#i imagine they've come over for a monthly get-together or something

[noknownnoun]

England: *getting rid of his coat cause it is always bloody raining in Britain* The store was closed today.

Norway: *sipping coffee, cuddled up in a blanket watching Romania play* We know.

England: How? Astral projection? Mind's eye?

Romania: *aggressively playing with his controller* The Internet.

[theunrealinsomniac]

Could you give me some Nejiten family headcanons?

Yeah alright, let's see what the old melon can spit out when I shake it lol.

NejiTen Family Headcanon #1: So we've touched on how in my Modern!AU's people parents are alive ... guess who's got both his parents in my AUs?

Ding ding, Neji does. Hizashi and his mother, who I have named Himiko, are alive and well and raised Neji.

Hizashi being alive has the added bonus of chilling Hiashi out an immense amount in comparison to his Canon counterparts.

Nothing quite like your brother being there to keep your arse in check to remind you of humility, believe me.

So Neji has actually got quite a nice childhood behind him, in my Modern!AUs, his Uncle Hiashi is still a dick, but well, he doesn't hold complete control over him or his family so that's not the end of the world.

And Hizashi is a spectacular grandpa. Himiko is also a wonderful grandma.

NejiTen Family Headcanon #2: We've talked a bit about Neji's parents but canon tells us jack all about either of Tenten's parents and ... well sadly, I ain't got much myself lol.

What I do have is that Tenten was raised in a loving and supportive home. In Modern!AUs both her parents supported her emotionally and financially where needed during her training in Judo and they love Neji.

They help dislodge the stick from his arse a bit but mostly they're just really, really good parents and it gives Tenten something to draw on when Hideki and Nejire come along.

NejiTen Family Headcanon #3: Neji, Tenten, Hideki and Nejire have a monthly movie night.

Each month they take turns picking a movie. Neji one month, then Tenten, then Hideki, then Nejire ... you get the idea.

It's a little family thing they can do and they've never missed one. They might have to rearrange the day but without fail, once a month, the four of them go into the living room and watch a movie together.

The only restrictions are obviously that Mum and Dad get to veto something if it feels inappropriate when their children are young. As you can imagine this leads to arguments when they're older, but they don't budge.

It's mostly Hideki wanting to watch older films on his turn that wouldn't be suitable for Nejire.

They caved once and the nightmares that Nejire had, leading her to hide in Hideki's bed taught the boy that maybe he should consider his little sister and he never tried it again.

Thanks for asking!

[dent-de-leon]

The fact that campaign 3 is only 7 years later than campaign 2 (compared to the 23 year jump from 1 to 2) has me going 👀

(Overall I’d still want any oneshots to be set much closer to campaign 2, but just knowing that the Mighty Nein are very much able to still be around and kicking during the events of campaign 3 makes me happy.)

oH I somehow didn't realize they were quite so close in the timeline, that's so interesting?? Seeing the Nein not even a decade later would be fascinating. It's enough time for everyone to get comfortable with their new directions in life, but not so long that I think they'd grow apart. But like--Luc is almost a teenager! Veth's little adventuring academy sounds so fun, I want to see it so bad. Also, I bet her wizard magic's really coming along; I hope she gets her own familiar. And little Kiri's older too!

King Molly's spent several years at sea--and a good few of those years with Fjord and Jester (longer than the whole Nein have been traveling together! I'd love to see how that changes up their dynamic, how close they all are now). King’s also got those “dreams of black chains” he’s trying to run from, which I am Terrified of, but...I’d love to see if that goes somewhere. He's also probably read Beau's whole journal and traveled all over to "visit and learn" about his past.

Jester opening up that lovely art gallery Laura mentioned, maybe even visiting the Feywild finally! And don’t even get me started on how badly I want Jester to have another run in with Isharnai. Fjord's post campaign arc can go in so many different directions; his past and reunion with Vandran, that contract he put out to hunt down Sabien, his strengthening bond with the Wildmother, everything that still needs to be dealt with to stop Uk'otoa! Caleb's probably got a reputation as everyone's favorite transmutation professor. Maybe he's started putting things in motion to try and remove Ludinus from power--Caleb's parting threat to him at the end of the campaign was so good.

Yasha could've grown an entire garden of her own by now, and maybe even tried to recontact her tribe--learn about her past, try to preserve Zuala’s memory, whatever she needs...she and Beau might've adopted a kid like they wanted! And Beau, there's just so much good she can do with the Cobalt Soul. So much to learn and so many more monsters to take down. I hope she and her little brother have grown close.

I imagine Caducues has had enough time to rest comfortably, and has starting going off on those adventures with Calliope Taliesin mentioned. I'd love to see all the things those two have been up to, all the exploring they could do. Maybe Clarabelle even joins them at some point. I hope Deucues has like, monthly tea parties for the Nein (Jester and Fjord have gone to every single one, and they always bring King Molly with them while he’s on the crew).

Sorry to get so sidetracked, but it’s definitely exciting to think about all the possibilities for what the Nein have been up to and where they are now! If it’s ever even alluded to the Kingsley somehow really became the Plank King, I’ll go feral. And I know we don’t have an exact age for Molly, but I’m pretty sure Beau estimates him at like early 20s in her notes. And given that he’s had such little time to live and explore this world--I’d just really love to see him when he’s older, a little more settled, having lived a decade or two instead of just two short years. That's so much more time to discover himself and try to come to terms with the past and I love that for him.

But yeah, I'm really hopeful that we'll see the Nein again! Oneshots will definitely be fun, but I also love that...with what they've done with the EXU crew and campaign 3, there's just something I love about the notion that we could see all the Nein again in little mini arcs! An EXU series where the Nein go to Darktow with King? Take down Uk'otoa?? Go to the Feywild? Confront someone else in the Cerberus Assembly? Find another corrupted forest like the Blooming Grove? King running into someone else from Lucien's past? Yasha seeking out her tribe again? There are just some really fascinating plot threads I think would be hard to constrain to a single oneshot, and I love the potential to revisit these characters in another miniseries in the same vein as EXU.

[aenaxes]

#ok I’m reblogging this again because: think about Rex calling Howzer after Fives. after all of that mess.#think about howzer trying to encourage him. help him. console him from light years away.#and then think about the sinking feeling in Howzers stomach when suddenly all of the men he called brothers#are suddenly just oh-so-blank shells#like a stitch was flipped#or a chip turned on

ok wait this is such a fantastic addition @icanbringyouincold

because when rex takes echo and fives under his wing, he undeniably sees himself and howzer reflected back at him. imagine the excitement, the breathless disbelief when he calls howzer after rishi, and the first thing he says is "holy shit, i found us."

duos aren't hard to come by in the millions of familiar faces, but there's something special about batchmates sticking together, rising through the ranks, always at each other's backs. rex keeps him updated on their latest antics.

> the twins are killin' me out here, howie.

> you know cody used to say that about us, too, right?

they laugh, and it feels good, stepping away from the precipice and reliving their brief youth. maybe when the war clock blows them all back to coruscant, he'll buy a round for the little brothers he's never met but still calls his own.

and then the citadel happens.

howzer's just about ready to turn in for the night when rex calls him, absolutely hysterical—that very special kind of distress he can't afford to show in the field, in front of his men, the kind he saves for the brother who knows him almost better than he knows himself. rex falls apart over the holo, and from a heavy few parsecs away, all howzer can do is listen.

because losing a brother always hurts. between them both, they've lost enough men to empty the seats of a maelstrom cruiser—grief is no stranger to them, they've just gotten better at reducing its sting to a low, dull ache that finds home thrumming over his temples.

but this time, the pain isn't something he can relegate to a clenched jaw and a few sleeping pills. it's devastating, mourning these brothers that he never knew: the brothers he heard about over their monthly calls humoring rex's fond irritation as they shared drinks from lightyears away; the brothers he envisions in flashes of memory and blurry faces; the brothers assigned to live the unlucky game of chance while rex and howzer watch, paralyzed.

> i left him there, i left him there, he's gone.

> that could have been us, howzer.

rex wails. the holo frequency crackles.

> why does it feel like i lost a part of us, too?

howzer doesn't have an answer, but rex's pain needles in his chest for weeks afterwards. he checks in with rex the next morning, then every morning after, just quick messages of r u ok, call me, i'm with u.

rex doesn't reply, and that's okay.

they really were the lucky ones, weren't they?

and then their next monthly call rolls around, and rex looks better. there are shadows of exhausted grief still lingering over his eyes and faltering smile, but he's getting better. and no victory has ever tasted as sweet as when howzer cracks a shitty joke that pulls a genuine laugh from rex's chest. because echo may be gone, but they're still here.

but this is war. they were created to fight and die. there's no real "getting better."

rex mourns differently when fives dies. his voice is flat and the call doesn't pull long into the late hours. rex just. gives him the play by play and ends with a hollow announcement that fives is dead; he even has the timestamp down to the minute. and then he sits there in silence as howzer struggles to string words together.

> when's this going to happen to us?

when. howzer wants to vomit.

the next time they see each other, it's a chance refuel run on some grassy mid-rim moon, and howzer nearly trips over himself running to rex's cruiser. he finds his brother laughing with his men at the mouth of the hangar bay, but howzer knows that rex's smile doesn't reach his eyes, fronting for the sake of his men. he was always good at that.

they take a speeder until the lights of the base flicker out over the horizon, and they find a high spot to climb atop. it's not the same as stargazing on a laatie, but it'll make do. and they sit, shoulder-to-shoulder, eyes turned skyward.

the wind is warm, here. nothing like the biting, salty tang of a brewing storm front on kamino. it's kind. maybe they can come back here after the war. maybe they can heal.

howzer waits.

> be careful.

rex breaks the silence. he drops his head onto howzer's shoulder, and howzer pulls him close. howzer still doesn't quite understand what's got rex so afraid, but he knows when to hold his tongue and listen.

> you first, di'kut.

rex laughs, and then his laughter slips into a shuddering sigh, and then howzer's wrapping his arms around his shoulders as rex's digs his fingers into his brother's back and sobs.

and when order 66 plays on loop over the comms, howzer knows to play pretend. he can hide the nauseating tremble in his hands; he can pretend to lift his blaster; he can pretend. rex was right. fives was right.

is rex out there fighting it, too?

thinking about batchmates howzer and rex as arc troopers under cody’s command before they were promoted to their own companies.

the og arc twins with one left pauldron and one right, because mirror images were still their own part of a whole. same heart, same blood, chiral.

they have the classic rough and tumble start of any archetypal duo; always pulling the high risk missions that earned them scoldings as much as it earned then praise; balanced in howzer’s level calm and rex’s sharp tactical sense; playing teasing games of one-upmanship on who could take out more droids, who could down the most shots at 79’s, who could hold a staring contest while the hull of a gunship rattled around them because they could never be too sure if this was the battle that would leave one the soul-crushing burden of burying the other.

and they mellow out. they get old. they lose parts of themselves to every jedi, every shiny, every brother they see fall, and eventually they lose each other when their combined strategic efficiency and battlefield know-how get them promoted to captains, each different shades of a dusty plastoid blue.

it’s not a complete loss, no. there are still the same planetside drinking games and occasional holocall rendezvous, but it isn’t the same when the truest thing to a brother you’ve had is a few hundred star systems away. there’s no rex to drop down and break up howzer’s carefully waxed hair. there’s no howzer to touch up rex’s roots and wash out the bleach. there’s no twin beacon of hope to climb onto a landed ship’s roof and map out the stars and fall asleep shoulder-to-shoulder under the cool night sky because even if they didn’t know what would happen to them tomorrow—much less after the war—they knew that they would have each other.

but they do their best, they care for their men the same way they remember caring for each other: leader, brother, friend. the loss doesn’t get any easier, but their respective companies flourish.

and then order 66 hits. howzer watches in mute horror as his brothers suddenly go cold—men with whom he’d shared blaster tricks and heart-to-hearts and tipsy paint days; suddenly they look at him glassy-eyed and brusque, and they don’t see a brother where he stands, much less a human. and it’s terrifying, sure, but that’s not what has him sprinting to the records once the blaster smoke clears and the bodies are pushed aside.

when the records show that rex is dead, maybe the relief that floods from the top of his head to the pit in his gut isn’t because rex is gone, but because death has always been that one looming force above their heads. the thing they’ve prepared for with letters and holorecordings and promises that would live on beyond a beating heart. maybe it was because dying in battle was a better way to lose rex than to have to confront a dead-eyed shell of a memory.

so howzer pushes on. he stands soft-spoken but strong at cham’s side, moving quietly in the new order’s shadows, living for himself, living for rex. and he thinks that it’s only fitting if he dies caught in his quiet subversion, that he would go out the same way he knows rex would have.