder he had left of Damian, both gone

Jon was pulled off his murderous father by Kon and Jason, despite being strong enough to break from their hold on him he chose not to, instead he glared at his father, Clark had never seen such hatred from anyone. None of his enemies have ever gave him such a dark and murderous look at least not the one that made him fear for his life.

Jon shrugged off Kon’s and Jason’s hold as he went over to Damian’s body, he picked his husband’s body as he turned to face not only his father but his mother and little sister.

“Your dead to me Super-Man,” Jon took to the sky ignoring the cries of Batman telling him to bring back Damian.

[noctisluciscaelumcxiv]

ok! i have been reading about 64 door glitch for ff4 and i THINK i got it. all the stuff with vehicles parked on specific tiles i understood when i first watched it, but what i didn’t get was the fucking chocobo thing or the window color thing. chocobo thing is done for the same reason as the vehicles, the game is pulling random code in random places during 64 door from what i can gather. so left chocobo is somehow a valuable piece of info? idk. window color and battle speed determine where you end up, i THINK. gil….i still dont know why gil has to be a certain value, assuming it is for the same reason chocobo and vehicles are specified.

from, https://www.vgfacts.com/forums/thread-1402.html:

“ Because of the way the game keeps track of what floor you’re on in the SNES version of Final Fantasy IV, it is possible to underflow the floor counter and force the game to send you to maps based on the game’s RAM values. Because of the random or otherwise variable nature of these values, one who would accidentally come across this glitch could potentially softlock or even freeze the game.”

that should shed some light onto it. i just want to know WHY the gil is important? i can guess everything else. anhyone know?

alsotheres a floor based off of in the games in game timer???? thats horrible lmao.

HERE https://ff4.aexoden.com/guides/mini-item-warps/ is an interesting explanation of why certain items are needed. they set the coordinated to where we wanna go! since the game is pulling from inventory, how many you itmesm u have. it uses these to deterine map ID and xy cordinates and what not!

I FOUND A CHART FOR THE GIL, OK so each seperate glitched room is pulling date FROM DIFFERENT AREAS IN THE GAME! i assumed that all floors pulled from the same place, but thats not the case! it even says it in that quote and i just soe how missed it haha. so on floors -47, floor coordinates are based on:

MAP = 256xGP(0-255)

Direction = 65536xGP(0x00,0x40,0x80,0xC0)

X = 65536xGP(0-0x3F)

Y = GameTimeFrame(0-59)

(from: http://tasvideos.org/4198S.html)

this would explain why certain amounts of gil are needed to manipulate floors!

so here is the glitch, what u must do and all the steps and why (this was initially in japanese so the wording is a bit weird):

I come back to the crystal room in Dejon(Warp). There is the 0th floor. If DarkCrystal is got, it means finished the Sealed Cave. Battle speed is set to 4 incidentally.

I go to the negative world by “return type door”.

You must put HoverShip appropriately to go along RoomLevel-7th safely.

You must put back BlackChocobo to the forest to go along RoomLevel-9th safely.

You must release Chocobo to the west to go to RoomLevel-10th safely.

You must walk leftward to go to RoomLevel-12th safely.

You must walk upward to go to RoomLevel-13th safely.

You can go to RoomLevel-43th safely.

Because WindowColor is “R:4,G:2,B:17”, RoomLevel-44th becomes the Sealed Cave’s Entrance.

Kain is left in RoomLevel44th.

I set the waiting time of the loading screen to 12 Frames to go to RoomLevel-45th safely.

I regulated GAME TIME(1xSec) to become MAP of same BGM to minimize LagFrame of RoomLevel-46th.

RoomLevel-47th is based on money and GAME TIME(Frame).

FuSuYa joins party in Crystal Palace.

FuSuYa rearranges magic appropriately.

Map ID = R(0-31) + G(0-31)%8*32 = 4 + 2*32 = 68(Sealed Cave’s Entrance)

X = G(0,8,16,24)/8 + B(0-31)%8*4 = 0 + 1*4 = 4

Y = BS(1-6) - 1 = 4-1 = 3

Direction = Left

GP = 0x506055 = 5267541

MAP = 256xGP(0-255) = 96(Crystal Palace)

Direction = 65536xGP(0x00,0x40,0x80,0xC0) = Down

X = 65536xGP(0-0xFF)%0x40 = 0x10 = 16

Y = GameTimeFrame(0-59) = 0x14 = 20

Since it is returned to RoomLevel 0th, Teleport is used. It is a crystal room there.

It exchanged so that X and Y might not become less than 31.

Because there was much LagFrame in Map 46, I traded with Map 48.

FuSuYa replaced a bottom of White Magic to learn ChainExplosion.

I change WindowColor(R:1,G:7,B:23) and BattleSpeed(1) and BattleMode(Wait).

If you get down from the stairs of “GO TYPE” by RoomLevel-67th, WhiteMagic of FuSuYa will change.

Because WindowColor is “R:1,G:7,B:23”, RoomLevel-44th becomes the Glitch Room.

There is a weapon shop in “Map:225,X:27,Y:0”. I buy 22 GreatBows and one DwarvenAxe here for fund adjustment.

I regulated GAME TIME(1xSec) to become MAP ID 0 to minimize LagFrame of RoomLevel-46th.

RoomLevel-47th is based on money and GAME TIME(Frame).

Map ID = R(0-31) + G(0-31)%8*32 = 1 + 7*32 = 225(Glitch Room)

X = G(0,8,16,24)/8 + B(0-31)%8*4 = 0 + 7*4 = 28

Y = BS(1-6) - 1 = 1-1 = 0

Direction = Left

GreatBow = 2000GP*22 = 44000GP

DwarvenAxe = 15000GP

GP = 5267541 - 44000 - 15000 = 5206541(0x4F720D)

MAP = 256xGP(0-255) = 0x72 = 114(Zeromus Floor)

X = 65536xGP(0-0xFF)%0x40 = 0x0F = 15

Y = GameTimeFrame(0-59) = 0x0E = 14

from the same link as above! so now i get why everything is done and why! cool! hey, if u have any info to add or correct some points, feel free! i wrote this not all in one go and was looking things up and watching them so thats why its written weird, sorry! but this is super cool!

ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57jUrDd0fuw the TAS. this trick IS viable in a run adn is not TAS only, tho! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sLE-26ZegE is the race! the used it at the veeeery end, everything else is just one big set up for it! they also use the rng manipulation thing. something about being on a certain seed? 92? at the start of the game to ensure the run goes as optimally as possible! give em a watch! the TAS is abt an hour and the race is around 2hrs! i watched both but im rewatching the TAS. i didnt get it at first but after the run, i get whats going on, although the rng stuff is still foggy for me. i GET it but i dont….its weird. i feel like i almost get it but not really.

[cosmosogler]

i’m not sure how to begin today. i was gonna start writing five minutes ago... but then i just kind of sat there and i’m not sure what to say. i’m so tired.

well i wrote a post here when i woke up. the dream bothered me all day though. i feel like it means something but i don’t know how to unpack it and i don’t got an individual therapist to talk about it with.

it’s so hard to condense those dreams into words, especially in 15 minutes. i dropped whole... i can’t call them “plot lines” but stuff that was important for understanding the dream in order to hurry up and get to the ending to try and summarize. 

like i left out that dad always has nightmares about sharks and alligators, and the last third of the dream (which was the only part he was in at all) was in an area of my dreams that always has a big ass shark living on the coast. i don’t know what it means. but i noticed it. i recognized the coast line while i was falling out of the sky.

and i left out most of the actual ending. which was, i discovered who was manufacturing the dimensional bombs as i traveled through forests and neighborhoods, becoming more and more disheveled. i wasn’t sure if they transported all of what they touched or just cut things off in a set radius. but i was cold. i found out where the leader was. i teleported into the airship chamber and found him in a crowded room surrounded by armed guards. i knew what would happen but i still did it. i was holding one of the bombs i’d plucked off the guns outside. i threw it at him. when it hung in the air for a second i set it on fire and exploded his whole head. the 100 guards leveled their guns at me. but i didn’t care. i woke up.

i think it was interesting that at the beginning of that part of the dream i was in a store for stuff to pamper yourself with and by the end of the dream i was shoeless and covered in dirt and rain and about to die.

it also seems to be about the first time i’ve ever killed someone easily in a dream. usually the “monster” is like, a guy with a gun or a rabid dog, and i only have my weak hands and arms and i don’t want to hurt them but i need to survive. this time i didn’t even care at all and also i could set things on fire with my mind.

anyway i got ready for school. i picked up snoopy’s cat food from the front office. my home package came later in the day but i won’t have time to retrieve it until maybe saturday. booked until then. and i don’t know how heavy it will be so i can’t just pop down and grab it in five minutes before i leave in the morning.

i felt... ill, today. not sure how to describe it. “crummy” i guess is an accurate word. the feeling didn’t go away at all over the course of the day. by the end of the day i was retching every time i coughed. keegan asked if i was ok. i said i just felt sick.

it wasn’t like a sore throat or runny nose or anything. i mean i still have coughing fits but it doesn’t feel like there’s anything to cough up. it was like my stomach was just uneasy. it was the kind of thing that was maybe supposed to stop happening after i got my gallbladder out? 

eating didn’t make me nauseous or anything but... ehh describing it in too much detail is weird. if i am reading this in the future it’s THAT feeling.

so that set the stage for everything i did today!!! 

in classical, first thing in the morning, there was a screeching noise that just... was present for the first 30 minutes of class. i was going to die. i was about ready to run out of the room and go out the front door of the building and cry. poor luis must have been tired of hearing me fidgeting and scratching out stuff in my notes and being indecisive about what color i wanted to use. 

i’m still taking notes with the four-color pen. i like it a lot but god it’s gonna be hard to read those notes because i had to scratch stuff out constantly because that noise was destroying my brain and my coordination and my ability to comprehend words and pictures. and also my patience.

half the class wasn’t there this morning. i think most, if not all, of them got out of that midterm at 10 when it ended. suzanne didn’t show up. she came for the next class and later she told me she had sat down to plink at her piano and ended up just wanting to be there for an hour. i gave her my notes even though they were messy from the distant but unceasing metal on rusted metal sound.

then we went to spaghetti day! i talked to suzanne about dreams the whole way there. she said she remembers basically every dream she has every night. it was such a, i guess, relief to meet someone who also remembers all their dreams??? it made me feel less, unique, i guess. mostly it was just REALLY nice to listen to someone else talk about how they dream about the same places over and over and remember stuff they did in previous dreams because they spent so much time remembering everything. we compared notes. 

i guess i was looking for an answer or some kind of context to put this dream in. i didn’t get that information here but i did really appreciate how open suzanne was about her dreams.

so we had spaghetti. i don’t remember what we talked about while we sat in the grass. we mostly gave the halava a running commentary when suzanne noticed they had changed up the recipe. she said they used to do that more often.

then i went to group therapy. we talked about the guy talking here next thursday. he who shall not be named. the racist guy. one interesting thing happened, besides me sharing my discomfort with how to approach the danger since i’m only tangentially affected by it. 

the interesting thing was that one member was telling a story about their experience with a very sketchy person earlier in the day. they were joking around and laughing and making a face that our therapist interpreted as “smiling.” she asked why the person was making so light of this kind of pretty scary situation.

i said “no. i’ve spent a lot of time telling jokes about bad stuff, and that’s not a smile. that’s a grimace at best.” 

the person gave me a sort of look that i’m not sure how to describe. recognition? gratitude? embarrassment? maybe all of them.

i walked back to the physics building and went straight to e&m class. i took notes!!! the professor didn’t really make any sense though. but i found out suzanne works with one of my classmates so i asked her if it would be ok for us to maybe be introduced during their next meeting tomorrow. she said that was probably a good idea.

after that i bummed around in my office and worked on the new quantum assignment (due monday because god hates us). 

i showed harrison the card crusher video. i also realized while i was being sick in the bathroom that i don’t feel very comfortable... not laughing around some of my classmates. i guess i just fell into this really easy, natural pattern of telling horrible stories about my childhood and then pretending to laugh and be not upset. it’s something i did a lot at villanova too. 

the pattern is that almost every story i tell will contort itself in such a way that, in the last sentence or two, if it wasn’t already dark it will get there at light speed.

like one doozy i told yesterday when we were talking to rebika about child labor in the united states was that “oh yeah, my mom would take me to work with her when i was about ten. she’d tell me, ‘here, put this away. do this. do this. and do this.’ and she’d do that for eight hours. this happened a lot. but she wouldn’t take me out for ice cream afterward or let me keep any of the money. she’d just take me home and beat me.”

i... want to say it’s an exaggeration? but i feel like it’s kind of not. maybe some of the words aren’t quite accurate. like the beatings had mostly stopped by the time i was 10-12... more or less? but the emotional beatings never ended.

maybe i was a little older than 10 when she did actually start taking me there and forcing me to work all day. pretty sure i was 12 at that point because i was on The Forum and i’d have pretend conversations with my internet friends in my head while listening to one of the two albums i had on my ipod and removing staples for nine hours straight.

i guess i get some sort of satisfaction from the look of utter horror on harrison and jennica’s faces. 

at 6 we had a second round of quantum. classes normally go for 50 minutes but the professor decided to keep talking for another 20 minutes after that and my brain turned to mush about 8 minutes before he finally let us go. 

poor keegan couldn’t actually see the board because we were in a lecture hall instead of the classroom. i probably should have noticed that he had really bad vision. he just... never complained/bragged about it the way suzanne or jennica do. i offered to let him see my notes tomorrow morning because about halfway through the lecture my eyes stopped working. 

they felt dry and gunky and stopped focusing which was giving me a headache. like, there was a delay where i couldn’t see between looking up at the board and looking down at my notes.

i thought that things might improve since i am taking more frequent breaks and also biking home which requires ONLY long distance vision. maybe i should pick up some eye exercises.

then i was sick one more time and then i biked home. i went TURBO FAST. all the parts where i usually get tired i flew by. i mean, i was still tired and my legs burned, but i didn’t pant as much after getting up the hill and i forced myself to keep going.

then i made the rest of the tempeh tacos for dinner because i didn’t want the leftovers to go bad and waste the beautiful experience of tempeh tacos. my onion had gotten a pink spot though and i think it’s what was making the fridge/kitchen area smell funky. i need to learn how to preserve those better. 

they were still pretty good! i made the tempeh way better this time, texture-wise, and i didn’t drown everything in lime juice, but my body was just unhappy and i thought this would cheer me up but it didn’t really.

after that it was 8:40 so i just listened to some mbmbam clips and played a logic puzzle and read some real short fanfiction. now it’s 10:54 and i’m ending my journal entry late but i guess... i don’t want to sleep honestly.

i’ve got the follow-up appointment with the psychiatrist tomorrow so i’ll be talking to her for a while i think. i’ve got some notes compiled as i mentioned earlier. tomorrow i gotta teach for four hours though and i don’t know if i’m really up for that. i mean, i have to be up for it, but i don’t know if i’m really honestly up for it. which means i’ll just be tired tomorrow all day too.

something good about me. i can’t think of anything i ain’t said already. dang it. 

i think my comedic timing is pretty on point. yesterday harrison mentioned again how my sarcasm is virtually indistinguishable from my normal voice. i said something in reply... he started drawling something really obviously sarcastic and i cut him off.

“i’ve been doin this since before you were born! literally everything i say has a drop of sarcasm in it! GET! ON! MY! LEVEL!!! scrub.”

jennica died.

i’m glad someone thought it was funny. people seem to generally like my for real jokes. even the stupid puns. luis said today that “i think sammie is the only one who actually likes my nonsense” and i gave him a thumbs up. 

[dragonpressgraphics]

Prompt from A03:

I really like these. I wonder if you might be up to this challenge: Cas is an inventor at a company and doesn't think of anything but his work.

That is until one day when he meets one of his bosses' sons, Dean, and falls in love with him. He attempts to win his heart but Dean rejects him.

Amara, another one of Cas' bosses who is also vying for Dean becomes jealous.

She forces Cas to test out his latest invention, a teleporter, on himself despite him constantly saying that he still hasn't worked out all the kinks yet. Something goes wrong and Cas is transported a parallel universe.

Dean realizing his feelings tries to get Cas back.

You don't have to take this challenge if you don't feel up for it but let me know either way.

It was a more elaborate prompt and when i wrote it, it came out to 1451 words! i think there’s a long fic in this too...

___________

Dean was running an inspection for his dad when it happened.

Walking by Cas’s lab on the way to inspect the project running in the next lab over, he paused. The light was one. The ‘we’re experimenting so stay out’ light.

That wasn’t right. Cas hadn’t gotten the green light – no pun intended – to make the first trial run yet. So why would he…?

Dean reversed direction and went to Cas’s door. He knew better than to interrupt an experiment in process. Thankfully, the higher ups had outfitted all labs with monitoring equipment. Dean opened the panel beside the door and flicked the switches, the little monitor flaring to life.

He frowned. Amara and Cas were inside and Cas did not look happy. She, on the other hand, looked smug. Dean didn’t like Amara. She was the kind of woman who just wouldn’t take no for an answer. He’d told her time and time again that he had no interest in her.

At least Cas had been respectful, if a bit disappointed, when Dean had said the same to him. And while it had made things a little awkward between them, Cas was still one of his best friends. Something here didn’t line up.

Dean flicked another switch and suddenly his earpiece came to life, the audio from inside the room beaming straight in.

“…told you, this technology isn’t ready. None of the test modules have either made it to their landing coordinates or sent back viable data for adjustments.”

“And I told you, Castiel, that your funding depends on results and you’re behind schedule.”

“No, I’m not,” Cas turned to the pad on his table.

“Oh, you are. The time tables were moved up this morning.” Amara handed her pad over and Cas reluctantly took it.

Dean’s frown deepened and he pulled his own pad out to check it. Pulling up Cas’s timeline, he saw no changes. What the hell was Amara getting at? Dean looked up in time to see Cas’s face fall, the pad dropping to his side.

Amara looked down at her nails and picked at something non-existent. “I believe todays’ test calls for human trials?”

Looking defeated, Cas dropped her pad down on the table and went to the test equipment. His fingers flew over them controls like an expert pianist at a keyboard and he locked the last one in place, walking forward to the testing pad.

With his back turned, Amara smirked and Dean nearly growled. Something was very wrong, he just couldn’t put his finger on what. As soon as Cas stepped up onto the pad and turned to face Amara, her face wiped of her smile and one of fake concern was pasted on.

“Why, Castiel, why haven’t you called for one of the volunteers?” she asked.

“You know very well why not. I may be forced to start the human trials today, but I still insist that this equipment isn’t ready. I’m not risking someone else’s life because suddenly, the bottom line is all the folks at the top care about. If it works, then it works. But if it fails…then at least the project won’t be able to continue because I’ll be gone.”

And that’s when Dean realized what the hell was going on.

Screw the lab light. He punched his override code into the pad, waiting impatiently, his heart in his throat, for the doors to slide open. Dashing inside when they did, he yelled, “Cas, stop! She’s playing you!”

He was too late. Cas’s startled face at Dean’s outburst was suddenly obscured by a blinding white light. Dammit! The thing had been on a timer! Amara jumped back at his entrance, surprised as well, and turned to face Dean. He ignored her, staring numbly at the spot Cas had been standing, trying to register what had just happened.

Cas was gone. His best friend was gone. Dean didn’t even know if the man was alive or where he’d been sent.

He might never be able to come home.

“Dean! I tried to stop him, but he was insistent on getting results today. It was all I could do to keep him from calling in some poor, deluded sap to – “

“Save it, bitch,” Dean growled, shoving past her. “I heard and saw everything. I don’t know why you were trying to get rid of Cas, but I’ll make sure you’re fired.”

“Dean, he’s just a scientist. This place is crawling with scientists. They’re a dime a dozen. It’s what we do. There will always be more to replace them,” her voice was oozing fake sincerity. “Now, someone like me…” she stepped closer to him, placing a neatly manicured finger to his chest, “We could be something special, if you let us.”

“So that was your angle,” Dean whispered in shock. “Jealousy? Over Cas? Why?”

“Why? Because some stupid, head in the clouds scientist, was stealing you from me,” Her eyes narrowed, her words coming out vicious and sharp.

“Cas isn’t just a scientist – he’s one of the rare ones. He’s an inventor. He can envision an idea and then work the science to find a way to do it. He’s like an artist, and science is his medium. It’s his sort that we collect here to work and none of them are replaceable. And besides that, Cas is my friend and he means a lot to me – he means…” Dean trailed off, his eyes widening. “Shit…he means everything to me.”

“Now, Dean –“ Amara started. He stopped her with a glare, tapping his earpiece. Her face went white.

“I’ve sent the date from the monitors and our conversation just now to Security. Expect to be fired for manipulation and abuse of power within minutes. Now get outta my way. I have to save Cas,” Dean’s face was grim, determined as he strode about the room.

Dean was a scientist, but he couldn’t invent things the way the others could. He could assist, though, and Cas had talked enough about his work that Dean was sure that he could operate the machine.

As long as he didn’t change anything Cas had done. He also knew that Cas had been tinkering with a portable device to set up at his destination that could link back to the home device. He’d been thinking of the possibility that the transporter might not be able to make a connection at the other end clear enough to retrieve anything.

If Dean could find that equipment, then maybe he could chase after Cas and bring him home.

And if Cas’s other worries proved true…well then, at least Dean wouldn’t have to face a world that didn’t have his dorky, nerdy best friend in it.

Because suddenly, the idea of doing so had him blinking back tears, caused an aching lump in his throat and carved a hole in his chest. All Dean could think was, when the hell had he fallen in love with Castiel Novak?

Now was not the time. He looked for the portable device and the control box that went with it. Dean snagged Cas’s backpack and dumped it’s contents on the work table, heedless of the mess it caused and carefully packed the equipment inside. He looked around – ignoring Amara’s yells as security arrived and dealt with her – and tried to see if there was anything else he should bring with them.

He snagged 2 bottles of water and a first aid kit and Cas’s coat. The coat he used to help cushion the equipment before placing anything else in the bag. Dean zipped the bag shut, started picking it up and then put it back down, snagging a set of tools. Not any Cas’s elaborate things, but a basic, survival guide style tool set. Cas might need to tinker with things.

Zipping it up once more, Dean hefted the pack onto his back, went back to the console to check the controls and then reset the timer. He took a deep breath, than another.

Cas was worth the risk.

He pressed the button and ran to the platform.

Dean would bring Cas home. There was no room for anything else. 30 seconds left. Tapping his earpiece one more time, he sent a message to his brother explaining in quick simple terms what was going on.

“Goodbye Sammy. Tell dad everything and wish me luck,” Dean finished just as the light flared up around him. He closed his eyes tight against it, not wanting to be so blinded that he was unprepared for anything on the other side.

After all – he had no idea where the other side was.

Didn’t matter. He knew all he needed to know.

Cas was there.

_______

I rather like it (though the malfunctioning teleporter and dean going off to rescue Cas reminds me a LOT of one of my favorite video games lol) and of course, when i have a few more prompts gathered, i’ll add it to the ficlet sets on A03 that i’m making.