#i mentioned au's that stick closer to canon the other day and i suppose this qualifies. one small detail...

[sisterdivinium]

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Category: Gen Characters: Sister Lilith (Warrior Nun), Shotgun Mary (Warrior Nun), Mother Superion (Warrior Nun), Ava Silva, Jillian Salvius, Sister Beatrice (Warrior Nun), Father Vincent (Warrior Nun), Cardinal Duretti (Warrior Nun), Adriel (Warrior Nun), Sister Camila (Warrior Nun) Additional Tags: Angst, It's all of their relationships to one another and to the halo, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

A short AU for if Mary hadn't arrived on time and Lilith managed to get the halo in 1x05.

[quibbs126]

So I decided to work on some more designs more characters in my AU starting yesterday, this being Megatronus/The Fallen and then Liege Maximo

They’ve already been here in the lore, they just didn’t have designs

I’m also not 100% on either of these designs, not just from a detail perspective, but overall. Like I wanted Megatronus to be purple, and have his head more resemble his canon designs in his Fallen state, but he really ends up just looking more like Galvatron. Like yes, he is supposed to look like Megatron, but maybe it’s too much. Or maybe I need to design Galvatron in this AU too, because he’s kind of also here (the Decepticon leader)

And with Liege, he’s predominantly based on his IDW appearance, with a couple other things, but his role is supposed to be semi-closer to his original role, and he’s a threat larger than a mere trickster. I guess when you’re a combination of official designs and most of those designs are twinks, you’ll end up a twink too, but still. Maybe he needs beefing up

And like I said, the helms. Megatronus’ looks too similar to Megatron or Galvatron I think (though the issue is again that I want to save his Fallen head for when he is The Fallen, and the heads that aren’t resemble the Decepticon logo, which he isn’t nearly as tied to here). And then Liege, I just don’t know if it looks good, it took a fair bit of tries and I’m still unsure

They aren’t horrible I don’t think (though I need to figure out the triangle shoulder anatomy), but they might need more work. I don’t know, tell me what you think about these designs

Oh and also, the Fallen design at the bottom. I meant to go full in with it, but I really don’t know how to design what I want, I’m not skilled enough. So he is left as sketch, because lining that would have been a mess as is

But a lot of his design comes from Trio/Evil Robot from Mega Man 8, since he really captures that vibe I want. I just don’t know how to use it right

I don’t know, hopefully I’ll figure something out eventually. I have to work more on breaking out of this standardization of the designs

Anyways, lore time for these guys. I think I’m gonna put it under a cut this time since I know I text wall a bit too much, we’ll see if it sticks

Okay, so starting off, I should probably mention that these two are not in the current day story, they lived and died centuries prior, and it’s been even longer since Megatronus looked like that, but they’re relevant to the lore, specifically Megatron

So starting with Megatronus, he was some sort of gladiator revolutionary, wanting a better Cybertron than the corrupt one he had lived in. I don’t really know the details of what he was fighting against, but basically he has like a modern Megs’ backstory, I’d say closest to IDW (that I know of), since this AU’s Megatron doesn’t. He was incredibly powerful, even trading out one of his arms for a powerful arm cannon to be better suited for battle (in this time weapons weren’t retractable, unlike the current day. Megatron’s arm follows the old rule for reasons and he doesn’t want people poking around his circuitry), and there was seemingly no foe he could not best

But despite what his gladiator reputation might lead you to believe, he was also a great intellectual as well, writing many poems and treatises that are still read and appreciated in the modern day (he did not trade out his writing hand). Not only this, but he was an incredibly empathetic and kind bot to those he fought for, saving his anger only for the corrupt leaders who deserved it

Unfortunately one day, the Mighty Megatronus simply disappeared, with no knowledge as to what had happened. Some assumed he died in glorious battle, some simply believed his rebellion against the ruling class finally caught up to him, some believed he may have gone into hiding, either from exile or because he had given up the cause. But regardless, without him there, the cause he strove for slowed somewhat, but his teachings and ideals remained, and eventually, the better, equal Cybertron he sought was attained. And while he did not lead the final charges to cause this, his influence on the revolution led to him still being remembered as an influential and respected figure

Sorry it’s a little vague, I really don’t know what specifically was the conflict Megatronus was fighting or what the corrupt Cybertron was about

But as for what actually happened to Megatronus? I don’t have the who yet, but someone managed to get the drop on Megatronus and capture him, and “punish” him for his actions. Megatronus was locked inside a massive armor, which ran with fire and would keep him perpetually burning, but never to the point of death, just eternal pain. And it would eventually fuse to his plating, meaning that trying to simply pull him out of the armor would kill him instead. Not only this, but his voice box was broken to he point where he can no longer speak any coherent words, only make noises, and his voice was also taken away by removing his remaining hand and replacing it with a claw, so he could no longer write either, to communicate with others

He would be locked within eternal suffering, while never being able to relay to anyone who he was, or any thoughts at all, only able to look on as bots run horrified at the terrifying monster they saw, as he would be left as nothing more than the mindless, savage gladiator the ruling class claimed him to be, with no other name given to this creature than The Fallen

Basically his life becomes pain, both figuratively and literally

Like I said, I don’t know who did this to him or specifically why, so I don’t really know what he did after this, but I do know that he eventually ends up working for Liege Maximo, mostly unwillingly, but without the strength and nearly the spirit he once had; the old him would have rather died than take any part in Liege’s schemes

So now let’s talk about Liege Maximo. While I don’t know what he is exactly, whether a warrior or a scientist (though I think he has to be able to do both), he’s definitely evil, and probably tried to either conquer or destroy Cybertron in the past

He also just so happens to be Megatron’s creator, as well as the creator of the Destron Virus that later created the Decepticons. And as for Megatronus’ involvement, Megatron was made in his image

Liege’s backstory is even more undefined than Megatronus’, but he once tried to do something bad to Cybertron, but ended up failing and presumably dying in some huge, probably lore relevant event that I think Alpha Trion was there for. The Fallen also definitely dies here, but we’ll get to that later

Megatron and the Destron Virus were key players in his ultimate plan (whatever it was), whether they were the next large phase in his plan that never came to fruition, or they were a backup should the main plan fail. But regardless, Megatron wasn’t supposed to stay locked in stasis for as long as he was, he was supposed to wreak havoc centuries prior to the current story. The virus also wasn’t supposed to make him docile either, the smoking gun here, but either Liege wasn’t as good a scientist as he thought, or he didn’t have time to iron out the bugs. But in current day, the virus has been unleashed and the Decepticon leader is following in his footsteps

I should probably mention, in case I haven’t said, the Decepticon leader is meant to be like, Megatron’s clone or something. He’s somewhere between Galvatron and BW Megatron. The main reason I’m unsure of the clone thing is that he was supposed to be made because the original Megs went AWOL, and lacks the flaw that made the virus affect him the way it did, but the issue here is: how did the clone get made in the first place? He couldn’t have created himself and Megatron wouldn’t have done it, and Liege would already be long dead. That’s why I need to think on it more

But back to Liege, let’s talk about his relationship with The Fallen

I half want to call them toxic yaoi? It might be seen like that, considering they are on some level, basically Megs’ parents, and in my head Liege has some sort of obsession with Megatronus/The Fallen, so much so that he keeps him as his attack dog essentially, and based his piece de resistance almost entirely on the former gladiator. But also, Megatronus had no say in any of the events that led him to Liege or what he does under him, and he utterly despises him, he’s just unable to do anything about him. Like if there’s yaoi, it’s entirely one sided, and LM’s absolutely emotionally and probably on some level physically abusive in this relationship (maybe not directly, but like he can control how much pain Fallen’s in)

I’m unsure if Liege was the one to turn him into this, but he does pose a strong possibility, I just don’t know if I want to go that route, seeing as how Liege is entirely separate from the corruption stuff (well he probably isn’t, but he wouldn’t be someone Megatronus knew before as an enemy of his)

But regardless of whether or not he was involved, he is one of the only people that knows the truth that The Fallen and Megatronus are the same bot. I heard once in a fanfics that Liege can read minds, and while I have no clue whether or not that’s true, screw it, he has some level of telepathy here. So he can hear The Fallen’s thoughts, the only way he has left to communicate, if only to himself, and so he’d find out the truth eventually. As the years and isolation and suffering continue, The Fallen’s thoughts probably deteriorate more in terms of cohesion and intelligence, which Liege laments, but not because he feels bad for him, and he won’t do anything about it, he’s just disappointed. Liege tends to hold one sided conversations with The Fallen, at least to anyone else that sees them, since The Fallen can only communicate in his mind

But he does hold his knowledge of this over the Fallen’s head, specifically the idea that he holds the key to any form of salvation from his torment, of someone finally knowing who he was that isn’t Liege. Liege will never give this info away, not unless it was actually beneficial in some way, and on some level The Fallen knows this, but he chooses to still hold on to the potential hope this brings of being free from his prison

The Fallen despises the villainy that Liege forces him to do, but he feels he has no choice, whether it bring him salvation, or the sweet mercy of death, and it was the latter he eventually found

Originally I was going to have it that Prima was the one who killed The Fallen, back when he was companions with Alpha Trion in my lore, and somewhere along the way they’d eventually discover The Fallen’s true identity (it might have been a mercy kill), but now that Prima’s role in the story is completely different and much farther back, I don’t think it was him anymore. But I do still think Alpha Trion knows his true identity, I’m just not entirely sure as to how. He also didn’t make this public knowledge, probably because of how Megatronus was remembered and how The Fallen was perceived in his time, as a force of pure evil, and that this wasn’t something that should stain the legacy of the great hero, especially when he himself never wanted it and knew nothing but pain from it

The Fallen was also aware of Megatron and Liege creating him, and while disturbed by the likeness to his former self, had no way to stop Liege from doing so. As for The Fallen/Megatronus’ views on Megatron himself? It depends on how articulate this version of him looking at this modern incarnation is, and when in his lifetime. Though it probably doesn’t really matter

Megatronus despises the evil he was created for and the destructive, violent nature Liege created him with, mixed with extreme disturbance at how similar Megatron looks to him. But he also knows that Megatron did not ask for any of this, it was his creator that intended him to be this way, and can’t really blame him. In the time before his death, he would have had mixed feelings on Megatron, but if he were to have lived, he would have tried to make sure Megatron could have had some amount of a decent life, and not be terminated before he ever comes online to prevent whatever plans Liege had, with the hopes that he could overcome what Liege had wanted him to be and there was some goodness in him. If he were to meet modern day Megatron? He would be absolutely delighted that the virus backfired on him so bad and gave him complete free will and compassion, and probably be extremely supportive of the bot he is now, trying to make up for his past, even if he doesn’t know the half of how significant it is to the current situation. Keeping a crucial secret from his team? Not the best decision, but it’s understandable why he doesn’t and goddamnit he’s trying at least. Pre-Fallen Megatronus would probably get along well with Megatron, though maybe be a bit more critical of his secret keeping, and wouldn’t have any of the prior context as to his situation. Also no clue why this other bot looks so similar to him and even has a name a mere 2 letters off, he’d probably question that, but Megatron wouldn’t have the answer to that either

And I think that about wraps up all the infodumping on these two? I don’t know, I have a lot to say on Megatronus

As for how they tie into the current story, Liege’s schemes are the basis for the Decepticon’s ultimate goal, but I don’t entirely know about Megatronus, outside of his connection/similarities to Megatron. I’ll have to work on that

But yeah, I think that’s about it for now. Now for sleep time

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #32 - Nobody’s Ever Actually Dead in Comic Books

Our band of merry guys-who-weren’t-on-the-Lost-Light-in-issue-#1 approach the shattered husk of the Lost Light, in a gruesome scene that is only slightly marred by the graphic design.

Font doesn’t really suggest danger, does it? Here, for comparison, is something I slapped together in fifteen minutes (including recreation of background) using a font I got off a free font site.

Now, one could say that my version is rather derivative, flat, and arguably cliche, but you know what else it is? Appropriate for the fucking mood of having found a destroyed, hemorrhaging ship after everyone you knew disappeared.

I’m available, IDW! Hit me up.

Theorizing that this is the ship that the Coffin Rodimus came from- remember that? It was a few issues ago- the gang flies in for a closer look. The ship blood is actually something called quantum foam, which allows for quantum space travel to happen. It’s not supposed to be outside of the quantum quills, but the ship’s pretty junked up, so it is.

Because the ship is so very full of holes, the gang can set down for repairs pretty easy. They land in Swerve’s, finding it in less-than-pristine condition. They also find evidence of Crosscut having gotten creative, as a poster for the play he was working on is hung up in the room. Considering he was still writing it when he disappeared, this might seem a bit odd. But then you remember that this is a ship from the future, and it stops being so odd.

Because this is a future ship, with evidence that Crosscut did some stuff, it stands to reason that, at some point, everyone is going to come back from being disappeared.

Just to die.

Which is a bummer, but one crisis at a time.

Megatron disembarks the Rod Pod, with Ravage following, and everyone is just a touch put off by the duo. Everyone but Nautica, who proceeds to commit a microaggression.

Nautica, that’s Soundwave’s father you’re petting like a common animal.

Ravage, angered by this over-familiarity, swats at her. Skids questions letting an active Decepticon roam around, but Megatron brushes off these concerns, saying that finding any still-living crew members is more important. With that, the search begins.

The gang splits up to look for clues, despite Riptide thinking this is a horrible idea. They’re on the clock for this one- the quantum foam is liable to explode if it touches anything, and there’s an awful lot of the stuff floating around right now.

Nightbeat and Nautica leave the rest of the group to their own work, seeing as Nautica has the most appropriate alt-mode for traversing the gaps in the ship.

Man, that’s pretty cool. Wish Nautica hadn’t been regulated to being “girl best friend” for her character arcs, I would have loved to see her do some neat stuff for her own development. Guess that’s what happens when you get introduced as main cast late, and have to compete with all the faves who had dozens of issues to be established and who also don’t have to deal with the whole “token girl character” thing.

The rest of the gang- Megatron, Ravage, Riptide, Skids, and Getaway- start looking in the area they’re already in. Seems a little lopsided, but whatever.

Ravage finds someone almost immediately, identifying Ultra Magnus through smell alone. Only, it isn’t just Ultra Magnus.

The Magnus armor lays not terribly far away, having had its hands cut off to prevent the recall signal from being activated before being gut-murdered.

Gut-murdered wiTH A FUSION CANNON, MEGATRON

Of course, Megatron was forced to destroy his fusion canon after it was decided he would be joining the Lost Light, but you can buy these things off the black market like it’s nothing. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Brainstorm had a few stashed in his lab.

As it currently stands, nobody can trust the guy who has a storied past of killing Autobots, on a future ship where the only folks who could stop him are dead. Megatron, at least, has the good sense to not argue this fact, and suggests that the boys lock both Ravage and himself up until they suss out exactly what happened.

Meanwhile, over with Nautica and Nightbeat, we run through all the weird shit that’s happened in the last day or so.

Nautica, you’ve been on this ship for months now. How did you miss the fact that the only couple within 800 miles got annihilated by way of Phase Sixer? I feel like that attack might have come up at some point.

Since they’re on the subject of spouses, Nightbeat asks Nautica if she’s married, or if she has friends. Though noting that such a direct line of questioning might get him slapped with someone else, Nautica reveals that she is single, though she does have a best friend. Nightbeat is also single, probably because he pulls shit like this.

While this conversation is going on, Nautica uses her Sonic Screwdriver wrench to open a door with the literal push of a button. Brainstorm tricked out her wrench so hard it turned into a magic wand, which is good, because they’re going to need all the help they can get now that space is literally warping around them thanks to the quantum foam.

Nautica kicks something on the elevator, and that something turns out to be Brainstorm’s mysterious briefcase. Too bad Swerve is gone, he was so invested in what it contained. Luckily, Nightbeat is just as interested.

Back over on the other side of the ship, it seems as though Megatron kept his word about not resisting, as both he and Ravage have been locked in a cabinet. Wonder how that’s going for them.

Oh, better than I expected.

Ravage is fucking pissed that Megatron joined the Autobots, thereby turning his back on everyone who supported his cause during the last four million years. Despite this grievous betrayal though, the Decepticons haven’t stopped moving. Turns out, Galvatron’s in charge now.

But only if Autobot Megatron isn’t some sort of ploy.

It’s at this point that we learn just why Ravage is here to begin with- to see if Megatron’s truly given up the Decepticons, and if he has, to murder him. But first he’d like to know why this is happening.

Megatron views himself as a monster, having perpetuated a war that ended the lives of billions, destroyed the Cybertronian way of life, ostracized his race from the rest of the universe, and killing just to have something to do. He doesn’t like feeling this way about himself, so he decided to walk away from that life by joining the other team.

Don’t think it’s quite that easy to do, but okay.

Ravage isn’t so sure that this change of heart is going to stick, still convinced that Megatron will snap back to his old self with just a bit more time. Problem is, Megatron may not have a ton of that resource left.

Didn’t they build that body in like an hour so you wouldn’t die? Yeah, no wonder it feels as ill-fitting as a twenty-dollar suit. Thing’s probably made out of pig iron and duct tape.

The lights come on before further self-reflection can be done, and the duo realize that they’ve had guests this whole time.

Someone put the kettle on.

Obviously some fucked up shit happened on this ship. Megatron isn’t so sure that it’s him who did these dirty deeds, however, as he reaches into Ratchet’s mouth and pulls out his brain. Which feels like something that doesn’t really absolve one of guilt, but okay.

Also, ew.

Back with Nautica and Nightbeat, things are getting weird.

Now, this sequence might seem confusing at first blush, but this is because the laws of reality are collapsing around them. Going by clues in the background, we can find the proper, linear progression of time, and thus is conversation. This is what is actually happening:

With the mystery of Brainstorm’s briefcase eluding us once again, we move on to see more graphic aftermaths of violence. Poor Tailgate has been nailed to the wall with a chunk of a metal beam that’s almost as big as he is. The mood lighting for this scene is gorgeous, but I’ve hit my limit for exposing y’all to gore for this issue, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one. Then they find something even more interesting.

Who’s ready for Under Cold Blue Stars… 2!

Back over on the opposite side of the ship, Riptide’s found something nasty. It’s a bunch of dead bodies!

Including, uh, Pipes.

Who already died a while ago.

Hm.

All the bodies in this room are in their alts, and it looks like they’ve all been shot and drilled into, for some reason. Skids brings up that he had a friend who could identify the placement of any robot’s brain module just by knowing what they turned into. Then he reaches into a corpse to see what the drill-hole’s all about. It makes him sick, though maybe not for the reason you might think. He gets on the phone with Nightbeat, who’s called to tell them that they’ve found Overlord.

Still locked in his weird body harness.

And decapitated.

Megatron is on the other line, calling because he’s figured out the same thing Skids has. Someone paid a visit to this ship. Someone nasty.

The gang regroups, and Nautica gets the basics on the DJD, because I guess nobody’s mentioned them even in passing in the last six months, either.

God, what do they even talk about on this ship? Certainly not their feelings.

The reason that one room was filled with alt-modes was because of Tarn’s addiction to transforming; t-cogs are easier to remove when they’ve been used recently.

We get a quick 4/5ths-page gore-fest, then it’s back to making it all about Megatron.

Maybe you should have thought about that before you FUCKING DEFECTED, YOU POOL NOODLE.

Nightbeat’s beginning to put two and two together. There’s an Overlord in the basement. That shouldn’t be, because Overlord got exploded by Chromedome when he mercy-killed Rewind. Something is off about the past of this ship.

Before he can establish his MTMTE everybody-lives-but-then-dies AU though, the quantum foam fucks with the ship. These sons of guns need to get the hell out of here, pronto.

Oh god, what now?

Ravage smells someone inside the Magnus armor, someone who isn’t a part of the usual nesting doll lineup. Megatron reaches into the Crackerjack box and pulls out one hell of a prize.

HE LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVES

Chromedome would be so thrilled, if he still existed.

[warriorsfireandwater]

Laurel power of the 3?

Laurel: What changes to the books would you make if you could write the series?

I got two requests for this one! While I'm sort of following the same idea of "sticking closer to canon but making it functionally better", I think this series is really indicative of how poor planning made it functionally worse than its predecessors. So while I'll try to avoid diving too deep into AU territory, there will be some more significant changes to try and make it all work together better. Some of my thoughts on this have been influenced by @tennelleflowers‘s video on their Po3 changes - it’s a really great take on the series!

First, I would straight up butcher this series into three books. There’s a lot of filler here with the ancients and visits to the tribe and the mess that is the last book, and I would just boot all that to the curb. There could be some mentions of ancients, but the tribe visits feel less than necessary to the plot.

The Sight: Lionkit, Jaykit, Hollykit are just starting to grow up in ThunderClan. I would put greater emphasis on how they’re raised by the other queens in the nursery, especially Ferncloud but Daisy as well. They still love Squirrelflight and view her as her mother, but they’re very close to Ferncloud and Daisy. Squirrelflight has kept up with her warrior duties since Ferncloud has nursed the three when Squirrel’s milk didn’t come in. All around their kithood is just fuzzy and warm and they grow up encouraged by everyone - INCLUDING JAYKIT. None of that “everyone looks at him with pity :(((((” shenanigans. If anyone suggested Jaykit was unfit for anything, Mama Ferncloud had some stern words for them.

Things play out mostly the same across the book. Jaypaw starts out his training with Brightheart and Hollypaw with Leafpool, but they do end up switching. For Jaypaw its not because he’s bad at being a warrior or because Spottedleaf is harassing him into it, but because he has been aware of the strange dreams he has and more than once has woken up in the dreams of other cats. He feels like he’s been getting signs from StarClan but he can’t make sense of them, and he likes the allure of being able to communicate with StarClan and have that position of power and respect in the Clan (which is reinforced, because the watering-down of the influence of medicine cats later series is frustrating). Hollypaw conversely realizes that being a medicine cat is far more lonely than she expected, and notices how lonely Leafpool clearly is, even if she isn’t open about it. Hollypaw doesn’t want that for herself and sees the fun the other apprentices have, so she agrees to become a warrior apprentice instead. Brightheart takes over her training.

Lionpaw doesn’t have a huge arc here, he’s mostly kind of a doofus who comes off arrogant due to his skills but starts to learn throughout his apprenticeship that just being a meathead isn’t going to get the other apprentices to like him. Him and Berrypaw have a friendly rivalry. The Sight ends with Jaypaw receiving the prophecy from StarClan.

Dark Eclipse: Borrowing the title from my Wind!Po3 au... this is when Sol is introduced. He arrives to the Clans, showing himself to lone warriors or small patrols, making minor predictions and claiming to be able to preform miracles. He mostly predicts cats futures - if they’ll find love, how many kits they’ll have, silly things like that. Cats start eating it up despite being suspicious of the loner, because their medicine cats don’t do that kind of thing and honestly, it’s fun. Sol is mysterious but friendly, keeping cats at an arm’s length while dangling information in front of them. He also generally positions himself as being very all-knowing of the history of the lake, sun-drown place, and the “ancient cats” that used to live here.

While Jaypaw is out collecting herbs on his own, he happens across a tunnel (by accident, from falling into it), where he meets a cat with no scent that leads him out. He finds the ancient stick, and wants to know more about what the tunnels are all about - so of course, he goes to Sol to learn from him. Sol is more than happy to teach Jaypaw about the history of the ancients in exchange for information about the clans today (under the guise that he is something of a historian and likes collecting information wherever he goes). Sol also has heard of Jaypaw’s prophecy, and he claims he wants to help Jaypaw understand it and grow into his power.

Lionpaw starts having dreams with Hawkfrost and Tigerstar, and while he doesn’t trust them, he DOES want to learn their fighting skill. They also seem to have some sense of his special abilities, and claim to want to help him better understand them. This is when Lionpaw’s power in the waking world starts to have more... uncomfortable tones. Lionpaw starts losing his temper easily, becomes more aggressive, and finally during a training session he unsheathes his claws to claw another apprentice. This lands him in trouble, and he’s told he has to spend a quarter-moon helping Leafpool and Jaypaw in the medicine cats’ den to learn how to take care of others. During this Jaypaw walks in a dream with him and catches him visiting Hawkfrost and Tigerstar. Afterwards, Jaypaw threatens to tell Firestar unless Lionpaw stops visiting them. Lionpaw doesn’t want to give up his training, but he doesn’t want to get in trouble with Firestar, either - so Jaypaw admits he has his own teacher who Lionpaw can visit.

Hollypaw, meanwhile, is adjusting to being a warrior apprentice. She’s unlike her brothers - she’s much friendlier than Jaypaw and more intelligent that Lionpaw, and she’s not bad at hunting or fighting but not particularly egotistical about it. She can be a stickler for the warrior code, but generally she gets along with the other apprentices and begins to become the ringleader of the group. She is notably distant from her brothers, though, which makes her upset but she isn’t sure how to fix it. Jaypaw is fixated on his medicine cat training and is inherently separated from her by his role, but Lionpaw has just been... tired and grouchy and mean. To make matters worse, he starts disappearing during the day, too! Hollypaw is fed up with this and stalks her brothers one day (feeling a bit hurt that they’ve been spending time together without her) and catches them meeting Sol. She finds this absolutely disgraceful - he’s a rogue, smart or not! Jaypaw tells her that he can help them understand the prophecy, which only infuriates her more - because why didn’t they tell her about it in the first place if that was the point of meeting him? Furious, she storms right off and reports them to Firestar. They are both in trouble now for leaving the territory and their training to talk to a rogue, and Firestar is especially concerned to hear they’ve been sharing information about the Clans with him. A ThunderClan patrol tries to track him down, but Sol seems to have vanished.

Sol later shows up at a Gathering (with mixed reviews from the audience - as it turns out, all four Clans have seen this mysterious loner, and some admire his knowledge while others are pissed off about this outsider frolicking across the territories distracting their warriors and NOW having the audacity to strut into the gathering). He says he’s going to make the sun go out. Cats are like “wtf????” and Sol repeats this and says he is more powerful than StarClan and will show the Clans that it is so. Cats grow angry and fearful, some even wanting to kill him for suggesting such a thing, and Sol just sort of smirks and says “If your StarClan is so powerful, then I suppose they’ll keep the sun lit tomorrow.” With that he takes off and cats are freaking out, clouds are covering the moon, and the Clans call off the Gathering.

Cut to the next day when things are progressing more or less normally (with some general nervousness). A WindClan patrol storms right through ThunderClan territory, claiming to have heard ThunderClan is harboring Sol. Of course, they’re not - and when WindClan is about to attack them, a ShadowClan patrol races to ThunderClan asking for help because RiverClan is attacking them for “harboring Sol”, which they claim not to be doing. WindClan turns on ShadowClan, ThunderClan is confused, fights are breaking out, its all around madness. A few hisses turns into all-out war, but no one knows whose side is fighting for whose. Someone cries out that Firestar is losing a life - 

Then the sun goes out.

Outcast: This book picks right back up in the middle of the panic, with some cat shrieking that Firestar is dying. Thing is, no one is sure who killed him, because it’s chaotic and hard to see due to the, you know, black sun. Jaypaw is trying to get his way through the fray with Leafpool to make it to Firestar.

They don't make it in time. They get there and he's dead. Actually dead. Jaypaw is in shock, and Leafpool is shaking with grief—but Jaypaw catches a sense of rage in her.

"He had two lives left," she snarls. "He had two lives."

Jaypaw understands and is horrified. Firestar's wounds are fatal, but they're not horrific. Coming back from the loss of his eighth life should have healed him enough to survive through the ninth. Someone waited and killed him again.

The eclipse ends with Sol atop a tree, declaring he has proven himself to be stronger than StarClan. Cats are horrified by the aftermath of the short but bloody battle. All the Clans are calling for blood, until Blackstar admits that Sol clearly has knowledge that would benefit ShadowClan and brings him back to camp with him.

ThunderClan is feeling really low after everyone realizes Firestar was killed. Cats are willing to accept it was an accident until Leafpool reveals what she realized, and that just ramps them up to pissed. Cats pretty quickly jump to thinking it’s Sol, but Jaypaw isn’t sure. Sol was never aggressive, and he had seemed to be out of the fight. Jaypaw tries to say this with mixed effects. Lots of fingers are pointed, but Brambleclaw doesn’t want to start off his leadership attacking another Clan without being sure. There’s a bit of an early-to-mid book lag here, with cats trying to maintain normal Clan life but Very Stressed about the fact that their leader was murdered twice in battle. Aaaand cue the fire.

Fire scene plays out like canon. Ashfur traps the three and Squirrel reveals the truth to the horror of her kids. It’s a bit more emphasized here that he had some involvement with Firestar being trapped in the fox trap a while back - he specifically says “I just regret not staying to make sure the job was finished”. Lionblaze believes this means he killed Firestar in the battle.

A couple days pass. Ashfur’s body is discovered. Cats are FREAKING out thinking someone is trying to murder ThunderClan cats now. Bramblestar finally gets a patrol together to go to ShadowClan and demand they give up Sol—but ShadowClan won't have it. Things are just weird there, with Sol and other rogues just hanging out and Blackstar declaring ShadowClan is following Sol's wisdom now. Sol comes down and says he did not kill Ashfur or Firestar but is happy to help with their investigation. Hollyleaf and Lionblaze go along and Lionblaze INSISTS Sol must be lying. Hollyleaf is notably feeling eaten up inside from the reveal of not being Squirrel's kit, and starts to work out the whole truth. At the next Gathering, she jumps on the the tree and reveals everything—how Squirrelflight lies about being their mother, about Leafpool and Crowfeather. Chaos ensues. Hollyleaf runs away, and Lionblaze chases her.

"What's wrong with you?" he snarls. "You ruined everything! Do you have any idea what I did to protect us?"

Jayfeather catches up and sees his memory of Lionblaze killing Ashfur. (I think HE should be the one to kill Ashfur so Hollyleaf's breakdown/killing feels less contradictory and because it fits Lion's power + Ash was his mentor.) When he killed Ashfur, he basically beat him to a pulp until Ashfur admitted he was the one that killed Firestar and repeated he was just sorry he hadn’t done it when he last had the chance to hurt Squirrelflight. Jayfeather shares this with Hollyleaf, who is horrified by what her brother has done and is afraid of how angry he is. She runs off into a tunnel, which collapses, and Jay and Lion believe she’s dead. Lionblaze feels a tremendous amount of guilt, believing he just killed his sister. Jayfeather is shaken and asks how the prophecy can still come true without her, which makes Lionblaze angry - “Don’t you care that our sister just died?”

The book ends on a dark tone, with Lionblaze being eaten up by guilt from Hollyleaf’s death, and not speaking to Jayfeather. Jayfeather is upset that Hollyleaf is dead but is extremely concerned for the sake of the prophecy (to the point of being half in denial about her death - thinking she simply can’t be dead because the prophecy needs her). The story ends with him helping Whitewing birth her kits, Dovekit and Ivykit, and when Cloudtail comes to visit his daughter, he is struck by the recollection that Whitewing is Firestar’s kin as well, making her daughters “kin of his kin”. He feels more hopeful after this, thinking to himself that he will keep a close eye on the kits so that they aren’t lost like Hollyleaf. This also leaves some plot threads for OotS to resolve - Sol isn’t gone, ShadowClan is clearly starting to have issues, and the Clan still isn’t sure who killed Ashfur.

[specialagentartemis]

People are really into Lambert Week here on Wolf 359 tumblr (because it was great), so here I am presenting: a canon-divergence (quite literally) AU (also literally) that spins off of that.

What if... I took the “Lambert watches the events of the Wolf 359 liveshow” entirely seriously?  Lambert gets a vision of the future.  He is ordered not to tell Captain Lovelace.

He tells Captain Lovelace.

Weird things start happening to the timeline.

Rated T, no romantic ships, lots of friendships and enemyships.

Also, part of the reason I’m getting back on tumblr is to have a place to archive all my Behind The Scenes thoughts where I don’t feel self-conscious rambling about them.

I know I always love reading about what authors are thinking when they wrote something, and I always have Lots Of Stuff that I’m thinking when I write things, but I always feel so... vain and self-conscious expounding on it because Who Cares.

So that’s what tumblr’s gonna be for.  Every week I’m gonna post a chapter on AO3, and then here’s gonna be my rambles about my thoughts and Explaining What The Refrance.

- This fic will totally be an excuse to indulge in Weird Sci-fi Stuff, off-kilter timelines, paradoxes, unreality, more than a little recapturing of what I’m loving about the flashback scenes of Harrow the Ninth, and Lovelace and Lambert being friends.  And Lambert and Rhea being friends.  Both of those are very important to me.

Chapter 1, Prologue:

- because I need to have an explanation for what’s going on in my head to explain what does and doesn’t work re: time travel: my idea was that, the star turning blue and going haywire at the end of Season 2 also caused weird time fluctuations and all sorts of strange and inexplicable events that went alongside the whole “turning blue” thing.  One of those weird time effects was sending security footage that was in the process of broadcasting back to Earth back into the past instead.  That’s how this all started - an accidental side effect of the Dear Listeners not really caring how freaky their “attempt at welcoming Eiffel was, haha.

- “Peter Kuiper” is the product of an extremely useful bit-character naming algorithm.  Gabriel Urbina has mentioned that when he needed a minor Goddard employee for Cutter to talk to, he grabbed a name from the Bible.  Not sure this is supposed to be Implying anything; I leave that to your discretion.  It makes choosing canon-compliant minor character names very easy, though.  Catholic school + currently taking a statistics class gives me plenty of biblical name/mathematician combos. 

- The name “Kuiper” was chosen specifically, though, from the theory that Cutter steals the bodies of employees when he wears out his welcome in his old one, body-hopping promising young Goddard employees.  When your coworker suddenly gets promoted to Communications Director and the old CD quietly retires and nobody hears from him again... well, you don’t ask questions.  Cutter seems to have a preference for K/C-R names, though, so I imagine he keeps an eye out for appropriate candidates... and Rachel is aware of this and keeps potential candidates on the correct promotional tracks.  (Maybe also why she chose the name “Young” - Cutter has never been a woman before, but just to be on the safe side, latch onto a name with all the wrong sounds in it...)

Chapter 2, “Live Psychodrama”:

- I have a hard time coming up with titles most of the time... but I love giving chapter titles to serial works.  Partially I think it makes serial following more fun and interesting, partially it helps me keep track of what plot point happened where, partially it’s sometimes a place to stick another obnoxious reference because I think I’m clever.  (Someday I’m going to write my epic tragic longfic about the last days of the Lovelace Administration and every chapter will be titled after a line from a different filk song, and then you’ll all be sorry.  Specifically you’ll all be sorry I’m allowed to post things on AO3.)

- I will never stop putting references to the OC Squad in my fics.  Someday I will write real things about them.  In the meantime you just get oblique references.

- A while ago, upon rereading the script for “Change of Mind,” as u do, I came away with the new realization that Lambert and Rhea seemed notably closer to each other than to the others - Lambert was Rhea’s favorite, and Lambert was friendly with Rhea in a way that wasn’t as stiff and awkward as he was with his human crewmates.  Lambert week was extremely validating in that regard.  Lambert is ready to throw down for AI rights!

[solarclaw]

Lore Reversal AU: Desperation Ch. 1

Aaaand here’s what I’ve written for this AU. Further groundwork I think. I wrote an entire one-shot but then it evolved and beat me up until I broke it into chapters / parts. Whichever.  In fact this whole thing was in a single post, so the beginning might not seem coherent. Whoops? Not completely finished so there may be some wait between them.

More info of this AU can be found in a previous post, tho the basis is Bergen invasion before Tribal separation.

A few warnings:

  Kinda dark with death being a thing, but that’s what happens when you have predators to deal with, the kind that eat prey. And those prey are trolls. Also maybe mention of PTSD; I’m honestly not sure? I’m not a psychologist...But bad flashbacks.

  For the most part, I left a lot of things up to interpretation. Especially gender identifications. Even sexual ones. I’d like for people to build off of this since this is just supposed to be a sort of base, or supporting foundation for the AU, which is dealing with the after-effects from all of this.

  No actual dialogue even since that’s not really my strong suit. Even if I practice lines by talking to myself. I just can’t seem to get spoken words right w/out being heavy in sarcasm, “meh” & lots of muttering. And rambling. Basically my general tone of voice; which probably shouldn’t be the default to every character here...

  OC Warning in case you’re not a big fan of them. I know there are people that aren’t a fan of OCs & can be rather hyper-critical of ‘em. But honestly? Kinda inevitable since this takes place in the far past before Peppy, Branch’s Grandma, etc. In canon, this is around the time the Bergens 1st appeared, after the Tribes separated. Honestly unsure of good they are....hopefully not too Sue-ish?

  I’m sorry for any grammer, spelling, incohesion etc mistakes. Most of this was written late at night, fueled by aggressive exhaustion. There may or may not be a severe case of purple prose? I still need a beta reader or even just a soundboard to help me with that

Anyways, let’s start this conglomerate of bad decisions, bias, & systemic genocide!

    A favorite....flavor, of troll is Pop. To the Bergens, eating one granted just that little bit more happiness than the others. These especially colourful trolls were soon in high demand every Trollstice. Despite all the other tribes’ efforts, some even throwing themselves in the way of cruelly reaching hands, Pop’s numbers were dwindling quicker than the other tribes. Things were getting desperate.

   Being rather forced to live so close together, and without the strings, the different tribes became both used to & intolerant of each other. Soon they grew isolationist, as much as they could in limited cage space. They’ve heard rumors from passing Bergens that their strings weren’t destroyed, just locked away. It would explain why the trolls were still able to make some music; though they had to be soft or the Bergens, in their daily unhappiness whenever it wasn’t Trollstice, would get further upset. Very angry and annoyed Bergens tended to not only scare the Trolls willy-nilly, but they had the option to special-order a troll to be eaten, even if it was VERY pricey and needed to be Royal-approved. Eventually, a certain generation of the leaders was hatched. The heir of Pop grew a bit resentful of the other tribes, how relaxed they were and even seemed relieved just because it wasn’t their friends, their family, that was being taken away to be eaten. They wanted better for their Pop trolls.

    Their only friend was the heir of Rock, the only one of the other heirs & most of the other trolls to not look at Pop in pity. In history lessons, the Rock heir especially learned of the loud power of Hard Rock, loud enough to sometimes literally blow the audience away. They also learned that in the beginning years of being trapped, Rock trolls resisted and fought back the longest, even if it did mean that a lot of them were special-ordered to be eaten in retaliation. These 2 friends, Wes of Pop and Mara “Marred” of Rock, also overheard the exact location of the lyre, the Strings.

    They began to plan.

    It was Marred’s idea to intentionally get themselves captured by one of the members of the Royal family. Or, at least, by the Royal chef or one of the Royal guards. They were confident that they could tear through the old cloth bags the Bergens were still using to collect trolls; they were beginning to look worn down & Wes had been trying to find a way to improve the cutting power of a whittled stick. Especially since they recently found a small broken piece of an abandoned shaving razor.

    Cautious and a little doubtful, Wes proposed a backup plan that if the Strings’ power wasn’t able to fight off the Bergens, then they at least memorize & map the layout from the kitchen to their exit. That way, for trolls captured in the future, all the trolls would know of where to escape & how. They could even try to find a way to escape Bergen Town itself.

    The plan was put to action dangerously close to the next Trollstice; the Queen wanted a good look at her potential next happy meal. She wanted these 2 loud and unruly upstarts to be served to her that very day, an appetizer of the joyous holiday feast that was to come. Knife cut through cloth before they were carried into the kitchen, unnoticed by the staff & guards around. They quietly, but quickly, traversed the halls, following a servant that was delivering a fine drink to the Royals in their chambers.

    They found the lyre, the Strings. It sat there on a shelving amongst many other trophies and even picture frames, one of the most colourful of all. It wasn’t glowing as brightly as their history records described.

   They snuck passed both Royal rulers and servant, the latter of which was getting yelled at by an irritably impatient Queen for bringing in the wrong drink with the King demanding for another servant to bring in the correct order.

    No one noticed the colourful lyre disappearing from the shelves. Nor did they see a slight glow coming from the basket of another servant collecting laundry. But the Royal chef & kitchen staff did notice the empty bag.

    As soon as the alarms were raised, the pair hurried in their escape, hopping from panicking servant to panicking servant towards the exit. Windows were being shut and doors closed as soon as someone entered the room. The clicking of locks echoed in the halls.

    No one was going to leave.

    Wes and Marred were going to escape.

    There was a garbage chute ahead, doors shut and a lever next to it. The servant they were currently hitchhiking was running towards a nearby door, blocked only by an abandoned mop bucket and wet floors. The Strings’ glow, though dulled, was still rather noticeable. Even if they did weaponize the music, the vengeance wrought from not only a pair of escaped trolls, but the theft of a prized possession (even if the trolls were taking back what was always theirs) would be catastrophic. A new plan formulated. And only one troll knew it.

    The harp was shoved in a surprised & confused Wes’ hair, which was thicker & bigger than Marred’s. The glowing Strings could barely be seen. Wes was shoved into the bow of the servants smock, tangling in the tie. Confusion changed to terror and the shock intensified as Wes watched Marred actually attack the servant, using their improvised knife. The servant stumbled, arms flailing, and Marred took the opportunity to throw the same knife at the servant’s foot, managing to cut into flesh, however shallow. A shout of pain, a short hop off the injured foot & onto, into, soapy water. Dirty mop water made the cut(s) burn as the servant was sent spinning on the bucket’s wheels, falling onto the chute’s doors.

    Marred finally leapt from the servant’s head landing squarely on the lever’s handle, momentum pulling it down. Those doors opened & both servant and unknown passenger fell through. The 2 friends locked eyes. Marred raised both arms, hands curled into Rock’s iconic horns, grinning; wild, triumphant, hopeful, sorrowful, accepting. I’m sorry. Goodbye.

    Angry shouts echoed against the chute’s walls, louder and closer. A large, sharp hand reached out for the Rock troll and the doors snapped shut.

    It was thought impossible, but the garbage dump was even more disgusting than the Bergens. Despite the bruises & scrapes from the fall, the Pop heir managed to untangle themselves and left the unconscious servant to the trash. The rainbow glow of the Strings stood out vividly against the dullness of the evening. Wes tucked the lyre deeper into their newly dark locks. Quietly, quickly, despondently, they made their way back to their cage.

[youhearstatic]

Exit Interview for a Fic (AKA: 10 Questions Every Fic Writer Secretly Wants to be Asked)

I started doing this list of questions every time I finish a ‘major’ fic. I’ve been putting together an updated fic list and realized I hadn’t ever done it for It’s About Time. So here we go!

1. Of the fics you’ve written, which is your favorite and why? At this point I’d have a really hard time picking between the still unposted (and unfinished) TwinSwap and the Dragon!Barry story. (The dragon AU has a lot more to it that I’ll hopefully get to eventually. There’s a few twists I adore with that one.) 

I really, really, really love both of those. I’m also, obviously, really keen on the whole Barry POV canon compliant story and the hanahaki story, Chrysanthemums (Lovesick). And I’m still pretty proud of Like Friendship Set Aflame. (FYI that last one is rated Explicit.) Plus, Losing Time is still something I feel good about.

2. Which scene was your favorite to write in It’s About Time? The scenes of Barry and Lup pining for one another are always fun of course but writing them together and in love? It’s just so good. I think my favorite to write was chapter 44. I started that first scene with no specific goal and it all just kind of organically evolved into what it did and where it all led and it just felt like it fit together well. And they were just so damn happy and absolutely gooey in love. Legato was obviously pretty good, too, but there was a lot of stress writing it because obviously it’s a Big Deal and needed to be Really Good.

(Putting the rest under a readmore because this is very long and self indulgent.)

3. Which part of It’s About Time was hardest to write? I struggled a few times. One of the hardest was chapter 34. I had a plan, there were story beats I was trying to hit and an overall arc to their relationship that called for things to go a certain way. But they just wouldn’t. I wrote and scrapped thousands of words trying to get there and finally realized the option I’d been too blind to see. Changing my plan meant a lot of other things had to be changed and created a lot of other hard to write parts but it also helped with the characterization for Barry and the change and growth he was going through.

4. If you could change anything in It’s About Time, what would it be? I kinda wish it wasn’t over? Like, don’t get me wrong. I’m excited to be on the part of the story I’m telling now - the part that initially drew me to even telling the story? But, holy crap, I miss Lup. I miss the crew and happiness. This is a long slog through dark times and if ever there was a time to say “Poor Barry” then this is it. I mean, I don’t think it’s all darkness? I think there’s surprises that make it worth it? (I really hope so! Like the appearance of certain characters in chapter 7 of Time After Time, for example.) 

And to be honest? I miss the interest that story got. Views/comments/etc have severely fallen off and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make it much much harder to motivate myself to work on it despite my determination to finish. (I get it though. It’s much more fun to read Blupjeans falling in love than Barry alone and kinda losing it.)

5. Did you make an outline for It’s About Time? Did you stick to it? Well, I mean, there’s the outline of the canon 11 cycles and that extrapolates out to giving the expanded story a specific set of story/character beats. As things got closer to Legato I had certain circumstances I wanted to hit in a certain order. So I guess yes, more than anything else I’ve written this had an outline. It wasn’t exceedingly thorough but it was definitely my game plan for things and yeah, several times that had to be scrapped like I mentioned about chapter 34 in question 3.

6. Which scenes did you cut, and which were added in It’s About Time? The scene of Barry cooking for the crew - specifically for the twins - wasn’t supposed to be in his POV. It was in Lup’s POV and I didn’t think it worked for his but then I couldn’t let it go so I just kinda... did it anyway.

I remember that snow cycle went on for much longer than intended, too. I’m really glad though, it got me away from the one cycle/one chapter format which helped me feel more relaxed about telling the story how it worked out rather than forcing things to fit certain ways.

There were definitely things that were cut but always because the scenes just weren’t working the way I thought they would during planning.

7. Who was your favorite character to write in A Thousand Tiny Moments? It’s Barry’s POV and I feel like I have a pretty strong grasp of him at this point. Gheesan and Selba were a lot of fun to write. Probably my still favorite OC is Embrace, though. One day I want to get art of Barry and Embrace, the big golden mongoose from cycle one.

Okay, this is maybe a weird answer since he’s not exactly a character? But I enjoyed writing my take on Griffin’s narration that opened chapter 36.

8. Which came first, the title or the fic? For a long time this was just called “the fic I’m not gonna write” because I’d never really jumped hard into writing fanfic before. Previous to starting this thing I’d only written a couple of 1k-ish minifics for a different fandom and only written something over 10k ... a handful of times.

9. Which idea came to you first in It’s About Time? It’s a little tricky answering this question because, even though it’s split up between Stolen Century and then the rest of the podcast timeline being in Time After Time, I tend to think of them all as one piece - Barry’s story.

I think the part that hit me first was thinking about Barry in Taako’s pocket spa and what kind of things would be running through his mind. 

In this very first consideration of his POV, I’d forgotten he wouldn’t have memories yet. So then I backed it up to that night between Wonderland and his cave/getting back in a body. What all must he have been thinking while they slept? After so long to be so close to the end and then have to get in a body and relinquish any semblance of control to the boys and his memoryless body? Honestly, I find that idea terrifying. From there it just kept spinning out to considering different bits of canon from his point of view. I don’t remember what the point was that finally convinced me to start writing but I’m still surprised it happened after so long of not really being a fic writer.

10. What are some facts readers may not know about It’s About Time? The first thing I wrote for this fic was Contradictions, the so called test minific. Then I got obsessed. I wrote pages of notes, picking out details that were relevant to Barry’s story and thinking and enormous lists of questions about what was going on with him or in his head at certain points. I spent literal days thinking about how to account for things inferred from canon. For example, why didn’t Barry remember things between bodies? When did he get the boys’ artificing projects that he gives them after reunion tour? 

Then I started writing longhand in notebooks. I started out writing where Contradictions left off: Barry’s trip out of the gerblin cave with THB and arriving in Phandalin. For a while I thought that’s what the fic would be: just Barry’s time from that wagon ride to Phandalin and ending with him getting into the tank as his last moments as ‘the red robe’ before revealing himself as Barry Bluejeans again. 

Eventually I realized that I needed to include Stolen Century and decided to start from the chronological beginning of the story. I’d written the entire century (albeit much, much shorter in this first draft - there was nothing between Tessaralia and Legato, for example - and then probably 15k of stuff directly following the defeat of the Hunger - that night and the following morning, as well as the first part of the Faerun things, Frank Texican’s part that is chapters 8 & 9 of Time After Time, and parts that still haven’t posted in Time After Time, including that section I’ve mentioned several times as the bit I’m MOST excited to share. 

After that it still took me weeks to decide to start posting and then another few weeks to decide to start posting Stolen Century and tell the story in order. I kind of wish I hadn’t done that just because it’d be nice to see them falling in love after all the awful alone and voidfished time but it’s good to have it done this way and have specific memories and all the characterization solidly built in order.

[theguardianangel-fanfiction]

Once Bitten, Twice Dead

Summary: It’s been two years since the beginning, and only five days since Clementine met them. But somehow, things got so much worse, and Carver was just the beginning. [Season 2 AU/canon divergent. New situations, characters, etc.] 

Chapter 28:Turning Her Up In Her Nest Author’s Note: Enjoy! [Main Blog] [AO3] [FanFiction.Net]

If there was anything that the woman could say that would keep Kenny from immediately shooting her, then Clementine supposed that it was her begging for food.

“Are you okay?” The words came not from the woman, but from Walter, who stepped forward past Kenny. Without looking down, he pushed the barrel of Kenny’s gun down once more, as if it were a sign of pacifism to the woman. “Are you hurt?”

Clementine saw no wounds on the woman, though she noted that the woman was rather thin. Her sunken cheeks and the small but loose vest that exposed prominent collar bones made this quite obvious. But there were no wounds covering her.

Backing up, Clementine brushed against Kenny.

“I saw the house…” the woman stammered, her eyebrows knitting together. Her gaze turned to the ground. “And… I have a family. We’re starvin’.” She turned, gesturing to the woods in the distance, past the old ski lift, “We live down there.”

“Of course,” Walter took another step forward, as the woman took one backwards. “Why don’t you come in, miss…?”

“… Bonnie.” the woman spoke in a low voice, her eyes flicking between him and Kenny.

Between all four of them, there was a brief pause. Kenny leaned forward, his glare fixated on Bonnie as he whispered to Walter.

“Walt, I don’t know.” Clementine watched Kenny’s grip on the gun increase. “You’re just gonna let her in like that?”

“It’s fine, Kenny.”

There was an edge in Walter’s voice that Clementine hadn’t heard from him before. She backed up, once again looking up to Kenny. On one hand, Walter had allowed her group in, and he hadn’t known them. On the other hand… well, this woman had no link to them.

“We don’t know this girl.”

“Then I suppose we’ll get to know her.”

“Walt.”

“How much damage can this poor woman do?”

At Walter’s words, Clementine looked back to Bonnie. Walter had a point. From what she could tell, Bonnie didn’t seem to be carrying even a gun. She was taller than the average woman – maybe five-six – but she was still skinny, and probably wouldn’t do too much harm.

“Do you have any weapons?”

The words came out without thinking, and Clementine wanted to smack herself the moment she spoke.

To her surprise, however, Bonnie’s hands trembled as she reached towards her pockets. She looked from Kenny’s gun to Clementine’s face as she suddenly turned out both of her pockets.

“I got nothin’ on me.” Bonnie whispered, and then pushed her pockets back in. She looked back up at Walter, her face dropping. “Look – thank you, really – but that storm’ll be on us soon… I gotta get back to my family.”

“I’ll bring something out to you, then.”

Clementine watched as Kenny’s hand clenched.

Bonnie put her hands up. “You don’t have to do that.” By the looks of it, the pink tinge on her cheeks was from a little bit more than just the cold.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Walter assured her. He bumped Clementine’s arm with his own as he backed up. She wondered for a moment if he was trying to get her attention, and she stared up at him to watch his facial expression.

“What about your people?” Bonnie asked, gripping her shoulder. She looked down at the ground.

“We’ve got plenty. You stay put. I’ll be right back.”

With this, Walter backed up and turned, heading around the corner and towards the door. In that moment, Clementine thought of about a hundred things, if not more, that could go wrong. She and Kenny exchanged a glance, and then Clementine turned her attention back to Bonnie.

Bonnie took a few unsteady steps forward, and brushed away a loose strand of hair that had fallen from a messy ponytail. She smiled, just enough to show some form of happiness, and peered down to Clementine.

“I have… a little girl,” she stated, her voice barely above a whisper, “Like you.” Bonnie slowly crouched down to Clementine’s height. “How old are you, sweetie?”

Clementine was silent for a moment, the suddenness of the question having caught her off guard. For a brief second, she considered lying, but there really was no point to it.

Instead, she crossed her arms. “I’m eleven.”

Luke had stated several times that he thought she had a baby-face, and that she looked closer to nine years old than eleven years old. But Clementine, as bad as she was at it, knew how to do simple math. She knew her age, she was just tiny for her age.

Bonnie smiled again, nodding. She let out a chuckle. “I’d have thought older.”

Clementine nearly rolled her eyes. If this was the kind of thing an adult wanted to use to break the ice, it clearly wasn’t working. Especially because she honestly did agree with Luke’s words from before; she could barely pass any older than ten.

Without a response, Bonnie stood back up, her small smile slipping into that of an expression that seemed much more worried or bothered than happy or grateful.

The silence between them lasted only a few seconds before the front door opened and shut once more, revealing Walter, who held in his arms a cardboard box. Just from the sound of it – from the movements that Walter made as he brought it around the corner, Clementine heard the sound of several heavy cans moving around. Her heart sank as she thought of the loss of a steady supply of food; her stomach only growled more.

Bonnie’s eyes widened to the size of saucers.

“Here you are, miss,” said Walter as he passed the box to her.

With slight hesitation, Bonnie, her eyes still widened and her open in shock, took the box from him and wrapped her arms around it tightly. She repeatedly glanced from the box to Walter as she seemed to struggle to form a sentence.

“This-this is too much!”

Clementine took one step forward, peering around Walter to see that he simply returned her sentiments with a smile.

“Don’t mention it.” he said, his voice gentle as he did so. He stepped back from Bonnie, who’s hands were now trembling as she grasped the box.

She averted Walter’s gaze and murmured, “I don’t… know how to thank you.”

“Just help someone else down the line.”

“… Thank you so much. I’ll… I’ll be goin’ now.”

“You stay safe.”

“You… you too…”

Within a few seconds, Bonnie and the box of cans were gone.

“Go on inside and get to bed, Clementine.” Kenny said, his tone firm, once Bonnie was far enough away. He nudged her with his elbow. “Walt and I gotta talk for a second.”

Clementine nodded without speaking, cautiously turning and heading back up towards the front doors. She didn’t stick around long enough to hear what she was sure was going to be Kenny tearing into Walter; instead, she thought to herself that this was going to be Kenny’s attitude towards multiple things.

She thought of herself. She was – objectively – the only reason that she and the others were allowed into the lodge, because if she was correct, Clementine guessed that Walter, Matthew, and Sarita rarely got their ways against Kenny.

But maybe he was right in this instance; Walter was awfully quick to trust Bonnie. For all they knew, Bonnie could’ve been lying, or any other variation of things. Clementine recalled Walter’s words from before, however, and thought to herself that, if anything, she could believe and take someone at face value just this once.

Clementine stopped at the front door, grasping the handle as she peered over her shoulder towards the direction of Kenny and Walter. She could already hear the warning in Kenny’s tone. Glancing back, she tugged open the door and was once again greeted by the heat against her icy cheeks and the banter at the dinner table. Clementine wrapped her arms around herself and then looked back to the dining room.

They hadn’t noticed that she had come back in, but from the tones that she heard from Luke, Clementine knew that they were either talking about her, or they were discussing something else in a varying degree of severity.

She walked past the Christmas tree and began a climb up the stairs. Either way, Clementine didn’t want to be involved.

Once again, she felt her cheeks burn; the pounding in her head and the sickness in her stomach came back, now that Walter was no longer giving her the strangest cross between a pep talk and a lecture that she had had in quite a while. The distraction was gone.

Hurrying up the stairs, she found herself back in the same loft from before, with the same empty chairs and the same full bookcases and the same empty hallway. The box with the star decoration remained.

Clementine peeked down the empty hallway; she recalled Alvin going down there before and coming back with Rebecca’s water, but she hadn’t seen which room he had gone into before. Instead, she found herself entering the first door.

The bedroom was small, somewhere lingering in limbo between tidy and lived-in. A decently sized bed, fully made (how many people even bothered with it before the outbreak?) with a book lying discarded at the end of it. A pile of books found their home in a corner. There were no windows, and only a gas lamp sitting on a dark bedside table provided light.

She took a shaky step in. Obviously, this wasn’t the room that Sarita was talking about for them to sleep in when she mentioned it earlier, and Clementine almost wished that she had bothered to pay any attention to anything that wasn’t her reunification with Kenny so that she would know what the hell Sarita was referring to.

Clementine stepped lightly – if they heard her moving around downstairs… well, she had a feeling that no one would be happy with her nosy intruding. But there was really nothing else to do. She couldn’t go downstairs. She couldn’t talk to Sarah to pass the time. Her heart beat too hard and her stomach growled too much for her to go to sleep. And so she peered at the other objects sitting around the room, trying to determine for herself who this one belonged to.

A framed photograph sitting on the bedside table gave away the owners; Clementine gazed down at the photographed, smiling faces of Walter and Matthew, their arms around each other. In the dim lighting, they didn’t appear to be any younger than they were now.

For a moment, Clementine paused, watching the body language between the two of them. They looked… happy. Comfortable.

Clementine glanced over to the bed, and then back down to the photograph. In the back of her mind, she remembered Matthew’s words from earlier, about how Walter hadn’t allowed him to keep a certain, large bookshelf in their bedroom. It would explain the books littering the room.

She placed the photograph back down, and wandered over to the foot of the bed. With Matthew’s apparent literature collection and Walter’s constant references to Steinbeck, Clementine wasn’t surprised to see the book on the bed, or the large piles of books in the corner.

A door downstairs slammed. As she turned, Clementine gritted her teeth.

Time to leave, she thought, stepping lightly towards the door.

Carefully, Clementine closed it, turning her attention back to the other doors. She found her way into the room next to Walter and Matthew’s bedroom, and cracked open the door just enough to see inside of it.

The room, just as Walter and Matthew’s bedroom had been, was lit by only a gaslight that sat on top of a bookcase. She spotted several familiar belongings; this must’ve been the room that Sarita was talking about.

She opened it up wider and left it open. It was a clean room, and quite empty. A pile of several blankets and pillows had been left next to the door. The bags had obviously been moved from downstairs into this room, her own included. Clementine took a seat next to the bookcase, bracing her back against the solid wood. With a sigh, she pulled her bag into her lap and stared up at the ceiling.

Her stomach growled for the umpteenth time, leading Clementine to hug her bag tighter to her chest as a distraction. She closed her eyes, joining the dim room in the dark, and bit her tongue. There was absolutely no way that she was going to go downstairs for food.

The strap of Clementine’s bag slipped through her fingers as she felt shakiness in her fingers and hands.

The urge to go downstairs was strong.

Peering over to the bags of the others, Clementine stood on her knees, placing her bag against the wall. She pulled Alvin’s bag towards her and slowly unzipped the largest pocket.

Clementine looked up at the doorway, adequately confirming that there was no one standing there. She looked back down to Alvin’s bag and pushed aside a pack of some kind of ammo, a book, and a can as she dug into the bottom.

She smiled, her hands closing on a cellophane wrapper as she pulled out a discarded granola bar.

“Oh, thank God.” she murmured to herself.

Peering up once more, Clementine checked the doorway again. She rezipped Alvin’s bag again and tucked herself back into the corner with the bookshelf and her bag, the granola bar unwrapped.

Clementine took a bite out of the granola bar, looking up for a third time at the doorway before she turned her attention to the bookshelf’s contents. She squinted, cocking her head to the side as she attempted to read the titles; Sarah would at least appreciate any books that Walter and Matthew were willing to part with.

The name Steinbeck caught her eye. What on Earth had this man done to become so famous, other than write books? Clementine knew of famous authors, but Steinbeck had never been one that came up before Walter’s lecture.

She examined the cover of Of Mice and Men and the book that previously sat next to it, that came out with it when she pulled it out, Gathering Blue by another author that Clementine didn’t recognize. As she set Gathering Blue aside, Clementine set her eyes on Of Mice and Men. Sighing to herself, she decided that, maybe, it was a good idea to get some perspective on Walter’s point of view. After all, it would be enough to distract her from the anxiety that continuously came and went. Hopefully.

Well, Clementine debated with herself, looking from the cover of the book to the doorway, it could provide entertainment while her brain dissected her previous interactions and situations in the background.

She flipped to the first page.

Immediately, Clementine knew that she wasn’t going to be able to finish the first page. Maybe it was her lack of vision, or the lack of good lighting, or simply her terrible reading skills. On the other hand, maybe it was the language used.

Still, however, she trudged on, attempting to read the small font as she scrunched her eyebrows and clenched her jaw; but as the words – descriptions of what she thought may have been a forest – continued on, Clementine clenched her fist. She started the paragraph over again, her focus slipping through her fingers.

She read the same paragraph again, blinking several times, and then attempted to read the next sentence.

The next thing that Clementine knew, she flung the book across the small room, where it skidded to a stop next to the doorframe.

Clementine looked up at the sound of footsteps. Despite the pounding in her head, she gave a small smile to Sarah, who looked down at the discarded copy of Of Mice and Men.

“Steinbeck?” asked Sarah, picking the book up. She also stared at the cover and then turned it over to read the back of it, her expression lighting up. “I’ve been looking for this!”

“That book?” Clementine rubbed her temples as she spoke.

Sarah nodded, not looking up from the back of the book. She grinned. “It’s a classic. I’ve been wanting to read it for a while, but I couldn’t find a copy!”

She approached Clementine and then sat across from her against the wall, to the right of Alvin’s tampered-with bag. As she put the book back down on the ground in front of both of them, Sarah looked back up and asked, “Are you okay?”

The sudden whiplash in Sarah’s mood caught Clementine off-guard. Sitting up from against the bookshelf, Clementine opened her mouth to reply, but she faltered in her words. Briefly, the two of them locked eyes.

“You were crying.” Sarah said, her voice hushed.

Clementine looked away for a moment, her head continuing to pound. She had. But it hadn’t been intentional – it was about the last thing that she wanted. But, Clementine supposed, it was in Sarah’s nature to be sympathetic in that form.

“And…” Before Clementine could speak, Sarah spoke up once more, her eyebrow raised, “You… you had this look on your face… It was like –”

Sarah imitated a face that looked somewhere stuck between scared and excruciatingly uncomfortable. This only made Clementine grimace in response.

“It doesn’t matter.” Clementine grabbed the copy of Gathering Blue from the floor next to the bookshelf and replaced it, and then turned her attention to Of Mice and Men. She pushed it towards Sarah. “Do you want this?”

Without answering, Sarah took the book and bit her lip. “Clem, it matters if they did something that made you upset.” She messed with the first page of the book. “Just because they were mad doesn’t give them an excuse to make you cry.”

“Don’t remind me,” Clementine muttered, opening her bag. She pulled out her half-filled water bottle and took a sip of it. Lowering the bottle from her mouth, she snapped, “Look – it doesn’t matter now.”

Sarah was quiet for several seconds, but then shook her head. “Did your friend start it, or did Luke and Nick? Do you trust him?”

Clementine glowered, narrowing her eyes. This wasn’t what she needed right now – she needed to be alone, or to have a pleasant distraction with Sarah. But Clementine was silent, thinking about the words that she had been asked so many times that evening.

Do you trust him?

Of course she did. Kenny was a good man. He took care of the group in Georgia, no matter how much he fought with Lilly. They both did. She thought of the man who she could only refer to as The Stranger. It was the same then; Christa and Omid said that Kenny fought like hell to help Lee get her back from that monster.

She had to trust him.

“Did Carlos tell you to ask me that?” Clementine snapped, the edge in her voice apparent.

“Wha – no!” Sarah shot back, the book falling from her grasp. “No. No, I just – I just wanted to know. It –” Sarah shook her head, “I just don’t like listening to people fight like that. And… I don’t know. I just don’t want this to turn out like everything else has.”

“He’s not a bad person.” Clementine assured, sitting up on her knees. She tried to look Sarah in the face, but Sarah looked away instead, her cheeks flushing. “Kenny’s a good man. He just… he gets angry a lot. You trust Walter and Matthew and Sarita…”

From that moment, Clementine trailed off. Sarah slowly nodded.

“They seem nice. I like Sarita.”

“And I like Kenny.”

They room went quiet as Sarah crossed her legs, opened Of Mice and Men to the first page, and began to read it. Clementine turned again to the bookshelf and debated with herself on reading another book – maybe one with a lower reading level than that of Steinbeck’s genres.

“That’s The Outsiders,” Sarah suddenly spoke, drawing Clementine’s attention. Sarah looked up from the book and nodded towards a book that stuck out from under a pile of other stacked novels. “We had it at the cabin.” She frowned as she spoke. “Pete liked it.”

Clementine felt a tugging in her chest as she thought about Pete. She pulled the book from the pile and turned it over, attempting to make out faded, white words against a lighter gray background.

“His name’s Ponyboy?”

Sarah smiled. “Well, yours is Clementine.”

Clementine let out a soft laugh, and set the book aside. If she could recover from the headache that John Steinbeck had given her, then maybe she would take a gamble at S.E. Hinton.

The floorboards creaked, and both girls looked up to see Nick standing in the doorway, rubbing his eyes with his fists.

“What?” he asked, his voice hoarse, as he glared back at Clementine and Sarah.

“Nothing.” Sarah said quickly, looking back down to the book.

Nick pulled a blanket and a pillow from the piles in the left corner of the room, and then trudged to the other side. Clementine watched as he laid both of them down, and then laid down on his back.

“Nick?” she said, her voice low.

Nick turned on his side and pulled his baseball cap against his chest. “What do you want?”

Clementine paused. “Um… are you going to sleep?”

She chastised herself for not following through with her original words. If she were any braver, then she would ask him if he was okay. If he was angry at her. If he was angry at Kenny.

She would have asked if he really did want to leave in the morning.

“Yeah.”

With this, Nick turned over on his side, facing the wall.

As Clementine took another bite of the granola bar, she held the empty cellophane in her hand and wordlessly glared at it. Her stomach rumbled with the same cold hunger that she was no stranger to at this point in her life. She balled up the wrapper and hid it in her pockets.

For a moment, she debated going back to Alvin’s bag to steal more food, but the presence of Nick and Sarah put a damper on her pan.

This would’ve been much easier a week ago when she hadn’t eaten in two days – save for the beans – and the hunger pangs hadn’t been this regular. She could say a lot about Luke’s group, but they kept her fed. Even the processed shit in a can kept her fuller than the half of the squirrel that she and Christa had managed to cook a few days previously.

Unless…

Clementine stared at her knees, debating with herself; surely, someone hadn’t eaten her dinner in the few minutes that she was outside. But then again, she thought of Alvin – he didn’t get to his size eating just his own portion.

She stood, casting her bag aside, and headed towards the door with what she could only describe as an internal sigh.

“Where are you going, Clem?”

“The bathroom.” Clementine lied, and then she left the room without a second glance behind her at Sarah.

As she neared the stairs, Clementine stood at the banister once again, her feet seemingly glued to the spot, and surveyed the downstairs. Walter and Matthew were at the kitchenette now, and only a few of the others remained in the dining room.

Maybe they wouldn’t say anything.

Slowly, Clementine made her way down the stairs in an attempt to stay as quiet as possible; she set her sights on the dining room, where Kenny and Sarita were seated again, and Rebecca, two bowls in front of her, was seated a few feet away.

Clementine clenched her jaw, and figured that there had to be at least a seventy-percent chance that the second bowl in front of Rebecca had to have been her own, and not another bowl that Walter gave her.

“Hey, Clementine.”

Matthew spoke first to her as she neared the kitchenette, and leaned against the JOY decoration as he said this.

“Hi,” she replied, her gaze focused on the dining room. The bowl from her spot was gone. Her shoulders sagging, Clementine knew that, even though she didn’t care for the meal, it could’ve done something to keep her full. But before either of the two men asked her about it, she began to speak. “I found Of Mice and Men. Upstairs. On the bookshelf.”

Walter turned to Matthew, nudging him by his shoulders. “Watch out, Matt,” he teased, a grin coming to his face, “You’re going to have a little reading prodigy catching up to you soon. She’s interested in Steinbeck.”

Clementine wouldn’t have called her curiosity interested, but she appreciated Walter’s support as it was.

“Pshh -- I’m not worried,” Matthew leaned back against the kitchenette, grinning, “Because unlike you, I don’t start competitions with nine year olds.”

“Eleven.” Clementine corrected, crossing her arms.

“Now, don’t ever look down on the intelligence and curiosity of a child, Matthew. They do more than you think.”

Walter stepped to the side as he spoke, crossing his arms in a similar manner to Clementine, though his expression remained kinder on Matthew’s part. Behind him, Clementine spotted the pot of what she was beginning to hope was leftovers from dinner. He peered down to Clementine.

“Did you find The Grapes of Wrath, too?”

Clementine shook her head, and then thought about the title. Maybe a little bit too hard.

“Wrath means… ‘anger’, right?”

Matthew suddenly looked as if he were resisting the urge to laugh. Walter on the other hand, cut his eyes at Matthew and then nodded in response to Clementine’s question.

“It does.” he told her, his gaze sliding to her from Matthew.

“So…” Clementine trailed off at first, but then regained her composure, “Is… is the book about an army of angry grapes?”

Matthew snorted, and Walter simply chuckled.

“No,” said Walter, continuing to watch Matthew out of the corner of his eye, “It’s… actually, I’ve not had the chance to read it. But from listening to Matthew, I can promise you that it isn’t actually about angry grapes. Matt, where does that title come from? You’ve read it a few times, haven’t you?”

Matthew’s laughing ceased. “Yeah, I’ve read it a couple of times. It’s a… a Biblical reference. Maybe. I don’t remember exactly. But Steinbeck took it from a poem called – and I quote – The Battle Hymm of the Republic. That’s way too fancy of a name for me.”

Walter’s lip twitched. “I think that I prefer the poem that Of Mice and Men comes from.”

“Ah, yeah, I forgot about that – Turning Her Up In Her Nest.”

“It’s To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest.”

“To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest –”

“—With a Plough.”

Matthew stopped, raising his eyebrow. “’With a Plough’?”

“’With a Plough’.” Walter parroted, nodding. He looked back to Clementine. “Steinbeck originally wanted to call it Something That Happened.”

“Well, everything is ‘something that happened’.” Clementine pointed out, a small smile coming to her face as she continued to speak with them, “Why would he call it that?”

Matthew simply shrugged in response. “To make a long story short, Steinbeck was an interesting man.”

“I guess,” Clementine murmured, her gaze beginning to fall on the pot of leftovers again. “You’d have to be.”

All three of them were silent for a few seconds, Clementine continuing to feel the pangs of hunger in her stomach. Her mouth couldn’t seem to work; her idea of asking for more food hadn’t been well thought out.

“Are you hungry, Clementine?” Walter asked, the small smile returning back to him from earlier. He leaned in close to her and whispered, “Rebecca took your bowl, unfortunately.”

“I noticed,” Clementine whispered back, “It’s okay. She can have it.”

Walter stood to his full height and walked behind the kitchenette, where he produced another bowl from one of the cabinets underneath; he grabbed one of the larger spoons, and then suddenly stopped before he stuck the spoon inside of the pot.

“Is something wrong?”

Clementine hadn’t realized that she had pulled the face that she had; her memories of earlier that evening were beginning to repeat. Once again, offending Walter was one of the last things that she wanted to do, and so was the act of wasting food, but… she had very strong opinions about beans and about peaches.

She shook her head. If it was between this and going hungry, she supposed that she couldn’t turn it down.

“One moment,” Walter put the spoon down and then reached underneath the counter. From it he pulled a small, opened box of crackers, and set it down in front of Clementine. “It’s nothing fancy, but it might suit your palate just a bit more.”

Clementine’s eyes widened on the box of crackers; it wasn’t a full on meal, but she hadn’t expected it to be. An almost full box of crackers was a hell of a lot more than she had had to herself within… what, at least the last year?

“How –” As her stomach seemed ready to eat itself, Clementine still had to restrain herself, and prevented herself from snatching the box up right then and there. “How many can I have?”

Walter smiled and pushed the box across the counter. “Keep it. But be sure not to make yourself sick off of those.” He leaned down and closed what Clementine thought must have been the cabinet door, and then placed his palms flat on the counter. With a glance at Matthew, he spoke again.

“Did you and Kenny ever bring the rest of the wood back in?”

Matthew was quiet for a moment, not meeting Walter’s gaze, and suddenly appeared deep in thought. Slowly, he began to shake his head.

“You know, I don’t think we did – uh, the roof’s shielding it though. You think I should get the guys back out there with me?”

“Nick’s asleep.” Before Walter could answer, Clementine pulled the box of crackers off of the counter and hugged it to her chest. “I don’t think he’s getting back up.”

“After the events this evening, I wouldn’t expect it.” Walter placed a glass cover over top of the pot. “You all must be exhausted.”

Clementine wanted to refute this, but she knew deep inside that she would yawn in the middle of her sentence and ruin any credibility that she had. Instead, she simply shrugged and began to slide her hand into the cracker box.

“I think Luke’s still awake, isn’t he?” asked Matthew. He began to toy with the collar of his hoodie and pulled a string away from the strings. “Your medic’s fairly built. Could get him to do it. Or that other guy – the fucking big one?”

“I have arms, Matt. I can help if you ask.”

Clementine shoved a cracker into her mouth as she began to brainstorm ways to excuse herself from their conversation.

“I mean, if you want to.” said Matthew with a shrug. “Don’t feel like you have to.”

Walter’s expression was incredulous. “I live here.”

“Yeaaahhh,” Matthew dragged out the syllable, and then shrugged. “But you cooked dinner, so I’ll get the wood.”

Walter grinned. “I cook every night.”

Matthew leaned over the counter so that he and Walter were physically closer. Clementine backed away and leaned against one of the room’s wooden support beams, hugging the box of crackers to her chest. Maybe, if anything, she could share them with Sarah; no one could call her greedy or gluttonous in that case.

“Look –” Walter stated, picking up the now cooled down pot by its handles. “I’ll come outside and help bring the supplies in.” He opened the refrigerator with one hand and slid the pot into the bottom of it. He turned back to Matthew.

“No – just go to sleep.”

As Matthew spoke, Clementine remembered the fact that she herself was supposed to be asleep, at least at Kenny’s orders. She allowed herself a small smile as she glanced towards Kenny and Sarita, who sat at the table having a quiet discussion. They didn’t seem to be paying any bit of attention towards Walter and Matthew.

Matthew took Walter’s hand in his own the moment that Walter returned to the counter.

“Come on,” whined Matthew, squeezing his hand around Walter’s, “It’s late.”

And maybe it was. But of everything that they had in the lodge, including the power, there was not a working clock.

“Matthew.”

“Shhhhh –” Matthew let go of Walter’s hand and instead placed his own hand over Walter’s mouth; the grin suddenly slipped off of his face. “Ew! Gross! Walt, don’t lick my hand!”

Clementine tried to prevent herself from laughing, and only just barely managed to avoid choking on the cracker she was eating.

Matthew pulled his hand away and wiped it on the sleeve Walter’s sweater, his hyperbole of a physical response only making it harder for Clementine to avoid laughing. Walter’s soft chuckles didn’t help either.

“I didn’t lick your hand, Matt. I’m not a dog.” Walter smirked. “All I did was kiss it.”

“Kiss my ass, old man.”

There was a brief moment where Walter opened his mouth, as if he were about to reply, but then closed it and instead nodded as he seemingly attempted to wipe the grin from his face.

Clementine looked down into the box of crackers, but only because she had nothing else left to do as she pondered to herself why Walter would kiss the palm of Matthew’s hand – especially after what he had been digging around in outside. But more than even that, she wondered why it was a kiss at all.

By watching them and the body language, Clementine had… questions. She thought about the photograph that she found in their room, and while she in no way wanted to give away the fact that she had been snooping, she couldn’t deny the fact that she had questions. Walter and Matthew, in the way of their body language, were beginning to remind her a bit of Nick and Luke.

Slightly, she mentally corrected herself.

Luke liked having his arm around Nick back in the woods, when everyone else was asleep and they were all alone. Sometimes, Clementine was there keeping watch with them at night – most of the time, she was supposed to be asleep, but spent a few minutes stuck in-between full consciousness and sleep spying on them instead.

“So… Nick and Luke, right? … You two sure do look like a match.”

Kenny’s words stuck out in her mind, for more reasons than one.

Clementine hesitated for a moment as she watched the two men joking and laughing with each other, and waited until their laughter died down. She held onto the cracker box tightly, and then took a few steps forward towards the counter.

“Walter?” she spoke, raising an eyebrow. “Can I ask you something kind of personal?”

Immediately, the atmosphere melted away. The laughter and grins from both Walter and Matthew slipped away as Walter crouched down to her level, his eyes wide with the same kind of concern that he held outside.

“Of course.” he said, his voice quiet. “Is everything alright?”

Clementine didn’t meet his eyes as she spoke, her cheeks already feeling as if they were burning. Quietly, she asked, “Are you and Matthew married?”

For a moment, she thought that it was wrong to ask such a question; in that brief moment, she thought of Nick and Luke and Kenny’s words and Matthew’s words in response. It was personal, she knew that. But how personal… well, she didn’t know. Christa and Omid talked openly about each other, and so did Alvin and Rebecca. Kenny and Sarita did.

Matthew laughed, and for a split second, the horrible thoughts that she had offended them dissipated, only to be replaced with that of confusion. Why was he laughing? All she’d done was ask a simple question.

“Don’t laugh at her question.” Walter scolded, though he seemed to maintain his smile as he did so. “You never know if you don’t ask.”

Clementine simply shrugged in response. He was right; it was a valid question.

Walter didn’t stand from his position, and there was something about it that Clementine liked. They were eye-level, just as they had been briefly outside. He was a teacher through and through, but he knew how to be approachable. He turned from Matthew and smiled.

“To answer your question – no, Matthew and I aren’t married.” Walter’s voice was quieter than before; Clementine assumed that he didn’t want to wake anyone who may have been trying to sleep. He looked over his shoulder before he spoke again. “But we would like to be… are you okay with that, Clementine?”

Clementine stared blankly back at him; she’d had a similar reaction to Steinbeck, but this… well, had Rebecca said nothing to her, then she would have never expected anyone to ask her for her opinion on their relationship. Maybe Sarah would, but Clementine was at least ninety-percent sure that Sarah was more interested in books than boys.

“Why do you care about my opinion?” she asked, shifting the cracker box to be held under her arm. “You guys are the ones who are gonna be stuck together for the rest of your lives…”

Matthew shook his head and then patted Walter’s shoulder. “My God, she’s so innocent.”

Clementine glared. She had had this same conversation with Walter while he was still cooking about her perceived innocence.

“There are a lot of countries and states where Matthew and I wouldn’t have been able to get married. We lived in Virginia,” Walter explained, his voice still low. “And it was illegal there, too.”

“Why?”

Walter’s face fell; in turn, Clementine’s did the same, but she watched as he seemed to force himself to smile – to look hopeful.

“Some people can be intolerant of things that they don’t understand. But, like I said before, the best thing that we can do is educate each other. And show each other kindness. We just have to be smart about it.”

Clementine was silent as she took this in. There was still something missing…

Walter seemed to take notice to this. “Something else on your mind?”

“I think…” She hesitated, and then looked over her shoulder. “I think Nick and Luke are like you.”

Matthew sighed, but then nodded in response to Clementine’s words.

“I think they are too.”

Walter turned to the kitchenette counter and used it to help him stand to his full height; Matthew’s little taunt was right. Walter wasn’t an old man in the way that Pete was, but he was probably older than Alvin and Carlos. Maybe in his fifties. He showed his age.

Kenny’s voice rang out from the dining room, and Clementine turned to see that he had turned around from his place on the bench.

“Clementine,” he admonished, as Sarita peered around him to see her. “Thought I told you to get to bed?”

“It’s okay, Kenny. I’ve been keeping her.” replied Walter. He turned back from Kenny to Clementine and patted her shoulder. In a low voice, he teased, “That’s your cue. Time to get your beauty sleep, madam.”

And so Clementine left, the cracker box grasped in her arms, and headed towards the stairs. She was no more exhausted than she had been before, but now, she had both Kenny and Walter telling her to go to sleep.

Upon returning to the room, the first thing that Clementine did was offer a cracker to Sarah, who declined it.

“I’m still full, Clem. Thanks though.” She returned to Of Mice and Men shortly after this.

The moment that Clementine took her previous seat against the book case, she hid the box of crackers on the side, and eyed Nick as he seemed to sleep – or at least rest in the other corner of the room.

Clementine couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt in her chest as she thought of her conversation with Matthew and Walter; maybe… it wasn’t worth having her questions answered if she was going to feel that she had information that they didn’t.

“Y’all in here?”

Luke poked his head in through the doorway and panned the room.

“You comin’ to tuck me in?” asked Nick, turning back to look at Luke. He smirked, and Clementine disguised a light chortle with a cough.

The slightest tinge of pink appeared on Luke’s cheeks. “Yeah,” he murmured, stepping into the room, “Somethin’ like that.”

Clementine looked down at her bag, feeling her cheeks heat up. Secondhand embarrassment, she thought, fucking sucked. Out of the top of her vision, she peeked up at Luke, who made his way over to Nick and sat down next to him. She rubbed her eyes as she looked into her bag, placing the half-full water bottle back inside of it and looting around to look for something to do with her time. Her hand hit a crayon; the waxy residue of it and several other broken crayons coated her fingers as she pushed them aside. The only other thing of importance in there was a lighter, one that she really only liked because of the butterfly design. But she had no paper to entertain herself with the crayons, and there was little an eleven year old girl could do with a lighter that didn’t involve arson.

She supposed that she could read the labels on the cracker box.

“You should pro’lly get some sleep, Clem.”

Clementine rubbed her eyes again as she shook her head; one of the shitty parts of the apocalypse was the lack of working clocks. Her inability to tell time based off of the shadows outside gave her little leverage against Luke’s friendly suggestions on a bedtime. She didn’t need Kenny, Walter, and Luke on her about going to sleep.

The rumbling thunder outside took away Clementine’s attention from Luke and Nick; Sarah tightened her grip around her book. Joining the rumbling thunder was the gentle pattering of rain, the warning of a harsher storm. She shivered as she thought of the cold rain nipping at her skin, as if she were the one sitting outside in the storm. And, Clementine thought again, if they left the next morning…

This rain will turn to sleet, then ice, then snow. It won’t be easy.

Christa’s words rang true. Virginia was the south, but it wasn’t Georgia. It was

… Maybe it was a good idea to go to sleep, Clementine thought, watching Luke out of the corner of her eyes. He and Nick were now speaking in low voices. Maybe they did have the right idea.

Thump!

Clementine slammed her head on the bookshelf, crying out in pain as something both soft and hard slammed right into her face. The pillow and her cap fell down into her lap, tears of pain stinging in her eyes.

“Luke!” she shouted, her hand flying to the back of her head. As if she hadn’t hit her head enough within the last few days, Clementine thought as she grit her teeth and stared daggers in Luke’s direction.

He held a second pillow in his hands from his space next to Nick, his eyes widening as the realization seem to have hit him, just as hard as the pillow had hit Clementine’s face. And then he laughed.

“Y’alright?” Luke asked, putting down the pillow. He stood, obviously trying to hide the chuckling at Clementine’s expense and walked towards her.

“Don’t laugh!” she cried, feeling the tender bump already forming on the back of her head. “You almost took me out with a pillow!”

“I thought you were payin’ attention!”

Clementine huffed as Luke knelt next to her and reached his hand around the back of her head to feel the bump. She shifted away from him, pushing away his arm with one hand and the pillow with the other.

“Luke, stop, you’re making it hurt worse!”

Outside, the thunder clapped, its sound as full as the sound of Clementine’s skull colliding with the wooden bookcase.

Luke pulled his hand away, his face still holding on to the ghost of another laugh as he chuckled, “Sorry, kid. Honestly – I thought you were payin’ attention.”

Nick scoffed, and laid back down. He murmured, “You knew damn well she wasn’t payin’ any attention.” His voice, while quiet, betrayed some of his own amusement at the situation.

Clementine glared in response, pushing Luke’s arm away again as a clap of thunder shook the floor. It was followed by a high-pitched whistling, and sudden shouting from downstairs – a voice that sounded suspiciously like Kenny.

Luke drew his hand away, cutting his eyes towards the door.

Sarah froze, putting the book down, and then immediately looked to Luke for some semblance of an explanation.

All of them quiet, Nick’s voice rang out.

“What the hell is that?”

[some-cookie-crumbz]

Another Set of Updates

Okay, gonna try to keep this as brief as possible!

My poll regarding which Kidge-a-Palooza AU I should turn into a story proper is still available: [here]. I’m gonna leave it up for another week or so, so please give it a vote if you haven’t already!

Chapter 4 of Here (In Your Arms) is up and available: [here].

Chapter 2 of Paint me in Trust is up and available: [here].

Chapter 2(6) of Time, Space and Everything Between is up and available: [here].

Since the update for Time, Space and Everything Between is up, I wanted to clarify a few things about where it’ll be going from hence forth. That information (spoiler free) can be found below for those that are interested.

Okay, so, confession time! This fic wasn’t supposed to become what it is now. Originally, I planned for this fic to be about six/ seven chapters and go in a somewhat different direction than it has. There was going to be an entire chapter dedicated just to the Kogane and Holt families bonding. The rescue of Shiro was going to go almost the same as it did in the series canon, with Keith being kept on Earth with his father using his camouflage device and entering the Garrison in hopes of snuffing out who the Blue Paladin was. The only big changes to it that I intended to make was Keith and Pidge knowing each other prior, Keith actually being a Galra, and when they head back to the shack, they’re greeted by Papa Kogane. From there, I was planning to end the fic with them going through the wormhole and implying events played out mostly the same as canon. But, then I decided I didn’t really like that idea either, so then I thought I’d go the route of letting Keith grow up with the Holt’s. Like, Ethan moving out there and Krolia leaving Keith on Earth to have a tradional human childhood.

As you can see, I didn’t end up doing any of that. And you may be wondering why.

Because the last season of Voltron left me that disappointed but I will admit I had issues with the show even before that Spit-in-the-Face ending but we’ll get there and I was raised by parents who said “If you don’t know how you’d improve something, you shouldn’t be the one to complain about it.”

Well, fine then. I’m gonna do just that.

ALSO I WANT TO CLARIFY that I am NOT saying I could have written the show better than the show runners themselves! I’ve never been in the position(s) they were in. I do, however, have the benefit of hindsight, which allows me to look at where the show succeeded and failed respectively, and take steps that I think would offer a more cohesive, enjoyable story-telling experience as a whole. I am taking the things that I, personally, took issue with, as well as some of the bigger things I’ve seen the fandom at large take issue with. At the end of the day, though, most of these decisions will be made from my own personal desires/ whims (since, you know, ship-feels and all that jazz). I will, however, be open to criticism from any and all who read my fics, so please feel free to tell me what you think does or doesn’t work as we go along.

I’m gonna break this down into four main categories down below; Things I’m Adding, Things I’m Cutting, Things I’m Adjusting, and Cut Fic Content. All but one of these is pretty self-explanatory, I think, but I promise to explain that little oddity when we get there. I’ll also touch on what and why I chose to approach certain things the way that I did.

Things I’m Adding

Melenor and Garett

Queen Melenor is kind of an anomaly in the series, don’t you think? It was kind of implied throughout most of the series proper that she died while Allura was still pretty young, which would have made a lot more sense for both Allura’s relationship with Alfor, as well as why Alfor was so distant from Zarkon when Daibazaal began tattering at the seams. But then Season 8 happened and threw all that out the window! All of a sudden, Melenor’s death suddenly carries this great significance for Allura, to the point she has a hallucination about her. Plus, it also kinda throws a wrench into scenes from the earlier seasons. Allura specifically says “Zarkon killed my Father and my Mother!” but… If Melenor was killed by Zarkon, where was she during the fall of Altea? Why wasn’t she with her daughter and husband in the final moments? And it makes even less sense when you look at that first scene where Allura and Coran were introduced. There were eight pods there. You mean to tell me Alfor didn’t think it might be a good idea to save an extra body or two to help guide Allura as she steps into the role she will have to take once he’s gone? Or even to help with maintaining/ rebuilding the Castle of Lions?

So, I’ve decided to add Melenor as a way to give some more characterization to not only she herself as a character, but also Alfor. Plus, I decided to make use of Garett (whose name I spell differently for reasons), Coran’s son from the original series, too. I think it’d be more fun to have an extra set of hands on board to help maintain the Castle of Lions and teach the Paladins, but maybe closer to their age range. So, we’ll see how things go with adding him to the roster. :3

Backstory for the Blades

This was something that we should have gotten a little bit of exposition on, considering how inflated their importance got. Like, the Blade became instrumental to the functionality of both Voltron and the Rebels due to their intelligence gathering. I think it’d have been kind of cool to see where it all started and what events in specific triggered it into becoming.

More Focus on Team Relationships

I didn’t really feel like the big victory against Zarkon was earned at the end of Season 2. I also didn’t think the team really earned any of their bigger victories, such as against Lotor and Honerva. They never felt like a real team that meshed because they just kinda stuck the same pairs/ clicks together. This was my biggest issue throughout most of the show and I really want to explore the dynamics we never really got to see. There are a few standout relationships that definitely needed some retooling, but I’ll mention those farther down. 

More Alien Worlds

Sci-fi and Fantasy are my big genres because I. Fudgin. Love seeing the designs for different technology, worlds and races. And while we did get some interesting ones with the series proper - which I’ll be mostly still including - I wish we’d gotten to see more. So, because I have no self-control, I’ll be planning to do that here!

Shiro’s Love Life

Shiro deserved better. I feel like that’s kind of something that most of the fandom can agree on. I don’t say this from a place of hate for Curtis, though, because… Well, what is there to hate? He was a literal background character who did nothing, said maybe two lines of dialogue, and that was it. Considering how much they pushed Shiro being the rep for the LGBT+ crowd, they did literally nothing with his love life. Hell, Adam was only revealed as his fiance because Bex fought tooth and nail for them to say it! If they hadn’t pushed the way they did, it would have all been subtext.

So, Shiro is going to have a romantic side plot in this fic, where we’ll focus on him and the character I’ve picked to be his partner.

Minor Side Romances

Some other little side pairings are gonna get a bit of love, here, too, since Voltron really only did the romance side of things well with, like, two couples. All the main couples are also gonna get plenty of spotlight, but I also think it would be fun to do some smaller side ships every now and then, too.

Things I’m Cutting

Villain Roulette

There was way too much jumping back and forth between who our main villain to focus on was. Bam, it’s Zarkon! No, wait, now it’s Lotor! Just kidding, here comes Zarkon again! Except that it was actually Lotor! Or so you thought; it’s actually Honerva haha great prank amiright? It was exhausting and I think it’d be a lot simpler to just… Stick with one villain who controls the smaller monster-of-the-day bad guys for an extended period of time and, once they’re for reals defeated, then move on to the next. I’ll be taking this approach for the sake of not only having a more focused story, but also my own sanity. I’ve never been good at gambling so trying the same thing as the show would probably turn out even worse for me.

Keith’s Excellent Blade Adventure with His Mommy

This is all unnecessary in this story, so we won’t be doing it at all. Keith’s sorry purple tail is staying with Team Voltron; no buts, no fuss, no coconuts.

Shiro’s Illness and Adam’s Death

Adam’s death is something I could go on about for hours specifically because it seemed unfair and kinda petty. Like, I feel they killed him specifically because they couldn’t kill Shiro, and they wanted to amp up the Tragic Backstory for our prior leader. So, instead, that’s getting the boot, as well as Shiro’s illness, since it’s also unneeded for plot convenience. Plus, it could have been nice to have a character that was willing to call Shiro out on the Atlus. Shiro always got treated like some kind of flawless entity, and I think it’d been nice to have someone call that Nice Guy Schtick out.

Allura and the Entity Plotline

This whole thing made no sense, got no proper development because of how late into the game they introduced it, and ended up being nothing more than a tool for them to kill Allura off. So, that can GTFO of my house post haste.

The Ending as a Whole

Some parts of the ending worked, but most of it just sucked. When the ending is so bad that it makes me feel obligated to stan characters I was ambivalent/ outright disliked? Yeah, gonna need to walk that back a bit.

Most of Seasons 3-6

The pacing in these seasons really was terrible. We derailed working on the team dynamic, building up the Coalition and Rebel forces, and developing the Paladins’ characters to instead focus on all that shit with Lotor. That… Was infuriating. Especially considering it was all basically a waste.

Additionally, we had Keith sidelined and his arc - which was clearly going to be center around him learning how to be a leader - completely pushed aside and then treated as if it did happened when he showed up late with Starbucks at the end of Season 6. That felt really unbelievable to me.

Time Skips

There were way too many time skips, for serious. Especially when those time skips didn’t include any kind of change in development/ character for the team. There’ll be smaller time skips, but nothing as egregious as what we got in seasons 6 and 7.

Things I’m Adjusting                                                              

Lion Swap

This’ll still be happening, but the circumstances that trigger it will be different. I may also shift around who gets to take which Lion when we get to that point. I haven’t decided just yet, but I’ll have it figured out before we reach that point. Most of this fic is already planned out and, honestly, the Lion Swap will be finalized once I figure out what I’m doing with a few of the other characters.

Shiro and Keith’s Relationship

This, right here? This was one of my biggest issues with Voltron. Keith was completely codependent on Shiro, while Shiro clearly cared about Keith’s well-being but it always felt like he’d have been just fine if something similar to what happened to him happened to Keith. It’s just… Really gross to me. It doesn’t help that I also find the whole “Dying for Your Lover” Trope – which I’ve seen a lot of people praise The Black Paladins for implying - to be incredibly disgusting and unhealthy. Also Keith’s flagrant hypocrisy never getting called out bothers me a lot since I actually like when a character behaves in a hypocritical manner, since it feels organic, but it has to be called out because hypocrisy can lead to double-standards and create harmful environments and I need to stop for now

So, Keith and Shiro are still going to be close, but they aren’t going to be that close.

Keith and Allura’s Relationship

Oh, look! Another potentially interesting aspect of the show that they kinda dropped the ball on! I really hated Allura’s heel-turn on Keith when it’s revealed that he’s Galra in S2 because a) It’s not like Keith himself knew this and was actively hiding it, and b) It felt out of character for the way Allura had been presented thus far. Her lashing out at Zarkon when she was captured made sense since he directly killed her father, her people and her planet. And I could understand being wary of the Blades – to the extent that she was in the first half – but after Keith’s heritage is revealed, she’s completely cold to him and only seems to decide he’s a good guy when he’s willing to take on a potential suicide mission! They either needed to drag the animosity out and show it effecting Allura’s ability to work with the team as a whole and also show the team sticking up for Keith because the fact that Hunk was the only one that said anything is kinda messed up like where tf was Shiro if he and Keith are oh so close? or they needed to tone Allura’s attitude towards him back a bit more, have her approach him in a manner similar to how she addressed the Blade members; acknowledging he is there and contributing, but not praising or thanking him outright.

And since Keith presents and knows he’s part Galra from the start in this fic? Well, we’ll actually get to play around with that dynamic a little more. And while I’m on the subject of our favorite Altean princess…

Allura’s Character Inconsistencies

Allura’s character jumped around a lot in some of the earlier seasons and I’d be willing to wager that this is because the writers never settled on an age for her. And I don’t mean during the big changes like her becoming a Paladin or Lotor’s betrayal, since it’d make sense she be shaken by situations that drastic. One minute, she’s this composed, confident and well-spoken young leader doing the best she can. The next, she’s a more temperamental sort who has low self-esteem/ confidence in her own abilities to even successfully contribute to a team. Now, I think I kniw what they were trying to do; they were trying to show that the more impulsive side of her is more genuine while the composed side is her trying to be the leader she is expected to be. I get it. They fixed this and improved on it later down the line, but they could have done better by maybe addressing it and using it as a chance to develop her relationship with another member or two of Team Voltron.

Season 2’s Ending

The defeat of Zarkon happened way too soon. Especially since then, because they wanted to play around with Lotor’s intentions, they had to bring him back as a cyborg-zombie fueled by quintessence. Zarkon should have only been defeated once and then we should have been allowed to move on to the next main villain. As such, I’m moving Zarkon’s defeat further down the line and will be modifying some of the consequences there in.

P Much Everything About Lotor’s Acr/ Motives

Lotor… Man, Lotor was confusing and a lot of wasted potential. They painted him as if they wanted him to be a morally grey villain, where he does terrible things for what he considers the betterment of others, but then, once it’s revealed that he was keeping secrets, he just… Goes full ham. He becomes Evil McAwful incarnate and it felt unrealistic. There were about 20 different directions they could have taken Lotor – before and after the reveal – and I just didn’t care for the approach they took. So, I’ll be doing things a little different and seeing how that goes.

What I’m Keeping from Seasons 3-6

Very, very little things are going to be kept from each of the aforementioned seasons and implemented in the fic. I’m not planning to keep too many of the big plot moments because they all bled into the issues I had with the story as it stood on its own. I will, however, take some of the small things from those three seasons and include them here. This also applies to certain elements from the other seasons as well, but we’ll get there when we get there.

Adopting Kosmo

Kosmo will be in this fic, come Hell or high water. He is the Best Boi and deserves to be here.

Cut Fic Content

Okay, so here’s the weird one in this line up! As the title implies, there’s some content that I have cut from the fic, even this early on. I actually have some of the Kogane-Holt bonding scenes still drafted up somewhere in my files. I removed them because I was worried that they’d feel too much like filler. There’s also some scenes I started to work out from when I planned to have Keith grow up with Pidge and Matt; specifically including a scene where Krolia and Ethan talk about the idea and decide to commit.

Some of these ideas won’t work in the fic as it stands now, though. I also, however, like the idea of putting it out for everyone to read. So, I’m debating on making a separate one-shot collection of things that could have happened, or just adding them as the occasional buffer between the arcs of the story. I’ll make a poll when I get closer to the point of deciding how to proceed, so keep an eye out for that. :3

That’s all for now! I hope you all enjoy the updates and I’ll hopefully be updating again sooner than this time!

[scarletrebel]

oh god okay alright

so this is an au ive been thinking about for A While Now, cause im a dramatic fuck who cant finish anything and is living in wip city right now. 

rook (@mrpinstripesuit‘s boy because of course) somewhat reluctantly and through ~plot~ that i do have in mind actually turning into the next dredgen yor because in a small twist of events killing just one guardian in crucible wasnt enough for him.

cue avia being sent to hunt him down and getting marked down as scared and horny when she meets him for the first time

i do have a whole story planned for this and ive been thinking about this au a lot, i bashed this out in about three hours so there might be little errors here and there and critically i think it moves way too fast but hey i havent uploaded in so long so shrug emoji i hope its at least readable aha

When Ikora calls her to the Vanguard chambers, Avia is expecting Cayde’s presence too. Her Hunter Vanguard will do all he can to remind her of her class, even butting into mission briefings with Ikora.

So it comes as a shock to see him not present at the table when she walks in. Ikora turns to greet her, and Avia casts a glance over her shoulder at Zavala.

“Don’t tell me you finally let Cayde out of the Tower?”

Zavala throws her a grim look, mouth set into a line and Avia meets it with a morbid confusion.

“What’s his problem?” She asks Ikora, whose face is set in an equally grim measure.

“Cayde left for a brief scouting mission, it was only supposed to take him a few hours,” Ikora reaches down to her holopad, and from its screen rises a map of an area of Earth Avia has never heard before. “This is the European Dead Zone. It’s highly off limits to Guardians due to the fluxuating levels of both Darkness and Light.”

“Why’s that?”

“A shard of the Traveler exists in that region, cast off from the Collapse.”

Avia watches the images cycle in front of her. A giant cascading shard towers over a forest, buildings rusted and decaying sit in its shadow. Lightning bounces off of the shard, storm clouds gathering around it.

“Looks suitably ominous,” Avia mutters, quickly realising that now is not the time.

Ikora simmers. Avia’s come to notice this in the Warlock Vanguard, when something is wrong and pressing up against her mind but she must remain calm and composed in the face of it all. Avia recognises it well, a quiet storm betrayed by only the smallest of movements.

Ikora places a hand down on the table, her fingers trembling.

“Cayde left two days ago. He hasn’t returned.”

Avia allows her mind to wander as Ikora’s words hit her. Cayde, bold and brass finding his way through this forest as easy as walking through the Tower. Enemies of the Light crowding him, surrounding him, and whilst he doesn’t go down without a fight it’s that one mistake that could cost him.

“You want me to find him.”

Ikora thins her lips into a line, looking from the holo pad and down to Zavala. Avia misses the minute way they communicate to each other, and when Ikora turns to her she can tell the Warlock is somehow sadder.

“Bring him home, however that may be.”

She has to receive the highest clearance from Zavala, Ikora, and the Speaker in order to fly into the Dead Zone. She was advised by Zavala to touch down on the outside of the forest and make her way in. His monotone suggestion didn’t exactly inspire confidence, and it left her riddled with annoyance that she couldn’t shake.

“Levi?” She calls for her Ghost, and they materialise with a whirl.

“Are you afraid?” They ask, and Avia scoffs.

“No. I just… Feel like I’m not getting the full picture.”

“How do you mean?” They ask as Avia looks down the scope of her sniper rifle. She spots the forest a breath away, the trees thick and coarse. No hostiles as she scans the horizon, and answers her Ghost.

“There’s something Ikora wasn’t telling me.”

“You always think that,” Levi floats in front of her scope, making her lower it with a sigh. “She has no reason to lie to you.”

“Lying by omission is still lying.” Avia says.

“You’re not in the Reef anymore.” Levi’s voice is soft, a comfort.

“I’m not sure sometimes.”

She starts to walk, making her way down a cliff face and landing as quietly as she can on the ground. She walks towards a gathering of buildings, the same rusted ones Ikora showed her. The air is still and quiet. As she climbs the structure, the echo of her movements starts to set her on edge.

“What was Cayde scouting?” She wonders out loud. Levi hesitates next to her. Then he whirls his shell once, twice, and answers.

“I think… ‘Scouting’ might have been a loose term for whatever he was actually looking for out here.”

Avia smiles under her helmet. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

“With the language in his recent reports, if you could even call them that, I think he was looking for something.”

“Like what?” Avia asks, moving through an empty room and shimmying through a grated wall. She jumps down and out of the building on the other side, trees at her left and right. She pushes in.

“Something he lost, I think.”

Avia hums, sticking close to the trees, trying to watch and be careful of the way her feet brush against the dead leaves and twigs on the ground. It’s not an environment she’s used to for stealth, but the same rules apply – stay close to the ground and keep your eyes open.

“Let me know when you detect anything.” She tells Levi.

“Aside from the insurmountable Darkness surrounding us alongside a general feeling of dread?” Levi asks, to which Avia laughs. “Can do.”

He was dangerously close to growing bored.

He sits with his back to the wall, flicking a knife up and down. In the cave system, dingy orange lights bounced off the walls. The Dredgen’s chattered around him, keeping to themselves mostly. He still didn’t understand what they wanted from him, what they expected from an exiled Guardian.

He’d told them as much, but still, they followed.

Some of their Ghost’s pitter around their heads, cowardly, having conversations they don’t want him to hear. He catches a glowing orb with his eyes more than once and it dissipates, causing the Hunter with his legs crossed to cast a glance over his shoulder. The Human stills the hand in her book, the scattered pieces of the scout rifle she’s trying to infuse into darkness around his feet.

“What?” He spits. The Guardian doesn’t cower, just tries to hide her smile as she begins to draw something in the soil between them.

“My Ghost thinks you’re dangerous.”

“Your Ghost is right,” he replies. He watches the gloved hand trace a pattern, and it takes him longer than he’d like to admit to recognise it as something Hive.

The Guardian places the main skeleton of her gun over the rune, speaking as she draws an intricate circle around it. “I think she doesn’t get it. I think the Light makes us blind, but I don’t think it’s our enemy either.”

“Aint that poetic.”

“You don’t want to lead us,” the Guardian starts. He stills his motions with the knife, catching it blade side, the metal biting into his skin. “But you could be the start.”

“The start of what, kid?”

The Guardian mutters something under her breath, and they both watch the runes on the floor glow a sickly green, a plume of smoke rising to intwine itself in the metal above it. The others around them stop to stare. When the spell finishes, the exo skeleton breathes with that same sickly energy, something black like ichor peeling off of it.

“I guess that’s up to you.”

A Warlock peels around the corner, harried, breathing hard.

“He’s gone.”

“What?” He asks, a quiet intensity in the way he tenses but doesn’t move.

The Warlock stutters, tries to find his voice. “He overpowered us. His Ghost did something, got herself out of her cage and then freed him. He subdued everyone so he could--”

He flings the knife between the Warlocks feet, a centimetre away from his foot. He stands and takes the hand canon off his hip, once laced in gold and now dark and peeling at the edges. With his fury it starts to feel warm in his hands, putting the scout rifle on the floor to shame. The young Guardian looks at it in awe, seeing the same runes she carved transcribed on the sides.

“Tell me which way he went and then get the hell out of here. Everyone.”

The Hunter pipes up from the floor as he walks towards the mouth of the cave system; “And then what? How will we find you?”

“I guess that’s up to you.”

“I don’t like this.”

“You’ve said that five times already, Levi.” Avia says, though her voice betrays her own unease.

They’ve been walking for what feels like hours. As they traversed deeper, the forest became darker, blocking out all sunlight. Levi told her a ways back that the influence of the shard was heaviest here, but what Avia didn’t mention was the solar flames beneath her skin, an ache to act. Something was coming, her gut felt out of sorts.

“Any sign of him?” Avia asks. Levi extends his shell and scans as far as he can.

“No, I – wait!” Avia perks up as her Ghost scans once more, pulling their shell back to themselves with an excited whir. “Cayde’s Ghost, she’s near!”

“Lead the way,” Avia says, following her marker and picking up the pace.

She breaks into a run as she gets closer, nearing a large tree trunk on its side.

“Wait!” Levi yells into her comm. She slides to take cover by the tree, her mouth opening to ask what’s wrong.

She hears two shots, the way they ring through the air all too familiar. Cayde yells, goes down, and the person wielding Thorn catches up to him.

She pops her head up and over the tree, looking into a circular clearing. Her Vanguard lies on his side, his Ghost fussing over him tirelessly. She watches another man move closer, black armour from head to toe, and she sees that his gun isn’t the hand canon she wields. No, it’s similar in nature, but corrupted in a completely different way.

“Is that a Guardian?” She whispers, as the man in question walks lazily over to where Cayde rights himself onto his back. Her Vanguard is hurt, his Exo plating damaged beyond recognition.

“No,” Levi answers. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“Aint this a little too – ahh, god – easy for you?” Cayde asks, pulling his Ghost to his chest. She gets the message and dissipates as the man stands over him.

“You made it hard enough when you ran the first time,” he says, pulling his helmet off. Ebony hair falls out around his shoulders, dark brown eyes boring holes into the Exo below him. Avia holds a breath. He’s human. But there’s something about him that isn’t. “I’m starting to think you just enjoy this.”

“I’m not the sicko running around like the next Dredgen Yor,” Cayde spits back. There’s a venom that Avia can’t place.

“Then why did you even try to find me?” The man asks, kneeling down, regarding Cayde like he’s playing with his food. “Trying to save my sorry soul?”

“Well, that’s real dramatic Rook, maybe those Dredgens have finally – ahh!”

The man, whose name is apparently Rook, fires a round into Cayde’s chest.

“He’s running on auxiliary power already Avia, we have to get in there.” Levi’s voice is small and strained.

“Wait,” she finds herself saying.

Cayde coughs and splutters, the machines where his lungs would be whirring in protest. “I’m sorry, Rook. But I know you -- you don’t -- you don’t want to be this.”

Rook stands, aiming his gun down and Avia sees the sightline – right between Cayde’s eyes.

“It’s too late to give me that choice.”

Avia hops over the tree and summons her Golden Gun, using the first blast to knock the gun from Rook’s hand. The Darkness around it absorbs the blast but knocks it off centre, and his eyes find her immediately. She aims the second for his chest, which causes him to stutter back, and she takes the opening to run forward and place herself over Cayde.

The man in black rights himself and they aim their guns at each other, Avia still engulfed in solar flame as something darker roils off of Rook’s body. When her Light runs its course, the solar light makes way for the Thorn in her hands to make itself known.

Rook looks her in the eyes, down to the gun in her hands, and then laughs.

“Oh you are a bunch of hypocrites, aren’t you Cayde?”

“Get out of here,” Avia warns. Levi scans Cayde’s body, coaxing his own Ghost forward so they can make enough repairs to keep Cayde stable for now. “Last chance.”

“Oh, sweetheart, you have no idea what this is, do you?” A wicked smile curls up Rook’s face as he lowers his own gun, taking a few steps forward.

“Shut up.” Avia spits back.

“Nah, I’d rather tell you all about how you’ve got a Guardian killer in your hands there. One that your Vanguard keep around for god knows what reason.” He inches closer, and Avia steps forward to meet him. His hands come up in mock surrender, and she ignores how her stomach curls at his easy smile. It’s infuriating, to some degree.

“The only Guardian killer I see is you,” she starts. “Go. Now.”

“Or else what?” He asks. He moves forward once again, and Avia misses the time in between him feeling like he was a mile away and being pressed up against the Thorn. She can practically feel his heartbeat through the gun.

Thank the Traveler she’s wearing her helmet.

“Avia,” Cayde rasps below her. He sounds better, and she hears the soft dissipation of a Ghost that must be his. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“That is rich coming from you.” She mutters, and the man in front of her has the audacity to laugh as if they’ve known each other for years.

“Avia,” he says, his eyes raking down her body. “Pretty name.”

“I am seconds away from putting you down for good.” She bites back. He smiles at her reaction and it sends a wave of embarrassment through her.

“But you won’t. Killing Guardians is bad, remember?”

“You’re not a Guardian.”

Rook’s face falls, impassive and unreadable as the darkness rolls off him, still steady.

In a flash he grabs Avia’s wrist, and places the Thorn underneath his chin, his other hand on her waist as he looks at her and says; “I’m the same kinda Guardian that you are, sweetheart.”

She’s caught off guard, a steady and aggravating heat pooling in her chest. She doesn’t realise when his finger curls around hers on the trigger, squeezing it.

She pulls back as quick as she can, the bullet sounding off between them. She makes to reach for a knife, throw it at his chest and make some space but then she’s back on her ship, Cayde still on the floor below her.

Levi whirls in front of her; “Are you alright?”

“I…” She starts, shaking herself and taking her helmet off. Cayde groans behind her, and she turns and kneels at his side.

“Nice one, hot shot.” He splutters. Avia rolls her eyes, hooking an arm around his back and moving him into the co-pilot chair.

“Who was he?” She asks once he’s sat down, still clutching his chest as though some parts will fall out of him.

“That’s a long story.”

Avia set’s a course for the Tower, plotting the longest route she can find without raising suspicion.

“You’ve got time.”

[some-messy-portuguese-enby]

Heathers x Naruto Founders AU idea?

I have an exam I haven’t studied for at all which i’ll have to take in a couple days but instead my mind decided to obsess over Heathers and Naruto at the same time so, obviously, that would lead to me thinking about a Heathers x Naruto Founders AU

Not sure if there are that many fellow Heathers and Naruto fans out there but I just wanted to let this idea out in the internet, gonna put a click to read thing because this is quite a lot ughirugr Also reminder that since Heathers is set in a highschool, most characters (besides the director of the school and teachers) are around 17/18 years old, and yes, obviously this is a Hashimada AU, yk me

tw for: heathers spoilers, suicide mention, deaths, and sibling rivarly

and heathers is iconic, do watch the movie and musical if you haven’t :D

Characters

Veronica: Madara

J.D: Hashirama

Heather Chandler: Tobirama

Heather McNamara: Mito

Heather Duke: Izuna

Ram: Hidan?

Kurt: Kakuzu?

Martha: Naruto

Betty: Sasuke

Ms. Fleming: Sakura?

Director: Tsunade

Story and changes from the story of Heathers to adapt to Naruto’s I thought were important 

-I suppose Westerberg High could be changed to Konoha High (I know, extremely creative)

-The story overall, as in who lives, who dies and the main toxic relationship, so far, are pretty much what we saw in the movie/musical

-Hashirama and Tobirama are brothers, so are Madara and Mito

-Hashirama and Tobirama had a ton of issues growing up bc of their mom’s suicide and their father being not so good, leading to them getting apart and Tobirama deciding to go live with their aunt and Hashirama remaining with their father (althought he didn’t want to stay with him, his aunt reminded him too much of his mother and he couldn’t bear to see her all the time)

-Hashirama and his dad travel a lot, their dad felt betrayed by Tobirama’s departure so that added onto Hashirama and Tobirama barely communicating for a couple years, not sure if Hashirama’s dad would destroy buildings too but eh, eventually they end up coming back to Konoha but only because of a job not because of Tobirama (or at least that’s what Butsuma told Hashirama)

-Tobirama doesn’t know Hashirama’s back until he notice who Madara is making dreamy eyes at, this leads to an argument that only doesn’t escalate a lot because they’re at school and Tobirama has a reputation to keep

-During this argument Hashirama calls Tobirama out in how sold his soul for popularity and meaness (one of the first things he would know about the school once he entered would obviously be the all mighty heathers so) and Tobirama calls him out in how he’s irrational and angry all the time (and funnily enough, he doesn’t even know he’s worse than when Tobirama moved out)

-Tobirama warns Madara about Hashirama but yk, love~ overrules all

-Madara and Mito aren’t the closest siblings but they do care about each other, so when Tobirama noticed Madara somewhat, Mito pushed for him to join them (she did have a small bad feeling about him joining, but she trusted it would go for the best, after all, she did appreciate her besties Tobirama and Izuna)

-Naruto and Sasuke would know each other and both be Madara’s friends (especially Sasuke) but they are kinda petty with each other, and Madara ends up getting away from them after joining the Heathers, they get closer during that time, and I think I’m sticking to the heathers equivalent canon here and Naruto tries to, stop living, and I’m sticking with him surviving that too

Things that need work/to be thought about and may change

I kind of decided to mix the movie and musical by having the equivalents of Bethy and Marta being friends with the equivalent of Veronica, I came up with the idea of Bethy as Sasuke and couldn’t leave Sasuke in a world with no Naruto c’mon

I’m still not sure about Ram and Kurt, I think a pair from the akatsuki would fit, and kakuzu and hidan are bastards in-canon and they kinda gay soooo, but still not sure

Regarding Heather McNamara and Heather Duke, I think it would fit for Duke and Chandler to be Izuna and Tobirama, respectively, because it fits their rivarly, Mito could fit McNamara well too, the thing here is that I’m making the change of Madara and Izuna being brothers to Madara and Mito, so yeah that’s what i’ll have to think more about

Regarding the equivalents of JD and Veronica, I wanted to explain that tbf I can see Madara and Hashirama both fitting JD’s character, especially Madara with the way he did a really extreme plan in-canon and didn’t stop for anything or anyone; BUT I imagined Hashirama in a trench coat and I dig darker stuff from him so this is what I decided to go with even thought about making the Veronica be pretty much a JD but ehhhh nah

I have to also give more thought to how Tobirama and Hashirama grew such a bridge between them that Hashirama doesn’t end up telling Madara he’s going to give Tobirama a cup of liquid drainer… Oop-

Anyways, so far that’s it, still have work to do on this but first I urgently need to study and try to pass this disgusting statistics class, damn I want a break

Please give your opinion on all these ideas and suggestions if you have any, I appreciate any and all help! And have a good day! ^-^

[jadehqknb]

A random belated Aomine birthday scenario appears!

I know it’s a couple days late and during my AU event, but I wasn’t able to touch base with @hiding-from-senpai (time zone differences I think) until a day after Aomine’s birthday and didn’t get my butt around to writing this until now. I didn’t remember until after I finished that she was supposed to be his best friend so they ended up more acquaintances from their early days but since it’s almost 11PM and I don’t want another day to go by I kept it as it is. So, happy belated birthday Aomine!

Here’s what she requested when I proffered her with the question of what she’d like to read for Aomine’s birthday since he’s her bae: We read in canon that Aomine likes writing his memoirs. In this request, he is already working as a detective. Can we please have an excerpt from a chapter that he had just finished writing some hours after his birthday has passed (ex. 1am). The subject matter of his entry has to do with recounting events, specifically his trying to do something major before his birthday — something that he isn’t sure of to challenge himself. The challenge he set for himself was to confess to this fem!bestfriend whom he had a crush on since highschool but he never got the courage to confess because he always thought she was out of his league. He’s had two failed relationships and some flings and decided he’s had enough. Please include how he confessed and her reaction. He also remarks how this is his greatest victory.

Memoir entry August 31st

I’m not sure what time it is, late no doubt, or early if I’m being honest. Ever since getting this job, I feel both more and less observant. More to the things that matter to catch the bad guys, less to my everyday life because I’m just always so damn tired. Ironic, really, for a detective as good as I am to miss so many of the clues.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Today (or yesterday really) was a day built for reflection. For consideration of where I’ve been, what I’ve done and unsurprisingly of where I’m going. Birthdays will do that to you, draw up not only the joy of being alive but the reminder that you’re one year closer to the end, one year closer to the conclusion of your story and doesn’t everyone want to make it a good one?

I thought I’d found the secret to a happy, uncomplicated life. I started out seeking some fulfillment in coupling up only to find it almost impossible given the strain of my job. Most people aren’t cut out to date a cop, especially one who’s focused on making detective.

I guess those two gave it their best shot. I know I’m not the easiest person to get along with on a good day but add in the stress of training, reports and chasing assholes and well…I become one pretty damn fast.

But sleeping around wasn’t helping either, just adding angry texts and crazy bitches pounding at my door because they couldn’t get it through their stupid heads there wasn’t anything deeper going with them than a rough fuck.

Now though…now I’ve finally met my match. Or rather, I’ve become reacquainted with her considering we’ve known each other through high school. ______ has always been my yard stick for measuring women, none really being able to hold a candle to her and that’s where my problem lay. She saw through all my bullshit so plainly that she scared me. She was almost if not more perceptive than Satsuki and that wasn’t something I was ready to deal with.

That and she’d most likely have laughed in my face if I ever did confess. Why would someone as good as her ever want to be with someone like me?

But this year, I decided enough was enough. I’ve arrived, top of my unit and continuing to rise but now, now was the time to look at the other areas of my life I’ve neglected for so long. I don’t know how I’ve managed to keep my friends but it was good to see them at my birthday dinner.

It’s weird as fuck to see Midorima married to his high school sweetheart and that Kagami actually made it in pro ball. Akashi’s kids look just like him, creepy little fuckers, but Mursakibara hasn’t changed a bit and that’s strangely comforting. Satsuki finally nailed Tetsu and they’re getting married next year. Only Kise couldn’t be there because of a job but he sent a kick ass bottle of scotch to make up for his absence.

I’ll have to send him one hell of a thank you in return because it was that bottle that provided the opportunity to talk to _________ again. After the dinner, I ran into her randomly in the parking lot and we started talking. She just moved back and is looking for a job. Our conversation led to the reason of my being where I was and when I mentioned it was birthday she smiled brightly.

“I’ll have to buy you a drink,” she exclaimed.

“No need, I’ve got some right here,” I answered showing her the bottle. Then after a second added, “My place isn’t too far, care to come over for a shot?”

And that’s how we ended up on my couch, catching up on all the years we’d been apart. She moved to Australia to continue her studies and had me rolling with laughter at all her crazy ass stories from that place. One shot turned to two and then three. I could feel the alcohol loosening my inhibitions and quelling my nerves. It’s probably not advisable to confess to your long-time crush while buzzed but it’s what I did, spitting out randomly, “You know I had a huge crush on you in high school right?”

She giggled, a sweet sound I always want to hear. “Really? And here I thought you hated me!”

That got my attention like a bucket of cold water to the face. “What do you mean? How could you think I hated you?”

She stuttered slightly, cheeks turning pink and I know it wasn’t from the scotch. “We-well, you avoided me a lot. Like, you never seemed to want to talk to me. Not that you really talked to anyone that much but with me, it just…felt like you were avoiding me on purpose.”

“Shit, I…really?”

She laughed again, downing another shot then shrugging her shoulders looked me in the eyes. “Yeah, I mean, I thought maybe the bentos would help clue you in but you never said anything. And every time I went to a game it’s like you didn’t even see me.” She looked away to the fire place, its flickering flames dancing on her face. I was startled to see glistening trails of tears on her cheeks as memory of those days took hold. She shook her head, wiping them away quickly. “Sorry, old scars. I don’t want to be a downer on your birthday, Aomine-kun, so I’ll get going.”

She stood but I grabbed her wrist tugging her back down practically in my lap pulling a startled squeak from her lips which my eyes locked onto. Leaning forward I whispered, “I wanted you so bad it hurt but I…I couldn’t…you were too good.” Closer, breaths mingling, I could feel the thrum of her pulse against my fingers. “Honestly, I never stopped wanting you, still do as a matter of fact.”

“Aomine-kun, I think that’s the scotch talking.” Her tone tried for light, hand pressing against my chest to push away but I wouldn’t let her go, not when I finally had her in my arms.

“I’m not drunk, and I’m not saying these things because I feel bad, although I do, I was an asshole to you and I’m sorry. But I’m saying these things because they’re true. I…I want you, _______.”

Her eyes searched mine for what felt like an eternity but finally, finally she moved forward and touched her lips to mine. They were petal soft, warm and sultry, everything I’d imagined but better. The kiss went from sweet to heated quickly, unsurprisingly because I’m an impatient bastard. Her mouth tasted faintly of the scotch but was ten times more intoxicating.

I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun making out with someone in my life.

And now I’m here, watching the rise and fall of a blanket where she lies encased in the warmth of my bed. I’ve accomplished a lot in my life, but being given a place in ________’s heart to call my own, is the greatest victory I’ve ever known.  

Best. Birthday. Ever!

[sleepy-giggles]

The Cursed Tea

Hi friends! This is the first chapter of my ‘A Lemon A Day’ series. It will contain multiple smutty one-shots of Gruvia; some will stick to canon material, while others will be AU. Hope you guys will enjoy, and happy reading! ^^

Summary: Gray and Juvia accidentally drink tea that’s been infused by a dark, mysterious magic. It is said that whomever ingests it will lose every ounce of control and succumb to their sexual desires. 

Rating: M (Contains sexual content, please read at your own discretion)

Pairing: Gruvia and some Nalu

Can also be read at https://www.fanfiction.net/~scarfsan

“You two look like shit.”

The dragon slayer and celestial mage remained slumped in their seats, looking dead and soulless despite Gray’s blunt remark.

“What in the world happened?” Wendy leaned across the table in concern.

“Aghhh… don’t even mention it,” Happy groaned, clearly exhausted. “I couldn’t get any sleep last night and was even kicked out of my own house by these two… these two ANIMALS!”

The exceed erupted into tears while the others looked on in confusion.

“What do you mean?” Erza demanded. “Natsu, Lucy, explain yourselves.”

The pink-haired mage opened his mouth, but whatever words that came out was slurred and incomprehensible. Lucy made no attempt to talk; her face turning a bright shade of red was her only reply.

“I can explain.”

Everyone turned their heads to see Porlyusica walk into the guild hall.

She took out a small green can that had a picture of tea leaves on the front, and in the corner, there were tiny black letters that said ‘Warning: potent lust spell’.

“These idiots didn’t check the label and drank a special tea that’s infused with a dark, powerful spell. It turns the unfortunate souls who drink it into horny, savage beasts. Disgusting… only humans could come up with such a thing”.

Shock settled in the faces of the onlookers, and jaws dropped.

“Hey! How were we supposed to know that this reward we got from a mission is actually a sick love potion some bastard cooked up?!” Natsu jumped out of his seat, having finally recovered from his stupor.

“HA! I wouldn’t be surprised if you shoved the whole thing in your mouth the second you heard it was edible.”

“What the fuck did you just say ice princess?!”

“I said, only a flame brain like you would let this happen—”

“Stop it, both of you!” Lucy slammed her hands on the table just as Erza knocked their heads together to break up the fight.

“By the time we realized something was wrong, we had finished the whole pot. That’s when…,” Lucy blushed furiously.

“That’s when Happy had to come get my help,” Porlyusica finished for her.

“They started wrestling each other naked, making all sorts of weird noises. I was so scared!” Happy wailed. “And then Natsu threw me out of the house, saying that I was in the way.”

“Forgive me Happy,” Natsu mumbled, shedding a tear as well. “I wasn’t myself last night….”

The elderly woman sighed. “Anyway, the worst is over. I followed them here today to make sure that the antidote they took is working as it should. There has been four other cases of people falling victim to this distasteful prank. You should all be cautious too, since it is a spell that can reduce even a saint to nothing but an animal. It will corrupt the mind and enslave the body to act on your most carnal desires.”

Gray sighed. There’s no such thing as a peaceful day in this guild. But he had more important things to do than loiter around and tease Natsu and Lucy. For today at least.

“Well, I’m gonna head back now. Make sure flame breath here doesn’t get into any more trouble.” He waved off Natsu’s threat that he’s gonna kick his sorry ass all the way to Edolas when he gets better, and strode out the guild doors.

“Gray-san is leaving earlier than usual,” Wendy noticed.

Erza smiled proudly at that. “Ah. It must be because Juvia is cooking him dinner tonight.”

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

Gray let out a satisfied sigh as he set down the empty tea cup and gave his stomach a hardy pat.

“That was delicious, Juvia.” His girlfriend had promised to cook him a proper meal today since he just got back from a week-long mission, but little did he know that she had prepared him a feast. Actually, he really shouldn’t be all that surprised. It was Juvia after all. It was the first time he got to enjoy such a generous display of food all by himself, without Natsu around to fight him for the best parts of a chicken.

The blunette who sat across from him smiled shyly. “Juvia’s glad to hear that, Gray-sama!”

“By the way, where’d you get this tea from? It’s really good.”

“Ah! Juvia bought it from the local market down the street. This brand is very popular right now!” The water mage left briefly and came back with a small green can. When she handed it to Gray, his gaze settled on the familiar looking label. Then, his eyes widened to the size of saucers.

“No.” His voice came out so soft it could barely be heard.

Juvia cocked her head to the side, puzzled. “What was that Gray-sama?”

He lifted his gaze and with a grave expression, told her about everything that had happened at the guild earlier that day. About how their two friends suffered a most embarrassing and shameful night, how Happy was kicked out of his house, and how Porlyusica’s intervention had put a stop to the spell.

“They drank the same tea.” Gray finished.

“It can’t be…” Juvia covered her mouth, horrified. But then, her imagination ran wild and a dreamy look washed over her features. “It can’t be…,” she said again, more excited than before.

“Oi!” Gray could tell that she had the wrong idea already. “It’s not the type of potion you’re thinking of! This particular spell will literally turn us into animals, and we won’t have an ounce of sanity to control what we do.”

“Oh no, is there an antidote?” If this tea truly holds such power, then Juvia doesn’t want herself or Gray to be under its manipulation. Having experienced Invel’s Ice Lock was traumatizing enough.

“Let’s hurry to the guild. If we’re lucky, Porlyusica might still be there.”

“Okay!” Juvia scrambled around trying to remove her apron, just as Gray got up hastily to make a dash to the front door. In the madness of it all, the water mage slipped on one of the tails of her apron and crossed her feet with Gray’s in the process, bringing him down with her.

THUD.

The force of the fall resulted in Juvia sprawled out on top of Gray, with their limbs tangled up in awkward positions. Their eyes locked then, lips inches apart.

The devil slayer could feel his heart beating a fierce rhythm against his chest, and instantly he felt that it was difficult to breathe.

‘This can’t be right,’ he thought, panicking. ‘The effects of the tea are this fast?!’

To make things worse, he was torturously aware of the blunette’s ample breasts pressed against his bare chest, and her squirming made his blood rush first to his head, and then to his other…head.

“J-Juvia!” He sputtered.

“Yes?” She squirmed some more. “Juvia is trying to get up, but Gray-sama’s elbow is on her dress.”

“Oh.” Gray lifted his arm and sneaked a glance at her, and he instantly regretted it. Were her eyes always this blue? Not just any kind of blue, but a deep, royal blue that reminded him of the ocean on a sunny day.

His unwavering gaze caused her cheeks to grow unbearably hot, and she became equally captivated by his intense eyes. Somehow, this closeness felt very different from the many times she’d thrown herself at him into a hug. This was not an act that was initiated by her random expressions of love; this situation felt as foreign to her as that fateful day when Gray finally gave her the answer.

“We uh…should really get going.” The deep, rich tone of his voice broke her out of her reverie and released butterflies in her stomach.

“Ah, yes,” her fingers moved delicately against the hard lines of his abs. “We should…go right now…”

“Before it’s too late,” he finished, mesmerized by her thick, fluttering eyelashes. But neither made any indication of moving.

Her eyes hooded with a strange desire, Juvia’s face dipped dangerously close to his. Was she giving in too easily to this cursed spell? She doesn’t know. She only knows that whatever motivation she had before to fight the effects had left without warning, leaving her with a yearning so strong that it no longer made sense to get up.

A hand reached up to tenderly caress her cheek, and before she knew what was happening, Gray had leaned over and parted her lips with his own in a firm, sultry kiss.

Her gasp was muffled as he moved his mouth skillfully against hers.

“We have to stop, Gray-sama.” Her actions betrayed her words as Juvia pulled him closer, moaning into their kiss.

“Do we?” They separated only briefly before Gray crushed their bruised lips together yet again, this time more hungrily than before.

His hand wandered down to her small waist as he relished in the delicious, sweet taste of her mouth. Despite knowing that he was very heavily drugged, he couldn’t stop slipping his tongue inside, or trailing his hand lower to her voluptuous hips. The pressure of her soft body on his sent a wave of pleasure to his groin, and he winced when he felt his pants tighten.

It was as if every ounce of inhibition he possessed had dissipated. All that existed in his world at that moment was the sexy woman on top of him.

The curse be damned. He wanted her.

In a swift movement, Gray flipped their bodies over and had her pinned beneath him. His eyes traced over her flushed face, and down to the bow made out of flimsy string that barely covered her cleavage. If he wanted to, the string would come apart easily with a slight tug….

“Um, Gray-sama.” Her voice made him stop. His hand was mere centimetres away from the bow.

Suddenly, it dawned on him that what he was about to do would be a huge step in their relationship. It hasn’t been long since the war with Alvarez ended, and they’ve both been taking things slow when it came to expressing intimacy.

Gray peered over at her before quickly looking away, a blush spreading across his face. “Sorry… I got carried away.”

Juvia caught his hand before he could pull away, and shyly placed it on top of the bow. “No, it’s okay. Juvia doesn’t mind…if it’s Gray-sama.”

That seemed to be all the encouragement he needed. Even though somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that they should get to Porlyusica right away, his brain was simply not in charge right now.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he pulled the string that held the dress together, revealing the blue transparent bra underneath.

The sight of her took his breath away. She’s so beautiful, and he couldn’t believe that he came so close to losing her in the war.

He leaned down and placed a soft kiss on the nape of her neck. The sensation made Juvia shiver and bite back a moan. She gasped when Gray nipped at the skin on her neck, and then he bit down gently before soothing over the bruise with his tongue.

The pleasure was so intense that it left her feeling light-headed. Every brush of his lips, every touch of his long fingers made her hardened nipples strain against the thin fabric of her bra. His hand finally made it to her breast and he grazed her stiff peak with his thumb.

“Ah!” She bit her bottom lip in an attempt to hold back more moans.

She probably didn’t know that the sound she made drove him crazy. As if they were opposite ends of a magnet, he slammed his lips to hers in a smouldering kiss. This time, he took his time exploring her hot mouth with his tongue.

“Mmm, you taste so good Juvia,” he growled as she took his bottom lip into her mouth and sucked on it.

Gray’s fingered worked fast and swiftly ripped her bra and dress off, tossing them to a dark corner of the room. Juvia parted her lips in astonishment when she felt his erection on her inner thigh.

Heat immediately pooled to her nether regions at the contact, and although she couldn’t think clearly, she knew with every fibre of her being that she needed more. She pulled him closer and used her legs to shift their position. Bringing her hips up to meet his, she proceeded to grind against his hardness.

The ice mage groaned deeply. His manhood throbbed achingly against the constraining fabric of his pants, which were getting tighter and tighter by the second, and Juvia’s grinding wasn’t helping one bit.

Sensing his problem, the blunette reached a hand between their hips and undid the zipper. He shrugged off the stupid article of clothing, leaving only his boxers. He pushed his erection against her wet mounds, and they both shuddered with pleasure.

“Fuck.” Gray took both her breasts into his hands and squeezed as he rubbed himself on her frantically. He could feel every ounce of self-control leaving him, and at the same time being replaced by an euphoric sensation so addicting that he couldn’t get enough.

“Gray-sama!” Her fingers gripped tightly at his muscular back when she felt herself getting so wet to the point that she could almost not feel her underwear at all. Their grinding became slippery due to the wetness created by both their arousals, and it served to heighten the sensations even more.

Juvia pulled desperately at his boxers. “Take it off.”

He obeyed eagerly and almost ripped hers off at the same time. Now completely naked, the water mage redirected her gaze to his thick, rigid arousal, and the muscles between her legs reflexively clenched in anticipation.

Gray’s breathing became quick and laboured as he grabbed one side of her hip and moved his thumb along her moist, swollen lips. She writhed in absolute bliss under his touch, and it only served to encourage him more. Rubbing the pink nub of her clit gently, he watched as she jerked forward and cried out his name. He continued teasing her until Juvia’s vision blurred. She was drowning in pleasure, and was afraid that if it kept building up, she was going to lose herself completely.

Unable to help himself, the devil slayer nuzzled his face against her heavy breasts before taking one of the stiff buds into his mouth and suckling hungrily. Juvia grasped a handful of his black hair and moaned loudly. When he swirled his hot tongue around her sensitive tip, she felt her whole body tense up and immediately clamped her legs tightly on his hand.

“Please,” she gasped out. “Juvia can’t…take it anymore.”

“Oh? Can’t take what anymore?” He smirked in amusement. “This?” He slipped his index finger into her crevice and growled deeply in pleasure at how wet and tight it was. “Or this?” Another finger was inserted, and he began to pump her repeatedly.

“Gray-sama!” She screamed, voice dripping with desire. “Please…I need you… inside.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Without warning, he forced the tip of his manhood inside and they both shivered at the raw contact.

“Fuck, you’re so tight.” With a final push, Gray forced the rest of his shaft inside and groaned. The feeling of her hot core gripping every inch of him was almost too much to handle.

“Ahh,” she moved her hips instinctively, losing herself to the ecstasy of being stretched to the limit by his cock. “It feels… so good.”

He thrusted deeper and harder each time their hips met, with a rhythm only known to them. Every wave of pleasure spread to their core and continued to build up, threatening to overflow.

Juvia panted and dug her nails into Gray’s skin, leaving long red marks along his back. He moaned in response and thrusted faster and faster, repeatedly hitting the sensitive spot within her folds. The feeling of being inside her alone was enough to push him over the edge.

Her muscles squeezed around his length and she cried out as an intense, almost ethereal sensation reached her. Gray tensed and threw his head back when his own climax washed over him. He grunted as he spilled his hot cum inside her, and they both rode out the last waves of pleasure together.

The ice mage collapsed on top of his girlfriend, absolutely spent. When she found her strength again, Juvia wrapped her arms around his head and played with the soft strands of his hair.

“Gray-sama, Juvia thinks that we should go get the antidote now.”

His eyes snapped open. Due to the heat of the moment, that whole thing about the cursed tea had completely escaped his mind.

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

The doors of the guild flew open, revealing two Fairy Tail mages who were completely out of breath.

The remaining members of the guild stared questioningly at them.

“Where’s Porlyusica?” Gray demanded.

A figure with long pink hair stepped out from the shadows. “What do you want at this goddamned hour?”

“Porlyusica-san, please help us,” Juvia approached her hesitantly. “Due to Juvia’s carelessness, we drank the same tea that had drugged Natsu-san and Lucy.” She gave Porlyusica the small green can that had started this whole mess, and bit her lips nervously.

The pink-haired lady smelled the leaves inside, took one look at the can and chucked it at Gray’s head.

“Ow! What was that for you old hag?!” The devil slayer rubbed the growing bump on his head tearfully. “We just wanted the antidote.”

“Antidote my ass!” If possible, Porlyusica managed to look even more irritated than before. “Hmph, you two are even more dim-witted than that hot-headed moron and blondie over there.”

Laughter erupted somewhere from the back of the guild hall, and heads turned to see Natsu clutching his stomach.

“Did you hear that popsicle-for-brains? She said you’re more stupid—” Lucy whacked him across the head in embarrassment.

The elderly woman ignored them and continued impatiently. “The drink your two had wasn’t drugged at all, it’s just normal tea leaves. I can tell by just looking at it.” She then pointed an accusing finger at the couple. “Would it kill ya to read the label for once?!””

Gray and Juvia just stared at her in dumbfounded silence.

Looking them up and down with disapproval, she said, “Don’t use the tea as an excuse for whatever disgusting thing you two did. I’m going to show myself out, don’t bug me unless someone’s dying.”

And with that, Porlyusica left, leaving behind many dropped jaws and saucer eyes.

“Whoa, does that mean they finally did it?!”

“Atta boy, Gray!”

“BWAHAHAHAHA! Did you hear that Lucy? They did all that stuff even without being cursed—”

THWACK.

Lucy walked away while massaging her arm. ‘That idiot,’ she thought angrily. ‘Why did he say it as if it was such a bad thing….’ A blush found its way to her cheeks as she looked over fondly at the unison raid pair. Maybe someday, that blockhead of hers would realize his feelings….