I heard you are doing storm hawks writing prompts. If you still doing writing prompts how about something about young Dark Ace arguing with Lightning Strike about a mission or ignoring orders.
Okay like this was really hard for me since I for one forget that Lightning Strike existed at any opportunity because the things I assumed and headcannond make me not like him like, in an unfun way. like that guy had no lines and was a background character but I still really don't care for him or the lore about him bc I ignore canon. and the Dark Ace is just a silly little man to me. so I have no attatchment to these characters and didn't know how to make them argue or anything and this was all I could think of, it's not exactly what you wanted so sorry for that but I have zero ideas for these guys.
So instead have a you are Dark Ace POV of just straight up not liking Lightning Strike
1.3k words, fighting
The thing about a good fighter, like most of our crew, is that they can take down an enemy without killing them. They're also smart enough to not kill everyone they fight. Some fighting styles required killing people, but not directly, meant to conserve energy and strength. Like Sky Fu, disrupting your opponents balance and knocking them off their craft. The issue was him. Lightning Strike isn't a good fighter. His swings are heavy, he's uncoordinated, he aims to hurt people and kill them, and he gets out of breath often. Our leader didn't deserve the position, he only cared about praise and looking cool. Doing stupid poses when he beat someone or to intimidate them. The council sees him as an effective fighter, what they don't see is the fights he's a part of. Spilling unnecessary blood at any opportunity. I'm convinced he became a Sky Knight just to hurt people, we're just lucky he's on our side. Large, fast, able to dodge quickly, and not stopping his attacks, all the qualities a fighter should have. But he's also our leader.
I'm Ace, Lightning Strikes right hand and co pilot. The only reason he says he 'allows' me to be his co pilot is because I'm the only one to beat him in a fight. No matter how many times I beat him though, he doesn't show me respect.
So I hate the fact that I'm rushing in behind him to protect him. The Jerk should focus on the people around him. He just rushed headfirst into a group of Talons chasing after one soldier of theirs just because of a stupid insult. He tackled the soldier, leaving his back open. Fortunately for me everyone was focused more on that brute than me. I got there just in time to stop a Talon from bringing his blade down onto Strikes neck. I used the dagger in my right hand to parry the blade to the side while my left dagger went under the shoulder, severing the tendons that supported the arm. He screamed, he would be fine his arm would be useless for a few years but he'd be taken out of the fighting, but the important thing would be that he would live. Lavinia had been close behind me and started fighting at the front of their lines.
Lightning Strike is back on his feet, already swinging his sword blindly taking down anyone getting too close. I feel a bit of sympathy for the Talons in his path. I recognize the style they're using, doing their best to use Lighting Strikes swings against him. Lightning strike shrugging them off and bringing his blade down on them.
I am about to get away and get back to the front to help the rest of the crew when an arrow landed underneath my feet. A red arrowhead, jumped in the direction the arrow came from and the small explosion from the arrow threw me even farther. I wont have the balance to land after this so I braced my arms in front of my face, hoping I can roll it off and get back to the fighting.
My arms hit the ground first and I know my plan didn't work. My body turns upon impact and rolls sideways. I'm dizzy but I try my best to get my bearings as my vision focuses. It looks like it was a good thing I landed here, I thought, I'm even farther behind enemy lines and only two Talons are focused on me. One's rushing at me with a spear and the other is reloading his crossbow, fumbling with the arrow.
I try to stand and feel a sharp pain in my left arm and ribs, I ignore it and try to push myself forward as I get back on my feet. The Talon rushes me and aims for my side as jump to the left and use the dagger in my right hand to push the spear away. The Talon is off balance now, leaning over when I had pushed the spear. With the distance closed I grapple his waist and throw him over my back. I hear him land on the ground behind me with a large metallic thud, the sound of air leaving his lungs let me know he couldn't move and I jabbed his head with the brunt of my daggers, knocking him out.
The archer had reloaded and moved deeper behind enemy lines, not watching where he was going. Lighting Strike slashed him down the back when he got too close. The fight is nearly over now, and it looks like Lightning Strike didn't kill most of them, just brutally injured them. They needed to get to medics quick though. All of the fighting seemed to be focused at the rest of the crew, nothing they couldn't handle. I breathed a sigh of relief and gripped at my ribs as our leader approached me.
“We still have the tents to search, can you keep going?” He isn't asking out of concern, I can tell. He's mocking me, while I'm standing here struggling to stand straight and refusing myself to clutch at my ribs he has this huge grin on his face since he didn't get hit. Lucky bastard. I can see in his eyes that during our next spar he'd use my injuries against me.
“Of course.” I said with a forced smile.
The first few tents were empty, save for a Talon who cowered away from fighting. Lightning Strike had the sense to knock him out and drop him outside the tent. With only one tent left Lavinia approached us, asking what we should do next. Before Lightning Strike could tell them to relax I quickly gave them the orders to collect the Talons and get them to the ship and get them to the nearest med unit as fast as possible. Watching the rest of the crew gather the injured Talons my leader only gave a scoff and headed towards the last tent.
Lighting Strike pulled back the tent curtain and leaped backwards as a blade came out and swung at him. A kid no older than sixteen in only leather armor swung his sword up and down slowly, clearly not used to the blades weight. Another kid roughly the same age ran out of the tent and away from the fighting. I rushed the one swinging his sword and kicked his hands up, knocking the blade out of his hands and swung my leg to the side, hitting the kids chest and knocking him on his back. Lightning Strike ran after the other kid and grabbed him by his arms.
“I had heard Cyclonia had started using child soldiers, didn't think we'd run into any though.” Lighting strike said. Throwing the kid he caught onto his friend. Both of them looked up at us, fear obvious in their eyes. Cole quickly rushed over with handcuffs and took the kids away. Lightning Strike put his hand on my shoulder, I didn't notice before but he had been wearing a smile since the kid came out of the tent. “This is great news Ace!”
“Sir?”
“Come on Terrance, think about it.” He placed both his hand on my shoulders. “If they're really using child soldiers now then that means their army is falling apart. The Sky Knights have more people than ever now. If we attack now then it's an easy win.”
I watched over the next few weeks as his ego grew in size. He gathered the other Sky Knights and convinced most of them into an all out attack against Cyclonia. His plan could work. Child soldiers weren't as skilled in combat, they couldn't fight back against such a large attack. I fought him countless times leading up to the attack. Trying to get him to call it off. He wouldn't listen to me. A brute like him never should have been calling the shots. It should have been me. I was stronger, faster, knew how to fight, and best of all smarter. If it wasn't for me he'd be dead. I should be the leader.
My eyes traced over his back as we flew into battle against the Cyclonians. I drew The blade on his back, and his confused and scared expression as he looked up at me was priceless.
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SUBJECTIVE OPINION TIME re: Rhea
Me: * Finishes Empire Route * Maybe it’s just because both dogmatic zealots and quasi-parental figures than only love you “conditionally” tend to set me off personally, but man, Rhea is scary
People: “Well she goes off the deep end there, in the other routes she’s much nicer”
Me: Alright then lets see what nice Rhea is like * waits for it *
[...]
Me: ...where is it?
Rhea: *Is barely IN the other routes* *Never once talks to any of the people who are so loyal to her* *it looks more and more like Edelgard did everyone a solid by removing her from the equation and they dont even know it*
Rhea’s support chain: is nothing but major creepo vibes (and some Jeralt backstory I guess) - you do get “personal space plz” dialogue options so this isn’t entirely unintentional
Rhea’s S support: “I fabricated a false history, deceived everyone and was literally giddy about the prospect of you becoming a meat puppet until you offered me your tits/dick”
the vibe is very much “This character was basically evil until just now, but sinse she’s somewhat (sym?)pathetic we’re letting you redeem her if you’re really comitted to it” - and why not? Video games are all about freedom. And it makes total sense that she could be swayed by someone acting as a strong protector to her since she has a very childish, self-centered mentality and basically wants her mommy.
Just saying, none of the lords require you to screw them for them to listen to reason. You could run off with their best friends if you wanted.
Alliance Route: Edelgard was right about the censorship and shady meddling... actually, it’s even worse, because she’s to blame for the rampant xenophobia and closed-mindedness too!
I already suspected that Nemesis wasn’t going to turn out to actually have been good/ that there must be a bit more to it, but I’d had a lot more sympathy if she hadn’t basically enslaved 1000 years worths of humans for something their distant ancestors did. Nemesis and the elites were dead. In fact she killed them, and rightly so! But even if she could kill them again and again it wouldn’t bring back Sothis. And what did the commoners ever do to deserve this?
All while the actual Culprits go unchecked, cheerfully inflicting similar slaughter on, say, Edelgard’s and Dimitri’s families.
They had sad backstories too. Almost the same one (”Agarthans killed my whole clan”). What did Edelgard do with it? Decide that she will uproot both the meddling shadow factions, end inequality and give power to the people even if she has to give up everything she cares about, so the same never happens to anyone else. Sure, she had a much harder time trusting or connecting with people and dealt poorly with being cornered but she recognizes that her classmates aren’t to blame for what their fathers did. What did Dimitri do with it? Well he struggles alot, but he definitely developed empathy for the downtrodden and other victims of violence and he makes an effort to be aware of his shortcomings and be a good person most of the time. He never believes that trying to do good or fight evil means that hes perfect or cant be criticised. At some point he definitely held some resentment against Adrestians as a whole (not just Arundel or Edelgard themselves), but he got over that and became a dedicated peacemaker.
Both of them have more maturity and self-awareness at 23 than Rhea has at 23 hundred.
Church Route: Well, at least Mama Eisner actually DID die of natural causes and there’s no indication that she mistreated her ‘experiments’ in anyways, but it can’t have been great for Byleth’s mom, to grow up knowing that she’s considered a ‘failure’, that her mother figure would so much rather that someone else take her place and is just waiting for her to die of old age so she could repeat the process.
And then there’s how she made all the higher ups of the church drink her blood/ crest stones
Would this have happened to Jeralt if he hadn’t died when he did? Heavens could she have monsterified anyone who disagreed at any time?!
And just to twitch the knife she just HAS to call poor Byleth “mother”to their face at the very end after they went through all the trouble to rescue her and forgave her for the meat puppet thing.
Kingdom Route:
- The Ashe/Cassandra support DEAR GOD
...did she just get off scot free?
It’s not like I want her dead, per se, just not-a-threat-anymore.. She lives in her S support but she also partially recognizes her wrongdoings and that she’s unfit to rule and even goes on to atone, so, no objections from me. Whereas here we never see her realize that she was wrong in any way. Sure she’s stepped down but she’s probably discarded and assumed new identities a bajillion times. Just because she CAN cause trouble again doesn’t mean she will but if it were me I’d want some minimal assurance that she wont...
People: “But she has a sad backstory/sympathetic motivations/characterization other than muahaha”
Me: That’s decent writing, not morality.
By “evil” I don’t mean “cackling disney villain”, I mean that a certain critical mass of badness is present and that her motivations are mainly selfish at other’s expense. Sanctimonious delusions just make it worse.
Like you might feel sympathy towards some guy who was beaten by his father until you find out that he then went on to beat humiliate and mistreat his own children. It’s the same principle, though I recognize that this is by naturally subjective.
She’s clearly intended to be tragic/pitiable and I’m certainly not going to get on anyone’s case for feeling sorry for or emphatizing with her (let alone liking her - you’re allowed to like antagonists and not every opinion has to be some great act of moral value)
But wether or not one wants to use the label “evil” which by nature is a subjective emotion-charged thing, or the entirely separate question of what one would or wouldn’t view as appropriate countermeasures, there’s no denying that the results of her actions were net negative and that she was just plain incompetent and accountable to no one. And she wasn’t ever gonna stop.
It’s hard to give her a pass for being childish when Edelgard, Claude and Dimitri (eventually) take on so much responsibility and determinedly pursue altruistic goals though they are young and inexperienced.
As I see it, Rhea’s a “rule the world” villain whereas the Agarthans are a “destroy the world” one. Lawful vs Chaotic evil. Out of the two you’d probably prefer to be subjugated by Rhea because she’ll act as a benevonent tyrant as long as you do not openly defy her but both view the surface-dwelling people as lowly animals. In Rhea’s case, you get to be the pet cat, and she may even protect you like a pet cat. But pet cats dont get any say in how they are governed.
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Hi @pixiesandink , I hope better late than never...Here your Secret Santa gift. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year and all that. I hope you are having a good time with your snow :-)
By the time Iida and Midoriya returned with their umbrellas, Uraraka was sitting in a garbage container and refused to leave. “It’s my home now.” she puffed, sitting cross-legged, arms folded above her chest while slowly sinking into the mass of thrown away class assignments and shredded meeting minutes: “I live here.”
“It’s a garbage container.”, Iida argued, having faced to many pointless discussions to care much whether his reasons mattered to her.
“Its paper.” She explained: “Soft and comfy. And I don’t have to walk to school at all.”
“That’s inappropriate and probably illegal,” he continued, chopping the air, as he was wont to: “And dangerous on top.”
“It’s a single room flat in a good area,” she shook her head in overplayed disappointment: “People murder for this kind of place. And it comes fully furnished,” she gestured at the paper surrounding her.
“This is the school yard.”
The UA towers stood high to their right, looking foreboding against the grey afternoon sky, the tinted windows reflecting the fading light in deep blue, seeming eternal and calm against the wind beaten branches of near standing trees, shrill signing birds flitting between their branches, hiding from the oncoming storm. It smelled of rain, and the promise of an evening spent huddling in the common room, hoping the electricity would hold while fighting over blankets, their voices drowning out the sound of rain beating against the windows.
Uraraka shifted again, sinking even deeper into her new home, as she aimlessly pulled pieces of paper from the mess. With her head at about Iidas height, she huffed lazily, shaking her head: “What did you think of the essay questions today?”
The other one leaned forwards, setting his forearms against the side of the garbage container, carefully avoiding all dirt and eying his friends new home suspiciously: “I definitively have to study when we return. They are putting significantly more empathies on their humanities program now than they did when my brother went here.”
She nodded her agreement, through she knew nothing about the schools humanities program several years ago: “That last question really got me confused. Did we cover that in class.”
“It was on one of the hand-outs, actually.” Midoriya chimed in from below, having sat himself down on the dirty asphalt besides the containers, his painfully yellow umbrella opened above him, as if to create a small cave consisting only of it, him and the worn out sweater he had thrown over his Uniform: “I hardly understood it through, anyway.” He yawned.
It was the week of test preparation, with teachers drilling theoretical information into them, even putting off part of their physical regime in favour of endless repetition and practise tests.
“I didn’t read those.” Uraraka signed, leaving Iida torn between reprimanding her for not fully following the lessons or scolding himself for forgetting valuable class material.
“I doubt it matter through.” Midoriya went on: “Hardly anyone who is not amongst the top five solved that one. I heard Yaoyorozu say she struggled with it, even.”
“History isn’t her thing huh?” his friend asked past a struggling Iida, still undecided: “But she is so brilliant at Chemistry. Think they will keep a question even the best student can’t answer?”
This made Iida snap. Taking a deep breath and completing a few forceful chops against the unsuspecting air he made his decision known, launching into a lengthy monologue on work ethics, which, to the readers convenience, shall here be reduced to its essence: “Of course they should keep it. As students and future hero we have a duty to meet the highest expectations of not only this school, but society also. It would do you two good to remember…” he started, pushing himself of the garbage container to flathandendly point at Uraraka: “…that even the history of a pre quirk society can be relevant to your work one day.”
“Hm. You think so? But how?” his friend wondered, leaning forwards to look over the side of the container downwards: “He does have a point through.”
Midoriya shrugged, the motion hardly visible through his oversized yellow sweater: “We still have two more weeks to learn, so they might just…expect us to forget everything else.”
“Who needs a hero when you could have someone who understands a gold-standard.” Uraraka laughed, throwing her head back and glancing up at the sky, which was cloudy and unusually dark for a summer day.
“The gold-standard”, it sounded from below, the words torn away from the boy’s mouth, hardly audible against her disinterest. With one hand she took hold of some discharged papers, making them float before pushing them up into the wind. Iida huffed disapprovingly as they where ripped towards the east gate.
“How long can you keep that up?”
“Long enough.” She grinned, watching the paper disappear in the distance: “With something that light till the next shopping district maybe.” A smile broke across her face: “Have you ever drunk like an astronaut?”
Iida huffed, recognizing the abrupt change of topic as what it was, but Midoriya, who knew that the evening would be filled with relentless studying and quiet discomfort, laughed: “With a straw?”
“Yes,” she bobbled her head up and down, her knees sinking in deeper from the sudden movement: “Or like Pacman,” she looks almost proud saying it, snapping her mouth shut trying to imitate the video game character and both boys where struck by the sudden realisation that they would probably soon find out how the dirty brown spots appeared on the common room celling over the weekend.
“Yes”, the smaller boy perked up, his head bumping against the umbrella: “Like an obstacle run, weightless in the air,” he smiled up to them, waving off Iida, whose face softened at the look of excitement on his friends face: “You could train body awareness and agility. Stamina too. With all the - Is it more straining to float liquids?”
“Huh?” Uraraka tilted her head, trying to compare the effort to the lifting of a solid object and coming up empty: “It’s different I think. I can’t actually touch all of it.”
“Oh! So it is all about the surface tension?” her friend asked from below.
“I guess.” She sounded uncertain, twirling a strand of hair around her finger: “Its weird. I was not paying that much attention.” A slight blush crossed her face, remembering the last Saturday night when the common room had been to quiet, with only her and Kaminari sitting on the plush couches, trying to scare the night away with pointless chatter and bad ideas. To throw some drinks into the air had been his suggestion, the kind of drinks as well and she had agreed because she was fifteen and these here the kind of trills she should experience. Nothing more than a slight taste of danger laced with stupidity and laughter. The kind of things that made time pass quicker.
A single drop of rain landed on her face and stopped her in her thoughts, running down her nose and dropping on her lips. Laughing she licked it up, wondering about water pollution and the sense of inner tension floating liquids gave her: “Deku,” she said, reaching backwards for the lid of the garbage container: “ Iida, I think it’s starting.”
Iida looked upwards, at the grey clouds looking just a shade darker than before as he blinked away a raindrop in the corner of his eye. Ignoring the sound of the lid being closed he reached for his umbrella, feeling more drops falling on his thin hair and smiling at Midoriyas quiet mumble: “…he wont like that, he’ll…”
Alarmed his head shot up, starring at Uraraka who smiled at him softly beneath the half closed lid of the container, fitting comfortably and looking cosy lying amongst the thrash, shoulders angled slightly towards him, her legs almost entirely covered by the paper. He blinked as she burst out in laughter, her body convoluting as the scandalised look on his face deepened.
“What are you thinking? We are…” he started, frowning and jerking his head as more raindrops soaked through his hair, the sudden movement letting them drop into his face as he hit the containers side repeatedly.
“Wait, what is she doing?” Midoriya shouted from below, giggling along his friend at the taller boys attics.
“Aw, come on,” despite her apologetic smile, wide and open and not regretful at all, the girls voice was teasing as she tried to wards of the punishing lecture that was sure to follow: “I’m the one without an umbrella.”
“Something any of your friends,” Iida waved at the space behind him, indicating nothing but empty asphalt and rain: “… could have helped you with! Here,” he opened his umbrella, which was wide and dark, looking sturdy and expensive, with light brown studs at the end of its rips, just the kind of model his friends would have expected him to own and held it over the container, leaving his own back uncovered: “… we can share.”
Uraraka laughed again, pushing her head out from below the lid and under the umbrella: “You know that this is exactly the kind of umbrella I thought you had.”
It took her some wriggling and crawling to push herself from the paper, hands folded to activate her quirk a moment before she threw her arms around Iida and, with a forceful jump, let herself float almost vertically upwards, rain and dirt staining her clothing while the taller boy tried desperately to hold onto her and keep them both covered. They must have made for a ridicules picture, because when Midoriya, still seated on the ground in a small circle of dryness, peered at them from below his shelter, he began to giggle, starting with a small, swallowed sound, that soon turned into cut-off pleas to stop, please, of not for Iidas, then for his hearts sake.
It took a few minutes for the two to sort themselves out, like an overworked machine trying to pull a hot-air balloon down to earth, both moving unsuccessfully to avoid each others flailing limps, like two dancers attempting to push each other off balance, as if they where not sure if they should be fighting or help each other to float off into space to never be seen again.
“I am getting good at this.” Uraraka said, after her feet had again found the ground, her friend holding onto her shoulders as if trying to keep her grounded. Her face was slightly pale; looking sickly against her dropping wet hair she spent some time trying to push back. Still she was smiling, proud and exhausted as if she would do this again, in a day maybe, after she had gotten to spent some quality time with her bed: “Who is up for some hot chocolate?”
“I am certainly not ‘up’ anything.” The grip around her shoulders tightened, but she could hear something like happy displeasure in the boys’ voice: “But I would not mind something warm to drink. Are you coming Midoriya?” he asked, already turning towards the dorm, relived about the end of a chaos he had enjoyed all the more for knowing that it would end.
“No”, the boy chimed from the ball of yellow below: “I will not abandon this small heaven of dryness.”
“Huh?” came from above: “You too.”
“I think,” said Uraraka, a slight frown marring her face: “You broke him Deku. Congratulations. No hot chocolate for you.”, she sung, looking smug, sickly and happy at the continuation of their attics.
“But,” the teen whined: “All the dedication and patience that went into staying dry! If I get up now, I will be wet too. And I haven’t done the laundry.”
“You can wear…No.” The girl shook her head, remembering, with glee, giddily excitement and slight remorse the last time her friend had tried on any of her clothes and stretched her fourth best tight fitting shirt to a pyjama: “Your can wear Iidas clothes. Right?”
“Wha-? Yes, I am, of course, always happy to help a friend, even if it would not be necessary if said friend had done his chores.” Despite trying to sound accusatory, waving his hands through the air, the dark haired boy seemed to smile, even through he was shivering in the cold, as he tried to pull Uraraka closer to his body, using her as personal source of warmth.
“Oh really?” she muttered: “I bet…” With a slight tap to the shelve of his sweater Midoriya felt himself lifted off the ground, struggling and trying to maintain contact with the small, round patch of asphalt he had sat one, the ground darkening as the first drops of rain fell on it belatedly.
With a drawn out ‘NO’ the teen gave up his fight, stretching his hand comically towards the disappearing dry asphalt, as he was drabbed along on his right foot, trying and failing to keep at least his upper body dry as he wined along his friends cheerful chants of ‘one of us’, preparing to soon be dropped unexpectedly. He had seen Uraraka before, after all.
They made it halfway to the dorms before she dropped him, letting herself fall dramatically into his arms as soon as he had stood up and she brought her stomach under control, fainting sudden weakness and screaming as he tried to lift her over his head.
“Waaaarm.”, she groaned after he had successfully lowered her and hugged him. He hugged back until Iida threw himself over the two, slinging his arms around both their shoulders and throwing them of balance, seeming perfectly content as they all tumbled onto the ground, just a few meters from their destination.
“Now,” Uraraka chided: “Now I really need to shower.”
“You sat in a garbage container.” He replied as he rolled off them: “You should anyway.”
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