#i think he would be if he either went totally bald or grew his hair out like a sexy caveman

[marinetti-dinner-party]

if you ever start to suspect that da fash have a super clear-eyed pragmatic realistic view of the world, remember, hans 'stonetoss' graebener called himself an 8.5

[bigtreefest]

Chapter 10: We Should Get Married

From: Bigger Houses Series

Pairing: Mountain Ranger! Ari x Reader

Summary: Ari’s got a special date planned for you in a special location the two of you hold near and dear

Word Count: 3,229

Content/Warnings: 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI, smut, outdoor sex, protected sex (woo hoo! He comes in the condom), cockwarming, nudity, kissing, mentions of alcohol consumption (champagne), happy tears, loooooove or whatever, nervous and organized Ari, semi-unsuspecting Duchess, good friends, discussions of marriage, I think an engagement ring should be a warning

A/N: It’s been too long! I’m so happy to finally release another chapter of our majestic mountain man.

PLEASE screech with me in asks, comments, and reblogs!! Much love!

Dividers by @animatedglittergraphics-n-more

Below is the song which inspired this chapter.

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Ari had run his hands through his hair in nervousness so many times today that he was afraid he was about to go bald. His hiking boots paced on the floor of the ranger station as he bit his nails, a nasty old habit, and went through the plan with his coworkers and friends once again.

“Max, you’re sure you can do that?”

Max rolled his eyes, albeit with a smile, and nodded once again.

“Yes, Ari. It’ll be good training for my next lumberjack competition, anyway. You know nothing is gonna keep me from climbing up a tree for a good shot.”

Ari nodded and blew out a breath, hands on his hips.

“Okay, okay, good. And Rachel, appointment all booked?”

She smiled. “Yep! Today after work, so she’ll be all ready for tomorrow. Oh! And before I forget, here is your special package. I know you said you were going to pick it up from the jeweler, but I knew I’d be seeing you today, so one less thing to worry about going into town for.”

Ari reached for the bag Rachel held out for him, feeling the small box was there. He gingerly nestled his fingers in the cinched opening and pulled to get to the contents, taking out and rolling the velvet box between his fingers. He carefully opened it up to check the contents, the sparkle in his eye matching that of the item in front of him. A rare grin grew on the mountain ranger’s face for how anxious he had been, planning for tomorrow this whole week.

“Thank you for this. It’s perfect, just like her.”

You were running around the house like crazy trying to tidy up as dinner was cooking on the stove. After a couple weeks of insane work, Ari had convinced you to take two days off to relax and treat yourself. It wasn’t without your resistance, but finally you gave in since it would be a good opportunity to finally get to some things done around the house you’d been putting off. It was a chance to deep clean, but unfortunately, rush it a little since you wanted your day tomorrow to be all relaxation.

So far, you had reorganized the entire kitchen and spice cabinets, swept and mopped the whole house, tidied the bathroom, and washed all your bedding and laundry. All that was left was a little light dusting that was sort of high up, so you’d figured you’d wait for the next time Ari came over for him to get those high places, or at least make sure you didn’t fall when trying to reach the top of your cabinets.

You were sprawled on your floor between semi-folded piles of laundry, dresser drawers pulled open and emptied in an attempt to reorganize when you heard a knock on the door. You pushed yourself up with a groan and shuffled over the hardwood floors in your socks, pushing up your old, oversized sweatshirt sleeves, and readjusting your sweatpants before reaching for the door handle. When you turned it, you were surprised to be met by Rachel’s smiling face. And then it hit you and you facepalmed.

“Rach! Hi, oh my gosh, it totally slipped my mind. We have that nail appointment, don’t we?”

She laughed as you gestured for her to come through the door. “Yeah, I figured you either forgot or were busy when I called twice and you didn’t pick up. No worries, though. It’s not for another half hour.”

You blew some hair out of your face and checked your watch as you closed the door.

“Okay. That’s good, then. I’m going to go change. You can help yourself to dinner if you haven’t eaten yet and then we can go?”

“Sounds good.” She nodded as she already went to open your cabinets to grab a plate.

Taking a rare chance to pamper yourself was a treat. You laid in bed late Friday morning, sighing as you looked out the window, sipping a coffee that was lukewarm at this point, but you didn’t mind. It was made with love. Ari had stopped by just an hour ago before his Ranger shift and made it for you, pleasantly surprised to find you still tangled in the sheets. It was rare for you to sleep in this late, but he was glad you’d taken his advice on giving yourself a break, a chance to relax for once. You deserved it with how hard you worked.

You watched him intently that morning, the then-steaming mug of coffee snug in your hands, as he strode over to your closet. He slid the hangers from one side to the other, searching for something specific until he found it. “Ah! Here it is.”

He turned and set it on your dresser: a sundress. The one you had worn on your first date in the mountains where Ari had shown you his favorite overlook of town.

“This one’s my favorite. Wear it tonight? I’ll take you out.”

Your face morphed into a sleepy smile, voice still a little raspy.

“Okay. Then you and me can come back here afterwards? We’ve both got the weekend off.”

He grinned, moving across the room in only a few steps, leaning over and reaching for his hands to frame your face, thumbs brushing your cheeks as his fingertips barely tangled in your hair. Ari nodded, his golden brown locks swaying beautifully as he did, as he leaned in, placing a kiss on your forehead, then your nose, and finally deeply and lovingly on your lips.

“Perfect, Duchess. I love you.”

And with that, he was out the door.

Ari showed up at your house that evening when the sun was low in the sky, but there was still a little time before it set below the horizon. You walked down the steps out to his truck, surprised to see him dressed up more than usual. He wore a flannel shirt, but you could tell it was a new, fresh one. Crisp. The colors were complimentary to those of your dress. Where was he taking you? Somewhere fancy? You trotted out to see him and leaned into him as he squeezed you tight.

When you pulled away, you ran your hands up and down his chest on the soft fabric while his hands rested on your waist.

“So what’s the special occasion, Bear?”

He smiled and shrugged, grabbing your hand and leading you to the truck. “Just another day in paradise. There have to be a special occasion for me to treat my girl?”

Ari was playing it cool on the outside, but underneath the surface, he was a nervous wreck. He had wiped his hands several times on his good jeans so you wouldn’t be able to feel how clammy they were. His heart was beating a mile a minute, but he did his best to keep his breathing even. This was meant to be a happy occasion, and deep down, he knew what your answer would be. He had known for months, really when he looked back at the signs, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still nervous.

You giggled as you hopped up on the seat. “Of course not. I’ve just never seen you this dressed up. You look spiffy. I like it.”

Ari huffed out a laugh as he climbed up in the truck behind you and closed the door. “More than the ranger shorts? More than that old ballcap I always see your drooling over?”

You turned your torso towards him, holding your hands up to stop that thought. “Woah, woah. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I will say it’s a top contender, though. Me and my sweet babe who looks absolutely dapper. But I’d happily spend everyday forever with you, in any clothes you want.”

Ari smirked as he turned the keys in the ignition. “Even no clothes?”

You poked a finger into his chest. “Now that, sir, might be my favorite outfit of yours.”

You knew exactly what was happening when Ari pulled onto the rocky road between the evergreens and past the creek bed. Well, at least you thought you did. The same magic was in the air as a year ago when he had brought you out here the first time, except now, there was somehow even more. More electricity, more love, more beauty in it all. After all that time, nothing had faded. It had grown brighter.

More than just metaphorically. Physically, too. As Ari pulled the truck towards the familiar Rocky cliff, small twinkling lights came into your vision. You looked over at him and tilted your head to the side as he put the truck in park.

“Ari, what’s going on? You did this?”

He turned towards you and smiled, gathering your hands in his and placing a kiss to your knuckles.

“Of course I did. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen out here, but I figured some extra ambiance would be nice. I’ve got picnic supplies in the back, why don’t we hop on out and I’ll grab them, meet you over at the blanket that’s set out. Sound good?”

You nodded and gave him a final kiss as he helped you down out of the cab. While Ari hung back, you made your way out near the cliff edge to the blanket where fairy lights were strewn across a small wooden arch, along with ivy and some buds of your favorite flowers. You leaned over to sniff one, the floral scent mixing with the surrounding pine in the refreshing mist that covered the mountains. As you looked out over the town in the valley, you could see the peachy sun just starting to dip below the horizon. This was your favorite time of day next to the sunrise, as the golden hour light bathed the scenery.

You stood back up and took a deep breath in, relaxing your shoulders as your heard Ari’s steps coming up behind you.

“You know, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of this view.”

“Neither will I.” Ari’s voice came from right behind you, but not as high up as you would’ve expected. And he sounded like he had stopped moving. Usually, he would’ve come up and hugged you from behind to share the view, but something must’ve stopped him. You turned around to investigate.

When you did so, your gaze was drawn downward, finding Ari’s face lower than yours. He was on a knee, sharing the blanket you were standing on. Your breathing started picking up and you covered your mouth in a gasp as you saw what was in his hands: a small wooden box that housed a ring. A beautiful emerald, framed by twisting vines of gold. It was so unique. The deep green matched the wooded mountains around you, and somehow seemed mimetic to the love you and Ari shared. A comforting, natural, golden tie between hearts. The ring was perfect, and so you.

Before Ari could even say a word, tears were flooding your eyes.

“Yes! Oh my gosh. Yes, Ari, Yes!!”

He laughed and smiled as he gently took your hand that you had frantically shoved out in front of you and slid the ring on your finger. In a second, you were falling into him, throwing your arms around his neck in the tightest hug, turning your head to kiss his bearded cheek over and over again.

“I love you. I love you so much.”

Ari stood up, your feet no longer on the ground from his squeeze around your torso, spinning you around in celebration. When he finally set you down, he pulled back and held your hands in his, kissing the new ring that fit perfectly onto your finger, looking deeply into your eyes and giggling with elation.

“I love you, too, Duchess. Baby, I had a whole speech planned and I didn’t even get to say it!”

You shook your head and sniffled, smiling profusely. “Okay, okay, sorry. Go ahead, say it now.”

Ari took a quick breath and rubbed his thumbs over your knuckles as he began.

“When I brought you here a year ago, I told you that this was my favorite spot on earth. But I want you to know, you’re my favorite spot on earth. I’d be so happy anywhere with you. You saved me, and you’ve given me endless grace, and I’m so honored that you’re willing to let me be your husband.”

Ari’s eyes were watering now with emotion as you moved your hands to his cheeks, pulling him down for another kiss. Afterwards, he turned his head and kissed the inside of your left hand, right at the underside of your newly adorned engagement band. He was already obsessed with seeing you in it. Feral, even, and you could tell by the way his gaze darkened, exactly what he was feeling. A smirk grew on your face.

“Right here or truck bed?”

Ari’s grin matched your own. “Truck bed. You go ahead and get over there. I’ve gotta make a call first.”

Your eyebrows furrowed, so you slowly started walking as Ari pulled out his phone from his back pocket.

“Max, hope you got some good photos, but I’m gonna need you to climb down real quick from that tree and get outta here.”

Ari looked at you with a dopey smile. “My fiancée and I are about to do something I don’t want you to see, especially with a telescopic lens.”

Ari shoved his phone back in his pocket and jogged after you.

“Yes! Oh my gosh. Yes, Ari, Yes!!”

Your hands clawed into his chest as you ground your body against his harder, faster. Ari’s flannel shirt had been hastily unbuttoned and opened, his tan chest on display and pants tossed off to the side as you straddled his waist, sundress long gone. It was a wild act of love in the middle of the wilderness. Ari’s feet were planted on the blanket he had laid out in the truck bed as he thrusted upwards to meet you. His blunt fingertips dug slightly into your hips, guiding your movements. The sun had fallen in the sky, the last drops of light remaining, just enough to cause the new gemstone you wore to sparkle almost as much as the eyes of your new fiancé.

Ari grunted and groaned as he continued to look up at you, his muscles growing sore and faltering with exhaustion of chasing your mutual, pleasureful release. You could see the pleading in his eyes as you clenched, the both of you nearing your peak.

The sensation of the hair at Ari’s base tickling your clit had been stimulating you slowly in a gradual climb, but not enough to tip you over the edge, the two of you prolonging this aspect of your celebration of a life tied together.

Ari took one of his large hands and snaked it towards your belly, fingers putting pressure just above your mound and thumb making small circles on your slick clit. The begging that you had only read on his face became verbal as you clenched harder at the stimulation.

“Please, Angel. I’m so close. Come for me. Come with me, baby. I-I-“

Ari let out a loud groan that morphed into almost a whimper as he threw his head into your chest while he spilled into the condom. His breaths were heaving with satisfaction. Your arms cradled his head against you and your body shook with your orgasm, triggered by seeing him like that. You rode out your high with a few slow grinds of your hips before collapsing on top of Ari. He leaned back against the rear window of his truck, looking up at you, the happiest he had ever been. Ari had never been this at peace, this satisfied with his life, but right now, it was better than anything he could’ve ever imagined.

You looked down at him, having moved your hands to the sides of his neck as he had pulled away, your thumbs brushing the sensitive skin of his jugular.

Ari was positively enamored. He had been this whole time, but now he knew for sure, he belonged to you. You belonged to each other.

“Let’s get married right now.”

Your eyes went wide and you laughed. “Sex was that good, huh?”

The smile had no prospect of being wiped off Ari’s face. “I mean, it’s always good. But that was better somehow. I can’t wait to see what it’s like when we’re husband and wife.”

One of your hands moved over his heart. “Bear, I guarantee you it’ll be much better, considering I’ll be the one going feral over you wearing a wedding band.”

He shrugged. “So then why not right now? Drive out to a little chapel in Vegas, hire an Elvis, ride away into the sunset in one of those ridiculous pink limousines with the longhorns on the hood. We can find you a little white dress, I’ll rent a cheap suit. Ya know, feed each other wedding cake, the whole shebang.”

You just giggled and shook your head. “No. I’ve gotta tell my mom. I want our family and friends there.”

Ari sighed, but acquiesced. “I know, I know. It was worth a shot, though. Ain’t no point in waiting when you know, though…. ya know?”

You nodded. “I know, hun. And trust me, I’d get married to you in a heartbeat, but look how much work you put into this engagement. I want that in the wedding. Sure, it’s our special day, but we’re sharing it with family. And I want it to be as beautiful as the love we share.”

Ari’s eyebrows raised as he blew out a breath. “If you want what I did for this engagement on a wedding scale, I’m not sure we’re gonna have money for a honeymoon. We can go to Paris, but it’ll just have to be the one in Tennessee.”

You grimaced thinking about how much Ari must’ve spent. Flowers were expensive! And honestly, probably so was the ring. But you knew that the amount of money spent wasn’t what it was about. It was about showing how much you loved each other through your gestures.

“No need to go bankrupt. We’ll keep it small and thrifty. All I care about is people seeing how devoted I am to you.”

Ari smiled, the small stress that had painted his brow melting away from your reassurance. Just as he was sitting up to give you a kiss, his stomach grumbled, causing you both to laugh.

“Oh yeah, this was supposed to be a picnic. Okay, babe, pull out the food and let’s get at it.”

Ari stole a kiss and leaned over, opening the picnic basket as you let out a whine at the feeling of him inside you. That reminded you that you were both sitting here naked, too. From on top of the food, Ari pulled out a warm blanket, heated by the steamy container lids. He draped it over the two of you, the skin of your chests comfortably pressed together.

The rest of the night was filled with more than enough warmth, love, laughter, and champagne sipping for the two of you.

Next >

Bonus A/N: hngggg squeeeee!!😍🫣 that is all.

Taglist: @patzammit @hawkeyes-queen @identity2212 @jamneuromain @whiskeytangofoxtrot555 @ronearoundblindly @mrsevans90 @steviebbboi @mercurial-chuckles

[pvrpleblccd]

Promise.

pairing : shuntaro chishiya x f reader

tw : angst, unresolved grief, death, mentions of death, blood, violence (beating up someone), chishiya being violent

a/n : this is my first post- cndovn- but i am currently having a massive crush on this man right here <3 ALSO CHISHIYA GIVES ME MASSIVE KENMA VIBES (im sorry for the typos, i wrote this at 4 am-)

-

There he was again, sitting at the edge of the rooftop of the Beach, hoods on and hands in his white Nike zip up sweater, well, it was given to him. He looked down to see all of the horny animals dancing and living their life as if it was their last day. Chishiya sighed, ‘Everyone looks like their all about to die, as always.’

It was a beautiful day in this cruel country. But it’s just like any other day, people will die tonight, either because their visa will expire or die during a game. Dying in a game, probably the worst death here. Chishiya sighed again and took a deep breath, trying to erase all negativity going through his head. Though, there’s one thing that he can’t get out of his head.

“Hey, Chishiya.”

Chihsiya whipped his head to where he heard the voice. He was about to call her name, but he only saw Kuina at the door of the rooftop entrance, looking at Chishiya with a confused look. ‘Ah... I’m still hearing her voice, I must be crazy.’

“An told me you guys had a meeting, I’m just here to rely the message to you.”

The blonde male nodded and stood up, making his way to where Kuina was. No words were exchanged between the both of them, though Kuina noticed the slight mood change the male had every now and then. There are times where he’s cocky, would always slide comment when he had the chance, had his guard up, and times where he just became more reserved than ever and was cold and gloomy.

Kuina noticed, but never dared prying on it, not wanting to get on the intelligent man bad side.

Chishiya on the other side, he zipped up the white hoodie he loved very much. He entered the meeting room and sat at his place, like always, though he kept a pokerface while hugging the hoodie he was wearing. He felt several pair of eyes on him, not on him, but the zip up he was wearing. No one dared to say anything, though Niragi wasn’t having it.

“Chishiya. Were you really obligated to wear that zip up when we’re in a meeting?!”

Niragi shouted from his place, gripping hard the rifle he had in his hand. No one budge or said anything, even Hatter looked at Chishiya, both with envy and anger in his eyes.

“It was given to me. Why whouldn’t I wear it? If you’re thinking that we should share it, you, out of everyone in this room, that I don’t share what I own. And plus, if we shared it, you’d only get blood on it and dirty it, y/n managed to keep it white and as clean as possible. I won’t let your stupidity ruin it.”

“You wouldn’t know what y/n would have wanted!” Niragi stood up and pointed his rifle at the blonde male.

“I knew y/n longer than you.”

“We were still close!”

“To someone like you? I don’t think so, you’re a complete psycho, Niragi.”

“Give it a break! We’re all mourning Chishiya, espicially An! So what the hell do you mean, y/n-”

“Y/n is dead.” Last Boss said while looking at the arguing males.

The room was even more quiet than it ever was, not only with the statement, but for the bald tattooed male to speak up and empathized the dead made them slightly uncomfortable. With no one saying a thing for a minute or two, Mira stood up and talked about the card they were able to collect and that they haven’t gotten news ones for a while. An talked about the medical supplies and that she was running out from it, Hatter asked Aguni and his Militants to accompany An for a short run to grab all supplies they can gather.

She was the first one to leave, the meeting room which was understandable. When no one said anything, Hatter talked about adding a new rule. Rule number three, death to traitors.

Soon after, the meeting was done.

The blonde male made his way to his room, opening the door he saw a familiar figure sitting on his bed, when he blinked the figure was gone. Chishiya closed his room door and laid on his bed, looking at the ceiling. He never felt so confused and empty in his entire life. He never wanted to deal with anyone’s emotions or feelings, let alone his. But upon on thinking and thinking, he came to a conclusion he now only realized.

How much he loved y/n.

“Damn it. This hurts... This sucks.”

Too tired and exhausted to think, Chishiya closed his eyes and embraced the darkness that surrounded him.

“Chishiya?” A voice called out.

The blonde male turned his head, seeing a petite figure looking at him as if he was a ghost. He looked at her from head to toe and his eyes grew wide, he instantly got up and hugged the petite figure.

“Y/n?” He said in a weak voice.

The petite figure sighed in relief and hugged the male back, while letting out a small sob. They were currently in an abandonned mall, gathering food and necessities to get through the night. Y/n came back with a ton of canned food and water, while Chishiya came back with the others things they needed, such as flashlights and batteries and other things.

The both of them were catching up upon missed times and Chishiya kept eyeing on how she was dressed, grey sweatpants with a nike zip up and what looked like a swimsuit top, and the pink locker bracelet around y/n wrist. The numbers 009 was on the bracelet and the girl knew he was looking at it.

“What’s the most recent game you completed?” The petite girl asked.

“Six of diamonds, how about you?” Chishiya said, eating the canned peach. He didn’t noticed the slight spark in y/n’s eyes, but she smiled.

“Nine of hearts.” Y/n said and took a bite of her food.

A comfortable and peaceful silence was set between the two until the girl broke it.

“I want to take you somewhere.”

~

“Hatter, I want him to be part of the executives.”

Y/n said right after they all welcomed her back. All of them looked at her with confused and looked at Chishiya then back at y/n. The girl only smiled and put all of cards she collected on the table. Chishiya couldn’t believe the amount of cards she had in her possession, there was 14 cards in total.

“Chishiya cleared a diamonds game and is the lone survivor, I highly believe that his skills can be very useful to us. Also, I have known him before entering the Borderland. He is like a precious gem, full of hidden talents!”

She said while putting her hands in her grey sweatpants.

The blonde male was taken aback by the sudden praise, but dind’t show it. The others turned their attention to Chishiya, hearing the praise from y/n made them have a base opinion on Chishiya, he was smart and must not be harmed. Hatter started to explain the two rules to Chishiya and handed him a blue locker bracelet with the number 011 on it.

“Enjoy the Beach!”

~

After Chishiya settled in the Beach for a couple of weeks, he and y/n grew closer than they ever were before. The two of them became inseparable.

During one night, Chishiya and y/n were hanging out in the lobby, they were part of the first teams that finished early. Chishiya lost his other hoodie, blood was splattered on it, due to a player clung onto him begging him to help him and his collar went off.

In short words, he was currently shirtless. Y/n trying her best not to look, couldn’t help, but take a peek, thought the blonde male caught her.

“Like what you see?”

He said with a grin plastered on his face. Out of embarrassment, she took off her white Nike zip up and handed it to Chishiya, who watched her with an amused expression.

“H-here...! It’s yours now..!” She said and sprinted to elsewhere.

Chishiya sat there smiling at himself and decied to put the zip up on. He got up from his place and went off to find y/n. A part of him starting to worry, since it’s been an hour and he hasn’t found the petite girl yet. He passed the lobby at least three or four times, that’s when he started asking around.

With no one knowing where the girl was, he even asked Niragi, he too was worried so they both went on their sides to find her. Chishiya went outside and started to walk around the perimeter until he heard an oh so familiar voice coming form the sketchy alleyway.

“Were you hiding the cards from Hatter?”

“So what if I was?! I had to watch my friends die in front of me to be able to get this card! I’m not giving it to some cult leader or whatever he is!”

Chishiya rushed to the voices and saw one of the new militants holding three cards in his left hands and a gun in this right. Y/n tried to reason with the boy, but it only seemed to boil his blood even more, to the point he raised his gun. Chishiya ran to y/n side and hid her behind him, y/n on the other side was surprised.

“Put the gun down... You’re pointing it at the most important person apart from Hatter.” Chishiya tried calm the boy down, but didn’t work.

“Y/n... You remember Kirika? She was close to you right? Did you know that she gave her life up so that I can survive the game? Her last words were, ‘Tell y/n, thank you... I love you Aki-kun.’ She gave her life for me because she loved me!”

Aki broke down crying, falling on his knees and letting out pained screams. Y/n came forward tears falling down her cheek and approached Aki and gave him a hug. She careful put the gun down and caressed the top of Aki’s head.

“Kirika was a wonderful person, Aki, she was-“

Y/n sentence was cut abruptly and Chishiya took a step wondering why y/n suddenly stopped talking, he took another stop forward, his eyes widening seeing Aki’s hands was covered in blood and held a knife. He dropped the knife and moved his hand to grab the gun next to him.

“You’re all Hatter’s soldier. We have to end this, I have to end it.”

Aki grabbed the gun and slowly got up, hair covering his eyes. While Chishiya looked at how y/n’s body fell to the side and seeing a dark substance staining her grey sweatpants. A small pool of her own blood was starting to form underneath her.

Chishiya looked at Aki who was still mumbling things, but he saw red. The blonde grabbed the closest thing to him, which was a metal pipe, and ran towards Aki, hitting him with it, unable to stop himself.

Chishiya’s blood was boiling, he never felt so angered in his entire life. He kept on swining the pipe, hitting a part of Aki’s body every time. His vision was red, he couldn’t even hear the screams of his victim. What brought him back was Aguni taking off the metal pipe off of his hands. Chishiya’s face was unrecognizable, it was full of hatred, sadness, anger and disgust. Aguni never saw such expression on the male’s face before, he always looked so calm and preserved.

Something caught Chishiya off guard when he looked at Aguni. His eyes were red, as if he was holding himself back not to cry, that’s when he remembered y/n. He turned around to see An trying to stop the bleeding from y/n’s wound, but the blood was coming out and went through all of the amount of cloth that was put on it.

The blonde male rushed towards y/n’s side caressed her face while shaking his head. Tears fell on the girl’s cheek while Chishiya was telling y/n to stay with him. He soon looked at An and she was trying everything she could, all of the sudden, a small and tired voice caught his attention.

“S...shuntaro...? Ri-chan..?”

The blonde male whipped his head to look at y/n. She was smiling. Why was she smiling? She was dying, but she was still smiling. Chishiya tried to understand her, but couldn’t.

“S-spending my... last moments.. with the ones I love.. Shun... taro... I’m sorry... but pro..mise me... you’ll live, okay?”

“W..why are you saying sorry.. No. We both survive okay? Look... An... An will take care of you okay?”

Y/n turned weakly looked over the forsenic, who was doing her best to keep the petite girl alive. They made an eye contact, y/n let out a pained sigh while An shook her head. Y/n was trying to stay strong until the very end.

“Ri..chan... Thank you for everything... Take care... Big sis...”

At this point, An was crying too and shouted for other people to come help them. Y/n placed her bloodied hand on Chishiya’s cheek, wiping his tears away, he held her hand as she caressed him. She was so warm, he never knew she was this warm before. He didn’t wanted her to leave.

Just not yet.

“No.. No, you can’t leave.. Hang on okay y/n..? Help is... help is on the way.”

Y/n shook her head and let all of her tears fall, managing to give Chishiya one final smile.

“Shuntaro... I love you.”

At her words, y/n’s eyes closed and her hand went limp, landing on her body. When the other arrived, all of the executives looked at the scene before them. They were too late. An was crying, still holding on her little sister dead body, telling her to wake up and not to leave her. Chishiya sat there unable to move or say anything.

A pang of guilt hit two executives in particular and they slightly looked at each other and sighed, tears slowly coming in their vision. Aguni was behind them and his fist turned white, knowing y/n was the most important person in the Beach. She was the only one who kept Hatter in the sane side.

Niragi pushed the people aside and dropped his rifle, analyzing the dead girl’s feature. Y/n died with a smile on her face.

“She looks so peaceful.”

Chishiya woke up at the sound of the bell, indicating to gather in the lobby and group up, since the games were about to start. He felt something wet on his side and he looked at his pillow, it was wet. He touched his face and he shook his head, laying on his bed once again.

He cried. He was crying.

He looked at the ceiling and smiled sadly, clutching on his chest at the amount of pain he felt. The memory of her smiling to him was engraved in his mind and he wasn’t going to let it go.

“I never had the chance to tell you that I loved you too... I’m sorry.. I only now realized it..”

He stood up, wiping the tears off of his face, putting his shoes on and went to the lobby. He put his hood on and tucked his hands in the pockets, he analyzed everyone and he nodded to himself.

‘I will keep my promise.’

[twilightdruig]

why did it have to be me?

pairing: bill weasley x fem!reader, slight ron weasley x fem!reader

summary: (part 2 of mamma mia! series) after y/n’s intimate night with ron, she’s off to greece in search for her destiny and future. too bad she misses her boat.

warnings: mamma mia!au, muggle!au, alludes to sex, reader has mommy issues

words: 1.8k

a/n: unedited!! , this is the second part of the mamma mia! series, next is sam aka donna’s 3rd lover. hope you enjoyed this!

y/n successfully snuck out of the small hotel room of ron weasley. the two shared an intimate night only a few hours ago and here she was leaving for greece.

she arrived at the pier, met with a short, bald man who was checking for their tickets.

“hey” she slid her ticket and id into the booth he was sitting in. he looked very uninterested and drowsy.

she sighed before the ticket man inspected her ticket and id. “you grew your hair. it’s longer now.” he bellowed with a french accent. it reminded her of fleur a bit who was full french.

“it is a bit. yeah.” she sighs, looking back at the boat she was supposed to be in “we could totally talk about that but, um, i’m kind of in a hurry. the ferry leaves any time now and this trip’s very important, you see—“

“i prefer it shorter.” he retorted.

the ferry departing the dock now. y/n felt as though her destiny was departing with it.

the ticketman stamps her ticket and gives it back to her. before he knows it she was running, trying to catch the boat who wasn’t at the dock anymore.

“wait! wait!” she cried out, not caring about half of her wardrobe falling out of her trunk “please! don’t. oh, god!” she dropped her baggage and felt like she wanted to drop dead as well.

she was about to before she heard another person behind her.

“this is great.” she turned around to be met with yet another ginger man. this one was tall, had a few scars on his face, had a (what looked like) a shark tooth necklace and a black earring. “i’m just gonna follow you everywhere. by the end of the day, i’ll have a whole new wardrobe.” he laughed.

this brightened up her mood a little bit. this man, quite attractive as well, holding multiple of her clothing items and was laughing.

“i don’t think that’ll suit you” she tilted her head and giggled.

“oh trust me, love. i can make this work” he winked before trying to put her clothes ; specifically a two piece top, on his muscular body. he was different from ron. he may have been ginger as well but this one looked cool, earring, long hair, leather — no, snake skin? boots, he was lanky and almost the exact opposite from ron.

“ugh,” she groaned “i really wanted to catch that ferry”

“i’m sure there’ll be another one tomorrow” he assured.

“thanks.” she turned her head back to him while smiling sarcastically.

he jumped to another boat. a private one. y/n wondered, maybe this was his. he wouldn’t mind taking her to wherever she was going right?

“right, uh… but what would be really great… today, not tomorrow… is if, uh, somewhere in this harbor there was a guy.” she tested the waters.

“young, tall, dashingly handsome?” he interjected.

“he’s probably passive-looking, but… he has a boat.” she continued.

“and a couple days free before he takes part in a sailing race.” he was swinging by one of the ropes now.

“so maybe, maybe. he can take me where i want to go?” she urged, rolling on the balls of her feet.

“he’d love to” he consented, grinning.

“but, the… um, sad fact is… this-this isn’t my boat; i just wanted to impress you” he finally stood still, trying to act serious, until he chuckled.

“oh, okay” she was about to turn around and leave, before she even got to that she heard fits of laughter coming from the man.

“i’m kidding!” he waved his hands in the air “hop on, i’m bill”

she scoffed and laughed. she jumped on the boat, put down her things and tried to get comfy.

bill led her to where the beds were. “i actually have an elderly relative on the island who helped me buy this beauty.”

she nodded as he explained.

“well, it certainly is a beauty” she ran her hand over the details of the small boat.

“thank you” he pretended to tip a hat.

“well, there are two beds down here. unfortunately, one’s a little bit… full” he gestured to the certainly full bed against one side of the small room.

“huh… convenient” she rolled her eyes.

“well i’m lucky this trip isn’t long enough for you to shatter my heart into pieces” he teased.

“ugh” she moaned “i get it. i’m attractive and charming” she winked.

he paused before talking again “you’re one of them” he smiled.

her face contorted into a look of confusion “one of who?”

“there are two,” he put two fingers up “kinds of seducer.”

he paused again, “first doesn’t actually like women, so he wants to assert his power and dominance over them. second one, far, far more dangerous, is the guy who falls in love every morning just to fall out of love the next.”

she chuckled at his explanation.

“but as you run away, you tell her you’re the one in pain and she’s just too much for you to handle” he smirked.

y/n was trying to tidy up the bed she will supposedly sleep in.

before she could actually get any work done bill pulled her back up to the deck.

“bill!” she exclaimed then giggled excitedly.

bill played some music on his radio before the two started dancing on deck. technically, he told her to while he steered to wherever they were going.

multiple minutes or hours passed. she couldn’t tell how long it has been. she had been talking and giggling with him for way too long.

what y/n was unaware of is that her most recent ginger boy toy (before george) was on the harbor trying to catch the boat he thought she was on.

ron rushed the ticket man to scan his ticket and check his id. “your hair. it’s short now”

“well… yes, i had to cut it for work” he politely smiled, slightly shaking from nervousness “uhm… i wonder, could you hurry up a bit? uh, you see i’ve followed a girl all the way from paris. she wrote me a note. a very kind note… saying goodbye.” he sighed.

when the ticketman didn’t reply, he continued “but, when you’ve found the only girl you’re ever gonna love, it’s gotta be worth one more try! don’t you think?”

“it’s better short” the ticketman returned his things. ron ran off to the edge only to find the boat far from the pier.

ron felt helpless. he really liked loved this woman. he really thought he had a chance with her.

back to the boat where y/n and bill were bonding, “you’re really funny, you know that?” she complimented, “and you’re very attractive… and charming” he complimented her back.

“listen… we only just met”

their faces grew hot and they were nearing each other’s, noses bumping against one another, just about to kiss until a faint yell was heard from a distance.

“hey! help!” they heard a masculine voice who sounded like they were drowning.

“do you hear that?” she pushed him away.

“what? no. that was um.. a seagull now, where were we?” he pulled her close to his chest once more.

“anyone on that boat?! help!!” the voice yelled again.

“there it was again!” she pushed his chest to see where the gurgled voice was coming from.

he groaned “we’re coming!!”

“hi!” y/n greeted. she found a man on a still boat.

“just checking to see you’re not in danger, which you’re obviously not, so… we’ll be off” he tried tugging her arm but she wouldn’t budge.

“uh.. my engine is not working” the man gestured to the non moving vehicle.

“oh, that is bad luck” bill scratched his head “i-i’ll radio someone for someone to come and help. they should be along soon.”

“bill.”

“please, please!” the man pleaded “there is a woman waiting for me on main land. her family, they not want her to marry simple man like alexio. they want rich man. ugly, big, fat, mole but rich.” he frowned “but she… she want me. and i love her with all my heartness” he smiled at the thought of his lover “please help, kind sir and beautiful lady”

y/n laughed “well obviously we’re doing this” she turned to bill.

they turned back to alexio “yes” they said at the same time.

they sailed for a few minutes until the saw dry land and a few people waiting on it. men in suits and a lady in a white wedding dress.

“i see them. okay, everyone, we’re nearly—“

“apollonia!!” alexio yelled, cutting off bill’s sentence.

bill went to speak up again until alexio jumped off the boat “apollonia!!!” he yelled again.

“woah!” bill was surprised by the man jumping off. y/n was just laughing on the floor.

“what are you doing? we could get you closer” bill roared with laughter.

“if you love someone, you’re willing to die for them!” his voice was gurgled as he might’ve swallowed water.

“apollonia” he yelled again.

“alexio?!” she turned around “alexio!” she started running to the edge of the pier, ready to jump off.

“aah! apollon..!” his head dunked underwater.

“he’s just swallowed a big mouthful of water, but the basic point he’s trying to make is that he loves you!” bill screamed for alexio.

“what?” she screamed back.

“he loves you!” both y/n and bill yelled. both of their throats getting sore.

“apollonia!” alexio screamed for the umpteenth time.

apollonia jumped into the water in her wedding dress, trying to swim to her unrequited lover.

faint and distant ‘apollonia!’s and ‘apollonia no!’s came from the men in suits she was previously with.

“apollonia!”

“alexio!”

“oh god, i don’t think she can swim either” he began to take his own shirt off.

“well, she’s wearing a dress”

bill couldn’t hear her when he already jumped in the water to save the couple.

bill dropped them off at the second nearest dry land, away from apollonia’s relatives.

—

sooner or later, they arrived at y/n’s destination. the island of kalokairi.

“hey,” bill grabbed her attention once more “you sure you’re okay here?”

“yeah” she smiled at him “i’ll be fine”

“i’ll come back after the race” he reassured her “although it wouldn’t be for a few weeks, but i do promise to come back.”

“look at this place” she gushed “it’s so beautiful”

“it is, yeah.” they admired their surroundings while nearing where bill would drop off y/n.

“what? what’s wrong?” she noticed his expression.

“storm’s coming” he murmured. this worried herself. but all that worried faded when she noticed the clear sky.

“shut up, it’s a clear sky” she rolled her eyes.

“trust me,” he paused “actually, don’t”

“but i know i’m right. i’ll still be fine. i got a very good feeling.”

“bye, bill” she hopped off the boat, dragging her trunk on the wooden floor.

“see you soon, yeah?”

“yeah. thanks a lot too!”

“anytime, love” they waved at each other until bill was out of sight.

[stardust-walker]

The (Victorious) Princess Bride: Chapter 2

Summary: Scott Lang is tasked with one of his hardest missions ever. Keep a trio of kids occupied as their parents decide to go on date nights. Never one to turn down a challenge or miss the chance to impress one of his superhero idols, Scott accepts. After his usual tricks for amusing kids fall through, he falls back on one of the classics: a story. If princesses, sword fighting, pirates, Valkyries, and magic are what it takes to keep these kids from tearing the house down, then he accepts.

Infinity War/ Endgame never happens. Mentions of chaotic dad Tony Stark. Loki x Sigyn.

CHAPTER SUMMARY:  After Loki gets 'killed' by the Dread Pirate Fury, Sigyn vows to never love again. Fast forward 5 years and she's being forced to marry the Grandmaster and is suddenly in the hands of a familiar cast of characters. One of them happens to look a little too familiar.

MASTERLIST

Scott had never been more grateful for Thor loving his own stories as he tried to continue with his own. He would really have to thank him for it later, honestly.

Loki had more than enough money for marriage, but more importantly he would need approval from his father. The time came when he had to pack the few belongings he had and left the farm to seek his fortune in the war with Svart...awhata.

“You said it wrong,” The dark haired boy piped up. His brother nodded in agreement.

“Who’s telling the story here, buckaroo?” Scott furrowed his brow as he continued.

Fine. The war with...Sakaar. Still, it was a very emotional time for Sigyn. 

“I fear I’ll never see you again,” Sigyn sniffled as she clung to Loki like she truly meant her words. She wanted to never leave the spot where they stood. She knew that the war was dangerous and there was more of a chance that she would never see him again than either of them would truly like to believe.

 “Of course you will,” Loki reassured her.

“But what if something happens to you?” Sigyn wiped at her eyes as the tears began to fall in spite of herself.

 A small smile crossed Loki’s face as he wiped one of her tears away. “Hear this now. I will return for you no matter what.” Sigyn opened her mouth to interrupt him, but Loki continued. His face was more stern now, a determined look in his eye. “This is true love. You think this happens every day?”

Sigyn’s heart fluttered as she studied his face. There was no hint of trickery in his eyes or anything to make her think the words he spoke were false.

The blonde let out a weak laugh as she threw her arms around Loki’s neck. She pressed a kiss to his cheek and nuzzled her face into his neck. He might be speaking the truth, but there was no telling what the Norns had in store for them.

“Loki never reached his destination,” Scott stated solemnly. “His crew was attacked by the Dread Pirate Fury. Now the Dread Pirate Fury never kept captives alive. When Sigyn got the news that Loki had been killed…”

“Murdered by pirates?” The blond haired boy sounded shocked despite trying to come off as disinterested. 

A small noise behind him made Scott turn quickly in his seat. “Wait who got murdered by pirates?”

“Jesus,” Scott yelped as he placed a hand over his heart.

The young girl on the couch threw her arms in the air. “Peter! Come sit! Uncle Scott is telling us a story and Loki just got killed by pirates!” 

The confused look on Peter’s face seemed to grow even more quizzical as he practically tiptoed over to take a seat on the couch. “Wait as in Loki Loki?”

“Of course not,” the dark-haired boy scoffed. “He would never let himself get killed by something as easy to beat as a mortal pirate.”

“Wait Dread Pirate Fury? Is that because of the eye-”

“How did you even get inside? Aren’t I the only one on baby-sitting duty tonight?”

“Oh!” Peter grinned. “Mr. Stark gave me a key!” He produced a house key from seemingly out of nowhere. “I was in the neighborhood and I was hungry but if you’re telling a story, I’m down.”

“Where was I?” Scott frowned as he rubbed the back of his head.

“Killed by pirates,” the two young boys answered together.

Peter eyed the two of them nervously before he turned and nodded at Scott.

Anyway . When Sigyn found out that Loki had been killed, she went into her room and shut the door. For days, she didn’t eat or sleep. She swore she would never love again. After the death of his youngest son, Odin grew weaker. The war with Sakaar was eventually lost with the Grandmaster naming himself ruler over Asgard and his own country. The other prince had disappeared shortly after the war was lost. There was almost nothing left to remind her of how life was before anymore.

Five years passed, the main square of Asgard was filled as it hadn’t been in years to hear the announcement of the great Grandmaster’s bride to be.

The extravagant Grandmaster stepped out onto the balcony of the castle and raised a hand as the crowd grew silent. “Hey there, Sakaarans. I have a fantastic announcement! A month from now, our wonderful country will have its 5th anniversary of joining with the slightly less incredible country of Asgard. But look how much you’ve improved in only 5 years!” From where she stood, Sigyn rolled her eyes. “On that sundown, I shall marry a lady who was once a commoner like yourselves.”

While that may have been true, at least Loki had never called her a commoner. At least not to her face anyway. Everything about the Grandmaster made her stomach turn and her blood boil. Most of all, she hated the fact that she had been sold off like a high prized goat to the man that was the reason her true love was dead. 

“But perhaps, you will not find her common now. My people! The Queen Sigyn!” 

The blonde woman took a deep breath as she allowed herself to be led out into the blinding sunlight. She had no doubt that the fanfare would have been just as grand if Odin was still king, but still. It might have been the way that her name sounded when the Grandmaster spoke, but it felt like the world was spinning. People were bowing to her and it took everything in her not to beg them to just stand up.

She didn’t want this. She missed the farm and her horses. More importantly, she missed the way the kingdom was before. She missed Loki.

Sigyn’s emptiness consumed her. Although the law of the land gave the Grandmaster the right to choose his bride, she did not love him. Despite his reassurance that she would grow to love him, the only joy that Sigyn found was on her daily ride.

Sigyn couldn’t stop herself from smiling as the horse galloped along through the orchard. As the wind blew her hair back and she felt the fresh air in her lungs, the woman felt at peace. Her hazel eyes narrowed as she spotted figures in the distance. She grew close enough to see them clearly and pulled on the reins to slow her horse to a stop. 

“My lady!” A bald man spoke from the center of the small group. “A word.” She didn’t like this man, but still she didn’t make a move to get going. A smaller woman stood beside him with a taller blond man alongside her. Something about the blond man looked familiar. “We are but poor lost circus performers. Is there a village nearby?” 

The hair on the back of Sigyn’s neck raised as her eyes darted around quickly. “There is nothing nearby, good sir,” she replied briskly, “not for miles.”

The blond man’s relaxed expression seemed to crumble slightly as she heard something move behind her. 

“Then there will be no one around to hear you scream,” the bald man grinned at her.

Sigyn turned and her eyes widened as a bright green hand moved towards her. A startled yelp stopped halfway through as his fingers pinched her neck. She fainted. The blond man stepped forward quick enough to catch her as she swayed forward and began to fall from the back of her horse. 

“Well done, Hulk!” Skurge made a move like he was about to clap the green giant on the arm but some common sense got into him as he lowered his hand.

The dark-haired woman furrowed her brow as the blond walked over with the fainted woman in his arms. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Don’t you lot want to get back at the Grandmaster for stealing your home? And more importantly, my stuff. ”

Hulk grunted as he stomped over to rejoin the group.

“Easy there, buddy. I think you’re a bit too big for the boat, yeah?” Valkyrie raised a hand in the air.

The green monster let out a low growl of annoyance as his hands began to quiver. Before their eyes, he transformed back into a man. A much smaller, more nervous looking man than the fainted woman could probably guess. He exchanged a worried look with the blond man as Skurge went to work on a piece of cloth.

“Are you sure that this is the best way to get back at him? I mean isn’t this a little...extreme?” The nervous looking man asked.

“The best way to piss this git off is to take his stuff. Blondie here is his future bride, therefore,” he slapped the horse on its backside, “one of the most important parts of his stuff.”

Valkyrie’s eyes narrowed as he continued.

“I just placed a piece of fabric with Jotunheim’s crest on it on the lass’s horse. Everyone will think that the Jotun’s took her. Bang, boom, Bob’s your uncle. He’s got a war on his hands and we all get paid. And Val here can go back to drinking her sorrows away.”

The woman moved her hand dangerously close to her sword as Banner stepped forward. The man raised a hand slightly and she seemed to freeze. 

Her sword remained in its sheath, but her eyes narrowed a little more dangerously as he continued. 

“When he finds her body dead on the shores of Jotunheim, his suspicions about them will be totally confirmed! It’s genius!” 

“It’s murder,” Thor frowned as he glanced nervously at the warrior woman beside him. “You never said anything about killing anyone.” 

“I hired you to help me start a war, your highness . Unless you and Hulky would rather go back to fighting in the pits,” Skurge shot them a poisonous smile.

Banner let out a sigh as he turned to board the small ship with the others following behind him. “I don’t think it’s right to kill an innocent girl!”

“Oi!” Skurge shouted. Valkyrie stopped halfway through her check of the ropes on the sail. “Am I going nuts or did the word think escape your lips? No offense doctor, but I didn’t hire you . I hired the big man. You’re only here because he’s too big for the ship!”

Skurge didn’t give a damn about the other three in his crew, that much was evident.

“The sun’s getting low,” Thor said calmly as he laid Sigyn down and began to tie up her wrists.

“I agree with them, unfortunately,” Valkyrie shrugged as Banner began to pace the small deck of the ship. 

“What happens to her is none of your concern, ya got it?” Skurge rounded on her. Valkyrie stared right back. “When I found you, you were so slobbering drunk that ya couldn’t buy brandy.” 

Sigyn was beginning to stir now even as Thor continued to tie check the knots on her wrists.

“You were friendless! Wrecking havoc wherever you went,” the bald man continued his rampage as Sigyn regained consciousness. 

Thor tapped her on the hand gently as he rose to his feet to join the others. She couldn’t help but feel perplexed about the whole thing. First of all, she’d been stupid enough to let herself get kidnapped. Second of all, one of the kidnappers had been gentle with her as if she were a baby. Now what were they doing?

“That Skurge,” the woman whispered. “He can fuss.” She grunted as she pulled on one of the ropes.

“I think he likes to scream,” Thor smirked as he climbed the small ladder towards the helm, “at us.”

“Probably he means no harm,” Valkyrie snickered even as she watched their boss’s shoulders tense in frustration.

Banner chimed in. “He’s really very short on charm!”

“Enough of that! The lot of ya,” Skurge shouted.

“Bruce, are those rocks ahead?” Valkyrie called out in a sickly sweet voice.

“If there are, we’ll all be dead,” Banner deadpanned.

Thor let out a roar of laughter as Skurge fumed even more.

What the hell had Sigyn gotten herself into.

“I bet his face was really...red,” the little girl grinned.

Peter let out a small laugh, “Nice one.”

“This rhyming game sure seems like it would be a lot of fun,” the blond boy raised an eyebrow.

Realization dawned on Scott’s face. Then his expression turned to one of amused horror. “Wait a minute, guys…”

“To play this game one would have to be very wise!” The black haired boy’s eyes sparkled with mischief.

“I wonder if we would win some sort of prize”

“Parker!”

“Aw,” Peter grinned. “Cmon Scott don’t be such a….a…”

“Barker?” The girl offered.

“Martyr,” the blond boy leaned forward in his seat.

“Oh that’s a good one!” His brother nodded in agreement.

“Alright I guess you guys don’t want to hear about the screaming eels and the,” Scott let out a sigh as he paused for dramatic effect, “cliffs of Insanity.”

The two boys cheered even as Peter inched a little further away from them on the couch. At least the kids weren’t trying to burn the house down like they did with their last babysitter.

[darkpoisonouslove]

Riven x Musa

Ok, so I keep seeing posts everywhere that basically badmouth S8 and after seeing ten seconds of the trailer (YIKES to the animation, what’s wrong with the industry that they are making everything anime? Powerpuff Gen Z, I’m looking at you – obs: I didn’t watch it fully yet) I can see where some of the criticism is coming from but anyways…

My favorite Winx!couple EVER has always been Musa x Riven since I was kid and first watched the show (Netflix is not helping ‘cause I ship them even there).

I remember yawning at Bloom/Sky, rolling my eyes at Stella/Brandom and making a completely incredulous expression that I could literally feel forming on my face at Helia/Flora (can anyone say ‘unrealistic’?). Timmy/Tecna are a second favorite.

And why my Winx OTP are Riven x Musa followed after Timmy x Tecna? Because it reflects real life. In real life you’re not gonna stumble into people whose real and deep relationship problems are solved in twenty four minutes (not even that considering that some episodes present the “problem” half-way through said 24 minute-episode).

The breakup between Riven and Musa in S6 (spoilers everywhere after all) was one of the most mature breakups in the history of breakups with the hope for the future (yes, I’m completely ignoring S7, sue me, the whole thing was one huge filler anyways). And, after reading a lot of opinions on both ends (defending Musa/attacking Riven and defending Riven/attacking Musa) and watching the episodes in question (reuniting through reconciling) I think I can give my own analysis.

Since Musa AND Riven (individually and as couple) are my favorite characters in Winx, I think I CAN give a fairly unbiased view (hopefully).

*clears throat*

Ok, keep in mind that I’m defending BOTH of them, because I ship them too hard not to.

Musa Being OC (sometimes being called ‘brat’): C'mon, people! Musa and Tecna are OC since S4 anyways, where are the tomboy and the nerd? With the sneakers, T-shirt and comfortable-looking clothes? Noooo, now they all need neat skirts and hot pink high heels and long, glamorous hair. Do they look good? Of course, but and I would totally be less pissed if there was ANY indication on the reason for the change. Are they just maturing? Expressing themselves differently? Crowd mentality? Tune and Stella finally broke Musa down and Tecna followed soon after? Was it just to please Riven and Timmy? ANYTHING (even the 'pleasing a boy’ would at least be A reason - a ridiculous one that would piss me off, but A reason none the less), was just a sudden impulse that took?

Sure, we can talk about “character growth” until we are blue in the face, but the matter of the fact is that there was none.

The changes we see in Musa and Tecna are basically the creators making them more like the rest of the Winx (I’m including Aisha in this too, where is the sporty girl that matched the boy’s interest in extreme sports? C'mon! Even Bloom and her Girl Next Door looks are replaced with Bratz and Clueless-level of outfits).

Is anyone really going to look me in the eye and say Stella wasn’t a shallow (if friendly and good-natured) Mean Girl? She got better, but as I re-watch the show (currently in S3, meaning almost half-way through the content), Stella still worries more about her hair than anything else even while under literal fire.

More and more, Musa, Tecna and Aisha are losing their identities and what made them, IMO, the more badass Winx.

How did the two on the left went from this…

… to this:

Yeah, yeah, Musa still sings, Tecna still technobabble and Aisha is still a Warrior Princess but Aisha was the first one to go Bloom and Stella on us with Musa and then Tecna following soon after. It’s not just their clothing style, it’s the way they carried themselves too.

Right now? The only thing keeping them apart is their BF blues (different kind of blues) and some personal interests (singing, shopping, tech, the whole drama with Domino/Sparks, etc). But that’s IT, their personalities are going down the drain!

Sorry for the long-winded text, but the reason I’m expressing my disappointment at their change is because Musa’s reaction fits it. S6 we have such an AMAZING breakup (didn’t even think that was possible, WTH, right? Amazing breakup?) only for her to be mad as hell at Riven at S8? Bad writing, that has been dragging her (and the rest of the Winx) down to becoming just one unilateral, shallow character (the Specialists are also falling into that pit, what in the world did they do Helia in S8? He sounds like Thor telling about his “brave exploits” there, yikes). And continuity what? What continuity? Do they even remember how the breakup was written?

But ok, let’s put the Audience View aside for a moment and focus only on the In-Universe terms.

S6: You’ll always be my hero.

S8: What on EARTH are you doing here. 

I laughed a bit, the contrast just got to me but instead of getting mad at one or the other like most of the fandom, I laughed.

Musa followed that by saying that Riven has not maintained contact and just in that I would be beyond pissed as well and giving my support to Musa. WTH, Riven? I think that each season is more less six months to a year? Sort of? Still, zero contact for so long even after ending on amicable terms and wanting to stay friends? And he went off on his own! A text now going, “I’m not dead” would be the bare basics for Musa not to worry herself bald!

BUT then I also read comments about how this was a two-way street, why didn’t Musa call either? That’s unfortunately something that I very much doubt will ever be explained. One of those: did it or didn’t it? Musa could have called and went straight to voicemail with no signs of life from Riven or she might not have called and just expected him to call as if feminism were dead and all initiative must come from the guy (which doesn’t even fit because they parted as friends).

Since we have no info on the above, I put it on both of them. It’s not fair to say, “HE should have called!” or “Why didn’t SHE call?” because we don’t have fricking context. So the only thing we can take is: no contact.

BECAUSE I put the lack of contact on both of them, Musa’s reaction was a little too much, however, Riven shows up all smirks and leaning against a tree with his arms crossed and I would have flashbacks to S1 if it wasn’t for the animation style that made all the guys look like girls. Dude! Not the time for that kind of posture. Not saying that he should be all sheepish and rubbing his arm as if he had done something horrible (again: we don’t have context on the no contact) but a more neutral approach was warranted here. Nobody does themselves any favors with that kind of attitude no matter what how high of a horse they may be (rightly or not) riding on, if anything I would react like Musa solely on that one.

Next episode we have that Riven convinced the guys to follow the girls in some mission and Musa was angry. Again: I would be too. WTH? Yes, yes, they helped and if it wasn’t for them, the Winx would gotten seriously injured but Musa did have a point saying that this demonstrated that they had no trust in them and need their hand held, it was no sanctioned mission like on Earth after all. BUT, Riven does something that I would never expect from in S1-4: he explains, he reasons it, he puts it in all the words that he does trust Musa and co and that he only wanted to show that he’d be there for her (you know? One of the main issues in S6 that made them breakup in the first place? His inability to conciliate Specialist work with supporting his girlfriend and ultimately failing or feeling like failing in both?) and Musa still pouts, crosses her arms, and turns around. Geez. I expected that one from Stella, not Musa. I think the closest Musa has ever come to THIS was back in S2 when Jared explains that Riven was the one to recommend that he interview Musa and yada yada yada and she got mad and stomped off on the poor guy that didn’t even understand what was going on (only to immediately apologize to Jared and recognizing that it wasn’t him that she was mad at… like I said: what character growth?).

Riven then goes to show that he indeed grew when he asked for advice from Sky and Brandon (WTH, right? Can we picture that happening back in S1-3? He very grudgingly would LISTEN to UNSOLICITED advice from Nabu and Helia in S4-6). And does a very, very goofy and embarrassing show of affection. Yeah… again… I can picture Stella loving the light show with her face for IDK how many people to see but not Musa (although can we really blame the guy after the series went out of its way to make Musa all Stella-like? Clothes, attitude, the only thing missing is making Riven carry her shopping bags around and call him “Shnookums” (although the mental image is already enough for me to fall over laughing, just for the face Riven would make). Still, I have to count that one against Riven if only because (as much as the show gives only lip service to it) Musa isn’t Stella.

Riven being mind controlled (again) aside, those two are back together. And on the overall? Riven showed more growth than any other character in the show COMBINED (he is the Zuko of the show), that doesn’t go to say that he didn’t make mistakes since coming back in S8 (but that was more a guy trying to win back a girl than… betraying his friends for a pair of nice legs or… IDEK like in S1 – where, mind control or not the show itself made sure to make it clear that he had free will) or that he is now the one out of Musa’s league. I think that NOW it can actually work… if the show allows him to keep the progress, Musa is the next to see her flaws and work on them (which she showed to be able to do since S2) and put effort in the relationship. The difference between them is that Musa can actually work on herself and the relationship at the same time. That’s not me saying she is better than Riven in any way, everybody has their own pace and their own way to cope, to improve and to self-reflect.

I still root for them.

~*~

PS-IDK why, but I read posts about how Riven changed so much and posts about how all his progress disappeared and he is now back to his S1 attitude and I’m just cofused. Yeah, different of opinions and so on, but such opposite opinions on the subject of a guy whose relationship was focused on three episodes? 

[sophielovesbarnes]

All or Nothing

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Winchester!reader

Warnings: none yet

Author note: Hello! ❤️ so this idea has been running on my mind for months and I hadn’t brought myself to write it, but due to the COVID my classes are cancelled which has me with a lot of spare time in my hands.

The story will make a kind of crossover with Supernatural, pretty much I will be using some of the characters in a AU.

Please let me know what do you think and dm me if you want to be tagged.

Chapter one.

You’ve always loved this; the adrenaline that rushes through your veins when you are thrown into the air and you fly so high that it feels like you are going to touch the stars, the excitement that fills you with every jump, the rush you get when you listen to the joyful voices that surround you, cheering every move you make, the smile on your teammates' faces that assures you that they are as passionate about this as you are.

These are the great things about being a cheerleader, things that not many people see or understand; you’ve been called vain, bimbo, basic, the thing is that you don’t people that have never felt this emotion will ever understand.

They won’t understand the sacrifices needed to get there, to make every move coordinated, the weeks of practice behind fifteen minutes on the stage; they wouldn’t understand the permanent calluses and blisters covering your feet and hands, feeling your muscles so weak as noodles after practice, the hours of training devoted everyday, the sweat, the blood and the tears; but those fifteen minutes, God, they made you feel like heaven.

**

After the music ends, signalling the end of the halftime you and your squad head back to the edge of the field, waving hello and throwing kisses back and forward.

When you finally reach your bench, you throw yourself to your water bottle and feel the relief of it’s cold contents hydrating your throat.

"It went well." Ingrid says, you can see her chest going up and down rapidly and short black hairs sticking to her sweaty forehead. "Truth be told I really thought I was gonna mess up that basket."

"Double kicks are a bitch." You agree and take one last sip from your water bottle, after you both catch your breath and both football teams are on their spot ready to start the next time you put down your bottle and grab your pom poms, preparing yourself to keep everyone's spirits up until the end of the game. "Ready?"

"Let’s do this." She smiles, and you both go back to position chanting and cheering for your team.

Forty-five minutes later, the crowd erupts into claps and screams when your team scores their last touchdown making them victors of this game, the squad jumps into hugs celebrating your victory.

The game is over and everyone starts to abandon the bleachers, so you take your bag and head to the locker rooms followed by the rest of the team, discussing what went well and wrong on the routine, the pre-spring break stress that’s building up, how cute the linebreaker looked, but mostly everyone is talking about the upcoming celebration party.

When you get to your locker, you untie your ponytail, letting your head recover it’s proper blood flow, you get undressed, carefully folding your uniform and proceed to step into the shower. The hot water loosens up your muscles and brings you to a sleepy point of relaxation. You finish showering and step out, wrapping your body with a fluffy white towel.

"Are you sure you’re not going to Liam’s party?" A tall brunette girl asks as she walks behind you. “It’s the event of the year.”

"Thanks Alice but I really want to attend the FBI lecture tomorrow and a hangover would keep me from actually paying attention." You reply simply as you get dressed and pack the rest of your stuff into your bag.

"Well I’m sure Liam will miss you." She implies. "He was very enthusiastic about having you there."

"He’ll survive." You give her a playful smile and throw the strap of your bag over your shoulder. "Night girls see you tomorrow."

They reply almost in chorus and, you wave goodbye walking out from the locker room, spinning your car keys on your finger. The parking lot is almost empty, most people are either back on their dorm rooms or on their way to Liam’s party, so the way back to your apartment is peaceful, just the sound of the wheels rolling on the road and the wind running through the windows.

Originally you lived on the dorm rooms like most of the squad, but at the beginning of this school year your brothers had surprised you buying an apartment just for you, quoting Dean's words it was easier to concentrate on your own space and you deserved a nice and private place to live, after all, you had a full scholarship ride so you didn’t have to worry about paying tuition.

Truth be told, you really liked the apartment; the building is fifteen minutes away from your school, and your neighbors are nice and quiet. When you first got the place, you, Dean, Sam, and Adam had spent an entire weekend painting the walls, decorating and equipping the place so it could fit all your necessities.

The kitchen is right next to the entrance door, behind it it’s the living room, there’s only one loveseat and the tv is in front of it, there are photographs everywhere, your brothers are on the most of them, there’s one from your first competition, you are sitting on Dean’s shoulders, holding high the trophy you and your squad won, Sam and Adam hugging Dean from each side, there’s one from your graduation, the KU game where Dean finally decided to introduce you to and your brothers to Castiel, next to it is the one from their wedding, there’s also one from your prom where you and your ex where crowned king and queen for the last time; you still keep the crown and the band displayed on your room.

You love the apartment, even though you live alone and far from Kansas and your brothers, they made it feel like home.

You leave your keys and your bag next to the door and then head to your bedroom where you strip out of your clothes and put on your pjs, you fall asleep the second your head touches the pillow.

The next morning your alarm starts beeping exactly at 6 o’clock, you have made a cocoon in the blankets that’s so warm and comfortable that you refuse to move, but eventually the beeping sound off the alarm becomes unbearable and you know for a fact that if you don’t get up from your bed soon you are going to be late for class; so you begrudgingly get up from the bed and slam the button of the alarm turning it off.

One hour later your hair and your makeup are neatly done, you have replaced your pajamas with jeans and a white bustier with puff sleeves, and you are ready to step out if the door, bag on one hand and coffee on the other one.

When you get to the auditorium, your best friend Maia is already there saving a seat for you, you distinguish her from her curly hair and her cinnamon skin, she smiles at you when she sees you.

“You’re late.” You drop your bag on the chair next to her and then take a seat.

“My bed and I were too comfortable together this morning.”

“I getcha.” She replies, her New York accent marked on her words. “Are you excited?”

“Totally, I’ve been looking towards this lecture for weeks.”

A few minutes later three men step on the stage, accompanied by the principal, there’s a man in his sixties, with black hair and a kind smile, you know he is David Rossi, you have re-read his book over and over since you were little. There’s also a bald black man, and you can almost see his muscles through his shirt.

But the third man is the one who has your complete attention.

You’re completely fascinated with him from the second he steps into the podium, there’s something on his messy brown hair, his shy smile, and the way he fidgets nervously with his fingers that makes your heart flutter.

A few moments later the room starts to fill and when every seat is taken the older man takes a spot on the podium and clears his throat.

“Good morning, I am Agent David Rossi, and these are my partners, agent Derek Morgan and Doctor Reid.” He points at each of the men and they both give a courteous nod.

“Research, casework, and training to hunt down monsters, rapists, terrorists, pedophiles, and our specialty, serial killers.” Agent Rossi turns his back and lets agent Morgan continue.

“Does anybody here know what a serial killer is and what makes it different from a spree killer or a mass murderer?” He asks, and you raise your hand almost immediately, he grants you the word and you smile.

“A mass murderer is someone who kills four or more people on the same location and on the same time period, spree killers murder two or more victims on different locations and they don’t have a cooling period.” You reply. “Serial killers have three or more victims; they usually select the victim with anticipation and there is a cooling period between each murder.”

“It’s very good, by statue three is the magic number, and it’s actually more qualitative than quantitative for us.”

“Today we’re gonna talk about how some serial killers get made.” Rossi continues, “Because if you can understand that, then you can figure out a way to catch them.”

After that Morgan proceeds to introduce two girls, both victims of the same serial killer; whom as Rossi describes as the most prolific killer they’ve had.

“One thing you should understand is that no two killers are the same, they each occupy their own point on the behavioral spectrum.” After listening to agent’s Reid’s rapid voice, you officially consider yourself a goner. “Genetics, brain chemistry, psychology, and environment are all factors.”

“We believe that this particular killer grew up in an environment so adverse that he never had a chance.” Morgan adds. “He endured years of cruel and abject physical abuse as well as horribly profound psychological abuse.”

“Now let me be clear, most abused kids do not turn into killers, but this particular unknown subject, or unsub suffered extreme abuse and it has everything to do with why he does what he does.” Agent Rossi explains, after that they project the images from the unsub’s murder scenes and they give the details of his MO.

“I’m gonna be sick.” Maia whispers to you as she covers her eyes and retreats into her seat to avoid watching the gruesome pictures displayed on the wall.

When they finish explaining the case, sharing the details and the profiling process they open the podium for questions, again you are the first and only one to raise your hand.

“Yes? Miss…”

“Winchester.” You complete “So, you said that not all abused kids become killers, but what is the breaking point where some of them do and some don’t?”

“The majority of the most prolific and dangerous serial killers were genetically disposed to behave antisocially and furthermore grew up in an environment that cultivated a disregard for the lives of others.” Agent Reid answers “One gene in particular is linked with an increased risk of violent or aggressive behavior; monoamine oxidase A, it controls the production of a protein that breaks down brain-signaling chemicals like dopamine, noradrenalin, and serotonin, which all influence mood, there’s a variant of the gene called MAOA-L, it causes people to produce less

of the protein that breaks down these signaling chemicals, which in turn causes them to build up. An excess of these chemicals, leads to impulsive behavior; such as hypersexuality, sleep disorders, mood swings, and violent tendencies.

“So it can be inherited?”

“The heritability of the antisocial personality disorder is estimated to be 0.38. Heritability is the proportion of differences in traits in a population that are due to genetic differences as opposed to differences in the environment. A heritability of 0.38 tells us that, on average, about 38 percent of the individual differences that we observe in degree of “sociability” or “anti-sociability" are in some way attributable to individual genetic differences.”

“Thank you.” You smile at him, and you can swear there’s a pink blush coloring his cheeks as he smiles back at you.

There are just a couple more questions, most of them directed to morbid curiosity about the case, when they are done answering, agent Rossi opens an invitation to all the attendees to join the FBI, which brings a query about the requirements and the preparation his team had; again, Spencer is the one who answers.

“Most of us have done extensive postgraduate work in areas such as abnormal psychology, and sociology, as well as an intensive study of relative casework and existing literature.” He keeps his hands in the pocket of his navy blue pants.

“But that is after the selection to the unit, first you have to be an agent, work in a field, and that’s what we are here to talk about.” Spencer retreats himself to the back of the stage, almost leaning against the wall. “For that, the academics are wide open, everyone in this room, once you graduate; regardless of your course study; is eligible to apply to the FBI.”

“What did you study?” The guy wearing the Cardinals hoodie, sitting two rows behind you asks.

“Criminal justice, but sports appreciation was all full up at my Community College.” There’s a soft general laugh, but you can’t take your eyes from the Doctor.

“And you Doctor Reid?” You ask, looking him straight in the eyes. “What did you study?”

“I-I hold doctorates in Chemistry, Mathematics and Engineering, as well as BAs in psychology and sociology.”

“You’re drooling.” Maia mocks in a whispered tone, causing you to blush.

“Shut it.” You whisper as you try to slow down your heart rhythm. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-four as of last month, thirty-four; I, I also completed an additional BA in Philosophy, which reminds me that I have a joke.” He chuckles nervously and keeps talking “How many existentialists take to screw in a lightbulb? Two, one to change the lightbulb and one to observe how it symbolizes an incandescent beacon of subjectivity in another world of cosmic nothingness.”

You giggle softly, but the rest of the room seems to remain silent, Maia looks at you with an eyebrow raised like she is trying to figure you out.

“It’s fun, you know? Because that’s what existentialists do.” You explain on a murmur.

The silence of the spectators makes Spencer shift timidly and he starts to speak again, trying to explain the joke when he gets cut off by agent Rossi.

“Okay, before he does his Quantum Physics knock-knock joke.” This is what makes the class laugh while you stay quiet “Do we have any other questions about opportunities in the FBI?”

There are only a couple more questions, and when the lecture is over Morgan and Rossi find themselves surrounded by curious students, and girls fussing over them, Spencer stays alone and he starts to pack his things on his bag, you take a deep breath and make your way down towards him.

“That was really interesting.” Your voice seems to startle him, he turns around and runs his fingers through his hair messing it up just a bit more. “I really enjoyed it.”

“Uh thanks, Miss Winchester.”

“Y/N is fine.”

“Y/N.” He repeats and changes his weight from one foot to the other. “You seemed interested in the BAU.”

“I am, I mean, I still have a couple years left in college but joining the FBI does sound interesting.”

“Well, if you have any more doubts, you can... you know, call.” He hands you a white card with the FBI emblem on it, as well as his name and phone number; you take the card without breaking eye contact and give him a coy smile.

“Will do.”

A/N: so that’s it, please let me know what do you think ❤️

[alarawriting]

The Cold At The Heart of the Light: Chapter One

I’ve decided I’ll post probably the first three chapters of this as I work on it. There’s currently six chapters written and the seventh is started; I have been planning about twelve of them.

This is gonna have to be edited a lot when I finish the whole thing -- it’s too goddamn long, for one thing -- but I can’t spend too much time editing the first draft when I’m not done with it.

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

As soon as the maid led me to the living room and I got my first look at the little girl, I could tell the child was dying.  She was sitting on an overstuffed, white suede couch with brown fringy pillows all around her, at the back of a living room that looked like something out of House Beautiful, all tall wide windows and understated elegance in brown and beige and gold and white. She was maybe about seven, if her disease hadn’t undersized her, feet dangling off the couch and not moving. When children whose feet are dangling are not kicking those feet, and there is neither a book nor a TV nearby to explain the discrepancy, I can generally tell something is wrong. Her blonde curly wig was as expensive as the décor of her parents’ living room, but I’m an expert in these matters – I could tell the chemo had taken her hair. And her skin was dull and dry looking, her eyes vague and unfocused, her expression indrawn and blank, her small limbs painfully skinny.  She showed all the signs of either being abused, drugged, or severely ill, and given that her father had called me in, I knew that at least it was the last. Probably the second as well.  The pharmaceutical industry has never solved the problem of stopping children’s pain to my satisfaction (or, for that matter, the children’s.)

Her mother would have been an elegantly plastic politician’s wife if she hadn’t been sitting tensely at the edge of the sofa, arm around her daughter, clutching the child. Fear and anxiety make even women with $500 haircuts and botoxed foreheads seem human. I’d already forgotten the woman’s name; after checking over the daughter with a quick glance, I turned to focus on her father. Senator John Lightman, one of those politicians who manages to look “boyish” simply by being a thin dark-haired man in his prime when everyone else in the Senate is somewhere between 60 and dead, was walking toward me, reaching out a hand as if to shake it. I saw the look of puzzlement cross his face as he got a good look at me. “Are you…”

“Dr. Mystery?” I filled in the blank. “Yes, of course, I apologize. You couldn’t possibly recognize me like this.”  I had arrived in a stock form, a middle-aged woman of average height, weight and appearance with blonde graying hair in a short fluffy do.  I couldn’t very well drive around town in my working form, but now that I was here, it was time to shock and awe the mundanes.  With a thought, I transformed.

When I first adopted this as my working form, it used to take me ten or twenty minutes in front of a mirror to get it just right, because it doesn’t look human enough for me to use DNA as a model anywhere – I have to brute-force it. But by this time I’d been doing it for so many years, it took only a few seconds. Changing doesn’t hurt – it feels like having a really good stretch, actually.  

In a moment, I was six feet tall, simultaneously busty and thin, with the golden skin of an Academy award, iris-less purple eyes with cat pupils, and flame-red hair down to the small of my back.  I wore a skin-tight black leather catsuit with no shoes, and modified pelvis and leg muscles so I looked like I was wearing high heels even though I was barefoot – an anatomic impossibility for other women, but there’s no point in having total control over your own flesh if you can’t use it to show off a little.  To complete the costume I grew a white cotton labcoat over the catsuit; not exactly a cape, but the name is Doctor Mystery, not Ms. Mystery or Lady Mystery or Sexy Chick I’d Like To Do Mystery.  

Being a supervillain’s all about the power and the respect.  Back when my working form wasn’t quite so do-me hot, I actually used to get less respect as a villain, as if a woman couldn’t possibly really be all that mad, bad and dangerous to know if she doesn’t look like a supermodel.  But when I do the catsuit without the lab coat, I get respect as a badass with dangerous powers and incredible fighting skills, not as a biomedical genius.  Not that I’m not a badass with dangerous powers and incredible fighting skills, but I’m not a teen thug for hire anymore, I’m a bona fide mad scientist and I want people to remember that, dammit.  

Mrs. Lightman’s eyes went wide, and she made a tiny little yelping noise and clutched her little girl… who rather than looking frightened, actually looked mildly interested for the first time since I’d arrived.  Her dad was trying to hide it, but his lips had compressed as if he were trying not to bite them and there was just the tiniest tremor in his hands.  I expected Mrs. Lightman’s reaction, but the Senator could have gone one of two ways – men usually react to me with fear or lust, or a combination.  I didn’t think I saw lust in Senator Lightman, and when I took his hand and shook it, I confirmed it.  He was on the verge of peeing his pants.  I might have believed he wasn’t reacting with any lust because he really had eyes only for his wife, if he weren’t a politician.  But I’ve known very few male politicians to be faithful, and even they couldn’t avoid being lustful.  Senator Lightman was terrified of me because I was a Proxima and he was a Sapien-centric bigot.  Also, probably, because I was a supervillain and a killer and I could drop him dead in a second, turn him inside out, make the skin melt off his flesh or give him cancer, just from the touch of his hand in mine.  But I suspected I’d have gotten the same reaction if I’d been a member of the Peace Force, or even a Girl Scout with purple eyes and gold skin trying to sell him cookies.  He hated my kind, but he needed me today.

And I intended to use his need to my people’s advantage.

“Introduce me to your family, Senator,” I said.

I felt his adrenaline spike through the skin connection of our clasped hands, but he managed not to show it.  He let go of me.  “This is my wife, Dot, and our daughter Mindy.  She’s eight.”

I walked over to Mindy and knelt down in front of her, prompting more tension and white knuckles from her mother clasping her.  “Hello, Mindy,” I said.

“Hi,” she mumbled.

“Do you know who I am?”

“My daddy says you’re some kind of super doctor.”

Super doctor. I liked that.  “He’s right.  I’m here to help you.  I imagine you’ve gotten real tired of being sick.”

She smiled wanly.  “Yeah.”

“Let me have your hands.”

“Will it hurt?”  Her tone was tired and apathetic, as if it didn’t really matter if it was going to hurt or not.  I suspected it was more resignation than apathy.

“Not at all.”  I smiled at her.  “I’m a super doctor, remember?  It doesn’t hurt if I don’t want it to.”  

She gave me her small hands and I clasped them in mine.  I can’t entirely describe what I feel when I examine a living creature, not in terms that refer to the senses everyone else has.  It’s like feeling a symphony or hearing a tapestry.  Everything is very complex and interrelated, and I get signals from thousands of processes in the body, but it all melds together into a single big picture.  The big picture here was that Mindy’s body was attacking itself.  Her bone marrow was busily churning out cancerous white blood cells that didn’t work, filling her bloodstream with useless cells that crowded out and starved the working, useful ones.  The pain signals were overwhelming even with the drugs trying to mask them, and the drugs themselves were dulling her mind as much as the fatigue and weakness from the disease.

Like many terminally ill children, she was quiet and accepting, which is constantly mistaken in glurgy human interest stories about terminally ill children for bravery.  Children who go out with scarves on their bald heads and run lemonade stands to raise money to research and cure their own illnesses are brave.  Children who are too tired to feel fear and have been living with a disease too long to cry about it are just normal human beings.  Mindy was a normal human being, and her leukemia was also perfectly normal, something I’d dealt with a hundred times before.  

I closed my eyes so I could focus better on Mindy’s internal world.  First I triggered the release of endorphins into her bloodstream to mask any pain caused by what I was about to do.  The human body rebels against my power, seeing my authority as a violation of its autonomy, and frequently reacts by tattling to the brain about it in a way that the mind perceives as agonizing, but unspecific, pain.  As I told Mindy, though, no one feels pain in my hands unless I allow it.  As soon as her body was saturated with endorphins and I’d shut down most of the internal sensory trunk lines to the brain, making her internally numb while leaving her ability to sense anything touching her skin, I swept my concentration through her body and killed every immature white blood cell she had.  I then targeted the surviving mature white cells and forced them to rapidly replicate and mature, until she had almost a normal white blood cell count and they all worked correctly.

To finish off, I blocked the drugs that hadn’t been working so well anyway, turned the internal nerves back on, and filled Mindy with a combination of endorphin and oxytocin, and other hormones designed to make people feel good.  This particular cocktail wouldn’t have sexual effects – Mindy’s brain lacked some of the structures needed to process that, yet, and I always took great care with children not to do anything inappropriate to their age.  After what my own father did to me… well, I may be a supervillain, but I am not a child molester, and that makes me better than he was.  What I was going for – what I always gave the children I treated – can be best described, if you remember being a kid, as the excitement from knowing you’re about to go to an amusement park, coupled with the pleasure you get from eating ice cream, and all that combined with the warm snuggly feeling you get when you’re cuddled with your parents.  Mindy wouldn’t know why, in the future, she looked forward to my visits and felt very warm and positive emotions toward me.  She would just know that seeing Dr. Mystery would be the coolest thing ever, and just my presence would be more fun than any doctor’s office lollipop ever was.

Combine such warm and pleasant emotions with the freakish physical appearance of an obvious Proxima, and Mindy would not grow up to share her dad’s bigotry, even if he tried to teach it to her.

“Mindy?” Dot Lightman asked, her voice trembling slightly.  “Are you all right?”

Mindy lifted her head.  Her skin didn’t look any better, of course – I hadn’t done any cosmetic work – but her eyes were refocusing, turning bright and engaged.  “Mommy?  I feel good, Mommy.  I think the doctor fixed me!”

With my endorphin cocktail chasing away her fatigue temporarily, she leapt to her feet.  “Thank you, Super Doctor Mystery!  I feel all better!”  She twirled around, perhaps to prove to all of us that she was fully healed… and stumbled.  “Whoa, dizzy!”

“Slow up there, kiddo,” I said.  “You’re not cured.  You feel a lot better and you’re going to be a lot better, but you’ve spent a couple of years being sick and you’re not going to be back to your full strength overnight.  Take it easy.”

“Is she—is she going to be cured?” her mother asked, looking at me, her lower lip trembling.

“She’s much healthier, right now.  But no, as I said, I haven’t cured her yet.  I triggered a temporary remission and bolstered her immune system to compensate for what the disease did to it, so she needn’t suffer while she’s waiting for a full cure.”  I turned to Senator Lightman.  “To cure her, I’ll need to perform three treatments, about two months apart.  The cost will be $8,000 per treatment.  When we’re done, not only won’t she have leukemia, but the genetic potential for cancer will be purged from her system, so it will be very, very unlikely that she ever get any cancer-like disease again.  Short of living on top of a radioactive landfill, of course, but you understand what I mean.”

“Oh, God….” Mrs. Lightman started to cry.  “Oh, God, thank you…”

“Don’t cry, Mommy,” Mindy said, and gave her mom a hug.  “It’s good news. Don’t cry.”

“I’m crying because I’m so happy,” Mrs. Lightman said.

“I—I don’t know what to say, Doctor.  You have a deal.  I’d pay anything to save Mindy’s life, and your prices… well, they’re much more reasonable than I was led to assume.  I’d pay more than that for hospital treatments, even with the insurance.”  I was pretty sure this was a fib – Senators get damn good health insurance.  But of course Lightman belonged to the party that thought that health insurance was a privilege, not a right, and downplaying the high quality of his own state-sponsored insurance was probably a reflex by this point.  

I smiled at him.  “That’s because most of my payment is non-monetary.”

“Non-monetary?”

“Let’s go have a discussion, Senator.  I imagine you must have a private office in this house somewhere?”

His wife gave me a hard-eyed look. I returned her look with an “oh, please” expression, just the slightest of eye rolls and sardonic smile.  “There’s nothing you can say to me that you can’t say in front of my wife,” Lightman said, his voice hardening.

“Yes, there is,” I said, pleasantly.  “You want to tell her all about it when we’re done talking, that’s your prerogative.  But I am here to negotiate with a United States Senator, not a husband or a father.”

He stiffened.  “All right,” he said slowly.  “We can go downstairs to the den.”

“Is it—is it going to be all right?” Dot Lightman asked her husband.

“I don’t see that I have much choice, Dot,” he said.  “She’s the only hope Mindy has.  You know that.”

“Mommy? Can I play outside?”

“Sure.  Sure thing,” Dot said, her voice breaking again.  “I’ll play with you.”

“Don’t let her overexert herself,” I said.  “As I said, she’s better, not cured, and even if she were cured she’d still need time to recover her energy. She wants to run around and play now because she’s not in pain, but she actually still does need to save her strength.”

“We’ll go for a walk,” Dot said.  “How’s that sound, Mindy?”

“Sure, Mommy. We can do that.”

“The den is this way,” Senator Lightman said.

It was a typical suburban finished basement, not nearly as fancy looking as the living room, if you didn’t count the huge projection television.  I perched on the still-nice-but-obviously-worn couch, sitting on the back of it.  “Let’s get down to it, Senator,” I said.  “You’re a member of the Committee to Analyze Parahuman Activity.  You’re aware as well as I am that the United States government has been investigating or implementing various techniques to control or eliminate the Proxima population, including laws to create a registry for us as if we’re sex offenders, black ops soldiers with power suits to hunt us down, attempting to find cures for us like we’re a disease, secret databases being maintained in an attempt to identify us in the absence of a registry law… so on and so forth.”  I didn’t mention the biowarfare; people who didn’t live through being imprisoned in a government research facility and watching others being injected with various tailored viruses have a tendency to assume that government biowarfare is the stuff of paranoid conspiracy theories, and I doubted anyone had actually let Congress know what was going on there.  The others, I was pretty sure he’d been briefed on, if not actively involved with.  “And you’re an active supporter of the Human Definition Amendment, which would deprive us of any human rights whatsoever on the basis of junk science.”

The faintest beading of sweat broke out on his forehead.  “The United States government hasn’t taken any illegal actions to ‘control’ the Proxima population, as you put it, and certainly not to eliminate you.  You must understand, however, that we do have the right and the duty to protect normal humans from people like…”

He hesitated just a moment too long. “Me?”

“I was going to say, people like Caesar Primus or Optometron.  But if the rumors about your activities are true, then yes, you.  Weren’t you some sort of assassin?  An enforcer for a drug lord?”

While technically the description was almost true, the idea of describing David as a “drug lord” almost made me laugh.  Almost.  I don’t actually have a lot of a sense of humor when it comes to David.  “And I was rehabilitated by the Peace Force and today I’m a fine, upstanding citizen who cures little girls of leukemia,” I said.  

“That isn’t a lot of comfort to the families of the people you killed.”

“Maybe not.  But if I’d been killed by American soldiers in power suits then, your daughter would be out of luck now, wouldn’t she?”  I slid off the back of the couch and paced around him.  “And this isn’t about me.  How many people were saved when the Irregulars stopped that second plane from crashing into the Trade Towers?  When they held up the collapsing building so the firefighters could get out?  When the Peace Force shored up the levees in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina so the city didn’t flood, or when Maui’s volcano went active and they shut it down again?”  The Senator didn’t actually need to know that was a plot of Professor Octohedron’s, if he didn’t already. The Peace Force hadn’t actually broadcast the fact that the disaster had been caused by a Proxima in the first place; I only knew about it because Octohedron continued to believe that he could get into my pants if only he could impress me enough, and he hadn’t actually ever managed to figure out that I wasn’t impressed by grandiose plots to take over the world by threatening to activate volcanoes.  “You might owe your life to a Proxima. You are about to owe your daughter’s life.  So I want your support for our basic human rights.  Oppose the Parahuman Registry, oppose the research to kill us or break us of our powers, and oppose the Human Definition Amendment.”

“The Human Definition Amendment isn’t designed to take away your human rights,” he said.  “It’s designed to clarify the rights you do have.  I mean, there have to be different ways to handle you people vs. the rest of us.  Remember when the ACLU sued on behalf of the Heat Miser?  They said that it was cruel and unusual punishment to keep him continuously drugged in prison. And as soon as they won and the drugs were withdrawn, his powers came back and he burned the prison down. 700 people were killed, over 100 guards and the rest of them human inmates, who’d been sentenced to serve time in jail for their crimes, not to burn to death.”

“Then you redefine cruel and unusual punishment to state that methods intended to block Proximas from using superhuman powers to escape from prison are not cruel and are perfectly usual.  Passing an amendment to the Constitution that declares that Proximas aren’t human is overkill.”

“It actually declares that humans belong to the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, and that the law should not be automatically extended to grant human rights to people who can destroy our entire planet with a thought just because some bleeding heart doesn’t think they deserve to go to jail for killing hundreds of people.”

“Yes, and by declaring that Homo sapiens promixus does not automatically count as human, it effectively says that we’re not, and we can be shot on sight with no one but the ASPCA to worry about our murders, let alone suffer discrimination in every part of our lives.  You do not live with the reality of what being defined as non-human means, Senator.  I do.”

“And you, Doctor, don’t live with the reality of inhabiting a world filled with creatures who can kill you with a thought, steal everything you own, destroy your home without even touching it, or make you believe that up is down and black is white.”  

I could argue that last point, if I wanted to be a smartass – I lived in the world where there was conservative talk radio, and it had convinced any number of people that up was down and black was white.  But that would be sidetracking.  “True.  But you’re so focused on perceiving yourself as a victim of the existence of Proximas that you’ve given no thought to what it would be like to be one of us. And you really should.  Because you have a child, Senator, and she is too young to be confirmed as Sapien or Proxima.  You don’t know what she is, and you’re just assuming she’s Sapien.  What if she’s Proxima?”

He blinked.  “Well, of course I—but she doesn’t have anything in her background – I mean neither her mother nor I have anything unusual, genetically—“

“No one knows what’s causing the sudden explosion in powered humans, Senator, but we do know that it’s some type of mutation.  90% of Proximas have parents who were Sapien.  And the number is that low only because some of us have started having kids.  If your daughter was a Proxima with two fully Sapien parents, she’d be in the same boat as most Proximas. Including me.  So you really need to think about it.”

“Well, I – I certainly wouldn’t treat Mindy any differently if she were – but if she were, you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

“I didn’t check for it.  But I could, yes.”

“Well, if she turned out to be, you could just fix it, right?  As part of the treatment?”

I stared at him as if I’d just found him on my shoe.  “Of course I could. And if she was black, I could make her white and blonde and blue-eyed. And I could change her into a boy if you decided you really wanted a son.  Have you any idea how offensive what you just said is?”

“I – I didn’t mean to give offense.  I just want Mindy to have a normal life.”

“Most Proximas do. I don't look like this all the time, Senator.  When I'm not treating hopeless cases, I live in a nice little townhouse, with two cats and a cockatiel.  I go dancing with men friends on weekends, I buy groceries, I do my laundry.  I choose to look like this when I'm treating people like your daughter, because I have no desire to be kidnapped and pressed into the service of crime lords or the government."

"Why would the government kidnap you?  Proximas have rights.  If you’ve served your time for your previous crimes, and committed no new ones--"

"--I would still have the power to make old men young, cure impotence and infertility, heal disease and scarring, change people's appearances... come on now, Senator, don't be naive.  If you had a way to make me heal your daughter without paying my price, you'd do it.  And I think you're basically a good man, who’s concerned for the child he loves.  Can you say none of your colleagues would want me to heal them?  To restore lost youth, or whatever they had lost?"  I thought of the white room then, the snipers with guns outside ready to blow my head off if the important old men screaming under my hands didn’t get up and walk free completely healed when I was done. Never again.  

"I... suppose power corrupts.  There are some bad elements in any system, but that doesn't mean the system is evil."

"I didn’t say the system was evil.  I said it’s not designed to protect people like me.  And if you and your fellows have their way, it’ll be even harder for me to live a normal, safe life.”  I shook my head.  "We're sidetracking.  If Mindy turns out to be a Proxima, she could still have an entirely normal and happy life, so long as you didn't reject her for it and the government didn't kill her for it."

"I would never reject Mindy.  No matter what.  If-- if she was a parahuman--"

"Then your opinions on appropriate treatment of Proximas would be rather different, wouldn't they?"

He sighed.  “Look, I have a constituency, Doctor Mystery.  They elected me into office to protect them and serve them, and they have ideas as to what constitutes doing that.  If I do something that they don’t approve of, I won’t have the power they’ve given me for very long.”

I flopped down on his couch again.  “Oh, baloney.  You mean that if you can’t fearmonger about hidden Proximas living among us and the draconian measures the Daddy State will take under your watch to protect the poor scared soccer moms and NASCAR dads, you can’t get elected.”  I sat up and leaned forward.  “It’s all bullshit. The tide of history always favors greater human rights, greater freedoms, greater protections for minorities vs. mobs.  And it always works out better in the end that way.  I understand that you have to protect yourself from lunatics who shoot death rays out of their elbows, but you know, you also have to protect yourself from lunatics who break into the McDonalds’ with a gun and start shooting people, and somehow it was your party who decided it was an unacceptable infringement on your freedom to hunt, shoot intruders, and generally feel like manly men to make people undergo background checks to get assault weapons.”

“The Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms.”

“The Constitution wouldn’t say that if you passed an amendment redefining a ‘well-regulated militia’ as the National Guard.  Which I’m not saying you should.  I’m in favor of your right to protect yourself with a gun. I’m in favor of your right to shoot animals for fun if you feel like it; I’m a Darwinist and you’re a predator.  It’s in your genes.  Go shoot deer if you want.  But the Constitution currently states that I am a human being, because it doesn’t say that I’m not, and I was born in the United States to two human beings, share 99.9% of my DNA with you, speak your language, look like you, and have sex with you.  Well, not you personally, but Sapiens men.  So if it’s so vitally important to preserve the right to bear arms, because it’s in the Constitution, that it’s okay to let sociopaths get guns and shoot up college campuses, then it is vastly more important to make sure that every child born in this country to human parents is defined as human.  

“If you pass this Definition of Humanity amendment in order to protect your constituency, and Mindy turns out to be a Proxima, then she can be raped and her rapist could be charged with bestiality at best, because she wouldn’t be legally a child who can be molested, she’d be legally an animal. She could be killed, and the most her killer could be charged with is animal cruelty. No school would have to take her, no hospital would have to treat her diseases, no restaurant would have to let her in to eat with you.  You would have to fight a battle to get her treated in a way that you humans take for granted, every time.  Want her to die in a car accident because the paramedics didn’t want to treat a Proxima?  Want her to die in a fire because the firefighters didn’t want to risk themselves going into a burning building for someone who isn’t even human?  There are better ways to defend Sapiens than making it legally open season on us.”

“But you’re against those too. The Parahuman Registry would allow us to track dangerous people without having to deprive any of you of basic civil rights.”

“Except I’ve never heard of a version of it suggesting that only parahuman criminals be added to the registry.”

“Well, dangerous parahumans haven’t necessarily committed crimes yet.  But for instance, if your next door neighbor turns up dead of a heart attack and everyone knows you were fighting with him, isn’t it important that the police know you have the power to stop people’s hearts by touching them?”

“If your next door neighbor has a gun, isn’t it important that you know about it so you can keep your daughter from playing in his yard?”

“Most gun owners are law abiding citizens, and if someone is killed with a gun we already have laws on the books to help the police track down the killer.  If someone is killed with a superpower, we wouldn’t even necessarily know to look for a superpower.”

“So educate the cops better on superpowers.  Most Proximas are law abiding citizens.  If you kill your neighbor by hitting him over the head with a frying pan, does that mean you needed to be on some sort of registry of frying pan owners?”  I started pacing again.  “It’s irrelevant in any case.  I don’t care what your personal beliefs are.  I care that you love your daughter and want her to be healthy.”

“So you’re blackmailing me.”

“Blackmail?  I’m demanding payment.  When your campaign contributors give you money for re-election, they’re not blackmailing you to expect that you’re going to show them some quid pro quo. I’m offering you something far, far more valuable than a few dollars in your re-election coffers; I’m offering you your daughter’s life and health.  I think expecting a little quid pro quo is not unreasonable.”

“And what if I refused?  Would you let her die?”

At one point that would have been a tough one; in this line of work you have to appear to be compassionate, but you also have to be tough or the patients will walk all over you.  I had had plenty of experience dealing with this particular conundrum, though.  “Do you know what I did for Mindy today?  Do you understand her disease at all?”

“I don’t know what you did, no. You keep saying you made her better but you didn’t cure her.  But I do know something about her disease.  The doctors tell me that she’s making too many white blood cells, and it’s crowding out and killing the rest of her blood.”

“Close.  They’re immature, cancerous blood cells, so they don’t work to protect her from disease the way mature white blood cells would.  This lowers her general immunity, and yes, it clogs up her bloodstream and takes resource away from working cells.  What I did today was to kill all the immature cells and regenerate some of the mature ones.  She still has leukemia; she’s still making too many immature cells.  Without a full treatment that will never stop.  What I’ve done is to ease her symptoms.  Until she builds up too many immature cells again, she’ll feel better.”  I leaned on the wall, arms folded.  “I’m perfectly capable of doing this every six months and never actually curing her.  She’ll feel better, and she’ll have a happy, normal life, as long as she gets her treatments on time.  The one time she misses a treatment, though – maybe because the government kidnapped me, arrested me, killed me or took my powers away – she’ll have full-blown leukemia again, and within a year or two she’ll die.”  I pushed off the wall.  “So you can support me up front because it’s the right thing to do for the person who gave you back your daughter’s life, or you can hedge and haw and refuse to get with my program, and if so your daughter will be well for exactly as long as I am able to continue treating her.  The very laws you want to pass that will harm me, will block my ability to heal her sooner or later, and then she’ll die, and it’ll be your fault.”

“And how do I know that if I promise to do as you ask, you really will heal Mindy and you won’t just do what you just said?”

“How do I know that if I really heal Mindy, you won’t go back on your word and start pushing for the Human Definition Amendment again?  It’s a matter of trust, Senator.  You trust me, I trust you.  Or you don’t trust me, I don’t trust you.  Tit for tat.  What’s it going to be?”

He took a deep breath.  “I’m not going to just rubber stamp your suggestions.  Even if that was the right thing to do for my constituency, and it’s not.  I’m going to study the situation and try to do the best thing to protect my people and yours.  You can accept that or not.”

“All right, I’ll accept that, with one caveat.  The Human Definition Amendment is totally off-limits.  You can switch your support to the Inclusive Humanity Amendment, or just drop your support of Human Definition, but if you don’t publicly do one or the other within the month Mindy does not get fully cured.  The other stuff, do the studies you want to do, but I think you’ll find that when you look at Proximas as if we are people and not weird animal things with superpowers, you’ll find it a lot easier to come up with ways to help protect your kind without harming mine.”

Lightman nodded.  “All right, Doctor.  Then we have a deal.  When do you want to perform the first treatment?”

“If you’ve got $8,000 lying around in a checking account, we can do it today.”

“I do.  Who do I make the check out to?  I don’t imagine you can cash a check made out to Doctor Mystery.”

“Make it out to Miracle of Life, LLC.”  I had about twenty-seven of these shell companies I used to funnel my various payments through, since even Senators typically had a hard time coming up with $8,000 in small unmarked bills on short notice, and a girl’s gotta eat.  Playing politics is all well and good, but I needed to cover the mortgage and the gas money for my various trips to clients, plus the funds for my various Activities of Mad Science.  Just because you can manipulate any organic tissue with a touch, doesn’t mean you get your beakers and retorts and Petri dishes for free.  “Let’s go upstairs.  I’m sure Mindy is eager to begin freeing herself from this disease.”

“Of course.”

At the top of the stairs, I reached out for his hand.  Too afraid of giving offense to refuse me, he took it, and I shook with him.  “Pleasure doing business with you, Senator.  Go call your daughter in, give me a check and we’ll do this thing.”

“Thank you, Dr. Mystery.  I may not entirely approve of your politics, but thank you for giving my daughter back her life.”

He wouldn’t be thanking me so much if he had known I’d just planted a tiny clump of slow-growing cancerous cells deep in his brain.  It’d be a year from now before he started feeling any symptoms, and that would land in the middle of his re-election campaign.  If he did what I wanted after I finished healing his daughter and we were on good terms, I’d find some excuse to come by and heal him or prune it down again.  If not… there was a reason I was a feared supervillain even though most people knew me, if they knew me at all, as some kind of uber-doctor.  You didn’t double-cross Dr. Mystery and survive it.  Ever.

Well, unless you were Dr. Suryabati Chandrasekhar.  Then you got any number of free passes.

***

The truth was, I was being something of a hypocrite.

I was offended at Lightman’s suggestion that I make his daughter a Sapiens if she turned out to be a Proxima, but not for the reason I told him.  The difference between a Proxima becoming a Sapien and a Sapien becoming Proxima isn’t the difference between black changing to white or male changing to female.  The difference was described by Plato as a man raised in the darkness leaving the cave to see the light of the sun, vs. a man raised in the sunlight doomed to spend the rest of his life in a cave.  Making a Proxima a Sapiens is like giving someone a lobotomy, or a clitoridectomy, or binding her feet until she can’t walk.  It’s an obscenity, a Harrison Bergeron nightmare of breaking the best down to the level of the mediocre, taking away a birthright one was born with.  

Making a Sapien a Proxima is, on the other hand, one of my great callings in life.

Mindy Lightman wasn’t a Proxima before I touched her.  But she would be, before I was done.  I did a preliminary assessment of her DNA while I was performing the first treatment, and I stored a small amount of her cellular matter in a pocket under the skin of my hand, to study at length later. I’d determine how much energy her mitochondria could supply her and which latent powers-complex genes she had, and which powers they were likely to ignite into.  If she had something distressing, like death touch or world-shattering TK or the gene for turning blue, I’d edit the complex over the next two sessions into something more palatable for the child of a public figure, something frilly and unthreatening.  Maybe the ability to make pretty light shows, or fly.  Most flyers loved it, and it didn’t seem to frighten Sapiens as much as some other powers did.

When I left the Lightmans’, now back in my middle-aged lady persona, I headed first to the bank to deposit the check.  Senators whose daughter’s lives are on the line don’t give me checks that bounce, but they do take time to clear, so the sooner I got it in, the better.  And then I dumped the rental car at the airport, changed form in the bathroom, and got on the Metro to head back home.

****

Science fact: There is only one gene that determines the difference between a Sapiens and a Proxima.

To most people this seems insane.  Proximas come in an entire extra range of colors besides the human norm, have powers ordinary humans can only dream of, and get energy to fuel these powers from a source that is frankly incomprehensible.  We just have to be a separate species, in most people’s minds.  When Proximas were first discovered, there was a huge push to label us a fully separate species – Homo superior (thankfully, that one got shot down real fast) or Homo proximus, “the man who comes next.”  Scientists – not me at the time, since I was too young, but reputable geneticists and biologists – had to constantly point out that the definition of a species is that they cannot viably interbreed.  The children of superpowered and ordinary humans were themselves perfectly fertile. Ergo, we cannot be a separate species.

But we hadn’t mapped the genome then, and we didn’t know exactly why Proximas had powers.  So scientists made, in my opinion, a mistake.  They agreed to classify us as a separate sub-species.

You’ve grown up being told that you are Homo sapiens.  What you might not know is that technically, if you’re not a parahuman, you are actually Homo sapiens sapiens.  There were several other subspecies of humans, all extinct, such as Homo sapiens idaltu (elderly wise man).  It is still scientific nonsense to call us a subspecies, when we’re only different by one gene – to put this in perspective, parents and children differ by many, many more than one gene – and in fact the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature keeps debating changing it to Homo sapiens sapiens proximus or dropping the designate proximus entirely. But the scientific evidence that we aren’t even a separate subspecies gets even less play in the media than studies that show that men and women are alike, if such a thing is possible.  And at least the Homo sapiens proximus nomenclature reinforces that we are of the human species.

The trouble is, most people don’t know that the true name of Homo sapiens is actually Homo sapiens sapiens.  So when they hear the short designators – Sapiens vs. Proxima – they assume that our species is Homo proximus.  We’re widely believed to be an entirely separate species, and it doesn’t help that high-profile supervillains like Caesar Primus (who is 2,000 years old and knows as much as any Roman gladiator about science, which is to say, diddly jack), or Professor Octohedron (a brilliant physicist and inventor, but he knows about as much biology as I know about fixing my car, and let me put it this way, the last time I ended up dead on the side of the road I needed a friendly dude passing by to tell me I’d run out of oil) are constantly spouting off about how we are a new, superior species.  Informed laypeople and doctors usually know better, but the truth – that we are different by only one gene – is so appallingly counterintuitive that you almost need to be a geneticist or an evolutionary biologist to get it.

But here’s the truth.

The human genome is packed with genes that don’t do anything.  Most come from our evolutionary history. You may have heard that we are less than 1% genetically different from chimpanzees.  That 1% consists mostly of control genes, which govern when, how and if the other genes turn on.

It turns out that some of those genes generate superpowers, under the right conditions.  One of them turns melanin, the brown pigment of humans, blue in the presence of a hormone called catalysine.  Others use catalysine to activate superhuman abilities.  All humans carry some of these genes.  But only a very, very tiny number – about 1 in 10,000 – have the gene that codes for the creation of catalysine.

Like testosterone, catalysine has two surges in a person’s life cycle.  One is pre-natally.  The amount generated is small and doesn’t pass the placental barrier, so no, pregnant women do not manifest superpowers when carrying a Proxima baby.  That’s an urban myth.  The surge pre-natally does little, usually, except to prepare the brain to control superpowers someday, creating a brain nucleus and appropriate wiring.  In cases where the child has two Proxima genes – for example, the child of two Proxima parents-- the amount of catalysine created pre-natally might be enough to distort the child’s appearance, begin converting melanin into azurin, or awaken a low level of superpower.

When the child hits puberty, the same genes that turn on sex hormones turn on catalysine production.  The superpowers appear, and wire up to the brain structures created in utero.  If the child has the gene for azurin conversion, their pigment changes from brown to blue – so pale red-haired and blonde white children suddenly develop purple, green or blue hair, while brown-skinned children turn blue all over.  (Azurin is also rare.  Only about 5% of all people carry the gene for azurin production, and only Proximas ever display it.  Non-Proximas with the azurin mutation never express it, and end up creating perfectly normal melanin, because they are never exposed to catalysine.)

The “power mitochondria” are another pan-human phenomenon that only expresses itself in Proximas.  All living cells on Earth contain tiny organelles called mitochondria – practically separate living things, with their own DNA, they use oxygen and sugar to generate the chemical that powers all life, ATP.  Power mitochondria vastly overproduce ATP, and no one knows where they get the energy to do it – it’s like they suck potential energy out of the universe and convert it to life force.  But they do this only when activated by catalysine within the cell.  About 1/3rd of humans have power mitochondria.  In the presence of the Proxima gene, these people generate energy above and beyond what they take in from food and air, which is then consumed by their superpowers.  Without power mitochondria, a Proxima must draw from their own life force to fuel their superpower, which makes their powers pretty weak.  The exact same genes for telekinesis can code for a person that can lift 70 lbs with their mind with effort vs. a person who can lift an aircraft carrier out of the water and break it in half, depending on the presence and output of the power mitochondria.  Since mitochondria are passed by the mother, Proximas who inherit their power from a powerful mother will always be very powerful themselves, whereas Proximas who inherit from a powerful Proxima father depend entirely on the hidden status of their mother for their own strength.  

(Funny fact, here: when Proximas were first discovered, male Proximas freely dated, married and fathered children on human women, because our entire society says it’s okay for men to have wives who are weaker than they are. Proxima women, on the other hand, mostly stuck to their own kind.  In the seven years since we discovered the role of the power mitochondria, we have seen a dramatic reversal in which powerful Proxima men will not marry or get serious with human women unless they consider themselves “childfree” or have had the human woman’s mitochondria analyzed for power status, and more and more Proxima women are dating Sapiens men.)

So most of what goes into making a Proxima is actually in a vast percentage of the human population – 30% have power mitochondria, pretty much all of them have powers-complex.  It’s the presence of the single gene that codes for catalysine production that makes a person Proxima as opposed to Sapiens.  My belief was that Proximas would not be safe from the fear and envy of Sapiens unless we were normalized.  The more Proximas there were, the more the law would adapt to and accommodate us and our needs and the less we’d need to fear the mob of Sapiens out to kill or control us.  So my primary work, since I became Dr. Mystery, had been to increase the number of Proximas by giving as many Sapiens the Proxima gene as I can.

In my early experiments, when I used uncontrolled methods like retroviruses to mutate people, there were high casualty rates.  Sapiens adults whose brains have not been exposed to catalysine in utero can’t control whatever superpowers they develop if they suddenly start making catalysine.  So I started working primarily with children, usually terminally or chronically ill children that I could get direct access to.  My power can create new brain pathways, and in a child or teen, with a developing brain, I can do it transparently, with no one noticing.  Adults cannot experience sudden brain growth and change without noticing that something’s wrong – memories suddenly becoming lost, well-developed skills becoming weaker, mood swings, etc—so I only alter adults into Proximas if they request it.  I often modify women of child-bearing age so that all their eggs carry the Proxima gene, ensuring that they’ll give birth to Proximas if they ever have kids.  It’s harder with men, because men are generating new sperm all the time – I’d have to alter the spermatogonia, and since they’re part of the body, the body’s immune system might notice that they are genetically different from the other cells and attack them, making the man infertile.  So I only make men into Proxima-fathers if I have plenty of time to work with them and tweak their immune systems, if necessary – and if they’re likely to have kids.  Gay men coming to me to save them from AIDS and 70-year-olds who don’t want to get Alzheimer’s are usually not worth modifying reproductively.  

The Peace Force were aware of my work, and opposed it.  They believed it was wrong of me to change people’s genes without their consent.  Technically, maybe they were right, but come on, what sane person would object to having superpowers?  The only reason anyone would not want to be a Proxima is the prejudice against us, and I was working on that too.  So I had to maintain a low profile because every so often the Peace Force would take it into their heads to try to capture me.  I’m pretty sure this wasn’t fully legal – I was pardoned for my activities as Megamorph by Bill Clinton (did you know that Hillary Clinton once had breast cancer? No?  Well, neither does anyone else), and nothing illegal I’d done as Dr. Mystery could be proven in a court of law.  But the law hadn’t caught up with Proxima abilities, so the Peace Force never overly concerned themselves with whether they could prove wrongdoing or not.  Their mentor and leader, Dr. Suryabati Chandrasekhar, aka Doctor Sun, was a telepath, and if she said, “Bad guy! Go fetch!” they would jump like puppydogs after a thrown stick.

So I lived in Baltimore, in a townhome in the Woodberry neighborhood, on Television Hill, because living directly under the broadcast tower generated enough interference that Suri couldn’t find me telepathically.  I’d have preferred Little Italy, or better yet, a real city like New York or Philly (and I’d come way down in the world, admitting that Philly is a real city), but New York was far too close to Suri, whose base of operations was in Manhattan, and a lot of my work was done with politicians, making Baltimore or DC more convenient than Philly.  And DC had the Special Service, human police in power suits who patrolled to protect the Capitol from parahuman attack.  I never felt safe in DC.  My Woodberry home had civilians living on both sides and a children’s day care across the street, ensuring that the Peace Force couldn’t attack me in force – they’d know the threat to civilians from a power battle would be too great to risk it politically for my sake (and to be fair, most of them are goody-two-shoes hero types who wouldn’t risk civilians, especially preschool children, even if they had perfect political cover for the operation.)  So I figured that if Suri ever found me, she’d still think twice about siccing her dogs on me.

Also, the Light Rail, Baltimore’s sad and pathetic substitute for a subway, had a stop near my home.  I didn’t learn to drive until I was 28, and I still hated it with a passion.  I was a Brooklyn girl – give me a city with buses and subways and railways, so I wouldn’t have to dodge hurtling chunks of death metal just to get where I was going.  From DC’s Metro, after I dropped my rental car at the airport, I changed at Union Station to the Camden line, took it to the baseball stadium in Baltimore, and changed there for the Light Rail.  This took far longer than a car would have, but didn’t involve me being isolated in a tiny box with no source of living organic matter other than my own flesh and facing careening metal boxes coming right for me.  It also didn’t involve traffic jams, which are brutal on the DC Beltway.  A short walk from my stop later, and I was home.

As I unlocked my front door, Brian the cockatiel chirped at me wildly, flapping his wings in his cage.  I’m really proud of Brian – in some ways he’s my greatest work.  He used to be a man, or the head of a man, who attempted to rape me once.  The truly pathetic thing was that Brian had been a good-looking guy, wiry and blond, the way I like them, and if he’d been willing to wait half an hour I would happily have had sex with him.  But he hadn’t wanted sex, he’d wanted rape – the only reason he dated women and went back to their houses with them, rather than jumping out of the bushes with a knife, was that he was a lawyer and knew that a handsome man with money who date rapes a woman will basically never, ever be convicted.  People think rapists have to be hard up for sex, or have to somehow look evil – the idea that a handsome, charming guy who could get any woman he wanted would actually prefer to hold screaming women down and force them when he could get consensual sex with the exact same woman instead breaks people’s brains.  They assume the woman must be lying, because what man who could get mutual fun would prefer to commit rape?  No one wants to admit how common misogynistic sadists actually are or how normal they look.

I found out from Brian that he’d date-raped ten women before me, that only two had tried to press charges, and the cops had refused to take the charges in one case and upset the other one so badly with their disbelief that she’d dropped the charges.  I found this out while I had him paralyzed but still able to feel sensation, his voice made too hoarse to do more than whisper no matter how much he suffered, on a cot in the basement.  Over the course of the two weeks that I used him in experiments, he told me his entire life story, amidst lots of self-justifications, begging, pleading and promising to change his ways.  Then I started turning his body parts into animals, bit by bit.  The rats and mice I made of his arms and legs didn’t come out right, and they died.  The cockroaches who used to be his testicles were actually very robust, but after the cat knocked over the terrarium I was keeping them in, I had to get an exterminator to kill them because who wants cockroaches in their house?  I was actually quite sad when the puppy I made out of his guts wouldn’t wake up and live – sometimes they just won’t come alive no matter what I do.  Living things are very complex, and it’s more an art than a science to do things like make life into different life.  

Since at that point, Brian had no way to digest food or ingest water, and he was therefore only a day or two away from death, I finally put him out of his misery by turning his head into a cockatiel and his torso into an iguana, a gecko, and a handful of tropical fish.  Nothing lived longer than a week except the cockatiel, which so far had lasted three years.  I often wondered, since I’d used some of the original brain tissue in making Brian’s new cockatiel brain, if he had any dim sense that he used to be human.

I fed Brian a cracker, re-absorbed my shoes into my flesh, and took back my original human form before plopping down on the couch to relax and await my cats.  My actual body was permanently frozen at about age 22 or so; I changed it so often, I’d never really had the opportunity to let it naturally age.  I could have forced it up to 36, where I really was, if I had to, but why bother?  No one was going to see me and think less of me for looking too childish.  My natural form is about 5’4” and built like a gymnast – tiny breasts, thickly muscled legs and arms, a rounded and balanced body with a low center of gravity and nothing sticking way out of line with the rest of it.  For gymnastics – my childhood passion – and for combat, it was a fantastic body, and I used it for years as Megamorph before it occurred to me that maybe I should hide my true face if I was going to be a criminal.  For instantly commanding respect, making men drool and women envy, or sending the signal “I AM A SERIOUS CRIMINAL MASTERMIND”, it wasn’t so good.  It was short, the face looked too young and soft (and too much like a young, soft Gillian Anderson – people in med school actually used to call me “Scully”), and a body perfectly proportioned for gymnastics or martial arts isn’t all that attractive by the psycho standards of our culture.  But it was my body, and in my home, with the shades drawn and the security system on, I went back to it because it was me.  

As I wiggled my toes on my shag carpet and then propped my feet up on my coffee table, I wondered where my cats were.  They were well-fed cats, but their heightened metabolisms made them constantly hungry, and they knew I was a sucker for giving them treats when I’d first come home.  Normally, they’d be leaping on me minutes after my arrival.  This worried me.  If I had accidentally shut them in the bedroom, Angelkitty would probably pee on my ceiling to express her displeasure and Pikachu might have destroyed my furniture with a few good lightning blasts by now.  

My cats were also experiments.  I’d been curious to see if the genetic structures I’d observed in other mammals that seemed related to the human powers-complex were in fact superpowers, so I got myself a pair of abandoned newborn kittens and in between the droppers of kitten formula (I really drew the line at making cat milk in my own breasts; those little things have teeth very early), I modified them to generate catalysine.  The female promptly grew bird wings (which didn’t attach to the right spot on her back and were too small; she’d never have flown if I hadn’t heavily modified them for her), and the male developed the ability to shoot lightning out of his paws, so I named them Angelkitty and Pikachu.  (Technically, if you have seen the Pokemon cartoon, which I admit I have, Pikachu is a mouse that shoots electricity, or something rodentlike anyway, but come on, there aren’t exactly any mythological figures of cats that shoot electricity.)  Angelkitty’s a Siamese and Pikachu is mostly white with some orange. They don’t have power mitochondria – that does appear to be a human thing – so they eat like pigs.  I could feed six ordinary cats off what my two eat, but they remain extraordinarily svelte, almost feral in their slimness.  And so if they weren’t here to pester me for fish treats, something was wrong.

I got up and went out to the kitchen.  To my relief, my cats were still noshing on their tuna fish, which amazingly it looked like they had barely touched before I came home.  (I always fed them human food.  Why not?  I had the money to keep them in canned tuna rather than cat food, and they loved the stuff.)  Pikachu looked up at me, gave me a meow that I interpreted as “Oh, you’re home, good,” and then went back to his meal.

Wait a minute.  There was more food in the bowl than there had been when I said good-bye to them this morning.  And it was beyond the realm of possibility that they’d left so much food untouched for so long, anyway.  And the tuna looked fresh out of the can.  So how—

“I was wondering when you were going to get home,” a woman’s voice said behind me.  I was already spinning to face her, preparing to leap at her, but as soon as I saw her I realized it was hopeless.  “Don’t you ever feed these cats?  They look like they’re starving.”

Ciana Kim, aka Sapphire, my once-classmate and current dire nemesis, was standing – well, floating—above my stairs in her traditional blue bubble, her features slightly obscured by the blue distortion and concealed behind her mask.  The combat leader of the Peace Force was in my house.

I backed up.  I couldn’t take Sapphire directly.  Her power was to generate spherical or toroid magnetic fields, which glowed blue due to the way they bent light, hence her name.  I needed organic channels to send my power through—behind her force field, Sapphire was totally safe from me, because I couldn’t touch her.  I wasn’t safe from her, though.  She could generate a force field around me, trapping me, any time she wanted.  

There was a switch by the door to my basement, labeled “FURNACE – DO NOT TOUCH,” that would actually activate an EMP.  All the computer and electronic equipment I had in my house outside the Faraday cage of the basement would fry, but Sapphire’s power would fail as well, and I could leap on her before she could reset her power.  Or, if I didn’t really want to replace my MP3 player, phones, and the laptop in the bedroom, perhaps I could grab Pikachu and throw him at her.  He’d be startled enough to discharge a bolt, and the electrical surge should pop her field like a soap bubble.  I knew I had a faster reaction time than Sapphire – after years of modifying and tuning up my nervous system, I’m faster than anyone who doesn’t have super-speed as a specific power – so I should be able to grab her and neutralize her power or knock her out before she could get a force field back up again.  I was reluctant to do that because Pikachu was my kitty and throwing him at superheroes seemed kind of mean, even though I knew he wouldn’t be hurt, but the EMP generator could theoretically blow out TV Hill, and then I’d have to dodge swarms of reporters trying to find out why they suddenly couldn’t get on the air anymore.  

I stalled for time.  “They’ve got very fast metabolisms.  I feed them all the time, but they’ll pester anyone they meet for more.”

Sapphire rolled her eyes.  “Oh, stand down, Meg. If I was here to capture you or beat you up, I’d have done it before you knew I was here.”

She had a point. Sapphire wasn’t stupid, and she had completely gotten the drop on me, to the point that I was actually really embarrassed about it.  “So what do you want?  Cooking advice?  I always prefer to replace the generic vegetable oil with olive or canola, it’s easier on the heart.”  The last time I’d been in the same household as her, Ciana Kim had refused to learn to cook, for very similar reasons to her refusal to learn hand-to-hand combat.  

She ignored my jab. “Doctor Sun sent me.  She needs your help and she asked me to ask you.”

I blinked.  Doctor Sun wanted my help?  Cold day in hell.  But it’d have to get a lot colder before I’d say yes.  “She wants my help?  And she actually thinks I might agree?  Excuse me, but the last time I interacted with any of you people you wrecked my lab, ruined four years of work and set me back half a million dollars.”

“You were infecting children’s vaccines with a retrovirus.  Did you seriously think we’d let you just get away with it?”

“All it would have done was make them into Proximas.  What do you think I am?”

“Someone who mutates people against their will.  And how do you know that’s all it would have done?  Retroviruses mutate. Besides, it’s still wrong to change people without their consent.  How do you know those kids would even have wanted superpowers?”

“Oh, be real.  Who wouldn’t want superpowers?”

“If I wasn’t a Proxima, I might have been an Olympic gold medalist.”

She was telling the truth.  One of the things that annoyed me so much about Ciana was how close her life had been to mine, minus the dysfunctional family.  I, too, had had Olympic dreams once, and my coach had told me when I was 11 that I might seriously make it as a contender.  But no matter how good I’d been, I’d never really had a chance; if my parents hadn’t died when I was 13, some other aspect of my family’s screwed-up-ness would have ruined it for me.

Ciana Kim, however, had had a good and loving family who’d pushed her hard in the belief that she could achieve anything.  She was a third-generation Korean American from California and her parents were doctors or something like that, and they’d stood behind her every step of the way.  Even after everything had fallen apart in my life and I’d basically become a thug for hire, I had followed the Olympic gymnastic news, so I’d known all about this as it was happening.  

Ciana was originally to be the USA’s representative to the Olympics in Seoul for women’s artistic gymnastics.  Much was made in the media of a Korean American going to Seoul to represent America, but Ciana had been very photogenic and full of great soundbites about how she was as American as apple pie and she was honored to represent our great country and she was so looking forward to bringing a medal home for the US and she was following in Mary Lou Retton’s footsteps and blah blah blah.  And then, a week before the Olympics, it had come out that she was a Proxima.  They’d finally figured out that doing a blood test for catalysine would find any Proxima with an active power.

The truth is that even now, twenty years later, as an experienced superhero who uses her powers all the time, Ciana still can’t use her powers invisibly.  There’s always a shiny blue blob there. And she had no training with her powers when she was 16, so it would have been even more implausible that she could have somehow used her powers to secretly cheat.  I would be disqualified from a Sapiens competition in gymnastics in any sane world because of what my powers actually are, but Ciana was disqualified solely from anti-Proxima prejudice (and, to be fair, probably some anti-Asian prejudice from the Americans whose job it would have been to advocate for her).  The Americans paid for their prejudices when Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union took home all the women’s gymnastics medals (I don’t like Ciana, but I’m pretty sure she would have won at least a silver in something, if not a gold.) Ciana was recruited by Dr. Chandrasekhar to learn how to use her powers and eventually join the Peace Force, Dr. Chandrasekhar’s UN-supported superhero team.

So it wasn’t that I had no respect for Ciana’s loss, but it irritated me that she saw the problem as being that she was a Proxima rather than that the Olympic committee was scared of Proximas.  And also, that being an Olympic medalist was better than being a superhero.  “Yeah yeah, you could have had your moment of glory, and nowadays you’d be selling sneakers and breakfast cereal to pay the bills, assuming anyone even remembered you at all.  What’s Mary Lou Retton doing with her life?”

“She’s been an Olympics commentator, and she’s a motivational speaker who supports physical fitness.”

Trust Ciana to actually know this.  “And that’s better than being a superhero how?  You save lives, you have an action figure, millions of little girls look up to you—“

“—I wear a mask when I save lives because otherwise supervillains or stalkers might hunt me down, no one knows my real name, my family aren’t allowed to tell anyone what I do for a living, I’ll probably never have a normal life with a husband and kids—“

“--You could marry some guy and quit the superhero business any time you wanted to, it’s just your overblown sense of responsibility that says you can’t quit your job to have babies until your powers give out on you, because you think the world needs you, and if that’s the case where would they have been if you hadn’t been a Proxima?”

“Someone else would have taken my place if I hadn’t been a Proxima.  And all of this is besides the point; no matter how great you or even I might think it is to have superpowers, the fact is that you were planning to infect helpless babies with a retrovirus that would have mutated them.  Some of them might have died of it.  Some might have been killed by their families for being Proximas once they manifested.  You don’t have the right to play God that way.”

“Nobody would have died of my virus,” I retorted.  “I tested it thoroughly ahead of time.  But you also notice, I haven’t done it again.”

“Because you know we’ll stop you.”

“Because I listened to your arguments that retroviruses are unstable and highly prone to mutation, and I decided that maybe you have a point.”

“Then why did you bring it up?”

“You didn’t even try to just persuade me.  You just blew up my lab!  Do you know how many vials of vaccine I hadn’t modified yet you destroyed?”

“All of this is pointless,” Sapphire snapped.  “I’m wasting time arguing with you when Doctor Sun is dying.  Are you coming or not?”

Wait, what?  Dying?  

I had been a half-crazed killer with no self-esteem, no sense of myself being able to be or do anything good, no belief that anyone could ever care about me – at least not without dying for it – after David died.  Dr. Chandrasekhar had taken me in and taught me that I could have a better destiny than being a tool for monsters to use to kill each other with; that I didn’t have to be a monster myself.  I could use my powers for good.  I could help people.  I could be a decent person.

Viewed from her perspective, I suppose, it didn’t last – I freely admit I am a supervillain and I do highly unethical things, up to and including killing people.  But I do it for a cause I believe in.  I do it to save my people from the bio-engineered diseases I was forced to participate in creating at Sonnebend.  I do it so girls with superpowers who are going to medical school to learn how to save lives will not be kidnapped, stripped of their powers except when convenient for their captors, raped, tortured and forced to use their powers to heal enemies and kill their own kind, by agents of their own government.  I do it so my people can enjoy the same rights and privileges as every other human on this planet.  And the fact that I can fight for a cause, that I can see myself as a person with a noble goal of my own… I owe that entirely to Doctor Sun.

No matter what she does to me, no matter what she orders her Peace Force to do, I can’t ever get away from that.

“Dying of what?”

“She was kidnapped and raped by Caesar Primus.  When she escaped, she was two months’ pregnant, but the doctors say it seems more like six months.  The child is growing too rapidly for her to handle it, and it’ll kill her.”

Oh, God.  

My heart started pounding, my throat went dry.  I could feel the adrenaline surging, my sympathetic nervous system revving up for a totally inappropriate fight-or-flight response.  I couldn’t stop imagining the reality behind Sapphire’s words.  It didn’t help that I’d once had sex with Primus myself – consensual, sort of, but I could entirely too easily imagine what it’d be like to be raped by him, without powers to protect you.  And Primus was immune to telepathy, so effectively Suri would have been helpless.  God, no.  I didn’t want to think about that.  

So I was flippant, and cold.  “Doctor Sun’s a woman of the world.  You’re telling me she’s never heard of an abortion?”

“She doesn’t want an abortion.  She says she won’t compound Primus’ act by taking an innocent life.”

“When did Doctor Sun turn into a pro-lifer?”

“She says the baby has a mind and she won’t kill it.”  Sapphire floated herself down onto my dining room floor, still surrounded by a protective bubble but no longer on my stairs.  “Are you going to help, or not?”

“I’m a feminist Darwinist.  I’m morally opposed to letting a fetus conceived in rape live.  It lets dangerous genes persist in the population.  Suri knows that.”

Sapphire sighed explosively.  “Fine.  I knew you weren’t going to be any help, but Doctor Sun believed in you.  I’ll just go tell her I was right and she was wrong.”

“What is this supposed to be, reverse psychology?”

“Nothing reverse about it. I knew before I got here that I would be wasting my time.  You’re a killer with no conscience; why Doctor Sun ever thought you might help, I have no idea.”

“Because she knows me better than you.”  I stepped forward.  “If this is reverse psychology bullshit, it isn’t necessary. I’ve known I was going to agree to help you since you told me she was dying.  And if you really believe what you’re saying, then nyaah nyaah nyaah.  I’m a doctor; everything I do, I do to save lives.  And at least I have to try to persuade Doctor Sun to abort the thing.  Besides, if she was raped by Primus she might have injuries she could need my help with.”  Primus had hammered at me like he was trying to break my pelvis, and without my powers he might actually have done so.  And I’d voluntarily gone to bed with him.  What he’d do to a woman he was raping, I really really didn’t want to imagine.

I didn’t mention to Sapphire that this was partly my fault anyway.  When I’d met her, Suri (Dr. Suri to me in those days, but I feel I have the right to call her by her first name now) had been dying slowly of multiple sclerosis.  She had met me on a good day; she’d only needed crutches and braces to move.  On bad days she’d been confined to a wheelchair, and on really bad days she’d had to stay in bed.  I’d healed her, and in the process I’d turned her from a forty-something woman approaching menopause back to a woman in her prime, young and healthy, physically in her 20’s.  It had been almost 20 years since I’d done that; Suri would be approaching menopause again, but obviously wasn’t there yet.  By now she’d be well past childbearing if I hadn’t de-aged her when I’d healed her disease.

I didn’t know whether Primus had raped her to torture her, to express domination over her, to really make the Peace Force mad at him, or to impregnate her, but I knew he had enough control over his body that if he hadn’t wanted to impregnate her, it wouldn’t have happened.  It was entirely possible that the goal of the whole thing had been to force her to carry his child; Suri was an enormously powerful Proxima with high output power mitochondria, and most women with such energy-full mitochondria would have had a power they could use to fight back against Primus.  Blocking a Proxima woman’s powers while she was pregnant carried high risk to the fetus if it too was a Proxima; it could prevent the fetus from developing the ability to control its powers as an adult.  Suri was rare in that she was incredibly powerful but only telepathic, with no telekinetic abilities, and with Primus’ immunity to telepathy, she’d have had no way to fight back against him even at her full power.  If Primus had wanted a powerful woman to pass her mitochondria to his child, and he hadn’t cared about her consent, there were few Proximas who’d make a better target for him.  And if that was the case, then the whole thing wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t made her younger, sixteen years ago.

Sapphire blinked.  “Wait.  You are coming?”

“I just said so.  But we have to bring my cats.  They need to eat more than the average cat – they’d starve if I left them without food for three or four days, and obviously I can’t ask the neighbors to come feed them.”

“Fine.  Sedate them; I don’t need a cat flying all over my car, or meowing and moaning in his carrier the whole time.  We’ll put them in one of the suites and make sure they get fed.”

I took my cell phone – it had all of my appointments and contacts in it, and I’d have to call them all to reschedule once I knew how long this was going to take.  If I could talk Suri into aborting the fetus, this could probably go very quickly, but I knew how stubborn she was.  If I had to save the baby too, I could possibly have to take a few weeks.

Damn Suri.  Why the hell was I taking time off my work and spending four hours in a car with one of the people who most annoyed me in the entire world to go save my greatest opponent anyway?  From a problem she could just fix herself if she wasn’t so damn stubborn?

But I already knew.  I couldn’t let Suryabati Chandrasekhar die; not under any circumstances, and most especially not if she’d asked for me specifically.  Our differences were ideological; what she’d done for me went beyond ideology.  I would fight her and her people when I had to, but if she was dying and she needed me, I had to go.

[fuwafuwamedb]

The Inverted Planet (Hakuno, Gilgamesh)

Gilgamesh had decided to get out first.

It was a new planet. They needed to get some things repaired and they needed food and drink. She’d been injured during their last visit and the king was beside himself with reprimanding her. Honestly? She hadn’t minded the fact that he had stormed off Vimana and declared that if she moved, he’d kill her.

That was fine.

Totally fine.

As far as she was concerned, she was going to lay on the golden expanse that was the top of Vimana and she was going to just pass out. The man had been noisy, rambunctious, and he had been driving her to the brink of death through this migraine alone. A few minutes without him sounded marvelous.

“BYE GIL!”

The man waved as he went away, climbing onto the mainland and heading into the red brush.

The planet they were on looked… strange. They all did. Whether it was the land where all the trees grew with large lumps like someone had sat on them all to make them grow in strange bends and twists, the planet where water drifted upwards, evaporating into the hemisphere only to downpour madly on the other side of the planet due to a strange magnetism… or if it was a land like this. Every color that one would expect here, was the exact opposite on a color wheel. Golds were purple. Greenery was now all red. Oranges were blues and blues were orange.

Again, Hakuno closed her eyes and focused on what was truly important: Gilgamesh had wandered off. She had peace. Quiet. Stillness.

Her stomach could heave onto the Vimana and no one yelled at her.

She could bleed out a little in peace, without someone nearby declaring that her death was going to be by his hand alone.

Dying felt good right now and her head was about a minute from being pounded into the spaceship.

“He’d probably bring me back to life, don’t kid yourself,” Hakuno murmured, pressing her cheek against the golden ship more.

A small nap, that’s what she would take.

If he came back, she could plead that her head hurt. She could appeal to her king with a less pounding headache.

It felt so good in this silent place.

It felt so damn good to rest.

The ache in her skull dulled down. She could feel the bandages and the ointment that Gil had used on her going into effect. Things were diminishing in terms of agony throughout her person.

Who knew how long she lay there in that state of being? Who cared?

Hakuno just found herself opening her eyes after a while and looking up at the orange colored skies, sighing happily at the feeling of things being better.

“Hakuno.”

She blinked as she heard his voice, Gilgamesh had made it back.

“Did I miss anything on the planet?” she asked.

“The natives seem peaceful enough. You’re invited to one of the houses.”

They were?

She moved to sit up, noting that the king was brushing back his hair and glancing at the ship. His eyes seem to fall onto the vomit nearby.

“I um… I didn’t feel good… Earlier.” She smiled a little, keeping her gaze averted. “Hopefully, you can find it in yourself as my great and noble king to forgive me and allow me to clean it up until the ship gleams like new.”

“I’m not worried about it.”

He wasn’t?

Hakuno looked up at him as he moved forward. The man was closing his eyes, leaning in to lift her up and hold her to him. It was hard to see his face from this angle, but…

This was definitely her servant. He looked no different than before.

Gilgamesh didn’t care that she’d trashed Vimana though?

“How are your wounds?”

Hakuno shifted, glancing at the back of his head.

She didn’t see any bumps or balding on the back of his head. There was no blood coming down. She didn’t see bitemarks from some kind of strange native monster on him either. Nothing said that he’d been possessed or eaten… He felt similar…

“I… I’m doing better. Thanks to you.”

His hand pressed to the center of her back. His thumb stroked her, keeping her close to his person.

“What are the natives like?”

“They’ve modeled themselves to look like me. I think it is customary or something.”

“So they make themselves look like whomever they’re talking to?”

They had done that tango with her having three selves. She really didn’t want to do that again. Opening her mouth to say that, she found the king shaking his head, continuing that calm and quiet tone.

“It’s nothing like that,” he replied. “They just felt I suited their appearance.”

Of course, they did.

Of course, they would do that kind of thing.

It was no doubt something that Gilgamesh felt very proud of as well. The great alien race, taking after them and wanting to be as great as the great king himself. She’d be hearing about this for eons. Probably through at least a good half dozen galaxies.

“Hakuno.”

“What is it?” She glanced over at his head again, wishing he would just let her walk already.

“You’re very important… I can’t let you get that close to death again.”

“I am staying at your side. We’re sticking together, remember?”

His head bobbed a bit. “I remember… What if we stayed here?”

Stayed… Stayed here?

One glance around had her once more feeling disoriented. The planet felt so off, like someone placed everything one centimeter to the left, but they’d just changed the world’s color scheme. It wasn’t the most comfortable of places, but in comparison to some other places they’d been…

“We could stay.”

For now.

The man waved, gaining a handful of looks.

“It seems my queen wishes to remain!”

Queen?

Hakuno paused at that.

What the hell was he on about? Had the color scheme gotten to him or just some kind of hallucinogen? The others were cheering, but the eyes. All of their eyes were a strange blazing blue color, almost green as she looked their way.

They hadn’t managed to copy him fully.

It must be due to their perception of colors here.

Gilgamesh set her in the center of the courtyard between the houses they were approaching. He turned to the others, continuing this strange talk.

“Hakuno will do well as our queen!”

Why?

“She is strong enough to get through any situation. Determined enough to power through any struggle! No matter flesh eating or magic ridden- she can survive all matter of beasts!”

“Gil,” Hakuno began.

It wasn’t that simple.

Hell, the man saw him through most those things himself. It wasn’t like she was truly powerful on her own. Then there had been her other friends like Gawain, Nameless, Cu Chulainn, Lu Bo…

The others were cheering.

Everything was wrong. So terribly, terribly wrong.

Hakuno went to argue again when the king glanced her way. The same strange blue-green eyes looked over at her, the smirk as devilish as ever.

“She did agree to remain with me…”

Where the hell was Gilgamesh?

Hakuno looked around, glancing from one building to the next and the next. The places looked like they were all open, doors hanging with small Gils running in and out or women who were strangely similar to Gilgamesh leaning out the windows to speak to other false Gilgameshes.

All the buildings were open… except one.

She watched the king that had brought her here giving his speech, cheering everyone into a flurry of running and preparing. A fire was being built. She could hear talk of pleasure-

No, she climbed to her feet as best as she could and hobbled with her bad ribs and swollen ankle to the door, falling into the room rather than walking in. She kicked it closed a moment before a blond looked up from the wall.

Plastered there in a series of chains and strange, red goo, stood her king.

“…You fool!”

“SHHHHHH!” Hakuno held a finger to her lips, listening to the applause outside. The man was going to get them caught.

“You were supposed to remain on Vimana,” he hissed, lowering his voice. “You couldn’t do that though, could you? You just had to investigate. If your ribs ache even the slightest when I get out of this, I’m going to-“

There was her king.

“I got it,” Hakuno replied, keeping her voice low and grabbing a sharp swordlike object from near the door. “I’ve got it… Why do those-“

“They drank from me.”

Oh.

“I don’t know how much they know, but they knew things after they drank…”

She was getting really tired of these damn places.

So damn tired.

“The next human-like planet we find, we’re staying for at least a month.”

“So long as they’re entertaining,” he countered.

“I’ll find a mage or something. There has to be one alive somewhere.”

The man shrugged off her comment, falling forward as the goo was sliced open. The poor king lay on the floor now, his face contorted in a mixture of disgust and something like looked a lot like horror.

“I will,” she promised.

“Can you run?”

“No.”

“Then you’re pretty much useless right now, aren’t you?” He scoffed at her, hoisting her up by the thigh and waist roughly.

That was Gilgamesh.

He had his softer moments, but he wasn’t quiet or gentle. He was a complainer. He was a disgusted individual who held little time for cheap tactics like the ones these aliens had used.

And, as she noted, he had a flair for the dramatic.

“THE MAGE IS MINE!” He roared, busting the door open with her under his arm like a sack of potatoes and his gates bursting open around the fake Gilgameshes.

Roars of terror filled the air.

The king unleashed hellfire and steel upon the aliens of this planet, sending them running into their homes. Others, attempting to open the gates, found their attempts in vain.

No one could copy the king.

“GRAB YOUR WEAPONS,” the Gil that had carried her here declared, still slightly more Gil-like than the others. “GET MY WOMAN!”

His woman.

Hakuno remained in place, doing her best to pour more power into her Gilgamesh.

The false King grinned.

“I feel some of that power. Hakuno is truly one worthy of standing at my side! A fitting queen!”

“How dare you,” Gilgamesh growled.

“Gil-“

The man lunged forward, pulling out Ea from his gates and beginning to power up his Noble Phantasm. She could feel the winds churning, the air thinning.

“GIL!”

She didn’t have that king of power left! She was healing!

Gilgamesh threw Ea at the last minute, slamming the weapon into the man’s arm and severing it as they ran passed. Into the trees, through the thickets; Hakuno could feel the twigs and branches cutting at her skin, but she didn’t dare tell the man to stop.

They launched themselves onto the ship, turning Vimana towards the heavenes and casting off.

Higher and higher they went, with Gilgamesh laughing all the while.

The laughter continued, echoing in her mind and around her in the vacuum of space that the ship made so habitable for them.

The king, once more, was on his throne.

As his laughter died, he leaned back, strumming his fingers along the arms of his seat.

“So… No strange inverted planets.”

She had to say something.

The man was sitting there looking about ready to sulk for eternity.

“They glanced into my mind, Hakuno.”

Had they?

Hakuno laughed a little.

“I don’t think you’re that interested in keeping me like that. They were making it sound like they wanted to take my innocence and marry me or something.”

The silence ensued.

Hakuno stared at him for a full minute before turning away.

Did… Did he like her? Truly like her, not tolerate her as his master and the one who had stood at his side throughout the Moon Cell battles. If he did, then was his attitude how he thought women liked to be treated?

She couldn’t be a wife. She was barely able to be a proper mage!

“Hakuno…”

His voice was getting too soft. It lacked the same bite it’d had before. Worse, it was different from those aliens. The strange little flutter in her chest was making her face warm and her body want to curl up.

“Hakuno,” he purred again.

Her hand went to her face. She had to cover the blush from his eyes.

She had to not reveal what she was thinking… or feeling.

“Yes, Gil?”

“Is that your bodily fluids on my priceless Vimana’s gold surface?

She paled.

“Hakuno,” he cooed so softly, his eyes hardening to garnets in this dark void of space. “Did you happen to vomit upon my Vimana?”

She should have stayed with the sex desiring fake Gilgameshes.

__

(This isn’t the end of their encountering these aliens. Enjoy the “Gilg-aliens” return here. )

[witharsenicsauce]

(XCOM) Chosen Stories From the War #2: We’re Not Using the “Zed” Word

For a month, Kon-Mai stayed secluded in the XCOM medical bay, spending most of that month sleeping, in deep meditation, or staring at the ceiling while her thoughts tangled in her mind. Her wounds, despite Malinalli’s assurances, were deep and painful, and often seemed just on the cusp of infection. Her IV contained one dose of antibiotics after another and, when the pain got too bad, the occasional shot of morphine so she could relax enough to sleep.

Seclusion leads to depression. Kon-Mai had never been very social with her brothers before, but being surrounded by the unfamiliar faces of people who kept you at arm's length, it was beginning to wear on her. Tygan was one of the only people who didn’t seem to fear her, but his social skills were lacking to say the least, and thus she didn’t trouble him for conversation.

Her only respite was Malinalli. While often swamped with tending to other injured soldiers, when her nurse could get a moment she would come change her bandages or refill the IV, and then take a bit of extra time away just to talk. She was much more talkative than Kon-Mai would ever be, but even listening to the human girl ramble was a nice reprieve from the solitude.

“I think you need a break.” The girl said to her one morning while changing Kon-Mai’s bandages.

“I have been resting diligently for weeks on end.” Kon-Mai replied. “I am already in the middle of ‘a break’ as you say.”

“I think you need a break from resting.” Malinalli pouted. “You don’t talk to anyone besides me.”

“They do not wish for my companionship.” Kon-Mai tried to sound dismissive. “I am used to being solitary.”

“Is that why you look so sad all the time?”

“I do not look sad, this is just the structure of my face.” Her borther had often commented on her “resting bitch face” and while she hated when he did...she ad to agree. She was no pretty sight.

“Mhm.” Malinalli pulled the new bandages tight and tucked them in. “You’ve gotten most of your strength back, haven't you? If nothing else, your wound looks much better. I don’t even think there’s a risk of dehiscence anymore.”

Kon-Mai was silent. While she’d been out of bed occasionally since the last time, it was only with help from Malinalli and while leaning heavily on a walker, and that was only because her medic insisted that she use her muscles so they didn’t atrophy. There was no other reason: she had no need for food of any kind and, thus, no need for the restroom facilities the other soldiers used. She also had not showered or bathed herself since she arrived, but that was less due to her own genetics and more out of...apathy.

“A bunch of my colleagues usually like to meet in the bar to hang out.” Malinalli kept talking. “I want you to come.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I’ll have to decline.”

“I told them you were coming though.”

“What?” Kon-Mai bared her sharp teeth and growled. Malinalli flinched, but only for a split second. She stood her ground firmly.

“I can’t pick you up and force you to go.” She said, “I mean literally. You’re a lot heavier than me. But, I want you to.”

“I can assure you, your colleagues DO NOT want me to join them.”

“I think you’d be shocked.” Malinalli said. “They’re really excited to put a face to the name. Everyone’s been talking about you.”

“They fear me.”

“Yeah but…” Malinalli shifted on her feet. “How do I put this...you have a bit of a growing...fan club.”

Kon-Mai growled. “Wonderful. As if the pathetic civilian stalkers were not enough, the very enemy wishes for my attention. Would they like me to autograph their plastic swords?” She said in a high, mocking tone.

“They admire you.” Malinalli insisted. “Facing you in battle made a lot of us realize we’re woefully unprepared in melee combat. Goldilocks has been trying to make a training regimen based on your work but without you it’s all guesswork, and I know she’d love to learn from the best-”

“Cease!” Kon-Mai held up her hand. “You prattle like a Sectoid! Who is this ‘Goldilocks’?”

Malinalli seemed to smile knowingly. “I could tell you, but it would be much easier to just...show you.”

Kon-Mai bared her teeth, but it was half-hearted. “...I will need garments.”

“You can borrow mine…wait…”

Kon-Mai raised a brow.

“I guess you can’t. Um...gimme one second!”

.

.

Kon-Mai stared at herself in the mirror of the tiny bathroom. She towered over the sink and had to look down in order to see her reflection, but even at that angle she noticed how ragged she looked. The battle had taken more from her than she’d thought it had. Aside from her main, self-inflicted injury, she was dotted with tiny bullet wounds that had bruised as they healed, leaving her peppered with indigo dots.

She reached up behind her head and ran her hand through her...her hair. Her long, white hair. She had not worn it down since...she couldn’t remember when. She remembered being issued her clasps, the tubs with which her hair had hidden behind. She remembered the circlet fitting around her skull, the priests clasping it in place and then drilling-

She ran her fingers along the slight scars along the sides and top of her head: they looked uneven. She supposed the doctors must have removed her circlet? If they’d removed her chip, they must have had to. Now, her white hair breathed again: her eldest brother’s hair was soft and radiant, almost glowing. Hers, in perfect contrast, was knotted, kinky and so very oily from years being neglected, only taken from the tube every few months to be cut down and scrubbed raw. She shook her head, the while curls bouncing around her shoulders, and ran her fingers through it. It only grew from the back of her head and down her neckline to the nape. There already wasn’t much of it, and the way it stuck together made her look as bald as The Hunter. No wonder he wore a hood, it was not a good look on either of them.

Following her scarred hairline, she reached back and felt along the thick scar where her chip used to be. She no longer heard the Elders’ voices, and they could not read her thoughts. To them, she must have been presumed dead. She had expected the emptiness in her mind to be stifling, but for perhaps the first time in her life, she had been sleeping peacefully at night.

Kon-Mai reached into the shower and turned it on. She was the Assassin, and if she was going to present herself to the enemy, it was on her to make sure she looked presentable.

She pulled off her gown and stared at herself, at her scar, running jagged along her belly. Her dagger had cut so deep; so many torn muscles and arteries, so many split tendons, she had nearly felt her soul leave her body when she drove the blade into her ribs. The fact that the Commander not only saved her life, had brought her back to near perfect health…

She was supposed to die there.

That woman was hiding something.

Kon-Mai stepped under the hot water, shivering at the sensation. She didn’t remember this kind of warmth. Her baths had always been cold, and she herself was always...cold.

She hugged herself and just stood there for a moment, feeling the water run over her body.

Then she reached for the shampoo. If she went to all this trouble to take her hair down, she might as well wash it.

.

.

She put her hair into a single braid when she stepped out, not wanting to encase it while it was wet. With that, Kon-Mai dried herself off and reached for the clothes Malinalli had brought her.

They were small, of course. That was to be expected, no one here was even close to her size. The pants she was given were more like shorts, stopping just below her knees and hugging her body where Kon-Mai was pretty sure they were supposed to hang loose. The shirt was a flowy dress that on a human would come down to the knees. On her, it almost reached her waist and hugged her lady-lumps a bit more than she would have preferred. It had no sleeves, leaving her arms exposed. She looked over the glowing veins and…

Shook her head.

There were no shoes that fit her, of course, so she walked barefoot into the infirmary, the cold metal floor biting the soles of her feet. Malinalli was waiting for her, and beamed when she saw her. “You look so pretty! And your hair! I didn’t realize you…” She trailed off.

“I do indeed have hair.” The Assassin glowered. “I simply can’t leave it flying like my brother can.”

“No, no, I totally get it.” Despite her dark complexion, Kon-Mai could see Malinalli blushing. “I have to keep my hair back during work so I understand….”

Kon-Mai said nothing, barely meeting her gaze. “Let us get on with it then.”

“Yeah.” Malinalli held out her hand but Kon-Mai shook her head.

“I can walk perfectly fine, if you lead the way.”

“Okay...the canteen is this way.” She opened the door and held it. “After you.”

Kon-Mai had to duck slightly under the doorframe. Perhaps it was a good thing she was barefoot, she could only imagine the trouble she’d have wearing something akin to heels.

Despite the insistence on her independence, every step Kon-Mai took sent a shot of pain up her legs and into her chest. She clenched her fists, biting her lip and willing herself to keep a steady pace with the small human woman. Thank goodness she was walking slowly.

The canteen was, thankfully, close by. They rounded a corner and the metal shifted to dark, polished wood. The bar was much darker, lit with mood lighting and candles, and Kon-Mai could feel her muscles relaxing in the calm environment.

Until she heard the yelling.

“I TOLD YOU!” A distinctly British voice cried. “WE ARE NOT USING THE ZED WORD!”

“Why not?” Resounded another woman’s voice, without the noticeable accent. If Kon-Mai had to guess, she’d say this one was American.

“Because it’s RUDE!”

“Rude to who, the zombies? They don’t fucking care!”

Kon-Mai heard Malinalli sigh audibly, and she looked over to the source of the nose, where two human women sat at a booth.

“It’s the principle of the matter!” The British one said.

“There is no ‘principle’ to this matter.” The other one began counting on her fingers. “They walk like zombies, they’re half-rotten, they eat brains, they talk in weird growls, they are zombies, so I will call them zombies!”

“They still have human rights!”

“NO THEY DON’T! And neither do we, Princess! Have you forgotten the world ended?!”

Kon-Mai approached the table, and the shadow she cast over it made the two women stop and look up at her.

“Guys!” Malinalli called. “Meet Kon-Mai!”

“Oh!” The British woman, a girl in her youth with short purple hair, perked up. “Oh yes! We’ve been absolutely dying to meet you!” She jumped up, and Kon-Mai noticed that clasped in her hair was a little tiara. “Lady Demetria Min of the British Isles!”

“Don’t believe anything she says.” The other woman piped up. “You’re not an actual Lady, Princess.”

“Shut up.” Princess snapped.

The other woman looked significantly older, with wrinkles and scars carved in her dark ebony skin, but the bright red hair she sported gave her a youthful demeanor.

“Kon-Mai, this is Zuri Temitope.” Malinalli gestured to the woman.

“I prefer Tisiphone.” The woman smiled, looking the Chosen up and down. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but you...certainly live up to the hype.”

Kon-Mai nodded in thanks, but remained silent.

Tisiphone turned to Malinalli. “Hm. She’s quiet. I like her already.”

Princess pouted. “Well, come on! Sit with us, don’t just stand there!” Kon-Mai yelped as Princess pulled her into the seat beside her. 

“Maybe she can finish this debate for us.” Tisiphone said as she sat back down. “So. I say that the Lost should just be called ‘zombies’.”

“And I say that it’s rude to call them the zed word, and ‘The Lost’ is more politically correct!” Princess countered, her tone rising.

“I’m not fucking worried about hurting the zombies feelings, Princess.”

“It’s not about feelings, it’s about what’s right!”

“What do you mean what’s right? Our job is to mow them down like grass!” Tisiphone turned to Kon-Mai. “But what do you think? Your perspective is probably a lot different.”

“Yes. Tell her I’m right.”

“Shut your goddamn mouth, Princess.”

Kon-Mai blinked as the two women finally fell silent, staring at her expectantly.

“I believe it was one of your kind that said, ‘a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.’” Kon-Mai said slowly. “What you call them does not matter, or change what they are. As long as you can do what must be done and eliminate them.”

“Oh fuck off.” Tisiphone said. “That’s a non-answer. You gotta pick a side.”

“Guys, come on, she said her piece.” Malinalli cut in. “Don’t badger her.”

“Why do you object to their current title?” Kon-Mai asked Tisiphone.

“It sounds like some sci-fi fantasy bullshit. Zombies have been part of human mythologies for centuries and everyone knows the term. Calling them ‘The Lost’ is just needlessly complicated.”

“Of course it is!” Princess cut in. “Everything is complicated right now, Tisiphone! But we have it so much easier compared to them, the way they’re suffering. Even if I gotta put them down, I don’t wanna forget that they are human, just like us.”

There was a brief silence, in which Kon-Mai’s eyes drifted to the hallway and she, unfortunately, locked eyes with a familiar Skirmisher woman.

“Betos.” She hissed, and hid her face with her hand, but it was too late. The conversation died at the sound of combat boots clomping their way towards the group.

“The Commander instructed me to fetch you.” Betos’ gravelly voice sounded too close for her comfort.

Kon-Mai looked up briefly, again catching Betos’ narrowed, yellow eyes. 

“I did not expect to see you here.” she said as she stood, Princess helping her to her feet.

“My soldiers are here, and thus so am I.” Betos turned to Malinalli. “You are dismissed.”

Malinalli stammered. “I need to return the patient to-”

“When the Commander is done, she will page you.” Betos said firmly. “You are dismissed. Go back to your post.”

Malinalli looked warily to Kon-Mai, who gave her a nod.

“...Understood.” Malinalli mumbled as she left.

“It was nice meeting you!” Princess called after Kon-Mai. “Come back sometime, alright?!”

Kon-Mai did not answer her.

.

.

Betos’ pace was much faster than her human nurse’s, and despite her best efforts, Kon-Mai found herself falling behind. She dared not call out, but she saw Betos getting farther and farther away and knew if she didn’t, she’d get left behind on this damned ship.

Luckily for her, Betos stopped dead in her tracks and turned to face her, her yellow eyes glowing in the low light.

Kon-Mai bared her teeth. “This was your plan, then? Lead me away, so I would be helpless, and then strike me down?” She nodded. “A devious trick, but it has worked. If you wish to kill me, now is your time.”

“Believe me, if I wanted to, you would already be dead by now. Dead and rotting in your stronghold, where your poor brothers would find the broken body of their little sister, and they would know that your life was taken by your own hands...” Betos shook her head. “But no. No, it’s not enough. Killing you, it wouldn’t be enough.”

Kon-Mai’s goading smile fell, and she felt a chill run up her spine. “What?”

“If you died, that would be it. You might feel a moment of pain and in the end, you might even beg for repentance. But…” She smiled. “No. I began this journey not so different from you. Mox has killed more than you, lest we forget.” ”Do not remind me of that.” ”I will. You are not the monster you want yourself to be. And I want you to look upon that truth, and swallow it like medicine. I want you to renounce your precious Elders and become exactly what you swore to destroy, to live like us, to truly feel.”

“I did feel, once. You saw it yourself, Betos. And yet you did not seem to care so much then.” Kon-Mai blinked violently, hot tears in her eyes. “...Do not be so sure that anything will happen.”

“We’ll see.” Betos turned her back to her. “It’s why the Commander wants to meet with you.” She continued her pace, and Kon-Mai limped along, trying to catch up.

Thankfully, it was only a few more feet down the hallway that they stopped at a single metal door, upon which Betos knocked. “Commander, I have her.”

The door opened, and Kon-Mai froze.

The woman stood up, her long white hair flowing like it had its own wind current around it. She walked slowly around to the front of her desk and locked eyes with the Assassin, those green eyes glowing with warmth and light and calm. She radiated with ethereal beauty.

“Welcome, Kon-Mai Mordenna.” The woman said. “I am Commander Senuna of XCOM. I’ve been so looking forward to our meeting.”

.

.

.

.

.

(God I’ve been looking forward to this. I’ve decided I’m going to post a new chapter once a week on Saturdays, but I already have five or so written so waiting to post this has been torture.

Now that it’s out, I hope you all enjoy!

Also extra credit to the people who catch the “Shawn of the Dead” reference.)

[kaifireheart-blog]

Crisis thoughts/questions

Watched crisis and have a lot of thoughts moving around in my head. I like crisis.....if I don't think about it with any kind of depth. Because if I think about it really at all it kind of unravels (and I'm not even getting to thinking about it in depth). So this is a list of questions/concerns (I guess would be the wording?) of what happened in crisis mostly focused on the last two episodes.

1. Why were they stuck in the vanishing point for month's and we got no interactions between Kara and Kate or Sara? Like that would have been a great time for some bonding between any of them really but no we skip it all.

1b. Also while we are at it it's a timeless spaceless zone/place why did that human dude (who's name I can't remember mostly because he was literally inconciquencal although he had some good lines) grow a beard? (He may have had one at the start but I'm fairly sure he didn't) Also if he grew one why the frick was Lex still bald with no faical hair? Like what??? I'm so lost.

1c. Barry just took off?? Like the second everyone gets there he just runs away? (To find a way out I get that) but like he's gone a month and they're not sure where he went. (Also time should still not be a thing) He didn't like tell them 'hey I'm gonna look for a way out.' Which on that note if that's why he left wouldn't you want supergirl to go with him maybe like the other direction to get a scope of the area faster? Maybe find the exit. Either way it's he just disappears for a whole ass month. (And they know that because why? When it's a timeless zone.)

2. Juat a quick personal one as I used it in a theory. What happened the the kryptonite that Kate had that was a huge deal up until now??

3. What the hell was the point of Oliver tapping Barry's head and unlocking his potential like??? He was already in the speed force seconds ago so he could do it on his own if he just rested. And seeing as they are in a timeless spaceless zone he could have rested and then hopped to it.

3b. The whole speed force thing was janky anyway but like mostly the way they did it. (Though I did love the cameo by the actor from the movies completely random but I liked it.) I was just really confused, Barry dropped Kara Lex and the chow? Choi? (Whatever) the human off on a planet somehow in time before the anti monitor was created or like was it a different reality that had it's own infant earths? (Not clear at all or I'm supid.) And the whole we got attacked so you have to go find everyone in the speed force made no sense either mostly the 'find them were bonds were foraged.' I figured that ment foraged with him Barry but like they were random moments form the shows and I don't understand. Especially batwomans like what? Pls explain.

4. Oliver died twice why? I don't understand. (Like I get it but also it really dilutes his dead in my opinion.) And you can die as specter? (whatever that even is). Also they stood in a line and thought about how much they were a Paragon? Like I get maybe thinking about how much Hope you have in you but what the heck did like Sara think about? How do think about destiny or humanity or justice? That whole scene was werid as shit, or I'm missing something.

5. I don't even want to get into how merging basically every show together is (while cool) a huge ass mistake and headache. (The implications of that are so massive that I would need to write a whole ass epic novel just to scrach the surface.) Also supergirl got shafted the most with the world changing shit (mostly due to Lex) but like no other show or characters seemed to be changed that much. Also Kal now has two sons because that's something that would change for no reason? (Other than more to write about when he gets his own show.)

There's a lot of other things (in my opinion) but they are small and not worth mentioning. And then there's things where I could go on and on about how they could have done something different but to keep it relatively short I'm gonna end my rant here.

I like crisis I did but I have to just kind of shut down my brain in order to do so. Which isn't hard as it's made for entertainment over making total sence. (The writer me me has many questions)

Anyway what did you guys think? Did you like crisis? Have the same questions as me or different ones?

[charlieswan-squad]

Twilight Rewrite First Sight (ii)

Thick fog was all I could see out my window in the morning, and I could feel the claustrophobia creeping up on me. You could never see the sky here; it was like a prison cage, that after sixteen years was finally locking me in. 

Breakfast with Charlie was a quiet event. He wished me good luck at school. I thanked him, knowing his hope was wasted optimism. Good luck tended to avoid me. Charlie left first, off to the police station that was his wife and family. After he left, I sat at the old square oak table in one of the three unmatching chairs and examined the familiar kitchen, with its dark paneled walls, bright yellow cabinets, and white linoleum floor. Nothing had changed. My mother had painted the cabinets eighteen years ago in an attempt to bring some sunshine into the house. 

Over the small fireplace in the adjoining handkerchief-sized family room was a row of pictures. First a wedding picture of Charlie and my mom in Las Vegas, then one of the three of us in the hospital after I was born, taken by a helpful nurse, followed by the procession of my school pictures up to last year's. Those were embarrassing to look at; missing front teeth, the horrendous haircuts, the braces - I would have to see what I could do to get Charlie to put them somewhere else, at least while I was living here. It was impossible, being in this house, not to realise that Charlie had never gotten over my mom. It made me uncomfortable.

 I didn't want to be too early to school, but I couldn't stay in the house anymore. I donned my jacket - thick and unbreathing like a biohazard suit - and headed out into the rain.

 It was just drizzling still, not enough to soak me through immediately as I reached for the house key that was always hidden under the eaves by the door, and locked up. Only in a town like Forks, would it be normal for the chief of police to keep his house key in such an obvious place. The sloshing of my new waterproof boots was unnerving. I missed the normal crunch of gravel as I walked. I couldn't pause and admire my truck again as I wanted; I was in a hurry to get out of the misty wet that swirled around my head and clung to my hair under my hood. 

 Inside the truck, it was nice and dry. Either Billy or Charlie had obviously cleaned it up, but the tan upholstered seats still smelled faintly of tobacco, gasoline, and peppermint. It was a strange combination, but not totally unpleasant. The engine started quickly, to my relief, but loudly, roaring to life and then idling at top volume. Well, a truck this old was bound to have a flaw. The antique radio worked, a bonus that I hadn't expected.

 Finding the school wasn't difficult, though I'd never been there before. The school was, like most other things, just off the highway. It was not obvious that it was a school; only the sign, which declared it to be the Forks High School, made me stop. It looked like a collection of matching houses, built with maroon-coloured bricks. There were so many trees and shrubs I couldn't see its size at first. Where was the feel of the institution? I wondered nostalgically. Where were the chain-link fences, the metal

detectors? You know, all the homely aspects of a school in a city like Phoenix.

 I parked in front of the first building, which had a small sign over the door reading Front Office. No one else was parked there, so I was sure it was off limits, but I decided I would get directions inside instead of circling around in the rain like an idiot. I stepped unwillingly out of the toasty truck cab and walked down a little stone path lined with dark hedges. I took a deep breath before opening the door.

 Inside, it was brightly lit, and warmer than I'd hoped. The office was small; a little waiting area with padded folding chairs, orange-flecked commercial carpet, notices and awards cluttering the walls, a big clock ticking loudly. Plants grew everywhere in large plastic pots, as if there wasn't enough greenery outside. The room was cut in half by a long counter, cluttered with wire baskets full of papers and brightly colored flyers taped to its front. There were three desks behind the counter, one of which was manned by a large, friendly-looking woman wearing glasses. She was wearing an orange t-shirt, which immediately made me feel overdressed.

 The woman looked up. "Can I help you?"

 "I'm Bella Swan," I informed her, and saw the immediate awareness light her eyes. I was expected, a topic of gossip no doubt. The Chief's daughter, the one with the unstable mom, come home at last.

 "Of course," she said. She dug through a precariously stacked pile of documents on her desk till she found the ones she was looking for. "I have your schedule right here, and a map of the school, Isabella." She brought several sheets to the counter to show me.

 “Um, it’s Bella, please.”

“Oh, sure, Bella.”

 She went through my classes for me, highlighting the best route to each on the map, and gave me a slip to have each teacher sign, which I was to bring back at the end of the day. She smiled at me and hoped, like Charlie, that I would like it here in Forks. I smiled back as convincingly as I could.

 When I went back out to my truck, other students were starting to arrive. I drove around the school, following the line of traffic. I was glad to see that most of the cars were older like mine, nothing flashy. At home I'd lived in one of the few lower-income neighborhoods that were included in the Paradise Valley District. It was a common thing to see a new Mercedes or Porsche in the student lot. The nicest car here was a shiny Volvo, and it stood out. Still, I cut the engine as soon as I was in a spot, so that the thunderous volume wouldn't draw attention to me.

 I looked at the map in the truck, trying to memorise it now; determined I wouldn't have to walk around with it stuck in front of my nose all day. I stuffed everything in my bag, slung the strap over my shoulder, and sucked in a huge breath. It won’t be that bad, I lied to myself feebly. Seriously Bella, it’s just high school, it wasn’t like anyone was going to bite me. I finally exhaled and stepped out of the truck.

 I kept my face pulled back into my hood as I walked to the sidewalk, crowded with teenagers. My plain black jacket didn't stand out, I noticed with relief.

 Once I got around the cafeteria, building three was easy to spot. A large black "3" was painted on a white square on the east corner. I felt my breathing gradually creeping toward hyperventilation as I approached the door. I tried holding my breath as I followed two unisex raincoats through the door.

 The classroom was small. The people in front of me stopped just inside the door to hang up their coats on a long row of hooks. I copied them. They were two girls, one a porcelain-colored blonde, the other also pale, with light brown hair. At least my skin wouldn't be a standout here.

 I took the slip up to the teacher, a tall, balding man whose desk had a nameplate identifying him as Mr. Mason. He gawked at me when he saw my name - not a particularly encouraging response - and of course I felt blood rush to my cheeks. But at least he sent me to an empty desk at the back without introducing me to the class. It was harder for my new classmates to stare at me in the back, but somehow, they managed. 

I kept my eyes down on the reading list the teacher had given me. It was fairly basic: Bronte, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Faulkner. I'd already read everything. That was comforting… and boring. I wondered if my mom would send me my folder of old essays, or if she would think that was cheating. I went through different arguments with her in my head while the teacher droned on.

  When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me.

 "You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?" He looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.  

"Bella," I corrected. Everyone within a three-seat radius turned to look at me.

 "Where's your next class?" he asked.

 I had to check in my bag. "Um, Government, with Jefferson, in building six."

 There was nowhere to look without meeting curious eyes. I wondered if this is how animals felt in the zoo. 

 "I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way…" Definitely over-helpful. "I'm Eric," he added.

 I forced a smile. "Thanks Eric."

 We got our jackets and headed out into the rain, which had picked up. Several people seemed to be walking too close behind us - like they were trying to eavesdrop or something. I hoped I wasn’t becoming paranoid. 

 "So, this is a lot different than Phoenix, huh?" he asked.

"Very.” 

"It doesn't rain much there, does it?”

"Three or four times a year."

"Wow, what must that be like?" he wondered.

"Sunny," I told him.

"You don't particularly look like you grew up in the sunshine." he laughed; most likely referring to the fact that I don’t even have freckles, or that, despite the rain, I wasn’t in shorts and flipflops with a baseball cap or something. I never did fit any of the Arizona-stereotypes.

"Well, you know what they say about vampires."

He studied my face apprehensively, and I stifled a groan. It looked like clouds and a sense of humour didn't mix. A few months of this and I'd forget how to use sarcasm. 

“I’m joking, Eric.” 

He began to laugh too loudly and forcefully to be real. I could still read the confusion in his eyes, suggesting he didn’t understand my joke, but at least he hadn’t run away screaming that the new girl is a freak. Just give it time. 

 We walked back around the cafeteria, to the south buildings by the gym. Eric walked me right to the door, though it was clearly marked.

 "Well, good luck," he said as I touched the handle. "Maybe we'll have some other classes together." He sounded hopeful.

 I smiled at him, in what I hoped was not an encouraging way and went inside.

 The rest of the morning passed in much the same way. My Trigonometry teacher, Mr. Varner, who I would have hated anyway just because of the subject he taught, was the only one who made me stand in front of the class and introduce myself. I stammered, blushed, and tripped over my own feet on the way to my seat. 

 “Nailed it.” I thought snarkily.

 After two classes, I started to recognise several of the faces in each class. There was always someone braver than the others who would introduce themselves and ask me questions about how I was liking Forks. I tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied a lot. At least I never needed the map.

 Every one of my teachers called me Isabella, and though I corrected them immediately, it was depressing. I had decided at the age of three that I was Bella, and had refused to answer to anything else until Mom and Charlie got the message. At home, no one remembered that Bella was just a nickname; but now I had to start over again.  

 One girl sat next to me in both Trig and Spanish, and she walked with me to the canteen for lunch.  She was tiny, several inches shorter than my average height, but her hair was pulled into a very tight ponytail on the top of her head which made up a lot of the difference between our heights. I couldn't remember her name, so I smiled and nodded as she rattled about teachers and classes and what gossip I had to catch up on. I barely listened let alone try to keep up.

 We sat at the end of a full table with several of her friends, who she introduced to me. I forgot all their names as soon as she spoke them. At least I couldn’t complain about the manners here. They all seemed to think it was really cool and brave of her to invite me. Eric, the boy from English, waved at me from across the room, and my neighbours all laughed. I thought it must be a new record for me, already the butt of a joke. But none of them seemed nasty about it. That was something at least.

 It was there, sitting in the canteen, attempting to make conversation with a bunch of strangers, that I first saw them. I was surprised it had taken me so long to notice them.

[incoherentbabblings]

First Date (4/9)

Tim has one more test to pass before Bruce will allow him out as Robin. Like Dick and Jason before him, he has to avoid being caught by Batman for one night. He has already failed once, and is determined to succeed this time. Determination which might not count for much when Stephanie Brown is on the run from the mob. Her mother kidnapped as a way to threaten her father, Stephanie manages to escape and run into Tim. Unable to leave Stephanie alone when she is in need, Tim decides to try and multi-task. All he has to do is rescue Stephanie’s mother, take down the mob, avoid Batman, and get Stephanie to agree to a proper date all in one night. Absolute anarchy ensues.  Ao3 link here!

Bruce wasted no time on the screaming man thirty stories up above Gotham’s streets.

“What do you want with Crystal and Stephanie Brown?”

The man did not seem suitably composed to give a response and continued to screech like a bat out of hell.

Batman dropped him ten stories, then yanked him on the cord back up.  The man was by then crying, tears flooding down his balding head.  His trousers were also wet but Bruce tried valiantly to ignore that issue and repeated his question.

“Arthur Brown owes Ibanescu a loooooottttt of money.”  The man sobbed.   “He had time to pay it back when he got out of jail back in June, but he’s taking too long…” The man began to whimper, and the wet patch grew.  Batman grabbed his hair and shook his head.

“And where have your friends taken Crystal?”

“I don’t know!  We were supposed to call when we had them!  Somewhere in the Narrows I’d guess!”

“How many are out looking for her?”

“Last I knew fifteen?  But there’s maybe more now that the daughter’s gone… We’re not gonna hurt them before Arthur turned up…honest!  They’re just bait!  I nearly had the girl but some kid punched me out and I don’t know where either of them have gone…”

“You know where you’re going?”

“Prison?”

“Hmm.”

And then the man was dropped once more.  Like a yo-yo, he was then tugged up, straight into Bruce’s waiting fist.  The knocked-out man was left for the police to pick up on a nearby rooftop, with more than enough evidence for attempted murder and kidnapping in his shooting efforts towards Stephanie.

“I’m taking at look at what Dragos Ibanescu has been up to recently,” stated Oracle.

Bruce moved up high, getting ready to rooftop hop away from the city centre towards to quieter areas.

“More trafficking I suspect.  Catwoman and he tangled recently.”

“Don’t know what Brown could possibly get from this guy.   Cluemaster just wants his ego stroked right? That’s why he does what he does, so why Ibanescu?”

“…Any luck with the car?”

“Not quite, but if this guy thinks it’s heading to the Narrows that… well it narrows it down a bit.”

“When you find Crystal, Oracle, let me know.  I need to speak to Tim, make sure he goes home.”

“Ah.  About that.”

“What?”

“He and Stephanie left the hospital five or so minutes ago?”

“Which direction did they head in?”

“…Dunno.”

“Oracle.”

“I am busy!  Black cars and Romanian gangsters aren’t going to find themselves.  You’re the detective, track him down yourself –”

“Oracle do not –”

“Okay bye.”  She teased and cut the line.  Bruce was left standing awkwardly atop a pillar, trying to reconnect the line, but Barbara would only be contacted if she wanted to be spoken to.

She was ensuring Tim got a second shot, but he was being pursued by up to twenty men, all fully armed, whilst he had nothing but a backpack filled with energy drinks and a wallet.

Bruce looked down on the crowds.  If they were heading to the Bristol safehouse then they would have gotten on the subway across the Avenue.  He couldn’t follow them down there, but he could access the subway systems, and see who had bought tickets, who had gotten on, and who had gotten off.  He would start there.

Batman jumped off the building, and moved towards the central hub.

Stephanie wasn’t safe with Tim, even if he was taking her somewhere safe, the route to the one safehouse Tim had access to was anything but… Batman needed to track them down, and quickly.  Tim was in over his head, and Stephanie was probably terrified out of her mind.

***

“I need to pee.  Can we use your staff bathroom?”  Stephanie asked.

“No.”  Said the boy, once he’d caught his breath.  He sounded quite certain of his response.  “It’s a staff bathroom, not for customers.”

Tim and Stephanie burst into the empty convenience store with such a bang that the young man behind the counter jumped a mile.  He shuffled whatever magazine he’d been reading under the counter, face red with embarrassment.

Tim sighed and marched up to the counter.  The boy took a nervous step back.

“How much?”

“What?”

“How much will it take for you to let her pee and wash her hair?  One hundred?”

He pulled out his wallet and slammed two fifty-dollar bills down.  The boy stared suspiciously.

“We have CCTV here you know.  If I get caught taking money…”

“Then just let me pee!  Be a good Samaritan!”  Stephanie interjected.  The boy looked increasingly uncomfortable.  He no doubt saw her blood-stained jeans and her messy hair and makeup.  He was right to want to have nothing to do with them.  Stephanie decided to jump to drastic measures.

“Look man, you tell me which is worse: letting a customer pee all over your floor – which I will do if I don’t get my way – or allowing them to pee and clean up in peace.  I have had a hell of a night and I just want to freshen up.  I’m not a druggie, I’m not dangerous… there just aren’t any public bathrooms in Gotham and I’m really far from home still. “

The boy grew green at the thought of cleaning up some teenage girl’s urine, and acquiesced.  

“Okay fine.  Five minutes.”  He lifted the counter to let her through.

“Wait, Steph.”

Stephanie jolted at him calling her by her nickname.  She turned back, eyebrows raised.

Tim had his arm held out.  “Let me hold your bag.”

“Oh!  Thanks, sweetie.”

Tim smiled lopsidedly, but the cashier was unamused.  He refused to give her the key and herded her through to the back.

He returned to find Tim piling high food, drink and other items.  Tallying it up, the cashier eyed Tim suspiciously.  Tim looked up at him and smiled awkwardly.

“I’ve had better first dates.”  He joked.  The cashier did not find it heart-warming and instead scanned the goods aggressively.

“You’re going to get me in trouble.  Thirty-four sixty-nine total.”

Tim laughed uncomfortably and put down one fifty bill.

“You can keep the change.  Honestly.”

The man harrumphed and cashed it in.  Stuffing his bag full, Tim pulled out Stephanie’s phone, and put in the battery once more.  He waited until it switched on, then moved towards the entrance of the shop.  Looking through her contact lists, he saw she didn’t have that many.  Her mother was one, but her father was not, and there were people who were probably a school mate or two, but the entire list fit onto her screen, no scrolling required.  He looked back towards the door, wondering if she were lonely in her day to day life.

Taking a breath, knowing in the back of his head this was going to maybe be a mistake, but it was a risk he needed to take, he dialled for Stephanie’s mother.  At the very least, Oracle would pick up the call, no doubt she would be watching for any activity from Crystal or Stephanie’s phone.  If this risk didn’t help Tim and Stephanie, it would certainly help Barbara and Bruce.  The call rang for a long while, but eventually was picked up, and a man’s voice answered, to which Tim immediately hung up.

Now it was a waiting game, someone – or several someones – would show up soon.

Tim’s stomach started to grow cold.  He was missing the point of the assignment.  He was to stay hidden, to only help others if absolutely necessary, and now he had invited trouble to him.  He could handle himself, he was sure of that, but he still felt naked without his bo staff.  Stephanie he was more unsure of, but he had been on the receiving end of her slaps, she wouldn’t go anywhere without a fight.

Five minutes passed and Stephanie and still had not emerged from the bathroom.

“Can I check on her?”  Tim asked, becoming anxious that the cashier was going to be danger so long as he was out front of the shop.

“If anyone pinches anything whilst I’m in the back with you…”  The boy threatened.

“Sounds fair.”

And he was led through.

Stephanie meanwhile had gone to great efforts of sticking her hair under a tap, running hot water and the sad bar of soap on the sink to get out the vomit which had been haunting her for hours.

She was probably going to get a cold now without any way of drying if, but she grabbed a tea towel from the tiny kitchen and rung out her tangled hair as best she could, running her fingers through then giving up when they’d hit a knot.

She looked in the mirror and wet a paper towel, dabbing her cheeks to clear off the runny eyeline and mascara.  She had had to scrub a little, so her cheeks looked red and sore when she was done, but at least she didn’t look like such a mess anymore.  More like someone who had just come from swimming practice rather than a shooting casualty on the run.

Speaking of shootings…

She worried about her leg.  The glue might not have held up under the pressure of leaping and running and jumping that she had done.  She couldn’t feel the blood flowing down her leg anymore, but the bandage just might be doing its job.

Rummaging through various cupboards in the back, she found the first aid kit, went into the bathroom and shut the door.  Pulling down her jeans and plopping herself down on the toilet, she tentatively unwrapped her bandages.

Sure enough, at one end the skin had started to split apart, and blood was oozing out.  Steph breathed out a curse, then rummaged through the kit, hoping to find something that could close the wound.

It would be messy, and she was bound to have a gnarly scar, but she needed to get it closed whilst the skin was still numb.

She was actually quite good at sewing, for one reason or another.  She found a needle and thread and some disinfectant wipes.

It would have to do.

She set to work when Tim burst in.

“Jesus!” Stephanie shouted, nearly stabbing herself in the wrong place.  “Knock first!”

Whatever he was going to say didn’t come out.  Instead he shut the door and knelt next to her.  Her embarrassment at being caught in her undies faded at his concerned look.  Tentatively, he touched her leg, and she suppressed a shiver.

“It’s opened up?”

She sighed and looked down at her sliced leg.  “It’s okay, I can stitch it.”

“I can help?”

“No.  No, it’s quicker if I do it myself.  I wanna just get it done before my leg’s not numb anymore.”

He watched her concentrated expression as she began stitching.  Her fingers quickly grew bloody, but she was right.  She was quick at sewing, and fairly neat at it too.  She wiped away the blood with some wipes, and Tim helped her hold the bandage tight and she reapplied it.

“You’ve done this before haven’t you?”

“…Once or twice.”  She replied reluctantly.

“I heard, back at the hospital, about your forehead –”

“It’s fine.”  Her tone was short, but not rude.  Her defensiveness made Tim feel like his heart was frozen.  A jagged lump grew in his throat, and he realised he’d made a mistake.

Tim stayed knelt on the floor as she shimmied her jeans back on and washed her hands.  She turned back to Tim, who had a slightly haunted look on his face.

“What’s wrong?”  She asked, voice soft.

“I made a mistake.”

“What?  Tim…”

“We need to go.”  And he rose, opening the door to reveal the cashier far too close to have been doing anything but listening in.  Tim tried not to make a face at him.

“Call the police.”

“What?”  The boy sneered at them.

“Bad men are following us.  They’re heading here.  Hide back here and call the police.”

He didn’t move, and Tim felt his temper rise.

“Do it!  This isn’t a joke!  How do you think she got the blood on her?”

The boy looked at Stephanie, and seeing the utter lack of humour in either of their expressions, he pulled out his phone.

“We’ll get out here.  Thank you for letting us rest up for a second.”

And Tim pulled Stephanie past the cashier, heading back out front to leave.

“Wait wait wait wait wait.”  She puffed as they exited the store, zipping her coat back up.  “What’s going on?  You said we were going to find out where my mom is?  We need to interrogate one of them ‘cause unless you –”

“I got in over my head.  It’s too dangerous.”

“What?  No-one’s even here!”

“But they will be!  You’re too badly hurt and I didn’t think it through!”

It was the first time he had really shouted at her, but it wasn’t from anger, rather from fright.  She could hear how scared he was.  She stared him down, not moving with any of his tugs to her arm.  An uncomfortable moment past them by.  His free fist clenched around something, but she couldn’t see what he was holding. Something he’d bought in the shop probably.  She briefly thought he might hit her with it, but she quickly quashed that thought.  She had to constantly remind herself, Tim wouldn’t do that.

He wouldn’t.

The sound of a car racing around the corner made both of turn to look down the street.

“No.”  Muttered Tim.  He pushed Stephanie behind him then, uncomfortably aggressive, and she stumbled with a cry.  A big black SUV pulled up and the pair were met by two men, a gun pointed at them each.  Tim began pulling Stephanie into the alleyway.  They’d reached a fair way down when a warning shot whizzed past their heads.  Tim instinctively grabbed Stephanie, pressing his body in front of hers.

“Don’t try anything!”  One of the yelled.  “Turn around.”

Keeping Stephanie behind him still, they both turned to face the men, who stood at the entrance to the alleyway.  The other, the fatter of the two, pulled out his phone and rang a number, confirming that they had Stephanie in hand.

Tim shakily held a hand up, trying to deescalate the situation.

Stephanie is seemed determined to do the opposite.

“Where’s my mom?  Where’s my dad?”

“Get in the car and you’ll be with both of them.  Out of the way, kid.”  The man indicated for Tim to step aside, out of range of the guns.  Tim supposed he was being kind.  He shook his head.

“Look kid move!  We’re sick and tired of chasing this girl down, and I get it, not your fault that your dad’s a massive fuck up Stephanie, but we have a job to do.  Get in the car.  We need you in one piece.”

One of the men crept forward, getting closer and closer, gun held out, level with Tim’s head.  Tim didn’t say anything, and just glared at the man, like he was waiting for something.  The hand that was clenched behind his back twitched anxiously.

The man clicked the gun.

“Don’t!”  Stephanie throw herself forward, knocking over both Tim and the man.  The other guy, further back, fired a shot that went wide and bounced off the metal pipes that stretched down the damp walls.

Tim swung out from the floor, knocking one man off his feet.  Rising up quick, he threw whatever he’d been holding at the other man.  With a swear he flinched, and Tim rushed over, knocking the gun out of his hand.

Stephanie rolled over to the man who had threatened Tim and punched his face.  Hard.  His grip on his gun loosened, and she managed to wrestle it away from him.  She opened it up and scattered the cartridges.

Left with an empty gun and a lot of adrenaline, she began to pound the guys face in the pistol.  She only got so far towards knocking him out, as he managed to tug her hair so painfully she felt strands be ripped out.  She screeched and jolted upwards, kicking him before he could rise.

She looked over at Tim, who had pinned the fatter man to the floor.  The arm was twisted at an awful angle, and she could see where blood was starting to spread on the dirty floor.  He was yelling something at him, more full of anger than she had heard from him so far this night, but she couldn’t make it out.  Her ears were ringing from the echoing gun shot, and her breathing was so laboured and heartbeat so loud her head felt like it was throbbing.

A sharp, stabbing pain made her leg give out then.  The man she’d been standing over punched her in her shot wound, and the nerve endings vibrated the pain through her calf.  She cried out and fell down.  Her head was then picked up and smacked against the unforgiving floor.  Vision blurring and sparking, she flailed, kicking the man straight in the groin.  He gasped and leaned forward, giving her enough leverage to smack him hard again.  His head connected with the wall, and with a sharp snap, he fell still, chest rising in short puffed out breaths.

“Tim?”  She instinctively called out, rolling on to her stomach.  The pain in her weak leg prevented her from getting up on her feet just yet.  Tim was still perched over his foe.

“Who’s your boss?”  Tim bit out.

The man writhed, not willing to give up his pride to a teenager.

“Fuck you.”

Tim smashed the guys head against the floor, to which he swore once more, even louder.

“Tell me!”

“Ibanescu!  God fucking…”

Stephanie managed to crawl over to their pair.  Tim took his eyes off the man, but not for too long, to see how hurt she was.  She looked betrayed and horrified, but Tim couldn’t understand why.

“Why was my dad working with him?”  She asked.

“More like for him.  Your dad’s got a massive debt kiddo.”

Stephanie’s eyes grew wet, and Tim pressed his knee on the man’s neck.

“Where is her mother?”

“Told you,” The man choked out.  “Don’t know.  You or the police won’t find her.”

“Batman –”

“Batman has bigger problems than your mom.”

She didn’t argue, and Tim watched from the corner of his eye and she seemed to retreat into herself.  She believed this random guy, and not Tim’s constant reassurances.

Tim felt his anger spike at her self-perception of unimportance.

“How many more are searching for her?”

“There’s twenty.  All across the island, looking just for her.”

Tim’s muscles froze.  God he’d messed up.  Two he could deal with, maybe even four.  But he wasn’t Batman, he was just a kid with some training and an injured girl to protect.

He needed to end this conversation and get her hidden once more.

“Tell your boss he can’t have her when you wake up.”

“What?”

And Tim gave such a hard punch Stephanie saw the man’s nose crunch, the cartilage shattering.

He pulled himself off the ground, then leaned over to Stephanie, raising her from the floor.

“We’re gonna pinch their car, okay?  Get down the road a bit.  I wanna check your head.  But we need to leave.  Now.”

“One more second.  Okay?”  She said.  Limping, Stephanie rummaged through both men’s belongings, looking for anything of use.  Both of their phones were locked, but she could see their more recent messages on the screen when or if they came in.

“Don’t bother with taking them, they’ll be tracked.”

“One second Tim.”

The phone’s screen was shattered as Stephanie ran her thumb over it.  

A message was popped up on the locked screen.  The entire text wasn’t visible, but she caught the jist all the same.

“Mom’s in the Narrows!”  And she dropped the phone, the back breaking off as she did so.  "Don’t know where but…“

“It narrows it down.  Hah.  That’s good.”

Tim poked his head into the driver’s seat of the car, seeing that the keys were still present.  He snorted a laugh at how easy it was.  He turned off the GPS and Bluetooth, and gestured Stephanie to get in as well.

She looked back, only to see the cashier from earlier was staring at them through the glass of the shop window, his mouth wide open.  She blushed and quickly turned away, crawling into the passenger seat.  Before she had pulled the door shut Tim was pulling away, heading  in the opposite direction that the men had arrived.  He took a few random turns here and there, always heading towards their original destination.  Stephanie gripped the dashboard tight, unable to even put on her seat belt.  She tried to calm down, but found she couldn’t.

Eventually he pulled up in a dark corner of the city and switched the car off.

They sat in the dark, still breathing heavy.

Stephanie’s breathing wobbled, and became shallow.  Tim reached over and cradled her face.

“Steph…”

Stephanie began to cry softly.

“I can’t do this.”

Her breathing spiked, and her tears fell faster.  “My dad has been working for a human trafficker.  I didn’t think he could go so low and I don’t know where my mom is I don’t know what to do and I’m trusting you but I’m scared of how much I liked that violence and what if I’m just like him,”  Her tears made her voice wet and slurred, and she sniffed, undignified and distraught, as the reality of what her father was doing sunk in.

“Steph.”

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this, you don’t deserve this, god I’m sorry…”

“Steph.  It’s my choice.  I want—”

“But it’s not mine!” She cut him off.  “I didn’t choose any of this, I’m just getting pulled around and hiding!  I’m not getting a say in anything!”

She was becoming hysterical, Tim could see, and he frantically wiped away large tears from her red cheeks.  She looked at him then, the affection being all too much for her.  Tim watched as her eyes widened a fraction, like an idea had suddenly occurred to her.

“Stephanie…”  He muttered once more.  She seemingly made up her mind with a huff, and Tim looked her quizzically.  Almost as if from a third-party perspective he watched, practically in slow motion, as she leaned forward and kissed him.

Oh.  Okay.  This is definitely what I wanted.

[borusawa]

1 New Message

A/N: Here’s the chapter one of the story. A little big, I know. You can read my other works in my masterlist. (I know I posted twice, but it’s because i’m testing something.)

Beta reader: @abbypdg again, cause she is my baby.

Warnings: As I said, this book is hated mature but this chapter has nothing abnormal, only some cursing and a lot of angst (but this is only the beginning).

Word count: 5,398

<  Prologue                   Chapter 2  >

CHAPTER 1: Date Nights and Ghosts

3:23AM Idiot

We gotta talk. Wait for me if you finish

the test first, ‘kay?

Now Me

Okay.

That message was definitely a new thing. What could it possibly be? I tried not to think about it too much and focus on the day ahead instead. But it was hard. All I could think of was the subject of the talk as tried to keep myself from imagining it too far. I dressed up and went to the kitchen with my best blank face, afraid of Chocho’s questions. To my relief, she wasn’t up yet and I left the apartment before having to face her. Chocho was a great friend but too interested in others’ lives to her own good.

Only the teacher was in the class when I got there and I politely greeted him good morning. He was a middle age man with a beer kind of belly and a bad-tied tie. The sun was reflecting right on his bald head and I hold back the laugh.

“Always the early bird, right Sarada?”

I tried to laugh at his comment but instead an awkward sound left from my mouth and I covered it up with a cough. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t be so serious. It’s only the two of us here.”

I furrowed my brows. What? “…Okay?” I took my place, secretly hoping for someone to appear soon, and I went through my stuff, taking my notes and giving them a quick glance before the test. To my happiness or to my despair, the first person to appear was Boruto. His hair was crazy and the bag in his eyes told a story of someone who hadn’t slept enough last night, what I only could deduce by the time he had sent the message. I wondered why, though.

“Good morning, sunshine. You look like a broken Barbie today.” I said, seeing him rub his eyes with the right hand and taking his seat by my side. “What happened to you after I left last night?”

“Nothing.” He smirked. This guy was up to no good and I knew it.

“Hey, I know that nothing. I use that nothing.” I smirked back.

“Let’s talk about this later, okay?” His serious tone surprised me a little and I took that as my cue to shut up.

“Fine.” I answered quickly, turning to face my notes once again. What was wrong with him?

Soon, the class was crowded and we started the test. Boruto finished before me and when I left the class my phone had a message from him.

10:42AM Idiot

I’m in the cafeteria waiting for you.

Now Me

I’m going.

It wasn’t hard to find him, his blond hair worked well to highlight his presence. He spotted me and waved. I couldn’t wait to know what he needed to tell me. I sat across the table smiling, placing my stuff in the chair beside me.

“How was your test, Sarada?”

“I think it went well. I had reviewed most of its content so I’m confident. What about yours?”

He stared down while smiling. “I have no idea, but I guess it went okay.” He took a sip from his large cup of coffee that, until now, went unnoticed by me.

“What happened last night?” I giggled to relax the tension between us.

All the while I pondered if it was a serious or a normal topic but either way, something had to explain his current behavior, the night up and the smile playing on his lips. I wished it was something about Shikadai and his mother because that was an easy thing to deal with. I hoped it had nothing to do about me or him or, worst of all, us. I had feelings for him for as long as I could remember, since we used to play together as kids and he would make fun of me for my glasses or I made fun of him for his, most of the times, stupid words. We grew up together as family, friends and sometimes border lining the “more”. I just wanted him to correspond my feelings but at the same time, I had no intention of declaring my love first. Love is kind of weird and I was weirder. My mom used to say that I got that from my dad, but who knows.

“I didn’t go home after leaving you.”

I furrowed my brows, all ghost of smiling left my face completely. I was completely taken aback by his words, I wanted to pretend it was okay but my body wasn’t cooperating at all, so I just stood there, staring at him seriously, seeing that he was avoiding my gaze but I couldn’t imagine why.  “ Y-You… didn’t? Where did you go then?”

“I got to tell you from the start.” He sighed before kept on going. “There’s this girl I like really much. I wanted to ask her out but I didn’t know how.” My heart started racing, my mouth went dry and my eyes widened, all this in one blink. Who was he talking about? Was it about me? “So, yesterday I gather the courage to finally ask her out but…”

I could not hide my curiosity anymore. I wished he was more straightforward. “But what?”

“But I went her house after leaving you and she wasn’t there.” So no, it wasn’t me.

I could deal with that, right? I totally could deal with that. It looked like he needed me right at that moment. He needed his best friend and I was willing to be there for him even with my heart shattered in pieces. I could collect myself later; what I couldn’t do was avoiding the hurt.

And I was hurt. More than any other moment in my life.

More than when my parents had started to fight every day and I thought they were going to divorce. More than when the guy I had my first kiss had started dating my closest friend back in elementary school. More than when I had noticed that no relationship in my life would work while I still had feelings for Boruto. More than when I gave up trying to have a normal date life because I knew I would only hurt innocent people bringing them to my mess of feelings. No, nothing compared. His words were the statement that we would never work out together and even though I expected something, it wasn’t that. I expected more for what our friendship meant and it was my fault. I just thought maybe I… I mean, we could be more than friends somehow. I was clearly mistaken.

“Wait, who is she?” I asked, holding my feelings inside me in the best Sarada’s way possible.

“You don’t know her yet, but I’m hoping you’ll know it soon.” He managed to stare back at me, his eyes clouded by a feeling I couldn’t recognize. “Anyway, I messaged her and she told me she was in her way home from her parents’ house or so. When she got home we talked for hours. I felt so good around her and I got the feeling that she felt the same around me last night, so I asked her out and she accepted.”

“I see.” It was my turn to avoid his gaze, in order to keep him from seeing something I wasn’t able to hide. The truth is I wanted to cry right there and now, but I needed to be as strong as I could be. I was the best pretender I’ve ever met. And I intended to maintain that title.

“I have a date today and I need your help.”

In that moment, while he was looking at me with bags under his eyes for staying up all night talking with another girl, and not less but the one he liked, I knew I wasn’t going to have my cute and easy life story, where everything goes as planned. And I knew Boruto wasn’t for me. We were just friends and after so many years waiting, I thought I should just... give up.

Skip that date and go out with me instead. “I’d help you through anything. You can rely on me.” His grin went wider with my words. What the fuck is this guy doing to me? "Can I know her name at least?"

"Yuki. She is awesome, you are going to love her she's-"

Exactly when he was starting to make a speech about the Yuki girl, his phone rang, and looking at the screen he raised the left hand for me to wait while he answered the call. During his talk, my mind wandered to what this Yuki girl could possibly look like to make Boruto be so crazy about her. His eyes sparkled when mentioned her name and I had never saw him that way before. She was the first girl he was really showing interest about, I didn’t even know if he ever had others and I thought if there were others, they weren’t important enough for him, otherwise he would tell me. I was still his best friend so I could tell Yuki was a new feeling for Boruto. And that was what scared me the most.

He turned his phone off and sighed. “I gotta go.”

“Something happened?” I asked with my voice filled with worry.

“Well, I haven’t told you till this point because I wasn’t sure, but everything is settled and this weekend I’ll be moving to your building.” He couldn’t hold back a smile and I was just shocked and confused. “Yeah, actually not only me but the guys. Mitsuki heard from Chocho about the empty apartment in your floor and we figured it would be nice.”

“Who are ‘the guys’?” I raised a brow. The only roommate Boruto had in the moment was Shikadai.

“Mitsuki, Shikadai and I. There’s a fourth guy but I don’t know much about him. All I know is that he’s friends with Shikadai and used to live alone but decided to have roommates now. Shikadai said that he’s more a rich spoiled brat than me, so I can’t wait to meet him and apparently that’s where I’m going now.” He hurried and stood up.

“Wait, who called you?”

“Shikadai.” He paused for a moment. “What you think about I stepping in your house later?”

“Yeah, sure.” And he left me alone with that.

“See you later!”

The whole deal about his moving got Yuki out of my mind for a little moment, but it came back as soon as Boruto walked away. The last thing I wanted was to be alone with my thoughts, yet I was sitting in a crowded place with a lot going on in my own world, too busy to notice anyone close to me. I was resting my face on my arm, totally over the table and glaring nowhere. So when someone sat in Boruto’s former seat I didn’t pay attention until the person started talking to me.

“Earth to Sarada. You got to stop spacing out.” Mitsuki said. “What happened? You look upset.” Mitsuki unwrapped his sandwich and my stomach started to rumble, what I took as a signal to eat.

“Nothing.” Why was hiding my first reaction to any question about my feelings?

“Why is hiding your first answer to everything?” You got me.

I glared at him with brows knit together. “Since when you know shit about human behavior?”

“Since Chocho made me watch Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”

“I’ve been there.” I rolled my eyes, what apparently made Mitsuki giggle.

“It’s a useful show if you intend to know something about crazy rich girls.” He took a sip from his juice. “But let’s not quit the topic. Why are you upset?”

He started to eat his sandwich and I start to ponder either tell him the truth or not. He wasn’t making too much pressure, but my guess it was because he knew if he pressed me, he couldn’t get anything. Smart bastard. But the truth is he only wants me to be fine, he’s not asking for curiosity, Mitsuki wanted to help.

I sighed after a long silence. “It’s Boruto.”

“Boruto again?”

“You sounded like my mother. That was weird.” I pointed with narrowed eyes.

“Sorry. Keep going.”

“It’s Boruto and that Yuki girl.” I sighed again. Talking to Mitsuki was almost like removing a weight from my shoulders.

He stopped eating to stare at me. “So… You found out about her, hum.”

“Yeah, I…” Realization suddenly hit me. “Wait, you knew about her?”

“Yes, you’re not the only friend Boruto has, you know? And Chocho also knows because I told her. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sumire knows too. You know how Chocho is.” I was shocked. Why were they hiding it from me? I was the only one allowed to hide things.

“So everyone knew and nobody told me? Why?” I throw myself against the back of chair, surprised with my friends’ betrayal.

“Chocho said it was better to spare your feelings, Shikadai said that love was too troublesome and that he was happy for not liking anyone and I just didn’t disagree with any of them.”

“Then, why Boruto didn’t tell me before?”

“He just shared with me because I asked and I guess Shikadai know because he knows the girl.” He started to eat again and I got that as the end of the talk. My stomach was aching at that point so I decided to head back home to eat something since I had the rest of the day free.

“Shouldn’t you be meeting your new roommate?”

Mitsuki face palmed himself. “Fuck. I knew I was forgetting something. Thanks, I totally forgot that when I saw you all sad.” I giggled while Mitsuki grabbed his things. When he finished taking everything, he stood up but stopped before leaving. “You shouldn’t be worrying about Yuki, though. Boruto will come back to you eventually.” And then he left, smiling and running right after. Back? He was never mine in first place.

I took my phone and sent a message to Chocho.

Now Me

R u home?

Now Chocho

Yes

It was surprising how Chocho always answered right away. Apparently, no matter where she was or what she was doing, she always had her phone in hands and I could trust that in any moment of my life. I headed home by walking as soon as I received her message. I didn’t want to overthink but, what option did I had? I needed to get my things clear before talking to anyone else. It took good fifteen minutes to finally get home, my mind replaying the talk with Boruto over and over like a broken disc, reminding me how things would change from that moment. It was inevitable. He was happy and I was broken, unable to say when I would be fine again but not even thinking about it. I wanted to feel the sorrow because that feeling was what would remind me that everytime Boruto and I were together, he didn’t belong to me, and even when we gravitated around each other, we would never attract, because he is always running away from me. I gave up waiting, there was no reason for.

With the keys on the door, I prepared myself to anything. All my willpower was required to face my roommates’ possible questions. I sighed and opened the door carefully. To my pleasure, an awesome food smell entered my nose and by that I just knew Sumire was home. As I said at some point, she was the sane of the house most of the times and probably responsible for the delicious smell.

I left my bag in the couch and headed to the kitchen with my fake smile ready. “Oh my god, I’m so hungry.”

“Hi, Sarada. Welcome home!”

“Thank you, Sumire. How are you? Long time no see. ”

She giggled. “I’m fine, and you?”

“Hn… I heard that you slept with your new boyfriend last night.” I smirked, expecting her reaction. The girl went all red but stood mixing her pans. I sat on one of the chairs of the four-place table in the center of our kitchen, resting my arms and head on the table. “How was it?”

“S-saradaaa!!” She stuttered, her hands covering her face.

“It’s okay, girl, we are all adults here, and you probably did nothing I didn’t do already. You will need to talk with us eventually, though. Not sharing any details, just be more open about it.” Be open. That was an advice I should try to follow at some point. Hn, naah. Either way my words were no use to relax her so I decided to change the subject. “So, when will we meet the guy?” She calmed down and faced me.

Sumire sighed. “Today is Friday so…” she made a pause and looked up, like she was thinking about it, but when she spoke again, she looked at me fiercely. “Never.” And she turned back to look for something in the cabinets. I raised myself from the table, narrowing my eyes at her answer.

“Wha-” My question was totally ignored since Chocho entered the kitchen calling my name.

“Sarada, are you okay?” Chocho walked directly to me, grabbing my hand while I confusedly watched her. I saw in my eye corner that Sumire was smiling. I bet she was happy I wasn’t asking anything about her boyfriend anymore.

“How did you know I was here and why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“I saw your bag on the couch, obviously.” She carefully sat beside me. “I was talking to Mitsuki.” Her tone made everything clear.

“Oh.” We went all silence. What were we supposed to say anyway? She knew what I was feeling and I knew that she didn’t want me to feel that way, but none of us could avoid the fact.

“What happened? I’m kinda lost here.” Sumire said, wiping her hands and getting closer to sitting with us after turning off the stove.

My gaze was fixated on the floor and I tried my best not to give in to my feelings. “She found out about Yuki.” Chocho answered in my place.

“Oh.” They both directed pity looks at me. I wished they didn’t because that made me feels worse.

“I’m okay, really. Stop worrying.” I shook my head and put an annoyed face. “It’s not that surprising, you know. He doesn’t like me; he would like someone at some point.” We fell silence once again.

Chocho’s face lighted up as she remembered something. “You know what we should do?” Sumire and I exchanged glances; we knew that nothing good was coming for that. “There’s that party today-“

“No.” I calmly said before she finished her sentence.

“At least let me finish.”

“No, Chocho, that’s not what I need. I need some time alone to think.” My stomach rumbles again. “And I need to eat.” I stood up and went to see the pans, my back turned to them. I took a deep breath and I felt a lonely tear in my right cheek. I knew my friends noticed, they always noticed, but both Chocho and Sumire knew better than bother me about my feelings. Previous experiences taught them that the best thing was to let me handle that in my way. I coughed before talking, just to make sure my voice was bold when I spoke again. “What did you make, Sumire?”

“I-I made spaghetti.”

I turned to see them. “Thank you, girls.”

The lunch went fine, despite Chocho constant questions about Sumire and her night with the mysterious boyfriend, which made the innocent girl almost faint. When we finished, I told the girls I was going to my room and maybe nap, but the truth was that I wasn’t planning to. I entered my room locking the door behind me. I couldn’t keep my pain inside anymore. I took my spectacles away from my face so my tears could freely run through my face. Sobbing, I placed my glasses on my night stand and sat on my bed hugging my legs. Should love be this hard? My mind wandered to places I never want to relive, memories of all the moments I thought that was more, and the times we only had each other for comforting. I wondered if they meant nothing to him, if he couldn’t see the things I saw, if I should have told him my feelings years ago, if he would reject me easily. The ifs were killing me, and I didn’t know what to do despite crying. Was that impossible for me to be loved? To be wanted? Dumb me thought I had a chance with him, dumb me thought that I was nearly enough for him. For a moment, I wondered if he ever felt like I was feeling at that moment, if he ever felt like his world was falling down into madness, into a sea full of tears and sorrow. No, he was too good for that.

At some point though, I fell asleep and I was woken up by a fucking loud music coming from my living room and I stood up fucking furious, opening the fucking door with rage in my eyes and killing intent.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS FUCKING GOING ON HERE?” My eyes weren’t quite opened yet and when I came back to put my glasses, I saw a perfect set of teeth grinning and blue eyes playfully staring at me in my room’s door. I stared at him while he pressed the turn off button of the remote in his hands, making  the annoying sound to stop, making me hear some laughing coming from the living room. That’s what will kill me: Rage. “What was that?”

“Oh, so you can complete a sentence without the f word.” Boruto’s grin grew wider. That boy loved to tease me and I hated it with all my heart.

“Fuck you, asshole. Where the f… Where are Chocho and Sumire?” I sat on my bed, rubbing my eyes and fixing my glasses.

“Chocho is in the couch with Mitsuki, obviously laughing her ass off because of your reaction and Sumire... To be honest I don’t know, she wasn’t here when I came.”

“Odd. She’s being out a lot lately.”

“Must be because of her-“ Boruto got closer to sat by my side.

“Her boyfriend, I know.” I looked at him. Why is this boy being the topic lately?

“How do you feel being the only single roommate? Feeling left out already?” He said playfully, a smirk on his face and his index finger trying touching my side. I wasn’t that playful though. At that point, I wasn’t able to hear the laughing outside anymore. I wonder what are Chocho and Mitsuki doing to be so silent.

“Get out.”

Boruto furrowed his eyebrows, his face turning into a confused expression. “What?”

I pointed to the door. “Get. Out.”

He didn’t show any intentions to move so I started to push him to the door, so he started to laugh and shouted. “No, Sarada, please stop! Let me stay! I’ll stop teasing you, I swear!” I stopped pushing him and he spoke low and slowly. “Please, I need your help.”

I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes. “Spill it.”

He sighed and motioned for us to sit in the bed again. I sat but my expression remained still. “I need dating advice.”

“YOU NEED WHAT?” I started to laugh hard, throwing myself back and hitting my head on the wall but I didn’t even mind. “You are asking the single one for advising?” He stood still, staring seriously at me, which made me frown. “Wait, you’re serious?”

“Yeah, you are the one that knows me better and since you’re the only one single, you have a clearer idea of what you’d want on a first date.”

I pondered for a minute. “Do you remember the last time I went on a date?”

“Wasn’t that when your father appeared in the middle of the movie and dragged you out?”

I closed my eyes, my mind brought to life that moment again, even though sometimes it popped up spontaneously in my nightmares. “Yes. And that was sophomore year in high school. Now we are sophomores in college, don’t you see that?  I know nothing about dating, that thing doesn’t work for me. One night stands, that’s what I know about.” That was all I let myself feel for another humans: physical attraction and nothing more. I didn’t want to play with people’s feelings because I was in love with someone that didn’t love me back but still, girls gotta eat. If papa knew that though, he would eat me alive. With only a glare.

“What you don’t know about dating, you compensate with your knowledge about me and my terrible behavior. Let’s start simple, what should I try to avoid?”

“You shouldn’t go then. You’d need to avoid being you.” I smirked and he raised a brow. “Okay, seriously now. Try not to rush things, you need to calm down and take your time to everything. To speak, to walk. Don’t scream and please don’t share your daddy issues just yet. If uncle Naruto calls you during your date, act normally without the scandal you usually do.”

He huffed. “I don’t do a scandal.” I stared at him. “I’ll try to avoid it, then.”

“You should seriously don’t talk too much about yourself too. Think about things you want to know about her before going and ask her them.” I sighed and closed my eyes. I couldn’t avoid to imagine how our first date would be like, if he would try to be nicer just for me or if he would be the same Boruto as always. Being a good friend sucks sometimes. “Compliment her, but not too much. Laugh at her jokes and help her with any struggle. That’s pretty much it.” Well, my advice was sure way better than I expected it to be. I opened my eyes only to see that he was watching me with such a cute smile on his lips. “What?”

“See? I knew you would be helpful.” I put my tongue out and giggled. “I gotta go now, my date is in one hour.” He sighed. “But first, I’ll need to ask one more favor.”

“Spit it, pretty boy.”

“Tomorrow we’ll start the moving out so... maybe, if you are in the mood, can you step by at my apartment and help us? The new guy will be there too, you’ll have the chance to meet him then. His name is Inojin, by the way. Apparently Namida, Denki and Iwabe will be there too. And you know that girl that was in love with Shikadai a while ago?”

“Which girl?” I narrowed my eyes. Despite being completely uninterested in any living creature, Shikadai sure was attractive to a lot of weird girls. Maybe it was because of his intelligence. Whatever.

“The less weird of them all, the one with blonde hair, that’s always alone or with that really good looking guy, Shinki, and the other.”

Oh, I remembered Shinki. He sure caught every girl eye and yet, the girl who was always with him, fell in love with Shikadai. Maybe that’s why they were friends. I thought I should learn from her. “Oh, you mean Yodo. Yeah, I know. What about her?”

“I called her too since is practically a get together and a farewell to the old apartment, right? I wish he gave her more attention, though.”

“Aren’t you cute trying to make everyone to have a relationship?” I awed.

“You’d be the next but it’s hard when you’re so denial with your feelings.”

All I did was to make an annoyed face. “HAHAHA now go. Otherwise you will be late for your date.” I stood up with arms crossed and ready kick him out of my room.

When he got to the door, he turned to me and smirked. “Fine, fine, I’m going. But you cannot avoid this talk forever.”

“I can, and I will.” We smiled to each other, we both knowing the other unspoken words. He knew that I was saying that I didn’t want to do that and I could almost hear him saying that I should stop being stubborn.

As soon as he left the room, I closed the door but I still heard his scared yell from the other room. ‘Mitsuki? What the hell is this? You two could be in her room. Ewww.’ I giggled all by myself. Wrong thoughts came to my mind again, but I was ready to put them behind me for a little so I went to the living room.

The rest of the day went by with a lot of my complaints towards Chocho and Mitsuki behavior. A part of me was happy that they were outside her room because if they were inside and if I was hearing wherever they were doing there, it could’ve been worse. I wondered how much this kind of problem I would have to deal with now that the boys were moving to our building. Gladly, they stopped when Sumire got home because there was a possibility that if they kept acting like teenagers in our living room she could die with a stroke, so Mitsuki finally went to his own home. Seriously I had no idea how Sumire managed to have a boyfriend and stay alive at the same time. We ordered pizza only by Chocho’s pressure and watched a girly movie, again, because of Chocho’s pressure. We were used to it though, so no stress. And the movie was good after all, disregarding how much Chocho was dissatisfied to have no company to the party she had mentioned earlier that day.

We all said good night and went to our beds and I took my phone as soon as I got inside.

2 new messages.

In the deep of my heart, I had an idea of who could be and I wasn’t ready to read, yet I pressed the notification.

22:34PM Idiot

Saradaaaaaaaaa. The date was

awesome and probably we will have a

second I’m so happy

22:34PM Idiot

Yuki is great, thanks for your advice

Now Me

You’re welcome. If it’s not a bother to

ask, how do you feel about her?

Before he could answer, I felt water in my cheeks again. I wanted to know his feelings but at the same time, I didn’t. It took a while before my cellphone vibrate again.

Now Idiot

I don’t know, but I’m excited to find out

It’s late so, good nite, ttyl

Now me

Good night.

I was already sick of feelings. Why did I keep acting like it's worthy? I had to find someone else. I stood up and headed to Chocho’s room. I knocked the door twice.

“Come in.” I heard her, so I opened the door carefully. The lights were still on and she had her attention on the computer, already wearing her pajamas.

“Are you still up to that party?” She just gave me a big grin and I knew the answer.

“Let’s party girl!” She stood up with a dance that made me laugh.

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to hell because of our friendship.” And with that, I went to my room to get ready too.

…

I woke up with a fucking headache. My body was completely sweaty from the sunlight hitting my body. Wait, sunlight? My room’s window was on the opposite side from the sun. I opened one eye slowly, afraid of what I might see. I was in a white room and white curtains dancing from the breeze entering from an open window, the same one that was letting the sunlight warm my body. I opened my other eye and looked down to myself. Okay, I was naked. Filled with worry, I turned to see the other side of the bed. Blond hair filled the pillow and the muscle body told me that it belonged to a guy. Well, that wasn’t my house, I have never seen that room before and definitely, I didn’t know this naked guy by my side. Where the fuck was I?

[xelamoc]

Last Night

Another dream prompt. More about monsters and stuff the more you get into it. Don’t really have a whole plot to it, but the first part was interesting enough that I might do some sort of second part if I feel like holding onto this idea. We will see how into detail I get into this. 

There was a house that everyone knew of in the middle of the forest behind the high school, where we weren’t allowed to go. The high school staff would tell us that sometimes kids would go in there and get lost and would never be seen again. I called BS on that, but they actually had video evidence of people going into the woods and the staff had missing reports of every kid that went in there. After that, I didn’t really care to go into the forest, but the group of teenagers I hung out with at the time were very interested in seeing the house in the middle of the forest. As hesitant as I was, I wasn’t going to let them just go on their own. So, I guess I was going with them. There were 5 of us all together; 2 boy, both one grade above us and 3 girls, including me, all of us juniors. We all grew up together. We figured the boys would try to pull some prank on us, a simple one just to joke around. But whatever they had planned, we didn’t get to laugh about because we found it. A house in the middle of a large field. The entire property surrounded by trees. The house was kind of Victorian, at least that’s what we guessed. To me, it just looked Gothic. We all said that we wanted to go see the house, but one of the girl suggested just one person go up there to make sure its safe first. The two boys looked at each other with worried looks. I don’t blame them. It was the middle of the night, the moon was full in the sky, everything seems to be black and gray out here and the whole thing just screamed bad vibes... well, not literally because that would just be horrible.  The boys decided to do rock, paper, scissors to see who was going to be the first one to go up there. The girls were very focused on the match, mostly because the boys were being stupid and picking the same thing over and over again. I figured they would be too chicken to actually go to the house. I suggested loudly that we just head back home before we forget the way that we came in.  No one heard me, of course. They were all too focused on who would win the game. I groaned, knowing that whoever was going to go up there wasn’t going to actually spend anytime admiring the house up close. So I took out my phone, no service of course, and opened up the camera to take some pictures. I started walking closer to the house to get a better look and that when i heard someone say one of the boy’s names. He must have been the loser in rock, paper, scissors. Right after the guy was chosen, I heard a collective gasp. Glad to know they finally saw me walking up to the house now.  I had just gotten through the field when the realized and I was on some sort of gravel drive. I got my camera out again and took some more pictures. The house had two tall towers on either side of the house. The house was three stories... maybe four. It was a very pretty house. I thought the pictures were coming out great, but then I heard everyone yelling my name. I turned around to see what they were yelling about when I felt two large hands on my shoulders. I ducked under the hands and took a few steps away so I could turn around to see the individual. He was tall, dressed in a suit, bald with a big beard, and overall, quite terrifying. I started to run away from the man when I felt him grab me again and this time, he threw me over his shoulder. I looked at where everyone had been and just barely saw them running into the forest. At least, they were going to be safe. I didn’t really expect them to come and save me. They were all pretty wimpy when it came to fighting. I guess this is where I die. The man was taking me into the house when I remembered I still had my phone on me. I turned the camera around and took some pictures of me entering the house, going through the grand entrance and into a room with a long carpet that led to a couple of stairs and eventually led to a small couch. On either side of the room were pools the length of the room so deep that I couldn’t see the bottom. The man placed me on the ground a few feet from stairs. I put my phone in my back pocket and looked at him.  “Now what?” I asked him. “Are you going to torture and kill me now? Or was throwing me over your shoulder just your way of inviting me to tea?” Not the best time to be sarcastic, but I was pretty freaked out and I’d rather go out calm and collected-ish rather than panicking and screaming.  “I am neither going to torture and kill you nor am I going to give you tea.” A voice said from behind me. I looked up the stairs and found a man sitting on the couch. Well... rather, he was draped across the couch. “I want to know what you are doing on this property and what you want.” I swallowed. “In all honesty, I didn’t even want to be here. I was just following everyone else and I wanted to see the house up close because I thought it was pretty cool looking, very Goth-Victorian kind of cool. Its totally my aesthetic. Really love it.” The man looked at me. He had long dark hair and a very light skin color. He was dressed to match the house. A dark coat-jacket-thing that had many layers and a lot of accessories. He wore a white blouse-shirt with a lot of ruffles in the front and on his wrists, had very tight leather pant and was barefoot. He was very Gothic-Victorian.  “I don’t appreciate you trespassing onto my family’s property. I believe there is only one way to settle this.” He said before he stood up and began walking to me where I sat on the ground. Many thoughts were going through my head. What was the only way to settle this? Slavery? Sex? Sex Slave?... Okay well not many. Those were the only options that had been going through my head. I would have preferred none of them.  “The only way to settle this...” he began before he knelt in front of me and got incredibly close to my face. “is death.” He finished. My eyes widened and I couldn’t stop the loud “What?” that came out. “Death. You trespassed onto my property so you must die.” I looked at him with bewilderment. He couldn’t have been serious. I’ve heard of trespassers would be shot, but I didn’t see any warning of death to trespassers anywhere on the property.  “Brother, you aren’t thinking straight. Perhaps, I should take over this matter?” Another voice spoke from my side. The man in front of me looked over at the voice and I followed suit. To my astonishment, I found another man inside the pool.  “I don’t need you to take over this matter. I’ve already decided that she is going to die.” He spoke harshly as he stood up and walked over to the couch once again. He started rummaging around behind the couch, probably to find something to kill me with. “Pst.” I heard from my side once again. It was the man in the pool. He was waving for me to come over. He was smiling at me. “Come on.” I crawled over to the man. “Don’t worry. My brother has the sickness right now. He should be over it in a few days and then he will apologize for his behavior and let you go.” I blinked at the man. “What do I do until then?” I felt the man grab my hand and he slid a pearl bracelet on it. I looked at him again and he was still smiling at me. “Don’t worry and keep breathing.” He said before he pulled me into the pool. I gasped as I hit the water and felt the water enter my mouth and lungs, but... it wasn’t painful, like drowning. It was like I was breathing normally, just underwater. “Just keep breathing. Its alright. Its normal.” I looked at him and nearly squealed in surprise. The man wasn’t really a man at all... he was a merman?... I had so many questions. 

I’m gonna stop right there because I didn’t really have a whole lot else planned out completely, but some elements were from my dream. There was a merman and a house in a field. I don’t remember a lot else though... So I’ll figure something out. 

[mrsjihyunkim]

20 Seconds of Bravery Ch 10

First chapter of the new year!!!!! XD

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Here’s a link if you want to skip the Nsfw chapter.

                   V was defiantly taken aback by my question. He began to cough and wouldn't even look me in the eyes. "I don't understand what you mean MC."

"I know that you were engaged to the same Rika that I grew up with. I just want to know if she is the one who hurt your eyes." A blush crept across his face as he ran his hand through his hair. I felt almost bad for pushing him to tell me but these thoughts have been buzzing on my mind and I needed answers.

"How do you know all of that?" He still wouldn't look me in the eyes and he was clenching his pants with his hands.

"Well it's not like Rika is a common name and when I told you about her I could tell that you lied about knowing her. After that I just kinda put the pieces together. I didn't want to force you to tell me anything but it's all just been swimming in my head. That’s why I just want one answer. You don't have to explain anything, just tell me yes or no." He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. He looked like a mix of frustrated and sad. "I'm sorry. Maybe it was a mistake for me to ask so soon." I moved to get off the couch but V grabbed my hand.

"No its ok. I wanted to tell you everything but I didn't want to overwhelm you with everything else going on." He paused and I squeezed his hand. "I also just didn't want you to see Rika every time you saw me." Suddenly an image of V wearing a blonde wig and wearing a dress popped into my head. I tried my best to stay serious but a small laugh escaped me. "What?" V finally looked at me and he was confused.

"I'm sorry. I tried to stay serious but when you said that an image of you wearing a wig and a dress popped in my head. It was hard not to laugh at." I cleared my throat and collected myself. "All joking aside though, I could never think of her when I look at you. You are both different people and I'm sure that you thought she was a good person, a lot of people did. I just want to know if she hurt you so that should I ever see her again I can at least punch her." V let out a small chuckle and just shook his head.

"You don't have to worry about that. She's very far away from us getting the help she needs." I gave him a confused look and he took a deep breathe. "I suppose I should go ahead and tell you everything. Where would you like me to start?"

"I guess just start with why she hurt you so badly. I know you told me some of it but I know there's more too it."

"You're right. We were fighting that night, which was really nothing new with her, but this night was worse. I had discovered that she had started another organization called Mint Eye. I didn't confront her with it until I found out that she was drugging people to make them 'happpy'. When I did confront her she accused me of not understanding and during my attempt to comfort her she attacked me." He paused and I processed what he just told me. I had this weird feeling of deja vu hearing the name Mint Eye.

"Hold on a second. You said Mint Eye right?" V nodded and got up and went to my office. In one of the drawers was a flyer with a big greenish color eye on it. I walked back into the living room and handed it to V. "Is this the place?" V became wide eyed as he grabbed the flyer.

"Yes. When did you get this?" I sat down next to him and could feel anger rising in him.

"It was a while ago. I actually got it as an email but the color was pretty so I printed it out to show the paint guy. Other than that I never really thought anything of it." V crumpled up the paper and his posture was stiff. "What is it?" I asked placing a hand on V's shoulder, suddenly concerned. He relaxed a little at my touch and leaned back.

"Nothing. Just the thought of you in that awful place makes my blood boil. And even though I know it wasn't his fault I'm angry that Saeran even sent it to you."

"Wait, Saeran was involved in it too?" All the anger left V and he realized that I was still pretty clueless on all of this.

"Oh yes. You see when the twins were younger they got separated in an attempt to get them away from their mother. Saeyoung went to work for an information agency and Rika said she had found a suitable home for Saeran. Turns out she was just feeding his anxieties about Saeyoung leaving him. He became her number one follower and was bent on destroying Saeyoung. Rika had poisoned his mind to a point where he would have died in the name of her paradise and he almost did." V looked sad as he took a drink of his tea.

"That's terrible. I know Rika had her issues but I never thought she would go so far. Is Saeran doing ok now?"

"He's doing better now. Saeyoung tells me that he still has nightmares and bad days where he just shuts down. But I can see improvement. Him and Yoosung have become best friends and he seems to really enjoy working at an ice cream shop. I think he's finally healing." V smiled a bit and put his tea down. I had one last question but I was honestly scared to ask it.

"Can I ask you one more thing?" V raised an eyebrow at my request but nodded. "Do you still love Rika?" I looked down at my hand and waited for his answer.

"To be honest I don't ever even know if I really loved her. I saw an emptiness in her that I wanted to create something with. It was more like I wanted to make myself feel better through her. It was a toxic type of love so I guess my answer would be no I don't. I used to always think that a part of me would love the person I thought she was but then something happened that changed all of that."

"What happened?" I asked full of curiosity. Before V answered he put his arms around me and pulled me on to his lap.

"Isn't it obvious? I met you and fell in love." He whispered in my ear. My face became red as I buried it in his chest. I felt him laugh and he tipped up my chin and kissed me. When he pulled back I was stunned. In that moment I could see all the love that V had for me. "You really are adorable when you're so flustered. I could just stay like this forever." He whispered as he hugged me.

"I don't understand why but I feel the same way." I meant every word that I said but I couldn't help but think about all the bad stuff going on. I was finally happy and I didn't want anything to take it away. I must have done a terrible job hiding my anxieties from V because he seemed to pick up on it right away.

"What's wrong?" he asked. I could hear nothing but concern in his voice. Right as I was about to tell him everything on my mind the front door flew open. We jumped off the couch and V stood in front of me. At first all I heard was the shouting of the security guards, until I heard Eric's voice cursing. I moved out from behind V and went to the door and saw Eric desperately trying to make his was through the door but weighted down by security guards.

"Stop! It's ok he's my family. He won't hurt us." I screamed. The security guards instantly let go of Eric and he fell into my foyer. One of the guards came up to me and bowed his head.

"We are so sorry ma'am. He came up to the house demanding to see you but wouldn't give us his name. So we treated him as a threat. I'm greatly sorry." I was completely flushed and didn't know what to say.

"It's totally fine. You guys couldn't have possibly known. I mean it's not like you were given of list people who weren't a threat." I scratched the back of my head and laughed a little. The security guards cleared out and shut the door behind them while I followed Eric into the kitchen. I could tell that he was majorly pissed cause he went straight for the beer and downed it. Now I was getting worried. "Eric what happened?" He ignored my question and walked straight up to V.

"Can you protect her? Shit is about to hit the fan and I need to know that my family is safe with you. So can you keep MC safe." Now I was getting angry for being ignored.

"Eric what the fuck is going on? You can't just come over and freak out like this. I've already had one attack today and I really don't need another. Now leave V alone and tell us what you're rambling about."

"Trust me you're not going to be so calm when I tell you what I found out today. He's going to have to know what he's up against if he's going to date you. You don't live with me and Shelby anymore so I need to know that you're safe, because Jake came to the shop today. He's out MC and you know he's going to come after you. Can you both handle that?" Eric sat down in a chair and ran his hand over his bald head. "I'm sorry to drop this on you but I knew you'd want to know. I was also worried that he had already came by here but I don't see that happening with your army out front." He laughed a little but I was still processing what he said. I could feel my heart rate rising and my breathing getting shorter. Suddenly a glass of water was in front of me and I saw V standing next to me. I took the water and drank it. V held my hand and faced Eric.

"Honestly Eric I don't know how well I can protect her right now, but I will do what ever it takes to keep her safe. It's not just me either. She's already won all of the RFA over and they'll do what ever they can to protect her because as far as they're concerned she's one of them now. The only thing that has me worried is when I get my eye surgery. I'll be useless to her as I heal after that." Eric gave me a confused look and I realized that he didn't know about V's eyes.

"V had an accident a while ago and it damaged his eyes. There's a surgery to fix them but I didn't know he was going to get it." I looked at V and he smiled at me.

"I made the appointment today. I was going to tell you but it kinda got away from me what with everything that happened once I came home." I blushed as I remembered my dramatic reaction to V not being home. Eric just seemed to brush it off and got serious again.

"So how bad is your eye sight right now? Is it good enough to watch everything and keep her safe?" Eric looked V dead in the eyes and I could see how serious both of them were.

"Eric you're being," V stopped me before I could finish.

"I have my good days and my bad days but my other senses more than make up for it. Today isn't so bad and I can see out of my right eye. My hearing has more than adapted to this and I can hear everything on through the house and outside. If something happens I'll more than likely hear it before anyone else. I greatly appreciate your concern about MC's safety. I'm very happy that she has family that cares about her this much. Not many people would bother fighting their way through Jumin Han's security guards." V laughed and Eric's serious aura completely dissipated.    

"Those are C&R body guards?" Eric stood up and looked out the window. He turned back around and put his hands on his head while pacing. "Holy crap I punched one of them in the face." Eric sat down in defeat and looked like he'd just seen a ghost. Between that and V's confused face I couldn't help but laugh.

"Eric is a fan of Jumin. He's looked up to him as a business man for the longest time. Guess you could say he's a fan boy when it comes to Jumin." I laughed a little bit more and Eric glared at me. Everyone finally seemed to have lightened up a little bit and I was glad.

"Well I should probably get home. Shelby has been freaking out since he came to the store. She'll calm down when I tell her that you have an army outside your house." He stood up and hugged me, then shook V's hand. After I walked him out I returned to the living room and saw V standing in front of the fire place. I walked up behind him and wrapped my arms around him.

"I know what you're thinking so stop it. I trust you and I'm not going to lose you." He placed his hands on top of mine. I felt him relax a little bit but he was still very tense.

"I'm just angry. I thought I had time to get stronger for you. I'm also angry that he's still bothering you. It's also funny because I've never been one to resort to violence but I just want to beat the crap out of him." He paused and took a deep breathe. "Considering everything I've already been through you think I wouldn't be so terrified of a pathetic loser like Jake but I am. I finally have something to live for and I could lose it all because of him." I heard a slight tremble in his voice. I moved to stand in front of him and saw how upset he was. His jaw was set very stiff and his eyes were locked into the fire. I placed my hands on his face and gently made him look at me. I smiled at him.

"Look at me. We knew this was going to happen sooner or later. Considering my level of anxiety I should be freaking out right?" He gave me a confused look. "The reason I'm not freaking out is because I have you. I believe in us and I believe that we'll get through this. I said I wasn't going to run and I meant it. Plus we still have time. I know Jake and he won't do anything if I'm around other people. He has a nice guy image to protect and he won't ruin that by making a scene." V smiled and pulled me into him.

"Your courage amazes me MC." He kissed the top of my head and let out a deep sigh. I could feel him finally completely relax.

"It's all thanks to you. I love you Jihyn." I looked up and him and was met with the full force of his lips. This kiss was full of hunger and passion and I met it with equal amounts. It wasn't until one of our phones rang that he went to pull away. I stoped him and pulled him back into me. "Leave it." I whispered to him.

"Are you sure?" He asked. I answered by pressing my lips back against his. Together we sank down on the floor with the phone fading into the background.