#i wish sonia was in this drawing too so it could be all the girls but oh well Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[apollorobin]

the most people ive ever drawn in one picture before :) tap for better quality if it's blurry!! also stage play ref photo below:

[monokuma-apologist]

So- Danganronpa became a big enough fandom for me that I decided to make a side blog for it! And because…I need a community my dudes

Please do not message me or send me asks pertaining to charities and seeking donations- though I wish those who truly need it help and support, this just isn't a place for it.

ME:

I’m @snickerzanddoodlez, you can call me whatever you’d like! I’ve finished all of the mainline games / seen the End of Hope’s Peak High School anime, and though I haven’t played Ultra Despair Girls I don’t mind spoilers for it!

This little sucker is my channel mascot. Anything ya could ever dream to know about her is in this post

THIS BLOG USES HE / HIM PRONOUNS FOR CHIHIRO! I don’t mind what people headcanon, I just don’t personally believe Chihiro was intended to be a trans character. But canon or otherwise, headcanon or interpret it how you’d like! All I ask is that we all as a fandom accept other people’s interpretations. ❤️

My favorite characters are Teruteru, Gundham, Ryoma, Byakuya, Kaito, Yasuhiro, and Togami! Fuyuhiko, Gonta, Kokichi, and Monokuma are very close behind :) (NOTE: I don’t support all of these characters’ actions! You know who this disclaimer is about, haha! And my affection of said individual doesn’t exactly extend to the End of Hope’s Peak Academy anime…)

I’m a Warrior Cats veteran, so…the things I make might end up being a little weird!

I also sell cute lil’ Danganronpa stickers!

I do commissions, too! Fund my Doll-gonronpa Collection

ASKS:

The ask box is always open for questions, discussion, suggesting incorrect quotes / art / animatics, etc!

By the way! I like to be incredibly needlessly angsty and cringy- so we don’t judge here! I’m still getting a feel for what does and doesn’t fly in this fandom- so give me the best you’ve got! All of your angst and ideas- maybe I’ll draw them!)

Just stay generally SFW (suggestive jokes and the likes are fine!) and keep in mind that I am 16!

RPS:

Currently occupied with a few!

TAGS:

Oh! FYI, I tag posts that fit into the same niche the same way! Here’s the list!

Incorrect Quotes - dgnincorrect

Headcanon - danganheadcanon

Posts I Look Back On for Comfort - my happy posts

Animatics / Animation - danganimatic

Fankids - Koji Hinata, Hotaru Tanaka, Aika Miodasoda, Haru Nidai, Mieko Nidai, Natsuki Kuzuryu, Fumiko Kuzuryu, Kiko Naegi, Honda Hagakure

The Nextgen Killing Game - legacy killing game

“IMPORTANT” STUFF

-The Teruteru Essay

-Animatics (Even Unlisted Ones!)

-“Hating” Fiction

-Akane x Nekomaru is PEAK: An Essay

MY BUDDIES:

(If you are on this list and uncomfy with it let me know!)

-@detective-dick-gumshoes-pot-room

-@susiecampbelll

- @thedaydreamerscastle

MY SHIPS

Please note! As long as it isn’t incestuous / predatory, I don’t really mind what people ship- these are just my biggies! I’m also a really big fan of weird / unconventional ships, despite the lack of them on this list. Not PRO-ships, let’s get that straight, just ships that make you think about ‘em for a minute…like, “who came up with this??�� I dig those.

TRIGGER HAPPY HAVOC:

Ishimaru x Mondo

Makoto x Kiyoko

Byakuya x Genocide Jack (I don’t really care for Toko I just think Byakuya and Genocide Jack are really funny)

Sakura x Aoi

Yasuhiro x Aoi (but as mega siblings. I ship them so hard but it’s so completely platonic I want them to be best friends forever)

Celeste x Hifumi (I’m not active in this ship, nor am I even sure it actually exists I just think they should fix each other)

Leon X Sayaka

GOODBYE DESPAIR:

Gundham x Sonia

Akane x Nekomaru

Fuyuhiko x Peko

Monokuma x Monomi (silly)

Hajime x Nagito (but only Nagito’s one-sided crush on Hajime)

Chiaki x Hajime

Kazuichi x Ibuki

Imposter x Mikan

KILLING HARMONY:

Shuichi x Kaede

Tsumugi x Gonta (in an au or something idk I shipped this before I finished)

Korekiyo x Kirumi (Kokichi is their son) (don’t even ask)

Miu x Keebo (Monotaro is their son)

Kaito x Maki (one of my OTPs for this fandom, honestly)

Shuichi x Kaede

Ryoma x therapy

Kokichi x Himiko

Korekiyo X Angie

[quickdeaths]

Logically, Shinobu knew that there was little she could have done to prevent the tragedy from occurring as it did. Even if she had acted differently, what was done to Sonia and her classmates went beyond some kind of simple, reason-based decision. Junko Enoshima had manipulated them with both torment and subliminal messaging at the most vulnerable period, and that was the source of their descent. It had little to do with personal comfort or happiness - after all, Shinobu had endured quite a difficult life, themselves, and they hadn't fallen. Meanwhile, some of the happiest or most put-together people had been laid low by only a handful of videos. There was nothing that could have been done by a depressed, abused teenager.

And yet, looking at Sonia sobbing, her eyes puffy and her face covered in splotchy red, Shinobu wondered why it had taken her so long to properly contextualize any empathy. She'd felt similarly, in high school - when Sonia looked gloomy, or regretful, when the many, many demands upon her were too much for anyone to bear even as she attempted to manage with a smile, Shinobu had felt the same emotion as she did now. She'd pushed Sonia away, then, carelessly, thoughtlessly, while now all she wished to do was draw her closer into her arms, and soothe her as best she could.

Though she didn't touch her, reasoning that Sonia might have reached her limit on unexpected physical contact, Shinobu still sat near her, not tearing her gaze away. "You've been a friend to me since I arrived here. You've allowed me to spend time with you, and share experiences with you, even when my organization has not treated you fairly or with kindness." Even that word came so much easier now than it had, friend. As though it had been weak to say it, as though showing human emotions or desiring human relationships was wrong, somehow.

"I don't have any friends or family left. The closest thing I had to a mentor, and my girlfriend, are both gone. I am not well-liked among my peers at Future Foundation, and the administration pities me at best, or despises me at worst." Neither was better than the other, truly. They gave a soft sigh as they looked at Sonia. There were so few moments that they had seen her like this, face covered in tears and snot, among the furthest things from the composed and well-mannered girl they'd known. Yet she was Sonia, still, underneath it. Different from how she had been, very different, but still the person Shinobu cared for so deeply.

Standing from the bed, Shinobu decided to give Sonia a bit of space, just in case their presence was making her feel claustrophobic. "So, of course I find comfort in you, and your companionship. I'm happy to talk to you, and watch films together, and I'm happy to listen to you if you're upset and want to tell someone how you're feeling." With the power back on, her cell phone had resumed charging, plugged into an outlet. There were a few messages, and missed calls, that Shinobu inspected as she picked it up. Well, those were less important in the moment than continuing here with Sonia.

Though she hadn't brought a change of clothes, Shinobu at least dressed in her socks and slacks. That she left her button-up, and her blazer, where they were was perhaps some indication that she wasn't making for a hasty exit. "If you want me to leave, I'll do so. I don't mean to cause trouble for you when you'd prefer to be alone, but please don't read false intent into my actions." Sitting at the edge of the bed, she was careful not to touch Sonia, even as she looked to her with a soft expression. "I don't want to leave. I want to stay here with you, if you'd accept it." If it could give Sonia even the slightest bit of comfort or happiness, she'd spend the rest of her life in this cabin.

From the way Sonia was laying upon the bed, buried beneath the blankets as she was, Shinobu imagined she had no desire to get up, and even the prospect of a trip to the library wouldn't excite her. If she needed time to process her feelings, if the morning was too difficult for her to bear, then the archer had no intention of forcing her to do anything. It was enough just to be near her, in case she needed something. Anything else could wait, including her duties as a Future Foundation agent. If she was still in some standing - not good standing, perhaps, but some standing - after beating Togami's face blue, then a few hours of absence was unlikely to move the needle either way.

"Though, if you want to stay in, you still need to eat." There was a small kitchenette in the cabin, and though it lacked a number of amenities and tools - likely due to concern for Sonia's safety - Shinobu imagined they could work their way through something or other. "So, rather than leave, what I'd like to do is cook a small breakfast for the two of us, and eat it together." Rather than reach beneath the covers for Sonia's hand, she merely rested her own over where she could see the faint outline of it. "You're under no obligation to eat more than you'd like, but would that be agreeable to you?"

Easy for her to say 'calm down.' Sonia didn't doubt that Yaguchi had her own demons to contend with, but it was nothing like being responsible for mass murder in a cult of despair. All in service to a leader who preached that unpredictable despair was the cure for boredom, for feeling anything and everything. The most prevalent now, in Sonia's experience, were deep sadness, loneliness, and regret: nothing she wanted, everything she hated.

And so Sonia sobbed harder. Behind her hands and so thoroughly disgraced in the world, it no longer mattered what she looked like or how she reacted in front of others. And thus, when Shinobu tugged her hands away, she revealed a pair of red, swollen, and splotchy eyes, flushed and tear-stained cheeks, and a nose that ran unless Sonia sniffled, an attempt to dry her tears and the rest of her face while at it. A mostly fruitless endeavor, as Yaguchi held her hands firmly in her own and with no way to wipe at the mess on her face.

"That seems," A pause, a sniffle, "A bit bizarre. To sleep well beside me. I have committed murder on quite a large scale, and have caused plenty of suffering to many more. You shouldn't find any comfort in me: no one does."

That wasn't exactly true: the only people she felt who could find comfort in her were those as equally complicit and guilty in The Tragedy as she was. Person, rather: who had looked at her and couldn't see a woman worth loving anymore, just someone who had helped destroy the world and destroy him, in the way only someone his twisted heart loved could do. He'd done the same for her, she had the faint scars to prove it. They, alongside the many that littered her lower torso, were both her comfort and love, and her shame and sorrow. A constant reminder that anything she felt she'd deserved before she'd become a Remnant of Despair was beyond her now.

Another sniffle, and Sonia needed to look away, gently tugging her hands out of Yaguchi's grasp. She'd been gentle, Yaguchi, but it seemed impolite to stay like that. After she'd already breached the barriers of personal space, considering how little help the pillows had been in the end. "You probably wish to leave," Sonia mumbled, finally reaching up to wipe at the last few tears in her eyes. But her tone left little to question: instead, it was decidedly on the side of 'there's no reason why you'd want to stay here, not without a threatening thunderstorm to keep her prisoner in my cabin.'

It was hard to believe anyone at face value anymore, at least about anything remotely positive. Makoto Naegi's constant prattling about hope and bright futures, with his friends espousing similar sentiments (Togami aside) and now Yaguchi assuring her that not only had she not taken advantage of her, but she enjoyed sleeping at her side. It all seemed so disingenuous, empty words and phrases spouted to pacify the former mass-murderers so they wouldn't revert back to the monsters they once were. So they wouldn't overpower and slaughter the Future Foundation members before commandeering a ship and carrying out Junko Enoshima's Despair, or a new sort of terror entirely unique to them. It wasn't as if Sonia hadn't thought of it: not that she wanted to, but more the fact she was capable of it. And she was only the former Ultimate Princess, thinking of what around her could be turned into a weapon that the Future Foundation had yet to confiscate. Hajime was the brains behind every operation now: if he wanted to, Sonia was certain, he could find a way for all of them to get off the island and pursue whatever path they wished.

But he was compliant. He wanted to work with the Future Foundation, to have Hajime Hinata and Izuru Kamukura work in tandem together to make one composite being. So she was stuck: stuck until she was deemed ready to be sent home, exiled from her home forever. Her friends...they were her home now, not the half-burnt, crumbling kingdom in Europe who couldn't decide whether to let her live a life imprisoned or kill her as soon as she stepped foot on Novosonian soil.

Sonia winced, falling back down against the pillows and mattress. There was no alcohol left in her cabin, nothing that could take the pain away. If only she would will herself into a dreamless sleep, and keep it going until she no longer had to live anymore.

Despite the fact Yaguchi was still very much present and very much awake, Sonia pulled the covers up over her messy braid, her sticky cheeks. There was no reason to get out of bed, not really.

[forbidding-souda]

I don't know if you still do all d2 girls, but I you do, maybe all d2 girls with an S/O that wears a full face mask (like forehead to jaw) because of facial scars?

SDR2 girls with a S/O who wears a mask because of facial scars

i'm addicted to chiropractically adjusting my own body it's so bad

i was waiting in a video game rank waiting room while writing this and i looked down and I had been in the waiting room for 21 minutes.

fingerspelling nanami is so fun

you can tell how long this took me to write bc of the random unrelated thoughts i've written up there lmfao ^

currently listening: lips like sugar by echo & the bunnymen

playlist: for my second book

- Mod Souda

Mahiru Koizumi

❤ It makes seeing your smile even more precious to her. She wishes she could see your face more, but it's not like it bothers her or anything. Just, in reference to photographing people being like her 'love language' - seeing your face would make it easier to portray you in her work! She does take pictures of you sometimes, and when she uploads them her audience just falls in love with you uniqueness. They all find such a beauty in the fact that you wear a mask. In the art world, this is ground-breaking, and inspirational.

"Look, you're so popular now." She teases as she leans against your shoulder, showing you the reviews she's gotten on her recent portfolio. "They like you a lot."

"Oh," you nod. "That's good."

"Isn't it, though?"

You get a closer look at the photos - she hadn't shown you the results when she took them. Your mask really does make you look like a treasure. She perfectly captures your aura, and somehow also capturing her love for you.

❤ You are very recognizable in public as that-person-in-the-art.

❤ ^ Whether that's a good or bad thing - you decide.

❤ She always keeps good eye contact. Sometimes she forgets that it's a mask and not your actual face. She's so used to it.

.

Sonia Nevermind

❤ She sees it as a plus sometimes. If you are wearing a mask then she doesn't have to worry about being too affectionate in public - PDA messing with her reputation. In a royalty sense, you wearing a mask can just be an easier way to hide your face from a crowd, similar to modesty and veneration. She absolutely loves unique things. You wearing a mask would be one of them. She never asks you what your face looks like - she has also never directly asked you why you wear it. She just accepted it as something you do.

She shows you a bunch of fabric testers, putting them up to your body before nodding to herself and writing things down. You can see her brain working and it's very pleasing. Still, the close attention she's paying to your body is a bit nerve-wracking.

"These colors," she holds up a handful. "Are the colors I usually wear to events."

She puts a few of them down. "And these remaining ones are the ones that look good with your mask."

You lean forward. "And?"

"If we are going to match then I got to find a color that looks good on you, too." She smiles.

❤ Pressing soft kisses onto the forehead of the mask.

❤ She stands so close to you all the time that your mask starts to smell like her. Her and her lipgloss.

❤ ^ Sticky... annoying to clean off lipgloss.

❤ But the kisses are very nice so win some lose some yolo.

.

Hiyoko Saionji

❤ Is incredibly in love with your aura. It draws her in - and she has so many reactions to the mask you wear. At first, she wonders if it's because you have low self esteem. For a solid second she begins to get annoyed - what, you get to wear a mask and nobody else does? All of this dissipates when she learns that it's because of facial scarring, and she very quickly accepts the mask. Plus, it's a bit fun, she can draw on it and put stickers all over it.

❤ Will probably convince you to wear something like an oni mask or a kitsune mask. She loves her culture, is all.

❤ Okay but there's no way you're going to have any serious-looking masks after she gets her hands on them.

❤ She literally will not listen to anything you say about "don't mess with my-" she don't care!

❤ If her face had scars then she'd probably wear a mask all the time too so she literally can't say anything about it.

.

Peko Pekoyama

❤ She thinks it's insanely beautiful. Your mask is a lovely part of you - one that she both envies and adores. There's something appealing about being so mysterious. And with that mystery comes the sense of something 'unknown'. Not knowing something makes it interesting: she thinks you are interesting, that's why she was able to talk to you more clear than she could her classmates. She would have never put so much effort into befriending somebody she deemed boring.

The sound of her rapping against your mask catches you off guard. She pulls her hand away as if you had shocked her.

You lean back. "What was that for?"

"It wasn't for anything," she says. "I was testing how hard the material is."

"Why?"

In a frightening way, she doesn't answer, instead turning her head away from you and avoiding your attention altogether.

❤ In reference to in-canon events, I imagine in the killing game the idea of her pretending to be Sparkling Justice would have been inspired by you: the mask wearing.

❤ She likes analyzing them when you take them off - what do they feel like?

❤ I don't think Fuyuhiko would say anything because he respects Peko but if he does she is going to give him the ugliest mug ever.

.

Ibuki Mioda

❤ She wants you to feel less like an outcast. She'll start wearing a mask around, too. She might even make it apart of 'her thing' - like on stage, she will have a masked pulled to the side, resting around her ear area, and have it as a part of her costuming. It might become a trend - other people wearing them in public too. You'd get way less stares and it would be partially more normalized. Whether you appreciate this or not is dealer's choice.

❤ Sometimes on her setlists she'll doodle you and your mask.

❤ (Also I'd imagine her wearing one that's identical to yours).

❤ She might be another person that would try to decorate it - adding stickers or a mustache or eyeliner.

❤ Around the house, if she notices you aren't wearing it, she'll cover her eyes and start screaming.

.

Akane Owari

❤ Thinks it's incredibly badass. It's like those operas with the magnificent costuming - that's how you remind her. She will cup the sides of your face and pat your head whenever she sees you. The mask doesn't stop her from being overly affectionate with your face. She'll still kiss your cheeks and press her nose against you and lean her forehead against yours. Sometimes she'll even lick your mask, making you lean away in disgust (this motivates her to do it more).

❤ Really wishes she can see you eat with her but you turning your back and shortly lifting the mask is good enough - at least she gets your company!!

❤ She's still going to share food that she's eating with you.

❤ (Maybe try to sneak a peak of your lips - just for her imagination).

❤ Out of all of the girls, she'd be the one that would try to slyly see your face.

❤ Completely off topic but because your mask covers your vision a bit she is going to take this opportunity to jumpscare you.

.

Mikan Tsumiki

❤ She sees people with facial coverings all the time. She's completely used to it, and she would be able to give you specific medical masks as well as other medical things you might need, depending on how recent the scars are. She has never asked about your actual face - never asked to see it nor what it looks like. There's no surprise there. If you're comfortable, then she is comfortable. And she's extremely happy that you found something that makes you feel safe, that's all that matters to her.

❤ I think when you shower she will sneak it away and put it on to smell you.

❤ She'll probably clean them for you - I feel like she has a lot of experience and knowledge about that.

❤ She is the most supportive and the most accepting out of everyone in the planet - being with a health professional can help you settle anxieties about whether or not your partner will support you.

❤ If she does see your face, whether on accident, like her walking into the bedroom while you're changing, she will act as if nothing is amiss and continue on without commenting on it.

.

Chiaki Nanami

❤ I doubt she even notices the mask. Through her bad eye contact and constant gaming, she would take a second to realize that it's actually not your face. She would hardly have a reaction. When she realizes she is just like, okay cool, and then continue gaming. Even as the two of you get closer and more romantic it has never been something she'd consider unusual or uncomfortable. The mask is always room-temperature, and it doesn't freeze her lips when she kisses it, it's satisfying.

❤ Honestly you can just walk without your mask near her and she'd probably not notice anyway.

❤ The mask makes you look extra appealing when you're laying in her thighs. She likes the way your eyes look through the holes.

❤ She doesn't kiss the mask nor ever touch it - she doesn't know if it would make you uncomfortable, and she's never bold enough to ask.

❤ She'll just hold your hand or wrap her arms around your bicep.

[leefi]

Starira MBTI II - Siegfeld

These were the most fun to write up.

Seisho

Siegfeld

Frontier

Rinmeikan

Michiru Otori: ENFJ

Oh my woof woof...My evil little girlboss. i love you sooooo soooooo so much. Michiru is fake as fuck and soooooo evil and funny. She's the final entry I'm writing because I wanted to save the best for last.

She is the perfect example of how manipulative and conniving Fe doms can be (we even see a teeny tiny bit of this in Nana - see how she tricks Kaoruko into doing work in their My Theatre conversations). Michiru is also a visionary - she has a very distinct plan for the future that she’s always working towards (aux Ni), but you’d never guess that about her at first glance. She works very hard to maintain an affable, easygoing, approachable persona to contrast with Te dom Akira’s more intimidating and domineering one (dom Fe). I can’t say that I’ve seen her use too much of that tertiary Se, but her Ni and Fe are so strong that I have absolutely no doubt that she’s an ENFJ. We definitely see that inferior Ti struggle to catch up with Akira’s dominant Te reasoning for prioritizing Elysion over the Performance Festival, though, because Michiru’s Ni is thinking so far--too far, she comes to realize--ahead.

I could talk more about how smart and pragmatic and intuitive Michiru is, but we’d be stuck here all day. She’s my evil little girlboss, yes, but she also cares for her friends so much. At the end of the day, she’s an Fe dom, and that mastermind auxiliary Ni comes second - everything she does is to uplift and benefit the people around her. That dominant extroverted Feeling is what allows her to pick up on Akira’s potential from that day in their childhood - and auxiliary Ni instantly begins setting a plan into motion for how to get there. Why doesn’t Michiru try for the throne herself, then? Well, maybe there’s some deep-seated insecurity towards Akira and their relationship that we’re not seeing. It has always intrigued me so much as to why she prefers to work in the background. It would be fine if she truly preferred to stay in the shadows - that’s a normal thing for a lot of people to want, and they thrive there. But I’ve always had the feeling that isn’t quite the case for her…Sometimes she says things that make me think she desires more.

But again, she’s an Fe dom - her mind is geared towards thinking about other people, about what’s best for the group. And we see that once more when she’s perfectly poised to win the Arcana revue against Shiori, when she flippantly remarks at the start that there’s no way in hell that she’s losing to her - but then she sees how hard Shiori is trying, the potential she has to succeed her the role of Frau Saphir one day, how much she’s grown and come into her own and found a cause to fight for, while Michiru is is too far stuck in the future...and dominant Fe stamps that conniving auxiliary Ni down, and she rips off her own jacket for her kouhai.

Akira Yukishiro: ESTJ

Funnily enough, the “extroverted” ESTJ actually tends to be a bit more socially reserved than their “introverted” ISTJ siblings - this is because ESTJs have Feeling in their inferior slot, while ISTJs have it in their Tertiary (compare her to ISTJ Junna, who as a class leader actively goes out of her way to interact with the other girls and make sure everyone’s included, while Akira bothers herself only with the Edels). ESTJ’s extroversion instead manifests in their desire to control, order, and yes, be on top, just like Akira’s ENTJ cousin Claudine. Akira is a Te dom and Si aux, so she’s all about leading by example and doing it by the tried-and-true. This is why she fits so well into the role of the quintessential emperor/king, but as I mentioned with her inferior Fi, doesn’t actually have any charisma beyond what Fe-dom Michiru has manufactured for her (it's explicitly stated that Akira is even more revered than Edels of old - yes, due to her phenomenal and unparalleled talent, but also because Michiru actively works to cultivate an image that makes her untouchable). This is exactly why her relationship with Michiru works so well. It’s only natural that two extroverted judgers aimed for Siegfeld - and absolutely thrive there.

Her tertiary Ne, meanwhile, is why a lot of people (myself included) love her interactions with Yachiyo and Aruru (Ne doms). Akira’s Ne and Fi are weak, but she’s very smart and - contrary to first impressions - isn’t a stubborn person when she trusts the competency of the people around her (Te). And that’s thanks to her Ne. She lives for the stage, it’s her pride and joy, and when she sees people who are doing something that pay ode to it well - whether that’s ENFP Aruru’s excitable and childlike Ne-Fi or ENTP Yachiyo’s more pragmatic and intellectually curious Ne-Ti, she is quick to place her trust in them. Akira surprises the other two school leaders in the event story when she tells them they’d be wise to learn from Karen and Aruru’s senses of wonder, and Yachiyo’s passion for the stage - though wildly different from Akira’s own - is what makes her confident in her decision to pass the throne off to her.

Shiori Yumeoji: ISFJ

A PERFECT example of using dominant Si is when Shiori inhabits the role of the Chariot to draw out the strength and energy she needs during her revue with Michiru - introverted Sensing is all about deriving from past experiences and using them to inform the present!

And she and Tamao are!! The same!! Type!! Which is so interesting to me! ISFJs are so sweet and kind and caring (they and INFPs are actually often mistaken for each other - compare her to Mahiru!) - but there’s an inner fire to them that can be so easy to miss! I can’t think of a single fictional ISFJ I’ve met that didn’t, at some point, become incredibly insane and unhinged! I’m not sure what it is, but if I had to guess I think it’s that inferior Ne showing up, kicking down the door, and going “I’M HEEEEEEEEEEEEREEEEEEE BITCHESSSSSSSSSS”

Anyway - textbook ISFJ. So, so sweet and demure (Si dominant, Fe auxiliary - both are so concerned with standards, group sentiment, how things were done before, how everyone is feeling - so so so accommodating but can end up becoming doormats). We see that Si a lot in her woes towards her sister - “we were supposed to do this, we were supposed to be this,” etc. etc...hell the only reason in the first place that she joins the Edels is because of her original promise with Fumi. Tend to keep their inner thoughts and machinations to themselves (Ti tertiary). Prone to snapping and going insane if they get pushed/bothered too much (Ne inferior) - I legitimately think that Ne is the scariest function to have in your inferior slot. Godspeed, ladies.

Another fun note: she and Yachiyo are polar opposites, something I never noticed until just now. Interesting lmao

Liu Mei Fan: ENFJ

I had to check her PDB page to get her type because I honestly had no clue! She was the most difficult for me! But after seeing her listed as ENFJ I went “...hm?” and then went “oh yeah.”. Because she reminds me of Sonia Nevermind from Dangan Ronpa LMAOOOOO. FORGIVE ME FOR THIS COMPARISON. IT’S NOT BECAUSE OF THE EXCHANGE STUDENT THING!! They just have the same personality type, and it kind of manifests itself in the same way - despite the stereotype being that Fe doms are always very socially conscious and suave, these two are both a quirkier/more awkward type of ENFJ, and at first glance both could pass off as their happy-go-luckier ENFP or ESFP cousins instead...if you’re just looking at the letters. But when you look at their actual functions, they’re both ENFJ as they come! See how different two people of the same type can be?! She and Michiru share a type! Mei Fan is a well-meaning, driven Fe-dom in a strict Si-heavy environment like Siegfeld’s, and it’s SO funny to watch her dominant Fe desperately try to adjust her personality as she goes to fit in properly (while Michiru watches like 🙂 , Shiori is right there with her desperately adjusting (Fe aux), and Yachiyo doesn’t give a shit and does her own thing anyway). Our beloved shimbo has Ti in her last slot which isn’t surprising given her penchant to speak before she thinks, and Se in her tertiary slot which shows up in, again, her physicality (MUSCLEMAN MEI FAN HIGH-INTENSITY JOCK TRAINING IN THE MOUNTAINS). Aux Ni showed itself in that ceaseless determination to become an Edel, and her constant work towards shaping herself into an ideal one to impress Akira (and achieve her own goals in surpassing Akira herself!). Just compare her to dom Ne Yachi, who could care less about any of that stuff and goes her own way.

Yachiyo Tsuruhime: ENTP

“What do I wish for? World peace and happiness for everyone, I guess.” The moment I saw this homescreen quote I knew she was an ENTP - somebody else on her PDB page actually pointed it out too lmao. ENTPs are the “devil’s advocate” type which can lead to ruffling a lot of other peoples’ feathers, but Yachiyo is a bit suaver than that (developed tertiary Fe). Granted, she doesn’t escape the stereotype completely - she has a lot of fun in teasing the Fe-aux and Fe-dom Shiori and Mei Fan respectively, though she would never dare to do the same to Michiru. As we learn through the main story, there’s something that appears insidious about her at first glance - but that’s genuinely all it is, a first impression. She keeps to herself, yes, but Yachiyo’s an actress to the core, and her greatest love is the stage, just like (if not more than) all of the other girls around her. Yachiyo’s unique in that she breaks some of the typical Starira model of seeing her partner as her greatest inspiration - she’s not invested in a person like Shiori is with her sister or Michiru and Mei Fan are in Akira - Yachiyo pursues the stage solely for her own fulfillment and desires. Everything is a curiosity to her (Ne feeding Ti - how can I make sense of this world, and what can I do for myself to gain access to more information and experiences, because I’m always, always hungry for more). Her inferior Si shows up in how much she contrasts Akira, who is an Si-aux - just look at the unconventional way she found to practice her acting (pretending to be a spy snooping on the Edels), compared to Akira’s more conventional methods of stringent, scheduled practice.

[takonei]

I rate the DR 10th anniversary outfits because

Sooo someone posted scans of the thing and I am here to rate those disasters. Here we fucking go.

---

Makoto: 7/10 Simple and effective, but nothing special.

Taka: 7.5/10 A bit more classy than Makoto but still simple with not much originality.

Byakuya: 6/10 Out of all the characters who could have worn a jacket incorrectly, they choose McRich for the job. I hate it. But outfit is fine I guess.

Mondo: 10/10 So ridiculous and in character. Love it.

Leon: 5/10 What are you, scottish? The shoes ruin everything for me they’re so ugly smh. I know I can’t draw shoes either but what are those

Hifumi: 0/10 Look Hifumi, I know your character gets too much hate but I gotta say: Ew.

Hiro: 6.5/10 I like the outfit. But my guy, that color is piss. If you had just changed the color I would have added 2 points.

Sayaka: 7/10 Like Makoto, it’s nice but that’s it.

Kyoko: 9/10 Damn, she look classy as hell. I don’t like that much whatever is going on with the sleeves but the rest looks stunning.

Hina: 10/10 My girl looks SPLENDID in yellow. And the flowers are great too, I just love her. Plus that smile <3

Toko: 8/10 It’s nice, I like the bun(s?) and the dress looks good. The flower in her hair is a nice touch and the colors fit her.

Sakura: 9/10 My girl looks great in buns (+ flower). I like the kimono a lot but the colors used irks me just a tiny bit. Still love her, though.

Celeste: 8.5/10 I wish that veil was a bit more transparent so I could see her dress in it’s entirety. Either way, she looks stunning and that hairpiece is just in character.

Junko: 9/10 The dress looks fantastic, the mask is a nice touch but I feel like she would have been perfect with loose hair.

Chihiro: 7/10 Say what you want about the onceler, I like that outfit. Very cute but the socks(?) give me the same vibe as Miu’s bondage gear and mmmm don’t like that

-

Hajime: 7.5/10 See Makoto above but a little 0.5+ for that flower.

Nagito: 8.5/10 I’m a sucker for boys with tied hair, as you may already know. White looks nice on him, and the outfit is nice.

Twogami: 4/10 You just took Hifumi’s ugly outfit and put a fur coat on it. It doesn’t look that bad since it’s at least less flashy, but I just don’t vibe.

Gundham: 6/10 The outfit is okay I guess but are you telling me that this guy wouldn’t choose something 100 times more extra? He looks so plain. Give him the crazy outfit he deserves.

Kazuichi: 6/10 You fucking disaster. You just took your jumpsuit and made it fancy. This is so damn ridiculous, but I can still see some appeal in it but like, you’re a disaster man. Also nice glasses bro

Teruteru: 10/10 I love it. The vibe it has,,, I love this. The colors, the simpleness yet effectiveness, it’s just perfect.

Nekomaru: 6.5/10 It’s fine, I guess. It does fit him, but I don’t see that much stuff that could be considered out of the ordinary in a good way.

Fuyuhiko: 7.5/10 Palette color is good but like. The outfit is peak bisexual. I don’t even hc him as bisexual.

Akane: 10/10 THAT’S MY GIRL. She is more of a queen than Sonia will ever be, I’m sorry. She is rocking with that cape. And the outfit is great.

Chiaki: 7/10 It’s cute and effective, it fits her. I don’t like her hair that much for some reason, but overall she looks neat.

Sonia: 6/10 What do you mean this isn’t a miss universe contest?  I can’t vibe, I’m sorry. It looks nice, but it feels more like a popular girl’s dress than who Sonia really is.

Hiyoko: 7.5/10 It looks better than her in-game outfit, at least. The colors suit her, I like it.

Mahiru: 7/10 I have mixed feelings. I love the dress, but the headband is a huge no from me. Little plus for the flower, though.

Mikan: 1/10 Who thought this was a good outfit? Genuinely curious.

Ibuki: 9/10 This is so damn extra, I love it. So many ribbons for nothing, it almost gives a Touhou vibe. But the outfit itself? Horrendous color palette, but it fits because it’s Ibuki.

Peko: 9/10 Opposite of Ibuki on the same spectrum. It’s calm, classy anyway, and fits Peko. I don’t have anything to say, it’s just really good. Nice flower btw

-

Rantaro: 7/10 Outfit is fancy af, but you would have a better grade if it wasn’t for that damn fedora.

Kokichi: 7/10 Who the fuck wears purple socks with white shoes? Also as I said before, he looks like the type of person who gets drunk before coming to the party. Outfit’s good, but once you get to the details it’s a disaster.

Keebo: 4/10 I do not vibe. I don’t know what I’m looking at. Is this another armor? Is this an outfit on the armor? I don’t know. Scarf looks a bit out of place. Also Keebo, wearing your jacket like Hiro doesn’t suit you I’m sorry.

Gonta: 4/10 I do. do not vibe. Too many squares? Too green? idk what bothers me the most. Also he gave me a heart attack the first time I saw him bc I thought he had cut his hair.

Shuichi: 6.5/10 After those two disasters I am glad to see someone at least decent. The color palette doesn’t suit him that much, but I can respect it.

Kiyo: 10/10 The guy is so classy it hurts. I don’t even know if that’s a skirt or pants but either way I love it. This outfit just suits him 100%.

Ryoma: 3/10 What the fuck is this. What. What is this. This hat reaches Touhou levels of ridiculousness. It’s horrible. The outfit is kinda better than whatever some of them have going on but holy shit the hat ruins everything for me.

Kaito: 9/10 The coat is fantastic. Black with tiny moons and stars + a space interior? That’s beyond perfect. Outfit is nice, although I would have liked a different color for the vest and the pants.

Kaede: 8/10 It’s simple and effective. I really like the flowers but still, I can’t get used to Kaede’s haircut. At this this one has cute flowers and ribbons.

Miu: 8.5/10 Now you would think that with what Mikan got, Miu would get something super revealing, but this is surprisingly not the case. It’s very original and it suits her a lot, especially the huge sleeves.

Tsumugi: 7/10 The dress is nice, but that’s pretty much it. I like how she tied her hair, it does look nice. Also those shoes are weird tbh

Tenko: 9/10 I was wrong. This is, in fact, a mini-short. She looks so classy and I love the new placement of the hairpin. She looks a lot like a talentswap Magician!Tenko and I love it. So classy. Very good.

Kirumi: 10/10 That’s peak fancy. I just. I love. her. She’s so fucking great like the elegance, the classiness, everything is perfect. I believe in Kirumi supremacy.

Maki: 3/10 I’m sorry I hate this dress. It had good potentiel but the color palette irks me. No. I can’t. Hair looks nice tho.

Himiko: 8/10 It’s just so damn cute. Idk if the space theme is a reference to her beta design but either way, I love it.

Angie: 8/10 A different kind of fancy. I like the large pants, it does fit her vibe. Also that veil is cool af.

[skylights2000]

Blush (Kazuichi x Fem! Reader) Part 1

This is my first story with a Female Reader, but if you guys don’t like it that way, I can rework it to make the reader Genderneutral. Let me know what you think 💜

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Kazuichi had only agreed to this stupid ritual because Sonia asked him, and Miu said she’d drag him here herself if he didn’t show up.

He’d gone through the motions, trying his best not to panic, but that all went out the window when the lights above their heads burst, showering, Miu, Sonia, Gundham, and him with sparks.

He stood there, frozen in horror, as smoke swirled from the center of the salt circle they’d made. A figure slowly appeared as the mist began to vanish. The lights flickered back on, and standing in the middle of the circle was what appeared to be a woman.

She was wearing a dark purple t-shirt and black jeans. She would look like a regular person if it weren’t for the dark spirals that curled up her arms, and the pair of curled, dark purple horns that protruded from her head.

She looked around the room before her eyes settled on him. She moved silently and at a speed his eyes couldn’t keep up with. In a heartbeat, she was standing at the edge of the salt circle, her dark purple eyes boring into his.

He jumped, stumbling backwards. She held out her hand, frowning when her hand met the barrier created by the salt circle.

“Mm, that’s unfortunate.” Her voice was soft, slightly deeper than most women he’d met.

She hooked her thumbs through her belt loops and turned to face Sonia and Gundham. “You called?”Gundham nodded calmly. “We wish for you to imbue this mechanical being with a living soul.”

She moved back to the center of the circle where Kiibo laid. She crouched down beside him, inspecting it quietly.

“No.”

“What?!” Miu screeched. “You have to! Please!”

She turned to Miu with an exasperated frown. “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I can’t.”

“How is that possible? Your power is quite immense from what I can tell.” Gundham asked curiously.

“Even with my power, giving this robot a living spirit would take too much of my energy. I’d be completely immobilized. If I went back to my world in that condition” She scowled darkly. “I’d be ripped to shreds.”

“Then stay here until you’re strong enough to go back!” Miu countered fiercely.

The demon ran a hand through her hair, frustration written across her face. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Why not?!”

“I’m a demon. My energy doesn’t replenish on its own. I gain energy from others through physical touch.” She explained.

“Then touch one of us!”

“No!” She snapped, finally losing her cool. “Taking that much energy from a human at one time would kill them!”

Miu finally went silent as she processed the words. “Then can’t you take someone’s energy a little at a time?”

“I can in theory, but it’s hard to find a human that’s willing to agree to something like that.”

“Take Kazuichi!” Miu offered, ignoring Kazuichi’s sputtered protests.

The demon glanced at him, a ghost of a smile dancing at the corners of her lips. “As tempting as that is, I don’t think you should be volunteering your friend without asking him.”

Every head turned to Kazuichi, and he instantly stiffened under their gazes.

“I..” He looked at Kiibo, the metal robot that he and Miu had painstakingly made by hand. They’d spent months building and improving the robot until it nearly looked like a real person. He glanced to Miu, who was watching him with a painfully hopeful expression.

He swallowed thickly, squared his shoulders, and locked eyes with the demon woman. “I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded stiffly, trying to hide how nervous he actually was. She shot him one last doubtful look before shrugging and turning away from him. He watched in shock as her fingers grew into long, black claws. Just as she was about to dig them into the ground, Sonia spoke up quickly. “Wait!”

The demon paused, head raising to look at Sonia from where she stood. “Yeah?”

“You can’t carve anything on the ground. We don’t own this building.” Sonia explained.

The demon glanced around the room before nodding. “Take me somewhere where I can.”

She leaned forward and picked Kiibo up as if he weighed nothing. It had taken both Kazuichi and Gundham to move Kiibo the few feet to get him in the circle, but she carried him with ease. She stood at the edge of the salt circle, and Sonia kicked some away to make a path for her.

The demon woman nodded gratefully and moved to stand beside Sonia. “Lead the way.”

Gundham led them outside the building and into a grassy area outside. “Put it here.”

She laid Kiibo in the spot Gundham was pointing to and told them to back up. She used her claws to draw a large circle around Kiibo, carving several strange symbols inside as she went.

When she was done, she crouched down next to Kiibo and took one of his smooth, metal hands. The symbols she carved began to glow, softly at first but rising until the light lit up the area around them. He could hear her talking, her voice carried by the wind that swirled around them, whipping his hair into his face. The words were different, spoken confidently in a language he didn’t understand. Her body began to shift, the spirals on her arms began to curl all the way up her neck, framing her face and branching across her cheeks. A pair of large, dark wings protruded from her back, shielding their eyes from the blinding explosion of purple light that followed. The light slowly began to fade until all that was left was a soft glow coming from Kiibo’s chest. Once it faded, Miu rushed forward, cradling Kiibo’s head in her lap.

The demon girl shifted to sit on the ground, using one arm to hold herself up while the other was clenched in the center of her chest. “..He’ll wake up..tomorrow..” She choked out, each word strained and laced with pain.

“Are you okay?” Sonia asked worriedly as she crouched down beside the horned woman.

She nodded stiffly. “Just..took more than..I thought it would..” She glanced back at Miu. “You need..to take him..inside..” At the curious looks she received, she clarified. “A storm..is coming..”

“You can sense the shifting of the weather patterns.” Gundham spoke up, tapping his chin thoughtfully.

“Whatever, just help me with this, man.” Kazuichi said.

He and Gundham worked together to carry Kiibo back into the garage while Miu and Sonia worked together to cover the markings in the dirt before returning to her side.

The demon had clambered to her feet, swaying dangerously when she moved. Sonia and Miu rushed forward to catch her, supporting as much of her weight as they could. She was taller than both of them, so it was a bit difficult, but they managed to help her into the building.

By the time they got inside, her wings had vanished and the spirals on her skin had receded back to their original place. They helped her over to a bench nearby, and she sat down, leaning her head against the wall.

Miu glanced over at Kiibo and smiled softly. “Thank you.”

She laughed breathily. “You better enjoy that damn robot. Nearly killed myself for it.”

Miu grinned at her excitedly. “Hell yeah, I’ll enjoy it!” As if to prove her point, she ran over to the robot man and began excitedly tinkering with several things to get him plugged in. She assumed it was so that he could charge.

“Oh my, how rude of me!” The demon glanced at Sonia when she spoke. “My name is Sonia Nevermind.” Sonia held out her hand happily, and when the demon woman hesitated, Sonia took her hand instead. “What’s your name?”

“...Call me (Y/n). That was my human name.”

“You have another name?”

The demon, (Y/n), nodded but didn’t specify what that name actually was.

Sonia squeezed her hand gently. “You can have a bit of my energy.”

(Y/n) turned to her sharply, eyes narrowing skeptically. “You’re sure about that?”

Sonia nodded seriously, and after a second, she felt a spark at her fingertips. When (Y/n) removed her hand from Sonia’s she still didn’t look great, but she no longer looked like she was in pain. “Thank you.”

Sonia smiled sweetly and headed off towards her friends. (Y/n) watched as she tapped the pink haired man on the shoulder. What had they called him, Kazuichi?

(Y/n) watched Sonia’s mouth move, tempted to use her stronger hearing to hear the conversation, but she decided against it. She shouldn’t be eavesdropping.

She really wished she had though when Kazuichi started walking towards her.

He approached her hesitantly, like she would suddenly rip out his heart. She was honestly a bit offended by his reaction, but she supposed she couldn’t blame him.

The portrayal of demons amongst humans, both in writing and in word of mouth, was quite horrendous. Most of the things said about demons were actually wrong.

Many people claimed demons were monstrous beings that were created by and served Lucifer, but that wasn’t entirely true. Every demon was once human, but only the vilest, most horrible demons served under Lucifer.

She was not one of them. She had been born a human, though her father was, indeed, a demon. Her father was a truly wretched demon. Being his daughter had plagued her from the beginning, filling her head with horrible thoughts and desires for destruction.

In the end, it started to become too much to control. The only way to fix it was to perform a ritual that would denounce him as her father. The only problem was that the ritual would kill her.

She’d done it knowing that, and for that, she was to be locked out of heaven for one thousand years as her punishment. She was currently 999 years old. One more year and this hell she’d suffered would be over. She would be allowed into heaven and have any remnants of her father cleansed from her soul forever.

That thought had been enough to keep her going, to keep her hoping.

She was so lost in thought that she didn’t realize Pinky had reached her until he was standing right in front of her.

He pointed at the spirals on her arm that had begun to shift, almost like they were flickering. “What’s goin’ on with those marks?”

“Since I’m only half-demon, it takes a certain amount of energy to keep up my demon form. Soon, I’m gonna have to switch back to my human form.”

“You’re half-human?”

“Yeah. My mom was a human.”

He shuffled awkwardly. “So what now?”

“Whaddya mean?”

“Aren’t you like” He waved his hand as if that would answer her question. “feeding off me?”

Her eyebrows drew together. “You say that like I forced you to agree to that.”

“You did!”

She glared at him, not even caring when he flinched. “I didn’t tell you to do shit. In case you’re forgetting, I even asked you a second time if you were sure about it. The second you said ‘yes’, it became your problem. I don’t know about here, but in the demon world, a promise is a binding contract.” She scowled at him, irritation written across her face. “You think I wanted to be here? The only reason I showed up is because I owed the on-call demon a favor. If I knew I’d be knocking on death’s doorstep for the second time, I woulda said no.” She snapped angrily.

She pinched the bridge of her nose, telling herself to calm down. Her father’s spirit came through much worse when she was angry, and that was the last thing she wanted. “Listen, I’m not here to start a fight. Figure out what you wanna do. Until then, leave me alone.” With that, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

She wished she was still human. If she was, maybe no one would look at her with such disgust. She was tired of the fear in people’s eyes when they saw her.

‘Just one more year, kid’ She told herself.

Just one more year.

[insomniac-dot-ink]

The Dark Library

Words: 19k

Genre: high fantasy, wlw romance

Summary: A young woman descends below the earth into an enormous ancient library to learn the secrets of necromancy. There she meets a librarian’s assistant that is bound to the forbidden place and starts to form a tentative bond in the face of the fact the assistant herself cannot leave.

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Tomma’s boots crunched on the rough ground with each step. The sky was grey and faceless above her and there was a whisper of a chill on the breeze. The trees around her had already lost their summer clothes and shed rough piles of orange and red to the ground.

It was a sparse path with vegetation spread far apart and trees lonely by the side of the mountain. The mountain itself was iron gray and stuck straight out of the earth as if to split the sky in two with a jagged vengeance. It was broken in many places and Tomma made sure to keep her eyes focused on a dark patch on its side.

There was no gate or runes or even a door she could make out. There was only a dark smudge on the side of the stone with an inky, etching blackness just beyond. As Tomma grew closer she could feel a warmth oozing out from inside, it wasn’t hot, but it was unsettling- like the breath from a sleeping giant snaking out.

Tomma squinted ahead and started to cast her spell before she went any closer, “Abador, li jada…” she muttered the ancient words in a tongue she barely understood herself. The words seemed to fall on deaf ears as her boots crunched and crunched forward on the stony path.

She frowned slowly and finished the spell, “show yourself…”

For a long terrible moment Tomma thought the words she had fought for, spilled blood for, cried for, had been for naught. That she might just turn around and have to find another way in.

But, as if from a dream, a woman in a cloak stepped out of the darkness. She had a black velvet dress that swept over the ground and a cloak that covered her from head to foot. On her face was enormous bird mask that covered her eyes and hair.

She moved her mouth, and it moved oh so oddly. “A child?” She said in a bitter winter wind voice and frowned with thin lips. Some say she built the library herself. Others say she simply stewarded the place for the thing that did.

Tomma drew herself up, “I wish to travel into the dark library.”

A smile played across the woman’s exposed mouth in an almost cruel way. “I see.” She said simply and straightened up. She was a tall woman with an impressive build.

“Please, I must enter.” Tomma grew a smile to match the woman’s own. “Madame Sonia.” The woman’s smile faltered at the sound of her own name but she swept around in a circle.

“Follow me.”

Tomma had barely a moment to hesitate before she disappeared into the warm mouth of the cave and Tomma was forced to hurry after the heavy cloak into the darkness. The sound of the rustling trees and a nearby river was swallowed whole as she entered. It was warm inside in a tepid sort of way- like a bath left to cool for too long.

Inside was dim and filled with sharp walls where runes were carved into the soft flesh of the mountain. Madam Sonia’s steps were all but silent and she hurried on ahead with her cloak billowing behind her.

Tomma swallowed and reached for her own gloved left hand. She wanted to squeeze it and remind herself why she was here, but there was no time as Madame Sonia dipped lower in the path and she had to jog to not lose her.

“First rule,” Madame Sonia spoke in a hushed and yet clipped manner. “Do not wander. I’m sure you’ve heard rumors about the library and I’ll assure you they’re all true. You won’t live longer than a day if you wander.”

“I won’t.” Tomma confirmed in a low voice, edged herself past a craggy overhang, and followed Madame Sonia down into the earth.

“Second rule,” Madame Sonia gestured outward. “We no longer lend items out. Carry nothing with you on your way back to the surface.”

“I understand.”

“Final rule,” Sonia abruptly stopped in place and Tomma had to squint to even see her outline. She seemed to be standing in front of an enormous archway. “Past this point you must make as little noise as possible. This isn’t a library to be taken lightly. Whisper, or you will find yourself sorely regretting it.”

“Okay.” A cold sweat break down Tomma’s spine. You knew what you were getting into, she chastised herself as a complete hungry darkness lay ahead.

“Do you still wish to proceed into the Library Below the Earth?”

“Yes.” She said quickly without hesitation. “Take me.”

“Very well, put these on,” Madame Sonia held out a pair of soft-bottomed felt shoes from within her cloak. “You will be assigned a guide from here on out. You must follow her at all times or risk the worst. Remember rule one. No wandering.”

The felt shoes were too small and cramped Tomma’s feet but the material was at least soft and the grip more firm than painful. She could not tell the color or make of the shoe, but it didn’t matter.

There was only one thing that mattered past the archway: the Cipher of the Dead. And all the secrets of necromancy therewithin.

“I am ready.” Tomma stood and had to crane her neck up to look at the bird-faced mask of Madame Sonia. It’s a crow, she realized belatedly.

Madame Sonia waved her hand with a flourish and just past the archway was a flickering light in the darkness that traveled quickly toward them on some unseen path.

“You will have Lucia to guide you. She is one of my girls and will take you where you need to go and,” the Madame said in her deep, icy voice. “She will know everywhere you go inside the library. Nothing is off limits, but I’m sure I do not need to encourage prudence in your studies.”

“Thank you.” Tomma managed to grit out because she wasn’t about to be rude to her hosts yet- no matter how much this woman rubbed Tomma the wrong way.

The flickering torch came into view and another mask appeared ahead. The girl before her had an autumn orange dress that hung just above her feet and long sweeping pleated sleeves that covered half her hands.

Her face was mostly covered by a red fox mask. It was stylized and with a small white snout and feathers woven into the red fur. Her hair was covered and only her pale pink mouth and angular cheeks showed. She had a sturdy build and moved very suredly across the uneven blackened ground.

Her skin was weathered and had the look of many farm girls that Tomma had passed along the way to the dark library. Tomma wondered if that’s how the wicked place got its servants: stole them from the countryside right out from under the nose of their mothers and fathers. Or if foolish young things just sometimes wondered into caves and never came out.

It didn’t matter. The young woman silently made her way to the archway and illuminated its huge face. The arch was covered in rough runes and made of an inky black stone that reflected the light. Tomma wrinkled her nose. The rock was too shiny and too smooth in the light of the flame.

Madame Sonia examined Tomma, “Do you agree to our terms?”

Tomma barely turned her chin up. “I do.”

Madame Sonia gestured ahead. “Lucia. This is Tomma Merrimont. You will escort her toward the books of the dead.”

Tomma gritted her teeth as she realized she had never told this woman her name or her purpose. But it didn’t matter.

Lucia barely nodded before turning around again and standing aside. Tomma looked between the tall imposing Sonia and her servant, but Lucia was already walking and there was nothing to do but follow.

Crossing the archway of the damned was said to be an unpleasant experience no matter what. Tomma stared at the structure for a long moment before squaring her shoulders, drawing herself up, and walking. Her whole body shook with a sickening lurch of her stomach and goosebumps shivering up her arms. Her mouth tasted brackish and gritty as she entered and she had to cover her mouth for a moment.

She didn’t have time to revel in the lump in her throat as the light moved on ahead and Tomma looked over her shoulder only once to see Sonia watching them both. She turned around and followed Lucia.

The area beyond the archway was different than the cave behind them. Instead of grey and jagged rock walls the cavity was made of that same shiny, black material that was unnervingly smooth and bright against the light. The ground was less cave-like and almost like a normal hall with corners and flat floors. The only similarity with the cave was the uncomfortable mild warmth that bled through the air.

The halls varied in width as they went, sometimes forcing Tomma to duck down, or expanding to the point where she could extend both arms out. Tomma wasn’t sure how long they traveled, always downward into the earth, but her feet began to ache from the tight shoes and thoughts started to buzz from the silence.

Their footsteps were quiet and eaten by the thick still air and the only noise was something dripping in the distance- water down into a pool. Dripping and breathing and a world of strangeness.

The fox-masked girl ahead never stumbled or even looked back at her. She just walked at a steady, fast pace. It felt like almost an hour before she slowed and the path ahead started to open up.

It was warmer than ever before and sweat trickled down Tomma's spine. The light reflected off the first color she had seen in miles: blue, deep enchanting indigo blue embedded in the walls. The gems caught the light for a moment before Lucia turned and touched the wall.

Tomma raised her eyebrows as she recognized a door there: it was small and compact with a handsome brass handle and a central blue gem. Lucia waved a hand in front of it and the thing seemed to swing open with a gust of wind.

“We’re here,” Lucia whispered and her voice was like rusting hinges and soft wind chimes. “Don’t wander.”

Tomma’s eyes grew huge as the light of the torch danced across an enormous room. “Oh…” She said softly. “Wow.” She had arrived at the library beneath the earth.

She hurriedly took a step inside before it could disappear like a mirage or she would jerk awake from this dream.

Tomma couldn’t see any walls, but there were blue pillars reaching up and up past the height of any grown man and hitting an unseen ceiling. There were splotches of pale light streaming from above: it was stark white and faint, but enough to fill the room in bright patches here and there.

The air smelled slightly dusty, but it was cooler than in the halls and there was something stark about it that seemed to wake her up.

She strained to see across the room, but could only make out rows and rows of books before her. Enormous shelves of sturdy dark wood and towering ladders climbing toward the highest shelves at precarious angles. The shelves themselves held thick tomes with spines of gold that caught the light and black books the color of ink that looked like they wept dark liquid. It was a library of proportions Tomma couldn’t even fathom.

Tomma tipped her chin up toward the glowing powder-white light above and she knew her mouth had fallen open. She glanced back to the fox-masked girl, Lucia. “Where is the Cypher of the Dead?” She whispered shortly. “Books on necromancy?”

The girl stared at her deftly as if she was asking something unreasonable. For a moment Tomma thought she caught the edge of hazel eyes behind the eye holes. Weary hazel eyes.

“This way,” Lucia said faintly and started leading the way.

Shelves of books passed, ones made with solid white that shone like diamonds and books with pressed flowers along their spine and books that seemed to twitch when they passed.

They wove through the rows and dipped in and out of the strips of blanched white light that shone from above like a scrawled bits of sudden color in a grey pool. Something continued to drip in the distance and Tomma tried to remember their steps and how many turns they took, but counting was pointless.

The books looked different, but the enormous space was strange and crooked and hard to follow. The ground itself was made of interconnecting tiles in varying blue designs: swirls and diamonds and peacock feather eyes- different and yet seemingly made to confuse.

“Ahead.” Tomma barely heard the whisper of the girl. She snapped her head up and a humid breath of chilled air licked her cheek.

It was colder here.

Lucia stopped with her torch in front of an black gate made of wrought iron. “We have to go to the lower section.” The girl said impassionately.

Tomma gave a short nod. “Lead the way.” Lucia fiddled with the gate for a long minute and Tomma fidgeted in place and glanced around. After several long moments she tried to break the deadening silence, “Deep dark, holes, huh?” She leaned against the wall and looked over the gate, “Nothing I haven’t dealt with before. Though I usually prefer a person attached, heh...” She didn’t know why she said that.

If Lucia understood or found the comment amusing at all she didn’t show it. She turned and Tomma was mentally kicking herself, who says that? She tried to blame it on the oddness of the morning and the fact she had worked for months for this and it was somehow stranger than she had imagined.

Lucia opened the gate with a rusty creak and visibly flinched at the pitched noise. “Let’s go.” She stood aside and Tomma passed through the black gate without meeting her eyes. Lucia closed the gate behind them.

Tomma followed her down a set of winding iron steps into an even darker part of the library with dirt walls that seemed to compress around them. They strolled past more book shelves with thicker tomes on them and steeper ladders. This level was lit by red lanterns hanging from the ceiling instead of the chilled white light, bathing the whole room in an orangey glow.

Lucia paused with a sudden jerk and pointed at several shelves with gaps between the books. “There.” She said flatly. “Cyphers of the dead.”

Tomma’s eyes went wide, “That’s it?”

Lucia only nodded and Tomma shook slightly, reaching for her left hand to squeeze it through the thick leather gloves. She had been waiting for months and months to see this. To read it, to see it, to touch it.

“Okay,” she took a shuddering breath and her steps were slow and almost painful as she worked her way over to the enormous books of the dead.

“I will give you four hours here before it will be time to retire to our chambers.”

That made Tomma pause, “Chambers?”

“Arrangements are made in the library for anyone seeking knowledge,” she said simply. “Once you find what you’re looking for you will be escorted out, but until then you may stay as long as it takes. That is the purpose of the library.”

Tomma’s lifted her eyebrows, she had heard that people disappeared for months at a time in the library below- looking for military strategies, keys to eternal life, access to vast amounts of wealth. That sort of thing.

She never imagined that they simply… slept in the library itself in arranged rooms.

“Uh, thanks.” Tomma scratched the back of her neck and Lucia only dipped her head in acknowledgement.

“Find what you seek quickly, patron.” She said softly. “Dallying does not bode well for those accepted here.”

Tomma’s skin crawled at that comment and quickly skipped over to the large faceless bookshelf with no apparent markings on it. She picked the first book off the shelf at random and a giddy electricity swept through her veins.

The book was smooth and its spine fit neatly in her hand. The cover was black with an overdramatic carving of a skull on its face. It smelled thickly of leather and was almost warm and thrumming against her hands.

This is it. She carefully, slowly, opened it all the way up. This is it. She found a page of scrawled dark letters.

“What?” Tomma stopped and stared. She blinked several times at a mass of smeared nonsense words in a language she didn’t recognize: triangles and dashes and empty circles. She quickly shoved it aside and reached for the next book with a certain fever rush.

She flipped through the next book with the pattern of a horn on the front. It opened up to another slew of words in the same strange shapes that didn’t mean anything to her. “No.” She gasped.

She opened five more books after that: a blue one with a smiling cruel face on it. A red one with a dragon design that was made of bones. And then three black ones with nothing at all on their fronts.

“How can this be?” She seethed and barely kept her voice low and below a full-on cry. She whipped around on her heels to face the waiting librarian's assistant. She strode over with hot coals in her center. “What is this?” She shook the book in Lucia’s face.

“Books of the dead are written in the language of the dead.” Lucia said simply. “I think you would know that.”

Tomma’s eyes grew huge and she gnashed her teeth, “No.” She shook slightly. “I didn’t.”

Lucia shrugged. “I can take you to the dictionary section of the library.”

Tomma’s stomach fell into a cold pit, more? She fumed. I have to do more?!

She took deep even breaths to calm herself. No. I’ve waited this long… What’s a bit more waiting and studying? She reasoned with herself and clenched her left hand and nodded.

They went up the set of stairs back into the white light and Tomma didn’t even bother to count the number of turns they took until they were at another enormous section with spines the size of her extended hand.

“Here,” Lucia stepped aside. “You have three more hours here before we retire.”

Tomma stood and blankly looked on ahead, “where is this dictionary?”

Lucia shrugged. “I can show you sections of the library, but all knowledge here must be begot by your own hands.”

“Ugh,” Tomma groaned as she realized it was one of those silly “you have to earn it” tests that wizards and fools liked to give out.

She scanned the shelves and realized that they would have languages upon languages housed in this ancient place. Dead languages, languages of the stars, languages that other scholars would kill to learn. But Tomma wasn’t interested in that, all she just needed the secrets to necromancy.

First, of course, she needed a proper translating device.

She opened the first book and got to work. -------------- Words started to blur together in sticky clumps and Tomma had a slight headache by the time the library assistant cleared her throat. None of the lights had changed in the chamber and Tomma’s ass hurt from sitting for so long.

“It’s time.” Tomma jumped as Lucia whispered next to her shoulder and she jerked her head up.

“Already?” Tomma returned quietly, though she wasn’t unhappy with the interruption. Her muscles were sore and she had to rub her eyes several times to get the real world to focus. “I don’t suppose there’s a map to these sections?” Tomma asked slowly, “or some sort of system I can use to find this book?”

Lucia simply straightened up and gestured, “it’s time to retire to the chambers.”

“Fine, fine.” Tomma put away the half-dozen books spread out around her and itched her foot for a moment- still stuffed in the too-tight shoes.

The walk to the chambers was just as winding as any of the other ones, past massive bookshelves, splashes of light, and across decorative blue and white tiles. Tomma rubbed her eyes again and reminded herself it would all be over after this.

I can go home after this.

She barely noticed as they approached an enormous dirt wall with a red door embedded in it. “Will there,” Tomma’s voice felt rough and odd in the large place. “Will there be food? Water?”

The fox-masked girl shot her an annoyed glare, probably for talking at all. “You will be provided for in your room.”

They exited out of the library into the hall with the inky black stones and Tomma shivered in the dull warmth. Lucia walked clippedly ahead without pausing. For a moment Tomma wanted to smack the seriousness off her tight lips and stern brow. She wanted her to start laughing or tap dancing or doing anything else.

Regardless, Lucia led her down, down, into a dimly lit second hall with the blue tiles on the walls and a long, dreary corridor. Lucia seemed to select a door at random and got out an enormous set of keys from her sleeve and clanged it into the lock.

The door heaved open with a creaking sigh and a small chamber lay within that was about half the size of Tomma’s room back home. And she didn’t grow up in a big house. The walls were covered in those same blue tiles and there was an eerie pale light from above.

“Here,” Lucia stood aside. “Bedding and a chamber pot are in the corner.” She said in that same flat tone. “Food will arrive through the slot in the door.”

Tomma made a face, “you’re not like, locking me in, are you? I’m not some sort of prisoner?”

Lucia looked at her carefully and a long pause followed that would be classified somewhere between an awkward dinner party at your estranged relatives and accidently farting in a confined space. “No.” She finally said tightly, “you are not a prisoner, but.” She seemed to study Tomma mutely, “do not leave your room.”

Tomma swallowed dryly at the way the girl spoke, but simply nodded. “I’ll uh, retire then.”

“I will retrieve you in nine hours for further studying.”

“Of course.” Tomma said and suddenly felt the energy drain from her like a straw attached to the soles of her feet and sucked. “Great.”

Lucia simply dipped her head again and Tomma slipped into her room and listened to the loud clank of the door as it shut tightly. Tomma closed her eyes, exhaled, and for a moment she saw a flash of the red-fox mask in her mind’s eye.

Red and indifferent and staring at her with the exhaustion of ages.

She shivered and kicked her shoes off before spreading out on the bed padding and staring at the ceiling. She tried not to get lost in the dizzying patterns of the tiles there. “Soon…” She reassured herself with a whisper, “we’ll go home soon.”

The night passed slowly after that. She was given a thick stew with chunks of rabbit meat, brown bread, and a single sugar cube for a pot of hot tea. She sniffed and poked and shook the food to test it, but it seemed to be a regular meal.

She was hungry enough to scarf down the stew and bread while staring at the wall and having the silence gnaw at her from all sides. The dripping of the water was distant now and there was a certain nothingness about the place, a gaping lack.

A lack of proper lighting and proper sound and proper words to speak out loud. Tomma ducked her head down in her small room and curled up in bed as quickly as possible.

Only a little longer, she promised herself and tried to force herself asleep.

But sleep didn’t come. The ground was hard under the bedding and dug into her hips and shoulder blades in a way where she couldn’t get comfortable. She missed the sound of rustling leaves overhead, thumping feet, and chattering voices in cities or encampments. Tomma tossed and turned and waited.

It must have been hours later when a sound came from outside.

Clank, clank, clank.

Tomma’s eyes flew open as a clunky metallic noise erupted from the hallway.

Clank, clank.

Her skin crawled with a cool whisper of unease and she listened to the metal jangling as it passed. After a few moments Tomma rolled out of bed and crept toward the door despite the voice in her head that told her to stay inside and not investigate.

Had she not been warned? But Tomma listened to the metallic ringing and she couldn’t just ignore it. I’ll only take a peak, she told herself and gently, slowly, eased the door open. She stuck her nose out an inch and her eyes darted to a warm light at the end of the hall.

There was a familiar figure there holding a brilliant torch in the darkness. “Oh…” Tomma said softly and openly stared.

The figure wore a long white nightdress that went down to her ankles and was pale and flimsy in the light. She had long reddish-brown hair that fell to the middle of her back in big fluffy bushels and the same sturdy build and weathered skin.

Lucia.

Lucia stood with her back to her with impeccably straight posture that seemed off somehow- too upright and too taut. Lucia took a few grinding steps down the hall and the noise came again: clank, clank.

Tomma glanced down and realized that Lucia was barefoot and mask-less, but there were heavy metal chains clamped around both of her ankles. She was the one clunking down the hall with her metal confines in tow.

There was a lonely aspect to her in that white nightgown, holding a light high, back straight, and feet rattling as she moved. A dream-like sorrow about it.

Tomma’s entire body tensed as she watched Lucia for another transfixed moment before shutting the door quickly and scurrying back to bed.

It’s none of your business, she told herself and grit her teeth. This place is none of your business.

She tried to ignore the girl in chains and go to sleep after that. --------------- Tomma didn’t mention what she saw the next morning. Someone delivered a bland breakfast to her through the slot in the door of soup, bread, and tea and she dressed and washed. She made sure her knife was tied neatly to her hip and then simply waited.

Lucia arrived promptly with her pink lips pressed together and hands folded in front of her, “good morning.” She said with a curt nod and then gestured, “let's get started for the day.”

Tomma simply sighed, “yeah, yeah. Good morning.”

They exited the room and Tomma tried to read Lucia as they walked. She tried to see past her red mask and controlled movements and back to the lonely looking specter of a girl from the night before. She came up empty.

Lucia brought her to the library, and Tomma tore herself away from the enigma of it all and back to the task at hand. She approached the dictionary section and took a deep breath. “Alright,” She pushed her lank dark hair back, “alright.”

She pulled one book out. And then another. Lucia stood off to the side and simply watched as she checked the first pages of each. Tomma put them back and then pulled out a third.

It was many books later when Tomma realized that the day was probably going to much like the previous one. Books and dust and darkness.

She was right. And the next day was much like the one before. They all passed with a type of monotonous singularity: dark halls, rough books, words upon words, climb ladder, check text, check text, check text, eat soup, follow Lucia, dark halls, words, words, words.

Tomma found a massive table in the center of the dictionary section and stacked piles high around her and flipped through them. She would take one glance at the text, and then slide the book away to check the next one.

Tomma still hadn’t found the right dictionary, but she eventually found a dictionary for fish languages and elvish in a dialect she didn’t know existed and two types of draconic. Most of the languages she didn’t recognize, and worse, none of them even hinted to the language of the dead. There were no indications of its existence in the five “universal translation” books she found or “The Big Book of Curse Words in Every Language” text.

“Ugh.” She groaned and stretched high above her back until her spine cracked one vertebra at a time. She had spent the last few months running and jumping and riding horses and it was almost some sort of punishment to have to keep sitting day after day.

Of course, the days dragged on and the worst part of it all was the watching. As far as Tomma could tell she was the only one occupying that section of the library right then. It was just her and the fox-masked girl and the silence and the books and the distant dripping sound. And the fox-masked girl was always watching.

Tired, hazel eyes, quick and hostile behind her mask. Brisk steps and incredibly steady and tense poise as she stood to the side. Always watching.

It started to grate against Tomma’s nerves- an ever present presence that haunted her every sneeze and page flip and paper cut. It felt like a giant eye to witness her failure and it started to deeply bother Tomma like some scab she couldn’t pick at.

Somewhere into the fifth day a restlessness took hold of Tomma. Lucia’s gaze seemed to burn a hole into the back of her neck. She glanced over her shoulder relentlessly in turn. Just do something, Tomma thought to herself venomously, blink, cough, burp, stop looking at me!

It was hard to concentrate by that point. The words were heavy against her eyes and despair heavier behind her movements. She glanced back to Lucia again and she was standing impassively between two bookcases with her mouth a straight line and entire demeanor almost lifeless and empty. Tomma scowled. Do something!

Lucia did nothing.

Something snapped within Tomma. She sat up straight, twitched once, and then moved. She pretended to yawn first and then turned around rapidly and stared at Lucia with all the intensity she could muster.

How do you like it? She thought. To have all eyes on you.

Lucia just stood there, motionless.

Tomma made a face at her. She scrunched her nose up and stuck her tongue out and blew her cheeks up with air and wrinkled her forehead up. Do something! Lucia did not do anything or give any reaction at all to her strange behavior.

Tomma turned back to her pages for just an instant before twisting in place and making a spectacular monster face. She bore her teeth and made her eyes wide and awful, she growled and hoped to scare Lucia into laughing or screaming or moving at all. Tomma’s chair squeaked as she did and she started flailing in midair as it unbalanced and her arms went pinwheeling around.

“Ah!” She gave a sharp squeak and then the chair squidded backward and she fell in a heap. Her back bumped against the floor and then she rolled into an embarrassing pile on the smooth floor.

Tomma wanted to cover her face and die at that point, but a sound erupted next to her. It was soft and barely audible, but there nonetheless. It was a careful and fractured laugh.

Lucia was laughing into her hands and looking down at the floor.

“Ha!” Tomma said triumphantly. “You are human!”

Lucia covered her mouth to smother the laughter, but abruptly stopped mid-laugh and her head jerked around like a dog cocking its ears up.

“Fuck,” she whispered and drew backward with visible anxiety written across her body. Her mouth twisted into a snarl and her shoulders tensed. She faced Tomma, “You idiot,” She said scathingly and hurried over to her.

“What?” Tomma blinked a couple times, “I just made you laugh. It’s not a criminal offense or-”

“Too much noise.” Lucia yanked her up. “Too much damn noise.” She tugged again and then Tomma heard it too: a scraping sound across the tiles on the other side of the library. Shit.

“What is that?” She whispered and Lucia’s eyes blazed.

She pulled Tomma fully to her feet, “You don’t want to find out.”

It was a scraping sound like knives against dinner plates and nails dragging across metal.

Lucia pushed her once and then started hurrying them forward. “Come on…” She barked, “Run!” They dipped and wove through the shelves, winding around enormous puddles of light and thumping in some unknown direction. They passed large chairs with dusty cushions, more ladders, and pillars, and Tomma started to get dizzy.

They were fast, but the scraping sound was persistent. A long grating noise that filled the space with an echoing heavy grind to it.

They seemed to be making good time, but Lucia took a hard right turn and Tomma stumbled behind her. Her foot collided with something with a jarring thunk and she yelped from the impact. “Ow!”

“No.” Lucia looked back at her in horror as the smacking sound echoed across the still air and then the scraping picked up speed and a loud audible sniff followed.

“Fool.” She whispered before grabbing Tomma and hauling her over to a shelf and ducking them behind it.

“What do we-” Tomma whispered but Lucia threw her hand out and slapped it across Tomma’s mouth. They both sat there with their chests heaving and harsh steps lumbering in their direction.

The sound of sniffing was unmistakable at that point: something scenting the air with a huge nose and persistent huffing breath. Tomma cursed in her head and her whole body seized up and she felt like she might be sick. Her heart beat in her ears and her chest was tight to the point it was almost hard to breath.

Lucia sat perfectly still beside her and made no indication she was freaking out right then. Her hand was firm across Tomma’s mouth and fingers calloused and slender.

The scraping went around and around, and Tomma got one clear glance of the creature and her heart practically stopped in her chest. The thing was the size of a large horse with thick reedy muscles and brown fur lined with black streaks. It had a snout the size of both of her forearms pressed together and a wet black nose that scrunched and swung through the air.

Its lips were parted by enormous white teeth that curled down its chin and two ears that sat erect and stiff on the top of its head. The ears were perked up and flicking in every direction to sense them. Its eyes were completely round and milky white. They didn’t move or seem to look at anything, but were large and almost iridescent.

Its body was lithe and long and had short fur that looked painted on and showed off each of its hungry ribs. The creature’s body ended in a long sweeping tail that with a deadly looking point.

Tomma would identify it as some sort of demon dog with its snout and ears and fangs, but it had six legs sticking off its lean body with strange claws that dragged across the ground as it moved. Almost insectoid and clacking with each step.

Her chest heaved as the creature passed by their hiding place and it slowly rounded the area. Tomma’s heartbeat violently thumped in her wrists and she tried not to swallow or sneeze or start hysterically breaking down.

Tomma wasn’t sure how long they sat there with their muscles screaming and breathes soft and controlled in a contest for their lives. They waited and strained and heard the creature sniff the air and round the area.

Tomma saw it twice more before it swung its massive head around and started scraping in the opposite direction. They stayed there for several minutes longer before they dared to even look at each other and exhale.

Lucia glared at her fiercely and then for a brief instant made something that might have been a choking motion with her hands. Tomma glared right back and opened her mouth to demand some answers when Lucia shook her head and pointed.

They retreated to the back of the library and Lucia tucked them away behind a large armchair the color of pea soup and a shelf of thick books all glowing pastel colors. After settling down to the ground in what she must have chosen as a “safe spot” she rounded on Tomma.

“What the hell do you think you were doing?” Lucia snapped at her and leaned in close to growl at her. She had a milky sweet smell to her.

“Nothing,” Tomma looked away. “What the hell was that? You really live with monsters here?”

“What did you think this place would be?” She hissed, “you think we are just whispering for fun?”

“It is a library.” Tomma said back, though her cheeks were burning. She was the one who started the series of events.

“For fuck’s sake,” Lucia said with more emotion than Tomma had seen from her in all the days they had been together. “Were you having some sort of kanipshin before? Because if you are unwell I am allowed to escort you out.”

“I’m well, I’m well,” She said without looking Lucia in the eye. “You were the one that laughed!”

“Yes! That was a mistake,” she shook her head. “But you were having some sort of episode.”

“It wasn’t an episode,” She looked down at her knees pressed to the cool ground. “I was just… sick of it all.”

“Sick of what?” Lucia snapped a little above a whisper.

Tomma struggled for a moment, shifting back and forth and deciding on her next words carefully. “Can’t you watch me from somewhere else?” She said slowly, “or not watch me all the time? It’s… annoying.”

Lucia visibly rolled her eyes behind her mask, “I watch you because of beasts like the Night Prowler there. Me and the other assistants are here for you, little fool. This isn’t a safe place.”

Tomma snorted, “I guess my school masters were right… Knowledge is a dangerous thing.” She said wryly and Lucia shot her a writhing look.

“Are some sort of jokester? Ugh.” She turned away. “I think we should retire early.”

Tomma exhaled, “I guess.”

Lucia took her by the scruff of her shirt and dragged her up, “come on.” She escorted her back toward her room, which seemed to take longer than usual.

They didn’t say anything more to each other before departing, but when Tomma lay down in her bed she stared at the ceiling she remembered the heart-thumping afternoon. The beast with its huge teeth and empty eyes.

And then she remembered Lucia’s rough hand pressed across her mouth and her strange milky scent that clung to her. Tomma shook her head and faced the wall, “stupid library assistant…” She pushed it out of her mind. ------------------ Things were tense after that between her and Lucia. They didn’t greet each other in the mornings nor did they speak when they went to lunch or retreated to their rooms for the night.

Some days after dinner Tomma still heard the chains rattling down the hall and she wondered where the girl was going and what she was looking for in the strange, dark library. How had she been bound to it like this?

Then Tomma stopped herself: it’s none of my business.

She had her own problems to focus on. Tomma would look at her left hand and decide to try harder in the morning. Though, she was starting to think that the language of the dead didn’t really exist, not really.

The days passed so slowly with one blurry text after the next passed before her and her head thumping with headache and teeth clenching with each fresh failure. Lucia was silent and watchful as the hours passed.

Where is it? Tomma dug her fingernails into the meat of her palm after it had been more than a fortnight. I can’t just leave. Where is it?!

Leaving without knowing was not an option.

It was a drooping, hazy afternoon after her descent into the darkness when she heard the voice. Tomma was sitting at her table in the dictionary section and stooping over a text of gnomish.

“They’re lying to you.” A soft silky voice crooned just loud enough to be heard. It was velvety and textured in a way that gently stroked her skin and weaved into her. “They’re lying to you.”

Tomma looked left and right to try and see the speaker, but there was only Lucia standing stiffly off to the side and the unchanging rows of bookshelves.

“...Lying.” The voice slithered from behind her.

“They are?” She whispered toward her lap, “who?”

“The library.” The voice said with a certain firmness that made Tomma nod along to that.

Her gut churned and she turned to make sure that Lucia hadn’t heard the voice yet either, but Lucia hadn’t so much as twitched.

Tomma ducked down and whispered to the ground, “What’s the truth?”

“This way…” The voice softly called to her, “this way.”

Tomma sat there for a long moment and held her head in her hands. Don’t follow strange voices into the darkness… She reasoned with herself, but something tugged at her.

But we haven’t made any progress, another voice in her head said, why would this place be truthful anyway? They are lying no doubt. This might be our only lead.

Tomma’s skin crawled and she looked over to Lucia and then back to her stacks of books on the table that were not in the language of the dead.

“Alright,” she said and nodded. “Alright.”

Guilt settled in as she was about to break one of their key rules, but there was no turning back. She had already done enough things to get to the library in the first place and she had promised herself she would do whatever it took to get home. She plucked a peach pit from her pocket that she kept for such purposes and tossed it to the side.

It clattered across the floor noisily and Lucia immediately turned around to look for the source of the sound. The second that Lucia tore her eyes away Tomma ducked down underneath the large table and started crawling.

“Where are you?” She hissed to the voice.

“Here, here.” She followed the crooning words that beckoned her to crawl through the dust and grime of the floors. She eventually hunched over and quietly made her way toward the wall.

“This way, this way.” The voice dragged her to the dark walls and another gate lay with its twisting spikes and jagged teeth that were made out of blown glass this time. Tomma hesitated for a long moment, but after a minute she pushed and the gate scraped open with a wrenching squeak and she darted inside. Past the gate was a hole in the ground.

A set of circular black stairs led downward into the earth, just like the path that led to the books of the dead section. Tomma frowned at it for a hard second before pushing herself onward and descending.

She noticed that the dripping noise was becoming louder and louder as she went down, a steady drip, drip, drip as her footsteps clanked against the metal stairs and the air steadily became thicker and warmer.

Steam started to waft up and Tomma had to squint through the frothing white clouds as she entered a large underground cave. The cave was lit by large ornate golden lanterns trailing across the ceiling one by one, piercing through the steam with warm yellow light and hanging off glittering gold chains. Shelves were nailed into the uneven rocky wall with several strange books sitting on each.

The books seemed to be made of glass: sea glass and pure transparent glass with words edged into the surface and books made of dark glossy volcanic glass. Tomma momentarily wondered if you could read those books or if they were meant to be read at all.

“Ah.” The voice said in a sweet way, “there you are.”

Tomma blinked through the steam and approached the edge of what appeared to be a pool of black water that gave off puffs of steady warmth. Sweat trailed down her spine and she wiped her palms down on her pants. The water was strange like everything else in the library, it was thick and dark like tar that no light penetrated and she could see nothing within.

The ceiling was low and the area quiet except for a loud dripping into the pool of tar-water.

Tomma looked left and right before her gaze settled on a head that just barely stuck out of the pool of tar itself.

Its short silver hair was slicked back and only its eyes peeked out of the water with dark slits. Its skin was pale and tinged green and a pair of large webbed ears stuck up from the side of its head.

“Heh,” Tomma snorted. “A tar mermaid. Okay.”

A tail flicked behind the creature and Tomma caught a glimpse of shiny bone and tattered end of a white fish tail. Her face slowly emerged from the water and she had a squashed nose and a mouth filled with needle-point deadly looking teeth.

Her neck had a series of slim slits that Tomma assumed were her gills and a small wicked looking bony frame.

“Hello, little knowledge-seeker.” She said in her soft, lovely voice.

“Hello,” Tomma nodded her head. “I snuck away from the librarians for this. What is it they are lying about?”

The mermaids smile spread wider and crueler as she glided closer to the edge of the water. “So hasty.” She said mildly. “What is it that you seek if you are in such a hurry?” Her eyes narrowed further. “Ways to win that mortal war above ground? Love potions? Great wealth?”

The mermaid examined Tomma’s frayed dark cloak and short brown hair clipped to her ears and sharp, almost elvish features. “I seek the books of the dead.” Tomma said as she had for months now, “And keys to necromancy.” Tomma narrowed her eyes, “but you already knew that.”

“I do.” She confirmed, “But you are but a child.” She said slowly. “What do the young know of death? So far away from it.”

“Closer than you think.” Tomma said bitterly. “And I’m here for answers, not your slick, easy words.”

“Ha,” the mermaid laughed something sharp and unpleasant. “My words mean nothing here. It is a place of secrets and knowledge held captive.”

“So I’ve heard.”

She shook her head, “Many died building this place. Bones in the walls. Bones in the floors. And the bone-layers are not telling you the truth. I have been listening.” Her webbed ears perked up on the sides of her head.

“Yes?” Tomma drew closer.

“The dead do not keep their words in the way of mortals.”

“You don’t say.” Tomma snapped back. “I didn’t notice that no dictionary seems to exist for their nonsense books.”

She swam in a lazy circle, “you must look at it with eyes of the reaper.” She said mysteriously, “it is not of this plane.”

Tomma’s eyes went large and she took another step forward, “go on.”

The mermaid looked furtively over her shoulder, “They are having you look for something that doesn’t exist.”

“So what does exist?” Tomma was by the very edge of the tar at this point.

“Why,” the mermaid said sweetly. “It’s something like this.” She held up a shiny stone with ivory bone embedded in it and an empty hole in the very center. “A reaper’s eye.”

Electricity spiked through Tomma’s system and her mouth went dry, “What do you want for it?” She asked softly and the mermaid splashed some of the hot tar against the wall with her tail and twisted toward her.

“Nothing,” she said quickly with a growl under her voice. “Just… come get it.” She held out the Reaper’s Eye and Tomma glanced between the mermaid’s slick face and the stone itself.

Be fast, Tomma told herself, but faster than this damned creature.

Tomma reached with her left hand toward the enticing charm and the mermaid’s smile grew even pointier.

“Don’t!” A voice called from behind her in the expanse of one tight moment. The mermaid flashed her bone-white dirty tail and grabbed Tomma’s arm with both hands.

“HA!” She laughed loudly and dug her teeth into the soft flesh of Tomma’s left arm. But it wasn’t soft. A snapping sound echoed through the air and the mermaid wailed as her teeth hit bone.

“Give me that.” Tomma reached for the stone but the mermaid started pulling her toward the hot tar. Tomma slipped off her feet.

“It’s been so long since I’ve had flesh!” The mermaid cackled, but someone grabbed Tomma around the waist and the two of them pulled back in forth in a tug of war for Tomma’s life as her feet dangled off the ground.

“I will tell Madame Sonia,” Lucia growled as she tried to pull Tomma to safety, “I will have your cave walled off.”

The mermaid hissed, splashed the tar violently, and let go. Tomma flew backward with waving arms and legs as she was released and crashed backward into Lucia. They sprawled for a moment, before Lucia cursed and crawled away from the side of the tar.

They both lumbered to their feet at the back of the cave.

“Ugh,” Lucia clutched her hand to her chest as she stood and Tomma tried to hide the sleeve of her outfit where it had been torn by the mermaid.

“Are you hurt?” Tomma said with bewilderment as she watched Lucia rock back and forth on her heels.

“Just some of that damn tar.” She said loudly while holding her right hand. “Let’s get out of here, Tomma Merrimont, Lord of the Idiots.”

Tomma glanced over her shoulder where the mermaid was sitting low with only her eyes exposed.

“But-”

“She’s not going to give you the damn eye!” Lucia almost frothed and Tomma followed her up the stairs. The metal creaked under them and Lucia’s breathing was labored above her.

“You’re hurt.” Tomma stated as she saw Lucia holding her hand tightly to her side.

“No shit.” Lucia glared over her shoulder and Tomma realized belatedly that her mask was off and her face exposed. She had hard eyes, a handsome nose, and auburn hair tied back at her neck in a bun. “You should be hurt too.”

Tomma hid her left hand where the mermaid had tried to bite her. “I was being careful.” She grumbled. “I knew she might try something like that…”

“And you still did it?!” Lucia burst out and Tomma shrugged. “Lord, no, not lord, Queen of the idiots!” They emerged back into the library and Tomma reached into her pack.

“Here,” she said. “Let me bind that.”

Lucia didn’t look at her, “It’s fine.”

“Come on.” Tomma said slowly. “I owe you.”

Lucia just frowned over her shoulder and a tightness was still there. “I have to go put my mask back on.”

“How…” Tomma frowned. “Why did you take it off?” Lucia didn’t answer and walked away. Tomma followed after a little reluctantly. “Why were you lying to me?”

“Being straightforward isn’t the practice of this place.” Lucia grumbled and was back to whispering.

“Is there really no dictionary?” She practically growled and Lucia just kept walking.

“Ugh,” she flinched and held her hand. “This stings too much for this damn conversation. Come on.” She led them back to their regular hallway.

Tomma assumed Lucia was going to force her back into her room and lock the door to go back to Madame Sonia and tell on her for “wandering.” But she didn’t.

They fast-walked all the way to the end of the hall where another identical door lay. “Here.” She got her keys out and to Tomma’s surprise and held open the door with her one good hand.

The room inside looked almost identical to Tomma’s with the same worn brown bedding and tiny table stuffed in the corner. Lucia busily went inside and reached for a wooden box under the table.

“Close the door behind you.” Lucia grumbled.

Tomma crept inside and shut the door as she openly stared at this strange girl with her sharp tongue and empty stares.

Tomma folded her arms over her chest. “I want answers.”

“You and everyone else who comes here.” Lucia murmured. She flipped open the box on the floor and fumbled through a few ointments and potions and strips of bandages. She seemed to choose a white lotion and take it out.

Tomma’s eyebrow twitched. “Here.” She knelt down next to Lucia. “Let me help.”

“No.” Lucia waved her off. “You’ve done enough.” Lucia’s hand slipped into view and a nasty dark burn was splashed across the top of her hand and wrist.

Tomma flinched. “I’m sorry.” She gritted out. “I can’t imagine living in this place.”

“Then don’t.” Lucia shook her head and dipped her finger into the white ointment before smearing it thickly on the burn. “Trust me when I say it only gets worse.”

Tomma was silent for a moment as she watched Lucia slather on the paste and hold herself perfectly still. “Can I ask how you ended up here?”

“Sure. You can ask,” Lucia said tersely. “And I’ll tell you as soon as you tell me what is going on with that arm of yours. She bit you, didn’t she?”

Tomma didn’t respond and instead watched as Lucia tore a bandage away and put it over her hand. “You’re never going to be able to secure that with just one hand.” Tomma said firmly and reached over. “Let me.”

She expected Lucia to kick away from her and say something dismissive, but she slumped down onto the floor bonelessly and offered up her burned hand. “Make it tight.” She said flatly.

Tomma just nodded and started carefully wrapping her wrist around and around with the white bandage. “So… Your arm.” Lucia prompted after a moment.

Tomma sighed without meeting her eyes. “Have you heard of the Carcass War?” Tomma muttered with few syllables.

“The current war between those beastly kings up above?”

“That one.” Tomma said weakly. “Well sometimes people get caught in the crosshairs of it. You know?”

“I know.” Lucia said darkly.

Tomma shook her head. “It was a gift. From the war.” Lucia frowned and kept frowning as Tomma gently wrapped and tucked and quietly bound her wound for her. “Where is your mask?”

“Back in the dictionary section.” Lucia said with her flat tone returned. “I threw it off when I realized where you probably went.”

“Okay.” Tomma dusted herself off and stood. “I’ll go get it for you. Stay here and drink some water or something.”

“Wait.” Lucia reached out and grabbed Tomma’s sleeve. “Show me.”

“What?” Tomma made a face at her demanding tone.

“Show me what they did.”

Tomma took a step back. “What? Why?”

Lucia met her eyes, “That mermaids teeth should have ripped through your hand. You should be bleeding out right now. Dead from the poison in her fangs.”

Tomma chuckled at that. “Trust me.” She started rolling up her sleeve. “I should have been dead a long time ago.” She held out her left arm and tried not to look at it as the arm stood stark white against the light and was nothing but moving bones and empty air. A skeleton frame attached to her warm flesh.

Lucia, for the first time, appeared surprised. Her eyes went large and pink mouth slightly parted. “Is that it?” Lucia’s brow folded in. “No. You can’t be undead. Or else you’d be able to read the books.”

Tomma snorted and met Lucia’s eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m only partially undead. I wasn’t completely gone before that bastard resurrected me.”

Lucia hummed deeply to herself. “Huh.” She said and then her brow folded in. “Huh. Peculiar.” She said as if thinking, “Very strange.”

“I know.” Tomma said with exasperation. “Satisfied now? Won’t kick me out?”

“I could have had you kicked out a long time ago.” Lucia said with a pale smirk.

Tomma cocked her head to the side. “Why haven’t you?”

Lucia shrugged and dusted herself off as she stood. “I don’t know.” She said while looking down at the floor. “You kind of reminded me of me when I came here.”

“Oh…” Tomma didn’t know what to make of that and she stood there and was suddenly very aware of how close they stood and how tight the space was.

She turned to the door, “I’ll go get your mask!”

Lucia chuckled. “Do you even know the way?”

Tomma froze in place and frowned, “Uuuh.”

“Come on,” Lucia gestured. “It’s a nice thought. But I’ll go get it and deal with Sonia’s punishment later.”

“Why did you take it off?” Tomma whispered as they closed in around the door.

“So she wouldn’t see.” Lucia whispered softly, “So the witch couldn’t peer through the eyes.” She finished before opening the door of her room and running off into the dark without looking back over her shoulder.

Tomma followed after. ----------------------- Something changed after that.

It was hard to talk about being part skeleton or being held captive by a magic evil library, but they started flashing each other knowing grins and walking a little closer together. Of course, Tomma’s approach had to change.

“So a dictionary doesn’t exist?” She asked the next day after a much-needed good night’s sleep.

“No.” Lucia whispered to her the next day after breakfast as they walked. “She was right about that. The language of the dead was never meant for the living- that’s why there’s so few necromancers.”

“There’s enough of them.” Tomma said bitterly. “So what then? Where do I get a reaper’s eye?”

“You don’t get one,” Lucia said sharply. “If you’re thinking of going back to the mermaid that is.”

“Tell me how to get one and I won’t.” Tomma shot back.

Lucia gave her a dark look, but there was something almost piqued about it. Interested. “Make one.” Lucia said slowly. “It will possibly be easier for you than others.”

Tomma’s eyebrows raised. “How so?” She felt her heartbeat pick up as she got excited. “So there is a way?”

“Yes. Another book.” Lucia pointed as they entered the library. “I can show you the way.”

“Go ahead.” She started to bounce on her heels. Another lead! I may finally go home and not live with the curse of that evil man.

Lucia seemed to be almost smiling behind her mask as they walked in a new direction. Bookshelves passed and Lucia stopped abruptly and pointed, “this is the section of magical item creation.” She stood aside. “Seek away.”

Tomma stood up tall. “Alright! Let’s do it. This one will only take me a day, just you watch.”

Lucia smiled. “Is that so?” She shook her head.

“You’ll see.” She winked. “I’m faster than I look.”

“You look like you’re twelve.”

Tomma rolled her eyes, “I’m nineteen.” Her teeth flashed, “And don’t underestimate me. I am very capable of finding things when they actually exist.” With that she ran up to the first bookshelf and scanned her eyes across the spines of the books.

She was going to get this done. She didn’t even mind Lucia watching her this time.

She was going to make a reaper’s eye and become her own necromancer. --------------------- Tomma didn’t end up finding the right book within the first day. Or the second. She found books on making amulets and lucky charms, witch’s wands and enchanted whips that would entangle anyone. She went over magical items that made you grow or shrink and flipped through entire books on how to make an endless wine goblet. It was the third day when she started to get ancy. “Today’s the day!” She sung to Lucia who just shot her a bemused look and folded her hands together in front of her. “Good luck,” she said and flashed her a sly smile. “Little skeleton girl.” “Of course,” she winked because she could. “Little fox girl.” They exchanged a very strange look and Tomma descended into the depths of the shelves with her heart doing a funny thing in her chest. She tried to push the feeling aside. She passed big brass metal books and books made out of forest leaves and tightly bound brown books that seemed to have fingers sticking out the top. And then there was a blue book. It was perfectly square and squat and it seemed to have a human spine design across the edge of it. Tomma stood in place and stared at each vertebrate for a long moment as if transfixed. She reached and took it off the shelf. The front of the cover had golden letters across a blue face that read: How to Make Rare and Wicked Items, a Guide by Harriet Georgian. “Harriet Georgian…” She said slowly and the name rang a bell, but she wasn’t sure which one. Tomma flipped open the front cover and practically tossed the book down in victory and did a little dance at the first words. There was a contents page for once and it read: How to make a Unicorn’s Horn, How to Make Fairy Dust, How to Make a Reaper’s Eye. Tomma had to remind herself not to shout. “Yes.” She shook with her nerves tingling, “Yes!” She ran back to where Lucia was standing. “Third day’s the charm,” she crowed happily. “I told you I would find it!” Lucia had an unreadable look on her face, but she did lift her chin up. “Congratulations.” Tomma sat down on the floor to get to work. She had an eye to make. ------------ The instructions were surprisingly straightforward: drill a hole in a stone that’s been bathed in the blood of a seer, merged with the bone from the hand of the maker, and soaked in light bleached off the sun.

The blood was probably going to be the hardest part since Tomma was no seer and she didn’t know any of them either.

“Perhaps if you pretended to be one…” Lucia suggested as they sat around a table. They had taken to sitting together. “Sometimes spells can be tricked. If you believe something so will they.”

Tomma made a face at her, “that can’t be true.”

Lucia raised her eyebrows, “how much do you actually know about magic?”

Tomma rolled her eyes and turned away from her on the bench they were sitting on. “Enough.” She shot her a look, “self-taught.”

“Ah,” Lucia said as if that explained something, “and what were you before this?”

Tomma frowned slightly and was silent for a long moment. She eyed Lucia for a moment, “you first.”

Lucia leaned back and looked up toward the ceiling with her fox-snout tipping upward. “I was a scholar.” She said simply. “Raised by monks in a big dingy monastery. All that nonsense.”

“Huh,” Tomma blinked several times.

“What?” Lucia prompted and itched her chin.

Tomma hummed deeply, “That’s not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?” She gave a sharp grin, “I was born in a cave from a pair of mated books and crawled out into the library fully grown?”

Tomma rolled her eyes, “No.” She sniffed loudly. “I dunno. I didn’t expect… any of this.”

“It’s not the sort of thing that normal people deal with.” Lucia looked away. “Most people aren’t allowed in.”

“I know.” Tomma said and glanced down at her left hand. “You have to want it. More than anything.”

Lucia’s eyes burned into Tomma’s flesh as she spoke. “Yeah.” Lucia sighed. “And only fools and madmen can want like that.”

“Which were you?” Tomma asked curiously and pried a little deeper into her companion.

“A beautiful tragic genius, of course.” She sniffed, “victim of circumstance and her own wiles.”

To her own surprise, Tomma laughed and her voice was rough and merry in the empty air. It felt unnatural in the dark atmosphere, but she couldn’t remember giggling like that for a long time.

Lucia hunched her shoulders and looked down, “Now, come on. We might need to synthesize blood, get to work little worker bee.”

Tomma gave a crooked grin. “And what about you pretending to be a psychic?”

“Sure, I could be psychic.” She nodded and there was some sort of a glow between them, a friendliness that Tomma didn’t expect. Nor should she want. “I see you falling in your future. Falling. Stubbing your toe. Oh! You tripped over your own feet, Queen of the Idiots.”

“Haha.” Tomma reached for another book. “Very insightful, Lady of the Nerds.”

She laughed and clicked her tongue, “I shouldn’t have told you my past.”

They grinned at each other and it was almost too much with a strange pressure in her chest and the fact that Lucia was chained to the walls at night. She turned back to the book in front of her and tried to read about synthesizing blood from water. ----------------- The days passed much more quickly after that, almost too quickly for Tomma’s tastes. Instead of lonely meals and endless books there was chatting and teasing and reading long texts together.

And Tomma almost thought she was dreaming. She had been alone for a long time before this.

“Okay,” Tomma looked over the ingredients on their table: a circular stone and some red liquid in a cup. “This will be easy. I’ll just break off a pinky bone, do a transmutation spell to bind them together, and then stew this sucker for a few minutes in light. Easy as pie.”

“Easy?” Lucia snorted. “The blood might be synthesized.” She said slowly, “but light bleached off the sun isn’t going to be a walk in the park either.”

“Why not?” Tomma wrinkled her brow, “weren’t you the one that told me all that meant was the light of the full moon? That’s soon according to the calendar. “

Lucia glanced at her, “and how do you suppose we’ll get moonlight down here?”

“Oh.” Tomma said softly and looked around her at the glowing gems above their heads embedded the ceiling and thick walls in all directions. “Oh.”

“Oh is right,” Lucia continued. “I mean, you could leave the library, but there is no guarantee that you could get back in to actually read the books later.”

Tomma frowned deeply, “Is it common to find your way back into the library a second time?” She thought she already knew the answer to that question.

Lucia looked at the floor and didn’t say anything and Tomma took that as her answer.

“Dammit,” She hissed and stood to pace around in tight circles behind the table. “This can’t be the hardest part of the task!” She gently kicked the nearest chair in frustration, “It’s just moonlight.” She sagged downward, “I’m so close.”

Lucia was quiet for another long minute before she cleared her throat. “There is a way,” she hesitated, opening and closing her mouth uncertainty. “Another one.”

“What is it?” Tomma saddled up next to her and leaned in close. She still smelled milky and like some sort of plant. Heather maybe. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Lucia’s mouth scrunched into a tiny pursed dot on her face and her eyes darted around behind her mask. “Nothing.” She said softly but then Tomma watched as her hand started to write on a spare piece of paper on the table. She faced away as her hand scribbled fastidiously beside her. “We’ll just have to think of another way.”

Tomma hardened her expression so it didn’t give anything away. “I understand.”

She carefully read the words on the paper: It would be a climb. Lucia wrote in thick letters, and you would have to do me a favor.

Tomma hummed deeply and repeated: “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Lucia nodded. “If we put our heads together something might come of that,” she smiled thinly, “if there is anything in your head at all.”

Tomma gave a forced laugh and hoped that didn’t give anything away. “You’d be surprised…”

Lucia scribbled one last sentence on the piece of paper before tossing it to the floor: meet me tomorrow night after dinner.

Tomma nodded and they both sat down and pretended to go over possible strategies and saying nothing at all. ------------------- Waiting for the next night was excruciating. Tomma had thought joining the night guild had been a waiting game that was hard: listening to hushed conversations in the dark and picking up the pieces of spells. Stealing for them. Killing for them.

She had thought that would be the hardest part of her journey, but those hours spent tapping her foot on the floor and wondering what secret Lucia had in mind felt like the worst.

What is it? Tomma tried to pry the secrets from her by just staring at Lucia but Lucia didn’t even bat an eye the entire next day. What is Madame Sonia not meant to see through your fox eyes?

Tomma’s head spun and her world became a dot of waiting and waiting for whatever it was Lucia was planning. The clock ticked by and Tomma was fully dressed with her thick leather gloves on and shoes stuffed on when dinner time finally ended.

“Okay,” she took a deep breath in through her nose. “Alright.”

She inched her way toward the door and then cracked it open to find the light of a flame dancing in the hall. Lucia was standing outside holding a lantern and wearing her sheer white nightgown turned pale red in the light. Her auburn hair fell down past her shoulders and her face was maskless and set in a stern expression.

“We have to hurry,” she said in a hasty whisper. “I can fool the mask into thinking I’m sleeping for at least a night, but there’s no telling if that will be enough time.” Tomma stared blankly back at Lucia for another minute before she spoke again, “Also... I wouldn’t mind some pants if you have an extra pair before we head out.”

Tomma shook her head to ground herself, “Sure. No problem.” She turned around to go for her traveling pack to retrieve a pair of extra trousers. “Wait, where are we going exactly?”

“To the moonlight.” Lucia said, “it won’t hit the crack for very long and it will be a lengthy walk to get there to begin with.”

“So uh, now?” Tomma yanked a pair of riding pants out. “For the moonlight?”

“Yes now, to bathe your Reaper’s eye in it.” She said as if it was obvious, “Madame Sonia would never let us enter the Silent Garden if I suggested it. So I had to suggest it without her knowing.”

“Huh.” Tomma nodded, “Okay, so a walk to the moonlight? Sounds easy enough.”

Lucia hunched over and didn’t meet her eye, “there’s just one thing.”

“What is it?” Tomma was grinning now, she thought she liked this new bashful side of Lucia as she tucked her chin down.

Lucia held out one thin ankle, “The um,” she frowned again, “you’ll have to help me out of these chains for the night so I can show you the way.”

Tomma straightened up and looked Lucia up and down, “is that allowed?”

“Of course not.” Lucia grumbled, “but it’s the only way to reach the garden.”

“Okay…” Tomma said slowly. “Yeah. I can help you escape. I understand this place is dreadful and-”

“Escape?” Lucia snorted. “It’s only for the night.” She shook her head, “There is no escaping this place.” She murmured the last part seemingly to herself. “Now come on, help me leverage these things open.”

Tomma nodded and got out her knife.

It took several long moments of prying and jerking and hissing at each other to try a different angle and put a little more muscle behind it. Tomma actually thought it would be harder than that, especially since she was distracted by Lucia’s exposed face and twisting expressions.

The other girl had a habit of wearing her feelings on her face that Tomma hadn’t noticed before. It was almost hypnotic to watch her wrinkle her nose in distaste or shyly brush her hair aside.

Finally, together, they tore at the bracelets until they both metal clamps heaved a sigh of release and Lucia wiggled her free ankles in midair. She was smiling at that point, really smiling. “God I hate those things.” She said in a pleased way and rubbed at the puckered skin. “I’ve tried to get them off before, but I guess it takes four hands.”

“Well,” Tomma leered at her, “three hands at least.” She shook her left arm in midair and grinned.

Lucia rolled her eyes, “let’s just get your evil moonlight enchantment done.” Tomma chuckled and nodded at that. “I mean. After I, uh, get these on.” Lucia raised Tomma’s pants in the air.

“Oh. Um, yeah.” Tomma turned to face the wall as Lucia shimmied them on and Tomma repeated the periodic table of magic to herself as she studied the floor tiles.

“Tomma,” Lucia said and prompted Tomma to turn back around. Her hands were animated kind of things resting on the doorknob, like two white doves poised for flight. Her face bent downward and almost cheerful, “thank you for helping me out of those chains. Really.”

Tomma swallowed thickly at her soft words and hurried over. “No trouble.” She said quickly, probably too quickly. “I don’t mind. You are helping me afterall.”

“Yeah,” Lucia gave her a guarded kind of look. “I guess I am.”

They exited the room after that and Tomma couldn’t find any words left in her as she watched Lucia’s long hair sway in the candlelight and her bare feet pad quietly along. Her wrists and ankles were thin and Tomma had to chastize herself as her thoughts wandered and considered the places those limbs led to.

Don’t be daft, she told herself as her cheeks burned. You’ll be out of this place in a fortnight or less. She told herself and watched Lucia find her way to the library door. And she’ll still be here…

Tomma forced herself to think about anything else as they entered the library again and made their way quietly to another wall.

“Can I ask where we’re going?” Tomma whispered but Lucia just hushed her and gestured for her to follow.

“Up.” She said simply.

They found another gate that was brown with rust and had intricate designs along the metal that almost seemed to shift and move when she wasn’t looking. The whole thing disturbed some practical part of her that thought that metal shouldn’t move and library’s shouldn’t have monsters in them. But parts of her like that had been silenced a long time ago anyway.

They made their way toward a set of spiral stairs that led upward and into the warm earth above. The steps were bulky and dark, but luckily didn’t creak as they started to climb. Tomma entered a sort of daze as she walked and walked in total silence with nothing but the lengthening stairs ahead. Lucia didn’t check to make sure if she was following and their footsteps were powder soft and the air as still as a cat before the pounce.

The trip was muted and reserved until Lucia stopped seemingly in the middle of the spiral stairs. “Here,” she muttered. “And we must be quick.”

Tomma didn’t have much time to question it before Lucia seemed to disappear into the wall itself with one fluid step. Tomma stared at it for a moment before her eyes made out a hole in the jagged wall and she took a deep breath in its wake.

Finally, Tomma put one arm into the opening and watched as it was eaten by the darkness there. She placed a leg in next and then she was forcing her way through the crack in the wall. Her cheek scraped against the walls and her knees knocked together.

It was a tight fit and it took a bit of wiggling before she saw the other side and Lucia’s lantern with it. Lucia was smiling and looking clean and fresh, “you’re lucky you’re so little.” She said with a smirk and speaking at full volume.

Tomma sniffed loudly, “yeah, yeah. I can fit into tight holes. Nothing new.”

Lucia gave a brisk laugh, “I thought you said you liked them.” She winked, “but with a person attached, was it?” Tomma almost swallowed her tongue at the reference to their first day.

Oh no, she thought as her heart sped up and Lucia joked with her. This isn’t good.

Lucia looked around the area with a faint smile on her face. “It’s been so long since I’ve been here.”

“How do you know about this place?” Tomma asked quickly as they stood in a wide cavern with featureless walls and a dipping, cramped path ahead leading upward.

“Not here to be precise,” Lucia corrected. “The place we’re going. It was walled off by Madame Sonia a little after I arrived.”

Tomma hummed deep from within her chest, “why?”

Lucia shrugged and started walking, “I was restless. Still trying to get out. Didn’t know how to be a proper servant yet.” Her expression hardened, “I tried to sneak away to this place and she walled it off. It took months to find another way in.”

Tomma didn’t know what to say to that and they traveled for a short distance in silence.

This journey was much faster than the first one and before Tomma could ponder on Lucia and her fate she was pointing ahead. “There,” she said softly with a childlike excitement in her tone. “There!”

And then she leaned forward and blew out the lantern she was holding. “What are you doing?!” Tomma gasped as the darkness burst in all directions and made her heart squeeze in her chest.

“Don’t worry,” she felt someone take her hand. It was rough and firm. “This way.”

Tomma swallowed thickly as they walked into a new wider space and cool air licked across her cheek as the first inklings of light began to glow around them. It was dull and barely there at first but little by little sharp objects started to enter her vision.

They were softly rounded or else jagged and upright and all were glowing cool colors such as baby blue and ocean green. It took a moment for Tomma to fully process it as the gems seemed to be glowing from the inside out.

“Ah,” Tomma turned her head left and right. “They’re flame gems. I’ve only ever heard about them before in stories.”

“Tomma Merrimont,” Lucia said her name fondly and squeezed her hand, “welcome to the Silent Garden.” She looked around as the walls and ground were covered in glowing gems in soft pastel colors and bathing their skin in luminescent sprays of rainbow. They covered the walls and corners of the long space with a wide swath of brightness and twisting shapes.

“It’s beautiful…” Tomma said softly as the stones spread out in all directions.

“This way.” Lucia didn’t let go of her hand as they climbed and climbed and Tomma practically fell over herself as a silvery light shone ahead on top of a giant glowing topaz.

“There it is.” Tomma whispered excitedly and stumbled toward the light. “It’s been so long.”

“Yeah…” Lucia’s voice sounded wet and thick and Tomma leaned over to see Lucia’s cheeks glimmering with tears. Wet trails that trickled down her lovely face and dripped down her chin.

“Sorry,” Lucia wiped at her face. “It’s just been a long time.”

“It’s okay,” Tomma reached out and wiped at her cheek delicately. “It’s alright.”

They stood there for a long moment with Tomma’s right hand hovering over her face and thumb rubbing away the tears there and their bodies breathing in time with each other. She just stood there with the moonlight behind them and their eyes meeting.

Tomma gulped, “Thank you.” She said, “Thank you for taking me here.”

Lucia shook her head and finally faced away, going toward the moonlight and letting go of her hand. “It’s nothing.” She said quickly, “I’ll admit I wanted to come for selfish reasons.”

“Still…” Tomma reached into her pocket for the circular stone- already bathed in blood and embedded with the tip of her pinky from her skeleton hand.

Lucia took a seat just outside the moonlight where an enormous deep crack in the ceiling let the light in. Tomma skipped over and plopped the eye of the reaper into the moonlight. It sat silent and small in the silvery glow, “Is that all?” She said and glanced over to Lucia, “just put it there?”

“I think so.” Lucia mumbled, “we’ll just have to wait a little.”

Tomma took a seat beside her and studied her face. “What were you looking for?” She said quietly and leaned toward her. “When you first came here?”

Lucia turned her face away. “I had good intentions.” She said and bit her bottom lip, “Too good perhaps.”

“Huh,” Tomma nodded along and then looked down at her left hand. “I only came down here for myself.”

“But it’s not your fault.” Lucia said made a face. “You’re just trying to regain control of your arm.”

“Oh… No. I have control of it now. I think my necromancer's dead.” Tomma admitted and picked a piece of dirt off the end of her cloak. “I only saw him that first day. When he resurrected me.” She said with a sigh.

“And then what?”

She lowered her head and shrugged, “And then I marched into battle with my left hand swinging a sword among the rest of the undead. I don’t know, I don’t remember those days very well but. But they ended.”

“Yeah.” Lucia said with a huff. “It’s lucky when those things do.”

“I can control it myself now.” Tomma reached up her gloved hand as if to demonstrate. “But I can’t go home.”

“Huh?” Lucia stared at her. “Do you have a home to go to?” She asked deceptively quickly, “I thought… Well I hope your home is nice.”

“Dunno if it is.” Tomma admitted, “my family lived in this small village until we got caught in this big battle of Westerly’s where a bunch of armies ran through the town for supplies.”

“I see.” Lucia said lowly. “And where you almost died?”

“Almost,” she tried to smile. “Almost is the important part. And… And my aunt and younger brother escaped. They headed to the island of Jermanda as far as I know. That’s what I heard at least.”

“Oh!” Lucia grinned. “So you can go join them.”

Tomma nodded slowly. “Yeah… once I’m magic free again.” She said softly. “Once I figure out how to free myself from this necromancy spell.”

Lucia folded her brow in, “How do you know, um,” she fumbled for a moment before her, “how do you know the spell’s not the thing keeping you alive?”

“I don’t.” Tomma said lightly. “All I know is that the island of Jermanda is a magic-free zone and I can’t return home to my family unless I’m free of it as well.”

“Oh…” Lucia shot her a worried look. “You must really want that.”

She nodded slowly, “with all my heart.” They stared at each other in the darkness as the rock stewed in the moonlight and the gems glowed around them. “What did you want when you came here?” Tomma sucked in a deep breath, “with all your heart?”

Lucia curled into herself and tipped her head down. “It doesn’t matter now.” She said and pushed her hair back, “I’m trapped here for good.”

“For good?”

“Until I pay off my debt.” She made a sour face. “I tried to take some of the books out.” She explained without inflection. “And now I’m indebted to the damn place.”

Tomma chuckled because she didn’t know what else to do, “That is awful.” She stated with a frown, “though I must say I would have never gotten this far without you.”

Lucia giggled, “so you’re happy that I’m prisoner here?”

“No!” She said with her body jerking upright and Lucia laughed more.

“I’m teasing,” she shook her head. “I’m glad to have met you too. You’re a better sort than the rest.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Tomma struggled for a moment, “I had to kill a man to get this spell… He wouldn’t. He wasn’t…” She sighed, “I’ve done a lot of things now.”

Lucia shrugged, “So have I.” She leaned in closer, “but you know what?” She wore a wicked grin and leaned in close to where her breath tickled Tomma’s ear and made her shiver. “I think we’re still alright. Good enough.”

“Good enough,” Tomma chuckled, “that’s what I like to hear.”

Lucia was still lingering above her, “Maybe sometimes a little more than good enough. For you at least.” Her face fell, “I’m glad to know you Tomma.”

“I thought…” Tomma swallowed and her head was spinning with the sight of Lucia and only Lucia in front of her. Her ruddy cheeks and soft lips and tired eyes, “Don’t you think I’m Queen of the Idiots?”

“Oh yes,” Lucia nodded, “But I’ll tell you a secret.” She gave a bitter smile, tinged with sadness and face bathed in topaz light from below and moonlight from above. “I like idiots.”

Tomma’s hand shot out and cupped Lucia’s cheek, cradling it gently in her grip as their faces hovered before each other like an ocean before a cliff face. “Stop me.” She said suddenly. “Stop me because I think I’m starting to feel things I shouldn’t.”

Lucia’s hazel eyes were huge and almost glowing in the moonlight. “You’re right,” she said and put a tentative hand over Tomma’s to keep it here, “You shouldn’t. I’m trapped here… I’m cursed.”

“You’re beautiful.” Tomma said before anything else. “And you make me feel stupid in the head.”

“That a good thing?”

Tomma grinned, “I always feel stupid in the head. You just make it worse.”

Lucia let out a hearty laugh. “Then don’t like me.” Lucia tapped their foreheads together and her warm breath splashed across her cheek, “you don’t even know me.”

Tomma hummed and leaned a little closer. “I’d like to get to know you.”

Lucia’s breath hiccuped and shifted in place, “Okay.” She whispered and glanced at Tomma’s mouth and as slow as daylight through windows and snowfall on quiet mornings moved toward her. “Show me. Get to know me.”

Tomma tipped Lucia’s chin up like moving the stars across the sky and brought Lucia’s face to hers.

Their lips met. It was sudden and inevitable and crushed her heart like daisy petals in a toddler’s grasp. Something inside her felt suckerpunched, brought low, destroyed into a fine powder without a sword or arrow.

Lucia’s mouth was soft and tingling against hers. It swept her out to sea and swallowed her whole with her bright movements and gentle lines. She kissed her gently at first with a firm grip around her neck and a slight shaking limbs.

And then Tomma opened her mouth delicately and they were embraced on the stone there, bathed in light and feeling her stomach swoop and heart seize. Her lips moved against hers and they came together again and again. They kissed until her lips were chapped and puffy and there was nothing but them in the universe.

Only them and their mouths and a world drained of words and thoughts and leaving nothing left.

It was only when the moonlight passed and the sky started to shift slightly in color that they remembered themselves.

Lucia’s held onto her so tightly it felt like she was digging in claws that would tear her apart and she wouldn’t resist a thing. “I have to go back,” Lucia said dryly with chapped lips and unshed tears in her eyes. “Madame Sonia still… still,” she hiccuped and her eyes spilled over in a thin stream of water, “I still belong to the library.”

Tomma took her hand and wiped her tears away again, “I know, I know.” She kissed each cheek delicately and Lucia just nodded and stood up, still crying softly.

They walked out of the garden, down the steps, and back into the library, hand in hand. ----------------- Tomma’s head was reeling after that night. This wasn’t what she planned.

She planned to get in, get out, and get rid of the magic on her for good. And be done with it. She could be a normal girl after this- no more sneaking around and ancient spells and daggers in the night. She assumed she could be normal again.

But she remembered the feel of Lucia’s lips on hers and the whole thing fell apart. Who would want to be anything after that? Who would want exist outside that moment? It felt like finding a soft landing after being trapped in a violent storm. Did everyone feel like this after a kiss? Surely not or else they would stop having jobs or going to church or waging wars.

They would just sit in the moonlight and kiss.

Tomma thought ridiculous thoughts like that for hours as she stared up at her ceiling and sleep refused to come even an inch closer. She was trapped in that singular moment with her cheeks flushed and heart fluttering in her chest.

Those hazel eyes and soft pink mouth and the way her gaze lingered as she left that night. It was all too much.

Tomma sat up in bed, tugged on her hair, and rolled over back and forth. Her stomach felt like it bottomed out, she covered her face with both hands, and groaned.

What am I going to do?

A new idea was forming in the back of her head but it wasn’t one she liked. But there it was: escape with Lucia or lose her forever. Learn a few new tricks or else leave someone to their fate of chains and dark libraries forever.

Tomma remembered the way she wept at the sight of moonlight hours earlier and Tomma made up her mind. She touched her mouth as she did it and stared at nothing.

Someone has to do it, she figured, someone has to help. ----------------- Tomma woke up the next morning without realizing she had fallen asleep after all and absently touched her mouth again as it pulsed with heat. That had been real, it had all been real. She reflected in a hushed daze.

“Oh God,” She covered her fever-hot face. “Oh no.” She murmured and rolled over. This morning is going to be so awkward, she thought to herself and squirmed. It was a full minute before she managed to push herself to her feet to scrub her face with water and get dressed. She ended up putting her shirt on backward as she did and barely registered her breakfast of bread and thin pea soup.

When she finally stood by the door she barely fit her shoes on or put her thoughts in order. We did that, she relived the last nights events over and over, that happened. Before she could hide in a corner or change into a more confident version of herself Tomma heard a knock on the door and jumped. “C-come in.” She hated how her voice shook as she addressed the other girl and Tomma’s face flushed two shades darker.

To her surprise, Lucia’s mask was tied tightly on when she rounded the door and nodded at her, “Good morning.” She said steadily and her mannerism was somehow not changed. Perhaps, Lucia was a bit pinker in the face and smile wider, but the tone was the same. “Did you wish to visit the books of the dead today?”

Tomma was momentarily confused, but nodded. “Yeah.” Though that’s not the secrets I need anymore. She thought to herself, but followed the trail of Lucia’s orange dress out as she turned around quickly and started gesturing for her.

Tomma tried to read Lucia’s thoughts through the back of her head as they walked, but she was just as straight-backed and quiet as usual. Tomma wanted to grab her shoulder and dip her. She wanted to yell “what is going on in your head?” She wanted to kiss her again.

She resigned herself to following after and wondering what she needed to do next.

They found their way back through the shelves of books and toward the gate at the edge of the room that they had visited on the first day. No spark of excitement went through Tomma this time and she was dragging her feet by the time the books of the dead came into view.

“Um,” Tomma finally spoke up and Lucia glanced over her shoulder at her. “What if… what if they’re other books I want to visit as well?”

Lucia’s eyes seemed to get a little larger behind her mask. “Is it something you want with your entire heart?” She asked softly, “because that is the purpose of the library. It won’t accept anything else.”

“It is.” Tomma said softly. “I want this.”

Lucia gave a shallow smile. “One thing at a time.” She said slowly. “Get in and get out of here, patron.”

Tomma’s heart dropped. Do you not want to see me anymore? She didn’t know how to discreetly ask what was going on between them. She didn’t know how to discreetly ask her if she thought last night was a mistake or if they were thinking the same thing.

She didn’t know how to ask if she actually liked her.

Tomma stared at her for another long moment before going over to the book shelves for something to do. She reluctantly picked up one book at random and sat down on the floor with it as the red lanterns cast long shadows around her.

She took out the Reaper’s Eye from her pocket and took a deep breath. She glanced over at Lucia, “here goes nothing.” She said lightly and brought the Eye up to her own eye. “Time to see if it worked.”

She flipped the first page open and squinted at the page. For a moment the letters were the same jagged triangles and random lines. And then the letters started to shift through the lens of one of her eyes. The words started ordering themselves and swam into focus.

They formed common words that she knew.

“Oh.” She said all at once, “Oh!”

‘The dead do not speak. But they do have something to say.’

“Is it working?” Lucia asked softly from behind her.

Tomma only grinned and gave a thumbs up, “You were right!” She cried just above a whisper. “All it took was some fake blood, my bones, and… other stuff.”

Lucia smiled fondly back at her but there was also something limp and sad about the way she stood there. As if the life was draining out of her, “Good. You’ll be able to depart soon.”

Tomma blinked several times. “Sure…” She wanted to shout that she wasn’t leaving just like that, she wanted to drag Lucia over and show her how the eye worked. She wanted.

She started to read. -------------- Despite everything Tomma was a planner. She used to plan her family’s weekly dinners and plan their shoe space and planned their family outings and then planned for months and months on how to return to her aunt and brother.

And she was starting to have a plan.

It formed as she flipped through book after book outlining the basic principles of necromancy. It was a loose and almost fantastical ideal that bordered on ridiculous. But it was there.

First, she decided, I must learn this...

Tomma blinked and tried to take in the words of the book: ‘It takes a vast amount of power to raise the dead. More than power, it takes a vast amount of intention to drag them back from the beyond to do your bidding. Lifting the veil tears a piece of your own soul each time and forms a type of magnetism between the shredding of your spirit calling to theirs. Like attracts like.’

Or at least, that was what Tomma had gathered so far from the dense texts that were part philosophy, part poetry, and only a little bit of practical instruction.

She couldn’t explain it but Tomma got the sense she needed to act fast. She needed to get this done or lose everything. I have to, she promised herself. We’re all getting out of here and out of this nest of devils that is magic.

She ran over options again and again to the point she almost forgot about eating or taking breaks. Her thoughts came in bubbling rivers: how could she escape? How could she free Lucia? Nothing readily came to her and Tomma practically jumped out of her skin when a hand tapped her on her shoulder.

“It’s time to retire,” Lucia said in her usual flat tone.

Tomma turned slowly and wished she could convey with her eyes what she was planning. What was possible.

“I’m almost there.” Tomma announced airily and pointed at the text. “I think it’ll only be a week or so to parse through it all.”

“Of course.” Lucia said without emotion. “Whatever is needed.”

Tomma impulsively reached out and grabbed her wrist, “I’ll stay as long as it takes.” She said with a fierceness she didn’t know she had. I won’t leave without you, she tried to convey it with her grip alone.

Lucia’s face seemed emptier than usual. When she spoke next it was slow and deliberate. “I wanted to change.”

“What?”

Lucia took a deep breath and the first shivers of emotion seemed to spread across her expression. It was a mixture of dread and a deadened worry written there. “I entered the library to change my body.” She announced loudly. “I had tried witches and potions before but many of them were temporary or tricks and some simply made me sick… I was raised by monks, you know. As a monk. But this is who I am.”

“Hmm?” Tomma blinked several times as she tried to make sense of that. “What?”

“I wasn’t always called Lucia,” Lucia explained slowly. “I got what I wanted here. And it was wonderful. I was who I was meant to be and when I returned to the surface and I got to be Lucia. But… Someone asked me to help them too. And I realize that the knowledge couldn’t just be locked away here.”

“Captive knowledge,” Tomma parroted the mermaid’s words from before.

“Something like that,” Lucia kept talking like the words had been building up and were just now spilling out. “So I came back a second time. It was… hard. The doorway didn’t appear as readily and it took complex spellwork to break in. I made it back though. And stole some of their books.”

Tomma’s eyes were huge, “You had good intentions.” She remembered Lucia’s words before.

“I did.” Lucia winced, “and I’ve been paying for them since.”

A red hot anger burned in Tomma’s center. “That’s fucked up.” She fumed, “This place…” She shook slightly, “that’s not right.”

“It wasn’t all selfless.” Lucia said softly. “I wanted someone to like me. I thought I could be a great magic wielder if I simply had the right books and then they would be impressed.”

“But you wanted to help people!”

“I did,” Lucia repeated, “but that was years ago. And I’m not the same person anymore. It’s too late.”

“Bullshit!” Tomma shouted impulsively as she processed what Lucia was trying to say. “It’s never too late.”

“Tomma...” Lucia seemed to wilt. “We should… retire…” She said faintly. “You have more studying to do tomorrow. So you can return to your family.”

Tomma gnashed her teeth. She held Lucia’s pale hand tightly, “This isn’t over.”

Lucia visibly flinched and started retreating backward, “you’re too reckless. You’re lucky the Night Prowler or mermaid didn’t eat you.”

Tomma followed her up to her feet. “Just you wait.” She frowned, “I’ll be a necromancer yet. More powerful than anyone. More powerful than Madam-”

Lucia slapped a hand down over her mouth. “Come to bed now.”

Tomma wanted to protest and raise her fists in the air and curse the gods of that world that made the rules and arbitrary punishments and rewards. Didn’t people like Lucia deserve to be rewarded?

She stood up nonetheless and followed her out of the library as she tried to formulate the right words in order to convince Lucia to come with her. To fight.

But Lucia had always seemed like a fighter, something else was stopping her.

“Lucia…” Tomma whispered at her back as they reached her door.

“Please,” Lucia whispered and there was something fragile and fall-apart about it. “Go to bed, Tomma. Let go of whatever it is on your mind.”

Tomma shook her head over and over again, “is that really what you want?” Lucia shook her off and walked in the opposite direction as Tomma’s door hung open. “I won’t let this be it.” Tomma promised the empty air. “I’ll change it.” ----------------- Tomma lay in bed and traced the lines of her ceiling with her eyes. Her mind wouldn’t quiet, but she couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not.

Options ran round and round in her head. Is this it? She thought to herself, is this all I can do? Wait and think and plan and have nothing to show for it?

Her stomach sank and she shifted in bed, feeling guilty she was lying down at all instead of up and trying to solve the ‘what next’ part of her plan. She barely knew that much about the library to begin with.

Tomma crawled to her knees and lit a candle in order to create a to-do list. She printed the words as neatly as she could: Ask the mermaid about the library Learn necromancy Summon the dead to help us escape

She stared at the words for a long painful second as she decided whether or not they were enough. If they were doable at all or simply foolish.

She was adding points to her plan when she heard the familiar sound of metallic jingling outside the door: clank, clank, clank.

Lucia was in the hall.

Clank, clank.

Tomma smiled thinking about her, but her smile froze when she heard a second voice this time.

“What do you think you’ve been doing?” Tomma’s blood froze at the sound of a harsh commanding tone. She rolled to her feet and reached for her knife. She couldn’t hear Lucia’s response. “You really think you could try this nonsense?” A cruel laugh followed.

Tomma was at the door and rushing outside before she could think.

She barely remembered to put her shoes on before she was standing outside at a scene she couldn’t have dreamt. An enormous woman in a bird mask was holding Lucia’s cheeks between her clawed fingers and snarling at her.

“Aw,” Madame Sonia twitched. “Your lover. Good timing.”

“No!” Lucia said breathlessly. “We weren’t actually doing anything. It was only a night.”

Madame Sonia snorted loudly. “Perhaps you weren’t going to do anything.” Her sharp eyes darted toward Tomma, “but she was.”

Tomma held the knife flimsily in the air, “put her down, witch!”

Madame Sonia laughed cruelly. “Moxie! Of course.”

“I’m serious.” All her big plans were empty now as Madame Sonia rounded on her with a cool frankness to her.

“She’s not what she says.” Madame Sonia said tartly.

“She is everything she says and more!” Tomma announced daringly and puffed her chest out.

“No.” Madame Sonia curled her thin lips back. “What I mean is that she is mine. She belongs to this place.”

“People can’t belong to places,” Tomma tried to reason. “People belong to themselves.”

Madame Sonia’s rolled her dark eyes behind her mask. “Little fool,” she said without hesitating, “perhaps it’s time to show you how patrons who break the rules are treated.”

“No!” Lucia gasped out softly with her cheeks dribbling blood and face screwed up. Madame Sonia turned to her and boxed her fiercely across the face with one hand before tossing her to the ground. She turned to Tomma.

“Making noise,” Madame Sonia took a menacing toward Tomma and she seemed even bigger and stranger than ever. “Wandering,” she took another step with a long twisted shadow cast behind her, “and trying to take something out!”

Tomma widened her stance and declared icily, “I’m not scared of you.”

“You should be.” Madame Sonia wet her lips before putting two fingers to her teeth and giving an enormous whistle.

Lucia started to claw her way toward Tomma, “Run,” she wheezed, “Run now.”

“Not without you,” Tomma dove toward her and Madame Sonia laughed- loud and boisterous.

“Just try to take her out like she is now.”

Tomma growled, but looked down to see that Lucia’s ankles were still in chains. “Come on.” She tried to pick her up. “We’re getting out of here. Together.”

Lucia pushed her face away, “I said get out of here, Tomma!” She said desperately, “I can’t run. Not like this.”

“Bullshit,” Tomma whispered and then pulled her to her feet. “Fight Lucia! Come on,” she wet her lips, “Don’t you want to see the moon again?!”

Lucia looked her up and down with a question in her eyes and Tomma nodded at her. Lucia bit her lip and then dove for her hand. “We have to run.”

She said it just as a huge beast rounded the corner and Madame Sonia gave a chilled cackle, “Oh Lucia, I will consider your debts paid once you feed the Night Prowler.”

“Oh, go stuff yourself!” Lucia said fiercely and reached behind her and whipped off her mask with a flourish. She flung it to the ground. “And find yourself a new assistant.”

Madame Sonia opened her mouth to reply but Tomma’s eyes were glued on the huge black beast lumbering at them. “Yell later,” Tomma instructured, “go now.” She started dragging Lucia forward just as the chains rattled.

“We’ll go as far as we can!” Lucia screeched and they began to run.

Lucia was slow. Her chains were too bulky and gait too awkward, but Tomma hurried them nonetheless to the end of the hall as Madame Sonia just impassively watched.

“Right, right!” Lucia spouted as they reached the end of the hall and turned. They started running up the hill toward what could only be the archway of the damned. And escape. Scratching footsteps came from behind them, ugly and always gaining and gaining.

Tomma sometimes glanced over her shoulder as they moved and saw the thing’s milky white eyes glowing and ears pricked toward them. They followed Lucia’s lamp through the caves in seemingly random directions and Tomma practically picked her up and threw her forward at points.

“No.” She started to repeat, “No. We’re reaching the end of my chains.”

“It’s not over.” Tomma said back and collapsed to the ground to take out her knife and start prying off the shackles.

A cold laugh followed them like a specter. “It’s too late.” Madame Sonia’s disembodied voice sang from above, “it’s here.”

She heard the sound of scraping before she turned to see the Night Prowler almost right at their backs. Tomma screeched a battle cry and contorted around to face it. “Come at us, you ugly pustule!”

“Tomma,” Lucia tried to drag her back, but Tomma shook her off and took a step toward the Night Prowler.

“Come at me!” She said again as she lifted up her knife with her right hand. The beast bent its ears back for just an instant before lowering its haunches and hissing at them like a cockroach. Tomma just grinned and barked a final, “hit me!” It launched itself through the air at them.

“There!” Tomma howled and switched her raised hand. She lifted up Lucia’s chains along with her left arm.

The creature’s enormous jaws closed around them both. A cracking sound erupted like a forest fire snapping wood and Tomma tried not to call out as her skeleton arm was wrenched off.

“Tomma!” Lucia called but the chains fell away as the creature chomped down on them.

“Throw the lantern!” Tomma yelled with her last breath as she fell backward.

The beast chewed on the bones of her arm and the chains between it’s shining deadly teeth before bearing down on them again. “Fuck off!” Lucia threw the flame of the lantern onto the creature and it let out a dreadful wail as its body was engulfed in fire. It lit up as if the creature itself was made of dry parchment.

Tomma gaped for a moment as it burst into licking red flames and Lucia put her hands under her armpits and started dragging her back and back. She had to tear her eyes away and they moved in the dark with the sounds of the creature howling behind them and Madame Sonia’s all-seeing eyes somewhere.

Lucia knew the path well enough to drag them up and up and up and away.

“We’re close,” Lucia kept saying and sweat dripped down their backs, “we’re close.”

The appearance of the figure in the archway was almost predestined as Madame Sonia stood in the threshold of the archway holding up a torch. “So.” She tutted as Lucia and Tomma panted and struggled for breath as they arrived, “that’s it? You burn my dog and run away?”

“You can’t,” Tomma wheezed, “you can’t keep people.”

She shrugged, “I think I can.” She snapped her fingers and a new mask rose in the air as if suspended from string. This one was an owl with brown feathers and huge eyeholes and covering the entire face- including the mouth.

“No.” Lucia backed up against the wall. “D-don’t!”

“I won’t be trifled with.” Madame Sonia warned and the new mask hovered closer and closer in midair.

Tomma put herself between the mask and Lucia and felt Lucia shivering against her back. “Go.” Lucia whispered beside her ear, “you’re not bound here. Go while you can.”

Tomma shook her head. “It’s my turn to do something a little selfless.” She whispered and hoped she sounded more sure of herself than she felt.

She raised her only hand in the air and started to chant, “domas, domina, domas, domina, illuminae…” She repeated over and over again and reached deep down into herself. Bones in the floors. Bones in the walls.

A library built on the bones of those who made it.

Madame Sonia shook her head. “You really think you can summon the dead after just one day of study? You really are a fool.”

Tomma closed her eyes to concentrate and folded her brow inard. “Domas, domina,” she shook with the effort and imagined ripping her own soul in two, she imagined cleaving it and tearing it like wet paper. She imagined their decayed bodies heaving through the tough earth and coming to her call- feeling drawn to her spirit.

She gnashed her teeth and dug deep into herself with the ancient words and her soul slightly, ever so slowly, shook within her. She raised her hand and yanked with all her might on the reanimated bodies of the dead.

“Come to me!”

She jerked upright when a scream came from behind her, “No!” Tomma cried out as the owl mask had darted over her shoulder and attached itself to Lucia’s face.

“Ah!” Lucia gave a muffled scream from behind the face and as it attached to her flesh. She ripped at it with her fingernails, but the thing held firm.

Tomma gnashed her teeth, “domas, domina!” She raised her voice, “come to me!” She yelled with the last of her waning strength, “get your revenge on this woman of the deep. Come and take her blood for yourself.”

Madame Sonia tossed her head back and barked a laugh as she put her hands on her hips. “Revenge?” She snickered, “I don’t think so. Justice is for fools and madmen.”

Tomma’s eyes went wide, “good thing I’m both.”

A bony hand jutted its way out of the depths of the dirt covered in a tattered shirt sleeve and rotting flesh.

Tomma gave a brittle smile and whispered dully, “and I don’t think they like you down here.”

A second skeletal arm shot out of the earth and grabbed Madame Sonia’s wrist, “What?!” She burst out as another skeleton hand drag itself from within the mountain and reached for her. “Don’t touch me!” Madame Sonia twisted around to start firing spells and Tomma turned to Lucia.

“What’s going on?!” Lucia wailed behind the material.

“Let me help.” Tomma grabbed the edge of the mask and started to pull.

Lucia drew a deep breath and reached for her hand, “you’re really with me?” She murmured with a delicate voice through the thick fabric.

“Yes,” she leaned forward and kissed the cheek of the mask. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

The mask seemed to fall away in their hands and Lucia was beaming as she was freed from the inside. “Okay.” She took Tomma’s hand and they both turned to where the undead were clawing their way out of the earth.

Tomma started to edge around a half-buried Burkan soldier, “alright,” she said slowly. “So I got to the summoning parts of the books… but not the binding part.”

“They aren’t bound to you?” Lucia said sharply and Tomma shook her head.

“They just really don’t like Madame Sonia,” she said as the witch beat off more bony hands that came for her.

“Come on,” Lucia pulled her, “we better get out here then.” She leaned in and kissed her cheek as they ran.

They jumped through the archway and crossing it was just as sickening as the first time: goosebumps ran up her arm and her ears popped and stomach twisted as they crossed it. And then they were out and into the cave.

They crashed forward and laughed and circled each other like puppies on their first outing as they fumbled their way out of the darkness and into the light. Lucia fell on top of her as the sun beat across their faces and the forest spread in all directions around them. Sounds of birds called in the treetops and a river babbled nearby and it was bursting with warmth and life.

Tomma’s eyes were shiny with fresh tears and they were on the ground and laughing. Lucia wrapped her arms around Tomma’s neck. “Thank you,” she whispered and peppered her face in small kisses, “thank you for saving me.”

Tomma ran her good hand through Lucia’s thick hair. “Thank you for saving me.” She kissed her firmly on the lips and whispered into her skin, “I was alone for a long time before this.”

And they wrapped around and around each other and the bright daylight bore down on them from all sides and the breeze licked their skin. They were out.

-------

A huge thank you to my beta readers for this story! I am so grateful for the comments and encouragements for this piece 😊

If you enjoyed the story please consider donating to my ko-fi or supporting me on patreon (even a dollar helps!)

[toko-talks]

i haven't seen any other anons send you answer you so far so ... 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 /p - 🧃

1.) what’s your favorite “underrated” DR character ?

there's a lot i like, but it's honestly probably a tie between the asahinas. i ADORE aoi - she'd be an amazing friend and/or girlfriend </3 on the other hand, ik we didn't see him much but ... <yutaasahina3 SORRY YOU CAN PROBABLY TELL BY MY PROFILE THEME I HAVE BRAINROT FOR HIM

2.) what DR character do you think would be your best friend in a non-despair au ?

!!! KYOKO, SONIA, CHIAKI, AND/OR KAEDE !!! i'm kind of basic with these choosings but ... i kin them and because of that we have a lot in common :] then again, i have too many kins ,,, but honestly probably sonia or chiaki for the most part !

3.) what DR character do you think would be annoying to be in a school setting with ? (like, if you had a group project with them you’d groan).

god, i'm so sorry byakuya, but i can't STAND you. love you tho *smooch* BUT IN ALL HONESTY YK HE WOULD JUST DUMP THAT SHIT ON YOU AND LEAVE ... i just can't stand people who don't do their part - at least, not without good reason.

4.) who do you think you’d crush on in DR if it were a non-despair au ?

basic again but ... <nagito3, chiaki, or hajime. or all three LMAOO i'm a goddamn simp and i . i love them sm .

5.) what character do you think deserves more “x reader” writing ?

OOH BOY THERE'S A LOT ... mmm but mainly to keep it short, a lot of the girls in this franchise ... the fighter girls !! they get some recognition, but not a whole lot ... OOH HIMIKO AND ANGIE !! AND AND AND KIRUMI AND AND UM PEKO AND -

bonus ! ;;

6.) how are you doing ?

i'm fine - really ! the real question is, how are you doing ?

7.) what are your hobbies ?

writing, as you probably already know, editing, drawing, singing sometimes //// .... um also kind of just interacting with people anonymously ? it's nice to watch people get happy over a stranger wanting to talk or genuinely curious even if it's over a post :] /gen

8.) what’s your favorite color?

oh my god ... the hardest question /s but in all honesty, red & black are in a tie ! hbu ? i assume probably pink and/or purple ? <3

AYE YOU’RE A REAL ONE 🧃 THANK YOU SO MUCH 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 /p

1.) I LOVE AOI ALTHOUGH IDK YUTA TOO WELL :0 i’m sure he’s great though his design and ur profile theme is so cutee

2.) YES THOSE GIRLS ARE SO GREAT I LOVE THEMMM ah they’d be great friends omg— it totally makes sense how you’d be friends with them because you have so much in common

3.) LMAOO you make a great point about byakuya i hadn’t thought of that at all but it makes so much sense now that you say it

4.) they are such an iconic trio i don’t even blame you at all! don’t let anyone tell you you can’t like “basic” characters, they’re still lovely! also hajime :lipbite:

5.) i will keep those in mind!! i totally wish i saw more of them too, looks like ima have to be the one to write about them more too! you’re an amazing writer too and i would love to see you write about them in the future :0 (no pressure tho i’m j saying i love ur work lol) i love kirumi and wish i could write about her more TwT

6.) i am also doing just fine tysm 🧃! i’m glad to hear you’re holding up :D lmk if you need anything!!

7.) you have such cool hobbies /gen, we share a lot!! i also draw and sing sometimes! it’s so cool that you draw if you’re comfortable with it, i’d love to see it!

and ppl like you are the backbone of society lol /hj thank you for interacting!! it makes my day to see you in my inbox, really—

8.) i also love red and black! i like wearing them as clothes more tho because i think they look better on me :D

ALSO YOU GUESSED IT WOAH— those have been my favorite colors for a while (pink and purple, i think it’s purple rn)

did my blog theme make it obvious? you’re so sweet to have noticed ! 😭 <33

[atlas-of-a-human-soul]

Hurt, pt.15/finale

Summary: Life moves on and for Ethan and Y/N it has ups and downs, but they brave each storm together.

Warnings: angst, FLUFF, talk of depression 

Word Count: 2000

A/N - best to read while listening to Next to me - Imagine Dragons

Hurt - Masterlist

Tiny fingers curl around Y/N’s pinky. She watches the baby peer through brand new eyes at what must be such a strange world after life inside the womb. Her legs kick in a tiny jagged motion, looking for that resistance they are used to, but finding nothing but air. Y/N wonders if that's unsettling or a relief. It must have been pretty cramped in there with her brothers. When she stretches, her hands barely rise above her head and she can’t help but think of how lucky she is to have this feeling of absolute exhaustion wash over her. She considers herself lucky because after going into labor a month prematurely and without her cervix dilating, her babies nearly died more than once that night.

‘’I’m sorry, but this is for a C section.” Doctor Sonia decided, tired of waiting and risking the babies suffocating inside. Y/N’s contractions were perfectly well-timed, but her cervix was no more than three centimeters dilated and the medication doctor Sonia gave had no effect.

Sweat rolling down her forehead, her heart struggling to beat, Y/N released a shaky breath as her hand squeezed Ethan’s tighter. He was just as terrified as she is, but he didn’t let it show. He was brave for both of them in that moment when he pressed a kiss to Y/N’s temple before nodding.

“Do it. Whatever is necessary to save them all – babies and Y/N.”

“Ethan?” She whispered as if the words she’s about to say are scandalous.

“I love you.” Hearing those words again, for the first time since what it felt like forever, Ethan knew everything would work out eventually. They meant so much more after waiting so long to hear her say it - not out of habit or because she thought she had to, but because she felt it, because she meant it.

“I love you too. Infinity times infinity.”

The night turned into a blur and what was meant to be a happy occasion turned very gloomy when only two of the babies cried. Twins, separated in a completely different amniotic sac, boys at that. But the baby girl who spent her eight months alone, that was much smaller than her brothers, she wasn’t breathing.

“Why isn’t she crying?!” Y/N croaked in a panic that constricted her chest, her eyes settling on the small, blueish baby instead of the twins who were pressed up against her chest, both wailing for being brought out into this world a month too soon. Well, they’re Ethan’s kids, they’d still wail even if they were overdue, simply because they wanted to sleep in.

“Take her to the NICU!” Y/N didn’t know much about medicine, but she knew what that meant from being around Edward so much. A part of her wished he was there as well. She trusted him with her babies, she trusted he’d do whatever it takes to save them. He’d tell her what is happening instead of leaving her in the dark, because that was scarier than hearing the bad news. Not knowing is always more terrifying than hearing what’s happened.

Before she had a chance to react, her twins were taken too and all she had to cling to is Ethan’s hand as they cried together, not knowing what will happen next.

The boys spent a week in the NICU too, but they were allowed to be held and fed by Y/N. Her baby girl was a different story – a full month in the NICU and all she could do is touch her hand through the incubator. She had so many tubes coming in and out of her body that Y/N would cry her heart out whenever she had to leave. It was damaging for a mother to watch her infant daughter struggle alone while she couldn’t do anything to help.

Little did she know her little girl had a guardian angel who had loved her mother and by extension, he loved her too. Edward spent every waking moment making sure that baby survived, never once interfering when Y/N or Ethan were around. He respected her choice and wishes, even if they hurt him, tore him apart. He didn’t resent her for it, but Edward hoped that one day she’d change her mind. However, he was pretty sure that would never happen, especially when he saw her when she was taking the twins home with Ethan. They looked happy and while it made his heart bleed, Edward swore he’d be happy for her and make sure that smile grows wider when she takes her daughter home too.

“I’m so happy you’re home now, but I think your brothers are already jealous of the attention I’ve been giving you. Your father is just as crazy about you too. His little princess, he calls you.” Y/N smiled as little Rose opened her tiny mouth to yawn, smacking her lips a few times before continuing her slumber as if she knew her mother was near, watching over her.

Satisfied she managed to put all three babies to sleep with a little help from Ethan who changed their diapers while she fed them, Y/N slowly moved to the bedroom. She was exhausted, barely keeping her eyes open, especially knowing that in two hours the cycle would start again. The worst part? It was only five in the afternoon and it was just an hour since Ethan got home from work.

While it wasn’t full hours spent in the office and he definitely cut all traveling for some time, Y/N still didn’t feel it was right for him to go back to the company so soon. The Hollywood scene could survive without him a while longer, she couldn’t. 

A little piece of information – his secretary is now a very married man and not a hot ex-girlfriend. Regardless, the two have been going strong - turns out, communication really is the key. No matter how bad things get, being open with each other had helped them settle back into a life they were used to, except it was better somehow, richer with laughter and pure adoration.

In the end, it turns out we’re all addicts struggling with our very own drugs of choice and as much as Ethan was hers, she was his as well.

Just a step inside her bedroom, she found Ethan on the bed, lying on his stomach as he stared blankly in the distance. With one look at him, Y/N knew it was one of the bad days that have taken his mind hostage. Most days, Ethan was perfectly fine, but he still had moments when he’d drift off and he stopped hiding them from Y/N because she understood it wasn’t her fault he would suddenly become uninterested in conversations or the movie she wanted to watch.

Dragging her feet, she sat on the bed, attracting his attention. She didn’t touch him, nor did she try to push him into talking because he never wanted to talk much, usually using grunts and humming to reply to her.

“Is this a ‘I don’t want to talk or be touched’ mood or is it a ‘hold me till it gets better’ mood?” She asked quietly, considering his feeling and needs in these moments when he’s at a low. When he hummed on the second one, she smiled kindly before getting into bed. Mingling her left arm under the pillow to support his neck, she let her left hand wander the short hairs at the back of his neck. Her right arm rests on his ribs, her right hand rubbing his back soothingly. Her face is hidden in his chest, her head reaching just below his chin and he leans down to rest his lips atop her head. He didn’t care about her hair getting into his nose or about the fact she smelled like a mixture of baby powder and expired milk, he just wanted her close. 

She whispered to him: “It’s okay, love. I’m here. I’m always here”, and despite feeling heavy, Ethan felt a smile tugging at his lips. 

It took two years for him to get off antidepressants, but his monthly therapy sessions continued.

“How do you know? Huh? What if I lose myself again? What if I fuck up our lives again?” Ethan was scared, Y/N knew that. He’s be prolonging his medication therapy for months now, despite knowing he doesn’t need them anymore. She knew he used them as a crutch of sorts, but the negative effects weren’t worth it. 

“Because I won’t let you get lost again. I’m here and I’m a lot better at seeing the signs and we’ll keep our truth or not policy. You have me. You have the kids. Those pills you’re so worried to let go of? They’re holding you back, but I promise to keep you afloat if you let go. I’ll be your parachute if you start to fall.”

Ethan’s bottom lip quivered as he put a hand at the back of her neck, leaning down to press his lips against hers, drawing his strength from her love. She was right, he knew that. After all this time, he believed she’d be there to catch him if he needs it. He could trust her.

** About four years after the birth **

“Holy shit, Danny isn’t here.” Ethan slapped a hand over his mouth, counting all the kids again. Grayson’s Katie and October were both there, but so was his newborn Chloe who was soundly asleep in her carry-on. His Rose and Shawn were both by his side, holding his pinkies for attendance report.

“Okay, this is it.” Grayson and Ethan crouched down to their kid’s level, knowing it’s happening.

“We’ve all practiced this before. Operation ‘Mommy can never know’ can commence.”

Half out of their mind, Grayson and Ethan had been speeding through the store, each with a kid on the arm. The older ones ventured around, calling out for Daniel in hopes of finding their missing brother. No one in that family considered themselves as cousins. In their minds, they were all brothers and sisters, as bonded as any family can be.

“I’m telling you, he’ll be in the freezers!” Ethan insisted, knowing his devilish little boy’s knack for finding ice cream anywhere they go. After all, it was his fault Daniel had wandered off. To let go of his hand in a store was always suicide. If Y/N and Clara truly knew how many times he and Grayson displaced their children and how long the ‘Mommy can never know’ had been running, they’d be dead by now.

“Danny?!” Ethan’s shrill scream startled the adventurous foodie, turning to his father with a small chuckle and a bucket of ice cream in his hands.

“Grayson, gather the agents!” Ethan send Grayson to get the rest of the kids, turning to his spitting image of a son who had a personality of someone who would give his dad a heart attack before he turns forty.

“Mamma can neva know?” Danny asked in his tiny little voice that made Ethan both melt and want to pull his own hair out.

“Yeah, bud. Mommy can never know.”

However, the moment boys walked into the house, Rose and Katie walked right up to Y/N and revealed themselves to be double agents.

“Mommy, mommy! Daddy lost Danny! AGAIN!”

In a split moment it took Y/N to turn around and face her husband and brother in law, their lives flashed before their eyes.

“YOU DID WHAT?!”

Tags: @melodiesforari​ @brittttneyyyy​ @beautorigin​  @dolandolll​ @xalayx​ @godlydolans​ @heyits-claire​ @peacedolantwins​ @dolanstwintuesday​ @accalialionheart​ @ethanhes​ @lanadeldolans​ @ebbach-03​ @dolangels​  @xxaamzxx​ @cutestdolans​ @yaren-ates​ @dolansmith​ @vintagebitttch​ @primadolangirl​ @caqsicle​ @jjustjoy​ @justordinaryjen​ @graydolan12​ @imaginashawnns​ @graysonslovie​ @fandomsfeministsandothershit​ @bdsmdolan​ @graysavant​ @ethanspillow​ @dopedoodes​ @anything-dolan​  @sugarfootdolan​ @joyrivh​ @reblogserpent​ @luvdols​​ @emiemille  @herewegoagainandagainandagain​​ @adventureswithmell

[dracula-in-purple-story]

Romantic Idiots

How to confess to your crush(es)?

Option 1 : Do not let your brain and heart clashes together and give you mixed signals. Then confess.

Option 2 : Give him/her/them an Applin or any shiny Pokemons. Then confess.

Advice : Panic if fail. 

“Panic if fail? What’s that supposed to mean, Grandpa?” Hop glanced up hesitantly as he finished noting down the old man’s advice. His ex-champion brother nervously clenched around his Charmander plushies. 

The grandfather smiled coyly as he went to the kitchen to pour himself a cup of tea while the brothers tried to follow behind him. Their mother chuckled at this silly scene before the grandmother answered for her husband, also smiling coyly.

“Panic as in running away like an idiot. I swear to Arceus, when I was at your age, Leon, your grandpa over there tried to asked me out by throwing a Poke Ball at my window. Poor Appletun dearie got a fright that time and refused to acknowledge him for a decade.”

“Hush, sweetheart.” the blushing old man ruffled his wife’s hair before settling down. “Our daughter-in-law got it worse than you. Am I right, Helen?”

The said woman just sighed blissfully before snorting out loud, almost making the brothers laughed if they weren’t asking for some love advices. Standing up, she shuffled through the living room to picked up her wedding photos and was reminiscing the moment.

“Mom?” the older brother asked gently as to not interrupt the moment.

“Yes, Leon?”

“How did Dad confess? It can’t be worse than Gramps’ attempt.”

“Yeah!” the younger brother butted in while grinning at the offended-looking man, “What was it like? Could it be he try to serenade? Bet he sounds goofy and passed it down to Lee!”

“Hey! I sound amazing, Hopscotch! You are just jealous!”

“Boys,” the mother smiled at her sons’ playful banter. When they finally stopped, she smiled even wilder as she recounted the fateful evening.

“Well, he didn’t serenade, for starters. But he did tried to make an A Capella with Rotoms and Dittos. Never worked out since he first practised it at the Lake of Outrage. The Rotoms snitched on him with the Dittos were making ‘He love You’ letters while I saved his arse.”

“Oof, ouchies.” Hop scrunched up his face jokingly while Leon laughed as he imagined the scenario over and over. They pulled out their own RotomPhones when they were done though. 

“You better not snitch on me, dude. I must do this myself.” The ex-champion pleaded with his little bro nodding beside him.

“You got it-Roto! Don’t stutter when you confess-Roto!”

“We make sure to taped you guys so we can see who’s got the worst end of the stick-Roto!”

“ROTOMS, NO!”

The purple-haired brothers panicked as they chased their cackling phones, leaving the amused adults behind. 

“I bet two thousand PokeDollars that they would failed terribly and cutely at the same time.”

“No need to bet, Mother. It’s obvious that their ability to confess is still strong in their blood.”

“Rude, ladies. Very rude.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Now back at their shared apartment at Wyndon City, Leon was pacing around. His little bro had already went out to find his crushes. The new chairman wished he had this kind of courage. He wished, just not gonna happen. He and Raihan are just friends with a healthy rivalry of ten years! How is he going to react if he just confess out of the blue?! That’s why he got a perfect plan! Sonia had helped him devised a lot of plans. Plans related to shiny Pokemons were quickly rejected due to him being a natural shiny repellent. Flowers were also a big no, Raihan’s Pokemons tend to gobbled up flowers from his fans. Chocolate was supposed to be part of the plan, but Sonia rejected that idea because it was overrated. So this is the result. Just ask Raihan to go out with him and make sure he knows it’s a date and not a Valentine’s Day hangout. Solid A+ Plan! “Over a phone call? So outdated, Master Lee. Not gonna lie but that’s so last season,” the RotomPhone floats around in front of Leon while showcasing the contact details of his master’s dream man. “I don’t want Raihan to see my face if I ask him face to face! It’s too obvious!” “Ain’t that the plan?” “No!” “Okay, okay! Geez, you humans are so overly complicated. What happen to mating calls? It’s so much easier.” “Shut it, Rotom...” With a heavy sigh, he slouched over the single-seat coach. Maybe it’s a bad plan, but it’s the only foul-proof plan he could ever execute. “Okay,” Leon sat up and slapped both side of his cheeks to concentrate, “I’m ready! All I have to say is ‘Go out with me this evening’!” Snatching RotomPhone from the air, while apologizing, the purple-haired man pressed ‘Call’ with confidence. It rang for a few times before the Dragon Gym Leader picked up with his smooth, husky voice. The voice he should still get used to but still melt every time he heard it. “What’s up, ex-champ? Feeling lonely on Valentines?” Let’s be boyfriends. Leon’s mind went on short circuit for a bit. He didn’t respond for a minute, making the silence unbearable. “Uh, Leon? Are you there?” “LET’S DO BOYFRIENDS’ DATE!” Unfortunately, his mind ended up fusing what he initially going to said and his current thoughts. Freaking out, he ended up the call without hearing the reply. He just screwed up. He managed to screw up the only foul-proof plan. This is not what it should happen and yet, here he was. Leon stomped his way to his bedroom, slammed his door open and threw himself onto the bed in frustration. He really shouldn’t take Option 1. ~~~~~~~~~~ Arriving at the Hammerlocke Gym, Hop quickly strode towards the lift, and quickly slid his access card. He went in but not without getting bumped by Raihan, who never seems to noticed him as the top Gym Leader dashed outside with the biggest grin plastered on his face. Leon succeed, huh... The lab assistant shook his face to focus on his mission. He really put a lot of effort finding these Pokemon after all. Gramps’ advice always worked! Reaching his destination, he walked out slowly towards his so-called Rival Gang. They were grooming and playing with Zacian and Zamazenta. The Legendary Pokemon was really ease up on Victor and Gloria real quick. Hop let out his own Legendary Pokemon partner, Eternatus, scaring the occupant in the room, especially the albino-haired boy. “Hop! You idiot! Are you trying to scare me half to death?!” I wanna smooch you til I melt though. Grinning characteristically, he settled himself down between the girls, who now switched their focus on Eternatus. Victor, the new chairman’s secretary, smiled gently at him as greeting. Arceus, I would love to see your smile everyday, every time. “So, how’s the research coming up, Hop? Having such a rowdy Pokemon like this dragon must have damage the lab a few times.” Marnie smirked at Hop while throwing a Heavy Ball for it to catch. Such a graceful badass. With a super effective smirk. “Natus can shapeshift to a smaller size to roam freely so it’s not a problem,” the lab assistant answered before side-glancing his Legendary partner, “the problem would be giving Sonia a hard time to examine it.” “Typical. Seems like giving you Eternatus is the right choice. After all, I don’t think I can handle two huge responsibilities at the same time. Am I right, Zacian?” Gloria, the newly-crowned champion, winked at the Sword-wielding Warrior Pokemon. Zacian huffed out a pleased grunt, almost indicating it agreed with her. Are you trying to faint me with your adorable wink?! Finding the right time, Hop waited for the opportunity as they talked and played around. Occasionally battling or betting matches, making curry at this unusual location, talking about work. Hop had to thank Arceus when Victor popped the question. “So... today’s Valentines Day, ain’t it? You guys got some confession to make?” Silence taking over the room. Marnie and Bede tried to hide their blush but failed miserably while Gloria was looking embarrassed for once. Hop took a deep breath. “I do.” Shocking his gang again, he took out four Love Balls. Each of them had their unique designs that Hop took the time to do. “It makes me sound crazy but I think... I have a crushes on you guys. Super, duper big ones,” he slowly exclaimed as he handed them each of their own unique Love Balls, which they took it gladly. A good sign. Victor had Sobble with heart-shaped eyes drawing; Gloria had Scorbunny with its ear forming a heart-shaped drawing; Bede had a heart-shaped Solosis drawing; Marnie had Morpeko with heart-shaped cheek pouches drawing. “Hop, I hate you,” the Fairy Type Gym Leader started scowling. While Hop thought he was already damaging their friendship, the blushing albino head also threw him and the others a Love Ball. “You make me look so underprepared that it hurts.” “Me too.” The Dark Type Gym Leader joined in as she too had four Love Balls. “Me three.” The secretary chimed in, also with another four Love Balls. “I’m an idiot,” Gloria was flushed red as she took out four boxes of chocolates. The gang bursted out laughing at their rightfully-called lover. Lovers... that rings nicely to my heart. Our heart.

[apollorobin]

Sonia for ask?

SONIA MY BABYGIRL!!!!! oh my goodness i am in love with her <3 one of my favourite girls of the whole danganronpa series, what a sweetheart!! answering all of my opinions on her was so fun i loved it

favourite thing about them: i love how strong she is, like, how much she can stand up for herself!! she is confident and wonderful and strong, and her design is very polished in my opinion, her dress suits her so well and i love the colours (and also she is very pretty) (i would like to kiss her) (she is also very beautiful) (did i mention how pretty she is)

least favourite thing about them: hmmm, to be honest, in general i don't like when characters exist as a big reference to something else. if you didn't know, sonia is based on the band nirvana: novoselic is the surname of someone in the band, nevermind is one of their albums, and in utero (written on her uniform) is another album. i love sonia so much, and it's just a shame she's based on something i have no interest in, yknow? however i love to ignore all of that lol because nevermind and novoselic are pretty and european sounding anyway so they fit her nicely, so it's not a big deal. just wish the words had been come up with a different way really. but YEAH i love her design regardless :) my silly little gal

favourite line: i am not some woman with flexible legs!! that makes me giggle a lot :) in general i love her weird little semi broken english phrases and slang, she's so silly

brotp: i like her being friends with fuyuhiko!! my silly lil blondes :) also like her with all of the girls except hiyoko to be honest (she can get in the trash)

otp: bit of a rare pair from what ive seen buuut soniaki!!! her and chiaki are so cute together :) so sweet and fluffy, i love imagining/writing/drawing them! also it works really well with soudam in my opinion so that's a plus :)

notp: i know it's a very popular one, but i cannot stand sondham :( i get why other people like it though, so no judgement or hate at all if you like them!! i just very strongly see her and gundham as best best best friends, and it makes me feel gross to think of them romantically together. they are both just so gay to me!!!! the gayest bffs of all time. and i love imagining them help each other out with their individual relationship issues and crushes :)

random headcanon: she is a hopeless romantic, she loves to talk about crushes, and valentine's day is definitely her favourite holiday! she wants her and her friends to all have wonderful happy fairy tale endings

unpopular opinion: i've seen people say she was useless in the games before and that the plot would be basically the same if she wasn't there, but that's not true in my opinion! she saw hiyoko in ch3, her and gundham at the end of ch4 is impactful, and in ch5 she's suspicious when she's looking through the military stuff etc and if i remember correctly she tries to take the blame off of chiaki in the trial, right? and probably other stuff im too empty-brained to remember right now lol. and besides, her interactions with kaz and gundham add comic relief so! :) she is very important to me and the game would not be the same without her

a song i associate with them: this question is so hard omg, but im doing my best. here's a song that makes me think of sonia and chiaki together! just a generic love song really, nothing specific to them but it makes me think of them <3

favourite picture of them: she's so PRETTY i could literally say any oh my goodness. for sprites i'll say the one where she's holding her bicep like💪 lol then for pictures i'll say these :)

also love the one of her on the ch4 roller coaster though and as with kaz, i like all of those anime screenshot things like the picnic and there's one of her, kaz and gundham by the fountain under a rainbow, etc

thank you for asking about her!!! <3<3 and if anyone else would like to send in another character then please feel free!! this is fun :)

[drchiakinanami]

Us (Fuyupeko)

Rating: General/teen

Summary: She doesn’t wake up for months.No one does, for awhile, but he wasn’t upset about that.  The only thing that mattered was her waking up.

Read it on AO3 here!

She doesn’t wake up for months.

No one does, for awhile, but he wasn’t upset about that.  The only thing that mattered was her waking up.

The pods were all in a circle around the main hub that the Neo-World Program, both victims and blackened surrounding it, looking as though they were sleeping peacefully.

Fuyuhiko sat next to Peko’s pod every day, to the point where the others were starting to get worried about him.  Sometimes it would seem like she’d moved, even though that wasn’t possible- his eyes were just playing cruel tricks on him.  He talked to her sometimes too, but that felt weird most of the time, so he ended up just being in her company most of the time.

Hajime joined him every once in awhile.  It was sort of unspoken that he was going to be the ‘leader’ among them.  He was the most level-headed, since he had a little bit of Izuru in him still, and his logical thoughts almost freaked Fuyuhiko out some of the time.   He was so different than he’d been in the simulation. But really, everyone was different.  Those were different people.

The days were long.  Sometimes he’d talk to Peko, and tell her how things were going.  “You know,” he’d tell her, “Sonia decided she wants to learn to cook.  She’s never had to because of all that princess shit. It’s kinda funny.  I think you’d laugh.”

He wished she would wake up and laugh. Or just stare.  It didn’t really matter. It had been such a long time since he’d seen her eyes.  

“You should really eat something,” Hajime said, feet kicked up on a stool he’d brought in from his cottage.

Fuyuhiko was leaning his elbows on his knees, watching Peko’s still face.  “I ate this morning.”

“I meant eating with everyone else, in the hotel,” Hajime said gently, “It would probably be good for you to have some conversation.”

“We talk.”

“Yeah, we do.”  Hajime said, “But I talk to Kazuichi too, and Sonia and Akane go do girl stuff together.  You don’t really hang out with us.”

“You miss Chiaki, don’t you?” Fuyuhiko snapped suddenly, looking over at Hajime with a sort of anger he wasn’t sure even he understood.

Hajime’s eyebrows went up and his face took on a bit of a shield. For a moment, Fuyuhiko felt guilty for bringing her up and almost took it back, but Hajime answered his question anyway.

“Of course I miss Chiaki,” he said softly, looking away from Fuyuhiko.  “I miss her every day.”

“So you’re saying if she was in a pod right now, you wouldn’t spend every moment with her until she woke up?”

Hajime blew out his cheeks. “I can’t say that I would or wouldn’t, but Chiaki wanted us to move forward.  She would’ve… Probably yelled at me, to the best of her ability, if I spent all my time by her side when she wasn’t awake to know I was there.”

Fuyuhiko let out a short laugh. “I can’t imagine her yelling at anyone.”

Hajime laughed too, though it was weaker.  “Yeah. Me either.”

****

Though he didn’t like it, Fuyuhiko took Hajime’s advice to heart and started spending time with the others.  They didn’t seem to know how to handle it first, and Akane specifically asked him what his deal was, but he just laughed them off and tried to act as normal as possible.

But then people started waking up.

Gundham woke up first, shouting about the Dark Lord never being fully able to die, but he softened up real quick when Sonia started crying.  Fuyuhiko looked away when he offered her a hug, feeling a stab of pain go through him. He noticed Hajime left the room.

Hiyoko and Ibuki were next, both of them disoriented and Ibuki far quieter than usual.  Hiyoko called two people stupid once she woke up, so at least one of them was normal.

Fuyuhiko fell into his old habits when the others started coming out of their comas, sitting by Peko and praying to God she’d be the next one up.

Nagito woke up.

Nekomaru woke up.

Mikan woke up, apologizing.

Byakuya woke up, though none of them could say with one hundred percent certainty what his real name was.

Hajime left each event earlier.  Fuyuhiko stayed later.

Mahiru and Teru Teru woke up too, leaving just Peko.  And Mahiru was too nice to him about the whole damn thing for him to even yell at her or say something snarky.  She should hate him, after all.

But more than anything, Fuyuhiko didn’t understand the order of things.  Peko was the strongest person he knew, and he knew she could pull herself out of this.  So why wasn’t she?  

A few more days passed, and Hajime started bringing him food instead of arguing that he should be hanging out with the others.  If anyone got it, it was Hajime. He went on lots of long walks by himself for hours, after all.

“You know, you should probably wake up soon,” Fuyuhiko said softly one night when it was far too late for him to even be up.  “I can’t do this much longer on my own, Kazuichi is driving me fuckin’ crazy since Gundham woke up. He’s loud as shit.”

He heard a huff from beneath the glass.

His eyes grew wide.  “Peko?”

The pressurized inside of the pod disengaged and the glass on the pod slid back.  Fuyuhiko didn’t even breathe for several moments, leaning forward to stare into her face. After a few moments, she opened her eyes, staring up at him.

Fuyuhiko felt himself tearing up. “Peko?”

She blinked, opening and closing her mouth.  She sat up a little, struggling to support herself.  “Young master?”

Unable to help himself, he sat next to her on the bed and pulled her into a loose hug so she could get out if she wanted to.  She was stiff in his arms for a couple moments, then wrapped her arms around his waist, settling her cheek against his chest.  

“Do you remember what happened?” He asked her.

She nodded against his chest. “Everything.”

He let out a shaky sigh and pulled back to look at her, still holding onto her shoulders.  Peko’s arms were still around him as well, and once she got a good look at him, she reached up and touched the skin under his eye with delicate fingers. He’d almost forgotten that his eye, or Junko’s eye, rather, had been removed from the socket, and he was actually needing to wear an eye patch again.

“Is it gone?” Peko asked softly.

“Yeah.  Yeah, it’s gone.” She snatched her hands back suddenly and sat up a little straighter.  “My apologies, young master, I seem to have overstepped-”

“Nah, you can cut that shit out,” he said softly, cutting her off.  “I don’t want you to call me that. Not anymore. You and me, we’re equals.”

She nodded, though she seemed unsure. “Then would it be alright… If I hugged you again?”

He didn’t even answer, just pulled her up against him once more.  She sighed almost inaudibly and hugged him as tight as her feeble muscles would let her.  Fuyuhiko wasn’t sure what he had expected from their reunion after all this time, but this was the best possible outcome, in his opinion.  

“Do you want anything? Like some water, or something to eat? Or maybe you want to go back to sleep?”

She shook her head.  “No. I want to get up.”

“Okay, yeah, we can do that. I can help, if you want.  We could go down to the beach?”

“We’re on a beach?”

“Yeah.  Jabberwock island.  It’s real, we were just on a… Virtual one.  I’ll explain later.”

She was wearing a thick grey nightgown, so Fuyuhiko didn’t ask her if she wanted to change, but he helped her to her feet and helped her drape one arm around his neck.  Their height difference actually made it easier for her to lean against him. He led her down to the beach slowly, hoping no one else would see them. He wanted her to himself for a little while longer.  

Peko sighed when they got out into the sun.  She stopped walking and tilted her head back, letting the sunlight kiss her face.  Fuyuhiko watched her, once more in awe of her. Not that he ever really stopped feeling that way.  After a few moments, she felt him staring at her and glanced down at him, blushing lightly.

“I’m sorry,” She said, “Let’s keep walking.”

“No, we can stay still if you want to. I don’t mind.  You don’t have to worry about what I want anymore, you know.”

“Ah… I’m not sure I can do that.”

She looked a little unsure, and he watched her for another few seconds.  “Man, I fuckin’ missed you.”

She blushed, rather uncharacteristically, but Fuyuhiko thought it was cute, so he didn’t want to say anything drawing attention to it.  Instead they just kept walking, down to the beach, and Peko started to direct him towards the water.

“Whoa, be careful,” he reached around to take her hand that was farthest from him.  They were very close now. “Your muscles probably aren’t what they used to be.”

She sighed.  “No, they aren’t.”

“Hey, don’t be discouraged.  Nekomaru was bedridden for a day before he could get up.  You’re already doing better than him.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you,” Peko said softly, as though she hadn’t heard his last words at all.  “In the end, I wanted to save you. I wasn’t expecting you to come after me, during the execution. It… Surprised me.”

“Well, you would’ve  done the same for me.”

“Of course.”

He knew what she meant- he knew she was sincere.  She would’ve done it for him even if she hadn’t been a tool.  They’d been friends before her training, they’d grown up together. “No, like, I mean… Shit, I mean if I’d done it, killed Mahiru, it would’ve been to protect you.”

“My life is not that-”

“Peko, I would die for you.”

She blinked hard, like she hadn’t expected that and didn’t know if she could believe it or not.  He kept eye contact with her so she would know that he was serious.

“Forgive me, young master, I think it would be best if I sat for a moment.  I’m getting dizzy.”

“Hey, you don’t have to say sorry,” he replied, helping her to sit on the sand.  She let out a sigh and sagged forward a bit once she was sitting.

He shifted a little uncomfortably next to her. “I… I would get if you don’t wanna be around me anymore, you don’t have to, but if you do, you don’t have to call me that shit.  Just Fuyuhiko is fine.”

She turned wide eyes upon him. “Why would I not want to be around you?”

“Uh…” He hadn’t expected this question.  “Uh, well, I mean, you were basically forced to hang around me and serve me.  I don’t want you to feel like you have to do that.”

“Can I do that and still be around you?”

“Yeah! Yes! I just, uh, I don’t want you to think you owe me anything, or, shit, I don’t know, I just don’t want you to feel trapped.”

She dug her toes into the sand. “I don’t.”

“Okay, yeah… Good.”

“I feel… Happy, I think.”

“Yeah?” “Yes.”  She cocked her head to the side. “I am also aware that we have done many awful things.  I want to feel worse about that. For now, I think I am just happy to be alive.”

He shoved the toe of his shoe into the sand, watching it intently and trying not to smile.  Peko didn’t often speak of how she felt, mostly because his parents hadn’t wanted her to feel anything, so it was nice to not have to guess what she was feeling.

“Hey, I wanna say sorry.”

She turned surprised eyes onto him. “What for?”

“For not sticking up for you more, when we were kids.  For not forcing my parents to understand that I never wanted a tool.  Because I… I meant it, you know, what I said before…” He heaved a deep sigh.  “I just wanted you.”

Her gaze softened. “You do not have to apologize for that.  When we were the ultimate despair, we were equal, I suppose.” “We were also killing people.”

She leaned closer to him. “We were killing people before that too.”

He laughed.  “I guess you’ve got me there.  God, we were fuckin’ stupid, huh?”

Peko rested her chin on her knees, looking out over the ocean.  “Hm. I think… Perhaps, there is more to it then our intelligence level.”

He nudged her shoulder with his. “Do you… Do you forgive me though?”

She looked over at him again. “I would have given my life for you.  Not just because you were my master.” That took him by surprise.  “I never wanted that.” “Not wanting it doesn’t make it any less true.  I very much would’ve done it. I did, in fact.” “That’s because-”

“Not because I felt an obligation,” She said firmly.  “I did not.”

They sat in silence for a bit, just listening to the ocean and watching it.  Fuyuhiko wanted to say something else, anything. He’d been sitting and waiting for her to wake up so he could talk to her.  Tell her, you idiot, his mind screamed at him.  He looked over at her, watching her, curled up in a ball.  She was so perfect. He should tell her that, right? He sighed and looked away from her again.

“I feel like we’re both dancin’ around the real question,” He said.  “I care about you. A lot. I don’t wanna live without you.”

“I-”

“I want to be with you in whatever way that looks like.  I don’t want you as a tool, I want you as my partner in crime- or, no, let’s not do anymore crime.”  He knew he was rambling now, but he couldn’t stop. “I just want you to know that I don’t know when I fell in love with you, I just know that I did and to be honest I think I might actually die without you.  Doing life without you… In the simulation… Even if there weren’t any more murders, that was the hardest shit I’ve ever had to do.”

She didn’t seem to know what to say, so his mouth caught up with the nervousness of his brain and he kept talking.

“Shit, I didn’t mean to put on that pressure on you, that’s super uncool.  You don’t have to answer right now, or ever, really. I’m okay with us just spending time together in whatever way possible, we can just… Yeah.”

She laughed.  It was a real laugh, one that came from her gut, one that he hadn’t heard since they were kids.  After a few moments, it died down, but he felt the reverberations of it for hours.  

“That was… Very nice.”  She looked at him, smiling.  “I do feel… Strong feelings for you, as well.  I never knew how to place them, and I was always told they were wrong. I suppose I am in love with you.  I don’t know how to do that.”

“However you do it is the right way,” he said softly, ignoring how his heart was exploding and putting itself back together all at once.  He scooted a little closer to her. “Cause for the first time… We get to be us.”

She smiled.  “Us.” She seemed tired all of a sudden, or maybe just content.  She leaned against him, head on his shoulder. “It will take some… Getting used to.  I am very used to serving you.”

“I’ll be… Ahem,” he cleared his throat, “Serving you, every once in awhile. You deserve that.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that.”

“I’ll just have to prove it to you.”  He tilted his cheek against her head. “I’m so glad you woke up.”

“Me too.”

The others flooded the beach then, pulling both Peko and Fuyuhiko to their feet and chattering loudly.  Ibuki was crying the loudest, hanging onto Peko, and Peko didn’t seem quite sure how to react or where to put her hands.  She was graceful with everyone who approached her, trying not to show too much emotion, it looked like, and finally, Mahiru stood before her.  

“I’m sorry,” Peko said, her voice strong.

“We all did what we thought we had to,” Mahiru replied, and gestured to everyone.  “There’s no blame on this beach.”

Peko’s eyes welled up with tears then, and she turned back to Fuyuhiko.  They became the center of a massive, very loud group hug, and Peko was crying harder than he’d ever heard her cry.  But that was okay. They were all going to be okay.

[more-than-a-princess]

Sonia shrugged: in the grand scheme of all of her social outings, Hasagawa had been rude but far from the worst she'd experienced. She'd told him she did not wish to accompany him to such gatherings ever again upon their parting, and it seemed to have stuck. So why did Shinobu look so angry? There was sympathy for friends of course, but she hadn't been wronged by him. "I do not like to say that I should have expected as much, I prefer to give everyone a chance," She replied, sighing. "But my dates so often turn out like this that it is difficult to remain optimistic. I am better off disengaging from it, until I must."

That was the problem at its core: she could never fully disengage by choice. There were two guarantees in life, or so her father had impressed upon her: death, and marrying a respectable man and birthing the next heir so Prince Arthur would be effectively shut out of any chance of taking the throne. For all the good he did for Novoselic aside, the most important one, her father told her in strict confidence, was ensuring his daughter would one day sit on the throne, and her children after her, to keep a selfish, close-minded relative as far away from the crown as he could.

"What I deserve and what will happen are not the same thing," Sonia reminded her. It had taken Shinobu holding, if not gripping, both of her hands to draw Sonia out of her head. She'd come to Japan to leave centuries of royal obligations behind her, just for a little while, and what she'd begun to find was that even thousands of kilometers and an island weren't enough to fully disengage. Everywhere she went, including Hope's Peak Academy, she was a princess. "And I wonder if you may think too much of me. As much as I would like to believe others would still find me appealing without my title and family, my past experiences leave me uncertain. I am not that special: I am just a person born into extraordinary circumstances who just wants to make the world a better place when I leave it and- Yaguchi-san?"

If Shinobu worried about running her mouth, it was nothing to the way Sonia now babbled on. Hands clasped in hers, Sonia had forgotten entirely that they stood in the middle of a mostly-deserted university hallway, with only her guards for company (and they tried their best to ignore the display of emotion that unraveled before them). Instead, she found herself confined, watched, if not scrutinized, by Shinobu. Despite how warm and tense it had become, the other girl refused to look away, and it would have been rude for her to do so when Shinobu had given her her full attention. Unwarranted, Sonia thought: it dawned on her that they were here to support one of Shinobu's friends, not have Shinobu be supporting her.

She needed to be stronger, she thought: complaining of bad dates didn't suit her, not if she was supposed to be a princess, the Princess. Regardless of the fact Shinobu cared or not, everyone else did. At least her own gestures of care came from a genuine place and not a desire for good press, as some members of the royal family exhibited.

"You are so very red," Sonia continued, eyebrows furrowed into a worried look. "Do you have a hand towel or handkerchief of your own? It is quite warm in here, perhaps the air system is not working." She shook her head, both at Shinobu's words and her own: a quiet, even hum from the air conditioning a few meters away proved Sonia wrong, and yet her cheeks had, by the feel of it and if she had to guess, flushed a deep shade of pink themselves.

"I do not blame myself, only my poor judgment for accepting the date at all," She continued. How was it getting so warm in the hallway with the air running? And why did she feel so short of breath, her chest tight? "But I suppose the identity of the person behind the cake will remain a mystery. They have their reasons, revealing themselves would likely be a complication. One they do not want: I can hardly blame them, after how the media was working to expose Gun-, that is, Tanaka-san's family history to the public."

It was a miracle they'd remained friends after it all happened, but it was a strength of both their characters, she supposed, that allowed it. Sonia breathed deeply once Shinobu had let go of her hands: maybe it was simply too warm for it. Spring had arrived, and the temperatures would only rise. "I am glad you enjoyed the chocolates, though. But I cannot imagine not being very taken with chocolate!" She laughed, the pink shade fading from her cheeks. The tension had dissipated in favor of amusement. "That seems rather unpatriotic to me, where I am from. I am quite glad you enjoyed Novosonian chocolate, and I would be pleased to share more in the future with you. But for now, yes, let us find our seats."

As Sonia explained her situation, Shinobu found herself possessed of two conflicting emotions. It was awful, what had happened to Sonia - how she'd been treated as a status symbol or an accessory. That any man could look at her, with how interesting and charming she was, and see her only in that way was the height of male myopia. And yet, there was some part of themselves that was happy her date hadn't gone spectacularly, and that Hasegawa would not continue onwards in her life as a boyfriend, or, eventually, something even more than that.

The only feeling that wasn't conflicted or in any doubt was her awareness that she should have beaten him harder. For that sort of person, it would have been fair to take a few of his teeth, or to crack a rib. Perhaps if she'd pierced a lung with a broken rib, he'd have been too laid-up to even attend his little function. Of course, that would have brought with it all manner of complications, but... Anzu was a good liar, and she'd have covered for her, if asked. Yes, she should have allowed her violent urges to play as they liked, knowing that it might have been some while before the opportunity surfaced again. Hasegawa should hope not to cross her path again, she thought, for she'd surely enjoy dismantling him.

They became aware too late that that dark shroud had settled over their features. "That's awful, Miss Nevermind," she said, taking a breath and forcing her sharp eyes to relax behind her glasses, and allowing the tension she'd been holding in her jaw to release. "Even for all my own dating misfortunes, that sort of experience stands out as uniquely unfair." Without her mind realizing what her body was doing, Shinobu reached out and gently took Sonia's hands in her own. "I've... said as much, before, but I repeat myself - you are rather extraordinary, Miss Nevermind. Any man who refuses to see that deserves not a moment of your time."

Looking at Sonia like this, so close, always seemed to soften her expression. "If you've made that decision for yourself, I'm no one to question it, but..." She shook her head, casting off the errant thought that had nearly made its way to her lips. "Whenever it is, I suppose, now, or some point in the future, you surely deserve someone who will treat you as you desire to be treated. Not as a prize to be displayed, or some thing upon a pedestal to be guarded and hidden away, but rather..."

The blush on Shinobu's face stretched past her cheeks, reaching the tips of her ears. This kind of nakedly honest vulnerability ill-suited her, in her opinion. "Rather, as you are, I mean. After all, you have to know that you're quite special, as far as people go." It was embarrassing. So embarrassing, and yet, she didn't let Sonia's hands go. "You could be a penniless orphan with no title, with nothing at all to your name, Miss Nevermind, and I hardly think it would change how lucky someone would be to have your affection."

She was talking far too much, wasn't she? "I regret if I've been unduly running my mouth, Miss Nevermind," they murmured apologetically. "I just wouldn't want you to think that you were in any way at fault for what transpired. Ha- he, rather, clearly missed out." Awkward... She truly had too much connection to the situation, and to speak plainly about it would only raise more questions. Shinobu would need to approach it carefully. "I'm not sure if it would bring you any comfort, but, I have my suspicions as to whether or not that was even his gift in the first place - the gentleman."

He'd seen the dessert himself, hadn't he? And yet not even realized that the red strawberries were mixed with white ones - Japan's hatsukoi no kaori strawberries. The scent of first love. What an embarrassing name for such a sweet fruit. Frankly, had Hasegawa any understanding of them, surely he could have parlayed it into a more romantic point. That he'd stolen credit was bad enough, but then to so... what was the word Anzu used in situations like this... 'fumble' the situation was even worse. Then, so important was it to correct Sonia's understanding, so she might not think such a personal and thoughtful gift came from someone so unconcerned with her.

With a soft hum, Shinobu gave a light shrug of their shoulders. "I'm in the same class as Miss Sato, you see - the baker - and we're on decent enough terms." After Anzu and Sonia, Ayaka could, perhaps, be considered her next closest regular acquaintance, if not quite a full friend. "Anzu spoke with her, and inquired about it, and though Miss Sato declined to reveal the identity of the person who solicited it, she mentioned they brought a detailed plan of what they wanted. She didn't seem to think it was a reserve course student, either, and Miss Sato... for her sharp exterior, is rather sensitive to these sorts of romantic things. I don't imagine she'd accept so elaborate an order if she didn't detect some manner of genuine feelings behind it." She took a breath, her speech having lost a bit of its even, measured tone. Honestly, they had to mind themselves. "If it's any comfort at all to you, then, it might be the case that the person who had it sent to you is still out there."

Was that enough? She felt some small measure of regret, of course, for involving Ayaka in the situation. She and Sonia didn't speak, so, it was unlikely that things would get back to her, and it wasn't as though she'd said anything particularly untrue, or damning. Ayaka was, after all, both sensitive to, and perceptive regarding romantic gestures and feelings. They'd learned that much at that ridiculous party that Anzu and Momoka had thrown involving half of their class. Even just thinking about it... what a bizarre night that had been.

"Ah, and as for the Valentine's chocolates..." Shinobu had, as she recalled, said thank you, but, perhaps Anzu was right. She texted so strangely that perhaps the message didn't get through, surrounded as it was by other things. "Actually, yours are the only ones I kept. I receive too many, and I'm not especially taken with chocolate in the first place, so I seldom eat them, but..." Abruptly, she became aware of the fact that she was still holding Sonia's hands, but, to let go now seemed as though it would draw too much attention to it. "I greatly enjoyed yours, Miss Nevermind, so thank you."

There was a moment, standing with her in the corridor like this, away from the eyes of others, holding both of her hands, where Shinobu imagined that something could happen. What, exactly, that something would look like, they weren't sure. There was just... something. Some kind of potential energy. Then, the moment passed, as Shinobu heard in the distance the announcement over the PA. First in the auditorium itself, then in the hallway. "Ah..." She murmured, letting go of Sonia's hands. "I suppose that's our sign to go to our seats, isn't it?"

[yakumtsaki]

I taste just like ice cream, bitch I am so icy, heart cold like an ice queen, that's why they don't like me 🎵

-What the hell was that.

Traditionally I start Union updates with semi-relevant song lyrics.

-Why did you start an update at all.

Because it’s time, Shajar! I took a holy oath in my 2020 simming goals post to update Unions once a month, and I’m already a month late.

-But nothing interesting is happening. 

That’s never stopped me before. Now listen to Rico Nasty, cry some more about Sophie blowing you off, and shut up.

-Ugh please, I couldn’t be more over Sonia if I tried. I hardly ever texted her links to wedding pinterest boards and quizzes to determine if our parenting styles are compatible. 

Did she ever reply? 

-She did once and said ‘who dis’. Of course the letters unscrambled spell out ‘do wish’, meaning she did wish me to keep messaging her. I just don’t know where it all went wrong. 

-Hey there, 17 year old girl, maybe you’ve had enough neat whiskey for the night? We’re actually running out of bottles. 

-Beat it, ponytail, I need to dull my pain. I’ve just been stabbed right in the gut by the love of my life. Just like my style idol and general role model, space opera fascist Kylo Ren.

Shaj I really hate seeing you like this, and not just because the red neon light is super unflattering on your complexion.

-You can fuck right off too, I was perfectly happy with my dads who hate me and my imbecile sister and my brother who might as well not exist, noogie-ing people all day AND night long, but you had to be all ‘OMG IT’S SOPHIE MIGUEL SHAJAR GO TALK TO HER’. Life-ruining-moron. 

But I was totally right about you two hitting it off, I mean look how sad you are now that she dumped- yea never mind, that’s not a good argument.

-Look what I can do even though I’ve had 46 whiskeys!! How you like me now, Sophie???

-You’re paying for all these broken glasses, I’m going to need your name and a credit card.

-Yes, fair enough, my name is Cyneswith Union-

-I LOOK GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT

Yea, you really should eat something to soak up all the alcohol. And not to kick you when you’re down, but you should also disregard all those cliches about ~a smile being the most beautiful thing you can wear~ because MAN. Watch out Joaquin, there’s a new Joker on the prowl. 

-So.. 20 lobsters thermidor and our most expensive appetizers?

-Aha.

-Would you mind settling your bill now?

-Of course not! My name is Cyneswith Union and this is the credit card my parents got me when I was 6 because we’re super duper best friends! I love my parents! They don’t care about their other daughter at all, even when their other daughter is going through a really hard time because she got the emotional equivalent of a lightsaber wound in the gut. You know what, let me also get 20 bottles of your most overpriced champagne to go with the lobsters.

Feeling better?

-Well it’s hard to feel bad when you’re spending your parents’ money recklessly and with malice aforethought.

It sure is. Alright well, the sun is coming up, maybe we should head home.

-What’s the rush? What is going to happen if I don’t go home, my parents will get worried? LOL

God your life sucks. Ok let’s hit a couple more places.

-Greetings. Welcome to our establishment. I am a human employee from this planet.

Great, nice to meet you.

-I just want there to be no doubt that I am indeed an earthling, born and raised under the earth’s exosphere and not above it.

Leave us alone.

-And I’m the resident community lot sim with that one face template you hate! There must be one of us on every lot you visit!

-And I am here in my revealing outfit to use the dance sphere and make everyone uncomfortable!

You’re actually pretty, I need to keep you in mind for after Don Oates takes a wrecking ball to our genetics, but yea, let’s bounce, Shajar.

Time to visit the happiest place on earth, Deh'Javu Modern Art Museum, home to my favorite piece of art in any medium, The Toilet of Fire. Shove that Fountain up your ass, Duchamp. How we feeling, Shaj?

-This trash can reminds of Sophie :( She used to go around town throwing money she stole from charities in trash cans and then send them riddles for where to find them :(

Enough with Sophie, we’ll find you someone better! Like..

..your aunt! Get the hell out of here Brit Brit, you’re taking up townie space. 

-I won’t be long, Gunther’s amazing close-up portrait of my hair was rejected by the museum so I’m here to set this shithole on fire. 

In other words Gunther just painted a canvas black and called it a day?

-His art doesn’t cater to plebs. Yes, offense.

Our old friend Ugly Teen Townie is here so finally we can have some fun. Shajar had gone almost 12 hours(!) without noogieing someone and I was starting to worry for her health.

-Yes, yes, I’m starting to feel like myself again..

Good for you, Shaj!

-Hope you’ve made peace with your God, Ugly Teen Townie, this water balloon is filled with horse feces! 

-WHERE DID YOU EVEN GET HORSE SHIT

-I ordered it from some guy named Leod McGreggor.

-How about a another joke, MuRRAY?

-What?!

-Now you say, ‘no, I think we’ve had enough of your jokes’. Say it!

-No, I think we’ve had enough of your jokes.

-What do you get when you cross a mentally-ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? Now you say ‘call the police, Gene!’

-Call the police, Gene!

-I'll tell you what you get..

-YOU GET WHAT YOU FUCKING DESERVE. HAHA oh man! Good stuff. 

Alright I’m starting to feel bad for Ugly Teen Townie, first he had to come to all the toddler birthday parties during the Victoria/Komei era and now this, he has suffered enough at this family’s hands. Time to go home, Shaj.

-Not so fast!

Wow, the Countess and Mrs. Crumplebottom on the same lot, top 10 anime crossovers.

-I have been sent here by the Limp Dick Vamps United organization to recruit Shajar Union.

Ugh you people are still around? Haven’t heard of you losers since the Count wouldn’t let Victoria bang him, which I’m still annoyed about. 

-Indeed we are, and it’s clear Shajar is ready to join us, dedicating her life to evil deeds without romantic distractions. I have no idea what Crumplebottom is doing here.

-I’m here to recruit Shajar to my own organization, Bitter Sims Worldwide Alliance. We’re always on the lookout for new members who want to spread their misery to their fellow Sim. 

It sounds like it’d be more effective if you guys just merged your organizations.

-I will NEVER merge my organization with someone who displays her bosom like a common whore. 

-Eat a dick, Crumplebottom!

-MAKE ME, FANGTOOTH

-Alright here I am, what the fuck do you want?

-Shajar, it is a pleasure to meet you! Ardent admirer of your work.

-What work, freakshow?

-Torturing everyone around you, what else!

-What? I don’t torture people around me, if anything they torture me.

-Why don’t you talk to me about it?

-I’d rather not, you look like a bejeweled snowman.

-Look deep into my eyes, Shajar..

-And now look deep into my razor sharp teeth..

-Ugh fine, let’s talk. 

-Is that Victoria and Komei’s teen granddaughter hanging out with a vampire?

Yes it is Kennedy, keep it moving.

-God, wtf is wrong with this family. 

Nothing now that you’ve been removed from our social circle, go away! Just kidding, you’re an icon and I’m marrying you in at some point. 

-Hard pass. 

Your loss, hombre. 

-It definitely isn’t.

-If I had known your turn on was vampires I would had set you two up!

STOP SETTING UP TEENS WITH ADULTS, LAKSHMI. And Shajar’s turn ons isn’t vampires, it’s fitness/fatness. Body positive queen. 

-Well, Shajar, you alphabetically listing all the people who have wronged you while I was trying to kill Crumplebottom telepathically has made for a very productive conversation. We’ll be in touch. 

-Thanks, Countess, it’s been real.

Shajar!!! Who cares about Sophie when you might bag a hot, rich vamp??

-Meh.

I’m gonna need you to be more excited about this prospect because a vampire spouse might just be enough of a draw to beat the comedic factor of fucking Don Oates turning us into an unintentional uglacy and I’m doing whatever I can to avoid my fate.

Ugh.

UGH

UGHHHHHHH

LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOO VICTORIA

-GET FUCKED, BROKEN FACED WEIRDO

God I miss you Vic 💔

-Donnie-bear, not to be not-nice, but mopping your pee off my front lawn is not exactly what I pictured doing during this date.

This guy won’t even mop up his own piss, what a catch.

Wow, manipulative much?? You are a piss piece of work, Donaldo.

-Don’t think we forgot about you, you 10-nice-point disgrace!

-VICTOR NO

-GET THAT MOP READY

-Finally, some peace and quiet.. Just me, alone with my broken heart, pondering my hopeless, loveless future..

-💗💗💗OMG SIS THERE YOU ARE. DONNIE AND I MADE OUT!!! 💗💗💗 But then grandma’s ghost scared him into soiling himself. 

-Good for grandma, hopefully next time she gives him a stroke. Now shut up and let’s eat in silence while I ponder my hopeless, loveless future.

-Okie dokie! 💗💗💗

-Um, I think mine has vomit in it.

-Yea I did that, but it’s just whiskey and lobster, if anything it increased in value. 

-Awww thanks sis! 💗💗💗

-Stop patronizing me, you little bitch. God I want to poke your eye out with this chopstick so badly.

-I love you too Shaj! 💗💗💗

And I hate both of you. Where’s your brother, I haven’t paid attention to him in 3 days. 

-He went upstairs, I think he’s pusshurt we forgot his birthday LOL

IT’S HIS BIRTHDAY????

-Don’t feel bad, I forgot it too! 💗💗💗

GODDAMMIT. WULF! WULF WHERE ARE YOU

-I’m here, I just grew up and dare I say it could not have gone better! 

Really?? Finally some good news! Let me look upon you-

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

WULF WHAT THE FUCK

-I was Mozart musical genius boy but now I’m a sk8ter boi! Character development!

Ok this is the most iconic birthday look since Gunther grew up in the pirate costume, we’re obviously keeping it. 

-Great! And as if the fact I’m a Wyatt face template with 0 Jojo genes wasn’t enough to make me unelectable, I also rolled family! :D I’m doing everything I can to ensure I live that sweet motherlode spare life! 

Honestly you should had picked another outfit cause now that you’re dressed like this I unironically want you to win. Hoisted with your own petard.

[akiseyu]

Prompt Day 3: Sudden Realization/ Slow Realization You thought I have a drawing, but voila, a drabble! Polishing my writing skills for a bit, but seems to be a bad time because my brain is mush from graveyard shift. Story under the cut~

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 Gloria was still fidgeting in her seat inside the flying taxi, her Rotom phone on her hands. Hop’s last call may have sounded reassuring; but facing a legendary Pokémon, and an enraged one at that, by yourself was definitely something to be worried about. She had recalled her earlier standoff against Zacian, the one with Hop now, and its power wasn’t to be underestimated.

“Gloria, are you OK?” she barely heard Sonia ask.

The reigning champion had been trying to maintain her composure this whole chase. Yes, she wanted to stop the brothers from wreaking havoc over Galar, but seeing Hop so…reckless about the situation suddenly made her fret for his safety. All the more when she had remembered before all of this had occurred, he had been pensive on the events of the Champions’ Cup. He was not himself lately. Of course I should be concerned for him, she thought. He’s not just my rival; he’s my best friend.

“—ria! Gloria!” Sonia waved her hand across Gloria’s face to get her attention, and sighed in relief when she finally looked up. “Good gracious, I can’t worry for the two of you at the same time.” Noticing the young girl’s tense hold on her phone, the professor smiled. “I’m sure Hop is on it like a car bonnet. He’s just as strong as you are, and you know that of all people.”

Sonia had a point. Also, Gloria was sure that Zamazenta, the other Hero that she just caught minutes ago, had total faith in Hop for restoring order for its sibling. Still, she couldn’t shake off this feeling of dread.

--------

Both Sonia and Gloria rushed towards the heart of the Slumbering Weald after getting off the taxi, wishing they would make it in time before anything worse could happen. Hop, please be all right, the Champion fervently prayed. Please—

Suddenly, memories of their encounters today flashed in her head.

“Really, you’re amazing, Gloria. So amazing, maybe, that I don’t even realize just how amazing you really are!”

But you are, too! she had wanted to answer him, but she was astounded by everything he had revealed to her at that moment.

“I didn’t expect there to be such a gap between you and me, mate.”

Then there was no need for one! The League may have given the title to me, but I had never thought of that separating us, Hop!

Was that what bothered him?

“Hop!” Sonia’s cry broke Gloria from her thoughts. There was Hop right in front of the worn-down shrine, gently stroking Zacian’s mane. The boy looked a fright, probably from running around Galar and having to handle the raging Pokémon alone. However, it seemed that it had finally calmed down.

“See!” Hop flashed a grin at Zacian. “I knew you could do it, champ!”

The sight of her best friend still in one piece and successful at a feat without even having to use his Pokémon brought Gloria relief—and another feeling she couldn’t explain. “Hop!”

He whirled to see the two girls come closer. “You two made—” He wasn’t able to finish his sentence when Gloria suddenly hugged him. “G-Gloria?!”

“Don’t rush off like that again!” she berated. “I don’t want to see you hurt!”

She felt Hop hesitate a bit, then returned the gesture with his arms around her shoulders. “I’m fine, see?” He had to reluctantly let go to show himself to her. “No harm done.”

“Hmm, Zacian seems to be happy now,” Sonia stated, obviously shifting her direction at the legendary Hero from their scene.

“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? Though I can tell you, things were looking pretty dire here at first!” Zacian then responded with a proud bark. Avoiding Gloria’s worried stare, he turned to the Pokémon. “Wait, really?! Are you saying I’m…worthy?”

“Worthy of what?”

“I think…Zacian wanted me to be its trainer! Is it…is it really OK?”

Zacian nudged into his pockets as if trying to point to his other Pokéballs. Understanding the Pokémon’s answer, Hop reached for one unused Ball, to which the Hero touched with its snout. The familiar light enveloped its body and entered the Ball, securing its capture.

Gloria gaped in admiration. Having to prove yourself in front of the Heroes was no easy feat: she had done so prior today by battling Zamazenta. However, Hop had only showed his determination and compassion for Pokémon, and Zacian had given him its trust.

Hop had never been more commendable in Gloria’s eyes.

“You two really are something!” Sonia exclaimed.

“I…” He stared at the Pokéball in disbelief. “I still don’t quite see anything like that in myself yet…”

You still don’t? After all of this?

“…but thanks to your help,” He grinned widely, this time at her, “I’m starting to!”

Gloria smiled. That’s much better.