#i dont really have much to say abt this one except fawking lord i am writing more of this from scratch than i expected i would have to

[faebriel]

and you caused it: chapter 3

(click for more detail!)

In which Niki has a terrible secret, Puffy just wants to move on, Tommy sneaks into casino parties and Wilbur learns to deal with anger being justified. Or - the one thing they don't warn you of, when dropping nuclear warheads on old friends, is fallout.

in chapter three: a prisoner goes free, niki and tommy try (and miserably fail) to get along, and some breaking and entering is committed. just out of curiosity, y'know.

wc: 5.2k

wilbur watches from phil's verandah, old coffee mug in hand, as the remaining syndicate spills from their houses. the world is a dull grey before dawn, as if the sun is loitering beneath the horizon until everyone is all saddled-up and kitted out in their armour and weapons.

not wilbur, though. of course.

"Why didn't you tell me about all this?" he asks Phil, question just as poised as it is nonchalant, as he emerges from the house. Just about gives Phil a bloody heart attack, is what it does. He thought Wilbur would still be asleep. "Top secret," he says. "You know how Techno's like." "What, Techno put all this together, then?" Phil pauses. "How'd you find out, anyway?" "Niki told me." Phil's eyebrows raise, and despite how the man clearly wants to ask more than that - his mouth opens, then he looks at Wilbur like he's just a kid again, and closes it - he just descends down the porch steps with the quiet clink of armour against armour. "Didn't think she'd do that," he mutters - more to the snow than anyone else, barely caught by Wilbur, as he heads towards the stables. And then, thrown over his shoulder - "and get some proper fucking sleep!"

if that was the plan, he wouldn't have made himself a fucking coffee, would he. but he decides to mollify phil for once by returning to bed, even if he spends more of his time casting glances between the ceiling and his communicator than watching the backs of his eyelids.

---

a few more hours of crisp morning, and somehow niki finds herself waiting around the arctic again.

it's not comfortable. the place is full of too many memories for her not to miss it, and even if the syndicate is out on their little mission, the thought that she might run into wilbur again is stressful. wobbuffet can sense her anxiety, and it's making her apprehensive too.

fortunately, it's not too long before she spies a small group returning from the greater smp, just over the horizon.

"Niki," Dream heralds her, extending a hand to shake. She supplies hers primly, and he shakes it with the same amount of delicacy - an amused huff behind his mask, but nothing else. "Long time no see, huh?" Not long enough. "Something like that," she agrees. "I apologise, I couldn't make the recovery myself. Some things came up." Her eyes slide over to Techno's, stony. He looks away, but keeps his mouth shut. Good. "I understand entirely," Dream replies, with a kind of curl in his voice that makes it sound like he's grinning behind that dish-mask of his. It makes her stomach turn, angry and roiling like the seas. "Could always make it up with a pastry or two, right?" It's clearly meant to be a joke, and Phil supplies an awkward laugh, but Niki still finds her fingers forming fists in the sleeves of her jacket before she remembers to titter politely. They leave thumbprints of flour behind, white on coffee brown. "I'm sorry," she says, sugar-sweet. "I haven't baked anything for a while now." "Ah, a shame," Dream says abashedly. The falseness oozes from him like tar, sticky and ill, seeping into the bones of everything he touches and turning it sickly. It curdles his tone, makes her blood boil beneath her skin. It's a damn wonder Phil and Techno keep a straight face. It's a damn wonder she didn't fully see it a year ago. Something acrid rises at the back of her throat - an old feeling, the kind of feeling she would have welcomed last winter when she was cold and dark and angry and bitter and that she should cast off now that she knows better. It overwhelms her senses, fills her mouth with the taste of blood and clings there. Sticky and metallic, lining the insides of her throat. She can't let it go. The words thrum beneath her skin, and for better or for worse, they're the same thoughts she had before TNT rained down on L'Manberg - she will not die, she will not lose a life for Tommy's sake at the hands of this man. "Well, you'd best be getting on your way," Techno says, ever blunt - and even as he hands Dream the reins to a horse, his eyes jut cautiously over to hers. "There's your debt repaid." "Alright, alright, I know when I'm not wanted," Dream laughs. Always with the jokes, this one, although these words have an edge to them - a challenge that he isn't powerful enough to assert. Not right now, at least. "I'll see you around, Techno. Take care." Sounds more like a threat than a goodbye, but Techno still lifts a hand in farewell as Dream gallops off into the distance. Not in the direction of the city, for now. Good. Techno then turns to her. "Reconsiderin'?" Niki shakes her head. He tilts his head away from hers in response - if he weren't wearing the mask she'd be able to figure out what he's thinking from the expression alone, but he won't be taking it off until Dream's long disappeared over the horizon. She'll be gone by then, too.

she's made her appearance, established her alibi. should be enough. she doesn't have much business left in the arctic - she moved most of her things by ender chest the day before, and the rest was... destroyed. techno, still awkwardly distant and standoffish, doesn't encourage her to linger. funny - for as proficient as he is in combat, even he seems to find the newfound crevasse between them difficult to traverse. she waits til she's certain dream is gone, gone away before she climbs back onto wobbuffet and heads towards the nether circuit.

---

that is day one.

more days pass, and with every one the city seems to get smaller. niki is caught in a kind of (hah) limbo - avoiding the distant shapes of other players on the surface, but unable to steer away from tommy, tubbo and michael's constant clatter in her city. (day two, she gathers more supplies - but paranoia trips at the back of her mind, because she's alone again alone again even in the endless noise of her own base, hated and feels like the forest has eyes on her, asking why so much spruce, nihachu? they need the charcoal to keep the torches and furnaces burning, to keep a small room warm for michael to sleep in.)

both tubbo and tommy are far too outdoorsy for this kind of captivity. tubbo's set himself loose on her spare materials, chests and chests stacked with stone and ores and redstone dust - in half an attempt to mollify him, niki's given him free reign over some of the less-used parts of the city for "improvements", whatever that means.

(the other half of that is an attempt to get back on his good side - he's stopped glaring at her so openly, ever since they left snowchester, though his pointedly cordiality is almost as bad.)

she's overheard him mutter about building some kind of rail line - whatever wood-and-metal contraption that's engulfed half of her storage rooms and the library space doesn't look like a rail line, but niki supposes that she's not the expert. he's already rigged a headache-inducing network of redstone and lamps through their farms, spitting out double the amount of wheat and potatoes that niki had managed to put together on her own. at least they won't go hungry. tubbo always makes a point to ask her permission before shoving another set of iron beams across a walkway and carving redstone tracks into the walls (where did that mischievous kid from l'manberg go, wrecking mostly-well-meaning (or at least, fun) chaos through their houses and their gardens? you would be lucky if he mentioned his plans for utilising your base as a dreamon-beacon or something, let alone if he asked first), but once she's given the go-ahead, he single-mindedly settles into refining all things productive in niki's city to a knife-edge.

sometimes she walks through these parts of the city, counting each new rung of iron and stone set into her walls. she realises she's missed an opportunity to do this with tubbo not hating her - missed any opportunity she had to invite tubbo to her city under normal pretenses. now it's locked away beneath the earth forever, and she doubts her friendship with tubbo will ever see the light of day again, either.

she misses ponk. she misses hbomb. she misses enough things already - she can't waste time missing things that never even happened.

tommy, on the other hand, is still climbing the walls. he has his little hobbies - he does a bit of sewing, a bit of embroidery, has even taken to baking experimental breads, but it's all clearly time-killing. whenever she comes back to the city he's always waiting at the foot of the stairwell, arms out to help her unload supplies and a million questions on his tongue. who did she see? did they see her come home? did she say hello to them? did she see wilbur? did she see ranboo? did she see - and for this part his voice always goes hushed, as if he might summon the man's presence just by saying his name) - did she see dream?

she saw ponk and hannah, she sure hopes they didn't see her come home, and no she didn't say hello to them, avoiding the cult - she didn't see wilbur, she didn't see ranboo, and no, she didn't see dream.

it doesn't even do much to ease his nerves - he's just as twitchy when she returns as he is when she leaves. she thinks he just can't help himself from asking. she remembers how quiet the server went after tommy's death, paths decked out in flowers and monuments, and thinks - well, she can't really blame him. being away from the beating life of the server is, for tommy, probably about the same as being left without air or water.

doesn't mean she doesn't start getting testy about it all, though.

particularly when he asks after techno, or phil, or wilbur.

it's been just over a week when, sleepless, niki finds herself prowling the city corridors. her plan is to wait the morning out in the library, but when she passed the beehive nook, she finds tommy awake and fidgeting with the flowers.

she can't just ignore him, and hopes a polite greeting will suffice - but when tommy looks up at her, startled by her approach, there's pure anxiety in his grey eyes. part of her still wants to turn her back - clamouring for time to herself, which feels so sparse when the city is live and awake with activity - but there's a more responsible, more nostalgic part of her that insists she stay.

niki resigns herself to a night amidst the flowers.

even she doesn't really know what she plans to achieve. back in l'manberg they all had night terrors from the war, she remembers that, but tommy almost always took them directly to wilbur, if tubbo even let him leave their bunks (clingy, tommy would joke, as if he wasn't just as bad). fundy was the one who would come to her, sometimes tubbo. wilbur had only deigned to tell her that he shared their nightmares at all in the last few months.

is this what all those awkward conversations of rehearsal was for? some shitty, third-act twist? somehow, she still feels unprepared. she still feels like she doesn't know her lines. she doesn't feel like talking, like breaking the nighttime peace that is so fucking rare these days. it's precious. she doesn't want to hand it over. haven't I handed over enough, some part of her thinks, whines - but if that were true she wouldn't be the only person sitting here, and she wouldn't have no one to comm as she waited awkwardly to see if Tommy will find his voice, and she might even have slept through the night. she would still have techno and wilbur and phil and ranboo and puffy and god, who else? so she tosses the thought out.

finally, tommy speaks.

“He’ll kill you, y’know,” Tommy says. There’s a grim, grey look on his face - not frowning, not spitting and cursing, just resigned. Limp. Playing dead. “If he finds out you let me stay here. He’ll kill you.” Niki huffs, absent-mindedly blowing a thick chunk of pink-blonde out of her face. Dream is - Dream is formidable, terrifying, powerful, and she knows that. She has seen him in battle, and it’s only ever been on the opposing side. But only from afar. Dream has never spared her a second glance - not even purposely overlooked, like Eret or Fundy, just passed over -  and Niki doesn’t hate him for him, really, she hates him for the axes he holds and the TNT he palms off to her friends and that hollowed-out, horrible bliss in Wilbur’s eyes when he said Dream was his only friend. It could be anyone behind that mask, and to Niki, it wouldn’t particularly matter. The hatred she feels for him is direct, almost mechanical with how it just makes sense - she doesn’t burn with anger at him like she has at Wilbur. At Tommy. Well. She hasn’t. Tommy is trembling now, and Wilbur is somewhere out there with gunpowder on his hands again and that lost, empty look in his eyes that burns her up inside like kindling and makes her stomach turn. She tries not to let it show. “Tommy,” she says. She’s trying to be careful. “Dream doesn’t care about me. He wouldn’t track me down like that. He doesn’t care.” And to think, that’s a benefit for once? “Yeah, I know that,” Tommy says immediately, barrelling immediately past the implication that probably would offend a lot of people, and probably would offend Niki if it referred to anyone else - but Tommy stares dead ahead, unblinking. “He’ll kill you to teach me a lesson. Because I let you help me. Because of me.”

niki is a lot of things, but afraid of dream is not one of them - she struggles to comprehend tommy's fear. or, at least, the fear on her behalf. she can defend herself, no matter what tommy keeps babbling about revenge and consequences, and from across the broad crevasse of misunderstanding, his concern looks more like condescension. the more frustrated niki gets, the more stubborn she becomes - she rebuts tommy's warnings, half in an attempt to console him, and half because she simply doesn't believe they can be true. and on tommy's part, yet another instance of being brushed off about dream when he knows he is right the guy is just as infuriating - though god forbid either of them actually explain why they frustrate the other so fiercely. they don't fight outright, but the conversation sours into tired, bitter jabs.

"You don't listen," he scowls. "None of you fucking listen to me." Frustration crawls up Niki's throat, pulls fire into her tone. "I have listened to you, Tommy! For a long time! I listened well enough - before doomsday - " "Exactly!" He cuts her off, arms tightening around his knees. "What happened at doomsday? Exactly, eck-fucking-zactly what I said would happen - " "Do you honestly think that's what I cared about at the time, Tommy," Niki spits, righteous. "Do you think I just didn't know what I was doing? Just because I didn't like what you had to say, that doesn't mean I didn't listen to you." He doesn't say anything to that - instead, his face twists into a fierce, grumpy pout, and he angles his shoulder pointedly away from hers as he curses her out under his breath to a nearby bumblebee.

they part, after that - niki stalks off to the library to sulk, frustrated that tommy refuses to ever take her seriously. tommy refuses to budge from the bee nook, frustrated that niki refuses to ever take him seriously. and no one listens, and no one learns, and they keep spiraling down into bitter nosedives governed entirely by their own senses of guilt and burden and frustration, goodnight, the end.

well. not quite.

there's still a server running hot that exists outside the confines of the underground city, after all.

---

more days pass.

---

it has been just over three weeks since the casino exploded, and wilbur is starting to think that - once again - he might be losing his mind.

that's the clean way to name the incident, isn't it? it's been just over three weeks since the casino exploded, which means it's been just over three weeks since phil and techno broke dream out of prison, which means it's been just over three weeks since wilbur has spoken to niki or tommy or, fuck, even like, tubbo. even ranbus has buggered off to god-knows-where. his mind is an endless tumble-skip of well, you deserve it and god, so angry and why niki?

why niki?

the question grates at him. for the longest time, wilbur has taken niki's gentle trust as a fact of the universe - the sun rises and falls on a timer, unless an admin wills it so; water flows to the lowest point of land; witches never spawn in mushroom fields; niki is levelheaded and trustworthy and all the things wilbur is not.

it appears he may have made that last bit up.

it's disconcerting, upsetting, like the plane of land beneath his feet tipping on its side and his stomach twisting as he tries to get used to this new sense of gravity. for the long, broken line of his life, wilbur has trusted niki's judgement as so-called second to god. he built that pedestal so naturally that he didn't even recognise its existence. that even now, when its smashed so thoroughly into pieces, he struggles to pair the niki in his mind's eye to the woman raving excuses in the casino before its implosion, to the shaky woman spitting insults back at him over l'manberg's corpse. for the first time he sees himself in niki - unstable, pathetic and deranged all at once - and it is uncomfortable.

but even then -

niki fought beside him to reclaim manberg. they had shared that.

and though he paid it little attention at the time (the thing about limbo - plenty of free time to turn every living memory over in one's mind, like searching for bugs beneath upturned stones...) he recalls whispers of the plan she and eret had while the lot of them were split between manberg and pogtopia. TNT. it's a brutish and imprecise tool.

and he thinks of her fierceness. her determination, her drive, how she burns with feeling and lets it power her in a way that others can't bear the vulnerability to pull off - all things that he had basked in the glow of, and all things that can burn and scald and tear up the object of their hatred. the dim awareness that he had been that object, once - but it was niki, so of course that fire was righteous. he had accepted the blame without trouble.

but pointed towards something more valuable...

oh, niki.

Niki is... a loose canon. He rolls the sentence around in his head, lets it acclimate uncomfortably to its surroundings. It's the kind of thing Wilbur didn't really recognise, when he was alive - or at least, not without rose-tinted glasses. Niki is confident, but not brash. Emotional, but not violent. Perhaps she had seen him through that rosy gaze too, before his death. Now he knows better.

idly, he finds himself venturing towards niki's abandoned cabin - he's still living with phil at the moment, as quackity refuses to have him on las nevadas land (really refuses this time, makes their fun little playfights look like a fucking olive branch in hindsight), though he still gets a chill down his spine when he ventures further than the porch. anxiety, or something. in any case, neither phil or techno could bear to do anything with the cabin, and now it just sits there unused and unlit like a stark reminder against the glow-white of snowdrifts marking out the horizon.

(techno absolutely refuses to discuss whatever argument they had, actually, which means phil is not saying shit because of privacy. the two of them are as bad as each other when it comes to gossip - all too happy to listen in when it's someone else's turn on the rumour mill, and all too happy to keep their mouths clamped shut when it's theirs. when it's something either of them care about, at least. which says all it needed to about niki and techno before... well. he knew they were close, not best buds close.)

the door is unlocked. is that a surprise? he mulls the thought over as he enters, taking in the destruction. glass and flour and tipped-over flowerpots line the ground, forming an awful kind of texture beneath his boots. the place is doused in cold, as if someone had layered it in a thick, cool blanket. dust hangs in the air like snowflakes.

how strange to think that a few short weeks ago, he had laid upon this couch - warm and noisy as the two of them chatted away over baking and brewing. it's all gone cold and silent, now.

he takes in every abandoned detail that he can, soaks himself in this empty shell. the weapons rack against the back wall, littered with dull knives - the cheap, brittle ones, obviously, the ones that weren't worth taking. the kitchen bench, now cold and dusty. dying flowerbeds. glass carpeting the floor, crunching under his feet with every step. the bed is the worst part of it all, somehow - it's the least-destroyed thing in the room, quilts left stacked and forgotten. they look handmade.

it draws him over. he runs a hand over the weight of the quilt sitting at the top of the stack - it's heavy, good-quality wool, rich with colour. crocheted. someone put a lot of fucking time into it. when his hand trails the edge of it, he recognises the repeating pattern - teal and cream frame ringed-round eyes of ender, framing patches woven with pink, with green, with reds and blacks and whites and gold. he's seen the matching coats the four of them wear.

the syndicate, woven into something warm to sleep with. now it sits empty, abandoned, in the dust and debris of niki's cabin.

it's a distant, strange, uncomfortable. like watching a tragedy unfold before him - one that doesn't really concern him, for once, but is still faintly distressing. he snatches his hand back as if it's been burned, goes to walk past the bed, until his boot catches on some limp thing half-spilled across the floor and he deigns (big mistake) to look downward.

he doesn't recognise it, at first. funny. it was his first, after all.

the worn leather is cold and smooth beneath his fingers - picking the thing up feels like walking over his own grave, and it's only then that he sees the deep slashes in the back of the thing, and realises that really, he is. he reaches blindly into his memory, and come to think of it - he remembers niki wearing a coat like this, not that he'd thought much of it at the time. it must have just been similar was a simple refrain. and even then, if he pushes his memory further, there's a distant memory of a woman who could be niki amidst falling fire and rubble, tearing down a wooden path...

but that memory isn't his to recall, anyway.

she had this, the entire time. ever since - ever since i died. now abandoned too.

the sheer wave of feeling that overcomes wilbur is difficult to discern. there's sadness, even grief, nestled right next to that familiar, burning anger. there's the sense that he's fucked up something important again, although that's a thought he's simply deemed permanent for now, and then a part of him that screams righteous that he was right, he was right, traitors get what traitors deserve. there's something that could be a faint cousin of - impossibly - nostalgia, even staring down at the evidence of something so miserable.

and he misses niki.

perhaps he is of weak character. if he wasn't, he might not feel so compelled to reminisce.

his circling thoughts are cut off by the sound of his name, phil calling him from somewhere outside - wilbur sticks his head out of niki's doorframe to see him blustering through the snow. there's some hubbub in the distance as techno negotiates armour with carl.

you good? wilbur asks him.

for a moment, phil's eyes skirt knowingly past wilbur's, into niki's empty house - for fuck's sake, old man, he's not here to be picked apart - but fortunately, phil breezes past it.

did you get a comm from tommy? he asks instead.

no? no. is this a trend, now? is the rest of the SMP in some group comm that wilbur has not been invited to? he swallows the bitter feeling, although it still tastes like poison as it passes his gullet, and informs phil as much. phil looks less surprised, less knowing at that, but his expression doesn't lose any of its gravity.

alright, phil tells him. i'll tell you, 'cause i think you oughtta know, but you can't take this one all personally, wil - tommy's calling us for help, for some reason. and if he's doing that, then -

something must have happened.

(to call on phil and techno, of all people - no offence to them, but wilbur knows his brother, and he's a hell of a lot more observant than too many people refuse to give him credit for - )

something must be wrong.

---

the sun has just passed its noon peak when niki returns to her city. she loads her backpack with oak and iron ore and a few pumpkins she found wandering the overworld (a treat for michael, because god knows the kid deserves it and god knows the rest of them deserve a quiet night, for once), winds her way through the nether paths, steps out towards the winding staircase of her city.

immediately, she realises -

There is something wrong. It dawns on her, as she steps down the narrow staircase to the ravine - it’s dark, too dark. There is still a torch burning at the top of the staircase but the next is tipped over, kindling scattered over the floor, extinguished. The stone-carved steps descend into a thick darkness, the type of heavy black that she only finds deep, deep underground. Not in her city. (There are other signs, although she doesn’t notice them later - boot scuffs at the entryway, leaving marks in the grass that surrounds it, and a faint, clean smell of potions as she descends down the staircase.) Potions can't hide it all. Gunpowder pricks the space behind her nose, an arrow-bolt into Niki's heart - it ignites within seconds, propelling her flight down the tumbling staircase.

her city lies in ruins.

it is as if some grand, wild creature has torn through the place - entire walls of the city crumble, spilt into gravel and rubble and ash. gunpowder leaves scorch marks against the stone, marking out smudged, defiant bootprints. the beehive nook, the library, the bakery, her bedroom - she takes in the wreckage of the cavern with a heart that doesn't dare to beat and lungs that don't dare to take in breath.

the bridge is broken down before her feet, and numbly, she scrambles down to the well of the cavern - and from this new vantage point she can see her garden still smoldering, the flowers blackened and curling downwards towards kicked-open earth. the trees she so painfully grew beneath the dim torchlights are twisted and shelled-out, stark fingers that crumble to the ground without their leaves. her feet propel her forward without thought, and she rests a hand against its trunk - there's still scant flames licking at its insides, and she feels the heat grow beneath her palm. she can't move it, can't lift it away from the burning wood. she can't. it is as if she's frozen, shadows flickering beneath the flames and the broken lanterns and the kindling strewn carelessly across the floor, throat filled with the smell of gunpowder and sickly honey from the cracked-open beehives.

she can't breathe. she can't think. part of her can't believe what she's seeing even as the heat builds beneath her palm, even as she tastes gunpowder and blood on her tongue, even as she watches the blackened bark glow with embers.

another precious thing, gone. gone. every hour she poured into this place - making it safe, making it hers - is destroyed.

niki feels that she has been destroyed with it.

she should be angry. oh, she is angry - the feeling rushes in as soon as she puts a name to it, floods her veins with gasoline. she feels sickly and lit up with flames all at once, struggles to swallow around the ash in her throat. the silent screaming thrums through her blood, makes her skin itch. even so, it remains locked inside her mouth. she can't open it. she can't talk, because if she says a word, everything will spill - tar and fire and poison and blood.

tommy and tubbo emerge from the wreckage - tubbo pushing past niki to stand by the mouth of the staircase, a squalling michael shushed in his arms, as tommy and niki lock eyes.

this wasn't me, tommy says, immediate. niki, you - you have to believe me, it was dream - i swear, i swear on prime, on the discs, on tubbo, on fucking anything -

what happened, she asked. what - what happened here, tommy?

he tries to swallow, and almost chokes on his own spit - if niki thought she had seen tommy wound up before, well - she was naïve.

it was dream, he insists, dream found us, found this place, and he called to us and i heard the spark i heard the flint screech against the iron i heard the TNT ignite and -

“We hid,” his face falls into his hands, voice breaking into a hysterical laugh, “in the walls.”

niki is barely listening.

you humoured him, the voice in her head tells her. you stuck your neck out for tommy again, and now what? everything you fucking cared about is gone. everything is gone.

this is his fault. this has to be his fault.

the gasoline running alongside her blood shrieks for a match.

“Tommy,” she hears herself say. Her voice is tight. He flinches away, head bowed. “Please, just - go. Wait outside.” His face crumples. Something tugs distantly at her chest. “Niki, I - ” “I’m not - it’s not you, Tommy.” He needs to leave. She can’t hold onto her head for much longer. “I need to - I will catch up. Outside.” He doesn’t look convinced, still shying away from her like a spooked rabbit - but he leaves, he leaves, slinks off towards the staircase and leaves her alone in the wreckage.

niki waits until she hears their whispers fade, waits until the sound of their shoes scuffling against the staircase sinks into silence. she counts her breaths - in, out. in, out. each one deep, only mildly ragged.

it is only when she is entirely convinced that she is alone that she falls to her knees, like a puppet with its strings cut, and screams.

[alotsgonnachange]

Mystic Messenger Saeran’s AE Thoughts (.......And Prayers..) #Spoilerz

Hello, I just finished Saeran’s after ending and I have a lot of things to say and I am going to write it down while I'm still all keyed up about it.

First of all… Please DO NOT ask me how much money I spent to finish this as fast as I did…. I’m grown but my bank account is certainly going to have a good ole fashioned CHUCKLE at this….. It’s been a long quarantine I deserve a lil happiness as a treat methinks!

I have been playing this absolutely insane game since I think 2016? When I first started playing the deep routes had JUST come out I think? And I was just finishing up high school and am now a college grad...lmao

I’ve played all routes at least once except Jaehee but i’ve seen walkthroughs of her route (I’ve heard it makes you hate Jumin and he’s my favorite so um. hehe). V’s and Saeran’s routes I found to be so emotionally intense and just….a lot and I've been waiting a long ass god damn time for this after ending okay…. I would theorize and make up an ending in my head but i’m no writer so it was hard to figure out lol. I’m a Jumin stan mostly but I love everybody and yeah I should probably play that jumin dlc too but I need like a DAY to recover from Saeran’s AE. Enough about me HERE are my thoughts on it overall

Major Saeran AE Spoilers under da cut!

Can we please discuss V showing up to the C+R conference room with basically chloroform and made everybody Pass Out like??? I was alone in my room at like midnight just SCREAMING at my phone???? And the creepy ass CG ???? It’s like that gif of sarah paulson from ahs being like “I put arsenic in the wine….and the pasta”

Anyway I screamed at V a lot during this process!!

Loved RFA being sweet and kind to saeran (before V fucking drugged them…)

This is such common V behavior “I have to do it all myself...there’s no other way..” GIRL SHUT UPPP You do this every route....

SO many CG’s and I enjoy them a lot

Saeran’s sprite looks a little TOO crisp compared to everyone else but maybe its a glitch??? V next to him is in 480p while saeran is like 1080p

Hearing both Saeran and Saeyoung missing the other brother the whole time??? PAIN. All my homies know is PAIN

BOSS and his V for Vendetta ass guy fawkes mask??? I literally yelled “this game is TERRIBLE!!” several times at my phone

Their dad is so>??????? When he was sitting on the couch with saeyoung in that one CG while simultaneously telling him to kill himself?????????? Maybe chairman han is actually the best dad in this game somehow

When V and Rika were like we’re back together teehee teehee okay pack it up bonnie and clyde ..

When chairman han calls u and says hes jealous of u and saeran…..HUH????? I’m calling HR

When they go to the apartment and see boss and vanderwood and poor saeyoung is sitting there seeing his brother for the first time in years i wanted to D word sooooo bad like PAIN...PAIN….

Can we HAVE A DISCUSSION ABOUT JUMIN HAN BEING THE BEST CHARACTER IN THE GAME AND HE LOST EVERYTHING IN THIS AE……. he just took the blame and moved on jumin what the hell….. I love him so much r we serious? He watched his 2 closest friends betray him in the worst way and found out abt how Rika abused Saeyoung and Saeran???? I felt just AWFUL. Terrible ...Terrible….

Rika’s change in demeanor from Saeran's actual route is certainly a Choice. I find her much more bearable this time around and unfortunately i think I was too nice to her and ended up with a bad end LMFAO

I was happy to see Saeran stand up for himself and become stronger and confident. You go king!

The CG of Yoosung laying in Zen’s lap is everything to me…

HOWEVER YUP I sure did get a bad ending and I was so mad fdsafdskfdhsf ! (I would be happy to clarify how I got the good one the second time.) MAKE SURE To SAVE EARLY in days 2 and 3 bc the branches on day 4 is where the bad end will show up. For me it was the first day 4 chat and then a story mode titled “SAVIOR”.... If you see that RUN FOR THE HILLS!!

I was so mad! But I had saved in day 2 and replayed and MANAGED to get good end

I’m obsessed with everyone calling V and Rika “that psychotic couple” like…..its true its true…

No those two are so toxic… V’s route was torture watching them go on and on about the sun like yo can yall just call each other babe like normal people.

I respect straight people but not V and RIka that shit was just wrong… Straight marriage was a mistake

Oh lord i also FULLY Forgot Rika killed the twins’ mother…. Yeah that scene was um Certainly a lot but it needed to happen eventually

Like it’s good they know but damn that storyline is just so bleak

I think it was satisfying TO A DEGREE….To see Rika understand where she was wrong, why she was wrong, fess up and even APOLOGIZE! I was very surprised.

Saeran and Saeyoung are Certainly twins with the amount that those two self sacrifice in every route MY GOD…..

The scene with Jumin talking to his father and the other scene of him praying oh my god I cannot tell you how happy I was to see him begin to understand and address his own feelings in a route that was not his own. My main problem with Jumin’s route has always been the trapping MC in his penthouse aspect.. This way Jumin understands love and emotions without being overly possessive !!! YAY also loved seeing him be on good terms with his dad who was surprisingly profound

That last Story mode was Really a Lot…. and Strange things occurred which I will get into in just a minute

Jumin becoming a politician is so funny but ngl … i see it.

Yoosung going to france to study pastries ok king I see u! (it made more sense to me than the vet thing anyway)

Lastly Zen FURRY ERA

MY BEEF With the AE

I was happy with how they handled it for the most part. I think Cheritz heard our feedback about V’s after ending and was like okay….let’s try something different

HOWEVER

Saeran…. Sweet kind saeran… IS SO AFFECTIONATE HAHA….

He must have said I love you like 300 times…..very mushy gushy flowery language...and maybe that’s just his personality but for me it was like eating cake with buttercream cake. It means well, but god damn is it sugary and going to cause a stomach ache later.

He was just… SO MUCH! SO forward and ON all the time in his affections. I honestly felt kind of smothered and by day 3 and 4 I was sooooo over all the compliments… King you’ve come a very long way, but ur still putting MC on a pedestal and probably need to see a therapist.

Nextly….Rika and V….. Naw that knock out gas really ...that hurt lol. Coming from “I would do anything to protect RFA” V? Idk like…. EYE felt betrayed reading that. It was just hurtful. I can’t even imagine how the members would have felt as they were passing out. It was just so cruel. I suppose I understand why but like?? Just TERRIBLE

Them being in cahoots with the agency and the prime minister..HUH??? Also too much

V just felt so irresponsible like I do understand that he ended up in a weird web of secrets that’s hard to untangle but he’s so fucking stubborn he’s SO stubborn it makes me insane. Like sir… It seems like in other routes he wanted to try to protect Rika and the RFA.. But in this AE it seems more to me that he was like yeah i’m protecting Rika and That’s It… so fucking hurtful to me. Both of y’all apologize ESPECIALLY to the twins and Jumin..

The forgiveness thing…… Okay so I think some people will not like that Saeran decided to “forgive” the people who hurt him (Rika, V, Saejoong, his mother). I would point out that I actually think this was approached somewhat well. He says at one point that he doesn’t think they’re good or bad, just people. I think he sounded mature and like this was the way for him personally to accomplish his healing process. Would I have loved for Saeran to flip V and Rika off and kick Saejoong off a cliff? Yea I really would. But like…. If that’s what HE needs to do to heal then who am I to judge?

HOWEVER…. Everything Eye just said goes out the window when the scenes at the end with Saejoong come up… I was PERPLEXED. Like why did he HUG his deranged father who just kicked the shit out of him??? Also all the chat options that MC has with him r like blah blah you’re like this because no one loves you were so corny to me LMFAOOOO?

AND WHEN HE WAS IN THE ROOM LATER WITH SAERAN… i’m sorry but if that were me I would have called a nurse to deck his ass. Cool he turned himself in YOU SUCK SOOOO BAD AND I NEVER WANT YOU TO COME NEAR SAEYOUNG AND SAERAN AGAIN THANKS.

*scratches ass* I wish I got to see saeyoung and saeran finally sit down and have that first conversation after a long time and hug CG but the ending was fine I GUESS….. I dont care about ROMANCE I want those boys to be happy brothers together

Anyway that was really emotionally exhausting but I fr think I got it out of my system after literal years… And I can rest in peace knowing the choi twins are happy. THATS ALL I WANTED TO KNOW!!!!