#i think it was good and fine but overall uneventful until the train crash happened tbh

[snowstories]

heyo! *yeets into inbox* paninya headcanons about her life? (parents, home life before dominic, sexuality, pet peeves, etc) tHAnk YOu! *yeets out of your inbox*

THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME RAMBLE ABOUT PANINYA I HAVE SO MANY HEADCANONS

She’s half Ishvalan, half Amestrian. She and her parents were on their way to visit relatives in Ishval for the first time in a while when the train they were on derailed and almost everyone on board died. 

Because she was so young when they died, she doesn’t really remember her parents properly. It’s more a bunch of impressions, like a smile, or a hug, things like that. She doesn’t necessarily miss them (it’s hard to miss people you don’t even really know, especially if you’ve got a found family to serve as your family), but she does feel sad that she doesn’t and never will get to know them any better, and feels guilty for not remembering them.

She does know she has relatives in Ishval, but little!Paninya wasn’t entirely sure what their names were, and after the genocide, she isn’t sure if they’re even alive enough to track down. She hasn’t decided whether or not she’ll try to find them anyway.

Her surname is a traditionally Ishvalan one, but for safety reasons she pretended to have Dominic’s surname during the Ishvalan genocide, even if it turned out to be mostly unnecessary since the military didn’t bother searching for Ishvalans outside Ishval or the military much. She eventually decides to go by her original name again post-canon. 

Anyway three guesses why she has no love or respect for the military. 

She’s got brown eyes like she did in the 2003 anime, not that weird dark blue colour Bones decided to give her in Brotherhood for some reason.

She loses an arm post-canon and puts a flamethrower in her automail. Winry has no idea how Dominic managed to do that without making the arm overheat, and neither Dominic or Paninya will tell her, and it drives her nuts. Paninya finds this absolutely hilarious.

My headcanon on her exact gender and sexuality keeps shifting, but she’s definitely queer and transfeminine. 

She tried growing out her hair when she first found out she was trans, because it was just kind of the Thing To Do, you know? But she didn’t really like it, so she cut it to the length she has in canon. Post-canon, she cuts it even shorter, into a buzzcut, but that turns out to be too short for her. She eventually settles on an undercut.

I headcanon Rush Valley to have a well developed LGBT+ community, which she found a lot of refuge in when she was questioning and coming to terms with stuff, and in which she stays active throughout her life.

She gets into a romantic relationship with Winry post-canon + a queerplatonic triad with her and Ed. Because you physically cannot stop me. 

After Winry and Ed move back to Resembool, she initially tries to move with them, but finds she can’t settle in such a small, quiet, uneventful village, and gets very homesick for Rush Valley. Moves back on her own eventually and settles into a long distance relationship with them.

Winry spends a couple months each year in Rush Valley promoting her shop and running a smaller one in Rush Valley, and she and Paninya live together then. Ed mostly stays in Resembool with the kids if they can’t come along, so he comes over less, but he does accompany her sometimes.

Because their relationship is mostly long distance, Paninya becomes less of a parent and more of a fun aunt for the kids, which she doesn’t mind, because it means the kids adore her, and she doesn’t ever have to be strict with them like Ed and Winry. 

She and Ed travel together for a short while post-canon, and she turns out to be the Absolute Worst travel companion. Constantly asking if she’s there yet, constantly complaining about everything, getting in trouble with corrupt authorities for stealing from them non-stop, etc. It drives Ed nuts and their trip doesn’t last very long.

Al has a good laugh when he hears Ed’s complaining, because finally, brother, karma has caught up with you. Suffer like I did.

She and Al maintain a casual relationship, and he eventually ends up introducing her to Mei. They get along like a house on fire.

It turns out she’s a natural at alkahestry. Mei is still trying to teach Al the basics, and she walks into one of their lessons, and just gets it within a few minutes. Mei is absolutely delighted and Al is both proud of her and INCREDIBLY offended that she picked it up five times faster than him. 

She doesn’t really end up doing anything with it, but she does learn the basics, and finds that it’s surprisingly helpful with parkour if she can change the track from a few meters away. 

She stops stealing stuff (mostly. She robin hoods sometimes when dealing with corrupt officials, but even Dominic doesn’t mind that much), but keeps parkour as a hobby of hers, and becomes even better at it than she was in canon.

She sets up a shop of her own in Rush Valley sometime post-canon. What the shop is actually selling changes every few months with Paninya’s interests, but it always does good business because she knows how to find rare items of whatever it is she’s selling, has a keen business instinct, and because she’s a staple of the Rush Valley community and they all want to support her. 

As for pet peeves, I think she probably hates rain, not just because it makes her automail ache, but because she just plain doesn’t like it too. 

She doesn’t like cold, either. Although she doesn’t remember it, winter used to be the only time she stayed in the house as a kid. The one time she experienced snow that she can remember properly, during her short-lived period in Resembool, she turns into an absolute drama queen, muddling in blankets and grumbling to anyone who tries to get her outside. 

As for more serious stuff: I used to headcanon her as the type to fall asleep on trains, but after remembering that she’s got Trauma attached to it, I changed my mind. I think she’s probably really nervous around trains, and although she’s got her fear mostly under control, she refuses to ride them and doesn’t really like it when others do, although she can’t stop them.

Pays Dominic back sometime in her forties, and is absolutely unbearably smug about it. 

[scathecraw]

Upon The Rock - Chapter 5 - Nightmare

Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 here.

The next day was cloudy and grey, and the air felt heavy with the storm that had yet to break.

Billy was still groggy as he got on the train to school, and kept thinking he saw things out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t until he was spoken to that he realized he was sitting near a familiar face. It was the wild haired, heavyset homeless man from the day before.

“You look rough, Billy the Kid,” he said with a wide smile.

Billy thought he must have offered up his name yesterday, as abnormal as that was. “Just tired. I’ll be fine.”

“You better. Big things are happening, and you need to be ready.” It was the most solemn Billy had ever heard the man, though that wasn’t hard with their limited interactions.

“Sure thing, mister.” That was a little weird of an interaction, even for Fawcett City’s subway.

“You can call me Talky. Everybody does.” Back to all smiles.

Billy supposed that the moniker made sense. He certainly did seem to live up to it. “Alright, Mr. Talky. I gotta go. Goodbye.” Billy was glad that his stop was here already. He wasn’t entirely comfortable talking to this stranger, even as crowded as the train was.

School was just as uneventful. Kyle and his goons were nowhere to be seen, but that could very well have been due to suspension or, Billy hoped, expulsion. Waiting for his name to be called over the loudspeaker to punish him for his part in hitting Kyle had him tense and jumpy, and his mood was overall grim. He sat silently in class, and his smiles were brief compared to their usual warmth.

Freddy was still out of commission back at the home, but he stopped by and picked up Freddy’s assignments before heading to the station. It wasn’t a good show from Billy’s perspective, but nobody made any mention of it. He went through the community events and tried to muster up enthusiasm, but it drained away as soon as he could generate it.

By the time he was done with his segment, Sophia, the Program Director pulled him aside. “You look beat, dude. Somethin’ up?”

“It’s nothing, Ms. Sophia. Just been really tired all day.”

Sophia nodded at that. “I know that feeling, kid. Head home and get some rest. Remember, you’re shadowing Echo this Friday at the museum reopening.”

Billy felt a spark of excitement gain purchase. Echo, real name Edward Cho, was the most laidback worker at the station, and Billy’s favorite to work with. “I forgot all about that! Thanks, Ms. Sophia. I’m sure I’ll feel better by then.”

There was thunder and lightning as he walked home, and the air was humid and moist, but he didn’t feel any rain or see any puddles as he went.

The next few days failed to clear up or break the grey pall that seemed to simply lower at night as fog, then rise bank into the sky as the morning progressed. The unsettling dreams didn’t get much better, either. They simply clarified, the sound of thunder resounding louder, and the shadows growing more defined.

Kyle returned to school the next day, and hadn’t made any moves of retribution towards Billy. He avoided him entirely, in fact, and seemed to avoid Freddy as well, once Mr. Hayman cleared his return to school. Freddy did his best to deflect when pressed about what had happened, and most of his friends let the matter drop when he seemed uncomfortable. Billy just tried to keep his head down. He didn’t feel nearly as tired, but something was just off of normal – like his clothes didn’t quite fit right.

Elsewhere, a heartbeat stirred, and ghostly flesh reached out from an ancient bone. Static fuzzed out the cameras and security systems that surrounded the exhibit. It grabbed onto any solid substance it could find, incorporating it into a slowly swelling mass that pulsed and throbbed, growing into something larger than life.

That afternoon, things came into focus as Billy slept. The shadowed form that had inhabited his dreams the entire week came into sight, a bolt of lightning on his chest. To Billy, he was everything a superhero should look like. He was massive, built like he could bench press a firetruck. He looked serious, and stood in the shadows that swirled around, unaffected.

He looked up, and Billy saw his own eyes reflected in the man. “It’s time to wake up. It’s time to remember. Wake up and say our name. Say -”

The van jerked hard to the side and Billy awoke from his impromptu nap to chaos. Cars honked and crashes could be heard, but present over everything was a roar. Billy’s first thought was Godzilla from the movies, but then a second, a third called out. Billy could feel it deep in his chest, and then the pit of his stomach dropped out as the vehicle kicked hard, losing traction and sliding almost gently to rest against the bumper the car ahead.

Echo looked back over his shoulder, craning his head to stare, wide-eyed, out the back window. He saw Billy, and gasped “We gotta get out of here. That thing nearly crushed us! C’mon, we aren’t driving anywhere with these cars. My door has some room to get out.” He struggled with his seatbelt, then the door, then his seatbelt again, ignoring Billy’s questions and repeated calls to get his attention. He started and jerked away in surprise when Billy reached up and grabbed his sleeve, intent on figuring out what was going on.

“Eddie. What’s happening? Tell me, now.” It must have been finally calling him by his real name that got him to pay attention.

“Some dinosaur looking thing busted down the front of the museum while I was trying to find parking. Cars are backed up, so we’re not driving out of here, but we need to go.” He had barely finished before another roar, louder and closer than before, shook the air.

They bailed from the car, Billy feeling like there was something on the tip of his tongue, but not having the time to think about it as he looked over his shoulder and saw a massive grey-green torso leading up to one, two, three heads rising into the sky. Two were bitten down into a sedan, tugging it back and forth until, with a screech of metal, it shredded apart and was tossed aside. It looked around hungrily, spotting a fleeing group of ceremony attendees, including a man in a too big suit, with a broad, honest face and a build to match.

Even as Clark Kent looked for an alley to duck into, he was present-minded enough to ensure people’s safety in the chaos, shielding the smaller members of the crowd from being trampled in the confusion. He helped up a frail looking man that had stumbled, and after ensuring his footing, slipped away into an alley. It was a moment’s work to exchange his navy blue suit and glasses for the much brighter uniform of Superman. Faster than a speeding bullet, he took off into the air and raced towards the epicenter of the disaster.

The hydra didn’t know what hit it, at first. Its head was smashed to the side, careening into its neighbor and disorienting it, making it whip around wildly. With that one blow, the first head flopped loose, stunned. The other two were not so affected. The untouched head snapped viciously at the Man of Steel with teeth that weren’t so sharp as they were large, meant for gripping and tearing. Its speed was nothing Superman hadn’t seen before, and he dodged and maneuvered, swinging to smash the jaw shut and hopefully keep it from snapping at anything for a good long time. The mouth closed with a loud clack and the head swung wide, shaken, but surprisingly resilient.

A moment later, he found himself dodging the rest of the set. They had a brutal cunning to them, one attempting to draw his attention while the other snapped at his blind spot. Superman was able to evade the gnashing teeth, but regardless of how many times he hit them, the heads didn’t seem to register the blows. As time went by, the creature seemed to begin to anticipate his movements, snapping closer at his heels.

As soon as Billy heard the cry of “Superman! Superman is here!” that some bystander shouted, he stopped running. After all, what could some big dinosaur do to stop the Man of Steel? And how often would he get a chance to watch a superhero in action? So he turned around, starry-eyed, to watch Superman put a beatdown onto the hydra. He didn’t expect to see the fight turn against the hero, to the point where Superman exited the melee and flew up some distance.

Superman took a deep breath and focused his sight onto the hydra. He looked into the body of the beast with his X-Ray vision and was surprised to see that the hydra’s flesh was practically nonexistent! That meant magic. While he wasn’t particularly adept against spells or enchantments, he was sure he could win in a melee.

If he remembered his mythology, the Greek hero Hercules had defeated the immortal hydra by cutting off its heads and burning it with fire. He didn’t want to kill the thing, magic or not, but stopping a couple of those heads would be helpful. He narrowed his eyes once again, and used his heat vision to cut a path through one of the writhing necks.

He thought the battle all but over, the severed head disintegrating into dust and leaving behind the stone and metal it had used as a scaffold to grow. Unfortunately for him, the red-hot stump burst into a twisting growth that shaped itself into two more heads, each as large as the one it replaced. As Superman dove into fray to try and knot the heads together, the hydras several heads looked at one another and came, as one, to a decision. Before Superman could reach them, two of the four heads seized its neighbor and tore, a sickening wrenching noise occurring as what was four heads became six, and spun into a frenzy of gnashing teeth and flailing heads.

Billy’s wide smile and hopeful eyes turned to shock and horror as the heads surrounded Superman, knocking into him and preventing his escape with sheer numbers. No matter the blow, the heads recovered with no apparent damage to resume their harassment. As Superman was entangled in the mass of necks and the toothy maws, his certainty in the Man of Steel was replaced with despair as he was entangled in a knot of scales. Once Superman’s struggles were rewarded with another head, torn off and replaced by two more, his hope of a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat disappeared.